The Way of All Flesh

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


He lived until about twelve months ago, when he was found dead in his bed
on the morning after having written the following letter to his son:--

"Dear Ernest,--I've nothing particular to write about, but your letter
has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered letters, to
wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered.

"I keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles with
comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will last, and
time flies quickly. I have been busy potting plants all the morning,
but this afternoon is wet.

"What is this horrid Government going to do with Ireland? I don't
exactly wish they'd blow up Mr Gladstone, but if a mad bull would
chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, I should not
be sorry. Lord Hartington is not exactly the man I should like to set
in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than Gladstone.

"I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express. She kept my
household accounts, and I could pour out to her all little worries,
and now that Joey is married too, I don't know what I should do if one
or other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me. My only
comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy, and that he is
as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.--Believe me, Your
affectionate father,

"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."

I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's marriage
as though it were recent, it had really taken place some six years
previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old, and her husband
about seven years younger.

There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his sleep.
Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? He has presented
the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of himself he has
not only not died, but has not even thought that he was going to die.
This is not more than half dying, but then neither was his life more than
half living. He presented so many of the phenomena of living that I
suppose on the whole it would be less trouble to think of him as having
been alive than as never having been born at all, but this is only
possible because association does not stick to the strict letter of its
bond.

This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the
general verdict is often the truest.

Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect for his
father's memory. "He never," said Dr Martin, the old doctor who brought
Ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against anyone. He was not
only liked, he was beloved by all who had anything to do with him."

"A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family
solicitor, "I have never had anything to do with--nor one more punctual
in the discharge of every business obligation."

"We shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to Joey in the very warmest
terms. The poor were in consternation. "The well's never missed," said
one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what everyone else
felt. Ernest knew that the general regret was unaffected as for a loss
which could not be easily repaired. He felt that there were only three
people in the world who joined insincerely in the tribute of applause,
and these were the very three who could least show their want of
sympathy. I mean Joey, Charlotte, and himself. He felt bitter against
himself for being of a mind with either Joey or Charlotte upon any
subject, and thankful that he must conceal his being so as far as
possible, not because of anything his father had done to him--these
grievances were too old to be remembered now--but because he would never
allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel. As long
as communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well,
but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt
that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate opposition to
his own. When he was attacked his father laid whatever stress was
possible on everything which his opponents said. If he met with any
check his father was clearly pleased. What the old doctor had said about
Theobald's speaking ill of no man was perfectly true as regards others
than himself, but he knew very well that no one had injured his
reputation in a quiet way, so far as he dared to do, more than his own
father. This is a very common case and a very natural one. It often
happens that if the son is right, the father is wrong, and the father is
not going to have this if he can help it.

It was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the mischief
in the present case. It was not Ernest's having been imprisoned.
Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of ten
would have done. Partly, no doubt, it was due to incompatibility of
temperament, but I believe the main ground of complaint lay in the fact
that he had been so independent and so rich while still very young, and
that thus the old gentleman had been robbed of his power to tease and
scratch in the way which he felt he was entitled to do. The love of
teasing in a small way when he felt safe in doing so had remained part of
his nature from the days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on
purpose to torment her. I suppose it is so with all of us. At any rate
I am sure that most fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like
Theobald.

He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one whit
better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or anything, or if
he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked after him when he
was not well, and took great care of him and believed him to be the best
and ablest man in the whole world. Whether this faithful and attached
servant continued to think this after Theobald's will was opened and it
was found what kind of legacy had been left him I know not. Of his
children, the baby who had died at a day old was the only one whom he
held to have treated him quite filially. As for Christina he hardly ever
pretended to miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as
a proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her.
It may have been so, but I do not think it.

Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the Harmony of
the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during many years with
such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of MS. sermons--being all
in fact that he had ever written. These and the Harmony fetched
ninepence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear that Joey had not given
the three or four shillings which would have bought the whole lot, but
Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer in his dislike of his father
than ever he had been himself, and wished to get rid of everything that
reminded him of him.

It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married. Joey
has a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any intercourse. Of
course, Ernest took nothing under his father's will; this had long been
understood, so that the other two are both well provided for.

Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come and
stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she knows
that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a _de haut en
bas_ tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay one's finger upon
it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without feeling that he is
being written to by one who has had direct communication with an angel.
"What an awful creature," he once said to me, "that angel must have been
if it had anything to do with making Charlotte what she is."

