The island

I was alone with the clouds, the ocean, and my note-book. I could attend to the note-book, only by forgetting the ocean and the clouds; so, after one last look at them, I retired to the back of the Cave, and set to work.

Notes for the Lecture.

‘Old England and Old Rome; Parallel.—England, my friends, you are to understand, is in the position of Old Rome after the conquest. She is sitting down to enjoy the world she has won. She wants no more: after dinner, the lion would not hurt a fly. She feels the lassitude of digestion, especially in governing circles. Yet, somehow, the duties of empire are still carried on. Rome fed all her children from the subject realms, and they all grew lazy. England feeds only some of hers, and, what with need and hunger, the watch of empire is duly kept. The reliefs are sent out to the distant provinces; the pro-consuls come home regularly to die of liver-complaint in ancestral halls. Take a bird’s-eye view of our hemisphere, and you would see its main roads of earth and ocean speckled with the foam or dust that marks the movements of her legions. ’Tis a pretty sight!

‘Holiday Preparations.—The public holidays in England are ordained by law, and, three or four times a year, there is a general suspension of work in this workshop of the world. It is a Sabbath of popular festivity. One of its first signs is the general migration from town of the select few. All who can possibly manage it get out of the way—only, of course, to leave more room for the others. It is just like them.

‘London is given up to its masses, with all its spacious environs. The streets are theirs, the parks are theirs. Every lamp-post in the slums is turned into a screw swing.

‘Adaptiveness of the Race.—The diversions of infancy among the English masses are of primitive simplicity. The youthful slummer plays, as the mature savage wrought, with the rudest tools. His swing is the knotted fragment of a clothes-line; and, in the national game, he demands no more than a bundle of old coats for the wicket, with a splinter of deal for the bat. This healthy contempt for “plant” shows the adaptiveness of the race, its readiness in making the most of the materials that come to hand. Waterloo was won in the playing fields of Eton, and Australia in the playing fields of Seven Dials. Walk through St. James’s Park on a public holiday, and you can no longer doubt it. Cricket is contrived with the implements aforesaid; football, with an old hat, or a broken kettle. The same adaptiveness is shown in all the arrangements: the average of breech, to the extent of nakedness it has to cover, may be put at about three-fifths. Yet there are no glaring whites to mar the beauty of the landscape; and even the faces are in a sort of keeping of pale green. Artists might picture this Bank Holiday scene in the Park; it could hardly fail to attract attention at Burlington House. The sicklier children, and the very young, play in the alleys nearer home, where the dust is considerately left in sufficient abundance to enable them to make their mud-pies. Many play in the old graveyards adjacent to these alleys, recently opened to them by the munificence of a public-spirited society. This is perhaps the highest example of our national readiness to make the best of circumstances.

‘Note.—Sketch of Tom All Alone’s—real or supposed—on a public holiday, as one of the most suggestive sights of the universe: “Tom All Alone’s; with a few observations on Russell Court and Vinegar Yard.” Ancient cemetery or native barrow of district, consisting of three back-yards rolled into one; now a public playground, dedicated for ever, etc., with becoming circumstance, as local “boon.” To get it into focus, should be seen from the meadows about Eton College. So seen, will inspire sentiments of devout gratitude to God for the mysteries of patience, far surpassing the mysteries of faith, in the souls of men. Tom All Alone’s, as something to be thankful for. Ha! ha! ha! (try to laugh here). Oh, by what magic, by what magic, do we get them to take this irreducible minimum in settlement of the human claim? (try not to weep).

‘Same adaptability, too, in grown-up natives of region—veritable note of our race. Require no costly machinery of enjoyment. Take a plank of wood, put a row of taps and glasses on one side, and, on the other, a kind of horse box in which fifteen or twenty people may manage to stand upright, and you have “house of entertainment.” A young woman turns taps, as fast as she can, and fills glasses; people in horse-box empty them with equal dispatch; and public enjoyment is at its height. Marble tables, public gardens, flowers, music, not indispensable. A trough would be simpler still; but horses do not care for gin, and the higher animal would object to it, as it implies the unsound principle of community of goods.

‘Here, in these houses of entertainment, they exchange their artless confidences, and settle their family affairs. Not inquisitive about future; have learned to take short views. Whenever perplexed about problems of destiny, and their own relations of joy to this joyous world, they nod to young woman, who turns tap, and their perplexities disappear.

‘Note.—The beautiful modesty of their demand on life might teach even shepherds a lesson in content. Their simple attainable standard in wine, in woman, in music, in light, in joy. Their conversation—direct and plain, free from tortuous refinements of studied wit; their badinage, usually no more than the light play of the pewter on one another’s heads. All their pleasures of the same simple description. Will spend their leisure very contentedly in watching a dog worrying a pitfull of rats, or two men beating each other into insensibility with gloves that only seem to hurt. As childlike as the North American Indians, and not unlike them in the race type—high cheek bones; a wide mouth, massively lipped; slits for the eyes. See them on the great public days, pouring out in myriads to a horse race, boat race, or Lord Mayor’s Show; and own the wonders of a social and religious system that has suffered them to find satisfaction in this state, or us to find content.

‘Amplify admiration of the system, in the lyric vein—rhythmic prose, etc.

‘Their Women.—Like their North American sisters, fond of feathers and bright hues. No gaudier thing in nature than the coster girl in her holiday dress of mauve, with the cruel plume that seems to have been dyed in blood. Relation of female to male, singular survival of primitive state. Love-making always, in form at least, an abduction of the virgin. A meeting at the street corner in the dusk, for the beginning of the ceremony; then a chase round the houses, the heavy boots after the light ones, with joyous shrieks to mark the line of flight; after that, the seizure, the fight, with sounding slaps for dalliance that might knock the wind out of a farrier of the Blues. In the final clutch, skirts part in screeching rents, feathers strew the ground. Then the panting pair return, hand in hand, to the street corner, to begin again.

‘A Night Piece.—Nightfall brings the whole slum together, at the universal rendezvous, from every near or distant scene; men, and those that were once maidens, mumbling age and swearing infancy, stand six-deep before the slimy bar, till the ever flowing liquor damps down their fiercest fires, and the great city is once more at rest. The imagination of him that saw Hell could hardly picture the final scene.’

‘Are you ready?’

The voice came from the rock above, and it was hers.

‘Yes, pining for liberty—please let me out.’

‘Have you done your work?’

‘Yes.’

‘Word of honour?’

‘Word of honour!’

‘I am coming—you may come and look at me, if you like; but mind: don’t you try to look down.’

I walked to the mouth of the Cave, and there, a few yards above me, was the beautiful head peeping over the summit, the eyes smiling down into mine. Only the face was visible; she must have been stretched full length on the rock.

A few moments, and I was in soft delicious touch of her again, as we crept along the ledge; and I kept touch, as we crossed the angle of the slope on our way to the schoolhouse, for, though help was no longer needed, Victoria still let me guard her hand. And so we walked through the twilight, without wanting to speak a word.

That lecture was never delivered. When I saw all their happy faces in the schoolroom, I felt that I could not spoil their holiday. I accordingly chose another subject, while the Ancient was making his introductory speech, and trusted to my star. The star was friendly. The Ancient wasted a good deal of time; and, when he sat down, I was ready for a spirited improvisation on the Benefits of the Printing Press, with which they were perfectly content.

‘Light the torches, Reuben,’ said the old man when the applause had subsided, ‘and let the youngsters go bird-nesting on the Ridge, for the wind-up. Victoria, and all the girls that are good girls, will stay behind and sing us a song. There is light enough on the Green.’