The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857

The Initial Association failed. Clodman did not return; and it was found that he had appropriated to his private use the funds of the Association.

Behind him he had left a distressed family, and many creditors. Where was Susan?

I now thought it time to hunt up Pendlam. After no little search, I was sent to an obscure lodging. I opened the door pointed out to me, and entered an extraordinary chamber. The sides were covered with strange diagrams, grotesque drawings, lettered inscriptions. Some were sketched rudely upon the plastering with colored chalk; others were designed upon paper, and pasted on the wall. In the centre of the room sat an indescribable human figure, with its face buried in its hands. It wore an anomalous garment, slashed with various colors, like a harlequin's coat. Upon one shoulder was sewed the semblance of a door cut out of blue cloth; on the other, a crescent cut out of green. Upon the head was set a tinsel crown, amid tangles of disordered hair. Above was a huge brass key, suspended by a tow string from the ceiling. Table and floor were littered with manuscripts and papers; under the former I observed an empty bottle.

I spoke. The figure started, and looked up. In the sallow cheeks, untrimmed beard, sunken and encircled eyes, I recognized Pendlam. A quick flush spread over his haggard features, and he made a snatch at his tinsel crown.

"Do not be disturbed," I entreated.

He smiled, but with an air of embarrassment; and leaving the tinsel upon his uncombed head, pointed to the wall.

"You see where I am," said Pendlam.

"I see, yet do not see."

"I have reached the plane of symbols. You are aware that there is something in symbols?"

"A great deal! a great deal!" I said, from a sorrowful heart, as I glanced around me.

Pendlam, who had spoken doubtingly, seemed encouraged.

"Symbols are the highest expression of spiritual thought. Both words and pictures are used. They are the language of the spirit, which only the same spirit can understand. Look here, and you will see some symbols of a very astonishing character."

"Astonishing," said I, "is a mild word!"

"And what is equally astonishing," added the eager reformer, "is the manner in which they are produced. The hand is moved to write or draw them spontaneously. The symbol comes first, the interpretation afterwards. Here is a vulture soaring away with a lamb. It has a meaning."

"A deep meaning!" I added. "We have known such a vulture!"

"Here," he cried,—too excited to heed any words but his own,—"are swine feeding upon golden fruit."

"Oh, the swine! Oh, the precious, wasted, golden fruit!"

"Here is one in words; it reads, Beware of falling from a balloon. It requires a peculiar experience," added Pendlam, with a smile, "to enable one to understand that beautiful symbol."

"Perhaps I have not had the requisite experience; but"—I laid my hand on Pendlam's shoulder—"I know a man who has fallen from several balloons!"

"Here is one," said Pendlam, turning to the table, "which I have just drawn. I was trying to get at its meaning when you came in." He showed me a sketch consisting of a number of zigzag lines, joined one to another, and tending towards a circle.

"My dear John Henry," said I, "any person who has watched your course for the last four or five years will readily see the meaning of that symbol. It is a map of your voyage of discoveries."

"Such tacking and shifting?" queried Pendlam, with a smile commiserating my ignorance.

"Just such tacking and shifting. If you had possessed a good compass, it would have shown you."

Pendlam caught at the word compass. "It is singular;—you must have some spiritual perception;—it was written through my hand nine days ago, Purchase a compass. Here is the writing; I placed it upon the wall as a symbol; and I have intended buying a compass as soon as I could get the means."

"Ah, John Henry," said I, "there is more in your symbols than you suppose.

You want no purchasable compass."

Pendlam rewarded my simplicity with another pitying smile.

"Here," said he, "you who know so much of symbols, explain this. Avoid the shores of Old Spain. I have not yet penetrated its meaning."

"Leave it," I replied, "with the unexplained Pythagorean symbol touching abstinence from beans. Perhaps future events will reveal it."

Pendlam smiled as before. But was I not right? Did not lamentable events in the not far-off future give to the symbol a melancholy significance?

