Joshua Davidson is a provincial carpenter, 
 ^ho, when a lad, modeled his life on that of 
 Christ's. Literally interpreting his Prototype's 
 words and acts, he is successively bitten by a 
 snake and broke one of his legs by jumping 
 from a small precipice. Going to London 
 with a friend, he lived his religious, moral, and 
 political opinions, — with caustic effect upon 
 fashionable professors of religion, salvation 
 to some fallen, and little comfort to himself 
 He joined the Communists in Paris, and there 
 was killed by his political foes. We may 
 safely say that no such person as Joshua Da- 
 vidson ever lived, — no more did " Ginx's 
 Baby," — and that the author of "The Girl of 
 the Period" simply adopts this biographical 
 form to ventilate her views of politics, morality, 
 and the Christian world. The book is pub- 
 lished anonymously in England, and a review 
 in the London "Athenaeum" concludes thus : 
 " In saying this we humor the author by ac- 
 cepting him as the workman he pretends to 
 be; but it is clear from the style that, although 
 not ignorant of proletarian opinion, he is 
 nothing of the kind, unless, indeed, it be — a 
 skilled workman in the field of literature." 
 
on 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 Dul<e University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/truehistoryofjosOOOIint 
 
THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 JOSHUA DAVIDSON 
 
THE TRUE HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 Joshua Davidson, 
 
 COMMUNIST. 
 
 I'HILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT <fc CO. 
 
 18 73. 
 

 PREFACE. 
 
 So many false reports have got about 
 concerning the life and opinions of Joshua 
 Davidson, the Cornish carpenter, that I feel 
 it to be a duty I owe his memory to tell 
 the truth as I know it ; leaving the world 
 to judge between what I, his nearest friend, 
 knew of him, and what gossips and his 
 enemies have falsely said. As I am neither 
 a gentleman nor a scholar I have not pre- 
 tended to any graces of style ; and I have 
 not tried to make an amusing story. My 
 little book is more a record of what Joshua 
 said and thought than of what happened to 
 him through others : that is, there is next to 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 no dramatic interest in it. Neither do I 
 care to give my name. Those who know 
 ' Joshua will know who I am well enough ; 
 and if I have said anything wrong they can 
 come forward and challenge me. And for 
 the rest it does not signify. I have written 
 merely for truth's sake and love's ; and with 
 this I leave my dear friend's memory to the 
 verdict of all honest hearts. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Joshua Davidson was tlie only son of a 
 village carpenter,. born in the small hamlet 
 of Trevalga on the North Cornwall coast, in 
 the year 1835. His parents were poor but 
 worthy people, who kept themselves very 
 much together and had but little to do with 
 the neighbours. Folks blamed this for pride, 
 and said they held themselj^es high because 
 they were the decayed branches of an 
 ancient family — some said dating from 
 King Arthur's self. Of course this was only 
 
2 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 an " Arthurian legend," if I may call it so, 
 that could not be verified ; for naturally 
 down about Tintagel everything has to do 
 with King Arthur — even the choughs. 
 Joshua sometimes spoke of it, but not from 
 pride ; there never was a man freer from 
 that failing than he ; rather from the belief 
 he had in what a learned man would call 
 hereditary transmission, but as we say, just 
 " in the blood,'' and a kind of idea that 
 dawned on him, quite of late years, that 
 there would be a revival of national glories, 
 national names and leaders, under new 
 aspects but from the ancient sources. And 
 if so, might he not count for something, 
 direct descendant as he believed he was of 
 the hero whose Castle had been one of his 
 earliest playgrounds, and on whose Quoit he 
 had spent many an hour of way-side dream- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 3 
 
 ing ? It was a fancy ; a harmless one ; so 
 let it pass for just as much as it was 
 worth. 
 
 There was nothing very remarkable about 
 Joshua's childhood. He was always a quiet, 
 thoughtful boy, and from his earliest years 
 noticeably pious. His parents came of the 
 Friends' stock; not of a strict kind them- 
 selves, for they joined in the Church services ; 
 but the fact is just an indication of the kind 
 of influences which helped to mould him in 
 early youth. He had a habit of asking why, 
 and of reasoning out a principle, from quite a 
 little lad ; which displeased people ; so that 
 he did not get all the credit from the school- 
 master and the clergyman to which his dili- 
 gence and good conduct entitled him. They 
 thought him troublesome, and some said he 
 was self-conceited ; which he never was ; but 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the more lie was in earnest the more he 
 offended them. 
 
 He was never well looked on by the 
 Vicar since a famous scene that took place 
 in the church one Sunday after afternoon 
 catechism. He was then about fourteen 
 years of age, and I have heard say he Avas 
 a beautiful boy, Avith a face almost like a 
 young woman's for purity and spirituality. 
 He was so beautiful that some ladies and 
 gentlemen staying at the Vicarage noticed 
 him during church time, and said he looked 
 like a boy-saint. But he knew nothing about 
 himself I question if he knew whether his 
 hair was black like mine, or, as it was, a 
 bright brown like ripe nuts in the sunshine. 
 After catechism was over he stood out before 
 the rest, just in his rough country clothes as 
 he was, and said very respectfully to the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 5 
 
 Vicar, Mr. Grand : * "If you please sii% I 
 would like to ask you a few questions/' 
 
 "Certainly, my lad, wliat have you to 
 say ? " said Mr. Grand rather shortly. He 
 did not seem over well pleased at the boy s 
 addressing him ; but he could not well 
 refuse to hear him because of the ladies 
 and gentlemen with him, and especially ]\Ir. 
 Freeman, a very good old man who thought 
 well of everybody, and let everybody do 
 pretty much as they liked. 
 
 " If we say, sir, that Jesus Christ was 
 God/' said Joshua, '' surely all that He said 
 and did must be the real right ? There 
 cannot be a better way than His ?" 
 
 * I do not mind giving tliis name of the clergyman, 
 because it was not his own ; only one that we lads gave 
 him behind backs, as it were ; else I do not intend to 
 give the names of any living actors in this history. The 
 scene I am now describing was told me by Joshua's 
 mother, who wrote it down as soon as she got home. 
 
6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 "Surely not, my lad/' Mr. Grand made 
 answer ; " what else have you been taught 
 all your life % what else have you been say- 
 ing in your catechism just now V 
 
 "And His apostles and disciples, they 
 showed the way too \ " said Joshua. 
 
 " And they showed the way too, as you 
 say ; and if you come up to half they taught 
 you'll do well, Joshua." 
 
 The Vicar laughed a little laugh as he 
 said this ; but it was a laugh, Joshua's 
 mother said, that seemed to mean the same 
 thing as a " scat " — our Cornish word for 
 a blow — only the boy didn't seem to see it. 
 
 " Yes ; but, sir, it is not of myself I am 
 thinking, it is of the world," said Joshua. 
 " If we are Christians, why don't we live as 
 Christians ? " 
 
 " Ah indeed ! why don't we ! " said Mr. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 7 
 
 Grand. '' Because of the wickedness of the 
 human heart ; because of the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil 1 '' 
 
 "■ Then, sir, if you feel this, why don't 
 you and all the clergy live like the apostles, 
 and give what you have to the poor V cried 
 Joshua, clasping his hands and making a 
 step forward, the tears in his eyes. '' Why, 
 when you read that verse, * Whoso hath 
 this world's good, and seeth his brother have 
 need, and shutteth up his compassion from 
 him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?' 
 do you live in a fine house, and have grand 
 dinners, and let Peggy Bray nearly starve 
 in that old mud hut of hers, and widow 
 Tregellis there, with her six children, and no 
 fire or clothing for them ? I can't make it 
 out, sir ! Christ was God ; and we are 
 Christians ; yet we won't do as He ordered. 
 
8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 thoiigli you tell us it is a sin that can never 
 be forgiven if we dispute what the Bible 
 says." 
 
 " And so it is/' said Mr. Grand sternly. 
 " Who has been putting these bad thoughts 
 into your head \ " 
 
 " No one, sir. I have been thinking for 
 myself. Michael, out by Lion's Den, is 
 called an infidel ; he calls himself one ; and 
 you preached last Sunday that no infidel 
 can be saved ; but Michael helped Peggy 
 and her base child when the Orphan Fund 
 people took away her pension, because, as 
 you yom-self told her, she was a bad woman, 
 and it was encouraging wickedness ; and he 
 worked early and late for widow Tregellis 
 and her children, and shared with them all 
 he had, going short for them many a time. 
 And I can't help thinking, sir, that Christ, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 9 
 
 wlio forgave all manner of sinners, would 
 have lielpecl Peggy with her base child, 
 and that Michael, being an infidel and such 
 a good man, is something like that second 
 son in the Parable who said he would not 
 do his Lord's will when he was ordered, but 
 who went all the same " 
 
 " And that your Yicar is like the first ? " 
 interrupted Mr. Grand angrily. 
 
 '' A\'ell, yes, sir, if you please," said Joshua 
 quite modestly but very fervently. 
 
 There was a great stir among the ladies 
 and gentlemen when Joshua said this ; and 
 some laughed a little, under their breath 
 because it was in church, and others lifted up 
 their eyebrows, and said, " What an extra- 
 ordinary boy ! " and whispered together ; 
 but Mr. Grand was very angry, and said in 
 a severe tone — 
 
lo THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 "These tliing^s are beyond the knowledofe 
 of an ignorant lad like you, Joshua ; and I 
 advise you, before you turn questioner and 
 reformer, to learn a little humility and 
 respect for your betters. I consider you 
 have done a very impertinent thing to-day, 
 and I shall mark you for it !" 
 
 " I did not mean to be impertinent, sir," 
 said Joshua eagerly ; "I want only to 
 know the right of things from you, and to 
 do as God has commanded, and Christ has 
 shown us the way. And as you are our 
 clergyman, and this is the House of God, I 
 thought it the best plan to ask. I want 
 only to know the truth ; and I cannot make 
 it out ! " 
 
 " Hold your tongue, sir ! '* said ]\Ir. 
 Grand? " God has commanded you to obey 
 your pastors and masters and all that are in 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. ii 
 
 authority over you ; so let us have no more 
 of this folly. Believe as you are taught, 
 and do as you are told, and don't set your- 
 self up as an independent thinker in matters 
 you understand no more than the ass you 
 drive. Go back to your place, sir, and 
 another time think twice before you speak 
 to your superiors." 
 
 " I meant no harm. I meant only the 
 truth and to hear the things of God," re- 
 peated Joshua sadly, as he took his seat 
 among his companions ; who tittered. 
 
 When they all went out of church Mr. 
 Grand was heard to say to Mr. Freeman : 
 " You will see, Freeman, that boy will go to 
 the bad ; he will turn out a pestilent fellow, 
 a freethinker and a democrat. Oh, I know 
 the breed, with their cant about truth and the 
 right! He richly deserved a flogging to-day 
 
12 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 if ever boy did ; to dare to take rae to task 
 in my own cliurcli 1 " 
 
 But Mr. Freeman said gently ; " I don't 
 think lie meant it for insolence. I think the 
 lad was in earnest, though of course he 
 should not have spoken as he did.'' 
 
 *' Earnest or not, he must be taught better 
 manners for the future," said Mr. Grand. 
 
 And so it was that Joshua was not well 
 looked on by the clergyman, who was his 
 enemy, as one may say, ever after. 
 
 All this made a great talk at the time, 
 and there are many who remember the whole 
 thing at this present day; as any one would 
 find if they were to ask down at Trevalga ; 
 but all that Joshua was ever heard to say of 
 it was : " I thought only of what was right 
 in the sight of God ; I never thought of man 
 at all." 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 13 
 
 He did not however, repeat the experi- 
 ment of asking inconvenient questions of his 
 social superiors in public ; but it was noticed 
 that after this he became more and more 
 thoughtful, and more and more under the 
 mfluence of a higher principle than lads of 
 his age are usually troubled with. And 
 though ahvays tender to his parents and re- 
 spectful to the schoolmaster and minister, 
 and the like of that, yet he was less guided 
 by what might be called expediency in his 
 conduct, and more than ever a stickler for 
 the uncompromising truth, and the life as 
 lived by Jesus Christ. He was not uncom- 
 fortable to live with, his mother said ; quite 
 the contrary ; no one ever saw him out of 
 temper, and no one ever knew him do a 
 bad thing ; but he somehow forced his 
 parents to be always up to the mark, and 
 
14 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 even tlie neighbours were ashamed to talk 
 loosely or say what they shouldn't before a 
 lad whose whole thought, whose sole en- 
 deavour was, " how to realise Christ.'* 
 
 " Mother," he once said, as he and Mrs. 
 Davidson stood by the cottage door together, 
 " I mean when I grow up to live as our Lord 
 and Saviour lived when He was on the earth. 
 For though he is God in Heaven he was only 
 man here ; and what He did we too can do 
 with His help and the Holy Spirit's." 
 
 *' He is our example, lad," said his mother 
 reverently. " But I doubt lest you fall by 
 over boldness." 
 
 *' Then, if imitation is over bold. His life 
 was a delusion, and He is not our example at 
 all," said Joshua. " AVhich is a saying ot 
 the devil." 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 15 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Joshua did not leave home early. He 
 wrought at his father's bench and was con- 
 tent to bide with his people. But his spirit 
 was not dead if his life was uneventful. He 
 gathered about him a few youths of his own 
 age, and held with them prayer meetings 
 and Bible readings, either at home in his 
 fathers house, or in the fields when the 
 throng was too great for the cottage. It 
 gave one a feeling as of old primitive times 
 to be sitting there under the clear sky of a 
 summer's evening, with the larks singing 
 over head, and the swallows and sea birds 
 
i6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 flasliino; tliroug;li tlie air, the voice of tlie 
 \Yaves as tliey beat up against Long Island 
 subdued to a tender murmur that seemed to 
 have a mystery somehow in it, and the 
 young carpenter reading to us of Christ, and 
 praying for the power to be like unto Him in 
 life and heart ; praying with an earnestness, 
 a realization, a very passion of entreaty — 
 nay, I have never heard or seen aught like it 
 since, in church or chapel either ! 
 
 And then he liimself was so unlike other 
 boys. He was so upright, so steadfast ! No 
 one ever knew Joshua tell the shadow of a 
 lie, or go back from his word, or play at 
 pretence. And he had such an odd way of 
 coming right home to us. He seemed to 
 have felt all that we felt, and to have 
 thouo;ht all our thouo^hts. Youno; as he was, 
 he was our leader even then. We all looked 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 17 
 
 for ^rreat tbing-s from liim. I should be 
 laughed at if I said how high our expecta- 
 tions reached. 
 
 The youths that Joshua got together as 
 his friends were as well-conditioned a set of 
 lads as you would wish to see ; sober, indus- 
 trious, chaste. They were never in any 
 trouble, and no one could say they had ever 
 heard one of them give back a bad word, 
 whatever the provocation, or say a loose 
 one ; but the clergy of their several parishes 
 scouted them, and stood at no evil to say of 
 them. For they were not church-goers ; and 
 that is always an offence to the clergy of 
 country parishes, who treat even the best of 
 the Dissenters as little better than rogues, 
 taking it partly as a personal affront and 
 partly as a moral sin if their parishioners 
 find greater comfort for their poor souls else- 
 
i8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 where than under them. However, for the 
 matter of that, the lads were of no denomi- 
 nation ; and though they prayed much and 
 often, it was neither at church nor chapel; it 
 was at their own houses or in the fields. 
 
 Their aim was to be thorough and like 
 Christ. They denounced the sin of luxury 
 among professing Christians, and spared no 
 one, lay or clerical : so did Christ, they said. 
 They set their faces against the priestly class 
 altogether, and maintained that Christ as 
 High Priest needed no subordinate or go- 
 between, and that the modern parson was 
 only the ancient Pharisee, whom Christ was 
 never weary of denouncing. They were 
 anti-Sabbatarians too, as He had been, and 
 held the doctrine of freedom in Christ 
 throughout. They believed implicitly every 
 word of the Gospels, which they stood by as 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 19 
 
 fuller of the Divine Life than the Epistles ; 
 and they thought that the Example left the 
 world was the one thing to follow and the 
 one pattern to imitate. Joshua's great hope 
 and desire, confessed among us, was to bring 
 back the world to the simplicity and broad 
 humanity of Christ's acted lif e ; and as a 
 believer in the divinity of that life, he could 
 not understand how it had been let drop. 
 His one central point was the same now as 
 that which had formerly troubled him — and 
 Mr. Grand ; namely, how, if Christ was God, 
 and His life given to us as our example, do 
 we not follow it literally, in simple exactness, 
 and as we find it set before us in the Gos- 
 pels % And he believed that God would 
 strengthen his hands, not only to enable him 
 to realise this in his own person, but also to 
 
 evangelise society, and bring it over to the 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Truth alono^ with him. He was waitinof 
 for a Sign ; and he believed it would be 
 given him. 
 
 He was but a young man at this time, 
 remember ; enthusiastic, with little or no 
 scientific knowledge and with much of the 
 logic of fanaticism; unable to judge between 
 the possible and the impossible, and putting 
 the direct interposition of God above the 
 natural law. Wherefore, he accepted the 
 text about faith removing; mountains as 
 literally true, and possible to be done. Given 
 the faith, the mountain would move. And 
 one evening he went down into the Eocky 
 Valley, earnest to try conclusions with God's 
 promise, and sure of proving it true. He had 
 fasted all day, and he liad prayed all day ; 
 not necessarily kneeling and repeating set 
 forms, but in the whole attitude of his mind ; 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 21 
 
 and in the twilioiit when work was over he 
 
 o 
 
 went down with three of us, myself and two 
 others, all certain that the truth of the Word 
 would be made manifest, and that he could 
 remove rocks by faith. 
 
 He prayed to God to grant us this mani- 
 festation — to redeem His promise. He was 
 full of faith : not a shadow of doubt chilled 
 or slacked him. As he stood there in the 
 softening twilight, with his arms raised 
 above his head and his face turned up to 
 the sky, his countenance glowed as Moses' 
 of old. He seemed inspired, transported 
 beyond himself, beyond humanity. He 
 commanded the stone to move in God's 
 name, and because Christ had promised : and 
 we knelt beside him, not so much tremblinsf 
 as exalted, feeling in the very presence of 
 the Divine, and that He would do unto us 
 
2 2 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 according to His word. But the rock stood 
 still ; and a stonechat went and perched 
 on it. 
 
 Another time he took up a viper in his 
 hand, quoting the passage, ''They shall 
 take up serpents." But the beast stung 
 him, and he was ill for days after. So, 
 when he ate a handful of the berries of the 
 black briony, and all but died of the poison. 
 Yet he had handled the viper and eaten the 
 berries in faith as simple and sincere as 
 when he had commanded the stone in the 
 Rocky Valley to move. 
 
 When the doctor was called in, and 
 Joshua told him, boylike, what he had done 
 and why and in what spirit, he shook his 
 head gravely, and told his mother he was 
 mad and had better be looked after. 
 
 " No, no, not mad, sir, because I believe 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 23 
 
 the Bible, and have determined to lead a 
 life after Christ's ^Yord and example," said 
 Joshua. 
 
 '' Tut ! rubbish I " said the doctor. 
 " What you've got to do, my lad, is to 
 plane your wood smooth and make your 
 joists firm. All this religious folly of 
 yours has no sense in it. I tell you it will 
 upset your brain, and that you are mad 
 now, and will be madder if you don't pull 
 up in time.'^ 
 
 " So Festus said to St. Paul, sir ; but he 
 was not mad, nor am I." 
 
 "But what do you want to do, jackass ? '^ 
 said the doctor with a good-humoured kind 
 of impatience. " What's amiss with your 
 poor foolish head that you can't take things 
 easy 5 
 
 " I want to find out which is true, sir," 
 
24 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 answered Joshua : '' the Bible which or- 
 dains certain ways of life ; or the Christian 
 world which disobeys them. If Christ was 
 God, there is but one way for us all. He 
 could not have left us an imperfect example 
 to be mended here and there as we think 
 best for the convenience of society. He is 
 God or man ; for, as things are, it is not 
 God and man — Christ and Christians ; and 
 I V\^ant to know which is the truth." 
 
 *' Take my advice,'' said the doctor 
 kindly ; " put all these thoughts out of 
 your head as quickly as you can. Get 
 some work to do in a new part of the 
 country, fall in love wdth some nice girl, 
 and marry as soon as you can make a home 
 for her. Give over reading; the Bible for a 
 time, and look up some pleasant stories and 
 books of travel, and the like ; and leave off 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 25 
 
 eating poison-berries and handling vipers. 
 That's the only life for you, depend upon it ; 
 and though I am no theologian, I venture 
 to say, that working honestly in that state 
 of life to which it has pleased God to call 
 you, going to church, keeping out of beer- 
 shops, and living like your respectable neigh- 
 bours, is a far better kind of thing tlum 
 all this high-flown religion you are hanker- 
 ing after. Depend upon it, our best religion 
 is to do our duty, and to leave the care of 
 our souls to those whose business it is to 
 look after them." 
 
 " Thank you, sir ; you mean kindly," 
 said Joshua. " But God has given me other 
 thoughts, and I must obey them if I would 
 not sin against the Holy Ghost." 
 
 And the doctor said afterwards to Mr. 
 Grand, that he was quite touched at the lad's 
 
26 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 sweetness and wrong-headedness combined, 
 and would have given mucli to have 
 been able to send him there and then to 
 a lunatic asylum, where he might have 
 been taken care of for a time and put to 
 rights. 
 
 The failure of these trials of faith per- 
 plexed us all, and profoundly afflicted 
 Joshua. Not many men have gone through 
 greater spiritual anguish, I should suppose, 
 than he did at this time. It was like the 
 sudden darkening of the sun to him, and 
 the doubt of himself which it brought Avas 
 nearer madness than his simple faith had 
 been. He passed through a bad time; when 
 his soul went down into the Valley of the 
 Shadow, if ever man s did I But in time he 
 came out into the light again. He knew 
 his own sincerity, and his entire acceptance 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 27 
 
 of the Word of God and of the Divinity of 
 Christ; and he could not think that God 
 had met his prayer with a rebuff. God, 
 who knew the heart, would he felt sure 
 have accepted his endeavour, had that en- 
 deavour been within the scope of His plan 
 for humanity. It was the first struggle 
 between Faith and Law, Eevelation and 
 Nature, through which every inquiring 
 mind has to pass ; and it was a bitter 
 one. 
 
 He said nothing of these thoughts for 
 many weeks. He was not a youth who 
 jumped to conclusions, but rather one who 
 pondered well, and who let his thoughts 
 ripen ; but at last he spoke one evening, 
 when we were o;athered too;ether as usual, 
 after work. 
 
 " Friends/' he said, " it seems to me — 
 
28 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 indeed, I think we must all see it now — 
 tlmt His Word is not to be accepted lite- 
 rally, and not to be acted on in all its 
 details. The laws of Nature are supreme, 
 and even faith cannot change them. Can 
 it be," he then said solemnly, " that much 
 of that Word is a parable ? — that Christ 
 was truly as he says of Himself, the corner 
 stone, but not the whole building ? — and 
 that we have to carry on the work in His 
 spirit, but in our ovm way, and not merely 
 to try and repeat His acts % '' 
 
 I do not think we were prepared for such 
 a speech. We looked at one another un- 
 easily, even the dimmest of us seeing some- 
 thing of the conclusions to which such a 
 principle would lead us, and forecasting the 
 rudderless wandering of souls that would 
 ensue. But Joshua would say no more. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 29 
 
 He bade us good-night soon after, and it 
 was long before we renewed the subject. 
 We all felt that he had broken dangerous 
 oTOund ; for had we not set out with the 
 determination to realise Christ in our lives, 
 founded on our conviction of the literal- 
 ness, the absolute uncompromising truth of 
 every word in the tjospels % — a truth not to 
 be explained away, or paraphrased in any 
 manner of worldly wisdom or expediency ; 
 but to be accepted crude, naked, entire as 
 it is set down ? It was one thing or the 
 other — Christ or society, the Bible or the 
 world. It could not be both ; but once 
 admit the right of choice, of criticism, and 
 where was then our standard ? Yet again, 
 what could we make of that text about 
 faith, when we had proved it for ourselves 
 and found it wanting ? And if Avrong in 
 
so THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 ever so small a matter, was not our theory 
 of absolute infallibility at an end ? But if 
 absolute infallibility was at an end, was 
 not that making Christ a mere temporary 
 teacher, local and for the day — not universal 
 and for all time; and God a bit by bit 
 worker ? And if so, and even Gospel reve- 
 lation is not final, where then exists the 
 absolute necessity of acceptance ? Yet, if 
 we came to this conclusion — sorrowfullest of 
 all ! — we must relinquish all anchorage every- 
 where, and do our best to piece together a 
 theory of life for ourselves, glad if any of 
 the broken frao;ments of faith mio;ht still 
 serve us. 
 
 But we were far off, as yet, from any such 
 conclusions ; and the Christ life, and the 
 Gospel narrative, and the need laid on us 
 all to follow in the Master's steps, and be- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 31 
 
 lieve as He taught, and do as He did, were 
 still the cardinal points of Joshua's creed, 
 and the object of his endeavours : and, with 
 him, of ours. 
 
THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 It was after this that we noticed a certain 
 restlessness in Joshua. He seemed to feel 
 the narrowness of his life down at such a 
 dead place as Trevalga, where a man must 
 work hard to keep body and soul together, 
 and keep them very poorly when he has done 
 his best ; and where he cannot get forward 
 save by his own thoughts. There is nothing 
 for an energetic-minded young man to do there 
 after his day's work is over. No lectures, 
 no mechanics' institute, no library ; only a 
 few books to be borrowed here and there by 
 chance. And Boscastle and Trevenna are 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 33 
 
 no farther advanced ; nor was even Camel- 
 ford in those days. And then Camelford is 
 full five miles away, across a wild whisht 
 country that does not invite much night 
 walking. To be sure there are the cliffs and 
 the sea, the waterfall up at Knighton's 
 Kieve, the rocks and the old ruins at Tin- 
 tagel — King Arthur s Castle — which fill the 
 imagination. But imagination does very 
 wxll for extreme youth, as looking back does 
 for old age : a man coming to his prime 
 wants action. 
 
