Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Take a man of another stamp, and observe how he met the first blows of Fortune. Thomas Carlyle had dwelt on a lonely moorland for six years. He came to London and employed himself with feverish energy on a book which he thought would win him bread, even if it did not gain him fame. Writing was painful to him, and he never set down a sentence without severe labour. With infinite pains he sought out the history of the French Revolution and obtained a clear picture of that tremendous event. Piece by piece he put his first volume together and satisfied himself that he had done something which would live. He handed his precious manuscript to Stuart Mill, and Mill’s servant lit the fire with it. Carlyle had exhausted his means, and his great work was really his only capital. Like all men who write at high pressure, he was unable to recall anything that he had once set down, and, so far as his priceless volume went, his mind was a blank. Years of toil were thrown away; time was fleeting, and the world was careless of the matchless historian. The first news of his loss stunned him, and, had he been a weak man, he would have collapsed under the blow. He saw nothing but bitter poverty for himself and his wife, and he had some thoughts of betaking himself to the Far West; but he conquered his weakness, forgot his despair in labour, and doggedly re-wrote the masterpiece which raised him to instant fame and caused him to be regarded as one of the first men in Britain. In the whole wide history of human trials I cannot recall a more shining instance of fortitude and triumphant victory over obstacles. Let those who are cast down by some petty trouble think of the lonely, poverty-stricken student bending himself to his task after the very light of his life had been dimmed for a while.

  There is nothing like an array of instances for driving home an argument, so I mention the case of a man about whom much debate goes on even to this day. Napoleon starved in the streets of Paris; one by one he sold his books to buy bread; he was without light or fire on nights of iron frost, and his clothing was too scanty to keep out the cold. He arrived at that pass which induces some men to end all their woes by one swift plunge into the river; but he was not of the despairful stamp, and he stood his term of misery bravely until the light came for him. Leave his splendid, chequered career of glory and crime out of reckoning, and remember only that he became emperor because he had courage to endure starvation; that lesson at least from his career can harm no one. Choose the example of a woman, for variety’s sake. George Eliot was quite content to scrub furniture, make cheese and butter, and sweep carpets until she arrived at ripe womanhood. She felt her own extraordinary power; but she never repined at the prospect of spending her life in what is lightly called domestic drudgery. The Shining Ones oftenest walk in lowly places and utter no sound of mourning. She was nearing middle age before she had an opportunity of gaining that astonishing erudition which amazed professed students, and, had she not chanced to meet Mr. Spencer, our greatest philosopher, she would have lived and died unknown. She never questioned the decrees of the Power that rules us all, and, when she suddenly took her place as one of the first living novelists, she accepted her fame and her wealth humbly and simply. Till her last day she remembered her bitter years of frustration and failure, and the meanest of mortals had a share of her holy sympathy; she gained her unexampled conquest by resolutely treading down despair, and her brave story should cheer the many girls who find life bleak and joyless. George Eliot was prepared to bear the worst that could befall her, and it was her frank and gentle acceptance of the facts of life that brought her joy in the end. We must also remember such people as Arkwright, Stephenson, Thomas Edwards the naturalist, and Heine the poet. Arkwright saw his best machinery smashed again and again; but his bull-dog courage brought him through his trouble, and he surmounted opposition that would have driven a weakling to exile and death. Stephenson feared that he would never conquer the great morass at Chat Moss, and he knew that, if he failed, his reputation would perish. He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came; but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven years in his “mattress grave;” he was torn from head to foot by the pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid of the other had to be raised in order that he might see those who visited him. Let those who have ever felt the aching of a single tooth imagine what it must have been to suffer the same kind of pain over the whole body. Surely this poor tortured wretch might have been pardoned had he esteemed his life a failure! His spirit never flagged, and he wrote the brightest, lightest mockeries that ever were framed by the wit of man; his poems will be the delight of Europe for years to come, and his memory can no more perish than that of Shakspere.

