Said gold elephant standing on a purple cushion was subjected to a severe test of his value. He was sent to a low auction room in London. There he fell to the trade at 18s. This was a “knock-out” transaction; twelve buyers had agreed not to bid against one another in the auction room, a conspiracy illegal but customary. The same afternoon these twelve held one of their little private unlawful auctions over him; here the bidding was like drops of blood oozing from flints, but at least it was bona-fide, and he rose to 25s. The seven shillings premium was divided among the eleven sharpers. Sharper No. 12 carried him home and sold him the very next day for 37s. to a lady who lived in Belgravia, but shopped in filthy alleys, misled perhaps by the phrase “dirt cheap.”
Mr. Eden conceived him, two detected ones made him at a cost of 5s., twelve undetected ones caught him first for 18s., and now he stands in Belgravia, and the fair ejaculate over him, “What a duck!”
The aggregate of labor to make and gild this elephant was not quite one woman's work (12 hours). Taking 18s. as the true value of the work, for in this world the workman has commonly to sell his production under the above disadvantages, forced sale and the conspiracies of the unimprisoned—we have still 13s. for a day's work by a woman.
From the bull greater things are expected. The cast is from the bull of the Vatican, a bull true to Nature, and Nature adorned the very meadows when she produced the bull. What a magnificent animal is a bull! what a dewlap! what a front! what clean pasterns! what fearless eyes! what a deep diapason is his voice! of which beholding this his true and massive effigy in —— Jail we are reminded. When he stands muscular, majestic, sonorous, gold, in his meadow pied with daisies, it shall not be “sweet” and “love” and “duck”—words of beauty but no earthly signification; it shall be, “There, I forgive Europa.”
And need I say there were more aimed at in all this than pecuniary profit. Mr. Eden held that the love of production is the natural specific antidote to the love of stealing. He kindled in his prisoners the love of producing, of what some by an abuse of language call “creating.” And the producers rose in the scale of human beings. Their faces showed it—the untamed look melted away—the white of the eye showed less, and the pupil and iris more, and better quality.
Gold-leaf when first laid on adheres in visible squares with uncouth edges, a ragged affair; then the gilder takes a camelhair brush and under its light and rapid touch the work changes as under a diviner's rod, so rapidly and majestically come beauty and finish over it. Perhaps no other art has so delicious a one minute as this is to the gilder. The first work our prisoner gilded she screamed with delight several times at this crisis. She begged to have the work left in her cell one day at least. “It lights up the cell and lights up my heart.”
“Of course it does,” said Mr. Eden. “Aha! what, there are greater pleasures in the world than sinning, are there?”
“That there are. I never was so pleased in my life. May I have it a few minutes?”
“My child, you shall have it till its place is taken by others like it. Keep it before your eyes, feed on it, and ask yourself which is the best, to work and add something useful or beautiful to the world's material wealth, or to steal; to be a little benefactor to your kind and yourself, or a little vermin preying on the industrious. Which is best?”
“I'll never take while I can make.”