The Master Craftsman

On Saturday evening I called for Frances. We were going to hear the man she would call the Wonderful Person of Wapping.

‘We shall have to drive right through London,’ I told her. ‘You will see first the trade end of the West; then the lane of the country visitors, called the Strand; then the lane of the printers; then the merchants’ quarters, silent and deserted; and then the place where the people live who do all the work; the city of the thousand industries. And then you will see these people you are going forth to see.’

‘So long as you don’t take me to see the places with associations, I don’t mind. I was looking over a book about London the other day; it was full of associations. Dear me! What does it matter to me where Milton lived? And why should I want to see the place where Shakespeare had a theatre?’

‘You are curiously impatient about the past, Frances.’

‘I like the world just exactly as it is, George; the order of it and the ways of it; and the flow of the stream—I like to feel that I am in the swim. And if ever I marry again, I shall be a great deal more in the swim.’

‘The man you will hear to-night likes the world as it ought to be.’

‘Well, why not? So long as we don’t change anything. Now, Master Craftsman, my gloves are on.’

‘You look very fine to-night, Frances. It will please our friends at Shadwell, seeing a lady among them, that she is a real lady. They resemble your friends in one respect—these men of the gutter, as you kindly called them on a recent occasion—they like to see a woman well dressed.’

It is a long drive from Piccadilly to High Street, Shadwell, which, as everybody knows, is a continuation of Ratcliffe Highway. The whole journey was as unknown to Lady Frances as China or Peru. For the City she cared nothing; memories of Gresham and Whittington moved her not; this evening, of course, the offices and warehouses were closed, and the streets deserted; she only began to take interest when we came out on Tower Hill, and drove past the gray old fortress into the highway sacred to the memory of sailors and to riverside thieves and to crimps, and to Moll and Poll and Doll. Indeed, ghosts of the departed sinners are still allowed regretfully to hover around the swinging doors of these old taverns, and to linger about the pavement where they were wont to roll and sing and dance and fight. Oh, the brave old days! And they acknowledge that the game is still kept up, and with spirit, though, perhaps, with less heart in it than of old. The fighting has gone off sadly; the singing is still good, but that, too, shows signs of deterioration; the dancing, however, shows the old spirit—legs are loose, heel and toe are true to time; and the drinking is still free and generous. As for Moll and her friends, they continue to lend the charm of woman’s society to Mercantile Jack.

‘Men and women!’ said Lady Frances. ‘And by their appearance not among the strictest moralists. Show me men and women, George, and not tall black warehouses, where something once stood, or grimy churches, where something once happened. Give me men and women. Give me the present. Ouf! what a reek from that door!’

The carriage stopped for a moment; a little crowd assembled, seeing that most unaccustomed appearance, a carriage and pair with a coachman and a footman in liveries. The open door belonged to a tavern full of sailors drinking and smoking, so that the air which came forth in waves was charged with the fragrance of rum, gin, beer and tobacco. The carriage moved on slowly. There came another kind of fragrance. The first knocked one down like a club, the second cut one like a knife.

‘It is fried fish,’ I explained. ‘This is the staple food of the women and work-girls. There are differences in the matter of food. For my own part I should never get over a prejudice against this form of—— Do get on a little faster, if you can,’ I called to the coachman.

We passed into another street, really the same, but called by a different name, where there were no sailors and no sailors’ friends. It was, however, filled with people walking about; among them were lads smoking cigarettes, girls with immense yellow feathers in their hats and bright blue blouses, walking arm-in-arm, laughing loudly; working men leaning about with pipes, women with children in arms, children everywhere tumbling about the road and the gutter.

‘Behold the people!’ I said. ‘Concentrated people. Pure extract of people.’

‘I recognise them,’ said Frances, ‘though I do not seem to have seen them before. On the whole they look harmless.’

‘As for their power of harm, I have my own opinion. But it is quite certain that at present they don’t want to do any harm.’

