Bilton

“ Bilton had recovered herself and risen, and Mr. Bilton had risen too.
"Hush, children; it is not Santa Claus," she said, "it is Mr. Gilton. We are glad to see you, Mr. Gilton;" and she held out her hand to him. "Won't you sit down?" She felt that he had come in the Christmas spirit, and she was anxious to meet him half-way.
"Yes," said her husband, coming forward, and instantly taking his cue from his wife,—for he was really a very nice man,—"we are very glad." To be sure, in his manner there was a certain stiffness, for a man cannot always change completely [21] in a moment, as a woman can ”

“ Of course there was an assortment of minor difficulties. The smoke from the Biltons' kitchen blew in through the windows of the Giltons' sitting-room when the wind was in one direction, and, when it was in the other, many of the clothes from the Giltons' clothesline were blown into the Biltons' yard, and Fanny, Susan, or Cora Cordelia had to be sent out to pick them up and drop them over the fence again, which Mrs. Bilton said was very wearing, as of course it must have been. Things like this were always happening, but matters reached a climax when it came to the dog. ”

“ Now we all know that early rising is a good thing and [7] honorable among all men, but it is something that ought to be done quietly, out of regard to the weaker vessels; and a dog that barks between five and seven in the morning, continuously, certainly ought to be suppressed, even if it be necessary to use force. Everybody agreed with the Biltons about that,—everybody except the Giltons themselves, who, by some one of nature's freaks, didn't mind it. Mrs. Bilton often said she wished Mrs. Gilton could be a light sleeper for a week and see what it was like. ”

“ I want a room to sleep in; and I want somebody to cook my chop, and somebody to make my bed. All that I leave to you; you know my taste. If the room doesn't suit me, I shall fly into a violent rage, and probably refuse to act at all. You will take all the trouble of furnishing and engaging servants off my hands, won't you? How dear of you! Now, please go away; I'm busy. Au revoir, till New York.'
Now, Bilton, as has been mentioned, was an excellent man of business, and, knowing perfectly well that Mrs. ”

“ As for Bilston, where is the man heroic enough to sound its praises? Passengers by railway, passing through Bilston, see only deserted slag-heaps, cinder mounds, and a general area of desolation, but the road reveals Bilston in an added squalor of grimy houses and frowzy courts. The collieries and ironworks that created the town are things of the past, and their ruins only remain to tell of what it was a century ago. ”

“ Bilston in Staffordshire is of more fearful aspect than either Hebburn, or Walker, or Felling, or Jarrow. On Tyneside, too, one may look away to the bright open country, to where there are low sunlighted hills on the horizon; but at Bilston an eye which searches over a landscape of blackened and withered grass only beholds more forges. In these northern latitudes, again, the skies are very cloudy and wonderful; and in the Black Country one never becomes aware that Nature can work miracles with her clouds and skies. ”

“ At Scotland Yard, Milton’s only son, John, was born, and here his protracted labours in his vehement controversy with Salmasius brought on the blackness of great darkness which, at the age of forty-three, for ever shut his world from view. For the next twenty years and more it is the blind poet whose life we follow, during the period when his fiery spirit was chastened not only by his own afflictions, but by the nation’s also.
In 1652 Milton moved to Petty France, now York Street, near the Bird Cage Walk, which was so named from the king’s aviary there. ”

“ Bittle, however, was unperturbed, and once again that throaty chuckle gurgled in his larynx without kindling any corresponding geniality in his features.
“Copies,” he said simply, and at that point the Saint thought that the conversational tension would be conveniently relieved with a little affable comment from a third party.
“You little fool!” said Bittle acidly. “Did you think I worked my way up from mud to millions without some sort of brain? And d’you imagine that a man who’s beaten the sharpest wits in London at their own game is going to be baulked by a chit of a country child? ”

“ That was the hour for mass, Pitou objected.
"Just why I pitch on it, to test my lads," replied the farmer.
Billet detested religious leaders as the apostles of tyranny, and seized the opportunity of setting up one altar against another.
His wife and daughter raising some remonstrance, he said that church was good enough for womanfolks, no doubt, and they might go and sleep away their time there; but it suited men to hear stronger stuff, or else the men should not work on his land.
Billet was a despot in his house; only Catherine ever coped with him and she was hushed when he frowned. ”

“ The best short modern Life is Mark Pattison's masterly, though occasionally wilful, little book in the English Men of letters Series. For the library and for students all other biographies have been superseded by the great work of David Masson, who spared no labours to investigate every smallest detail of the life of Milton and to place the whole in the setting of an elaborate history of England in Milton's day. The value of the book is somewhat impaired by the very strong Puritan and anti-Cavalier partisanship of the writer ”

“ Master Billet delegates and authorizes Miss Catherine to see to all the work and govern the house and household in his stead.”
As Billet was infallible in his wife’s eyes, all her resistance ceased instantly.
“Billet is right,” she declared after a glance at her daughter; “she is young but she has a good head, and she can even be headstrong. She can get along outdoors better than me; she knows how to make folks obey. But to be running about over field and hills will make a tomboy of her—--“
“Fear nothing for her,” interposed Pitou with a consequential air ”

“ What indignation inspired in Billet, and what he did in the gush of enthusiasm, was to pick up the blood-spattered bust, wave it over his head, and cheer with his fine manly voice in protest at the risk of being killed like the patriotic fop dead at his feet. [Pg 56]
But instantly a large and vigorous hand came down on the farmer's shoulder and so pressed him that he had to bow to the weight. He tried to wrest himself from the grasp, but another fist, quite as strong and heavy, fell on his other shoulder. He turned, growling, to learn what kind of antagonist was this.
"Pitou?" he cried. ”