 An opening however came in time, and 
 Joshua had an offer to go up to London to 
 follow his trade at a large house in the City ; 
 which he accepted; and got me a job as well, 
 that I mio^it be alono-side of him. For we 
 were like brothers ; he, the elder, the better, 
 the leader ; and I, the younger, the led. And 
 
34 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 neither was afraid of work ; or. let me add, 
 afraid for our work. AYe were skilled in our 
 trade so far as we could be without first-rate 
 teaching, having made it a point of duty and 
 honour both, that we should never o^ive folks 
 occasion to talk of us as babbling saunterers, 
 who took to the Bible because they could 
 not manage the plane and the saw. 
 
 A few days before he went, Joshua 
 happened to be coming out of his father's 
 workshop just as ]\Ir. Grand was passing, 
 driving the neat pair-horse phaeton he had 
 lately bought. 
 
 " "Well, Joshua, and how are you doing ? " 
 said the parson, pulling up. 
 
 I dare say he was a good man when he 
 was at home, but Mr. Grand was not fit to 
 be a parish priest — at all events, not of such 
 a place as Trevalga. He might have made 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 35 
 
 a fine general ofificer, or a dignitar}^ in a 
 
 catliedral where he had nothing to do with 
 
 the poor ; but among a lot of half-starving, 
 
 uneducated creatures, such as you find in a 
 
 by-kind of coast hamlet in Cornwall, he 
 
 was worse than useless. He had no love 
 
 for the poor, and no pity : he always called 
 
 them " the common people," and spoke of 
 
 them disdainfully, as if they wxre different 
 
 creatures from gentry. I question if he 
 
 allowed us the same kind of souls ; and I do 
 
 know that he denied equality of condition after 
 
 death, and quoted the text of "many mansions" 
 
 in proof of his theory of exclusion. He was 
 
 a man of good family himself, and his wife 
 
 was the daughter of a bishop ; he was rich 
 
 too, and looked to be made dean or bishop 
 
 himself by time. So you see, Trevalga was 
 
 only a stopping-place with him, where he 
 
 D 2 
 
S6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 just put ofi' tlie tiaie the best way he could 
 till he saw his way to better things ; and 
 he didn't care a rush for any one in the 
 place. 
 
 However, he drew up at seeing Joshua, 
 and asked him how he was ; and then 
 said : " And why have you not been to 
 church lately, my man ? " as if Joshua had 
 been in the habit of going, and had failed 
 only of late. This was Mr. Grand's way. 
 He never knew anything about his people. 
 That gave them to think, you see, that he 
 held himself too high to notice what such 
 poor A\Tetches might be about. God forgive 
 me if I misjudge him ! 
 
 " Well, sir," said Joshua, '' I don't go to 
 church, you know." 
 
 "No? have you joined the chapel then? 
 Is that your latest fad, Joshua ? " 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 37 
 
 "No, sir; neither cliurch nor chapel," 
 answered Joshua. 
 
 " What ! a new light on your own account, 
 hey ? " and he laughed as if he mocked 
 him. 
 
 "No, sir, only a seeker." 
 
 " The old paths not good enough for 
 you ? — the light that has lightened the 
 Gentiles these eighteen hundred years and 
 more not pure enough for an unwashed 
 Cornish lad, planing wood at a carpenter's 
 bench, and not able to speak two consecutive 
 words of orood Ensjlish ? " 
 
 " I must answer for my conscience to God, 
 sir," said Joshua. 
 
 " And your clergyman, appointed by God 
 and the State to be your guide, what of 
 him ? Has he no authority in his own 
 parish % " cried Mr. Grand warmly. " Does 
 
38 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 it never strike you, my fine fellow, that in 
 thinking for yourself, as you call it, you are 
 flying in the face both of Divine ordinances 
 and the laws of man, and that you are 
 entering on the sin of schism on the one 
 hand, and of rebellion on the other ? ^' 
 
 ''Look here, sir," said Joshua with 
 earnestness, but quite respectfully ; " if I 
 speak plainly, I mean it for no offence ; but 
 my heart burns within me and I must speak 
 out. I deny your appointment as a God- 
 given leader of souls. The Church is but the 
 old priesthood as it existed in the days of 
 our Lord, and is, as much as that was, the 
 blind leading the blind. There are good 
 and kind gentlemen among you, but not 
 Christians according to Christ. I see no sacri- 
 fice of the world, no brotherhood with the 
 poor ^^ 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 39 
 
 ■ " The poor ! " interrupted Mr. Grand dis- 
 dainfully ; " what would you have, you 
 young fool ? The poor have the laws of 
 their country to protect them, and the Gospel 
 preached to them for their salvation." 
 
 " Yes, and in preaching that — that is, in 
 giving two full services on Sundays, and 
 reading the marriage-service and the burial- 
 service and the like of that when you are 
 wanted — you discharge your conscience of 
 all other obligations towards them, and think 
 you have done enough. You never seem to 
 remember that when Christ preached the 
 Gospel to the poor it was to make them 
 equal with the rich. Why, sir, the poor of 
 our day are the lepers of Christ's ; and who 
 among you. Christian priests, consorts with 
 them ? Who ranks the man above his 
 station, or the soul above the man ? '' 
 
40 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 " Now, we have come to it 1 " cried Mr. 
 Grand. "I thought I should touch the 
 secret spring at last ! And you would like 
 us to associate with you as equals ? — Is that 
 it, Joshua? Gentlemen and common men 
 hob-and-nob together, and no distinctions 
 made ? You to ride in our carriages, and 
 perhaps marry our daughters ? " 
 
 He had his little girl of six or so in the 
 phaeton with him ; a pretty little maid that 
 used to go about dressed in blue velvet and 
 a white feather in her hat. 
 
 " That's just it, sir. You are gentlemen, 
 as you say, but not the followers of Christ. 
 If you were, you would have no carriages to 
 ride in, and your daughters would be what 
 Martha and Mary and Lydia and Dorcas 
 were, women of no station, bent only on 
 servino; God and the saints, and their title 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 41 
 
 to ladyhood founded on their degrees of 
 goodness." 
 
 " Going in for socialism, Joslma ? " said 
 Mr. Grand, continuinor his banterinor tone. 
 " A little radicalism, a little method ism, and 
 a great deal of self-assm\ance — that seems to 
 me to be about where you are ! " 
 
 " Going in for no isms at all, sir," said 
 Joshua. " Only for the truth as it is in 
 Christ ! " 
 
 " Shall I tell you what would be the very 
 thing for you % " said Mr. Grand quite 
 quietly. 
 
 " Yes, sir ; what ? " asked Joshua eagerly. 
 
 " This whip across your shoulders ! — and, 
 by George, if I were not a clergyman I w^ould. 
 lay it there, wdth a will ! " cried the parson, 
 half rising from his .seat. 
 
 No one had ever seen Joshua angry since 
 
42 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 lie had grown up. His temper was pro- 
 verbially sweet, and his self-control was a 
 marvel. But this time he lost both. It w^as 
 not so much as a maD, because of the insult 
 to himself; he would have borne that meekly 
 enough ; but it w^as the feeling that the 
 Sacred Thing had been mocked in him which 
 drove him into sudden anger : an anger so 
 violent and so sudden as to take the 
 clergyman fairly aback. 
 
 " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall ! " 
 he cried with vehemence. "Is this your 
 boastedleadership of souls? — this your learned 
 solving of difficulties? — this your fatherly 
 guidance of your flock ? * Feed my lambs ' 
 — with what ? with stones for bread — with 
 insult for sincerity — with the gentleman's 
 disdain for the poor thought of the artisan 
 — with class insolence for spiritual diffi- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 43 
 
 eulties ! Of a surety, Christ has to come 
 again to repeat the work which you priests 
 and churches have destroyed and made of 
 no effect, and to strip you of your ill-used 
 power. You are the gentleman, sir, and I 
 am only a poor carpenter's son; but I stand 
 against you now — man against man — soul 
 against soul — and I spurn you with a deeper 
 and more solemn scorn than you have spurned 
 me ! " He lifted his hand as he said this, 
 with a strange and passionate gesture, then 
 turned himself about and went in ; and 
 Mr. Grand drove off more his ill-wisher 
 than before ; as perhaps was only natural. 
 And yet he richly deserved all he had 
 got. 
 
 This was one of the stories that got 
 bruited abroad to Joshua's discredit. Some 
 said he had struck the parson — some that he 
 
44 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 liad been monstrously and unjustifiably im- 
 pertinent ; and the tale got bandied about as 
 a kind of dramatic scarecrow — a kind of 
 logical warning to young men given to think 
 for themselves, as to what would become of 
 them if they phook themselves free of autho- 
 rity. " You'll be as bad as Joshua to Parson 
 Grand," was a phrase I myself heard more 
 than once. But here is the story just as it 
 happened ; and I put it to my readers — was 
 Joshua so very much to blame, all things 
 considered — motives, feelings, spiritual dis- 
 appointment, and that inner dignity of Man 
 which overpowers all social differences when 
 the fit moment comes ? I can only say that 
 never, to the last, could he be got to see that 
 he had done wrong, and never, to the last, 
 could I say it or see it either. 
 
 "No," he used to say, "some kinds of 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 45 
 
 anger are righteous ; and this was of 
 them/' 
 
 But Mr. Grand made old Davidson, 
 Joshua's father, suffer for his son ; for he took 
 away his own custom from him, and did him / 
 what harm in the neighbourhood a gentle- 
 man's ill-word can do a workino- man. It 
 
 o 
 
 was a bad thmg for the old man. The 
 Trevalga schools were being built, and St. 
 Juliot's church was under repair, and David- 
 son, as the best workman thereabouts, would 
 have been sure to have been head man at 
 both jobs. But Mr. Grand, he put his 
 spoke in that wheel ; and one day wihen I 
 took courage to speak and plead, all I got 
 was a recommendation to mind my own 
 business, and not interfere where I was not 
 wanted. And tlien as if in consideration — a 
 kind of condescendino- consideration — for 
 
46 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 my being a " canter/' Mr. Grand Avound up 
 with saying tliat I niust see he was justified 
 according tc the law of God. 
 
 When T challenged him hotly, I daresay 
 intemperately, I daresay even impertinently, 
 for his proof— for you see I was but a poor 
 uneducated artisan, and he was a gentleman 
 and a scholar — he laughed, and said he did 
 not argue with carpenters' lads ; and when I 
 answered back, he ordered me out of the 
 house, saying T was as pestilent a fellow as 
 my friend ; — I replying angrily that I did not 
 think the pestilence rested with Joshua. 
 Which ended the interview; not without loss 
 of temper and dignity on both sides, and no 
 good done to anyone. 
 
 The night before we left for London 
 Joshua had a kind of vision or waking 
 dream, which he told me as we were on our 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 47 
 
 way to Launceston, walking up tlie hill 
 from Boscastle, while the omnibus toiled 
 after us. He was on the cliflf by Long 
 Island, when suddenly he seemed to be 
 caught away to a wide plain, where many 
 men were gathered. In the centre of 
 the plain was a hill, like Brown Willy 
 out there by Camelford, and on this 
 hill sat two kingly figures who ruled over 
 the swarming multitudes below. They sat 
 together hand in hand, and he saw that they 
 were in some mysterious manner inseparable. 
 The one was dressed as a high priest, and 
 was Ecclesiastical Christianity ; the other as 
 a king, and was Society ; and both were 
 stern, forbidding, and oppressive. The only 
 persons to whom they showed favour were 
 the well-dressed and the subservient — rich 
 people dressed in gold and jewels, and 
 
48 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the poor and undistinguished who were 
 submissive and conforming ; who ac- 
 cepted all that the high priest taught 
 without questioning the truth of any part, 
 and who obeyed what the kino; ordained 
 without even so much as a wish to resist. 
 These were called Believino; Christians and 
 Eespectable Members of Society ; and, in 
 consideration of their obedience, both the 
 high priest and the king smiled on them, and 
 spoke them fair. Yet they were scarcely 
 friendly to their adherents. The one sur- 
 rounded them with the most monstrous 
 shapes of demons cast by magic lanterns 
 and in everyway unreal, of which they were in 
 continual fear — God, whom yet they labelled 
 "Our Father/' and the '* God of Love," 
 the most terrible looking demon of all ; and 
 the more they were afraid, and the more 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 49 
 
 cruel they believed Our Father to be, the 
 more Ecclesiastical Christia.nity was content. 
 The other bound them round and round 
 with chains and swathing bands, till they 
 were scarcely able to move or breathe. And 
 when they submitted to the stifling torture 
 with a good grace — some of them even draw- 
 ing the links tighter, and buckling up the 
 thongs more home of their OAvn accord, 
 and all declaring the pattern of each 
 particular bandage to have been sent down 
 direct from heaven, and in no wise invented 
 as an experiment by Society — then the king 
 smiled on them kindly, and praised them 
 with many flattering words ; and the poor 
 atrophied wretches were quite content with 
 the barren honour of their reward. 
 
 At the feet of these two rulers lay three 
 figures cruelly bound and tortured. They 
 
50 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 were Truth, bearing in her arms her 
 young child Science, Freedom, and Hu- 
 manity. All three were stretched on racks 
 made in the form of a cross, which gave 
 in the eyes of the multitude a kind of 
 symbolic sanction to their torture. The 
 two rulers were for ever trying to gag them, 
 so that they should not speak ; but they 
 could not quite succeed ; and every now 
 and then they uttered words, loud and clear 
 as the sound of a silver trumpet, that stirred 
 the multitude below, and set men running 
 hither and thither, some shaking themselves 
 free of the bonds in which both Christianity 
 and Society had bound them. And when 
 they spoke, the high priest and the king and 
 their worshippers, all the well-dressed little 
 kings and poorer conformists, buffeted them ; 
 and would have killed them if thev could. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 51 
 
 Ill-treated as they were however, each 
 tortured being had a small knot of adherents. 
 Bound Truth, bearing her young child, 
 Science, gathered men of imposing aspect — 
 men of authority, of large brains, of tem- 
 perate nature, of clear and candid thought. 
 There were some among them of such un- 
 questionable grandeur, tliat even the mob of 
 Believing Christians and Eespectable Mem- 
 bers of Society paid them a certain cold, de- 
 precatory reverence as they passed; while 
 Ecclesiastical Christianity tried to reconcile 
 their statements with his own creed, hiding 
 his magic lantern painted with demons and 
 that all-devouring hell with which he terri- 
 fied the multitudes, when he spoke to them ; 
 saying, " See, there is no such great difier- 
 ence between us after all ! I do not con- 
 tradict you. Say what you will about the 
 
 B 2 
 
52 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 sun, and tlie age of the earth, the relations 
 of the universe, and the gradual evolution of 
 man, nothing that you advance disturbs 
 me. I only suj)plement you, and add the 
 divine grace of spiritual truth, which is 
 beyond your analysis. You are right 
 and I am right ; let us be friends and 
 brothers." 
 
 Society was less concerned about these 
 .philosophers. They were for the most part 
 swathed in Ms bands tight enough ; some for 
 pre-occupation with other matters, some for 
 expediency, some for dread of the unknown, 
 and some for conviction ; and, for the rest, 
 he let his twin-brother, the high priest, fight 
 his battles as he best could. 
 
 Eound the prostrate form of Freedom, 
 scarred, gashed, bleeding, fettered, stood 
 only a few. Even the men of science were 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 53 
 
 afraid of this huge giant, this son of the 
 old god^, whose might no one had been able 
 to calculate should he once arise in his 
 strength. All, save his own few lovers, 
 chiefly of the poorest class, looked on 
 him with dread, and prophesied evil 
 days for the world should he ever get free 
 of his bonds and the symbolic constraint 
 of the cross. But his small band of lovers, 
 themselves either martyrs or victims, worked 
 incessantly at his deliverance ; every now 
 and then getting one link loosened here and 
 another there, knowing that in time he would 
 with their help shake himself free of all 
 his chains, and stand up before the world, 
 the great-hearted leader, the glad possession 
 of every man and woman that breathes. 
 
 The third figure was the most deeply 
 oppressed. The face was hidden, but it was 
 
54 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 a lovely form, vilely clad in disfiguring gar- 
 ments, and bespattered with dirt that had 
 been flung at it by the high priest and 
 Society in concert. On its nailed hands 
 hung tlie weeping and the miserable ; and 
 no one was rejected or bidden back. The 
 most miserable sinner that crawled — the 
 thief, the murderer, the harlot — it gathered 
 them all around it ; its own bound hands 
 doing their checked best to free them from 
 their stains. Pleasure and pain and sin and 
 virtue all rested equally on its large breast, 
 and to all it gave full sympathy and under- 
 standing. It condemned no one ; only it 
 refused obedience to the high priest and the 
 king. As the dreamer looked, it slowly 
 turned its face to the sky : and Joshua re- 
 cognised in the soiled and vilified face of 
 Humanity — the face of Christ. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 55 
 
 Suddenly standing side by side with tne 
 magnificently attired j)ontiff, this Eccle- 
 siastical Christianity, oppressor of Truth, 
 slanderer of Humanity, t3rrant of Freedom, 
 ruler of the churches, and through them of 
 the consciences of men ; side by side too, 
 with his tmn-brother Society, his fellow- 
 tyrant and oppressor, w^as a man coarsely 
 clad in rude garments, a man of uncul- 
 tured speech, of unconventional manners, 
 but of a noble aspect, whose face was 
 the face of an enthusiast who believed in 
 himself, and in whose self-reliance were his 
 sole credentials. His companions were the 
 same as those who had gathered round the 
 crucified form of Humanity. All the poor 
 and the miserable, the leprous, the sinners, 
 the outcast, and those " sinless Cains " of 
 history, those men who had lived to do good 
 
56 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 to their generation, and who had been stoned 
 and crucified and blasphemed and cursed as 
 their reward — they were all clustered closely 
 round him. He had nothing to do with 
 that regal Society, that mitred Christianity. 
 He loudly proclaimed his antagonism to 
 both, and drew to him only such as they 
 spurned and rejected. 
 
 He pointed to the high priest : " Look," 
 he said to Joshua, " what they have made of 
 me; of an unskilled artisan, no schoolman even 
 of his day, and a vagrant preacher living by 
 charity, they have made a king ; of a man, a 
 god ; of a preacher of universal tolerance, 
 the head of a persecuting religion ; of a life, 
 a dogma ; of an example, a church. Here 
 am I, Jesus the Nazarene, the son of Joseph 
 and Mary, as I lived on earth ; poor, un- 
 learned, a plebeian, and a socialist, at war 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 57 
 
 with the gentlemen and ladies of my society, 
 the enemy of forms, of creeds, of the 
 priestly class of respectabilities ; and there 
 you see my modern travesty, this jewelled, 
 ornate, exclusive Ecclesiastical Christianity, 
 who is the ancient Pharisee revived. To 
 you, and to such as you, is given the task 
 of bringing men back to the creed that I 
 preached. And if in securing the essence of 
 the creed you forget the Founder, and call 
 my doctrine by another name than mine, so 
 be it. The world wants the thing, not the 
 label ; and Christ-likeness, not Ecclesias- 
 tical Christianity, is the best Saviour of 
 men/' 
 
 As he said this the whole vision seemed 
 to fade away, and the voice of Peggy Bray, 
 whining and drunk, with ]\Ir. Grand's deep 
 tones of angry di-sgust, broke the cjuiet 
 
S8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 evening stillness, and brought Josliua back 
 to the realities of life. 
 
 " Something seemed to bid me," he said, 
 when he told me the story : " I ran oflf 
 over the down as fast as I could, and caught 
 Peggy on the Tintagel Eoad. She was 
 drunk, dirty, and crying. I took her by 
 the hand. ' Peggy, woman,' I said, * dry 
 your eyes, and come along with me/ I 
 spoke so sudden, I startled her, and so a 
 little sobered her. Then I took her by the 
 arm and led her to mother's cottas^e. * Here, 
 mother,' I said ; ' here is a bit of Christ- 
 work for you to do. Take this poor creature, 
 in her dirt and vileness as she is, and cleanse 
 her. You believe and know that God's love 
 did that for the world : we are less pure 
 than Christ, but we hold ourselves too fine 
 to follow His example in that ! Love her, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 59 
 
 mother ; she is your sister — and maybe your 
 love can heal her/ Poor mother ! she didn't 
 like the task. She cried over it, and said 
 that I put a burden on her she could not 
 bear ; but I held to my poiut," said Joshua, 
 with a glowing face ; " and she yielded. 
 Peggy stayed in our house for over a month, 
 and mother was ill-called for her work. Not 
 that she much cared, I fancy. I don't know, 
 however, whether she did or not ; she never 
 said much. And though Peggy broke out 
 again and went to the bad as before, yet a 
 month's experience of loving-kindness and 
 cleauly living was something. At all events, 
 it was practical Christianity ; and if it did 
 Peggy herself little or no good permanently, 
 it was the right thing to do, and mother was 
 so far benefited." 
 
6o THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 In London a new view of life opened to 
 Joshua altoo;etlier. Tlie first thinoj that 
 struck him in our workshop was the avowed 
 infidelity of the workmen, with the indif- 
 ference so many of them showed for any 
 spiritual life at all. Having apparently made 
 up their minds that Christianity, as taught by 
 the churches and practised in high places, is 
 a humbug throughout, they seemed to have 
 stopped there, not caring to go farther, nor 
 to find a truer and better religion for them- 
 selves. Distrust had penetrated to their in- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 6i 
 
 most souls, and God was abandoned because 
 man had betrayed them. Some of the better 
 class among them had become Unitarians ; 
 whicli gave them the most religion with the 
 least dogma of all the sects that go by the 
 name of Christian ; and some had transferred 
 their whole passion and life of thought 
 and intellectual energy to science, finding 
 that consolation in nature whicb they could 
 not get from revelation. But very few were 
 what is called religious men : that is, men 
 believing in the Bible, going to church on 
 Sundays, and reverencing the clergy as men 
 placed over them by a higher power to guide 
 theii' souls as they would. 
 
 The immense gulf existing between the 
 church and the workmen also surprised the 
 Cornish lad. At home, though the cottagers 
 and the clergy stood as wide as the poles 
 
62 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 apart, socially and intellectually, yet there 
 was some kind of mutual knowledge and 
 intercourse ; wliicli, if it meant little for 
 human wants and less for spiritual needs, 
 still was intercourse and knowledge. In 
 London there was none ; or so little in pro- 
 portion to the work to be done, it seemed 
 almost as good as none. The parish priest, 
 save in some chiefly ritualistic exceptions, 
 scarcely exists, and his place is supplied by 
 all sorts of lieutenants, both authorised and 
 irregular ; by Bible women, the City mis- 
 sioixaries. Baptists, Eoman Catholics, and the 
 thousand and one odd, obscure sectaries of 
 whom no one in good society ever heard 
 the names — anything rather than the 
 fashionable preacher who has invested all his 
 store of godliness in his sermons, or the bene- 
 ficed clergyman who thinks his East-end 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 63 
 
 income dearly bought at the price of his 
 East-end residence. 
 
 As he grew however, to understand the 
 inner relations of life in the metropolis, he 
 ceased to wonder at the wide-spread in- 
 differentism of the working men ; and he 
 came further to understand how religion, like 
 other things, had followed that class antago- 
 nism felt by the artisan, to wdiich the exclu- 
 siveness of caste cherished by the rich had 
 given birth. Christianity represents to the 
 poor, not Christ tender to the sinful, visiting 
 the leprous, the brother of publicans, at whose 
 feet sat the harlots and were comforted, but 
 the bishop in his palace and the parson in 
 his grand house, the gentleman taking sides 
 with God against the poor and oppressed, as 
 an elder brother in the courts of heaven 
 kicking the younger out of doors. It is in 
 
64 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 fact, lie used to say, antagonism not love ; 
 Cain not Christ. 
 
 His religious experiences followed tlie 
 natural course of sucli a mind as his, at once 
 so earnest and so logical. Attracted by the 
 self-sacrificing lives of so many of the Eitual- 
 ist party, he threw himself with ardour into 
 the congregation of a noted City priest 
 whose name I do not feel justified in giving, 
 as I have not asked his consent. If, how- 
 ever, he should read these pages he will 
 remember Joshua Davidson well enough. 
 The Superior, as he was called, took to him 
 greatly, and Joshua felt all the charm of 
 close intercourse with a cultivated mind. It 
 was the first time this great good had been 
 granted him, and it was like a new life to 
 him. At one time I thought he would have 
 abandoned the independent line he had 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 65 
 
 diosen and would have gone over to the High 
 Church party; but I do not think now that he 
 was ever very near. For, fascinated as he Avas 
 with the earnestness and culture of the Supe- 
 rior and his colleagues, they failed to hold him 
 mainly because of the largeness of their asser- 
 tions, the smallncss of their proofs, and the 
 feeling he had that more lay behind their 
 position than they acknowledged, and that 
 they used their adherents as tools. Added 
 to which, their devotion to the Church rather 
 than to Christianity at large, the absorption 
 of the human example of Christ in His 
 mystical character, the deification of the man 
 as He lived, as if He had walked about like 
 a God with a halo round His head, and was 
 not a real man of the people of his time — 
 of lowly birth, of confessed scientific igno- 
 rance, in antagonism to all the wealth and 
 
66 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 culture, and class-refinement and political 
 economy of His day, fighting the cause of 
 the poor against the rich, of the outcast 
 against the aristocrats, just as any earnest 
 democrat, any single-hearted communist, 
 might be doing at the present day — all this 
 repelled him from close union ; and all this 
 made him feel that, great and good as the men 
 themselves are, in the High Church movement 
 was not his Shekinah. Then again, their 
 elaborate system of symbolism seemed to 
 him puerile ; a playing with spiritual toys 
 that had less reality than ingenuity ; and 
 their central creed of sacrifice rather than 
 commemoration in the Eucharist, backed by 
 their assumption of a priesthood possessing 
 unproved and mysterious powers, failed to 
 convince him. 
 
 " You have captivated my heart," he one 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 67 
 
 day said to the Superior — '' you charm my 
 tastes — you delight my imagination ; but 
 you have not mastered my reason. Fairly 
 reasoned out I do not think your position 
 is tenal)le. You are Eoman Catholics under 
 another name ; irregulars claiming to be re- 
 ceived on the footino' of the acknowledged 
 Body Guard ; you are infallible yet eclectic, 
 and I cannot concede infallibility to eclec- 
 ticism." 
 