‘It is curious to think that all of us have come out of this mass. Here and there, I suppose, one disengages himself and leaves his friends, and gets up a bit over their heads, and prepares the way for founding a family. That is the way we all began, perhaps. The Earls and Barons of the future have got their fathers and mothers in this crowd. But no one, except you, George, ever wanted to go back again. Oh! most remarkable of men! Unique Man! You wanted to go back again.’

The carriage stopped at the entrance of a hall; gas-lights flamed over the open doors; people, nearly all men, were streaming in, and in the lobby men were standing about disputing and arguing in earnest tones; everyone looked as if he came on private business—which was the first thing remarkable.

I spoke to an attendant doorkeeper, who conducted us upstairs and along the back of the gallery to a private box overlooking the stage. Lady Frances looked round. By the decorations, the footlights, the stage, the place for the orchestra, the gallery which ran all round the room, the large room itself, and the close atmosphere, it was evident that the place was habitually used for entertainments.

‘This is the Siren Music-hall,’ I explained. ‘It is named, not after the Sisters Three, of whom the proprietor and baptizer never heard, but after the new-fashioned steam-whistle which you may hear all day long upon the river. And it is hired for these meetings.’

‘They are not going to have, I hope, a music-hall entertainment?’

‘Not quite. You are going to hear a political speech. Meantime, look round and watch the people. You say you want men and women. Very well. There are your men and women all gathered together, especially the men.’

They were nearly all men—working men. Frances looked down upon the crowded hall; the faces she gazed upon shone white and shiny in the glare of the gas; they were serious faces, they were hard faces; the impression produced by the collective face was one of honesty and slow powers of perception, but with determination. Most of them sat in silence, leaning back contentedly, and in no hurry. The men who work actively with the bodily limbs all day for their wage are never in a hurry so long as they can wait sitting. When they talked it was seriously and with earnestness, conducting their argument on the approved lines, in which one man advances an array of alleged facts which he cannot prove, and the other contradicts the allegations, though he cannot disprove them. This is the argument of the taproom, the bar-parlour, and the smoking-room. The more carefully we adhere to the old-fashioned, well-tried method, the more animated, spirited, and convincing is the conversation. Imperfect knowledge is most clearly indicated by frequent interruptions and noisy denials. Now, these men were arguing on the constitution of the country, being ignorant of what it is, how it has grown, whence it came, or what it means. And they wanted to change it, being ignorant of what these changes would mean, or how they were to be effected, and how other members of the community would receive them. There were Socialists among them, men who look forward to the time when every man, for the sake of every other man, and not for himself at all, will gladly do a hard day’s work and get no payment or profit but only the equal ration, the same garb, the same warmth, and the same roof; and they think that the levelling up or down to the same unbroken plane will create, for the first time in history, happiness complete. ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ Alas! it is the same old, old story. There was then no gentleman, but in the third or fourth generation after Adam there was founded the first family of gentlefolk—they were, I believe, Welsh. There were also in the crowd Anarchists—a kindly race who want to sweep away all laws, with the police and the lawyers, and the judges and the prisons, and to leave everybody to work out his own redemption for himself. And there was among them the common Radical who desires nothing more than the abolition of the Crown, the Church, and the Lords, after which no one certainly can expect or desire anything more. And there were many of that numerous class, the Wobblers, who incline this way and that, being unable to balance the advantages of any one plan against any other. Mostly, however, being poor and dependent, they desire change. Some of the women came with their husbands and brought their work with them, the business of the evening being quite below their own attention. The British matron, who is a practical and keen-eyed person, is seldom able to understand that the abolition of the House of Lords will give her husband better pay, or herself more housekeeping money. Here and there one saw a white woman’s face, with set lips and furrowed brow. She was that rare woman who can see the wickedness of things, and the imperfection of things, and the injustice and cruelty and uncertainty of things; and she ceases to believe in the powers that be, or in the doctrines of Church, of teacher, and of preacher, and longs to shuffle the cards and try a new deal, if haply that may bring a remedy to the evils of the time.