  Enough of examples; the main fact is that to men and women who refuse to accept failure all life is open, and there is something to hope for even up to the verge of the grave. When the sullen storm-cloud of misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair, the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious effort. There never yet was a misfortune or an array of misfortunes, there never was an entanglement wound by malign chance from which a man could not escape by dint of his own unaided energy. By all means let us pity those who are sore beset amid the keen sorrows that haunt the world, look with tenderness on their pain, soothe them in their perplexities; but, before all things, incite them to struggle against the numbing influence of despondency. The early failures are the raw material of the finest successes; and the general who loses a battle, the mechanic who fails to find work, the writer who pines for the approach of tardy fame, the forsaken lover who looks out on a dark universe, and the servant who meets only censure and coldness, despite her attempts to fulfil her duty, all come under the same law. If they consent to drift away into the limbo of failures, they have only to resign themselves, and their existence will soon end in futility and disaster; but, if they refuse to cringe under the lash of circumstances, if they toil on as though a bright goal were immediately before them, the result is almost assured; and, even if they do succumb, they have the blessed knowledge that they have failed gallantly. Half the misfortunes which crush the children of men into insignificance are more or less magnified by imagination, and the swollen bulk of trouble dwindles before an effort of the human will. Read over the dismal record of a year’s suicides, and you will find that in nine cases out of ten the causes which lead unhappy men and women to quench their own light of life are absolutely trivial to the sane and steadfast soul. Let those who are heavy of heart when ill-fortune seems to have mastered them remember that our Master is before all things just. He lays no burden that ought not to be borne on any one of His children, and those who give way to despair are guilty of sheer impiety. The same Power that sends the affliction gives also the capability of endurance, and, if we refuse to exert that capability, we are sinful. When once the first inclination toward weakness and doubt is overcome, every effort becomes easier, and the sense of strength waxes keener day by day. Who are the most serene and sympathetic of all people that even the most obscure among us meet? The men and women who have come through the Valley of the Shadow of Tribulation. By a benign ordinance which is uniform in action, it so falls out that the conquerors derive enhanced pleasure from the memory of difficulties beaten down and sorrows vanquished. Where then is the use of craven shrinking? Let us rather welcome our early failures as we would welcome the health-giving rigour of some stern physician. Think of the heroes and heroines who have conquered, and think joyfully also of those who have wrought out their strenuous day in seeming failure. There are four lines of poetry which every English-speaking man and woman should learn by heart, and I shall clo
se this address with them. They were written on the memorial stone of certain Italian martyrs —

  “Of all Time’s words, this is the noblest one

  That ever spoke to souls and left them blest;

  Gladly we would have rested had we won

  Freedom. We have lost, and very gladly rest.”

  XVIII. “VANITY OF VANITIES.”

  Those who have leisure to explore the history of the past, to peer into the dark backward and abysm of Time, must of necessity become smitten with a kind of sad and kindly cynicism. When one has travelled over a wide tract of history, and when, above all, he has mused much on the minor matters which dignified historians neglect, he feels much inclined to say to those whom he sees struggling vainly after what they call fame, “Why are you striving thus to make your voice heard amid the derisive silence of eternity? You are fretting and frowning, with your eyes fixed on your own petty fortunes, while all the gigantic ages mock you. Day by day you give pain to your own mind and body; you hope against hope; you trust to be remembered, and you fancy that you may perchance hear what men will say of you when you are gone. All in vain. Be satisfied with the love of those about you; if you can get but a dog to love you during your little life, cherish that portion of affection. Work in your own petty sphere strenuously, bravely, but without thought of what men may say of you. Perhaps you are agonised by the thought of powers that are hidden in you — powers that may never be known while you live. What matters it? So long as you have the love of a faithful few among those dear to you, all the fame that the earth can give counts for nothing. Take that which is near to you, and value as naught the praises of a vague monstrous world through which you pass as a shadow. Look at that squirrel who twirls and twirls in his cage. He wears his heart out in his ceaseless efforts at progression, and all the while his mocking prison whirls under him without letting him progress one inch. How much happier he would be if he stayed in his hutch and enjoyed his nuts! You are like the restless squirrel; you make a great show of movement and some noise, but you do not get forward at all. Rest quietly when your necessary labour is done, and be sure that more than half the things men struggle for and fail to attain would not be worth the having even if the strugglers succeeded. Do not waste one moment; do not neglect one duty, for a duty lost is the deadliest loss of all; snatch every rational pleasure that comes within your reach; earn all the love you can, for that is the most precious of all possessions, and leave the search for fame to those who are petty and vain.”