 " But have you no reverence for the 
 virtues of obedience and humility ? " asked 
 the Superior. " Cannot you quell that ques- 
 tioning spirit of yours for the sake of the 
 Church's honour, and to maintain a close 
 front ? Who can hope to do anything as an 
 isolated unit against a host ? Is not the 
 whole secret of strength in organisation ? " 
 
 " But I cannot become part of a system 
 
 !• 2 
 
68 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 for expediency ! " said Josliua mournfully. 
 " Some men may, but it is not given to me 
 to be able to stifle my own individual con- 
 science for any considerations of party 
 strength. I have got it to do — to find out 
 if practical Christianity is possible in the 
 world, and to learn why, being Christians, 
 we are not of Christ. I know I should 
 get something of the kind in such institu- 
 tions as St. Vincent de Paul and the like, 
 but I should have there so much in excess of 
 the simple faith I love, that I cannot join 
 them. I must go on my way alone." 
 
 " x4nd you will fail," said the Superior. 
 " No one man can succeed in such a search as 
 yours. Guided by wise counsels and su^d- 
 ported by authority you might come to satis- 
 factory conclusions ; but adrift on the wide 
 sea of dissent, and private opinion, and indi- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 69 
 
 vidual interpretation, you are lost. To 
 the Church came the promise and the 
 Spirit ; believe me the Church is your only 
 ark." 
 
 " If any, then the Eoman Catholic at 
 once, frankly and without reserve," said 
 Joshua. " If the keys of life and death are 
 held by a governing body, they are surely 
 held within the Vatican ; and if I must 
 enter irto the virtue of unquestioning obe- 
 dience, I would rather accept it in its to- 
 tality. Your ritualism seems to me like 
 Canute and the waves. * Thus far and no 
 farther,' you say to private inquiry ; and 'only 
 so much and so much will we take of tradi- 
 tion and the \dtality of past ages.' Where 
 is your standing-point? where your logical 
 foothold ? By what authority do you re- 
 ject and accept at will \ and by what mea- 
 
70 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 sure do you set the length of the tether of 
 reason ? ^' 
 
 •'' If you are for the whole history of the 
 Church you must read more closely than 
 you have done," said the Superior a little 
 evasively. 
 
 *' Forgive me, sir," continued Joshua 
 earnestly ; ''I know you will, whatever I 
 say ; for I am speaking now heart-open, 
 man to man, and there is no question of dis- 
 courtesy or of courtesy ; but with all my 
 personal love and admiration for the pro- 
 fessors of your creed, the creed itself is 
 tainted with an insincerity I cannot digest. 
 And your position, standing as you do in 
 the front, between yearning souls demanding 
 the support of authority, the moral protec- 
 tion of infallibility, and the only Western 
 Church that can give it logically, is, to my 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 71 
 
 way of thinking, both dangerous to your- 
 selves and cruel to the people. Why do 
 you not go over to Rome at once, sir, since 
 your commission is self-appointed and irre- 
 gular \ " 
 
 The Superior smiled gently. " I never 
 argue," he said ; " for I never found any 
 good to come of it. These questions are 
 matters for spiritual reception, not dialec- 
 tical discussion. Use the appointed means 
 and the grace of our Lord will find 
 
 you." 
 
 *' I have used them ; I do use them ; and 
 yet I cannot get conviction," Joshua made 
 answer, as sorrowfully as frankly. 
 
 " Persevere ! " said the Superior solemnly; 
 " the promises of God never failed yet." 
 
 Joshua did not speak. He remembered 
 his trial of the material promises and how 
 
72 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 they failed ; but he did not go into that 
 with the Superior. He had learat to look 
 back on the phase through which he had 
 passed then as a boyish craze, sincere if you 
 will, but a craze all the same. Yet it had 
 struck into him, and, perhaps unknown to 
 himself how much, had helped greatly to 
 modify his views. It had broken down his 
 belief in the literal exactness of the Scrip- 
 tures, and the science-lectures he attended 
 went the same way ; and when one's child- 
 like confidence has received its first shock, 
 it is Ions: before anythino^ like an analosfous 
 faith is reconstructed out of more mature 
 knowledge. 
 
 At this time Joshua's mind was like an 
 unpiloted vessel. He was beset with 
 doubts, in which the only thing that kept 
 its shape or place was the character of 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 73 
 
 Christ. For the rest, everything had failed 
 him. 
 
 " What/' he said to me at this time, 
 "if the spiritual life is as little real as 
 that act of faith in which we all failed ? — 
 if what we call conviction is only a 
 state of the mind — a subjective condition 
 owning no absolute without — a state as 
 good and righteous for tKe Buddhist, for 
 the Mohammedan, for the Hindoo, as for 
 the various Christian denominations ? We 
 are all convinced. Every creed has had its 
 martyrs and enthusiasts and its well-trained, 
 well-balanced professors, all as firmly con- 
 vinced of its truth and of its being the one 
 truth only, as the Superior is convinced of the 
 absolute rightness of Anglicanism, as the 
 Pope believes in the infallibility of his 
 Church, and the whole Christian world in 
 p 
 
74 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the impregnability of the Bible and its literal 
 exactness. I cannot focus Gocl as these men 
 are able to do ; and yet I feel it better to be 
 rooted than wandering, as I am wandering 
 now, unfixed and nnnourished. If you are 
 rooted you can grow ; but floating, hover- 
 ing, what is the soul but as one of those 
 winged seeds carried about by the wind 
 and fastened nowhere \ " 
 
 "And yet," I answered, *'it is better to 
 be unfastened from a fallacy than to be 
 rooted on it. There must be the moment 
 of suspension when you are in progress. To 
 mount a ladder you must leave the rung on 
 which you stand, and before you have your 
 foot on the other it is nowhere — only in 
 space. The time of doubt is a time of pain, 
 but it must be passed through if we would 
 believe the better thing. To Lave lost the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 75 
 
 old land-marks— left them behind us— is 
 not necessarily to have lost the right way, 
 Joshua ! " 
 
 *' Ah ! but to have been so near to God as 
 I once felt myself— to have lived in the light 
 — and now to be so far off— to be in darkness 
 and alone ! " he sighed. 
 
 " The darkest hour is that before dawn," 
 was my reply. '' Even at this moment 
 God may be preparing you for con- 
 viction." 
 
 I do not think that what is called the 
 Evangelical school ever warmed Joshua as 
 the Eitualists had done. If the assumptions 
 of the Church, clad in her venerable autho- 
 rity, seemed to him excessive, the assump- 
 tions of sectarianism, where each man is an 
 independent pope and quite as bigoted as 
 the real one, Avere more so. And he could 
 
76 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 not come to believe tliat faith, wMcli is a 
 thing we cannot give ourselves, which will 
 not come for the seeking, and which, when 
 we have it, is as likely to lead us wrong as 
 right — unless all beliefs are true alike ; which 
 sectarianism does not admit — is the one sole 
 means of salvatioD, without which we are 
 lost. It seemed to him a theory entangled 
 in contradictions. Faith is the gift of God ; 
 no one can believe at will, but only as God 
 gives him grace to do so ; but if you do not 
 believe you are damned, and God punishes 
 you for not having what He will not bestow. 
 Again, you have to distinguish between your 
 various kinds of faith, and you must discern 
 accurately which kind is sent by God and 
 which by the devil. No outward test can 
 tell you : for the Calvin ist holds the Eo- 
 manist in deadly error ; the Eomanist damns 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 77 
 
 the heretic \Yith no hope of mercy ; the 
 Anglican talks about the deadly sin of 
 dissent ; and not one of them all regards the 
 Unitarian, the Jew, or the Pagan, as in any 
 sort of possibility a child of God, or as aught 
 but a confirmed, if unconscious, son of the 
 devil. What known test then can be applied 
 to all these conflicting schools ? To Joshua's 
 mind, none ; and the more he sought for the 
 unerrino; truth — truth centralised, unified, 
 focussed — the less, it seemed to him, he found 
 it, and the more dignity and grandeur ani 
 charity he felt resided in the wide creed cf 
 Universalism. 
 
 Durino; this time he did not neoiect what 
 1 suppose may be called secular life. He 
 attended all such science-classes as he had 
 time for ; and being naturally quick in study, 
 he picked up a vast deal of knowledge in a 
 
78 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 very sliort time ; lie interested himself in 
 politics, in current social questions, specially 
 tliose relating to labour and capital, and in 
 the condition of the poor. This, above all, 
 was his main subject ; and perhaps more 
 than any thing else, the fact that all the 
 sects and denominations he had searched 
 into accepted the class di^dsions of the pre- 
 sent time as final, and thought that it was 
 enough to preach the Gospel to the poor — 
 that is, to preach to them submission and 
 patience, and belief that Christ was God, 
 and then leave them to their physical 
 wretchedness and social degradation as to 
 things that must be, and with which they 
 must make themselves content — had turned 
 him from communion with them, one and 
 all. It was such a comfortable way of get- 
 ting rid of a difficulty, he used to say. It 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 79 
 
 was offering a potential heaven as a bribe to 
 induce the starving and the down-trodden 
 to be patient with their sufferings, and sub- 
 missive to the unjust tyranny of circum- 
 stances. It was shirking the question of 
 Christian equality altogether; and nullifying 
 the whole teaching and tendency of Christ's 
 life. 
 
 So his time passed, and his thoughts went 
 more and more into the rationalistic channel ; 
 till at last one evening, when I and other of 
 his friends were sitting with him, he made 
 his declaration. 
 
 " Friends," he said, " I have at last cleared 
 my mind and come to a Belief. I have 
 proved to myself the sole meaning of Christ: 
 it is Humanity. I relinquish the miracles, 
 the doctrine of the Atonement, the doc- 
 trine of the Divinity of Jesus, and the 
 
8o THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Tinelastic finality of His knowledge. He 
 was the product of His time ; and if He 
 went beyond it in some things, He was 
 only abreast of it in others. His views of 
 human life were oriental ; His images are 
 drawn from the autocratic despotism of the 
 great and the slavish submission of the 
 humble, and there is never a word of repro- 
 bation of these conditions, as conditions, only 
 of the individuals according to their desert. 
 He did His best to remedy that injustice, so 
 far as there might be solace in thought, by 
 proclaiming the spiritual equality of all men, 
 and the greater value of worth than status ; 
 but He left the social question where he found 
 it — paying tribute even to Csesar without re- 
 luctance — His mind not being ripe to accept 
 the idea of a radical revolution, and His hands 
 not strong enough to accomplish it, if even 
 
rOSHUA DAVIDSON. 8i^. 
 
 He liad imamned it. But neither He nor His 
 
 o 
 
 disciples imagined more than the communism 
 of their own sect ; they did not touch the 
 throne of Caesar, or the power of the heredi- 
 tary irresponsible Lord. Their communism 
 never aimed at the equalization of classes 
 throughout all society. Hence, I cannot 
 accept the beginning of Christian politics as 
 final, but hold that we have to carry on the 
 work under different forms. The modern 
 Christ would be a politician. His aim would 
 be to raise the whole platform of society, he 
 would not try to make the poor contented 
 with a lot in which they cannot be much 
 better than savages or brutes. He would 
 work at the destruction of caste, which is 
 the vice at the root of all our creeds and insti- 
 tutions. He would not content himself with 
 denouncing sin as merely spiritual evil ; he 
 
82 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 would go into its economic causes, and destroy 
 the flower by cutting at the roots — poverty 
 and ignorance. He would accept the truths 
 of science, and he would teach that a man 
 saves his own soul best by heljDing his neigh- 
 bour. That, indeed. He did teach ; and that 
 is the one solid foothold I have. Friends, 
 Christianity according to Christ is the creed 
 of human progress, not that of resignation 
 to the avoidable miseries of class ; it is 
 the confession that society is elastic, and 
 that no social arrangements are final ; that 
 morals themselves are only experimental, 
 and that no laws are divine — that is, absolute 
 and unchangeable by circumstance. It is 
 the doctrine of evolution, of growth ; and 
 just as Christ was the starting-point of a new 
 era of theological thought, so is the present 
 the starting-point of a new era of social fact. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. %i 
 
 Let us then strip our Christianity of all 
 the mythology, the fetichism that has grown 
 about it. Let us abandon the idolatry with 
 which we have obscured the meaning of the 
 Life ; let us go back to the Man, and carry 
 on His work in its essential spirit in the 
 direction suited to our times and social con- 
 ditions. Those of you who still clmg to the 
 mystical aspect of the creed, and who prefer 
 to worship the God rather than imitate the 
 Man, must here part company with me. You 
 know that, as a youth, I went deep into the 
 life of prayer and faith ; as a man, I have 
 come out into the upper air of action ; 
 into the understanding that Christianity is 
 not a creed as dogmatised by churches, 
 but an organization having politics for its 
 means and the equalization of classes as its 
 end. It is Communism. Friends ! the doc- 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 trine I have chosen for myself is Christian 
 Communism — and my aim will be, the Life 
 after Christ in the service of humanity, 
 ■without distinction of persons or morals. 
 The Man Jesus is my master, and by His 
 example I will walk." 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 85 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 These tlien were the stao^es througli 
 whicli Joshua's mind had passed ; first, 
 literal acceptance of the Word, which as 
 he went on he found to be against the 
 laws of nature, and which therefore he 
 relegated to the ignorance and exagge- 
 ration of the time in which it was 
 written ; next, the authority of the Church 
 with its increment of symbolism and tra- 
 dition, by which the Humanity of Jesus is 
 resolved into a mystical Appearance of 
 Di^^nity, and his Life made no longer an 
 example for men to follow but a dogma to 
 
86 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 be worshipped under emblems ; and now tbe 
 frank acceptance of that Humanity alone, 
 of tlie Man as a teacher, and of the Life 
 as an example to be faithfully followed ; 
 more especially in its tenderness to sinners 
 and its brotherhood with the poor and out- 
 cast. It was an abandonment of the dead 
 mystical for the living real ; but I doubt if 
 any single sect among all the hundreds into 
 which the Christianity of Jesus is shredded, 
 would have recognised him as a brother 
 Christian, or have believed that Christ would 
 do aught else to him in the Last Day but 
 deny him as a '' thief and a robber." 
 
 And now Joshua began to carry out his 
 programme of life wdth more fixed lines. 
 He disdained nothing that could advance 
 him in knowledge and intellectual strength : 
 and I have often heard him say that the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 87 
 
 great marvels of science, such as were shown 
 us in the lectures to workiug men that we 
 attended, stirred his soul to religious feeling 
 just like the passion of prayer. And what 
 he knew and valued for himself, that he was 
 eager to impart to others. And it was this 
 which made him begin his " night school," 
 where he got together all who would come, 
 and tried to interest them in some of the 
 more taking *' fairy tales of science," as well 
 as to teach them a few homely truths in 
 the way of cleanliness, health, good cooking, 
 and the like ; with interludes, so to speak, 
 of lessons in morality; winding up with a few 
 simple prayers and an attempt to make his 
 hearers feel the Presence and the Power of 
 God. All came to this meeting who would ; 
 thieves and drunkards, lost women and gut- 
 ter-children — no matter who : there was a 
 
88 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 kindly welcome for all ; no preaching at 
 them for their sins ; no expression of 
 spiritual or moral superiority, but just the 
 great loving equality which does the de- 
 graded so much good, and gives them, if 
 only for a moment, a flash of natural self- 
 respect and the glorious sense of inclusion 
 and brotherhood. So that you see his life 
 was not a meagre one ; and while he blessed 
 others so far as his power went, he grew 
 daily riper in his own thoughts, and fuller 
 of knowledge, and more clear as to what he 
 meant. 
 
 We were very poor all this time : that of 
 course we understood we must be. We were 
 accustomed to it, and would have been more 
 embarrassed with a lot of surplus money to 
 spend, if we had had to spend it on ourselves, 
 than we were to make the best of the little we 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 89 
 
 possessed. Bat we did look to live like 
 decent men, and not like savages. And we 
 desired tke same for our order. Yet how 
 was that possible in the conditions in which 
 we found ourselves ? And we were only 
 two out of thousands. 
 
 We lodged in a stifling court, Church- 
 court, wdiere every room was filled as if 
 cubic inches were gold, as indeed they are 
 to London house-owners, if human life is 
 but dross. Children swarmed like rabbits in 
 ev.ery house, and died like sheep with the 
 rot. It was sore to see them, poor little, 
 pale, stunted, half-naked creatures, playing 
 about the foul uncleansed pavement of the 
 court, from the reeking gutter of which 
 they picked up apple-parings, potato-peel- 
 ings, fish-heads, and the like, which I have 
 seen them many a time wipe on their rags 
 
90 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 and eat. "The broncMtis " it was called 
 that sent so many of them to the hospital 
 and the graveyard, but the real word was 
 poverty : poverty in everything ; in food, in 
 clothing, in care, in lodging. It made one's 
 heart ache to see them — them and their 
 parents too : the hopeless misery of their 
 lives and the moral degradation following. 
 And it made one think with deep amazement 
 of what the wisdom of that nation could be 
 which leaves its riches to rot in the gutter 
 for want of looking after and tending; 
 not to speak of the religion, which contents 
 itself with building churches, and endowing 
 foreign and colonial bishoprics, while its 
 own immortal souls perish for lack of the 
 Bread of Life squandered in baskets full on 
 the altars to Baal ! Where to find the issue \ 
 How to fill up the great chasm between the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 91 
 
 rich and the poor, the virtuous and the 
 vicious, the learned and the ignorant, the 
 civihsed and the brutish ? 
 
 " There is only one way out of it," said 
 a noted M.P. to Joshua one day, a great 
 political economist and a strict Malthusian : 
 " abstinence ; if you wish to see the poor 
 raised you must lighten the labour market 
 by bringing fewer labourers into it. That 
 is the first necessity. Leave off having 
 children, live frugally, and put by money, 
 and as many of 3^ou can, emigrate." 
 
 " Is this not omitting one important 
 factor from your calculations, sir ? " said 
 Joshua. 
 
 " What do you mean ? ^' asked Mr. . 
 
 " Merely the human nature there is in 
 humanity," said Joshua. " Do you think 
 the poor have no instincts ? Is not a wife 
 
92 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 or a husband, a home where there are little 
 children, sometimes a day's pleasure, and 
 the old family ties of father and mother 
 and brothers and sisters — are not all these 
 as dear to them as to the rich ? Why 
 should they be required to forego these that 
 the rich may not be called upon to share ? " 
 
 " Would you destroy the existing order of 
 society ? " said the M.P. sternly. 
 
 " Destroy it ? aye ! root and branch, if 
 need be ! In no civilised community — not 
 to speak of a Christian one, if Christianity 
 meant anything — ought there to be such 
 places as Belgrave-square and Church-court. . 
 Keep your Belgrave-square by all means, 
 but let the Church-courts be made at least 
 wliolesome and decent." 
 
 "You have the remedy in your own 
 hands," said the ]\r.P. " So long as you 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 93 
 
 will many on nothing, spend all you 
 get, and breed paupers, paupers you must 
 remain, wallowing in filth and wretchedness. 
 The whole question is as much a matter of 
 exact science as any other mathematical 
 problem ; and you are to blame, Davidson, 
 that you do not abandon your foolish 
 rant about Christian charity and human 
 rights, and apply yourself to the only way 
 out of the difficulty — the science of Political 
 
 Economy." 
 
 Joshua smiled sadly. " Political Economy 
 
 is not quite human enough for us, sir," he said. 
 
 " It rests too on the basis of these very existing 
 
 conditions of society that I do not care for ; 
 
 I would rather see something more radical, 
 
 going straight to the root of the evil." 
 
 " You are an enthusiast," said the M. P. 
 
 coldly. '' I tell you again, Political Economy 
 
94 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 does go to the root of tlie evil ; and the 
 only thing that does/' 
 
 *'Then Christianity is wrong/' said Joshua. 
 
 And the M.P. was silent. He had never 
 confessed himself on the subject of religion, 
 and never would. Not his most intimate 
 friends knew what he believed or what he 
 did not believe. All that the world saw 
 was that he went to church, made the 
 orthodox bow at the Name in the Creed, 
 and wrote books and pamphlets full of anti- 
 Christian, hard-headed doctrines, without 
 ever once alluding to religious dogma. 
 When he was called an infidel by his foes 
 he hit out savagely, and said, "Prove it.'' 
 And no man could : only every man felt 
 that his whole teaching, from first to last, 
 was absolutely devoid of all Christian feel- 
 ing; that pity, charity, warmth, and love 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 95 
 
 were as far from him as heaven is from the 
 earth ; and that he squared the accounts of 
 humanity with the most sublime uncon- 
 sciousness that such disturbing elements as 
 passions or the sentiment of rights existed 
 to upset his sums and prove his sociology 
 for the present at least imperfect. 
 
 And the result of the conversation was, 
 that Mr. , the M.P., who is a worthy- 
 man, upright and honourable, but practically 
 one-sided because so utterly undisturbed by 
 weakness or passions of any kind, and there- 
 fore unable to allow for them in another, de- 
 nounced Joshua as a mischievous ag-itator 
 and an ignorant fanatic, and warned those 
 of us whom he knew to beware of him. 
 Yet Mr. was as hearty as Joshua him- 
 self in his desire to see the regeneration of 
 the working class : but as Joshua said, and I 
 
96 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 thought said well too ; " He advocates our 
 making ourselves so slender that we can 
 slip through our bands and fetters, while I 
 hold that we should make ourselves strong 
 enough to force those who hold the fastenings 
 to loosen them. "We both mean the same 
 thing in the end, liberty and social advance- 
 ment ; but we differ as to the means/' 
 
 Our court was one of just ordinary moral 
 character, neither strictly respectable nor 
 the reverse. AVe had all sorts ; from the 
 man who would harbour a pal in trouble and 
 stow away swag not honestly come by till 
 the police scent grew cold, to the decent 
 workman doing his best to be respectable, 
 and to keep his girls pure and his boys 
 honest ; from the hard working- woman 
 slaving night and day to make her two poor 
 ends meet, to the idle slattern who was drunk 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 97 
 
 half her time, and begged in the streets the 
 other half; from the fond mother with her 
 pretty pride in Sunday frocks or bits of 
 coloured bows, to the husbandless wench 
 whose half-starved children, as naked as 
 crows and nearly as black, were knocked 
 about as if they were street dogs, and on the 
 highway to the gallows through neglect; 
 from the virtuous spinster proud of her char- 
 acter and intolerant of looseness, to the poor 
 flaunting girl who got her living in the 
 streets, leastwise eked out her scanty wages 
 from slopwork and the like by prostitution, 
 more or less avowed. 
 
 One of these girls lived just opposite 
 to us. Her name was Mary Prinsep. 
 We had seen her at a music-hall we went 
 to by times : for Joshua was not one 
 of those prudes who are afraid of ap- 
 
98 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 pearances, and as he wanted to learn tne 
 world on all sides he went to all sorts of 
 places and talked to all sorts of people — to 
 these poor girls, as well as to any one else, 
 and just as he would to any one else ; seek- 
 ing to know the causes of things, and why 
 they went on to the streets, and if they 
 would keep out of them if they could, and 
 so on. 
 
 Any one who knows anything about us 
 working men as we are and not by fancy 
 portraits, knows the profound contempt, and 
 more, in which as a class we hold the pro- 
 fessed prostitute, or the woman of our own 
 homes who lets herself be seduced by a gen- 
 tleman. A base child — nay, more than one, 
 and by different fathers too — if by men of 
 our own class is not so unpardonable an 
 offence. We think it a pity, of course and 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 99 
 
 we would rather not have it happen to our 
 daughters and sisters ; but we get over it ; 
 and the women not unfrequently marry, and 
 marry well, when the thing has blown by a 
 little. But the poor, painted, bedizened 
 wreck of womanhood who goes about the 
 streets at the West-end, and sells herself to 
 club-gentlemen and the like, is of all things 
 that of which we have the most abhorrence. 
 I don't pretend to explain it, and very likely 
 it is only a matter of class jealousy when all 
 is said and done ; but I mention it as a kind 
 of introduction to what I have to say of 
 Mary Prinsep. I want it to be seen that it 
 was no indifferentism to her trade which ac- 
 tuated Joshua ; but, on the contrary, that it 
 was the large and generous humanity in him 
 which made him able to accept even a street- 
 walker as his sister and his friend. 
 
 H 2 
 
loo THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Mary was very young and very ignorant. 
 She had been brought up any how, and had 
 been neglected and untaught from the be- 
 guming. There was no romantic history 
 attached to her. She was no " soiled dove '' 
 whose feathers had once been white and 
 shiningr • she was the dauo^hter of a dram- 
 drinking charwoman, sent out to mind 
 children when quite a child herself, brought 
 up to no trade, and knowing nothing now 
 but the streets and the music-halls. But 
 she had so much to the good, that she did 
 not drink — at least not much — they all drink 
 some ; and she had never been in trouble or 
 locked up. She was merely one of the 
 abandoned — abandoned by society from her 
 birth, and left to sink or swim in the foul 
 streams of the metropolis as she best could. 
 She had been picked up by a gentleman a 
 
JOSH UA DA V ID SON. i o i 
 
 few years ago ^Yhen she was about fifteen ; 
 and he had taught her a good deal Loth of 
 refinement and womanly ways. She had 
 been grateful to him at the time, but she 
 scarcely loved him. He was older than her- 
 self ; in fact, an old man comparatively ; 
 married, with grown-up daughters and sons, 
 a churchwarden, and a fine Christian gentle- 
 man living out at Bays water in the very 
 odour of class respectibility, But he had an 
 eye for pretty girls ; and he had placed Mary 
 in a little house at Bow, where, as I said, 
 she had learned some things that were 
 useful to her, being a girl of great natural 
 quickness, and, if she had had fair play, of 
 refined taste and good disposition. In time 
 he got tired of her. Such men always do : 
 for what was there in an ignorant girl like 
 that to keep him when he had had enough of 
 
I02 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 her beauty ? So, making her a handsome pre- 
 sent — oh ! he behaved to her quite hand- 
 somely ! — he parted with her, and Mary had 
 to tm^n out into the streets with a ruined 
 character and a taste for good living. She 
 had learned however, durino; her two or three 
 years of "protection/' to keep herself and 
 her place tidy, and to do needlework after a 
 fashion, but not sufficiently ay ell to keep her. 
 Twelve hours a day of slop-work would not 
 feed, clothe, and lodge her ; flower-selling 
 would not ; but her youth and good looks 
 would. So she sold them, as all she had to 
 sell ; and got bread of the dcAdl's baking be- 
 cause she could not get it any way else. 
 
