LETTER LV.

No more letters, at present, reaching me, from clergymen, I use the breathing-time permitted me, to express more clearly the meaning of my charge,—left in its brevity obscure,—that, as a body, they “teach a false gospel for hire.”

It is obscure, because associating two charges quite distinct. The first, that, whether for hire or not, they preach a false gospel. The second, that, whether they preach truth or falsehood, they preach as hirelings.

It will be observed that the three clergymen who have successively corresponded with me—Mr. Tipple, Mr. Lyttel, and Mr. Headlam—have every one, for their own part, eagerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh Article of the Church of England. Nevertheless, the substance of that article assuredly defines the method of salvation commonly announced at this day from British pulpits; and the effect of this supremely pleasant and supremely false gospel, on the British mind, may be [184]best illustrated by the reply, made only the other day, by a dishonest, but sincerely religious, commercial gentleman, to an acquaintance of mine, who had expressed surprise that he should come to church after doing the things he was well known to do: “Ah, my friend, my standard is just the publican’s.”

In the second place, while it is unquestionably true that many clergymen are doing what Mr. Headlam complacently points out their ability to do,—sacrificing, to wit, themselves, their souls, and bodies, (not that I clearly understand what a clergyman means by sacrificing his soul,) without any thought of temporal reward; this preaching of Christ has, nevertheless, become an acknowledged Profession, and means of livelihood for gentlemen: and the Simony of to-day differs only from that of apostolic times, in that, while the elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a considerable offer in ready money, the modern Simon would on the whole refuse to accept the same gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, without a nice little attached income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr. Scott, and an eligible neighbourhood.

These are the two main branches of the charge I meant to gather into my short sentence; and to these I now further add, that in defence of this Profession, with its pride, privilege, and more or less roseate repose of domestic felicity, extremely beautiful and enviable in country parishes, the clergy, as a body, [185]have, with what energy and power was in them, repelled the advance both of science and scholarship, so far as either interfered with what they had been accustomed to teach; and connived at every abuse in public and private conduct, with which they felt it would be considered uncivil, and feared it might ultimately prove unsafe, to interfere.

And that, therefore, seeing that they were put in charge to preach the Gospel of Christ, and have preached a false gospel instead of it; and seeing that they were put in charge to enforce the Law of Christ, and have permitted license instead of it, they are answerable, as no other men are answerable, for the existing “state of things” in this British nation,—a state now recorded in its courts of justice as productive of crimes respecting which the Birmingham Defender of the Faith himself declares that “in the records of no age or nation will any tales be found surpassing these in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of heart and soul.”

Answerable, as no other men are, I repeat; and entirely disdain my correspondent Mr. Headlam’s attempt to involve me, or any other layman, in his responsibility. He has taken on himself the office of teacher. Mine is a painter’s; and I am plagued to death by having to teach instead of him, and his brethren,—silent, they, for fear of their congregations! Which of them, from least to greatest, dares, for instance, [186]so much as to tell the truth to women about their dress? Which of them has forbidden his feminine audience to wear fine bonnets in church? Do they think the dainty garlands are wreathed round the studiously dressed hair, because a woman “should have power on her head because of the angels”? Which of them understands that text?—which of them enforces it? Dares the boldest ritualist order his women-congregation to come all with white napkins over their heads, rich and poor alike, and have done with their bonnets? What, ‘You cannot order’? You could say you wouldn’t preach if you saw one bonnet in the church, couldn’t you? ‘But everybody would say you were mad.’ Of course they would—and that the devil was in you. “If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of His household?” but now that ‘all men speak well of you,’ think you the Son of Man will speak the same?

