*THE WORKER*
BRISBANE, OCTOBER 12, 1895.
Lucinda Sharpe on Books.
I recollect the first serious book I ever read as well as though I read it regularly still instead of only sometimes, not but what I fancy I still read it oftener than some do who pretend to pry into it with microscopes. It was the Bible, of course, and I’ll never forget how I used to while away the long prayers and still longer sermon as by reading how Ebub ripped up Eglon and how Gideon picked a couple of hundred heroes out of a couple of thousand cowards, and how Boaz made love to Ruth, with a hundred other dramatic incidents of thrilling interest to me, not forgetting the prophets that I couldn’t understand and the proverbs that I thought I could, and the long genealogical tree of Adam began Eve and Eve begat Cain and Cain begat – oh, I forget that, but it doesn’t matter, it runs on so for a whole half-hour, and our parson, when it came into the lessons, used to solemnly read it over to us, carefully pronouncing each word so that we shouldn’t mistake any, and neither he nor anybody in the church seeing the humour of it. I have to laugh now when I think how we used to listen to those genealogical chapters. Perhaps you don’t see the joke, but really it is very funny if you’ve got any sense of humour and have ever sat solemnly listening to half an hour of such hopelessly incomprehensible Hebrew sounds. And I like the Bible still, although it isn’t quite so popular now as it was then. Times have changed and I don’t know that in this they have changed for the better.
“Stuff! Nonsense!” I hear Wallace Nelson say. Almost the same words that a good old parson friend of mine, a good, kind old fellow who wasn’t selfish and thoughtless and greedy, blurted out when he knew that I read Renan’s criticisms and didn’t have as many somewhat heathenish ideas as I’d had before. But whatever Wallace Nelson may have to say about it, I’ve got this to say that there is a little that’s good in the old Bible, unless we’re so blind that we won’t see it, while as for its English – well, it’s the most beautiful English that ever was written or ever will be written, there’s no doubt about that at all.
But I’m getting away from what I started to talk about. Times change and people with them and reading helps to do it. At least so it seems to me. I recollect, not ten years ago in Brisbane, when to hold any sort of advanced views was to be simply looked upon as mad, quite mad, when workmen themselves looked upon unionism with dread and unionists looked upon Socialists as crack-brained people who ought to be in goal. A freethinker was a horrible example of depravity, and the daily papers need to solemnly talk about the evolution theory as a new fangled notion that was intended to drive the thoughtless masses from respecting Holy Writ. But that was the time when you never saw low-necked dresses in the theatre or private carriages on the street. In fact, it was altogether a simple time, and being simple was sort of prospects and people could afford to have simple ideas about things. And they had ‘em believe me. One day I had a visit from a parson. He wasn’t my parson, for I never had one to speak of, but he had a church in the neighbourhood, and we’d moved in lately and he’d come round to secure a customer in a was I thought terribly impudent in my youthful days, but now don’t wonder at and accept as one of the sitting room as though he had tea to sell or owned the place, and it was the morning, too, and I was in my wrapper, and the table littered with tobacco ash, burnt matches, orange peel, plates and a milk jug, Master Charlie having been up late the night before or early that morning, if you want to be very particular. Into this marched the parson without a blush and introduced himself as the vicar or rector or something of the parish, and I being, as I remarked, young and indignant, let him know pretty sudden what I thought of things generally. I forgot to mention that when I came into the room I had found him looking over the bookcase, which was a bit advanced looking for those primitive days, and that he’d looked a bit shocked – at seeing them in a five roomed house instead of in a palace. I suppose. So as he stalked off he replied in a tragic voice, meant to be convincing, that he wasn’t surprised to hear such sentiments after seeing such books as those.
I forget exactly what those would be at the time, but I recollect Darwin, Gibbon’s “Roman Empire.” “The Decameron,” some French and Russian novels, in English, of course, and Renan’s little books. I fancy it was the general hotch-potch collection of such like books that people get together who read snatches of everything and don’t profess to be anything but liberal in their literary tastes. Anyway, it was a little too much for the parson who reckoned that with such reading the path was ready paved to perdition. Strangely enough, I met him eight years afterwards at a friend’s the very same parson. I knew him and he didn’t know me, and I sat back and smiled as I heard him talk. Socialism had got to be popular, and liberal education was on the boards, and we mustn’t be too narrow in our interpretations, don’t you know, but remember that everybody may misunderstand and that the good wise thing is to go ahead slowly. So he orated, drinking tea, and I thought of those books. Somebody spoke of a trashy popular book of the day, one of the miserable things that whizz through popularity because they give in a sneaking, hidden sort of way vent to the vicious, wicked side of human nature. He had professed Christian Socialism, he had praised Renan, he had sympathised with Gibbon, he had got enthusiastic over Darwin, though whether he’d read much of them I couldn’t say, though I wouldn’t wonder if he had a little. He was explaining everything, when somebody asked him what he thought of this miserable book I’ve forgotten. “Most interesting!” he said. “Altogether interesting! I could not say that I agree with it altogether, but it is most interesting. It shows that questions can’t be forced back. It is most interesting, altogether interesting.”
