Walter Besant

“ Angela let him have his querulous way unrebuked, because she knew the cause of it. He was suffering from that dreadful, hopeless anger which falls upon the unappreciated. He was like some poet, who brings out volume after volume, yet meets with no admirers, and remains obscure. He was like some novelist who has produced a masterpiece—which nobody will read—or like some actor (the foremost of his age) who depletes the house; or like a dramatist, from whose acted works the public fly; or like a man who invents something which is to revolutionize things. Only people prefer their old way! ”

“ Honor? Glory? Fortune? where are they? Eight-and-sixpence in my pocket; and the head of the Greek department calls me a fool, because I won't acknowledge that truth—yes, TRUTH—is error. Laughs at the triangles, Mr. Goslett!"
He laughed bitterly and went out, slamming the door behind him.
Then Harry entered the breakfast-room, nodding pleasantly to everybody; and without any apology for lateness, as if breakfast could be kept about all the morning to suit his convenience, sat down and began to eat. Jonathan Coppin got up, sighed, and went away to his brewery. ”

“ Angela was thinking, "and she gives him up for my sake."
"He is not," Nelly went on—as if she could by any words of hers persuade Angela—"he is not like any of the common workmen. See how he walks, and how independent he is, and he talks like a gentleman. And he can do all the things that gentlemen learn to do. Who is there among us all that he could look at, except you?"
"Nelly—do not make me vain."
"As for you, Miss Kennedy, there is no man fit for you in all the world. You call yourself a dressmaker, but we know better; oh, you are a lady! ”

“ He shall be our next member."
"No," said Harry, clapping his cousin on the shoulder, "here is your next member; Dick Coppin is your boy. He is clever—he is ambitious. Tell him what you want, and he'll get it for you if any one can. But, O men! find out what you want, and have it. Yours—yours—yours is the power. You are the masters of the world. Leave the humbug of Radicalism, and Liberalism, and Toryism. Let dead politics bury their dead—learn to look after your own interests. You are the kings and lords of humanity. The old kings and lords are no more—they are swept away! ”

“ They have their churches, too, the Reformed and the Lutheran, with nothing to choose between them on the score of ugliness.
"Let us get home," said Angela; "I have seen enough."
"It is the joylessness of the life," she explained, "the ignorant, contented joylessness, which weighs upon one. And there is so much of it. Surely there is no other city in the world which is so utterly without joy as this East London."
"No," said Harry, "there is not in the whole world a city so devoid of pleasant things. They do not know how to be happy. They are like your work-girls when you told them to dance." ”

“ Probably no greater event had ever happened within the memory of Stepney Green than the arrival of Miss Messenger's carriage to take away the illustrious pair from the boarding-house. Mrs. Bormalack felt, with a pang, when she saw the pair of grays, with the coachman and footman on the box, actually standing before her own door, for all to see, as if she had not thoroughly appreciated the honor of having a peer and his consort residing under her roof, and paying every week for board and lodging the moderate sum of—but she could not bear to put it into words. ”

“ We know not, we know nothing; the love which women bear for crape is a mystery; man can but speculate idly on their ways. We are like the philosopher picking up pebbles by the seaside. Among the old people sat Nelly Sorensen, a flower of youth and loveliness, in her simple black dress, and her light hair breaking out beneath her bonnet. The Catholics believe that no church is complete without a bone of some dead saint or beatified person. Angela made up her mind, on the spot, that no act of public worship is complete without the assistance of youth as well as of age. ”

“ Angela hesitated.
"There are no carriages here," said the workman; "no footmen in powder or coachmen in wigs; there are no ladies on horseback, no great squares with big houses, no clubs, no opera-houses, no picture-galleries. All the rest of life is here."
"But these things make life," said the heiress. "Without society and art, what is life?"
"Perhaps these people find other pleasures; perhaps the monotony gets relieved by hope and anxiety, and love, and death, and such things." ”

“ They should cultivate a noble discontent; they should gradually learn to be critical; they should import into their own homes the spirit of discontent; they should cease to look upon life as a daily uprising and a down-sitting, a daily mechanical toil, a daily rest. To cultivate the sense of pleasure is to civilize. With the majority of mankind the sense is undeveloped, and is chiefly confined to eating and drinking. To teach the people how the capacity of delight may be widened, how it may be taught to throw out branches in all manner of unsuspected directions, was Angela's ambition. ”

“ Angela looked in and found an immense hall crammed with people who came to fight, or look on, to scoff, or gaze. Higher up, on the left, stands a rival in red-hot religion, the Hall of the Jubilee Singers, where another vast crowd was worshipping, exhorting, and singing.
"There seems," said Angela, "to be too much exhorting; can they not sit down somewhere in quiet for praise and prayer?"
"We working-people," replied her companion, "like everything loud and strong. If we are persuaded to take a side, we want to be always fighting on that side." ”

“ The night was clear and bright.
"Do not go in just yet," said Harry. "It is pleasant out here, and I think the stars are brighter than they are at the West End."
"Everything is better here," said Angela, "than at the West End. Here we have hearts, and can feel for each other. Here we are all alike—workmen and workwomen together."
"You are a prejudiced person. Let us talk of the Palace of Delight—your dream." ”

“ O Harry! what is a woman's gift of herself?"
Harry restrained himself. The solicitor might be sympathetic; but, on the whole, it was best to act as if he were not. Law has little to do with love; Cupid has never yet been represented with the long gown.
"It is a strange request, Harry. It is connected with my—my little foolish secret. You will let me go away directly the service is over, and you will consent not to see me again until the evening, when I shall return. You, with all the girls, will meet me in the porch of the Palace at seven o'clock exactly. ”