  Such a cold and chilling speech would be a very good medicine for uneasy vanity, but the best medicine of all is the contemplation of the history of men who have flourished and loomed large before their fellows, and who now have sunk into the night. How many mighty warriors have made the earth tremble, filling the mouths of men with words of fear or praise! They have passed away, and the only record of their lives is a chance carving on a stone, a brief line written by some curt historian. The glass of the years was brittle wherein they gazed for a span; the glass is broken and all is gone. In the wastes of Asia we find mighty ruins that even now are like symbols of power — vast walls that impose on the imagination by their bulk, enormous statues, temples that seem to mock at time and destruction. The men who built those structures must have had supreme confidence in themselves, they must have possessed incalculable resources, they must have been masters of their world. Where are they now? What were their names? They have sunk like a spent flame, and we have not even the mark on a stone to tell us how they lived or loved or struggled. Far in that moaning desert lie the remains of a city so great that even the men who know the greatest of modern cities can hardly conceive the original appearance and dimensions of the tremendous pile. Travellers from Europe and America go there and stand speechless before works that dwarf all the efforts of modern men. The woman who ruled in that strong city was an imposing figure in her time, but she died in a petty Roman villa as an exile, and Palmyra, after her departure, soon perished from off the face of the earth. One pathetic little record enables us to guess what became of the population over whom the queen Zenobia ruled. A stone was dug up on the northern border of England, and the inscription puzzled all the antiquarians until an Oriental scholar found that the words were Syriac. “Barates of Palmyra erects this stone to the memory of his wife, the Catavallaunian woman who died aged thirty-three.” That is a rude translation. Poor Barates was brought to Britain, married a Norfolk woman of the British race, and spent his life on the wild frontier. So the powerful queen passed away as a prisoner, her subjects were scattered over the earth, and her city, which was once renowned, is now haunted by lizard and antelope. Alas for fame! Alas for the stability of earthly things! The conquerors of Zenobia fared but little better. How strong must those emperors have been whose very name kept the world in awe! If a man were proscribed by Rome, he was as good as dead; no fastness could hide him, no place in the known world could give him refuge, and his fate was regarded as so inevitable that no one was foolhardy enough to try at staving off the evil day. How coolly and contemptuously the lordly proconsuls and magistrates regarded the early Christians. Pliny did not so much as deign to notice their existence, and Pontius Pilate, who had to deal with the first twelve, seems to have looked upon them as mere pestilent malefactors who created a disturbance. For many years those scornful Roman lords mocked the new sectarians and refused to take them seriously. One scoffing magistrate asked the Christians who came before him why they gave him the trouble to punish them. Were there no ropes and precipices handy, he asked, for those who wished to commit suicide? Those Romans had great names in their day — names as great as the names of Ellenborough and Wellesley and Gordon and Dalhousie and Bartle Frere, yet one would be puzzled to write down a list of six of the omnipotent sub-emperors. They fought, they made laws, they ruled empires, they fancied themselves only a little less than the gods, and now not a man outside the circle of a dozen scholars knows or cares anything about them. The wise lawgivers, the dread administrators, the unconquerable soldiers have gone with the snows, and their very names seem to have been writ in water.