 It was a bad life; and she felt it was. And 
 it was a hard life too. Those who see these 
 girls only in their show-hours, dressed in the 
 height of the fashion and queening it at 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 103 
 
 night-houses and the like, have no idea of 
 the wretchedness of the reality for the poorer 
 kind ; for there are classes even here. No 
 wonder they take to drink, poor souls, suf- 
 fering as they do — merciful Heaven, how 
 they do suffer ! And how some of them 
 loathe their lives as they go on^ and go 
 do^^^n, and wish they had died before they 
 took up the trade ! Not that I say for 
 an instant they go moaning about in eternal 
 agonies of remorse or horror — human na- 
 ture does not live at such high pressure ; but 
 a lot of them do hate their business never- 
 theless, when the drink is not in them and 
 their vanity is not flattered 
 
 But — virtuous women will start at this — 
 they look on themselves, like all the poor, as 
 martyrs to society. They think that, as 
 men and things are, they must be ; that they 
 
104 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 make the virtuous wife, the chaste maiden, 
 possible. In their blind way they are 
 vaguely conscious that the root of this fine 
 flower of western civilisation, the rich mono- 
 gamous Christian home, is planted in the filth 
 of prostitution, and that to them is owing the 
 " self-restraint," so much admired in gentle- 
 men who do not marry until they can afibrd 
 to have a family, and so often ofi'ered as an 
 example to us working men who love 
 honestly one of our own sort, and do not as 
 a rule go among these girls. And the more 
 thoughtful of them, conscious of their eco- 
 nomic uses, resent the opprobrium dealt out 
 to them, and pity themselves angrily as vic- 
 tims rather than criminals, the scapegoats 
 not the pollutors of society. 
 
 To be sure, they do not fret at the scorn of 
 the great ladies whom they help to keep 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 105 
 
 virtuous, for they have their compensations. 
 Fine ladies think that because they would 
 not brush skirts with a prostitute, therefore 
 no one will, and that all life shows them the 
 same aspect of repulsion and horror. It is 
 nothino; of the kind. Decent women of 
 the poorer class, consort with them, if not 
 cordially yet humanely; then they have 
 friends of their own sort, and many of 
 them ; and we know that a multitude of evil 
 doers makes the evil done seem light to each. 
 The gentlemen who go with them are often 
 kind and playful, and no more brutal than 
 most men are to most women outside the 
 artificial restraints of society. Sometimes, 
 of course, they are vile enough ; but these 
 are the men who would be brutal to their 
 own lady-wives and daughters. So that the 
 poor Girls, as they call themselves, are not 
 
io6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 quite shut out from all liunian sympathy 
 like the lepers of old — though indeed 
 the circle is terribly narrowed ! And 
 though many of them have fits of self- 
 loathino^ and reg^ret, others take matters 
 more coolly, and look on their profession as 
 a legitimate trade, as lawful as a publican's 
 w^ho sells the gin that robs a man's family 
 of bread, and makes him perhaps a murderer 
 as well as a madman. 
 
 Mary Prinsep was what the world calls 
 lost — a bad girl — a castaway — but she might 
 have been a saint for the natural virtue that 
 was in her. I have reason to speak well of 
 her, for to her we owe the life of Joshua. 
 
 Soon after w^e came to know her, Joshua 
 fell ill in our wretched lodmns^s Avhere we 
 lived and did for ourselves. He did not like 
 to go to the hospital, nor did I like it for 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 107 
 
 liim. We both had a strong feeling against 
 accepting the charity of society ; so I said he 
 should not go, and that I would work harder 
 for him and myself too. But by my harder 
 work — overtime, and the like — I was 
 obliged to leave him for twelve hours and 
 more at a stretch ; and Mary Prinsep, whose 
 "friend'' had just left her to go into a 
 west-end " dress-house," poor wench ! came 
 over and nursed him, and kept him alive. 
 
 She it was who made up the fire, 
 cooked his broths and messes, gave him 
 his medicine, washed his clothes, and 
 kept him clean and comfortable. And 
 when I came home from work, and found 
 her there, with everything arranged so nicely 
 and as only a woman can — Joshua's bed 
 made and him settled for the night, and my 
 own supper ready, and hot water for cleaning 
 
io8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 myself — for we had but one room between 
 us — as one of tlie great family of the frail, 
 the suffering, I could not feel anything like 
 virtuous horror of her. She was our sister — 
 our sister of sorrow, of poverty, of affliction. 
 Gladly would Joshua have lifted her out 
 of her life into something purer and nobler. 
 He was so poor himself with all he did and 
 gave away, he had much ado to live on the 
 leavings ; and as for marrying, that was as 
 unlikely as murder ! So that he could 
 neither put her into any way of business 
 independently, nor give her a home that the 
 world would not misjudge. We did what 
 we could, however. I say i^e intentionally, 
 as it makes the whole thing clear to those 
 who are candid enough not to wilfully mis- 
 understand. We helped her all we could, 
 and she helped us. We worked for her 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 109 
 
 food, while she gave us her time and did 
 our chores. And so in this way we made it 
 unnecessary for her to continue her sad trade. 
 
 This got us the name of associating with 
 bad women ; for it was said that we lived 
 partly on her earnings ; and made us to be 
 shyly looked on by our shopmates. But 
 Joshua's mind was set to do the thing that 
 is right ; and what men said against him, 
 not understanding facts or motives, hurt 
 him no more than that dogs should bark 
 at shadows. That which is, not that which 
 seems, nor what folks choose to say, was 
 what he lived for ; and Mary Prinsep 
 was only a text and an occasion, like 
 others. 
 
 And even when, one day, the men fairly 
 hooted him down and hustled him into the 
 street, and me along with him, because 
 
no THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 when lie was chaffed savagely about " his 
 girl " he answered them mildly enough ; 
 " Mates, did our great Master receive Mary 
 Magdalene and all sinners, or did He not ? 
 And if He did — as you may find for your- 
 selves — am I too pure to help them ? " — he 
 only said to me, wiping the mud from his 
 torn coat ; " You are not afraid, John ? 
 You '11 go on the right way, whatever comes 
 of it ? " — and not a word even of impatience 
 against those who had misused us, calling 
 us " canters," *' white-livered hypocrites," 
 and worse words still. No, I was not afraid, 
 I said. I would stand shoulder to shoulder 
 with him through it all ; and where he led, 
 there would I follow, if we sunk up to our 
 very necks in the slough of the world's 
 reproach. And we were not far ofi". 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. m 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 Among the rest of the doubtful characters 
 with which our court abounded, was one Joe 
 Traill, who had been in prison many a time 
 for petty larceny and the like, but who, the 
 last time he was had up, was convicted of 
 burglary. However, he was out now on a 
 ticket-of-leave, and fast going the way to 
 get it cancelled, with a new score to the 
 back of it. Respectability and the police 
 were bent on elbowing poor Joe into the mire, 
 which was only too much his natural ele- 
 ment. He had been crotch deep in the mud 
 from the earliest ; a gutter child, in whose 
 
112 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 very blood ran tlie hereditary taint ; a thief, 
 the son of thieves, the grandson of thieves ; 
 a thing of mud from head to heel, inside 
 and out ; dirty, dissipated, shiftless, and 
 with no more moral principle in him than 
 he had of education. His only morality 
 indeed, was his cleverness in being able to 
 break the law without being found out ; and 
 when he was most down on his luck, he was 
 disposed to think most meanly of himself 
 
 He was one of those who stink in the 
 nostrils of cleanly, civilised society, and who 
 are its shame and secret sore. And cleanly, 
 civilised society, not being able to make a 
 good job of him as he stood, thrust him out 
 of its sight, and tried to forget him behind 
 the prison grating. There was no place for 
 Joe in this great world of ours. There was 
 no work for him to do, because he could do 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 113 
 
 none requiring any of the deftness got by 
 practice ; and if by chance he got a job any- 
 where, he lost it mysteriously in a day or 
 so; and, double as he might, he found the 
 dogs of detection too sharp for him. 
 
 So he said to Joshua one night in his 
 blithe way — poor Joe ! he had not fibre 
 enough in him to take even his misfortunes 
 seriously ! — that there was nothing for him 
 but the old line along with his pals, making 
 a running fight of it, now up now down, as 
 his luck went. 
 
 " We 11 see if something better won't turn 
 up," said Joshua. " Biargiary's a \)ad trade, 
 Joe/' 
 
 " Only one Fve got at my fingers' ends, 
 governor," laughed the thief ; '' and starva- 
 tion is a worse go than quod." 
 
 '* Well, till you've learned a better, share 
 
114 THE TRUE HIS70RY OF 
 
 with us," said Josliua. "If we have no 
 
 wddow's cruse " " Blowed if I know what 
 
 that means ! " put in Joe, " — we have what 
 does as well," continued Joshua ; " and it's 
 better for four to go short than for one to be 
 rationed at the hulks." 
 
 So now our little home circle was in- 
 creased by one more ; and we had added a 
 burglar to the prostitute. 
 
 " It is what Christ would have done/' 
 said Joshua, when he was remonstrated with. 
 " He lived among the lepers whom no man 
 would touch, and whose very presence was 
 pollution. But he healed some among them ; 
 and so will I these." 
 
 But the police did not see it. They do 
 not understand practical Christianity in 
 Scotland-yard, save as a generous kind of 
 fad or pastime in a swell with more money 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 115 
 
 than brains, and a lot of 'idle time on his 
 hands. And then they laugh at it behind 
 backs, and ridicule him for being green. 
 But when it came to a poor journeyman car- 
 penter housing a jail-bird, and consorting 
 with bad characters daily, they had but one 
 conclusion to come to — the carpenter was 
 no better than his company. Wherefore, 
 " from information received," Joshua and I, 
 who had long been looked on askance by 
 our mates as I said, were called up before 
 the master, and had our dismissal from the 
 shop. His other men, he said, objected to 
 us ; and, by the Lord, from all he had been 
 told he did not wonder at it ! And he 
 gave us a caution — kindly meant, if harshly 
 said — not to keep such company as we did, 
 if we wanted to be respected by master or 
 mate, and to remember that " birds of a 
 
 2 
 
ii6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 feather flock together," and if we chose such 
 birds as he was told we did, we could look 
 for nothing else than to be classed along 
 with them. On Avhich he paid us our week's 
 wages, and we found ourselves next thing to 
 penniless in the wilds of London. 
 
 But Joshua was undisturbed. He told 
 both Joe and Mary, on the evening we were 
 discharged, that he would not forsake them 
 come what might. It should still be share 
 and share alike ; only let them be of good 
 courage and a clean conscience, and things 
 would go well. How, nobody knew ; but 
 this is what he said, and promised. 
 
 And Mary, looking up into his face with 
 a look that made her like an angel — for in- 
 deed she was a pretty girl ! — said, " If I 
 have to starve, Joshua, I'll never go back to 
 the streets again ! " and poor Joe, fii'st 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 117 
 
 laiigliing, and then sobbing like a woman, 
 said, " You'd have done better to have 
 left me to my little game, governor 1 I've 
 brought you bad luck, you see; and I'm 
 no good, you see, when you've done your 
 best ! " 
 
 ''Don't carry on like that, Joe," said 
 Joshua. " I shall have done somethino- if I 
 save you both : and I will." 
 
 I could not help thinking that this "I 
 will," said with such manly courage, such 
 deep religious firmness, was a greater trial 
 of faith than the boyish exaltation in the 
 Eocky Valley so many years ago ; and that 
 to save from the streets a girl who was not 
 able to do anything else that the world 
 w-ants, and to put honesty and a clean name 
 into such a poor conscienceless waif as Joe, 
 were greater deeds than to cause a stone to 
 
ii8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 move out of its place in the Name of the 
 Lord. 
 
 And all of us, his old Cornish friends who 
 had come up to be near him, and some new 
 friends he had made in London, swore we 
 would never desert him, but would stand by 
 him to the last. For we looked that he 
 should do something in his day, as I said 
 before — something to advance the world, and 
 towards the solution of the great questions 
 perplexing society at this moment. True, 
 we were a poor, moneyless lot — all working 
 men, no science among us, no political 
 power, no social status, no political-economy 
 knowledge of the right sort ; a handful of 
 enthusiasts set out to realise Christ at one 
 time by faith, and now by works. But we 
 had a soul among us — a leader in whom we 
 believed ; and we trusted in ourselves. And 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 119 
 
 one by one we all got to work again some- 
 how, and floated in the shallow but sufficient 
 water to which we were accustomed. But 
 it was a hard time ; and, bit by bit, every- 
 thing we possessed passed over the paAvn- 
 broker's counter, even to our tools. And 
 when they went, it seemed as if all hope 
 had gone. 
 
 But when we were at the worst, and 
 things looked as though they had given over 
 all thought of mending — for we were getting 
 whersh and weak for want of food — Joshua 
 received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, 
 " from a friend." AYe never knew where it 
 came from, and there was no clue by which 
 we could guess. It was very certain that 
 neither had Mary earned it in the old way, 
 nor had Joe stolen it; but who sent it re- 
 mained for ever a mystery. I always thought 
 
120 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 that ]\Iaiy liacl had a hand in it, and I think 
 so to this day. I believe, though I don't 
 know, that she borrowed it of an artist to 
 wliom she went to sit for a model ; for she 
 did not make any secret of this ; and that 
 she paid it back honestly when we were 
 in funds again. However that might be, 
 it came at the very nick of time ; and 
 immediately after, both Joshua and I got 
 the offer of a job at Messrs. in Curtain- 
 road, which we could not have accepted had 
 we not had money wherewith to take our 
 tools out of pawn. It was a sharp pinch 
 while it lasted, but, God be praised, it passed 
 without doing real harm to any one. And 
 Joe and Mary still bided with us. 
 
 By this time Joshua's strange doings in 
 Church-court had got known to some of the 
 gentlemen who practise philanthropy. His 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 121 
 
 night-school for those who would learn either 
 prayer or secular knowledge of him — his 
 charity dinners, when he could get enough 
 money together to give them — his goodness 
 to the children, to the lost, to the starviuo- — 
 all this had got wind ; and just as he wanted 
 help most, the news of his doings Ijrougbt 
 him the famous Mr. C. anxious to know 
 how a man like him could carry on charities, 
 apparently on nothing, which cost himself a 
 large income to keep up. 
 
 He was a good man, this Mr. C. ; up to 
 his lights, none better ; but his lights were 
 few and feeble, and he drew a line hard and 
 fast where Joshua did not. His line was 
 respectability. He distinctly refused to aid 
 those who were hopeless paupers, or those of 
 bad repute. He would help respectable po- 
 verty, and help it substantially though always 
 
122 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 afraid of overdoing it and inducing a habit 
 of reliance on extraneous aid ; but beasted, 
 sliiftless, drunken poverty — poverty that 
 lied and whined a,nd drank gin and got 
 relief from half-a-clozen charities at once — • 
 poverty that was its own cause and that 
 never stirred a hand to help itself — for 
 this he had no pity, and to it gave no 
 help. 
 
 " To encourage pauperism " and " to offer 
 a premium for vice '^ w^ere the two things of 
 which he w^as most afraid in his dealings 
 with the poor; but he held out a helping 
 hand gladly enough to the " deserving " and 
 the " respectable " poor, and he was a vrarm 
 patron of reformatories, refuges for soiled 
 doves, and the like half-punitive places of 
 retreat for sinful flesh, where they might 
 repent of their evil past, and be made fit to 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 123 
 
 take up a lowly place among the respectable 
 members of society once more ; — but always, 
 in a sense, a place of humiliation and peni- 
 tent degradation. 
 
 As he came along at this time, and was 
 handy, and as Mar}^'s friend, the artist, had 
 gone to Italy for some months, arid she had 
 no other patron of the like kind, so was out 
 of work as one may say, to him Joshua told 
 the whole story of both her and Joe Traill ; 
 also how he had kept them in the best way 
 he could from the evil to which society had 
 driven them in former days : he did not add 
 the rider of how societv had reveno-ed itself 
 on him as on them, and cast us all out in 
 company. But now, he said, he was de- 
 sirous of placing them both where their 
 temptation would he toivards honesty; 
 where it would be better for them to be 
 
124 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 honest, and wliere falling back would plunge 
 them into misery as \Yell as shame. 
 
 Mr. C. listened attentively. He ^vas evi- 
 dently touched l:>y the high spirit of the 
 man, but he greatly questioned the wisdom 
 of his ways. For Joe, he said, he scarcely 
 knew what to propose. He shrank from 
 committing himself to the patronage of a 
 convicted thief, who was not a boy to be 
 sent to a reformatory and disciplined into 
 good ways. It was out of his line alto- 
 gether, and he had no machinery at hand 
 for him. Had he been a broken-down, 
 solder, honest, and industrious chap, who 
 had failed through sickness or any blameless 
 misfortune, he would then have given him a 
 lift willingly ; but a man who had slipped 
 into the dark ways of crime, who had got 
 into houses at dead of night with a crow- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 125 
 
 bar and a jemmy — he shook his head, and 
 said he did not like to have anything to do 
 with him. It was offering a premium to 
 vice to take trouble to place this unsatis- 
 factory waif and stray, when hundreds of 
 honest men, who had never gone wrong, 
 were perishing for want of aid. 
 
 '' As for that," said Joshua, " I ask 
 nothing, w^hether this man sinned or his 
 parents ; or neither. He is in want ; and, to 
 my way of thinking, his need is his claim, 
 not his respectability." 
 
 Mr. C. looked dubious. " We must draw 
 a line," he said. 
 
 " Christ drew it at the Pharisee,'' an- 
 swered Joshua simply. 
 
 " To make no difference between vice 
 and vu'tue — to tr.'^'.at the one as tenderly as 
 the other — would soon be to obliterate all 
 
126 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 difference between them in minds as well as 
 in practice," said Mr. C. 
 
 " And what, then, do we say to the 
 parable of the men who worked unequally, 
 and who got the same wages at the end V^ 
 said Joshua. 
 
 '' My good fellow," cried Mr. C. a little 
 impatiently, "it would be perfectly impos- 
 sible to try and live strictly after the Bible. 
 * Counsels of perfection ' are all very well, but 
 they are impracticable for the world as it is." 
 
 " I have to find that out yet," said Joshua. 
 " Then you wdll not help me with poor 
 Joe?" 
 
 " Do not say I will not — I cannot," said 
 Mr. C. *' How can I ask my poor, honest 
 pensioners, or my respectable workmen, to 
 receive a convicted thief among them ?" 
 
 " ' And forgive us our trespasses, as we 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 127 
 
 forgive them that trespass against us/ 
 Does that mean only petty, personal affronts, 
 sir, or does it mean trespass against our 
 patience, our hope, our faith, our principles \ 
 Does it not mean the everlasting Love, 
 whether we call it charity or humanity, by 
 which we would raise the fallen and help 
 the weak ? " 
 
 " As for that," retorted Mr. C, " there are 
 texts enough against consorting with evil. 
 You cannot touch pitch, Mr. Davidson, with- 
 out being defiled." 
 
 " Christ lodged in the house of Simon the 
 leper. Mary Magdalene loved Him, and He 
 her. I want no other example, sir. AYhat 
 the Master did, His followers and disciples 
 may imitate !" 
 
 " You are an enthusiast," said Mr. C. 
 just as the M.P. had said before him, and 
 
128 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 botli meant that enthusiasm was ridiculous ; 
 " and some day these fine theories of yours 
 will come to a cruel downfall. You will be 
 harbouring some ruffian who will turn 
 against you, and perhaps cut your throat for 
 your pains. I tell you I know these people 
 — they are incorrigible." 
 
 " Then what would you do with them, 
 Mr.C?" 
 
 " You can do nothing with them ! " he 
 answered. 
 
 '' But they cannot be let to starye/^ said 
 Joshua earnestly. 
 
 " I do not see that it is any one's duty to 
 feed them, when they will not feed them- 
 selves save by vice and crime," answered 
 the philanthropist. " I would make all 
 rogues, male and female, show some tan- 
 gible signs of repentance and good living 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 129 
 
 before I would help them or countenance 
 them in any way. Believe me, your uni- 
 versal charity is the most disastrous line 
 you could adopt/' 
 
 "Then Christ was wrong," said Joshua: 
 *' and so we have come round to our start- 
 ing-point again. So this is decided — you 
 will not give Joe Traill a trial ? '' 
 
 " No ; I would rather not have anything 
 to do with him,'' said Mr. C, who had 
 talked himself cross and determined. "I 
 should never be easy with the fellow. I 
 have no fancy for burglars, and I don't 
 believe in their reformation. All my men 
 are picked men ; not a loose character 
 among them. I could not ask them to 
 admit a convicted thief as one of them ; and 
 if I did, my own influence over them would 
 be gone. It is because they know I 
 
130 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 would never pardon the smallest dereliction 
 of duty that I keep them up to the mark : 
 with what face then could I place among 
 them such an unsatisfactory companion as 
 your 'protege'^ The thing would be im- 
 possible ! With the woman perhaps I can 
 do something. If she is young, she cannot 
 be wholly hardened, and I could get her into 
 
 the Street Reformatory. " 
 
 "No," said Joshua, "I will not consent 
 to her going into a reformatory. It is not 
 that she needs. In a reformatory she will 
 be continually reminded of what I want her 
 to forget. She would be made morbid by 
 incessant thought about herself; taught to 
 say penitential psalms when she should be 
 set to learn some skilled employment that 
 would be of use to her in the future. I wish 
 her to be kept virtuous through self-respect, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 131 
 
 and by being placed beyond the need of going 
 back to siieli a life. I do not want lier to 
 be weakened by a self-torturing contrition 
 for the past, or terrified at the prospect of 
 eternal damnation for the future. I want 
 her to be lifted up, not cast down." 
 
 " You surely do not make light of re- 
 pentance!" cried Mr. C. warmly. ''What 
 other assurance have we that she will not 
 fail again ?" 
 
 " The best assurance, sir, will be to teach 
 her self-respect and the means of gaining an 
 honest living," said Joshua. 
 
 "You are a rank materialist, David- 
 son ! " said Mr. C. " I cannot stand your 
 referring sin to mere social conditions. Are 
 there no such things as sins in high places ? 
 Poverty and ignorance are not the only 
 roots of human wickedness 1" 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 "About tlie strongest though," Joshua 
 answered. 
 
 *^ And the sins of Inxmy " 
 
 ''Make Mary Prinsep and her class," in- 
 terrupted Joshua. " See here, sir, what are 
 you asked to do ? — to repair, in a very small 
 way, the evil done by society. You repre- 
 sent society at this moment, and you are 
 asked to undo a portion of your own bad 
 work." 
 
 " Pshaw- ! '' said Mr. C. " / have not made 
 Mary bad!" 
 
 He was an individual kind of man, and 
 never saw beyond his own point. 
 
 " Well," he then said, " I will do what I 
 can for the young woman. My wife wants 
 an under-servant ; I will put the case to 
 her; but I rely on you," he added, old 
 habits of thought coming back to steady 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 133 
 
 him in this sudden taking-off of his feet, as 
 it were ; " I rely on you that I am dealing 
 with a woman substantially repentant, and 
 so far purified ; and that she will not cor- 
 rupt the rest. For it is a dangerous expeii- 
 ment at the best." 
 
 " She is good enough for any one to trust 
 and to love," said Joshua warmly; and 
 Mr. C. looked at him with a sharp, sus- 
 picious glance that quite changed his face. 
 *' And I thank you heartily," Joshua went 
 on to say, unconscious that he had caused 
 the sHghtest discomfort in the gentleman's 
 mind ; ^' you have done a good work 
 to-day — a work of brotherhood with 
 Christ." 
 
 " I trust I am not doing Avrong," said 
 Mr. C. doubtfully ; " but it is against my 
 principles, you know. I cannot help feeling 
 
f34 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 that I am rewarding a woman, because she 
 has lived a life of infamy, with a position 
 which hundreds of virtuous girls would be 
 rejoiced to fill." 
 
 " If your economic conscience troubles 
 you, sir, lay it at rest by the answer our 
 Lord made to Himself, when He asked the 
 Canaanitish woman if it were meet to cast 
 the children's bread to dogs." 
 
 *' For all that, I cannot think it a duty to 
 reward vice," persisted Mr. C. "And in 
 doing^ what I am doinor now, I wish it to be 
 distinctly understood that it is at your 
 instance." 
 
 "Which means that you refuse the re- 
 sponsibility ?" 
 
 " It does." 
 
 '' So be it, sir. I accept it." 
 
 " That will not help me much if the thing 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 135 
 
 turns out ill," said Mr. C. in a discomposed 
 
 voice. 
 
 "Oh, sir, liave faith in human nature!" 
 said Joshua earnestly — so earnestly that I 
 believe the tears were in his eyes : they 
 were in his voice. 
 
 " It is because I know human nature that 
 I have so little faith in it," said Mr. C. 
 *' Every one wants the help of strict moral 
 principle to enable him to steer clear of 
 the temptations so sure to beset him, and 
 these fallen brothers and sisters are but 
 leaky vessels at the best. If human nature 
 was the grand thing you say it is, Mr. 
 Davidson, of what need the coming of 
 Christ ? You are a Christian." 
 
 " And it is because Christ lived that I 
 believe in humanity," said Joshua. 
 
 On which, Mr. C. saying with a smile, 
 
136 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 " There is no doing anything with you, Mr. 
 Davidson ; you are as unconvinceable as a 
 woman," shook hands with him kindly 
 enough, and left. 
 
 A day or two after this he came again, 
 with many kind words, much regret and I 
 doubt not genuine, but — his wife was as 
 afraid of our poor Mary as he had been of 
 Joe Traill, and refused to take her into her 
 house. If the other servants should ever 
 know ; if Mary had imposed on Joshua, and 
 was really of no good ; if she should cor- 
 rupt the younger ones ; and then the repute 
 of their house — the duty they owed their 
 neighbours to keep up a stainless appearance. 
 No, there could be no home for her there ; 
 but the lady sent a note, full of that half- 
 censorious advice a virtuous woman knovv^s 
 so well how to administer to her fallen 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 137 
 
 sisters — a parcel of tracts (Mary could 
 not read), and a renewal of her hus- 
 band's offer to get her in the Street 
 
 Eeformatory. After which perhaps some 
 kind Christian person would be found to 
 take her, she said, endorsed as she would 
 then be by the Lady Superintendent of the 
 establishment. For without casting any slur 
 on Mr. Davidson, she went on to say, the 
 voucher of only a young man was not quite 
 satisfactory to a mistress Avho cared for the 
 honour of her house. And perhaps she was 
 right. But then Joshua was not like other 
 young men ; only she did not know this ; 
 and Christians think it no sin to sus- 
 pect all manner of evil of each other, 
 unless they know for certain it does not 
 exist. 
 