"Come," I said, "leave these abstruse studies; take off that symbolic coat, that tinsel crown; wash, comb your hair, and walk with me."

"I should enjoy a walk," replied Pendlam; "but I am directed to retain these symbols upon my person, and you would hardly wish me to appear in the street with them."

"Directed!—by what authority?"

"By the Spirit. Some beautiful use is to be fulfilled. I see where you are," added Pendlam;—"from your stand-point it must look absurd enough."

I sat down, and endeavoured to reason with him. But I found it impossible for a person upon my plane to reach with any argument a person upon his. In vain I recapitulated his successive trials and failures.

"It is true," he confessed, "I have been called to pass through some strange experiences. But all were necessary steps; and I have now reached a stand-point from which I can look back and see in its indisputable place every grade of the progressive ascent. There has been only apparent failure. Our attempted Association was a necessary foreshadowing of what remains to be unfolded; a prophetic symbol. We have all been taught great lessons."

"And the vulture and the lamb!" I said, sternly; "where are they?"

"I perceive," answered Pendlam, charitably, "you do not understand."

"It is you," I cried, "who have failed to understand your own symbols. To use plain language, then, where is Susan? She is the lamb that was entrusted to your keeping, and that you suffered the obscene bird to carry away!"

"You are pleased to employ harsh terms," said Pendlam, meekly. "Susan has done well; she has followed her attractions, and that is obedience to the Spirit. Perfect freedom is essential to progression. Consequently, above a certain plane, monogamy, which has undeniable primitive uses, ceases to exist. The laws of chemical affinity teach this by analogy. When the mutual impartations which result from the conjunction of positive and negative have blended in a state of equilibrium, there is consequent repulsion, and the law of harmonies ordains new combinations. You see where I am," said Pendlam.

Disheartened and sorrowful, I set out to go. At the door I turned back.

"Can I do anything for you, John Henry?"

"Not unless"—Pendlam hesitated a moment—"if you have a dollar to spare?"

I gave him a bank-bill. As he leaned forward to receive it, he struck his head against the suspended key.

"Another symbol," I said. "Break not your brains upon the key of brass."

He scratched his head, rearranged his tinsel, and smiling, advanced to show me the stairs. I looked back once: there crowned he stood, in his symbolic coat, with the green crescent and blue door on the shoulders; and as a gust from the stairway blew open the garment, I beheld a great yellow heart on his breast. That picture remained impressed upon my vision. In the street, I recalled the room, the drawings, the inscriptions,—all so tragical and saddening! I had not proceeded far, when, moved by greater compassion, I turned and retraced my steps. At the door of the house, I saw the servant girl who had admitted me coming out with a bottle, and thought it the same I had seen lying empty under Pendlam's table. I followed her into a grocery on the corner. She called for gin, and paid for it out of my bank-bill.

I now changed my mind, and went to consult Horatio. It was concluded that Pendlam's old habits of thought and associations ought to be entirely broken up. Deserted, destitute, dependent, he condescended, after long holding out against us, to listen to what we proposed. Hearing of a vacancy in a newspaper office in a western city, we had procured for him the situation. Not without a struggle, he consented to accept it, abandoned his darling reformatory projects, and set out for his new sphere.

His position was that of subordinate writer; and for a time he maintained it with considerable ability. But he grew restless under restraint; and at length, taking advantage of the managing editor's absence, he published articles on prohibited subjects, which lost the paper half its subscribers, and him his situation. When next heard of, he was gaining a meagre subsistence by writing theatrical puffs,—employment for which he was indebted to the kindness of a certain influential actress named Kellerton.

In the mean time Susan returned from her unhappy wanderings; and her mother's family, seizing upon her like wolves, hid her from the world in their den. And I was pleased not long after to read that an individual named Clodman, a noted swindler, had recently been shot in a street-fight in St. Louis, by a husband whose domestic peace he had disturbed.

