THE WARDEN
CHAPTER XV
Tom Towers, Dr Anticant, and Mr Sentiment
‘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 than this. To
what a world of toil and trouble had he, Bold, given rise by his
indiscreet attack upon the hospital!
‘You see,’ said Towers, ‘that this affair has
been much talked of, and the public are with you. I am sorry you
should give the matter up. Have you seen the first number of The
Almshouse?’
No; Bold had not seen The Almshouse. He had seen advertisements
of Mr Popular Sentiment’s new novel of that name, but had in
no way connected it with Barchester Hospital, and had never thought
a moment on the subject.
‘It’s a direct attack on the whole system,’
said Towers. ‘It’ll go a long way to put down
Rochester, and Barchester, and Dulwich, and St Cross, and all such
hotbeds of peculation. It’s very clear that Sentiment has
been down to Barchester, and got up the whole story there; indeed,
I thought he must have had it all from you, it’s very well
done, as you’ll see: his first numbers always are.’
Bold declared that Mr Sentiment had got nothing from him, and
that he was deeply grieved to find that the case had become so
notorious.
‘The fire has gone too far to be quenched,’ said
Towers; ‘the building must go now; and as the timbers are all
rotten, why, I should be inclined to say, the sooner the better. I
expected to see you get some eclat in the matter.’
This was all wormwood to Bold. He had done enough to make his
friend the warden miserable for life, and had then backed out just
when the success of his project was sufficient to make the question
one of real interest. How weakly he had managed his business! he
had already done the harm, and then stayed his hand when the good
which he had in view was to be commenced. How delightful would it
have been to have employed all his energy in such a cause—to
have been backed by The Jupiter, and written up to by two of the
most popular authors of the day! The idea opened a view into the
very world in which he wished to live. To what might it not have
given rise? what delightful intimacies—what public
praise— to what Athenian banquets and rich flavour of Attic
salt?
This, however, was now past hope. He had pledged himself to
abandon the cause; and could he have forgotten the pledge he had
gone too far to retreat. He was now, this moment, sitting in Tom
Towers’ room with the object of deprecating any further
articles in The Jupiter, and, greatly as he disliked the job, his
petition to that effect must be made.
‘I couldn’t continue it,’ said he,
‘because I found I was in the wrong.’
Tom Towers shrugged his shoulders. How could a successful man be
in the wrong! ‘In that case,’ said he, ‘of course
you must abandon it.’
‘And I called this morning to ask you also to abandon
it,’ said Bold.
‘To ask me,’ said Tom Towers, with the most placid
of smiles, and a consummate look of gentle surprise, as though Tom
Towers was well aware that he of all men was the last to meddle in
such matters.
‘Yes,’ said Bold, almost trembling with hesitation.
‘The Jupiter, you know, has taken the matter up very
strongly. Mr Harding has felt what it has said deeply; and I
thought that if I could explain to you that he personally has not
been to blame, these articles might be discontinued.’
How calmly impassive was Tom Towers’ face, as this
innocent little proposition was made! Had Bold addressed himself to
the doorposts in Mount Olympus, they would have shown as much
outward sign of assent or dissent. His quiescence was quite
admirable; his discretion certainly more than human.
‘My dear fellow,’ said he, when Bold had quite done
speaking, ‘I really cannot answer for The Jupiter.’
‘But if you saw that these articles were unjust, I think
that You Would endeavour to put a stop to them. Of course nobody
doubts that you could, if you chose.’
‘Nobody and everybody are always very kind, but
unfortunately are generally very wrong.’
‘Come, come, Towers,’ said Bold, plucking up his
courage, and remembering that for Eleanor’s sake he was bound
to make his best exertion; ‘I have no doubt in my own mind
but that you wrote the articles yourself, and very well written
they were: it will be a great favour if you will in future abstain
from any personal allusion to poor Harding.’
‘My dear Bold,’ said Tom Towers, ‘I have a
sincere regard for you. I have known you for many years, and value
your friendship; I hope you will let me explain to you, without
offence, that none who are connected with the public press can with
propriety listen to interference.’
‘Interference!’ said Bold, ‘I don’t want
to interfere.’
‘Ah, but, my dear fellow, you do; what else is it? You
think that I am able to keep certain remarks out of a newspaper.
Your information is probably incorrect, as most public gossip on
such subjects is; but, at any rate, you think I have such power,
and you ask me to use it: now that is interference.’
‘Well, if you choose to call it so.’
‘And now suppose for a moment that I had this power, and
used it as you wish: isn’t it clear that it would be a great
abuse? Certain men are employed in writing for the public press;
and if they are induced either to write or to abstain from writing
by private motives, surely the public press would soon be of little
value. Look at the recognised worth of different newspapers, and
see if it does not mainly depend on the assurance which the public
feel that such a paper is, or is not, independent. You alluded to
The Jupiter: surely you cannot but see that the weight of The
Jupiter is too great to be moved by any private request, even
though it should be made to a much more influential person than
myself: you’ve only to think of this, and you’ll see
that I am right.’
The discretion of Tom Towers was boundless: there was no
contradicting what he said, no arguing against such propositions.
He took such high ground that there was no getting on it.
