Book: The Revolution in Tanner\'s Lane

M >> Mark Rutherford >> The Revolution in Tanner\'s Lane



Transcribed from the 1913 Hodder and Stoughton edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




THE REVOLUTION IN TANNER'S LANE




"Per various casus, per tot discrimina rerum,
Tendimus in Latium; sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt. Illic fas regna resurgere Trojae.
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis."
- Virgil.

"By diuers casis, sere parrellis and sufferance
Unto Itaill we ettill (aim) quhare destanye
Has schap (shaped) for vs ane rest and quiet harbrye
Predestinatis thare Troye sall ryse agane.
Be stout on prosper fortoun to remane."
- Gwain Douglas's translation.



CHAPTER I--THE WORLD OUTSIDE



The 20th April 1814, an almost cloudless, perfectly sunny day, saw
all London astir. On that day Lewis the Eighteenth was to come from
Hartwell in triumph, summoned by France to the throne of his
ancestors. London had not enjoyed too much gaiety that year. It was
the year of the great frost. Nothing like it had been known in the
memory of man. In the West of England, where snow is rare, roads
were impassable and mails could not be delivered. Four dead men were
dug out of a deep drift about ten miles west of Exeter. Even at
Plymouth, close to the soft south-western ocean, the average depth of
the fall was twenty inches, and there was no other way of getting
eastwards than by pack-horses. The Great North Road was completely
blocked, and there was a barricade over it near Godmanchester of from
six to ten feet high. The Oxford coach was buried. Some passengers
inside were rescued with great difficulty, and their lives were
barely saved. The Solway Firth at Workington resembled the Arctic
Sea, and the Thames was so completely frozen over between Blackfriars
and London Bridges that people were able, not only to walk across,
but to erect booths on the ice. Coals, of course, rose to famine
prices in London, as it was then dependent solely upon water-carriage
for its supply. The Father of his people, the Prince Regent, was
much moved by the general distress of "a large and meritorious class
of industrious persons," as he called them, and issued a circular to
all Lords Lieutenant ordering them to provide all practicable means
of removing obstructions from the highways.

However, on this 20th April the London mob forgot the frost, forgot
the quartern loaf and the national debt, and prepared for a holiday,
inspired thereto, not so much by Lewis the Eighteenth as by the
warmth and brilliant sky. There are two factors in all human bliss--
an object and the subject. The object may be a trifle, but the
condition of the subject is most important. Turn a man out with his
digestion in perfect order, with the spring in the air and in his
veins, and he will cheer anything, any Lewis, Lord Liverpool, dog,
cat, or rat who may cross his path. Not that this is intended as a
sufficient explanation of the Bourbon reception. Far from it; but it
does mitigate it a trifle. At eleven o'clock in the forenoon two
troops of the Oxford Blues drew up at Kilburn turnpike to await the
sacred arrival. The Prince Regent himself went as far as Stanmore to
meet his August Brother. When the August Brother reached the
village, the excited inhabitants thereof took the horses out of the
carriage and drew him through the street. The Prince, standing at
the door of the principal inn, was in readiness to salute him, and
this he did by embracing him! There have been some remarkable
embraces in history. Joseph fell on Israel's neck, and Israel said
unto Joseph, "Now let me die, since I have seen thy face:" Paul,
after preaching at Ephesus, calling the elders of the Church to
witness that, for the space of three years, he ceased not to warn
every one night and day with tears, kneeled down and prayed, so that
they all wept sore and fell on his neck: Romeo took a last embrace
of Juliet in the vault, and sealed the doors of breath with a
righteous kiss: Penelope embraced Ulysses, who was welcome to her as
land is welcome to shipwrecked swimmers escaping from the grey
seawater--there have, we say, been some remarkable embraces on this
earth since time began, but none more remarkable than that on the
steps of the Abercorn Arms. The Divine couple then drove in solemn
procession to town. From the park corner for three-quarters of a
mile or so was a line of private carriages, filled with most
fashionable people, the ladies all standing on the seats. The French
Royalist flag waved everywhere. All along the Kilburn Road, then
thinly lined with houses, it was triumphant, and even the trees were
decorated with it. Arriving by way of Cumberland Gate at Piccadilly,
Lewis was escorted, amidst uproarious rejoicing, to Grillon's Hotel
in Albemarle Street. There, in reply to an address from the Prince,
he "ascribed, under Providence," to his Royal Highness and the
British people his present blissful condition; and soon afterwards,
being extremely tired, went to bed. This was on a Wednesday. The
next day, Thursday, His Sacred Majesty, or Most Christian Majesty, as
he was then called, was solemnly made a Knight of the Garter, the
Bishops of Salisbury and Winchester assisting. On Friday he received
the corporation of London, and on Saturday the 23rd he prepared to
take his departure. There was a great crowd in the street when he
came out of the hotel and immense applause; the mob crying out, "God
bless your Majesty!" as if they owed him all they had, and even their
lives. It was very touching, people thought at the time, and so it
was. Is there anything more touching than the waste of human loyalty
and love? As we read the history of the Highlands or a story of
Jacobite loyalty such as that of Cooper's Admiral Bluewater, dear to
boys, we sadden that destiny should decree that in a world in which
piety is not too plentiful it should run so pitifully to waste, and
that men and women should weep hot tears and break their hearts over
bran-stuffing and wax.