And you, and especially your wives, (as is likely!) are very angry with me, I hear, on all hands;—and think me hostile to you. As well might a carter asleep on his shafts accuse me of being his enemy for trying to wake him; or his master’s enemy, because I would fain not see the cart in the ditch. Nay, this notable paragraph which has given Mr. Hansard’s friends so much offence, was credited and printed by me, because I thought it one of the noblest instances I had ever heard of energy and unselfishness; [187]and though, of all the sects of ecclesiastics, for my own share, I most dislike and distrust the so-called Evangelical, I took the picture of Swiss life, which was meant to stand for a perfect and true one, from the lips of an honest vicar of that persuasion.

Which story, seeing that it has both been too long interrupted, and that its entire lesson bears on what I have to say respecting the ministrations of Felix Neff, I will interrupt my too garrulous personal reminiscences by concluding, in this letter, from that of March, 1874.

“The old cart went again as well as ever; and ‘he could never have believed,’ said Hansli, ‘that a cart could have taken itself up so, and become so extremely changed for the better. That might be an example to many living creatures.’

More than one young girl, however, in her own secret heart reproached Hansli for his choice—saying to herself that she would have done for him quite as well. ‘If she had thought he had been in such a hurry, she could have gone well enough, too, to put herself on his road, and prevented him from looking at that rubbishy rag of a girl. She never could have thought Hansli was such a goose,—he, who might easily have married quite differently, if he had had the sense to choose. As sure as the carnival was coming, he would repent before he got to it. All the worse for [188]him—it’s his own fault: as one makes one’s bed, one lies in it.’

But Hansli had not been a goose at all, and never found anything to repent of. He had a little wife who was just the very thing he wanted,—a little, modest, busy wife, who made him as happy as if he had married Heaven itself in person.

It is true that she didn’t long help Hansli to pull the cart: he soon found himself obliged to go in the shafts alone again; but, aussi, once he saw he had a mustard,1 he consoled himself. ‘What a fellow!’ said he, examining him. ‘In a wink, he’ll be big enough to help me himself.’ And, thereupon, away he went with his cart, all alone, without finding any difference.

It is true that in a very little while his wife wanted to come again to help him. ‘If only we make a little haste to get back,’ said she, ‘the little one can wait well enough—besides that the grandmother can give him something to drink while we are away.’ But the mustard himself was not of their mind, and soon made them walk in his own fashion. They made all the haste they could to get home—but before they were within half a league of their door, the wife cried out, ‘Mercy! what’s that?’ ‘That’ was a shrill crying like a little pig’s when it is being killed. ‘Mercy on us, what is it,—what’s the matter!’ cried she; and [189]left the cart, and ran off at full speed: and there, sure enough, was the grandmother, whom the little thing’s cries had put into a dreadful fright lest it should have convulsions, and who could think of nothing better than to bring it to meet mamma. The heavy boy, the fright, and the run, had put the old woman so out of breath that it was really high time for somebody to take the child. She was almost beside herself; and it was ever so long before she could say, ‘No—I won’t have him alone any more: in my life I never saw such a little wretch: I had rather come and draw the cart.’

These worthy people thus learned what it is to have a tyrant in one’s house, little one though he be. But all that didn’t interrupt their household ways. The little wife found plenty to do staying at home; gardening, and helping to make the brooms. Without ever hurrying anything, she worked without ceasing, and was never tired,—so easily things ran under her hand. Hansli was all surprise to find he got along so well with a wife; and to find his purse growing fatter so fast. He leased a little field; and the grandmother saw a goat in it; presently two. He would not hear of a donkey, but arranged with the miller, when he went to the town, to carry some of his brooms for him; which, it is true, skimmed off a little of the profit, and that vexed Hansli, who could not bear the smallest kreutzer to escape him. But [190]his life soon became quite simple and continuous. The days followed each other like the waves of a river, without much difference between one and another. Every year grew new twigs to make brooms with. Every year, also, without putting herself much about, his wife gave him a new baby. She brought it, and planted it there. Every day it cried a little,—every day it grew a little; and, in a turn of the hand, it was of use for something. The grandmother said that, old as she was, she had never seen anything like it. It was, for all the world, she said, like the little cats, which at six weeks old, catch mice. And all these children were really like so many blessings—the more there came, the more money one made. Very soon—only think of it—the grandmother saw a cow arrive. If she had not with her own eyes seen Hansli pay for it, it would have been almost impossible to make her believe that he had not stolen it. If the poor old woman had lived two years more,2 she would even have seen Hansli become himself the owner of the little cottage in which she had lived so long, with forest right which gave him more wood than he wanted; and ground enough to [191]keep a cow and two sheep, which are convenient things enough, when one has children who wear worsted stockings.