 Well, it was a disappointment ; but 
 
138 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Joshua was not a man to be cast down for 
 one blow or a dozen ; so lie set to work to 
 find some one who would take her, knowing 
 her past life ; and at last lighted on a good, 
 tender-hearted, but timid woman, who re- 
 ceived her in full faith so far as the girl 
 herself was concerned, but on the express 
 condition that no one should ever know 
 what she had been, and that there was to be 
 no kind of communication between her and 
 ourselves, or any of her old Church-court 
 friends. To these terms Joshua advised her 
 to submit ; so with many tears poor Mary 
 went away to take the place of kitchen- 
 maid in a family living at a little distance 
 from London, where, as the lady said, she 
 had a chance now of redeeming herself, and 
 a new start given her altogether. 
 
 " And if I dd well, Joshua, you will be 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 139 
 
 pleased with me ? " she said as she was 
 bidding us good-by. 
 
 "More than pleased, Mary," he said. 
 '•'You know that I trust you, and that we 
 both love you — John here as well as I." 
 
 Mary's face was as white as the frill 
 round her neck. *' Joshua !" she said, look- 
 ing up at him, " give me one kiss before I 
 go ; it will help me." 
 
 Joshua bent his noble head and kissed 
 her tenderly. 
 
 " God be with you, sister ! " he said, and 
 his voice a little failed him. 
 
 " And I will say the prayer you taught 
 me, Joshua, regularly morning and even- 
 ing when I ain't too sleepy," said Mary 
 simply. "And you will pray for me too V 
 
 " As I do ever, my girl," said Joshua : 
 " and I believe that God hears us ! " 
 
140 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 " Then He will hear me ! '' said Mary 
 with a kindling face ; " and I'll pray harder 
 nor ever for the thing I want !" 
 
 Poor Mary ! prayer was nanght but a 
 "charm" to her as yet. She had never heard 
 one, never offered one, till Joshua taught 
 her the Lord's Prayer, with a childish 
 hymn and a childish " God bless all I 
 love " at the end ; and she repeated what 
 she had been taught as a young child 
 might ; believing that it did good because 
 she had been told so by one she loved and 
 trusted, but realisinor nothinor more. Or if 
 she realised anything, it was that she prayed 
 to Joshua, gro^\Ti very great and strong, and 
 a long way off. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 141 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Joshua's life of work and endeavour 
 brought with it no reward of praise or popu- 
 larity. It suffered the fate of all unsec- 
 tarianism, and made him to be as one man 
 in the midst of foes. Had he been a con- 
 verted sinner like Ned Wright, preaching 
 the doctrine of the Atonement, and Purifi- 
 cation by the blood of Jesus, he would have 
 had all the evangelical force at his back, 
 pivoted as they are on the same hub, what- 
 ever their special denomination. Had he 
 been a Ritualist, working under organised 
 authority, he would have then been a pipe, so 
 
142 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 to speak, tlirougii wHch flowed the power of 
 the Church ; and this much more had he 
 been a Koman Catholic, and of any Order. 
 Had he been a Unitarian, a stickler for re- 
 spectability and that the poor he relieved 
 should be deserving, like Mr. C. and the 
 charity-organisation people ; or a Political 
 Economist, giving lectures on the law of 
 supply and demand, and the immorality of 
 large families ; had he belonged to any body 
 whatsoever, he would have been supported. 
 But, as he was — a man working on the 
 Christ plan, and that alone ; dealing with 
 Humanity by pity and love and tolerance 
 — he was as a strano^er and an alien. 
 
 The whole force of home missionaries of 
 every denomination discountenanced him as 
 an infidel, unsound, irregular ; and in what- 
 soever they disagreed among themselves, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 143 
 
 they all agreed in their ill estimate of him. 
 The police were suspicious of him, and set 
 him do^Yn as a doubtful character who 
 harboured criminals ; and the very people 
 to whom he gave himself — accustomed as 
 they w^ere to be scouted by every man and 
 woman pretending to clean hands and a 
 pure life, or, at the best, to be preached at 
 and urged to remorse — misdoubted him. 
 The absence of abhorrence in his dealings 
 with them looked to some like a trap, to 
 others hke encouragement. And yet they 
 could scarcely think that ! — with all his en- 
 deavours to put them into a better way of 
 life, and to lift them out of the necessity of 
 crime by giving them the alternative of 
 honesty made possible, because giving them 
 work sufficient for their daily wants. 
 
 But he soon began to see that the utmost 
 
144 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 lie, or a dozen such as he, could do, was 
 only palliative and temporary. He might 
 save one out of a thousand, and he would 
 do well if he did that ; but what is one out 
 of a thousand cleansed and set in a safe 
 place, to the nine hundred and ninety-nine 
 left in their filth at the bottom of the abyss ? 
 Things have gone too far in England now 
 for private charities to be of much use. 
 What is wanted is a thorough reorganisation 
 of society, so that the distribution of wealth 
 and knowledge shall not be so partial as it 
 is. And this the working classes must get 
 for themselves by combination. 
 
 So Joshua turned to class-organisation as 
 something more hopeful than private charity. 
 But do not let me be misunderstood : he 
 gave up nothing of his own personal doings 
 among the poor, and never wearied nor re- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 145 
 
 laxed. If he looked to organisation as the 
 framework, he did not disdain charity as 
 the enrichment, in the plan of social ame- 
 lioration. 
 
 When the International Working Men's 
 Association was formed, he joined it as one 
 of its first members ; indeed he mainly 
 helped to establish it. It had been one of 
 his articles of belief long before any one else 
 had spoken, that the time had passed for 
 distinct and exclusive nationalities ; and 
 that if working men would free themselves 
 from the fetters in which ca^^ital and caste 
 have bound them, it must be by their own 
 class-fraternisation all over the world. If 
 labour is to make its own terms mth capital, 
 it must be by the coercive strength of the 
 labourer. To wait for the free gift of the 
 capitalist, through his recognition of human 
 
146 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 duties, as some among the Comtists urge, 
 would be to wait for the millennium. Yet 
 the International represented no class enmity 
 with him. He had no dream of barricades 
 and high places taken by assault. It was 
 to him, as to his other English brethren, an 
 orofanisation to streno;then the hands of the 
 labourer everywhere, but not to plunge so- 
 ciety into a bloody war. It was a means of 
 class-advancement by peaceable and noble 
 efforts, not of universal destruction by 
 violent or ignoble ones. 
 
 The middle classes laugh at the artisan's 
 desire to rise in the world, and speak of his 
 close combinations as traitorous and re- 
 bellious to the existing order of things. 
 Some think it an irreligious contempt of a 
 caste-Providence ; forgetting that their own 
 order was made by the same spirit of de- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 147 
 
 termination, and tliat the recognition of the 
 merchant class, and its reception on any- 
 thing like terms of equality, was forced from 
 the nobles by men who had at heart the 
 great truth of human equality and human 
 rights ; at least, down to that part of the 
 social page where their own names stood. 
 Below that paragraph where the artisan, the 
 proletaire, is to be found, society has as 
 yet drawn a line not to be overpassed. 
 Demand rights and recognition for working 
 men, and even the Liberal press gives forth 
 an uncertain sound, and the bugbear of 
 " Jack Cade " scares such stout hearts as the 
 Pall Mall and the Spectator. Even they, 
 kings of liberal thought as they are in so 
 many ways, will nqt see that the modern 
 artisan stands in the same relation to capital 
 as that in which the ancient serf stood to 
 
 L 2 
 
148 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the land. The serf tilled the land, which 
 was his master's, for his master. If he could 
 get for himself a living about as good as 
 that of the hogs he forested, he had all that 
 Avas considered necessary for a serf And 
 the artisan represents the serf of olden days, 
 while capital is the foretime baron. The 
 baron gave his villein disdainful leave to 
 live because his life was so far requisite 
 to his ov-ii needs ; but individually he had 
 neither rights nor value. So the capitalist. 
 He gives his workmen only enough to keep 
 them in efficient working order — or not that, 
 if the labour market is so thronged that he 
 can replace without trouble those who foil 
 out. His " hands " are the mere parts of his 
 machinery. The sum of them work to a 
 certain result ; but he is indifierent whether 
 the work is done witli sorrow and insuffi- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 149 
 
 ciency to the individual or not. His sole 
 business is to see that the sum oet throudi 
 their labours creditably — to the firm. It is 
 good that the work of the world should be 
 done at all costs, even by comj^ulsory labour 
 if need be ; but it is better that it should be 
 done by men regarded as men, individual, 
 and ha vino- inalienable rioiits, rather than as 
 so many portions of a vitalised mechanism. 
 And a fair and proportionate share in the 
 profits of the business is part of the rights 
 of the labourer. 
 
 I am speaking now as if of myself ; but I 
 am only repeating what I have heard my 
 friend say scores of times. 
 
 Of course Joshua was an earnest Ee- 
 publican. AVho that thinks for himself can 
 fail to be one ? Not that he would have 
 put aside the reigning sovereign by force, 
 
ISO THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 but he held that the times were ripening for 
 the old monarchical symbol and aristocratic 
 exclusiveness to disappear now that the 
 reality had gone ; and that the Eepublic 
 would come about of itself, thanks, in great 
 part, to the monarch who has shown the 
 people that royalty can be dispensed with 
 and yet things go none the worse for the 
 withdrawal, and to the aristocracy which 
 has abandoned its old traditions of blood 
 and birth, and has sold so many of its blue 
 ribands to money. But he was not a Ee- 
 publican of the kind to rave and vilify, and 
 accuse all the higher classes of Avilful mis- 
 doing, of vice and selfishness, and what not. 
 He never abused anybody, but judged things 
 by their merits, and gave to the professors 
 of any doctrine, no matter what, at least 
 the credit of sincerity. By which he made 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 151 
 
 many enemies, and was constantly accused 
 of lukewarmness to the cause, and of looking 
 two ways at once. 
 
 " You cannot beat me off my point," he 
 used to say, when he had put into an uproar 
 a little inner and anonymous society which 
 some few of us had formed together, by vin- 
 dicatino' some man whose measures he also 
 had attacked. " I say that we do our cause 
 harm, and degrade ourselves, by all these 
 childish personalities. What we have to do 
 is, to defend our own principles, and show 
 the fallacy or the evil of our opponents' ; 
 but we must fight fair, and give that credit 
 for honesty of purpose which we demand for 
 ourselves. If we are thieves and brigands 
 to the governing classes, and they are thieves 
 and brigands to us, what kind of under- 
 standing can we ever come to together ? " 
 
152 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 But L., one of those faimtical men who 
 cannot accept the doctrine of an opponent's 
 virtue, and whose zeal takes the form of the 
 wildest abuse on all who diJffer from him, 
 got up and denounced Joshua as an "in- 
 herent traitor," and advised his expulsion 
 from the society. And more than one of 
 the council looked grave, and as if they 
 were giving their minds to it, had not 
 Fehx Pyat risen, and given his opinion 
 so forcibly that the malcontents were 
 silenced. Even the thin-voiced little man 
 who had denounced Joshua, and whose am- 
 bition was to be regarded as the Eobespierre 
 of the society — incorruptible, and not to be 
 moved by fear or favour — even he had to 
 give in. For Felix was our giant ; and Felix 
 loved Joshua. 
 
 This was at the time when he was over 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 153 
 
 here as an exile, chiefly reading at the 
 British Museum, and when he gained the 
 love and admiration of all who knew him 
 by the dignity, the devotion, the earnestness 
 of his life. I mention this somewhat by 
 the way, as my feeble protest against the 
 terms in which it is the fashion to speak of 
 one of the finest fellows that ever lived — as 
 fine in his own way as Delescluze, our martyr, 
 — and by those who ought to know better ; 
 and who do know better ; but who think it 
 politic to swim with the stream, and to 
 curse those whom fortune has not blessed. 
 
 From his position in the International, 
 and in other political societies — which abound 
 among the working men more than the care- 
 less upper ten have the least idea of — 
 Joshua was thrown into intimate relations 
 with a great many men, more or less no- 
 
154 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 torious. He saw all sorts — the frothy ranter 
 Avhose motive power was vanity ; the reckless 
 agitator whose conscience was obscured, 
 and, so lono; as there was somethinsj stirrino^, 
 cared nothing what stirred or who suffered ; 
 the bilious antagonist to all men superior to 
 himself, and who would pull down those 
 above to his own level but never raise 
 up to it those who lay below ; the honest 
 patriot willing to sink all minor differences 
 in the one great aim, and ready to sacrifice 
 himself for the good of his cause and class, 
 but blind as a beetle as to the best methods : 
 he saw them all, and he accepted all with 
 that broad human love, that large and liberal 
 allowance of differences, which made the 
 charm of his character. 
 
 "They are good elements," he used to 
 say, " badly mixed. Does not some one say 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 155 
 
 that dirt is only matter in the wrong place ? 
 So these men as leaders would be pernicious 
 enouo'h, but a wise administration could 
 utilise them. When Fourier could find an 
 economic value in the diablotin, we need 
 not fear for any one." 
 
 It was on this point that Joshua and the 
 chief man of the London branch split. He 
 was a purist, and gave his mind to tares. 
 But Joshua thought more of the wheat, and 
 believed in the larger power of good than of 
 evil. He opposed all that narrow partisan- 
 ship which goes only in one gToove, and 
 said, as the skilled workmen have lately 
 said, that he would work with any one, no 
 matter what his rank or politics, who would 
 aid him and his order in securing the essen- 
 tials for knowledge and decency of living. 
 The more rabid and ultra of the politicians 
 
156 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 attacked him, as lie had been attacked in 
 the other society ; but he held on in his own 
 broad, generous way. And though he never 
 got the ear of the International, because he 
 was so truly liberal, he had some little in- 
 fluence ; and what influence he had ennobled 
 their councils as they have never been 
 ennobled since. 
 
 This is not speaking against the society. 
 I belong to it myself, and I am proud to do 
 so. But I have learnt from my friend to 
 distrust one-sided partisans, and to think all 
 questions best argued from their principles, 
 and the men w^ho either support or oppose 
 them left out in the shade. Men don't 
 wilfully uphold the thing they know to be 
 bad. Take the stiffest Conservative of them 
 all — the man w^ho believes in the divine 
 ordination of caste, and the absolute need 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 157 
 
 of preserving the fetichism of society as it 
 is, even though, like Juggernaut, the great 
 car of gentility crushes the whole working 
 class beneath it — he may be, and is, 
 sorry for the individuals ; but he maintains 
 the existing order conscientiously. And to 
 blackguard him, and call him blood- 
 sucker, and all the names that hysterical 
 men do call him, is simply childish anger, 
 not manly argument. So, on the other 
 side, the men who would make a revolution 
 by fire and blood, as has been said, if 
 necessary, though they too would be sorry 
 for the individuals who had to sufier, yet 
 they would feel the thing to be done so 
 much more righteous than the suifering 
 would be unrighteous, that they would 
 sacrifice the few and the present to the 
 good of the many and the future. And 
 
158 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 these are no more '' bloodthirsty scoundrels/' 
 and all the rest of it, than their opponents. 
 After all, it is the same battle of strength which 
 goes on throughout creation — the struggle 
 for existence in class as in individuals ; and 
 " the good old rule, the royal plan " has its 
 meaning and its uses, in that it necessitates 
 endeavour ; which is the sole way by which 
 things human come to perfection. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 159 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 We were eittins; one evenins^ at the niglit 
 school whicli Joshua still kept up, the room 
 full of men and women of what the world 
 calls the worst kind, when the door was 
 flung open with a clatter, and Joe Traill, 
 shabbier and dirtier than ever, staggered in 
 half-drunk. I do not know if I have said 
 that Joshua had at last succeeded in getting 
 him a situation, where he would have done 
 well enough had he kept oflf drink ; but he 
 had not ; and this was the upshot after about 
 three months' fair sailing;. 
 
 " It's no use, governor," he said to Joshua, 
 
i6o THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 in his drunken way ; " work and no lusli too 
 hard for me, governor ! I'd got to fall 
 ' soft!" 
 
 " Well Joe, my man, it seems that you 
 have fallen soft enough this time ; as soft as 
 mud ! " said Joshua. '' However, sit down 
 and make no noise. I will talk to you by- 
 and-by." 
 
 " Not a copper ! " said Joe, turning his 
 pockets inside out and holding on by the 
 tips. "I've come back like the devil, worse 
 than I went ! " 
 
 •'' All right, friend, but not just now ; let 
 me go on with what I have in hand, and then 
 I'll attend to you.'' 
 
 But Joe was in that state when a man is 
 either maudlin or quarrelsome. He was the 
 latter ; and partly because he had still sense 
 enough to be ashamed of himself, and partly 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, i6i 
 
 because he was pricking all over like a por- 
 cupine with the drink, and wanted to have 
 it out with some one, he chose to try and 
 fasten a quarrel on Joshua. So he set at him 
 again ; this time with some ribaldry Til not 
 lower myself to repeat. And again Joshua 
 answered him mildly, but more authori- 
 tatively than before. 
 
 " Sit down," he said ; and I don't think 
 I ever heard his voice sound so hard and 
 stern. " You've made a sore enough job of 
 it for one day; don't add to your disgrace 
 by folly." 
 
 Then the bad blood, the bad convict blood 
 that never got quite clear away, boiled up in 
 Joe, and he let out from his shoulder and 
 struck Joshua on his head, at the side just 
 above the ear. A dozen men rose at once ; 
 a dozen voices cursed and swore, some at 
 
1 62 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Joe for tlie blow, some yaMng at Joshua for 
 not returning it; women shrieked; the forms 
 were upset as the men scrambled forward ; 
 and the quiet night-school was turned into a 
 roaring Babel of tumult and violence. One 
 brawny fellow — he too was a burglar, a man 
 who might at any time develop into a 
 murderer ; but he had more fibre in him 
 than poor, loose, slippery Joe, more to go 
 upon as it were, and so could be held in 
 hand better if once you could master his 
 brutality — he squared up to the drunken 
 creature, on whom already half-a-dozen 
 hands were fiercely laid. But Joshua, who 
 had turned white and sick-looking with the 
 blow, laid his left hand on Jim's big arm, 
 while he held out his right to Joe Traill, 
 saying ; "Why Joe ! strike at a man, and 
 your friend, for nothing ! You must be 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 163 
 
 dreaming, my son, and a bad dream too ! 
 Give us your hand, and wake up out of it ! '* 
 I can tell nothing more. There was 
 nothing perhaps in the words, but there was 
 that in the look of him, as he stood there 
 so white and yet so kingly, with one hand 
 keeping back Jim Graves, the other offered 
 to Joe squirming in the grasp of those who 
 held him, that acted like a spell on all the 
 room. There were men there, and women too, 
 who would have been ready to tear him in 
 pieces themselves if they had suspected for 
 an instant that his loving leniency was from 
 cowardice ; but it was no coward who con- 
 fronted the drunkard that had struck him, 
 who confronted that roaring, yelling crowd 
 of desperate men and women, and calmed 
 them all by his own unutterable dignity. 
 The same intense look that had come into 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 his face when, a little lad, he had questioned 
 the parson in the church, when, a youth, he 
 had prayed for a miracle in the Eocky 
 Valley, came into his face now. He was as 
 if raised into something more than man — so 
 simple, so earnest as he was — so far above 
 all common weaknesses, so near to God, so 
 like to Christ ! 
 
 Joe burst into tears, sobered and subdued ; 
 many of the women cried too, even that big 
 coarse-mouthed Betsy Lyon, one of the most 
 abandoned women of the district ; while the 
 men slunk together as it were, and most of 
 them said a few rough words of praise, 
 which, well meant as they were, sounded 
 very far amiss at such a time. And then the 
 police, attracted by the tumult, came up into 
 the room ; and, glad of an opportunity they 
 had been looking for— after having been 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 165 
 
 knocked about a good deal, for all that 
 Joshua and I did our best to protect them — 
 marched us both off to the station-house 
 where we were locked up for the night, no 
 bail being at hand. 
 
 The mao;istrate understood nothins^ of 
 Joshua's defence next day, when he made it, 
 but put him down with a severe rebuke. 
 And as we had to be punished, reason or 
 none, we were both sent to prison for a 
 couple of weeks, as a caution to us to behave 
 ourselves better in the future. To live accord- 
 ino' to Christ in modern Christendom was, 
 as we found out, to be next thing to criminal, 
 and at all events qualified for prison disci- 
 pline. We don't understand anything about 
 the Lazaruses and Simeons and Magdalenes 
 of our own city. When we read of our Lord 
 and Master croino^ about among; the bad 
 
1 66 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 people of His day, we say it was divine; 
 when Joslma followed suit, he was locked 
 np. Well, Christ was the criminal of His 
 day ; and Caiaphas the high priest, repre- 
 senting respectability and adhesion to the 
 existing order of things, took Him in hand, 
 and taught the multitude so well to feel how 
 far He had erred against the morality of the 
 day, that they asked for Barabbas rather 
 than for him. And we have our Caiaphases 
 in full ^do;our still. 
 
 We had not done with poor Joe. Mr. C.'s 
 words came too true. The demon of drink 
 had got possession of him, and he was no 
 more his o^stl master than if he had been a 
 lunatic in Bedlam. Durinoj our fortnidit's 
 imprisonment he took everything he could 
 lay his hands on — clothes, furniture, tools — 
 every individual thing, he did ! — and pawned 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 167 
 
 them for drink ; and when we were set at 
 liberty, we found our phxce stripped. 
 
 I never had Joshua s patience, and I con- 
 fess I was indignant. It did seem to me 
 such wicked ingratitude, such lowness ! 
 
 But when I flared up with sudden passion, 
 and broke out against the thief for a rascal 
 and a scoundrel, Joshua silenced me with a 
 rebuke it w^as not in me to resist. 
 
 " Unto seventy times seven, John ? " he said, 
 " I think we joined hands on that line ? " 
 Then he added : " ^Ye must look that poor 
 fellow up. He has got on to the incline, and, 
 if not stopped, he will go down to perdition." 
 
 He took his hat and went out; and after 
 many hours' search through all the worst 
 haunts he knew of, brought Joe Traill 
 back : and kept him. 
 
 I need not go over the whole after-history 
 
i68 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 of this wretched castaway. It is enough to 
 say that again and again he fell into bad 
 courses, and ag:ain and ao:ain Joshua foro-ave 
 him. No trial was too severe for his 
 Christian forbearance, his angelic patience. 
 " Not to the sinless, but to the sinners," he 
 used to say ; and truly the sinners found it so ! 
 
 This unwearied sweetness, this tenderness 
 and hojDe that never failed, wrought their 
 good work before too late; and the convicted 
 thief, who but for Joshua would have ended 
 his days at the hulks, if not at the gallows, 
 died, — of the results of former poverty and 
 vice, granted — so far at peace with the 
 law as to die out of jail, and repeating 
 softly, " God bless me and forgive me ! " 
 
 These backslidings and failures were 
 among the greatest difficulties of Joshua's 
 work. Men and women, whom he had 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 169 
 
 tliouo'ht he had cleansed and set on a whole- 
 some way of living, turned back again to the 
 drink and the devilry of their lives. Excite- 
 ment had become all in all to them ; the 
 monotony of virtue tired them, and they 
 broke out into evil as a relief. But, fail as 
 often and as badly as they might, they never 
 chilled Joshua's heart, if they saddened him ; 
 as indeed they did. He forgave them every- 
 thing; ; whether their sins had been against 
 himself or against the law ; and took them 
 up where they had left him. Sometimes 
 they laughed at him for his patience with 
 them ; sometimes they swore at him and 
 refused his friendship ; sometimes they cried 
 and clung about him with pathetic but short- 
 lived gratitude ; and sometimes, but not 
 often, they took his better lessons to heart 
 and reformed altogether. For the most part, 
 
I70 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 they just fluctuated — now bad, now good, 
 as the fit took them and temptation was 
 stronger than resolution. But, bad or good, 
 he was ever the same to them — in the first 
 case tr}dng to win over, in the second 
 helping to keep straight, and thankful if he 
 succeeded ever so little in his endeavours. 
 
 The different reasons given by the various 
 sectarians who came along, when any of his 
 failures were afloat, were what I have said 
 before. The Evangelicals said it was because 
 he did not teach the Gospel ; the Church 
 people, because he was unconsecrated to the 
 task ; the Unitarians asked him, in calm 
 disdain, how he could expect to do good, 
 if he made no difference between vice and 
 virtue but treated both alike ? while the 
 Charity Organization people talked of pro- 
 secuting him for his encouragement of men- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 171 
 
 rlicity, and spoke of him as tlie pest of the 
 district and the cause of half the pauperism 
 about, because h^ helped the poor in their 
 need without enquiring into the merits of the 
 case. And they all agreed that the weak spot 
 in his system, and the cause of his failures, 
 was just this — he was not a Christian. 
 
 In the midst of all Mary Prinsep came 
 back on our hands. You may perhaps re- 
 member that her mistress had made a point 
 of concealing her former life from every one ; 
 in which she was justified, and for Mary's 
 sake as much as for her own. Things had 
 gone very well so far, and Mary had given 
 satisfaction and worked hard to deserve it, 
 when unfortunately that man who had 
 known her only too well in the sorroA^^ul 
 days of her sin, came with his family to the 
 house, on a visit of a day or two. All the 
 
172 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 servants were marshalled into prayers morn- 
 ino' and evenino^ : and naturally Mary with 
 them ; face to face with the guests. So there 
 it was — on the one side a dignified, haudsome, 
 well-to-do gentleman, with respectable white 
 hair and a gold eye-glass, a wife and a 
 fine . young family, a character to lose, and 
 a reputation for piety ; on the other, a poor 
 ignorant girl, abandoned by society, driven 
 by want into bad ways, but now doing her 
 best to get out of them. 
 