The last word of all, that ends this strange, eventful, and, alas! too true history, remains to be said.

For some months, we had heard nothing of Pendlam. But last week I received a bundle of Roman Catholic publications, one of which contained an article proclaiming a miraculous conversion of the distinguished reformer, and thereby greatly glorifying Catholicism.

The same mail brought me a letter from the convert.

"At last," he wrote, "I have found peace in the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church. All my previous experiences were necessary to lead me where I am. This is the divine association I was so long seeking elsewhere in vain; I find in its forms the true symbols of a universal religion; and I now perceive that the seeming errors, in which I was for a time permitted to stray, were wisely designed to convince me of the sublime truth, that celibacy is the single condition befitting a holy apostolic teacher."

Amid the flood of reflections that rushed upon me, arose prominent the image of poor Pendlam's unexplained symbol: "Avoid the shores of old Spain." Had it not now received its interpretation? The tossed voyager, failing to make the continent of truth, but beating hither and thither amid the reefs and breakers of dangerous coasts, mistaking many islands for the main, and drifting on unknown seas, had at last steered straight to the old Catholic shores, from which the great discoverers had sailed so many years before.

BRITISH INDIA

The year 1757 was one of the gloomiest ever known to England. At home, the government was in a state of utter confusion, though the country was at war with France, and France was in alliance with Austria; these two nations having departed from their policy of two centuries and a half, in order that they might crush Frederic of Prussia, England's ally. Frederic was defeated at Kolin, by the Austrians, on the 18th of June, and a Russian army was in possession of East Prussia. A German army in British pay, and commanded by the "Butcher" hero of Culloden, was beaten in July, and capitulated in September. In America, the pusillanimity of the English commanders led to terrible disasters, among which the loss of Fort William Henry, and the massacre of its garrison, were conspicuous events. In India, the English were engaged in a doubtful contest with the viceroy of Bengal, who was supported by the French. Even the navy of England appeared at that time to have lost its sense of superiority; for not only had Admiral Byng just been shot for not behaving with proper spirit, but a combined expedition against the coast of France ended in signal failure, and Admiral Holburne declined to attack a French fleet off Louisburg. No wonder that the British people readily believed an author who then published a work to establish the agreeable proposition, "that they were a race of cowards and scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly deserved their fate." Such a succession of disasters might well discourage a people, some of whom could recollect the long list of victories which commenced with Blenheim and closed with Malplaquet, and by which the arrogance of the Grand Monarque had been punished.

Yet it is from this very year of misfortune that the power of modern England must take its date. "Adversity," said El Hakim to the Knight of the Leopard, "is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate." In the summer of 1757 was formed that ministry which succeeded in carrying England's power and glory to heights which they did not reach even under the Protectorship of Cromwell or the rule of Godolphin. Then were commenced those measures which ended in the expulsion of the French from North America, and gave to England a territory here which may perpetuate her institutions for ages after they shall have ceased to be known in the mother-land. Then was America conquered in Germany, and not only was Frederic so assisted as to be able to contend successfully against the three great houses of Bourbon, Habsburg, and Romanoff, and a horde of lesser dynasties, but British armies, at Minden and Creveldt, renewed on the fields of the continent recollections of the island skill and the island courage. Then was a new spirit breathed into the British marine, by which it has ever since been animated, and which has seldom stopped to count odds. Then began that dashing course of enterprise which gave almost everything to England that was assailable, from Goree to Cuba, and from Cuba to the Philippines. Then was laid the foundation of that Oriental dominion of England which has been the object of so much wonder, and of not a little envy; for on the 23d of June, 1757, was fought the battle of Plassey, the first of those many Indian victories that illustrate the names of Clive, Coote, Wellesley, Gough, Napier, and numerous other heroes. It seems odd, that the interest in Indian affairs should have been suddenly and strangely revived in the hundredth year after the victory that laid Bengal at the feet of an English adventurer. Had the insurgent Sepoys delayed action but a few weeks, they might have inaugurated their movement on the very centennial anniversary of the birth of British India.

