The Way of All Flesh

S >> Samuel Butler >> The Way of All Flesh


On these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views of things and
say to himself that in spite of all his goodness to them his children did
not love him. But who can love any man whose liver is out of order? How
base, he would exclaim to himself, was such ingratitude! How especially
hard upon himself, who had been such a model son, and always honoured and
obeyed his parents though they had not spent one hundredth part of the
money upon him which he had lavished upon his own children. "It is
always the same story," he would say to himself, "the more young people
have the more they want, and the less thanks one gets; I have made a
great mistake; I have been far too lenient with my children; never mind,
I have done my duty by them, and more; if they fail in theirs to me it is
a matter between God and them. I, at any rate, am guiltless. Why, I
might have married again and become the father of a second and perhaps
more affectionate family, etc., etc." He pitied himself for the
expensive education which he was giving his children; he did not see that
the education cost the children far more than it cost him, inasmuch as it
cost them the power of earning their living easily rather than helped
them towards it, and ensured their being at the mercy of their father for
years after they had come to an age when they should be independent. A
public school education cuts off a boy's retreat; he can no longer become
a labourer or a mechanic, and these are the only people whose tenure of
independence is not precarious--with the exception of course of those who
are born inheritors of money or who are placed young in some safe and
deep groove. Mr Pontifex saw nothing of this; all he saw was that he was
spending much more money upon his children than the law would have
compelled him to do, and what more could you have? Might he not have
apprenticed both his sons to greengrocers? Might he not even yet do so
to-morrow morning if he were so minded? The possibility of this course
being adopted was a favourite topic with him when he was out of temper;
true, he never did apprentice either of his sons to greengrocers, but his
boys comparing notes together had sometimes come to the conclusion that
they wished he would.

At other times when not quite well he would have them in for the fun of
shaking his will at them. He would in his imagination cut them all out
one after another and leave his money to found almshouses, till at last
he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of
cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion.

Of course if young people allow their conduct to be in any way influenced
by regard to the wills of living persons they are doing very wrong and
must expect to be sufferers in the end, nevertheless the powers of will-
dangling and will-shaking are so liable to abuse and are continually made
so great an engine of torture that I would pass a law, if I could, to
incapacitate any man from making a will for three months from the date of
each offence in either of the above respects and let the bench of
magistrates or judge, before whom he has been convicted, dispose of his
property as they shall think right and reasonable if he dies during the
time that his will-making power is suspended.

Mr Pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room. "My dear John, my
dear Theobald," he would say, "look at me. I began life with nothing but
the clothes with which my father and mother sent me up to London. My
father gave me ten shillings and my mother five for pocket money and I
thought them munificent. I never asked my father for a shilling in the
whole course of my life, nor took aught from him beyond the small sum he
used to allow me monthly till I was in receipt of a salary. I made my
own way and I shall expect my sons to do the same. Pray don't take it
into your heads that I am going to wear my life out making money that my
sons may spend it for me. If you want money you must make it for
yourselves as I did, for I give you my word I will not leave a penny to
either of you unless you show that you deserve it. Young people seem
nowadays to expect all kinds of luxuries and indulgences which were never
heard of when I was a boy. Why, my father was a common carpenter, and
here you are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many
hundreds a year, while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in
my Uncle Fairlie's counting house. What should I not have done if I had
had one half of your advantages? You should become dukes or found new
empires in undiscovered countries, and even then I doubt whether you
would have done proportionately so much as I have done. No, no, I shall
see you through school and college and then, if you please, you will make
your own way in the world."

In this manner he would work himself up into such a state of virtuous
indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then and there upon
some pretext invented at the moment.

And yet, as children went, the young Pontifexes were fortunate; there
would be ten families of young people worse off for one better; they ate
and drank good wholesome food, slept in comfortable beds, had the best
doctors to attend them when they were ill and the best education that
could be had for money. The want of fresh air does not seem much to
affect the happiness of children in a London alley: the greater part of
them sing and play as though they were on a moor in Scotland. So the
absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognised by
children who have never known it. Young people have a marvellous faculty
of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they
are unhappy--very unhappy--it is astonishing how easily they can be
prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any
other cause than their own sinfulness.