(Upon all that,3 Hansli certainly owed a good deal, but it was well-placed money, and no one would ask him for it, as long as he paid the interest to the day; for the rest, ‘if God lent him life, these debts did not trouble him,’ said he.) He might then learn that the first kreutzers are the most difficult to save. There’s always a hole they are running out at, or a mouth to swallow them. But when once one has got to the point of having no more debts, and is completely set on one’s legs, then things begin to go!—the very ground seems to grow under your feet,—everything profits more and more,—the rivulet becomes a river, and the gains become always easier and larger: on one condition, nevertheless, that one shall change nothing in one’s way of life. For it is just then that new needs spring out of the ground like mushrooms on a dunghill, if not for the husband, at least for the wife,—if not for the parents, at least for the children. A thousand things seem to become necessary of which we had never thought; and we are ashamed of ever so many others, which till then had not given us the smallest concern; and we exaggerate the value of what we have, because once we had [192]nothing; and our own value, because we attribute our success to ourselves,—and,—one changes one’s way of life, and expenses increase, and labour lessens, and the haughty spirit goes before the fall.

It was not so with Hansli. He continued to live and work just the same; and hardly ever spent anything at the inn; aussi, he rejoiced all the more to find something hot ready for him when he came home; and did honour to it. Nothing was changed in him, unless that his strength for work became always greater, little by little; and his wife had the difficult art of making the children serve themselves, each, according to its age,—not with many words neither; and she herself scarcely knew how.

A pedagogue would never have been able to get the least explanation of it from her. Those children took care of each other, helped their father to make his brooms, and their mother in her work about the house; none of them had the least idea of the pleasures of doing nothing, nor of dreaming or lounging about; and yet not one was overworked, or neglected. They shot up like willows by a brookside, full of vigour and gaiety. The parents had no time for idling with them, but the children none the less knew their love, and saw how pleased they were when their little ones did their work well. Their parents prayed with them: on Sundays the father read them a chapter which he explained afterwards as well [193]as he could, and on account of that also the children were full of respect for him, considering him as the father of the family who talks with God Himself (and who will tell Him when children disobey4). The degree of respect felt by children for their parents depends always on the manner in which the parents bear themselves to God. Why do not all parents reflect more on this?5

Nor was our Hansli held in small esteem by other people, any more than by his children. He was so decided and so sure; words full of good sense were plenty with him; honourable in everything, he never set himself up for rich, nor complained of being poor; so that many a pretty lady would come expressly into the kitchen, when she heard that the broom-merchant was there, to inform herself how things went in the country, and how such and such a matter was turning out. Nay, in many of the houses he was trusted to lay in their winter provisions, a business which brought him many a bright bätz. The Syndic’s wife at Thun, herself, often had a chat with him; it had become, so to speak, really a pressing need with her to see him at Thun every Saturday; and when she was talking to him, it had happened, not once nor twice, that M. the Syndic [194]himself had been obliged to wait for an answer to something he had asked his wife. After all, a Syndic’s wife may surely give herself leave to talk a little according to her own fancy, once a week.

One fine day, however, it was the Saturday at Thun, and there was not in all the town a shadow of the broom-merchant. Thence, aussi, great emotion, and grave faces. More than one maid was on the doorsteps, with her arms akimbo, leaving quietly upstairs in the kitchen the soup and the meat to agree with each other as best they might.

