Cronshaw

“ Ragged children played in the road, and an old barrel-organ was grinding out a vulgar tune. Philip knocked at the door of Cronshaw's house (there was a shop of cheap sweetstuffs at the bottom) , and it was opened by an elderly Frenchwoman in a dirty apron. Philip asked her if Cronshaw was in.
"Ah, yes, there is an Englishman who lives at the top, at the back. ”

“ She took the leg of mutton and held it high above her, as though it were the head of John the Baptist on a platter; and, the cigarette still in her mouth, advanced with solemn, hieratic steps.
"Hail, daughter of Herodias," cried Cronshaw.
The mutton was eaten with gusto, and it did one good to see what a hearty appetite the pale-faced lady had. Clutton and Potter sat on each side of her, and everyone knew that neither had found her unduly coy. She grew tired of most people in six weeks, but she knew exactly how to treat afterwards the gentlemen who had laid their young hearts at her feet. ”

“ He had little doubt that Doctor South would be glad to have him, and he pictured to himself the life he would lead with Sally in the fishing village. They would have a little house within sight of the sea, and he would watch the mighty ships passing to the lands he would never know. Perhaps that was the wisest thing. Cronshaw had told him that the facts of life mattered nothing to him who by the power of fancy held in fee the twin realms of space and time. It was true. Forever wilt thou love and she be fair! ”

“ Leonard Upjohn described Kennington with that restrained humour which a strict adherence to the vocabulary of Sir Thomas Browne necessitated. With delicate sarcasm he narrated the last weeks, the patience with which Cronshaw bore the well-meaning clumsiness of the young student who had appointed himself his nurse, and the pitifulness of that divine vagabond in those hopelessly middle-class surroundings. Beauty from ashes, he quoted from Isaiah. It was a triumph of irony for that outcast poet to die amid the trappings of vulgar respectability ”

“ The restaurant, consisting of one small room, was of the poorest class, and Cronshaw seemed to be its only customer. He was sitting in the corner, well away from draughts, wearing the same shabby great-coat which Philip had never seen him without, with his old bowler on his head.
"I eat here because I can be alone," he said. "They are not doing well; the only people who come are a few trollops and one or two waiters out of a job; they are giving up business, and the food is execrable. But the ruin of their fortunes is my advantage."
Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. ”

“ He had middle-class instincts, and it seemed a dreadful thing to him to marry a waitress. A common wife would prevent him from getting a decent practice. Besides, he had only just enough money to last him till he was qualified; he could not keep a wife even if they arranged not to have children. He thought of Cronshaw bound to a vulgar slattern, and he shuddered with dismay. He foresaw what Mildred, with her genteel ideas and her mean mind, would become: it was impossible for him to marry her. ”

“ If you take away duty and goodness and beauty why are we brought into the world?"
"Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer," smiled Cronshaw.
He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered. They were Levantines, itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It was Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. ”

“ Upjohn was also a little put out because Philip had brought Cronshaw to his own rooms.
“I wish you had left him in Soho,” he said, with a wave of his long, thin hands. “There was a touch of romance in that sordid attic. I could even bear it if it were Wapping or Shoreditch, but the respectability of Kennington! What a place for a poet to die!”
Cronshaw was often so ill-humoured that Philip could only keep his temper by remembering all the time that this irritability was a symptom of the disease. Upjohn came sometimes before Philip was in, and then Cronshaw would complain of him bitterly. ”

“ Since his illness he had found it more difficult than ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to keep himself in liquor; and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though admiring the poems, thought it not worth while to publish them, Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impressing upon Upjohn his great need and urging him to make more strenuous efforts. Now that he was going to die he wanted to leave behind him a published book, and at the back of his mind was the feeling that he had produced great poetry. He expected to burst upon the world like a new star. ”

“ Cronshaw never came to Gravier’s. For the last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson described with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter. ”

“ During the first few months of his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said, but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action. ”

“ He told them of the last test match he had seen and described the course of the game wicket by wicket.
"That's the only thing I miss in Paris," he said, as he finished the bock which the waiter had brought. "You don't get any cricket."
Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one of the celebrities of the Quarter, grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking his time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side indicated that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched the scene with amusement. ”

“ It is no uncommon thing for a Cornishman to build his own house, make his own shoes, be both fisherman and miner, and, possibly, small shop-keeper besides; and wherever the Cornish miner emigrates, he is pretty sure to take the lead in enterprise and danger.
Wilkie Collins says: "As a body of men they are industrious, intelligent, sober, and orderly, neither soured by hard work, nor depressed by harsher privations"; and the old poet Taylor, in 1649, writes: "Cornwall is the compleate and repleate Home of Abundance, for high, churlish hills and affable, courteous people. ”

“ One Forbes, or Forbhas, was presented rector of this parish in the latter end of Cromwell's usurpation, and lived here on this fat benefice, without spending or lending any money, many years, always pretending want thereof; at length he died suddenly intestate, about the year 1681, having neither wife nor legitimate child, nor any relation of his in blood in this kingdom; upon news of whose death Mr. Arundell, his patron, opened his trunks, and found about three thousand pounds in gold and silver, and carried it thence to his own house. ”

“ Cornish said feebly: "Oh, well...."
Before she willed it, she was telling him:
"He didn't. He didn't leave me," she cried with passion. "He had another wife." Incredibly it was as if she were defending both him and herself.
"Lord sakes!" said Cornish.
She poured it out, in her passion to tell some one, to share her news of her state where there would be neither hardness nor censure.
"We were in Savannah, Georgia," she said. "We were going to leave for Oregon—going to go through California. We were in the hotel, and he was going out to get the tickets. He started to go. Then he came back. ”

