The Master Craftsman

In the evening the other part of the bargain began.

‘My turn now,’ I said. ‘If I can only get this aching out of my shoulders. I am now going to be your coach—a judicious coach. The first point I am told that a judicious coach observes is never to teach more than is wanted. And the next thing is to rub in what he does teach—to rub it in by incessant repetition.’

‘It will be labour thrown away,’ he grumbled. ‘You will never make a fine gentleman of me.’

‘My dear cousin, I am not going to try. I am, however, going to make of you a man acquainted with, and accustomed to, the usages of society. You are to belong to the world of society, not of fashion. The House of Commons has still a large majority of men who belong to that world. A knowledge of these habits, I have already told you, is absolutely indispensable.’

‘Oh! Very good, then, I am ready.’ But he was not eager; he was rather glum about the work in hand.

‘Yes, but you must be more than ready. You must be as eager to learn this branch of knowledge as any other. Don’t grumble over it—like an unwilling schoolboy.’

‘Look here, Sir George——’

‘Don’t call me Sir George, to begin with. You are my cousin. Call me George, and I shall call you Robert.’

‘Very well. I confess I don’t like it. How would you like to be told that you don’t know manners? Hang it! the thing sticks——’

‘Let us say, then, the manners of the West End. Don’t let it stick, old man. Now listen. First of all you must have dress clothes, and you must put them on every evening.’

‘What the devil does a man want with dress clothes?’

‘I will tell you when I have time. Meanwhile, you must have them. The next thing is that, from the moment you leave Wapping till you get home again, you are not to speak one word concerning your projects, or your ambitions, or your opinions.’

‘I don’t mind that condition. No one but yourself does know my ambitions.’

‘Very well, then, that’s settled so far. Now let us sit down and consider my scheme.’ We had reached my chambers, and we were in the study where the lathe was. ‘I have been making out a little skeleton scheme—in my head.’

‘Let us hear it.’ We sat down solemnly opposite each other to discuss this question seriously.

‘What do we want? To make you a man of the world. Some things you won’t want to learn—whist, billiards, lawn tennis, dancing——’

‘No,’ he grinned, ‘not billiards or dancing—or betting or gambling.’

‘The first thing, the most important thing, is to get the dinner arrangements right. With this view we will begin with a course of restaurants. I don’t say that one meets with the very finest manners possible at a restaurant, but, still, the people who go there have at least got a veneer; they understand the elements. I need not tell you much. You will look about you and observe things, and compare and teach yourself.’

‘Well? We are to waste time and money over a needless and expensive late dinner, are we? And all because there’s a way of holding a fork.’

‘It is part of the programme. After a while I shall take you to the theatre, which is sometimes a very good school of manners, and there you will see on and off the stage ladies in their evening splendour.’

‘Jezebels—painted Jezebels.’

‘Not all of them. A few, perhaps, here and there. Later on you will be able to distinguish Jezebel. But it is best not to think about this lady. Remember that a well-dressed woman has never come within your experience, and it is time for you to make her acquaintance. After a week or two of restaurants I will take you to a club, and introduce you to some of our fellows. You can sit quiet at first and listen. Their talk is not exactly intellectual, but it shows a way of looking at things.’

‘I know. Like you talk. Just as if nothing mattered, and everything was all right and as it should be.’

‘Not dogmatic nor downright. Not as if we were going to fight to the death for our opinions.’

‘If the opinion is worth having, it is worth defending. You ought to fight for it.’

‘My dear cousin, formerly opinions were distinct and clearly outlined. Nowadays there is so much to be said on the other side that all opinions have grown hazy and blurred. For instance, you want, perhaps, to pull down the House of Lords.’

‘No, I don’t. I want to reform the House.’

‘Well, if you did you would be astonished to learn what a lot can be said for the Peers, and how extremely dangerous it would be to pull down their House, because the House of Commons leans against it, and all the houses in the country lean upon the House of Commons. When you have grasped that fact, where is the clearness of your opinion? Gone, sir—gone.’

‘You think that you will change me completely, then.’

‘Not quite completely. Only in certain points. I shall try to graft upon you the manner of a finished gentleman. No one could possibly look the part better. You might be an Earl to look at. Of course, the garb will have to be reconsidered—those boots, for instance.’ Robert looked quickly at mine as compared with his own, and blushed. He blushed at his own boots. This was a note of progress. ‘But all in good time. You shall not present yourself in a drawing-room until you can enter it, and stand in it, and talk in it, as if you belonged to the world of drawing-rooms.’

Robert entered upon his part of his education with much the same enthusiasm as is shown by a dog of intelligence going off to be washed. It has to be done; he knows that; and he goes, but unwillingly. Nobody has any conception of the numberless little points in which Wapping may differ from Piccadilly. Wapping, you see, has so long been cut off from external influences. The influence of the clergy, beneficent in other respects, is not felt at the Wapping dinner-table. And the Burnikels, by the retirement of the other old families, the aristocracy of the quarter, have remained almost the only substantial people of the place. Therefore, for a great many years they lived alone; and their manners, as a natural consequence, continued to be much the same as the manners of their forefathers.