 It was an awkward meeting for him, and 
 he was afraid maybe of Mary's establish- 
 in o- a claim, or tellins: what she kncAv. There 
 he was, a auest in her master's house, with 
 his wife and eldest daughter, and under his 
 own name which she had never known, and 
 his private and official addresses both to be 
 got at. It was an instinct of self-preserva- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 173 
 
 tion, no doubt ; but it was cowardly all the 
 same ; and, as usual, the weak one had to go 
 to the wall. He made up an excellent story 
 to explain how it was that he knew the 
 girl's former life. It was a story to his 
 credit as a Christian gentleman somehow, 
 and he told it out of sheer regard for his 
 good friends who had been so shamefully 
 imposed on. And even when the lady con- 
 fessed, as she did, that she had known the 
 main fact of Clary's history, she was urged 
 so strongly to get rid of her that she con- 
 sented, partly in a vague kind of belief that 
 she had been imposed on and that Mary was 
 worse than she appeared and capable of 
 all manner of unknown crimes, partly by the 
 force of respectability and the need of keep- 
 ing up blameless appearances. So, as the 
 right thing to do considering her position and 
 
174 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 what she owed her family and her own cha- 
 racter, this lady — good Christian as she was, 
 going to church regularly twice on Sunday, 
 and taking the sacrament once a month — 
 turned the poor creature out of doors again ; 
 and she, keeping the gentleman's secret loyally, 
 came back to us, as the only friends she had. 
 She was something different to us from 
 any other girl that Joshua had been 
 the means of rescuing, and we both felt 
 that she had a stronger claim somehow, on 
 our exertions and affections. Other women 
 came and went, and Joshua helped them and 
 got them work, and did what he could for 
 them, and always kept up a kindly interest 
 in them, and the like of that ; but they 
 were not to us what Mary was ; for she was 
 like our own sister. So, when she came 
 back, it was just a family sorrow somehow; 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 175 
 
 but, to me at least, it was a bit of a joy too. 
 But you see since we had got into that 
 trouble about Joe, and had been locked up, 
 we had been worse off than eve]*. Masters 
 would not employ us; mates would not work 
 with us — we were ''jail birds " to them ; and 
 the Union turned us out. Joshua held on 
 though, and we got day-jobs ; but we were 
 often hungry and often weary ; yet Joshua 
 never let me sink into despair, nor was he 
 ever near it himself, and we managed to 
 scrape along somehow. Still, our present 
 poverty made poor Mary's return embarrass- 
 ing, though she didn't see it all. 
 
 " It is of no use, Joshua," she said, sitting 
 on a chair and leaning her head on her hand 
 disconsolately : " once lost, you are done for 
 in this world I There is nothing for me but 
 the old way ; it is all I have left ! " 
 
176 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 I remember so well when she said this. 
 The sun had come round to our window ; for 
 it was a summer's evening ; and it came into 
 the room and fell on her, as she sat with 
 her bonnet off, and her fair hair partly fallen 
 about her face. She had very fine hair, and 
 she knew it. I remember too that her 
 dress was some kind of blue, and that she 
 looked like a picture there is in the National 
 Gallery ; and I thought, if only some one who 
 could save her really, and lift her up for 
 ever out of the past, could but see her now ! 
 
 " Courage, Mary, and patience," said 
 Joshua. 
 
 " Yes, I know all that ; but the ways and 
 means ? '' said Mary, raising her eyes to him. 
 " What can I do, Joshua ? To get my bread 
 any way but the old way I must creep into 
 a house under false pretences, and then be 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 177 
 
 always afraid of being found out ; and if I 
 am found out I am sure to be turned off. 
 No one will have me who knows about me, 
 if I work ever so hard, or try to do my 
 duty ever so faithfully." 
 
 " One failure is not final,'^ said Joshua. 
 " While we have a home, you have one too ; 
 you are our sister, remember. Only have 
 faith, and as I said before courage and 
 patience; and beware of the first step back ! " 
 
 " Ah, Joshua 1 " said Mary, "you are an 
 angel ! " 
 
 "No," he answered smiling, "I am only 
 a man trying to live by principle." 
 
 But if he was not an angel he was not 
 far off being one. 
 
 It was difficult to know what to do for 
 the best for Mary. We kept her for as 
 long as we could, she doing our chores for 
 
 K* N 
 
178 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 US in the old way for her meat and room ; 
 and then Joshua raised funds — I can scarce 
 understand how, but the poorest of the 
 people helped, as well as the best off 
 — and somehow, enouo-h was e^ot too;ether 
 to establish her in a small sweet-stuff 
 shop in East-street close to Church-court. 
 To help her with the rent we went to lodge 
 with her ; which suited both her and our- 
 selves ; for you see we had got accustomed 
 to her, and she to U;^, and she knew our 
 ways, and was always good and helpful. 
 People talked, of course ; but then people 
 talk al:)Out anything, reason or none, that is 
 out of the common by ever so small a Hue ; 
 and no man who has taken an independent 
 path can escape the comment of the crowd 
 accustomed to only one way. The old report 
 that we were living with a woman of bad 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 179 
 
 character crept about again, and got down to 
 our dear Cornish homes. You may be sure 
 it made our mothers bad enough when they 
 heard it; but I don't think they quite 
 believed it, though they thought it right to 
 send us a warning, as if they did ; and 
 if they did, then they believed what was 
 not true. As for om^selves, we had our own 
 consciences and Mary's salvation to keep us 
 up ; and with these it mattered little what 
 any one else chose to say. As Joshua said, 
 we had not set out in our endeavour to 
 realise Christ for the sake of gain, but for 
 the sake of the right ; and if we had to 
 suffer, we must ; but the right was not to be 
 abandoned because of it. 
 
 N 2 
 
iSo THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 LoED X., (I may not in common honour 
 give his name ; a man however — so far I 
 may say — notorious for his philanthropy of 
 an unsteady and spasmodic kind, and for a 
 certain restless curiosity to see into the 
 inside of different social circles) — this lord, 
 in his wanderings among the East-end j)oor, 
 had come across Joshua in his little kingdom 
 of endeavour in Church-court. And as no 
 one could come in contact with him, with- 
 out feeling that inexplicable charm which is 
 inseparable from great earnestness and self- 
 devotion, it is to be supposed that Lord X. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. i8i 
 
 among the rest was attracted to the man 
 as he was. Or maybe it was only a poor 
 kind of curiosity, not sympathy ; as I have 
 since believed. However that may be, he 
 and Joshua met ; and a friendship was 
 struck up between them on the spot. 1 use 
 the word advisedly ; for though the one was 
 a peer of the realm, and the other only an 
 artisan — not learned in the scholarly way of 
 a gentleman ; not refined in the same way 
 perhaps as a gentleman, so far as manner 
 and little observances went; a man speaking 
 with a provincial accent, and dressed in 
 fustian and coarse clothes — yet he was fit 
 to take his place with the finest gentleman 
 in the land ; and even the finest lady would 
 have found but little in him to ridicule and 
 much to respect. And I will do both Lord 
 and Lady X. the credit of sincerity in 
 
i82 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the beginning, when, as I said, the friend- 
 ship between him and them was struck up. 
 
 Then it must be remembered, that Joshua 
 was one of the handsomest men you could 
 see in a long summer s day ; a real man ; no 
 sickly, effeminate, half- woman, but a tall, 
 broad-shouldered, deep-chested fellow, largely 
 framed, and with that calm self-control, that 
 steady unfeverish energy, which seemed as 
 if it could carry the world before it. And 
 maybe his good looks influenced his new 
 acquaintances in the beginning, even more 
 than they themselves knew. However that 
 might be, they made up to him, and seemed 
 as though they would have been his best 
 friends all through. 
 
 " You want a background, Mr. Davidson," 
 said Lord X., one day when he called on 
 him at our lodojinii^s. "All human nature 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 183 
 
 resolves itself into a mathematical formula ; 
 a plus ij represents a quantity unattainable 
 by a alone." 
 
 *'But what background can I get, my 
 lord % " returned Joshua. " It sounds a 
 strange confession to make, but no one will 
 work with me. Sects keep only to them- 
 selves or their affiliations ; and I, who be- 
 long to no sect, am looked on as an enemy 
 by all because I am an enemy to none." 
 
 " Puttinof sectarianism aside for the 
 moment, you can do nothing without the 
 sanction of society," said Lord X. " No 
 movement can succeed which is not backed 
 by men of birth and money." 
 
 Joshua smiled. '' This remark does not 
 apply to the roots, my lord, I suppose % " 
 he said ; " only to the growth and develop- 
 ment ? " 
 
1 84 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 " Oil ! " said Lord X., carelessly, " a 
 low fellow might strike out an idea, but it 
 would want a man of position to develop it/' 
 
 " Well, perhaps you are right," Joshua 
 answered. '^ For, after all, Christianity owes 
 more to Paul than to Jesus ; and the Pauline 
 development has struck deeper and spread 
 wider than the Christ original." 
 
 *' Just so," said Lord X. 
 
 "The one being example, both difficult 
 to follow and subversive of the existing 
 state of things; the other dogma which 
 ranks the intellectual acceptance of a creed 
 above the revolutionary ethics on which it 
 is based," said Joshua. 
 
 " But, Mr. Davidson I " remonstrated 
 Lord X., " surely even you, enthusiast as 
 you are, must acknowledge that it would be 
 impossible to. go back to the practices of 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 185 
 
 early Cliristian times ? The staff and the 
 scrip ^Ye^e all very well in their day, Lut 
 they would scarcely do now. Society has 
 become more complex and intricate since 
 then ; it would be out of all question to 
 have the connnon purse and live in the bar- 
 baric simplicity of apostolic times. Times 
 change, and manners with them.'' 
 
 " Which is just my difficulty, my lord," 
 said Joshua. "For if modern society is 
 right, then Christ was wrong ; and we have 
 to look elsewhere than to Him for a solution 
 of our moral and social problems." 
 
 " I would not pronounce so crudely as 
 that," said Lord X. " Say rather that 
 a further development may reconcile our 
 differences." 
 
 "So be it, sir ; yet if this is so, we are 
 still in the same position as before, and the 
 
1 86 7 HE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 life of Christ, as related in the Bible, is not 
 the absolute example for us to follow." 
 
 " About that you must form your own 
 opinion," said Lord X., with a certain 
 cynical indifference not pleasant to witness. 
 " What you may or may not believe of the 
 Bible is a question for yourself alone to 
 decide : it can have no interest for any one 
 else. What has an interest, however, is your 
 mode of dealing with the great social 
 problems in which you have bestirred your- 
 self ; and, going back to our starting-point, 
 I say again that you can do nothing if 
 society does not assist you." 
 
 Joshua smiled a little sadly. " And I 
 have only the same answer to make, my 
 lord," he said. *' No one will help me ; and 
 my work, such as it is, stands alone." 
 
 *'Then I think, Mr. Davidson, that it 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. - 187 
 
 must be your own fault," said Lord X. 
 '' There are liberal denominations to which 
 your spirit of inquiry w^ould not be alien ; 
 wdiy cannot you coalesce with them ? The 
 Broad Church do not nail their colours to 
 your old enemy, dogma ; and the Unitarians 
 are not superstitious." 
 
 " But the Unitarians above all demand 
 respectability of life," said Joshua. " Having 
 abandoned that -wide harbour, the Atone- 
 ment, they are obliged to anchor themselves 
 on morality. My poor lost sheep would come 
 off but badly before the rigid tribunal of 
 Unitarian morality ; and the Broad Church, 
 though more humane perhaps, requires at 
 the least repentance. But the men and 
 women I have to do with are without a 
 sense of sin — people who fail again and 
 again, and whom nothing but the utmost 
 
i88 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 patience can ever reclaim, if even tliat 
 does." 
 
 " Then I do not see much use in your 
 attempts/' said Lord X. "I myself would 
 do all I could to rescue the poor wretches 
 one sees in the courts and alleys from the 
 filth and misery in which they live. But 
 when I find I am doing no real good, and 
 that they go wrong again, I leave them to 
 their fate and mark them off as hopeless. 
 You must draw a line, Mr. Davidson ! For 
 the sake of society, you must show some 
 difference in your estimate of men. To 
 treat the deservino^ and the undeservinof 
 alike is gross injustice. Some of these 
 wretches are more like brutes than men. I 
 would clear them all out like rats ; and with 
 no more compunction than if they were rats." 
 
 "I do not agree with you, my lord. I 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 189 
 
 believe that more harm has been done by 
 condemnation than ever wonld come through 
 tolerance. By love alone can the world l)e 
 saved/' 
 
 -Love? Pvubbish !" said Lord X. "The 
 laws nnistbe obeyed, and society supported." 
 
 " Only in so far as it is just," put in 
 J oshua. 
 
 " If by just you mean equality, pardon 
 me if 1 say that you talk nonsense," said 
 Lord X. " You might as well say that 
 nature is unjust, because a grove of oaks 
 needs more space than a roAv of turnips, 
 as that man is to blame because he 
 has lifted himself into classes of w^hich the 
 superiors have more than the inferiors. If 
 it had not been for this inj ustice, as you call 
 it, we should never have had a superior class 
 at all, and the world would have o;one on 
 
I90 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 for ever in one dead level of mediocrity, 
 where no one shone, and no one was 
 obscured." 
 
 " Granted," said Joshua. '^ But you having 
 developed into stars and suns, what we 
 want is, that you should help the poor dark 
 spheres on the same way." 
 
 Lord X. laughed. " I doubt the power 
 and I question the wisdom of that," he said. 
 " Help them to be cleanly and virtuous and 
 content with their natural position, if you 
 like ; but I for one do not go further." 
 
 "And Christ and history do, my lord," 
 said Joshua. 
 
 " Mr. Davidson, you are incorrigible ! " 
 said Lord X., jocularly ; " but happily 
 your opinions do not vitiate your good 
 works, and I will help you in these where 
 I can." 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 191 
 
 " Thank you, my lord," said Joshua 
 simply : " I shall hold you to your promise. 
 And yet you must understand that I hope 
 far more from the union and ors^anization of 
 the working classes together, than from any 
 extraneous aid whatever ; only w^e take all 
 kinds." 
 
 " In w^hich you are wise,'' said Lord X., 
 drily. '' You would get on but poorly among 
 yourselves I fancy, if it were not for Us." 
 
 Joshua did not answer. He said after- 
 wards that, having made his declaration 
 honestly, he felt it would have been un- 
 generous to have carried the conversation 
 further on that line. While accepting my 
 lord's help it was scarcely the thing to de- 
 preciate it ; so the talk then drifted or rather 
 settled on all that he had been doing in 
 Church-court and the neighbourhood — on his 
 
192 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 night-school, his charities, his hospitality to 
 thieves and the like ; and the results ; those 
 whom he might fairly count as his successes, 
 with those who had been as yet his failures. 
 He never allowed more than this " as yet." 
 *' While there is a gate open to them, there is 
 always the hope that they will enter in by 
 it," he used to say. " What men are taught 
 of Christ in heaven — that no shame, no dis- 
 grace, no sin can make Him turn away 
 His face from those who seek Him — 
 so ought they to find here on earth in 
 human pity and human love. If we were 
 more patient, we should have more power 
 over each other, and there would be fewer 
 failures." 
 
 " You mean, if we were gods we should act 
 in a godlike manner," said Lord X., with that 
 curious mixture of cynicism and philanthropy, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 193 
 
 kindness and satire, earnestness and levity, 
 that characterised him. 
 
 " No," Joshua answered ; " I mean only 
 that, if we did our best possible as men, we 
 should make a better job of life altogether 
 both for ourselves individually and for the 
 world at large." 
 
 " You must come and see me, Mr. Da\dd- 
 son," said Lord X., suddenly rising and 
 drawing on his gloves. '' Lady X. will be 
 charmed to see you, I am sure. She is im- 
 mensely interested in all sorts of social ques- 
 tions, and I shall be delighted to present 
 you. You will be a new reading to her," he 
 added, and smiled. 
 
 " I will come and be read," said Joshua ; 
 " and I hope to a good end. If I can in- 
 terest you, and your friends through you, my 
 lord, I shall have done somethinor." 
 
194 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 This was the first time that I had seen 
 Joshua really elated with hope of help from 
 the outside. He knew that Lord X. was 
 a man of immense wealth, and that he could, 
 if he would, do wonders for his poor friends. 
 But he did not know how shallow his 
 philanthropic zeal was ; how much more a 
 matter of mere amusement than of vital 
 principle. His work among the poor was 
 the work of a superior ; and his estimate of 
 his own class, and therefore of himself as a 
 peer, was so curiously great, that he thought 
 his very presence among them ought to 
 prove a kind of loalm and moral styptic to 
 all their wounds. He was willing^ to orive 
 when the fit took him ; but he would have 
 resented the doctrine of duty, or the right 
 to take. The poor Avere as curious specimens 
 to him. He never regarded them as men 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 195 
 
 and women like himself and his class. He 
 scarcely gave them credit for ordinary human 
 feeling even ; for he used to say that affections 
 and nerves ay ere both matters of education 
 and refinement, a.nd that the uneducated and 
 unrefined neither loved nor felt as the others. 
 Perhaps he was right. I am not physiologist 
 enouo'h to know much about nerves and 
 pain and the difference of education, so far 
 as that g;oes : but I think I have seen as 
 much real affection, as much passionate self- 
 abandoning, self-sacrificing love among the 
 poor as there is among the rich. It may be 
 more uncouth, its demonstration more simple 
 too, and less elegantly expressed, but it is 
 there all the same, and maybe in fuller 
 quantity than with fashionable folks who 
 really seem too idle and dispersed to be ablt? 
 to love with either vio^our or concentration. 
 
 o 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 Furtliermore, pliilantliropy to Lord X. 
 was an occupation and a reputation. He 
 had no turn for abstract politics, no head for 
 diplomacy, no taste for literature ; he was 
 not an artist nor a mechanician, but he was 
 ambitious, and he liked distinction. So, 
 dabbling among the poor, and touching the 
 grave social problems besetting them deli- 
 cately, following them to their haunts and 
 relieving their immediate distress, pleased 
 both his kind heart and his vanity ; and he 
 did substantial good of a fragmentary kind, 
 if his motives would scarce bear severe 
 scrutiny. 
 
 For myself I did not augur much from 
 the association. Less spiritual and less 
 single-minded than my friend, I could also 
 judge better than he of his own power of 
 fascination. Hence I could discern more 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 197 
 
 clearly than he, how much of Lord X/s 
 offer of help was the genuine movement of 
 his own soul, and how much was due to the 
 curiosity and amusement which the study of 
 a life and character at once so fresh and 
 whole-hearted as his awakened and pro- 
 mised. But it was not for me to speak, or 
 throw cold water on what might turn out to 
 be such a l30on to the cause. If Joshua had 
 \Yanted my advice, he would have asked it. 
 As he did not ask it, I considered him best 
 able to judge for himself. And yet some- 
 times I have been sorry that I did not 
 speak. 
 
198 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 This was Joshua's first introduction into a 
 wealthy house of the upper classes ; and from 
 the retinue of servants in their gorgeous 
 liveries thronging the hall, to the little lap- 
 dog on its velvet cushion, the luxury and 
 lavishness he saw everywhere almost stupified 
 him. To a man earning, say some twenty- 
 five shillino;s a week, and livino- on less than 
 half — sharing with those poorer than himself, 
 and content to go short that others mio;ht 
 be satisfied — the revelation of Lord X/s 
 house was a sharp and positive pain. The 
 starvation he, the nobleman, had seen in his 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 199 
 
 wanderings — starvation in all probability 
 relieved for to-day ; but to-morrow and 
 the day after and for all future time, till the 
 pauper's grave closed over all ? — and then 
 had come back to an abundance, a fasti- 
 diousness, of which the very refuse would 
 have been salvation to hundreds ; the mise- 
 rable dwellings he visited, mere styes of 
 filth, immodesty, and vice, where the seeds 
 of physical disease and moral corruption are 
 sown broadcast and from earliest infancy — 
 and then returned to a dwelling like a fairy 
 palace, where every nook and corner was 
 perfect, redolent of all kinds of sweetness 
 and loveliness — to a man of the people like 
 Joshua, fairly oppressive in its richness and 
 grandeur; the gaunt and famine-wasted men 
 and women and children that he had so 
 often met, the little ones brutally treated, 
 
200 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 half starved, sworn at, and knocked about, 
 swarming througli reeking courts and alleys 
 where the very air of heaven was poisonous — 
 and the lady's lap-dog, with its dainty food, 
 its tender care, well washed, combed, curled, 
 scented, adorned, on a velvet footstool, a toy 
 bought for it to play with : and that man 
 and that woman — this lord and lady — were 
 professing Christians, went regularly to 
 church, believed that Christ was very God, 
 and that every w^ord of the Bible was in- 
 spired ! It w^as habit ; but at first sight it 
 looked incomprehensible to one who lived 
 among the poor, and was of them. 
 
 Lady X. soon came into the room where 
 Joshua and Lord X. were. She was a tall, 
 fair, languid woman, kindly natured but 
 selfish, dissatisfied with her life as it was yet 
 unable to devise anything better for herself ; 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 201 
 
 having no interest anywhere, without chil- 
 dren, and evidently not as much in love with 
 her husband as model wives usually are : a 
 woman whose intelligence and physique 
 clashed, the one being restless and the other 
 indolent. Every now and then she took up 
 her husband's '' cases," partly out of com- 
 plaisance to him, partly from profound 
 weariness with her life, and also from the 
 natural kind-heartedness wdaich made her 
 like to do good-natured things and to give 
 pleasure to others. But she soon abandoned 
 them and set them adrift. She was a woman 
 with great curiosity but no tenacity ; full 
 of a soft sensual kind of passion that led 
 her into danger as much from idleness as 
 from vice ; she loved out of idleness, and 
 worked out of idleness. It was a gain to 
 her to be interested in anything — whether it 
 
202 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 was the fashion of the day or the salvation 
 of a human soul ; but there was no spirit of 
 self-sacrifice in her, and she would have con- 
 sidered it an impertinence if she had been 
 asked to do a hair's-breadth more than she 
 desired of her own free-will. Had she been 
 born poor, she might have been a grand 
 woman ; as she was, she was just a fine lady 
 whose nobler nature was stifled under the 
 weight of idleness and luxury. 
 
 But she liked Joshua, and took to him 
 kindly. 
 
 She gave him at that first interview 
 a really handsome sum of money for his 
 poorer friends ; she promised clothes and 
 soup-tickets, books for his school, toys for 
 his children, good food for his sick. The 
 simple yet so grand earnestness of the man 
 interested her, and she too felt as every 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 203 
 
 one else did, that here was a master-spirit 
 which had a chiim to all men's reverence and 
 admiration. She was not satisfied with this 
 first visit, but Joshua must go to see her 
 again ; and after he had been there twice, 
 she of herself offered to come and see him in 
 his lodgings, over the little sweet-stuff shop 
 which ]\lary Prinsep kept. And Joshua did 
 not forbid her. 
 
 Was there ever such an incongruity ? The 
 street — East-street — in which we lived, was 
 too narrow for her carriage to come down, so 
 she had to walk the distance to Joshua's 
 rooms. And I shall never forget the sight. 
 Her dainty feet were clothed in satin on 
 which glittered buckles that looked like dia- 
 monds ; her dress was of apple-blossom- 
 coloured silk that trailed behind her ; her 
 bonnet seemed to be just a feather and a 
 
204 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 veil ; she wore some lidit lace thino; about 
 her that looked like a cloud more than a 
 fabric ; and her arms and neck were covered 
 with chains and lockets and bracelets. She 
 was like a fairy cjueen among the gnomes 
 and blackamoors of an underground mine, 
 like a sweet-scented rose-bush in the midst 
 of a refuse heap as she came picking 
 her way with courage, but witli exaggerated 
 delicacy, her footman in his blue and silver 
 at her back, and the mob of the street 
 staring, too much astonished at such an ap- 
 parition to jeer. 
 
 When she came into the little shop and 
 asked for Joshua, I was standing in the 
 doorway (it was on a Sunday) between the 
 shop and Mary's back room ; and for the 
 first time I saw Mary in an ugly light. She 
 turned quite white as the lady came in, and 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 205 
 
 instead of answering, looked round to me 
 with an agony in her face that was inde- 
 scribable. 
 
 " Yes, madam," I said coming forward ; 
 " he is up-stairs." 
 
 " Do you want him, ma'am ? '' then asked 
 Mary, the look of pain still in her large 
 fixed eyes ; and I thought that the lady, 
 looking at her — for Mary was young and 
 very pretty, as I have said — looked uneasy 
 too. At all events, she looked haughty. 
 
 " Yes," she said ; but she turned and 
 spoke to me, not to Mary. " Have the good- 
 ness to tell him that Lady X. wants to 
 speak to him." 
 
 I ran upstairs and told him ; and Joshua, 
 without changing his countenance one whit, 
 as if lords and ladies in gorgeous array were 
 our natural visitors and what we were used 
 
2o6 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 to every day, came down and greeted the 
 lady as lie would have greeted the baker's 
 wife — neither more nor less respectfully ; 
 which means, that he was respectful to 
 every one. 
 
 Lady X. made a step forward when he 
 came into the shop, and the blood flew 
 over her face as she gave him her hand. 
 
 " Now, you must let me see where you 
 live, and how you do such wonders," she 
 said, with the most undefinable but unmis- 
 takable accent of coaxing in the voice. 
 
 And Joshua saying quietly; "Are you not 
 too fine to come up our stairs. Lady X. ? 
 — we do our best to kee23 them clean, 
 Mary, don't we ? but they are not used to 
 such-like feet on them ; " gave her his hand 
 smiling. 
 
 " They will be used to mine, I hope, often," 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 207 
 
 said my lady kindly. *' You know I have 
 taken a great interest in your work, Mr. 
 Davidson, and I am going to help where 
 I can." 
 
 " If you will come this way then, my 
 lady, I will show you all I have on hand at 
 the present moment," said Joshua moving 
 towards the stairs. 
 
 And again the lady blushed ; and her long 
 silk skirts trailed behind her with a curious 
 rustling; noise : and we heard her lio-ht boot- 
 heels go tap, tap, up the stairs, and her 
 chains and trinkets jingle. 
 
 Then Mary turned to me, and said with 
 a ^nld kind of look ; " John ! John ! she is 
 here for no good ! She will harm more than 
 she helps. What call has she to come here ? 
 who wants her ? She will only do us all a 
 mischief I" 
 
2o8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 She turned her face to the window and 
 burst into tears. 
 