"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a
little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with
heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think
begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no
heather--the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall
be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and
sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month. Would you
decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to
try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your
mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction."

"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed
me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte."

Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it
is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power
than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much
as to say, "There now--don't you think you are the only one of us who can
write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing
for your next book, you can make what use of it you like." I daresay she
writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words
"hope," "think," "feel," "try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly
write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more
than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.

Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years
has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds
it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting
into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable
to get back again.

"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected
female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at
Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to. How is
she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham Junction
won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished
seventh--susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it
into all the possible termini of music."

Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between
Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr Skinner's eldest daughter, not so very long
ago. Dr Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had become Dean of a
Cathedral in one of our Midland counties--a position which exactly suited
him. Finding himself once in the neighbourhood Ernest called, for old
acquaintance sake, and was hospitably entertained at lunch.

Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows--his hair they
could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have been
made a bishop.

His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon a
plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirinal,
he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the QuirInal--or as I myself
prefer to call it, the QuirInal." After this triumph he inhaled a long
breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the
face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his head-mastership. At
lunch he did indeed once say, "next to impossible to think of anything
else," but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words,
"next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed
to feel a good deal more comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of
Dr Skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the Deanery dining-room, but
he saw no copy of "Rome or the Bible--Which?"

"And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr Pontifex?" said Miss
Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like
modern music."

"Isn't that rather dreadful?--Don't you think you rather"--she was going
to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that
she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.

"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to
like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."

"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"

"With Sebastian Bach."

"And don't you like Beethoven?"

"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I
never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say
this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is
enough. This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness
which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even
to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me
describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by,
and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it
were an epitaph:--

"Stay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the
Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was
pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. "These
expressions," he said, _voce sua_, "are very valuable to me." "They are
but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what anyone of your old
pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at
the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that
looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest departed; but a few
days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his
critics were a [Greek text], and at the same time [Greek text]. Ernest
remembered [Greek text], and knew that the other words were something of
like nature, so it was all right. A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner
was gathered to his fathers.

"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent towards
him."

"I could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost like
playing with a child."

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself, and
then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr
Skinner or Theobald in his sleep--but beyond this neither of these two
worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half
afraid--as for example when I talk to him about his books--that I may
have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I trust he
has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention between us. I
want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his
readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writing than the
colour of his hair, and that he must write as he does or not at all.

With the public generally he is not a favourite. He is admitted to have
talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer unpractical kind,
and no matter how serious he is, he is always accused of being in jest.
His first book was a success for reasons which I have already explained,
but none of his others have been more than creditable failures. He is
one of those unfortunate men, each one of whose books is sneered at by
literary critics as soon as it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading"
as soon as it has been followed by a later work which may in its turn be
condemned.

He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him over
and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing
I can say to him which makes him angry with me.

"What can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books or
not? It may matter to them--but I have too much money to want more, and
if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by. I do not
know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion can any
sane man form about his own work? Some people must write stupid books
just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men. Why should I
complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely
below mediocrity let him be thankful--besides, the books will have to
stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better."

I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. "Mr Pontifex," he
said, "is a _homo unius libri_, but it doesn't do to tell him so."

I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in
Ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose failure
was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a _coup_.
"He is in a very solitary position, Mr Overton," continued the publisher.
"He has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the
religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well.
This will not do nowadays. If a man wishes to get on he must belong to a
set, and Mr Pontifex belongs to no set--not even to a club."

I replied, "Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a
difference--he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the
literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they
him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were
brought into contact with them his last state would be worse than his
first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them, and
attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it--in the hope, perhaps,
that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the
present."

"Can anything,"' said the publisher, "be conceived more impracticable and
imprudent?"

To all this Ernest replies with one word only--"Wait."

Such is my friend's latest development. He would not, it is true, run
much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual
Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is not
a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of Spiritual
Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the next
generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there is not, and
takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis lest he should
again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather fatigues him, but "no
man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be worth holding unless he knows
how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of
charity." In politics he is a Conservative so far as his vote and
interest are concerned. In all other respects he is an advanced Radical.
His father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of
mind than they could understand Chinese, but those who know him
intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he
actually is.