‘Ah, Bold! how are you? You haven’t breakfasted?’
‘Oh yes, hours ago. And how are you?’
When one Esquimau meets another, do the two, as an invariable rule, ask after each other’s health? is it inherent in all human nature to make this obliging inquiry? Did any reader of this tale ever meet any friend or acquaintance without asking some such question, and did anyone ever listen to the reply? Sometimes a studiously courteous questioner will show so much thought in the matter as to answer it himself, by declaring that had he looked at you he needn’t have asked; meaning thereby to signify that you are an absolute personification of health: but such persons are only those who premeditate small effects.
‘I suppose you’re busy?’ inquired Bold.
‘Why, yes, rather; or I should say rather not. I have a leisure hour in the day, this is it.’
‘I want to ask you if you can oblige me in a certain matter.’
Towers understood in a moment, from the tone of his friend’s voice, that the certain matter referred to the newspaper. He smiled, and nodded his head, but made no promise.
‘You know this lawsuit that I’ve been engaged in,’ said Bold.
Tom Towers intimated that he was aware of the action which was pending about the hospital.
‘Well, I’ve abandoned it.’
Tom Towers merely raised his eyebrows, thrust his hands into his trowsers pockets, and waited for his friend to proceed.
‘Yes, I’ve given it up. I needn’t trouble you with all the history; but the fact is that the conduct of Mr Harding — Mr Harding is the —’
‘Oh yes, the master of the place; the man who takes all the money and does nothing,’ said Tom Towers, interrupting him.
‘Well, I don’t know about that; but his conduct in the matter has been so excellent, so little selfish, so open, that I cannot proceed in the matter to his detriment.’ Bold’s heart misgave him as to Eleanor as he said this; and yet he felt that what he said was not untrue. ‘I think nothing should now be done till the wardenship be vacant.’
‘And be again filled,’ said Towers, ‘as it certainly would, before anyone heard of the vacancy; and the same objection would again exist. It’s an old story that of the vested rights of the incumbent; but suppose the incumbent has only a vested wrong, and that the poor of the town have a vested right, if they only knew how to get at it: is not that something the case here?’
Bold couldn’t deny it, but thought it was one of those cases which required a good deal of management before any real good could be done. It was a pity that he had not considered this before he crept into the lion’s mouth, in the shape of an attorney’s office.
‘It will cost you a good deal, I fear,’ said Towers.
‘A few hundreds,’ said Bold —‘perhaps three hundred; I can’t help that, and am prepared for it.’
‘That’s philosophical. It’s quite refreshing to hear a man talking of his hundreds in so purely indifferent a manner. But I’m sorry you are giving the matter up. It injures a man to commence a thing of this kind, and not carry it through. Have you seen that?’ and he threw a small pamphlet across the table, which was all but damp from the press.
Bold had not seen it nor heard of it; but he was well acquainted with the author of it — a gentleman whose pamphlets, condemnatory of all things in these modern days, had been a good deal talked about of late.
Dr Pessimist Anticant was a Scotchman, who had passed a great portion of his early days in Germany; he had studied there with much effect, and had learnt to look with German subtilty into the root of things, and to examine for himself their intrinsic worth and worthlessness. No man ever resolved more bravely than he to accept as good nothing that was evil; to banish from him as evil nothing that was good. ’Tis a pity that he should not have recognised the fact, that in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is but little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly.
Returning from Germany, he had astonished the reading public by the vigour of his thoughts, put forth in the quaintest language. He cannot write English, said the critics. No matter, said the public; we can read what he does write, and that without yawning. And so Dr Pessimist Anticant became Popular. Popularity spoilt him for all further real use, as it has done many another. While, with some diffidence, he confined his objurgations to the occasional follies or shortcomings of mankind; while he ridiculed the energy of the squire devoted to the slaughter of partridges, or the mistake of some noble patron who turned a poet into a gauger of beer- barrels, it was all well; we were glad to be told our faults and to look forward to the coming millennium, when all men, having sufficiently studied the works of Dr Anticant, would become truthful and energetic. But the doctor mistook the signs of the times and the minds of men, instituted himself censor of things in general, and began the great task of reprobating everything and everybody, without further promise of any millennium at all. This was not so well; and, to tell the truth, our author did not succeed in his undertaking. His theories were all beautiful, and the code of morals that he taught us certainly an improvement on the practices of the age. We all of us could, and many of us did, learn much from the doctor while he chose to remain vague, mysterious, and cloudy: but when he became practical, the charm was gone.
His allusion to the poet and the partridges was received very well. ‘Oh, my poor brother,’ said he, ‘slaughtered partridges a score of brace to each gun, and poets gauging ale- barrels, with sixty pounds a year, at Dumfries, are not the signs of a great era! — perhaps of the smallest possible era yet written of. Whatever economies we pursue, political or other, let us see at once that this is the maddest of the uneconomic: partridges killed by our land magnates at, shall we say, a guinea a head, to be retailed in Leadenhall at one shilling and ninepence, with one poacher in limbo for every fifty birds! our poet, maker, creator, gauging ale, and that badly, with no leisure for making or creating, only a little leisure for drinking, and such like beer-barrel avocations! Truly, a cutting of blocks with fine razors while we scrape our chins so uncomfortably with rusty knives! Oh, my political economist, master of supply and demand, division of labour and high pressure — oh, my loud-speaking friend, tell me, if so much be in you, what is the demand for poets in these kingdoms of Queen Victoria, and what the vouchsafed supply?’