 " Mary 1 what ails you ? " I said, 
 vaguely ; for I was shocked, and did not 
 rightly understand her. I seemed to feel 
 something I could not give a name to — a 
 pain and a queer kind of doubt ; but indeed 
 it was all chaotic, and all I knew was that 
 I was sorry. " You know," I went on 
 trying to comfort her, " that money and 
 worldly influence at Joshua's back would 
 give him all he wants. His hands are so 
 weak now for want of both these things. 
 Why should we be sorry, dear, that he has 
 the chance of them ? " 
 
 " She has come for no good ! " was all that 
 Mary would say ; and I could only wonder 
 at an outburst unlike anything T had ever 
 seen before. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 209 
 
 My lady stayed a long time upstairs, and 
 poor Mary's agony during her visit never 
 relaxed. At last she came down, flushed and 
 radiant. Her eyes were softer and darker, 
 her face looked younger and more tender ; 
 she even glanced kindly at me as she passed 
 me, saying to Joshua in a voice as sweet as 
 a silver bell ; " And this is the John you have 
 been telling me about ? — he looks a good 
 fellow ! — and is this Mary ? " but she was 
 not quite so tender to Mary ; and she added, 
 in rather a displeased tone of voice ; " Girl ! 
 you look very young to keep house by 
 yourself, and have young men lodgers ! " 
 
 " Ah, my lady, you forget that our girls 
 have not the care taken of them that yours 
 have," said Joshua gently. " So soon as 
 a girl of ours can get her living, L;he 
 
 does." 
 
 p 
 
2IO THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 " Well, I hope that Mary will be a good 
 girl, and do you credit," said my lady 
 coldly. 
 
 She shook hands then with Joshua, but, 
 with her hand still in his, turned to him and, 
 with the sweetest smile I have ever seen on 
 woman's face, said in the same strange ca- 
 ressing way ; '' I must ask you to be kind 
 enough to take me to my carriage, Mr. 
 Davidson. I think my footman must have 
 gone to keep the coachman company ; and I 
 should scarcely like to go down the street 
 alone." 
 
 " Certainly not," said Joshua, and led her, 
 still holding her hand, out from the shop 
 and into the little street to where her car- 
 riao;e was waitinoj for her. 
 
 " Mind the shop for me, John," said 
 Mary ; and with a great sob she ran 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 211 
 
 away and shut herself up in her own 
 room. 
 
 She would have been ashamed I know, to 
 let Joshua see that she was crying, and all 
 for nothing, too ; only because a fine lady, 
 smelling of sweet scents and wearing a rich 
 silk gown, had passed through the shop. 
 
 As for him, he came back without a ruffle 
 on his quiet, mild face. There was no flush 
 of gratified vanity on it; nothing but just 
 that inward, absorbed look, that look of 
 peace and love which beautified him at all 
 times. As he passed through, he looked 
 round for Mary ; but I told him she was 
 bad with her head; and as this had the 
 efi'ect of sending him into her room to look 
 after her, poor Mary's attempt at conceal- 
 ment came to nothing. But I don't think 
 
 Joshua found out why she Vvas crying. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Many a day after this my lady's carriage 
 came to the entrance of our wretched street, 
 and my lady herself, like a radiant vision, 
 picked her way among garbage and ruffian- 
 ism down to the little sweet-stuff shop 
 where ha'pennyworths of " buUs'-eyes " were 
 sold to young chiklren by a girl who had 
 once been a street-walker, and where the 
 upstairs rooms were tenanted by two jour- 
 neymen carpenters. It was an anomaly that 
 could not last ; but the very sharpness 
 of the contrast gave it interest in her 
 eyes; and while the novelty continued 
 it was like a scene out of a play in 
 which she was the heroine. So, at least, I 
 judged her ; and the more I think of the 
 whole affair, the more sure I feel that I am 
 right. 
 
 And then Joshua's handsome face and 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 213 
 
 dignity of look and manner might count for 
 something. 
 
 She (the hidy) Tras truly good and helpful 
 to Joshua all the time this fad of hers 
 lasted ; for that it was only a fad, without 
 stability or roots, the sequel proved. She 
 brouglit him clothes and money, and seemed 
 ready to do all she could for him. He had 
 only to tell her that he wanted such and 
 such help, and she gave it, aye, like a 
 princess ! 
 
 What took place between them neither 
 I nor any one can say. Joshua never opened 
 his lips on the subject ; and after that day, by 
 tacit consent all round, the name of Lord and 
 Lady X. was a dead letter among us. All 
 I know is, that one day, when she had come 
 down to our place as so often now, my lady, 
 flushed, haughty, trembling too, but changed 
 
214 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 sonieliow, with a sad, disordered face instead 
 of the half-sleepy sweetness usual to it, came 
 downstairs — not this time holding Joshua's 
 hand ; he following her, pale and troubled- 
 looking ; that she passed through the little 
 shop quickly and impatiently, with never a 
 glance towards Mary or me ; that at the 
 door she turned round, and said sharply ; 
 " You need not give yourself the trouble, 
 Mr. Davidson, to come with me — I can find 
 my way alone ; " and that Joshua answered 
 with more tenderness and humility of tone 
 and manner than I had ever seen or heard 
 in him before ; " My lady, I must disobey 
 you : I cannot let you go through the street 
 alone." And that he followed her out, bare- 
 headed, but at a little distance from her — 
 not beside her. 
 
 This was the last time we saw her ; nor 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 215 
 
 did Lord X. keep up any association with 
 my friend. And I heard afterwards, quite 
 accidentally, that he had said soon after 
 this, he really '^ could not countenance that 
 man "Davidson : he was too offensively radi- 
 cal in his opinions, and a presuming fellow 
 besides/' 
 
 But word came to us both that my lady 
 had found out all about Mary, and that she 
 had expressed herself insulted and revolted at 
 Joshua's allowing her to enter a house kept 
 by such a creature. 
 
 " It was all very well to be compassionate 
 and helpful," she had said ; *' but no amount 
 of charity justified that man Davidson in 
 his proceedings with such a woman. Or, 
 if he chose to associate with her himself, he 
 ought to have warned her (her ladyship), 
 that she should not have made the mis- 
 
2i6 THE TRUE HISTORY OB 
 
 take of speaking to her as to a proper 
 person." 
 
 So tins first and Last attempt at aristo- 
 cratic co-operation fell to the ground ; and 
 Society peremptorily refused to endorse a 
 man who had set himself to live the life 
 after Christ. 
 
 If Joshua was sorry for the loss he had so 
 mysteriously sustained, poor JMary was not. 
 All during the lady's visits she had drooped 
 and pined, till I thought she was in a bad 
 way, and going to be worse. Ah ! this was 
 a bitter time to me, for I loved her like my 
 own ; and I loved Joshua and his work and 
 his life better than my own life ; and I was 
 perplexed, and in a manner torn to pieces, 
 among so many feelings. But she revived 
 after the day when the lady passed through 
 the shop with her sad, proud, disordered 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 217 
 
 face, and when Joshua came back from 
 seeing her to her carriage, like a man who 
 has had a blow and is still dazed by it. 
 She waited on him after this, more assidu- 
 ously than ever. She seemed to live only 
 to please him. The place was the very per- 
 fection of cleanliness. Even my lady's 
 palace could not have been more wholesome 
 or more pure. The squalor of the shell, so 
 to speak, and the poverty of the inside, was 
 concealed or made to be forgotten by the 
 exquisite neatness and cleanliness with which 
 it was all kept; -and when Joshua's counte- 
 nance came l)ack again, as it did after 
 awhile, to its usual sweet serenity, Mary's 
 also came to its peace, and the cloud that 
 had hung over it like a distemper passed 
 away. 
 
 " It will not do, John !" he said to me one 
 
2i8 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 day, some time after : " for the aristocracy 
 to come down to the poor is a mistake. 
 They are different creatures altogether, with 
 diflferent laws of honour and morality among 
 themselves from what we know anything 
 about. And the gulf is too wide to be 
 bridged over by just one here, and another 
 there, coming like the old Israelitish spies 
 among us, to see the nakedness of the land. 
 They do a little good for the time, but it is 
 good that bears no blessing with it, and is 
 not lasting. We must work up by ourselves 
 into a state nearer to them in material o-ood ; 
 but not," he added, as if by an after-thought, 
 " in looseness of principle. That, however, 
 has come only from idleness ; and if great 
 people had imperative duties and the abso- 
 lute need of exertion, we should hear of 
 fewer divorce scandals, fewer turf catas- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 219 
 
 trophes, and the like, than we do now. 
 However, that is not our affair. We are 
 here to work on our own account, not to 
 judge of others.'' 
 
 " It is an old saying, Joshua, but a true 
 one, ' extremes meet,' " said I. '' The very 
 poor have no taste for refined j^leasure, and 
 indeed no power of indulging it if they 
 had ; and the very rich, sated with all that is 
 given to them by their position, devise new 
 excitements of an ignoble kind. I sujDpose 
 that is something like it ? " 
 
 "I suppose so," he answered. "At all 
 events, there can be no such thing as level- 
 ling down. It would be no righteousness to 
 bring the rich, the refined, the well educated 
 down to the level of the poor ; but to raise 
 up the masses, and to impose on the upper 
 classes positive duties, this is the only way 
 
220 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 in which the difference between high and 
 low can be lessened. And if this can be 
 done free of national revolt and bloodshed, 
 it will be a godlike work, and the blessed 
 solution of the greatest difficulty the world 
 has seen yet. It cannot be a good thing 
 that some men have to work till all the 
 strength of intellect is worked out of them, 
 while others are lapped in such idleness that 
 all theirs is either bemused and stagnated, 
 or turned to evil issues for want of being 
 wholesomely used. Come how it may, it 
 has to come — this more equal distribution of 
 the better thino-s of life. I do not mean 
 that the duchess will have to share her vel- 
 vet cushions with the seamstress; but it has 
 to be that, either by education or improved 
 machinery, or both, there will not be the 
 enormous difference there is now between the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 221 
 
 duchess and the seamstress. We have made 
 a great parade lately of our sympathy with 
 the North, on the ground of emancipation; 
 but Society here in London holds slaves as 
 arbitrarily and as cruelly as ever the Southern 
 planters did ; and its vested interests, how- 
 ever demoralising, are as sacred to us as 
 were the vested interests of the planter to 
 him. I will never again try a fraternal 
 union with a rich house. When the working- 
 men have their political and social rights, 
 and have utilised their leisure to refine and 
 elevate, to beautify and adorn, their lives, 
 then, when we are radically equal, we can 
 meet as men and brothers. As we are now, 
 we are experiments to some, mere tem- 
 porary amusements to others, inferiors to 
 all ; and we pin our faith to a straw — 
 hang our golden hopes on gossamer — 
 
222 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 when we look for vital co-operation from 
 
 them." 
 
 " I thouo-lit Joshua would find her out in 
 time," was Mary's comment. '' I took stock 
 of her from the first, and saw she was no 
 good." 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 223 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 I HAVE said so much of the personal 
 charities of Joshua that I seem to have 
 thrown into the shade, by comparison, his 
 political life and action ; and yet this was 
 the more important of the two. The extreme 
 section of republican working men, though 
 they did not go in for his religious views, 
 made use of his political zeal ; and when 
 w^ork was bad to get, sometimes he was sent 
 as a delegate, sometimes he went of his own 
 accord, to the various towns that needed 
 either encouragement or awakening ; where 
 he gave lectures on the necessity of labour 
 
224 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 keeping a close front against the serried 
 ranks of capital ; on the lawfulness and de- 
 sirability of trades' unions and strikes, when 
 occasion demands ; on the political w^orth 
 of a republic that grows naturally out 
 of monarchy and oligarchy, as manhood 
 grows out of childhood ; on the need of the 
 working classes raising themselves to a 
 higher level in mind and circumstance than 
 that which they occupy now ; on the 
 beauty of social and moral freedom ; and on 
 the right of each man to a fair share of the 
 primary essentials for good living. And all 
 this was mixed up with that fervid prac- 
 tical Christianity of his, which gave a new 
 and holier aspect to every question he 
 handled. 
 
 Joshua believed in the religion of politics. 
 He often said that, were Christ to come 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 225 
 
 again in this day, He would be more of 
 a politician tlian a theologian ; and that He 
 would teach men to work for the coming of 
 the kingdom of heaven on earth, rather 
 through the general elevation of the material 
 condition of the masses than by either ritual 
 or dogma, 
 
 '' You can't make a man a saint in mind," 
 I have heard him say more than once, 
 " when you keep him like a beast in body ; " 
 and " higher wages, better food, better lodg- 
 ment, and better education will do more to 
 make men real Christians than all the 
 churches ever built." 
 
 No man was more convinced than he 
 that sin and misery are the removable results 
 of social circumstances, and that poverty, 
 ignorance, and class-distinctions consequent, 
 are at the root of all the crimes and wretched- 
 
226 THE TRUE HISTORY OE 
 
 ness afloat. The evil lying in tliat great 
 curse of partial civilisation — that upas tree 
 of caste — by which this Christian world of 
 ours, with its religion of brotherhood and 
 socialism, is overshadowed, pained him most 
 of all. The caste of the rich, with its pro- 
 duct, the class antagonism of the poor — 
 what a sorry satire on the religion of 
 Jesus of Nazareth, thtiL poor, unlearned 
 man of the people, whom we have ex- 
 alted into God and now worship with 
 gorgeous ceremonial, while despising every 
 one of the social doctrines He and His 
 disciples preached ! However, Joshua did 
 his best to rouse men to a consciousness of 
 Christ, and to the acceptance of His teaching 
 of human equality ; and though steadily op- 
 posed to all doctrines of violence, was always 
 tlie passionate upholder of the doctrine of 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 227 
 
 duty on the one side and tlie theory of rights 
 on the other. 
 
 He had often a sore time of it. His 
 discourses roused immense antagonism, and 
 he was sometimes set upon and severely 
 handled by the men to whom he spoke. I 
 have seen him left for dead twice in the 
 rough monarchical towns. But he worked as 
 the Master had worked before him ; simply 
 changing the methods to be more in harmony 
 with the times ; going on his way calm, un- 
 shaken, cheerful, ever ready to face the 
 worst and take what danger might arise 
 without blenching ; of a steadfast heart and 
 a loyal spirit; looking up to God, living after 
 Christ, and loving the humanity that black- 
 guarded and nearly killed him as his reward. 
 Tears are in my eyes, rough man as I am, 
 when I remember Joshua Davidson, his life 
 
 Q 2 
 
2 28 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 and T\^orks, and what the world he lived but 
 to better said of him and did to him. I 
 have known swindlers and nmrderers more 
 gently entreated. Of a truth, the age of 
 martyrs has not passed away ; as any one 
 may prove in his own person who will set 
 himself to enlarge the close boroughs of 
 thought, and to rectify the injustice of 
 society. 
 
 The war broke out between France and 
 Prussia, and at the first the tide of liberal 
 sympathies went with Prussia, as represent- 
 ing opposition to the Empire. But as time 
 went on, sides changed, and moderates 
 backed up Prussia, while the ultra-Tories and 
 the Ee]3ublicans went with France ; the 
 one hoping to see the Empire restored, the 
 other longing for the establishment of liberty. 
 And Joshua's sympathies changed with the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 229 
 
 rest. I ought perhaps to have made more 
 than I have done of his intimacy with cer- 
 tain foreign socialists and reformers. Felix 
 Pyat I have abeady spoken of. He was 
 one of our warmest friends ; and, to go to 
 a very materialistic part of the subject, his 
 association with us both was of great value, 
 not only for the sake of the man himself, 
 but also for the opportunity he afforded us 
 of learning the French language. 
 
 When the Commune declared itself on the 
 eighteenth of March, none but those in the 
 centre of advanced political feeliug can tell 
 wdiat passionate hopes were awakened in the 
 men who care for liberty and believe in social 
 progress. Comtists, Internationalists, Secu- 
 larists, Socialists, Eepublicans, by what name 
 soever the doctrine of liberty and brother- 
 hood may be proclaimed, we all looked over 
 
230 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 to Paris with an anxiety that was as painful 
 as if we stood watching the struggles of a 
 beloved friend with our own hands bound. 
 There were men whom that time sent mad 
 with hope and fear ; and some that I could 
 name are now lying cold in their graves 
 for sorrow at the failure of the righteous 
 cause. The Commune, successful in Paris, 
 meant the emancipation of the working 
 clases here, and later on the peaceable estab- 
 lishment of the Eepublic ; which we all 
 believe lias to come, whether peaceably 
 established or not. 
 
 On the nineteenth of March, Joshua 
 resolved to go over to Paris, to help, so far 
 as he could, in the cause of humanity. I 
 never sa -■' him so full of enthusiasm. Every 
 now and then, especially of late, his hope, if 
 not his zeal, had slackened a little before 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 231 
 
 tlie magnitude of the task lie liad undertaken 
 at home. Alone as he was, not only unsup- 
 ported by any inHuential men whatsoever, 
 but actively opposed by many, he found his 
 work of amelioration very hard, and the 
 results unsatisfactory. But to help in the 
 establishment of an organised liberty like the 
 Commune — that seemed the best thing any 
 man loving his fellow-men could do; and 
 accordingly, he and I agreed to go over at 
 once. And poor Mary Prinsep was broken 
 hearted. But, sorry as he was to give her 
 sorrow, his duty was too clear before him to 
 let him hesitate ; and, stifling whatever 
 grief of private affection he might leave 
 behind him, he set his face toward Paris ; 
 and after some difficulties and dangers we 
 arrived there, "let into the trap" as so 
 many before and after us. 
 
232 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 As this is not a history of the Comirmne it 
 is not necessary to say much about the leaders. 
 Some he loved like his very brothers; others, 
 chiefly of the noisier sort, he distrusted as 
 leaders, and would rather have seen subordi- 
 nate to better-balanced minds. He might 
 not too, have always agreed even with the 
 men he loved. Being men, they were fallible ; 
 but they did honestly for the best, and the 
 abuse hurled at them — a " nest of mis- 
 creants," a '' handful of brigands," and the 
 like — was as untrue as it was illogical. There 
 were among^ the Communist leaders men as 
 noble as ever lived ujDon earth ; men, what- 
 ever their special creed, the most after the 
 pattern of Christ in their faithful en- 
 deavour to help the poor and to raise the 
 lowly, to rectify the injustice of conventional 
 distinctions, and to give all men an equal 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 233 
 
 chance of being happy, virtuous, and 
 human. 
 
 Never had Paris been so free from crime 
 as during; the administration of the Commune 
 — never so pure. All the vice which had 
 disgraced the city ever since the congenial 
 Empire had existed, was swept clean out of it ; 
 and not the most reckless vilifie-rs of these 
 latter-day Christ-men could make out a case of 
 peculation, of greed, or of uncleanness among 
 them. Skilled artisans abandoned their 
 lucrative callings for the starvation-pay of a 
 franc and a half a day, and set themselves 
 — not to amass wealth, not to gain power, 
 nor to live in luxury and pleasure — but to 
 plan for the best for their fellow-men, and 
 to sketch out a future glorious alike for 
 France and the whole world. The working; 
 man vindicated then his claim to be en- 
 
234 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 trusted with his own self-government ; and 
 one of the brightest pages of modern history, 
 in spite of all its mistakes, is that wherein 
 the artisan government of '71 wrote its brief 
 but noble record on the heart of Paris. 
 
 The most fatal thing of that time, however, 
 was the unconquerable distrust of the people. 
 Long used to tyranny and treachery as they 
 had been, they seemed unable to accept any 
 man as a true patriot, not plotting underhand 
 for his own advantage. They trusted no 
 one — not even their sworn and tested 
 friends. And we can scarcely wonder at it. 
 Twenty years of Louis Napoleon, the military 
 command of Trochu, the history of the past 
 Imperial administration and the present 
 Imperial war, had eaten into their very 
 hearts, and taken all the faith out of them. 
 And the consequence w^as, that even the men 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 235 
 
 now heading the great liberation movement, 
 the best and most unselfish of the " sinless 
 Cains" of history, were suspected by the 
 very city they were sacrificing themselves to 
 save. 
 
 But Paris was mad — mad with despair, 
 with famine, with shame, disease, excite- 
 ment. The gaunt frames, the hollow cheeks, 
 the wild eyes that met you at every turn, 
 were eloquent witnesses of the state of men's 
 minds ; and I shall never forget the mournful 
 impression it all made on me. No one 
 looked sane, save the leaders, and perhaps a 
 few of us more cool-headed Anglo-Saxons. 
 The Poles, who had flocked in to take part 
 in a cause they identified with their own 
 broken nationality, added the fever of their 
 political despair to the fire consuming the 
 vitals of the Parisians ; the Italians poured 
 
236 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 in their bitter hatred to the priests as oil 
 on flames — emblems to them of tyranny, 
 treachery, ignorance, and persecution they 
 could not be brouo^ht to acknowledo-e even 
 the good that is in them, but were ever their 
 unrelenting enemies ; the republicans of all 
 nations gathered into the struggling city, 
 each with his own specific and his own de- 
 sires ; everywhere was fierce excitement, and 
 the conflict of hope and fear, high en- 
 deavour and deep despair ; while it grew 
 clearer and clearer, as the days passed by, 
 that the cause of the freedom of Paris, and 
 with Paris of Europe — the cause of the 
 rights and better organisation of labour — was 
 lost for the hour, and that hope only was left 
 for the future. The city was overmatched, 
 and liberty was doomed. It was but a ques- 
 tion of time ; the Commune had to die, and 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 237 
 
 it resolved to die fighting and unsur- 
 rendered. 
 
 Of all the Communists, Delescluze was 
 the o]]e Joshua loved most, because he 
 esteemed him most ; and this, not forgetting 
 his old loyalty and friendship to Felix Pyat, 
 nor denying reverence and love to many 
 others. But there was something special in 
 Delescluze. His heroic spirit, his martyr's 
 life, his unbroken com^age, his unquenchable 
 faith, and that quiet sadness which seemed 
 like the sadness of a prophet — all that he 
 was, and had been, raised one's admiration 
 more than any other man among them was 
 able to do ; and Joshua was one of his chosen 
 friends. AYe were both present at the sitting 
 where he vowed, in answer to a taunt flung 
 like a bomb-shell among the members, not to 
 survive the insurrection. The effect was 
 
238 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 electrical ; it was like a leaf out of old-world 
 history, telling of a time when patriotism 
 was a passion of which men were not 
 ashamed. And when that noble old man 
 rose so quietly, so solemnly, with no theatri- 
 cal display or frothy excitement, but calmly 
 registered the vow he afterwards kept with 
 such sublime courage, it was as a torch that 
 lighted every heart and soul there with 
 Pentecostal fire. All knew what his words 
 meant ; and we, who shared his private 
 thoughts and feelings as brothers, knew 
 perhaps more than some others. Ah ! the 
 Society that needs such victims as Deles- 
 cluze to bolster up its rottenness had better 
 crumble to dust as it stands. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 239 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It was early in the evening, and we were 
 walking slowly along the Boulevard Mont- 
 martre, when I saw a wayworn woman 
 coming with staggering steps towards us, 
 but at some distance yet. Her dress was 
 torn ; her pale face was turned anxiously to 
 each passer-l3y, scanning every one with a 
 wild scrutiny, not curious so much as full of 
 yearning ; her fair hair was hanging in 
 disordered masses about her face and neck ; 
 but when I tried to speak, pointing her out 
 to Joshua, something in my throat prevented 
 me. There was no need to speak ; she saw 
 
240 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 us almost as soon as I had recoo^nised her, 
 and, holding out her hands, as we came up 
 hurriedly, said with a plaintive kind of 
 weary smile, "I knew that I should light 
 on you, Joshua ! ^' 
 
 Then she sank in a heap at his feet, her 
 arms stretched out, and her fair hair trailed 
 in the dust. 
 
 Poor loving, faithful Mary ! She had 
 travelled for the last days on foot ; and if 
 we men had suffered on our journey, she had 
 suffered ten times more. It seems she had set 
 out almost immediately after us, though she 
 had been more than three weeks longer on 
 the road. She was but an ignorant girl, it 
 must be remembered ; she had not come yet 
 to the point of knowing that obedience 
 was even a higher quality than love, and 
 that love is best shown by obedience. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 241 
 
 Here she was however, and we took hei 
 home to our lodgings in the Eue Blanche ; 
 and the concierge laughed significantly when 
 asked for a room where she might be lodged. 
 It would have been better to have refused 
 her admission altogether, than to have laughed 
 and leered as he did. The blood came into 
 Joshua's pale face for just a moment ; but 
 there was no likelihood of his failing to do 
 right for fear of its looking like wrong, 
 so he gravely gave Mary his hand, and led 
 her to our apartment. She was full of self- 
 reproach and contrition when she saw the 
 false position in which she had placed him ; 
 but he would not hear a word. *' If you 
 have been less than wise, my girl," he said, 
 *^ you have been true of heart ; so we will 
 balance the one against the other, and cry 
 quits ! " 
 
 N B 
 
242 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 This concierge was ar man who, from 
 the first, inspired me with disgust and a 
 vague dread. He was a red-haired, coarse- 
 featured, ruffianly-looking fellow, by name 
 Legros ; now in the time of the Commune a 
 noisy republican ; but one could fancy him 
 under the Empire standing with his greasy 
 cap in hand shouting, '' Vive I'Empereur ! '' 
 with the loudest. He was a man who had 
 not, I should say, one single guiding principle 
 of life save selfishness — a frank, cynical, un- 
 abashed selfishness — a selfishness that be- 
 lieved in nothing save self; and to whom 
 amassing miserable little sums of money to 
 be spent in sensuality, was the ultimate of 
 human cleverness and happiness ; a man 
 without faith, honour, justice, or mercy. 
 I do not think I am too hard in my judg- 
 ment of him ; for he was one of tlie men 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 243 
 
 who make the theory of the devil very easy 
 to believe. 
 
 Among the sentiments professed by 
 Legros was that of disbelief in womanly 
 virtue. He laughed at the idea of purity 
 as possible in the friendship of men and wo- 
 men, and of course had his own ideas about 
 Mary ; which it seems he expressed pretty 
 plainly. It was some gross insult, I never 
 heard precisely what, that he offered to the 
 poor girl which brought the whole thing to a 
 conclusion. We had both been out, leaving 
 her at home ; and when we came back we 
 found her in a state of excitement and in- 
 dignation at something that had happened 
 during our absence. She told Joshua, not 
 me ; and indeed, the first I rightly heard of 
 it was when Joshua camo back from down- 
 stairs, where he had been into the porter's 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 lodge, and had thrashed Legros to within 
 an inch of his life. This was the first and 
 only time he had ever raised his hand against 
 any one ; and I was sorry he had not left 
 the job to me. I would have done it as well, 
 and he would have kept his hands clean. 
 Yet for all this, Avhen Legros, who had been 
 wounded by a chance splinter, was in the 
 hospital, Joshua attended to him specially, 
 and mainly kept him alive by his care. 
 
