Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 1 of 3

Thoroughly settling down to his work, the individual to whom I have already drawn the attention of the reader took out his note-book, and began studying its contents. At length, unable to find what he wanted, he exclaimed somewhat pettishly:

‘Where the dickens are my notes?’

‘Why, in your hat, to be sure, you old fool!’ said one of the men, who, having finished his report, was preparing to go home. ‘I saw you put them into your hat directly you came in.’

‘Well, you’re right,’ said the now sober pressman, looking into the last-named receptacle. ‘The fact is, I’ve been lushing,’ said he, ‘a little too much. Indeed, it was only as I went into the pub, and saw the people, I could get up anything worth writing about.’

‘Oh, there is no reason to explain, my dear fellow,’ replied the gentleman thus addressed.

‘No, but I wish you to understand I am the victim of circumstances over which I had no control. It was business, not love of liquor, which reduced me to this state.’

‘Of course. We all know you’re as virtuous as Father Mathew.’

But here the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a small boy, sent by the sub-editor, to know if Mr. Wentworth was in, as he was waiting for copy.

‘Tell that respected gentleman,’ said the individual thus alluded to, ‘Mr. Wentworth is in, and in a few minutes will let him have as much copy as he requires,’ at the same time handing the boy a few slips for the printers to go on with.

The boy retired, and the speaker set to work, describing with great felicity the revelry of the night, and deploring the drunkenness which interfered with the pleasures of the day, and which marred the beauties of the sylvan spot. By turns he was humorous and moral, classical or romantic, and so effective was the article that it was reprinted next day for gratuitous circulation, and with a view to prevent the repetition of such excesses on another occasion, by an ‘Old Teetotaler’ who lived in the neighbourhood of the revelry thus condemned.

‘I think that will fetch the public,’ said the worthy proprietor of the Daily Journal, as he lingered over the breakfast-table of his well-furnished mansion in an aristocratic square next morning. ‘That, my dear,’ said he to his better-half, ‘is just what the British public likes – something light and airy, with a moral tag at the end. We are a very high-souled people, and mere flippancy soon palls. I never had any fellow for the right kind of article like poor MacAndrew. What a pity it is that he drank himself to death! One would have thought he was good for another ten years. As soon as he died we had quite a drop in our sale; but since we have got the new hand the sale has been steadily rising. Most of my writers are getting too high and mighty, and think a great deal more of themselves than the public do. But this new hand is more useful. I fancy he is rather hard up. I know he drinks a good deal, and as long as that is the case he will be glad to be on the staff of the Daily Journal.’

‘Well,’ said the lady of the house, ‘ask him to our next soirée.’

‘I would, but I don’t think he’d care to come. The Cave of Harmony, or the Cider Cellars, is more in his line, and, then, there are the girls. I’ll not have these fellows come here and make love to them.’

‘No danger of that,’ said the proprietor’s lady. ‘My daughters have been far too well brought up to fall in love with newspaper writers. It might do in Paris, but not in London.’

‘Dear old girl,’ said the fond husband, ‘you’ve not got over the prejudices of early education and the traditions of Minerva House. We’ve changed all that in these days, when illiterate young noblemen make a living by scribbling scandals for the weekly journals, or are found to appear as amateur performers, or, what is worse still, on the real stage, jostling better men off, while the tuft-hunters applaud and wise men swear.’

‘Perhaps I am a little faulty,’ replied the wife. Her father was an old-fashioned City merchant, whose one standard of merit was wealth, and who thought his daughter had quite forgotten herself when she fell in love with a man who had anything to do with newspapers. ‘At any rate, I am sure I shall be glad to do what is civil to the poor fellow, should you wish it.’

The poor fellow referred to was our old acquaintance – the pious youth, the village preacher, the brief occupant of the pulpit in Sloville. Tottering home to his chambers at early morn, he met a shabbily-dressed man whom he remembered as a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge – a grand scholar, and one of his old professors.

‘I suppose you’re not got such a thing as a half-crown to lend a fellow,’ said the ex-professor, looking, unshorn and unwashed, particularly shady. ‘I’m drying of hunger.’