Take, for instance, the ordinary dinner-napkin. It is astonishing to note how many mistakes may be made with a simple dinner-napkin, when a man takes one in hand for the first time. There were no dinner-napkins at Wapping. There had been, many years ago, but they went out when forks came in. That is to say, so far as the children were concerned, just about two hundred years ago. The right handling of the dinner-napkin can only be acquired by custom. So also with wine and wineglasses. If you are perfectly ignorant of wine, except that the black kind is port, and the straw colour means sherry, and that either kind, but especially the former, may be exhibited on Sunday, you become bewildered with the amount of wine lore that one is supposed to know.

‘You are getting on,’ I remarked, after six weeks of almost heart-breaking work, because—I repeat that one would never believe that isolation could make such a difference—everything had to be learned. This young man was steeped in the things he had learned from books—political economy, history, sociology, philosophy, trade questions, practical questions—he was a most learned person, but of the things of which men talk, or men and women talk, he knew nothing—absolutely nothing. Art, poetry, fiction, the theatre, sport, games, things personal—which take up so large a share in the daily talk—on all these things he was mute. He came to the club with me, and sat perfectly silent; disdainful at first, but presently angry with himself for not being able to take a part, and with the fellows for talking on subjects so trifling.

‘I’m a rank outsider,’ he said. ‘I heard one of them call me a rank outsider. Thought I couldn’t hear him. If he’d said it in the street, I’d have laid him in the gutter. A rank outsider. Do you think, George, that you will ever make me anything else?’

‘What does it matter if you are a rank outsider in some things? Patience, and let us go on.’

At first he grumbled; he could see no use in trifles, such as ceremonials of society. We have simplified these of late years; still, some forms remain.

‘You will want to be received,’ I told him, ‘as a man of culture. These are the outward and visible forms of culture.’

He listened and reflected. Presently I observed that he took greater interest in things—he was realizing what things meant. Finally, the recognition of things arrived quite suddenly. Then he grumbled no longer. He looked about him, interested and amused. He sat out plays, and talked about the life pictured—a very queer sort of life it is, for the most part. As for the acting, he accepted the finest acting as part of the play, without comment. He was like an intelligent traveller—he wanted to know what it all meant, the complex civilization of this realm; where the Court comes in; what part is played in the daily life by the noble Lords, whose House he was so anxious to improve for them, feeling quite capable of adjusting reforms and bringing the Peers up-to-date by himself alone and unaided; how the Church affects society; what are the powers and the limitations of money; what is the real influence of the Press; what is the position of the professions. He wanted to know everything. As for me, I had never before asked myself any of these questions, being quite satisfied with the little narrow world that surrounded me.

I tried to interest him in Art. It was impossible. He said that he would rather look at a tree than the picture of a tree. I tried him with fiction. He said that the world of reality was a great deal more interesting than the world of imagination. I tried him with poetry. He said that, if a thing had to be said, it was best said plainly, in prose.

He wanted to survey the whole world, and to understand the whole world. When one assumes the attitude of an impartial inquirer, and learns what can be said on the other side, the Radical disappears and the Reformer succeeds. There is, of course, the danger, if one inquires too long, and with more than a certain amount of sympathy, that the Reformer himself may vanish, leaving the Philosopher behind. Or, perhaps, Radical, Reformer and Philosopher may all live together in the same brain.

Robert was passing into the second stage. He snorted at things no longer; he rather walked round them, examined them, and inquired how they came.

‘I confess,’ he said, ‘that I was ignorant when I came here. My knowledge was of books. Men and women I did not take into account. It is worth all the trouble of learning your confounded manners only to have found out the men and women.’

This was the Reformer.

‘The people at this end of the town,’ he continued, ‘are interesting, partly because they have got the best of everything, and partly because they think themselves so important. They are not really important. The people who do nothing can never be important. The only important person is the man who makes and produces.’

Here was the Radical.

‘You live in a little corner of the world; you are all living on the labour of others; you are beautifully behaved; you are, generally, I think, amiable; you look so fine and talk so well that we forget that you’ve no business to exist. It is a pleasure only to watch you. And you take all the luxuries, just as if they naturally belonged to you. I like it, George. I am a rank outsider, but I like it.’

This was the Philosopher.

‘And what about the House?’

‘Oh! I’ve begun to nurse my borough. I address the men every Sunday evening in a music-hall. You may come and hear me, if you like.’

‘What is your borough?’

‘Shadwell, close by, where they know me and the boat-yard. The men come in crowds. Man! There is no doubt! They come, I say, in crowds. They fill the place; and mind you, I can move the people.’

‘Good. If you can only move the House as well!’

‘These fellows will carry me through. I’m sure of it. They are the pick of the working man—Socialists, half of them—chaps, mind you, with a sense of justice.’

Here we had the Radical still.

‘That means getting a larger share for themselves, doesn’t it?’

‘Sometimes. Motives are mixed. Well, I’m going to be Member for Shadwell—Independent Member. A General Election may at any moment be sprung upon us. And Lord! Lord! if I had gone into the House as I was six weeks ago!’

‘Patience, my cousin; we have not quite finished yet. There’s one influence wanting yet before you are turned out, rounded off, and finished up. Only one thing wanting, but a big thing. No, I will tell you, later on, what that is.’