Part 2 (1/2)
No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and are still, ”The Learned.” You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry spoken of as that, I'm afraid.
As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, and who certainly knew nothing about either.
One of the real objects of this sad little Society was pa.s.sionately to ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Coalchester.
Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was ”Walt Whitman,”--a name which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give his paper, he p.r.o.nounced its t.i.tle slowly, with his full carrying voice, and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through the old Lyceum: ”W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n.”
Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression that I can only compare to b.u.t.tered rolls. He was just three hundred years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob c.l.i.theroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little coterie; _and_ Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite recent ancestor had refused to pay t.i.thes. That ancestor was in his blood to-night.
Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters which never came out in the ”Transactions.”
The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's writings and doctrines, with extracts from ”The Leaves of Gra.s.s;” and from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the b.u.t.tered-roll expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his ”our young friend”
expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ...
The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob c.l.i.theroe, who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the Coalchester ”Argus” were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the blood to young c.l.i.theroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written some quite pretty lines.
It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind.
Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a silence: ”Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to Coalchester?”
”Capital!” cried Londonderry; ”come in for a bit of supper, all of you, and let us talk over the plan of campaign.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER
Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his workshop, she would fix the date by saying, ”It was about six o'clock at night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ...”
Sometimes it was, ”I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish,” or it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that marked the day.
The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate enough,--she would hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of what she called ”deep talk,” or shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and mothered, with a ”Law! what a boy it is!” She wasn't quite sure sometimes as to the soundness of his ”doctrine,” but wisely decided that her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no doubt G.o.d Almighty would look after for himself.
Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to Coalchester wits and their b.u.t.ts, so I shall not record the bright and animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but confine myself to a practical outcome of it.
What interests me specially about these young men was their rare practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got on to the market of realities.
Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called ”The Dawn,”
devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible subject,--politics and munic.i.p.al misgovernment; the new social ideals; the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its expenses by tradesmen's advertis.e.m.e.nts, a guarantee of a certain minimum distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid for by lies about bacon and b.u.t.ter,--or, let us say, business exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless as truth.
Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would promise a permanent advertis.e.m.e.nt, and he even promised ill.u.s.trations, in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the ”Argus,” of the flouris.h.i.+ng shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were truth without you!
The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertis.e.m.e.nts, at, say, half a guinea apiece. He would also a.s.sist Londonderry in the political and munic.i.p.al departments, not only in the higher flights, but lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities.
Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract millinery advertis.e.m.e.nts. She already announced the t.i.tle of her first article, which was very grand: ”Dress as a form of self-expression.”
It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming b.u.mpers of very hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; ”to keep the cold out,” she explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till that hour to be suitably recommended to the G.o.d of all enterprises.