‘No, I’ve not; but if you come to my chambers in Clifford’s Inn we’ll have a jolly good breakfast.’

It is needless to say that the invitation was accepted. The bachelor’s kettle was brought into play, and some good coffee was made. Soon the room was fragrant with the scent of Yarmouth bloaters, as they were being toasted, and after that came a smoke and some chat. The feast, if not stately, was satisfying, and the ex-professor, finding no more was to be had, departed with lingering steps, leaving Wentworth to moralize, ere he dropped into the arms of Morpheus, upon the strange fate that had reduced a man of such talent and standing to so low a condition; and then he went off to sleep, to dream of his early peaceful and happy home. That is what one never forgets, no matter what may be his after-life. To the last each of us may exclaim with Wordsworth:

‘My eyes are filled with childish tears,   My heart is idly stirred,And the same sounds are in my ears   Which in my youthful days I heard.’

It was well on towards noon when Wentworth woke up, exclaiming:

‘Ah, if life were a dream, and if dreams were life, what happiness there would be for poor devils like myself! What an infernal fool that old professor of mine has been! He must have played his cards very badly.’

Suddenly, reflecting that he was not much better himself, he looked at the glass, and was astonished at his seedy appearance.

‘By Jove,’ said he, ‘this will never do,’ and hastily dressing himself, he rushed off to Hampstead Heath for a mouthful of fresh air.

Fleet Street saw no more of him that day. Goldsmith tells us that, in all his foreign travel, he saw no finer view than that he enjoyed from the top of Hampstead Heath, and the view there is still fine, in spite of the damage done by the smoke of London rising in the distance, and the hostile attacks of that foe to the picturesque, the speculative builder.

On the Heath Wentworth met a fellow-reporter, looking as gay and respectable as a rising barrister or successful physician. He had his wife and children with him. They nodded to each other, and the lady asked:

‘Who is that shabby, seedy-looking fellow?’

‘Oh, it is Wentworth, of the Daily Journal.’

‘He looks very sad and miserable.’

‘Of course. He is quite a man about town. I fancy he drinks more than is good for him, and leads too fast a life.’

‘What a pity! Has he no friends to look after him?’

‘I believe not. It is said he was brought up to be a parson of some kind or other, but he gave it up. He has plenty of ability, and would do well if he would settle down quietly. But he will never do that. They tell me he is quite a vagabond.’

‘Ask him to lunch, and let us see what we can do to reform him,’ said the lady, with the instinctive tender-heartedness of her sex.

‘My dear, he would not come if we did,’ and they passed on.

‘Ah, there goes Tomlinson,’ said Wentworth to himself. ‘How happy and respectable he looks! They tell me he has saved quite a lot of money, and has quite a nice little property about here. Such is destiny. He was born under a lucky star, I under an unfortunate one. Ah, if I had turned up trumps in matrimony, how different it would have been!’

Thus talking to himself, our hero found himself in the neighbourhood of a well-known inn, and a smile from the barmaid – a showy specimen of her class – was quite sufficient to induce him to enter. The fair creature, as she said, ‘was a little low, and wanted a fellow to talk to.’ Wentworth soon rose to the occasion, and when he left the hostelry, it was with a flushed cheek and a jaunty air. Indeed, he was quite mirthful till he reached a little cottage where he had spent many a riotous hour. To his consternation, the blinds were down, and there was an unspeakable air of desolation about the place, as if had come there the grim unbidden visitor whose name is Death. He summoned enough courage to enter, and came out, after a very short stay, looking pale and sad. Death had indeed been there, and taken away the breadwinner of the family, leaving wife and children desolate.

It was late when he reached the rendezvous of his companions, seedy fellows, but very happy, nevertheless, unshaven, with rather big beards and long hair, much given to smoking, and not over-clean in person or linen.

‘You’re late, young man,’ said the eldest of the party, as Wentworth entered, ‘and will have to stand glasses all round.’

‘Certainly; but hear my excuse. I promised to be here at eight; it is now ten. I want an S. and B. I have not a rap in my pocket – absolutely cleared out.’