 No one worked harder in these days of 
 dread and turmoil than Joshua. This was 
 what he had come to do. Among the poor 
 and starving, the wounded and dismayed, 
 there he was, day after day, helping all who 
 needed so far as he could, tender as a woman, 
 faithful and strong as a hero. Or he did 
 the work of the Commune, as he might be 
 ordered ; and they had no more trustworthy 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 245 
 
 official. Never a tliouglit of self came in to 
 weaken or distract him. For several nio-bts 
 at a stretch he did not go to bed, and he 
 seemed to have the strenoth of half-a-dozen 
 
 o 
 
 men, and to be kept up by an almost super- 
 natm^al power. For the famine that was 
 wasting the city was touching him with no 
 tender hand. Day by day he got paler and 
 thinner ; his eyes, always bright and as if 
 they were looking at something farther off 
 than we could see, were sunk and dark and 
 hollow ; his cheeks were drawn and pale, his 
 lips blackening and parched. But he never 
 complained ; he never seemed to think of 
 himself at all ; and if he had been without 
 food for twelve hours or twenty-four, the 
 chances were that he would share his scanty 
 rations with the first passer-by who looked 
 famine- stricken. Mary too was suffering 
 
246 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 from tlie want and privation of all kinds with 
 whicli we were afflicted. We did Avbat we 
 could for her, be sure. If my life could have 
 bought hers or his, I would have laid it 
 down as willingly as I would have given 
 them my bitter crust. But they bore up 
 bravely, both of them; and she helped too 
 with the sick and wounded. She was let 
 to nurse in the English ambulances, where 
 she was interpreted when necessary ; and 
 even at the worst her face as she went 
 softly about the beds was pleasant for the 
 sick and dying to look at. And here let me 
 say how entirely in these late years all trace 
 of her former condition had passed out of it. 
 Purified by love ; that was it ; so that she 
 looked now as if she might have come out 
 of a convent. This is no fancy of my own. 
 Any one who knew Joshua, and consequently 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 247 
 
 Mary Prinsep whom lie had saved, will 
 endorse what I say. 
 
 Things were looking wild and stormy, and 
 the day of our doom was coming near. The 
 Versaillists were too strong for us, and the 
 hope of European freedom was over for the 
 time ; only for the time ! For ^0 sure as 
 day follows on the night, so surely will the 
 law of human rights follow on the tyrannies 
 and oppressions which have so long ruled the 
 world ; and the faith for which the Com- 
 mune bled, will be triumphant. But for 
 the present, God help this poor sorrowful 
 world of ours ! 
 
 The Yicaire-General had gone to Versailles, 
 but he had not returned ; and no answer had 
 been vouchsafed to the offer made, now I 
 think for the third time, to release the Arch- 
 bishop and the other hostages for the one 
 
248 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 exchange of Blanqui. How often must the 
 story be told ? And will it ever be acknow- 
 ledged by those who care only, right or 
 wrong, to fasten the stain of blood- guiltiness 
 on the Commune, that the real murderer of 
 Monseigneur Darboy, and the rest, was M. 
 Thiers ? He knew what would happen, as well 
 as a man knows what will happen if he puts 
 a lighted match to a barrel of gunpowder. 
 He knew that the hostages would be sacri- 
 ficed. Inflamed as Paris was, surrounded by 
 an enemy that treated her like a wild beast, 
 and even shook hands with the common foe 
 for her destruction, her best men spoken 
 of as creatures below humanity, her hour 
 of humiliation and bloody agony at hand — 
 lie knew there would be no calm reasoning- 
 out of consequences, no quiet acceptance of 
 the result. Men's blood was up ; and the 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 249 
 
 result ^yas foreseen and played for. It was 
 a heavy stake to pay ; but to discredit the 
 Commune, and attach to it the ineffaceable 
 stain of blood-guiltiness, was worth even an 
 Archbishop and some sixty other lives ! 
 
 We were at the prison during the time of 
 the execution. It would be impossible to 
 describe distinctly how it all took place. 
 No one has, and no one ever will. The whole 
 thing was confusion. No person knew ex- 
 actly what was being done, or by whom ; 
 and no one had any recognised authority. 
 The leaders of the Commune were fi2fhtin2f 
 singly at the barricades, and for the time all 
 executive government was at an end. The 
 tumult and excitement at the prison was 
 beyond all power of description. Men went 
 and came ; orders were given and contra- 
 dicted ; women shrieked, some for blood 
 
250 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 and some for mercy ; youths shouted ; and 
 through all, and above all, Ave heard the roar 
 of the cannon, the whistling of the shells, 
 and saw the smoke and flame of Paris rising 
 up against the sky. 
 
 Joshua, mounted on a gun-barrel, pleaded 
 for the lives of the unfortunate men. 
 
 " The work that the Commune had pledged 
 itself to do," he said, " was to hel^D on the 
 freedom of the working classes, by proving 
 to the world their nobility and power of 
 self-government. The slaughter of unarmed 
 men would do none of this. It would aive 
 their enemies a just handle against them, for 
 it was a baseness unworthy of them — an act 
 neither human nor noble, neither rio-hteous 
 nor generous. Whatever the wrong com- 
 mitted by the Government at Versailles, the 
 innocent oudit not to suffer. Let the Com- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 251 
 
 mune show itself supreme in virtue at this 
 moment of trial, and put the temptation of 
 blood-guiltiness away from it." 
 
 While he spoke Legros drew his revolver 
 from his belt. 
 
 " Death to the English traitor ! " he cried. 
 " Death to the tool of the priests ! he be- 
 lieves in Jesus Christ ! " 
 
 " Christ ! we want no Christs here \ 
 Death to the traitor ! " shouted one or two 
 of the mob. 
 
 Sick with dread for the safety of the man 
 I loved best on earth, I sprang forward and 
 covered Joshua's body with my own ; when 
 a fine-looking man — he was one of us then, 
 but, as he is now in office under Thiers, I 
 will not say who he was — quietly struck the 
 revolver from Legros's hand. 
 
 "Keep your bullets for your enemies, 
 
252 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 fool ! — do not give them to your friends," 
 he said; "this man is not a hostage." 
 Then hurriedly, aside, to Joshua, " Escape 
 while you can ; I will cover your retreat, 
 and divert their attention." 
 
 '' Oh, that I had the voice of a God to 
 teach them wisdom ! " cried Joshua. 
 
 " Pshaw mon ami ! ^' said our friend, 
 contemptuously. " Your best wisdom now 
 is to save your own life — not to try and 
 teach men anything." 
 
 '' Out with you, spies, traitors, priest-rid- 
 den Tartuffes ! — we want no sympathizers 
 with tyranny here 1 " shouted an excited, 
 half-mad looking man close to us. *' Out 
 with them, citoyens ! " 
 
 And at the word half-a-dozen ' men and 
 women, shrieking and gesticulating, laid 
 hands on us and roughly thrust us out. I 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 253 
 
 tliouglit it fortunate we left with our lives, 
 for indeed, the wild, surging crowd was in 
 no mood for mercy just then ; and a couple 
 of lives, more or less, were of small account 
 at that moment. Howbeit, we were flung 
 out with many a blow and bitter word ; and 
 just as we were going through the gateway a 
 loud yell burst forth, a volley was fired, and 
 we knew that the policy of Versailles had 
 triumphed. 
 
 A few Parisians — not the Commune — had 
 fallen into the snare prepared for them ; and 
 the blood was shed which was to cover 
 Liberty with shame, until men can hear and 
 learn the truth. 
 
 The last day came. The guns of our 
 forts were silent ; the men were fis^htino; in 
 the streets, desperate, conquered, but not 
 craven. The Versaillists were pouring in 
 
254 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 like wolves let- loose; Paris was drenched 
 with blood, and in flames. And then the 
 cry of the jyetroleuses went up like the fire 
 that shot against the sky. What mattered 
 it that it was a lie ? It gave the Party of 
 Order another reason, if they had wanted 
 any, to excuse their lust of blood. It was 
 their saturnalia, and they did not stint 
 themselves. The arms, that had served 
 them so ill against the Prussians, served them 
 but too well against their countrymen ; and 
 the short hour of a nation's hope was at 
 an end in the bloody reprisals of brothers, 
 that exceeded all we have ever heard or 
 read of in a victorious foreign army. 
 
 I had been separated from my friends for 
 more than twenty-four hours. The house 
 where we had lodged was in flames ; and 
 when I went to seek information at a Com- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 255 
 
 miinist friend's, De Lancy, I found a group 
 of three by the concierge door — himself, his 
 young wife, and a little daughter not two 
 years old, lying as if asleej), save for the 
 blood that was their bed. They had been 
 bound together and shot. Not one, but 
 hundreds and thousands of such cases stand 
 recorded in the history of that terrible 
 moment, when the victorious Versaillists 
 marched into Paris, and society revenged 
 itself on the men who had dared to dream 
 of redressino; its wrono^s : and amono; the 
 terrible sights that met me, the evidences of 
 brutal, wanton, sickening murder, I had a 
 shuddering dread that I should find Joshua 
 and Mary. I was never so nearly mad as I 
 was that day when I wandered about the 
 bloody streets of Paris, looking for my 
 friends ; sorrow for the lost cause, horror at 
 
256 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 the scenes I encountered, and fear for those 
 I loved, all combining to render life in that 
 hour simply torture. 
 
 At last I caught a glimpse of Mary cross- 
 ing the street, carrying a wounded child in 
 her arms, and making for the ambulance. I 
 called to her, and hurried after her ; but, 
 weak as I was with excitement and want 
 of food, I could not make my voice reach 
 her. 
 
 Just then, cap in hand and bowing low, 
 Jacques Legros rushed out of a ruined house 
 and stopped the captain of a troop that 
 came marching down the street. He pointed 
 in a frantic way to Mary. 
 
 *^ Via, mon Capitaine/' he said, weeping 
 and sobbing loudly, as one in the greatest 
 distress ; " c'est la cocotte d'un Communiste 
 Anglais— c'est une petroleuse ! Elle a fait 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 257 
 
 sauter la maison cle ma m^re. C'est ce que 
 je sais, moi ! " 
 
 '' Prends-la," said the Captain in an odd, 
 half bitter, half matter-of-fact way. And 
 Mary was seized by a couple of his 
 men, and brought up close to where he 
 stood. 
 
 " C'est une jolie cible, 9a ! " he said with a 
 brutal laugh. " C'est dommage — une belle 
 fille com me 9a ! Mais on ne doit pas etre 
 petroleuse, ma fille. Fi done ! '^ 
 
 " I have done no harm," said Mary, with 
 her wild eyes searching his in vain for pity. 
 "I have done only what good I could to 
 all ! " 
 
 *' Is setting fire to honest women's houses 
 doing good, wretch \ " said the Captain, 
 suddenly changing his mocking manner for 
 one of ferocious sternness, and speaking in 
 
258 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 broken Engiisli. " A petroleuse ? — you are 
 not fit to live ! " 
 
 " She is no petroleuse," I cried. 
 
 But as I spoke a blow laid me senseless ; 
 and when I came to myself I found myself 
 lying wounded on the ground, with Mary 
 stretched beside me — shot through the 
 heart. 
 
 It was then night time ; but soon after I 
 recovered, and just as I was in the first 
 agony of understanding what had hap- 
 pened, Joshua, and the . same man who had 
 saved his life at the time of the murder of 
 the hostages in the prison, came up to where 
 we lay, searching for us. 
 
 I have no more to tell of this episode. 
 Our Mary was buried tenderly, lovingly ; 
 and I laid part of my life in her grave. 
 What Joshua felt I never knew exactly. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 259 
 
 He did not say much ; and though once I 
 saw him, when he thought I was asleep, lay 
 his head on his hands and weep l3itterly, he 
 never gave me a hint as to whether he was 
 grieving at the loss of Mary, or at the 
 failure of the cause. Whichever it was, it 
 nearly broke him down ; and ill as I was 
 myself, with a bad wound and a smashed 
 collar-bone, I saw that his distress was 
 greater than my own, and needed more 
 consideration. I was desperately afraid 
 more than once that he was going to die. 
 For myself, I felt as if I could not die while 
 Joshua lived, perhaps to want me. 
 
 However that might be, we neither of us 
 came to grief of that kind. I got well in 
 time ; and when I could travel, and a fitting 
 opportunity arrived, our friend, who had kept 
 us all this time in safety, got us sent off to 
 
 s 2 
 
260 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 Eno-land. And rig-ht o;lad was I when we 
 landed safe in the Old Country once more. 
 Joshua was glad too. He had suffered 
 much from the confinement, inertia, and 
 disappointment of the last few weeks ; — 
 cominof too, after a time of such intense 
 hope and excitement ; and once in England, 
 he thouo-ht he could do something^ for the 
 Humanity he loved, for the Truth to which 
 he had consecrated his life. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON, 261 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 We found times hard on our return. As 
 for work, it was simply impossible to be 
 had where we were known. If Joshua was 
 shunned as a consorter with bad characters 
 when he took vicious humanity by the hand, 
 and sought to cleanse the foul and raise the 
 degraded by the practical application of 
 Christian precepts unsupported by sectarian 
 organisation, what was he now, when be- 
 smirched with the Communistic doctrines of 
 liberty, equality, and fraternity ? Ordinary 
 men thinking ordinary thoughts shrank from 
 him in moral horror. He stood before them 
 
262 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 as the embodiment of miircler and rapine, 
 the representative of social destruction and 
 the godless license of anarchy. He was a 
 Communist : and that to most men and 
 women of the day, means one wilfully and 
 willingly guilty of every crime under 
 heaven. 
 
 " They must be told the truth, John," he 
 said to me one day ; " whether they will 
 accept it or not rests with themselves. But 
 the work has to be done, and I have to do 
 it, let what will be the result.'^ 
 
 " It will be a bad one for you, Joshua," I 
 said. 
 
 "So be it, my son. Preaching the Gospel 
 brought most of the apostles to a bad end — 
 as the world counts endings ; and I am 
 only following in their steps. I have got 
 my Gospel to preach : the same our Master 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 263 
 
 taught, if we could but get the world to 
 see it 1 '' 
 
 But that was just what neither he nor 
 any one else has yet got the world to do, 
 and I doubt it will be long before they 
 will. 
 
 Work at the bench being impossible, being 
 indeed scarcely the thing he wanted at this 
 moment, Joshua took up again the hungry 
 trade of political lecturer to working men, 
 and went about the country explaining the 
 Communistic doctrines, and showing their 
 apostolic origin. . His position was this. He 
 did not justify all the actions of all the men 
 at the head of affairs durino^ the short reioii 
 of the Commune in Paris ; but he warmly 
 defended the cardinal points of their creed, 
 as the logical outcome of Christianity in 
 politics. The abolition of priestly supre- 
 
2 64 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 macy in a man's social and daily life ; tlie 
 rights of labour as equal witli those of 
 capital ; the dignity of humanity, including 
 the doctrine of human equality ; fraternal 
 care for the poor, and the obligation laid on 
 the strong to help the ^reak ; the merely ex- 
 perimental nature of society, whence follows 
 the righteousness of radical changes which 
 shall break down the strongholds of tyranny 
 and injustice, and help on general ameliora- 
 tion ; the iniquity of maintaining the vested 
 rights of wrong ; and the right of the people 
 to self-government. These were the doc- 
 trines he preached ; but which he failed to 
 induce the world to accept. They called 
 him — as he called himself — a Communist ; 
 and the name offended, so that they would 
 not listen to any kind of statement. 
 
 *' You burnt Paris," said one. " You mur- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 265 
 
 dered innocent men," said another. '* You 
 insulted God and religion," said a third. A 
 fourth — " You outraged morality, and lived 
 in the most hideous licentiousness." " You 
 would take our hard-earned savings from us, 
 and reduce all men to one level — the idle 
 with the industrious, and the ignorant 
 with the educated," said a fifth. " You 
 would rob the capitalist, and by so doing 
 destroy the very labour you uphold," said 
 a sixth. 
 
 And when he answered — " You mistake ; 
 I give up the blunders of the Commune, 
 and the wrong-doing of which some of its 
 members w^ere guilty, only suggesting that 
 they did not do all that was said of them ; 
 as neither did the early Christians slaughter 
 children for their Eucharist, nor indulge in 
 gross sin in their love feasts, as the Jews 
 
266 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 said of them ; but I maintain the doctrine. 
 Let me set that clearly before yon, and I 
 will leave the rest to time and God " — as 
 often as not they turned against him, and 
 hounded him out of their towns. 
 
 " We want none of your French atheism 
 here," they said, when they were religiously 
 inchned ; — " None of your Ked-republi- 
 canism '' when they were conservative. 
 
 But where parties were anything like even 
 enough to get him a handful of sympathizers, 
 there was generally a fight ; and then the 
 magistrates ordered him out of the place, 
 with insult from the bench ; and in many 
 towns they refused him permission to speak 
 at all. The very name of the Commune is 
 the red rag to English thought ; and all 
 reason is lost when it is the question of 
 telling the truth about men who tried to get 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 267 
 
 the working classes equal rights and re- 
 cognition with the moneyed ones. 
 
 At last we came to a place called Low- 
 bridge, where a friend of ours lived — a 
 member of the International ; and here 
 Joshua announced himself to give a lecture 
 on Communism, in the Town Hall. His pro- 
 gramme stated the usual thing, that he, 
 Joshua Davidson, would show how Christ 
 and his apostles were Communists, and how 
 they preached the same doctrines which the 
 Commune of Paris strove to embody ; allow- 
 ing for the differences of method inherent 
 to the differences of social arrangements 
 that have grown up during a lapse of nearly 
 two thousand years. 
 
 The evening came, and Joshua prepared 
 to go to the meeting he had called ; and 
 I along with him. Our friend had warned 
 
268 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 him to expect an unfriendly audience ; but 
 Joshua was not a man to be daunted by a 
 few stern faces ; and I do not think I ever 
 saw him so possessed with the spirit of what 
 he had set out to teach as he was this 
 evening. Yet also I noticed something in 
 him that was not exactly like himself. 
 Grave as he always was, to-night he was 
 grave to sadness ; a solemn kind of sadness ; 
 like a martyr going to his death, steadfast, 
 testifying always, but — knowing that he was 
 to die. 
 
 He shook hands with me at the side door 
 cordially before going up, saying, " God 
 bless you, John, you have been a true friend 
 to me;" then smiled at me; and, the moment 
 having come, stepped on to the platform. 
 
 In the first row, right in front of him, 
 was the former clergyman of Trevalga ; him 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 269 
 
 we lads used to call behind his back, 
 " Mr. Grand," because of his pomposity and 
 haughtiness. He had lately been given the 
 rich living of Lowbridge, and one or two 
 stately appointments connected with the 
 Cathedral and such like. I do not know 
 what they were exactly, but they had made 
 him a man of supreme importance, not only 
 in Lowbridge itself, but in all the neighbour- 
 hood round about. 
 
 I saw Joshua's face chancre as he cauoht 
 the clergyman's eye. It did not change to 
 cowardice, but to a kind of eager look, like 
 a man taking hold of an enemy ; and then 
 it passed away into his usual abstracted 
 unconsciousness of self, as he came quietly 
 to the front and prepared to speak. But 
 at the first word there broke out such a 
 tumult as I had never heard in any public 
 
2 70 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 meeting, and I have been at a few rough 
 and rowdy ones too. The yells, hisses, cat- 
 calls, Avhoopings were indescriljable. It 
 was impossible to be heard. I believe the 
 roar of a lion would have been overpowered. 
 Joshua stood there quiet and dignified as 
 ever, looking straight in among them, wait- 
 ing for the tumult to cease. It only ceased 
 when Mr. Grand rose, and standing up on 
 the chair on which he had been sitting, 
 waved his hand for silence. 
 
 "Friends," he said, "I am glad that by 
 your honest English love of law and God, 
 you have shown what you think of the 
 poison this demagogue would have poured 
 into your ears. I know that man well," 
 pointing to Joshua ; " I have known him 
 from a boy ; and I can bear my testimony to 
 the fact that he has been an ill-conditioned. 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 271 
 
 presumptuous, insolent fellow from the first. 
 I know that he has led an infamous life in 
 London ; and that he kejDt such a disorderly 
 house the police were obliged to interfere ; 
 and he was imprisoned for the offence. Loose 
 women, thieves, iDurgiars — all the scum of 
 the earth have been his chosen companions ; 
 and, to crown all, he went over to Paris at 
 that awful time of the Commune, when, if 
 ever hell was let loose on earth it was then, 
 and joined himself to that band of mis- 
 creants who disgraced the very name of 
 humanity. x4nd now he has the audacity to 
 come before you, honest and sober men of 
 Lowbridge, loving your queen and country, 
 abiding by the laws, and fearing God as I 
 hope you all do. And what for ? — to praise 
 that pandemonium of vice and crime — the 
 Palis Commune — and blasphemously to 
 
272 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 liken those fiends in human shape to onr 
 Lord and the holy apostles ; to incite you to 
 a rebellion as bloody as that ; and more than 
 all this — to pick your pockets of your 
 honest wages, that he, an idle vagabond, who 
 won't work, may wander about the country, 
 sowing his poison everywhere, while living 
 on the fat of the land. Give him your 
 minds, my men ; and let him understand that 
 Lowbridge is not the place for a godless 
 rascal like him at any time — and by no means 
 the place for an atheist and a Communist ! " 
 
 Then he got down, and the men cheered 
 him as lustily as they had hissed Joshua. 
 
 I will do Mr. Grand the justice to say that 
 I do not think he intended his words should 
 have the effect they did have. Gentlefollis 
 do not often incite to riot ; and a clerg}Tnan 
 does not like to be the wirepuller for a mur- 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 273 
 
 cler. But, maddened by their own miscon- 
 ceptions to begin with, and excited still 
 more by their parson's abuse and encourage- 
 ment to violence as it were, the audience 
 lost all self-control. A dozen men leaped 
 on the platform, and in a moment I saw 
 Joshua under their feet. It was in vain then 
 for Mr. Grand to cry " Order " — for the two 
 policemen at the doors to be sent for — for 
 me to lay about me as hard as I was handled. 
 The men had it all their own way. They 
 were the representatives of law and order in 
 their own minds, the champions of God and 
 religion, and they regarded it as a sacred 
 duty to take it out of this godless anarchist. 
 Beaten, kicked, held back by a dozen or 
 more, 1 could not help him. They beat me 
 first ; and then the police beat me, and 
 knocked me about savagely with their trun- 
 
274 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 cheons, because I struggled to get free, and 
 to get to Joshua. He was lying on the 
 ground, pale and senseless, with a stream of 
 blood slowly flowing from his lips ; while the 
 men trampled on him and kicked him, and 
 one, with a fearful oath, kicked him twice 
 on the head. Suddenly a whisper ran round 
 them, and they all drew a little way off; 
 when, at a sign from one of them, the gas 
 was turned down, and the place cleared as if 
 by magic. When the lights were up again, 
 and I went to lift him — he was dead. 
 
 I know no more — no more than this, 
 that the man ^^ho had lived the life after 
 Christ more exactly than any human being 
 ever known to me, who had given himself to 
 humanity and poured out his strength 
 like water for the sacred cause, who had 
 been loving, tolerant, pitiful to all — that 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 275 
 
 man was killed by the Cliristiaii Party 
 of Order; his memory denounced on the 
 one hand as that of a blood-thirsty revo- 
 lutionist who was justly punished for 
 his crimes, on the other, as that of a pre- 
 sumptuous and heretical enthusiast who had 
 insulted God and dishonoured the true faith. 
 But the same things were said of the early 
 Christians as have been said of him, of the 
 Communists, and of all reformers of all 
 times. 
 
 The world has ever disowned its Best when 
 they came ; and every truth has been planted 
 in blood, and its first efforts sought to be 
 checked by lies. So let them rest, our 
 martyrs whom men do not yet know ; as 
 neither did they know eighteen hundred 
 years ago the crucified Communist of Ga- 
 lilee — he who dwelt with lepers, made his 
 
276 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 friends of sinners, and preached against all 
 the conventional respectabilities which society 
 then held in honour. 
 
 The death of my friend has left me not 
 only desolate, but uncertain. For I have 
 come round to the old starting-point again : 
 Is the Christian world all w^rong, or is 
 practical Christianity impossible ? I see 
 men simply and sincerely devoted to 
 the cause of Humanity, and I hear the 
 world's verdict on them. I hear others, 
 earnest for the dogma of Christianity, rabid 
 against its acted doctrines. They do not 
 care to destroy the causes of misery by 
 any change in social relations ; they only 
 attack the sinners for whose sin society is 
 originally responsible. They maintain the 
 unrighteous distinctions of caste as a 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 277 
 
 religion ; and they denounce as delusion, 
 or impiety, the doctrine of universal bro- 
 therhood which Christ and His apostles 
 preached and died for. I hear a great 
 deal about faith, and the infidel beino- 
 an accursed thing; but then I see the 
 practical Christian, like Joshua, held accursed 
 too. What does it all mean ? Let us have 
 something definite. If the doctrines of 
 Political Economy are true, if the law of 
 the struggle for existence and the survival 
 of the fittest applies absolutely to human 
 society as well as to plants and fishes, let us 
 then be frank, and candidly admit that 
 (■hristianity, in its help to the poor and weak 
 and in its patience with \\i^ sinner, is a craze ; 
 and let us aboHsh the pretence of a faith 
 which infiuences neither our political insti- 
 tutions nor our social arrangements; and 
 
278 THE TRUE HISTORY OF 
 
 wliicli ouoiit not to influence them. If 
 Christ was right, modern Christianity is 
 wrong ; but if sociology is a scientific truth, 
 then Jesus of Nazareth preached and 
 practised not only in vain, but against 
 unchangeable Law. 
 
 Like Joshua in early days, my heart burns 
 within me and my mind is unpiloted and 
 unanchored. I cannot, being a Christian, 
 accept the inhumanity of political economy 
 and the obliteration of the individual in 
 averages ; yet I cannot reconcile modern 
 science with Christ. Everywhere I see 
 the sifting of competition, and nowhere 
 Christian protection of weakness ; every- 
 where dogma adored, and nowhere Christ 
 realised. And again I ask, "Which is true — 
 modern society in its class strife and con- 
 sequent elimination of its weaker elements, 
 
JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 279 
 
 or the brotherhood and conimiuiism taught 
 by the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth \ Who 
 will answer me ? — who will make the dark 
 thing clear \ 
 
 THE END,