I wish, how I wish in malignant moments, that I had assurance of a hereafter for Pugsley in a dark, noisome factory, where he would have to work for ten hours a day on skilly. The parson tells me that there is a mansion in the skies prepared for Pugsley. And another equally sumptuous residence for the more honest Bill Brown, the poacher? Why not?
London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield—these are the paradises of the Pugsleys; they batten in the rechy air of these gambling centres. How do these dismal, over-crowded, smoke-blackened haunts of Respectability impress "the intelligent foreigner?" "Send a philosopher to London, but no poet," says Heine. "Everywhere we are stared down on by wealth and Respectability, while, crammed away in retired lanes and damp alleys, poverty dwells, with her rags and her tears." Heine, like many another thinker, was struck by the wretchedness and poverty of London, hiding away behind the mansions of plutocrats and Respectables. He saw "gaunt hunger staring beseechingly at the rich merchant who hurries along, busy and jingling gold, or at the lazy lord who, like the surfeited god, rides by on his high horse, casting now and then an aristocratically indifferent glance at the mob below, as though they were swarming ants, or, at all events, a mass of baser beings, whose joys and sorrows have nothing in common with his feelings;" and the poet cried to poor Poverty, "Well art thou in the right when thou alliest thyself to vice and crime. Outlawed criminals often bear more humanity in their hearts than those cold, blameless citizens of virtue, in whose white hearts the power of evil is quenched, but also the power of good."
Mr. Grant White has written a book entitled "England Within and Without," a very pungent and witty delineation of the English character from an American point of view. He tells us that the British Philistine is "perfect of his kind;" that "Philistinism pervades the whole society of Great Britain south of the Tweed." Mr. Grant says that this Philistinism is of late growth in England, a phenomenon of the last hundred and fifty years. We cannot find traces of it in the "spacious days," in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Ford, and Massinger, nor in all the comedies of Shakspere. Master Ford and Master Page, the townsmen of Windsor, are neither snobs nor Philistines. But now, in this wonderful nineteenth century, the Philistines are as obvious as the poor; they swarm and teem everywhere. The dense-minded middle-class man, rich, purse-proud, vulgar, incapable of apprehending anything beyond the range of his own personal experience, comes upon the stage. Enter Pugsley, with a capacious abdomen, a red beef face, set off with cropped side whiskers, a shiny pow, a big voice, and an imposing cough. "He is the butt, it is true, of the courtier and of the travelled man; nevertheless, he is represented as the type of a large class, and as one who is becoming a power in the land, and who is recognised as one of the characteristic elements of its society. He is conscious at once of his importance, and of his social inferiority, and he submits, although with surliness, to the snubbing of his superiors, which sometimes takes a very active and aggressive shape."
One day they will be coming round to me for a subscription towards erecting a statue of the Great Pugsley. You know the kind of effigy—Pugsley in a pot-hat, beaming benevolence, on a granite pedestal, that all who pass by may behold and envy the glory of this apotheosis of the Successful Man. But why should not Pugsley have his monument? Could one devise a better way of advertising his Piquant Pickles? Yes, let us have a colossal bronze figure of Peter Pugsley, M.P., in the market place of Diddleham, with raised pickle-bottles in metal festooned around the pedestal, and the words, "Ask for Pugsley's" graven in the polished stone. There is not much artistic beauty in Diddleham in the way of statuary. The statue will supply a long-felt want. Besides, there is a purely utilitarian aspect to the question (they are very utilitarian at Diddleham). At six meetings of the Town Council, the question of where to put the public fire-escape has been discussed with great heat. Let me suggest that it should be stood against the memorial to Pugsley.
If I had a son who began to develop the faculty of "getting on" upon the Pugsley lines, I would do all I could to encourage the youngster. He would earn success so easily that he would not care a rap for it. I would go, unbeknown to him, and scatter pins on the ground in front of the office where he intended to apply for a clerkship, so that he might stoop to pick them up, thereby, like the youth in the story, convincing the employer of his thrifty and methodical qualities. His library should be stocked with the lives of self-made men, the biographies of smart bagmen, and works on how to grow money. Portraits of successful merchants should deck the walls of his bedroom, and he should be taught to revere them as patron saints. I warrant such methods of fostering the love of commercial success would have the desired effect. The boy would run away to "a hollow tree, a crust of bread, and liberty."
CHAPTER VIII.
VILLADOM.
"There is less inconvenience in being mad with the mad than by being wise by oneself."