William Hale White

“ Let him come home after he has suffered what is far worse than hatred—the contempt of a superior, who knows that he can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he can replace his slave at a moment’s notice. Let him be trained by his tyrant to dwell upon the thought that he belongs to the vast crowd of people in London who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom it is a charity to offer employment; who are conscious of possessing no gift which makes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend the divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear. ”

“ Our aim ought not so much to be the salvation of this poor petty self, but of that in me which alone makes it worth while to save me; of that alone which I hope will be saved, immortal truth. The very centre of the existence of the ordinary chapel-goer and church-goer needs to be shifted from self to what is outside self, and yet is truly self, and the sole truth of self. If the truth lives, we live, and if it dies, we are dead. Our theology stands in need of a reformation greater than that of Luther’s. ”

“ It was as if he had said to himself, “Political controversy is nothing to me, and, what is more, is so uncertain that it matters little whether I say yes or no, nor indeed does it matter if I say yes and no, and I must keep my wife and children from the workhouse; but when it comes to the relationship of man to God, it is a different matter.” His altogether outside vehemence and hypocrisy did in fact react upon him, and so far from affecting harmfully what lay deeper, produced a more complete sincerity and transparency extending even to the finest verbal distinctions. ”

“ It is very terrible to think that the labour by which men are to live should be of this order. The ideal of labour is that it should be something in which we can take an interest and even a pride. Immense masses of it in London are the merest slavery, and it is as mechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus horse. There is no possibility of relieving it, and all the ordinary copybook advice of moralists and poets as to the temper in which we should earn our bread is childish nonsense. If a man is a painter, or a physician, or a barrister, or even a tradesman, well and good. ”

“ He will create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possible escape here and there, but this problem of Drury Lane was round and hard like a ball of adamant. The only thing I could do was faintly, and I was about to say stupidly, hope—for I had no rational, tangible grounds for hoping—that some force of which we are not now aware might some day develop itself which will be able to resist and remove the pressure which sweeps and crushes into a hell, sealed from the upper air, millions of human souls every year in one quarter of the globe alone. ”

“ I thought that with a little care life might become at least bearable with his wife; that by treating her not so much as if she were criminal, but as if she were diseased, hatred might pass into pity, and pity into merciful tenderness to her, and that they might dwell together upon terms not harder than those upon which many persons who have made mistakes in youth agree to remain with each other; terms which, after much consideration, they adjudge it better to accept than to break loose, and bring upon themselves and those connected with them all that open rupture involves. ”

“ The cheek-bones were more prominent than of old, and her dark-brown hair drawn tightly over her forehead increased the clear paleness of the face; the just perceptible tint of colour which I recollect being now altogether withdrawn. But she was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished. There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if not of joy, at least of resignation. ”

“ No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon what lies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses is loosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic. The beyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us consider it as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure of the universe. ”

“ Such love, I should have said, was only possible between man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But now I doubt whether a love of that particular kind could be felt towards any grown-up human being, love so pure, so imperious, so awful. My love to Marie was love of God Himself as He is—an unrestrained adoration of an efflux from Him, adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation had clothed itself with a child’s form. ”

“ It must not, however, be supposed that human nature was different from the human nature of to-day or a thousand years ago. There were then, even as there were a thousand years ago, and are to-day, small, secret doors, connected with mysterious staircases, by which access was gained to freedom; and men and women, inmates of castles with walls a yard thick, and impenetrable portcullises, sought those doors and descended those stairs night and day. But nobody knew, or if we did know, the silence was profound. The broad-shouldered, yellow-haired Whig squire, had a wife who was the opposite of him. ”

“ He was shallow, and yet he possessed in some mysterious way a talent which I greatly coveted, and which in this world is inestimably precious—the talent of making people give way before him—a capacity of self-impression. Chalmers could never have commanded anybody. He had no power whatever, even when he was right, to put his will against the wills of others, but yielded first this way and then the other. Clem, on the contrary, without any difficulty or any effort, could conquer all opposition, and smilingly force everybody to do his bidding. ”

“ No religion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with such profound earnestness on the bisection of man—on the distinction within him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and the lower, heaven and hell. What utter folly is it because of an antique vesture to condemn as effete what the vesture clothes! Its doctrine and its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of precious thoughts purchased by blood and tears.
I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts. The theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say. ”

“ Here was nothing but sullen subjugation, the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only by a tendency to mutiny. Here was a strength of circumstance to quell and dominate which neither Jesus nor Paul could have overcome—worse a thousandfold than Scribes or Pharisees, or any form of persecution. The preaching of Jesus would have been powerless here; in fact, no known stimulus, nothing ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can do anything in the back streets of great cities so long as they are the cesspools which they are now. ”

“ Looking at the masses of humanity, driven this way and that way, the Christian teaching is apt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocation as real as if that soul were alone upon the planet. Yet it is a fact. We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of the impotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shall take care of every atom of life on the globe: we are compelled to think that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individuals must elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness. ”