“ And he will come to the wedding if I ask him."
"Then ask him, Harry."
"So," said Lord Jocelyn, "the dressmaker has relented, has she? Why, that is well. And I am to give my consent? My dear boy, I only want you to be happy. Besides, I am quite sure and certain that you will be happy."
"Everybody is, if he marries the woman he loves," said the young man sententiously.
"Yes—yes, if he goes on loving the woman he has married. However, Harry, you have my best wishes and consent, since you are good enough to ask for it. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that only rich people can enjoy these things. They may buy them, but everybody may create them; they cost nothing. You shall learn music, and forthwith all the world will be transformed for you; you shall learn to paint, to carve, to model, to design, and the day shall be too short to contain the happiness you will get out of it. You shall learn to dance, and know the rapture of the waltz. You shall learn the great art of acting, and give each other the pleasure which rich men buy. ”

“ And what a grand thing, what an inspiriting thing, it is to feel that some day or other, perhaps not to-day nor to-morrow, nor in one's lifetime at all, the whole world will rally round the poor little obscure banner, and shout all together, with voice of thunder, the battle-cry which now sounds no louder than a puny whistle-pipe! Yet, on the whole, Angela felt it must be an uncomfortable creed; better be one of the undistinguished crowd which flocks to the parish church and yearns not for any distinction at all. ”

“ Yes, my dear, all my life, short or long, shall be given to science. I will have no love in it, or marriage, or—or—anything of that kind at all."
"Nor will I," said the other stoutly, yet with apparent effort. "Marriage spoils a woman's career; we must live our life to its utmost, Constance."
"We must, Angela. It is the only thing in this world of doubt that is a clear duty. I owe mine to science. ”

“ What is your idea of the life I shall have to live?"
"Why," said Lord Jocelyn, with a shudder, "you will rise at six; you will go out in working-clothes, carrying your tools, and with your apron tied round and tucked up like a missionary bishop on his way to a confirmation. You will find yourself in a workshop full of disagreeable people, who pick out unpleasant adjectives and tack them on to everything, and whose views of life and habits are—well, not your own. You will have to smoke pipes at a street corner on Sundays; your tobacco will be bad; you will drink bad beer—Harry! ”

“ Indeed, the Professor was an extremely honorable man, and would have scorned to betray confidence, and it was good to Miss Kennedy to find out that an evening of magic and miracle would do the girls good.
But a profound pity seized the heart of Angela. These poor people who believed themselves to be entitled to an English peerage, who were so mistaken, who would be so disappointed, who were so ignorant, who knew so little what it was they claimed—could not something be done to lessen their disappointment, to break their fall? ”

“ Upon the great block of stone, which the poor wretches are painfully dragging, while the cruel lash goads the weak and terrifies the strong, there sits one in authority. He regards the herd of slaves with eyes terrible from their stony gaze. What is it to him whether the feeble suffer and perish, so that the Pharaoh's will be done? The people of the East reminded Angela, who was an on-looker, and had no work to do, of these builders of pyramids: they worked under a taskmaster as relentless as that stony-hearted captain or foreman of works. ”

“ It was his cousin who first directed his attention to this point.
"Yes: there is no reason why you should not get into the House," said Angela. "But it would be a thousand pities if you should get in yet."
"Why should I wait, if they will elect me?"
"Because, Mr. Coppin, you must not try to lead the people till you know whither you would lead them: because you must not pretend to represent the people till you have learned their condition and their wants; because you must not presume to offer yourself till you are prepared with a programme." ”

“ Angela came to Whitechapel incognito—a princess disguised as a milkmaid; partly out of curiosity, partly to try her little experiment for the good of work-girls, with the gayety and light heart of youth—thinking that before long she would return to her old place, just as she had left it. But she could not. Her old views of life were changed, and a man had changed them. More than that—a man whose society, whose strength, whose counsel had become necessary to her. ”

“ The ordinary young man, thrown into the society of half a dozen working-girls, would have begun to flirt and talk nonsense with all of them together, or with one after the other. Harry was not that kind of young man. There is always, by the blessing of kind Heaven, left unto us a remnant of those who hold woman sacred, and continually praise, worship, and reverence the name of love. He was one of those young men. To flirt with a milliner did not seem a delightful thing to him at any time. ”

“ And when a change came in Miss Kennedy's manner—it was after her first talk with Lord Jocelyn—when Nelly saw her color heighten and her eyes grow brighter when Harry appeared, a dreadful pain seized upon her, and she knew, without a word being spoken, that all was over [Pg 365] for her. For what was she compared with this glorious woman, beautiful as the day, sweet as a rose in June, full of accomplishments? How could any man regard her beside Miss Kennedy? How could any man think of any other woman when such a goddess had smiled upon him? ”

“ Is there, thought Harry, gazing upon his luckless cousin, a condition more miserable than that of the cheap clerk? In early life he learns to spell, to read, to write, and perhaps keep books, but this only if he is ambitious. Here his education ends; he has no desire to learn anything more; he falls into whatever place he can get, and then he begins a life in which there is no hope of preferment and no endeavor after better things. ”

“ With some difficulty Harry persuaded his cousin to come with him. Dick Coppin was not, he said of himself, a dangler after girls' apron-strings, having something else to think of; nor was he attracted by the promise, held out by his cousin, of music and singing. But he came under protest, because music seemed to him an idle thing while the House of Lords remained undestroyed, and because this cousin of his could somehow make him do pretty nearly what he pleased.
He was a man of Harry's own age; a short man, with somewhat rough and rugged features—strong, and not without the beauty of strength. ”