Babylon. Volume 1

‘Then run away from it and be done wi’ it.’

‘Run away from it! Oh, Minna, do you know that they could catch me and put me in prison?’

‘I’d go to prison an’ laugh at ‘em, sooner nor I’d be bound for all those years against my will,’ Minna answered firmly. ‘Leastways I would if I was a man, Colin.’

That last touch was the straw that broke the camel’s back with poor Colin. ‘I’ll go,’ he cried; ‘but where on earth can I go to? It’s no use goin’ back to Wootton. Vicar’d help ‘em to put me in prison.’

‘I’d like to see ‘em,’ Minna answered, with her little eyes flashing. ‘But why can’t you go to London like Mr. Chickaleary told you?’ ‘Cicolari, Minna,’ Colin said, correcting her as gravely and distinctly as the vicar had corrected Miss Eva. ‘The Italians call it Cicolari. It’s as well to be right whenever we can, ain’t it? Well, I can’t go to London, because I’ve got no money to go with. I don’t know as I could get any work when I got there; but I know I can’t get there without any money; so that settles it.’

Minna rose from the seat in the Northernhay where they were spending Colin’s dinner-hour together and walked slowly up and down for a minute or two without speaking. Then she said, with a little hesitation, ‘Colin!’

‘Well, Minna.’

‘I could lend ‘ee – lend you – nine shillin’.’ ‘Nine shillings, Minna! Why, where on earth did you get ‘em from?’

‘Saved ‘em,’ Minna answered laconically. ‘Fish father give me. In savin’s bank.’

‘What for, Minna?’

Minna hesitated again, still more markedly. Though she was only fourteen, there was a good deal of the woman in her already. ‘Because,’ she said at last timidly,’ ‘I thought it was best to begin savin’ up all my money now, in case – in case I should ever want to furnish house if I was to get married.’

Country boy as he was, and child as she was, Colin felt instinctively that it wouldn’t be right of him to ask her anything further about the money. ‘But, Minna,’ he said, colouring a little, ‘even if I was to borrow it all from you, all your nine shillings, it wouldn’t be enough to take me to London.’

Minna had a brilliant idea. ‘Wait for a ‘scursion,’ she said simply.

Colin looked at her with admiring eyes. ‘Well, Minna,’ he cried enthusiastically, ‘you are a bright one, and no mistake. That’s a good idea, that is. I should never have thought of that. I could carve you, Minna, so that a stranger anywhere’d know who it was the minute he set eyes on it; but I should never have thought of that, I can tell you.’ Minna smiled and nodded, the dimple in her brown cheek growing deeper, and the light in her bright eye merrier than ever. What a vivacious, expressive little face it was, really! ‘I’ll tell you what I’d do,’ Minna said, with her sharp determination as if she were fifty. ‘I’d go first and ask Mr. What’s-his-name to let me off the rest of my ‘prenticeship. I’d tell him I didn’t like wood, an’ I wanted to go an’ make statues. Then if he said to me: “You go on with the wood-carvin’ an’ don’t bother me,” I’d say: “No, I don’t do another stroke for you.” Then if he hit me, I’d leave off, I would, an’ refuse to work another turn till he was tired of it. But if he hardened his heart then, an’ wouldn’t let ‘ee go still, I’d wait till there was a ‘scursion, I would, and then I’d run away to Mr. Chick-o-lah-ree’s friends in London. That’s what I’d do if I was you, Colin.’

‘I will, Minna,’ Colin faltered out in reply; ‘I will.’

‘Do ‘ee, Colin,’ Minna cried eagerly, catching his arm. ‘Do ‘ee, Colin, and I’ll send ‘ee the money. Oh, Colin, I know if you’d only get ‘prenticed to the sculpturin’, you’d grow to be as grand a man – as grand as parson.’

‘Minna,’ Colin said, taking her hand in his as if it were a lady’s, ‘thank you very much for the money, an’ if I have to work my fingers to the bone for it, I’ll send it back to ‘ee.’

‘Don’t ‘ee do that, Colin, oh don’t ‘ee do that,’ Minna cried eagerly. ‘I’d a great deal rather for you to keep it.’