Amidst the hooraying multitude that Saturday April morning was one
man at least, Zachariah Coleman by name, who did not hooray, and did
not lift his hat even when the Sacred Majesty appeared on the hotel
steps. He was a smallish, thin-faced, lean creature in workman's
clothes; his complexion was white, blanched by office air, and his
hands were black with printer's ink.

"Off with your tile, you b---y Corsican!" exclaimed a roaring voice
behind him. Zachariah turned round, and found the request came from
a drayman weighing about eighteen stone; but the tile was not
removed. In an instant it was sent flying to the other side of the
road, where it was trodden on, picked up, and passed forward in the
air amidst laughter and jeers, till it was finally lost.

Zachariah was not pugnacious, and could not very well be so in the
presence of his huge antagonist; but he was no coward, and not seeing
for the moment that his hat had hopelessly gone, he turned round
savagely, and laying hold of the drayman, said:

"You ruffian, give it me back; if I am a Corsican, are you an
Englishman?"

"Take that for your b---y beaver," said the other, and dealt him a
blow with the fist right in his face, which staggered and stupefied
him, covering him with blood.

The bystanders, observing the disparity between the two men,
instantly took Zachariah's side, and called out "Shame, shame!" Nor
did they confine themselves to ejaculations, for a young fellow of
about eight and twenty, well dressed, with a bottle-green coat of
broadcloth, buttoned close, stepped up to the drayman.

"Knock my tile off, beer-barrel."

The drayman instantly responded by a clutch at it, but before he
could touch it he had an awful cut across the lips, delivered with
such scientific accuracy from the left shoulder that it was clear it
came from a disciple of Jackson or Tom Cribb. The crowd now became
intensely delighted and excited, and a cry of "A ring, a ring!" was
raised. The drayman, blind with rage, let out with his right arm
with force enough to fell an ox, but the stroke was most artistically
parried, and the response was another fearful gash over the right
eye. By this time the patriot had had enough, and declined to
continue the contest. His foe, too, seemed to have no desire for any
further display of his powers, and retired smilingly, edging his way
to the pavement, where he found poor Zachariah almost helpless.

"Holloa, my republican friend, d---n it, that's a nasty lick you've
got, and from one of the people too; that makes it harder to bear,
eh? Never mind, he's worse off than you are."

Zachariah thanked him as well as he could for defending him.

"Not a word; haven't got a scratch myself. Come along with me;" and
he dragged him along Piccadilly into a public-house in Swallow
Street, where apparently he was well known. Water was called for;
Zachariah was sponged, the wound strapped up, some brandy given him,
and the stranger, ordering a hackney coach, told the driver to take
the gentleman home.

"Wait a bit," he called, as the coach drove off. "You may feel
faint; I'll go home with you," and in a moment he was by Zachariah's
side. The coach found its way slowly through the streets to some
lodgings in Clerkenwell. It was well the stranger did go, for his
companion on arrival was hardly able to crawl upstairs to give a
coherent account to his wife of what had happened.

