Memoirs of Life and Literature

by W. H. Mallock

This change was due to the following causes, which partly produced, and were partly produced by, one of the earlier outbreaks in this country of what is now called "social unrest." The doctrines of Karl Marx, which had long been obscurely fermenting in the minds of certain English malcontents, now began for the first time in this country to be adopted by a body of such men as the basis of an organized party—a party which they ambitiously named "The Social Democratic Federation." The main object of these persons was the confiscation of all private capital. Another agitation had been initiated by Henry George, which in this country was much more widely popular, and which had for its object the confiscation not of private capital, but simply and solely of privately owned land. Meanwhile Bright, who was certainly not a Socialist (for he defended the rights of capital in many of their harshest forms), had been attacking private landlordism on the ground not that it was in itself an economic abuse, as George taught, but that in this country it formed, under existing conditions, the basis of an aristocratic class. Finally there was Ruskin, who had, since the days when I first knew him at Oxford, been attempting to excite sympathy with some vague project of revolution by rewriting economic science in terms of sentiment which sometimes, but only on rare occasions, struck fire by chance contact with the actual facts of life. It is hardly surprising that such ideas as these, jumbled together by a mob in Trafalgar Square, took practical form, on a certain memorable occasion, in a looting of shops in Piccadilly—an enterprise instigated by men one of whom, enlightened by disillusion, has subsequently earned respect as a grave cabinet minister.

As for myself, the most pertinacious conviction which these movements forced on me was that, whatever elements of justice and truth might lurk in them, they were based on wild distortions of historical and statistical facts, or on an ignorance even more remarkable of the actual dynamics of industry, of the powers of the average worker, and of the motives by which he is actuated.

Dominated by this conviction, which for me was verified every time I opened a newspaper, I found myself daily devoting more and more of my time to the task of reducing this chaos of revolutionary thought to order. But what most sharply awakened me to the need for such a work was an incident which, before it took place, would have, so I thought, a tendency to lull my anxieties for a time rather than to maintain or stimulate them.

I had regarded the revolutionary mood as mainly, if not exclusively, an emanation from those hotbeds of urban industry in which the modern industrial system has reached its most complete development, and I pictured to myself the more remote districts of the kingdom—especially the Highlands of Scotland—as still the scenes of an idyllic and almost undisturbed content. As to the rural counties of England, I was, so I think, correct, but, as to the Scottish Highlands, the truth of my ideas in this respect still remained to be tested. To me the Highlands were thus far nothing more than a name. I was therefore delighted when one morning I received an invitation from Lord and Lady Howard of Glossop, to stay with them for some weeks at Dorlin, their remote Highland home.

Dorlin, which had been bought by Lord Howard from his connection, Mr. Hope Scott, is situated on the borders of a sea loch, Loch Moidart, and of all places in Scotland it then enjoyed the repute of being one of the least accessible. The easiest means of reaching it was by a long day's journey in a rudely appointed cattle boat, which twice a week left Oban at noon, carrying a few passengers, and reached at nightfall the rude pier of Salen, about nine miles from the house. To my unaccustomed eyes the descent from the sleeping car at Oban, with the vision which greeted them of sea and heathery mountain, was like walking into the Waverley Novels. As I followed a barrow of luggage to the pier from which the steamer started, I expected to see Fergus MacIvors everywhere. This expectation was not altogether fulfilled; but at last, when the pier was reached, I knew not which thrilled me most—the smallness and rudeness of the vessel to which I was about to commit myself or the majesty of a kilted being who so bristled with daggers that even Fergus MacIvor might have been afraid of him. Not till later did I learn that the name of this apparition was Jones; but even if I had known it then, no resulting disillusion could have marred the adventurous romance of the voyage which was now awaiting me.

It was a voyage of astonishing and, to me, wholly novel beauty. The islands which we passed, or at which we stopped, wore all the colors of all the grape clusters of the world, until these were dimmed by slowly approaching twilight, when we found ourselves at rest in the harbor of Tobermory in Mull. We waited there for more than an hour, while leisurely boats floated out to us, laden with sheep and cattle, which were gradually got on board in exchange for some other cargo. Then, with hardly a ripple, our vessel was again in motion, its bows pointing to the mouth of Loch Salen opposite. By and by, in the dimness of the translucent evening, our vessel stopped once more—I could not tell why or wherefore, till a splash of oars was heard and some bargelike craft was decipherable emerging out of the gloom to meet us. Into this, as though in a dream, a number of sheep were lowered; and we, resuming our course, found ourselves at last approaching a small rocky protrusion, on which a lantern glimmered, and which proved to be Salen pier.

Gallic accents reached us, mixed with some words of English. With the aid of adroit but hardly distinguishable figures, I found myself stumbling over the boulders of which the pier was constructed, and realized that a battered wagonette, called "the machine," was awaiting me. A long drive among masses of mountain followed. At last a gleam of waters was once again discernible. The road, rough and sandy, ran close to little breaking waves, and then, in the shadow of woods and overhanging rocks, numerous lights all of a sudden showed themselves. The machine with a lurch entered something in the nature of a carriage drive, and I found myself on the threshold of Dorlin—a lodge of unusual size, which seemed to be almost wading in the water. When the door opened I was greeted by an odor of peat smoke. An old London butler conducted me up a flight of stairs, and I was presently in a drawing-room filled with familiar figures. Besides my host and hostess and their then unmarried daughters, were Lady Herbert of Lee, Lord Houghton, the Verulams, and the most delightful of priests, Father Charles Macdonald, famous as a fisherman, inimitable as a teller of stories, and great-grandson of fighters who had died for Prince Charlie at Culloden. One guest at Dorlin, who had left just before my arrival, was the then Lord Lorne, and I was told by Lady Howard that the boatmen who had helped him to land—Catholic Macdonalds all of them—had been heard saying to one another that "not so very long ago no Campbell would have dared to set foot in the Macdonald country." Not far away there were still living at that time two old ladies—Macdonalds—whose small house was a museum of Stuart relics, and who still spoke of the Pretender with bated breath as "the King."

Here, indeed, were conditions closely resembling those to which I had looked forward. The past was once more present. The modern spirit of unrest had, so it seemed to me, retreated to some incredible distance.

Lord Houghton, Father Charles, one of the daughters of the house, and I invariably beguiled the evenings with a rubber of modest whist. Lord Houghton was to leave on a Monday morning, and as soon as the dinner of Sunday night was over he hurried us to our places at the card table for another and a concluding game. Much to his surprise and annoyance somebody whispered in his ear that Lord Howard, though an excellent Catholic, had always had an objection to the playing of cards on Sundays. "Well," said Lord Houghton, "we must get Lady Herbert to speak to him about it." Lady Herbert, hearing her name, asked what she was wanted to do. Lord Houghton explained, and she, in tones of caressing deprecation, repeated that, as to this matter, Lord Howard was afflicted with a strong Protestant prejudice. "My dear lady," said Lord Houghton, taking both her hands, "what's the good of belonging to that curious superstition of yours if one mayn't play cards on Sunday?" Through her mediation the desired indulgence was granted. The game was played, but Providence nevertheless chastened Lord Houghton, using me as its humble instrument, for I won three or four pounds from him—the largest, if not the only, sum that I ever won at cards in my life.

Such episodes, imported as they were from the social world of England, were not altogether in keeping with the visionary world of Waverley, but they could not dissipate its atmosphere, charged with bygone romance. And yet it was among these "distant dreams of dreams" that my ears became first awake to the nearer sounds of some vague social disturbance of which Ruskin's gospel of Labor, as I heard it at Oxford without any clear comprehension of it, had been a harbinger.