“ He was tall, thin, and suffered occasionally from spitting of blood, brought on no doubt from excitement. He was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion. He had complete mastery over every detail of the business, and he never blundered. All his work was thorough, down to the very bottom, and he had the most intolerant hatred of everything which was loose and inaccurate. He never passed a day without flaming out into oaths and curses against his subordinates, and they could not say in his wildest fury that his ravings were beside the mark. ”

“ London on a dark Sunday afternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is depressing. The inhabitants drag themselves hither and thither in languor and uncertainty. Small mobs loiter at the doors of the gin palaces. Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling “walnuts” with a cry so melancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may be imagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by the monotony of a million years.
About two or three o’clock decent working men in their best clothes emerge from the houses in such streets as Nassau Street. ”

“ Most of us have no real loves and no real hatreds. Blessed is love, less blessed is hatred, but thrice accursed is that indifference which is neither one nor the other, the muddy mess which men call friendship. ”

“ There is something deeper than this scepticism, but the scepticism is the easiest and the most obvious conclusion to an open mind dealing so closely and practically with politics as it was my lot to do at this time of my life. Men must be governed, and when it comes to the question, by whom? I, for one, would far sooner in the long run trust the people at large than I would the few, who in everything which relates to Government are as little instructed as the many and more difficult to move. ”

“ The critics, too, will condemn because of our weakness; but this defect I at once concede. The severest critic could not possibly be so severe as I am upon myself. I know my failings. He, probably, would miss many of them. But, again I urge that men are not to be debarred by reason of weakness from doing what little good may lie within reach of their hands. Had we attempted to save scholars and thinkers we should have deserved the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be visited. We aspired to save nobody. We knew no salvation ourselves. ”

“ I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and praying with his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to the confusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, but he lived to a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, and he passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze. He never read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was not at work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter amazement of everybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he—George Butts—were to be married. ”

“ I did not know, till I came in actual contact with them, how far away the classes which lie at the bottom of great cities are from those above them; how completely they are inaccessible to motives which act upon ordinary human beings, and how deeply they are sunk beyond ray of sun or stars, immersed in the selfishness naturally begotten of their incessant struggle for existence and the incessant warfare with society. ”

“ She had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for any wrong which was done to her. That almost instinctive tendency in men, to excuse, to transfer blame to others, to be angry with somebody else when they suffer from the consequences of their own misdeeds, in her did not exist.
During almost the whole of her married life, before this affair between the squire and Clem, Mrs. Butts had had much trouble, although her trouble was, perhaps, rather the absence of joy than the presence of any poignant grief. She was much by herself. ”

“ Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more so, for she visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; but there is in her also an infinite Pity, healing all wounds, softening all calamities, ever hastening to alleviate and repair. Christianity in strange historical fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of her into a biography and a creed. ”

“ Cardinal could get no work again for a long time, and had to borrow money. I was sorry; but for my part, this and other eccentricities did not disturb my confidence in him. He was an honest, affectionate soul, and his peculiarities were a necessary result of the total chaos of a time without any moral guidance. With no church, no philosophy, no religion, the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont relax their hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and thither, arriving at nothing. ”

“ I have known many persons come up from the country and go into raptures over a playhouse sun and moon who have never bestowed a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to be seen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no means follows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle of unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore we can step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon the unrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left a widow in the little villa there. ”

“ There is no religion now-a-days. Religion is a mere literature. Cultivated persons sit in their studies and write overflowingly about Jesus, or meet at parties and talk about Him; but He is not of much use to me unless I say to myself, how is it with thee? unless I myself become what He was. This was the meaning of Jesus to the Apostle Paul. Jesus was in him; he had put on Jesus; that is to say, Jesus lived in him like a second soul, taking the place of his own soul and directing him accordingly. ”

“ I passed away from the thought of Clem, and dwelt upon the conviction which had long possessed me that I was insignificant, that there was nothing much in me, and it was this which destroyed my peace. We may reconcile ourselves to poverty and suffering, but few of us can endure the conviction that there is nothing in us, and that consequently we cannot expect anybody to gravitate towards us with any forceful impulse. ”

“ Perhaps the worst, or almost the worst effect of relationships which we do not like to acknowledge, is the secrecy and equivocation which they beget. From the very first moment when the intimacy between the squire’s wife and Clem began to be anything more than harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and to become contemptible. At the same time I believe he defended himself against himself with the weapons which were ever ready when self rose against self because of some wrong-doing. He was not as other men. ”

“ The skirts of London when the air is filled with north-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the least cheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wandering masses of people to find any way of amusing themselves. ”

“ It often happens that a grand attempt, although it may fail—miserably fail—is fruitful in the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, but one which would never have been attained without it. A youth strives after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he has never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter for the striving ”