Zachariah Coleman, working man, printer, was in April 1814 about
thirty years old. He was employed in a jobbing office in the city,
where he was compositor and pressman as well. He had been married in
January 1814 to a woman a year younger than himself, who attended the
meeting-house at Hackney, whither he went on the Sunday. He was a
Dissenter in religion, and a fierce Radical in politics, as many of
the Dissenters in that day were. He was not a ranter or revivalist,
but what was called a moderate Calvinist; that is to say, he held to
Calvinism as his undoubted creed, but when it came to the push in
actual practice he modified it. In this respect he was inconsistent;
but who is there who is not? His theology probably had no more gaps
in it than that of the latest and most enlightened preacher who
denies miracles and affirms the Universal Benevolence. His present
biographer, from intimate acquaintance with the class to which
Zachariah belonged, takes this opportunity to protest against the
general assumption that the Calvinists of that day, or of any day,
arrived at their belief by putting out their eyes and accepting
blindly the authority of St. Paul or anybody else. It may be
questioned, indeed, whether any religious body has ever stood so
distinctly upon the understanding and has used its intellect with
such rigorous activity, as the Puritans, from whom Zachariah was a
genuine descendant. Even if Calvinism had been carved on tables of
stone and handed down from heaven by the Almighty Hand, it would not
have lived if it had not have found to agree more or less with the
facts, and it was because it was a deduction from what nobody can
help seeing that it was so vital, the Epistle to the Romans serving
as the inspired confirmation of an experience. Zachariah was a great
reader of all kinds of books--a lover especially of Bunyan and
Milton; as logical in his politics as in his religion; and he
defended the execution of Charles the First on the ground that the
people had just as much right to put a king to death as a judge had
to order the execution of any other criminal.

The courtship between Zachariah and the lady who became his wife had
been short, for there could be no mistake, as they had known one
another so long. She was black-haired, with a perfectly oval face,
always dressed with the most scrupulous neatness, and with a certain
plain tightness which Zachariah admired. She had exquisitely white
and perfect teeth, a pale, clear complexion, and the reputation of
being a most sensible woman. She was not a beauty, but she was good-
looking; the weak points in her face being her eyes, which were mere
inexpressive optic organs, and her mouth, which, when shut, seemed
too much shut, just as if it were compressed by an effort of the will
or by a spring. These, however, Zachariah thought minor matters, if,
indeed, he ever noticed them. "The great thing was, that she was"--
sometimes this and sometimes that--and so it was settled.
Unfortunately in marriage it is so difficult to be sure of what the
great thing is, and what the little thing is, the little thing
becoming so frightfully big afterwards! Theologically, Mrs.
Zachariah was as strict as her husband, and more so, as far as
outward observance went, for her strictness was not tempered by those
secular interests which to him were so dear. She read little or
nothing--nothing, indeed, on week-days, and even the Morning
Chronicle, which Zachariah occasionally borrowed, was folded up when
he had done with it and put under the tea-caddy till it was returned.
On Sundays she took up a book in the afternoon, but she carefully
prepared herself for the operation as though it were a sacramental
service. When the dinner-things were washed up, when the hearth was
swept and the kettle on the fire, having put on her best Sunday
dress, it was her custom to go to the window, always to the window,
never to the fire--where she would open Boston's Fourfold State and
hold it up in front of her with both hands. This, however, did not
last long, for on the arrival of the milkman the volume was replaced,
and it was necessary to make preparations for tea.

The hackney coach drove up to the house in Rosoman Street where
Zachariah dwelt on the first floor. He was too weak to go upstairs
by himself, and he and his friend therefore walked into the front
room together. It was in complete order, although it was so early in
the morning. Everything was dusted; even the lower fire-bar had not
a speck of ashes on it, and on the hob already was a saucepan in
which Mrs. Coleman proposed to cook the one o'clock dinner. On the
walls were portraits of Sir Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, and
the mezzotint engraving of Sadler's Bunyan. Two black silhouettes--
one of Zachariah and the other of his wife--were suspended on each
side of the mantelpiece.

Mrs. Coleman was busily engaged in the bedroom, but hearing the
footsteps, she immediately entered. She was slightly taken aback at
seeing Zachariah in such a plight, and uttered a little scream, but
the bottle-green stranger, making her a profound bow, arrested her.

"Pardon me, my dear madam, there is nothing seriously the matter.
Your husband has had the misfortune to be the victim of a most
blackguardly assault; but I am sure that, under your care, he will be
all right in a day or two; and, with your permission, I take my
leave."