‘The public is defrauded,’ said he, ‘whenever
private considerations are allowed to have weight.’ Quite
true, thou greatest oracle of the middle of the nineteenth century,
thou sententious proclaimer of the purity of the press—the
public is defrauded when it is purposely misled. Poor public! how
often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to
contend!
Bold took his leave, and got out of the room as quickly as he
could, inwardly denouncing his friend Tom Towers as a prig and a
humbug. ‘I know he wrote those articles,’ said Bold to
himself. ‘I know he got his information from me. He was ready
enough to take my word for gospel when it suited his own views, and
to set Mr Harding up before the public as an impostor on no other
testimony than my chance conversation; but when I offer him real
evidence opposed to his own views, he tells me that private motives
are detrimental to public justice! Confound his arrogance! What is
any public question but a conglomeration of private interests? What
is any newspaper article but an expression of the views taken by
one side? Truth! it takes an age to ascertain the truth of any
question! The idea of Tom Towers talking of public motives and
purity of purpose! Why, it wouldn’t give him a moment’s
uneasiness to change his politics tomorrow, if the paper required
it.’
Such were John Bold’s inward exclamations as he made his
way out of the quiet labyrinth of the Temple; and yet there was no
position of worldly power so coveted in Bold’s ambition as
that held by the man of whom he was thinking. It was the
impregnability of the place which made Bold so angry with the
possessor of it, and it was the same quality which made it appear
so desirable.
Passing into the Strand, he saw in a bookseller’s window
an announcement of the first number of The Almshouse; so he
purchased a copy, and hurrying back to his lodgings, proceeded to
ascertain what Mr Popular Sentiment had to say to the public on the
subject which had lately occupied so much of his own attention.
In former times great objects were attained by great work. When
evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task
with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in
proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in
folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to
read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is
found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch
more than true sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned
quartos fail to do so. If the world is to be set right, the work
will be done by shilling numbers.
Of all such reformers Mr Sentiment is the most powerful. It is
incredible the number of evil practices he has put down: it is to
be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he has made the
working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into
proper-sized pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him
left to do. Mr Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and
perhaps not the less so that his good poor people are so very good;
his hard rich people so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very
honest. Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it be
introduced in the proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer
interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern
peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much
twaddle as one of Mrs Ratcliffe’s heroines, and still be
listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr Sentiment’s great
attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and
heroines walk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever
must, their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met
them in the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live
among our friends a rattling, lively life; yes, live, and will live
till the names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own,
and Buckett and Mrs Gamp will be the only words left to us to
signify a detective police officer or a monthly nurse.
The Almshouse opened with a scene in a clergyman’s house.
Every luxury to be purchased by wealth was described as being
there: all the appearances of household indulgence generally found
amongst the most self-indulgent of the rich were crowded into this
abode. Here the reader was introduced to the demon of the book, the
Mephistopheles of the drama. What story was ever written without a
demon? What novel, what history, what work of any sort, what world,
would be perfect without existing principles both of good and evil?
The demon of The Almshouse was the clerical owner of this
comfortable abode. He was a man well stricken in years, but still
strong to do evil: he was one who looked cruelly out of a hot,
passionate, bloodshot eye; who had a huge red nose with a
carbuncle, thick lips, and a great double, flabby chin, which
swelled out into solid substance, like a turkey-cock’s comb,
when sudden anger inspired him: he had a hot, furrowed, low brow,
from which a few grizzled hairs were not yet rubbed off by the
friction of his handkerchief: he wore a loose unstarched white
handkerchief, black loose ill-made clothes, and huge loose shoes,
adapted to many corns and various bunions: his husky voice told
tales of much daily port wine, and his language was not so decorous
as became a clergyman. Such was the master of Mr Sentiment’s
Almshouse. He was a widower, but at present accompanied by two
daughters, and a thin and somewhat insipid curate. One of the young
ladies was devoted to her father and the fashionable world, and she
of course was the favourite; the other was equally addicted to
Puseyism and the curate.
The second chapter of course introduced the reader to the more
especial inmates of the hospital. Here were discovered eight old
men; and it was given to be understood that four vacancies remained
unfilled, through the perverse ill-nature of the clerical gentleman
with the double chin. The state of these eight paupers was
touchingly dreadful: sixpence-farthing a day had been sufficient
for their diet when the almshouse was founded; and on
sixpence-farthing a day were they still doomed to starve, though
food was four times as dear, and money four times as plentiful. It
was shocking to find how the conversation of these eight starved
old men in their dormitory shamed that of the clergyman’s
family in his rich drawing- room. The absolute words they uttered
were not perhaps spoken in the purest English, and it might be
difficult to distinguish from their dialect to what part of the
country they belonged; the beauty of the sentiment, however, amply
atoned for the imperfection of the language; and it was really a
pity that these eight old men could not be sent through the country
as moral missionaries, instead of being immured and starved in that
wretched almshouse.
Bold finished the number; and as he threw it aside, he thought
that that at least had no direct appliance to Mr Harding, and that
the absurdly strong colouring of the picture would disenable the
work from doing either good or harm. He was wrong. The artist who
paints for the million must use glaring colours, as no one knew
better than Mr Sentiment when he described the inhabitants of his
almshouse; and the radical reform which has now swept over such
establishments has owed more to the twenty numbers of Mr
Sentiment’s novel, than to all the true complaints which have
escaped from the public for the last half century.