“Well,” I remarked, “I do not, I consider it shameless and worthless.” “Ah, my dear madam,” he replied, condescendingly, “there are many things which we would rather not hear but which we must hear to understand how our fellow creatures feel. I can understand your prejudices and respect them, but we cannot smother discussion, can we?” “Well,” I remarked, “I don’t know. For example, I couldn’t stop you arguing with anybody whether the moon was made of green cheese, but I could stop your arguing it with me, I have a notion. I’d smother that discussion quickly as far as I was concerned.” “But we must reason without prejudice in the first place, unless we are prepared to be guided by others,” quoth my black frocked friend. And them we had a bit of a talk in which, if you please, an outsider would have thought he was one of the most progressive men in the world. But I thought of eight years ago and smiled a little. It takes longer than that for the kangaroo to change its skin or the parson his coat. Oh, but talking of parsons, I really must tell you a funny story of a friend of ours who was up seeing Bishop Webber on business and was asked to lunch. There was the bishop was the bishop and two other parsons there at a four-in-hand table and they got talking about Socialism, which is a popular topic, and one of the parsons protested that if everything were divided to-day some would have nothing and some plenty tomorrow, so what was the good of it. Which shows that University educated men are just as ignorant in some ways as the veriest gutter-snips. However, the bishop knew better than that, and politely informed the lower light that he didn’t understand, for you must know that once upon a time Bishop Webber ranked himself among Christian Socialists though whether he does now or not I really couldn’t say, and it really doesn’t make much difference, anyway. However, that isn’t the joke. The joke comes in at the desperate attempt made by our friend to do as the Romans. Before lunch, one of the parsons said grace out loud, to which they all stood up, but before it was over this one had to hurry away to some class or other. So after lunch our friend kept his eye on the other parson who stood up and bent his head, whereupon up stood our friend and bent, too. But, to his horror, instead of a grace being said, the bishop walked off graceless and left those two standing there by the table with their necks bent.
“Well,” thinks our friend, “this is a bit of a fix, but I may as well make the beat of it.” So he solemnly settled down to keep his neck bent longer than the parson if he stood there for a week. The parson on his side-according to the version told me-seemed to have made up his mind not to be up down by a common layman of apparently unorthodox tendencies, and stood his ground-or, rather, bent his neck-well. But in the end the parson surrendered and walked off, followed by our graceless friend, who tells the story with great glee, and, really, it is rather funny. And, talking still of parsons, there was another, a good man, I believe, who’d made himself sick and ill and old working among the poor and starving and dying in that horrible East End of London. Perhaps he didn’t do very much good and perhaps he did, but, anyway, he tried to do good according to his lights and coming out to Queensland broken down in health and thinking that the change of climate and change of work would set him up, and being told there was as much work among the heathen to be done in Queensland as in the East End, which was probably about right. Anyway, he was sent up Toowoomba way, and of course, being a big man in social circles, was shown all round and entertained greatly, being stations and boundary-riders’ huts and stables, and so forth until one little idea got into his brain and next Sunday he let them have it. What did he say? Well, what didn’t he say? What Christ said once or twice, with a few private notions of his own added. That he’d come to Queensland thinking that those outside the churches were heathens and needed the Gospel but that he found it was here, as in other places, that those inside the churches were the worst heathens and needed the Gospel most of any; that he’d been round and had seen people caring only for their pleasure and nothing for how their fellows lived, and that when judgement day came he would he wouldn’t care to be in the shoes of the man who homed his horses better than he did his boundary riders. My word! He let them have it straight from the shoulder, like a man but he made one little mistake, which was in supposing that a parson in Australia could talk up as can a parson in England.
The Toowoomba elect all threatened to turn Presbyterian unless this horrible example of Socialism and Anarchism was removed from their sacred midst. So he was removed-suddenly-and exiled to a mining field where, if he did talk, it wouldn’t be noticed so, getting moreover a sharp hint that about one more row like that would see him scattered out upon the wide, wide world. Charlie met him, years after. He was saddened and sorrowed and wearied of fighting evil things, was this poor parson. He told Charlie, after a while when they’d got chatty, that in England so long as a clergyman kept inside the ordinance of the Church nobody could remove him, and even when he went outside there were all sorts of formulas and trials to be gone through before he could be shifted, but that here one was at the mercy of the bishop, who, in turn, had to submit in many things to the leading lights of the congregation. And he said that one ought to speak up always, of course, but what could one do when one was old and had a wife and family dependent upon one. “It isn’t only working people who have sorrow, “he said, with tears in his eyes. “We all have our sorrows and the worst sorrow is to feel ourselves powerless to resist circumstances.” The poor parson! I reckon there are some good men, even among those who wear black coats and look solemn by trade. But about books! I’ve run right away from them excepting the general deduction that books are responsible for a great many changes of thought and opening up of ideas. I don’t know that they alter a man’s or a woman’s nature much, but they help us grow, you know. I was going to run over a few of the books that I like best and that I think have given me most to think about, but that must be put off till another occasion for there’s got to be a limit even to the chit-chat of LUCINDA SHARPE.
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