‘You haven’t seen him then?—have you heard nothing of him?’—asked they, one of the other. More than one lady ran into her kitchen, prepared to dress6 her servant well, from head to foot, because she hadn’t been told when the broom-merchant was there. But she found no servant there, and only the broth boiling over. Madame the Syndic herself got disturbed; and interrogated, first her husband, and then the gendarme. And as they knew nothing, neither the one nor the other, down she went into the low town herself, in person, to inquire after her broom-merchant. She was quite out of brooms—and the year’s house-cleaning was to be done next week—and now no broom-merchant—je vous demande!7 And truly [195]enough, no broom-merchant appeared; and during all the week there was a feeling of want in the town, and an enormous disquietude the next Saturday. Will he come? Won’t he come? He came, in effect; and if he had tried to answer all the questions put to him, would not have got away again till the next week. He contented himself with saying to everybody that ‘he had been obliged to go to the funeral.’

‘Whose funeral?’ asked Madame the Syndic, from whom he could not escape so easily.

‘My sister’s,’ answered the broom-merchant.

‘Who was she? and when did they bury her?’ Madame continued to ask.

The broom-merchant answered briefly, but frankly: aussi Madame the Syndic cried out all at once,

‘Mercy on us!—are you the brother of that servant-girl there’s been such a noise about, who turned out at her master’s death to have been his wife,—and had all his fortune left to her, and died herself soon afterwards?’

‘It is precisely so,’ answered Hansli, dryly.8

‘But—goodness of Heaven!’ cried Madame the Syndic, ‘you inherit fifty thousand crowns at least,—[196]and behold you still running over the country with your brooms!’

‘Why not?’ said Hansli; ‘I haven’t got that money, yet; and I’m not going to let go my sparrow in the hand for a pigeon on the tiles.’

‘Pigeon on the tiles, indeed!’ said Madame,—‘why, we were speaking of it only this morning—I and M. the Syndic; and he said the thing was perfectly sure, and the money came all to the brother.’

‘Ah, well, my faith, so much the better,’ said Hansli; ‘but about what I called to ask,—must you have the brooms in eight days, or fifteen?’

‘Ah, bah—you and your brooms!’ cried Madame the Syndic; ‘come in, will you?—I want to see how wide Monsieur will open his eyes!’

‘But, Madame, I am a little hurried to-day; it’s a long way home from here, and the days are short.’

‘Long or short, come in, always,’ said Madame imperatively,—and Hansli had nothing for it but to obey.

She did not take him into the kitchen, but into the dining-room; sent her maid to tell Monsieur that Hansli was there,—ordered up a bottle of wine,—and forced Hansli to sit down, in spite of his continued protesting that he had no time, and that the days were short. But in a wink the Monsieur was there, sat down at the table also, and drank to Hansli’s health and happiness; requiring him at the same time to explain how that had all happened. [197]

‘Ah, well, I’ll tell you in two words,—it is not long. As soon as she had been confirmed, my sister went into the world to look for work. She got on from place to place, and was much valued, it seems. As for us at home, she occupied herself little about us: only came to see us twice, in all the time; and, since my mother died, not at all. I have met her at Berne, it is true; but she never asked me to come and see where she lived,—only bid me salute the wife and children, and said she would soon come, but she never did. It is true she was not long at Berne, but was much out at service in the neighbouring chateaux, and in French Switzerland, from what I hear. She had busy blood, and a fanciful head, which never could stay long in the same place: but, with that, well-conducted and proof-faithful;9 and one might trust her fearlessly with anything. At last there came a report that she had married a rich old gentleman, who did that to punish his relations, with whom he was very angry; but I didn’t much believe it, nor much think about it. And then, all of a sudden, I got word that I must go directly to my sister if I wanted to see her alive, and that she lived in the country by Morat. So I set out, and got there in time to see her die; but was not able to say much to her. As soon as she was buried, I came back as fast as I could. I was in a hurry to get home, for since I first set [198]up house I had never lost so much time about the world.’

