DOI article:
Greenwood, Frederick: The gospel of content
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0020
i6 The Gospel of Content
This was the beginning of my acquaintance with a man who
had a greater number of positive ideas than any one eise that ever
I have known, with wonderful intrepidity and skill in expound-
ing or defending them. However fine the faculties of some
other Russians whom I have encountered, they seemed to move
in a heavily obstructive atmosphere; Vernet appeared to be oppressed
by none. His resolutions were as prompt as his thought; what-
ever resourse he could command in any difficulty, whether the
least or the greatest, presented itself to his mind instantly, with
the occasion for it ; and every movement of his body had the same
quickness and precision. His pride, his pride of aristocracy, could
tower to extraordinary heights ; his sensibility to personal slights
and indignities was so trenchant that I have seen him white and
quivering with rage when he thought himself rudely jostled by a
fellow-passenger in a crowded street. And yet any comrade in
conspiracy was his familiär if he only brought daring enough
into the common business ; and wife, child, fortune, the exchange
of ease for the most desperate misery, all were put at stake for
the sake of the People and at the call of their sorrows and
oppressions. And of one sort of pride he had no sense whatever—
fine gentleman as he was, and used from his birth to every refine-
ment of Service and luxury : no degree of poverty, nor any
blameless shift for relieving it, touched him as humiliating. Priva-
tion, whether for others or himself, angered him ; the contrast
between slothful wealth and toiling misery enraged him ; but he
had no conception of want and its wretched little expedients as
mortifying.
For example. It was in November, that dreary and inclement
month, when he began life anew in England with a capital or
three Shillings and sevenpence. It was a bleak afternoon in
December, sleet lightly falling as the dusk came on and melting
as
This was the beginning of my acquaintance with a man who
had a greater number of positive ideas than any one eise that ever
I have known, with wonderful intrepidity and skill in expound-
ing or defending them. However fine the faculties of some
other Russians whom I have encountered, they seemed to move
in a heavily obstructive atmosphere; Vernet appeared to be oppressed
by none. His resolutions were as prompt as his thought; what-
ever resourse he could command in any difficulty, whether the
least or the greatest, presented itself to his mind instantly, with
the occasion for it ; and every movement of his body had the same
quickness and precision. His pride, his pride of aristocracy, could
tower to extraordinary heights ; his sensibility to personal slights
and indignities was so trenchant that I have seen him white and
quivering with rage when he thought himself rudely jostled by a
fellow-passenger in a crowded street. And yet any comrade in
conspiracy was his familiär if he only brought daring enough
into the common business ; and wife, child, fortune, the exchange
of ease for the most desperate misery, all were put at stake for
the sake of the People and at the call of their sorrows and
oppressions. And of one sort of pride he had no sense whatever—
fine gentleman as he was, and used from his birth to every refine-
ment of Service and luxury : no degree of poverty, nor any
blameless shift for relieving it, touched him as humiliating. Priva-
tion, whether for others or himself, angered him ; the contrast
between slothful wealth and toiling misery enraged him ; but he
had no conception of want and its wretched little expedients as
mortifying.
For example. It was in November, that dreary and inclement
month, when he began life anew in England with a capital or
three Shillings and sevenpence. It was a bleak afternoon in
December, sleet lightly falling as the dusk came on and melting
as