When Colin told Cicolari of this episode (suppressing so much of it as he thought proper), the Italian laughed and showed all his teeth, and remarked with a smile that Colin was very young yet. But he promised staunchly to keep the boy’s secret, and to give him good introductions to his former employer in London.

The die was cast now, and Colin Churchill resolutely determined in his own mind that he would abide by it. So a few days later he screwed up courage towards evening to go to Mr. Begg, his master, and for form’s sake, at least, ask to be let off the remainder of his apprenticeship. ‘At any rate,’ he thought to himself, ‘I won’t try running away till I’ve tried in a straightforward way to get him to cancel the indentures I signed when I didn’t really know what I was signing.’

Mr. Begg, that eminently respectable Philistine cabinet-maker, opened his eyes in blank astonishment when he actually heard with his two waking ears this extraordinary and unprecedented request. ‘Let you off the rest of your time, Churchill!’ he cried, incredulously. ‘Was that what you said, boy? Let – you – off – the rest – of – your – time?’

‘Yes,’ Colin answered, with almost dogged firmness, ‘I said that.’

‘And why, Churchill?’ Mr. Begg asked again, lost in amazement. ‘And why?’

‘Because, sir, I don’t like wood-carving, and I feel I could do a great deal better at marble.’

Mr. Begg gazed up at him (he was a little man and Colin was tall) in utter surprise and hesitation. ‘You’re not mad, are you, Churchill?’ he inquired cautiously. ‘You’re not mad, are you?’

‘No, sir,’ Colin replied stoutly; ‘but I think I must have been when I signed them indentures.’

The cabinet-maker went into his little office, called Colin in, and then sat down in a dazed manner to hear this strange thing out to its final termination. Colin burst forth, then, with his impassioned pleading, astonishing himself by the flood of native eloquence with which he entreated Mr. Begg to release him from that horrid wood-carving, and let him follow his natural calling as a sculptor in clay and marble. He didn’t know what he was doing when he signed the indentures; he had only just come fresh from his life as a servant. Now he knew he had the makings of a sculptor in him, and a sculptor alone he wished to be. Mr. Begg regarded him askance all the time, as a man might regard a stray dog of doubtful sanity, but said never a single word, for good or for evil. When Colin had worn himself out with argument and exhortation, the cabinet-maker rose from his high seat, unlocked his desk mechanically, and took out of it his copy of Colin’s indentures. He read them all through carefully to himself, and then he laid them down with the puzzled air of one who meets for the first time in his life with some inexplicable practical enigma. ‘This is very strange, Churchill,’ he muttered, coolly, half to himself; ‘this is really most remarkable. There’s no mistake or flaw of any sort in those indentures; nothing on earth to invalidate ‘em or throw doubt upon them in any way. Your signature’s there as clear as daylight. I can’t understand it. You’ve always been a good workman – the best apprentice, take you all round, I’ve ever ‘ad ‘ere; and Canon Melville, he’s praised your carving most uncommonly, and so they all do. A good, honest-working, industrious lad I’ve always found you, one time with another; not such a great eater neither; and I was very well satisfied altogether with you till this very evening. And now you come and say you want to cancel your indentures, and go to the stone-cutting! Never heard anything so remarkable in all my life! Why, you’re worth more than a hundred pounds to me! I couldn’t let you go, not if you was to pay me for it.’

Poor Colin! how he wished at that moment that he had been idle, careless, voracious and good-for-nothing! His very virtues, it seemed, were turning against him. He had thrown himself so heartily into the wood-carving at first that his master had found him worth half a dozen common apprentices. He fumbled in his pocket nervously at little Minna’s poor nine shillings which he had changed that very morning from her post-office order.

‘Can’t you understand, Mr. Begg,’ he said at last, despairingly, ‘that a fellow may change his mind? He may feel he can do one thing a great deal better than another, and he may have a longing to do that thing and nothing else, because he loves it?’

Mr. Begg gazed at him stolidly. ‘Cabinetmaking’s a very good trade,’ he said in his dull methodical bourgeois tone; ‘and so, no doubt, ‘s stone-cutting. But these indentures ‘ere bind you down to the cabinet-making, Churchill, and not to the sculpture business.

