All day long in the week, and during a good part of the evening, the good man served in his shop. It was a shop of which survivals may still be found in various parts of London—a shop with a round window furnished with many small panes of glass; the window was not garnished with the choicest wares which this dealer had to sell—not at all; he prided himself on keeping much better things within than those which he chose to show. After dark the window was illumined by two or three candles.
He breakfasted, for the most part, on tea and toast; he dined at one o’clock, plentifully if not luxuriously; it was not the custom, among his class, to invite friends to dinner. The house, in fact, was regarded as a kind of sacred harem, to which no one was invited. Friends, however, were taken to the tavern. Unless he was a Dissenter, this citizen was a member of the Vestry, and served all the parish offices. On Sunday he dined more plentifully than on a week day: he was a member of a club which met once a week; there he exchanged sentiments which we should call commonplace, but they were expected; any other sentiments would have affected his friends painfully, with doubt and misgiving.
These sentiments were based upon convictions fixed and unalterable. He believed—long before any Reform Bill—that the only land of liberty was Great Britain; that British armies were irresistible, and British fleets were ever victorious; that the greatest enemy to mankind was the Pope; that the greatest crime conceivable was not to pay your debts, especially debts contracted with a tradesman of Cheapside; that the greatest disgrace was to become bankrupt. A debtor’s prison he regarded as the chief safeguard and stay of British trade; he would listen to no sentimental nonsense about locking up debtors—every debtor ought to be locked up, ought to be flogged, ought to be hanged!
THE QUEEN’S PRIVATE CHAPEL, WINDSOR
ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL
He entertained no sympathy with trades unions: the working-man was the servant of his employer; it was not for him to regulate his own wages and his hours; he was to take what he could get, what the generosity of his master, what the conditions of trade, allowed him to have.
This man, of whom there were many hundred thousands in the country, read no books; he was quite ignorant of what we call everything, that is, of literature, science, art, music, history. Something he knew of what was going on, because there were newspapers at the tavern, which he sometimes read. But he took in no newspaper, and he read no books. There were no books in his house at all; his girls read no books. A book of Family Prayers there was; and for Church purposes, Prayer Books and Bibles, but no books. And so this man, with all his household, lived and died, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, without culture, without ideals, without standards, without aspirations.