Lady Frances looked down upon this crowd watching and wondering, interested merely by the sight of the lines of faces below her, line behind line, row behind row; while I told her the things that are written down above.

‘I am glad I came,’ she murmured. ‘Oh! I am very glad I came. George, I like to see them. Give me, I said, men and women. I say it again—men and women.’

‘And the thoughts of men and women—what they think about the world and themselves and your class, Frances. It is useful knowledge, even if it does not help you to play the game.’

‘So long as I am not compelled to associate with them I have no objection to looking at them, or to reading about them. It would be as a branch of natural history, except for the fact that these people may interfere with us. Their thoughts, I suppose, are mostly discontented; and their intentions, if they had any, would be revolutionary. But they are interesting, and I am glad I came.’

By this time the Hall was full to overflowing: the people were crammed in the galleries; they stood on the back-benches; they filled up the gangways; they climbed over the orchestra partition and stood, a mass of young men, in that capacious pew; they crowded the doors; they were packed tight on the stairs: there was no more room left to put in an umbrella.

‘It is seven o’clock,’ I said. ‘Time’s up. The man you are going to hear to-night, Frances—the strong man—the man who has ambitions such as you would like me to have——’

‘I never thought you ought to be a local demagogue, George.’

‘He is coming out immediately. He knows the people pretty well, and they know him. This evening he will pronounce one of a series of orations he has delivered on the questions of the day. The Captain tells me that he has set the people thinking and talking in a very surprising way. You see how they are discussing things. All these discussions are on the text of his last address.’

‘The Wonderful Person of Wapping. I await him with interest.’

Then the orator appeared, stepping out from the wings, and walked quietly to his place beside a small table, which, with a decanter and tumbler, formed the only furniture of the stage. The background, representing a rural scene, with woods, and a lake and a bridge, did not, somehow, seem incongruous with an address bristling with hard facts and practical conclusions. A bright country landscape, sunny and beautiful, is really far more appropriate to an address which uplifts the heart than a picture of a mean street, or of men and women toiling over mean and ill-paid labour.

There was no chairman. At the outset one had been proposed, but the lecturer scoffed at the suggestion, said that he could very well introduce himself, and propose for himself a vote of thanks. He therefore stood alone. In his hand he bore a bundle of papers, which he carefully placed in order on the table for reference.

Then he stood upright, facing his audience, and bowed slightly to the round of applause which greeted him.

Lady Frances saw a tall, broad-shouldered, and singularly handsome young man, with a broad square forehead—the light fell full upon it—clear eyes, hair in very short brown curls—such curls as denote strength—a serious face—too serious for his time of life; but, then, it is only your light comedian, your touch-and-go comic man, who can face an audience with a grin, and it is only a ballet-girl who can appear with a smile. There was not, however, the slightest touch of embarrassment or stage fright about him. He stood easily, in an assured attitude, standing well apart from the table, so that his figure was practically the only thing to be seen upon the stage. He was dressed in faultless evening clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole. This was the man who, a few weeks before, scoffed at the observance of evening dress, and sneered at the niminy-piminy ways of the fine gentleman.

‘Why,’ whispered Lady Frances, ‘the man is dressed like a gentleman. What does he do that for? He is only talking to workpeople. Look at his face, George; it says as plain as if he were speaking, “I am not afraid—I am a better man than anybody here.”’

The orator held up his hand. Everybody settled in his place; everybody adjusted his feet—mostly under the benches; every other person cleared his throat; the women who had come with their husbands looked up at the orator and round the room; then they took up their knitting again, and abstracted their thoughts into some useful line, such as boots and the acquisition of boots. The people on the stairs loudly besought those within to make room for them; one might as well implore the sardines to lie a little closer in their box. So they wailed aloud, like the foolish virgins, because they could not enter. And then the orator began.