There’s your signature to ‘em; and you’ve got to stick to it. So that’s the long and the short of it.’

‘But it’s not the end of it,’ Colin answered in his most stubborn voice (and your Dorsetshire man can be very stubborn indeed when he pleases): ‘if you don’t let me off my indentures as I ask you, you’ll have to put up in future with what you can get out of me.’

Next morning, when it was time to begin work, Colin marched as usual into the workshop, and took up a gouge as if to continue carving the panel on which he was engaged. But instead of doing anything to the purpose, he merely kept on chipping off small splinters of wood in an aimless fashion for half an hour. After a time, Mr. Begg observed him, and came up to see what he was doing, but said nothing. All through the day Cohn went on in the same manner, and from time to time Mr. Begg looked in and found the work no further advanced than it had been last evening; still, he said nothing. When the time came to shut up the shop, Mr. Begg looked at him sternly, but only uttered a single sentence: ‘We shall have the law of you, Churchill; we shall have the law of you.’

Colin stared him back stolidly and answered never a word.

For a whole week, this passive duel between the man and boy went on, and towards the end of that time Mr. Begg began to grow decidedly violent. He shook Cohn fiercely, he boxed his ears, he even hit him once or twice across the head with his wooden ruler; but Colin was absolutely immovable. To all that Mr. Begg said the boy returned only one answer: ‘I mean to be a sculptor, not a wood-carver.’ Mr. Begg had never seen anything like it.

‘The obstinacy and the temper of that boy Churchill,’ he said to his brother-tradesmen, ‘is really something altogether incredulous.’ (It may be acutely conjectured that he really meant to say ‘incredible.’)

Sunday came at last, and on Sundays Cohn went round to visit Cicolari. The Italian listened sympathetically to the boy’s story, and then he said, ‘I have an idea of mai own, mai friend. Let us both go to London together. I have saved some money; I want to set up on mai own account as a sculptor. You will go wiz me. I have quarrelled wiz Smeez. We will start tomorrow morning. I will pay you wages, good wages, and you will wawrk for me, and be mai assistant.’

‘But I’ve only got nine shillings,’ Colin answered.

‘I will lend you the rest,’ Cicolari said.

Cohn closed with the offer forthwith, and went home to Mr. Begg’s trembling with excitement.

Early next morning, he tied up his clothes in his handkerchief, crept downstairs noiselessly and let himself out by the backdoor. Then he ran without stopping all the way to the St. David’s station, and found Cicolari waiting for him in the booking office. As the engine steamed out of the station, Colin felt that he was leaving slavery and wood-carving behind him for ever, and was fairly on his way to London, Rome, and a career as a sculptor.

Mr. Begg, when he found that Colin was really gone, didn’t for a moment attempt to follow him. It was no use, he said, to throw good money after bad: the boy had made up his mind not to work at woodcarving; he was as stubborn as a mule; and nothing on earth would ever make him again into a good apprentice. So, though he felt perfectly sure that that nasty foreigner fellow had enticed away the boy for his own purposes, he wouldn’t attempt to bring him back or take the trouble to have him punished. After all, he reflected to himself philosophically, as things had lately turned out it was a good riddance of bad rubbish. Besides, it would be rather an awkward thing to come out before the magistrate that he had hit the boy more than once across the head with a wooden ruler.

Two days later, it was known in Wootton Mandeville that that lad o’ Churchill’s had gone and broke his indentures and runned away from Exeter along of a furrener chap o’ the name of Chickaleary. The vicar received the news with the placid contentment of a magnanimous man, who has done his duty and has nothing to reproach himself with, but who always told you so from the very beginning. ‘I quite expected it, Eva,’ he said loftily; ‘I fully expected it. Those Churchills were always a bad radical lot, and this boy’s just about the very worst among them. When I discovered his slight taste for carving, I feared it was hardly right to encourage the lad in ideas above his station: but I was determined to give him a chance, and now this is how he goes and repays us. I did my best for him: very respectable man, Begg, and well recommended by Canon Harbottle.

But the boy has no perseverance, no application, no stability. Put him to one thing, and he runs away at once and tries to do another. Quite what I expected, quite what I expected.’