“ The fanaticism of the covenanter and the sad grace of Petrarch seem to meet in Milton's monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world—the years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to enter—this conflict which was commencing in the social life of England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, and is reflected in Lycidas. ”

“ It was of oak, but the splinters flew freely under the chops of the vigorous yeoman. In a short time one could peep into the room. Billet looked in at the cleft. In the beam of light from a grated window in the yard a man was visible in the cell, standing a little back, holding one of his bedslates, he was in the attitude of defense, ready to knock down any one intruding.
Spite of his long beard, pale face and his hair being close cropped, Billet recognized Gilbert.
"Doctor, doctor, is it you? It is Billet who calls, your friend." ”

“ Milton, in these two idylls, has recorded a day of twenty-four hours. But he has not registered the phenomena; he places us at the standpoint of the man before whom they deploy. And the man, joyous or melancholy, is not a bare spectator of them; he is the student, compounded of sensibility and intelligence, of whom we are not told that he saw so and so, or that he felt so, but with whom we are made copartners of his thoughts and feeling. ”

“ My dear Fanny, now do be reasonable—you are not going to take offence without a cause?—a mere word in joke—Mr. Sweet was only in fun—were you, Mr. Sweet? After all Mr. Billington’s politeness too, surely you’ll go, it would seem so personal.
SWEET. To be sure! Insult a man like Billington! One of the first houses in the City! Most respectable delightful creature [Pg 6] like Billington! Why, he keeps two carriages, a couple of saddle horses, and a buggy! ”

“ Leaving the old timbered farmhouse of Dodmore upon our left, we descend into a pleasant vale, cross the Ledwych brook and bear away for Bitterley; following a narrow, unfrequented lane, with Titterstone making a brave show in the direction whither we are bound.
Set amidst green summer foliage, Bitterley village looks attractive [Pg 109] enough as we traverse its one quiet thoroughfare; but in winter-time, as the name suggests, the district is bleak and chilly:
'Bitterley, Bitterley under the Clee,
Devil take me if I ever come to thee!'
runs a rustic couplet that tells its own tale. ”

“ There was a Burberry thrown across the chair beside her, and she picked it up and slipped into it, trying to invest her movements with an insulting unconcern, ignoring his very existence.
“I was just leaving my cabin as you shepherded Maggs into the one next door,” Bittle explained, gloating. “I guessed you would try to interview me next, but I felt that if I let things go according to your plans you would have me at a disadvantage—a position which could only prejudice me for ever after in my rôle of your lord and master. A man should never give his chosen mate a chance to despise him.” ”

“ It was at the Spread Eagle that his eldest son, John Milton, was born, 9th December, 1608, being thus exactly contemporary with Lord Clarendon, who also died in the same year as the poet. Milton must be added to the long roll of our poets who have been natives of the city which now never sees sunlight or blue sky, along with Chaucer, Spenser, Herrick, Cowley, Shirley, Ben Jonson, Pope, Gray, Keats. Besides attending as a day-scholar at St. Paul's School, which was close at hand, his father engaged for him a private tutor at home. ”

“ Prince Arthur, Sir Philip Sidney, Alice and her brothers, and Milton in the dawn of his poet’s career; ill-fated Charles; 316 and brilliant, but broken-hearted, Butler. I thought of all of them, whilst the wind stirred faintly the summer leaves. At last I sank into repose. Sweet dreams are those suggested by old-world ghosts, and when the spirit is lulled by the graces of another age. I lay half-dreaming, half-awake, and thought of John Milton, young and beautiful, with the fire of inspiration in his deep grey-blue eyes. A man of wonderful learning and grace. ”

“ Milton is all the more urgent on the subject because he sees his own people inspired with an energy which presses forwards in all directions and is striking out new paths. She sees the light, says he; waking up from sleep she shakes her locks filled with the strength of Samson. ”

“ No man ever loved liberty and [Pg 117] virtue with a purer affection; no man ever labored in their cause with a more distinguished zeal; no man ever brought to the task a more glorious genius, accomplished with a more consummate learning. Milton was the noblest model of a devoted patriot and true Englishman; and the study of his works is the most certain means of perpetuating to his country spirits worthy of her greatness.
[Pg 118]
SAMUEL BUTLER.
"In the midst of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can only perish with his language. ”

“ Lawes, the famous musician and friend of Milton, was set to composing music for the occasion. On an evening in 1633, when Milton was living at Horton, the magnificent procession wended its way through crowds of enthusiastic spectators toward Whitehall. One hundred gentlemen on the best horses that the stables of royalty and the nobility could offer, all clad in gold and silver, and each accompanied by a page and two lackeys carrying torches, were only one feature of the pageant ”

“ Milton’s [Pg 13] life covered sixty-six of its one hundred years. It began with the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and included the brilliant period of exploration and adventure just before Milton’s birth, in which Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh, and other ambitious and not too scrupulous sea-rovers sought, like Cecil Rhodes, jewels and gold, empire, expansion, and renown.
It covered the chief work of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Lord Bacon, Milton, Bunyan, Defoe, Dryden, and fifty other men still read to-day. ”

“ Britling.
"He certainly does that," said Mr. Direck.
"He has the fair type of complexion, the rather full habit of body, the temperamental disposition, but in addition that close-cropped head, it is almost as if it were shaved, the plumpness, the glasses—those are things that are made. And the way he carries himself. And the way he thinks. His meticulousness. When he arrived he was delightful, he was wearing a student's corps cap and a rucksack, he carried a violin; he seemed to have come out of a book. No one would ever dare to invent so German a German for a book. ”

“ Just in that way must Milton, as boy and man, have often issued forth from the weariness of his studies and the noise and confinement of the streets, for a walk among the open fields that then lay so close at hand for the Londoner. ”