Mrs. Coleman was irritated. The first emotion was not sympathy.
Absolutely the first was annoyance at being seen without proper
notice by such a fine-looking gentleman. She had, however, no real
cause for vexation under this head. She had tied a white
handkerchief over her hair, fastening it under her chin, as her
manner was when doing her morning's work, and she had on her white
apron; but she was trim and faultless, and the white handkerchief did
but set off her black hair and marble complexion. Her second
emotion, too, was not sympathy. Zachariah was at home at the wrong
time. Her ordinary household arrangements were upset. He might
possibly be ill, and then there would be a mess and confusion. The
thought of sickness was intolerable to her, because it "put
everything out." Rising up at the back of these two emotions came,
haltingly, a third when she looked her husband in the face. She
could not help it, and she did really pity him.

"I am sure it is very kind of you," she replied.

Zachariah had as yet spoken no word, nor had she moved towards him.
The stranger was departing.

"Stop!" cried Zachariah, "you have not told me your name. I am too
faint to say how much I owe you for your protection and kindness."

"Nonsense. My name is Maitland--Major Maitland, 1A Albany. Good-
bye."

He was at the top of the stairs, when he turned round, and looking at
Mrs. Coleman, observed musingly, "I think I'll send my doctor, and,
if you will permit me, will call in a day or two."

She thanked him; he took her hand, politely pressed it to his lips,
and rode off in the coach which had been waiting for him.

"What has happened, my dear? Tell me all about it," she inquired as
she went back into the parlour, with just the least colour on her
cheek, and perceptibly a little happier than she was five minutes
before. She did nothing more than put her hand on his shoulder, but
he brightened immediately. He told her the tale, and when it was
over desired to lie down and to have some tea.

Emotion number two returned to Mrs. Coleman immediately. Tea at that
time, the things having been all cleared away and washed up! She did
not, however, like openly to object, but she did go so far as to
suggest that perhaps cold water would be better, as there might be
inflammation. Zachariah, although he was accustomed to give way,
begged for tea; and it was made ready, but not with water boiled
there. She would not again put the copper kettle on the fire, as it
was just cleaned, but she asked to be allowed to use that which
belonged to the neighbour downstairs who kept the shop. The tea-
things were replaced when Zachariah had finished, and his wife
returned to her duties, leaving him sitting in the straight-backed
Windsor-chair, looking into the grate and feeling very miserable.

In the afternoon Rosoman Street was startled to see a grand carriage
stop at Zachariah's door, and out stepped the grand doctor, who,
after some little hesitation and inquiry, made his way upstairs.
Having examined our friend, he pronounced him free from all mortal or
even serious injury--it was a case of contusion and shaken nerves,
which required a little alterative medicine, and on the day after to-
morrow the patient, although bruised and sore in the mouth, might go
back to work.

The next morning he was better, but nevertheless he was depressed.
It was now three months since his wedding-day, and the pomp and
beauty of the sunrise, gold and scarlet bars with intermediate lakes
of softest blue, had been obscured by leaden clouds, which showed no
break and let loose a cold drizzling rain. How was it? He often
asked himself that question, but could obtain no satisfactory answer.
Had anything changed? Was his wife anything which he did not know
her to be three months ago? Certainly not. He could not accuse her
of passing herself off upon him with false pretences. What she had
always represented herself to be she was now. There she stood
precisely as she stood twelve months ago, when he asked her to become
his wife, and he thought when she said "yes" that no man was more
blessed than he. It was, he feared, true he did not love her, nor
she him; but why could not they have found that out before? What a
cruel destiny was this which drew a veil before his eyes and led him
blindfold over the precipice! He at first thought, when his joy
began to ebb in February or March, that it would rise again, and that
he would see matters in a different light; but the spring was here,
and the tide had not turned. It never would turn now, and he became
at last aware of the sad truth--the saddest a man can know--that he
had missed the great delight of existence. His chance had come, and
had gone. Henceforth all that was said and sung about love and home
would find no echo in him. He was paralysed, dead in half of his
soul, and would have to exist with the other half as well he could.
He had done no wrong: he had done his best; he had not sold himself
to the flesh or the devil, and, Calvinist as he was, he was tempted
at times to question the justice of such a punishment. If he put his
finger in the fire and got burnt, he was able to bow to the wisdom
which taught him in that plain way that he was not to put his finger
in the fire. But wherein lay the beneficence of visiting a simple
mistake--one which he could not avoid--with a curse worse than the
Jewish curse of excommunication--"the anathema wherewith Joshua
cursed Jericho; the curse which Elisha laid upon the children; all
the curses which are written in the law. Cursed be he by day, and
cursed be he by night: cursed be he in sleeping, and cursed be he in
waking: cursed in going out, and cursed in coming in." Neither the
wretched victim nor the world at large was any better for such a
visitation, for it was neither remedial nor monitory. Ah, so it is!
The murderer is hung at Newgate, and if he himself is not improved by
the process, perhaps a few wicked people are frightened; but men and
women are put to a worse death every day by slow strangulation which
endures for a lifetime, and, as far as we can see, no lesson is
learned by anybody, and no good is done.