‘Too bad! and yesterday was pay-day,’ said the chairman. ‘Wentworth, you profligate, I am ashamed of you. What an example you set these young people!’

‘Shocking, shocking!’ was the cry all round.

‘Strike, but hear,’ said Wentworth. ‘You know poor Canning?’ naming a comedian popular at the music-halls.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, he’s dead; and there’s a wife and five children, and an invalid aunt, without a halfpenny. I happened to come by the cottage as I was coming here, and I never saw a sadder sight. In one room the poor dead body; in another, women in hysterics, children weeping, and a vile harpy of a landlady standing at the door wanting her money. I paid her something to keep her quiet. That’s why I’m cleaned out, knowing that you generous youths would give me something for the poor man’s wife and family.’

Immediately every hand was put into its owner’s pocket, and Wentworth was content with the result, and he prepared to enjoy himself after the fashion of the room, which was well patronized by gentlemen of the press, including the dreariest of shorthand writers and the most elegant of penny-a-liners. As one went out to deliver his copy another came in who had done so. The climax was reached when there came a gang of Parliamentary reporters from the Gallery with the news of a great division, a Ministerial defeat and a Parliamentary crisis, who seemed inclined to sit up late talking shop. Most of them had a cheerful glass, and when that is indulged in, it is astonishing how witty a man becomes, and what a cause of wit in other men. A good deal of profane language was used, and now and then a little Latin or a scrap of Greek. The atmosphere was as critical as it was clouded with tobacco. Wentworth took part in many a war of words, and

‘Drank delight of battle with his peers.’

The sleepy waiter, reinforced by the sleepy landlord, had hard work to clear the room, which, however, was not done till the milkman might be heard going his early rounds, and the great world of London was preparing for the business of the day.

No wonder Wentworth rather liked that sort of life. It had for him the charm of novelty. At any rate, he breathed a freer air than he had ever done before. He could say what he meant. He had lived where that was impossible. There was little free speech or thought in pious circles, either Dissenting or Church, fifty years ago. Happily, the present generation lives and moves in a freer day, when a man is not sent to Coventry on account of honest doubt. The one drawback he felt was that he was rushing to the other extreme.

When Johnson was about to write the life of Akenside, he asked Hannah More, as a friend of Sir James Stonehouse, Akenside’s contemporary at the now far-famed borough of Northampton, if she could supply him with any information concerning him. On which she tells us she made an effort to recollect some sayings she had heard reported. This did not suit the Doctor, who impatiently exclaimed:

‘Incident, child – incident is what a biographer wants. Did he break his leg?’

The great Doctor was but a superficial critic, after all. As a rule, writers nowadays care little about incident, and in this respect the public resembles them. Given a life of average duration and condition, and we know its inseparable incidents – incidents which are the general property and experience of the human family. In our day we like better to learn what is the hidden life – to see the springs and sources of action in the individual or the community at large – what are the seeds sown in the human heart, and what the fruit they bear. Nature works slowly and in order, and miracles are, if not impossible, at any rate rare. One can quite realize the feeling of the celebrated Rammohun Roy, when he contended that miracles were not the part of the Christian dispensation best adapted to the conversion of sceptics. Be that as it may, there was nothing of the miraculous in finding the ardent preacher of the Gospel now in the camp of the scorner. That was the result of causes long working unsuspected. He had been disgusted with the narrowness of the Church and people with whom he had come in contact. The God of his youth seemed to him hard, despotic, unmerciful, and unlovely. He had been bowed down to the earth with a great sorrow. Apparently the change was not for good. Once he was a preacher; now he never darkened church doors. Once he associated with the godly; now he did nothing of the kind. In the language of the sects, now he was a son of perdition.

Of course a woman was at the bottom of it all. It was in Hamburg they met. There was a fashionable English boarding-school in that ancient city, and in the course of his travels Wentworth had spent a winter there. Indeed, it was on account of the beauty of one in particular that he had stopped there wasting his time and getting over head and ears in debt. It was all an accident; going up the old Steinweg, he had seen some of the young ladies of the English school coming down. One of them was Adèle, blue-eyed, fresh and fair as the stars on a summer night. Their eyes met, and Wentworth was over head and ears in love.