I am profoundly sorry that I cannot, in this place, give you even the heads of this discourse; because his words and his facts were forcible and convincing, and I am sure, dear reader, you would like to be hammered with facts and convinced with reasons. I cannot, however, do so, for the simple reason that the laws of copyright forbid. The orations are now published, and everybody can get them and read them.

He began, however, with a personal point.

‘I told you,’ he said, ‘at the outset, that I am here because I propose to represent this borough at the next General Election. The reason why I have taken the trouble to address you is that you will be my constituents, and it is always best when a man has got opinions of his own that he should instruct his constituents upon them. Mine are not opinions: they are convictions; and my convictions, as I have shown you so far, are simple truths. You are all the better, I am quite sure, for having learned those truths; you will talk much less nonsense, and you will advocate much more sensible measures. So much, of course, you will acknowledge. Now, the next General Election is said to be close upon us. No one can possibly know for certain how close it is, but we may expect it any day. Therefore it is well that I have educated you to support my candidature.

‘I also told you at the outset that I mean to enter the House as an Independent Member. I am informed that no Independent Member is of any importance in the House; that he cannot influence votes that belong to this party or that party; that the House is divided into this flock of sheep and that flock of sheep, which follow their leaders when the bell rings. Very good. My friend, I don’t want to influence votes in the House. I want to influence you—you—you—not the House at all. I care nothing about the House. It is through the House that one speaks to the country, nay, to the world, if one is strong enough. I desire to speak the truth about things that I know, the exact plain truth, which they do not hear in the House—the forces which drive us; the way we are driven; the thing that has to be done. I want to speak out to the whole world by speaking in the House. Oh, I am not afraid! Men will laugh at such a confession. It is a worthy and noble ambition, and, my constituents, I mean to prove myself, yes, myself, worthy of that noble ambition. Very well. Now, remember that when I am elected I am not going to call myself your servant, nor shall I have the hypocrisy to pretend that I am sent to the House with a mandate from you. Why, you don’t think I am going to accept any instructions from anybody here, do you? You to give me—ME—instructions? My dear people, understand that your collective wisdom is no more than the wisdom of the best man among you, and your best man isn’t a tenth part of the man that I am in knowledge, or in ability either. Do not make any mistake. You may be my servants if you please; it is the best thing in the world for you to learn of me, to question me, to elect me, but I shall never be your servant. You can teach me nothing, but I can teach you a great deal. Understand, then, I shall be an Independent Member in every sense—free of interference of party, free of interference of constituents. So you had better make up your mind at once to turn out one of your present members—I do not in the least care which—and to put me in his place. But, by the Lord, I tell you, I promise you, I will make you proud of your member!’

He stopped. This was only the prologue—the forewords. He drank a little water and took up his papers.

The people, so far from resenting this plainness of speech, clapped and applauded mightily.

‘His assurance becomes him,’ said Lady Frances. ‘A more arrogant speech I never heard. After that, they are bound to elect him.’

And then he turned to his subject. He had at least the gift of oratory, and the first and the most important part of this gift is the power of clear and orderly arrangement; he knew how to select his points, and to present them so that a child might understand; he knew how to repeat them; to present them again in another form, yet still so as to be intelligible to all; he knew how to present them a third time, so that there should be no chance of forgetting them. He had a flexible, rich, and musical voice, which rolled in thunder in the roof, or dropped to the soft strains of a silver flute. He knew when to stir the people’s hearts, and when to make them follow to a cold chain of reason; when to make them laugh, and when to make them cry. The man played with his audience; and if you watched him, as Lady Frances did, you would observe that he rejoiced in his power; there were moments when he used this power wantonly—for his own pleasure when it was not wanted. Now and then, when he trampled upon some pet prejudice and exposed some cherished illusion, there were sounds of disagreement, but faintly expressed and quickly hushed. Thus he spoke of Socialism:

