Chapter 5. Of The Artist In Man And His Materials

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_ CHAPTER V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS

There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily upon New Zion.

The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a clay not without streaks of gold.

What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would circle on before they touched the shores of death?

We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many hearts would you dare to trust?

Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.

Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!

Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration!

But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their circumferences.

However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith.

Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I say he was the man for New Zion?"

The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High Street itself should hum and whizz.

The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus Londonderry.

Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. _

Read next: Chapter 6. Of A Wonderful Quality In Women

Read previous: Chapter 4. Ends Quite Romantically

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