‘Perhaps,’ Eva ventured to say suggestively, ‘if you’d sent him to a sculptor’s in London at first, uncle, he might have been perfectly ready to stop there. But you see his natural taste was for sculpture, not for woodcarving; and I’m not altogether surprised myself to hear he should have left Exeter.’

The vicar put up his double eyeglass and surveyed Eva from head to foot, as though she were some wild animal, with a stare of mingled amazement and incredulity. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, opening the door to dress for dinner. ‘Upon my word! What the young people of this generation are coming to is really more than I can answer for.’

CHAPTER X. MINNA IMPROVES HERSELF

Five years is a long slice out of a young man’s life, but the five years that Colin Churchill spent with Cicolari in London were of a sort that he need never have regretted; for though the work he learnt to do in the Italian’s little shop and studio in the Maryle-bone Road was mainly self-taught, he found Cicolari always sympathetic and anxious to help him, and he had such opportunities of study and improvement at the British Museum, and the South Kensington, and the great houses in the suburban counties, as he could never have obtained in the artless wilds of his native west country. It was a grand day for Colin, the day when he first entered the smoky galleries in Great Russell Street and feasted his eyes on those magnificent Hellenic torsos, carved by the vivifying chisel of Pheidias himself. Cicolari was an easy master: he had an Italian’s love of art for art’s sake and he was proud of ‘mai Englishman,’ as he used to call him; the boy whom he had himself discovered in the midst of a profoundly inartistic race, and released from the petty drudgery of an uncongenial vulgar calling. He felt a genuine interest in Colin’s success; so he allowed the boy as much time as possible for visiting the places where he could see the finest works of art in England, and helped him to see those which are usually locked up in rich men’s tasteless houses from the eyes of all who would most appreciate them.

Colin’s own taste and love for art, too, were daily developing. He saw all that he could see, and he read about all that he couldn’t see, spending every penny of his spare money (after he had repaid poor little Minna’s nine shillings) on books about sculpture and painting; and making frequent visits to the reading-room and galleries at the great Museum. Now and then, too, when the trade in mourning widows was slack, when busts were flat and statuettes far from lively, Cicolari would run down into the country with him, and explore the artistic wonders of the big houses. At Deepdene they could look at Thorwaldsen’s Jason and Canova’s Venus: at Knole they gazed upon Vandycks, and Rey-nolds’s, and Constables, and Gainsboroughs; in London itself they had leave to visit the priceless art collections at Stafford House, and half a dozen other great private galleries. So Colin Churchill’s mind expanded rapidly, in the midst of the atmosphere it should naturally have breathed. Not books alone, but the mighty works of the mightiest workers, were the documents from which he spelt out slowly his own artistic education. Later on, men who met Colin Churchill at Rome – men who had gone through the regular dull classical round of our universities – were astonished to find that the Dorsetshire peasant-sculptor, of whom they had heard so much, was a widely cultivated and well-read man. They expected to see an inspired boor wielding a sculptor’s mallet in a rude labourer’s hand: they were surprised to meet a handsome young man, of delicate features and finely-stored mind, who talked about Here and Aphrodite, and the nymphs who came to visit the bound Prometheus, as if he had known them personally and intimately all his life long in their own remote Hellenic dwelling places.

And indeed, though the university where Colin Churchill took his degree with honours was not one presided over by doctors in red hoods and proctors in velvet sleeves, one may well doubt whether he did not penetrate quite as deeply, after all, into the inmost recesses of the great Hellenic genius as most men who have learnt to write iambic trimeters from well-trained composition masters, with the most careful avoidance of that ugly long syllable before the cretic in the two last feet, to which the painstaking scholar attaches so much undue importance. Do you think, my good Mr. Dean, or excellent Senior Censor, that a man cannot learn just as much about the Athens of Pericles from the Elgin Marbles as from a classical dictionary or a dog-eared Thucydides? Do you suppose that to have worked up the first six Iliads with a Liddell and Scott brings you in the end so very much nearer the heart and soul of the primitive Achæans than to have studied with loving care the vases in the British Museum, or even to have followed with a sculptor’s eye the exquisite imaginings of divine John Flaxman?