‘Do not,’ he said, ‘be led away by theories of what may be or might be. We are concerned with what is, not with what may be. Man is born alone—absolutely alone in the world; he grows up alone; he learns alone; he works alone; he has his diseases alone; he thinks alone; he lives alone; he dies alone. The only thing that seems to take away his loneliness is his marriage. Then, because he has another person always in the house with him, he feels perhaps that he is not quite so lonely as he thought. It is illusion, but it cheers him up. Every man is quite alone. Remember that. Everything that he has is his alone; he cannot give it away if he wishes. His face belongs to himself alone—there is no other face like his in the whole world, and there never has been. In the Resurrection of the millions and millions of the long-forgotten dead there will be no face like any other face—no man like any other man. Quite alone. He cannot part with his gifts, his hereditary powers and weaknesses, his learning, his skill of hand and eye; his thoughts, his memory, his history, his doings, his follies—nothing that he has can he impart to any other living creature. It all belongs to him. He is alone in the world.

‘Quite alone—he and his property. Remember this, and when you hear men talk of things equal and things equally divided, ask how the most important property of all is to be divided—a man’s strength and skill and ability. For you are not equal; there is no equality. Nature—the Order of Creation—screams it loudly to you; she proclaims it from the mountain-tops, she whispers it in the rustling of the leaves, in the flow of the water, and in the breath of the spring. You are not equal. Nothing that was ever made is the equal of any other thing. You are all unequal; you have diversities of gifts; one is a giant and one is a dwarf; one can make and one can only destroy; you are all unequal. That is the voice of Nature. What follows? We who are individual and unequal have to provide for ourselves. Man is still a creature who hunts and lives by the chase. The rest shapes itself; the strong man tramples down the weak; we associate ourselves together so that the strong man may not too much oppress the weak; wages, hours, work, holidays, prices—all rest upon the will of the strong man, and he is ruled by the will of one stronger than himself. You who are strong, preserve your strength, learn to use it. You will form combinations for your protection against the stronger man. Good: if your strength is greater than his, you will get what you want; if his is greater than yours, you will lose. Above all things, be strong. All the systems, all the experiments, that the world has ever seen, terminate in the victory of the strong man, to whom belongs, and ever will belong, the round world and all that therein is.’

This was only a bit out of the middle of the oration. You will find plenty of pages in the printed book as strong as this passage.

He concluded at last, amid a storm of cheers and shouting.

At the door, as we went out, we met Captain Dering. I introduced him briefly.

‘I saw you in the private box,’ said the Captain, taking off his hat to Lady Frances. ‘What did I tell you? He winds ’em about like a bit o’ string; he does what he likes with ’em. They’re afraid of him, and yet they can’t help coming to hear him. They’ll go away—a whole lot of the chaps are rank Socialist scum’—the old sailor called them ‘scum’: did one ever know a Socialist sailor?—‘they’ll go away and curse him. But they’ll come again, all the same.’

‘And will they vote for him?’ asked Lady Frances.

‘They will. To a man. Because he isn’t afraid to have a mind of his own, and to speak it out, and to let ’em know what he thinks about their collective wisdom. Lord! their wisdom! Look here, now. With permission, Madam.’ The Captain was courtesy itself with a lady passenger. ‘It’s the same all the world over. And if you want to see what all the world wants, go and look for it aboard ship, because a ship is a world by itself. Very good. What do the sailors want? A man who palavers and pretends to take their advice? Not a bit of it. A man who talks about their wisdom? Not a bit of it. They know they’ve got no wisdom. They can’t even pretend to navigate a ship. They want a man to take the command; a skipper who will say, “Go there; do this, —— you!” begging your pardon, Madam. Ask their advice! I’d like to see a sailor’s face if his captain asked his advice.’

‘You like a strong man everywhere, Captain Dering,’ said Lady Frances. ‘So do I.’

‘It’s the same everywhere. They talk about this and that. They ask questions and pretend to know. And the candidate, he just pretends to ask their advice humble-like, and promises to take their advice when he’s got it, and goes to the House with his tongue in his cheek. What all the world wants, Madam, is a captain to give the word of command and to navigate the vessel.’

