Lord of the Sea
Page 31
XXXI
THE HAMMERS
Within six months Hogarth, as distinct from "Beech", had risen uponthe consciousness of Europe, say like the morning sun: and the weariedworker, borne at evening through crowded undergrounds, might read hisname with a listless incomprehension.
He impressed the popular fancy, especially in Paris, where he wasbest known, as erratic: as once when, by a stroke of financialsleight-of-hand, he got the young Government of Russia into a tightplace, then refused them a loan, except on condition of the lease tohim of the Kremlin: and for three months squalid old Moscow was the mostcometary Court anywhere--acts savouring of a meteorite waywardness whichimpressed him, more than anything, upon the everyday world; and he won atolerant wonder.
However, an outcry, led by the _Intransigeant_, denounced hisacquisition of the site of royal St. Cloud for his Paris residence onthe ground that he was a Jew, betrayed by his face--an accusation whichcaused the buying up of hundreds of thousands of his photographs--and onthe ground that his design was to familiarize the people with the ideaof his sovereignty, and by a _coup_ to seize the Government; at whichParis was in a ferment, and a midnight mob traversed the _Bois_ anddemolished some of his mason-work. The next day, however, the Ministerof the Interior announced from the Tribune that Hogarth was no Jew, butan Englishman _pur sang_; and, on the whole, Hogarth had his way: thenoise died down; and where parterres and avenues had stood on the oldpalace site, there arose one of those enchanting fabrics, which, fromthe Bosphorus to London, bore the name of "The Beeches".
At this time he had dependent upon him a retinue, serving him inmultifarious ways from electrical adviser to spy, and from chancellorto recruiter, numbering many hundreds. He knew five thousand faces bysight; in England had two armies--a small one collecting data as toacreages, tenures, trades, scales, wages, prices, crimes, mines, and alarge one, numbering five thousand, doing gun-practice in Westring Vale:for, England being for sale, he had bought at thrice its market valuethat part of it called Westring; and on the sea also he kept a littlearmy of a thousand, borne in old cruiser-hulks bought from the EnglishAdmiralty, hulks whose crews, in rotation, changed places with draftsfrom the Westring barracks.
Once he disappeared from Europe, and when he returned the President ofthe Republic of Ecuador, thenceforth one of his closest friends, waswith him; whereupon, through newspapers in the pay of Beech's, therumour commenced to appear that the Ecuador Government was givingorders for coast-defence on an unparalleled scale, in view of probablehostilities with Peru.
In the midst of which activities O'Hara said to him one morning: "Youcan now be called a mathematician".
"I have many admirers, and but one teacher, O'Hara", Hogarth answered:"teach me".
O'Hara cut a secret grimace.
After the failure of the Finchley Road plot he had had anotherrepentance, and had set himself earnestly to the cultivation ofHogarth's mind; but the priest's spirit was not "erect"; he had "falls";maintained a correspondence with the Jew, whose eye of malice neverslept; and once at Cairo, twice in Paris, Hogarth had to use wordslike these: "I must tell you, O'Hara, that I have heard of your recentbehaviour. Naturally, there are those that see for me, and I do not meanto be compromised by your low revels".
"Wretch that I am!" broke out O'Hara with smitten brow, and for halfa day was on his knees in an affliction of self-reproach. Yet the samenight he wrote a letter to Frankl containing the words: "You do notknow, _you cannot dream_, the high and slippery road which H. has chosenfor his feet: the future is _big_ with events. Wait: his sublime path isnot without pitfalls...."
Study with O'Hara was in the morning; at night, when possible, thatother study of the working world: and often then Hogarth would withdrawfrom opera in the St. Cloud palace, or from some "crush", to give anhour to the river of statistics with which he was inundated.
Till these years he had never seen into the sea of things as it is: hislife so isolated--had not even read newspapers.
Now he saw and knew. There below him blazed some masque of beauty andmajesty, moving under a moonlight of blue-darting jets of electric lightall among colossal columns of alabaster robed in vine and rose; orthere below some Melba voice, all trembles and maze of wobbly trebles,warbling: and the thronged hall sat tranced; but before _him_--figures:parents killed their children for insurance-money--keeping childrenin cellars till their flesh grew green, keeping sore the stumps ofchildren's legs; with some trades certain comic-sounding names had gotto be associated, "potter's rot", "phossy jaw",--enormous horror;each day in England one million people had to seek pauper-relief, manyperished; of aged persons 40 per cent were permanent paupers; childrenwere paid 2-1/2d. for making 144 match-boxes; pretty girls (thoughpretty girls were detestably rare) were allowed to work, nay _forced_to--far harder than any ten savages ever dreamt of working; in Glasgow41 of every 100 families lived in one room: fathers, for weeks, didnot see their children, except asleep; girls took emetics to vomit upcotton-dust--enormous horror, comic-opera in Hell: and below in the"crush" the voice of the warbler, cooing, shook.
Sometimes he would mutter: "But that can't be true!" There, though, thefigures lay; and presently he would take heart, and say: "Well, not forlong now, God help me...."
Whether God helped him or not, certainly Man was helping him: tenthousand and ten thousand hammers--from Spezzia to Belfast--inmodel-office and mould-loft and rolling-mill--in foundry and yard androaring forge--were ringing upon metal for him, their clamorous industryclattering over Europe and America carillons of his name.