The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 9

It is true that there
was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded to their
credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry his
chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he
suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation
read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication
that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of
acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society
of Coalchester.
Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a
name which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple
reason that it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing
for the young man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice

that had spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he
rose to give his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full
carrying voice, and allowed the strange new name to roll away in
menacing echoes through the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n."
Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a
funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead
learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an
expression that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three
hundred years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so)
ran from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present
besides the lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to
introduce,--Rob Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many
ambitions, and James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always
called) a gentle lover of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in
the whole little coterie; and Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable,
it having been by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him
that he was a tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt
a certain traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners.
A quite recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in
his blood to-night.
Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the
Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning,
occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters
which never came out in the "Transactions."
The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's
writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and
from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly
during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the
buttered-roll expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our
young friend" expression was ready for the chairman's remarks.
Londonderry's sitting down awakened a few sad echoes that were no
doubt hand-clappings, but seemed like the napping of the wings of
night-birds frightened by a light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not
frightened; they were entirely bewildered and rather indignant, that was

all. It was characteristic of their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any
subject, even when it was dangerous, that the criticism which followed
was directed almost entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This
was not poetry! Had not their revered founder, the learned Dr.
Ambrose ...
The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local
newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe,
who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to
the Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything
Walt Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance
with Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment
sent the blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever
that he would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had
written some quite pretty lines.
It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take
seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four
beneath the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now
and again, like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young
minister's brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind.
Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a
silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to
Coalchester?"
"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you,
and let us talk over the plan of campaign."
CHAPTER VIII
THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER
Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an
excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old
Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological
method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the
food