‘Then, you do think he will get in? I hope he will. He should have a thousand votes if I had them.’

‘If he doesn’t, he’ll just take and knock their silly heads together.’

‘George,’ said Lady Frances, as we drove away, ‘I have had a most delightful evening. Thank you, ever so much, for bringing me here. Your orator is a very strong man indeed. He speaks like a gentleman, yet he called himself a Master Craftsman—I suppose from some proud humility. “We are all working men,” I heard the Archbishop say once. I thought it was rather humbug.’

‘This man is indeed a Master Craftsman. He understands honest work with his hands as well as any working man present. In fact, better.’

‘He appeared in evening dress. Do Master Craftsmen habitually wear evening dress?’

‘The garb proclaimed the difference between his audience and himself. He does not appear before them as a workman, but as their master in every sense. The evening clothes are an allegory, you see. He told them pretty plainly that he is their master.’

‘He did indeed.’

‘Seeking election, not in order to carry out any views of theirs, you see, but to advance his own views. I think he was quite right to put on the dress-coat.’

‘He certainly speaks like a man who knows things.’

‘The things that man knows, Frances, would sink a three-decker. And the things he does not know couldn’t float a canoe.’

‘Your metaphors are mixed, George; but you mean well.’

‘You perceived, of course, that he is not a scholar. These self-taught men never are. He lacks the literary phrase, except, perhaps, when he comes to personal appeal. But the literary phrase may come. He acquires everything with amazing ease the moment he learns that it is necessary.’

‘Necessary? For what?’

‘For his personal ambition. Frances, you have seen to-night the chrysalis. Very soon, I believe, you will see the—the other creature—which comes out of the chrysalis. This man—you have heard what he says—means to become a power in the House—that is the ambition which most pleases you. He will, he calmly prophesies, be invited in a few years to become a Cabinet Minister; after that, Prime Minister; then—perhaps—Protector of the Realm. He is as determined as Cromwell; as clear-headed and as able—as ruthless, perhaps; and perhaps, also, as selfish.’

‘If he can debate as well as he can speak he ought to get on. A man like that always begins as a Radical. He wants to pull down the Church and the Lords, of course.’

‘On the contrary, he would pull down neither Church nor Lords. He would, I believe, enlarge the borders of both. You heard him say that he was going to be an Independent Member?’

‘Then, George, speaking as the daughter of a Prime Minister, I say that he will dig his own grave. Tell him that he must belong to a Party, if he would get on. He must—tell him he must! If he does not, he would do far better to remain outside.’

‘I have told him so over and over again. But he is as obstinate as a Western mule.’

‘And he is—your cousin! I had forgotten that. Why, it accounts for the strange resemblance. I was haunted all the time by his likeness. I could not think what likeness. It is you, George; he is strangely like you. Only bigger, I think.’

‘Yes; bigger all over, and more ambitious, Frances.’

‘Oh! and he is teaching you his trade. And what have you taught him, George?’

‘Nothing worth speaking of. You see, a man brought up at Wapping, which is only a little isolated slip of ground between dock and river—a kind of island—has very few chances of acquiring the air of society.’

‘George, you have taught your cousin manners—I know you have. And you are going to introduce him about. Do you think that he will not betray himself?’

‘I hope he will, because there will be no pretence. But in all essentials he will be fit for presentation in your own drawing-room, Frances, where I hope to bring him with your permission.’

‘Bring him, by all means. It is always a happiness to meet a strong and clever man. I think your cousin, to look at him and to listen to him, must be as clever as he is strong. George, give him, if you can, a lighter style. It is all very well to be intensely earnest at certain points—especially the weakest in an address—but he must not be intensely earnest all through. Make him cultivate repartee and epigram. Teach him to laugh a little, and to smile a little. A man nowadays, even a man who is going to pull down the House of Commons by the two pillars, should laugh and smile a little beforehand. But he is a strong man, George, and a very interesting man.’