There is nothing like the rule of the English in India to be found in history. It has been compared to the dominion which Rome held over so large a portion of the world; but the comparison has not the merit of aptness. The population of the Roman Empire, in the age of the Antonines, has been estimated at 120,000,000, including that of Italy. The population of India is not less than 150,000,000, without counting any portion of the conquering race. Rome was favorably situated for the maintenance of her supremacy, as she had been for the work of conquest. Her dominion lay around the Mediterranean, which Italy pierced, looking to the East and the West, and forming, as it were, a great place of arms, whence to subdue or to overawe the nations. Cicero called the Hellenic states and colonies a fringe on the skirts of Barbarism, and the description applies also to the Roman dominion; for though Gaul and Spain were conquered from sea to sea, and the legions were encamped on the Euphrates, and the valley of the Nile was as submissive to the Cæsars as it had been to the Lagidse, yet the Mediterranean was the basis of Roman power, and a short journey in almost any direction from it would have taken the traveller completely from under the protection of the eagles. Not so is it with British India. From no European country is India so remote as from England. The two regions are separated by the ocean, by seas, by deserts, and by some of the most powerful nations. Their sole means of union are found in the leading cause of their separation. England owes her Indian empire to her empire of the sea. India will be hers just so long, and no longer, as she shall be able to maintain her naval supremacy. Those who predict her downfall in the East, either as a consequence of the natives throwing off her rule, or through a Russian invasion, forget that she entered India from the sea, and that until she shall have been subdued on that element it would be idle to think of dispossessing her of her Oriental supremacy. Were the long-cherished dream of Russia to be realized,—a dream that is said to have troubled the sleep of Peter, and which certainly haunted the mind of Catharine,—and Russian proconsuls ruling on the Ganges, India could no more be to Russia what she has been to England, than the Crimea, had he kept it, could have been to Louis Napoleon what it is to the Czar. The condition of Indian dominion is ocean dominion.

In one respect the Indian empire of England resembles the Roman empire. The latter comprised many and widely different countries and races, and so is it with the former. We are so accustomed to speak of India as if it constituted one country, and were inhabited by a homogeneous people, that it is difficult to understand that not even in Europe are nations to be found more unlike to one another than in British India. In Hindostan and the Deccan there are ten different civilized nations, resembling each other no more than Danes resemble Italians, or Spaniards Poles. They differ in moral, physical, and intellectual conditions,—in modes of thought and in modes of life. This is one of the chief causes of England's supremacy, just as a similar state of things not only promoted the conquests of Rome, but facilitated her rule after they had been made. The Emperors ruled over Syrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and other Eastern peoples, with ease, because they had little in common, and could not combine against their conquerors. They did the same in the West, because the inhabitants of that quarter, if left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta.

