LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN.
A contrast—A poor student—His sad fate—Class-sentiment—Tycho Brahe—Robert Burns—Shelley’s opinion of Byron—Charles Dickens—Shopkeepers in English literature—Pride of aristocratic ignorance—Pursuits tabooed by the spirit of caste—Affected preferences in intellectual pursuits—Studies that add to gentility—Sincerity of interest needed for genuine culture—The exclusiveness of scholarly caste—Its bad influence on outsiders—Feeling of Burns toward scholars—Sureness of class-instinct—Unforeseen effect of railways—Return to nomadic life and the chase—Advantages and possibilities to life in the higher classes.
It is one of the privileges of authorship to have correspondents in the most widely different positions, and by means of their frank and friendly letters (usually much more frank than any oral communication) to gain a singularly accurate insight into the working of circumstances on the human intellect and character. The same post that brought me your last letter brought news about another of my friends whose lot has been a striking contrast to your own.[8]
Let me dwell upon this contrast for a few minutes. All the sunshine appears to have been on your side, and all the shadow on his. Born of highly cultivated parents, in the highest rank in England under royalty, you have lived from the beginning amongst the most efficient aids to culture, and Nature has so endowed you that, instead of becoming indifferent to these things from familiarity, you have learned to value them more and more in every successive year. The plainest statement of your advantages would sound like an extract from one of Disraeli’s novels. Your father’s principal castle is situated amongst the finest scenery in Britain, and his palace in London is filled with masterpieces of art. Wherever you have lived you have been surrounded by good literature and cultivated friends. Your health is steadily robust, you can travel wherever you choose, and all the benefits of all the capitals of Europe belong to you as much as to their own citizens. In all these gifts and opportunities there is but one evil—the bewilderment of their multiplicity.
My other correspondent has been less fortunately situated. “I began school,” he says, “when six years old, was taken from it at eleven and sent to the mines to earn a little towards my own support. I continued there till fourteen, when through an unlucky incident I was made a hopeless cripple. At that day I was earning the noble sum of eightpence per day, quite as much as any boy of that age got in the lead mines. I suffered much for two years; after that, became much easier, but my legs were quite useless, and have continued so up to the present time. The right thigh-bone is decayed, has not got worse these nine years; therefore I conclude that I may live—say another thirty years. I should like, at all events, for life is sweet even at this cost; not but what I could die quietly enough, I dare say. I have not been idle these years....”
(Here permit me to introduce a parenthesis. He certainly had not been idle. He had educated himself up to such a point that he could really appreciate both literature and art, and had attained some genuine skill in both. His letters to me were the letters of a cultivated gentleman, and he used invariably to insert little pen-sketches, which were done with a light and refined hand.)
“I can do anything almost in bed—except getting up. I am now twenty-two years old. My father was a miner, but is now unable to work. I have only one brother working, and we are about a dozen of us; consequently we are not in the most flourishing circumstances, but a friend has put it in my power to learn to etch. I have got the tools and your handbook on the subject.”
These extracts are from his first letter. Afterwards he wrote me others which made me feel awed and humbled by the manly cheerfulness with which he bore a lot so dreary, and by the firmness of resolution he showed in his pursuits. He could not quit his bed, but that was not the worst; he could not even sit up in bed, and yet he contrived, I know not how, both to write and draw and etch on copper, managing the plaguy chemicals, and even printing his own proofs. His bed was on wheels, on a sort of light iron carriage, and he saw nature out-of-doors. All the gladness of physical activity was completely blotted out of his existence, and in that respect his prospects were without hope. And still he said that “life was sweet.” O marvel of all marvels, how could that life be sweet!