‘What’s that?—lost so much time, indeed!’ cried Madame the Syndic. ‘Ah, nonsense;—with your fifty thousand crowns, are you going to keep carrying brooms about the country?’

‘But very certainly, Madame the Syndic,’ said Hansli, ‘I only half trust the thing; it seems to me impossible I should have so much. After all, they say it can’t fail; but be it as it will, I shall go on living my own life: so that if there comes any hitch in the business, people shan’t be able to say of me, “Ah, he thought himself already a gentleman, did he? Now he’s glad to go back to his cart!” But if the money really comes to me, I shall leave my brooms, though not without regret; but it would all the same, then, make the world talk and laugh if I went on; and I will not have that.’

‘But that fortune is in safe hands,—it runs no danger?’ asked M. the Syndic.

‘I think so,’ said Hansli. ‘I promised some money to the man, if the heritage really came to me; then he got angry, and said, “If it’s yours, you’ll have it; and if it isn’t, money won’t get it: for the expenses and taxes, you’ll have the account in proper time and place.” Then I saw the thing was well placed; and I can wait well enough, till the time’s up.’

‘But, in truth,’ said Madame the Syndic, ‘I can’t [199]understand such a sangfroid! One has never seen the like of that in Israel. That would make me leap out of my skin, if I was your wife.’

‘You had better not,’ said Hansli, ‘at least until you have found somebody able to put you into it again.’

This sangfroid, and his carrying on his business, reconciled many people to Hansli; who were not the less very envious of him: some indeed thought him a fool, and wanted to buy the succession of him, declaring he would get nothing out of it but lawsuits.

‘What would you have?’ said Hansli. ‘In this world, one is sure of nothing. It will be time to think of it if the affair gets into a mess.’

But the affair got into nothing of the sort. Legal time expired, he got invitation to Berne, when all difficulties were cleared away.

When his wife saw him come back so rich, she began, first, to cry; and then, to scream.

So that Hansli had to ask her, again and again, what was the matter with her, and whether anything had gone wrong.

‘Ah, now,’ said his wife, at last,—(for she cried so seldom, that she had all the more trouble to stop, when once she began),—‘Ah, now, you will despise me, because you are so rich, and think that you would like to have another sort of wife than me. I’ve done [200]what I could, to this day; but now I’m nothing but an old rag.10 If only I was already six feet under ground!’

Thereupon Hansli sat himself down in his arm-chair, and said:

‘Wife, listen. Here are now nearly thirty years that we have kept house; and thou knowest, what one would have, the other would have, too. I’ve never once beaten thee, and the bad words we may have said to each other would be easily counted. Well, wife, I tell thee, do not begin to be ill-tempered now, or do anything else than you have always done. Everything must remain between us as in the past. This inheritance does not come from me; nor from thee: but from the good God, for us two, and for our children. And now, I advise thee, and hold it for as sure a thing as if it were written in the Bible, if you speak again of this to me but once, be it with crying, or without, I will give thee a beating with a new rope, such as that they may hear thee cry from here to the Lake of Constance. Behold what is said: now do as thou wilt.’

It was resolute speaking; much more resolute than the diplomatic notes between Prussia and Austria. The wife knew where she was, and did not recommence her song. Things remained between them as they had been. Before abandoning his brooms, Hansli [201]gave a turn of his hand to them, and made a present of a dozen to all his customers, carrying them to each in his own person. He has repeated many a time since, and nearly always with tears in his eyes, that it was a day he could never forget, and that he never would have believed people loved him so.

Farming his own land, he kept his activity and simplicity, prayed and worked as he had always done, but he knew the difference between a farmer and a broom-seller, and did honour to his new position as he had to his old one. He knew well, already, what was befitting in a farmer’s house, and did now for others as he had been thankful to have had done for himself.