The peculiar condition of India a hundred years since enabled the English to lay the foundations of their power in that country so broadly and so deep that nothing short of a moral convulsion can uproot them, though the edifice erected upon them may be rudely shaken by internal revolts, or by the consequences of external wars. Fifty years sooner or forty years later, the English could have made no impression on India as conquerors. Seventy years before the conquest of Bengal the English traders had been plundered by a viceroy who anticipated the tyranny of Surajah Doulah. They determined not to submit to such exactions. They resolved upon war. But the great Aurungzebe was then on the throne of Delhi; and though the Moghul empire had declined somewhat from the standard set up by Akbar and maintained by Shah Jehan, the fighting merchants were soon taught that they were but as children in the hands of its chief. They were driven out of Bengal, and Aurungzebe thought of expelling them from his whole empire. The punishment of death was visited upon some of the East India Company's officers and servants by the Moghul. This severe lesson made a deep impression on the English. They resumed their humble position as traders on sufferance. They never thought of conquest again. It was not until every man who had been concerned in that business had long been in his grave, that the English dared so much as to think of making another war. Though the Moghuls rapidly became powerless after the death of Aurungzebe, the blows struck by anticipation in their behalf protected them for forty years against the ambition of the intrusive Occidentals, and even for some time after Nadir Shah's Persian invasion had demonstrated that their dynasty was as weak as that of Lodi had been found when Baber came into the land. Whether the English have been right or wrong in making themselves masters of India, it is certain that they were forced upon the work against their own wishes and inclinations, and in self-defence. The very expedition which Clive made use of to effect the subjugation of Bengal had been undertaken on defensive grounds; and so fearful was even that great man of the consequences of a union of the forces of the Moghul with those at the command of the French in the East, that he was at first desirous of making peace with Surajah Doulah himself. When the arrival of reinforcements had induced him to take a bolder course, and the destruction of that fierce viceroy had been resolved upon, it was not until after much doubt and hesitation, and against his original judgment, that that course of action was entered upon which ended in the victory of Plassey. He knew the risk that was run in fighting a pitched battle against a force nearly twenty times larger than his own; and had the viceroy been either a respectable ruler or a good soldier, the English, humanly speaking, must have then failed as signally as their predecessors of 1687; but as he was as destitute of humanity as of courage and skill, and could neither animate his followers by affection nor command them by force of character, he was utterly routed. Not six hundred men fell in the battle of Plassey, on both sides, and most of these were on the side of the vanquished. Seldom has it happened that so mighty a change has been effected with so little slaughter. One is reminded of the battles fought by the few Romans under Lucullus against the entire array of the Armenian monarchy.

Had circumstances not led to the display of British power at the time when great prizes were sure to follow even from minor exertions, England never could have become mistress of India. Had the English remained traders forty years longer,—or even for half that time, perhaps,—they would have encountered very different foes from those which they overthrew so easily when forced to fight for property and life. India was breaking up in 1757, and the process of reformation was about to begin. Had not the English been brought into the vast arena, either a number of powerful monarchies would have been formed, or the whole country would have passed under some new dynasty, which would have revived the power of the state with that rapidity which is so often exhibited in the East, when new and able men assume the reins of government. Hyder Ali might have made himself the master of all India, had it been his lot to contend only with native rulers and native races. Had this been the course of events, and had circumstances brought him into collision with the East India Company when he had made himself the Moghul's successor, can it be believed that he would have experienced any more difficulty in dealing with them than was found by Aurungzebe? We know that the English found in Hyder a very able foe, with but limited means at his disposal, and when they were masters of half the country, and had been almost uniformly victorious. Can it be supposed that they could have effected anything against all India, ruled by so consummate a statesman as Hyder Ali? There seems to have been something providential in the events that caused them to pass from traders to conquerors, at the only time when such a transition could be made either with safety or success. That their career of conquest has been occasionally marked by injustice and crime proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to be made from among men specially entitled to the honors of canonisation.

The English have frequently been denounced, not only for their errors in governing India, but for their conquest of that country. The French have been especially fervent in these denunciations. It is a fact, however, that the French saw nothing wrong in subduing India until all their own plans to that end had utterly failed. The device originated with them, but the English applied it. Dupleix planned for France what Clive executed for England. The French adhered to their plans for years, and it was not until a very recent period that the last remnants of their influence disappeared from India. They saw not the evil involved in the overthrowing of virtuous nabobs and venerable viceroys, until time and a whole train of events had proved that England alone was competent to the full performance of the work. The English in India have not, on all occasions, been saints; but we are unable to see what moral right the French have to reproach them with the enumeration of their errors. In the East, France was "overcrowed" by England; and that is the sole and the very simple cause of the vast amount of "sympathy" which the French have bestowed upon suffering Indian princes, whose condition in no sense would have been improved, had fortune favored the Gallic race, instead of the Saxon, in their struggle for supremacy in Hindostan.