In a little while he managed to make the acquaintance of the lady at an evening party, where everyone was ravished with her musical genius. He was introduced to her, and found her English charming. It was evident that immense pains had been taken with her education. He had never met so brilliant a linguist before, French, German, Italian, English – in all she was equally at home. Again, he had met her at a fête without the gates, and had the honour of escorting her home. In a little while he had sent her a letter of which it is needless to describe the contents. That letter was placed in her guardian’s hands, and the result was an interview and a betrothal.

Had our hero been equal to the situation, had he had a proper amount of backbone, had he not been trained to lead an emotional life, had he attained to the true dignity of manhood, he either would have never thought of love of one in every way so much superior, or he would have returned to England at once to fight the battle of life for himself and to fit him for her. Alas! he was weak and intoxicated with love, hardly master of himself. He fell into bad society with men richer than himself, where he learned to drink and live recklessly. Away from her, loving her with the intensest and wildest passion, he was utterly miserable. He returned to London, and got a little work to do in the way of reviewing.

In London he was worse off than in Hamburg. His mode of life lent itself easily to the wildest excesses. Had he brought back the lady with him as his wife it would have been otherwise. His was a nature that could not stand alone.

Some of his wealthy friends had married, and at their evening soirées he met men and women – authors, artists, statesmen, men of progress, men and women whose names the world yet gratefully remembers; and then away he would rush off to the lodgings of other friends – dissipated medical students as they were in those far-off days, types of the Bob Sawyer class, and with gin-and-water would pass the night, unless, as was too frequently the case, they plunged into the debaucheries of London by night, when respectability had gone to bed.

Lower and lower did Wentworth fall, and then came the end. The lady discovered how romantic had been her dream, and the dismissed lover staggered under the blow. It is hard to realise what a moral wreck that pitiable wretch had become – how with no real excuse for his drink and dissipation, now almost a necessity of his life, all hope had vanished from his horizon, all faith in God or man.

For a time he led, as many do, a dual life – decent by day, the reverse by night. London is full of such men now. Fathers and mothers living far away in the quiet country home have no idea what London is by night, or was, for I write of a wild scene of dissipation which no longer exists. A young man in business is sheltered more or less from the lowest abysses of London life. A young man in a decent home is also guarded to a certain extent. It is the stranger within the gates who, as a rule, falls the more easily to the allurements of vice. He is alone; he needs society. It is not good for man to be alone. If a man cannot have good society, the chances are he will have bad.

The Church at one time made no effort to bring back such lost ones. They drew a hard and fast line. They only admitted the hypocrite or the saint. Wentworth belonged to neither class. In reality he had little altered. He left religious society because he could not with an honest conscience conform to its ideas, or speak its language, or adopt its conventionalisms. At one time he believed in it because he had been brought up in it. He had been taught phrases, and he used them without ever thinking of their meaning, and when the meaning did not come he went on using them, believing it would come. ‘Preach faith till you have it,’ said an old divine to a young brother, ‘and then you will preach it because you have it.’ In Wentworth’s case the remedy did not answer. He preached because he thought it his duty. He did not preach because he felt it dishonesty to use terms of doubtful meaning utilized in the pulpit in one sense, understood in the pew in another. He had not found light in Little Bethel or Cave Adullam. Was it to be found elsewhere, in the gaiety and dissipation of the world? Well, that was what he wanted to find out for himself. Like most of us, Wentworth was too impatient, and could not wait for the happy surrounding which comes to all true men soon or late. Religious people and he had parted. It seemed to him as if he could do no good, and as if the attempt to do so were harm. He had aimed high and fallen low. To save himself from starvation he did a little literary work, but that was a poor staff on which to lean. He had, as most of us have, daily wants, and, to meet them, required daily cash.