“ Surely he can have some one to love near him," said Mrs. Swaffham.
"Well, Martha, it was part of the Apostle's wisdom to suffer fools gladly. My brother Oliver can do it; and there is nothing wiser or more difficult. I cannot do it. I would rough them! rough them! till they learnt their folly, and left it."
"If this young Lord is taking a letter to Madame Cromwell, then why did not Israel write to me?"
"Oh, the unreasonableness of women! Can a man write when he is in the saddle pursuing the enemy? Israel and Lambert left immediately with seven regiments for Edinburgh. ”

“ Cromwell cleared the road before him. If any great man stood against him he would pull down his castle the same as he pulled down that castle of your own, Ballinamantane, that is down the road. He never got more than two hours sleep or three, or at the most four, but starting up fearing his life would be peppered. There was a word he sounded out to the Catholics, 'To hell or Connacht,' and the reason he did that was that Connacht was burned bare, and he that thought to pass the winter there would get no lodging at all. ”

“ Crenshaw was averse to children as being inimical to cleanliness and order, oppressive virtues that drove Crenshaw himself in his hours of leisure to the woodshed, where he might spit freely.
“I reckon you'd rather drop a word with yo' missus before you toted him home?” suggested Yancy, who knew something of the nature of his friend's domestic thraldom.
“A woman ought to be boss in her own house,” said Crenshaw.
“Feelin' the truth of that, I've never married, Mr. John; I do as I please and don't have to listen to a passel of opinion. ”

“ I don't, Israel! I love nothing, I love nobody better than Israel Swaffham. I was thinking of Swaffham."
"I shall sign the sale of it to Cymlin as soon as Cromwell dies. The deed is already drawn out, and waiting for our names. If the Stuart comes back—and I believe he will—I should lose Swaffham, as well as my life; but Cymlin will marry Matilda, and make obeisance to Charles Stuart, and the old home will be in the family and keep its own name. I and thou can build another Swaffham; thou art but fifty, and my years are some short of sixty. We are in the prime of life yet." ”

“ Strange superstitions have lingered on, and one very curious story of a girl fed for years by fairies has been put on record.
It is somewhat remarkable that Cornwall has produced no musical genius of any note; and yet the Cornishman is akin to the Welshman and the Irishman.
Cornwall has certainly sent up to London and Westminster very able politicians, as Godolphin, Sir William Molesworth, and Sir John Eliot. It furnished Tyburn with a victim—Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, a strange mixture of money-grasping, enthusiasm, and humour. ”

“ I did never think to be parted from Major-General Harrison and John Bradshaw, those godly men. Albeit I have tried my best to remain with them, and I hope yet to win Major-General Harrison."
"He is hard, father—he is hard and fierce," replied Elisabeth Claypole. "He was cruel to many poor men—I have heard notable talk of it——"
"Thou art too pitiful," said Cromwell, "and judge as a woman. There is no man among us—not thy brother Henry, not Lambert, nor Dishowe, nor my son Fleetwood, a finer soldier or a truer Christian than Thomas Harrison." ”

“ Then Jane lifted his big hand and kissed it, and answered, "I thought so!"
"And if England wants a king," he continued, "she can make one; she has good men enough to choose from."
"Some say that Cromwell will make himself king."
"Some people know no more of Cromwell than a mite knows of a cheesemonger. Nevertheless, Cromwell is the Captain of England. He has expressed her heart, he has done her will."
"Yet he is not without faults," said Mrs. Swaffham.
"I don't see his faults, Martha. I see only him. Great men may have greater faults than little men can find room for ”

“ I have often been in Elizabeth Cromwell's room, both in Slepe House and in Ely. I remember its tent bed and checked blue-and-white curtains! Well, well—it is a topsy-turvy world. You must go and see Matilda to-morrow. I have been making inquiries about the Jeverys; they are what your father calls 'Trimmers,'—neither one thing nor another. He is an old soldier, and has made use of his wounds to excuse him from further fighting; and Lady Jevery mingles her company so well that any party may claim her. A girl so outspoken as her niece Matilda will give her trouble. ”

“ A friend of mine who wrote a review that that tended much to the success of a former work of this writer, said to me of his work on Cromwell that he had sacrificed everyone to Cromwell, and had not made much of him. This hero-worshipper has been very profuse of his scorn and reprobation towards those members of the Rump who did not lick the dust before Cromwell. The fault of each of those opponents of Cromwell is that he is not a "royal man." ”

“ I can trace no more resemblances out there, now, to a Cornish prospect; the view has gone altogether."
"Are you very fond of Cornwall, ma'am?" asked Mrs. Jazeph, rising, in rather a dilatory manner, to light the candles.
"Indeed I am," said Rosamond. "I was born there; and my husband and I were on our way to Cornwall when we were obliged to stop, on my account, at this place. You are a long time getting the candles lit. Can't you find the match-box?" ”

“ Crawshay slapped his thigh.
"That's talking!" said he. "Lord love yer, I know where I am when you talk like that. I'll trust yer. I know a man when he get's his tongue between his teeth; you're all right. I don't say so much about this other gent, though I saw him along with you on the job that time in the provinces; but if he's a pal of yours, Mr. Raffles, he'll be all right too. ”

“ You needn't waste any pity on him, old chap; he escaped from Dartmoor yesterday afternoon."
"Well done!"
Raffles smiled, but his eyebrows had gone up, and his shoulders followed suit.
"You are perfectly right; it was very well done indeed. I wonder you didn't see it in the paper. In a dense fog on the moor yesterday good old Crawshay made a bolt for it, and got away without a scratch under heavy fire. All honour to him, I agree; a fellow with that much grit deserves his liberty. But Crawshay has a good deal more. They hunted him all night long ”