The good God spared both of them to see their sons-in-law happy in their wives, and their daughters-in-law full of respect and tenderness for their husbands; and were they yet alive this day, they would see what deep roots their family had struck in their native land, because it has remained faithful to the vital germs of domestic life; the love of work; and religion: foundation that cannot be overthrown, unmoved by mocking chance, or wavering winds.”

I have no time, this month, to debate any of the debateable matters in this story, though I have translated it that we may together think of them as occasion serves. In the meantime, note that the heads of question are these:— [202]

I. (Already suggested in p. 59 of my letter for March, 1874.) What are the relative dignities and felicities of affection, in simple and gentle loves? How far do you think the regard existing between Hansli and his wife may be compared, for nobleness and delight, to Sir Philip Sidney’s regard for—his neighbour’s wife; or the relations between Hansli and his sister, terminating in the brief ‘was not able to say much to her,’ comparable to those between Sidney and his sister, terminating in the completion of the brother’s Psalter by the sister’s indistinguishably perfect song?

II. If there be any difference, and you think the gentle hearts have in anywise the better,—how far do you think this separation between gentle and simple inevitable? Suppose Sir Philip, for instance—among his many accomplishments—had been also taught the art of making brooms,—(as indeed I doubt not but his sister knew how to use them,)—and time had thus been left to the broom-makers of his day for the fashioning of sonnets? or the reading of more literature than a ‘chapitre’ on the Sunday afternoons? Might such—not ‘division’ but ‘collation’—of labour have bettered both their lives?

III. Or shall we rather be content with the apparent law of nature that there shall be divine Astrophels in the intellectual heaven, and peaceful earthly glowworms on the banks below; or even—on the Evangelical theory of human nature—worms without any glow? And shall [203]we be content to see our broom-makers’ children, at the best, growing up as willows by the brook—or in the simplest and innumerablest crowd, as rushes in a marsh;—so long as they have wholesome pith and sufficing strength to be securely sat upon in rush-bottomed chairs; while their masters’ and lords’ children grow as roses on the mount of Sharon, and untoiling lilies in the vales of Lebanon?

IV. And even if we admit that the lives at Penshurst, and by the woods of Muri, though thus to be kept separate, are yet, each in their manner, good, how far is the good of either of them dependent merely, as our reverend Novelist tells us, on “work” (with lance or willow wand) and “religion,” or how far on the particular circumstances and landscape of Kent and Canton Berne,—while, in other parts of England and Switzerland, less favourably conditioned, the ministration of Mr. Septimus Hansard and Mr. Felix Neff will be always required, for the mitigation of the deeper human misery,—meditation on which is to make our sweet English ladies comfortable in nursing their cats?

Leaving the first two of these questions to the reader’s thoughts, I will answer the last two for him;—The extremities of human degradation are not owing to natural causes; but to the habitual preying upon the labour of the poor by the luxury of the rich; and they are only encouraged and increased by the local efforts of religious charity. The clergy can neither [204]absolve the rich from their sins, for money—nor release them from their duties, for love. Their business is not to soothe, by their saintly and distant example, the soft moments of cat-nursing; but sternly to forbid cat-nursing, till no child is left unnursed. And if this true discipline of the Church were carried out, and the larger body of less saintly clerical gentlemen, and Infelix Neffs, who now dine with the rich and preach to the poor, were accustomed, on the contrary, to dine with the poor and preach to the rich; though still the various passions and powers of the several orders would remain where the providence of Heaven placed them—and the useful reed and useless rose would still bind the wintry waters with their border, and brighten the May sunshine with their bloom,—for each, their happy being would be fulfilled in peace in the garden of the world; and the glow, if not of immortal, at least of sacredly bequeathed, life, and endlessly cherished memory, abide even within its chambers of the tomb.

Roses in planter.

[205]