Turning one night into a tavern, he found two or three seedy-looking men manufacturing what they called ‘flimsy’ for one of the dailies. They took pity on him, and taught him how to do the same. For a time he was their assistant, and they gave him a share of the pay; but evil communications corrupt good manners, and, to drown all thought, he did as they did: sat up late in public-houses – these latter places kept open nearly all night then – and the excitement of the new life came to him as a pleasurable relief from the darkness which had cast a gloom on the morning of his days.

It became in time a habit with him to spend his nights in the music-halls, such as the Cider Cellars and Evans’s, which now have long ceased to exist, where he could forget what he once was, and did not think of what he once hoped to be. At such places all classes met in boon companionship – the lord and the lout, the drunken clergyman, the greenhorn from the country, the man of business, or county magistrate, or attorney up in town for a day or two and anxious to see life, the wild sawbones, who was supposed by his anxious parents far away to be walking the hospitals and fitting himself for a useful career, reporters, students, barristers, reckless men of all kinds, over whom tailors and landlords alike grieved. Then there were haunts still more infamous, frequented by women as reckless and abandoned as the men. Some had seen better days; some had loved, and been betrayed and abandoned; some had never known virtue in any shape; all on their way down to be trodden underfoot.

‘I was gay myself once,’ says many a man of the world, as he hears of the excesses of dissipation. Alas! so much the worse for him. It is true all experience makes a man, in one sense, wiser, if he be a wise man. Yet it is a solemn truth that no tears, no penitence, no prayers, no exertions of an after-life, can restore to the sensualist or the profligate the bloom, the freshness and purity of early youth. None of us can blot out the past. The joyous aspect of innocence and grace can never be recalled, though, for all who seek it, there is a Divine mercy, lasting as eternity, broad as heaven itself.

At one time the idea of being in such company would have been shocking to Wentworth. There are thousands who, however, thus do fall away. But they do so little by little. No one suddenly becomes base, said the Latin moralist, and he is right. A real friend or two might have saved Wentworth many a bitter hour. But at that time the thing was impracticable. The line of demarcation between the Church and the world was too strictly drawn. In the parable of the Great Teacher, the tares and the wheat grew side by side. In its superior wisdom, the Church undertook to pull up and get rid of the tares, but in doing so a good deal of mischief was done. There was no halting between two opinions. You were either converted or not. A man was either the child of God or of the devil. The Church held up an impossible and an unlovely Christianity, into the belief of which men and women were terrified.. To produce that effect there was no end of excitement, and then, when the excitement was over, in too many cases came the inevitable relapse. One result of this was that the victim had to look elsewhere for the excitement which had become part and parcel of his being – to the flowing bowl, to what is called jolly companionship, to the siren voice of worldly pleasure – and the novice falls too easily a prey. Abelard is a more common character than Simeon Stylites. The songs of Circe are pleasant to listen to, and there are roses and raptures for the sinner as well as the saint, and the roses and raptures are now – not in a world to come. The world has a great fascination for a lad brought up in a pious home, to whom it has been represented as a waste howling wilderness, peopled with devils fearful to gaze on. When he steps into it, and finds how unfairly it has been drawn to him by the Church, the chance is that he runs to the other extreme. We have hardly yet emancipated ourselves from the morbid and monkish theology of the Romish Church. There come to the writer sad recollections of a dismal theology to which he was expected to give his assent. Never did men then talk of man being made in the image of his Maker – of his being vicegerent of the earth, only a little lower than the angels, covered with glory and honour. All was devilish man could say or do. In vain was education, or science, or art. The cleverer, the more useful, the more decent you were, the more mischievous, the further from God.

Such was the doctrine preached from a thousand pulpits, at any rate, not many years since. And thus it was that the churches were chiefly filled with ignorant women and old men, or with young people – who died early of consumption – who accepted everything they heard in the pulpit, who knew nothing of the world they denounced, to whom the language of passion and temptation was unknown. It is easy to be religious when all that is irreligious has worked itself out of the man – to lead a dull, decent, formal life, when the capacity for excess is gone, or the spendthrift has been turned into a miser; when old age has taken from woman her power to tempt, and robbed the wine-cup of its fascination; when all a man wants is an easy-chair by a good fire. When we cry with Tennyson: