Part 4 (1/2)
Let us rather remember that the Rev. Matthew Gibson was crazed, stingy withal, and had no child by his wife. Personally I agree with my friend Mr. A. L. Humphreys, who has put it on record that, in his belief, it would be a good thing if every parish had a Man of Ross in preference to a parson. No harm necessarily in a parson as well, but the Man is more important.
At least one more poetical tribute from genius did John Kyrle win. Among the _Juvenile Poems_ of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is this:--
_Lines written at the King's Arms, Ross, formerly the house of the ”Man of Ross.”_
Richer than Miser o'er his countless h.o.a.rds, n.o.bler than Kings, or king-polluted Lords, Here dwelt the Man of Ross! O, Traveller, hear!
Departed Merit claims a reverent tear.
Friend to the friendless, to the sick man health, With generous joy he viewed his modest wealth; He heard the widow's heaven-breathed prayer of praise, He marked the sheltered orphan's tearful gaze, Or where the sorrow-shrivelled captive lay, Poured the bright blaze of Freedom's noon-tide ray.
Beneath this roof if thy cheered moments pa.s.s, Fill to the good man's name one grateful gla.s.s: To higher zest shall Memory wake thy soul, And Virtue mingle in the enn.o.bled bowl.
But if, like me, through life's distressful scene Lonely and sad thy pilgrimage hath been; And if thy breast with heart-sick anguish fraught, Thou journeyest onward tempest-tossed in thought; Here cheat thy cares! in generous visions melt, And dream of goodness thou hast never felt!
The sad and lonely poet, tempest-tossed in thought, who wrote those lines, was then twenty-one, on a walking tour with his friend Hucks, trying to construct Pantisocracy and forget Mary Evans.
For one ”of little or no literature” the Man of Ross did not do so badly.
But there was even more honour to come. When, in 1876, the late Miranda Hill addressed a public letter to ”Those who love Beautiful Things,” and called upon her readers to help in getting more sweetness and light into the homes of the poor, and particularly the poor of London, the response took the form of a Society to which the name of John Kyrle was (at the suggestion of Mr. Benjamin Nattalie) given: the Kyrle Society. During its many years of activity, the Kyrle Society has done much to realise the idealism of its founders--for with Miranda Hill was a.s.sociated her sister, the late Octavia Hill, that indomitable fighter for all that is good and ameliorative in life, whom, in her serene old age, a symphony in grey and silver, I used often to see walking on that height above Crockham Hill which her energies acquired for the nation as an open s.p.a.ce for ever. In a speech which she made at one of the meetings of the Kyrle Society not long before her death, Octavia Hill thus summed up certain of the needs which that excellent organisation strove to supply.
”Men, women, and children,” she said, ”want more than food, shelter, and warmth. They want, if their lives are to be full and good, s.p.a.ce near their homes for exercise, quiet, good air, and sight of gra.s.s, trees, and flowers; they want colour, which shall cheer them in the midst of smoke and fog; they want music, which shall contrast with the rattle of the motors and lift their hearts to praise and joy; they want suggestion of n.o.bler and better things than those that surround them day by day.... I a.s.sure you that I believe these things have more influence on the spirit than we are at all accustomed to remember. They cultivate a sense of dignity and self-respect, as well as breaking the monotony of life.”
These things has the Kyrle Society dispensed and will continue to dispense, among its countless and n.o.ble activities; and it is pleasant to think that that stolid old Man of Ross, in this new incarnation, has become so imaginatively sympathetic. How little can he ever have thought of this trans.m.u.tation of his kindly busy-bodydom into something so fine and rare! But it was a true instinct which set his ancient name on the modern banner; and if ever a new motto is called for, the merits of ”Od's bud, Od's bud, but I will mend you!” should be considered.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LAURA COMBINES BREAKFAST AND PHILANTHROPY. _See ”The Innocent's Progress”--Plate 3_]
THE INNOCENT'S PROGRESS
One thing leads to another, and had I not entered Mr. Simmonds' old curiosity shop in Monmouth to make inquiries about the Man of Ross's arm-chair, which nearly fills the window, I might never have met with ”The Elegant Girl,” and ”The Elegant Girl” is one of the comeliest books I ever coveted.
Having asked all my questions about the chair, which has much of the stern solidity of a fortress, I went upstairs and immediately was rejoiced by the sight of one of the engravings (Plate 2) which are reproduced in this volume. It was one, said Mr. Simmonds, of a series, and he showed me eight others--nine in all--each with its moral verses underneath--and I was enchanted, so delicate is the colouring and so distinguished the design, so nave the educational method and so easy the triumph. The reproductions here are absurdly small--the size of the originals is 9-1/2 inches wide by 6 high--but though they give nothing of the tinting they retain something of the spirit, and the very striking composition is unimpaired by reduction.
Mr. Simmonds thought nine a complete set, but I felt that an even number was more probable, and, in time, was proved to be right; but it was long before I could obtain sight of the other three and discover that they belonged to a book and had been taken from their binding to decorate a nursery's walls. There are excitements in this form of hunt--_la cha.s.se au bouquin_--commensurate with those that accelerate the pulses of wearers of pink coats, and some were mine as the scent grew hot and hotter. My first coverts were the print shops, but they were blank; then I drew the famous Bloomsbury spinneys, both the Reading Room and the Print Room, but they were blank too; and then, tally ho! away to the South Kensington gorse. It was here I had the luck to ascertain--through a reference to Tuer's ”Pages and Pictures”--that ”The Elegant Girl” was a book; and forthwith I turned to my friends the booksellers, and in High Street, Marylebone, got directly on the trail, which took me to Hampstead, where a copy of the work (the only one of which I have yet heard) was run to earth. It is this copy that now lies before me--the property of Mr. C. T. Owen, a famous collector of what the trade calls ”juveniles,” who has very kindly permitted the plates to be photographed for the present volume.
Mr. Simmonds thought the drawings the work of Adam Buck, an artist of child life, who has lately been the mode; but London experts differ. No doubt (they say) Buck's influence is apparent, but no more. The only name is that of Alais, the engraver, on the t.i.tle-page, and I do not find that Alais ever worked for Buck, but there are at South Kensington child scenes by Singleton engraved by him. ”The Elegant Girl” may be Singleton's. Equally may the designs be by a foreigner, for there is a distinctly foreign suggestion here and there, notably in the furniture.
The plates are not aquatints but were coloured by hand: the extreme scarcity of the volume probably being due to this circ.u.mstance, only a small edition having been prepared and that, I should imagine, at a high figure. To-day, of course, the value of the book is vastly higher.
All, or very nearly all, the old-fas.h.i.+oned writers for children had but one purpose animating their b.r.e.a.s.t.s; and that purpose was to make children better. I don't say that to-day we try to make them worse; but their naughtiness can amuse us, as apparently it never could our ancestors, and wild flowers can be preferred to the products of the formal parterre. Even Miss Edgeworth came out nominally as ”The Parents'
a.s.sistant,” although her native kindliness and sense of narrative were too much for her; and even she thought of the child too much as plastic material. Children as children excited little interest; but a child as a progressive moral animal, susceptible of moulding, a potential adult and citizen, was worth making books for, if in return it was responsive and mended its ways. There were of course a few books for the young which told an honest story--Charles and Mary Lamb's ”Tales from Shakespeare”
and ”Mrs. Leicester's School” are early and s.h.i.+ning examples--but the idea of amus.e.m.e.nt for amus.e.m.e.nt's sake was rare. And nonsense for the young, which later was to become a cult, did not exist before Edward Lear. Nothing can, of course, happen out of its time, and therefore the speculation is idle; but none the less it would be entertaining to visualise the effect of ”Alice in Wonderland” on the little Fairchilds.
What would Mr. Fairchild say to it? The work of a clergyman, too! Would not he return with renewed relish to the congenial task of repeating to his brood Biblical verses ill.u.s.trating the wickedness of man's heart?
(Incidentally--but this is not the place, for ”The Elegant Girl” is waiting--there are some interesting reflections to be recorded on the circ.u.mstance that the entertainment of the young has never been in such willing and safe hands as those of the celibates. All the writers I have just glanced at (save Mrs. Sherwood) were unmarried. This need not be taken as any aspersion upon matrimony--there must be marriage and giving in marriage in order that little readers may exist--but it ought to be remembered whenever the single state is under criticism. Think of the injustice of the foreshadowed Bachelor Tax falling upon Lewis Carroll!)
”The Elegant Girl,” the date of which is 1813, sets out to improve too, for this is the t.i.tle: ”The Elegant Girl, or Virtuous Principles the True Source of Elegant Manners”; but its lessons are so unprejudiced and persuasive that no one can object. Moreover, a very exceptional artistic talent was employed: the best available rather than the cheapest. With such attractive jam, who could resent the pill? Alone, the pictures do very little in the didactic way, but to the detached artist came an ally in the shape of a gentle--and probably, I think, female--bard. Each of the twelve drawings has a six-lined stanza to drive home the picture and inculcate a maxim of sound and refined behaviour.
In the first plate Laura (the elegant girl is, of course, named Laura) is seen in her little bedroom at her morning prayers, and, thus fortified, she then goes through the day in eleven episodes, all tending, as the Americans say, to uplift. Washed and dressed, she joins, in Plate No. 2, her mother at early lessons in a charming library such as neither Vermeer nor Whistler would have disdained. According to the verses, Laura is careless of ”what becomes her best,” but to the casual male eye she seems to have chosen her trousers with no little discretion. Having sufficiently ”explored the arts and sciences,” she is, in Plate No. 3, ready for breakfast, again with her mother. Her father was--where? Possibly he was dead; possibly (the date is 1813) at the wars; probably still in bed. At any rate his daughter pa.s.ses her day of edification entirely without his a.s.sistance.