Zachariah, however, did not give way to despair, for he was not a man
to despair. His religion was a part of himself. He had immortality
before him, in which he thanked God there was no marrying nor giving
in marriage. This doctrine, however, did not live in him as the
other dogmas of his creed, for it was not one in which his intellect
had such a share. On the other hand, predestination was dear to him.
God knew him as closely as He knew the angel next His throne, and had
marked out his course with as much concern as that of the seraph.
What God's purposes were he did not know. He took a sort of sullen
pride in not knowing, and he marched along, footsore and wounded, in
obedience to the orders of his great Chief. Only thirty years old,
and only three months a husband, he had already learned renunciation.
There was to be no joy in life? Then he would be satisfied if it
were tolerable, and he strove to dismiss all his dreams and do his
best with what lay before him. Oh my hero! Perhaps somewhere or
other--let us hope it is true--a book is kept in which human worth is
duly appraised, and in that book, if such a volume there be, we shall
find that the divinest heroism is not that of the man who, holding
life cheap, puts his back against a wall, and is shot by Government
soldiers, assured that he will live ever afterwards as a martyr and
saint: a diviner heroism is that of the poor printer, who, in dingy,
smoky Rosoman Street, Clerkenwell, with forty years before him,
determined to live through them, as far as he could, without a
murmur, although there was to be no pleasure in them. A diviner
heroism is this, but divinest of all, is that of him who can in these
days do what Zachariah did, and without Zachariah's faith.

The next evening, just as Zachariah and his wife were sitting down to
tea, there was a tap at the door, and in walked Major Maitland. He
was now in full afternoon costume, and, if not dandyish, was
undeniably well dressed. Making a profound bow to Mrs. Coleman, he
advanced to the fireplace and instantly shook hands with Zachariah.

"Well, my republican, you are better, although the beery loyalist has
left his mark upon you."

"Certainly, much better; but where I should have been, sir, if it had
not been for you, I don't know."

"Ah, well; it was an absolute pleasure to me to teach the blackguard
that cheering a Bourbon costs something. My God, though, a man must
be a fool who has to be taught that! I wonder what it HAS cost us.
Why, I see you've got my friend, Major Cartwright, up there."

Zachariah and his wife started a moment at what they considered the
profane introduction of God's name; but it was not exactly swearing,
and Major Maitland's relationship to them was remarkable. They were
therefore silent.

"A true friend of the people," continued Maitland, "is Major
Cartwright; but he does not go quite far enough to please me."

"As for the people so-called," quoth Zachariah, "I doubt whether they
are worth saving. Look at the mob we saw the day before yesterday.
I think not of the people. But there is a people, even in these days
of Ahab, whose feet may yet be on the necks of their enemies."

"Why, you are an aristocrat," said Maitland, smiling; "only you want
to abolish the present aristocracy and give us another. You must not
judge us by what you saw in Piccadilly, and while you are still
smarting from that smasher on your eye. London, I grant you, is not,
and never was, a fair specimen. But, even in London, you must not be
deceived. You don't know its real temper; and then, as to not being
worth saving--why, the worse men are the more they want saving.
However, we are both agreed about this--crew, Liverpool, the Prince
Regent, and his friends." A strong word was about to escape before
"crew," but the Major saw that he was in a house where it would be
out of place. "I wish you'd join our Friends of the People. We want
two or three determined fellows like you. We are all safe."

"What are the 'Friends of the People'?"

"Oh, it's a club of--a--good fellows who meet twice a week for a
little talk about affairs. Come with me next Friday and see."

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