To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children
that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most children. Point to
the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and
impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. You
carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. This is
called moral influence, and it will enable you to bounce them as much as
you please. They think you know and they will not have yet caught you
lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and
scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet
will they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you will run
away, if they fight you with persistency and judgement. You keep the
dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. Load them then,
for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them. Tell
them how singularly indulgent you are; insist on the incalculable benefit
you conferred upon them, firstly in bringing them into the world at all,
but more particularly in bringing them into it as your own children
rather than anyone else's. Say that you have their highest interests at
stake whenever you are out of temper and wish to make yourself unpleasant
by way of balm to your soul. Harp much upon these highest interests.
Feed them spiritually upon such brimstone and treacle as the late Bishop
of Winchester's Sunday stories. You hold all the trump cards, or if you
do not you can filch them; if you play them with anything like judgement
you will find yourselves heads of happy, united, God-fearing families,
even as did my old friend Mr Pontifex. True, your children will probably
find out all about it some day, but not until too late to be of much
service to them or inconvenience to yourself.

Some satirists have complained of life inasmuch as all the pleasures
belong to the fore part of it and we must see them dwindle till we are
left, it may be, with the miseries of a decrepit old age.

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised
season--delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice
very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting
east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what
we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. Fontenelle at the age of
ninety, being asked what was the happiest time of his life, said he did
not know that he had ever been much happier than he then was, but that
perhaps his best years had been those when he was between fifty-five and
seventy-five, and Dr Johnson placed the pleasures of old age far higher
than those of youth. True, in old age we live under the shadow of Death,
which, like a sword of Damocles, may descend at any moment, but we have
so long found life to be an affair of being rather frightened than hurt
that we have become like the people who live under Vesuvius, and chance
it without much misgiving.




CHAPTER VII


A few words may suffice for the greater number of the young people to
whom I have been alluding in the foregoing chapter. Eliza and Maria, the
two elder girls, were neither exactly pretty nor exactly plain, and were
in all respects model young ladies, but Alethea was exceedingly pretty
and of a lively, affectionate disposition, which was in sharp contrast
with those of her brothers and sisters. There was a trace of her
grandfather, not only in her face, but in her love of fun, of which her
father had none, though not without a certain boisterous and rather
coarse quasi-humour which passed for wit with many.

John grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fellow, with features a
trifle too regular and finely chiselled. He dressed himself so nicely,
had such good address, and stuck so steadily to his books that he became
a favourite with his masters; he had, however, an instinct for diplomacy,
and was less popular with the boys. His father, in spite of the lectures
he would at times read him, was in a way proud of him as he grew older;
he saw in him, moreover, one who would probably develop into a good man
of business, and in whose hands the prospects of his house would not be
likely to decline. John knew how to humour his father, and was at a
comparatively early age admitted to as much of his confidence as it was
in his nature to bestow on anyone.

His brother Theobald was no match for him, knew it, and accepted his
fate. He was not so good-looking as his brother, nor was his address so
good; as a child he had been violently passionate; now, however, he was
reserved and shy, and, I should say, indolent in mind and body. He was
less tidy than John, less well able to assert himself, and less skilful
in humouring the caprices of his father. I do not think he could have
loved anyone heartily, but there was no one in his family circle who did
not repress, rather than invite his affection, with the exception of his
sister Alethea, and she was too quick and lively for his somewhat morose
temper. He was always the scapegoat, and I have sometimes thought he had
two fathers to contend against--his father and his brother John; a third
and fourth also might almost be added in his sisters Eliza and Maria.
Perhaps if he had felt his bondage very acutely he would not have put up
with it, but he was constitutionally timid, and the strong hand of his
father knitted him into the closest outward harmony with his brother and
sisters.

The boys were of use to their father in one respect. I mean that he
played them off against each other. He kept them but poorly supplied
with pocket money, and to Theobald would urge that the claims of his
elder brother were naturally paramount, while he insisted to John upon
the fact that he had a numerous family, and would affirm solemnly that
his expenses were so heavy that at his death there would be very little
to divide. He did not care whether they compared notes or no, provided
they did not do so in his presence. Theobald did not complain even
behind his father's back. I knew him as intimately as anyone was likely
to know him as a child, at school, and again at Cambridge, but he very
rarely mentioned his father's name even while his father was alive, and
never once in my hearing afterwards. At school he was not actively
disliked as his brother was, but he was too dull and deficient in animal
spirits to be popular.