This was all very well: this gave us some hope. We might do better with our next poet, when we got one; and though the partridges might not be abandoned, something could perhaps be done as to the poachers. We were unwilling, however, to take lessons in politics from so misty a professor; and when he came to tell us that the heroes of Westminster were naught, we began to think that he had written enough. His attack upon despatch boxes was not thought to have much in it; but as it is short, the doctor shall again be allowed to speak his sentiments.
‘Could utmost ingenuity in the management of red tape avail anything to men lying gasping — we may say, all but dead; could despatch boxes with never-so-much velvet lining and Chubb’s patent be of comfort to a people in extremes, I also, with so many others, would, with parched tongue, call on the name of Lord John Russell; or, my brother, at your advice, on Lord Aberdeen; or, my cousin, on Lord Derby, at yours; being, with my parched tongue, indifferent to such matters. ’Tis all one. Oh, Derby! Oh, Gladstone! Oh, Palmerston! Oh, Lord John! Each comes running with serene face and despatch box. Vain physicians! though there were hosts of such, no despatch box will cure this disorder! What! are there other doctors’ new names, disciples who have not burdened their souls with tape? Well, let us call again. Oh, Disraeli, great oppositionist, man of the bitter brow! or, Oh, Molesworth, great reformer, thou who promisest Utopia. They come; each with that serene face, and each — alas, me! alas, my country! — each with a despatch box!
‘Oh, the serenity of Downing Street!
‘My brothers, when hope was over on the battle-field, when no dimmest chance of victory remained, the ancient Roman could hide his face within his toga, and die gracefully. Can you and I do so now? If so, ’twere best for us; if not, oh my brothers, we must die disgracefully, for hope of life and victory I see none left to us in this world below. I for one cannot trust much to serene face and despatch box!’
There might be truth in this, there might be depth of reasoning; but Englishmen did not see enough in the argument to induce them to withdraw their confidence from the present arrangements of the government, and Dr Anticant’s monthly pamphlet on the decay of the world did not receive so much attention as his earlier works. He did not confine himself to politics in these publications, but roamed at large over all matters of public interest, and found everything bad. According to him nobody was true, and not only nobody, but nothing; a man could not take off his hat to a lady without telling a lie — the lady would lie again in smiling. The ruffles of the gentleman’s shirt would be fraught with deceit, and the lady’s flounces full of falsehood. Was ever anything more severe than that attack of his on chip bonnets, or the anathemas with which he endeavoured to dust the powder out of the bishops’ wigs?
The pamphlet which Tom Towers now pushed across the table was entitled Modern Charity, and was written with the view of proving how much in the way of charity was done by our predecessors — how little by the present age; and it ended by a comparison between ancient and modern times, very little to the credit of the latter.
‘Look at this,’ said Towers, getting up and turning over the pages of the pamphlet, and pointing to a passage near the end. ‘Your friend the warden, who is so little selfish, won’t like that, I fear.’ Bold read as follows —
‘Heavens, what a sight! Let us with eyes wide open see the godly man of four centuries since, the man of the dark ages; let us see how he does his godlike work, and, again, how the godly man of these latter days does his.
‘Shall we say that the former is one walking painfully through the world, regarding, as a prudent man, his worldly work, prospering in it as a diligent man will prosper, but always with an eye to that better treasure to which thieves do not creep in? Is there not much nobility in that old man, as, leaning on his oaken staff, he walks down the High Street of his native town, and receives from all courteous salutation and acknowledgment of his worth? A noble old man, my august inhabitants of Belgrave Square and such like vicinity — a very noble old man, though employed no better than in the wholesale carding of wool.
‘This carding of wool, however, did in those days bring with it much profit, so that our ancient friend, when dying, was declared, in whatever slang then prevailed, to cut up exceeding well. For sons and daughters there was ample sustenance with assistance of due industry; for friends and relatives some relief for grief at this great loss; for aged dependents comfort in declining years. This was much for one old man to get done in that dark fifteenth century. But this was not all: coming generations of poor wool-carders should bless the name of this rich one; and a hospital should be founded and endowed with his wealth for the feeding of such of the trade as could not, by diligent carding, any longer duly feed themselves.
‘’Twas thus that an old man in the fifteenth century did his godlike work to the best of his power, and not ignobly, as appears to me.
‘We will now take our godly man of latter days. He shall no longer be a wool-carder, for such are not now men of mark. We will suppose him to be one of the best of the good, one who has lacked no opportunities. Our old friend was, after all, but illiterate; our modern friend shall be a man educated in all seemly knowledge; he shall, in short, be that blessed being — a clergyman of the Church of England!
‘And now, in what perfectest manner does he in this lower world get his godlike work done and put out of hand? Heavens! in the strangest of manners. Oh, my brother! in a manner not at all to be believed, but by the most minute testimony of eyesight. He does it by the magnitude of his appetite — by the power of his gorge; his only occupation is to swallow the bread prepared with so much anxious care for these impoverished carders of wool — that, and to sing indifferently through his nose once in the week some psalm more or less long — the shorter the better, we should be inclined to say.
‘Oh, my civilised friends! — great Britons that never will be slaves, men advanced to infinite state of freedom and knowledge of good and evil — tell me, will you, what becoming monument you will erect to an highly-educated clergyman of the Church of England?’
Bold certainly thought that his friend would not like that: he could not conceive anything that he would like less............