Before he was well out of his frocks it was settled that he was to be a
clergyman. It was seemly that Mr Pontifex, the well-known publisher of
religious books, should devote at least one of his sons to the Church;
this might tend to bring business, or at any rate to keep it in the firm;
besides, Mr Pontifex had more or less interest with bishops and Church
dignitaries and might hope that some preferment would be offered to his
son through his influence. The boy's future destiny was kept well before
his eyes from his earliest childhood and was treated as a matter which he
had already virtually settled by his acquiescence. Nevertheless a
certain show of freedom was allowed him. Mr Pontifex would say it was
only right to give a boy his option, and was much too equitable to grudge
his son whatever benefit he could derive from this. He had the greatest
horror, he would exclaim, of driving any young man into a profession
which he did not like. Far be it from him to put pressure upon a son of
his as regards any profession and much less when so sacred a calling as
the ministry was concerned. He would talk in this way when there were
visitors in the house and when his son was in the room. He spoke so
wisely and so well that his listening guests considered him a paragon of
right-mindedness. He spoke, too, with such emphasis and his rosy gills
and bald head looked so benevolent that it was difficult not to be
carried away by his discourse. I believe two or three heads of families
in the neighbourhood gave their sons absolute liberty of choice in the
matter of their professions--and am not sure that they had not afterwards
considerable cause to regret having done so. The visitors, seeing
Theobald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so much
consideration for his wishes, would remark to themselves that the boy
seemed hardly likely to be equal to his father and would set him down as
an unenthusiastic youth, who ought to have more life in him and be more
sensible of his advantages than he appeared to be.

No one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more firmly
than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him silent, but
it was too profound and too much without break for him to become fully
alive to it, and come to an understanding with himself. He feared the
dark scowl which would come over his father's face upon the slightest
opposition. His father's violent threats, or coarse sneers, would not
have been taken _au serieux_ by a stronger boy, but Theobald was not a
strong boy, and rightly or wrongly, gave his father credit for being
quite ready to carry his threats into execution. Opposition had never
got him anything he wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the matter
of that, unless he happened to want exactly what his father wanted for
him. If he had ever entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now,
and the power to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that
hardly did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence
as of an ass crouched between two burdens. He may have had an
ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals; he might
occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a sailor far away in
foreign lands, or even as a farmer's boy upon the wolds, but there was
not enough in him for there to be any chance of his turning his dreams
into realities, and he drifted on with his stream, which was a slow, and,
I am afraid, a muddy one.

I think the Church Catechism has a good deal to do with the unhappy
relations which commonly even now exist between parents and children.
That work was written too exclusively from the parental point of view;
the person who composed it did not get a few children to come in and help
him; he was clearly not young himself, nor should I say it was the work
of one who liked children--in spite of the words "my good child" which,
if I remember rightly, are once put into the mouth of the catechist and,
after all, carry a harsh sound with them. The general impression it
leaves upon the mind of the young is that their wickedness at birth was
but very imperfectly wiped out at baptism, and that the mere fact of
being young at all has something with it that savours more or less
distinctly of the nature of sin.

If a new edition of the work is ever required I should like to introduce
a few words insisting on the duty of seeking all reasonable pleasure and
avoiding all pain that can be honourably avoided. I should like to see
children taught that they should not say they like things which they do
not like, merely because certain other people say they like them, and how
foolish it is to say they believe this or that when they understand
nothing about it. If it be urged that these additions would make the
Catechism too long I would curtail the remarks upon our duty towards our
neighbour and upon the sacraments. In the place of the paragraph
beginning "I desire my Lord God our Heavenly Father" I would--but perhaps
I had better return to Theobald, and leave the recasting of the Catechism
to abler hands.




CHAPTER VIII


Mr Pontifex had set his heart on his son's becoming a fellow of a college
before he became a clergyman. This would provide for him at once and
would ensure his getting a living if none of his father's ecclesiastical
friends gave him one. The boy had done just well enough at school to
render this possible, so he was sent to one of the smaller colleges at
Cambridge and was at once set to read with the best private tutors that
could be found. A system of examination had been adopted a year or so
before Theobald took his degree which had improved his chances of a
fellowship, for whatever ability he had was classical rather than
mathematical, and this system gave more encouragement to classical
studies than had been given hitherto.

Theobald had the sense to see that he had a chance of independence if he
worked hard, and he liked the notion of becoming a fellow. He therefore
applied himself, and in the end took a degree which made his getting a
fellowship in all probability a mere question of time. For a while Mr
Pontifex senior was really pleased, and told his son he would present him
with the works of any standard writer whom he might select. The young
man chose the works of Bacon, and Bacon accordingly made his appearance
in ten nicely bound volumes. A little inspection, however, showed that
the copy was a second hand one.

Now that he had taken his degree the next thing to look forward to was
ordination--about which Theobald had thought little hitherto beyond
acquiescing in it as something that would come as a matter of course some
day. Now, however, it had actually come and was asserting itself as a
thing which should be only a few months off, and this rather frightened
him inasmuch as there would be no way out of it when he was once in it.
He did not like the near view of ordination as well as the distant one,
and even made some feeble efforts to escape, as may be perceived by the
following correspondence which his son Ernest found among his father's
papers written on gilt-edged paper, in faded ink and tied neatly round
with a piece of tape, but without any note or comment. I have altered
nothing. The letters are as follows:--

"My dear Father,--I do not like opening up a question which has been
considered settled, but as the time approaches I begin to be very
doubtful how far I am fitted to be a clergyman. Not, I am thankful to
say, that I have the faintest doubts about the Church of England, and
I could subscribe cordially to every one of the thirty-nine articles
which do indeed appear to me to be the _ne plus ultra_ of human
wisdom, and Paley, too, leaves no loop-hole for an opponent; but I am
sure I should be running counter to your wishes if I were to conceal
from you that I do not feel the inward call to be a minister of the
gospel that I shall have to say I have felt when the Bishop ordains
me. I try to get this feeling, I pray for it earnestly, and sometimes
half think that I have got it, but in a little time it wears off, and
though I have no absolute repugnance to being a clergyman and trust
that if I am one I shall endeavour to live to the Glory of God and to
advance His interests upon earth, yet I feel that something more than
this is wanted before I am fully justified in going into the Church. I
am aware that I have been a great expense to you in spite of my
scholarships, but you have ever taught me that I should obey my
conscience, and my conscience tells me I should do wrong if I became a
clergyman. God may yet give me the spirit for which I assure you I
have been and am continually praying, but He may not, and in that case
would it not be better for me to try and look out for something else?
I know that neither you nor John wish me to go into your business, nor
do I understand anything about money matters, but is there nothing
else that I can do? I do not like to ask you to maintain me while I
go in for medicine or the bar; but when I get my fellowship, which
should not be long first, I will endeavour to cost you nothing
further, and I might make a little money by writing or taking pupils.
I trust you will not think this letter improper; nothing is further
from my wish than to cause you any uneasiness. I hope you will make
allowance for my present feelings which, indeed, spring from nothing
but from that respect for my conscience which no one has so often
instilled into me as yourself. Pray let me have a few lines shortly.
I hope your cold is better. With love to Eliza and Maria, I am, your
affectionate son,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."

"Dear Theobald,--I can enter into your feelings and have no wish to
quarrel with your expression of them. It is quite right and natural
that you should feel as you do except as regards one passage, the
impropriety of which you will yourself doubtless feel upon reflection,
and to which I will not further allude than to say that it has wounded
me. You should not have said 'in spite of my scholarships.' It was
only proper that if you could do anything to assist me in bearing the
heavy burden of your education, the money should be, as it was, made
over to myself. Every line in your letter convinces me that you are
under the influence of a morbid sensitiveness which is one of the
devil's favourite devices for luring people to their destruction. I
have, as you say, been at great expense with your education. Nothing
has been spared by me to give you the advantages, which, as an English
gentleman, I was anxious to afford my son, but I am not prepared to
see that expense thrown away and to have to begin again from the
beginning, merely because you have taken some foolish scruples into
your head, which you should resist as no less unjust to yourself than
to me.

"Don't give way to that restless desire for change which is the bane
of so many persons of both sexes at the present day.

"Of course you needn't be ordained: nobody will compel you; you are
perfectly free; you are twenty-three years of age, and should know
your own mind; but why not have known it sooner, instead of never so
much as breathing a hint of opposition until I have had all the
expense of sending you to the University, which I should never have
done unless I had believed you to have made up your mind about taking
orders? I have letters from you in which you express the most perfect
willingness to be ordained, and your brother and sisters will bear me
out in saying that no pressure of any sort has been put upon you. You
mistake your own mind, and are suffering from a nervous timidity which
may be very natural but may not the less be pregnant with serious
consequences to yourself. I am not at all well, and the anxiety
occasioned by your letter is naturally preying upon me. May God guide
you to a better judgement.--Your affectionate father, G. PONTIFEX."

On the receipt of this letter Theobald plucked up his spirits. "My
father," he said to himself, "tells me I need not be ordained if I do not
like. I do not like, and therefore I will not be ordained. But what was
the meaning of the words 'pregnant with serious consequences to
yourself'? Did there lurk a threat under these words--though it was
impossible to lay hold of it or of them? Were they not intended to
produce all the effect of a threat without being actually threatening?"

Theobald knew his father well enough to be little likely to misapprehend
his meaning, but having ventured so far on the path of opposition, and
being really anxious to get out of being ordained if he could, he
determined to venture farther. He accordingly wrote the following: