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 The Way of All Flesh
 
 "It drives one almost to despair of English Literature 
 when one sees so extraordinary a study of English life as 
 Butler's posthumous Way of All Flesh" making so 
 little impression that when, some years later, I produce 
 plays in which Butler's extraordinarily fresh free and 
 future-piercing suggestions have an obvious share, I am 
 met with nothing but vague cacklings about Ibsen and 
 Nietzsche. . . . Really, the English do not deserve to 
 have great men." 
 
 G. Bernard Shaw in Preface to "Major Barbara."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 By 
 
 Samuel Butler 
 
 Author of "Erewhon," "Erewhon Revisited' 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 William Lyon Phelps 
 
 Lampion Professor of English Literature at Yale 
 
 'We know that all things work together for good to them 
 that love God." ROM. viii. 28 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 68 I FIFTH AVENUE 
 I9l6
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 BY E. P. BUTTON & Co.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I AM reminded of old Vigneron's remark about Meyer- 
 beer; for Samuel Butler died without my noticing it; 
 I didn't even know he was sick. Shortly after his cre- 
 mated ashes had been scattered to the winds of heaven, 
 a learned lady asked me if I knew anything about 
 Samuel Butler. Although I have ceased to be shocked 
 at anything the azure-footed say or do, I did feel a 
 penumbra of chagrin, for I earn my bread by teaching 
 English Literature. I proceeded to emit a few platitudes 
 about Hudibras, when I was sharply interrupted, and 
 informed that the subject for discussion was the great 
 Samuel Butler, the Samuel Butler, "the greatest novelist 
 of the nineteenth century." This is a title that few 
 writers of modern fiction have escaped, and I breathed 
 easier. "Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance," how 
 often Johnson has helped us! 
 
 Now I am grateful to my fair tutor, for while the 
 name of the Erewhon philosopher must eventually have 
 penetrated even into academic circles, I might have re- 
 mained a few months longer in the outer darkness, and 
 thus have postponed my acquaintance with The Way of 
 All Flesh. Butler spent a good many years writing this 
 extraordinary book, and finished it a good many years 
 ago, but in 1902, on his deathbed, gave for the first time 
 permission to have it printed, characteristically reversing 
 the conventional deathbed repentance and confession. 
 He, who had abandoned all faith except in his own 
 infallibility, ardently believed in his posthumous fame, 
 which has become a reality. Its slow growth seems to 
 indicate permanence. 
 
 V 
 
 2051573
 
 vi Introduction 
 
 It is a curious fact that the two Samuel Butlers the 
 seventeenth century poet and the nineteenth century 
 novelist should have held precisely the same attitude 
 toward religious priggery. Neither could endure the 
 organised and dominant church-going-Christianity of his 
 epoch. What the Burlesquer said of the Puritans neatly 
 expresses the contempt felt by his namesake. 
 
 A sect whose chief devotion lies 
 In odd, perverse antipathies, 
 In falling out with that or this 
 And finding somewhat still amiss; 
 More peevish, cross, and splenetic 
 Than dog distract or monkey sick: 
 That with more care keep holyday 
 The wrong, than others the right way; 
 Compound for sins they are inclined to 
 By damning those they have no mind to. 
 
 And the late W. E. Henley's summary of the first 
 Samuel Butler fits the second almost without the change 
 of a word. I give it verbatim. "He had an abundance 
 of wit of the best and truest sort ; he was an indefatigable 
 observer ; he knew opinions well, and books even better ; 
 he had considered life acutely and severely ; as a rhythm- 
 ist he proceeded from none and has had no successor; 
 his vocabulary is of its kind incomparable ; his work is a 
 very hoard of sentences and saws, of vigorous locutions 
 and picturesque colloquialisms, of strong, sound sense 
 and robust English." 
 
 Bernard Shaw, taking his eye off Brieux for a mo- 
 ment, informed us that he learned more from Butler than 
 from any other writer ; a statement easier to believe than 
 some of his affirmations. Unfortunately the disciple is 
 so much above his lord in popular estimation that we 
 have all been withholding honour where honour is due. 
 After one has read Butler, one sees where many of
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 Shaw's perversities and ironies came from. The founda- 
 tion of Butler's style is the paradox; moral dynamics are 
 reversed; the unpardonable sin is conventionality. His 
 masterpiece answers no questions; solves no problems; 
 chases away no perplexities. Every reader becomes an 
 interrogation point. Butler rubs our thoughts the wrong 
 way. As axiom after axiom is ruthlessly attacked, we 
 pick over our minds for some missile to throw at him. 
 It is a good thing for every man and woman whose 
 brain happens to be in activity to read this amazingly 
 clever, original, brilliant, diabolical novel. And for those 
 whose brains are in captivity it may smash some fetters. 
 Every one who understands what he reads will take an 
 inventory of his own religious and moral stock. 
 
 Butler delighted in the role of Advocatus Diaboli. In 
 his Note-Books he has the following apology for the 
 Devil : "It must be remembered that we have heard 
 only one side of the case. God has written all the books." 
 Well, He certainly did not write this one; He permitted 
 the Devil to have his hour. The worst misfortune that 
 can happen to any person, says Butler, is to lose his 
 money; the second is to lose his health; and the loss of 
 reputation is a bad third. He seems to have regarded the 
 death of his father as the most fortunate event in his 
 own life; for it made him financially independent. He 
 never quite forgave the old man for hanging on till he 
 was eighty years old. He ridiculed the Bishop of Car- 
 lisle for saying that we long to meet our parents in the 
 next world. "Speaking for myself, I have no wish to see 
 my father again, and I think it likely that the Bishop of 
 Carlisle would not be more eager to see his than I mine." 
 Melchisedec "was a really happy man. He was without 
 father, without mother, and without descent. He was 
 an incarnate bachelor. He was a born orphan." 
 
 One reason why The Way of All Flesh is becoming 
 every year more widely known is because it happens to 
 be exactly in the literary form most fashionable in fiction
 
 viii Introduction 
 
 at this moment. It is a "life" novel it is a biography, 
 which, of course, means that it is very largely an auto- 
 biography. Three generations of the hero's family are 
 portrayed with much detail ; the plot of the story is simply 
 chronological; the only agreeable woman in the book 
 was a personal friend of the author. Not only are hun- 
 dreds of facts in the novelist's own life minutely recorded, 
 it is a spiritual autobiography as well. It was his habit 
 to carry a notebook in his pocket ; whenever a thought or 
 fancy occurred to him, immediately to write it down. An 
 immense number of these fatherless ideas are now in- 
 woven in this novel. The result is that the reader literally 
 finds something interesting and often something valuable 
 on every page. The style is so closely packed with 
 thought that it produces constant intellectual delight. 
 This is well ; for I can recall no delight of any other kind. 
 Just as Samuel Butler poured out in Hudibras the 
 accumulated bottled venom and hatred of many years, 
 so our novelist has released all the repugnance, the rebel- 
 lion, the impotent rage of childhood. He had an excellent 
 memory, and seems to have forgiven nothing and for- 
 gotten nothing that happened to him in the dependent 
 years of his life. It is an awkward thing to play with 
 souls, and Butler represents the souls of boys treated by 
 their parents and by their school-teachers with astonish- 
 ing stupidity and blundering brutality. It is a wonderful 
 treatise on the art of how not to bring up children ; and 
 I should think that every mother, father, and teacher 
 would feel some sense of shame and some sense of fear. 
 For a good many years children are in the power of their 
 elders, who so greatly excel them in physical strength and 
 in cunning; but every child, no matter how dutifully he 
 may kiss the rod, becomes in after years the Judge of 
 his parents and of his teachers. Butler's sympathy with 
 children, whose little bodies and little minds are often in 
 absolute bondage to parents both dull and cruel, is a 
 salient quality in his work. One is appalled when one
 
 Introduction ix 
 
 remembers how often the sensitive soul of a little boy is 
 tortured at home, simply by coarse handling. This cham- 
 pionship of children places Butler with Dickens, though 
 I suppose such a remark would have been regarded by 
 Butler as an insult. 
 
 I think that the terrific attack on "professing Chris- 
 tians" made in this novel will be of real service to Chris- 
 tianity. Just as men of strong political opinions have 
 largely abandoned the old habit of reading the party 
 paper, and now give their fiercest opponents a hearing, 
 so I think good Christian people will derive much benefit 
 from an attentive perusal of this work. The religion 
 that Butler attacks is the religion of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, and unless our religion exceeds that, none of 
 us is going to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The Church 
 needs clever, active antagonists to keep her up to the 
 mark ; the principle of Good is toughened by constant 
 contact with the principle of Evil; every minister ought 
 to have in his audience a number of brilliant, determined 
 opponents, who have made up their minds they will be- 
 
 (lieve nothing he says; I have no doubt that God needs 
 the Devil. 
 
 Thus, although I firmly believe this is a diabolical 
 novel, I think it will prove to be of service to Christianity. 
 I know it has done me good. I cannot forget Butler's 
 remark about all those church-goers who would be equally 
 shocked if anyone doubted Christianity or if anyone prac- 
 tised it. 
 
 Samuel Butler was the grandson of a Bishop and the 
 son of Thomas Butler. He was born in Nottinghamshire, 
 England, on the fourth of December, 1835. Like his 
 father and grandfather, he went through St. John's Col- 
 lege, Cambridge. After graduation, in preparation for 
 the ministry, he did parish work among the poor in 
 London, which convinced him that he needed fresh 
 woods and pastures new. In 1859 ne sailed for New
 
 x Introduction 
 
 Zealand and became a successful sheep-farmer, appar- 
 ently finding the animals more interesting than his quon- 
 dam metropolitan flock. He returned to England in 1864, 
 took lodgings in Clifford's Inn, and studied art. Some 
 of his pictures were exhibited at the Royal Academy. 
 He made many journeys on the Continent, especially in 
 Italy, and wrote many books, of which The Way of All 
 Flesh, published in 1903, is the best. He died on the 
 i8th of June, 1902. 
 
 Butler's attitude toward everything except Handel and 
 himself was ironical; he delighted in ridiculing any gen- 
 erally-accepted tenet in politics, science, art, and religion. 
 This was often done behind a mask of grave, candid 
 enquiry, in the manner of Swift. Even his personal 
 appearance was ironical, for although he could truth- 
 fully have said, "I have fought the good faith," he looked 
 like a devout and rather ignorant evangelical parson. 
 
 WILLIAM LYON PHELPS. 
 YALE UNIVERSITY, 
 26 February, 1916.
 
 Note 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLER began to write "The Way of All Flesh" 
 about the year 1872, and was engaged upon it intermit- 
 tently until 1884. It is therefore, to a great extent, con- 
 temporaneous with "Life and Habit," and may be taken 
 as a practical illustration of the theory of heredity em- 
 bodied in that book. He did not work at it after 1884, 
 but for various reasons he postponed its publication. He 
 was occupied in other ways, and he professed himself dis- 
 satisfied with it as a whole, and always intended to re- 
 write or at any rate to revise it. His death in 1902 pre- 
 vented him from doing this, and on his death-bed he gave 
 me clearly to understand that he wished it to be published 
 in its present form. I found that the MS. of the fourth 
 and fifth chapters had disappeared, but by consulting and 
 comparing various notes and sketches, which remained 
 among his papers, I have been able to supply the missing 
 chapters in a form which I believe does not differ materi- 
 ally from that which he finally adopted. With regard to 
 the chronology of the events recorded, the reader will do 
 well to bear in mind that the main body of the novel is 
 supposed to have been written in the year 1867, and the 
 last chapter added as a postscript in 1882. 
 
 R. A. STREATFEILD.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN I was a small boy at the beginning of the century 
 I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and 
 worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the 
 street of our village with the help of a stick. He must 
 have been getting on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier 
 than which date I suppose I can hardly remember him, 
 for I was born in 1802. A few white locks hung about 
 his ears, his shoulders were bent and his knees feeble, 
 but he was still hale, and was much respected in our little 
 world of Paleham. His name was Pontifex. 
 
 His wife was said to be his master; I have been told 
 she brought him a little money, but it cannot have been 
 much. She was a tall, square-shouldered person (I have 
 heard my father call her a Gothic woman) who had in- 
 sisted on being married to Mr. Pontifex when he was 
 young and too good-natured to say nay to any woman 
 who wooed him. The pair had lived not unhappily to- 
 gether, for Mr. Pontifex's temper was easy and he soon 
 learned to bow before his wife's more stormy moods. 
 
 Mr. Pontifex was a carpenter by trade ; he was also at 
 one time parish clerk; when I remember him, however, 
 he had so far risen in life as to be no longer compelled to 
 work with his own hands. In his earlier days he had 
 taught himself to draw. I do not say he drew well, but 
 it was surprising he should draw as well as he did. My 
 father, who took the living of Paleham about the year
 
 2 The Way of All FlesH 
 
 1797, became possessed of a good many of old Mr. Ponti- 
 fex's drawings, which were always of local subjects, and 
 so unaffectedly painstaking that they might have passed 
 for the work of some good early master. I remember 
 them as hanging up framed and glazed in the study at the 
 Rectory, and tinted, as all else in the room was tinted, 
 with the green reflected from the fringe of ivy leaves that 
 grew around the windows. I wonder how they will ac- 
 tually cease and come to an end as drawings, and into 
 what new phases of being they will then enter. 
 
 Not content with being an artist, Mr. Pontifex must 
 needs also be a musician. He built the organ in the 
 church with his own hands, and made a smaller one 
 which he kept in his own house. He could play as much 
 as he could draw, not very well according to professional 
 standards, but much better than could have been expected. 
 I myself showed a taste for music at an early age, and 
 old Mr. Pontifex on finding it out, as he soon did, be- 
 came partial to me in consequence. 
 
 It may be thought that with so many irons in the fire 
 he could hardly be a very thriving man, but this was not 
 the case. His father had been a day labourer, and he 
 had himself begun life with no other capital than his 
 good sense and good constitution; now, however, there 
 was a goodly show of timber about his yard, and a look 
 of solid comfort over his whole establishment. Towards 
 the close of the eighteenth century and not long before 
 my father came to Paleham, he had taken a farm of 
 about ninety acres, thus making a considerable rise in 
 life. Along with the farm there went an old-fashioned 
 but comfortable house with a charming garden and an 
 orchard. The carpenter's business was now carried on 
 in one of the outhouses that had once been part of some 
 conventual buildings, the remains of which could be seen 
 in what was called the Abbey Close. The house itself, 
 emblossomed in honeysuckles and creeping roses, was an 
 ornament to the whole village, nor were its internal ar-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 3 
 
 rangements less exemplary than its outside was orna- 
 mental. Report said that Mrs. Pontifex starched the 
 sheets for her best bed, and I can well believe it. 
 
 How well do I remember her parlour half filled with 
 the organ which her husband had built, and scented with 
 a withered apple or two from the pyrus japonica that 
 grew outside the house ; the picture of the prize ox over 
 the chimney-piece, which Mr. Pontifex himself had 
 painted; the transparency of the man coming to show 
 light to a coach upon a snowy night, also by Mr. Ponti- 
 fex ; the little old man and little old woman who told the 
 weather ; the china shepherd and shepherdess ; the jars of 
 feathery flowering grasses with a peacock's feather or 
 two among them to set them off, and the china bowls full 
 of dead rose leaves dried with bay salt. All has long 
 since vanished and become a memory, faded but still fra- 
 grant to myself. 
 
 Nay, but her kitchen and the glimpses into a cavern- 
 ous cellar beyond it, wherefrom came gleams from the 
 pale surfaces of milk cans, or it may be of the arms and 
 face of a milkmaid skimming the cream; or again her 
 storeroom, where among other treasures she kept the 
 famous lipsalve which was one of her especial glories, 
 and of which she would present a shape yearly to those 
 whom she delighted to honour. She wrote out the recipe 
 for this and gave it to my mother a year or two before 
 she died, but we could never make it as she did. When 
 we were children she used sometimes to send her respects 
 to my mother, and ask leave for us to come and take tea 
 with her. Right well she used to ply us. As for her 
 temper, we never met such a delightful old lady in our 
 lives; whatever Mr. Pontifex may have had to put up 
 with, we had no cause for complaint, and then Mr. Pon- 
 tifex would play to us upon the organ, and we would 
 stand round him open-mouthed and think him the most 
 wonderfully clever man that ever was born, except of 
 course our papa.
 
 4 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Mrs. Pontifex had no sense of humour, at least I can 
 call to mind no signs of this, but her husband had plenty 
 of fun in him, though few would have guessed it from 
 his appearance. I remember my father once sent me 
 down to his workshop to get some glue, and I happened 
 to come when old Pontifex was in the act of scolding his 
 boy. He had got the lad a pudding-headed fellow by 
 the ear and was saying, "What ? Lost again smothered 
 o' wit." (I believe it was the boy who was himself sup- 
 posed to be a wandering soul, and who was thus ad- 
 dressed as lost.) "Now, look here, my lad," he contin- 
 ued, "some boys are born stupid, and thou art one of 
 them; some achieve stupidity that's thee again, Jim 
 thou wast both born stupid and hast greatly increased thy 
 birthright and some" (and here came a climax during 
 which the boy's head and ear were swayed from side to 
 side) "have stupidity thrust upon them, which, if it 
 please the Lord, shall not be thy case, my lad, for I will 
 thrust stupidity from thee, though I have to box thine ears 
 in doing so," but I did not see that the old man really did 
 box Jim's ears, or do more than pretend to frighten him, 
 for the two understood one another perfectly well. An- 
 other time I remember hearing him call the village rat- 
 catcher by saying, "Come hither, thou three-days-and- 
 three-nights, thou," alluding, as I afterwards learned, to 
 the rat-catcher's periods of intoxication; but I will tell 
 no more of such trifles. My father's face would always 
 brighten when old Pontifex's name was mentioned. "I 
 tell you, Edward," he would say to me, "old Pontifex 
 was not only an able man, but he was one of the very 
 ablest men that ever I knew." 
 
 This was more than I as a young man was prepared 
 to stand. "My dear father," I answered, "what did he 
 do? He could draw a little, but could he to save his life 
 have got a picture into the Royal Academy exhibition? 
 He built two organs and could play the Minuet in Sam- 
 son on one and the March in Scipio on the other ; he was
 
 The Way of All Flesh 5 
 
 a good carpenter and a bit of a wag; he was a good old 
 fellow enough, but why make him out so much abler 
 than he was ?" 
 
 "My boy," returned my father, "you must not judge 
 by the work, but by the work in connection with the sur- 
 roundings. Could Giotto or Filippo Lippi, think you, 
 have got a picture into the Exhibition? Would a single 
 one of those frescoes we went to see when we were at 
 Padua have the remotest chance of being hung, if it were 
 sent in for exhibition now? Why, the Academy people 
 would be so outraged that they would not even write to 
 poor Giotto to tell him to come and take his fresco away. 
 Phew !" continued he, waxing warm, "if old Pontifex 
 had had Cromwell's chances he would have done all that 
 Cromwell did, and have done it better ; if he had had 
 Giotto's chances he would have done all that Giotto did, 
 and done it no worse ; as it was, he was a village carpen- 
 ter, and I will undertake to say he never scamped a job 
 in the whole course of his life." 
 
 "But," said I, "we cannot judge people with so many 
 'ifs.' If old Pontifex had lived in Giotto's time he 
 might have been another Giotto, but he did not live in 
 Giotto's time." 
 
 "I tell you, Edward," said my father with some se- 
 verity, "we must judge men not so much by what they 
 do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them 
 to do. If a man has done enough, either in painting, 
 music or the affairs of life, to make me feel that I might 
 trust him in an emergency he has done enough. It is not 
 by what a man has actually put upon his canvas, nor yet 
 by the acts which he has set down, so to speak, upon 
 the canvas of his life that I will judge him, but by what 
 he makes me feel that he felt and aimed at. If he has 
 made me feel that he felt those things to be lovable 
 which I hold lovable myself I ask no more; his gram- 
 mar may have been imperfect, but still I have understood 
 him ; he and I are en rapport; and I say again, Edward,
 
 6 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that old Pontifex was not only an able man, but one of 
 the very ablest men I ever knew." 
 
 Against this there was no more to be said, and my sis- 
 ters eyed me to silence. Somehow or other my sisters 
 always did eye me to silence when I differed from my 
 father. 
 
 "Talk of his successful son," snorted my father, whom 
 I had fairly roused. "He is not fit to black his father's 
 boots. He has his thousands of pounds a year, while his 
 father had perhaps three thousand shillings a year 
 towards the end of his life. He is a successful man ; but 
 his father, hobbling about Paleham Street in his grey 
 worsted stockings, broad brimmed hat and brown swal- 
 low-tailed coat, was worth a hundred of George Ponti- 
 fexes, for all his carriages and horses and the airs he 
 gives himself." 
 
 "But yet," he added, "George Pontifex is no fool 
 either." And this brings us to the second generation of 
 the Pontifex family with whom we need concern our- 
 selves. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OLD Mr. Pontifex had married in the year 1750, but for 
 fifteen years his wife bore no children. At the end of 
 that time Mrs. Pontifex astonished the whole village by 
 showing unmistakable signs of a disposition to present 
 her husband with an heir or heiress. Hers had long ago 
 been considered a hopeless case, and when on consulting 
 the doctor concerning the meaning of certain symptoms 
 she was informed of their significance, she became very 
 angry and abused the doctor roundly for talking non- 
 sense. She refused to put so much as a piece of thread 
 into a needle in anticipation of her confinement and 
 would have been absolutely unprepared, if her neigh- 
 bours had not been better judges of her condition than
 
 The Way of All Flesh 7 
 
 she was, and got things ready without telling her any- 
 thing about it. Perhaps she feared Nemesis, though as- 
 suredly she knew not who or what Nemesis was ; perhaps 
 she feared the doctor had made a mistake and she should 
 be laughed at; from whatever cause, however, her re- 
 fusal to recognise the obvious arose, she certainly re- 
 fused to recognise it, until one snowy night in January 
 the doctor was sent for with all urgent speed across the 
 rough country roads. When he arrived he found two 
 patients, not one, in need of his assistance, for a boy had 
 been born who was in due time christened George, in 
 honour of his then reigning majesty. 
 
 To the best of my belief George Pontifex got the 
 greater part of his nature from this obstinate old lady, his 
 mother a mother who though she loved no one else in 
 the world except her husband (and him only after a 
 fashion) was most tenderly attached to the unexpected 
 child of her old age; nevertheless she showed it little. 
 
 The boy grew up into a sturdy bright-eyed little fellow, 
 with plenty of intelligence, and perhaps a trifle too great 
 readiness at book learning. Being kindly treated at 
 home, he was as fond of his father and mother as it was 
 in his nature to be of anyone, but he was fond of no one 
 else. He had a good healthy sense of m'eum, and as 
 little of tuum as he could help. Brought up much in 
 the open air in one of the best situated and healthiest vil- 
 lages in England, his little limbs had fair play, and in 
 those days children's brains were not overtasked as they 
 now are; perhaps it was for this very reason that the 
 boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or eight years 
 old he could read, write and sum better than any other 
 boy of his age in the village. My father was not yet 
 rector of Paleham, and did not remember George Ponti- 
 fex's childhood, but I have heard neighbours tell him 
 that the boy was looked upon as unusually quick and for- 
 ward. His father and mother were naturally proud of 
 their offspring, and his mother was determined that he
 
 8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 should one day become one of the kings and councillor^ 
 of the earth. 
 
 It is one thing, however, to resolve that one's son 'shall 
 win some of life's larger prizes, and another to square 
 matters with fortune in this respect. George Pontifex 
 might have been brought up as a carpenter and succeeded 
 in no other way than as succeeding his father as one of 
 the minor magnates of Paleham, and yet have been a 
 more truly successful man than he actually was for I 
 take it there is not much more solid success in this world 
 than what fell to the lot of old Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex ; 
 it happened, however, that about the year 1780, when 
 George was a boy of fifteen, a sister of Mrs. Pontifex's, 
 who had married a Mr. Fairlie, came to pay a few days' 
 visit at PaJeham. Mr. Fairlie was a publisher, chiefly of 
 religious works, and had an establishment in Paternoster 
 Row; he had risen in life, and his wife had risen with 
 him. No very close relations had been maintained be- 
 tween the sisters for some years, and I forget exactly 
 how it came about that Mr. and Mrs. Fairlie were guests 
 in the quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of their 
 sister and brother-in-law; but for some reason or other 
 the visit was paid, and little George soon succeeded in 
 making his way into his uncle and aunt's good graces. A 
 quick, intelligent boy with a good address, a sound con- 
 stitution, and coming of respectable parents, has a poten- 
 tial value which a practised business man who has need 
 of many subordinates is little likely to overlook. Before 
 his visit was over Mr. Fairlie proposed to the lad's father 
 and mother that he should put him into his own business, 
 at the same time promising that if the boy did well he 
 should not want some one to bring him forward. Mrs. 
 Pontifex had her son's interest too much at heart to 
 refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, 
 and about a fortnight after the Fairlies had left, George 
 was sent up by coach to London, where he was met by
 
 The Way of All Flesh 9 
 
 his uncle and aunt, with whom it was arranged that he 
 should live. 
 
 This was George's great start in life. He now wore 
 more fashionable clothes than he had yet been accus- 
 tomed to, and any little rusticity of gait or pronunciation 
 which he had brought from Paleham, was so quickly and 
 completely lost that it was ere long impossible to detect 
 that he had not been born and bred among people of what 
 is commonly called education. The boy paid great atten- 
 tion to his work, and more than justified the favourable 
 opinion which Mr. Fairlie had formed concerning him. 
 Sometimes Mr. Fairlie would send him down to Paleham 
 for a few days' holiday, and ere long his parents per- 
 ceived that he had acquired an air and manner of talking 
 different from any that he had taken with him from 
 Paleham. They were proud of him, and soon fell into 
 their proper places, resigning all appearance of a parental 
 control, for which indeed there was no kind of necessity. 
 In return, George was always kindly to them, and to the 
 end of his life retained a more affectionate feeling 
 towards his father and mother than I imagine him ever 
 to have felt again for man, woman, or child. 
 
 George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the 
 distance from London was under fifty miles and there 
 was a direct coach, so that the journey was easy; there 
 was not time, therefore, for the novelty to wear off either 
 on the part of the young man or of his parents. George 
 liked the fresh country air and green fields after the 
 darkness to which he had been so long accustomed in 
 Paternoster Row, which then, as now, was a narrow 
 gloomy lane rather than a street. Independently of the 
 pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the farmers and 
 villagers, he liked also being seen and being congratulated 
 on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young 
 fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a 
 bushel. His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek
 
 io The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of an evening ; he had taken kindly to these languages and 
 had rapidly and easily mastered what many boys take 
 years in acquiring. I suppose his knowledge gave him a 
 self-confidence which made itself felt whether he in- 
 tended it or not; at any rate, he soon began to pose as a 
 judge of literature, and from this to being a judge of art, 
 architecture, music and everything else, the path was 
 easy. Like his father, he knew the value of money, but 
 he was at once more ostentatious and less liberal than his 
 father; while yet a boy he was a thorough little man of 
 the world, and did well rather upon principles which he 
 had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as 
 principles, than from those profounder convictions 
 which in his father were so instinctive that he could give 
 no account concerning them. 
 
 His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let 
 him alone. His son had fairly distanced him, and in an 
 inarticulate way the father knew it perfectly well. After 
 a few years he took to wearing his best clothes whenever 
 his son came to stay with him, nor would he discard 
 them for his ordinary ones till the young man had re- 
 turned to London. I believe old Mr. Pontifex, along 
 with his pride and affection, felt also a certain fear of 
 his son, as though of something which he could not thor- 
 oughly understand, and whose ways, notwithstanding 
 outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his ways. 
 Mrs. Pontifex felt nothing of this; to her George was 
 pure and absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought 
 she saw, with pleasure, that he resembled her and her 
 family in feature as well as in disposition rather than 
 her husband and his. 
 
 When George was about twenty-five years old his 
 uncle took him into partnership on very liberal terms. 
 He had little cause to regret this step. The young man 
 infused fresh vigour into a concern that was already vig- 
 orous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in the 
 receipt of not less than 1500 a year as his share of the
 
 The Way of All Flesh II 
 
 profits. Two years later he married a lady about seven 
 years younger than himself, who brought him a hand- 
 some dowry. She died in 1805, when her youngest child 
 Alethea was born, and her husband did not marry again. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 IN the early years of the century five little children and a 
 couple of nurses began to make periodical visits to Pale- 
 ham. It is needless to say they were a rising generation 
 of Pontifexes, towards whom the old couple, their grand- 
 parents, were as tenderly deferential as they would have 
 been to the children of the Lord Lieutenant oi the 
 County. Their names were Eliza, Maria, John, Theobald 
 (who like myself was born in 1802), and Alethea. Mr. 
 Pontifex always put the prefix "master" or "miss" be- 
 fore the names of his grandchildren, except in the case 
 of Alethea, who was his favourite. To have resisted 
 his grandchildren would have been as impossible for 
 him as to have resisted his wife; even old Mrs. Pontifex 
 yielded before her son's children, and gave them all man- 
 ner of licence which she would never have allowed even 
 to my sisters and myself, who stood next in her regard. 
 Two regulations only they must attend to ; they must 
 wipe their shoes well on coming into the house, and 
 they must not overfeed Mr. Pontifex's organ with wind, 
 nor take the pipes out. 
 
 By us at the Rectory there was no time so much looked 
 forward to as the annual visit of the little Pontifexes to 
 Paleham. We came in for some of the prevailing li- 
 cence; we went to tea with Mrs. Pontifex to meet her 
 grandchildren, and then our young friends were asked 
 to the Rectory to have tea with us, and we had what we 
 considered great times. I fell desperately in love with 
 Alethea, indeed we all fell in love with each other, plu- 
 rality and exchange whether of wives or husbands being
 
 12 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 openly and unblushingly advocated in the very presence 
 of our nurses. We were very merry, but it is so long 
 ago that I have forgotten nearly everything save that we 
 were very merry. Almost the only thing that remains 
 with me as a permanent impression was the fact that 
 Theobald one day beat his nurse and teased her, and 
 when she said she should go away cried out, "You shan't 
 go away I'll keep you on purpose to torment you." 
 
 One winter's morning, however, in the year 1811, we 
 heard the church bell tolling while we were dressing in 
 the back nursery and were told it was for old Mrs. Pon- 
 tifex. Our manservant John told us and added with 
 grim levity that they were ringing the bell to come and 
 take her away. She had had a fit of paralysis which had 
 carried her off quite suddenly. It was very shocking, 
 the more so because our nurse assured us that if God 
 chose we might all have fits of paralysis ourselves that 
 very day and be taken straight off to the Day of Judge- 
 ment. The Day of Judgement indeed, according to the 
 opinion of those who were most likely to know, would 
 not under any circumstances be delayed more than a 
 few years longer, and then the whole world would be 
 burned, and we ourselves be consigned to an eternity of 
 torture, unless we mended our ways more than we at 
 present seemed at all likely to do. All this wa"s so alarm- 
 ing that we fell to screaming and made such a hullabaloo 
 that the nurse was obliged for her own peace to reassure 
 us. Then we wept, but more composedly, as we remem- 
 bered that there would be no more tea and cakes for us 
 now at old Mrs. Pontifex's. 
 
 On the day of the funeral, however, we had a great 
 excitement ; old Mr. Pontifex sent round a penny loaf to 
 every inhabitant of the village according to a custom still 
 not uncommon at the beginning of the century ; the loaf 
 was called a dole. -We had never heard of this custom 
 before, besides, though we had often heard of penny 
 loaves, we had never before seen one; moreover, they
 
 The Way of All Flesh 13 
 
 were presents to us as inhabitants of the village, and we 
 were treated as grown up people, for our father and 
 mother and the servants had each one loaf sent them, but 
 only one. We had never yet suspected that we were in- 
 habitants at all ; finally, the little loaves were new, and 
 we were passionately fond of new bread, which we were 
 seldom or never allowed to have, as it was supposed not 
 to be good for us. Our affection, therefore, for our old 
 friend had to stand against the combined attacks of 
 archaeological interest, the rights of citizenship and prop- 
 erty, the pleasantness to the eye and goodness for food 
 of the little loaves themselves, and the sense of impor- 
 tance which was given us by our having been intimate 
 with someone who had actually died. It seemed upon 
 further inquiry that there was little reason to anticipate 
 an early death for anyone of ourselves, and this being so, 
 we rather liked the idea of someone else's being put away 
 into the churchyard ; we passed, therefore, in a short time 
 from extreme depression to a no less extreme exultation ; 
 a new heaven and a new earth had been revealed to us 
 in our perception of the possibility of benefiting by the 
 death of our friends, and I fear that for some time we 
 took an interest in the health of everyone in the village 
 whose position rendered a repetition of the dole in the 
 least likely. 
 
 Those were the days in which all great things seemed 
 far off, and we were astonished to find that Napoleon 
 Buonaparte was an actually living person. We had 
 thought such a great man could only have lived a very 
 long time ago, and here he was after all almost as it were 
 at our own doors. This lent colour to the view that the 
 Day of Judgement might indeed be nearer than we had 
 thought, but nurse said that was all right now, and she 
 knew. In those days the snow lay longer and drifted 
 deeper in the lanes than it does now, and the milk was 
 sometimes brought in frozen in winter, and we were 
 taken down into the back kitchen to see it. I suppose
 
 14 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 there are rectories up and down the country now where 
 the milk comes in frozen sometimes in winter, and the 
 children go down to wonder at it, but I never see any 
 frozen milk in London, so I suppose the winters are 
 warmer than they used to be. 
 
 About one year after his wife's death Mr. Pontifex 
 also was gathered to his fathers. My father saw him 
 the day before he died. The old man had a theory about 
 sunsets, and had had two steps built up against a wall 
 in the kitchen garden on which he used to stand and 
 watch the sun go down whenever it was clear. My father 
 came on him in the afternoon, just as the sun was set- 
 ting, and saw him with his arms resting on the top of 
 the wall looking towards the sun over a field through 
 which there was a path on which my father was. My 
 father heard him say "Good-bye, sun ; good-bye, sun," 
 as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he 
 was feeling very feeble. Before the next sunset he was 
 gone. 
 
 There was no dole. Some of his grandchildren were 
 brought to the funeral and we remonstrated with them, 
 but did not take much by doing so. John Pontifex, who 
 was a year older than I was, sneered at penny loaves, 
 and intimated that if I wanted one it must be because my 
 papa and mamma could not afford to buy me one, 
 whereon I believe we did something like fighting, and I 
 rather think John Pontifex got the worst of it, but it 
 may have been the other way. I remember my sister's 
 nurse, for I was just outgrowing nurses myself, reported 
 the matter to higher quarters, and we were all of us put 
 to some ignominy, but we had been thoroughly awakened 
 from our dream, and it was long enough before we 
 could hear the words "penny loaf" mentioned without 
 our ears tingling with shame. If there had been a dozen 
 doles afterwards we should not have deigned to touch 
 one of them.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 15 
 
 George Pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a 
 plain slab in Paleham church, inscribed with the follow- 
 ing epitaph: 
 
 SACRED TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 JOHN PONTIFEX 
 
 WHO WAS BORN AUGUST IOTH, 1727, AND DIED FEBRUARY 8, l8l2, 
 
 IN HIS 85TH YEAR, 
 
 AND OF 
 
 RUTH PONTIFEX, HIS WIFE, 
 
 WHO WAS BORN OCTOBER 13, 1727, AND DIED JANUARY IO, l8ll, 
 IN HER &4TH YEAR. 
 
 THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY 
 
 IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR 
 
 RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND SOCIAL DUTIES. 
 
 THIS MONUMENT WAS PLACED 
 
 BY THEIR ONLY SON. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN a year or two more came Waterloo and the European 
 peace. Then Mr. George Pontifex went abroad more 
 than once. I remember seeing at Battersby in after 
 years the diary which he kept on the first of these occa- 
 sions. It is a characteristic document. I felt as I read 
 it that the author before starting had made up his mind 
 to admire only what he thought it would be creditable in 
 him to admire, to look at nature and art only through the 
 spectacles that had been handed down to him by genera- 
 tion after generation of prigs and impostors. The first 
 glimpse of Mont Blanc threw Mr. Pontifex into a con- 
 ventional ecstasy. "My feelings I cannot express. I 
 gasped, yet hardly dared to breathe, as I viewed for the 
 first time the monarch of the mountains. I seemed to 
 fancy the genius seated on his stupendous throne far
 
 16 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 above his aspiring brethren and in his solitary might de- 
 fying the universe. I was so overcome by my feelings 
 that I was almost bereft of my faculties, and would not 
 for worlds have spoken after my first exclamation till I 
 found some relief in a gush of tears. With pain I tore 
 myself from contemplating for the first time 'at distance 
 dimly seen' (though I felt as if I had sent my soul and 
 eyes after it), this sublime spectacle." After a nearer 
 view of the Alps from above Geneva he walked nine out 
 of the twelve miles of the descent : "My mind and heart 
 were too full to sit still, and I found some relief by ex- 
 hausting my feelings through exercise." In the course 
 of time he reached Chamonix and went on a Sunday to 
 the Montanvert to see the Mer de Glace. There he wrote 
 the following verses for the visitors' book, which he con- 
 sidered, so he says, "suitable to the day and scene" : 
 
 Lord, while these wonders of thy hand I see, 
 My soul in holy reverence bends to thee. 
 These awful solitudes, this dread repose, 
 Yon pyramid sublime of spotless snows, 
 These spiry pinnacles, those smiling plains, 
 This sea where one eternal winter reigns, 
 These are thy works, and while on them I gaze 
 I hear a silent tongue that speaks thy praise. 
 
 Some poets always begin to get groggy about the knees 
 after running for seven or eight lines. Mr. Pontifex's 
 last couplet gave him a lot of trouble, and nearly every 
 word has been erased and rewritten once at least. In 
 the visitors' book at the Montanvert, however, he must 
 have been obliged to commit himself definitely to one 
 reading or another. Taking the verses all round, I should 
 say that Mr. Pontifex was right in considering them 
 suitable to the day; I don't like being too hard even on 
 the Mer de Glace, so will give no opinion as to whether 
 they are suitable to the scene also. 
 
 Mr. Pontifex went on to the Great St. Bernard and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 17 
 
 there he wrote some more verses, this time I am afraid in 
 Latin. He also took good care to be properly impressed 
 by the Hospice and its situation. "The whole of this 
 most extraordinary journey seemed like a dream, its con- 
 clusion especially, in gentlemanly society, with every 
 comfort and accommodation amidst the rudest rocks and 
 in the region of perpetual snow. The thought that I 
 was sleeping in a convent and occupied the bed of no 
 less a person than Napoleon, that I was in the highest in- 
 habited spot in the old world and in a place celebrated 
 in every part of it, kept me awake some time." As a 
 contrast to this, I may quote here an extract from a let- 
 ter written to me last year by his grandson Ernest, of 
 whom the reader will hear more presently. The passage 
 runs : "I went up to the Great St. Bernard and saw the 
 dogs." In due course Mr. Pontifex found his way into 
 Italy, where the pictures and other works of art those, 
 at least, which were fashionable at that time threw him 
 into genteel paroxysms of admiration. Of the Uffizi 
 Gallery at Florence he writes : "I have spent three hours 
 this morning in the gallery and I have made up my mind 
 that if of all the treasures I have seen in Italy I were 
 to choose one room it would be the Tribune of this gal- 
 lery. It contains the Venus de' Medici, the Explorator, 
 the Pancratist, the Dancing Faun and a fine Apollo. 
 These more than outweigh the Laocoon and the Belve- 
 dere Apollo at Rome. It contains, besides, the St. John 
 of Raphael and many other chefs-d'oeuvre of the greatest 
 masters in the world." It is interesting to compare Mr. 
 Pontifex's effusions with the rhapsodies of critics in our 
 own times. Not long ago a much esteemed writer in- 
 formed the world that he felt "disposed to cry out with 
 delight" before a figure by Michael Angelo. I wonder 
 wjiether he would feel disposed to cry out before a real 
 Michael Angelo, if the critics had decided that it was not 
 genuine, or before a reputed Michael Angelo which was 
 really by someone else. But I suppose that a prig with
 
 i8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 more money than brains was much the same sixty or 
 seventy years ago as he is now. 
 
 Look at Mendelssohn again about this same Tribune 
 on which Mr. Pontifex felt so safe in staking his reputa- 
 tion as a man of taste and culture. He feels no less safe 
 and writes, "I then went to the Tribune. This room is 
 so delightfully small you can traverse it in fifteen paces, 
 yet it contains a world of art. I again sought out my 
 favourite arm chair which stands under the statue of the 
 'Slave whetting his knife' (L'Arrotino), and taking pos- 
 session of it I enjoyed myself for a couple of hours ; for 
 here at one glance I had the 'Madonna del Cardellino,' 
 Pope Julius II., a female portrait by Raphael, and above 
 it a lovely Holy Family by Perugino ; and so close to me 
 that I could have touched it with my hand the Venus 
 de' Medici; beyond, that of Titian. . . . The space be- 
 tween is occupied by other pictures of Raphael's, a por- 
 trait by Titian, a Domenichino, etc., etc., all these within 
 the circumference of a small semi-circle no larger than 
 one of your own rooms. This is a spot where a man 
 feels his own insignificance and may well learn to be 
 humble." The Tribune is a slippery place for people like 
 Mendelssohn to study humility in. They generally take 
 two steps away from it for one they take towards it. I 
 wonder how many chalks Mendelssohn gave himself for 
 having sat two hours on that chair. I wonder how often 
 he looked at his watch to see if his two hours were up. 
 I wonder how often he told himself that he was quite as 
 big a gun, if the truth were known, as any of the men 
 whose works he saw before him, how often he wondered 
 whether any of the visitors were recognizing him and 
 admiring him for sitting such a long time in the same 
 chair, and how often he was vexed at seeing them pass 
 him by and take no notice of him. But perhaps if the 
 truth were known his two hours was not quite two hours. 
 
 Returning to Mr. Pontifex, whether he liked what he 
 believed to be the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art
 
 The Way of All Flesh 19 
 
 or no, he brought back some copies by Italian artists, 
 which I have no doubt he satisfied himself would bear 
 the strictest examination with the originals. Two of 
 these copies fell to Theobald's share on the division of 
 his father's furniture, and I have often seen them at 
 Battersby on my visits to Theobald and his wife. The 
 one was a Madonna by Sassoferrato with a blue hood 
 over her head which threw it half into shadow. The 
 other was a Magdalen by Carlo Dolci with a very fine 
 head of hair and a marble vase in her hands. When I 
 was a young man I used to think these pictures were 
 beautiful, but with each successive visit to Battersby I 
 got to dislike them more and more and to see "George 
 Pontifex" written all over both of them. In the end I 
 ventured after a tentative fashion to blow on them a 
 little, but Theobald and his wife were up in arms at 
 once. They did not like their father and father-in-law, 
 but there could be no question about his power and gen- 
 eral ability, nor about his having been a man of consum- 
 mate taste both in literature and art indeed the diary 
 he kept during his foreign tour was enough to prove 
 this. With one more short extract I will leave this diary 
 and proceed with my story. During his stay in Florence 
 Mr. Pontifex wrote : "I. have just seen the Grand Duke 
 and his family pass by in two carriages and six, but little 
 more notice is taken of them than if I, who am utterly 
 unknown here, were to pass by." I don't think that he 
 half believed in his being utterly unknown in Florence or 
 anywhere else? 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FORTUNE, we are told, is a blind and fickle foster-mother, 
 who showers her gifts at random upon her nurslings. 
 But we do her a grave injustice if we believe such an 
 accusation. Trace a man's career from his cradle to his 
 grave and mark how Fortune has treated him. You will
 
 20 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 find that when he is once dead she can for the most pait 
 be vindicated from the charge of any but very superficial 
 fickleness. Her blindness is the merest fable; she can 
 espy her favourites long before they are born. We are 
 as days and have had our parents for our yesterdays, 
 but through all the fair weather of a clear parental sky 
 the eye of Fortune can discern the coming storm, and 
 she laughs as she places her favourites it may be in a 
 London alley or those whom she is resolved to ruin in 
 kings' palaces. Seldom does she relent towards those 
 whom she has suckled unkindly and seldom does she 
 completely fail a favoured nursling. 
 
 Was George Pontifex one of Fortune's favoured nurs- 
 lings or not ? On the whole I should say that he was not, 
 for he did not consider himself so; he was too religious 
 to consider Fortune a deity at all ; he took whatever she 
 gave and never thanked her, being firmly convinced that 
 whatever he got to his own advantage was of his own 
 getting. And so it was, after Fortune had made him 
 able to get it. 
 
 "Nos te, nos facimus, Fortuna, deam," exclaimed the 
 poet. "It is we who make thee, Fortune, a goddess"; 
 and so it is, after Fortune has made us able to make her. 
 The poet says nothing as to the making of the "nos." 
 Perhaps some men are independent of antecedents and 
 surroundings and have an initial force within themselves 
 which is in no way due to causation ; but this is supposed 
 to be a difficult question and it may be as well to avoid it. 
 Let it suffice that George Pontifex did not consider him- 
 self fortunate, and he who does not consider himself 
 fortunate is unfortunate. 
 
 True, he was rich, universally respected and of an ex- 
 cellent natural constitution. If he had eaten and drunk 
 less he would never have known a day's indisposition. 
 Perhaps his main strength lay in the fact that though his 
 capacity was a little above the average, it was not too 
 much so. It is on this rock that so many clever people
 
 The Way of All Flesh 21 
 
 split. The successful man will see just so much more 
 than his neighbours as they will be able to see too when 
 it is shown them, but not enough to puzzle them. Itis_f ar/\ ^ _ 
 safer jto-knowtoo littlethan joo jjmch.f People will corn / 
 demn the one, though they will resent being called upon to 
 exert themselves to follow the other. The best example 
 of Mr. Pontifex's good sense in matters connected with 
 his business which I can think of at this moment is the 
 revolution which he effected in the style of advertising 
 works published by the firm. When he first became a 
 partner one of the firm's advertisements ran thus : 
 
 "Books proper to be given away at this Season. 
 "The Pious Country Parishioner, being directions how 
 a Christian may manage every day in the course of his 
 whole life with safety and success ; how to spend the 
 Sabbath Day; what books of the Holy Scriptures ought 
 to be read first ; the whole method of education ; collects 
 for the most important virtues that adorn the soul : a dis- 
 course on the Lord's Supper; rules to set the soul right 
 in sickness ; so that in this treatise are contained all the 
 rules requisite for salvation. The 8th edition with addi- 
 tions. Price lod. 
 
 " ** * An allowance will be made to those who give 
 them away." 
 
 Before he had been many years a partner the adver- 
 tisement stood as follows : 
 
 "The Pious Country Parishioner. A complete manual 
 of Christian Devotion. Price lod. 
 
 "A reduction will be made to purchasers for gratuitous 
 distribution." 
 
 What a stride is made in the foregoing towards the 
 modern standard, and what intelligence is involved in the 
 perception of the unseemliness of the old style, when 
 others did not perceive it! 
 
 Where then was the weak place in George Pontifex's
 
 22 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 armour ? I suppose in the fact that he had risen too rap- 
 idly. It would almost seem as if a transmitted education 
 of some generations is necessary for the due enjoyment of 
 great wealth. Adversity, if a man is set down to it by 
 degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most 
 people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single 
 lifetime. Nevertheless a certain kind of good fortune', 
 generally attends self-made men to the last. It is their I 
 children of the first, or first and second, generation who \ 
 are in greater danger, for the race can no more repeat its 
 most successful performances suddenly and without its 
 ebbings and flo wings of success than the individual can 
 do so, and the more brilliant the success in any one gen- 
 eration, the greater as a general rule the subsequent ex-| 
 haustion until time has been allowed for recovery.: 
 Hence it often happens that the grandson of a success- 
 ful man will be more successful than the son the spirit 
 that actuated the grandfather having lain fallow in the 
 son and being refreshed by repose so as to be ready for 
 fresh exertion in the grandson. A very successful man, 
 moreover, has something of the hybrid in him; he is a 
 new animal, arising from the coming together of many 
 unfamiliar elements and it is well known that the repro-y 
 duction of abnormal growths, whether animal or vege-\ 
 table, is irregular and not to be depended upon, even 
 when they are not absolutely sterile. 
 
 And certainly Mr. Pontifex's success was exceedingly 
 rapid. Only a few years after he had become a partner 
 his uncle and aunt both died within a few months of one 
 another. It was then found that they had made him their 
 heir. He was thus not only sole partner in the business, 
 but found himself with a fortune of some 30,000 into 
 the bargain, and this was a large sum in those days. 
 Money came pouring in upon him, and the faster it came 
 the fonder he became of it, though, as he frequently said, 
 he valued it not for its own sake, but only as a means of 
 providing for his dear children.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 23 
 
 Yet when a man is very fond of his money it is not 
 easy for him at all times to be very fond of his children 
 also. The two are like God and Mammon. Lord Ma- 
 caulay has a passage in which he contrasts the pleasures 
 which a man may derive from books with the incon- 
 veniences to which he may be put by his acquaintances. 
 "Plato," he says, "is never sullen. Cervantes is never 
 petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. 
 Dante never stays too long. No difference of political 
 opinion can alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the 
 horror of Bossuet." I dare say I might differ from 
 Lord Macaulay in my estimate of some of the writers 
 he has named, but there can be no disputing his main 
 proposition, namely, that we need have no more trouble 
 from any of them than we have a mind to, whereas 
 our friends are not always so easily disposed of. George 
 Pontifex felt this as regards his children and his money. 
 His money was never naughty; his money never made 
 noise or litter, and did not spill things on the tablecloth 
 at meal times, or leave the door open when it went out. 
 His dividends did not quarrel among themselves, nor was 
 he under any uneasiness lest his mortgages should become 
 extravagant on reaching manhood and run him up debts 
 which sooner or later he should have to pay. There 
 were tendencies in John which made him very uneasy, 
 and Theobald, his second son, was idle and at times far 
 from truthful. His children might, perhaps, have an- 
 swered, had they known what was in their father's mind, 
 that he did not knock his money about as he not infre- 
 quently knocked his children. He never dealt hastily or 
 pettishly with his money, and that was perhaps why he 
 and it got on so well together. 
 
 It must be remembered that at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century the relations between parents and 
 children were still far from satisfactory. The violent 
 type of father, as described by Fielding, Richardson, 
 Smollett and Sheridan, is now hardly more likely to find
 
 24 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a place in literature than the original advertisement of 
 Messrs. Fairlie & Pontifex's "Pious Country Parish- 
 ioner," but the type was much too persistent not to have 
 been drawn from nature closely. The parents in Miss 
 Austen's novels are less like savage wild beasts than 
 those of her predecessors, but she evidently looks upon 
 them with suspicion, and an uneasy feeling that le pere 
 de famille est capable de tout makes itself sufficiently 
 apparent throughout the greater part of her writings. In 
 the Elizabethan time the relations between parents and 
 children seem on the whole to have been more kindly. 
 The fathers and the sons are for the most part friends 
 in Shakespeare, nor does the evil appear to have reached 
 its full abomination till a long course of Puritanism had 
 familiarised men's minds with Jewish ideals as those 
 which we should endeavour to reproduce in our every- 
 day life. What precedents did not Abraham, Jephthah 
 and Jonadab the son of Rechab offer? How easy was it 
 to quote and follow them in an age when few reasonable 
 men or women doubted that every syllable of the Old 
 Testament was taken down verbatim from the mouth of 
 God. Moreover, Puritanism restricted natural pleasures ; 
 it substituted the Jeremiad for the Paean, and it forgot 
 that the poor abuses of all times want countenance. 
 
 Mr. Pontifex may have been a little sterner with his 
 children than some of his neighbours, but not much. He 
 thrashed his boys two or three times a week and some 
 weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were 
 always thrashing their boys. It is easy to have juster 
 views when everyone else has them, but fortunately or 
 unfortunately results have nothing whatever to do with 
 the moral guilt or blamelessness of him who brings them 
 about ; they depend solely upon the thing done, whatever 
 it may happen to be. The moral guilt or blamelessness 
 in like manner has nothing to do with the result ; it turns 
 upon the question whether a sufficient number of reason- 
 able people placed as the actor was placed would have
 
 The Way of All Flesh 25 
 
 done as the actor has done. At that time it was uni- 
 versally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the 
 child, and St. Paul had placed disobedience to parents 
 in very ugly company. If his children did anything 
 which Mr. Pontifex disliked they were clearly disobedi- 
 ent to their father. In this case there was obviously only 
 one course for a sensible man to take. It consisted in 
 checking the first signs of self-will while his children 
 were too young to offer serious resistance. If their wills 
 were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression 
 then much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedi- 
 ence which they would not venture to break through till 
 they were over twenty-one years old. Then they might 
 please themselves; he should know how to protect him- 
 self ; till then he and his money were more at their mercy 
 than he liked. 
 
 How little do we know our thoughts our reflex ac- 
 tions indeed, yes; but our reflections! Man, forsooth, 
 prides himself on his consciousness ! We boast that we 
 differ from the winds and waves and falling stones and 
 plants, which grow they know not why, and from the 
 wandering creatures which go up and down after their 
 prey, as we are pleased to say, without the help of reason. 
 We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why 
 we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth 
 in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it 
 is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious 
 actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of 
 those who spring from us. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MR. PONTIFEX was not the man to trouble himself much 
 about his motives. People were not so introspective then 
 as we are now; they lived more according to a rule of 
 thumb. Dr. Arnold had not yet sown that crop of earnest
 
 26 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thinkers which we are now harvesting, and men did not 
 see why they should not have their own way if no evil 
 consequences to themselves seemed likely to follow upon 
 their doing so. Then as now, however, they sometimes 
 let themselves in for more evil consequences than they 
 had bargained for. 
 
 Like other rich men at the beginning of this century 
 he ate and drank a good deal more than was enough to 
 keep him in health. Even his excellent constitution was 
 not proof against a prolonged course of overfeeding and 
 what we should now consider overdrinking. His liver 
 would not infrequently get out of order, and he would 
 come down to breakfast looking yellow about the eyes. 
 Then the young people knew that they had better look 
 out. It is not as a general rule the eating of sour grapes 
 that causes the children's teeth to be set on edge. Well- 
 to-do parents seldom eat many sour grapes; the danger 
 to the children lies in the parents eating too many sweet 
 ones. 
 
 I grant that at first sight it seems very unjust, that the 
 parents should have the fun and the children be pun- 
 ished for it, but young people should remember that for 
 many years they were part and parcel of their parents 
 and therefore had a good deal of the fun in the person 
 of their parents. If they have forgotten the fun now, 
 that is no more than people do who have a headache af- 
 ter having been tipsy overnight. The man with a head- 
 ache does not pretend to be a different person from the 
 man who got drunk, and claim that it is his self of the 
 preceding night and not his self of this morning who 
 should be punished; no more should offspring complain 
 of the headache which it has earned when in the person 
 of its parents, for the continuation of identity, though 
 not so immediately apparent, is just as real in one case 
 as in the other. What is really hard is when the parents 
 have the fun after the children have been born, and the 
 children are punished for this.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 27 
 
 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 be- 
 come 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 in- 
 heritors of money or who are placed young in some safe 
 and deep groove. Mr. Pontif ex 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
 
 28 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 tor- 
 ture that I would pass a law, if I could, to incapaci- 
 tate 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 sus- 
 pended. 
 
 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
 
 29 
 
 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 advan- 
 tages ? 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 in- 
 vented 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 whole- 
 some food, slept in comfortable beds, had the best doc- 
 tors to attend them when they were ill and the best edu- 
 cation that could be had for money. The want of fresh 
 air does not seem much to affect the happiness of chil- 
 dren 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 com- 
 monly 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
 
 30 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 im- 
 press 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 in- 
 fluence, 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 per- 
 son 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; in- 
 sist 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 chil- 
 dren rather than anyone else's. Say that you have their 
 highest interests at stake whenever you are out of tem- 
 per and wish to make yourself unpleasant by way of 
 balm to your soul. Harp much upon these highest in- 
 terests. 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 Way of All Flesh 31 
 
 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 seven- 
 ty-five, and Dr. Johnson placed the pleasures of old age 
 far higher than those of youth. True, in old age we live j 
 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 fore- 
 going 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. 1 
 
 John grew up to be a good-looking, gentlemanly fel- 
 low, with features a trifle too regular and finely chiselled.
 
 32 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 diplo- 
 macy, 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 tq 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 re- 
 served and shy, and, I should say, indolent in mind and 
 body. He was less tidy than John, less welt able to 
 assert himself, and less skilful in humouring the caprices 
 of his father. I do not think he could have loved any- 
 one 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 Way of All Flesh 33 
 
 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 com- 
 plain even behind his father's back. I knew him as inti- 
 mately as anyone was likely to know him as a child, at 
 school, and again at Cambridge, but he very rarely men- 
 tioned 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. Ponti- 
 fex, 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 in- 
 fluence. 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 equi- 
 table to grudge his son whatever benefit he could derive 
 from this. He had the greatest horror, he would ex- 
 claim, 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
 
 34 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 unenthusias- 
 tic 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 bur- 
 dens. 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
 
 The Way of All Flesh 35 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren 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.
 
 36 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 ac- 
 cordingly made his appearance in ten nicely bound vol- 
 umes. 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 as- 
 serting 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.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 37 
 
 He did not like the near view of ordination as well as 
 the distant one, and even made some feeble efforts jto 
 escape, as may be perceived by the following corre- 
 spondence 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 ques- 
 tion 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 Eng- 
 land, 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 clergy- 
 man 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
 
 38 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 uneasi- 
 ness. 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 bur- 
 den of your education, the money should be, as it was, 
 made over to myself. Every line in your letter con- 
 vinces 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. Noth- 
 ing 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 be- 
 ginning, merely because you have taken some foolish
 
 39 
 
 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 com- 
 pel 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 conse- 
 quences 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
 
 40 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to venture farther. He accordingly wrote the following : 
 
 "Mv DEAR FATHER, You tell me and I heartily 
 thank you that "no one will compel me to be ordained. 
 I knew you would not press ordination upon me if my 
 conscience was seriously opposed to it ; I have therefore 
 resolved on giving up the idea, and believe that if you 
 will continue to allow me what you do at present, until 
 I get my fellowship, which should not be long, I will 
 then cease putting you to further expense. I will make 
 up my mind as soon as possible what profession I will 
 adopt, and will let you know at once. Your affectionate 
 son, THEOBALD PONTIFEX." 
 
 The remaining letter, written by return of post, must 
 now be given. It has the merit of brevity. 
 
 "DEAR THEOBALD, I have received yours. I am at a 
 loss to conceive its motive, but am very clear as to its 
 effect. You shall not receive a single sixpence from me 
 till you come to your senses. Should you persist in 
 your folly and wickedness, I am happy to remember that 
 I have yet other children whose conduct I can depend 
 upon to be a source of credit and happiness to me. 
 Your affectionate but troubled father, 
 
 "G. PONTIFEX." 
 
 I do not know the immediate sequel to the foregoing 
 correspondence, but it all came perfectly right in the 
 end. Either Theobald's heart failed him, or he inter- 
 preted the outward shove which his father gave him, 
 as the inward call for which I have no doubt he prayed 
 with great earnestness for he was a firm believer in 
 the efficacy of prayer. And so am I under certain cir- 
 cumstances. Tennyson has said that more things are 
 wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he 
 has wisely refrained from saying whether they are good
 
 The Way of All Flesh 41 
 
 things or bad things. It might perhaps be as well if the 
 world were to dream of, or even become wide awake 
 to, some of the things that are being wrought by prayer. 
 But the question is avowedly difficult. In the end Theo- 
 bald got his fellowship by a stroke of luck very soon 
 after taking his degree, and was ordained in the autumn' 
 of the same year, 1825. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MR. ALLABY was rector of Crampsford, a village a few 
 miles from Cambridge. He, too, had taken a good de- 
 gree, had got a fellowship, and in the course of time 
 had accepted a college living of about 400 a year and a 
 house. His private income did not exceed 200 a year. 
 On resigning his fellowship he married a woman a good 
 deal younger than himself who bore him eleven children, 
 nine of whom two sons and seven daughters were 
 living. The two eldest daughters had married fairly 
 well, but at the time of which I am now writing there 
 were still five unmarried, of ages varying between thirty 
 and twenty-two and the sons were neither of them yet 
 off their father's hands. It was plain that if anything 
 were to happen to Mr. Allaby the family would be left 
 poorly off, and this made both Mr. and Mrs. Allaby as 
 unhappy as it ought to have made them. 
 
 Reader, did you ever have an income at best none too 
 large, which died with you all except 200 a year? Did 
 you ever at the same time have two sons who must be 
 started in life somehow, and five daughters still unmar- 
 ried for whom you would only be too thankful to find 
 husbands if you knew how to find them? If morality 
 is that which, on the whole, brings a man peace in his 
 declining years if, that is to say, it is not an utter swin- 
 dle, can you under these circumstances flatter yourself 
 that you have led a moral life ?
 
 42 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 And this, even though your wife has been so good a 
 woman that you have not grown tired of her, and has 
 not fallen into such ill-health as lowers your own health 
 in sympathy; ,and though your family has grown up 
 vigorous, amiable, and blessed with common sense. I 
 know many old men and women who are reputed moral, 
 but who are living with partners whom they have long 
 ceased to love, or who have ugly, disagreeable maiden 
 daughters for whom they have never been able to find 
 husbands daughters whom they loathe and by whom 
 they are loathed in secret, or sons whose folly or ex- 
 travagance is a perpetual wear and worry to them. Is it 
 moral for a man to have brought such things upon him- 
 self? Someone should do for morals what that old 
 Pecksniff Bacon has obtained the credit of having done 
 for science. 
 
 But to return to Mr. and Mrs. Allaby. Mrs. Allaby 
 talked about having married two of her daughters as 
 though it had been the easiest thing in the world. She 
 talked in this way because she heard other mothers do 
 so, but in her heart of hearts she did not know how she 
 had done it, nor indeed, if it had been her doing at all. 
 First there had been a young man in connection with 
 whom she had tried to practise certain manoeuvres which 
 she had rehearsed in imagination over and over again, 
 but which she found impossible to apply in practice. 
 Then there had been weeks of a zvurra wurra of hopes 
 and fears and little stratagems which as often as not 
 proved injudicious, and then somehow or other in the 
 end, there lay the young man bound and with an arrow 
 through his heart at her daughter's feet. It seemed to 
 her to be all a fluke which she could have little or no 
 hope of repeating. She had indeed repeated it once, 
 and might perhaps with good luck repeat it yet once 
 again but five times over! It was awful: why she 
 would rather have three confinements than go through 
 the wear and tear of marrying a single daughter.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 43 
 
 Nevertheless it had got to be done, and poor Mrs. 
 Allaby never looked at a young man without an eye to 
 his being a future son-in-law. Papas and mammas 
 sometimes ask young men whether their intentions are 
 honourable towards their daughters. I think young men 
 might occasionally ask papas and mammas whether 
 their intentions are honourable before they accept invi- 
 tations to houses where there are still unmarried daugh- 
 ters. 
 
 "I can't afford a curate, my dear," said Mr. Allaby 
 to his wife when the pair were discussing what was next 
 to be done. "It will be better to get some young man to 
 come and help me for a time upon a Sunday. A guinea 
 a Sunday will do this, and we can chop and change till 
 we get someone who suits." So it was settled that Mr. 
 Allaby's health was not so strong as it had been, and 
 that he stood in need of help in the performance of his 
 Sunday duty. 
 
 Mrs. Allaby had a great friend a certain Mrs. Cowey, 
 wife of the celebrated Professor Cowey. She was what 
 was called a truly spiritually minded woman, a trifle 
 portly, with an incipient beard, and an extensive connec- 
 tion among undergraduates, more especially among those 
 who were inclined to take part in the great evangelical 
 movement which was then at its height. She gave even- 
 ing parties once a fortnight at which prayer was part of 
 the entertainment. She was not only spiritually minded, 
 but, as enthusiastic Mrs. Allaby used to exclaim, she was 
 a thorough woman of the world at the same time and had 
 such a fund of strong masculine good sense. She too 
 had daughters, but, as she used to say to Mrs. Allaby, 
 she had been less fortunate than Mrs. Allaby herself, 
 for one by one they had married and left her, so that her 
 old age would have been desolate indeed if her Profes- 
 sor had not been spared to her. 
 
 Mrs. Cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bache- 
 lor clergy in the University, and was the very person
 
 44 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 to assist Mrs. Allaby in finding an eligible assistant for 
 her husband, so this last named lady drove over one 
 morning in the November of 1825, by arrangement, to 
 take an early dinner with Mrs. Cowey and spend the 
 afternoon. After dinner the two ladies retired to- 
 gether, and the business of the day began. How they 
 fenced, how they saw through one another, with what 
 loyalty they pretended not to see through one another, 
 with what gentle dalliance they prolonged the conversa- 
 tion discussing the spiritual fitness of this or that dea- 
 con, and the other pros and cons connected with him 
 after his spiritual fitness had been disposed of, all this 
 must be left to the imagination of the reader. Mrs. 
 Cowey had been so accustomed to scheming on her own 
 account that she would scheme for anyone rather than 
 not scheme at all. Many mothers turned to her in their 
 hour of need and, provided they were spiritually minded, 
 Mrs. Cowey never failed to do her best for them; if the 
 marriage of a young Bachelor of Arts was not made in 
 Heaven, it was probably made, or at any rate attempted, 
 in Mrs. Cowey's drawing-room. On the present occa- 
 sion all the deacons of the University in whom there 
 lurked any spark of promise were exhaustively dis- 
 cussed, and the upshot was that our friend Theobald was 
 declared by Mrs. Cowey to be about the best thing she 
 could do that afternoon. 
 
 "I don't know that he's a particularly fascinating 
 young man, my dear," said Mrs. Cowey, "and he's only 
 a second son, but then he's got his fellowship, and even 
 the second son of such a man as Mr. Pontifex, the pub- 
 lisher, should have something very comfortable." 
 
 "Why, yes, my dear," rejoined Mrs. Allaby compla- 
 cently, "that's what one rather feels."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 45 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE interview, like all other good things, had to come to 
 an end; the days were short, and Mrs. Allaby had a 
 six miles' drive to Crampsford. When she was muf- 
 fled up and had taken her seat, Mr. Allaby's factotum, 
 James, could perceive no change in her appearance, and 
 little knew what a series of delighted visions he was 
 driving home along with his mistress. 
 
 Professor Cowey had published works through Theo- 
 bald's father, and Theobald had on this account been 
 taken in tow by Mrs. Cowey from the beginning of his 
 University career. She had had an eye upon him for 
 some time past, and almost as much felt it her duty to 
 get him off her list of young men for whom wives had 
 to be provided, as poor Mrs. Allaby did to try and get 
 a husband for one of her daughters. She now wrote 
 and asked him to come and see her, in terms that 
 awakened his curiosity. When he came she broached 
 the subject of Mr. Allaby's failing health, and after the 
 smoothing away of such difficulties as were only Mrs. 
 Cowey 's due, considering the interest she had taken, it 
 was allowed to come to pass that Theobald should go to 
 Crampsford for six successive Sundays and take the 
 half of Mr. Allaby's duty at half a guinea a Sunday, for 
 Mrs. Cowey cut down the usual stipend mercilessly, and 
 Theobald was not strong enough to resist. 
 
 Ignorant of the plots which were being prepared for 
 his peace of mind and with no idea beyond that of earn- 
 ing his three guineas, and perhaps of astonishing the in- 
 habitants of Crampsford by his academic learning, Theo- 
 bald walked over to the Rectory one Sunday morning 
 early in December a few weeks only after he had been 
 ordained. He had taken a great deal of pains with his 
 sermon, which was on the subject of geology then 
 coming to the fore as a theological bugbear. He showed
 
 46 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that so far as geology was worth anything at all and 
 he was too liberal entirely to pooh-pooh it it confirmed 
 the absolutely historical character of the Mosaic account 
 of the Creation as given in Genesis. Any phenomena 
 which at first sight appeared to make against this view 
 were only partial phenomena and broke down upon in- 
 vestigation. Nothing could be in more excellent taste, 
 and when Theobald adjourned to the Rectory, where he 
 was to dine between the services, Mr. Allaby compli- 
 mented him warmly upon his debut, while the ladies of 
 the family could hardly find words with which to express 
 their admiration. 
 
 Theobald knew nothing about women. The only 
 women he had been thrown in contact with were his 
 sisters, two of whom were always correcting him, and a 
 few school friends whom these had got their father to 
 ask to Elmhurst. These young ladies had either been 
 so shy that they and Theobald had never amalgamated, 
 or they had been supposed to be clever and had said 
 smart things to him. He did not say smart things him- 
 self and did not want other people to say them. Besides, 
 they talked about music and he hated music or pic- 
 tures and he hated pictures or books and except the 
 classics he hated books. And then sometimes he was 
 wanted to dance with them, and he did not know how to 
 dance, and did not want to know. 
 
 At Mrs. Cowey's parties again he had seen some 
 young ladies and had been introduced to them. He had 
 tried to make himself agreeable, but was always left 
 with the impression that he had not been successful. 
 The young ladies of Mrs. Cowey's set were by no means 
 the most attractive that might have been found in the 
 University, and Theobald may be excused for not losing 
 his heart to the greater number of them, while if for a 
 minute or two he was thrown in with one of the prettier 
 and more agreeable girls he was almost immediately cut 
 out by someone less bashful than himself, and sneaked
 
 The Way of All Flesh 47 
 
 off, feeling, as far as the fair sex was concerned, like the 
 impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. 
 
 What a really nice girl might have done with him I 
 cannot tell, but fate had thrown none such in his way 
 except his youngest sister Alethea, whom he might per- 
 haps have liked if she had not been his sister. The re- 
 sult of his experience was that women had never done 
 him any good and he was not accustomed to associate 
 them with any pleasure ; if there was a part of Hamlet 
 in connection with them it had been so completely cut 
 out in the edition of the play in which he was required to 
 act that he had come to disbelieve in its existence. As 
 for kissing, he had never kissed a woman in his life 
 except his sister and my own sisters when we were all 
 small children together. Over and above these kisses, 
 he had until quite lately been required to imprint a sol- 
 emn, flabby kiss night and morning upon his father's 
 cheek, and this, to the best of my belief, was the extent 
 of Theobald's knowledge in the matter of kissing, at 
 the time of which I am now writing. The result of the 
 foregoing was that he had come to dislike women, as 
 mysterious beings whose ways were not as his ways, nor 
 their thoughts as his thoughts. 
 
 With these antecedents, Theobald naturally felt rather 
 bashful on finding himself the admired of five strange 
 young ladies. I remember when I was a boy myself I 
 was once asked to take tea at a girls' school where one 
 of my sisters was boarding. I was then about twelve 
 years old. Everything went off well during tea-time, 
 for the Lady Principal of the establishment was present. 
 But there came a time when she went away and I was 
 left alone with the girls. The moment the mistress's 
 back was turned the head girl, who was about my own 
 age, came up, pointed her finger at me, made a face and 
 said solemnly, "A na-a-sty bo-o-y!" All the girls fol- 
 lowed her in rotation making the same gesture and the 
 same reproach upon my being a boy. It gave me a great
 
 48 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 scare. I believe I cried, and I know it was a long time 
 before I could again face a girl without a strong desire 
 to run away. 
 
 Theobald felt at first much as I had myself done at 
 the girls' school, but the Miss Allabys did not tell him 
 he was a nasty bo-o-oy. Their papa and mamma were 
 so cordial and they themselves lifted him so deftly over 
 conversational stiles that before dinner was over Theo- 
 bald thought the family to be a really very charming one, 
 and felt as though he were being appreciated in a way 
 to which he had not hitherto been accustomed. 
 
 With dinner his shyness wore off. He was by no 
 means plain, his academic prestige was very fair. There 
 was nothing about him to lay hold of as unconventional 
 or ridiculous; the impression he created upon the young 
 ladies was quite as favourable as that which they had 
 created upon himself; for they knew not much more 
 about men than he about women. 
 
 As soon as he was gone, the harmony of the establish- 
 ment was broken by a storm which arose upon the ques- 
 tion which of them it should be who should become Mrs. 
 Pontifex. "My dears," said their father, when he saw 
 that they did not seem likely to settle the matter among 
 themselves, "wait till to-morrow, and then play at cards 
 for him." Having said which he retired to his study, 
 where he took a nightly glass of whisky and a pipe of 
 tobacco. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE next morning saw Theobald in his rooms coaching 
 a pupil, and the Miss Allabys in the eldest Miss Allaby's 
 bedroom playing at cards, with Theobald for the stakes. 
 The winner was Christina, the second unmarried 
 daughter, then just twenty-seven years old and therefore 
 four years older than Theobald. The younger sisters 
 complained that it was throwing a husband away to let
 
 The Way of All Flesh 49 
 
 Christina try and catch him, for she was so much older 
 that she had no chance; but Christina showed fight in a 
 way not usual with her, for she was by nature yielding 
 and good tempered. Her mother thought it better to 
 back her up, so the two dangerous ones were packed off 
 then and there on visits to friends some way off, and 
 those alone allowed to remain at home whose loyalty 
 could be depended upon. The brothers did not even 
 suspect what was going on and believed their father's 
 getting assistance was because he really wanted it. 
 
 The sisters who remained at home kept their words 
 and gave Christina all the help they could, for over and 
 above their sense of fair play they reflected that the 
 sooner Theobald was landed, the sooner another deacon 
 might be sent for who might be won by themselves. So 
 quickly was all managed that the two unreliable sisters 
 were actually out of the house before Theobald's next 
 visit which was on the Sunday following his first. 
 
 This time Theobald felt quite at home in the house 
 of his new friends for so Mrs. Allaby insisted that he 
 should call them. She took, she said, such a motherly 
 interest in young men, especially in clergymen. Theo- 
 bald believed every word she said, as he had believed his 
 father and all his elders from his youth up. Christina 
 sat next him at dinner and played her cards no less judi- 
 ciously than she had played them in her sister's bed- 
 room. She smiled (and her smile was one of her strong 
 points) whenever he spoke to her; she went through all 
 her little artlessnesses and set forth all her little wares 
 in what she believed to be their most taking aspect. Who 
 can blame her? Theobald was not the ideal she had 
 dreamed of when reading Byron upstairs with her sis- 
 ters, but he was an actual within the bounds of possibil- 
 ity, and after all not a bad actual as actuals went. What 
 else could she do ? Run away ? She dared not. Marry 
 beneath her and be considered a disgrace to her family? 
 She dared not. Remain at home and become an old
 
 50 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 maid and be laughed at? Not if she could help it. She 
 did the only thing that could reasonably be expected. 
 She was drowning; Theobald might be only a straw, 
 but she could catch at him, and catch at him she accord- 
 ingly did. 
 
 If the course of true love never runs smooth, the 
 course of true match-making sometimes does so. The 
 only ground for complaint in the present case was that 
 it was rather slow. Theobald fell into the part assigned 
 to him more easily than Mrs. Cowey and Mrs. Allaby 
 had dared to hope. He was softened by Christina's 
 winning manners : he admired the high moral tone of 
 everything she said; her sweetness towards her sisters 
 and her father and mother, her readiness to undertake 
 any small burden which no one else seemed willing to 
 undertake, her sprightly manners, all were fascinating 
 to one who, though unused to woman's society, was 
 still a human being. He was flattered by her unobtru- 
 sive but obviously sincere admiration for himself; she 
 seemed to see him in a more favourable light, and to 
 understand him better than anyone outside of this charm- 
 ing family had ever done. Instead of snubbing him as his 
 father, brother and sisters did, she drew him out, lis- 
 tened attentively to all he chose to say, and evidently 
 wanted him to say still more. He told a college friend 
 that he knew he was in love now; he really was, for he 
 liked Miss Allaby's society much better than that of his 
 sisters. 
 
 Over and above the recommendations already enu- 
 merated, she had another in the possession of what was 
 supposed to be a very beautiful contralto voice. Her 
 voice was certainly contralto, for she could not reach 
 higher than D in the treble; its only defect was that 
 it did not go correspondingly low in the bass : in those 
 days, however, a contralto voice was understood to in- 
 clude even a soprano if the soprano could not reach 
 soprano notes, and it was not necessary that it should
 
 The Way of All Flesh 51 
 
 have the quality which we now assign to contralto. 
 What her voice wanted in range and power was made 
 up in the feeling with which she sang. She had trans- 
 posed "Angels ever bright and fair" into a lower key, 
 so as to make it suit her voice, thus proving, as her 
 mamma said, that she had a thorough knowledge of the 
 laws of harmony; not only did she do this, but at every 
 pause she added an embellishment of arpeggios from 
 one end to the other of the keyboard, on a principle 
 which her governess had taught her ; she thus added life 
 and interest to an air which everyone so she said 
 must feel to be rather heavy in the form in which Han- 
 del left it. As for her governess, she indeed had been a 
 rarely accomplished musician: she was a pupil of the 
 famous Dr. Clarke of Cambridge, and used to play the 
 overture to Atalanta, arranged by Mazzinghi. Neverthe- 
 less, it was some time before Theobald could bring his 
 courage to the sticking point of actually proposing. He 
 made it quite clear that he believed himself to be much 
 smitten, but month after month went by, during which 
 there was still so much hope in Theobald that Mr. Al- 
 laby dared not discover that he was able to do his duty 
 for himself, and was getting impatient at the number of 
 half-guineas he was disbursing and yet there was no 
 proposal. Christina's mother assured him that she was 
 the best daughter in the whole world, and would be a 
 priceless treasure to the man who married her. Theo- 
 bald echoed Mrs. Allaby's sentiments with warmth, but 
 still, though he visited the Rectory two or three times a 
 week, besides coming over on Sundays he did not pro- 
 pose. "She is heart-whole yet, dear Mr. Pontifex," said 
 Mrs. Allaby, one day, "at least I believe she is. It is 
 not for want of admirers oh ! no she has had her full 
 share of these, but she is too, too difficult to please. I 
 think, however, she would fall before a great and good 
 man." And she looked hard at Theobald, who blushed ; 
 but the days went by and still he did not propose.
 
 52 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Another time Theobald actually took Mrs. Cowey into 
 his confidence, and the reader may guess what account 
 of Christina he got from her. Mrs. Cowey tried the 
 jealousy manoeuvre and hinted at a possible rival. Theo- 
 bald was, or pretended to be, very much alarmed; a 
 little rudimentary pang of jealousy shot across his bosom 
 and he began to believe with pride that he was not only 
 in love, but desperately in love, or he would never feel 
 so jealous. Nevertheless, day after day still went by 
 and he did not propose. 
 
 The Allabys behaved with great judgement. They 
 humoured him till his retreat was practically cut off, 
 though he still flattered himself that it was open. One 
 day about six months after Theobald had become an 
 almost daily visitor at the Rectory the conversation hap- 
 pened to turn upon long engagements. "I don't like long 
 engagements, Mr. Allaby, do you?" said Theobald im- 
 prudently. "No," said Mr. Allaby in a pointed tone, 
 "nor long courtships," and he gave Theobald a look 
 which he could not pretend to misunderstand. He went 
 back to Cambridge as fast as he could go, and in dread 
 of the conversation with Mr. Allaby which he felt to be 
 impending, composed the following letter which he des- 
 patched that same afternoon by a private messenger to 
 Crampsford. The letter was as follows : 
 
 "DEAREST Miss CHRISTINA, I do not know whether 
 you have guessed the feelings that I have long enter- 
 tained for you feelings which I have concealed as much 
 as I could through fear of drawing you into an engage- 
 ment which, if you enter into it, must be prolonged for 
 a considerable time, but, however this may be, it is out 
 of my power to conceal them longer; I love you, ar- 
 dently, devotedly, and send these few lines asking you 
 to be my wife, because I dare not trust my tongue to 
 give adequate expression to the magnitude of my affec- 
 tion for you.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 53 
 
 "I cannot pretend to offer you a heart which has never 
 known either love or disappointment. I have loved al- 
 ready, and my heart was years in recovering from the 
 grief I felt at seeing her become another's. That, how- 
 ever, is over, and having seen yourself I rejoice over a 
 disappointment which I thought at one time would have 
 been fatal to me. It has left me a less ardent lover than 
 I should perhaps otherwise have been, but it has in- 
 creased tenfold my power of appreciating your many 
 charms and my desire that you should become my wife. 
 Please let me have a few lines of answer by the bearer 
 to let me know whether or not my suit is accepted. If 
 you accept me I will at once come and talk the matter 
 over with Mr. and Mrs. Allaby, whom I shall hope one 
 day to be allowed to call father and mother. 
 
 "I ought to warn you that in the event of your con- 
 senting to be my wife it may be years before our union 
 can be consummated, for I cannot marry till a college 
 living is offered me. If, therefore, you see fit to reject 
 me, I shall be grieved rather than surprised. Ever most 
 devotedly yours, THEOBALD PONTIFEX." 
 
 And this was all that his public school and University 
 education had been able to do for Theobald ! Neverthe- 
 less for his own part he thought his letter rather a good 
 one, and congratulated himself in particular upon his 
 cleverness in inventing the story of a previous attach- 
 ment, behind which he intended to shelter himself if 
 Christina should complain of any lack of fervour in his 
 behaviour to her. 
 
 I need not give Christina's answer, which of course 
 was to accept. Much as Theobald feared old Mr. Allaby 
 I do not think he would have wrought up his courage to 
 the point of actually proposing but for the fact of the 
 engagement being necessarily a long one, during which 
 a dozen things might turn up to break it off. However 
 much he may have disapproved of long engagements for
 
 54 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 other people, I doubt whether he had any particular ob- 
 jection to them in his own case. A pair of lovers are 
 like sunset and sunrise : there are such things every day 
 but we very seldom see them. Theobald posed as the 
 most ardent lover imaginable, but, to use the vulgarism 
 for the moment in fashion, it was all "side." Christina 
 was in love, as indeed she had been twenty times already. 
 But then Christina was impressionable and could not 
 even hear the name "Missolonghi" mentioned without 
 bursting into tears. When Theobald accidentally left 
 his sermon case behind him one Sunday, she slept with 
 it in her bosom and was forlorn when she had as it were 
 to disgorge it on the following Sunday; but I do not 
 think Theobald ever took so much as an old toothbrush 
 of Christina's to bed with him. Why, I knew a young 
 man once who got hold of his mistress's skates and slept 
 with them for a fortnight and cried when he had to 
 give them up. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THEOBALD'S engagement was all very well as far as it 
 went, but there was an old gentleman with a bald head 
 and rosy cheeks in a counting-house in Paternoster Row 
 who must sooner or later be told of what his son had in 
 view, and Theobald's heart fluttered when he asked him- 
 self what view this old gentleman was likely to take of 
 the situation. The murder, however, had to come out, 
 and Theobald and his intended, perhaps imprudently, 
 resolved on making a clean breast of it at once. He 
 wrote what he and Christina, who helped him to draft 
 the letter, thought to be everything that was filial, and 
 expressed himself as anxious to be married with the 
 least possible delay. He could not help saying this, as 
 Christina was at his shoulder, and he knew it was safe, 
 for his father might be trusted not to help him. He 
 wound up by asking his father to use any influence that
 
 The Way of All Flesh 55 
 
 might be at his command to help him to get a living, in- 
 asmuch as it might be years before a college living fell 
 vacant, and he saw no other chance of being able to 
 marry, for neither he nor his intended had any money 
 except Theobald's fellowship, which would, of course, 
 lapse on his taking a wife. 
 
 Any step of Theobald's was sure to be objectionable 
 in his father's eyes, but that at three-and-twenty he 
 should want to marry a penniless girl who was four 
 years older than himself, afforded a golden opportunity 
 which the old gentleman for so I may now call him, as 
 he was at least sixty embraced with characteristic 
 eagerness. 
 
 "The ineffable folly," he wrote, on receiving his son's 
 letter, "of your fancied passion for Miss Allaby fills me 
 with the gravest apprehensions. Making every allow- 
 ance for a lover's blindness, I still have no doubt that 
 the lady herself is a well-conducted and amiable young 
 person, who would not disgrace our family, but were she 
 ten times more desirable as a daughter-in-law than I 
 can allow myself to hope, your joint poverty is an in- 
 superable objection to your marriage. I have four other 
 children besides yourself, and my expenses do not per- 
 mit me to save money. This year they have been espe- 
 cially heavy, indeed I have had to purchase two not in- 
 considerable pieces of land which happened to come into 
 the market and were necessary to complete a property 
 which I have long wanted to round off in this way. I 
 gave you an education regardless of expense, which has 
 put you in possession of a comfortable income, at an 
 age when many young men are dependent. I have thus 
 started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should 
 cease to be a drag upon me further. Long engagements 
 are proverbially unsatisfactory, and in the present case 
 the prospect seems interminable. What interest, pray, 
 do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you ? 
 Can I go up and down the country begging people to pro-
 
 56 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 vide for my son because he has taken it into his head 
 to want to get married without sufficient means? 
 
 "I do not wish to write unkindly, nothing can be far- 
 ther from my real feelings towards you, but there is 
 often more kindness in plain speaking than in any 
 amount of soft words which can end in no substantial 
 performance. Of course, I bear in mind that you are of 
 age, and can therefore please yourself, but if you choose 
 to claim the strict letter of the law, and act without con- 
 sideration for your father's feelings, you must not be sur- 
 prised if you one day find that I have claimed a like 
 liberty for myself. Believe me, your affectionate father, 
 
 "G. PONTIFEX." 
 
 I found this letter along with those already given and 
 a few more which I need not give, but throughout which 
 the same tone prevails, and in all of which there is the 
 more or less obvious shake of the will near the end of 
 the letter. Remembering Theobald's general dumbness 
 concerning his father for the many years I knew him 
 after his father's death, there was an eloquence in the 
 preservation of the letters and in their endorsement, 
 "Letters from my father," which seemed to have with it 
 some faint odour of health and nature. 
 
 Theobald did not show his father's letter to Chris- 
 tina, nor, indeed, I believe to anyone. He was by nature 
 secretive, and had been repressed too much and too early 
 to be capable of railing or blowing off steam where his 
 father was concerned. His sense of wrong was still in- 
 articulate, felt as a dull, dead weight ever present day 
 by day, and if he woke at night-time still continually 
 present, but he hardly knew what it was. I was about 
 the closest friend he had, and I saw but little of him, 
 for I could not get on with him for long together. He 
 said I had no reverence; whereas, I thought that I had 
 plenty of reverence for what deserved to be revered, but 
 that the gods which he deemed golden were in reality
 
 The Way of All Flesh 57 
 
 made of baser metal. He never, as I have said, com- 
 plained of his father to me, and his only other friends 
 were, like himself, staid and prim, of evangelical ten- 
 dencies, and deeply imbued with a sense of the sinful- 
 ness of any act of insubordination to parents good 
 young men, in fact and one cannot blow off steam to a 
 good young man. 
 
 When Christina was informed by her lover of his 
 father's opposition, and of the time which must proba- 
 bly elapse before they could be married, she offered 
 with how much sincerity I know not to set him free 
 from his engagement; but Theobald declined to be re- 
 leased '"not at least," as he said, "at present." Chris- 
 tina and Mrs. Allaby knew they could manage him, and 
 on this not very satisfactory footing the engagement was 
 continued. 
 
 His engagement and his refusal to be released at once 
 raised Theobald in his own good opinion. Dull as he 
 was, he had no small share of quiet self-approbation. 
 He admired himself for his University distinction, for 
 the purity of his life (I said of him once that if he had 
 only a better temper he would be as innocent as a new- 
 laid egg) and for his unimpeachable integrity in money 
 matters. He did not despair of advancement in the 
 Church when he had once got a living, and of course it 
 was within the bounds of possibility that he might one 
 day become a Bishop, and Christina said she felt con- 
 vinced that this would ultimately be the case. 
 
 As was natural for the daughter and intended wife of 
 a clergyman, Christina's thoughts ran much upon reli- 
 gion, and she was resolved that even though an exalted 
 position in this world were denied to her and Theobald, 
 their virtues should be fully appreciated in the next. 
 Her religious opinions coincided absolutely with Theo- 
 bald's own, and many a conversation did she have with 
 him about the glory of God, and the completeness with 
 which they would devote themselves to it, as soon as
 
 58 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Theobald had got his living and they were married. So 
 certain was she of the great results which would then 
 ensue that she wondered at times at the blindness shown 
 by Providence towards its 'own truest interests in not 
 killing off the rectors who stood between Theobald and 
 his living a little faster. 
 
 In those days people believed with a simple down- 
 rightness which I do not observe among educated men 
 and women now. It had never so much as crossed 
 Theobald's mind to doubt the literal accuracy of any syl- 
 lable in the Bible. He had never seen any book in which 
 this was disputed, nor met with anyone who doubted it. 
 True, there was just a little scare about geology, but 
 there was nothing in it. If it was said that God made 
 the world in six days, why He did make it in six days, 
 neither in more nor less; if it was said that He put 
 Adam to sleep, took out one of his ribs and made a 
 woman of it, why it was so as a matter of course. He, 
 Adam, went to sleep as it might be himself, Theobald 
 Pontifex, in a garden, as it might be the garden at 
 Crampsford Rectory during the summer months when 
 it was so pretty, only that it was larger, and had some 
 tame wild animals in it. Then God came up to him, as 
 it might be Mr. Allaby or his father, dexterously took 
 out one of his ribs without waking him, and miraculously 
 healed the wound so that no trace of the operation re- 
 mained. Finally, God had taken the rib perhaps into 
 the greenhouse, and had turned it into just such another 
 young woman as Christina. That was how it was done; 
 there was neither difficulty nor shadow of difficulty 
 about the matter. Could not God do anything He liked, 
 and had He not in His own inspired Book told us that 
 He had done this? 
 
 This was the average attitude of fairly educated young 
 men and women towards the Mosaic cosmogony fifty, 
 forty, or even twenty years ago. The combating of in- 
 fidelity, therefore, offered little scope for enterprising
 
 The Way of All Flesh 59 
 
 young clergymen, nor had the Church awakened to the 
 activity which she has since displayed among the poor 
 in our large towns. These were then left almost without 
 an effort at resistance or co-operation to the labours of 
 those who had succeeded Wesley. Missionary work in- 
 deed in heathen countries was being carried on with 
 some energy, but Theobald did not feel any call to be a 
 missionary. Christina suggested this to him more than 
 once, and assured him of the unspeakable happiness it 
 would be to her to be the wife of a missionary, and to 
 share his dangers ; she and Theobald might even be mar- 
 tyred ; of course they would be martyred simultaneously, 
 and martyrdom many years hence as regarded from the 
 arbour in the Rectory garden was not painful; it would 
 ensure them a glorious future in the next world, and at 
 any rate posthumous renown in this even if they were 
 not miraculously restored to life again and such things 
 had happened ere now in the case of martyrs. Theo- 
 bald, however, had not been kindled by Christina's en- 
 thusiasm, so she fell back upon the Church of Rome 
 an enemy more dangerous, if possible, than paganism it- 
 self. A combat with Romanism might even yet win for 
 her and Theobald the crown of martyrdom. True, the 
 Church of Rome was tolerably quiet just then, but it was 
 the calm before the storm, of this she was assured, with 
 a conviction deeper than she could have attained by any 
 argument founded upon mere reason. 
 
 "We, dearest Theobald," she exclaimed, "will be ever 
 faithful. We will stand firm and support one another 
 even in the hour of death itself. God in His mercy may 
 spare us from being burnt alive. He may or may not do 
 so. O Lord" (and she turned her eyes prayerfully to 
 Heaven), "spare my Theobald, or grant that he may be 
 beheaded." 
 
 "My dearest," said Theobald gravely, "do not let us 
 agitate ourselves unduly. If the hour of trial comes we 
 shall be best prepared to meet it by having led a quiet,
 
 60 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 unobtrusive life of self-denial and devotion to God's 
 glory. Such a life let us pray God that it may please 
 Him to enable us to pray that we may lead." 
 
 "Dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina, drying the 
 tears that had gathered in her eyes, "you are always, 
 always right. Let us be self-denying, pure, upright, 
 truthful in word and deed." She clasped her hands and 
 looked up to Heaven as she spoke. 
 
 "Dearest," rejoined her lover, "we have ever hitherto 
 endeavoured to be all of these things ; we have not been 
 worldly people; let us watch and pray that we may so 
 continue to the end." 
 
 The moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp, 
 so they adjourned further aspirations for a more con- 
 venient season. At other times Christina pictured her- 
 self and Theobald as braving the scorn of almost every 
 human being in the achievement of some mighty task 
 which should redound to the honour of her Redeemer. 
 She could face anything for this. But always towards 
 the end of her vision there came a little coronation scene 
 high up in the golden regions of the Heavens, and a dia- 
 dem was set upon her head by the Son of Man Himself, 
 amid a host of angels and archangels who looked on with 
 envy and admiration and here even Theobald himself 
 was out of it. If there could be such a thing as the 
 Mammon of Righteousness, Christina would have as- 
 suredly made friends with it. Her papa and mamma 
 were very estimable people and would in the course of 
 time receive Heavenly Mansions in which they would 
 be exceedingly comfortable; so doubtless would her sis- 
 ters; so perhaps, even might her brothers; but for her- 
 self she felt that a higher destiny was preparing, which 
 it was her duty never to lose sight of. The first step 
 towards it would be her marriage with Theobald. In 
 spite, however, of these flights of religious romanticism, 
 Christina was a good-tempered kindly-natured girl 
 enough, who, if she had married a sensible layman we
 
 The Way of All Flesh 61 
 
 will say a hotel-keeper would have developed into a 
 good landlady and been deservedly popular with her 
 guests. 
 
 Such was Theobald's engaged life. Many a little pres- 
 ent passed between the pair, and many a small surprise 
 did they prepare pleasantly for one another. They never 
 quarrelled, and neither of them ever flirted with anyone 
 else. Mrs. Allaby and his future sisters-in-law idolised 
 Theobald in spite of its being impossible to get another 
 deacon to come and be played for as long as Theobald 
 was able to help Mr. Allaby, which now of course he 
 did free gratis and for nothing; two of the sisters, how- 
 ever, did manage to find husbands before Christina was 
 actually married, and on each occasion Theobald played 
 the part of decoy elephant. In the end only two out of 
 the seven daughters remained single. 
 
 After three or four years, old Mr. Pontifex became 
 accustomed to his son's engagement and looked upon it 
 as among the things which had now a prescriptive right 
 to toleration. In the spring of 1831, more than five years 
 after Theobald had first walked over to Crampsford, one 
 of the best livings in the gift of the College unexpectedly 
 fell vacant, and was for various reasons declined by the 
 two fellows senior to Theobald, who might each have 
 been expected to take it. The living was then offered to 
 and of course accepted by Theobald, being in value not 
 less than 500 a year with a suitable house and garden. 
 Old Mr. Pontifex then came down more handsomely 
 than was expected and settled 10,000 on his son and 
 daughter-in-law for life with remainder to such of their 
 issue as they might appoint. In the month of July, 1831, 
 Theobald and Christina became man and wife.
 
 62 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A DUE number of old shoes had been thrown at the 
 carriage in which the happy pair departed from the 
 Rectory, and it had turned the corner at the bottom of 
 the village. It could then be seen for two or three hun- 
 dred yards creeping past a fir coppice, and after this 
 was lost to view. 
 
 "John," said Mr. Allaby to his man-servant, "shut the 
 gate;" and he went indoors with a sigh of relief which 
 seemed to say: "I have done it, and I am alive." This 
 was the reaction after a burst of enthusiastic merriment 
 during which the old gentleman had run twenty yards 
 after the carriage to fling a slipper at it which he had 
 duly flung. 
 
 But what were the feelings of Theobald and Christina 
 when the village was passed and they were rolling quietly 
 by the fir plantation? It is at this point that even the 
 stoutest heart must fail, unless it beat in the breast of 
 one who is over head and ears in love. If a young man 
 is in a small boat on a choppy sea, along with his af- 
 fianced bride and both are seasick, and if the sick swain 
 can forget his own anguish in the happiness of holding 
 the fair one's head when she is at her worst then he is 
 in love, and his heart will be in no danger of failing him 
 as he passes his fir plantation. Other people, and unfor- 
 tunately by far the greater number of those who get 
 married must be classed among the "other people," will 
 inevitably go through a quarter or half an hour of 
 greater or less badness as the case may be. Taking num- 
 bers into account, I should think more mental suffering 
 had been undergone in the streets leading from St. 
 George's Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells 
 of Newgate. There is no time at which what the Italians 
 call la figlia delta Morte lays her cold hand upon a man 
 more awfully than during the first half hour that he is
 
 The Way of All Flesh 63 
 
 alone with a woman whom he has married but never 
 genuinely loved. 
 
 Death's daughter did not spare Theobald. He had be- 
 haved very well hitherto. When Christina had offered 
 to let him go, he had stuck to his post with a magnanim- 
 ity on which he had plumed himself ever since. From 
 that time forward he had said to himself: "I, at any 
 rate, am the very soul of honour; I am not," etc., etc. 
 True, at the moment of magnanimity the actual cash 
 payment, so to speak, was still distant ; when his father 
 gave formal consent to his marriage things began to look 
 more serious; when the college living had fallen vacant 
 and been accepted they looked more serious still; but 
 when Christina actually named the day, then Theobald's 
 heart fainted within him. 
 
 The engagement had gone on so long that he had got 
 into a groove, and the prospect of change was discon- 
 certing. Christina and he had got on, he thought to him- 
 self, very nicely for a great number of years ; why 
 why why should they not continue to go on as they 
 were doing now for the rest of their lives? But there 
 was no more chance of escape for him than for the sheep 
 which is being driven to the butcher's back premises, 
 and like the sheep he felt that there was nothing to be 
 gained by resistance, so he made none. He behaved, in 
 fact, with decency, and was declared on all hands to be 
 one of the happiest men imaginable. 
 
 Now, however, to change the metaphor, the drop had 
 actually fallen, and the poor wretch was hanging in mid 
 air along with the creature of his affections. This crea- 
 ture was now thirty-three years old, and looked it : she 
 had been weeping, and her eyes and nose were reddish; 
 if "I have done it and I am alive," was written on Mr. 
 Allaby's face after he had thrown the shoe, "I have done 
 it, and I do not see how I can possibly live much longer" 
 was upon the face of Theobald as he was being driven 
 along by the fir plantation. This, however, was not ap-
 
 64 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 parent at the Rectory. All that could be seen there was 
 the bobbing up and down of the postilion's head, which 
 just over-topped the hedge by the roadside as he rose 
 in his stirrups, and the black and yellow body of the 
 carriage. 
 
 For some time the pair said nothing: what they must 
 have felt during the first half hour, the reader must 
 guess, for it is beyond my power to tell him; at the end 
 of that time, however, Theobald had rummaged up a 
 conclusion from some odd corner of his soul to the effect 
 that now he and Christina were married, the sooner they 
 fell into their future mutual relations the better. If 
 people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little 
 reasonable thing which they can clearly recognise as rea- 
 sonable, they will always find the next step more easy 
 both to see and take. What, then, thought Theobald, 
 was here at this moment the first and most obvious mat- 
 ter to be considered, and what would be an equitable 
 view of his and Christina's relative positions in respect 
 to it? Clearly their first dinner was their first joint entry 
 into the duties and pleasures of married life. No less 
 clearly it was Christina's duty to order it, and his own 
 to eat it and pay for it. 
 
 The arguments leading to this conclusion, and the 
 conclusion itself, flashed upon Theobald about three and 
 a half miles after he had left Crampsford on the road 
 to Newmarket. He had breakfasted early, but his usual 
 appetite had failed him. They had left the vicarage at 
 noon without staying for the wedding breakfast. Theo- 
 bald liked an early dinner; it dawned upon him that he 
 was beginning to be hungry ; from this to the conclusion 
 stated in the preceding paragraph the steps had been 
 easy. After a few minutes' further reflection he 
 broached the matter to his bride, and thus the ice was 
 broken. 
 
 Mrs. Theobald was not prepared for so sudden an 
 assumption of importance. Her nerves, never of the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 65 
 
 strongest, had been strung to their highest tension by 
 the event of the morning. She wanted to escape obser- 
 vation; she was conscious of looking a little older than 
 she quite liked to look as a bride who had been married 
 that morning; she feared the landlady, the chamber- 
 maid, the waiter everybody and everything; her heart 
 beat so fast that she could hardly speak, much less go 
 through the ordeal of ordering dinner in a strange hotel 
 with a strange landlady. She begged and prayed to be 
 let off. If Theobald would only order dinner this once, 
 she would order it any day and every day in future. 
 
 But the inexorable Theobald was not to be put off 
 with such absurd excuses. He was master now. Had 
 not Christina less than two hours ago promised sol- 
 emnly to honour and obey him, and was she turning res- 
 tive over such a trifle as this? The loving smile de- 
 parted from his face, and was succeeded by a scowl 
 which that old Turk, his father, might have envied. 
 "Stuff and nonsense, my dearest Christina," he ex- 
 claimed mildly, and stamped his foot upon the floor of 
 the carriage. "It is a wife's duty to order her hus- 
 band's dinner; you are my wife, and I shall expect you 
 to order mine." For Theobald was nothing if he was not 
 logical. 
 
 The bride began to cry, and said he was unkind; 
 whereon he said nothing, but revolved unutterable things 
 in his heart. Was this, then, the end of his six years of 
 unflagging devotion? Was it for this that, when Chris- 
 tina had offered to let him off, he had stuck to his en- 
 gagement? Was this the outcome of her talks about 
 duty and spiritual mindedness that now upon the very 
 day of her marriage she should fail to see that the first 
 step in obedience to God lay in obedience to himself? 
 He would drive back to Crampsford ; he would com- 
 plain to Mr. and Mrs. Allaby; he didn't mean to have 
 married Christina ; he hadn't married her ; it was all 
 a hideous dream; he would But a voice kept ring-
 
 66 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ing in his ears which said : "You CAN'T, CAN'T, CAN'T." 
 "CAN'T I?" screamed the unhappy creature to him- 
 self. 
 
 "No," said the remorseless voice, "YOU CAN'T. You 
 
 ARE A MARRIED MAN." 
 
 He rolled back in his corner of the carriage and for 
 the first time felt how iniquitous were the marriage laws 
 of England. But he would buy Milton's prose works 
 and read his pamphlet on divorce. He might perhaps be 
 able to get them at Newmarket. 
 
 So the bride sat crying in one corner of the carriage ; 
 and the bridegroom sulked in the other, and he feared 
 her as only a bridegroom can fear. 
 
 Presently, however, a feeble voice was heard from 
 the bride's corner saying: 
 
 "Dearest Theobald dearest Theobald, forgive me; I 
 have been very, very wrong. Please do not be angry 
 with me. I will order the the " but the word "din- 
 ner" was checked by rising sobs. 
 
 When Theobald heard these words a load began to be 
 lifted from his heart, but he only looked towards her, 
 and that not too pleasantly. 
 
 "Please tell me," continued the voice, "what you think 
 you would like, and I will tell the landlady when we get 
 
 to Newmar " but another burst of sobs checked the 
 
 completion of the word. 
 
 The load on Theobald's heart grew lighter and lighter. 
 Was it possible that she might not be going to henpeck 
 him after all? Besides, had she not diverted his atten- 
 tion from herself to his approaching dinner? 
 
 He swallowed down more of his apprehensions and 
 said, but still gloomily, "I think we might have a roast 
 fowl with bread sauce, new potatoes and green peas, 
 and then we will see if they could let us have a cherry 
 tart and some cream." 
 
 After a few minutes more he drew her towards him,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 67 
 
 kissed away her tears, and assured her that he knew 
 she would be a good wife to him. 
 
 "Dearest Theobald," she exclaimed in answer, "you 
 are an angel." 
 
 Theobald believed her, and in ten minutes more the 
 happy couple alighted at the inn at Newmarket. 
 
 Bravely did Christina go through her arduous task. 
 Eagerly did she beseech the landlady, in secret, not to 
 keep her Theobald waiting longer than was absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
 "If you have any soup ready, you know, Mrs. Barber, 
 it might save ten minutes, for we might have it while the 
 fowl was browning." 
 
 See how necessity had nerved her! But in truth she 
 had a splitting headache, and would have given anything 
 to have been alone. 
 
 The dinner was a success. A pint of sherry had 
 warmed Theobald's heart, and he began to hope that, 
 after all, matters might still go well with him. He had 
 conquered in the first battle, and this gives great pres- 
 tige. How easy it had been too ! Why had he never 
 treated his sisters in this way? He would do so next 
 time he saw them ; he might in time be able to stand up 
 to his brother John, or even his father. Thus do we 
 build castles in air when flushed with wine and con- 
 quest. 
 
 The end of the honeymoon saw Mrs. Theobald the 
 most devotedly obsequious wife in all England. Accord- 
 ing to the old saying, Theobald had killed the cat at the 
 beginning. It had been a very little cat, a mere kitten 
 in fact, or he might have been afraid to face it, but such 
 as it had been he had challenged it to mortal combat, 
 and had held up its dripping head defiantly before his 
 wife's face. The rest had been easy. 
 
 Strange that one whom I have described hitherto as 
 so timid and easily put upon should prove such a Tartar
 
 68 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 all of a sudden on the day of his marriage. Perhaps I 
 have passed over his years of courtship too rapidly. 
 During these he had become a tutor of his college, and 
 had at last been Junior Dean. I never yet knew a man 
 whose sense of his own importance did not become ade- 
 quately developed after he had held a resident fellowship 
 for five or six years. True immediately on arriving 
 within a ten mile radius of his father's house, an en- 
 chantment fell upon him, so that his knees waxed weak, 
 his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like an 
 overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he 
 was not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the 
 spell was taken off again ; once more he became the fel- 
 low and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the be- 
 trothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind. 
 From all which may be gathered that if Christina had 
 been a Barbary hen, and had ruffled her feathers in any 
 show of resistance, Theobald would not have ventured 
 to swagger with her, but she was not a Barbary hen, she 
 was only a common hen, and that too with rather a 
 smaller share of personal bravery than hens generally 
 have. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 BATTERSBY-ON-THE-HILL was the name of the village of 
 which Theobald was now Rector. It contained 400 or 
 500 inhabitants, scattered over a rather large area, and 
 consisting entirely of farmers and agricultural labourers. 
 The Rectory was commodious, and placed on the brow 
 of a hill which gave it a delightful prospect. There was 
 a fair sprinkling of neighbours within visiting range, but 
 with one or two exceptions they were the clergymen and 
 clergymen's families of the surrounding villages. 
 
 By these the Pontifexes were welcomed as great ac- 
 quisitions to the neighbourhood. Mr. Pontifex, they 
 said, was so clever ; he had been senior classic and senior
 
 The Way of All Flesh 69 
 
 wrangler ; a perfect genius in fact, and yet with so much 
 sound practical common sense as well. As son of such 
 a distinguished man as the great Mr. Pontifex, the pub- 
 lisher, he would come into a large property by-and-by. 
 Was there not an elder brother? Yes, but there would 
 be so much that Theobald would probably get something 
 very considerable. Of course they would give dinner 
 parties. And Mrs. Pontifex, what a charming woman 
 she was ; she was certainly not exactly pretty perhaps, 
 but then she had such a sweet smile and her manner was 
 so bright and winning. She was so devoted too to her 
 husband and her husband to her; they really did come 
 up to one's ideas of what lovers used to be in days of 
 old ; it was rare to meet with such a pair in these degen- 
 erate times ; it was quite beautiful, etc., etc. Such were 
 the comments of the neighbours on the new arrivals. 
 
 As for Theobald's own parishioners, the farmers were 
 civil and the labourers and their wives obsequious. 
 There was a little dissent, the legacy of a careless pred- 
 ecessor, but a,s Mrs. Theobald said proudly, "I think 
 Theobald may be trusted to deal with that" The 
 church was then an interesting specimen of late Norman, 
 with some early English additions. It was what in these 
 days would be called in a very bad state of repair, but 
 forty or fifty years ago few churches were in good re- 
 pair. If there is one feature more characteristic of the 
 present generation than another it is that it has been a 
 great restorer of churches. 
 
 Horace preached church restoration in his ode: 
 
 Delicta, majorum immeritus lues, 
 Romane, donee templa refeceris 
 Aedesque labentes deorum et 
 Foeda nigro simulacra fumo. 
 
 Nothing went right with Rome for long together after 
 the Augustan age, but whether it was because she did 
 restore the temples or because she did not restore them,
 
 70 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I know not. They certainly went all wrong after Con- 
 stantine's time and yet Rome is still a city of some im- 
 portance. 
 
 I may say here that before Theobald had been many 
 years at Battersby he found scope for useful work in the 
 rebuilding of Battersby church, which he carried out at 
 considerable cost, towards which he subscribed liberally 
 himself. He was his own architect, and this saved ex- 
 pense; but architecture was not very well understood 
 about the year 1834, when Theobald commenced opera- 
 tions, and the result is not as satisfactory as it would 
 have been if he had waited a few years longer. 
 
 Every man's work, whether it be literature or music 
 or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a 
 portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal him- 
 self the more clearly will his character appear in spite 
 of him. I may very likely be condemning myself, all 
 the time that I am writing this book, for I know that 
 whether I like it or no I am portraying myself more 
 surely than I am portraying any of the characters whom 
 I set before the reader. I am sorry that it is so, but I 
 cannot help it after which sop to Nemesis I will say 
 that Battersby church in its amended form has always 
 struck me as a better portrait of Theobald than any 
 sculptor or painter short of a great master would be 
 able to produce. 
 
 I remember staying with Theobald some six or seven 
 months after he was married, and while the old church 
 was still standing. I went to church, and felt as Naaman 
 must have felt on certain occasions when he had to ac- 
 company his master on his return after having been 
 cured of his leprosy. I have carried away a more vivid 
 recollection of this and of the people, than of Theobald's 
 sermon. Even now I can see the men in blue smock 
 frocks reaching to their heels, and more than one old 
 woman in a scarlet cloak; the row of stolid, dull, vacant
 
 The Way of All Flesh 71 
 
 plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely in face, lifeless, 
 apathetic, a race a good deal more like the pre-revolution 
 French peasant as described by Carlyle than is pleasant 
 to reflect upon a race now supplanted by a smarter, 
 comelier and more hopeful generation, which has dis- 
 covered that it too has a right to as much happiness as 
 it can get, and with clearer ideas about the best means 
 of getting it. 
 
 They shamble in one after another, with steaming 
 breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed 
 boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, 
 and through the opened door I catch a momentary 
 glimpse of a dreary, leaden sky and snow-clad tomb- 
 stones. Somehow or other I find the strain which Han- 
 del has wedded to the words "There the ploughman near 
 at hand," has got into my head and there is no getting 
 it out again. How marvellously old Handel understood 
 these people! 
 
 They bob to Theobald as they pass the reading desk 
 ("The people hereabouts are truly respectful," whis- 
 pered Christina to me; "they know their betters"), and 
 take their seats in a long row against the wall. The 
 choir clamber up into the gallery with their instruments 
 a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. I see them 
 and soon I hear them, for there is a hymn before the 
 service, a wild strain, a remnant, if I mistake not, of 
 some pre-Re formation litany. I have heard what I be- 
 lieve was its remote musical progenitor in the church of 
 SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since; and 
 again I have heard it far away in mid-Atlantic upon a 
 grey sea-Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves 
 are stirring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and 
 their plaintive psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of 
 the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that has sighed 
 till it can sigh no longer. Or it may be heard at some 
 Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in
 
 72 The Way of All FlesK 
 
 the churches it is gone forever. If I were a musician I 
 would take it as the subject for the adagio in a Wesleyan 
 symphony. 
 
 Gone now are the clarinet, the violoncello and the 
 trombone, wild minstrelsy as of the doleful creatures in 
 Ezekiel, discordant, but infinitely pathetic. Gone is that 
 scarebabe stentor, that bellowing bull of Bashan, the 
 village blacksmith, gone is the melodious carpenter, gone 
 the brawny shepherd with the red hair, who roared more 
 lustily than all, until they came to the words, "Shepherds, 
 with your flocks abiding," when modesty covered him 
 with confusion, and compelled him to be silent, as 
 though his own health were being drunk. They were 
 doomed and had a presentiment of evil, even when first 
 I saw them, but they had still a little lease of choir life 
 remaining, and they roared out: 
 
 . J rf fff^J .ULJ J-fJ-fti. 
 
 wick ed bands hav pierced and nailed him, pierced and nailed him to a tree. 
 
 but no description can give a proper idea of the effect. 
 When I was last in Battersby church there was a har- 
 monium played by a sweet-looking girl with a choir of 
 school children around her, and they chanted the canti- 
 cles to the most correct of chants, and they sang Hymns 
 Ancient and Modern ; the high pews were gone, nay, the 
 very gallery in which the old choir had sung was re- 
 moved as an accursed thing which might remind the 
 people of the high places, and Theobald was old, and 
 Christina was lying under the yew tree* in the church- 
 yard. 
 
 But in the evening later on I saw three very old men 
 come chuckling out of a dissenting chapel, and surely 
 enough they were my old friends the blacksmith, the 
 carpenter and the shepherd. There was a look of con- 
 tent upon their faces which made me feel certain they
 
 The Way of All Flesh 73 
 
 had been singing; not doubtless with the old glory of 
 the violoncello, the clarinet and the trombone, but still 
 songs of Sion and no new fangled papistry. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE hymn had engaged my attention ; when it was over 
 I had time to take stock of the congregation. They 
 were chiefly farmers fat, very well-to-do folk, who had 
 come some of them with their wives and children from 
 outlying farms two and three miles away; haters of 
 popery and of anything which any one might choose to 
 say was popish ; good, sensible fellows who detested 
 theory of any kind, whose ideal was the maintenance of 
 the status quo with perhaps a loving reminiscence of old 
 war times, and a sense of wrong that the weather was 
 not more completely under their control, who desired 
 higher prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were 
 most contented when things were changing least ; tolera- 
 tors, if not lovers, of all that was familiar, haters of all 
 that was unfamiliar; they would have been equally hor- 
 rified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at 
 seeing it practised. 
 
 "What can there be in common between Theobald and 
 his parishioners?" said Christina to me, in the course of 
 the evening, when her husband was for a few moments 
 absent. "Of course one must not complain, but I assure 
 you it grieves me to see a man of Theobald's ability 
 thrown away upon such a place as this. If we had only 
 been at Gaysbury, where there are the A's, the B's, the 
 C's, and Lord D's place, as you know, quite close, I should 
 not then have felt that we were living in such a desert ; 
 but I suppose it is for the best," she added more cheer- 
 fully; "and then of course the Bishop will come to us 
 whenever he is in the neighbourhood, and if we were at 
 Gaysbury he might have gone to Lord D's."
 
 74 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Perhaps I have now said enough to indicate the kind 
 of place in which Theobald's lines were cast, and the sort 
 of woman he had married. As for his own habits, I 
 see him trudging through muddy lanes and over long 
 sweeps of plover-haunted pastures to visit a dying cot- 
 tager's wife. He takes her meat and wine from his own 
 table, and that not a little only but liberally. According 
 to his lights also, he administers what he is pleased to 
 call spiritual consolation. 
 
 "I am afraid I'm going to Hell, Sir," says the sick 
 woman with a whine. "Oh, Sir, save me, save me, don't 
 let me go there. I couldn't stand it, Sir, I should die 
 with fear, the very thought of it drives me into a cold 
 sweat all over." 
 
 "Mrs. Thompson," says Theobald gravely, "you must 
 have faith in the precious blood of your Redeemer; it is 
 He alone who can save you." 
 
 "But are you sure, Sir," says she, looking wistfully at 
 him, "that He will forgive me for I've not been a very 
 good woman, indeed I haven't and if God would only 
 say 'Yes' outright with His mouth when I ask whether 
 my sins are forgiven me " 
 
 "But they are forgiven you, Mrs. Thompson," says 
 Theobald with some sternness, for the same ground has 
 been gone over a good many times already, and he has 
 borne the unhappy woman's misgivings now for a full 
 quarter of an hour. Then he puts a stop to the conver- 
 sation by repeating prayers taken from the "Visitation 
 of the Sick," and overawes the poor wretch from ex- 
 pressing further anxiety as to her condition. 
 
 "Can't you tell me, Sir," she exclaims piteously, as she 
 sees that he is preparing to go away, "can't you tell me 
 that there is no Day of Judgement, and that there is no 
 such place as Hell? I can do without the Heaven, Sir, 
 but I cannot do with the Hell." Theobald is much 
 shocked. 
 
 "Mrs. Thompson," he rejoins impressively, "let me
 
 The Way of All Flesh 75 
 
 implore you to suffer no doubt concerning these two cor- 
 nerstones of our religion to cross your mind at a moment 
 like the present. If there is one thing more certain than 
 another it is that we shall all appear before the Judge- 
 ment Seat of Christ, and that the wicked will be con- 
 sumed in a lake of everlasting fire. Doubt this, Mrs. 
 Thompson, and you are lost." 
 
 The poor woman buries her fevered head in the cover- 
 let in a paroxysm of fear which at last finds relief in 
 tears. 
 
 "Mrs. Thompson," says Theobald, with his hand on 
 the door, "compose yourself, be calm; you must please 
 to take my word for it that at the Day of Judgement 
 your sins will be all washed white in the blood of 
 the Lamb, Mrs. Thompson. Yea," he exclaims fran- 
 tically, "though they be as scarlet, yet shall they be 
 as white as wool," and he makes off as fast as he can 
 from the fetid atmosphere of the cottage to the pure 
 air outside. Oh, how thankful he is when the interview 
 is over ! 
 
 He returns home, conscious that he has done his duty, 
 and administered the comforts of religion to a dying 
 sinner. His admiring wife awaits him at the Rectory, 
 and assures him that never yet was clergyman so devoted 
 to the welfare of his flock. He believes her; he has a 
 natural tendency to believe anything that is told him, 
 and who should know the facts of the case better than his 
 wife? Poor fellow! He has done his best, but what 
 does a fish's best come to when the fish is out of water? 
 He has left meat and wine that he can do; he will call 
 again and will leave more meat and wine; day after day 
 he trudges over the same plover-haunted fields, and lis- 
 tens at the end of his walk to the same agony of fore- 
 bodings, which day after day he silences, but does not 
 remove, till at last a merciful weakness renders the suf- 
 ferer careless of her future, and Theobald is satisfied 
 that her mind is now peacefully at rest in Jesus.
 
 76 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HE does not like this branch of his profession indeed 
 he hates it but will not admit it to himself. The habit 
 of not admitting things to himself has become a con- 
 firmed one with him. Nevertheless there haunts him an 
 ill defined sense that life would be pleasanter if there 
 were no sick sinners, or if they would at any rate face an 
 eternity of torture with more indifference. He does not 
 feel that he is in his element. The farmers look as if 
 they were in their element. They are full-bodied, healthy 
 and contented ; but between him and them there is a 
 great gulf fixed. A hard and drawn look begins to set- 
 tle about the corners of his mouth, so that even if he 
 were not in a black coat and white tie a child might 
 know him for a parson. 
 
 He knows that he is doing his duty. Every day con- 
 vinces him of this more firmly; but then there is not 
 much duty for him to do. He is sadly in want of occu- 
 pation. He has no taste for any of those field sports 
 which were not considered unbecoming for a clergyman 
 forty years ago. He does not ride, nor shoot, nor fish, 
 nor course, nor play cricket. Study, to do him justice, 
 he had never really liked, and what inducement was 
 there for him to study at Battersby? He reads neither 
 old books nor new ones. He does not interest himself 
 in art or science or politics, but he sets his back up with 
 some promptness if any of them show any development 
 unfamiliar to himself. True, he writes his own sermons, 
 but even his wife considers that his forte lies rather in 
 the example of his life (which is one long act of self- 
 devotion) than in his utterances from the pulpit. After 
 breakfast he retires to his study; he cuts little bits out of 
 the Bible and gums them with exquisite neatness by the 
 side of other little bits ; this he calls making a Harmony 
 of the Old and New Testaments. Alongside the extracts
 
 The Way of All Flesh 77 
 
 he copies in the very perfection of hand-writing extracts 
 from Mede (the only man, according to Theobald, who 
 really understood the Book of Revelation), Patrick, and 
 other old divines. He works steadily at this for half 
 an hour every morning during many years, and the re- 
 sult is doubtless valuable. After some years have gone 
 by he hears his children their lessons, and the daily oft- 
 repeated screams that issue from the study during the 
 lesson hours tell their own horrible story over the house. 
 He has also taken to collecting a hortus siccus, and 
 through the interest of his father was once mentioned 
 in the Saturday Magazine as having been the first to find 
 a plant, whose name I have forgotten, in the neighbour- 
 hood of Battersby. This number of the Saturday Maga- 
 zine has been bound in red morocco, and is kept upon 
 the drawing-room table. He potters about his garden; 
 if he hears a hen cackling he runs and tells Christina, 
 and straightway goes hunting for the egg. 
 
 When the two Miss Allabys came, as they sometimes 
 did, to stay with Christina, they said the life led by their 
 sister and brother-in-law was an idyll. Happy indeed 
 was Christina in her choice for that she had had a choice 
 was a fiction which soon took root among them and 
 happy Theobald in his Christina. Somehow or other 
 Christina was always a little shy of cards when her sis- 
 ters were staying with her, though at other times she 
 enjoyed a game of cribbage or a rubber of whist heart- 
 ily enough, but her sisters knew they would never be 
 asked to Battersby again if they were to refer to that 
 little matter, and on the whole it was worth their while 
 to be asked to Battersby. If Theobald's temper was 
 rather irritable he did not vent it upon them. 
 
 By nature reserved, if he could have found someone 
 to cook his dinner for him, he would rather have lived 
 in a desert island than not. In his heart of hearts he 
 held with Pope that "the greatest nuisance to mankind is 
 man" or words to that effect only that women, with
 
 78 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the exception perhaps of Christina, were worse. Yet 
 for all this, when visitors called he put a better face on it 
 than anyone who was behind the scenes would have 
 expected. 
 
 He was quick too at introducing the names of any 
 literary celebrities whom he had met at his father's house, 
 and soon established an all-around reputation which sat- 
 isfied even Christina herself. 
 
 Who so integer vitce scelerisque purus, it was asked, 
 as Mr. Pontifex of Battersby? Who so fit to be con- 
 sulted if any difficulty about parish management should 
 arise? Who such a happy mixture of the sincere unin- 
 quiring Christian and of the man of the world? For 
 so people actually called him. They said he was such an 
 admirable man of business. Certainly if he had said he 
 would pay a sum of money at a certain time, the money 
 would be forthcoming on the appointed day, and this is 
 saying a good deal for any man. His constitutional 
 timidity rendered him incapable of an attempt to over- 
 reach when there was the remotest chance of opposition 
 or publicity, and his correct bearing and somewhat stern 
 expression were a great protection to him against being 
 overreached. He never talked of money, and invari- 
 ably changed the subject whenever money was intro- 
 duced. His expression of unutterable horror at all kinds 
 of meanness was a sufficient guarantee that he was not 
 mean himself. Besides, he had no business transactions 
 save of the most ordinary butcher's book and baker's 
 book description. His tastes if he had any were, as 
 we have seen, simple ; he had 900 a year and a house ; 
 the neighbourhood was cheap, and for some time he had 
 no children to be a drag upon him. Who was not to 
 be envied, and if envied why then respected, if Theobald 
 was not enviable? 
 
 Yet I imagine that Christina was on the whole happier 
 than her husband. She had not to go and visit sick 
 parishioners, and the management of her house and the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 79 
 
 keeping of her accounts afforded as much occupation as 
 she desired. Her principal duty was, as she well said, 
 to her husband to love him, honour him, and keep him 
 in a good temper. To do her justice, she fulfilled this 
 duty to the uttermost of her power. It would have been 
 better perhaps if she had not so frequently assured her 
 husband that he was the best and wisest of mankind, 
 for no one in his little world ever dreamed of telling him 
 anything else, and it was not long before he ceased to 
 have any doubt upon the matter. As for his temper, 
 which had become very violent at times, she took care 
 to humour it on the slightest sign of an approaching out- 
 break. She had early found that this was much the 
 easiest plan. The thunder was seldom for herself. Long 
 before her marriage even she had studied his little ways, 
 and knew how to add fuel to the fire as long as the fire 
 seemed to want it, and then to damp it judiciously down, 
 making as little smoke as possible. 
 
 In money matters she was scrupulousness itself. 
 Theobald made her a quarterly allowance for her dress, 
 pocket money and little charities and presents. In these 
 last items she was liberal in proportion to her income; 
 indeed she dressed with great economy and gave away 
 whatever was over in presents or charity. Oh, what a 
 comfort it was to Theobald to reflect that he had a wife 
 on whom he could rely never to cost him a sixpence of 
 unauthorised expenditure! Letting alone her absolute 
 submission, the perfect coincidence of her opinion with 
 his own upon every subject and her constant assurances 
 to him that he was right in everything which he took it 
 into his head to say or do, what a tower of strength to 
 him was her exactness in money matters! As years 
 went by he became as fond of his wife as it was in his 
 nature to be of any living thing, and applauded himself 
 for having, stuck to his engagement a piece of virtue of 
 which he was now reaping the reward. Even when Chris- 
 tina did outrun her quarterly stipend by some thirty
 
 8o The Way of All Flesh 
 
 shillings or a couple of pounds, it was always made per- 
 fectly clear to Theobald how the deficiency had arisen 
 there had been an unusually costly evening dress bought 
 which was to last a long time, or somebody's unexpected 
 wedding had necessitated a more handsome present than 
 the quarter's balance would quite allow: the excess of 
 expenditure was always repaid in the following quarter 
 or quarters even though it were only ten shillings at a 
 time. 
 
 I believe, however, that after they had been married 
 some twenty years, Christina had somewhat fallen from 
 her original perfection as regards money. She had got 
 gradually in arrears during many successive quarters, 
 till she had contracted a chronic loan, a sort of domestic 
 national debt, amounting to between seven and eight 
 pounds. Theobald at length felt that a remonstrance had 
 become imperative, and took advantage of his silver wed- 
 ding day to inform Christina that her indebtedness was 
 cancelled, and at the same time to beg that she would en- 
 deavour henceforth to equalise her expenditure and her 
 income. She burst into tears of love and gratitude, as- 
 sured him that he was the best and most generous of 
 men, and never during the remainder of her married life 
 was she a single shilling behindhand. 
 
 Christina hated change of all sorts no less cordially 
 than her husband. She and Theobald had nearly every- 
 thing in this world that they could wish for ; why, then, 
 should people desire to introduce all sorts of changes of 
 which no one could foresee the end? Religion, she was 
 deeply convinced, had long since attained its final devel- 
 opment, nor could it enter into the heart of reasonable 
 man to conceive any faith more perfect than was incul- 
 cated by the Church of England. She could imagine no 
 position more honourable than that of a clergyman's wife 
 unless indeed it were a bishop's. Considering his father's 
 influence it was not at all impossible that Theobald might 
 be a bishop some day and then then would occur to
 
 The Way of All Flesh 81 
 
 her that one little flaw in the practice of the Church of 
 England a flaw not indeed in its doctrine, but in its pol- 
 icy, which she believed on the whole to be a mistaken one 
 in this respect. I mean the fact that a bishop's wife does 
 not take the rank of her husband. 
 
 This had been the doing of Elizabeth, who had been a 
 bad woman, of exceedingly doubtful moral character, and 
 at heart a Papist to the last. Perhaps people ought to 
 have been above mere considerations of worldly dignity, 
 but the world was as it was, and such things carried 
 weight with them, whether they ought to do so or no. 
 Her influence as plain Mrs. Pontifex, wife, we will say, 
 of the Bishop of Winchester, would no doubt be consid- 
 erable. Such a character as hers could not fail to carry 
 weight if she were ever in a sufficiently conspicuous 
 sphere for its influence to be widely felt; but as Lady 
 Winchester or the Bishopess which would sound quite 
 nicely who could doubt that her power for good would 
 be enhanced? And it would be all the nicer because if 
 she had a daughter, the daughter would not be a Bishop- 
 ess unless indeed she were to marry a Bishop too, which 
 would not be likely. 
 
 These were her thoughts upon her good days ; at other 
 times she would, to do her justice, have doubts whether 
 she was in all respects as spiritually minded as she ought 
 to be. She must press on, press on, till every enemy to 
 her salvation was surmounted and Satan himself lay 
 bruised under her feet. It occurred to her on one of 
 these occasions that she might steal a march over some 
 of her contemporaries if she were to leave off eating 
 black puddings, of which whenever they had killed a pig 
 she had hitherto partaken freely ; and if she were also 
 careful that no fowls were served at her table which had 
 had their necks wrung, but only such as had had their 
 throats cut and been allowed to bleed. St. Paul and the 
 Church of Jerusalem had insisted upon it as necessary 
 that even Gentile converts should abstain from things
 
 82 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 strangled and from blood, and they had joined this pro- 
 hibition with that of a vice about the abominable nature 
 of which there could be no question; it would be well 
 therefore to abstain in future and see whether any note- 
 worthy spiritual result ensued. She did abstain, and was 
 certain that from the day of her resolve she had felt 
 stronger, purer in heart, and in all respects more spir- 
 itually minded than she had ever felt hitherto. Theobald 
 did not lay so much stress on this as she did, but as she 
 settled what he should have at dinner she could take care 
 that he got no strangled fowls; as for black puddings, 
 happily, he had seen them made when he was a boy, and 
 had never got over his aversion for them. She wished 
 the matter were one of more general observance than it 
 was; this was just a case in which as Lady Winchester 
 she might have been able to do what as plain Mrs. Ponti- 
 fex it was hopeless even to attempt. 
 
 And thus this worthy couple jogged on from month to 
 month and from year to year. The reader, if he has 
 passed middle life and has a clerical connection, will 
 probably remember scores and scores of rectors and rec- 
 tors' wives who differed in no material respect from 
 Theobald and Christina. Speaking from a recollection 
 and experience extending over nearly eighty years from 
 the time when I was myself a child in the nursery of a 
 vicarage, I should say I had drawn the better rather than 
 the worse side of the life of an English country parson 
 of some fifty years ago. I admit, however, that there 
 are no such people to be found nowadays. A more 
 united or, on the whole, happier, couple could not have 
 been found in England. One grief only overshadowed 
 the early years of their married life : I mean the fact that 
 no living children were born to them.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 83 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 IN the course of time this sorrow was removed. At the 
 beginning of the fifth year of her married life Christina 
 was safely delivered of a boy. This was on the sixth of 
 September, 1835. 
 
 Word was immediately sent to old Mr. Pontifex, who 
 received the news with real pleasure. His son John's 
 wife had borne daughters only, and he was seriously 
 uneasy lest there should be a failure in the male line of 
 his descendants. The good news, therefore, was doubly 
 welcome, and caused as much delight at Elmhurst as dis- 
 may in Woburn Square, where the John Pontifexes were 
 then living. 
 
 Here, indeed, this freak of fortune was felt to be all 
 the more cruel on account of the impossibility of resent- 
 ing it openly ; but the delighted grandfather cared nothing 
 for what the John Pontifexes might feel or not feel ; he 
 had wanted a grandson and he had got a grandson, and 
 this should be enough for everybody; and, now that Mrs. 
 Theobald had taken to good ways, she might bring him 
 more grandsons, which would be desirable, for he should 
 not feel safe with fewer than three. 
 
 He rang the bell for the butler. 
 
 "Gelstrap," he said solemnly, "I want to go down into 
 the cellar." 
 
 Then Gelstrap preceded him with a candle, and he 
 went into the inner vault where he kept his choicest wines. 
 
 He passed many bins : there was 1803 Port, 1792 Im- 
 perial Tokay, 1800 Claret, 1812 Sherry, these and many 
 others were passed, but it was not for them that the 
 head of the Pontifex family had gone down into his in- 
 ner cellar. A bin, which had appeared empty until the 
 full light of the candle had been brought to bear upon it, 
 was now found to contain a single pint bottle. This 
 was the object of Mr. Pontifex's search.
 
 84 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Gelstrap had often pondered over this bottle. It had 
 been placed there by Mr. Pontifex himself about a dozen 
 years previously, on his return from a visit to his friend 
 the celebrated traveller, Dr. Jones but there was no tab- 
 let above the bin which might give a clue to the nature 
 of its contents. On more than one occasion when his 
 master had gone out and left his keys accidentally behind 
 him, as he sometimes did, Gelstrap had submitted the 
 bottle to all the tests he could venture upon, but it was so 
 carefully sealed that wisdom remained quite shut out 
 from that entrance at which he would have welcomed 
 her most gladly and indeed from all other entrances, 
 for he could make out nothing at all. 
 
 And now the mystery was to be solved. But alas! it 
 seemed as though the last chance of securing even a sip 
 of the contents was to be removed for ever, for Mr. 
 Pontifex took the bottle into his own hands and held it 
 up to the light after carefully examining the seal. He 
 smiled and left the bin with the bottle in his hands. 
 
 Then came a catastrophe. He stumbled over an empty 
 hamper; there was the sound of a fall a smash of 
 broken glass, and in an instant the cellar floor was cov- 
 ered with the liquid that had been preserved so carefully 
 for so many years. 
 
 With his usual presence of mind Mr. Pontifex gasped 
 out a month's warning to Gelstrap. Then he got up, and 
 stamped as Theobald had done when Christina had 
 wanted not to order his dinner. 
 
 "It's water from the Jordan," he exclaimed furiously, 
 "which I have been saving for the baptism of my eldest 
 grandson. Damn you, Gelstrap, how dare you be so in- 
 fernally careless as to leave that hamper littering about 
 the cellar ?" 
 
 I wonder the water of the sacred stream did not stand 
 upright as an heap upon the cellar floor and rebuke him. 
 Gelstrap told the other servants afterwards that his mas- 
 ter's language had made his backbone curdle.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 85 
 
 The moment, however, that he heard the word "water," 
 he saw his way again, and flew to the pantry. Before his 
 master had well noted his absence he returned with a 
 little sponge and a basin, and had begun sopping up the 
 waters of the Jordan as though they had been a common 
 slop. 
 
 "I'll filter it, Sir," said Gelstrap meekly. "It'll come 
 quite clean." 
 
 Mr. Pontifex saw hope in this suggestion, which was 
 shortly carried out by the help of a piece of blotting 
 paper and a funnel, under his own eyes. Eventually it 
 was found that half a pint was saved, and this was held 
 to be sufficient. 
 
 Then he made preparations for a visit to Battersby. 
 He ordered goodly hampers of the choicest eatables, he 
 selected a goodly hamper of choice drinkables. I say 
 choice and not choicest, for although in his first exalta- 
 tion he had selected some of his very best wine, yet on 
 reflection he had felt that there was moderation in all 
 things, and as he was parting with his best water from 
 the Jordan, he would only send some of his second best 
 wine. 
 
 Before he went to Battersby he stayed a day or two 
 in London, which he now seldom did, being over seventy 
 years old, and having practically retired from business. 
 The John Pontifexes, who kept a sharp eye on him, dis- 
 covered to their dismay hat he had had an interview 
 with his solicitors. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 FOR the first time in his life Theobald felt that he had 
 done something right, and could look forward to meeting 
 his father without alarm. The old gentleman, indeed, 
 had written him a most cordial letter, announcing his in- 
 tention of standing godfather to the boy nay, I may as
 
 86 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 well give it in full, as it shows the writer at his best. It 
 runs: 
 
 "Dear Theobald, Your letter gave me very sincere 
 pleasure, the more so because I had made up my mind 
 for the worst; pray accept my most hearty congratula- 
 tions for my daughter-in-law and for yourself. 
 
 "I have long preserved a phial of water from the Jor- 
 dan for the christening of my first grandson, should it 
 please God to grant me one. It was given me by my old 
 friend, Dr. Jones. You will agree with me that though 
 the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend upon the 
 source of the baptismal waters, yet, ceteris paribus, there 
 is a sentiment attaching to the waters of the Jordan 
 which should not be despised. Small matters like this 
 sometimes influence a child's whole future career. 
 
 "I shall bring my own cook, and have told him to get 
 everything ready for the christening dinner. Ask as 
 many of your best neighbours as your table will hold. 
 By the way, I have told Lesueur not to get a lobster 
 you had better drive over yourself and get one from 
 Saltness (for Battersby was only fourteen or fifteen 
 miles from the sea coast) ; they are better there, at least 
 I think so, than anywhere else in England. 
 
 "I have put your boy down for something in the event 
 of his attaining the age of twenty-one years. If your 
 brother John continues to have nothing but girls I may 
 do more later on, but I have many claims upon me, and 
 am not as well off as you may imagine. Your affection- 
 ate father, G. PONTIFEX." 
 
 A few days afterwards the writer of the above letter 
 made his appearance in a fly which had brought him 
 from Gildenham to Battersby, a distance of fourteen 
 miles. There was Lesueur, the cook, on the box with the 
 driver, and as many hampers as the fly could carry were 
 disposed upon the roof and elsewhere. Next day the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 87 
 
 John Pontifexes had to come, and Eliza and Maria, as 
 well as Alethea, who, by her own special request, was 
 godmother to the boy, for Mr. Pontifex had decided that 
 they were to form a happy family party; so come they 
 all must, and be happy they all must, or it would be the 
 worse for them. Next day the author of all this hubbub 
 was actually christened. Theobald had proposed to call 
 him George after old Mr. Pontifex, but strange to say, 
 Mr. Pontifex overruled him in favour of the name Er- 
 nest. The word "earnest" was just beginning to come 
 into fashion, and he thought the possession of such a 
 name might, like his having been baptised in water from 
 the Jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy's char- 
 acter, and influence him for good during the more critical 
 periods of his life. 
 
 I was asked to be his second godfather, and was re- 
 joiced to have an opportunity of meeting Alethea, whom 
 I had not seen for some few years, but with whom I 
 had been in constant correspondence. She and I had 
 always been friends from the time we had played to- 
 gether as children onwards. When the death of her 
 grandfather and grandmother severed her connection 
 with Paleham my intimacy with the Pontifexes was kept 
 up by my having been at school and college with Theo- 
 bald, and each time I saw her I admired her more and 
 more as the best, kindest, wittiest, most lovable, and, to 
 my mind, handsomest woman whom I had ever seen. 
 None of the Pontifexes were deficient in good looks; 
 they were a well-grown, shapely family enough, but Ale- 
 thea was the flower of the flock even as regards good 
 looks, while in respect of all other qualities that make a 
 woman lovable, it seemed as though the stock that had 
 been intended for the three daughters, and would have 
 been about sufficient for them, had all been allotted to 
 herself, her sisters getting none, and she all. 
 
 It is impossible for me to explain how it was that she 
 and I never married. We two knew exceedingly well ?
 
 88 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and that must suffice for the reader. There was the most 
 perfect sympathy and understanding between us ; we 
 knew that neither of us would marry anyone else. I 
 had asked her to marry me a dozen times over; having 
 said this much I will say no more upon a point which is 
 in no way necessary for the development of my story. 
 For the last few years there had been difficulties in the 
 way of our meeting, and I had not seen her, though, as 
 I have said, keeping up a close correspondence with her. 
 Naturally I was overjoyed to meet her again; she was 
 now just thirty years old, but I thought she looked hand- 
 somer than ever. 
 
 Her father, of course, was the lion of the party, but 
 seeing that we were all meek and quite willing to be 
 eaten, he roared to us rather than at us. It was a fine 
 sight to see him tucking his napkin under his rosy old 
 gills, and letting it fall over his capacious waistcoat while 
 the high light from the chandelier danced about the bump 
 of benevolence on his bald old head like a star of Beth- 
 lehem. 
 
 The soup was real turtle; the old gentleman was evi- 
 dently well pleased and he was beginning to come out. 
 Gelstrap stood behind his master's chair. I sat next Mrs. 
 Theobald on her left hand, and was thus just opposite 
 her father-in-law, whom I had every opportunity of ob- 
 serving. 
 
 During the first ten minutes or so, which were taken 
 up with the soup and the bringing in of the fish, I should 
 probably have thought, if I had not long since made up 
 my mind about him, what a fine old man he was and how 
 proud his children should be of him; but suddenly as he 
 was helping himself to lobster sauce, he flushed crimson, 
 a look of extreme vexation suffused his face, and he 
 darted two furtive but fiery glances to the two ends of 
 the table, one for Theobald and one for Christina. They, 
 poor simple souls, of course saw that something was ex- 
 ceedingly wrong, and so did I, but I couldn't guess what
 
 The Way of All Flesh 89 
 
 it was till I heard the old man hiss in Christina's ear : "It 
 was not made with a hen lobster. What's the use," he 
 continued, "of my calling the boy Ernest, and getting him 
 christened in water from the Jordan, if his own father 
 does not know a cock from a hen lobster?" 
 
 This cut me too, for I felt that till that moment I had 
 not so much as known that there were cocks and hens 
 among lobsters, but had vaguely thought that in the mat- 
 ter of matrimony they were even as the angels in heaven, 
 and grew up almost spontaneously from rocks and sea- 
 weed. 
 
 Before the next course was over Mr. Pontifex had re- 
 covered his temper, and from that time to the end of the 
 evening he was at his best. He told us all about the 
 water from the Jordan ; how it had been brought by Dr. 
 Jones along with some stone jars of water from the 
 Rhine, the Rhone, the Elbe and the Danube, and what 
 trouble he had had with them at the Custom Houses, and 
 how the intention had been to make punch with waters 
 from all the greatest rivers in Europe ; and how he, Mr. 
 Pontifex, had saved the Jordan water from going into 
 the bowl, etc., etc. "No, no, no," he continued, "it 
 wouldn't have done at all, you know ; very profane idea ; 
 so we each took a pint bottle of it home with us, and the 
 punch was much better without it. I had a- narrow es- 
 cape with mine, though, the other day ; I fell over a ham- 
 per in the cellar, when I was getting it up to bring to 
 Battersby, and if I had not taken the greatest care the 
 bottle would certainly have been broken, but I saved it." 
 And Gelstrap was standing behind his chair all the time ! 
 
 Nothing more happened to ruffle Mr. Pontifex, so we 
 had a delightful evening, which has often recurred to me 
 while watching the after career of my godson. 
 
 I called a day or two afterwards and found Mr. Ponti- 
 fex still at Battersby, laid up with one of those attacks 
 of liver and depression to which he was becoming more 
 and more subject. I stayed to luncheon. The old gen-
 
 90 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 tleman was cross and very difficult ; he could eat nothing 
 had no appetite at all. Christina tried to coax him 
 with a little bit of the fleshy part of a mutton chop. 
 "How in the name of reason can I be asked to eat a mut- 
 ton chop?" he exclaimed angrily; "you forget, my dear 
 Christina, that you have to deal with a stomach that is 
 totally disorganised," and he pushed the plate from him, 
 pouting and frowning like a naughty old child. Writing 
 as I do by the light of a later knowledge, I suppose I 
 should have seen nothing in this but the world's growing 
 pains, the disturbance inseparable from transition in hu- 
 man things. I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow 
 in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and 
 making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long 
 growling and grumbling but surely nature might find 
 some less irritating way of carrying on business if she 
 would give her mind to it. Why should the generations 
 overlap one another at all ? Why cannot we be buried as 
 eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand 
 pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, 
 and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa 
 and mamma have not only left ample provision at its 
 elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks be- 
 fore it began to live consciously on its own account? 
 
 About a year and a half afterwards the tables were 
 turned on Battersby for Mrs. John Pontifex was safely 
 delivered of a boy. A year or so later still, George Pon- 
 tifex was himself struck down suddenly by a fit of pa- 
 ralysis, much as his mother had been, but he did not see 
 the years of his mother. When his will was opened, it 
 was found that an original bequest of 20,000 to Theo- 
 bald himself (over and above the sum that had been set- 
 tled upon him and Christina at the time of his marriage) 
 had been cut down to 17,500 when Mr. Pontifex left 
 "something" to Ernest. The "something" proved to be 
 2500, which was to accumulate in the hands of trustees. 
 The rest of the property went to John Pontifex, except
 
 The Way of All Flesh 91 
 
 that each of the daughters was left with about 15,000 
 over and above 5000 a piece which they inherited from 
 their mother. 
 
 Theobald's father then had told him the truth but not 
 the whole truth. Nevertheless, what right had Theobald 
 to complain? Certainly it was rather hard to make him 
 think that he and his were to be gainers, and get the hon- 
 our and glory of the bequest, when all the time the money 
 was virtually being taken out of Theobald's own pocket. 
 On the other hand the father doubtless argued that he 
 had never told Theobald he was to have anything at all ; 
 he had a full right to do what he liked with his own 
 money; if Theobald chose to indulge in unwarrantable 
 expectations that was no affair of his ; as it was he was 
 providing for him liberally; and if he did take 2500 of 
 Theobald's share he was still leaving it to Theobald's 
 son, which, of course, was much the same thing in the 
 end. 
 
 No one can deny that the testator had strict right upon 
 his side ; nevertheless the reader will agree with me that 
 Theobald and Christina might not have considered the 
 christening dinner so great a success if all the facts had 
 been before them. Mr. Pontifex had during his own 
 life-time set up a monument in Elmhurst Church to the 
 memory of his wife (a slab with urns and cherubs like 
 illegitimate children of King George the Fourth, and all 
 the rest of it), and had left space for his own epitaph 
 underneath that of his wife. I do not know whether it 
 was written by one of his children, or whether they got 
 some friend to write it for them. I do not believe that 
 any satire was intended. I believe that it was the inten- 
 tion to convey that nothing short of the Day of Judge- 
 ment could give anyone an idea how good a man Mr. 
 Pontifex had been, but at first I found it hard to think 
 that it was free from guile. 
 
 The epitaph begins by giving dates of birth and death ; 
 then sets out that the deceased was for many years head
 
 92 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of the firm of Fairlie and Pontifex, and also resident in 
 the parish of Elmhurst. There is not a syllable of either 
 praise or dispraise. The last lines run as follows : 
 
 HE NOW LIES AWAITING A JOYFUL RESURRECTION 
 
 AT THE LAST DAY. 
 
 WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS 
 
 THAT DAY WILL DISCOVER. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THIS much, however, we may say in the meantime, that 
 having lived to be nearly seventy-three years old and died 
 rich he must have been in very fair harmony with his 
 surroundings. I have heard it said sometimes that such 
 
 1 and such a person's life was a lie : but no man's life can 
 be a very bad lie; as long as it continues at all it is at 
 worst nine-tenths of it true. 
 
 Mr. Pontifex's life not only continued a long time, but 
 was prosperous right up to the end. Is not this enough ? 
 Being in this world is it not our most obvious business to 
 make the most of it to observe what things do bona fide 
 tend to long life and comfort, and to act accordingly? 
 
 ' All animals, except man, know that the principal business 
 of life is to enjoy it and they do enjoy it as much as 
 man and other circumstances will allow. He^Jhas^ spent 
 
 Jhisjifje^e^t_whojiasjen joyed it most ; God will take care 
 
 < that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. 
 If Mr. Pontifex is to be blamed it is for not having eaten 
 and drunk less and thus suffered less from his liver, and 
 lived perhaps a year or two longer. 
 
 Goodness is naught unless it tends towards old age and 
 sufficiency of means. I speak broadly and exceptis ex- 
 cipiendis. So the psalmist says, "The righteous shall not 
 lack anything that is good." Either this is mere poetical 
 license, or it follows that he who lacks anything that is 
 good is not righteous ; there is a presumption also that he
 
 The Way of All Flesh 93 
 
 who has passed a long life without lacking anything that 
 is good has himself also been good enough for practical 
 purposes. 
 
 Mr. Pontifex never lacked anything he much cared 
 about. True, he might have been happier than he was if 
 he had cared about things which he did not care for, but 
 the gist of this lies in the "if he had cared." We have 
 all sinned and come short of the glory of making our- 
 selves as comfortable as we easily might have done, but 
 in this particular case Mr. Pontifex did not care, and 
 would not have gained much by getting what he did not 
 want. 
 
 There is no casting of swine's meat before men worse 
 than that which -would flatter virtue as though her true 
 origin were not good enough for her, but she must have 
 a lineage, deduced as it were by spiritual heralds, from 
 some stock with which she has nothing to do. Virtue's 
 true lineage is older and more respectable than any that 
 can be invented for her. She springs from man's experi- 
 ence concerning his own well-being and this, though not 
 infallible, is still the least fallible thing we have. A sys- 
 tem which cannot stand without a better foundation than 
 this must have something so unstable within itself that it 
 will topple over on whatever pedestal we place it. 
 ?' The world has long ago settled that morality and virtue 
 are what bring men peace at the last. "Be virtuous," says 
 the copy-book, "and you will be happy." Surely if a 
 reputed virtue fails often in this respect it is only an 
 insidious form of vice, and if a reputed vice brings no 
 very serious mischief on a man's later years it is not so 
 bad a vice as it is said to be. Unfortunately^ though we 
 are all of a mind about the main opinion that virtue is 
 what tends to happiness, and vice what ends in sorrow, 
 we are not so unanimous about details that is to say as 
 to whether any given course, such, we will say, as smok- 
 ing, has a tendency to happiness or the reverse. 
 
 I submit it as the result of my own poor observation,
 
 94 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part 
 of parents towards children is not generally followed by 
 ill consequences to the parents themselves. They may 
 cast a gloom over their children's lives for many years 
 without having to suffer anything that will hurt them. I 
 should say, then, that it shows no great moral obliquity 
 on the part of parents if within certain limits they make 
 their children's lives a burden to them. 
 
 Granted that Mr. Pontifex's was not a very exalted 
 character, ordinary men are not required to have very 
 exalted characters. It is enough if we are of the same 
 moral and mental stature as the "main" or "mean" part 
 of men that is to say as the average. 
 
 It is involved in the very essence of things that rich 
 men who die old shall have been mean. The greatest 
 and wisest of mankind will be almost always found to 
 be the meanest the ones who have kept the "mean" best 
 between excess either of virtue or vice. They hardly ever 
 have been prosperous if they have not done this, and, 
 considering how many miscarry altogether, it is no small 
 feather in a man's cap if he has been no worse than his 
 neighbours. Homer tells us about some one who 
 made it his business <uev apwreueiv Kai v-n-etpoxov f/j,fj.evai 
 oXXwj' always to excel and to stand higher than 
 other people. What an uncompanionable, disagreeable 
 person he must have been! Homer's heroes generally 
 came to a bad end, and I doubt not that this gentleman, 
 whoever he was, did so sooner or later. 
 
 A very high standard, again, involves the possession 
 of rare virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or 
 animals, things that have not been able to hold their own 
 in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, 
 be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. 
 
 People divide off vice and virtue as though they were 
 two things, neither of which had with it anything of the 
 other. This is not so. There is no useful virtue which^/ 
 has not some alloy of vice, and hardly any vice, if any,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 95 
 
 which carries not with it a little dash of virtue; virtue 
 and vice are like life and death, or mind and matter 
 things which cannot exist without being qualified by their 
 opposite. The most absolute life contains death, and the 
 corpse is still in many respects living ; so also it has been 
 said, "If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is 
 done amiss," which shows that even the highest ideal we 
 can conceive will yet admit so much compromise with 
 vice as shall countenance the poor abuses of the time, if 
 they are not too outrageous. That vice pays homage to 
 virtue is notorious; we call this hypocrisy; there should 
 be a word found for the homage which virtue not un- 
 frequently pays, or at any rate would be wise in paying, 
 to vice. 
 
 I grant that some men will find happiness in having 
 what we all feel to be a higher moral standard than oth- 
 ers. If they go in for this, however, they must be content 
 with virtue as her own reward, and not grumble if they 
 find lofty Quixotism an expensive luxury, whose re- 
 wards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. 
 They must not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying 
 to make the most of both worlds. Disbelieve as we may 
 the details of the accounts which record the growth of 
 the Christian religion, yet a great part of Christian teach- 
 ing will remain as true as though we accepted the details. 
 We cannot serve God and Mammon ; strait is the way 
 and narrow is the gate which leads to what those who 
 live by faith hold to be best worth having, and there is no 
 way of saying this better than the Bible has done. It is 
 well there should be some who think thus, as it is well 
 there should be speculators in commerce, who will often 
 burn their fingers but it is not well that the majority 
 should leave the "mean" and beaten path. 
 
 For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure 
 tangible material prosperity in this world is the safest 
 test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleas- 
 ures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and
 
 96 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to 
 asceticism. To use a commercial metaphor, competition 
 is so keen, and the margin of profits has been cut down 
 so closely that virtue cannot afford to throw any bona 
 fide chance away, and must base her action rather on the 
 actual money ing out of conduct than on a flattering pros- 
 pectus. She will not therefore neglect as some do who 
 are prudent and economical enough in other matters 
 the important factor of our chance of escaping detection, 
 or at any rate of our dying first. A reasonable virtue 
 will give this chance its due value, neither more nor less. 
 Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or 
 duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us pleasure, 
 right and duty are often still harder to distinguish and, 
 if we go wrong with them, will lead us into just as sorry 
 a plight as a mistaken opinion concerning pleasure. 
 When men burn their fingers through following after 
 pleasure they find out their mistake and get to see where 
 they have gone wrong more easily than when they have 
 ! burnt them through following after a fancied duty, or a 
 fancied idea concerning right virtue. The devil, in fact, 
 iwhen he dresses himself in angel's clothes, can only be 
 I detected by experts of exceptional skill, and so often does 
 ! he adopt this disguise that it is hardly safe to be seen 
 talking to an angel at all, and prudent people will follow 
 after pleasure as a more homely but more respectable 
 and on the whole much more trustworthy guide. 
 / Returning to Mr. Pontifex, over and above his having 
 lived long and prosperously, he left numerous offspring, 
 lo all of whom he communicated not only his physical 
 and mental characteristics, with no more than the usual 
 amount of modification, but also no small share of char- 
 acteristics which are less easily transmitted I mean his 
 pecuniary characteristics. It may be said that he ac- 
 quired these by sitting still and letting money run, as 
 it were, right up against him, but against how many does 
 not money run who do not take it when it does, or who,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 97 
 
 even if they hold it for a little while, cannot so incorpo- 
 rate it with themselves that it shall descend through them 
 to their offspring? Mr. Pontifex did this. He kept 
 what he may be said to have made, and money is like a 
 reputation for ability more easily made than kept. 
 
 Take him, then, for all in all, I am not inclined to be 
 so severe upon him as my father was. Judge him accord- 
 ing to any very lofty standard, and he is nowhere. Judge 
 him according to a fair average standard, and there is 
 not much fault to be found with him. I have said what 
 I have said in the foregoing chapter once for all, and 
 shall not break my thread to repeat it. It should go 
 without saying in modification of the verdict which the 
 reader may be inclined to pass too hastily, not only upon 
 Mr. George Pontifex, but also upon Theobald and Chris- 
 tina. And now I will continue my story. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE birth of his son opened Theobald's eyes to a good 
 deal which he had but faintly realised hitherto. He had 
 had no idea how great a nuisance a baby was. Babies 
 come into the world so suddenly at the end, and upset 
 everything so terribly when they do come: why cannot 
 they steal in upon us with less of a shock to the domestic 
 system? His wife, too, did not recover rapidly from her 
 confinement ; she remained an invalid for months ; here 
 was another nuisance and an expensive one, which inter- 
 fered with the amount which Theobald liked to put by out 
 of his income against, as he said, a rainy day, or to make 
 provision for his family if he should have one. Now he 
 was getting a family, so that it became all the more neces- 
 sary to put money by, and here was the baby hindering 
 him. Theorists may say what they like about a man's 
 children being a continuation of his own identity, but it 
 will generally be found that those who talk in this way
 
 98 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 have no children of their own. Practical family men 
 know better. 
 
 About twelve months after the birth of Ernest there 
 came a second, also a boy, who was christened Joseph, 
 and in less than twelve months afterwards, a girl, to 
 whom was given the name of Charlotte. A few months 
 before this girl was born Christina paid a visit to the 
 John Pontifexes in London, and, knowing her condi- 
 tion, passed a good deal of time at the Royal Academy 
 exhibition looking at the types of female beauty por- 
 trayed by the Academicians, for she had made up her 
 mind that the child this time was to be a girl. Alethea 
 warned her not to do this, but she persisted, and cer- 
 tainly the child turned out plain, but whether the pictures 
 caused this or no, I cannot say. 
 
 Theobald had never liked children. He had always 
 got away from them as soon as he could, and so had 
 they from him; oh, why, he was inclined to ask himself, 
 could not children be born into the world grown up? 
 If Christina could have given birth to a few full-grown 
 clergymen in priest's orders of moderate views, but in- 
 clining rather to Evangelicism, with comfortable livings 
 and in all respects facsimiles of Theobald himself 
 why, there might have been more sense in it; or if 
 people could buy ready-made children at a shop of what- 
 ever age and sex they liked, instead of always having 
 to make them at home and to begin at the beginning 
 with them that might do better, but as it was he did 
 not like it. He felt as he had felt when he had been 
 required to come and be married to Christina that he 
 had been going on for a long time quite nicely, and would 
 much rather continue things on their present footing. 
 In the matter of getting married he had been obliged to 
 pretend he liked it; but times were changed, and if he 
 did not like a thing now, he could find a hundred unex- 
 ceptionable ways of making his dislike apparent. 
 
 It might have been better if Theobald in his younger
 
 The Way of All Flesh 99 
 
 days had kicked more against his father: the fact that 
 he had not done so encouraged him to expect the most 
 implicit obedience from his own children. He could 
 trust himself, he said (and so did Christina), to be more 
 lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; 
 his danger, he said (and so again did Christina), would 
 be rather in the direction of being too indulgent; he 
 must be on his guard against this, for no duty could be 
 more important than that of teaching a child to obey its 
 parents in all things. 
 
 He had read not long since of an Eastern traveller, 
 who, while exploring somewhere in the more remote 
 parts of Arabia and Asia Minor, had come upon a 
 remarkably hardy, sober, industrious little Christian com- 
 munity all of them in the best of health who had 
 turned out to be the actual living descendants of Jona- 
 dab, the son of Rechab; and two men in European cos- 
 tume, indeed, but speaking English with a broken accent, 
 and by their colour evidently Oriental, had come begging 
 to Battersby soon afterwards, and represented themselves 
 as belonging to this people ; they had said they were col- 
 lecting funds to promote the conversion of their fellow 
 tribesmen to the English branch of the Christian reli- 
 gion. True, they turned out to be impostors, for when 
 he gave them a pound and Christina five shillings from 
 her private purse, they went and got drunk with it in 
 the next village but one to Battersby; still, this did not 
 invalidate the story of the Eastern traveller. Then there 
 were the Romans whose greatness was probably due 
 to the wholesome authority exercised by the head of a 
 family over all its members. Some Romans had even 
 killed their children ; this was going too far, but then 
 the Romans were not Christians, and knew no better. 
 
 The practical outcome of the foregoing was a convic- 
 tion in Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Chris- 
 tina's, that it was their duty to begin training up their 
 children in the way they should go, even from their
 
 ioo The Way of All Flesh 
 
 earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be 
 carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once 
 before they had time to grow. Theobald picked up this 
 numb serpent of a metaphor and cherished it in his 
 bosom. 
 
 Before Ernest could well crawl he was taught to kneel ; 
 before he could well speak he was taught to lisp the 
 Lord's prayer, and the general confession. How was it 
 possible that these things could be taught too early? If 
 his attention flagged or his memory failed him, here was 
 an ill weed which would grow apace, unless it were 
 plucked out immediately, and the only way to pluck it 
 out was to whip him, or shut him up in a cupboard, or 
 dock him of some of the small pleasures of childhood. 
 Before he was three years old he could read and, after a 
 fashion, write. Before he was four he was learning 
 Latin, and could do rule of three sums. 
 
 As for the child himself, he was naturally of an even 
 temper ; he doted upon his nurse, on kittens and puppies, 
 and on all things that would do him the kindness of 
 allowing him to be fond of them. He was fond of his 
 mother, too, but as regards his father, he has told me in 
 later life he could remember no feeling but fear and 
 shrinking. Christina did not remonstrate with Theo- 
 bald concerning the severity of the tasks imposed upon 
 their boy, nor yet as to the continual whippings that 
 were found necessary at lesson times. Indeed, when 
 during any absence of Theobald's the lessons were en- 
 trusted to her, she found to her sorrow that it was the 
 only thing to do, and she did it no less effectually than 
 Theobald himself ; nevertheless she was fond of her boy, 
 which Theobald never was, and it was long before she 
 could destroy all affection for herself in the mind of 
 her first-born. But she persevered.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 101 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 STRANGE! for she believed she doted upon him, and cer- 
 tainly she loved him better than either of her other 
 children. Her version of the matter was that there had 
 never yet been two parents so self-denying and devoted 
 to the highest welfare of their children as Theobald 
 and herself. For Ernest, a very great future she was 
 certain of it was in store. This made severity all the 
 more necessary, so that from the first he might have 
 been kept pure from every taint of evil. She could not 
 allow herself the scope for castle building which, we 
 read, was indulged in by every Jewish matron before 
 the appearance of the Messiah, for the Messiah had 
 now come, but there was to be a millennium shortly, 
 certainly not later than 1866, when Ernest would be just 
 about the right age for it, and a modern Elias would 
 be wanted to herald its approach. Heaven would bear 
 her witness that she had never shrunk from the idea of 
 martyrdom for herself and Theobald, nor would she 
 avoid it for her boy, if his life was required of her in 
 her Redeemer's service. Oh, no! If God told her to 
 offer up her first-born, as He had told Abraham, she 
 would take him up to Pigbury Beacon and plunge the 
 no, that she could not do, but it would be unnecessary 
 some one else might do that. It was not for nothing 
 that Ernest had been baptised in water from the Jordan. 
 It had not been her doing, nor yet Theobald's. They 
 had not sought it. When water from the sacred stream 
 was wanted for a sacred infant, the channel had been 
 found through which it was to flow from far Palestine 
 over land and sea to the door of the house where the 
 child was lying. Why, it was a miracle ! It was ! It 
 was ! She saw it all now. The Jordan had left its bed 
 and flowed into her own house. It was idle to say that 
 this was not a miracle. No miracle was effected without
 
 102 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 means of some kind; the difference between the faith- 
 ful and the unbeliever consisted in the very fact that the 
 former could see a miracle where the latter could not. 
 The Jews could see no miracle even in the raising of 
 Lazarus and the feeding of the five thousand. The John 
 Pontifexes would see no miracle in this matter of the 
 water from the Jordan. The essence of a miracle lay 
 not in the fact that means had been dispensed with, but 
 in the adoption of means to a great end that had not 
 been available without interference; and no one would 
 suppose that Dr. Jones would have brought the water 
 unless he had been directed. She would tell this to 
 Theobald, and get him to see it in the . . . and yet 
 perhaps it would be better not. The insight of women 
 upon matters of this sort was deeper and more unerring 
 than. that of men. It was a woman and not a man who 
 had been filled most completely with the whole fulness 
 of the Deity. But why had they not treasured up the 
 water after it was used? It ought never, never to have 
 been thrown away, but it had been. Perhaps, however, 
 this was for the best too they might have been tempted 
 to set too much store by it, and it might have become 
 a source of spiritual danger to them perhaps even of 
 spiritual pride, the very sin of all others which she most 
 abhorred. As for the channel through which the Jordan 
 had flowed to Battersby, that mattered not more than 
 the earth through which the river ran in Palestine itself. 
 Dr. Jones was certainly worldly very worldly; so, she 
 regretted to feel, had been her father-in-law, though in 
 a less degree; spiritual, at heart, doubtless, and becoming 
 more and more spiritual continually as he grew older, 
 still he was tainted with the world, till a very few hours, 
 probably, before his death, whereas she and Theobald 
 had given up all for Christ's sake. They were not 
 worldly. At least Theobald was not. She had been, but 
 she was sure she had grown in grace since she had left 
 off eating things strangled and blood this was as the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 103 
 
 washing in Jordan as against Abana and Pharpar, rivers 
 of Damascus. Her boy should never touch a strangled 
 fowl nor a black pudding that, at any rate, she could 
 see to. He should have a coral from the neighbourhood 
 of Joppa there were coral insects on those coasts, so 
 that the thing could easily be done with a little energy; 
 she would write to Dr. Jones about it, etc. And so on for 
 hours together day after day for years. Truly, Mrs 
 Theobald loved her child according to her lights with 
 an exceeding great fondness, but the dreams she had 
 dreamed in sleep were sober realities in comparison with 
 those she indulged in while awake. 
 
 When Ernest was in his second year, Theobald, as 
 I have already said, began to teach him to read. He 
 began to whip him two days after he had begun to teach 
 him. 
 
 "It was painful," as he said to Christina, but it was the 
 only thing to do and it was done. The child was puny, 
 white and sickly, so they sent continually for the doctor 
 who dosed him with calomel and James's powder. All 
 was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and im- 
 patience. They were stupid in little things ; and he \ 
 that is stupid in little will be stupid also in much., 
 
 Presently old Mr. Pontifex died, and then came the 
 revelation of the little alteration he had made in his 
 will simultaneously with his bequest to Ernest. It was 
 rather hard to bear, especially as there was no way of 
 conveying a bit of their minds to the testator now that 
 he could no longer hurt them. As regards the boy 
 himself anyone must see that the bequest would be an 
 unmitigated misfortune to him. To leave him a small 
 independence was perhaps the greatest injury which 
 one could inflict upon a young man. It would cripple 
 his energies, and deaden his desire for active employ- 
 ment. Many a youth was led into evil courses by the 
 knowledge that on arriving at majority he would come 
 into a few thousands. They might surely have been
 
 104 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 trusted to have their boy's interests at heart, and must 
 be better judges of those interests than he, at twenty-one, 
 could be expected to be: besides if Jonadab, the son of 
 Rechab's father or perhaps it might be simpler under 
 the circumstances to say Rechab at once if Rechab, 
 then, had left handsome legacies to his grandchildren 
 why Jonadab might not have found those children so 
 easy to deal with, etc. "My dear," said Theobald, after 
 having discussed the matter with Christina for the twen- 
 tieth time, "my dear, the only thing to guide and console 
 us under misfortunes of this kind is to take refuge in 
 practical work. I will go and pay a visit to Mrs. Thomp- 
 son." 
 
 On those days Mrs. Thompson would be told that her 
 sins were all washed white, etc., a little sooner and a little 
 more peremptorily than on others. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 I USED to stay at Battersby for a day or two sometimes, 
 while my godson and his brother and sister were chil- 
 dren. I hardly know why I went, for Theobald and I 
 grew more and more apart, but one gets into grooves 
 sometimes, and the supposed friendship between myself 
 and the Pontifexes continued to exist, though it was 
 now little more than rudimentary. My godson pleased 
 me more than either of the other children, but he had 
 not much of the buoyancy of childhood, and was more 
 like a puny, sallow little old man than I liked. The young 
 people, however, were very ready to be friendly. 
 
 I remember Ernest and his brother hovered round 
 me on the first day of one of these visits with their 
 hands full of fading flowers, which they at length prof- 
 fered me. On this I did what I suppose was expected : I 
 inquired if there was a shop near where they could buy 
 sweeties. They said there was, so I felt in my pockets,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 105 
 
 but only succeeded in finding two pence halfpenny in 
 small money. This I gave them, and the youngsters, 
 aged four and three, toddled off alone. Ere long they 
 returned, and Ernest said, "We can't get sweeties for 
 all this money" (I felt rebuked, but no rebuke was 
 intended) ; "we can get sweeties for this" (showing a 
 penny), "and for this" (showing another penny), "but 
 we cannot get them for all this," and he added the 
 halfpenny to the two pence. I suppose they had wanted 
 a twopenny cake, or something like that. I was amused, 
 and left them to solve the difficulty their own way, being 
 anxious to see what they would do. 
 
 Presently Ernest said, "May we give you back this" 
 (showing the halfpenny) "and not give you back this 
 and this?" (showing the pence). I assented, and they 
 gave a sigh of relief and went on their way rejoicing. 
 A few more presents of pence and small toys completed 
 the conquest, and they began to take me into their con- 
 fidence. 
 
 They told me a good deal which I am afraid I ought 
 not to have listened to. They said that if grandpapa had 
 lived longer he would most likely have been made a Lord, 
 and that then papa would have been the Honourable and 
 Reverend, but that grandpapa was now in heaven singing 
 beautiful hymns with Grandmamma Allaby to Jesus 
 Christ, who was very fond of them; and that when 
 Ernest was ill, his mamma had told him he need not be 
 afraid of dying, for he would go straight to heaven, 
 if he would only be sorry for having done his lessons 
 so badly and vexed his dear papa, and if he would 
 promise never, never to vex him any more; and that 
 when he got to heaven Grandpapa and Grandmamma 
 Allaby would meet him, and he would be always with 
 them, and they would be very good to him and teach 
 him to sing ever such beautiful hymns, more beautiful 
 by far than those which he was now so fond of, etc., 
 etc. ; but he did not wish to die, and was glad when he
 
 io6 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 got better, for there were no kittens in heaven, and he 
 did not think there were cowslips to make cowslip tea 
 with. 
 
 Their mother was plainly disappointed in them. "My 
 children are none of them geniuses, Mr. Overton," she 
 said to me at breakfast one morning. "They have fair 
 abilities, and, thanks to Theobald's tuition, they are 
 forward for their years, but they have nothing like 
 genius : genius is a thing apart from this, is it not ?" 
 
 Of course I said it was "a thing quite apart from 
 this," but if my thoughts had been laid bare, they would 
 have appeared as "Give me my coffee immediately, 
 ma'am, and don't talk nonsense." I have no idea what 
 genius is, but so far as I can form any conception about 
 it, I should say it was a stupid word which cannot be 
 too soon abandoned to scientific and literary claqueurs. 
 
 I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I 
 should imagine it was something like this : "My children 
 ought to be all geniuses, because they are mine and 
 Theobald's, and it is naughty of them not to be; but, 
 of course, they cannot be so good and clever as Theo- 
 bald and I were, and if they show signs of being so it 
 will be naughty of them. Happily, however, they are 
 not this, and yet it is very dreadful that they are not. 
 As for genius hoity-toity, indeed why, a genius should 
 turn intellectual somersaults as soon as it is born, and 
 none of my children have yet been able to get into the 
 newspapers. I will not have children of mine give them- 
 selves airs it is enough for them that Theobald and I 
 should do so." 
 
 She did not know, poor woman, that the true great- 
 ness wears an invisible cloak, under cover of which it 
 goes in and out among men without being suspected; if 
 its cloak does not conceal it from itself always, and 
 from all others for many years, its greatness will ere 
 long shrink to very ordinary dimensions. What, then, it 
 may be asked, is the good of being great? The answer
 
 The Way of All Flesh 107 
 
 is that you may understand greatness better in others, 
 whether alive or dead, and choose better company from 
 these and enjoy and understand that company better 
 when you have chosen it also that you may be able to 
 give pleasure to the best people and live in the lives of 
 those who are yet unborn. This, one would think, was 
 substantial gain enough for greatness without its wanting 
 to ride rough-shod over us, even when disguised as 
 humility. 
 
 I was there on a Sunday, and observed the rigour with 
 which the young people were taught to observe the 
 Sabbath; they might not cut out things, nor use their 
 paintbox on a Sunday, and this they thought rather hard, 
 because their cousins the John Pontifexes might do these 
 things. Their cousins might play with their toy train 
 on Sunday, but though they had promised that they 
 would run none but Sunday trains, all traffic had been 
 prohibited. One treat only was allowed them on Sun- 
 day evenings they might choose their own hymns. 
 
 In the course of the evening they came into the draw- 
 ing-room, and, as an especial treat, were to sing some of 
 their hymns to me, instead of saying them, so that I 
 might hear how nicely they sang. Ernest was to choose 
 the first hymn, and he chose one about some people who 
 were to come to the sunset tree. I am no botanist, and 
 do not know what kind of tree a sunset tree is, but the 
 words began, "Come, come, come; come to the sunset 
 tree, for the day is past and gone." The tune was rather 
 pretty and had taken Ernest's fancy, for he was un- 
 usually fond of music and had a sweet little child's 
 voice which he liked using. 
 
 He was, however, very late in being able to sound a 
 hard "c" or "k," and, instead of saying "Come," he said 
 "Turn, turn, turn." 
 
 "Ernest," said Theobald, from the armchair in front 
 of the fire, where he was sitting with his hands folded 
 before him, "don't you think it would be very nice if
 
 io8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 you were to say 'come' like other people, instead of 
 'turn'?" 
 
 "I do say turn," replied Ernest, meaning that he had 
 said "come." 
 
 Theobald was always in a bad temper on Sunday 
 evening. Whether it is that they are as much bored 
 with the day as their neighbours, or whether they are 
 tired, or whatever the cause may be, clergymen are 
 seldom at their best on Sunday evening; I had already 
 seen signs that evening that my host was cross, and was 
 a little nervous at hearing Ernest say so promptly, "I do 
 say turn," when his papa had said he did not say it as 
 he should. 
 
 Theobald noticed the fact that he was being contra- 
 dicted in a moment. He got up from his armchair and 
 went to the piano. 
 
 "No, Ernest, you don't," he said, "you say nothing of 
 the kind, you say 'turn/ not 'come.' Now say 'come' 
 after me, as I do." 
 
 "Turn," said Ernest, at once; "is that better?" I have 
 no doubt he thought it was, but it was not. 
 
 "Now, Ernest, you are not taking pains : you are not 
 trying as you ought to do. It is high time you learned 
 to say 'come'; why, Joey can say 'come,' can't you, 
 Joey?" 
 
 "Yeth, I can," replied Joey, and he said something 
 which was not far off "come." 
 
 "There, Ernest, do you hear that? There's no diffi- 
 culty about it, nor shadow of difficulty. Now, take your 
 own time, think about it, and say 'come' after me." 
 
 The boy remained silent a few seconds and then said 
 "turn" again. 
 
 I laughed, but Theobald turned to me impatiently and 
 said, "Please do not laugh, Overton; it will make the 
 boy think it does not matter, and it matters a great deal ;" 
 then turning to Ernest he said, "Now, Ernest, I will give
 
 The Way of All Flesh 109 
 
 you one more chance, and if you don't say 'come/ I 
 shall know that you are self-willed and naughty." 
 
 He looked very angry, and a shade came over Ernest's 
 face, like that which comes upon the face of a puppy 
 when it is being scolded without understanding why. 
 The child saw well what was coming now, was fright- 
 ened, and, of course, said "turn" once more. 
 
 "Very well, Ernest," said his father, catching him 
 angrily by the shoulder. "I have done my best to save 
 you, but if you will have it so, you will," and he lugged 
 the little wretch, crying by anticipation, out of the room. 
 A few minutes more and we could hear screams coming 
 from the dining-room, across the hall which separated 
 the drawing-room from the dining-room, and knew that 
 poor Ernest was being beaten. 
 
 "I have sent him up to bed," said Theobald, as he 
 returned to the drawing-room, "and now, Christina, I 
 think we will have the servants in to prayers," and he 
 rang the bell for them, red-handed as he was. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE man-servant William came and set the chairs for 
 the maids, and presently they filed in. First Christina's 
 maid, then the cook, then the housemaid, then William, 
 and then the coachman. I sat opposite them, and 
 watched their faces as Theobald read a chapter from 
 the Bible. They were nice people, but more absolute 
 vacancy I never saw upon the countenances of human 
 beings. 
 
 Theobald began by reading a few verses from the Old 
 Testament, according to some system of his own. On 
 this occasion the passage came from the fifteenth chap- 
 ter of Numbers : it had no particular bearing that I 
 could see upon anything which was going on just then,
 
 no The Way of All Flesh 
 
 but the spirit which breathed throughout the whole 
 seemed to me to be so like that of Theobald himself, that 
 I could understand better after hearing it, how he came 
 to think as he thought, and act as he acted. 
 The verses are as follows 
 
 "But the soul that doeth aught presumptuously, whether he 
 be born in the land or a stranger, the same reproacheth the Lord ; 
 and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 
 
 "Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath 
 broken His commandments, that soul shall be utterly cut off; his 
 iniquity shall be upon him. 
 
 "And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness they 
 found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. 
 
 "And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto 
 Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 
 
 "And they put him in ward because it was not declared what 
 should be done to him. 
 
 "And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall be surely put to 
 death ; all the congregation shall stone him with stones without 
 the camp. 
 
 "And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and 
 stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded 
 Moses. 
 
 "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, 
 
 "Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they 
 make them fringes in the borders of their garments throughout 
 their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the bor- 
 ders a ribband of blue. 
 
 "And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon 
 it and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them, 
 and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes. 
 
 "That ye may remember and do all my commandments and be 
 holy unto your God. 
 
 "I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land 
 of Egypt, to be your God : I am the Lord your God." 
 
 My thoughts wandered while Theobald was reading 
 the above, and reverted to a little matter which I had 
 observed in the course of the afternoon. 
 
 It happened that some years previously, a swarm of 
 bees had taken up their abode in the roof of the house
 
 The Way of All Flesh in 
 
 under the slates, and had multiplied so that the drawing- 
 room was a good deal frequented by these bees during 
 the summer, when the windows were open. The draw- 
 ing-room paper was of a pattern which consisted of 
 bunches of red and white roses, and I saw several bees 
 at different times fly up to these bunches and try them, 
 under the impression that they were real flowers ; having 
 tried one bunch, they tried the next, and the next, and 
 the next, till they reached the one that was nearest the 
 ceiling, then they went down bunch by bunch as they 
 had ascended, till they were stopped by the back of the 
 sofa; on this they ascended bunch by bunch to the 
 ceiling again; and so on, and so on till I was tired of 
 watching them. As I thought of the family prayers 
 being repeated night and morning, week by week, month 
 by month, and year by year, I could not help thinking 
 how like it was to the way in which the bees went up the 
 wall and down the wall, bunch by bunch, without ever 
 suspecting that so many of the associated ideas could be 
 present, and yet the main idea be wanting hopelessly, and 
 for ever. 
 
 When Theobald had finished reading we all knelt 
 down and the Carlo Dolci and the Sassoferrato looked 
 down upon a sea of upturned backs, as we buried our 
 faces in our chairs. I noted that Theobald prayed that 
 we might be made "truly honest and conscientious" in 
 all our dealings, and smiled at the introduction of the 
 "truly." Then my thoughts ran back to the bees and I 
 reflected that after all it was perhaps as well, at any rate 
 for Theobald, that our prayers were seldom marked by 
 any very encouraging degree of response, for if I had 
 thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard 
 I should have prayed that some one might ere long treat 
 him as he had treated Ernest. 
 
 Then my thoughts wandered on to those calculations 
 which people make about waste of time and how much 
 one can get done if one gives ten minutes a day to it, and
 
 H2 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I was" thinking what improper suggestion I could make 
 in connection with this and the time spent on family 
 prayers which should at the same time be just tolerable, 
 when I heard Theobald beginning, "The grace of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ," and in a few seconds the ceremony 
 was over, and the servants filed out again as they had 
 filed in. 
 
 As soon as they had left the drawing-room, Christina, 
 who was a little ashamed of the transaction to which I 
 had been a witness, imprudently returned to it, and 
 began to justify it, saying that it cut her to the heart, 
 and that it cut Theobald to the heart and a good deal 
 more, but that "it was the only thing to be done." 
 
 I received this as coldly as I decently could, and by 
 my silence during the rest of the evening showed that 
 I disapproved of what I had seen. 
 
 Next day I was to go back to London, but before I 
 went I said I should like to take some new-laid eggs 
 back with me, so Theobald took me to the house of a 
 labourer in the village who lived a stone's throw from 
 the Rectory as being likely to supply me with them. 
 Ernest, for some reason or other, was allowed to come 
 too. I think the hens had begun to sit, but at any rate 
 eggs were scarce, and the cottager's wife could not find 
 me more than seven or eight, which we proceeded to 
 wrap up in separate pieces of paper so that I might take 
 them to town safely. 
 
 This operation was carried on upon the ground in 
 front of the cottage door, and while we were in the 
 midst of it the cottager's little boy, a lad much about 
 Ernest's age, trod upon one of the eggs that was wrapped 
 up in paper and broke it. 
 
 "There now, Jack," said his mother, "see what you've 
 done, you've broken a nice egg and cost me a penny 
 here, Emma," she added, calling her daughter, "take the 
 child away, there's a dear."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 113 
 
 Emma came at once, and walked off with the young- 
 ster, taking him out of harm's way. 
 
 "Papa," said Ernest, after we had left the house, 
 "why didn't Mrs. Heaton whip Jack when he trod on 
 the egg?" 
 
 I was spiteful enough to give Theobald a grim smile 
 which said as plainly as words could have done that I 
 thought Ernest had hit him rather hard. 
 
 Theobald coloured and looked angry. "I dare say," 
 he said quickly, "that his mother will whip him now that 
 we are gone." 
 
 I was not going to have this and said I did not believe 
 it, and so the matter dropped, but Theobald did not 
 forget it, and my visits to Battersby were henceforth less 
 frequent. 
 
 On our return to the house we found the postman 
 had arrived and had brought a letter appointing Theo- 
 bald to a rural deanery which had lately fallen vacant 
 by the death of one of the neighbouring clergy who had 
 held the office for many years. The bishop wrote to 
 Theobald most warmly, and assured him that he valued 
 him as among the most hard-working and devoted of his 
 parochial clergy. Christina, of course, was delighted, and 
 gave me to understand that it was only an instalment of 
 the much higher dignities which were in store for Theo- 
 bald when his merits were more widely known. 
 
 I did not then foresee how closely my godson's life 
 and mine were in after years to be bound up together; 
 if I had, I should doubtless have looked upon him with 
 different eyes and noted much to which I paid no atten- 
 tion at the time. As it was, I was glad to get away from 
 him, for I could do nothing for him, or chose to say 
 that I could not, and the sight of so much suffering was 
 painful to me. A man should not only have his own 
 way as far as possible, but he should only consort with 
 things that are getting their own way so far that they
 
 H4 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 are at any rate comfortable. Unless for short times 
 under exceptional circumstances, he should not even see 
 things that have been stunted or starved, much less 
 should he eat meat that has been vexed by having been 
 over-driven or underfed, or afflicted with any disease; 
 nor should he touch vegetables that have not been well 
 grown. For all these things cross a man ; whatever a 
 man comes in contact with in any way forms a cross 
 with him which will leave him better or worse, and the 
 better things he is crossec^with the more likely he is to 
 live long and happily. All things must be crossed a 
 little or they would cease to live but holy things, such 
 for example as Giovanni Bellini's saints, have been 
 crossed with nothing but what is good of its kind. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE storm which I have described in the previous chap- 
 ter was a sample of those that occurred daily for many 
 years. No matter how clear the sky, it was always liable 
 to cloud over now in one quarter now in another, and 
 the thunder and lightning were upon the young people 
 before they knew where they were. 
 
 "And then, you know," said Ernest to me, when I 
 asked him not long since to give me more of his childish 
 reminiscences for the benefit of my story, "we used to 
 learn Mrs. Barbauld's hymns; they were in prose, and 
 there was one about the lion which began, 'Come, and I 
 will show you what is strong. The lion is strong ; when 
 he raiseth himself from his lair, when he shaketh his 
 mane, when the voice of his roaring is heard the cattle 
 of the field fly, and the beasts of the desert hide them- 
 selves, for he is very terrible. I used to say this to Joey 
 and Charlotte about my father himself when I got a 
 little older, but they were always didactic, and said it 
 was naughty of me.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 115 
 
 "One great reason why clergymen's households are 
 generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much 
 at home or close about the house. The doctor is out 
 visiting patients half his time : the lawyer and the mer- 
 chant have offices away from home, but the clergyman 
 has no official place of business which shall ensure his 
 being away from home for many hours together at stated 
 times. Our great days were when my father went for 
 a day's shopping to Gildenham. We were some miles 
 from this place, and commissions used to accumulate on 
 my father's list till he would make a day of it and go 
 and do the lot. As soon as his back was turned the 
 air felt lighter; as soon as the hall door opened to let 
 him in again, the law with its all-reaching 'touch not, 
 taste not, handle not' was upon us again. The worst of 
 it was that I could never trust Joey and Charlotte ; they 
 would go a good way with me and then turn back, or 
 even the whole way and then their consciences would 
 compel them to tell papa and mamma. They liked run- 
 ning with the hare up to a certain point, but their instinct 
 was towards the hounds. 
 
 "It seems to me," he continued, "that the family is a 
 survival of the principle which is more logically em- 
 bodied in the compound animal and the compound 
 animal is a form of life which has been found incom- 
 patible with high development. I would do with the 
 family among mankind what nature has done with the 
 compound animal, and confine it to the lower and less 
 progressive races. Certainly there is no inherent love 
 for the family system on the part of nature herself. 
 Poll the forms of life and you will find it in a ridicu- 
 lously small minority. The fishes know it not, and they 
 get along quite nicely. The ants and the bees, who far 
 outnumber man, sting their fathers to death as a matter 
 of course, and are given to the atrocious mutilation of 
 nine-tenths of the offspring committed to their charge, 
 yet where shall we find communities more universally
 
 n6 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 respected? Take the cuckoo again is there any bird 
 which we like better?" 
 
 I saw he was running off from his own reminiscences 
 and tried to bring him back to them, but it was no use. 
 
 "What a fool," he said, "a man is to remember any- 
 thing that happened more than a week ago unless it was 
 pleasant, or unless he wants to make some use of it. 
 
 "Sensible people get the greater part of their own 
 dying done during their own lifetime. A man at five and 
 thirty should no more regret not having had a happier 
 childhood than he should regret not having been born a 
 prince of the blood. He might be happier if he had been 
 more fortunate in childhood, but, for aught he knows, if 
 he had, something else might have happened which might 
 have killed him long ago. If I had to be born again 
 I would be born at Battersby of the same father and 
 mother as before, and I would not alter anything that 
 has ever happened to me." 
 
 The most amusing incident that I can remember about 
 his childhood was that when he was about seven years 
 old he told me he was going to have a natural child. 
 I asked him his reasons for thinking this, and he ex- 
 plained that papa and mamma had always told him that 
 nobody had children till they were married, and as long 
 as he had believed this of course he had had no idea of 
 having a child till he was grown up; but not long since 
 he had been reading Mrs. Markham's history of England 
 and had come upon the words, "John of Gaunt had 
 several natural children" ; he had therefore asked his 
 governess what a natural child was were not all chil- 
 dren natural? 
 
 "Oh, my dear," said she, "a natural child is a child a 
 person has before he is married." On this it seemed to 
 follow logically that if John of Gaunt had had children 
 before he was married, he, Ernest Pontifex, might have 
 them also, and he would be obliged to me if I would tell 
 him what he had better do under the circumstances.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 117 
 
 I enquired how long ago he had made this discovery. 
 He said about a fortnight, and he did not know where 
 to look for the child, for it might come at any moment. 
 "You know," he said, "babies come so suddenly; one 
 goes to bed one night and next morning there is a baby. 
 Why, it might die of cold if we are not on the lookout 
 for it. I hope it will be a boy." 
 
 "And you have told your governess about this ?" 
 
 "Yes, but she puts me off and does not help me: she 
 says it will not come for many years, and she hopes not 
 then." 
 
 "Are you quite sure that you have not made any mis- 
 take in all this ?" 
 
 "Oh, no; because Mrs. Burne, you know, called here 
 a few days ago, and I was sent for to be looked at. And 
 mamma held me out at arm's length and said, 'Is he Mr. 
 Pontifex's child, Mrs. Burne, or is he mine?' Of course, 
 she couldn't have said this if papa had not had some of 
 the children himself. I did think the gentleman had 
 all the boys and the lady all the girls; but it can't be 
 like this, or else mamma would not have asked Mrs. 
 Burne to guess; but then Mrs. Burne said, 'Oh, he's 
 Mr. Pontifex's child of course,' and I didn't quite know 
 what she meant by saying 'of course' : it seemed as 
 though I was right in thinking that the husband has 
 all the boys and the wife all the girls ; I wish you would 
 explain to me all about it." 
 
 This I could hardly do, so I changed the conversa- 
 tion, after reassuring him as best I could. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THREE or four years after the birth of her daughter, 
 Christina had had one more child. She had never been 
 strong since she married, and had a presentiment that 
 she should not survive this last confinement. She accord-
 
 n8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ingly wrote the following letter, which was to be given, 
 as she endorsed upon it, to her sons when Ernest was 
 sixteen years old. It reached him on his mother's death 
 many years later, for it was the baby who died now, 
 and not Christina. It was found among papers which 
 she had repeatedly and carefully arranged, with the seal 
 already broken. This, I am afraid, shows that Christina 
 had read it and thought it too creditable to be destroyed 
 when the occasion that had called it forth had gone by. 
 It is as follows 
 
 "BATTERSBY, March i$th, 1841. 
 
 "Mv TWO DEAR BOYS, When this is put into your 
 hands will you try to bring to mind the mother whom 
 you lost in your childhood, and whom, I fear, you will 
 almost have forgotten ? You, Ernest, will remember her 
 best, for you are past five years old, and the many, many 
 times that she has taught you your prayers and hymns 
 and sums and told you stories, and our happy Sunday 
 evenings will not quite have passed from your mind, 
 and you, Joey, though only four, will perhaps recollect 
 some of these things. My dear, dear boys, for the sake 
 of that mother who loved you very dearly and for the 
 sake of your own happiness for ever and ever attend 
 to and try to remember, and from time to time read 
 over again the last words she can ever speak to you. 
 When I think about leaving you all, two things press 
 heavily upon me: one, your father's sorrow (for you, 
 my darlings, after missing me a little while, will soon 
 forget your loss), the other, the everlasting welfare of 
 my children. I know how long and deep the former will 
 be, and I know that he will look to his children to be 
 almost his only earthly comfort. You know (for I am 
 certain that it will have been so), how he has devoted his 
 life to you and taught you and laboured to lead you to all 
 that is right and good. Oh, then, be sure that you are
 
 The Way of All Flesh 119 
 
 his comforts. Let him find you obedient, affectionate and 
 attentive to his wishes, upright, self-denying and dili- 
 gent ; let him never blush for or grieve over the sins and 
 follies of those who owe him such a debt of gratitude, 
 and whose first duty it is to study his happiness. You 
 have both of you a name which must not be disgraced, a 
 father and a grandfather of whom to show yourselves 
 worthy; your respectability and well-doing in life rest 
 mainly with yourselves, but far, far beyond earthly 
 respectability and well-doing, and compared with which 
 they are as nothing, your eternal happiness rests with 
 yourselves. You know your duty, but snares and 
 temptations from without beset you, and the nearer you 
 approach to manhood the more strongly will you feel 
 this. With God's help, with God's word, and with 
 humble hearts you will stand in spite of everything, but 
 should you leave off seeking in earnest for the first, 
 and applying to the second, should you learn to trust in 
 yourselves, or to the advice and example of too many 
 around you, you will, you must fall. Oh, 'let God be 
 true and every man a liar.' He says you cannot serve 
 Him and Mammon. He says that strait is the gate that 
 leads to eternal life. Many there are who seek to 
 widen it; they will tell you that such and such self- 
 indulgences are but venial offences that this and that 
 worldly compliance is excusable and even necessary. 
 The thing cannot be; for in a hundred and a hundred 
 places He tells you so look to your Bibles and seek 
 there whether such counsel is true and if not, oh, 'halt 
 not between two opinions,' if God is the Lord follow 
 Him; only be strong and of a good courage, and He will 
 never leave you nor forsake you. Remember, there is 
 not in the Bible one law for the rich, and one for the 
 poor one for the educated and one for the ignorant. 
 To all there is but one thing needful. All are to be 
 living to God and their fellow-creatures, and not to them- 
 selves. All must seek first the Kingdom of God and
 
 120 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 His righteousness must deny themselves, be pure and 
 chaste and charitable in the fullest and widest sense 
 all, 'forgetting those things that are behind,' must 'press 
 forward towards the mark, for the prize of the high 
 calling of God.' 
 
 "And now I will add but two things more. Be true 
 through life to each other, love as only brothers should 
 do, strengthen, warn, encourage one another, and let 
 who will be against you, let each feel that in his brother 
 he has a firm and faithful friend who will be so to the 
 end ; and, oh ! be kind and watchful over your dear 
 sister; without mother or sisters she will doubly need 
 her brothers' love and tenderness and confidence. I am 
 certain she will seek them, and will love you and try to 
 make you happy; be sure then that you do not fail her, 
 and remember, that were she to lose her father and 
 remain unmarried, she would doubly need protectors. 
 To you, then, I especially commend her. Oh! my three 
 darling children, be true to each other, your Father, 
 and your God. May He guide and bless you, and grant 
 that in a better and happier world I and mine may meet 
 again. Your most affectionate mother, 
 
 "CHRISTINA PONTIFEX." 
 
 From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself 
 that most mothers write letters like this shortly before 
 their confinements, and that fifty per cent, keep them 
 afterwards, as Christina did. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE foregoing letter shows how much greater was Chris- 
 tina's anxiety for the eternal than for the temporal wel- 
 fare of her sons. One would have thought she had 
 sowed enough of such religious wild oats by this time,
 
 . The Way of All Flesh 121 
 
 but she had plenty still to sow. To me it seems that 
 those who are happy in this world are better and more 
 lovable people than those who are not, and that thus in 
 the event of a Resurrection and Day of Judgement, they 
 will be the most likely to be deemed worthy of a heavenly 
 mansion. Perhaps a dim unconscious perception of this 
 was the reason why Christina was so anxious for Theo- 
 bald's earthly happiness, or was it merely due to a 
 conviction that his eternal welfare was so much a matter 
 of course, that it only remained to secure his earthly 
 happiness ? He was to "find his sons obedient, affection- 
 ate, attentive to his wishes, self-denying and diligent," 
 a goodly string forsooth of all the virtues most con- 
 venient to parents; he was never to have to blush for 
 the follies of those "who owed him such a debt of 
 gratitude," and "whose first duty it was to study his 
 happiness." How like maternal solicitude is this ! Solici- 
 tude for the most part lest the offspring should come to 
 have wishes and feelings of its own, which may occasion 
 many difficulties, fancied or real. It is this that is at 
 the bottom of the whole mischief ; but whether this last 
 proposition is granted or no, at any rate we observe 
 that Christina had a sufficiently keen appreciation of the 
 duties of children towards their parents, and felt the task 
 of fulfilling them adequately to be so difficult that she 
 was very doubtful how far Ernest and Joey would 
 succeed in mastering it. It is plain in fact that her 
 supposed parting glance upon them was one of sus- 
 picion. But there was no suspicion of Theobald; that 
 he should have devoted his life to his children why, this 
 was such a mere platitude, as almost to go without 
 saying. 
 
 How, let me ask, was it possible that a child only a 
 little past five years old, trained in such an atmosphere 
 of prayers and hymns and sums and happy Sunday 
 evenings to say nothing of daily repeated beatings over 
 the said prayers and hymns, etc., about which our au-
 
 122 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 thoress is silent how was it possible that a lad so 
 trained should grow up in any healthy or vigorous de- 
 velopment, even though in her own way his mother was 
 undoubtedly very fond of him, and sometimes told him 
 stories? Can the eye of any reader fail to detect the 
 coming wrath of God as about to descend upon the head 
 of him who should be nurtured under the shadow of 
 such a letter as the foregoing? 
 
 I have often thought that the Church of Rome does 
 wisely in not allowing her priests to marry. Certainly 
 it is a matter of common observation in England that 
 the sons of clergymen are frequently unsatisfactory. The 
 explanation is very simple, but is so often lost sight of 
 that I may perhaps be pardoned for giving it here. 
 
 The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human 
 Sunday. Things must not be done in him which are 
 venial in the week-day classes. He is paid for this busi- 
 ness of leading a stricter life than other people. It is 
 his raison d'etre. If his parishioners feel that he does 
 this, they approve of him, for they look upon him as 
 their own contribution towards what they deem a holy 
 life. This is why the clergyman is so often called a 
 vicar he being the person whose vicarious goodness is 
 to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge. But 
 his home is his castle as much as that of any other Eng- 
 lishman, and with him, as with others, unnatural tension 
 in public is followed by exhaustion when tension is no 
 longer necessary. His children are the most defenceless 
 things he can reach, and it is on them in nine cases out 
 of ten that he will relieve his mind. 
 
 A clergyman, again, can hardly ever allow himself 
 to look facts fairly in the face. It is his profession to 
 support one side; it is impossible, therefore, for him to 
 make an unbiassed examination of the other. 
 
 We forget that every clergyman with a living or 
 curacy, is as much a paid advocate as the barrister who 
 is trying to persuade a jury to acquit a prisoner. We
 
 The Way of All Flesh 123 
 
 should listen to him with the same suspense of judgment, 
 the same full consideration of the arguments of the 
 opposing counsel, as a judge does when he is trying a 
 case. Unless we know these, and can state them in a 
 way that our opponents would admit to be a fair repre- 
 sentation of their views, we have no right to claim that 
 we have formed an opinion at all. The misfortune is 
 that by the law of the land one side only can be heard. 
 
 Theobald and Christina were no exceptions to the 
 general rule. When they came to Battersby they had 
 every desire to fulfil the duties of their position, and 
 to devote themselves to the honour and glory of God. 
 But it was Theobald's duty to see the honour and glory 
 of God through the eyes of a Church which had lived 
 three hundred years without finding reason to change a 
 single one of its opinions. 
 
 I should doubt whether he ever got as far as doubting 
 the wisdom of his Church upon any single matter. His 
 scent for possible mischief was tolerably keen; so was 
 Christina's, and it is likely that if either of them detected 
 in him or herself the first faint symptoms of a want of 
 faith they were nipped no less peremptorily in the bud, 
 than signs of self-will in Ernest were and I should 
 imagine more successfully. Yet Theobald considered 
 himself, and was generally considered to be, and indeed 
 perhaps was, an exceptionally truthful person ; indeed he 
 was generally looked upon as an embodiment of all those 
 virtues which make the poor respectable and the rich 
 respected. In the course of time he and his wife became 
 persuaded even to unconsciousness, that no one could 
 even dwell under their roof without deep cause for 
 thankfulness. Their children, their servants, their 
 parishioners must be fortunate ipso facto that they were 
 theirs. There was no road to happiness here or here- 
 after, but the road that they had themselves travelled, 
 no good people who did not think as they did upon every 
 subject, and no reasonable person who had wants the
 
 124 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 gratification of which would be inconvenient to them 
 Theobald and Christina. 
 
 This was how it came to pass that their children were 
 white and puny ; they were suffering from home-sickness. 
 They were starving, through being over-crammed with 
 the wrong things. Nature came down upon them, but 
 she did not come down on Theobald and Christina. Why 
 should she ? They were not leading a starved existence. 
 There are two classes of people in this world, those who 
 sin, and those who are sinned against ; if a man must 
 belong to either, he had better belong to the first than 
 to the second. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 I WILL give no more of the details of my hero's earlier 
 years. Enough that he struggled through them, and at 
 twelve years old knew every page of his Latin and Greek 
 Grammars by heart. He had read the greater part of 
 Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how many 
 Greek plays : he was proficient in arithmetic, knew the 
 first four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair 
 knowledge of French. It was now time he went to 
 school, and to school he was accordingly to go, under 
 the famous Dr. Skinner of Roughborough. 
 
 Theobald had known Dr. Skinner slightly at Cam- 
 bridge. He had been a burning and a shining light in 
 every position he had filled from his boyhood upwards. 
 He was a very great genius. Everyone knew this ; they 
 said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom 
 the word genius could be applied without exaggeration. 
 Had he not taken I don't know how many University 
 Scholarships in his freshman's year? Had he not been 
 afterwards Senior Wrangler, First Chancellor's Medal- 
 list and I do not know how many more things besides? 
 And then, he was such a wonderful speaker; at the 
 Union Debating Club he had been without a rival, and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 125 
 
 had, of course, been president; his moral character a 
 point on which so many geniuses were weak was abso- 
 lutely irreproachable; foremost of all, however, among 
 his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable 
 even than his genius was what biographers have called 
 "the simple-minded and childlike earnestness of his 
 character," an earnestness which might be perceived by 
 the solemnity with which he spoke even about trifles. It 
 is hardly necessary to say he was on the Liberal side in 
 politics. 
 
 His personal appearance was not particularly pre- 
 possessing. He was about the middle height, portly, and 
 had a couple of fierce grey eyes, that flashed fire from 
 beneath a pair of great, bushy, beetling eyebrows and 
 overawed all who came near him. It was in respect of 
 his personal appearance, however, that, if he was vulner- 
 able at all, his weak place was to be found. His hair 
 when he was a young man was red, but after he had 
 taken his degree he had a brain fever which caused him 
 to have his head shaved ; when he reappeared he did so 
 wearing a wig, and one which was a good deal further 
 off red than his own hair had been. He not only had 
 never discarded his wig, but year by year it had edged 
 itself a little more and a little more off red, till by the 
 time he was forty, there was not a trace of red remain- 
 ing, and his wig was brown. 
 
 When Dr. Skinner was a very young man, hardly more 
 than five-and-twenty, the head-mastership of Rough- 
 borough Grammar School had fallen vacant, and he 
 had been unhesitatingly appointed. The result justified 
 the selection. Dr. Skinner's pupils distinguished them- 
 selves at whichever University they went to. He 
 moulded their minds after the model of his own, and 
 stamped an impression upon them which was indelible 
 in after-life; whatever else a Roughborough man might 
 be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a 
 God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, if not a
 
 126 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Radical, in politics. Some boys, of course, were in- 
 capable of appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr. 
 Skinner's nature. Some such boys, alas ! there will be in 
 every school ; upon them Dr. Skinner's hand was very 
 properly a heavy one. His hand was against them, and 
 theirs against him during the whole time of the connec- 
 tion between them. They not only disliked him, but they 
 hated all that he more especially embodied, and through- 
 out their lives disliked all that reminded them of him. 
 Such boys, however, were in a minority, the spirit of 
 the place being decidedly Skinnerian. 
 
 I once had the honour of playing a game of chess 
 with this great man. It was during the Christmas holi- 
 days, and I had come down to Roughborough for a few 
 days to see Alethea Pontifex (who was then living 
 there) on business. It was very gracious of him to 
 take notice of me, for if I was a light of literature at all 
 it was of the very lightest kind. 
 
 It is true that in the intervals of business I had written 
 a good deal, but my works had been almost exclusively 
 for the stage, and for those theatres that devoted them- 
 selves to extravanganza and burlesque. I had written 
 many pieces of this description, full of puns and comic 
 songs, and they had had a fair success, but my best piece 
 had been a treatment of English history during the 
 Reformation period, in the course of which I had intro- 
 duced Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Henry the Eighth, 
 Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell (in his 
 youth better known as the Malleus M onachorum} , and 
 had made them dance a break-down. I had also drama- 
 tised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas Panto- 
 mime, and made an important scene of Vanity Fair, with 
 Mr. Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy, and Hope- 
 ful as the principal characters. The orchestra played 
 music taken from Handel's best known works, but the 
 tiaie was a good deal altered, and altogether the tunes 
 were not exactly as Handel left them. Mr. Greatheart
 
 The Way of All Flesh 127 
 
 was very stout and he had a red nose ; he wore a capa- 
 cious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the 
 middle of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mis- 
 chief as I could give him; he wore the costume of a 
 young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his mouth 
 which was continually going out. 
 
 Christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it 
 was said that the dress which the Stage Manager had 
 originally proposed for her had been considered inade- 
 quate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the 
 case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was 
 natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing 
 chess (which I hate) with the great Dr. Skinner of 
 Roughborough the historian of Athens and editor of 
 Demosthenes. Dr. Skinner, moreover, was one of those 
 .who pride themselves on being able to set people at 
 their ease at once, and I had been sitting on the edge of 
 my chair all the evening. But I have always been very 
 easily overawed by a schoolmaster. 
 
 The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, 
 when supper came in, we had each of us a few pieces 
 remaining. "What will you take for supper, Dr. Skin- 
 ner?" said Mrs. Skinner in a silvery voice. 
 
 He made no answer for some time, but at last in a 
 tone of almost superhuman solemnity, he said, first, 
 "Nothing," and then, "Nothing whatever." 
 
 By and by, however, I had a sense come over me as 
 though I were nearer the consummation of all things 
 than I had ever yet been. The room seemed to grow 
 dark, as an expression came over Dr. Skinner's face, 
 which showed that he was about to speak. The expres- 
 sion gathered force, the room grew darker and darker. 
 "Stay," he at length added, and I felt that here at any 
 rate was an end to a suspense which was rapidly becom- 
 ing unbearable. "Stay I may presently take a glass of 
 cold water and a small piece of bread and butter." 
 
 As he said the word "butter" his voice sank to a
 
 128 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 hardly audible whisper ; then there was a sigh as though 
 of relief when the sentence was concluded, and the 
 universe this time was safe. 
 
 Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the 
 game. The Doctor rose briskly from his seat and placed 
 himself at the supper table. "Mrs. Skinner," he ex- 
 claimed jauntily, "what are those mysterious-looking 
 objects surrounded by potatoes?" 
 
 "Those are oysters, Dr. Skinner." 
 
 "Give me some, and give Overton some." 
 
 And so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a 
 scallop shell of minced veal nicely browned, some apple 
 tart, and a hunk of bread and cheese. This was the 
 small piece of bread and butter. 
 
 The cloth was now removed and tumblers with tea- 
 spoons in them, a lemon or two and a jug of boiling 
 water were placed upon the table. Then the great man 
 unbent. His face beamed. 
 
 "And what shall it be to drink?" he exclaimed per- 
 suasively. "Shall it be brandy and water? No. It 
 shall be gin and water. Gin is the more wholesome 
 liquor." 
 
 So gin it was, hot and stiff, too. 
 
 Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him ? 
 Was he not head-master of Roughborough School? To 
 whom had he owed money at any time ? Whose ox had 
 he taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he 
 defrauded? What whisper had ever been breathed 
 against his moral character? If he had become rich it 
 was by the most honourable of all means his literary 
 attainments ; over and above his great works of scholar- 
 ship, his "Meditations upon the Epistle and Character 
 of St. Jude" had placed him among the most popular of 
 English theologians; it was so exhaustive that no one 
 who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject again 
 indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with 
 it. He had made 5000 by this work alone, and would
 
 The Way of All Flesh 129 
 
 very likely make another 5000 before he died. A man 
 who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and 
 butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp 
 and circumstance. Nor should his words be taken with- 
 out searching for what he used to call a "deeper and 
 more hidden meaning." Those who searched for this 
 even in his lightest utterances would not be without 
 their reward. They would find that "bread and butter" 
 was Skinnerese for oyster-patties and apple tart, and 
 "gin hot" the true translation of water. 
 
 But independently of their money value, his works had 
 made him a lasting name in literature. So probably 
 Gallio was under the impression that his fame would 
 rest upon the treatises on natural history which we 
 gather from Seneca that he compiled, and which for 
 aught we know may have contained a complete theory 
 of evolution ; but the treatises are all gone and Gallio has 
 become immortal for the very last reason in the world 
 that he expected, and for the very last reason that would 
 have flattered his vanity. He has become immortal be- 
 cause he cared nothing about the most important move- 
 ment with which he was ever brought into connection 
 (I wish people who are in search of immortality would 
 lay the lesson to heart and not make so much noise 
 about important movements), and so, if Dr. Skinner 
 becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason 
 very different from the one which he so fondly imagined. 
 
 Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a 
 man as this that in reality he was making his money by 
 corrupting youth ; that it was his paid profession to make 
 the worse appear the better reason in the eyes of those 
 who were too young and inexperienced to be able to 
 find him out; that he kept out of the sight of those 
 whom he professed to teach material points of the 
 argument, for the production of which they had a right 
 to rely upon the honour of anyone who made profes- 
 sions of sincerity ; that he was a passionate, half-turkey-
 
 130 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 cock, half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face and 
 hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid, but who would 
 take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly; 
 that his "Meditations on St. Jude," such as they were, 
 were cribbed without acknowledgment, and would have 
 been beneath contempt if so many people did not believe 
 them to have been written honestly ? Mrs. Skinner might 
 have perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place 
 if she had thought it worth while to try, but she had 
 enough to attend to in looking after her household and 
 seeing that the boys were well fed and, if they were ill, 
 properly looked after which she took good care they 
 were. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 ERNEST had heard awful accounts of Dr. Skinner's tem- 
 per, and of the bullying which the younger boys at 
 Roughborough had to put up with at the hands of the 
 bigger ones. He had now got about as much as he could 
 stand, and felt as though it must go hard with him if his 
 burdens of whatever kind were to be increased. He did 
 not cry on leaving home, but I am afraid he did on being 
 told that he was getting near Roughborough. His father 
 and mother were with him, having posted from home in 
 their own carriage; Roughborough had as yet no rail- 
 way, and as it was only some forty miles from Battersby, 
 this was the easiest way of getting there. 
 
 On seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and 
 caressed him. She said she knew he must feel very sad 
 at leaving such a happy home, and going among people 
 who, though they would be very good to him, could 
 never, never be as good as his dear papa and she had 
 been; still, she was herself, if he only knew it, much 
 more deserving of pity than he was, for the parting was 
 more painful to her than it could possibly be to him, etc., 
 and Ernest, on being told that his tears were for grief
 
 The Way of All Flesh 131 
 
 at leaving home, took it all on trust, and did not trouble 
 to investigate the real cause of his tears. As they 
 approached Roughborough he pulled himself together, 
 and was fairly calm by the time he reached Dr. Skinner's. 
 
 On their arrival they had luncheon with the Doctor 
 and his wife, and then Mrs. Skinner took Christina over 
 the bedrooms, and showed her where her dear little boy 
 was to sleep. 
 
 Whatever men may think about the study of man, 
 women do really believe the noblest study for woman- 
 kind to be woman, and Christina was too much engrossed 
 with Mrs. Skinner to pay much attention to anything 
 else; I daresay Mrs. Skinner, too, was taking pretty 
 accurate stock of Christina. Christina was charmed, as 
 indeed she generally was with any new acquaintance, for 
 she found in them (and so must we all) something of 
 the nature of a cross; as for Mrs. Skinner, I imagine 
 she had seen too many Christinas to find much regenera- 
 tion in the sample now before her ; I believe her private 
 opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master 
 who declared that all parents were fools, but more es- 
 pecially mothers ; she was, however, all smiles and sweet- 
 ness, and Christina devoured these graciously as tributes 
 paid more particularly to herself, and such as no other 
 mother would have been at all likely to have won. 
 
 In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr. 
 Skinner in his library the room where new boys were 
 examined and old ones had up for rebuke or chastise- 
 ment. If the walls of that room could speak, what an 
 amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they 
 not bear witness to! 
 
 Like all houses, Dr. Skinner's had its peculiar smell. 
 In this case the prevailing odour was one of Russia 
 leather, but along with it there was a subordinate savour 
 as of a chemist's shop. This came from a small labora- 
 tory in one corner of the room the possession of which, 
 together with the free chattery and smattery use of such
 
 132 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 words as "carbonate," "hyposulphite," "phosphate," and 
 "affinity," were enough to convince even the most scep- 
 tical that Dr. Skinner had a profound knowledge of 
 chemistry. 
 
 I may say in passing that Dr. Skinner had dabbled in 
 a great many other things as well as chemistry. He 
 was a man of many small knowledges, and each of them 
 dangerous. I remember Alethea Pontifex once said in 
 her wicked way to me, that Dr. Skinner put her in mind 
 of the Bourbon princes on their return from exile after 
 the battle of Waterloo, only that he was their exact 
 converse; for whereas they had learned nothing and 
 forgotten nothing, Dr. Skinner had learned everything 
 and forgotten everything. And this puts me in mind 
 of another of her wicked sayings about Dr. Skinner. 
 She told me one day that he had the harmlessness of the 
 serpent and the wisdom of the dove. 
 
 But to return to Dr. Skinner's library ; over the chim- 
 ney-piece there was a Bishop's half length portrait of 
 Dr. Skinner himself, painted by the elder Pickersgill, 
 whose merit Dr. Skinner had been among the first to 
 discern and foster. There were no other pictures in the 
 library, but in the dining-room there was a fine collec- 
 tion, which the Doctor had got together with his usual 
 consummate taste. He added to it largely in later life, 
 and when it came to the hammer at Christie's, as it did 
 not long since, it was found to comprise many of the 
 latest and most matured works of Solomon Hart, O'Neil, 
 Charles Landseer, and more of our recent Academicians 
 than I can at the moment remember. There were thus 
 brought together and exhibited at one view many works 
 which had attracted attention at the Academy Exhibi- 
 tions, and as to whose ultimate destiny there had been 
 some curiosity. The prices realised were disappointing 
 to the executors, but, then, these things are so much a 
 matter of chance. An unscrupulous writer in a well- 
 known weekly paper had written the collection down.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 133 
 
 Moreover there had been one or two large sales a short 
 time before Dr. Skinner's, so that at this last there was 
 'rather a panic, and a reaction against the high prices 
 that had ruled lately. 
 
 The table of the library was loaded with books many 
 deep; MSS. of all kinds were confusedly mixed up with 
 them, boys' exercises, probably, and examination papers 
 but all littering untidily about. The room in fact was 
 as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmos- 
 phere of erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered 
 it, stumbled over a large hole in the Turkey carpet, and 
 the dust that rose showed how long it was since it had 
 been taken up and beaten. This, I should say, was no 
 fault of Mrs. Skinner's but was due to the Doctor him- 
 self, who declared that if his papers were once disturbed 
 it would be the death of him. Near the window was a 
 green cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose plain- 
 tive cooing added to the melancholy of the place. The 
 walls were covered with book shelves from floor to 
 ceiling, and on every shelf the books stood in double 
 rows. It was horrible. Prominent among the most 
 prominent upon the most prominent shelf were a series 
 of splendidly bound volumes entitled "Skinner's Works." 
 
 Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest 
 believed that Dr. Skinner knew all the books in this 
 terrible library, and that he, if he were to be any good, 
 should have to learn them too. His heart fainted within 
 him. 
 
 He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did 
 so, while Dr. Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics 
 of the day. He talked about the Hampden Controversy 
 then raging, and discoursed learnedly about "Praemu- 
 nire" ; then he talked about the revolution which had 
 just broken out in Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope 
 had refused to allow foreign troops to pass through his 
 dominions in order to crush it. Dr. Skinner and the 
 other masters took in the Times among them, and Dr.
 
 134 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Skinner echoed the Times' leaders. In those days there 
 were no penny papers and Theobald only took in the 
 Spectator for he was at that time on the Whig side in 
 politics ; besides this he used to receive the Ecclesiastical 
 Gazette once a month, but he saw no other papers, and 
 was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr. 
 Skinner ran from subject to subject. 
 
 The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian revo- 
 lution naturally led the Doctor to the reforms which his 
 Holiness had introduced into his dominions, and he 
 laughed consumedly over the joke which had not long 
 since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No," 
 should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, 
 as the Doctor explained, he granted everything his sub- 
 jects asked for. Anything like a pun went straight to 
 Dr. Skinner's heart. 
 
 Then he went on to the matter of these reforms them- 
 selves. They opened up a new era in the history of 
 Christendom, and would have such momentous and far- 
 reaching consequences, that they might even lead to a 
 reconciliation between the Churches of England and 
 Rome. Dr. Skinner had lately published a pamphlet upon 
 this subject, which had shown great learning, and had 
 attacked the Church of Rome in a way which did not 
 promise much hope of reconciliation. He had grounded 
 his attack upon the letters A.M.D.G., which he had seen 
 outside a Roman Catholic chapel, and which of course 
 stood for Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem. Could anything 
 be more idolatrous? 
 
 I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory 
 play me one of the tricks it often does play me, when I 
 said the Doctor proposed Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem as 
 the full harmonies, so to speak, which should be con- 
 structed upon the bass A.M.D.G., for that this is bad 
 Latin, and that the doctor really harmonised the letters 
 thus: Ave Maria Dei Genetrix. No doubt the doctor 
 did what was right in the matter of Latinity I have
 
 The Way of All Flesh 135 
 
 forgotten the little Latin I ever knew, and am not going 
 to look the matter up, but I believe the doctor said Ad 
 Mariam Dei Genetricem, and if so we may be sure that 
 Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem is good enough Latin at any 
 rate for ecclesiastical purposes. 
 
 The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and 
 Dr. Skinner was jubilant, but when the answer appeared, 
 and it was solemnly declared that A.M.D.G. stood for 
 nothing more dangerous than Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, 
 it was felt that though this subterfuge would not succeed 
 with any intelligent Englishman, still it was a pity Dr. 
 Skinner had selected this particular point for his attack, 
 for he had to leave his enemy in possession of the field. 
 When people are left in possession of the field, spectators 
 have an awkward habit of thinking that their adversary 
 does not dare to come to the scratch. 
 
 Dr. Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pam- 
 phlet, and I doubt whether this gentleman was much 
 more comfortable than Ernest himself. He was bored, 
 for in his heart he hated Liberalism, though he was 
 ashamed to say so, and, as I have said, professed to be 
 on the Whig side. He did not want to be reconciled to 
 the Church of Rome; he wanted to make all Roman 
 Catholics turn Protestants, and could never understand 
 why they would not do so; but the Doctor talked in 
 such a truly liberal spirit, and shut him up so sharply 
 when he tried to edge in a word or two, that he had to 
 let him have it all his own way, and this was not what 
 he was accustomed to. He was wondering how he could 
 bring it to an end, when a diversion was created by the 
 discovery that Ernest had begun to cry doubtless 
 through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom 
 greater than he could bear. He was evidently in a 
 highly nervous state, and a good deal upset by the excite- 
 ment of the morning ; Mrs. Skinner therefore, who came 
 in with Christina at this juncture, proposed that he 
 should spend the afternoon with Mrs. Jay, the matron,
 
 and not be introduced to his young companions until the 
 following morning. His father and mother now bade 
 him an affectionate farewell, and the lad was handed 
 over to Mrs. Jay. 
 
 O schoolmasters if any of you read this book bear 
 in mind when any particularly timid, drivelling urchin is 
 brought by his papa into your study, and you treat him 
 with the contempt which he deserves, and afterwards 
 make his life a burden to him for years bear in mind 
 that it is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this 
 that your future chronicler will appear. Never see a 
 wretched little heavy-eyed mite sitting on the edge of a 
 chair against your study wall without saying to your- 
 selves, "Perhaps this boy is he who, if I am not careful, 
 will one day tell the world what manner of man I was." 
 If even two or three schoolmasters learn this lesson and 
 remember it, the preceding chapters will not have been 
 written in vain. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 SOON after his father and mother had left him Ernest 
 dropped asleep over a book which Mrs. Jay had given 
 him, and he did not awake till dusk. Then he sat 
 down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed 
 pleasantly in the late January twilight, and began to 
 muse. He felt weak, feeble, ill at ease and unable to 
 see his way out of the innumerable troubles that were 
 before him. Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even 
 die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, would 
 prove the beginning of new ones ; for at the best he 
 would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and Grandmamma 
 Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to 
 get on with than papa and mamma, yet they were un- 
 doubtedly not so really good, and were more worldly ; 
 moreover they were grown-up people especially Grand-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 137 
 
 papa Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had 
 been very much grown-up, and he did not know why, but 
 there was always something that kept him from loving 
 any grown-up people very much except one or two of 
 the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything 
 that he could imagine. Besides even if he were to die 
 and go to Heaven he supposed he should have to com- 
 plete his education somewhere. 
 
 In the meantime his father and mother were rolling 
 along the muddy roads, each in his or her own corner of 
 the carriage, and each revolving many things which were 
 and were not to come to pass. Times have changed since 
 I last showed them to the reader as sitting together 
 silently in a carriage, but except as regards their mutual 
 relations, they have altered singularly little. When I 
 was younger I used to think the Prayer Book was wrong 
 in requiring us to say the General Confession twice a 
 week from childhood to old age, without making pro- 
 vision for our not being quite such great sinners at 
 seventy as we had been at seven ; granted that we should 
 go to the wash like table-cloths at least once a week, 
 still I used to think a day ought to come when we should 
 want rather less rubbing and scrubbing at. Now that I 
 have grown older myself I have seen that the Church has 
 estimated probabilities better than I had done. 
 
 The pair said not a word to one another, but watched 
 the fading light and naked trees, the brown fields with 
 here and there a melancholy cottage by the roadside, 
 and the rain that fell fast upon the carriage windows. 
 It was a kind of afternoon on which nice people for 
 the most part like to be snug at home, and Theobald 
 was a little snappish at reflecting how many miles he 
 had to post before he could be at his own fireside again. 
 However, there was nothing for it, so the pair sat quietly 
 and watched the roadside objects flit by them, and get 
 greyer and grimmer as the light faded. 
 
 Though they spoke not to one another, there was one
 
 138 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nearer to each of them with whom they could converse 
 freely. "I hope," said Theobald to himself, "I hope he'll 
 work or else that Skinner will make him. I don't like 
 Skinner, I never did like him, but he is unquestionably a 
 man of genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who 
 succeed at Oxford and Cambridge, and that is the best 
 test. I have done my share towards starting him well. 
 Skinner said he had been well grounded and was very 
 forward. I suppose he will presume upon it now and 
 do nothing, for his nature is an idle one. He is not fond 
 of me, I'm sure he is not. He ought to be after all the 
 trouble I have taken with him, but he is ungrateful and 
 selfish. It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be fond 
 of his own father. If he was fond of me I should be 
 fond of him, but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, 
 dislikes me. He shrinks out of my way whenever he sees 
 me coming near him. He will not stay five minutes in 
 the same room with me if he can help it. He is deceitful. 
 He would not want to hide himself away so much if he 
 were not deceitful. That is a bad sign and one which 
 makes me fear he will grow up extravagant. I am sure 
 he will grow up extravagant. I should have given him 
 more pocket-money if I had not known this but what is 
 the good of giving him pocket-money? It is all gone 
 directly. If he doesn't buy something with it he gives it 
 away to the first little boy or girl he sees who takes his 
 fancy. He forgets that it's my money he is giving away. 
 I give him money that he may have money and learn to 
 know its uses, not that he may go and squander it imme- 
 diately. I wish he was not so fond of music; it will 
 interfere with his Latin and Greek. I will stop it as 
 much as I can. Why, when he was translating Livy the 
 other day he slipped out Handel's name in mistake for 
 Hannibal's, and his mother tells me he knows half the 
 tunes in the 'Messiah' by heart. What should a boy of 
 his age know about the 'Messiah'? If I had shown half 
 as many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my
 
 The Way of All Flesh 139 
 
 father would have apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of 
 that I'm very sure," etc., etc. 
 
 Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth 
 plague. It seemed to him that if the little Egyptians had 
 been anything like Ernest, the plague must have been 
 something very like a blessing in disguise. If the Israel- 
 ites were to come to England now he should be greatly 
 tempted not to let them go. 
 
 Mrs. Theobald's thoughts ran in a different current. 
 "Lord Lonsford's grandson it's a pity his name is 
 Figgins ; however, blood is blood as much through the 
 female line as the male ; indeed, perhaps even more so if 
 the truth were known. I wonder who Mr. Figgins was. 
 I think Mrs. Skinner said he was dead ; however, I must 
 find out all about him. It would be delightful if young 
 Figgins were to ask Ernest home for the holidays. Who 
 knows but he might meet Lord Lonsford himself, or at 
 any rate some of Lord Lonsford's other descendants?" 
 
 Meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily 
 before the fire in Mrs. Jay's room. "Papa and mamma," 
 he was saying to himself, "are much better and cleverer 
 than anyone else, but, I, alas ! shall never be either good 
 or clever." 
 
 Mrs. Pontifex continued 
 
 "Perhaps it would be best to get young Figgins on a 
 visit to ourselves first. That would be charming. Theo- 
 bald would not like it, for he does not like children; I 
 must see how I can manage it, for it would be so nice 
 to have young Figgins or stay! Ernest shall, go and 
 stay with Figgins and meet the future Lord Lonsford, 
 who I should think must be about Ernest's age, and then 
 if he and Ernest were to become friends Ernest might 
 ask him to Battersby, and he might fall in love with 
 Charlotte. I think we have done most wisely in sending 
 Ernest to Dr. Skinner's. Dr. Skinner's piety is no less 
 remarkable than his genius. One can tell these things 
 ,at a glance, and he must have felt it about me no less
 
 140 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 strongly than I about him. I think he seemed much 
 struck with Theobald and myself indeed, Theobald's 
 intellectual power must impress any one, and I was 
 showing, I do believe, to my best advantage. When I 
 smiled at him and said I left my boy in his hands with 
 the most entire confidence that he would be as well cared 
 for as if he were at my own house, I am sure he was 
 greatly pleased. I should not think many of the mothers 
 who bring him boys can impress him so favourably, or 
 say such nice things to him as I did. My smile is sweet 
 when I desire to make it so. I never was perhaps 
 exactly pretty, but I was always admitted to be fascinat- 
 ing. Dr. Skinner is a very handsome man too good on 
 the whole I should say for Mrs. Skinner. Theobald says 
 he is not handsome, but men are no judges, and he has 
 such a pleasant, bright face I think my bonnet became 
 me. As soon as I get home I will tell Chambers to 
 trim my blue and yellow merino with " etc., etc. 
 
 All this time the letter which has been given above was 
 lying in Christina's private little Japanese cabinet, read 
 and re-read and approved of many times over, not to 
 say, if the truth were known, rewritten more than once, 
 though dated as in the first instance and this, too, 
 though Christina was fond enough of a joke in a small 
 way. 
 
 Ernest, still in Mrs. Jay's room, mused onward. 
 "Grown-up people," he said to himself, "when they were 
 ladies and gentlemen, never did naughty things, but he 
 was always doing them. He had heard that some grown- 
 up people were worldly, which of course was wrong, still 
 this was quite distinct from being naughty, and did not 
 get them punished or scolded. His own papa and 
 mamma were not even worldly; they had often ex- 
 plained to him that they were exceptionally unworldly ; 
 he well knew that they had never done anything naughty 
 since they had been children, and that even as children 
 they had been nearly faultless. Oh ! how different from
 
 The Way of All Flesh 141 
 
 himself! When should he learn to love his papa and 
 mamma as they had loved theirs? How could he hope 
 ever to grow up to be as good and wise as they, or even 
 tolerably good and wise ? Alas ! never. It could not be. 
 He did not love his papa and mamma, in spite of all their 
 goodness both in themselves and to him. He hated 
 papa, and did not like mamma, and this was what 
 none but a bad and ungrateful boy would do after 
 all that had been done for him. Besides, he did not like 
 Sunday; he did not like anything that was really good; 
 his tastes were low and such as he was ashamed of. 
 He liked people best if they sometimes swore a little, 
 so long as it was not at him. As for his Catechism and 
 Bible readings he had no heart in them. He had never 
 attended to a sermon in his life. Even when he had been 
 taken to hear Mr. Vaughan at Brighton, who, as everyone 
 knew, preached such beautiful sermons for children, he 
 had been very glad when it was all over, nor did he 
 believe he could get through church at all if it was not 
 for the voluntary upon the organ and the hymns and 
 chanting. The Catechism was awful. He had never 
 been able to understand what it was that he desired of 
 his Lord God and Heavenly Father, nor had he yet got 
 hold of a single idea in connection with the word Sacra- 
 ment. His duty towards his neighbour was another bug- 
 bear. It seemed to him that he had duties towards 
 everybody, lying in wait for him upon every side, but 
 that nobody had any duties towards him. Then there 
 was that awful and mysterious word 'business.' What 
 did it all mean? What was 'business'? His papa was 
 a wonderfully good man of business, his mamma had 
 often told him so but he should never be one. It was 
 hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually 
 telling him that he would have to earn his own living. 
 No doubt, but how considering how stupid, idle, ig- 
 norant, self-indulgent, and physically puny he was? All 
 grown-up people were clever, except servants and even
 
 142 The Way of All Tlesh 
 
 these were cleverer than ever he should be. Oh, why, 
 why, why, could not people be born into the world as 
 grown-up persons ? Then he thought of Casabianca. He 
 had been examined in that poem by his father not long be- 
 fore. 'When only would he leave his position ? To whom 
 did he call ? Did he get an answer ? Why ? How many 
 times did he call upon his father? What happened to 
 him? What was the noblest life that perished there? 
 Do you think so ? Why do you think so ?' And all the 
 rest of it. Of course he thought Casabianca's was the 
 noblest life that perished there; there could be no two 
 opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the 
 moral of the poem was that young people cannot begin 
 too soon to exercise discretion in the obedience they 
 pay to their papa and mamma. Oh, no! the only 
 thought in his mind was that he should never, never 
 have been like Casabianca, and that Casabianca would 
 have despised him so much, if he could have known 
 him, that he would not have condescended to speak to 
 him. There was nobody else in the ship worth reckoning 
 at all : it did not matter how much they were blown up. 
 Mrs. Hemans knew them all and they were a very in- 
 different lot. Besides, Casabianca was so good-looking 
 and came of such a good family." 
 
 And thus his small mind kept wandering on till he 
 could follow it no longer, and again went off into a doze. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 NEXT morning Theobald and Christina arose feeling a 
 little tired from their journey, but happy in that best of 
 all happiness, the approbation of their consciences. It 
 would be their boy's fault henceforth if he were not 
 good, and as prosperous as it was at all desirable that he 
 should be. What more could parents do than they had 
 done ? The answer "Nothing" will rise as readily to the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 143 
 
 lips of the reader as to those of Theobald and Christina 
 themselves. 
 
 A few days later the parents were gratified at receiv- 
 ing the following letter from their son 
 
 "MY DEAR MAMMA, I am very well. Dr. Skinner 
 made me do about the horse free and exulting roaming 
 in the wide fields in Latin verse, but as I had done it 
 with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was nearly all 
 right, and he put me in the fourth form under Mr. 
 Templer, and I have to begin a new Latin grammar not 
 like the old, but much harder. I know you wish me to 
 work, and I will try very hard. With best love to Joey 
 and Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your affectionate 
 son, ERNEST." 
 
 Nothing could be nicer or more proper. It really did 
 seem as though he were inclined to turn over a new leaf. 
 The boys had all come back, the examinations were over, 
 and the routine of the half year began; Ernest found 
 that his fears about being kicked about and bullied were 
 exaggerated. Nobody did anything very dreadful to 
 him. He had to run errands between certain hours for 
 the elder boys, and to take his turn at greasing the 
 footballs, and so forth, but there was an excellent spirit 
 in the school as regards bullying. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was far from happy. Dr. Skinner 
 was much too like his father. True, Ernest was not 
 thrown in with him much yet, but he was always there; 
 there was no knowing at what moment he might not put 
 in an appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to 
 storm about something. He was like the lion in the 
 Bishop of Oxford's Sunday story always liable to rush 
 out from behind some bush and devour some one when 
 he was least expected. He called Ernest "an audacious 
 reptile" and said he wondered the earth did not open 
 and swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia with
 
 144 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a short i. "And this to me," he thundered, "who never 
 made a false quantity in my life." Surely he would have 
 been a much nicer person if he had made false quantities 
 in his youth like other people. Ernest could not imagine 
 how the boys in Dr. Skinner's form continued to live; 
 but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may 
 seem, idolised him, or professed to do so in after life. 
 To Ernest it seemed like living on the crater of 
 Vesuvius. 
 
 He was himself, as has been said, in Mr. Templer's 
 form, who was snappish, but not downright wicked, 
 and was very easy to crib under. Ernest used to wonder 
 how Mr. Templer could be so blind, for he supposed 
 Mr. Templer must have cribbed when he was at school, 
 and would ask himself whether he should forget his 
 youth when he got old, as Mr. Templer had forgotten 
 his. He used to think he never could possibly forget 
 any part of it. 
 
 Then there was Mrs. Jay, who was sometimes very 
 alarming. A few days after the half year had com- 
 menced, there being some little extra noise in the hall, 
 she rushed in with her spectacles on her forehead and 
 her cap strings flying, and called the boy whom Ernest 
 had selected as his hero the "rampingest-scampingest- 
 rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the whole 
 school." But she used to say things that Ernest liked. 
 If -the Doctor went out to dinner, and there were no 
 prayers, she would come in and say, "Young gentlemen, 
 prayers are excused this evening"; and, take her for all 
 in all, she was a kindly old soul enough. 
 
 Most boys soon discover the difference between noise 
 and actual danger, but to others it is so unnatural to 
 menace, unless they mean mischief, that they are long 
 before they leave off taking turkey-cocks and ganders 
 au serieux. Ernest was one of the latter sort, and found 
 the atmosphere of Roughborough so gusty that he was
 
 The Way of All Flesh 145 
 
 glad to shrink out of sight and out of mind whenever 
 he could. He disliked the games worse even than the 
 squalls of the class-room and hall, for he was still 
 feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till 
 a much later age than most boys. This was perhaps due 
 to the closeness with which his father had kept him to 
 his books in childhood, but I think in part also to a 
 tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, heredi- 
 tary in the Pontifex family, which was one also of 
 unusual longevity. At thirteen or fourteen he was a 
 mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick as 
 the wrists of other boys of his age; his little chest was 
 pigeon-breasted ; he appeared to have no strength or 
 stamina whatever, and finding he always went to the wall 
 in physical encounters, whether undertaken in jest or 
 earnest, even with boys shorter than himself, the timidity 
 natural to childhood increased upon him to an extent that 
 I am afraid amounted to cowardice. This rendered him 
 even less capable than he might otherwise have been, 
 for as confidence increases power, so want of confidence 
 increases impotence. After he had had the breath 
 knocked out of him and been well shinned half a dozen 
 times in scrimmages at football scrimmages in which 
 he had become involved sorely against his will he 
 ceased to see any further fun in football, and shirked 
 that noble game in a way that got him into trouble with 
 the elder boys, who would stand no shirking on the part 
 of the younger ones. 
 
 He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with 
 football, nor in spite of all his efforts could he ever 
 throw a ball or a stone. It soon became plain, therefore, 
 to everyone that Pontifex was a young muff, a molly- 
 coddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly. 
 He was not, however, actively unpopular, for it was 
 seen that he was quite square inter pares, not at all vin- 
 dictive, easily pleased, perfectly free with whatever little
 
 146 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 money he had, no greater lover of his school work than 
 of the games, and generally more inclinable to moderate 
 vice than to immoderate virtue. 
 
 These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very 
 low in the opinion of his school-fellows; but Ernest 
 thought he had fallen lower than he probably had, and 
 hated and despised himself for what he, as much as 
 anyone else, believed to be his cowardice. He did not 
 like the boys whom he thought like himself. His heroes 
 were strong and vigorous, and the less they inclined 
 towards him the more he worshipped them. All this 
 made him very unhappy, for it never occurred to him 
 that the instinct which made him keep out of games for 
 which he was ill adapted, was more reasonable than the 
 reason which would have driven him into them. Never- 
 theless he followed his instinct for the most part, rather 
 than his reason. Sapiens suam si sapientiam norit. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 WITH the masters Ernest was ere long in absolute dis- 
 grace. He had more liberty now than he had known 
 heretofore. The heavy hand and watchful eye of Theo- 
 bald were no longer about his path and about his bed 
 and spying out all his ways ; and punishment by way of 
 copying out lines of Virgil was a very different thing 
 from the savage beatings of his father. The copying 
 out in fact was often less trouble than the lesson. Latin 
 and Greek had nothing in them .which commended them 
 to his instinct as likely to bring him peace even at the 
 last; still less did they hold out any hope of doing so 
 within some more reasonable time. The deadness in- 
 herent in these defunct languages themselves had never 
 been artificially counteracted by a system of bona fide 
 rewards for application. There had been any amount of 
 punishments for want of application, but no good com-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 147 
 
 fortable bribes had baited the hook which was to allure 
 him to his good. 
 
 Indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this 
 or that had always been treated as something with which 
 Ernest had no concern. We had no business with pleas- 
 ant things at all, at any rate very little business, at any 
 rate not he, Ernest. We were put into this world not 
 for pleasure but duty, and pleasure had in it something 
 more or less sinful in its very essence. If we were doing 
 anything we liked, we, or at any rate he, Ernest, should 
 apologise and think he was being very mercifully dealt 
 with, if not at once told to go and do something else. 
 With what he did not like, however, it was different; 
 the more he disliked a thing the greater the presumption 
 that it was right. It never occurred to him that the pre- 
 sumption was in favour of the Tightness of what was 
 most pleasant, and that the onus of proving that it was 
 not right lay with those who disputed its being so. I 
 have said more than once that he believed in his own 
 depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready 
 to accept without cavil whatever he was told by those who 
 were in authority over him : he thought, at least, that he 
 believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other 
 Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger 
 and more real than the Ernest of which he was con- 
 scious. The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate 
 feelings too swift and sure to be translated into such 
 debatable things as words, but practically insisted as 
 follows 
 
 "Growing is not the easy, plain sailing business that it 
 is commonly supposed to be: it is hard work harder 
 than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires 
 attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to 
 your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. Besides, 
 Latin and Greek are great humbug; the more people 
 know of them the more odious they generally are; the 
 nice people whom you delight in either never knew any
 
 148 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they 
 could ; they never turned to the classics after they were 
 no longer forced to read them; therefore they are non- 
 sense, all very well in their own time and country, but 
 out of place here. Never learn anything until you find 
 you have been made uncomfortable for a good long while 
 by not knowing it ; when you find that you have occasion 
 for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have 
 occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, 
 but till then spend your time in growing bone and muscle ; 
 these will be much more useful to you than Latin and 
 Greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do 
 not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek can be acquired 
 at any time by those who want them. 
 
 "You are surrounded on every side by lies which 
 would deceive even the elect, if the elect were not gen- 
 erally so uncommonly wide awake ; the self of which you 
 are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self, will 
 believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with 
 them. This conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig 
 begotten of prigs and trained in priggishness ; I will not 
 allow it to shape your actions, though it will doubtless 
 shape your words for many a year to come. Your papa 
 is not here to beat you now; this is a change in the 
 conditions of your existence, and should be followed by 
 changed actions. Obey me, your true self, and things 
 will go tolerably well with you, but only listen to that 
 outward and visible old husk of yours which is called 
 your father, and I will rend you in pieces even unto the 
 third and fourth generation as one who has hated God ; 
 for I, Ernest, am the God who made you." 
 
 How shocked Ernest would have been if he could have 
 heard the advice he was receiving; what consternation 
 too there would have been at Battersby; but the matter 
 did not end here, for this same wicked inner self gave 
 him bad advice about his pocket money, the choice of 
 his companions, and on the whole Ernest was attentive
 
 The Way of All Flesh 149 
 
 and obedient to its behests, more so than Theobald had 
 been. The consequence was that he learned little, his 
 mind growing more slowly and his body rather faster 
 than heretofore : and when by and by his inner self 
 urged him in directions where he met obstacles beyond 
 his strength to combat, he took though with passionate 
 compunctions of conscience the nearest course to the 
 one from which he was debarred which circumstances 
 would allow. 
 
 It may be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen 
 friend of the more sedate and well-conducted youths then 
 studying at Roughborough. Some of the less desirable 
 boys used to go to public-houses and drink more beer 
 than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can hardly 
 have told him to ally himself to these young gentlemen, 
 but he did so at an early age, and was sometimes made 
 pitiably sick by an amount of beer which would have 
 produced no effect upon a stronger boy. Ernest's inner 
 self must have interposed at this point and told him that 
 there was not much fun in this, for he dropped the habit 
 ere it had taken firm hold of him, and never resumed it ; 
 but he contracted another at the disgracefully early age 
 of between thirteen and fourteen which he did not relin- 
 quish, though to the present day his conscious self keeps 
 dinging it into him that the less he smokes the better. 
 
 And so matters went on till my hero was nearly four- 
 teen years old. If by that time he was not actually a 
 young blackguard, he belonged to a debatable class 
 between the sub-reputable and the upper disreputable, 
 with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except so 
 far as vices of meanness were concerned, from which he 
 was fairly free. I gather this partly from what Ernest 
 has told me, and partly from his school bills which I 
 remember Theobald showed me with much complaining. 
 There was an institution at Roughborough called the 
 monthly merit money ; the maximum sum which a boy of 
 Ernest's age could get was four shillings and sixpence;
 
 150 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 several boys got four shillings and few less than six- 
 pence, but Ernest never got more than half-a-crown and 
 seldom more than eighteen pence; his average would, I 
 should think, be about one and nine pence, which was 
 just too much for him to rank among the downright bad 
 boys, but too little to put him among the good ones. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 I MUST now return to Miss Alethea Pontifex, of whom 
 I have said perhaps too little hitherto, considering how 
 great her influence upon my hero's destiny proved to be. 
 
 On the death of her father, which happened when she 
 was about thirty-two years old, she parted company with 
 her sisters, between whom and herself there had been 
 little sympathy, and came up to London. She was deter- 
 mined, so she said, to make the rest of her life as happy 
 as she could, and she had clearer ideas about the best 
 way of setting to work to do this than women, or indeed 
 men, generally have. 
 
 Her fortune consisted, as I have said, of 5000, which 
 had come to her by her mother's marriage settlements, 
 and 15,000 left her by her father, over both which sums 
 she had now absolute control. These brought her in 
 about 900 a year, and the money being invested in none 
 but the soundest securities, she had no anxiety about 
 her income. She meant to be rich, so she formed a 
 scheme of expenditure which involved an annual outlay 
 of about 500, and determined to put the rest by. "If I 
 do this," she said laughingly, "I shall probably just suc- 
 ceed in living comfortably within my income." In accord- 
 ance with this scheme she took unfurnished apartments in 
 a house in Gower Street, of which the lower floors were 
 let out as offices. John Pontifex tried to get her to take 
 a house to herself, but Alethea told him to mind his own 
 business so plainly that he had to beat a retreat. She had
 
 The Way of All Flesh 151 
 
 never liked him, and from that time dropped him almost 
 entirely. 
 
 Without going much into society she yet became ac- 
 quainted with most of the men and women who had 
 attained a position in the literary, artistic and scientific 
 worlds, and it was singular how highly her opinion was 
 valued in spite of her never having attempted in any way 
 to distinguish herself. She could have written if she had 
 chosen, but she enjoyed seeing others write and en- 
 couraging them better than taking a more active part 
 herself. Perhaps literary people liked her all the better 
 because she did not write. 
 
 I, as she very well knew, had always been devoted to 
 her, and she might have had a score of other admirers if 
 she had liked, but she had discouraged them all, and 
 railed at matrimony as women seldom do unless they 
 have a comfortable income of their own. She by no 
 means, however, railed at man as she railed at matri- 
 mony, and though living after a fashion in which even 
 the most censorious could find nothing to complain of, 
 as far as she properly could she defended those of her 
 own sex whom the world condemned most severely. 
 
 In religion she was, I should think, as nearly a free- 
 thinker as anyone could be whose mind seldom turned 
 upon the subject. She went to church, but disliked 
 equally those who aired either religion or irreligion. I 
 remember once hearing her press a late well-known 
 philosopher to write a novel instead of pursuing his 
 attacks upon religion. The philosopher did not much 
 like this, and dilated upon the importance of showing 
 people the folly of much that they pretended to believe. 
 She smiled and said demurely, "Have they not Moses 
 and the prophets? Let them hear them." But she 
 would say a wicked thing quietly on her own account 
 sometimes, and called my attention once to a note in her 
 prayer-book which gave an account of the walk to Em- 
 niaus with the two disciples, and how Christ had said tQ
 
 152 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them, "O fools and slow of heart to believe ALL that the 
 prophets have spoken" the "all" being printed in small 
 capitals. 
 
 Though scarcely on terms with her brother John, she 
 had kept up closer relations with Theobald and his fam- 
 ily, and had paid a few days' visit to Battersby once in 
 every two years or so. Alethea had always tried to like 
 Theobald and join forces with him as much as she could 
 ( for they two were the hares of the family, the rest being 
 all hounds), but it was no use. I believe her chief rea- 
 son for maintaining relations with her brother was that 
 she might keep an eye on his children and give them a 
 lift if they proved nice. 
 
 When Miss Pontifex had come down to Battersby in 
 old times the children had not been beaten, and their 
 lessons had been made lighter. She easily saw that they 
 were overworked and unhappy, but she could hardly 
 guess how all-reaching was the regime under which they 
 lived. She knew she could not interfere effectually then, 
 and wisely forebore to make too many enquiries. Her 
 time, if ever it was to come, would be when the children 
 were no longer living under the same roof as their par- 
 ents. It ended in her making up her mind to have noth- 
 ing to do with either Joey or Charlotte, but to see so 
 much of Ernest as should enable her to form an opinion 
 about his disposition and abilities. 
 
 He had now been a year and a half at Roughborough 
 and was nearly fourteen years old, so that his character 
 had begun to shape. His aunt had not seen him for some 
 little time and, thinking that if she was to exploit him 
 she could do so now perhaps better than at any other 
 time, she resolved to go down to Roughborough on some 
 pretext which should be good enough for Theobald, and 
 to take stock of her nephew under circumstances in which 
 she could get him for some few hours to herself. Ac- 
 cordingly in August, 1849, when Ernest was just enter- 
 ing on his fourth half year a cab drove up to Dr. Skin-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 153 
 
 ner's door with Miss Pontifex, who asked and obtained 
 leave for Ernest to come and dine with her at the Swan 
 Hotel. She had written to Ernest to say she was coming 
 and he was of course on the lookout for her. He had 
 not seen her for so long that he was rather shy at first, 
 but her good nature soon set him at his ease. She was 
 so strongly biassed in favour of anything young that her 
 heart warmed towards him at once, though his appear- 
 ance was less prepossessing than she had hoped. She 
 took him to a cake shop and gave him whatever he liked 
 as soon as she had got him off the school premises ; and 
 Ernest felt at once that she contrasted favourably even 
 with his aunts the Misses Allaby, who were so very sweet 
 and good. The Misses Allaby were very poor ; sixpence 
 was to them what five shillings was to Alethea. What 
 chance had they against one who, if she had a mind, 
 could put by out of her income twice as much as they, 
 poor women, could spend? 
 
 The boy had plenty of prattle in him when he was not 
 snubbed, and Alethea encouraged him to chatter about 
 whatever came uppermost. He was always ready to 
 trust anyone who was kind to him; it took many years 
 to make him reasonably wary in this respect if indeed, 
 as I sometimes doubt, he ever will be as wary as he ought 
 to be and in a short time he had quite dissociated his 
 aunt from his papa and mamma and the rest, with whom 
 his instinct told him he should be on his guard. Little 
 did he know how great, as far as he was concerned, were 
 the issues that depended upon his behaviour. If he had 
 known, he would perhaps have played his part less suc- 
 cessfully. 
 
 His aunt drew from him more details of his home and 
 school life than his papa and mamma would have ap- 
 proved of, but he had no idea that he was being pumped. 
 She got out of him all about the happy Sunday evenings, 
 and how he and Joey and Charlotte quarrelled some- 
 times, but she took no side and treated everything as
 
 154 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 though it were a matter of course. Like all the boys, he 
 could mimic Dr. Skinner, and when warmed with dinner, 
 and two glasses of sherry which made him nearly tipsy, 
 he favoured his aunt with samples of the Doctor's man- 
 ner and spoke of him familiarly as "Sam." 
 
 "Sam," he said, "is an awful old humbug." It was 
 the sherry that brought out this piece of swagger, for 
 whatever else he was Dr. Skinner was a reality to Master 
 Ernest, before which, indeed, he sank into his boots in no 
 time. Alethea smiled and said, "I must not say anything 
 to that, must I ?" Ernest said, "I suppose not," and was 
 checked. By-and-by he vented a number of small second- 
 hand priggishnesses which he had caught up believing 
 them to be the correct thing, and made it plain that even 
 at that early age Ernest believed in Ernest with a belief 
 which was amusing from its absurdity. His aunt judged 
 him charitably, as she was sure to do ; she knew very well 
 where the priggishness came from, and seeing that the 
 string of his tongue had been loosened sufficiently gave 
 him no more sherry. 
 
 It was after dinner, however, that he completed the 
 conquest of his aunt. She then discovered that, like her- 
 self, he was passionately fond of music, and that, too, 
 of the highest class. He knew, and hummed or whistled 
 to her all sorts of pieces out of the works of the great 
 masters, which a boy of his age could hardly be expected 
 to know, and it was evident that this was purely instinc- 
 tive, inasmuch as music received no kind of encourage- 
 ment at Roughborough. There was no boy in the school 
 as fond of music as he was. He picked up his knowledge, 
 he said, from the organist of St. Michael's Church, who 
 used to practise sometimes on a week-day afternoon. Er- 
 nest had heard the organ booming away as he was pass- 
 ing outside the church and had sneaked inside and up 
 into the organ loft. In the course of time the organist 
 became accustomed to him as a familiar visitant, and 
 the pair became friends.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 155 
 
 It was this which decided Alethea that the boy was 
 worth taking pains with. "He likes the best music," 
 she thought, "and he hates Dr. Skinner. This is a very 
 fair beginning." When she sent him away at night with 
 a sovereign in his pocket (and he had only hoped to get 
 five shillings) she felt as though she had had a good deal 
 more than her money's worth for her money. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 NEXT day Miss Pontifex returned to town, with her 
 thoughts full of her nephew and how she could best be 
 of use to him. 
 
 It appeared to her that to do him any real service she 
 must devote herself almost entirely to him; she must in 
 fact give up living in London, at any rate for a long 
 time, and live at Roughborough where she could see him 
 continually. This was a serious undertaking; she had 
 lived in London for the last twelve years, and naturally 
 disliked the prospect of a small country town such as 
 Roughborough. Was it a prudent thing to attempt so 
 much ? Must not people take their chances in this world ? 
 Can anyone do much for anyone else unless by making 
 a will in his favour and dying then and there? Should 
 not each look after his own happiness, and will not the 
 world be best carried on if everyone minds his own busi- 
 ness and leaves other people to mind theirs ? Life is not 
 a donkey race in which everyone is to ride his neighbour's 
 donkey and the last is to win, and the psalmist long since 
 formulated a common experience when he declared that 
 no man may deliver his brother nor make agreement unto 
 God for him, for it cost more to redeem their souls, so 
 that he must let that alone for ever. 
 
 All these excellent reasons for letting her nephew 
 alone occurred to her, and many more, but against them 
 there pleaded a woman's love for children, and her de-
 
 156 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 sire to find someone among the younger branches of her 
 own family to whom she could become warmly attached, 
 and whom she could attach warmly to herself. 
 
 Over and above this she wanted someone to leave her 
 money to; she was not going to leave it to people about 
 whom she knew very little, merely because they hap- 
 pened to be sons and daughters of brothers and sisters 
 whom she had never liked. She knew the power and 
 value of money exceedingly well, and how many lovable 
 people suffer and die yearly for the want of it; she was 
 little likely to leave it without being satisfied that her 
 legatees were square, lovable, and more or less hard up. 
 She wanted those to have it who would be most likely to 
 use it genially and sensibly, and whom it would thus be 
 likely to make most happy; if she could find one such 
 among her nephews and nieces, so much the better; it 
 was worth taking a great deal of pains to see whether 
 she could or could not; but if she failed, she must find 
 an heir who was not related to her by blood. 
 
 "Of course," she had said to me, more than once, "I 
 shall make a mess of it. I shall choose some nice-look- 
 ing, well-dressed screw, with gentlemanly manners which 
 will take me in, and he will go and paint Academy pic- 
 tures, or write for the Times, or do something just as 
 horrid the moment the breath is out of my body." 
 
 As yet, however, she had made no will at all, and this 
 was one of the few things that troubled her. 1 believe 
 she would have left most of her money to me if I had 
 not stopped her. My father left me abundantly well off, 
 and my mode of life has been always simple, so that I 
 have never known uneasiness about money; moreover I 
 was especially anxious that there should be no occasion 
 given for ill-natured talk ; she knew well, therefore, that 
 her leaving her money to me would be of all things the 
 most likely to weaken the ties that existed between us, 
 provided that I was aware of it, but I did not mind her
 
 The Way of All Flesh 157 
 
 talking about whom she should make her heir, so long 
 as it was well understood that I was not to be the person. 
 
 Ernest had satisfied her as having enough in him to 
 tempt her strongly to take him up, but it was not till 
 after many days' reflection that she gravitated towards 
 actually doing so, with all the break in her daily ways 
 that this would entail. At least, she said it took her 
 some days, and certainly it appeared to do so, but from 
 the moment she had begun to broach the subject, I had 
 guessed how things were going to end. 
 
 It was now arranged she should take a house at 
 Roughborough, and go and live there for a couple of 
 years. As a compromise, however, to meet some of my 
 objections, it was also arranged that she should keep 
 her rooms in Gower Street, and come to town for a week 
 once in each month ; of course, also, she would leave 
 Roughborough for the greater part of the holidays. Af- 
 ter two years, the thing was to come to an end, unless 
 it proved a great success. She should by that time, at 
 any rate, have made up her mind what the boy's char- 
 acter was, and would then act as circumstances might 
 determine. 
 
 The pretext she put forward ostensibly was that her 
 doctor said she ought to be a year or two in the country 
 after so many years of London life, and had recom- 
 mended Roughborough on account of the purity of its 
 air, and its easy access to and from London for by this 
 time the railway had reached it. She was anxious not 
 to give her brother and sister any right to complain, if 
 on seeing more of her nephew she found she could not 
 get on with him, and she was also anxious not to raise 
 false hopes of any kind in the boy's own mind. 
 
 Having settled how everything was to be, she wrote to 
 Theobald and said she meant to take a house in Rough- 
 borough from the Michaelmas then approaching, and 
 mentioned, as though casually, that one of the attractions
 
 158 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of the place would be that her nephew was at school 
 there and she should hope to see more of him than she 
 had done hitherto. 
 
 Theobald and Christina knew how dearly Alethea 
 loved London, and thought it very odd that she should 
 want to go and live at Roughborough, but they did not 
 suspect that she was going there solely on her nephew's 
 account, much less that she had thought of making Ernest 
 her heir. If they had guessed this, they would have been 
 so jealous that I half believe they would have asked her 
 to go and live somewhere else. Alethea, however, was 
 two or three years younger than Theobald ; she was still 
 some years short of fifty, and might very well live to 
 eighty-five or ninety; her money, therefore, was not 
 worth taking much trouble about, and her brother and 
 sister-in-law had dismissed it, so to speak, from their 
 minds with costs, assuming, however, that if anything 
 did happen to her while they were still alive, the money 
 would, as a matter of course, come to them. 
 
 The prospect of Alethea seeing much of Ernest was a 
 serious matter. Christina smelt mischief from afar, as 
 indeed she often did. Alethea was worldly as worldly, 
 that is to say, as a sister of Theobald's could be. In her 
 letter to Theobald she had said she knew how much of 
 his and Christina's thoughts were taken up with anxiety 
 for the boy's welfare. Alethea had thought this hand- 
 some enough, but Christina had wanted something better 
 and stronger. "How can she know how much we think 
 of our darling?" she had exclaimed, when Theobald 
 showed her his sister's letter. "I think, my dear, Alethea 
 would understand these things better if she had children 
 of her own." The least that would have satisfied Chris- 
 tina was to have been told that there never yet had been 
 any parents comparable to Theobald and herself. She 
 did not feel easy that an alliance of some kind would 
 not grow up between aunt and nephew, and neither she 
 nor Theobald wanted Ernest to have any allies. Joey
 
 The Way of All Flesh 159 
 
 and Charlotte were quite as many allies as were good 
 for him. After all, however, if Alethea chose to go and 
 live at Roughborough, they could not well stop her, and 
 must make the best of it. 
 
 In a few weeks' time Alethea did choose to go and 
 live at Roughborough. A house was found with a field 
 and a nice little garden which suited her very well. "At 
 any rate," she said to herself, "I will have fresh eggs 
 and flowers." She even considered the question of keep- 
 ing a cow, but in the end decided not to do so. She fur- 
 nished her house throughout anew, taking nothing what- 
 ever from her establishment in Gower Street, and by 
 Michaelmas for the house was empty when she took it 
 she was settled comfortably, and had begun to make 
 herself at home. 
 
 One of Miss Pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen 
 of the smartest and most gentlemanly boys to breakfast 
 with her. From her seat in church she could see the faces 
 of the upper-form boys, and soon made up her mind 
 which of them it would be best to cultivate. Miss Ponti- 
 fex, sitting opposite the boys in church, and reckoning 
 them up with her keen eyes from under her veil by all 
 a woman's criteria, came to a truer conclusion about the 
 greater number of those she scrutinized than even Dr. 
 Skinner had done. She fell in love with one boy from 
 seeing him put on his gloves. 
 
 Miss Pontifex, as I have said, got hold of some of 
 these youngsters through Ernest, and fed them well. No 
 boy can resist being fed well by a good-natured and still 
 handsome woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in this 
 respect give them a bone and they will like you at once. 
 Alethea employed every other little artifice which she 
 thought likely to win their allegiance to herself, and 
 through this their countenance for her nephew. She 
 found the football club in a slight money difficulty and 
 at once gave half a sovereign towards its removal. The 
 boys had no chance against her, she shot them down one
 
 160 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 after another as easily as though they had been roosting 
 pheasants. Nor did she escape scathless herself, for, as 
 she wrote to me, she quite lost her heart to half a dozen 
 of them. "How much nicer they are," she said, "and 
 how much more they know than those who profess to 
 teach them!" 
 
 I believe it has been lately maintained that it is the 
 young and fair who are the truly old and truly experi- 
 enced, inasmuch as it is they who alone have a living 
 memory to guide them; "the whole charm," it has been 
 said, "of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect 
 of experience, and when this has for some reason failed 
 or been misapplied, the charm is broken. When we say 
 that we are getting old, we should say rather that we 
 are getting new or young, and are suffering from inex- 
 perience; trying to do things which we have never done 
 before, and failing worse and worse, till in the end 
 we are landed in the utter impotence of death." 
 
 Miss Pontifex died many a long year before the above 
 passage was written, but she had arrived independently 
 at much the same conclusion. 
 
 She first, therefore, squared the boys. Dr. Skinner 
 was even more easily dealt with. He and Mrs. Skinner 
 called, as a matter of course, as soon as Miss Pontifex 
 was settled. She fooled him to the top of his bent, and 
 obtained the promise of a MS. copy of one of his minor 
 poems (for Dr. Skinner had the reputation of being 
 quite one of our most facile and elegant minor poets) on 
 the occasion of his first visit. The other masters and 
 masters' wives were not forgotten. Alethea laid herself 
 out to please, as indeed she did wherever she went, and if 
 any woman lays herself out to do this, she generally 
 succeeds.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 161 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 Miss PONTIFEX soon found out that Ernest did not like 
 games, but she saw also that he could hardly be expected 
 to like them. He was perfectly well shaped but unusually 
 devoid of physical strength. He got a fair share of this 
 in after life, but it came much later with him than with 
 other boys, and at the time of which I am writing he was 
 a mere little skeleton. He wanted something to develop 
 his arms and chest without knocking him about as much 
 as the school games did. To supply this want by some 
 means which should add also to his pleasure was Ale- 
 thea's first anxiety. Rowing would have answered every 
 purpose, but unfortunately there was no river at Rough- 
 borough. 
 
 Whatever it was to be, it must be something which 
 he should like as much as other boys liked cricket or foot- 
 ball, and he must think the wish for it to have come orig- 
 inally from himself ; it was not very easy to find anything 
 that would do, but ere long it occurred to her that she 
 might enlist his love of music on her side, and asked 
 him one day when he was spending a half-holiday at her 
 house whether he would like her to buy an organ for him 
 to play on. Of course, the boy said yes; then she told 
 him about her grandfather and the organs he had built. 
 It had never entered into his head that he could make 
 one, but when he gathered from what his aunt had said 
 that this was not out of the question, he rose as eagerly 
 to the bait as she could have desired, and wanted to be- 
 gin learning to saw and plane so that he might make the 
 wooden pipes at once. 
 
 Miss Pontifex did not see how she could have hit 
 upon anything more suitable, and she liked the idea that 
 he would incidentally get a knowledge of carpentering, 
 for she was impressed, perhaps foolishly, with the wis-
 
 162 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dom of the German custom which gives every boy a 
 handicraft of some sort. 
 
 Writing to me on this matter, she said, "Professions are 
 all very well for those who have connection and interest 
 as well as capital, but otherwise they are white elephants. 
 How many men do not you and I know who have talent, 
 assiduity, excellent good sense, straightforwardness, 
 every quality in fact which should command success, and 
 who yet go on from year to year waiting and hoping 
 against hope for the work which never comes? How, 
 indeed, is it likely to come unless to those who either are 
 born with interest, or who marry in order to get it? 
 Ernest's father and mother have no interest, and if they 
 had they would not use it. I suppose they will make him 
 a clergyman, or try to do so perhaps it is the best thing 
 to do with him, for he could buy a living with the money 
 his grandfather left him, but there is no knowing what 
 the boy will think of it when the time comes, and for 
 aught we know he may insist on going to the backwoods 
 of America, as so many other young men are doing 
 now." . . . But, anyway, he would like making an organ, 
 and this could do him no harm, so the sooner he began 
 the better. 
 
 Alethea thought it would save trouble in the end if she 
 told her brother and sister-in-law of this scheme. "I do 
 not suppose," she wrote, "that Dr. Skinner will approve 
 very cordially of my attempt to introduce organ-building 
 into the curriculum of Roughborough, but I will see what 
 I can do with him, for I have set my heart on owning an 
 organ built by Ernest's own hands, which he may play 
 on as much as he likes while it remains in my house and 
 which I will lend him permanently as soon as he gets 
 one of his own, but which is to be my property for the 
 present, inasmuch as I mean to pay for it." This was 
 put in to make it plain to Theobald and Christina that 
 they should not be out of pocket in the matter. 
 
 If Alethea had been as poor as the Misses Allaby, the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 163 
 
 reader may guess what Ernest's papa and mamma would 
 have said to this proposal; but then, if she had been as 
 poor as they, she would never have made it. They did 
 not like Ernest's getting more and more into his aunt's 
 good books ; still it was perhaps better that he should do 
 so than that she should be driven back upon the John 
 Pontifexes. The only thing, said Theobald, which made 
 him hesitate, was that the boy might be thrown with low 
 associates later on if he were to be encouraged in his 
 taste for music a taste which Theobald had always dis- 
 liked. He had observed with regret that Ernest had ere 
 now shown rather a hankering after low company, and 
 he might make acquaintance with those who would cor- 
 rupt his innocence. Christina shuddered at this, but when 
 they had aired their scruples sufficiently they felt (and 
 when people begin to "feel," they are invariably going 
 to take what they believe to be the more worldly course) 
 that to oppose Alethea's proposal would be injuring their 
 son's prospects more than was right, so they consented, 
 but not too graciously. 
 
 After a time, however, Christina got used to the idea, 
 and then considerations occurred to her which made her 
 throw herself into it with characteristic ardour. If Miss 
 Pontifex had been a railway stock she might have been 
 said to have been buoyant in the Battersby market for 
 some few days ; buoyant for long together she could never 
 be, still for a time there really was an upward movement. 
 Christina's mind wandered to the organ itself; she 
 seemed to have made it with her own hands ; there would 
 be no other in England to compare with it for combined 
 sweetness and power. She already heard the famous 
 Dr. Walmisley of Cambridge mistaking it for a Father 
 Smith. It would come, no doubt, in reality to Battersby 
 Church, which wanted an organ, for it must be all non- 
 sense about Alethea's wishing to keep it, and Ernest 
 would not have a house of his own for ever so many 
 years, and they could never have it at the Rectory. Oh,
 
 no ! Battersby Church was the only proper place for it. 
 
 Of course, they would have a grand opening, and the 
 Bishop would come down, and perhaps young Figgins 
 might be on a visit to them she must ask Ernest if 
 young Figgins had yet left Roughborough he might 
 even persuade his grandfather, Lord Lonsford, to be pres- 
 ent. Lord Lonsford and the Bishop and everyone else 
 would then compliment her, and Dr. Wesley or Dr. 
 Walmisley, who should preside (it did not much matter 
 which), would say to her, "My dear Mrs. Pontifex, I 
 never yet played upon so remarkable an instrument." 
 Then she would give him one of her very sweetest smiles 
 and say she feared he was flattering her, on which he 
 would rejoin with some pleasant little trifle about re- 
 markable men (the remarkable man being for the mo- 
 ment Ernest) having invariably had remarkable women 
 for their mothers and so on and so on. The advantages 
 of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it I 
 on so thick and exactly in the right places. 
 
 Theobald wrote Ernest a short and surly letter 
 a propos of his aunt's intentions in this matter. 
 
 "I will not commit myself," he said, "to an opinion 
 whether anything will come of it; this will depend en- 
 tirely upon your own exertions; you have had singular 
 advantages hitherto, and your kind aunt is showing ever} 
 desire to befriend you, but you must give greater proof 
 of stability and steadiness of character than you have 
 given yet if this organ matter is not to prove in the end 
 to be only one disappointment the more. 
 
 "I must insist on two things : firstly, that this new iron 
 in the fire does not distract your attention from your 
 Latin and Greek" ("They aren't mine," thought Ernest, 
 "and never have been") "and secondly, that you bring 
 no smell of glue or shavings into the house here, if you 
 make any part of the organ during your holidays." 
 
 Ernest was still too young to know how unpleasant a 
 letter he was receiving. He believed the innuendoes con-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 165 
 
 tained in it to be perfectly just. He knew he was sadly 
 deficient in perseverance. He liked some things for a 
 little while, and then found he did not like them any 
 more and this was as bad as anything well could be. 
 His father's letter gave him one of his many fits of mel- 
 ancholy over his own worthlessness, but the thought of 
 the organ consoled him, and he felt sure that here at any 
 rate was something to which he could apply himself 
 steadily without growing tired of it. 
 
 It was settled that the organ was not to be begun 
 before the Christmas holidays were over, and that till 
 then Ernest should do a little plain carpentering, so as 
 to get to know how to use his tools. Miss Pontifex had 
 a carpenter's bench set up in an outhouse upon her own 
 premises, and made terms with the most respectable car- 
 penter in Roughborough, by which one of his men was to 
 come for a couple of hours twice a week and set Ernest 
 on the right way ; then she discovered she wanted this or 
 that simple piece of work done, and gave the boy a com- 
 mission to do it, paying him handsomely as well as find- 
 ing him in tools and materials. She never gave him a 
 syllable of good advice, or talked to him about every- 
 thing's depending upon his own exertions, but she kissed 
 him often, and would come into the workshop and act 
 the part of one who took an interest in what was being 
 done so cleverly as ere long to become really interested. 
 
 What boy would not take kindly to almost anything 
 with such assistance? All boys like making things; the 
 exercise of sawing, planing and hammering, proved ex- 
 actly what his aunt had wanted to find 'something that 
 should exercise, but not too much, and at the same time 
 amuse him ; when Ernest's sallow face was flushed with 
 his work, and his eyes were sparkling with pleasure, he 
 looked quite a different boy from the one his aunt had 
 taken in hand only a few months earlier. His inner 
 self never told him that this was humbug, as it did about 
 Latin and Greek. Making tools and drawers was worth
 
 166 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 living for, and after Christmas there loomed the organ, 
 which was scarcely ever absent from his mind. 
 
 His aunt let him invite his friends, encouraging him 
 to bring those whom her quick sense told her were the 
 most desirable. She smartened him up also in his per- 
 sonal appearance, always without preaching to him. In- 
 deed she worked wonders during the short time that 
 was allowed her, and if her life had been spared I cannot 
 think that my hero would have come under the shadow 
 of that cloud which cast so heavy a gloom over his 
 younger manhood ; but unfortunately for him his gleam 
 of sunshine was too hot and too brilliant to last, and he 
 had many a storm yet to weather, before he became fairly 
 happy. For the present, however, he was supremely so, 
 and his aunt was happy and grateful for his happiness, 
 the improvement she saw in him, and his unrepressed 
 affection for herself. She became fonder of him from 
 day to day in spite of his many faults and almost incredi- 
 ble foolishnesses. It was perhaps on account of these 
 very things that she saw how much he had need of her ; 
 but at any rate, from whatever cause, she became 
 strengthened in her determination to be to him in the 
 place of parents, and to find in him a son rather than a 
 nephew. But still she made no will. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 ALL went well for the first part of the following half 
 year. Miss Pontifex spent the greater part of her holi- 
 days in London, and I also saw her at Roughborough, 
 where I spent a few days, staying at the "Swan." I 
 heard all about my godson in whom, however, I took 
 less interest than I said I did. I took more interest in 
 the stage at that time than in anything else, and as for 
 Ernest, I found him a nuisance for engrossing so much 
 of his aunt's attention, and taking her so much from
 
 The Way of All Flesh 167 
 
 London. The organ was begun, and made fair progress 
 during the first two months of the half year. Ernest 
 was happier than he had ever been before, and was strug- 
 gling upwards. The best boys took more notice of him 
 for his aunt's sake, and he consorted less with those 
 who led him into mischief. 
 
 But much as Miss Pontifex had done, she could not 
 all at once undo the effect of such surroundings as the 
 boy had had at Battersby. Much as he feared and dis- 
 liked his father (though he still knew not how much this 
 was), he had caught much from him; if Theobald had 
 been kinder Ernest would have modelled himself upon 
 him entirely, and ere long would probably have become 
 as thorough a little prig as could have easily been found. 
 
 Fortunately his temper had come to him from his 
 mother, wlio, when not frightened, and when there was 
 nothing 0^1 the horizon which might cross the slightest 
 whim or her husband, was an amiable, good-natured 
 woman. If it was not such an awful thing to say of any- 
 one, I should say that she meant well. 
 
 Ernest had also inherited his mother's love of building 
 castles in the air, and soT suppose it must be called 
 her vanity. He was very fond of showing off, and, pro- 
 vided he could attract attention, cared little from whom 
 it came, nor what it was for. He caught up, parrot-like, 
 whatever jargon he heard from his elders, which he 
 thought was the correct thing, and aired it in season 
 and out of season, as though it were his own. 
 
 Miss Pontifex was old enough and wise enough to 
 know that this is the way in which even the greatest men 
 as a general rule begin to develop, and was more pleased 
 with his receptiveness and reproductiveness than alarmed 
 at the things he caught and reproduced. 
 
 She saw that he was much attached to herself, and 
 trusted to this rather than to anything else. She saw 
 also that his conceit was not very profound, and that his 
 fits of self-abasement were as extreme as his exaltation
 
 168 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 had been. His impulsiveness and sanguine trustfulness 
 in anyone who smiled pleasantly at him, or indeed was 
 not absolutely unkind to him, made her more anxious 
 about him than any other point in his character ; she saw 
 clearly that he would have to find himself rudely unde- 
 ceived many a time and oft, before he would learn to 
 distinguish friend from foe within reasonable time. It 
 was her perception of this which led her to take the action 
 which she was so soon called upon to take. 
 
 Her health was for the most part excellent, and she 
 had never had a serious illness in her life. One morning 
 however, soon after Easter, 1850, she awoke feeling seri- 
 ously unwell. For some little time there had been a talk 
 of fever in the neighbourhood, but in those days the pre- 
 cautions that ought to be taken against the spread of in- 
 fection were not so well understood as now, and nobody 
 did anything. In a day or two it became plain that Miss 
 Pontifex had got an attack of typhoid fever and was dan- 
 gerously ill. On this she sent off a messenger to town, 
 and desired him not to return without her lawyer and 
 myself. 
 
 We arrived on the afternoon of the day on which we 
 had been summoned, and found her still free from de- 
 lirium: indeed, the cheery way in which she received us 
 made it difficult to think she could be in danger. She at 
 once explained her wishes, which had reference, as I 
 expected, to her nephew, and repeated the substance of 
 what I have already referred to as her main source of 
 uneasiness concerning him. Then she begged me by our 
 long and close intimacy, by the suddenness of the danger 
 that had fallen on her and her powerlessness to avert it, 
 to undertake what she said she well knew, if she died, 
 would be an unpleasant and invidious trust. 
 
 She wanted to leave the bulk of her money ostensibly 
 to me, but in reality to her nephew, so that I should hold 
 it in trust for him till he was twenty-eight years old, but 
 neither he nor anyone else, except her lawyer and myself,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 169 
 
 was to know anything about it. She would leave 5000 
 in other legacies, and 15,000 to Ernest which by the 
 time he was twenty-eight would have accumulated to, 
 say, 30,000. "Sell out the debentures," she said, "where 
 the money now is and put it into Midland Ordinary. 
 
 "Let him make his mistakes," she said, "upon the 
 money his grandfather left him. I am no prophet, but 
 even I can see that it will take that boy many years to 
 see things as his neighbours see them. He will get no 
 help from his father and mother, who would never for- 
 give him for his good luck if I left him the money out- 
 right ; I daresay I am wrong, but I think he will have to 
 lose the greater part or all of what he has, before he will 
 know how to keep what he will get from me." 
 
 Supposing he went bankrupt before he was twenty- 
 eight years old, the money was to be mine absolutely, 
 but she could trust me, she said, to hand it over to Ernest 
 in due time. 
 
 "If," she continued, "I am mistaken, the worst that can 
 happen is that he will come into a larger sum at twenty- 
 eight instead of a smaller sum at, say, twenty-three, for I 
 would never trust him with it earlier, and if he knows 
 nothing about it he will not be unhappy for the want 
 of it." 
 
 She begged me to take 2000 in return for the trouble 
 I should have in taking charge of the boy's estate, and 
 as a sign of the testatrix's hope that I would now and 
 again look after him while he was still young. The re- 
 maining 3000 I was to pay in legacies and annuities to 
 friends and servants. 
 
 In vain both her lawyer and myself remonstrated with 
 her on the unusual and hazardous nature of this arrange- 
 ment. We told her that sensible people will not take a. 
 more sanguine view concerning human nature than the 
 Courts of Chancery do. We said, in fact, everything that 
 anyone else would say. She admitted everything, but 
 urged that her time was short, that nothing would in-
 
 170 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 duce her to leave her money to her nephew in the usual 
 way. "It is an unusually foolish will," she said, "but he 
 is an unusually foolish boy;" and she smiled quite mer- 
 rily at her little sally. Like all the rest of her family, 
 she was very stubborn when her mind was made up. 
 So the thing was done as she wished it. 
 
 No provision was made for either my death or Er- 
 nest's Miss Pontifex had settled it that we were neither 
 of us going to die, and was too ill to go into details ; she 
 was so anxious, moreover, to sign her will while still able 
 to do so that we had practically no alternative but to do 
 as she told us. If she recovered we could see things 
 put on a more satisfactory footing, and further discus- 
 sion would evidently impair her chances of recovery; it 
 seemed then only too likely that it was a case of this 
 will or no will at all. 
 
 When the will was signed I wrote a letter in dupli- 
 cate, saying that I held all Miss Pontifex had left me in 
 trust for Ernest except as regards ^5000, but that he was 
 not to come into the bequest, and was to know nothing 
 whatever about it directly or indirectly, till he was twen- 
 ty-eight years old, and if he was bankrupt before he 
 came into it the money was to be mine absolutely. At 
 the foot of each letter Miss Pontifex wrote, "The above 
 was my understanding when I made my will," and then 
 signed her name. The solicitor and his clerk witnessed; 
 I kept one copy myself and handed the other to Miss 
 Pontifex's solicitor. 
 
 When all this had been done she became more easy 
 in her mind. She talked principally about her nephew. 
 "Don't scold him," she said, "if he is volatile, and con- 
 tinually takes things up only to throw them down again. 
 .How can he find out his strength or weakness otherwise? 
 A man's profession," she said, and here she gave one of 
 her wicked little laughs, "is not like his wife, which he 
 must take once for all, for better for worse, without 
 proof beforehand. Let him go here and there, and learn
 
 The Way of All Flesh 171 
 
 his truest liking by finding out what, after all, he catches 
 himself turning to most habitually then let him stick to 
 this ; but I daresay Ernest will be forty or five and forty 
 before he settles down. Then all his previous infidelities 
 will work together to him for good if he is the boy I 
 hope he is. 
 
 "Above all," she continued, "do not let him work up 
 to his full strength, except once or twice in his lifetime ; 
 nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all 
 round, it has come pretty easily. Theobald and Christina 
 would give him a pinch of salt and tell him to put it on 
 the tails of the seven deadly virtues ;" here she laughed 
 again in her old manner at once so mocking and so sweet 
 "I think if he likes pancakes he had perhaps better 
 eat them on Shrove Tuesday, but this is enough." These 
 were the last coherent words she spoke. From that time 
 she grew continually worse, and was never free from 
 delirium till her death which took place less than a fort- 
 night afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those who 
 knew and loved her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 LETTERS had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers 
 and sisters, and one and all came post-haste to Rough- 
 borough. Before they arrived the poor lady was already 
 delirious, and for the sake of her own peace at the last 
 I am half glad she never recovered consciousness. 
 
 I had known these people all their lives, as none can 
 know each other but those who have played together as 
 children ; I knew how they had all of them perhaps 
 Theobald least, but all of them more or less made her 
 life a burden to her until the death of her father had 
 made her her own mistress, and I was displeased at their 
 coming one after the other to Roughborough, and inquir- 
 ing whether their sister had recovered consciousness suf-
 
 172 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 fkiently to be able to see them. It was known that she 
 had sent for me on being taken ill, and that I remained 
 at Roughborough, and I own I was angered by the min- 
 gled air of suspicion, defiance and inquisitiveness, with 
 which they regarded me. They would all, except Theo- 
 bald, I believe, have cut me downright if they had not 
 believed me to know something they wanted to know 
 themselves, and might have some chance of learning 
 from me for it was plain I had been in some way con- 
 cerned with the making of their sister's will. None of 
 them suspected what the ostensible nature of this would 
 be, but I think they feared Miss Pontifex was about to 
 leave money for public uses. John said to me in his 
 blandest manner that he fancied he remembered to have 
 heard his sister say that she thought of leaving money to 
 found a college for the relief of dramatic authors in dis- 
 tress; to this I made no rejoinder, and I have no doubt 
 his suspicions were deepened. 
 
 When the end came, I got Miss Pontifex's solicitor to 
 write and tell her brothers and sisters how she had left 
 her money : they were not unnaturally furious, and went 
 each to his or her separate home without attending the 
 funeral, and without paying any attention to myself. 
 This was perhaps the kindest thing they could have done 
 by me, for their behaviour made me so angry that I be- 
 came almost reconciled to Alethea's will out of pleasure 
 at the anger it had aroused. But for this I should have 
 felt the will keenly, as having been placed by it in the 
 position which of all others I had been most anxious to 
 avoid, and as having saddled me with a very heavy re- 
 sponsibility. Still it was impossible for me to escape, and 
 I could only let things take their course. 
 
 Miss Pontifex had expressed a wish to be buried at 
 Paleham ; in the course of the next few days I therefore 
 took the body thither. I had not been to Paleham since 
 the death of my father some six years earlier. I had 
 often wished to go there, but had shrunk from doing so,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 173 
 
 though my sister had been two or three times. I could 
 not bear to see the house which had been my home for so 
 many years of my life in the hands of strangers ; to ring 
 ceremoniously at a bell which I had never yet pulled 
 except as a boy in jest; to feel that I had nothing to do 
 with a garden in which I had in childhood gathered so 
 many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for many 
 years after I had reached man's estate ; to see the rooms 
 bereft of every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar 
 in spite of their familiarity. Had there been any suffi- 
 cient reason, I should have taken these things as a matter 
 of course, and should no doubt have found them much 
 worse in anticipation than in reality, but as there had been 
 no special reason why I should go to Paleham I had 
 hitherto avoided doing so. Now, however, my going 
 was a necessity, and I confess I never felt more subdued 
 than I did on arriving there with the dead playmate of 
 my childhood. 
 
 I found the village more changed than I had expected. 
 The railway had come there, and a brand new yellow 
 brick station was on the site of old Mr. and Mrs. Ponti- 
 fex's cottage. Nothing but the carpenter's shop was now 
 standing. I saw many faces I knew, but even in six 
 years they seemed to have grown wonderfully older. 
 Some of the very old were dead, and the old were get- 
 ting very old in their stead. I felt like the changeling in 
 the fairy story who came back after a seven years' sleep. 
 Everyone seemed glad to see me, though I had never 
 given them particular cause to be so, and everyone who 
 remembered old Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex spoke warmly 
 of them and were pleased at their granddaughter's wish- 
 ing to be laid near them. Entering the churchyard and 
 standing in the twilight of a gusty, cloudy evening on the 
 spot close beside old Mrs. Pontifex's grave which I had 
 chosen for Alethea's, I thought of the many times that 
 she, who would lie there henceforth, and I, who must 
 surely lie one day in some such another place, though
 
 174 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 when and where I knew not, had romped over this very 
 spot as childish lovers together. 
 
 Next morning I followed her to the grave, and in due 
 course set up a plain upright slab to her memory as like 
 as might be to those over the graves of her grandmother 
 and grandfather. I gave the dates and places of her 
 birth and death, but added nothing except that this 
 stone was set up by one who had known and loved her. 
 Knowing how fond she had been of music I had been 
 half inclined at one time to inscribe a few bars of music, 
 if I could find any which seemed suitable to her character, 
 but I knew how much she would have disliked anything 
 singular in connection with her tombstone, and did not 
 do it. 
 
 Before, however, I had come to this conclusion, I had 
 thought that Ernest might be able to help me to the right 
 thing, and had written to him upon the subject. The 
 following is the answer I received 
 
 "DEAR GODPAPA, I send you the best bit I can think 
 of; it is the subject of the last of Handel's six grand 
 fugues and goes thus : 
 
 Uraoe 
 
 
 
 It would do better for a man, especially for an old man 
 who was very sorry for things, than for a woman, but I 
 cannot think of anything better ; if you do not like it for 
 Aunt Alethea I shall keep it for myself, Your affec- 
 tionate Godson, ERNEST PONTIFEX." 
 
 Was this the little lad who could get sweeties for two- 
 pence but not for two-pence-halfpenny? Dear, dear me, 
 I thought to myself, how these babes and sucklings do 
 , give us the go-by surely. Choosing his own epitaph at
 
 The Way of All Flesh 175 
 
 fifteen as for a man who "had been very sorry for 
 things," and such a strain as that why it might have 
 done for Leonardo da Vinci himself. Then I set the 
 boy down as a conceited young jackanapes, which no 
 doubt he was, but so are a great many other young 
 people of Ernest's age. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 IF Theobald and Christina had not been too well pleased 
 when Miss Pontifex first took Ernest in hand, they were 
 still less so when the connection between the two was in- 
 terrupted so prematurely. They said they had made sure 
 from what their sister had said that she was going to 
 make Ernest her heir. I do not think she had given 
 them so much as a hint to this effect. Theobald indeed 
 gave Ernest to understand that she had done so in a 
 letter which will be given shortly, but if Theobald wanted 
 to make himself disagreeable, a trifle light as air would 
 forthwith assume in his imagination whatever form was 
 most convenient to him. I do not think they had even 
 made up their minds what Alethea was to do with her 
 money before they knew of her being at the point of 
 death, and as I have said already, if they had thought it 
 likely that Ernest would be made heir over their own 
 heads without their having at any rate a life interest in 
 the bequest, they would have soon thrown obstacles in the 
 way of further intimacy between aunt and nephew. 
 
 This, however, did not bar their right to feeling ag- 
 grieved now that neither they nor Ernest had taken any- 
 thing at all, and they could profess disappointment on 
 their boy's behalf which they would have been too proud 
 to admit upon their own. In fact, it was only amiable 
 of them to be disappointed under these circumstances. 
 
 Christina said that the will was simply fraudulent, and 
 was convinced that it could be upset if she and Theobald
 
 176 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 went the right way to work. Theobald, she said, should 
 go before the Lord Chancellor, not in full court but in 
 chambers, where he could explain the whole matter ; or, 
 perhaps it would be even better if she were to go herself 
 and I dare not trust myself to describe the reverie 
 to which this last idea gave rise. I believe in the end 
 Theobald died, and the Lord Chancellor (who had be- 
 come a widower a few weeks earlier) made her an offer, 
 which, however, she firmly but not ungratefully de- 
 clined ; she should ever, she said, continue to think of him 
 as a friend at this point the cook came in, saying the 
 butcher had called, and what would she please to order. 
 
 I think Theobald must have had an idea that there was 
 something behind the bequest to me, but he said nothing 
 about it to Christina. He was angry and felt wronged, 
 because he could not get at Alethea to give her a piece of 
 his mind any more than he had been able to get at his 
 father. "It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to him- 
 self, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk fac- 
 ing those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at 
 any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven." But of this 
 he was doubtful, for when people had done so great a 
 wrong as this, it was hardly to be supposed that they 
 would go to Heaven at all and as for his meeting them 
 in another place, the idea never so much as entered his 
 mind. 
 
 One so angry and, of late, so little used to contradic- 
 tion might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon 
 someone, and Theobald had long since developed the or- 
 gan, by means of which he might vent spleen with least 
 risk and greatest satisfaction to himself. This organ, it 
 may be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest ; to Ernest 
 therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not per- 
 sonally, but by letter. 
 
 "You ought to know," he wrote, "that your Aunt 
 Alethea had given your mother and me to understand 
 that it was her wish to make you her heir in the event,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 177 
 
 of course, of your conducting yourself in such a manner 
 as to give her confidence in you ; as a matter of fact, how- 
 ever, she has left you nothing, and the whole of her 
 property has gone to your godfather, Mr. Overton. 
 Your mother and I are willing to hope that if she had 
 lived longer you would yet have succeeded in winning 
 her good opinion, but it is too late to think of this now. 
 
 "The carpentering and organ-building must at once be 
 discontinued. I never believed in the project, and have 
 seen no reason to alter my original opinion. I am not 
 sorry for your own sake, that it is to be at an end, nor, 
 I am sure, will you regret it yourself in after years. 
 
 "A few words more as regards your own prospects. 
 You have, as I believe you know, a small inheritance, 
 which is yours legally under your grandfather's will. 
 This bequest was made inadvertently, and, I believe, en- 
 tirely through a misunderstanding on the lawyer's part. 
 The bequest was probably intended not to take effect till 
 after the death of your mother and myself ; nevertheless, 
 as the will is actually worded, it will now be at your 
 command if you live to be twenty-one years old. From 
 this, however, large deductions must be made. There 
 will be legacy duty, and I do not know whether I am not 
 entitled to deduct the expenses of your education and 
 maintenance from birth to your coming of age ; I shall 
 not in all likelihood insist on this right to the full, if you 
 conduct yourself properly, but a considerable sum should 
 certainly be deducted ; there will therefore remain very 
 little say 1000 or 2000 at the outside, as what will be 
 actually yours but the strictest account shall be ren- 
 dered you in due time. 
 
 "This, let me warn you most seriously, is all that you 
 must expect from me" (even Ernest saw that it was not 
 from Theobald at all), "at any rate till after my death, 
 which for aught any of us know may be yet many years 
 distant. It is not a large sum, but it is sufficient if supple- 
 mented by steadiness and earnestness of purpose. Your
 
 178 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mother and I gave you the name Ernest, hoping that it 
 
 would remind you continually of " but I really cannot 
 
 copy more of this effusion. It was all the same old will- 
 shaking game and came practically to this, that Ernest 
 was no good, and that if he went on as he was going on 
 now, he would probably have to go about the streets beg- 
 ging without any shoes or stockings soon after he had left 
 school, or at any rate, college ; and that he, Theobald, and 
 Christina were almost too good for this world altogether. 
 
 After he had written this Theobald felt quite good- 
 natured, and sent to the Mrs. Thompson of the moment 
 even more soup and wine than her usual not illiberal 
 allowance. 
 
 Ernest was deeply, passionately upset by his father's 
 letter; to think that even his dear aunt, the one person 
 of his relations whom he really loved, should have turned 
 against him and thought badly of him after all. This was 
 the unkindest cut of all. In the hurry of her illness Miss 
 Pontifex, while thinking only of his welfare, had omitted 
 to make such small present mention of him as would 
 have made his father's innuendoes stingless ; and her ill- 
 ness being infectious, she had not seen him after its na- 
 ture was known. I myself did not know of .Theobald's 
 letter, nor think enough about my godson to guess what 
 might easily be his state. It was not till many years after- 
 wards that I found Theobald's letter in the pocket of an 
 old portfolio which Ernest had used at school, and in 
 which other old letters and school documents were col- 
 lected which I have used in this book. He had forgotten 
 that he had it, but told me when he saw it that he re- 
 membered it as the first thing that made him begin to rise 
 against his father in a rebellion which he recognised as 
 righteous, though he dared not openly avow it. Not the 
 least serious thing was that it would, he feared, be his 
 duty to give up the legacy his grandfather had left him ; 
 for if it was his only through a mistake, how could he 
 keep it?
 
 The Way of All Flesh 179 
 
 During the rest of the half year Ernest was listless and 
 unhappy. He was very fond of some of his schoolfel- 
 lows, but afraid of those whom he believed to be better 
 than himself, and prone to idealise everyone into being 
 his superior except those who were obviously a good 
 deal beneath him. He held himself much too cheap, and 
 because he was without that physical strength and vigour 
 which he so much coveted, and also because he knew he 
 shirked his lessons, he believed that he was without any- 
 thing which could deserve the name of a good quality; 
 he was naturally bad, and one of those for whom there 
 was no place for repentance, though he sought it even 
 with tears. So he shrank out of sight of those whom in 
 his boyish way he idolised, never for a moment sus- 
 pecting that he might have capacities to the full as high 
 as theirs though of a different kind, and fell in more 
 with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with 
 whom he could at any rate be upon equal terms. Before 
 the end of the half year he had dropped from the estate 
 to which he had been raised during his aunt's stay at 
 Roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, 
 with bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, 
 resumed its sway over him. "Pontifex," said Dr. Skin- 
 ner, who had fallen upon him in hall one day like a 
 moral landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you 
 never laugh? Do you always look so preternaturally 
 grave?" The doctor had not meant to be unkind, but 
 the boy turned crimson, and escaped. 
 
 There was one place only where he was happy, and that 
 was in the old church of St. Michael, when his friend the 
 organist was practising. About this time cheap editions 
 of the great oratorios began to appear, and Ernest got 
 them all as soon as they were published ; he would some- 
 times sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and 
 buy a number or two of the "Messiah," or the "Creation," 
 or "Elijah," with the proceeds. This was simply cheating 
 his papa and mamma, but Ernest was falling low again
 
 i8o The Way of All Flesh 
 
 or thought he was and he wanted the music much, and 
 the Sallust, or whatever it was, little. Sometimes the 
 organist would go home, leaving his keys with Ernest, so 
 that he could play by himself and lock up the organ and 
 the church in time to get back for calling over. At other 
 times, while his friend was playing, he would wander 
 round the church, looking at the monuments and the old 
 stained glass windows, enchanted as regards both ears 
 and eyes, at once. Once the old rector got hold of him as 
 he was watching a new window being put in, which 
 the rector had bought in Germany the work, it was 
 supposed, of Albert Diirer. He questioned Ernest, and 
 finding that he was fond of music, he said in his old 
 trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you 
 should have known Dr. Burney who wrote the history of 
 music. I knew him exceedingly well when I was a young 
 man." That made Ernest's heart beat, for he knew that 
 Dr. Burney, when a boy at school at Chester, used to 
 break bounds that he might watch Handel smoking his 
 pipe in the Exchange coffee house and now he was in 
 the presence of one who, if he had not seen Handel 
 himself, had at least seen those who had seen him. 
 
 These were oases in his desert, but, as a general rule, 
 the boy looked thin and pale, and as though he had a 
 secret which depressed him, which no doubt he had, but 
 for which I cannot blame him. He rose, in spite of him- 
 self, higher in the school, but fell ever into deeper and 
 deeper disgrace with the masters, and did not gain in the 
 opinion of those boys about whom he was persuaded 
 that they could assuredly never know what it was to 
 have a secret weighing upon their minds. This was what 
 Ernest felt so keenly; he did not much care about the 
 boys who liked him, and idolised some who kept him as 
 far as possible at a distance, but this is pretty much the 
 case with all boys everywhere. 
 
 At last things reached a crisis, below which they could 
 not very well go, for at the end of the half year but one
 
 The Way of All Flesh 181 
 
 after his aunt's death, Ernest brought back a document 
 in his portmanteau, which Theobald stigmatised as "in- 
 famous and outrageous." I need hardly say I am allud- 
 ing to his school bill. 
 
 This document was always a source of anxiety to 
 Ernest, for it was gone into with scrupulous care, and 
 he was a good deal cross-examined about it. He would 
 sometimes "write in" for articles necessary for his edu- 
 cation, such as a portfolio, or a dictionary, and sell the 
 same, as I have explained, in order to eke out his pocket 
 money, probably to buy either music or tobacco. These 
 frauds were sometimes, as Ernest thought, in imminent 
 danger of being discovered, and it was a load off his 
 breast when the cross-examination was safely over. This 
 time Theobald had made a great fuss about the extras, 
 but had grudgingly passed them; it was another matter, 
 however, with the character and the moral statistics, with 
 which the bill concluded. 
 
 The page on which these details were to be found was 
 as follows : 
 
 REPORT OF THE CONDUCT AND PROGRESS OF ERNEST PONTIFEX 
 UPPER FIFTH FORM, HALF YEAR ENDING MIDSUMMER 1851 
 
 Classics Idle, listless and unimproving. 
 
 Mathematics 
 
 Divinity " 
 
 Conduct in house Orderly. 
 
 General Conduct Not satisfactory, on account of his great un- 
 
 punctuality and inattention to duties. 
 
 Monthly merit money is. 6d. 6d. od. 6d. Total 2s. 6d. 
 
 Number of merit marks 20110 Total 4 
 
 Number of penal marks 26 20 25 30 25 Total 126 
 Number of extra penals 9 6 10 12 n Total 48 
 
 I recommend that his pocket money be made to depend upon 
 his merit money. 
 
 S. SKINNER, Headmaster. 
 
 1
 
 i82 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 ERNEST was thus in disgrace from the beginning of the 
 holidays, but an incident soon occurred which led him 
 into delinquencies compared with which all his previous 
 sins were venial. 
 
 Among the servants at the Rectory was a remarkably 
 pretty girl named Ellen. She came from Devonshire, and 
 was the daughter of a fisherman who had been drowned 
 when she was a child. Her mother set up a small shop in 
 the village where her husband had lived, and just man- 
 aged to make a living. Ellen remained with her till 
 she was fourteen, when she first went out to service. 
 Four years later, when she was about eighteen, but so 
 well grown that she might have passed for twenty, she 
 had been strongly recommended to Christina, who was 
 then in want of a housemaid, and had now been at Bat- 
 tersby about twelve months. 
 
 As I have said, the girl was remarkably pretty; she 
 looked the perfection of health and good temper, indeed 
 there was a serene expression upon her face which capti- 
 vated almost all who saw her; she looked as if matters 
 had always gone well with her and were always going to 
 do so, and as if no conceivable combination of circum- 
 stances could put her for long together out of temper 
 either with herself or with anyone else. Her complexion 
 was clear, but high; her eyes were grey and beautifully 
 shaped ; her lips were full and restful, with something of 
 an Egyptian Sphinx-like character about them. When I 
 learned that she came from Devonshire I fancied I saw 
 a strain of far-away Egyptian blood in her, for I had 
 heard, though I know not what foundation there was for 
 the story, that the Egyptians made settlements on the 
 coast of Devonshire and Cornwall long before the 
 Romans conquered Britain. Her hair was a rich brown, 
 and her figure of about the middle height perfect, but
 
 The Way of All Flesh 183 
 
 erring if at all on the side of robustness. Altogether 
 she was one of those girls about whom one is inclined 
 to wonder how they can remain unmarried a week or a 
 day longer. 
 
 Her face (as indeed faces generally are, though I 
 grant they lie sometimes) was a fair index to her dispo- 
 sition. She was good nature itself, and everyone in the 
 house, not excluding I believe even Theobald himself 
 after a fashion, was fond of her. As for Christina she 
 took the very warmest interest in her, and used to have 
 her into the dining-room twice a week, and prepare her 
 for confirmation (for by some accident she had never 
 been confirmed) by explaining to her the geography of 
 Palestine and the routes taken by St. Paul on his va- 
 rious journeys in Asia Minor. 
 
 When Bishop Treadwell did actually come down to 
 Battersby and hold a confirmation there (Christina had 
 her wish, he slept at Battersby, and she had a grand 
 dinner party for him, and called him "My lord" several 
 times), he was so much struck with her pretty face and 
 modest demeanour when he laid his hands upon her that 
 he asked Christina about her. When she replied that 
 Ellen was one of her own servants, the bishop seemed, 
 so she thought or chose to think, quite pleased that so 
 pretty a girl should have found so exceptionally good a 
 situation. 
 
 Ernest used to get up early during the holidays so that 
 he might play the piano before breakfast without dis- 
 turbing his papa and mamma or rather, perhaps, with- 
 out being disturbed by them. Ellen would generally be 
 there sweeping the drawing-room floor and dusting while 
 he was playing, and the boy, who was ready to make 
 friends with most people, soon became very fond of her. 
 He was not as a general rule sensitive to the charms of 
 the fair sex, indeed he had hardly been thrown in with 
 any women except his Aunts Allaby, and his Aunt Ale- 
 thea, his mother, his sister Charlotte and Mrs. Jay; some-
 
 184 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 times also he had had to take off his hat to the Miss 
 Skinners, and had felt as if he should sink into the 
 earth on doing so, but his shyness had worn off with 
 Ellen, and the pair had become fast friends. 
 
 Perhaps it was well that Ernest was not at home for 
 very long together, but as yet his affection though hearty 
 was quite Platonic. He was not only innocent, but de- 
 plorably I might even say guiltily innocent. His pref- 
 erence was based upon the fact that Ellen never scolded 
 him, but was always smiling and good tempered ; besides 
 she used to like to hear him play, and this gave him addi- 
 tional zest in playing. The morning access to the piano 
 was indeed the one distinct advantage which the holi- 
 days had in Ernest's eyes, for at school he could not get 
 at a piano except quasi-surreptitiously at the shop of Mr. 
 Pearsall, the music-seller. 
 
 On returning this midsummer he was shocked to find 
 his favourite looking pale and ill. All her good spirits 
 had left her, the roses had fled from her cheek, and she 
 seemed on the point of going into a decline. She said 
 she was unhappy about her mother, whose health was 
 failing, and was afraid she was herself not long for this 
 world. Christina, of course, noticed the change. "I 
 have often remarked," she said, "that those very fresh- 
 coloured, healthy-looking girls are the first to break up. 
 I have given her calomel and James's powders repeatedly, 
 and though she does not like it, I think I must show her 
 to Dr. Martin when he next comes here." 
 
 "Very well, my dear," said Theobald, and so next time 
 Dr. Martin came Ellen was sent for. Dr. Martin soon 
 discovered what would probably have been apparent to 
 Christina herself if she had been able to conceive of such 
 an ailment in connection with a servant who lived under 
 the same roof as Theobald and herself the purity of 
 whose married life should have preserved all unmarried 
 people who came near them from any taint of mischief.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 185 
 
 When it was discovered that in three or four months 
 more Ellen would become a mother, Christina's natural 
 good nature would have prompted her to deal as leniently 
 with the case as she could, if she had not been panic- 
 stricken lest any mercy on her and Theobald's part should 
 be construed into toleration, however partial, of so great 
 a sin"; hereon she dashed off into the conviction that the 
 only thing to do was to pay Ellen her wages, and pack her 
 off on the instant bag and baggage out of the house which 
 purity had more especially and particularly singled out 
 for its abiding city. When she thought of the fearful 
 contamination which Ellen's continued presence even for 
 a week would occasion, she could not hesitate. 
 
 Then came the question horrid thought! as to who 
 was the partner of Ellen's guilt? Was it, could it be, her 
 own. son, her darling Ernest? Ernest was getting a big 
 boy now. She could excuse any young woman for taking 
 a fancy to him; as for himself, why she was sure he 
 was behind no young man of his age in appreciation 
 of the charms of a nice-looking young woman. So 
 long as he was innocent she did not mind this, but oh, if 
 he were guilty! 
 
 She could not bear to think of it, and yet it would be 
 mere cowardice not to look such a matter in the face 
 her hope was in the Lord, and she was ready to bear 
 cheerfully and make the best of any suffering He might 
 think fit to lay upon her. That the baby must be either 
 a boy or girl this much, at any rate, was clear. No 
 less clear was it that the child, if a boy, would resemble 
 Theobald, and if a girl, herself. Resemblance, whether 
 of body or mind, generally leaped over a generation. The 
 guilt of the parents must not be shared by the innocent 
 offspring of shame oh! no and such a child as this 
 
 would be She was off in one of her reveries at 
 
 once. 
 
 The child was in the act of being consecrated Arch-
 
 i86 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 bishop of Canterbury when Theobald came in from a 
 visit in the parish, and was told of the shocking dis- 
 covery. 
 
 Christina said nothing about Ernest, and I believe was 
 more than half angry when the blame was laid upon other 
 shoulders. She was easily consoled, however, and fell 
 back on the double reflection, firstly, that her son was 
 pure, and secondly, that she was quite sure he would not 
 have been so had it not been for his religious convictions 
 which had held him back as, of course, it was only to 
 be expected they would. 
 
 Theobald agreed that no time must be lost in paying 
 Ellen her wages and packing her off. So this was done, 
 and less than two hours after Dr. Martin had entered 
 the house Ellen was sitting beside John the coachman, 
 with her face muffled up so that it could not be seen, 
 weeping bitterly as she was being driven to the station. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 ERNEST had been out all the morning, but came in to the 
 yard of the Rectory from the spinney behind the house 
 just as Ellen's things were being put into the carriage. 
 He thought it was Ellen whom he then saw get into the 
 carriage, but as her face had been hidden by her hand- 
 kerchief he had not been able to see plainly who it was, 
 and dismissed the idea as improbable. 
 
 He went to the back-kitchen window, at which the 
 cook was standing peeling the potatoes for dinner, and 
 found her crying bitterly. Ernest was much distressed, 
 for he liked the cook, and, of course, wanted to know 
 what all the matter was, who it was that had just gone 
 off in the pony carriage, and why? The cook told him 
 it was Ellen, but said that no earthly power should make 
 it cross her lips why it was she was going away; when, 
 however, Ernest took her au pied de la lettre and asked
 
 The Way of All Flesh 187 
 
 no further questions, she told him all about it after ex- 
 torting the most solemn promises of secrecy. 
 
 It took Ernest some minutes to arrive at the facts of 
 the case, but when he understood them he leaned against 
 the pump, which stood near the back-kitchen window, 
 and mingled his tears with the cook's. 
 
 Then his blood began to boil within him. He did not 
 see that after all his father and mother could have done 
 much otherwise than they actually did. They might per- 
 haps have been less precipitate, and tried to keep the 
 matter a little more quiet, but this would not have been 
 easy, nor would it have mended things very materially. 
 The bitter fact remains that if a girl does certain things 
 she must do them at her peril, no matter how young 
 and pretty she is nor to what temptation she has sue- 
 cumbed. This is the way of the world, and as yet there 
 has been no help found for it. 
 
 Ernest could only see what he gathered from the cook, 
 namely, that his favourite, Ellen, was being turned adrift 
 with a matter of three pounds in her pocket, to go she 
 knew not where, and to do she knew not what, and that 
 she had said she should hang or drown herself, which the 
 boy implicitly believed she would. 
 
 With greater promptitude than he had shown yet, he 
 reckoned up his money and found he had two shillings 
 and threepence at his command; there was his knife 
 which might sell for a shilling, and there was the silver 
 watch his Aunt Alethea had given him shortly before 
 she died. The carriage had been gone now a full quarter 
 of an hour, and it must have got some distance ahead, 
 but he would do his best to catch it up, and there were 
 short cuts which would perhaps give him a chance. He 
 was off at once, and from the top of the hill just past 
 the Rectory paddock he could see the carriage, looking 
 very small, on a bit of road which showed perhaps a 
 mile and a half in front of him. 
 
 One of the most popular amusements at Roughborough
 
 i88 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was an institution called "the hounds" more commonly 
 known elsewhere as "hare and hounds," but in this case 
 the hare was a couple of boys who were called foxes, 
 and boys are so particular about correctness of nomen- 
 clature where their sports are concerned that I dare not 
 say they played "hare and hounds"; these were "the 
 hounds," and that was all. Ernest's want of muscular 
 strength did not tell against him here; there was no 
 jostling up against boys who, though neither older nor 
 taller than he, were yet more robustly built ; if it came to 
 mere endurance he was as good as any one else, so when 
 his carpentering was stopped he had naturally taken to 
 "the hounds" as his favourite amusement. His lungs thus 
 exercised had become developed, and as a run of six or 
 seven miles across country was not more than he was 
 used to, he did not despair by the help of the short cuts 
 of overtaking the carriage, or at the worst of catching 
 Ellen at the station before the train left. So he ran and 
 ran and ran till his first wind was gone and his second 
 came, and he could breathe more easily. Never with 
 "the hounds" had he run so fast and with so few breaks 
 as now, but with all his efforts and the help of the short 
 cuts he did not catch up the carriage, and would prob- 
 ably not have done so had not John happened to turn his 
 head and seen him running and making signs for the 
 carriage to stop a quarter of a mile off. He was now 
 about five miles from home, and was nearly done up. 
 
 He was crimson with his exertion ; covered with dust, 
 and with his trousers and coat sleeves a trifle short for 
 him he cut a poor figure enough as he thrust on Ellen 
 his watch, his knife, and the little money he had. The 
 one thing he implored of her was not to do those dread- 
 ful things which she threatened for his sake if for no 
 other reason. 
 
 Ellen at first would not hear of taking anything from 
 him, but the coachman, who was from the north country, 
 sided with Ernest. "Take it, my lass," he said kindly;
 
 The Way of All Flesh 189 
 
 "take what thou canst get whiles thou canst get it; as 
 for Master Ernest here he has run well after thee; 
 therefore let him give thee what he is minded." 
 
 Ellen did what she was told, and the two parted with 
 many tears, the girl's last words being that she should 
 never forget him, and that they should meet again here- 
 after, she was sure they should, and then she would 
 repay him. 
 
 Then Ernest got into a field by the roadside, flung 
 himself on the grass, and waited under the shadow of a 
 hedge till the carriage should pass on its return from the 
 station and pick him up, for he was dead beat. Thoughts 
 which had already occurred to him with some force now 
 came more strongly before him, and he saw that he had 
 got himself into one mess or rather into a half-a-dozen 
 messes the more. 
 
 In the first place he should be late for dinner, and this 
 was one of the offences on which Theobald had no mercy. 
 Also he should have to say where he had been, and there 
 was a danger of being found out if he did not speak the 
 truth. Not only this, but sooner or later it must come out 
 that he was no longer possessed of the beautiful watch 
 which his dear aunt had given him and what, pray, had 
 he done with it, or how had he lost it? The reader will 
 know very well what he ought to have done. He should 
 have gone straight home, and if questioned should have 
 said, "I have been running after the carriage to catch our 
 housemaid Ellen, whom I am very fond of ; I have given 
 her my watch, my knife and all my pocket money, so that 
 I have now no pocket money at all and shall probably ask 
 you for some more sooner than I otherwise might have 
 done, and you will also have to buy me a new watch and 
 a knife." But then fancy the consternation which such 
 an announcement would have occasioned! Fancy the 
 scowl and flashing eyes of the infuriated Theobald ! 
 "You unprincipled young scoundrel," he would exclaim, 
 "do you mean to vilify your own parents by implying
 
 190 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 that they have dealt harshly by one whose profligacy has 
 disgraced their house?" 
 
 Or he might take it with one of those sallies of sar- 
 castic calm, of which he believed himself to be a master. 
 
 "Very well, Ernest, very well: I shall say nothing; 
 you can please yourself ; you are not yet twenty-one, but 
 pray act as if you were your own master; your poor 
 aunt doubtless gave you the watch that you might fling 
 it away upon the first improper character you came 
 across ; I think I can now understand, however, why she 
 did not leave you her money; and, after all, your god- 
 father may just as well have it as the kind of people on 
 whom you would lavish it if it were yours." 
 
 Then his mother would burst into tears and implore 
 him to repent and seek the things belonging to his peace 
 while there was yet time, by falling on his knees to Theo- 
 bald and assuring him of his unfailing love for him as 
 the kindest and tenderest father in the universe. Ernest 
 could do all this just as well as they could, and now, as 
 he lay on the grass, speeches, some one or other of which 
 was as certain to come as the sun to set, kept running in 
 his head till they confuted the idea of telling the truth 
 by reducing it to an absurdity. Truth might be heroic, 
 but it was not within the range of practical domestic 
 politics. 
 
 Having settled then that he was to tell a lie, what lie 
 should he tell ? Should he say he had been robbed ? He 
 had enough imagination to know that he had not enough 
 imagination to carry him out here. Young as he was, his 
 instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the 
 smallest amount of lying go the longest way who hus- 
 bands it too carefully to waste it where it can be dis- 
 pensed with. The simplest course would be to say that 
 he had lost the watch, and was late for dinner because he 
 had been looking for it. He had been out for a long 
 walk he chose the line across the fields that he had 
 actually taken and the weather being very hot, he had
 
 The Way of All Flesh 191 
 
 taken off his coat and waistcoat ; in carrying them over 
 his arm his watch, his money, and his knife had dropped 
 out of them. He had got nearly home when he found 
 out his loss, and had run back as fast as he could, look- 
 ing along the line he had followed, till at last he had 
 given it up; seeing the carriage coming back from the 
 station, he had let it pick him up and bring him home. 
 
 This covered everything, the running and all; for his 
 face still showed that he must have been running hard; 
 the only question was whether he had been seen about 
 the Rectory by any but the servants for a couple of hours 
 or so before Ellen had gone, and this he was happy to 
 believe was not the case; for he had been out except 
 during his few minutes' interview with the cook. His 
 father had been out in the parish ; his mother had cer- 
 tainly not come across him, and his brother and sister had 
 also been out with the governess. He knew he could de- 
 pend upon the cook and the other servants the coach- 
 man would see to this ; on the whole, therefore, both he 
 and the coachman thought the story as proposed by 
 Ernest would about meet the requirements of the case. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WHEN Ernest got home and sneaked in through the back 
 door, he heard his father's voice in its angriest tones, in- 
 quiring whether Master Ernest had already returned. 
 He felt as Jack must have felt in the story of Jack and 
 the Bean Stalk, when from the oven in which he was 
 hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young chil- 
 dren she had got for his supper. With much courage, 
 and, as the event proved, with not less courage than dis- 
 cretion, he took the bull by the horns, and announced 
 himself at once as having just come in after having met 
 with a terrible misfortune. Little by little he told his 
 story, and though Theobald stormed somewhat at his
 
 192 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "incredible folly and carelessness," he got off better than 
 he expected. Theobald and Christina had indeed at first 
 been inclined to connect his absence from dinner with 
 Ellen's dismissal, but on finding it clear, as Theobald 
 said everything was always clear with Theobald that 
 Ernest had not been in the house all the morning, and 
 could therefore have known nothing of what had hap- 
 pened, he was acquitted on this account for once in a 
 way, without a stain upon his character. Perhaps Theo- 
 bald was in a good temper; he may have seen from the 
 paper that morning that his stocks had been rising; it 
 may have been this or twenty other things, but what- 
 ever it was, he did not scold so much as Ernest had ex- 
 pected, and, seeing the boy look exhausted and believing 
 him to be much grieved at the loss of his watch, Theo- 
 bald actually prescribed a glass of wine after his 
 dinner, which, strange to say, did not choke him, but 
 made him see things more cheerfully than was usual 
 with him. 
 
 That night when he said his prayers, he inserted a few 
 paragraphs to the effect that he might not be discovered, 
 and that things might go well with Ellen, but he was 
 anxious and ill at ease. His guilty conscience pointed out 
 to him a score of weak places in his story, through any 
 one of which detection might even yet easily enter. Next 
 day and for many days afterwards he fled when no man 
 was pursuing, and trembled each time he heard his 
 father's voice calling for him. He had already so many 
 causes of anxiety that he could stand little more, and in 
 spite of all his endeavours to look cheerful, even his 
 mother could see that something was preying upon his 
 mind. Then the idea returned to her that, after all, her 
 son might not be innocent in the Ellen matter and this 
 was so interesting that she felt bound to get as near the 
 truth as she could. 
 
 "Come here, my poor, pale-faced, heavy-eyed boy," she 
 said to him one day in her kindest manner; "come and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 193 
 
 sit down by me, and we will have a little quiet confidential 
 talk together, will we not?" 
 
 The boy went mechanically to the sofa. Whenever his 
 mother wanted what she called a confidential talk with 
 him she always selected the sofa as the most suitable 
 ground on which to open her campaign. All mothers do 
 this; the sofa is to them what the dining-room is to 
 fathers. In the present case the sofa was particularly 
 well adapted for a strategic purpose, being an old-fash- 
 ioned one with a high back, mattress, bolsters and cush- 
 ions. Once safely penned into one of its deep corners, 
 it was like a dentist's chair, not too easy to get out of 
 again. Here she could get at him better to pull him 
 about, if this should seem desirable, or if she thought fit 
 to cry she could bury her head in the sofa cushion and 
 abandon herself to an agony of grief which seldom 
 failed of its effect. None of her favourite manoeuvres 
 were so easily adopted in her usual seat, the armchair 
 on the right hand side of the fireplace, and so well did 
 her son know from his mother's tone that this was going 
 to be a sofa conversation that he took his place like a 
 lamb as soon as she began to speak and before she could 
 reach the sofa herself. 
 
 "My dearest boy," began his mother, taking hold of his 
 hand and placing it within her own, "promise me never 
 to be afraid either of your dear papa or of me; promise 
 me this, my dear, as you love me, promise it to me," and 
 she kissed him again and again and stroked his hair. But 
 with her other hand she still kept hold of his; she had 
 got him and she meant to keep him. 
 
 The lad hung down his head and promised. What else 
 could he do? 
 
 "You know there is no one, dear, dear Ernest, who 
 loves you so much as your papa and I do; no one who 
 watches so carefully over your interests or who is so 
 anxious to enter into all your little joys and troubles as 
 we are ; but, my dearest boy, it grieves me to think some-
 
 194 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 times that you have not that perfect love for and con- 
 fidence in us which you ought to have. You know, my 
 darling, that it would be as much our pleasure as our 
 duty to watch over the development of your moral and 
 spiritual nature, but alas ! you will not let us see your 
 moral and spiritual nature. At times we are almost in- 
 clined to doubt whether you have a moral and spiritual 
 nature at all. Of your inner life, my dear, we know 
 nothing beyond such scraps as we can glean in spite of 
 you, from little things which escape you almost before 
 you know that you have said them." 
 
 The boy winced at this. It made him feel hot and un- 
 comfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought 
 to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his 
 forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. 
 His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch 
 she had given him. Had she felt less confident of vic- 
 tory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touch- 
 ing as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in 
 order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again 
 but she knew that when she had got him well down into 
 the sofa, and held his hand, she had the enemy almost 
 absolutely at her mercy, and could do pretty much what 
 she liked. 
 
 "Papa does not feel," she continued, "that you love 
 him with that fulness and unreserve which would prompt 
 you to have no concealment from him, and to tell him 
 everything freely and fearlessly as your most loving 
 earthly friend next only to your Heavenly Father. Per- 
 fect love, as we know, casteth out fear : your father loves 
 you perfectly, my darling,* but he does not feel as though 
 you loved him perfectly in return. If you fear him it is 
 because you do not love him as he deserves, and I know 
 it sometimes cuts him to the very heart to think that he 
 has earned from you a deeper and more willing sympathy 
 than you display towards him. Oh, Ernest, Ernest, do 
 not grieve one who is so good and noble-hearted by
 
 The Way of All Flesh 195 
 
 conduct which I can call by no other name than ingrati- 
 tude." 
 
 Ernest could never stand being spoken to in this way 
 by his mother: for he still believed that she loved him, 
 and that he was fond of her and had a friend in her 
 up to a certain point. But his mother was beginning to 
 come to the end of her tether ; she had played the domes- 
 tic confidence trick upon him times without number al- 
 ready. Over and over again had she wheedled from him 
 all she wanted to know, and afterwards got him into 
 the most horrible scrape by telling the whole to Theobald. 
 Ernest had remonstrated more than once upon these occa- 
 sions, and had pointed out to his mother how disastrous 
 to him his confidences had been, but Christina had always 
 joined issue with him and showed him in the clearest 
 possible manner that in each case she had been right, 
 and that he could not reasonably complain. Generally it 
 was her conscience that forbade her to be silent, and 
 against this there was no appeal, for we are all bound 
 to follow the dictates of our conscience. Ernest used to 
 have to recite a hymn about conscience. It was to the 
 effect that if you did not pay attention to its voice it 
 would soon leave off speaking. "My mamma's conscience 
 has not left off speaking," said Ernest to one of his chums 
 at Roughborough ; "it's always jabbering." 
 
 When a boy has once spoken so disrespectfully as this 
 about his mother's conscience it is practically all over be- 
 tween him and her. Ernest through sheer force of habit, 
 of the sofa, and of the return of the associated ideas, was 
 still so moved by the siren's voice as to yearn to sail 
 towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would 
 not do ; there were other associated ideas that returned 
 also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered con- 
 fessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his 
 mother's dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust 
 her further. So he hung his head and looked sheepish, 
 but kept his own counsel.
 
 196 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "I see, my dearest," continued his mother, "either that 
 I am mistaken, and that there is nothing on your mind, 
 or that you will not unburden yourself to me: but oh, 
 Ernest, tell me at least this much; is there nothing that 
 you repent of, nothing which makes you unhappy in con- 
 nection with that miserable girl Ellen ?" 
 
 Ernest's heart failed him. "I am a dead boy now," 
 he said to himself. He had not the faintest conception 
 what his mother was driving at, and thought she sus- 
 pected about the watch ; but he held his ground. 
 
 I do not believe he was much more of a coward than 
 his neighbours, only he did not know that all sensible 
 people are cowards when they are off their beat, or when 
 they think they are going to be roughly handled. I be- 
 lieve that if the truth were known, it would be found 
 that even the valiant St. Michael himself tried hard to 
 shirk his famous combat with the dragon; he pretended 
 not to see all sorts of misconduct on the dragon's part; 
 shut his eyes to the eating up of I do not know how many 
 hundreds of men, women and children whom he had 
 promised to protect; allowed himself to be publicly in- 
 sulted a dozen times over without resenting it ; and in the 
 end, when even an angel could stand it no longer, he 
 shilly-shallied and temporised an unconscionable time 
 before he would fix the day and hour for the encounter. 
 As for the actual combat it was much such another 
 wurra-wurra as Mrs. Allaby had had with the young man 
 who had in the end married her eldest daughter, till 
 after a time, behold, there was the dragon lying dead, 
 while he was himself alive and not very seriously hurt 
 after all. 
 
 "I do not know what you mean, mamma," exclaimed 
 Ernest anxiously and more or less hurriedly. His mother 
 construed his manner into indignation at being suspected, 
 and being rather frightened herself she turned tail and 
 scuttled off as fast as her tongue could carry her. 
 
 "Oh!" she said, "I see by your tone that you are
 
 The Way of All Flesh 197 
 
 innocent ! Oh ! oh ! how I thank my heavenly Father for 
 this ; may He for His dear Son's sake keep you always 
 pure. Your father, my dear" (here she spoke hurriedly 
 but gave him a searching look) "was as pure as a spot- 
 less angel when he came to me. Like him, always be 
 self-denying, truly truthful both in word and deed, never 
 forgetful whose son and grandson you are, nor of the 
 name we gave you, of the sacred stream in whose waters 
 your sins were washed out of you through the blood and 
 blessing of Christ," etc. 
 
 But Ernest cut this I will not say short but a great 
 deal shorter than it would have been if Christina had had 
 her say out, by extricating himself from his mamma's 
 embrace and snowing a clean pair of heels. As he got 
 near the purlieus of the kitchen (where he was more at 
 ease) he heard his father calling for his mother, and 
 again his guilty conscience rose against him. "He has 
 found all out now," it cried, "and he is going to tell 
 mamma this time I am done for." But there was noth- 
 ing in it; his father only wanted the key of the cellaret. 
 Then Ernest slunk off into a coppice or spinney behind 
 the Rectory paddock, and consoled himself with a pipe of 
 tobacco. Here in the wood with the summer sun stream- 
 ing through the trees and a book and his pipe the boy 
 forgot his cares and had an interval of that rest without 
 which I verily believe his life would have been insupport- 
 able. 
 
 Of course, Ernest was made to look for his lost prop- 
 erty, and a reward was offered for it, but it seemed he 
 had wandered a good deal off the path, thinking to find 
 a lark's nest, more than once, and looking for a watch 
 and purse on Battersby piewipes was very like looking 
 for a needle in a bundle of hay: besides it might have, 
 been found and taken by some tramp, or by a magpie 
 of which there were many in the neighbourhood, so that 
 after a week or ten days the search was discontinued, 
 and the unpleasant fact had to be faced that Ernest must
 
 198 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 have another watch, another knife, and a small sum of 
 pocket money. 
 
 It was only right, however, that Ernest should pay 
 half the cost of the watch ; this should be made easy for 
 him, for it should be deducted from his pocket money 
 in half-yearly instalments extending over two, or even it 
 might be three years. In Ernest's own interests, then, 
 as well as those of his father and mother, it would be 
 well that the watch should cost as little as possible, so 
 it was resolved to buy a second-hand one. Nothing was 
 to be said to Ernest, but it was to be bought, and laid 
 upon his plate as a surprise just before the holidays were 
 over. Theobald would have to go to the county town 
 in a few days, and could then find some second-hand 
 watch which would answer sufficiently well. In the 
 course of time, therefore, Theobald went, furnished with 
 a long list of household commissions, among which was 
 the purchase of a watch for Ernest. 
 
 Those, as I have said, were always happy times, when 
 Theobald was away for a whole day certain; the boy 
 was beginning to feel easy in his mind as though God 
 had heard his prayers, and he was not going to be found 
 out. Altogether the day had proved an unusually tran- 
 quil one, but, alas! it was not to close as it had begun; 
 the fickle atmosphere in which he lived was never more 
 likely to breed a storm than after such an interval of 
 brilliant calm, and when Theobald returned Ernest had 
 only to look in his face to see that a hurricane was 
 approaching. 
 
 Christina saw that something had gone very wrong, 
 and was quite frightened lest Theobald should have heard 
 of some serious money loss ; he did not, however, at once 
 unbosom himself, but rang the bell and said to the serv- 
 ant, "Tell Master Ernest I wish to speak to him in the 
 dining-room."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 199 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 LONG before Ernest reached the dining-room his ill- 
 divining soul had told him that his sin had found him 
 out. What head of a family ever sends for any of its 
 members into the dining-room if his intentions are 
 honourable ? 
 
 When he reached it he found it empty his father 
 having been called away for a few minutes unexpectedly 
 upon some parish business and he was left in the same 
 kind of suspense as people are in after they have been 
 ushered into their dentist's ante-room. 
 
 Of all the rooms in the house he hated the dining-room 
 worst. It was here that he had had to do his Latin and 
 Greek lessons with his father. It had a smell of some 
 particular kind of polish or varnish which was used in 
 polishing the furniture, and neither I nor Ernest can even 
 now come within range of the smell of this kind of 
 varnish without our hearts failing us. 
 
 Over the chimney-piece there was a veritable old mas- 
 ter, one of the few original pictures which Mr. George 
 Pontifex had brought from Italy. It was supposed to be 
 a Salvator Rosa, and had been bought as a great bargain. 
 The subject was Elijah or Elisha (whichever it was) 
 being fed by the ravens in the desert. There were the 
 ravens in the upper right-hand corner with bread and 
 meat in their beaks and claws, and there was the prophet 
 in question in the lower left-hand corner looking long- 
 ingly up towards them. When Ernest was a very small 
 boy it had been a constant matter of regret to him that 
 the food which the ravens carried never actually reached 
 the prophet; he did not understand the limitation of the 
 painter's art, and wanted the meat and the prophet to 
 be brought into direct contact. One day, with the help 
 of some steps which had been left in the room, he had 
 clambered up to the picture and with a piece of bread and
 
 200 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 butter traced a greasy line right across it from the ravens 
 to Elisha's mouth, after which he had felt more com- 
 fortable. 
 
 Ernest's mind was drifting back to this youthful es- 
 capade when he heard his father's hand on the door, and 
 in another second Theobald entered. 
 
 "Oh, Ernest," said he, in an off-hand, rather cheery 
 manner, "there's a little matter which I should like you 
 to explain to me, as I have no doubt you very easily 
 can." Thump, thump, thump, went Ernest's heart against 
 his ribs ; but his father's manner was so much nicer than 
 usual that he began to think it might be after all only 
 another false alarm. 
 
 "It had occurred to your mother and myself that we 
 should like to set you up with a watch again before you 
 went back to school" ("Oh, that's all," said Ernest to 
 himself, quite relieved), "and I have been to-day to look 
 out for a second-hand one which should answer every 
 purpose so long as you are at school." 
 
 Theobald spoke as if watches had half-a-dozen pur- 
 poses besides time-keeping, but he could hardly open his 
 mouth without using one or other of his tags, and "an- 
 swering every purpose" was one of them. 
 
 Ernest was breaking out into the usual expressions of 
 gratitude, when Theobald continued, "You are interrupt- 
 ing me," and Ernest's heart thumped again. 
 
 "You are interrupting me, Ernest. I have not yet 
 done." Ernest was instantly dumb. 
 
 "I passed several shops with second-hand watches for 
 sale, but I saw none of a description and price which 
 pleased me, till at last I was shown one which had, so the 
 shopman said, been left with him recently for sale, and 
 which I at once recognised as the one which had beep- 
 given you by your Aunt Alethea. Even if I had failed to 
 recognise it, as perhaps I might have done, I should have 
 identified it directly it reached my hands, inasmuch as it 
 had 'E. P., a present from A. P.' engraved upon the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 201 
 
 inside. I need say no more to show that this was the 
 very watch which you told your mother and me that you 
 had dropped out of your pocket." 
 
 Up to this time Theobald's manner had been studiously 
 calm, and his words had been uttered slowly, but here he 
 suddenly quickened and flung off the mask as he added 
 the words, "or some such cock and bull story, which your 
 mother and I were too truthful to disbelieve. You can 
 guess what must be our feelings now." 
 
 Ernest felt that this last home-thrust was just. In his 
 less anxious moments he had thought his papa and 
 mamma "green" for the readiness with which they be- 
 lieved him, but he could not deny that their credulity was 
 a proof of their habitual truthfulness of mind. In com- 
 mon justice he must own that it was very dreadfttl for 
 two such truthful people to have a son as untruthful as 
 he knew himself to be. 
 
 "Believing that a son of your mother and myself would 
 be incapable of falsehood I at once assumed that some 
 tramp had picked the watch up and was now trying to 
 dispose of it." 
 
 This, to the best of my belief, was not accurate. Theo- 
 bald's first assumption had been that it was Ernest who 
 was trying to sell the watch, and it was an inspiration of 
 the moment to say that his magnanimous mind had at 
 once conceived the idea of a tramp. 
 
 "You may imagine how shocked I was when I dis- 
 covered that the watch had been brought for sale by that 
 miserable woman Ellen" here Ernest's heart hardened a 
 little, and he felt as near an approach to an instinct to 
 turn as one so defenceless could be expected to feel; 
 his father quickly perceived this and continued, "who 
 was turned out of this house in circumstances which 
 I will not pollute your ears by more particularly de- 
 scribing. 
 
 "I put aside the horrid conviction which was begin- 
 ning to dawn upon me, and assumed that in the interval
 
 202 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 between her dismissal and her leaving this house, she had 
 added theft to her other sin, and having found your 
 watch in your bedroom had purloined it. It even occurred 
 to me that you might have missed your watch after the 
 woman was gone, and, suspecting who had taken it, had 
 run after the carriage in order to recover it ; but when I 
 told the shopman of my suspicions he assured me that 
 the person who left it with him had declared most 
 solemnly that it had been given her by her master's son, 
 whose property it was, and who had a perfect right to 
 dispose of it. 
 
 "He told me further that, thinking the circumstances in 
 which the watch was offered for sale somewhat sus- 
 picious, he had insisted upon the woman's telling him the 
 whole story of how she came by it, before he would 
 consent to buy it of her. 
 
 "He said that at first as women of that stamp in- 
 variably do she tried prevarication, but on being threat- 
 ened that she should at once be given into custody if she 
 did not tell the whole truth, she described the way in 
 which you had run after the carriage, till as she said you 
 were black in the face, and insisted on giving her all your 
 pocket money, your knife and your watch. She added 
 that my coachman John whom I shall instantly dis- 
 charge was witness to the whole transaction. Now, 
 Ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this appalling story 
 is true or false?" 
 
 It never occurred to Ernest to ask his father why he 
 did not hit a man his own size, or to stop him midway 
 in the story with a remonstrance against being kicked 
 when he was down. The boy was too much shocked and 
 shaken to be inventive ; he could only drift and stammer 
 out that the tale was true. 
 
 "So I feared," said Theobald, "and now, Ernest, be 
 good enough to ring the bell." 
 
 When the bell had been answered, Theobald desired 
 that John should be sent for, and when John came
 
 The Way of All Flesh 203 
 
 Theobald calculated the wages due to him and desired 
 him at once to leave the house. 
 
 John's manner was quiet and respectful. He took his 
 dismissal as a matter of course, for Theobald had hinted 
 enough to make him understand why he was being dis- 
 charged, but when he saw Ernest sitting pale and awe- 
 struck on the edge of his chair against the dining-room 
 wall, a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and turning 
 to Theobald he said in a broad northern accent which 
 I will not attempt to reproduce : 
 
 "Look here, master, I can guess what all this is about 
 now before I goes I want to have a word with you." 
 
 "Ernest," said Theobald, "leave the room." 
 
 "No, Master Ernest, you shan't," said John, planting 
 himself against the door. "Now, master," he continued, 
 "you may do as you please about me. I've been a good 
 servant to you, and I don't mean to say as you've been a 
 bad master to me, but I do say that if you bear hardly on 
 Master Ernest here I have those in the village as '11 hear 
 on't and let me know ; and if I do hear on't I'll come back 
 and break every bone in your skin, so there !" 
 
 John's breath came and went quickly, as though he 
 would have been well enough pleased to begin the bone- 
 breaking business at once. Theobald turned of an ashen 
 colour not, as he explained afterwards, at the idle 
 threats of a detected and angry ruffian, but at such 
 atrocious insolence from one of his own servants. 
 
 "I shall leave Master Ernest, John," he rejoined 
 proudly, "to the reproaches of his own conscience." 
 ("Thank God and thank John," thought Ernest.) "As 
 for yourself, I admit that you have been an excellent 
 servant until this unfortunate business came on, and I 
 shall have much pleasure in giving you a character if 
 you want one. Have you anything more to say ?" 
 
 "No more nor what I have said," said John sullenly, 
 "but what I've said I means and I'll stick to character 
 or no character."
 
 204 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Oh, you need not be afraid about your character, 
 John," said Theobald kindly, "and as it is getting late, 
 there can be no occasion for you to leave the house 
 before to-morrow morning." 
 
 To this there was no reply from John, who retired, 
 packed up his things, and left the house at once. 
 
 When Christina heard what had happened she said she 
 could condone all except that Theobald should have been 
 subjected to such insolence from one of his own servants 
 through the misconduct of his son. Theobald was the 
 bravest man in the whole world, and could easily have 
 collared the wretch and turned him out of the room, but 
 how far more dignified, how far nobler had been his 
 reply! How it would tell in a novel or upon the stage, 
 for though the stage as a whole was immoral, yet there 
 were doubtless some plays which were improving spec- 
 tacles. She could fancy the whole house hushed with 
 excitement at hearing John's menace, and hardly breath- 
 ing by reason of their interest and expectation of the 
 coming answer. Then the actor probably the great and 
 good Mr. Macready would say, "I shall leave Master 
 Ernest, John, to the reproaches of his own conscience." 
 Oh, it was sublime ! What a roar of applause must 
 follow! Then she should enter herself, and fling her 
 arms about her husband's neck, and call him her lion- 
 hearted husband. When the curtain dropped, it would 
 be buzzed about the house that the scene just witnessed 
 had been drawn from real life, and had actually occurred 
 in the household of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex, who had 
 married a Miss Allaby, etc., etc. 
 
 As regards Ernest the suspicions which had already 
 crossed her mind were deepened, but she thought it better 
 to leave the matter where it was. At present she was in 
 a very strong position. Ernest's official purity was firmly 
 established, but at the same time he had shown himself so 
 susceptible that she was able to fuse two contradictory 
 impressions concerning him into a single idea, and con-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 205 
 
 sider him as a kind of Joseph and Don Juan in one. 
 This was what she had wanted all along, but her vanity 
 being gratified by the possession of such a son, there was 
 an end of it; the son himself was naught. 
 
 No doubt if John had not interfered, Ernest would 
 have had to expiate his offence with ache, penury and 
 imprisonment. As it was the boy was "to consider him- 
 self" as undergoing these punishments, and as suffering 
 pangs of unavailing remorse inflicted on him by his con- 
 science into the bargain ; but beyond the fact that Theo- 
 bald kept him more closely to his holiday task, and the 
 continued coldness of his parents, no ostensible punish- 
 ment was meted out to him. Ernest, however, tells me 
 that he looks back upon this as the time when he began 
 to know that he had a cordial and active dislike for both 
 his parents, which I suppose means that he was now 
 beginning to be aware that he was reaching man's estate. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 ABOUT a week before he went back to school his father 
 again sent for him into the dining-room, and told him 
 that he should restore him his watch, but that he should 
 deduct the sum he had paid for it for he had thought it 
 better to pay a few shillings rather than dispute the 
 ownership of the watch, seeing that Ernest had undoubt- 
 edly given it to Ellen from his pocket money, in pay- 
 ments which should extend over two half years. He 
 would therefore have to go back to Roughborough this 
 half year with only five shillings' pocket money. If he 
 wanted more he must earn more merit money. 
 
 Ernest was not so careful about money as a pattern 
 boy should be. He did not say to himself, "Now I have 
 got a sovereign which must last me fifteen weeks, there- 
 fore I may spend exactly one shilling and fourpence in 
 each week" and spend exactly one and fourpence in
 
 206 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 each week accordingly. He ran through his money at 
 about the same rate as other boys did, being pretty well 
 cleaned out a few days after he had got back to school. 
 When he had no more money, he got a little into debt, 
 and when as far in debt as he could see his way to repay- 
 ing, he went without luxuries. Immediately he got any 
 money he would pay his debts ; if there was any over he 
 would spend it ; if there was not and there seldom was 
 he would begin to go on tick again. 
 
 His finance was always based upon the supposition 
 that he should go back to school with i\ in his pocket 
 of which he owed say a matter of fifteen shillings. There 
 would be five shillings for sundry school subscriptions 
 but when these were paid the weekly allowance of six- 
 pence given to each boy in hall, his merit money (which 
 this half he was resolved should come to a good sum) 
 and renewed credit, would carry him through the half. 
 
 The sudden failure of I5/ was disastrous to my 
 hero's scheme of finance. His face betrayed his emotions 
 so clearly that Theobald said he was determined "to learn 
 the truth at once, and this time without days and days of 
 falsehood" before he reached it. The melancholy fact 
 was not long in coming out, namely, that the wretched 
 Ernest added debt to the vices of idleness, falsehood and 
 possibly for it was not impossible immorality. 
 
 How had he come to get into debt? Did the other 
 boys do so? Ernest reluctantly admitted that they did. 
 
 With what shops did they get into debt? 
 
 This was asking too much, Ernest said he didn't know ! 
 
 "Oh, Ernest, Ernest," exclaimed his mother, who was 
 in the room, "do not so soon a second time presume upon 
 the forbearance of the tenderest-hearted father in the 
 world. Give time for one stab to heal before you wound 
 him with another." 
 
 This was all very fine, but what was Ernest to do? 
 How could he get the school shopkeepers into trouble by 
 owning that they let some of the boys go on tick with
 
 The Way of All Flesh 207 
 
 them? There was Mrs. Cross, a good old soul, who 
 used to sell hot rolls and butter for breakfast, or eggs and 
 toast, or it might be the quarter of a fowl with bread 
 sauce and mashed potatoes for which she would charge 
 6d. If she made a farthing out of the sixpence it was 
 as much as she did. When the boys would come troop- 
 ing into her shop after "the hounds" how often had not 
 Ernest heard her say to her servant girls, "Now then, 
 you wanches, git some cheers." All the boys were fond 
 of her, and was he, Ernest, to tell tales about her? It 
 was horrible. 
 
 "Now look here, Ernest," said his father with his 
 blackest scowl, "I am going to put a stop to this nonsense 
 once for all. Either take me fully into your confidence, 
 as a son should take a father, and trust me to deal with 
 this matter as a clergyman and a man of the world 
 or understand distinctly that I shall take the whole story 
 to Dr. Skinner, who, I imagine, will take much sterner 
 measures than I should." 
 
 "Oh, Ernest, Ernest," sobbed Christina, "be wise in 
 time, and trust those who have already shown you that 
 they know but too well how to be forbearing." 
 
 No genuine hero of romance should have hesitated for 
 a moment. Nothing should have cajoled or frightened 
 him into telling tales out of school. Ernest thought of 
 his ideal boys : they, he well knew, would have let their 
 tongues be cut out of them before information could 
 have been wrung from any word of theirs. But Ernest 
 was not an ideal boy, and he was not strong enough for 
 his surroundings ; I doubt how far any boy could with- 
 stand the moral pressure which was brought to bear upon 
 him; at any rate he could not do so, and after a little 
 more writhing he yielded himself a passive prey to the 
 enemy. He consoled himself with the reflection that his 
 papa had not played the confidence trick on him quite as 
 often as his mamma had, and that probably it was 
 better he should tell his father, than that his father
 
 208 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 should insist on Dr. Skinner's making an inquiry. His 
 papa's conscience "jabbered" a good deal, but not as much 
 as his mamma's. The little fool forgot that he had not 
 given his father as many chances of betraying him as 
 he had given to Christina. 
 
 Then it all came out. He owed this at Mrs. Cross's, 
 and this to Mrs. Jones, and this at the "Swan and Bottle" 
 public house, to say nothing of another shilling or six- 
 pence or two in other quarters. Nevertheless, Theobald 
 and Christina were not satiated, but rather the more they 
 discovered the greater grew their appetite for discovery ; 
 it was their obvious duty to find out everything, for 
 though they might rescue their own darling from this 
 hotbed of iniquity without getting to know more than 
 they knew at present, were there not other papas and 
 mammas with darlings whom also they were bound to 
 rescue if it were yet possible? What boys, then, owed 
 money to these harpies as well as Ernest? 
 
 Here, again, there was a feeble show of resistance, 
 but the thumbscrews were instantly applied, and Ernest, 
 demoralised as he already was, recanted and submitted 
 himself to the powers that were. He told only a little less 
 than he knew or thought he knew. He was examined, 
 re-examined, cross-examined, sent to the retirement of 
 his own bedroom and cross-examined again ; the smoking 
 in Mrs. Jones' kitchen all came out; which boys smoked 
 and which did not ; which boys owed money and, roughly, 
 how much and where; which boys swore and used bad 
 language. Theobald was resolved that this time Ernest 
 should, as he called it, take him into his confidence with- 
 out reserve, so the school list which went with Dr. Skin- 
 ner's half-yearly bills was brought out, and the most 
 secret character of each boy was gone through seriatim 
 by Mr. and Mrs. Pontifex, so far as it was in Ernest's 
 power to give information concerning it, and yet Theo- 
 bald had on the preceding Sunday preached a less feeble 
 sermon than he commonly preached, upon the horrors of
 
 the Inquisition. No matter how awful was the depravity 
 revealed to them, the pair never flinched, but probed and 
 probed, till they were on the point of reaching subjects 
 more delicate than they had yet touched upon. Here 
 Ernest's unconscious self took the matter up and 
 made a resistance to which his conscious self was 
 unequal, by tumbling him off his chair in a fit of faint- 
 ing. 
 
 Dr. Martin was sent for and pronounced the boy to be 
 seriously unwell ; at the same time he prescribed absolute 
 rest and absence from nervous excitement. So the 
 anxious parents were unwillingly compelled to be content 
 with what they had got already being frightened into 
 leading him a quiet life for the short remainder of the 
 holidays. They were not idle, but Satan can find as much 
 mischief for busy hands as for idle ones, so he sent a 
 little job in the direction of Battersby which Theobald 
 and Christina undertook immediately. It would be a 
 pity, they reasoned, that Ernest should leave Rough- 
 borough, now that he had been there three years; it 
 would be difficult to find another school for him, and to 
 explain why he had left Roughborough. Besides, Dr. 
 Skinner and Theobald were supposed to be old friends, 
 and it would be unpleasant to offend him ; these were all 
 valid reasons for not removing the boy. The proper 
 thing to do then, would be to warn Dr. Skinner confi- 
 dentially of the state of his school, and to furnish him 
 with a school list annotated with the remarks extracted 
 from Ernest, which should be appended to the name of 
 each boy. 
 
 Theobald was the perfection of neatness ; while his 
 son was ill upstairs, he copied out the school list so that 
 he could throw his comments into a tabular form, which 
 assumed the following shape only that of course I have 
 changed the names. One cross in each square was to 
 indicate occasional offence; two stood for frequent, and 
 three for habitual delinquency.
 
 2io The Way of All Flesh 
 
 
 Smoking 
 
 Drinking 
 beer at the 
 "Swan and 
 Bottle." 
 
 Swearing 
 and 
 Obscene 
 Language. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Smith 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 X X 
 
 Will smoke 
 next half. 
 
 Brown 
 
 XXX 
 
 o 
 
 X 
 
 
 Jones 
 
 X 
 
 X X 
 
 XXX 
 
 
 Robinson 
 
 X X 
 
 X X 
 
 X 
 
 
 And thus through the whole school. 
 
 Of course, in justice to Ernest, Dr. Skinner would be 
 bound over to secrecy before a word was said to him, 
 but, Ernest being thus protected, he could not be fur- 
 nished with the facts too completely. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 So important did Theobald consider this matter that he 
 made a special journey to Roughborough before the half 
 year began. It was a relief to have him out of the house, 
 but though his destination was not mentioned, Ernest 
 guessed where he had gone. 
 
 To this day he considers his conduct at this crisis to 
 have been one of the most serious laches of his life one 
 which he can never think of without shame and indigna- 
 tion. He says he ought to have run away from home. 
 But what good could he have done if he had ? He would 
 have been caught, brought back and examined two days 
 later instead of two days earlier. A boy of barely six- 
 teen cannot stand against the moral pressure of a father
 
 The Way of All Flesh 211 
 
 and mother who have always oppressed him any more 
 than he can cope physically with a powerful full-grown 
 man. True, he may allow himself to be killed rather than 
 yield, but this is being so morbidly heroic as to come 
 close round again to cowardice; for it is little else than 
 suicide, which is universally condemned as cowardly. 
 
 On the re-assembling of the school it became apparent 
 that something had gone wrong. Dr. Skinner called the 
 boys together, and with much pomp excommunicated 
 Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Jones, by declaring their shops to be 
 out of bounds. The street in which the "Swan and Bot- 
 tle" stood was also forbidden. The vices of drinking and 
 smoking, therefore, were clearly aimed at, and before 
 prayers Dr. Skinner spoke a few impressive words about 
 the abominable sin of using bad language. Ernest's 
 feelings can be imagined. 
 
 Next day at the hour when the daily punishments were 
 read out, though there had not yet been time for him to 
 have offended, Ernest Pontifex was declared to have 
 incurred every punishment which the school provided for 
 evil-doers. He was placed on the idle list for the whole 
 half year, and on perpetual detentions ; his bounds were 
 curtailed ; he was to attend Junior callings-over ; in fact 
 he was so hemmed in with punishments upon every side 
 that it was hardly possible for him to go outside the 
 school gates. This unparalleled list of punishments in- 
 flicted on the first day of the half year, and intended to 
 last till the ensuing Christmas holidays, was not con- 
 nected with any specified offence. It required no great 
 penetration therefore, on the part of the boys to connect 
 Ernest with the putting Mrs. Cross's and Mrs. Jones's 
 shops out of bounds. 
 
 Great indeed was the indignation about Mrs. Cross 
 who, it was known, remembered Dr. Skinner himself as a 
 small boy only just got into jackets, and had doubtless let 
 him have many a sausage and mashed potatoes upon 
 deferred payment. The head boys assembled in conclave
 
 212 The Way of All FlesH 
 
 to consider what steps should be taken, but hardly had 
 they done so before Ernest knocked timidly at the head- 
 room door and took the bull by the horns by explaining 
 the facts as faY as he could bring himself to do so. He 
 made a clean breast of everything except about the school 
 list and the remarks he had made about each boy's charac- 
 ter. This infamy was more than he could own to, and 
 he kept his counsel concerning it. Fortunately he was 
 safe in doing so, for Dr. Skinner, pedant and more than 
 pedant though he was, had still just sense enough to turn 
 on Theobald in the matter of the school list. Whether 
 he resented being told that he did not know the charac- 
 ters of his own boys, or whether he dreaded a scandal 
 about the school I know not, but when Theobald had 
 handed him the list, over which he had expended so much 
 pains, Dr. Skinner had cut him uncommonly short, and 
 had then and there, with more suavity than was usual 
 with him, committed it to the flames before Theobald's 
 own eyes. 
 
 Ernest got off with the head boys easier than he ex- 
 pected. It was admitted that the offence, heinous though 
 it was, had been committed under extenuating circum- 
 stances; the frankness with which the culprit had con- 
 fessed all, his evidently unfeigned remorse, and the fury 
 with which Dr. Skinner was pursuing him tended to 
 bring about a reaction in his favour, as though he had 
 been more sinned against than sinning. 
 
 As the half year wore on his spirits gradually revived, 
 and when attacked by one of his fits of self-abasement 
 he was in some degree consoled by having found out that 
 even his father and mother, whom he had supposed so 
 immaculate, were no better than they should be. About 
 the fifth of November it was a school custom to meet 
 on a certain common not far from Roughborough and 
 burn somebody in effigy, this being the compromise ar- 
 rived at in the matter of fireworks and Guy Fawkes 
 festivities. This year it was decided that Pontifex's
 
 The Way of All FlesH 213 
 
 governor should be the victim, and Ernest though a good 
 deal exercised in mind as to what he ought to do, in the 
 end saw no sufficient reason for holding aloof from pro- 
 ceedings which, as he justly remarked, could not do his 
 father any harm. 
 
 It so happened that the bishop had held a confirmation 
 at the school on the fifth of November. Dr. Skinner had 
 not quite liked the selection of this day, but the bishop 
 was pressed by many engagements, and had been com- 
 pelled to make the arrangement as it then stood. Ernest 
 was among those who had to be confirmed, and was 
 deeply impressed with the solemn importance of the cere- 
 mony. When he felt the huge old bishop drawing down 
 upon him as he knelt in chapel he could hardly breathe, 
 and when the apparition paused before him and laid its 
 hands upon his head he was frightened almost out of his 
 wits. He felt that he had arrived at one of the great 
 turning points of his life, and that the Ernest of the 
 future could resemble only very faintly the Ernest of the 
 past. 
 
 This happened at about noon, but by the one o'clock 
 dinner-hour the effect of the confirmation had worn off, 
 and he saw no reason why he should forego his annual 
 amusement with the bonfire; so he went with the others 
 and was very valiant till the image was actually pro- 
 duced and was about to be burnt; then he felt a little 
 frightened. It was a poor thing enough, made of paper, 
 calico and straw, but they had christened it The Rev. 
 Theobald Pontifex, and he had a revulsion of feeling as 
 he saw it being carried towards the bonfire. Still he held 
 his ground, and in a few minutes when all was over felt 
 none the worse for having assisted at a ceremony which, 
 after all, was prompted by a boyish love of mischief 
 rather than by rancour. 
 
 I should say that Ernest had written to his father, and 
 told him of the unprecedented way in which he was being 
 treated ; he even ventured to suggest that Theobald should
 
 214 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 interfere for his protection and reminded him how the 
 story had been got out of him, but Theobald had had 
 enough of Dr. Skinner for the present ; the burning of 
 the school list had been a rebuff which did not encourage 
 him to meddle a second time in the internal economics of 
 Roughborough. He therefore replied that he must either 1 
 remove Ernest from Roughborough altogether, which 
 would for many reasons be undesirable, or trust to the 
 discretion of the head master as regards the treatment he 
 might think best for any of his pupils. Ernest said 
 no more; he still felt that it was so discreditable 
 to him to have allowed any confession to be wrung from 
 him, that he could not press the promised amnesty for 
 himself. 
 
 It was during the "Mother Cross row," as it was long 
 styled among the boys, that a remarkable phenomenon 
 was witnessed at Roughborough. I mean that of the head 
 boys under certain conditions doing errands for their 
 juniors. The head boys had no bounds and could go to 
 Mrs. Cross's whenever they liked; they actually, there- 
 fore, made themselves go-betweens, and would get any- 
 thing from either Mrs. Cross's or Mrs. Jones's for any 
 boy, no matter how low in the school, between the hours 
 of a quarter to nine and nine in the morning, and a quar- 
 ter to six and six in the afternoon. By degrees, how- 
 ever, the boys grew bolder, and the shops, though not 
 openly declared in bounds again, were tacitly allowed to 
 be so. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 I MAY spare the reader more details about my hero's 
 school days. He rose, always in spite of himself, into the 
 Doctor's form, and for the last two years or so of his 
 time was among the praepostors, though he never rose 
 into the upper half of them. He did little, and I think the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 215 
 
 Doctor rather gave him up as a boy whom he had better 
 leave to himself, for he rarely made him construe, and 
 he used to send in his exercises or not, pretty much as 
 he liked. His tacit, unconscious obstinacy had in time 
 effected more even than a few bold sallies in the first 
 instance would have done. To the end of his career his 
 position inter pares was what it had been at the begin- 
 ning, namely, among the upper part of the less reputable 
 class whether of seniors or juniors rather than among 
 the lower part of the more respectable. 
 
 Only once in the whole course of his school life did 
 he get praise from Dr. Skinner for any exercise, and this 
 he has treasured as the best example of guarded approval 
 which he has ever seen. He had had to write a copy of 
 Alcaics on "The dogs of the monks of St. Bernard," and 
 when the exercise was returned to him he found the 
 Doctor had written on it: "In this copy of Alcaics 
 which is still excessively bad I fancy that I can discern 
 some faint symptoms of improvement." Ernest says that 
 if the exercise was any better than usual it must have 
 been by a fluke, for he is sure that he always liked dogs, 
 especially St. Bernard dogs, far too much to take any 
 pleasure in writing Alcaics about them. 
 
 "As I look back upon it," he said to me but the other 
 day, with a hearty laugh, "I respect myself more for hav- 
 ing never once got the best mark for an exercise than I 
 should do if I had got it every time it could be got. I am 
 glad nothing could make me do Latin and Greek verses ; 
 I am glad Skinner could never get any moral influence 
 over me; I am glad I was idle at school, and I am glad 
 my father overtasked me as a boy otherwise, likely 
 enough I should have acquiesced in the swindle, and 
 might have written as good a copy of Alcaics about the 
 dogs of the monks of St. Bernard as my neighbours, and 
 yet I don't know, for I remember there was another boy, 
 who sent in a Latin copy of some sort, but for his own 
 pleasure he wrote the following
 
 The dogs of the monks of St. Bernard go 
 To pick little children out of the snow, 
 And around their necks is the cordial gin 
 Tied with a little bit of bob-bin. 
 
 I should like to have written that, and I did try, but I 
 couldn't. I didn't quite like the last line, and tried to 
 mend it, but I couldn't." 
 
 I fancied I could see traces of bitterness against the 
 instructors of his youth in Ernest's manner, and said 
 something to this effect. 
 
 "Oh, no," he replied, still laughing, "no more than 
 St. Anthony felt towards the devils who had tempted him, 
 when he met some of them casually a hundred or a couple 
 of hundred years afterwards. Of course he knew they 
 were devils, but that was all right enough ; there must be 
 devils. St. Anthony probably liked these devils better 
 than most others, and for old acquaintance sake showed 
 them as much indulgence as was compatible with 
 decorum. 
 
 "Besides, you know," he added, "St. Anthony tempted 
 the devils quite as much as they tempted him; for his 
 peculiar sanctity was a greater temptation to tempt him 
 than they could stand. Strictly speaking, it was the 
 devils who were the more to be pitied, for they were 
 led up 'by St. Anthony to be tempted and fell, whereas 
 St. Anthony did not fall. I believe I was a disagreeable 
 and unintelligible boy, and if ever I meet Skinner there 
 is no one whom I would shake hands with, or do a good 
 turn to more readily." 
 
 At home things went on rather better; the Ellen and 
 Mother Cross rows sank slowly down upon the horizon, 
 and even at home he had quieter times now that he 
 had become a praepostor. Nevertheless the watchful eye 
 and protecting hand were still ever over him to guard his 
 comings in and his goings out, and to spy out all his ways. 
 Is it wonderful that the boy, though always trying to 
 keep up appearances as though he were cheerful and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 217 
 
 contented and at times actually being so wore often 
 an anxious, jaded look when he thought none were look- 
 ing, which told of an almost incessant conflict within? 
 
 Doubtless Theobald saw these looks and knew how to 
 interpret them, but it was his profession to know how to 
 shut his eyes to things that were inconvenient no clergy- 
 man could keep his benefice for a month if he could not 
 do this ; besides he had allowed himself for so many years 
 to say things he ought not to have said, and not to say the 
 things he ought to have said, that he was little likely to 
 see anythihg that he thought it more convenient not to see 
 unless he was made to do so. 
 
 It was not much that was wanted. To make no mys- 
 teries where Nature has made none, to bring his con- 
 science under something like reasonable control, to give 
 Ernest his head a little more, to ask fewer questions, 
 and to give him pocket money with a desire that it should 
 be spent upon menus plaisirs. . . . 
 
 "Call that not much indeed," laughed Ernest, as I read 
 him what I have just written. "Why it is the whole duty 
 of a father, but it is the mystery-making which is the 
 worst evil. If people would dare to speak to one another 
 unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in 
 the world a hundred years hence." 
 
 To return, however, to Roughborough. On the day of 
 his leaving, when he was sent for into the library to be 
 shaken hands with, he was surprised to feel that, though 
 assuredly glad to leave, he did not do so with any especial 
 grudge against the Doctor rankling in his breast. He had 
 come to the end of it all, and was still alive, nor, take it 
 all round, more seriously amiss than other people. Dr. 
 Skinner received him graciously, and was even frolicsome 
 after his own heavy fashion. Young people are almost 
 always placable, and Ernest felt as he went away that 
 another such interview would not only have wiped off 
 all old scores, but have brought him round into the ranks 
 of the Doctor's admirers and supporters among whom it
 
 218 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 is only fair to say that the greater number of the more 
 promising boys were found. 
 
 Just before saying good-bye the Doctor actually took 
 down a volume from those shelves which had seemed so 
 awful six years previously, and gave it to him after 
 having written his name in it, and the words <i\t'as KOI 
 ewot'as x^P lv f which I believe means "with all kind wishes 
 from the donor." The book was one written in Latin 
 by a German Schomann : "De comitiis Atheniensibus" 
 not exactly light and cheerful reading, but Ernest felt 
 it was high time he got to understand the Athenian con- 
 stitution and manner of voting; he had got them up a 
 great many times already, but had forgotten them as fast 
 as he had learned them; now, however, that the Doctor 
 had given him this book, he would master the subject 
 once for all. How strange it was ! He wanted to remem- 
 ber these things very badly ; he knew he did, but he could 
 never retain them; in spite of himself they no sooner fell 
 upon his mind than they fell off it again, he had such a 
 dreadful memory ; whereas, if anyone played him a piece 
 of music and told him where it came from, he never 
 forgot that, though he made no effort to retain it, and 
 was not even conscious of trying to remember it at all. 
 His mind must be badly formed and he was no good. 
 
 Having still a short time to spare, he got the keys of 
 St. Michael's church and went to have a farewell prac- 
 tice upon the organ, which he could now play fairly well. 
 He walked up and down the aisle for a while in a medi- 
 tative mood, and then, settling down to the organ, played 
 "They loathed to drink of the river" about six times over, 
 after which he felt more composed and happier; then, 
 tearing himself away from the instrument he loved so 
 well, he hurried to the station. 
 
 As the train drew out he looked down from a high 
 embankment on to the little house his aunt had taken, 
 and where it might be said she had died through her 
 desire to do him a kindness. There were the two well-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 219 
 
 known bow windows, out of which he had often stepped 
 to run across the lawn into the workshop. He reproached 
 himself with the little gratitude he had shown towards 
 this kind lady the only one of his relations whom he had 
 ever felt as though he could have taken into his confi- 
 dence. Dearly as he loved her memory, he was glad she 
 had not known the scrapes he had got into since she 
 died; perhaps she might not have forgiven them and 
 how awful that would have been ! But then, if she had 
 lived, perhaps many of his ills would have been spared 
 him. As he mused thus he grew sad again. Where, 
 where, he asked himself, was it all to end ? Was it to be 
 always sin, shame and sorrow in the future, as it had 
 been in the past, and the ever-watchful eye and protecting 
 hand of his father laying burdens on him greater than he 
 could bear or was he, too, some day or another to come 
 to feel that he was fairly well and happy? 
 
 There was a gray mist across the sun, so that the eye 
 could bear its light, and Ernest, while musing as above, 
 was looking right into the middle of the sun himself, 
 as into the face of one whom he knew and was fond of. 
 At first his face was grave, but kindly, as of a tired man 
 who feels that a long task is over; but in a few seconds 
 the more humorous side of his misfortunes presented 
 itself to him, and he smiled half reproachfully, half 
 merrily, as thinking how little all that had happened to 
 him really mattered, and how small were his hardships as 
 compared with those of most people. Still looking into 
 the eye of the sun and smiling dreamily, he thought how 
 he had helped to burn his father in effigy, and his look 
 grew merrier, till at last he broke out into a laugh. 
 Exactly at this moment the light veil of cloud parted from 
 the sun, and he was brought to terra firma by the break- 
 ing forth of the sunshine. On this he became aware 
 that he was being watched attentively by a fellow- 
 traveller opposite to him, an elderly gentleman with a 
 large head and iron-grey hair.
 
 220 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "My young friend," said he, good-naturedly, "you 
 really must not carry on conversations with people in the 
 sun, while you are in a public railway carriage." 
 
 The old gentleman said not another word, but unfolded 
 his Times and began to read it. As for Ernest, he blushed 
 crimson. The pair did not speak during the rest of the 
 time they were in the carriage, but they eyed each other 
 from time to time, so that the face of each was impressed 
 on the recollection of the other. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 
 SOME people say that their school days were the happiest 
 of their lives. They may be right, but I always look with 
 suspicion upon those whom I hear saying this. It is hard 
 enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now, 
 and still harder to compare the relative happiness or 
 unhappiness of different times of one's life; the utmost 
 that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as 
 we are not distinctly aware of being miserable. As I 
 was talking with Ernest one day not so long since about 
 this, he said he was so happy now that he was sure he 
 had never been happier, and did not wish to be so, but 
 that Cambridge was the first place where he had ever 
 been consciously and continuously happy. 
 
 How can any boy fail to feel an ecstasy of pleasure on 
 first finding himself in rooms which he knows for the 
 next few years are to be his castle ? Here he will not be 
 compelled to turn out of the most comfortable place as 
 soon as he has ensconced himself in it because papa or 
 mamma happens to come into the room, and he should 
 give it up to them. The most cosy chair here is for him- 
 self, there is no one even to share the room with him, or 
 to interfere with his doing as he likes in it smoking 
 included. Why, if such a room looked out both back and 
 front on to a blank dead wall it would still be a paradise ;
 
 The Way of All Flesh 221 
 
 how much more then when the view is of some quiet 
 grassy court or cloister or garden, as from the windows 
 of the greater number of rooms at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 Theobald, as an old fellow and tutor of Emmanuel at 
 which college he had entered Ernest was able to obtain 
 from the present tutor a certain preference in the choice 
 of rooms; Ernest's, therefore, were very pleasant ones, 
 looking out upon the grassy court that is bounded by 
 the Fellows' gardens. 
 
 Theobald accompanied him to Cambridge, and was at 
 his best while doing so. He liked the jaunt, and even 
 he was not without a certain feeling of pride in having 
 a full-blown son at the University. Some of the reflected 
 rays of this splendour were allowed to fall upon Ernest 
 himself. Theobald said he was "willing to hope" this 
 was one of his tags that his son would turn over a new 
 leaf now that he had left school, and for his own part he 
 was "only too ready" this was another tag to let by- 
 gones be bygones. 
 
 Ernest, not yet having his name on the books, was able 
 to dine with his father at the Fellows' table of one of the 
 other colleges on the invitation of an old friend of Theo- 
 bald's ; he there made acquaintance with sundry of the 
 good things of this life, the very names of which were 
 new to him, and felt as he ate them that he was now 
 indeed receiving a liberal education. When at length the 
 time came for him to go to Emmanuel, where he was to 
 sleep in his new rooms, his father came with him to the 
 gates and saw him safe into college ; a few minutes more 
 and he found himself alone in a room for which he had a 
 latch-key. 
 
 From this time he dated many days which, if not quite 
 unclouded, were upon the whole very happy ones. I need 
 not, however, describe them, as the life of a quiet, steady- 
 going undergraduate has been told in a score of novels 
 better than I can tell it. Some of Ernest's schoolfellows
 
 222 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 came up to Cambridge at the same time as himself, and 
 with these he continued on friendly terms during the 
 whole of his college career. Other schoolfellows were 
 only a* year or two his seniors ; these called on him, and 
 he thus made a sufficiently favourable entree into college 
 life. A straightforwardness of character that was 
 stamped upon his face, a love of humour, and a temper 
 which was more easily appeased than ruffled made up for 
 some awkwardness and want of savoir faire. He soon 
 became a not unpopular member of the best set of his 
 year, and though neither capable of becoming, nor aspir- 
 ing to become, a leader, was admitted by the leaders as 
 among their nearer hangers-on. 
 
 Of ambition he had at that time not one particle ; great- 
 ness, or indeed superiority of any kind, seemed so far off 
 and incomprehensible to him that the idea of connecting 
 it with himself never crossed his mind. If he could 
 escape the notice of all those with whom he did not feel 
 himself en rapport, he conceived that he had triumphed 
 sufficiently. He did not care about taking a good degree, 
 except that it must be good enough to keep his father and 
 mother quiet. He did not dream of being able to get a 
 fellowship ; if he had, he would have tried hard to do so, 
 for he became so fond of Cambridge that he could not 
 bear the thought of having to leave it ; the briefness in- 
 deed of the season during which his present happiness 
 was to last was almost the only thing that now seriously 
 troubled him. 
 
 Having less to attend to in the matter of growing, and 
 having got his head more free, he took to reading fairly 
 well not because he liked it, but because he was told he 
 ought to do so, and his natural instinct, like that of all 
 very young men who are good for anything, was to do 
 as those in authority told him. The intention at Bat- 
 tersby was (for Dr. Skinner had said that Ernest could 
 never get a fellowship) that he should take a sufficiently 
 good degree to be able to get a tutorship or mastership
 
 The Way of All Flesh 223 
 
 in some school preparatory to taking orders. When he 
 was twenty-one years old his money was to come into his 
 own hands, and the best thing he could do with it would 
 be to buy the next presentation to a living, the rector of 
 which was now old, and live on his mastership or tutor- 
 ship till the living fell in. He could buy a very good 
 living for the sum which his grandfather's legacy now 
 amounted to, for Theobald had never had any serious 
 intention of making deductions for his son's maintenance 
 and education, and the money had accumulated till it was 
 now about five thousand pounds; he had only talked 
 about making deductions in order to stimulate the boy to 
 exertion as far as possible, by making him think that this 
 was his only chance of escaping starvation or perhaps 
 from pure love of teasing. 
 
 When Ernest had a living of 600 or 700 a year with 
 a house, and not too many parishioners why, he might 
 add to his income by taking pupils, or even keeping a 
 school, and then, say at thirty, he might marry. It was 
 not easy for Theobald to hit on any much more sensible 
 plan. He could not get Ernest into business, for he had 
 no business connections besides he did not know what 
 business meant; he had no interest, again, at the Bar; 
 medicine was a profession which subjected its students to 
 ordeals and temptations which these fond parents shrank 
 from on behalf of their boy ; he would be thrown among 
 companions and familiarised with details which might 
 sully him, and though he might stand, it was "only too 
 possible" that he would fall. Besides, ordination was the 
 road which Theobald knew and understood, and indeed 
 the only road about which he knew anything at all, so not 
 unnaturally it was the one he chose for Ernest. 
 
 The foregoing had been instilled into my hero from 
 earliest boyhood, much as it had been instilled into Theo- 
 bald himself, and with the same result- the conviction, 
 namely, that he was certainly to be a clergyman, but 
 that it was a long way off yet, and he supposed it was all
 
 224 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 right. As for the duty of reading hard, and taking as 
 good a degree as he could, this was plain enough, so he 
 set himself to work, as I have said, steadily, and to the 
 surprise of everyone as well as himself got a college 
 scholarship, of no great value, but still a scholarship, in 
 his freshman's term. It is hardly necessary to say that 
 Theobald stuck to the whole of this money, believing the 
 pocket-money he allowed Ernest to be sufficient for him, 
 and knowing how dangerous it was for young men to 
 have money at command. I do not suppose it even 
 occurred to him to try and remember what he had felt 
 when his father took a like course in regard to him- 
 self. 
 
 Ernest's position in this respect was much what it had 
 been at school except that things were on a larger scale. 
 His tutor's and cook's bills were paid for him ; his father 
 sent him his wine ; over and above this he had 50 a year 
 with which to keep himself in clothes and all other 
 expenses ; this was about the usual thing at Emmanuel in 
 Ernest's day, though many had much less than .this. 
 Ernest did as he had done at school he spent what he 
 could, soon after he received his money ; he then incurred 
 a few modest liabilities, and then lived penuriously till 
 next term, when he would immediately pay his debts, and 
 start new ones to much the same extent as those which 
 he had just got rid of. When he came into his 5000 and 
 became independent of his father, i 15 or 20 served to 
 cover the whole of his unauthorised expenditure. 
 
 He joined the boat club, and was constant in his attend- 
 ance at the boats. He still smoked, but never took more 
 wine or beer than was good for him, except perhaps on 
 the occasion of a boating supper, but even then he found 
 the consequences unpleasant, and soon learned how to 
 keep within safe limits. He attended chapel as often as 
 he was compelled to do so ; he communicated two or three 
 times a year, because his tutor told him he ought to ; in 
 fact he set himself to live soberly and cleanly, as I imag- 
 
 r
 
 The Way of All Flesh 225 
 
 ine all his instincts prompted him to do, and when he 
 fell as who that is born of woman can help sometimes 
 doing ? it was not till after a sharp tussle with a tempta- 
 tion that was more than his flesh and blood could stand ; 
 then he was very penitent and would go a fairly long 
 while without sinning again ; and this was how it had 
 always been with him since he had arrived at years of 
 indiscretion. 
 
 Even to the end of his career at Cambridge he was not 
 aware that he had it in him to do anything, but others 
 had begun to see that he was not wanting in ability and 
 sometimes told him so. He did not believe it; indeed 
 he knew very well that if they thought him clever they 
 were being taken in, but it pleased him to have been able 
 to take them in, and he tried to do so still further ; he was 
 therefore a good deal on the lookout for cants that he 
 could catch and apply in season, and might have done 
 himself some mischief thus if he had not been ready to 
 throw over any cant as soon as he had come across an- 
 other more nearly to his fancy; his friends used to say 
 that when he rose he flew like a snipe, darting several 
 times in various directions before he settled down to a 
 steady, straight flight, but when he had once got into this 
 he would keep to it. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 WHEN he was in his third year a magazine was founded 
 at Cambridge, the contributions to which were exclusively 
 by undergraduates. Ernest sent in an essay upon the 
 Greek Drama, which he has declined to let me reproduce 
 here without his being allowed to re-edit it. I have 
 therefore been unable to give it in its original form, but 
 when pruned of its redundancies (and this is all that has 
 been done to it) it runs as follows
 
 226 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "I shall not attempt within the limits at my disposal 
 to make a resume of the rise and progress of the Greek 
 drama, but will confine myself to considering whether the 
 reputation enjoyed by the three chief Greek tragedians, 
 ./Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, is one that will be 
 permanent, or whether they will one day be held to have 
 been overrated. 
 
 "Why, I ask myself, do I see much that I can easily 
 admire in Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, Demosthenes, 
 Aristophanes, Theocritus, parts of Lucretius, Horace's 
 satires and epistles, to say nothing of other ancient writ- 
 ers, and yet find myself at once repelled by even those 
 works of yEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides which are 
 most generally admired. 
 
 "With the first-named writers I am in the hands of 
 men who feel, if not as I do, still as I can understand 
 their feeling, and as I am interested to see that they 
 should have felt; with the second I have so little sym- 
 pathy that I cannot understand how anyone can ever 
 have taken any interest in them whatever. Their highest 
 flights to me are dull, pompous and artificial productions, 
 which, if they were to appear now for the first time, 
 would, I should think, either fall dead or be severely 
 handled by the critics. I wish to know whether it is I 
 who am in fault in this matter, or whether part of the 
 blame may not rest with the tragedians themselves. 
 
 "How far, I wonder, did the Athenians genuinely like 
 these poets, and how far was the applause which was 
 lavished upon them due to fashion or affectation? How 
 far, in fact, did admiration for the orthodox tragedians 
 take that place among the Athenians which going to 
 church does among ourselves ? 
 
 "This is a venturesome question considering the ver- 
 dict now generally given for over two thousand years, 
 nor should I have permitted myself to ask it if it had not 
 been suggested to me by one whose reputation stands 
 as high, and has been sanctioned for as long time as
 
 The Way of All Flesh 227 
 
 those of the tragedians themselves, I mean by Aris- 
 tophanes. 
 
 "Numbers, weight of authority, and time, have con- 
 spired to place Aristophanes on as high a literary pinnacle 
 as any ancient writer, with the exception perhaps of 
 Homer, but he makes no secret of heartily hating Eurip- 
 ides and Sophocles, and I strongly suspect only praises 
 ^Eschylus that he may run down the other two with 
 greater impunity. For after all there is no such differ- 
 ence between yEschylus and his successors as will render 
 the former very good and the latter very bad; and the 
 thrusts at ^Eschylus which Aristophanes puts into the 
 mouth of Euripides go home too well to have been written 
 by an admirer. 
 
 "It may be observed that while Euripides accuses 
 ^Eschylus of being 'pomp-bundle-worded,' which I sup- 
 pose means bombastic and given to rodomontade, yEschy- 
 lus retorts on Euripides that he is a 'gossip gleaner, a 
 describer of beggars, and a rag-stitcher,' from which it 
 may be inferred that he was truer to the life of his own 
 times than ./Eschylus was. It happens, however, that a 
 faithful rendering of contemporary life is the very quality 
 which gives its most permanent interest to any work of 
 fiction, whether in literature or painting, and it is a not 
 unnatural consequence that while only seven plays by 
 Eschylus, and the same number by Sophocles, have come 
 down to us, we have no fewer than nineteen by Euripides. 
 
 "This, however, is a digression ; the question before us 
 is whether Aristophanes really liked Eschylus or only 
 pretended to do so. It must be remembered that the 
 claims of ^Eschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to the fore- 
 most place amongst tragedians were held to be as in- 
 controvertible as those of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso and 
 Ariosto to be the greatest of Italian poets, are held among 
 the Italians of to-day. If we can fancy some witty, 
 genial writer, we will say in Florence, finding himself 
 bored by all the poets I have named, we can yet believe
 
 he would be unwilling to admit that he disliked them 
 without exception. He would prefer to think he could 
 see something at any rate in Dante, whom he could 
 idealise more easily, inasmuch as he was more remote; 
 in order to carry his countrymen the farther with him, 
 he would endeavour to meet them more than was con- 
 sistent with his own instincts. Without some such pallia- 
 tion as admiration for one, at any rate, of the tragedians, 
 it would be almost as dangerous for Aristophanes to 
 attack them as it would be for an Englishman now to 
 say that he did not think very much of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists. Yet which of us in his heart likes any of 
 the Elizabethan dramatists except Shakespeare? Are 
 they in reality anything else than literary Struldbrugs ? 
 
 "I conclude upon the whole that Aristophanes did not 
 like any of the tragedians ; yet no one will deny that this 
 keen, witty, outspoken writer was as good a judge of 
 literary value, and as able to see any beauties that the 
 tragic dramas contained as nine-tenths, at any rate, of 
 ourselves. He had, moreover, the advantage of thor- 
 oughly understanding the standpoint from which the 
 tragedians expected their work to be judged, and what 
 was his conclusion? Briefly it was little else than this, 
 that they were a fraud or something very like it. For 
 my own part I cordially agree with him. I am free to 
 confess that with the exception perhaps of some of the 
 Psalms of David I know no writings which seem so little 
 to deserve their reputation. I do not know that I should 
 particularly mind my sisters reading them, but I will 
 take good care never to read them myself." 
 
 This last bit about the Psalms was awful, and there 
 was a great fight with the editor as to whether or no it 
 should be allowed to stand. Ernest himself was fright- 
 ened at it, but he had once heard someone say that the 
 Psalms were many of them very poor, and on looking at 
 them more closely, after he had been told this, he found
 
 The Way of All Flesh 229 
 
 that there could hardly be two opinions on the subject. 
 So he caught up the remark and reproduced it as his 
 own, concluding that these psalms had probably never 
 been written by David at all, but had got in among the 
 others by mistake. 
 
 The essay, perhaps on account of the passage about the 
 Psalms, created quite a sensation, and on the whole was 
 well received. Ernest's friends praised it more highly 
 than it deserved, and he was himself very proud of it, but 
 he dared not show it at Battersby. He knew also that 
 he was now at the end of his tether; this was his one 
 idea (I feel sure he had caught more than half of it from 
 other people), and now he had not another thing left 
 to write about. He found himself cursed with a small 
 reputation which seemed to him much bigger than it was, 
 and a consciousness that he could never keep it up. Be- 
 fore many days were over he felt his unfortunate essay 
 to be a white elephant to him, which he must feed by 
 hurrying into all sorts of frantic attempts to cap his 
 triumph, and, as may be imagined, these attempts were 
 failures. 
 
 He did not understand that if he waited and listened 
 and observed, another idea of some kind would probably 
 occur to him some day, and that the development of this 
 would in its turn suggest still further ones. He did not 
 yet know that the very worst way of getting hold of ideas 
 is to go hunting expressly after them. The way to get 
 them is to study something of which one is fond, and 
 to note down whatever crosses one's mind in reference 
 to it, either during study or relaxation, in a little note- 
 book kept always in the waistcoat pocket. Ernest has 
 come to know all about this now, but it took him a long 
 time to find it out, for this is not the kind of thing that 
 is taught at schools and universities. 
 
 Nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living 
 beings in whose minds they arise, must be begotten by 
 parents not very unlike themselves, the most original still
 
 230 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 differing but slightly from the parents that have given 
 rise to them. Life is like a fugue, everything must grow 
 out of the subject and there must be nothing new. Nor, 
 again, did he see how hard it is to say where one idea 
 ends and another begins, nor yet how closely this is 
 paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life begins 
 or ends, or an action or indeed anything, there being an 
 unity in spite of infinite multitude, and an infinite multi- 
 tude in spite of unity. He thought that ideas came into 
 clever people's heads by a kind of spontaneous germina- 
 tion, without parentage in the thoughts of others or the 
 course of observation; for as yet he believed in genius, 
 of which he well knew that he had none, if it was the 
 fine frenzied thing he thought it was. 
 
 Not very long before this he had come of age, and 
 Theobald had handed him over his money, which 
 amounted now to 5000; it was invested to bring in 5 
 per cent, and gave him therefore an income of ^250 a 
 year. He did not, however, realise the fact (he could 
 realise nothing so foreign to his experience) that he was 
 independent of his father till a long time afterwards ; nor 
 did Theobald make any difference in his manner towards 
 him. So strong was the hold which habit and association 
 held over both father and son, that the one considered 
 he had as good a right as ever to dictate, and the other 
 that he had as little right as ever to gainsay. 
 
 During his last year at Cambridge he overworked him- 
 self through this very blind deference to his father's 
 wishes, for there was no reason why he should take more 
 than a poll degree except that his father laid such stress 
 upon his taking honours. He became so ill, indeed, that 
 it was doubtful how far he would be able to go in for his 
 degree at all ; but he managed to do so, and when the 
 list came out was found to be placed higher than either 
 he or anyone else expected, being among the first three 
 or four senior optimes, and a few weeks later, in the 
 lower half of the second class of the Classical Tripos.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 231 
 
 111 as he was when he got home, Theobald made him go 
 over all the examination papers with him, and in fact 
 reproduce as nearly as possible the replies that he had 
 sent in. So little kick had he in him, and so deep was 
 the groove into which he had got, that while at home he 
 spent several hours a day in continuing his classical and 
 mathematical studies as though he had not yet taken 
 his degree. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII 
 
 ERNEST returned to Cambridge for the May term of 1858, 
 on the plea of reading for ordination, with which he was 
 now face to face, and much nearer than he liked. Up to 
 this time, though not religiously inclined, he had never 
 doubted the truth of anything that had been told him 
 about Christianity. He had never seen anyone who 
 doubted, nor read anything that raised a suspicion in his 
 mind as to the -historical character of the miracles 
 recorded in the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 It must be remembered that the year 1858 was the last 
 of a term during which the peace of the Church of 
 England was singularly unbroken. Between 1844, when 
 "Vestiges of Creation" appeared, and 1859, when "Essays 
 and Reviews" marked the commencement of that storm 
 which raged until many years afterwards, there was not 
 a single book published in England that caused serious 
 commotion within the bosom of the Church. Perhaps 
 Buckle's "History of Civilisation" and Mill's "Liberty" 
 were the most alarming, but they neither of them reached 
 the substratum of the reading public, and Ernest and his 
 friends were ignorant of their very existence. The 
 Evangelical movement, with the exception to which I 
 shall revert presently, had become almost a matter of 
 ancient history. Tractarianism had subsided into a tenth 
 day's wonder; it was at work, but it was not noisy.
 
 232 The Way of All FlesK 
 
 The "Vestiges" were forgotten before Ernest went up to 
 Cambridge; the Catholic aggression scare had lost its 
 terrors ; Ritualism was still unknown by the general pro- 
 vincial public, and the Gorham and Hampden controver- 
 sies were defunct some years since; Dissent was not 
 spreading; the Crimean war was the one engrossing 
 subject, to be followed by the Indian Mutiny and the 
 Franco- Austrian war. These great events turned men's 
 minds from speculative subjects, and there was no enemy 
 to the faith which could arouse even a languid interest. 
 At no time probably since the beginning of the century 
 could an ordinary observer have detected less sign of 
 coming disturbance than at that of which I am writ- 
 ing. 
 
 I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. 
 Older men, who knew more than undergraduates were 
 likely to do, must have seen that the wave of scepticism 
 which had already broken over Germany was setting 
 towards our own shores, nor was it long, indeed, before 
 it reached them. Ernest had hardly been ordained before 
 three works in quick succession arrested the attention 
 even of those who paid least heed to theological con- 
 troversy. I mean "Essays and Reviews," Charles Dar- 
 win's "Origin of Species," and Bishop Colenso's "Criti- 
 cisms on the Pentateuch." 
 
 This, however, is a digression ; I must revert to the one 
 phase of spiritual activity which had any life in it during 
 the time Ernest was at Cambridge, that is to say, to the 
 remains of the Evangelical awakening of more than a 
 generation earlier, which was connected with the name of 
 Simeon. 
 
 There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they 
 were more briefly called "Sims," in Ernest's time. Every 
 college contained some of them, but their headquarters 
 were at Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr. Clay- 
 ton who was at that time senior tutor, and among the 
 sizars of St. John's.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 233 
 
 Behind the then chapel of this last-named college, there 
 was a "labyrinth" (this was the name it bore) of dingy, 
 tumble-down rooms, tenanted exclusively by the poorest 
 undergraduates, who were dependent upon sizarships and 
 scholarships for the means of taking their degrees. To 
 many, even at St. John's, the existence and whereabouts 
 of the labyrinth in which the sizars chiefly lived was 
 unknown ; some men in Ernest's time, who had rooms in 
 the first court, had never found their way through the 
 sinuous passage which led to it. 
 
 In the labyrinth there dwelt men of all ages, from mere 
 lads to grey-haired old men who had entered late in life. 
 They were rarely seen except in hall or chapel or at 
 lecture, where their manners of feeding, praying and 
 studying, were considered alike objectionable; no one 
 knew whence they came, whither they went, nor what 
 they did, for they never showed at cricket or the boats ; 
 they were a gloomy, seedy-looking confrerie, who had 
 as little to glory in in clothes and manners as in the flesh 
 itself. 
 
 Ernest and his friends used to consider themselves 
 marvels of economy for getting on with so little money, 
 but the greater number of dwellers in the labyrinth would 
 have considered one-half of their expenditure to be an 
 exceeding measure of affluence, and so doubtless any 
 domestic tyranny which had been experienced by Ernest 
 was a small thing to what the average Johnian sizar had 
 had to put up with. 
 
 A few would at once emerge on its being found after 
 their first examination that they were likely to be orna- 
 ments to the college; these would win valuable scholar- 
 ships that enabled them to live in some degree of com- 
 fort, and would amalgamate with the more studious of 
 those who were in a better social position, but even these, 
 with few exceptions, were long in shaking off the un- 
 couthness they brought with them to the University, nor 
 would their origin cease to be easily recognisable till they
 
 234 The Way of All FlesK 
 
 had become dons and tutors. I have seen some of these 
 men attain high position in the world of politics or 
 science, and yet still retain a look of labyrinth and 
 Johnian sizarship. 
 
 Unprepossessing then, in feature, gait and manners, 
 unkempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily 
 described, these poor fellows formed a class apart, whose 
 thoughts and ways were not as the thoughts and ways of 
 Ernest and his friends, and it was among them that 
 Simeonism chiefly flourished. 
 
 Destined most of them for the Church (for in those 
 days "holy orders" were seldom heard of), the Simeon- 
 ites held themselves to have received a very loud call to 
 the ministry, and were ready to pinch themselves for 
 years so as to prepare for it by the necessary theological 
 courses. To most of them the fact of becoming clergy- 
 men would be the entree into a social position from which 
 they were at present kept out by barriers they well knew 
 to be impassable ; ordination, therefore, opened fields for 
 ambition which made it the central point in their thoughts, 
 rather than as with Ernest, some'thing which he supposed 
 would have to be done some day, but about which, as 
 about dying, he hoped there was no need to trouble him- 
 self as yet. 
 
 By way of preparing themselves more completely they 
 would have meetings in one another's rooms for tea and 
 prayer and other spiritual exercises. Placing themselves 
 under the guidance of a few well-known tutors they 
 would teach in Sunday Schools, and be instant, in season 
 and out of season, in imparting spiritual instruction to 
 all whom they could persuade to listen to them* 
 
 But the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates 
 was not suitable for the seed they tried to sow. The 
 small pieties with which they larded their discourse, if 
 chance threw them into the company of one whom they 
 considered worldly, caused nothing but aversion in the 
 minds of those for whom they were intended. When
 
 The Way of All Flesh 235 
 
 they distributed tracts, dropping them by night into good 
 men's letter boxes while they were asleep, their tracts got 
 burnt, or met with even worse contumely; they were 
 themselves also treated with the ridicule which they re- 
 flected proudly had been the lot of true followers of 
 Christ in all ages. Often at their prayer meetings was 
 the passage of St. Paul referred to in which he bids his 
 Corinthian converts note concerning themselves that they 
 were for the most part neither well-bred nor intellectual 
 people. They reflected with pride that they too had noth- 
 ing to be proud of in these respects, and like St. Paul, 
 gloried in the fact that in the flesh they had not much to 
 glory. 
 
 Ernest had several Johnian friends, and came thus to 
 hear about the Simeonites and to see some of them, who 
 were pointed out to him as they passed through the 
 courts. They had a repellent attraction for him ; he dis- 
 liked them, but he could not bring himself to leave them 
 alone. On one occasion he had gone so far as to parody 
 one of the tracts they had sent round in the night, and 
 to get a copy dropped '"nto each of the leading Simeonites' 
 boxes. The subject he had taken was "Personal Cleanli- 
 ness." Cleanliness, he said, was next to godliness; he 
 wished to know on which side it was to stand, and con- 
 cluded by exhorting Simeonites to a freer use of the tub. 
 I cannot commend my hero's humour in this matter ; his 
 tract was not brilliant, but I mention the fact as showing 
 that at this time he was something of a Saul and took 
 pleasure in persecuting the elect, not, as I have said, that 
 he had any hankering after scepticism, but because, like 
 the farmers in his father's village, though he would not 
 stand seeing the Christian religion made light of, he was 
 not going to see it taken seriously. Ernest's friends 
 thought his dislike for Simeonites was due to his being 
 the son of a clergyman who, it was known, bullied him; 
 it is more likely, however, that it rose from an uncon- 
 scious sympathy with them, which, as in St. Paul's case, in
 
 236 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the end drew him into the ranks of those whom he had 
 most despised and hated. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII 
 
 ONCE, recently, when he was down at home after taking 
 his degree, his mother had had a short conversation with 
 him about his becoming a clergyman, set on thereto 
 by Theobald, who shrank from the subject himself. 
 This time it was during a turn taken in the garden, and 
 not on the sofa which was reserved for supreme oc- 
 casions. 
 
 "You know, my dearest boy," she said to him, "that 
 papa" (she always called Theobald "papa" when talking 
 to Ernest) "is so anxious you should not go into the 
 Church blindly, and without fully realising the difficulties 
 of a clergyman's position. He has considered all of them 
 himself, and has been shown how small they are, when 
 they are faced boldly, but he wishes you, too, to feel them 
 as strongly and completely as possible before committing 
 yourself to irrevocable vows, so that you may never, 
 never have to regret the step you will have taken." 
 
 This was the first time Ernest had heard that there 
 were any difficulties, and he not unnaturally enquired in a 
 vague way after their nature. 
 
 "That, my dear boy," rejoined Christina, "is a ques- 
 tion which I am not fitted to enter upon either by nature 
 or education. I might easily unsettle your mind without 
 being able to settle it again. Oh, no! Such questions 
 are far better avoided by women, and, I should have 
 thought, by men, but papa wished me to speak to you 
 upon the subject, so that there might be no mistake here- 
 after, and I have done so. Now, therefore, you know 
 all." 
 
 The conversation ended here, so far as this subject 
 was concerned, and Ernest thought he did know all.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 237 
 
 His mother would not have told him he knew all not 
 about a matter of that sort unless he actually did know 
 it ; well, it did not come to very much ; he supposed there 
 were some difficulties, but his father, who at any rate 
 was an excellent scholar and a learned man, was probably 
 quite right here, and he need not trouble himself more 
 about them. So little impression did the conversation 
 make on him, that it was not till long afterwards that, 
 happening to remember it, he saw what a piece of sleight 
 of hand had been practised upon him. Theobald and 
 Christina, however, were satisfied that they had done 
 their duty by opening their son's eyes to the difficulties of 
 assenting to all a clergyman must assent to. This was 
 enough; it was a matter for rejoicing that, though they 
 had been put so fully and candidly before him, he did 
 not find them serious. It was not in vain that they had 
 prayed for so many years to be made "truly honest and 
 conscientious." 
 
 "And now, my dear," resumed Christina, after having 
 disposed of all the difficulties that might stand in the way 
 of Ernest's becoming a clergyman, "there is another mat- 
 ter on which I should like to have a talk with you. It is 
 about your sister Charlotte. You know how clever she is, 
 and what a (Jear, kind sister she has been and always will 
 be to yourself and Joey. I wish, my dearest Ernest, 
 that I saw more chance of her finding a suitable husband 
 than I do at Battersby, and I sometimes think you might 
 do more than you do to help her." 
 
 Ernest began to chafe at this, for he had heard it so 
 often, but he said nothing. 
 
 "You know, my dear, a brother can do so much for his 
 sister if he lays himself out to do it. A mother can do 
 very little indeed, it is hardly a mother's place to seek 
 out young men ; it is a brother's place to find a suitable 
 partner for his sister ; all that I can do is to try to make 
 Battersby as attractive as possible to any of your friends 
 whom you may invite. And in that," she added, with
 
 238 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a little toss of her head, "I do not think I have been 
 deficient hitherto." 
 
 Ernest said he had already at different times asked 
 several of his friends. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, but you must admit that they were none 
 of them exactly the kind of young man whom Charlotte 
 could be expected to take a fancy to. Indeed, I must 
 own to having been a little disappointed that you should 
 have yourself chosen any of these as your intimate 
 friends." 
 
 Ernest winced again. 
 
 "You never brought down Figgins when you were at 
 Roughborough ; now I should have thought Figgins would 
 have been just the kind of boy whom you might have 
 asked to come and see us." 
 
 Figgins had been gone through times out of number 
 already. Ernest had hardly known him, and Figgins, 
 being nearly three years older than Ernest, had left long 
 before he did. Besides, he had not been a nice boy, and 
 had made himself unpleasant to Ernest in many ways. 
 
 "Now," continued his mother, "there's Towneley. I 
 have heard you speak of Towneley as having rowed with 
 you in a boat at Cambridge. I wish, my dear, you would 
 cultivate "your acquaintance with Towneley, and ask him 
 to pay us a visit. The name has an aristocratic sound, 
 and I think I have heard you say he is an eldest son." 
 
 Ernest flushed at the sound of Towneley 's name. 
 
 What had really happened in respect of Ernest's 
 friends was briefly this : His mother liked to get hold of 
 the names of the boys and especially of any who were 
 at all intimate with her son; the more she heard, the 
 more she wanted to know ; there was no gorging her to 
 satiety; she was like a ravenous young cuckoo being fed 
 upon a grass plot by a water wag-tail, she would swallow 
 all that Ernest could bring her, and yet be as hungry as 
 before. And she always went to Ernest for her meals 
 rather than to Joey, for Joey was either more stupid or
 
 The Way of All Flesh 239 
 
 more impenetrable at any rate she could pump Ernest 
 much the better of the two. 
 
 From time to time an actual live boy had been thrown 
 to her, either by being caught and brought to Battersby, 
 or by being asked to meet her if at any time she came to 
 Roughborough. She had generally made herself agree- 
 able, or fairly agreeable, as long as the boy was present, 
 but as soon as she got Ernest to herself again she changed 
 her note. Into whatever form she might throw her criti- 
 cisms it came always in the end to this, that his friend 
 was no good, that Ernest was not much better, and that 
 he should have brought her someone else, for this one 
 would not do at all. 
 
 The more intimate the boy had been or was supposed 
 to be with Ernest the more he was declared to be naught, 
 till in the end he had hit upon the plan of saying, con- 
 cerning any boy whom he particularly liked, that he was 
 not one of his especial chums, and that indeed he hardly 
 knew why he had asked him; but he found he only fell 
 on Scylla in trying to avoid Charybdis, for though the 
 boy was declared to be more successful, it was Ernest 
 who was naught for not thinking more highly of him. 
 
 When she had once got hold of a name she never for- 
 got it. "And how is So-and-so?" she would exclaim, 
 mentioning some former friend of Ernest's with whom 
 he had either now quarrelled, or who had long since 
 proved to be a mere comet and no fixed star at all. How 
 Ernest wished he had never mentioned So-and-so's name, 
 and vowed to himself that he would never talk about his 
 friends in future, but in a few hours he would forget 
 and would prattle away as imprudently as ever ; then his 
 mother would pounce noiselessly on his remarks as a 
 barn-owl pounces upon a mouse, and would bring them 
 up in a pellet six months afterwards when they were no 
 longer in harmony with their surroundings. 
 
 Then there was Theobald. If a boy or college friend 
 had been invited to Battersby, Theobald would lay him-
 
 240 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 self out at first to be agreeable. He could do this well 
 enough when he liked, and as regards the outside world 
 he generally did like. His clerical neighbours, and in- 
 deed all his neighbours, respected him yearly more and 
 more, and would have given Ernest sufficient cause to 
 regret his imprudence if he had dared to hint that he had 
 anything, however little, to complain of. Theobald's 
 mind worked in this way: "Now, I know Ernest has 
 told this boy what a disagreeable person I am, and I will 
 just show him that I am not disagreeable at all, but a 
 good old fellow, a jolly old boy, in fact a regular old 
 brick, and that it is Ernest who is in fault all through." 
 
 So he would behave very nicely to the boy at first, and 
 the boy would be delighted with him, and side with him 
 against Ernest. Of course if Ernest had got the boy 
 to come to Battersby he wanted him to enjoy his visit, 
 and was therefore pleased that Theobald should behave 
 so well, but at the same time he stood so much in need 
 of moral support that it was painful to him to see one 
 of his own familiar friends go over to the enemy's camp. 
 For no matter how well we may know a thing how 
 clearly we may see a certain patch of colour, for exam- 
 ple, as red, it shakes us and knocks us about to find an- 
 other see it, or be more than half inclined to see it, as 
 green. 
 
 Theobald had generally begun to get a little impatient 
 before the end of the visit, but the impression formed 
 during the earlier part was the one which the visitor had 
 carried away with him. Theobald never discussed any 
 of the boys with Ernest. It was Christina who did this. 
 Theobald let them come, because Christina in a quiet, 
 persistent way, insisted on it; when they did come he 
 behaved, as I have said, civilly, but he did not like it, 
 whereas Christina did like it very much ; she would have 
 had half Roughborough and half Cambridge to come and 
 stay at Battersby if she could have managed it, and if it 
 would not have cost so much money : she liked their com-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 241 
 
 ing, so that she might make a new acquaintance, and she 
 liked tearing them to pieces and flinging the bits over 
 Ernest as soon as she had had enough of them. 
 
 The worst of it was that she had so often proved to be 
 right. Boys and young men are violent in their affec- 
 tions, but they are seldom very constant ; it is not till they 
 get older that they really know the kind of friend they 
 want ; in their earlier essays young men are simply learn- 
 ing to judge character. Ernest had been no exception to 
 the general rule. His swans had one after the other 
 proved to be more or less geese even in his own estima- 
 tion, and he was beginning almost to think that his 
 mother was a better judge of character than he was; but 
 I think it may be assumed with some certainty that if 
 Ernest had brought her a real young swan she would 
 have declared it to be the ugliest and worst goose of all 
 that she had yet seen. 
 
 At first he had not suspected that his friends were 
 wanted with a view to Charlotte ; it was understood that 
 Charlotte and they might perhaps take a fancy for one 
 another; and that would be so very nice, would it not? 
 But he did not see that there was any deliberate malice 
 in the arrangement. Now, however, that he had awoke 
 to what it all meant, he was less inclined to bring any 
 friend of his to Battersby. It seemed to his silly young 
 mind almost dishonest to ask your friend to come and 
 see you when all you really meant was, "Please, marry 
 my sister." It was like trying to obtain money under 
 false pretences. If he had been fond of Charlotte it 
 might have been another matter, but he thought her one 
 of the most disagreeable young women in the whole cir- 
 cle of his acquaintance. 
 
 She was supposed to be very clever. All young ladies 
 are either very pretty or very clever or very sweet ; they 
 may take their choice as to which category they will go in 
 for, but go in for one of the three they must. It was 
 hopeless to try and pass Charlotte off as either pretty or
 
 242 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 sweet. So she became clever as the only remaining alter- 
 native. Ernest never knew what particular branch of 
 study it was in which she showed her talent, for she 
 could neither play nor sing nor draw, but so astute are 
 women that his mother and Charlotte really did persuade 
 him into thinking that she, Charlotte, had something 
 more akin to true genius than any other member of the 
 family. Not one, however, of all the friends whom Er- 
 nest had been inveigled into trying to inveigle had shown 
 the least sign of being so far struck with Charlotte's 
 commanding powers, as to wish to make them his own, 
 and this may have had something to do with the rapidity 
 and completeness with which Christina had dismissed 
 them one after another and had wanted a new one. 
 
 And now she wanted Towneley. Ernest had seen this 
 coming and had tried to avoid it, for he knew how im- 
 possible it was for him to ask Towneley even if he had 
 wished to do so. 
 
 Towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets 
 in Cambridge, and was perhaps the most popular man 
 among the whole number of undergraduates. He was 
 big and very handsome as it seemed to Ernest the hand- 
 somest man whom he ever had seen or ever could see, 
 for it was impossible to imagine a more lively and agree- 
 able countenance. He was good at cricket and boating, 
 very good-natured, singularly free from conceit, not 
 clever but very sensible, and, lastly, his father and mother 
 had been drowned by the overturning of a boat when 
 he was only two years old and had left him as their only 
 child and heir to one\)f the finest estates in the South 
 of England. Fortune every now and then does things 
 handsomely by a man all round; Towneley was one of 
 those to whom she had taken a fancy, and the universal 
 verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely. 
 
 Ernest had seen Towneley as every one else in the 
 University (except, of course, dons) had seen him, for 
 he was a man of mark, and being very susceptible he had
 
 The Way of All Flesh 243 
 
 liked Towne4ey even more than most people did, but at 
 the same time it never so much as entered his head that 
 he should come to know him. He liked looking at him 
 if he got a chance, and was very much ashamed of him- 
 self for doing so, but there the matter ended. 
 
 By a strange accident, however, during Ernest's last 
 year, when the names of the crews for the scratch fours 
 were drawn he had found himself coxswain of a crew, 
 among whom was none other than his especial hero 
 Towneley; the three others were ordinary mortals, but 
 they could row fairly well, and the crew on the whole 
 was rather a good one. 
 
 Ernest was frightened out of his wits. When, how- 
 ever, the two met, he found Towneley no less remarkable 
 for his entire want of anything like "side," and for his 
 power of setting those whom he came across at their 
 ease, than he was for outward accomplishments ; the only 
 difference he found between Towneley and other people 
 was that he was so very much easier to get on with. 
 Of course Ernest worshipped him more and more. 
 
 The scratch fours being ended the connection between 
 the two came to an end, but Towneley never passed Er- 
 nest thenceforward without a nod and a few good- 
 natured words. In an evil moment he had mentioned 
 Towneley's name at Battersby, and now what was the 
 result? Here was his mother plaguing him to ask 
 Towneley to come down to Battersby and marry Char- 
 lotte. Why, if he had thought there was the remotest 
 chance of Towneley's marrying Charlotte he would have 
 gone down on his knees to him and told him what an 
 odious young woman she was, and implored him to save 
 himself while there was yet time. 
 
 But Ernest had not prayed to be made "truly honest 
 and conscientious" for as many years as Christina had. 
 He tried to conceal what he felt and thought as well as 
 he could, and led the conversation back to the difficulties 
 which a clergyman might feel to stand in the way of his
 
 244 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 being ordained not because he had any misgivings, but 
 as a diversion. His mother, however, thought she had 
 settled all that, and he got no more out of her. Soon 
 afterwards he found the means of escaping, and was not 
 slow to avail himself of them. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 ON his return to Cambridge in the May term of 1858, 
 Ernest and a few other friends who were also intended 
 for orders came to the conclusion that they must now 
 take a more serious view of their position. They there- 
 fore attended chapel more regularly than hitherto, and 
 held evening meetings of a somewhat furtive character, 
 at which they would study the New Testament. They 
 even began to commit the Epistles of St. Paul to memory 
 in the original Greek. They got up Beveridge on the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, and Pearson on the Creed ; in their 
 hours of recreation they read More's "Mystery of Godli- 
 ness," which Ernest thought was charming, and Taylor's 
 "Holy Living and Dying," which also impressed him 
 deeply, through what he thought was the splendour of 
 its language. They handed themselves over to the guid- 
 ance of Dean Alford's notes on the Greek Testament, 
 which made Ernest better understand what was meant 
 by "difficulties," but also made him feel how shallow and 
 impotent were the conclusions arrived at by German 
 neologians, with whose works, being innocent of German, 
 he was not otherwise acquainted. Some of the friends 
 who joined him in these pursuits were Johnians, and the 
 meetings were often held within the walls of St. John's. 
 I do not know how tidings of these furtive gatherings 
 had reached the Simeonites, but they must have come 
 round to them in some way, for they had not been con- 
 tinued many weeks before a circular was sent to each of 
 the young men who attended them, informing them that
 
 The Way of All Flesh 245 
 
 the Rev. Gideon Hawke, a well-known London Evangeli- 
 cal preacher, whose sermons were then much talked of, 
 was about to visit his young friend Badcock of St. John's, 
 and would be glad to say a few words to any who might 
 wish to hear them, in Badcock's rooms on a certain even- 
 ing in May. 
 
 Badcock was one of the most notorious of all the 
 Simeonites. Not only was he ugly, dirty, ill-dressed, 
 bumptious, and in every way objectionable, but he was 
 deformed and waddled when he walked so that he had 
 won a nickname which I can only reproduce by calling 
 it "Here's my back, and there's my back," because the 
 lower parts of his back emphasised themselves demon- 
 stratively as though about to fly off in different direc- 
 tions like the two extreme notes in the chord of the aug- 
 mented sixth, with every step he took. It may be 
 guessed, therefore, that the receipt of the circular had 
 for a moment an almost paralysing effect on those to 
 whom it was addressed, owing to the astonishment which 
 it occasioned them. It certainly was a daring surprise, 
 but like so many deformed people, Badcock was forward 
 and hard to check; he was a pushing fellow to whom 
 the present was just the opportunity he wanted for car- 
 rying war into the enemy's quarters. 
 
 Ernest and his friends consulted. Moved by the feel- 
 ing that as they were now preparing to be clergymen 
 they ought not to stand so stiffly on social dignity as 
 heretofore, and also perhaps by the desire to have a good 
 private view of a preacher who was then much upon the 
 lips of men, they decided to accept the invitation. When 
 the appointed time came they went with some confusion 
 and self-abasement to the rooms of this man, on whom 
 they had looked down hitherto as from an immeasurable 
 height, and with whom nothing would have made them 
 believe a few weeks earlier that they could ever come to 
 be on speaking terms. 
 
 Mr. Hawke was a very different-looking person from
 
 246 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Badcock. He was remarkably handsome, or rather 
 would have been but for the thinness of his lips, and a 
 look of too great firmness and inflexibility. His features 
 were a good deal like those of Leonardo da Vinci ; more- 
 over, he was kempt, looked in vigorous health, and was of 
 a ruddy countenance. He was extremely courteous in his 
 manner, and paid a good deal of attention to Badcock, 
 of whom he seemed to think highly. Altogether our 
 young friends were taken aback, and inclined to think 
 smaller beer of themselves and larger of Badcock than 
 was agreeable to the old Adam who was still alive within 
 them. A few well-known "Sims" from St. John's and 
 other colleges were present, but not enough to swamp the 
 Ernest set, as, for the sake of brevity, I will call them. 
 
 After a preliminary conversation in which there was 
 nothing to offend, the business of the evening began by 
 Mr. Hawke's standing up at one end of the table, and 
 saying, "Let us pray." The Ernest set did not like this, 
 but they could not help themselves, so they knelt down 
 and repeated the Lord's Prayer and a few others after 
 Mr. Hawke, who delivered them remarkably well. Then, 
 when all had sat down, Mr. Hawke addressed them, 
 speaking without notes and taking for his text the 
 words, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?" Whether 
 owing to Mr. Hawke's manner, which was impressive, or 
 to his well-known reputation for ability, or whether from 
 the fact that each one of the Ernest set knew that he 
 had been more or less a persecutor of the "Sims" and 
 yet felt instinctively that the "Sims" were after all 
 much more like the early Christians than he was him- 
 self at any rate the text, familiar though it was, went 
 home to the consciences of Ernest and his friends as 
 it had never yet done. If Mr. Hawke had stopped here 
 he would have almost said enough; as he scanned the 
 faces turned towards him, and saw the impression 
 he had made, he was perhaps minded to bring his ser- 
 mon to an end before beginning it, but if so, he recon-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 247 
 
 sidered himself and proceeded as follows. I give the 
 sermon in full, for it is a typical one, and will explain 
 a state of mind which in another generation or two 
 will seem to stand sadly in need of explanation. 
 
 "My young friends," said Mr. Hawke, "I am per- 
 suaded there is not one of you here who doubts the 
 existence of a Personal God. If there were, it is to him 
 assuredly that I should first address myself. Should 
 I be mistaken in my belief that all here assembled accept 
 the existence of a God who is present amongst us 
 though we see him not, and whose eye is upon our most 
 secret thoughts, let me implore the doubter to confer 
 with me in private before we part ; I will then put before 
 him considerations through which God has been merci- 
 fully pleased to reveal himself to me, so far as man can 
 understand him, and which I have found bring peace to 
 the minds of others who have doubted. 
 
 "I assume also that there is none who doubts but that 
 this God, after whose likeness we have been made, did 
 in the course of time have pity upon man's blindness, 
 and assume our nature, taking flesh and coming down 
 and dwelling among us as a man indistinguishable physi- 
 cally from ourselves. He who made the sun, moon and 
 stars, the world and all that therein is, came down 
 from Heaven in the person of his Son, with the express 
 purpose of leading a scorned life, and dying the most 
 cruel, shameful death which fiendish ingenuity has in- 
 vented. 
 
 "While on earth he worked many miracles. He gave 
 sight to the blind, raised the dead to life, fed thousands 
 with a few loaves and fishes, and was seen to walk upon 
 the waves, but at the end of his appointed time he died, 
 as was foredetermined, upon the cross, and was buried 
 by a few faithful friends. Those, however, who had 
 put him to death set a jealous watch over his tomb. 
 
 "There is no one, I feel sure, in this room who doubts 
 any part of the foregoing, but if there is, let me again
 
 248 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 pray him to confer with me in private, and I doubt not 
 that by the blessing of God his doubts will cease. 
 
 "The next day but one after our Lord was buried, 
 the tomb being still jealously guarded by enemies, an 
 angel was seen descending from Heaven with glittering 
 raiment and a countenance that shone like fire. This 
 glorious being rolled away the stone from the grave, 
 and our Lord himself came forth, risen from the dead. 
 
 "My young friends, this is no fanciful story like 
 those of the ancient deities, but a matter of plain history 
 as certain as that you and I are now here together. If 
 there is one fact better vouched for than another in 
 the whole range of certainties it is the Resurrection 
 of Jesus Christ; nor is it less well assured that a few 
 weeks after he had risen from the dead, our Lord was 
 seen by many hundreds of men and women to rise amid 
 a host of angels into the air upon a heavenward journey 
 till the clouds covered him and concealed him from the 
 sight of men. 
 
 "It may be said that the truth of these statements has 
 been denied, but what, let me ask you, has become of 
 the questioners? Where are they now? Do we see 
 them or hear of them ? Have they been able to hold what 
 little ground they made during the supineness of the 
 last century? Is there one of your fathers or mothers 
 or friends who does not see through them? Is there a 
 single teacher or preacher in this great University who 
 has not examined what these men had to say, and found 
 it naught? Did you ever meet one of them, or do you 
 find any of their books securing the respectful attention 
 of those competent to judge concerning them? I think 
 not; and I think also you know as well as I do why it is 
 that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they 
 for a time emerged : it is because after the most careful 
 and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial 
 minds of many countries, their arguments were found 
 so untenable that they themselves renounced them.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 249 
 
 They fled from the field routed, dismayed, and suing for 
 peace; nor have they again come to the front in any 
 civilised country. 
 
 "You know these things. Why, then, do I insist upon 
 them?* My dear young friends, your own consciousness 
 will have made the answer to each one of you already; 
 it is because, though you know so well that these things 
 did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you 
 have not realised them to yourselves as it was your duty 
 to do, nor heeded their momentous, awful import. 
 
 "And now let me go further. You all know that you 
 will one day come to die, or if not to die for there are 
 not wanting signs which make me hope that the Lord 
 may come again, while some of us now present are 
 alive yet to be changed; for the trumpet shall sound, 
 and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this cor- 
 ruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal 
 put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought 
 to pass that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in vic- 
 tory.' 
 
 "Do you, or do you not believe that you will one day 
 stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ? Do you, or 
 do you not believe that you will have to give an account 
 for every idle word that you have ever spoken? Do 
 you, or do you not believe that you are called to live, not 
 according to the will of man, but according to the will of 
 that Christ who came down from Heaven out of love for 
 you, who suffered and died for you, who calls you to 
 him, and yearns towards you that you may take heed 
 even in this your day but who, if you heed not, will 
 also one day judge you, and with whom there is no 
 variableness nor shadow of turning? 
 
 "My dear young friends, strait is the gate, and narrow 
 is the way which leadeth to Eternal Life, and few there 
 be that find it. Few, few, few, for he who will not give 
 up ALL for Christ's sake, has given up nothing. 
 
 "If you would live in the friendship of this world, if
 
 250 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 indeed you are not .prepared to give up everything you 
 most fondly cherish, should the Lord require it of you, 
 then, I say, put the idea of Christ deliberately on 
 one side at once. Spit upon him, buffet him, crucify him 
 anew, do anything you like so long as you secure the 
 friendship of this world while it is still in your power 
 to do so ; the pleasures of this brief life may not be 
 worth paying for by the torments of eternity, but they 
 are something while they last. If, on the other hand, 
 you would live in the friendship of God, and be among 
 the number of those for whom Christ has not died in 
 vain; if, in a word, you value your eternal welfare, 
 then give up the friendship of this world; of a surety 
 you must make your choice between God and Mammon, 
 for you cannot serve both. 
 
 "I put these considerations before you, if so homely 
 a term may be pardoned, as a plain matter of business. 
 There is nothing low or unworthy in this, as some lately 
 have pretended, for all nature shows us that there is 
 nothing more acceptable to God than an enlightened 
 view of our own self-interest; never let anyone .delude 
 you here; it is a simple question of fact; did certain 
 things happen or did they not? If they did happen, is 
 it reasonable to suppose that you will make yourselves 
 and others more happy by one course of conduct or by 
 another ? 
 
 "And now let me ask you what answer you have made 
 to this question hitherto? Whose friendship have you 
 chosen? If, knowing what you know, you have not yet 
 begun to act according to the immensity of the knowl- 
 edge that is in you, then he who builds his house and 
 lays up his treasure on the edge of a crater of molten 
 lava is a sane, sensible person in comparison with your- 
 selves. I say this as no figure of speech or bugbear with 
 which to frighten you, but as an unvarnished unexagger- 
 ated statement which will be no more disputed by your- 
 selves than by me."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 251 
 
 And now Mr. Hawke, who up to this time had spoken 
 with singular quietness, changed his manner to one of 
 greater warmth and continued 
 
 "Oh! my young friends, turn, turn, turn, now while 
 it is called to-day now from this hour, from this in- 
 stant ; stay not even to gird up your loins ; look not be- 
 hind you for a second, but fly into the bosom of that 
 Christ who is to be found of all who seek him, and from 
 that fearful wrath of God which lieth in wait for those 
 who know not the things belonging to their peace. For 
 the Son of Man cometh as a thief in the night, and there 
 is not one of us can tell but what this day his soul may 
 be required of him. If there is even one here who has 
 heeded me," and he let his eye fall for an instant upon 
 almost all his hearers, but especially on the Ernest set 
 "I shall know that it was not for nothing that I felt the 
 call of the Lord, and heard as I thought a voice by night 
 that bade me come hither quickly, for there was a chosen 
 vessel who had need of me." 
 
 Here Mr. Hawke ended rather abruptly; his earnest 
 manner, striking countenance and excellent delivery had 
 produced an effect greater than the actual words I have 
 given can convey to the reader ; the virtue lay in the man 
 more than in what he said ; as for the last few mysterious 
 words about his having heard a voice by night, their 
 effect was magical; there was not one who did not look 
 down to the ground, nor who in his heart did not half 
 believe that he was the chosen vessel on whose especial 
 behalf God had sent Mr. Hawke to Cambridge. Even 
 if this were not so, each one of them felt that he was 
 now for the first time in the actual presence of one who 
 had had a direct communication from the Almighty, and 
 they were thus suddenly brought a hundredfold nearer 
 to the New Testament miracles. They were amazed, 
 not to say scared, and as though by tacit consent they 
 gathered together, thanked Mr. Hawke for his sermon, 
 said good-night in a humble, deferential manner to Bad-
 
 252 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 cock and the other Simeonites, and left the room to- 
 gether. They had heard nothing but what they had been 
 hearing all their lives ; how was it, then, that they were 
 so dumbfounded by it? I suppose partly because they 
 had lately begun to think more seriously, and were in a 
 fit state to be impressed, partly from the greater direct- 
 ness with which each felt himself addressed, through 
 the sermon being delivered in a room, and partly to the 
 logical consistency, freedom from exaggeration, and 
 profound air of conviction with which Mr. Hawke had 
 spoken. His simplicity and obvious earnestness had 
 impressed them even before he had alluded to his special 
 mission, but this clenched everything, and the words 
 "Lord, is it I?" were upon the hearts of each as they 
 walked pensively home through moonlit courts and 
 cloisters. 
 
 I do not know what passed among the Simeonites after 
 the Ernest set had left them, but they would have been 
 more than mortal if they had not been a good deal elated 
 with the results of the evening. Why, one of Ernest's 
 friends was in the University eleven, and he had actually 
 been in Badcock's rooms and had slunk off on saying 
 good-night as meekly as any of them. It was no small 
 thing to have scored a success like this. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 ERNEST felt now that the turning point of his life had 
 come. He would give up all for Christ even his to- 
 bacco. 
 
 So he gathered together his pipes and pouches, 
 and locked them up in his portmanteau under his bed 
 where they should be out of sight, and as much out of 
 mind as possible. He did not burn them, because some- 
 one might come in who wanted to smoke, and though
 
 The Way of All Flesh 253 
 
 he might abridge his own liberty, yet, as smoking was 
 not a sin, there was no reason why he should be hard 
 on other people. 
 
 After breakfast he left his rooms to call on a man 
 named Dawson, who had been one of Mr. Hawke's hear- 
 ers on the preceding evening, and who was reading for 
 ordination at the forthcoming Ember Weeks, now only 
 four months distant. This man had been always of a 
 rather serious turn of mind a little too much so for 
 Ernest's taste; but times had changed, and Dawson's 
 undoubted sincerity seemed to render him a fitting coun- 
 sellor for Ernest at the present time. As he was going 
 through the first court of John's on his way to Daw- 
 son's rooms, he met Badcock, and greeted him with 
 some deference. His advance was received with one 
 of those ecstatic gleams which shone occasionally upon 
 the face of Badcock, and which, if Ernest had known 
 more, would have reminded him of Robespierre. As it 
 was, he saw it and unconsciously recognised the unrest 
 and self-seekingness of the man, but could not yet formu- 
 late them; he disliked Badcock more than ever, but as he 
 was going to profit by the spiritual benefits which he had 
 put in his way, he was bound to be civil to him, and civil 
 he therefore was. 
 
 Badcock told him that Mr. Hawke had returned to 
 town immediately his discourse was over, but that be- 
 fore doing so he had enquired particularly who Ernest 
 and two or three others were. I believe each one of 
 Ernest's friends was given to understand that he had 
 been more or less particularly enquired after. Ernest's 
 vanity for he was his mother's son was tickled at this ; 
 the idea again presented itself to him that he might be 
 the one for whose benefit Mr. Hawke had been sent. 
 There was something, too, in Badcock's manner which 
 conveyed the idea that he could say more if he chose, but 
 had been enjoined to silence. 
 
 On reaching Dawson's rooms, he found his friend in
 
 254 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 raptures over the discourse of the preceding evening. 
 Hardly less delighted was he with the effect it had pro- 
 duced on Ernest. He had always known, he said, that 
 Ernest would come round ; he had been sure of it, but he 
 had hardly expected the conversion to be so sudden. 
 Ernest said no more had he, but now that he saw his 
 duty so clearly he would get ordained as soon as possible, 
 and take a curacy, even though the doing so would make 
 him have to go down from Cambridge earlier, which 
 would be a great grief to him. Dawson applauded this 
 determination, and it was arranged that as Ernest was 
 still more or less of a weak brother, Dawson should 
 take him, so to speak, in spiritual tow for a while, and 
 strengthen and confirm his faith. 
 
 An offensive and defensive alliance therefore was 
 struck up between this pair (who were in reality singu- 
 larly ill assorted), and Ernest set to work to master the 
 books on which the Bishop would examine him. Others 
 gradually joined them till they formed a small set or 
 church (for these are the same things), and the effect 
 of Mr. Hawke's sermon instead of wearing off in a few 
 days, as might have been expected, became more and 
 more marked, so much so that it was necessary for 
 Ernest's friends to hold him back rather than urge him 
 on, for he seemed likely to develop as indeed he did 
 for a time into a religious enthusiast. 
 
 In one matter only did he openly backslide. He had, 
 as I said above, locked up his pipes and tobacco, so 
 that he might not be tempted to use them. All day long 
 on the day after Mr. Hawke's sermon he let them lie in 
 his portmanteau bravely; but this was not very difficult, 
 as he had for some time given up smoking till after hall. 
 After hall this day he did not smoke till chapel time, and 
 then went to chapel in self-defence. When he returned 
 he determined to look at the matter from a common sense 
 point of view. On this he saw that, provided tobacco 
 did not injure his health and he really could not see
 
 The Way of All Flesh 255 
 
 that it did it stood much on the same footing as tea or 
 coffee. 
 
 Tobacco had nowhere been forbidden in the Bible, but 
 then it had not yet been discovered, and had probably 
 only escaped proscription for this reason. We can con- 
 ceive of St. Paul or even our Lord Himself as drinking 
 a cup of tea, but we cannot imagine either of them as 
 smoking a cigarette or a churchwarden. Ernest could 
 not deny this, and admitted that Paul would almost cer- 
 tainly have condemned tobacco in good round terms if 
 he had known of its existence. Was it not then taking 
 rather a mean advantage of the Apostle to stand on his 
 not having actually forbidden it? On the other hand, 
 it was possible that God knew Paul would have forbid- 
 den smoking, and had purposely arranged the discovery 
 of tobacco for a period at which Paul should be no longer 
 living. This might seem rather hard on Paul, consider- 
 ing all he had done for Christianity, but it would be made 
 up to him in other ways. 
 
 These reflections satisfied Ernest that on the whole 
 he had better smoke, so he sneaked to his portmanteau 
 and brought out his pipes and tobacco again. There 
 should be moderation, he felt, in all things, even in vir- 
 tue; so for that night he smoked immoderately. It was 
 a pity, however, that he had bragged to Dawson about 
 giving up smoking. The pipes had better be kept in a 
 cupboard for a week or two, till in other and easier 
 respects Ernest should have proved his steadfastness. 
 Then they might steal out again little by little and so 
 they did. 
 
 Ernest now wrote home a letter couched in a vein 
 different from his ordinary ones. His letters were 
 usually all common form and padding, for as I have al- 
 ready explained, if he wrote about anything that really 
 interested him, his mother always wanted to know more 
 and more about it every fresh answer being as the lop- 
 ping off of a hydra's head and giving birth to half-a-
 
 256 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dozen or more new questions but in the end it came 
 invariably to the same result, namely, that he ought to 
 have done something else, or ought not to go on doing 
 as he proposed. Now, however, there was a new de- 
 parture, and for the thousandth time he concluded that 
 he was about to take a course of which his father and 
 mother would approve, and in which they would be 
 interested, so that at last he and they might get on more 
 sympathetically than heretofore. He therefore wrote a 
 gushing, impulsive letter, which afforded much amuse- 
 ment to myself as I read it, but which is too long for 
 reproduction. One passage ran : "I am now going 
 towards Christ ; the greater number of my college friends 
 are, I fear, going away from Him; we must pray for 
 them that they may find the peace that is in Christ even 
 as I have myself found it." Ernest covered his face 
 with his hands for shame as he read this extract from 
 the bundle of letters he had put into my hands they 
 had been returned to him by his father on his mother's 
 death, his mother having carefully preserved them. 
 "Shall I cut it out?" said I. "I will, if you like." 
 "Certainly not," he answered, "and if good-natured 
 friends have kept more records of my follies, pick out 
 any plums that may amuse the reader, and let him have 
 his laugh over them." But fancy what effect a letter like 
 this so unled up to must have produced at Battersby ! 
 Even Christina refrained from ecstasy over her son's 
 having discovered the power of Christ's word, while 
 Theobald was frightened out of his wits. It was well his 
 son was not going to have any doubts or difficulties, and 
 that he would be ordained without making a fuss over 
 it, but he smelt mischief in this sudden conversion of one 
 who had never yet shown any inclination towards re- 
 ligion. He hated people who did not know where to 
 stop. Ernest was always so outre and strange; there 
 was never any knowing what he would do next, except 
 that it would be something unusual and silly. If he was
 
 The Way of All Flesh 257 
 
 to get the bit between his teeth after he had got or- 
 dained and bought his living, he would play more pranks 
 than ever he, Theobald, had done. The fact, doubtless, 
 of his being ordained and having bought a living would 
 go a long way to steady him, and if he married, his wife 
 must see to the rest; this was his only chance and, to 
 do justice to his sagacity, Theobald in his heart did not 
 think very highly of it. 
 
 When Ernest came down to Battersby in June, he 
 imprudently tried to open up a more unreserved com- 
 munication with his father than was his wont. The first 
 of Ernest's snipe-like flights on being flushed by Mr. 
 Hawke's sermon was in the direction of ultra-Evangeli- 
 calism. Theobald himself had been much more Low 
 than High Church. This was the normal development 
 of the country clergyman during the first years of his 
 clerical life, between, we will say, the years 1825 to 
 1850; but he was not prepared for the almost contempt 
 with which Ernest now regarded the doctrines of baptis- 
 mal regeneration and priestly absolution (Hoity-toity, in- 
 deed, what business had he with such questions?), nor 
 for his desire to find some means of reconciling Meth- 
 odism and the Church. Theobald hated the Church of 
 Rome, but he hated dissenters too, for he found them 
 as a general rule troublesome people to deal with; he 
 always found people who did not agree with him trouble- 
 some to deal with: besides, they set up for knowing as 
 much as he did; nevertheless if he had been let alone 
 he would have leaned towards them rather than towards 
 the High Church party. The neighbouring clergy, how- 
 ever, would not let him alone. One by one they had come 
 under the influence, directly or indirectly, of the Oxford 
 movement which had begun twenty years earlier. It 
 was surprising how many practices he now tolerated 
 which in his youth he would have considered Popish ; 
 he knew very well therefore which way things were 
 going in Church matters, and saw that as usual Ernest
 
 258 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 was setting himself the other way. The opportunity for 
 telling his son that he was a fool was too favourable not 
 to be embraced, and Theobald was not slow to embrace 
 it. Ernest was annoyed and surprised, for had not his 
 father and mother been wanting him to be more religious 
 all his life? Now that he had become so they were still 
 not satisfied. He said to himself that a prophet was not 
 without honour save in his own country, but he had 
 been lately or rather until lately getting into an odious 
 habit of turning proverbs upside down, and it occurred 
 to him that a country is sometimes not without honour 
 save for its own prophet. Then he laughed, and for the 
 rest of the day felt more as he used to feel before he had 
 heard Mr. Hawke's sermon. 
 
 He returned to Cambridge for the Long Vacation of 
 1858 none too soon, for he had to go in for the Volun- 
 tary Theological Examination, which bishops were now 
 beginning to insist upon. He imagined all the time he 
 was reading that he was storing himself with the knowl- 
 edge that would best fit him for the work he had taken 
 in hand. In truth, he was cramming for a pass. In due 
 time he did pass creditably, and was ordained Deacon 
 with half-a-dozen others of his friends in the autumn of 
 1858. He was then just twenty-three years old. 
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
 ERNEST had been ordained to a curacy in one of the 
 central parts of London. He hardly knew anything of 
 London yet, but his instincts drew him thither. The 
 day after he was ordained he entered upon his duties 
 feeling much as his father had done when he found 
 himself boxed up in the carriage with Christina on the 
 morning of his marriage. Before the first three days 
 were over, he became aware that the light of the happi-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 259 
 
 ness which he had known during his four years at 
 Cambridge had been extinguished, and he was appalled 
 by the irrevocable nature of the step which he now felt 
 that he had taken much too hurriedly. 
 
 The most charitable excuse that I can make for the 
 vagaries which it will now be my duty to chronicle is 
 that the shock of change consequent upon his becoming 
 suddenly religious, being ordained and leaving Cam- 
 bridge, had been too much for my hero, and had for the 
 time thrown him off an equilibrium which was yet little 
 supported by experience, and therefore as a matter of 
 course unstable. 
 
 Everyone has a mass of bad work in him which he 
 will have to work off and get rid of before he can do 
 better and indeed, the more lasting a man's ultimate 
 good work is, the more sure he is to pass through a 
 time, and perhaps a very long one, in which there seems 
 very little hope for him at all. We must all sow our 
 spiritual wild oats. The fault I feel personally disposed 
 to find with my godson is not that he had wild oats to 
 sow, but that they were such an exceedingly tame and 
 uninteresting crop. The sense of humour and tendency 
 to think for himself, of which till a few months pre- 
 viously he had been showing fair promise, were nipped 
 as though by a late frost, while his earlier habit of taking 
 on trust everything that was told him by those in au- 
 thority, and following everything out to the bitter end, 
 no matter how preposterous, returned with redoubled 
 strength. I suppose this was what might have been ex- 
 pected from anyone placed as Ernest now was, especially 
 when his antecedents are remembered, but it surprised 
 and disappointed some of his cooler-headed Cambridge 
 friends who had begun to think well of his ability. To 
 himself it seemed that religion was incompatible with 
 half measures, or even with compromise. Circumstances 
 had led to his being ordained; for the moment he was 
 sorry they had, but he had done it and must go through
 
 with it. He therefore set himself to find out what was 
 expected of him, and to act accordingly. 
 
 His rector was a moderate High Churchman of no 
 very pronounced views an elderly man who had had too 
 many curates not to have long since found out that the 
 connection between rector and curate, like that between 
 employer and employed in every other walk of life, was 
 a mere matter of business. He had now two curates, of 
 whom Ernest was the junior; the senior curate was 
 named Pryer, and when this gentleman made advances, 
 as he presently did, Ernest in his forlorn state was de- 
 lighted to meet them. 
 
 Pryer was about twenty-eight years old. He had 
 been at Eton and at Oxford. He was tall, and passed 
 generally for good-looking; I only saw him once for 
 about five minutes, and then thought him odious both in 
 manners and appearance. Perhaps it was because he 
 caught me up in a way I did not like. I had quoted 
 Shakespeare for lack of something better to fill up a 
 sentence and had said that one touch of nature made 
 the whole world kin. "Ah," said Pryer, in a bold, brazen 
 way which displeased me, "but one touch of the un- 
 natural makes it more kindred still," and he gave me 
 a look as though he thought me an old bore and did not 
 care two straws whether I was shocked or not. Nat- 
 urally enough, after this I did not like him. 
 
 This, however, is anticipating, for it was not till Ernest 
 had been three or four months in London that I hap- 
 pened to meet his fellow-curate, and I must deal here 
 rather with the effect he produced upon my godson than 
 upon myself. Besides being what was generally con- 
 sidered good-looking, he was faultless in his get-up, and 
 altogether the kind of man whom Ernest was sure to be 
 afraid of and yet be taken in by. The style of his dress 
 was very High Church, and his acquaintances were ex- 
 clusively of the extreme High Church party, but he kept 
 his views a good deal in the background in his rector's
 
 The Way of All Flesh 261 
 
 presence, and that gentleman, though he looked askance 
 on some of Fryer's friends, had no such ground of com- 
 plaint against him as to make him sever the connection. 
 Pryer, too, was popular in the pulpit, and, take him all 
 round, it was probable that many worse curates -would 
 be found for one better. When Pryer called on my hero, 
 as soon as the two were alone together, he eyed him all 
 over with a quick, penetrating glance and seemed not dis- 
 satisfied with the result for I must say here that Ernest 
 had improved in personal appearance under the more 
 genial treatment he had received at Cambridge. Pryer, 
 in fact, approved of him sufficiently to treat him civilly, 
 and Ernest was immediately won by anyone who did 
 this. It was not long before he discovered that the High 
 Church party, and even Rome itself, had more to say 
 for themselves than he had thought. This was his first 
 snipe-like change of flight. 
 
 Pryer introduced him to several of his friends. They 
 were all of them young clergymen, belonging as I have 
 said to the highest of the High Church school, but Ernest 
 was surprised to find how much they resembled other 
 people when among themselves. This was a shock to 
 him; it was ere long a still greater one to find that cer- 
 tain thoughts which he had warred against as fatal to his 
 soul, and which he had imagined he should lose once for 
 all on ordination, were still as troublesome to him as 
 they had been ; he also saw plainly enough that the young 
 gentlemen who formed the circle of Pryer's friends were 
 in much the same unhappy predicament as himself. 
 
 This was deplorable. The only way out of it that 
 Ernest could see was that he should get married at 
 once. But then he did not know any one whom he 
 wanted to marry. He did not know any woman, in fact, 
 whom he would not rather die than marry. It had been 
 one of Theobald's and Christina's main objects to keep 
 him out of the way of women, and they had so far suc- 
 ceeded that women had become to him mysterious, in-
 
 262 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 scrutable objects to be tolerated when it was impossible 
 to avoid them, but never to be sought out or encouraged. 
 As for any man loving, or even being at all fond of 
 any woman, he supposed it was so, but he believed the 
 greater number of those who professed such sentiments 
 were liars. Now, however, it was clear that he had 
 hoped against hope too long, and that the only thing to 
 do was to go and ask the first woman who would listen 
 to him to come and be married to him as soon as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 He broached this to Pryer, and was surprised to find 
 that this gentleman, though attentive to such members of 
 his flock as were young and good-looking, was strongly 
 in favour of the celibacy of the clergy, as indeed were 
 the other demure young clerics to whom Pryer had in- 
 troduced Ernest. 
 
 CHAPTER LII 
 
 "You know, my dear Pontifex," said Pryer to him, some 
 few weeks after Ernest had become acquainted with him, 
 when the two were taking a constitutional one day in 
 Kensington Gardens, "You know, my dear Pontifex, 
 it is all very well to quarrel with Rome, but Rome has 
 reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, 
 while our own Church, though so much purer in many 
 respects, has no organised system either of diagnosis or 
 pathology I mean, of course, spiritual diagnosis and 
 spiritual pathology. Our Church does not prescribe 
 remedies upon any settled system, and, what is still 
 worse, even when her physicians have according to their 
 lights ascertained the disease and pointed out the remedy, 
 she has no discipline which will ensure its being actually 
 applied. If our patients do not choose to do as we tell 
 them, we cannot make them. Perhaps really under all 
 the circumstances this is as well, for we are spiritually
 
 The Way of All Flesh 263 
 
 mere horse doctors as compared with the Roman priest- 
 hood, nor can we hope to make much headway against 
 the sin and misery that surround us, till we return in 
 some respects to the practice of our forefathers and of 
 the greater part of Christendom." 
 
 Ernest asked in what respects it was that his friend 
 desired a return to the practice of our forefathers. 
 
 "Why, my dear fellow, can you really be ignorant ? It 
 is just this, either the priest is indeed a spiritual guide, 
 as being able to show people how they ought to live better 
 than they can find out for themselves, or he is nothing 
 at all he has no raison d'etre. If the priest is not as 
 much a healer and director of men's souls as a physi- 
 cian is of their bodies, what is he? The history of all 
 ages has shown and surely you must know this as well 
 as I do that as men cannot cure the bodies of their 
 patients if they have not been properly trained in hos- 
 pitals under skilled teachers, so neither can souls be 
 cured of their more hidden ailments without the help 
 of men who are skilled in soul-craft or in other words, 
 of priests. What do one half of our formularies and 
 rubrics mean if not this? How in the name of all that 
 is reasonable can we find out the exact nature of a 
 spiritual malady, unless we have had experience of other 
 similar cases? How can we get this without express 
 training? At present we have to begin all experiments 
 for ourselves, without profiting by the organised experi- 
 ence of our predecessors, inasmuch as that experience 
 is never organised and co-ordinated at all. At the outset, 
 therefore, each one of us must ruin many souls which 
 could be saved by knowledge of a few elementary prin- 
 ciples." 
 
 Ernest was very much impressed. 
 
 "As for men curing themselves," continued Pryer, 
 "they can no more cure their own souls than they can 
 cure their own bodies, or manage their own law affairs. 
 In these two last cases they see the folly of meddling
 
 264 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with their own cases clearly enough, and go to a profes- 
 sional adviser as a matter of course ; surely a man's soul 
 is at once a more difficult and intricate matter to treat, 
 and at the same time it is more important to him that 
 it should be treated rightly than that either his body or 
 his money should be so. What are we to think of the 
 practice of a Church which encourages people to rely on 
 unprofessional advice in matters affecting their eternal 
 welfare, when they would not think of jeopardising their 
 worldly affairs by such insane conduct?" 
 
 Ernest could see no weak place in this. These ideas 
 had crossed his own mind vaguely before now, but he 
 had never laid hold of them or set them in an orderly 
 manner before himself. Nor was he quick at detecting 
 false analogies and the misuse of metaphors ; in fact he 
 was a mere child in the hands of his fellow curate. 
 
 "And what," resumed Pryer, "does all this point to? 
 Firstly, to the duty of confession the outcry against 
 which is absurd as an outcry would be against dissection 
 as part of the training of medical students. Granted 
 these young men must see and do a great deal we do not 
 ourselves like even to think of, but they should adopt 
 some other profession unless they are prepared for this ; 
 they may even get inoculated with poison from a dead 
 body and lose their lives, but they must stand their 
 chance. So if we aspire to be priests in deed as well 
 as name, we must familiarise ourselves with the minutest 
 and most repulsive details of all kinds of sin, so that 
 we may recognise it in all its stages. Some of us must 
 doubtless perish spiritually in such investigations. We 
 cannot help it; all science must have its martyrs, and 
 none of these will deserve better of humanity than those 
 who have fallen in the pursuit of spiritual pathology." 
 
 Ernest grew more and more interested, but in the 
 meekness of his soul said nothing. 
 
 "I do not desire this martyrdom for myself," con- 
 tinued the other; "on the contrary I will avoid it to the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 265 
 
 very utmost of my power, but if it be God's will that I 
 should fall while studying what I believe most calculated 
 to advance his glory then, I say, not my will, O Lord, 
 but thine be done." 
 
 This was too much even for Ernest. "I heard of an 
 Irishwoman once," he said, with a smile, "who said she 
 was a martyr to the drink." 
 
 ' "And so she was," rejoined Pryer with warmth; and 
 he went on to show that this good woman was an experi- 
 mentalist whose experiment, though disastrous in its ef- 
 fects upon herself, was pregnant with instruction to other 
 people. She was thus a true martyr or witness to the 
 frightful consequences of intemperance, to the saving, 
 doubtless, of many who but for her martyrdom would 
 have taken to drinking. She was one of a forlorn hope 
 whose failure to take a certain position went to the prov- 
 ing it to be impregnable and therefore to the abandon- 
 ment of all attempt to take it. This was almost as great 
 a gain to mankind as the actual taking of the position 
 would have been. 
 
 "Besides," he added more hurriedly, "the limits of 
 vice and virtue are wretchedly ill-defined. Half the vices 
 which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of 
 good in them and require moderate use rather than 
 total abstinence." 
 
 Ernest asked timidly for an instance. 
 
 "No, no," said Pryer, "I will give you no instance, but 
 I will give you a formula that shall embrace all instances. 
 It is this, that no practice is entirely vicious which has 
 not been extinguished among the comeliest, most vigor- 
 ous, and most cultivated races of mankind in spite of 
 centuries of endeavour to extirpate it. If a vice in spite 
 of such efforts can still hold its own among the most 
 polished nations, it must be founded on some immutable 
 truth or fact in human nature, and must have some com- 
 pensatory advantage which we cannot afford altogether 
 to dispense with."
 
 266 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "But," said Ernest timidly, "is not this virtually doing 
 away with all distinction between right and wrong, and 
 leaving people without any moral guide whatever?" 
 
 "Not the people," was the answer : "it must be our 
 care to be guides to these, for they are and always will 
 be incapable of guiding themselves sufficiently. We 
 should tell them what they must do, and in an ideal state 
 of things should be able to enforce their doing it: per- 
 haps when we are better instructed the ideal state may 
 come about ; nothing will so advance it as greater knowl- 
 edge of spiritual pathology on our own part. For this, 
 three things are necessary; firstly, absolute freedom in 
 experiment for us the clergy; secondly, absolute knowl- 
 edge of what the laity think and do, and of what thoughts 
 and actions result in what spiritual conditions; and 
 thirdly, a compacter organisation among ourselves. 
 
 "If we are to do any good we must be a closely united 
 body, and must be sharply divided from the laity. Also 
 we must be free from those ties which a wife and chil- 
 dren involve. I can hardly express the horror with 
 which I am filled by seeing English priests living in what 
 I can only designate as 'open matrimony.' It is deplor- 
 able. The priest must be absolutely sexless if not in 
 practice, yet at any rate in theory, absolutely and that, 
 too, by a theory so universally accepted that none shall 
 venture to dispute it." 
 
 "But," said Ernest, "has not the Bible already told 
 people what they ought and ought not to do, and is it 
 not enough for us to insist on what can be found here, 
 and let the rest alone?" 
 
 "If you begin with the Bible," was the rejoinder, 
 "you are three parts gone on the road to infidelity, and 
 will go the other part before you know where you are. 
 The Bible is not without its value to us the clergy, but 
 for the laity it is a stumbling-block which cannot be 
 taken out of their way too soon or too completely. Of 
 course, I mean on the supposition that they read it,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 267 
 
 which, happily, they seldom do. If people read the Bible 
 as the ordinary British churchman or churchwoman reads 
 it, it is harmless enough; but if they read it with any 
 care which we should assume they will if we give it 
 them at all it is fatal to them." 
 
 "What do you mean?" said Ernest, more and more 
 astonished, but more and more feeling that he was at 
 least in the hands of a man who had definite ideas. 
 
 "Your question shows me that you have never read 
 your Bible. A more unreliable book was never put upon 
 paper. Take my advice and don't read it, not till you 
 are a few years older, and may do so safely." 
 
 "But surely you believe the Bible when it tells you of 
 such things as that Christ died and rose from the dead? 
 Surely you believe this?" said Ernest, quite prepared to 
 be told that Pryer believed nothing of the kind. 
 
 "I do not believe it, I know it." 
 
 "But how if the testimony of the Bible fails?" 
 
 "On that of the living voice of the Church, which I 
 know to be infallible and to be informed of Christ him- 
 self." 
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 THE foregoing conversation and others like it made a 
 deep impression upon my hero. If next day he had 
 taken a walk with Mr. Hawke, and heard what he had to 
 say on the other side, he would have been just as much 
 struck, and as ready to fling off what Pryer had told him, 
 as he now was to throw aside all he had ever heard from 
 anyone except Pryer; but there was no Mr. Hawke at 
 hand, so Pryer had everything his own way. 
 
 Embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a 
 number of strange metamorphoses before they adopt 
 their final shape. It is no more to be wondered at that 
 one who is going to turn out a Roman Catholic, should 
 have passed through the stages of being first a Metho-
 
 268 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 dist, and then a free thinker, than that a man should at 
 some former time have been a mere cell, and later on an 
 invertebrate animal. Ernest, however, could not be ex- 
 pected to know this ; embryos never do. Embryos think 
 with each stage of their development that they have now 
 reached the only condition which really suits them. 
 This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as 
 its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive 
 it. Every change is a shock ; every shock is a pro tanto 
 death. What we call death is only a shock great enough 
 to destroy our power to recognise a past and a present 
 as resembling one another. It is the making us con- 
 sider the points of difference between our present and 
 our past greater than the points of resemblance, so that 
 we can no longer call the former of these two in any 
 proper sense a continuation of the second, but find it 
 less trouble to think of it as something that we choose 
 to call new. 
 
 But, to let this pass, it was clear that spiritual path- 
 ology (I confess that I do not know myself what spiritual 
 pathology means but Pryer and Ernest doubtless did) 
 was the great desideratum of the age. It seemed to Er- 
 nest that he had made this discovery himself and been 
 familiar with it all his life, that he had never known, 
 in fact, of anything else. He wrote long letters to his 
 college friends expounding his views as though he had 
 been one of the Apostolic fathers. As for the Old Testa- 
 ment writers, he had no patience with them. "Do oblige 
 me," I find him writing to one friend, "by reading the 
 prophet Zechariah, and giving me your candid opinion 
 upon him. He is poor stuff, full of Yankee bounce; it 
 is sickening to live in an age when such balderdash can 
 be gravely admired whether as poetry or prophecy." 
 This was because Pryer had set him against Zechariah. 
 I do not know what Zechariah had done ; I should think 
 myself that Zechariah was a very good prophet ; perhaps 
 it was because he was a Bible writer, and not a very
 
 The Way of All Flesh 269 
 
 prominent one, that Pryer selected him as one through 
 whom to disparage the Bible in comparison with the 
 Church. 
 
 To his friend Dawson I find him saying a little later 
 on : "Pryer and I continue our walks, working out each 
 other's thoughts. At first he used to do all the thinking, 
 but I think I am pretty well abreast of him now, and 
 rather chuckle at seeing that he is already beginning to 
 modify some of the views he held most strongly when 
 I first knew him. 
 
 "Then I think he was on the high road to Rome ; now, 
 however, he seems to be a good deal struck with a sug- 
 gestion of mine in which you, too, perhaps may be in- 
 terested. You see we must infuse new life into the 
 Church somehow ; we are not holding our own against 
 either Rome or infidelity." (I may say in passing that 
 I do not believe Ernest had as yet ever seen an infidel 
 not to speak to.) "I proposed, therefore, a few days 
 back to Pryer and he fell in eagerly with the proposal 
 as soon as he saw that I had the means of carrying it 
 out that we should set on foot a spiritual movement 
 somewhat analogous to the Young England movement of 
 twenty years ago, the aim of which shall be at once to 
 outbid Rome on the one hand, and scepticism on the 
 other. For this purpose I see nothing better than the 
 foundation of an institution or college for placing the 
 nature and treatment of sin on a more scientific basis than 
 it rests at present. We want to borrow a useful term 
 of Pryer's a College of Spiritual Pathology where 
 young men" (I suppose Ernest thought he was no longer 
 young by this time) "may study the nature and treat- 
 ment of the sins of the soul as medical students study 
 those of the bodies of their patients. Such a college, as 
 you will probably admit, will approach both Rome on the 
 one hand, and science on the other Rome, as giving the 
 priesthood more skill, and therefore as paving the way 
 for their obtaining greater power, and science, by recog-
 
 270 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 nising that even free thought has a certain kind of value 
 in spiritual enquiries. To this purpose Pryer and I have 
 resolved to devote ourselves henceforth heart and soul. 
 
 "Of course, my ideas 'are still unshaped, and all will 
 depend upon the men by whom the college is first worked. 
 I am not yet a priest, but Pryer is, and if I were to start 
 the College, Pryer might take charge of it for a time and 
 I work under him nominally as his subordinate. Pryer 
 himself suggested this. Is it not generous of him? 
 
 "The worst of it is that we have not enough money ; I 
 have, it is true, 5000, but we want at least 10,000, so 
 Pryer says, before we can start; when we are fairly 
 under weigh I might live at the college and draw a salary 
 from the foundation, so that it is all one, or nearly so, 
 whether I invest my money in this way or in buying a 
 living ; besides I want very little ; it is certain that I shall 
 never marry ; no clergyman should think of this, and an 
 unmarried man can live on next to nothing. Still I do 
 not see my way to as much money as I want, and Pryer 
 suggests that as we can hardly earn more now we must 
 get it by a judicious series of investments. Pryer knows 
 several people who make quite a handsome income out of 
 very little or, indeed, I may say, nothing at all, by buying 
 things at a place they call the Stock Exchange ; I don't 
 know much about it yet, but Pryer says I should soon 
 learn; he thinks, indeed, that I have shown rather a 
 talent in this direction, and under proper auspices should 
 make a very good man of business. Others, of course, 
 and not I, must decide this ; but a man can do anything 
 if he gives his mind to it, and though I should not care 
 about having more money for my own sake, I care about 
 it very much when I think of the good I could do with 
 it by saving souls from such horrible torture hereafter. 
 Why, if the thing succeeds, and I really cannot see what 
 is to hinder it, it is hardly possible to exaggerate its im- 
 portance, nor the proportions which it may ultimately 
 assume," etc., etc.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 271 
 
 Again I asked Ernest whether he minded my printing 
 this. He winced, but said, "No, not if it helps you to tell 
 your story : but don't you think it is too long ?" 
 
 I said it would let the reader see for himself how 
 things were going in half the time that it would take me 
 to explain them to him. 
 
 "Very well then, keep it by all means." 
 
 I continue turning over my file of Ernest's letters and 
 find as follows 
 
 "Thanks for your last, in answer to which I send you 
 a rough copy of a letter I sent to the Times a day or two 
 back. They did not insert it, but it embodies pretty fully 
 my ideas on the parochial visitation question, and Pryer 
 fully approves of the letter. Think it carefully over and 
 send it back to me when read, for it is so exactly my 
 present creed that I cannot afford to lose it. 
 
 "I should very much like to have a viva voce discussion 
 on these matters : I can only see for certain that we have 
 suffered a dreadful loss in being no longer able to excom- 
 municate. We should excommunicate rich and poor 
 alike, and pretty freely too. If this power were restored 
 to us we could, I think, soon put a stop to by far the 
 greater part of the sin and misery with which we are 
 surrounded." 
 
 These letters were written only a few weeks after 
 Ernest had been ordained, but they are nothing to others 
 that he wrote a little later on. 
 
 In his eagerness to regenerate the Church of England 
 (and through this the universe) by the means which 
 Pryer had suggested to him, it occurred to him to try 
 to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of 
 the poor by going and living among them. I think he got 
 this notion from Kingsley's "Alton Locke," which, High 
 Churchman though he for the nonce was, he had de- 
 voured as he had devoured Stanley's "Life of Arnold,"
 
 272 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Dickens's novels, and whatever other literary garbage of 
 the day was most likely to do him harm; at any rate he 
 actually put his scheme into practice, and took lodgings 
 in Ashpit Place, a small street in the neighbourhood of 
 Drury Lane Theatre, in a house of which the landlady 
 was the widow of a cabman. 
 
 This lady occupied the whole ground floor. In the 
 front kitchen there was a tinker. The back kitchen was 
 let to a bellows-mender. On the first floor came Ernest, 
 with his two rooms which he furnished comfortably, for 
 one must draw the line somewhere. The two upper floors 
 were parcelled out among four different sets of lodgers : 
 there was a tailor named Holt, a drunken fellow who 
 used to beat his wife at night till her screams woke the 
 house; above him there was another tailor with a wife 
 but no children; these people were Wesleyans, given to 
 drink but not noisy. The two back rooms were held by 
 single ladies, who it seemed to Ernest must be respectably 
 connected, for well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking young 
 men used to go up and down stairs past Ernest's rooms 
 to call at any rate on Miss Snow Ernest had heard her 
 door slam after they had passed. He thought, too, that 
 some of them went up to Miss Maitland's. Mrs. Jupp, 
 the landlady, told Ernest that these were brothers and 
 cousins of Miss Snow's, and that she was herself look- 
 ing out for a situation as a governess, but at present had 
 an engagement as an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre. 
 Ernest asked whether Miss Maitland in the top back 
 was also looking out for a situation, and was told she 
 was wanting an engagement as a milliner. He believed 
 whatever Mrs. Jupp told him. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV 
 
 THIS move on Ernest's part was variously commented 
 upon by his friends, the general opinion being that it was
 
 The Way of All Flesh 273 
 
 just like Pontifex, who was sure to do something un- 
 usual wherever he went, but that on the whole the idea 
 was commendable. Christina could not restrain herself 
 when on sounding her clerical neighbours she found them 
 inclined to applaud her son for conduct which they ideal- 
 ised into something much more self-denying than it really 
 was. She did not quite like his living in such an unaristo- 
 cratic neighbourhood; but what he was doing would 
 probably get into the newspapers, and then great people 
 would take notice of him. Besides, it would be very 
 cheap; down among these poor people he could live for 
 next to nothing, and might put by a great deal of his in- 
 come. As for temptations, there could be few or none 
 in such a place as that. This argument about cheapness 
 was the one with which she most successfully met Theo- 
 bald, who grumbled more suo that he had no sympathy 
 with his son's extravagance and conceit. When Chris- 
 tina pointed out to him that it would be cheap he replied 
 that there was something in that. 
 
 On Ernest himself the effect was to confirm the good 
 opinion of himself which had been growing upon him 
 ever since he had begun to read for orders, and to make 
 him flatter himself that he was among the few who were 
 ready to give up all for Christ. Ere long he began to 
 conceive of himself as a man with a mission and a great 
 future. His lightest and most hastily formed opinions 
 began to be of momentous importance to him, and he in- 
 flicted them, as I have already shown, on his old friends, 
 week by week becoming more and more entete with him- 
 self and his own crotchets. I should like well enough 
 to draw a veil over this part of my hero's career, but 
 cannot do so without marring my story. 
 
 In the spring of 1859 I find him writing 
 
 "I cannot call the visible Church Christian till its 
 fruits are Christian, that is until the fruits of the mem- 
 bers of the Church of England are in conformity, or
 
 274 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 something like conformity, with her teaching. I cor- 
 dially agree with the teaching of the Church of England 
 in most respects, but she says one thing and does an- 
 other, and until excommunication yes, and wholesale 
 excommunication be resorted to, I cannot call her a 
 Christian institution. I should begin with our Rector, 
 and if I found it necessary to follow him up by excom- 
 municating the Bishop, I should not flinch even from this. 
 
 "The present London Rectors are hopeless people to 
 deal with. My own is one of the best of them, but the 
 moment Pryer and I show signs of wanting to attack 
 an evil in a way not recognised by routine, or of remedy- 
 ing anything about which no outcry has been made, we 
 are met with, 'I cannot think what you mean by all this 
 disturbance; nobody else among the clergy sees these 
 things, and I have no wish to be the first to begin turn- 
 ing everything topsy-turvy.' And then people call him 
 a sensible man. I have no patience with them. How- 
 ever, we know what we want, and, as I wrote to Daw- 
 son the other day, have a scheme on foot which will, I 
 think, fairly meet the requirements of the case. But 
 we want more money, and my first move towards getting 
 this has not turned out quite so satisfactorily as Pryer 
 and I had hoped ; we shall, however, I doubt not, retrieve 
 it shortly." 
 
 When Ernest came to London he intended doing a 
 good deal of house-to-house visiting, but Pryer had 
 talked him out of this even before he settled down in 
 his new and strangely-chosen apartments. The line he 
 now took was that if people wanted Christ, they must 
 prove their want by taking some little trouble, and the 
 trouble required of them was that they should come and 
 seek him, Ernest, out ; there he was in the midst of them 
 ready to teach; if people did not choose to come to him 
 it was no fault of his. 
 
 "My great business here," he writes again to Dawson,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 275 
 
 "is to observe. I am not doing much in parish work 
 beyond my share of the daily services. I have a man's 
 Bible Class, and a boy's Bible Class, and a good many 
 young men and boys to whom I give instruction one way 
 or another; then there are the Sunday School children, 
 with whom I fill my room on a Sunday evening as full 
 as it will hold, and let them sing hymns and chants. They 
 like this. I do a great deal of reading chiefly of books 
 which Pryer and I think most likely to help; we find 
 nothing comparable to the Jesuits. Pryer is a thorough 
 gentleman, and an admirable man of business no less 
 observant of the things of this world, in fact, than of the 
 things above; by a brilliant coup he has retrieved, or 
 nearly so, a rather serious loss which threatened to delay 
 indefinitely the execution of our great scheme. He and 
 I daily gather fresh principles. I believe great things 
 are before me, and am strong in the hope of being able 
 by and by to effect much. 
 
 "As for you I bid you Godspeed. Be bold but logical, 
 speculative but cautious, daringly courageous, but prop- 
 erly circumspect withal," etc., etc. 
 
 I think this may do for the present. 
 
 CHAPTER LV 
 
 I HAD called on Ernest as a matter of course when he 
 first came to London, but had not seen him. I had been 
 out when he returned my call, so that he had been in 
 town for some weeks before I actually saw him, which 
 I did not very long after he had taken possession of his 
 new rooms. I liked his face, but except for the common 
 bond of music, in respect of which our tastes were sin- 
 gularly alike, I should hardly have known how to get 
 on with him. To do him justice he did not air any of 
 his schemes to me until I had drawn him out concerning
 
 276 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 them. I, to borrow the words of Ernest's landlady, Mrs. 
 Jupp, "am not a very regular church-goer" I discovered 
 upon cross-examination that Mrs. Jupp had been to 
 church once when she was churched for her son Tom 
 some five and twenty years since, but never either before 
 or afterwards; not even, I fear, to be married, for 
 though she called herself "Mrs." she wore no wedding 
 ring, and spoke of the person who should have been Mr. 
 Jupp as "my poor dear boy's father," not as "my hus- 
 band." But to return. I was vexed at Ernest's having 
 been ordained. I was not ordained myself and I did 
 not like my friends to be ordained, nor did I like having 
 to be on my best behaviour and to look as if butter 
 would not melt in my mouth, and all for a boy whom I 
 remembered when he knew yesterday and to-morrow and 
 Tuesday, but not a day of the week more not even Sun- 
 day itself and when he said he did not like the kitten 
 because it had pins in its toes. 
 
 I looked at him and thought of his Aunt Alethea, and 
 how fast the money she had left him was accumulating ; 
 and it was all to go to this young man, who would use it 
 probably in the very last ways with which Miss Pontifex 
 would have sympathised. I was annoyed. "She always 
 said," I thought to myself, "that she should make a mess 
 of it, but I did not think she would have made as great 
 a mess of it as this." Then I thought that perhaps if 
 his aunt had lived he would not have been like this. 
 
 Ernest behaved quite nicely to me and I own that the 
 fault was mine if the conversation drew towards danger- 
 ous subjects. I was the aggressor, presuming I suppose 
 upon my age and long acquaintance with him, as giving 
 me a right to make myself unpleasant in a quiet way. 
 
 Then he came out, and the exasperating part of it was 
 that up to a certain point he was so very right. Grant 
 him his premises and his conclusions were sound enough, 
 nor could I, seeing that he was already ordained, join 
 issue with him about his premises as I should certainly
 
 The Way of All Flesh 277 
 
 have done if I had had a chance of doing so before he 
 had taken orders. The result was that I had to beat a 
 retreat and went away not in the best of humours. ^J 
 believe the truth was that I liked Ernest, and was vexed 
 at his being a clergyman, and at a clergyman having so 
 much money coming to him. 
 
 I talked a little with Mrs. Jupp on my way out. She 
 and I had reckoned one another up at first sight as being 
 neither of us "very regular church-goers," and the strings 
 of her tongue had been loosened. She said Ernest would 
 die. He was much too good for the world and he looked 
 so sad "just like young Watkins of the 'Crown' over the 
 way who died a month ago, and his poor dear skin was 
 white as alablaster; least-ways they say he shot hisself. 
 They took him from the Mortimer, I met them just as I 
 was going with my Rose to get a pint o' four ale, and she 
 had her arm in splints. She told her sister she wanted to 
 go to Perry's to get some wool, instead o' which it was 
 only a stall to get me a pint o' ale, bless her heart ; there's 
 nobody else would do that much for poor old Jupp, and 
 it's a horrid lie to say she is gay ; not but what I like a 
 gay woman, I do : I'd rather give a gay woman half-a- 
 crown than stand a modest woman a pot o' beer, but I 
 don't want to go associating with bad girls for all that. 
 So they took him from the Mortimer ; they wouldn't let 
 him go home no more; and he done it that artful, you 
 know. His wife was in the country living with her 
 mother, and she always spoke respectful o' my Rose. 
 Poor dear, I hope his soul is in Heaven. Well, sir, would 
 you believe it, there's that in Mr. Pontifex's face which 
 is just like young Watkins; he looks that worrited and 
 scrunched up at times, but it's never for the same reason, 
 for he don't know nothing at all, no more than a unborn 
 babe, no he don't ; why there's not a monkey going about 
 London with an Italian organ grinder but knows more 
 than Mr. Pontifex do. He don't know well I sup- 
 pose "
 
 278 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Here a child came in on an errand from some neigh- 
 bour and interrupted her, or I can form no idea where or 
 when she would have ended her discourse. I seized the 
 opportunity to run away, but not before I had given her 
 five shillings and made her write down my address, for I 
 was a little frightened by what she said. I told her if she 
 thought her lodger grew worse, she was to come and 
 let me know. 
 
 Weeks went by and I did not see her again. Having 
 done as much as I had, I felt absolved from doing more, 
 and let Ernest alone as thinking that he and I should 
 only bore one another. 
 
 He had now been ordained a little over four months, 
 but these months had not brought happiness or satis- 
 faction with them. He had lived in a clergyman's house 
 all his life, and might have been expected perhaps to 
 have known pretty much what being a clergyman was 
 like, and so he did a country clergyman ; he had formed 
 an ideal, however, as regards what a town clergyman 
 could do, and was trying in a feeble, tentative way to 
 realise it, but somehow or other it always managed to 
 escape him. 
 
 He lived among the poor, but he did not find that he 
 got to know them. The idea that they would come to 
 him proved to be a mistaken one. He did indeed visit a 
 few tame pets whom his rector desired him to look after. 
 There was an old man and his wife who lived next door 
 but one to Ernest himself ; then there was a plumber of 
 the name of Chesterfield; an aged lady of the name of 
 Cover, blind and bed-ridden, who munched and munched 
 her feeble old toothless jaws as Ernest spoke or read to 
 her, but who could do little more ; a Mr. Brookes, a rag 
 and bottle merchant in Birdsey's Rents, in the last stage 
 of dropsy, and perhaps half a dozen or so others. What 
 did it all come to, when he did go to see them? The 
 plumber wanted to be flattered, and liked fooling a gentle- 
 man into wasting his time by scratching his ears for him.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 279 
 
 Mrs. Cover, poor old woman, wanted money; she was 
 very good and meek, and when Ernest got her a shilling 
 from Lady Anne Jones's bequest, she said it was "small 
 but seasonable," and munched and munched in gratitude. 
 Ernest sometimes gave her a little money himself, but 
 not, as he says now, half what he ought to have given. 
 
 What could he do else that would have been of the 
 smallest use to her? Nothing indeed; but giving occa- 
 sional half-crowns to Mrs. Cover was not regenerating 
 the universe, and Ernest wanted nothing short of this. 
 The world was all out of joint, and instead of feeling it 
 to be a cursed spite that he was born to set it right, he 
 thought he was just the kind of person that was wanted 
 for the job, and was eager to set to work, only he did 
 not exactly know how to begin, for the beginning he had 
 made with Mr. Chesterfield and Mrs. Cover did not 
 promise great developments. 
 
 Then poor Mr. Brookes he suffered very much, ter- 
 ribly indeed; he was not in want of money; he wanted 
 to die and couldn't, just as we sometimes want to go 
 to sleep and cannot. He had been a serious-minded man, 
 and death frightened him as it must frighten anyone who 
 believes that all his most secret thoughts will be shortly 
 exposed in public. When I read Ernest the description of 
 how his father used to visit Mrs. Thompson at Battersby, 
 he coloured and said "That's just what I used to say to 
 Mr. Brookes." Ernest felt that his visits, so far from 
 comforting Mr. Brookes, made him fear death more and 
 more, but how could he help it ? 
 
 Even Pryer, who had been curate a couple of years, 
 did not know personally more than a couple of hundred 
 people in the parish at the outside, and it was only at 
 the houses of very few of these that he ever visited, but 
 then Pryer had such a strong objection on principle to 
 house visitations. What a drop in the sea were those 
 with whom he and Pryer were brought into direct com- 
 munication in comparison with those whom he must
 
 280 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 reach and move if he were to produce much effect of 
 any kind, one way or the other. Why there were be- 
 tween fifteen and twenty thousand poor in the parish, of 
 whom but the merest fraction ever attended a place of 
 worship. Some few went to dissenting chapels, a few 
 were Roman Catholics ; by far the greater number, how- 
 ever, were practically infidels, if not actively hostile, at 
 any rate indifferent to religion, while many were avowed 
 Atheists admirers of Tom Paine, of whom he now 
 heard for the first time ; but he never met and conversed 
 with any of these. 
 
 Was he really doing everything that could be expected 
 of him? It was all very well to say that he was doing 
 as much as other young clergymen did ; that was not the 
 kind of answer which Jesus Christ was likely to accept ; 
 why, the Pharisees themselves in all probability did as 
 much as the other Pharisees did. What he should do 
 was to go into the highways and byways, and compel 
 people to come in. Was he doing this? Or were not 
 they rather compelling him to keep out outside their 
 doors at any rate? He began to have an uneasy feeling 
 as though ere long, unless he kept a sharp lookout, he 
 should drift into being a sham. 
 
 True, all would be changed as soon as he could en- 
 dow the College for Spiritual Pathology; matters, how- 
 ever, had not gone too well with "the things that people 
 bought in the place that was called the Stock Exchange." 
 In order to get on faster, it had been arranged that 
 Ernest should buy more of these things than he could 
 pay for, with the idea that in a few weeks, or even days, 
 they would be much higher in value, and he could sell 
 them at a tremendous profit ; but, unfortunately, instead 
 of getting higher, they had fallen immediately after 
 Ernest had bought, and obstinately refused to get up 
 again ; so, after a few settlements, he had got frightened, 
 for he read an article in some newspaper, which said 
 they would go ever so much lower, and, contrary to
 
 The Way of All Flesh 281 
 
 Fryer's advice, he insisted on selling at a loss of some- 
 thing like 500. He had hardly sold when up went the 
 shares again, and he saw how foolish he had been, and 
 how wise Pryer was, for if Fryer's advice had been 
 followed, he would have made 500, instead of losing it. 
 However, he told himself, he must live and learn. 
 
 Then Pryer made a mistake. They had bought some 
 shares, and the shares went up delightfully for about a 
 fortnight. This was a happy time indeed, for by the 
 end of a fortnight the lost 500 had been recovered, and 
 three or four hundred pounds had been cleared into the 
 bargain. All the feverish anxiety of that miserable six 
 weeks, when the 500 was being lost, was now being 
 repaid with interest. Ernest wanted to sell and make 
 sure of the profit, but Pryer would not hear of it ; they 
 would go ever so much higher yet, and he showed Ernest 
 an article in some newspaper which proved that what 
 he said was reasonable, and they did go up a little but 
 only a very little, for then they went down, down, and 
 Ernest saw first his clear profit of three or four hundred 
 pounds go, and then the 500 loss, which he thought he 
 had recovered, slipped away by falls of a half and one 
 at a time, and then he lost 200 more. Then a newspaper 
 said that these shares were the greatest rubbish that had 
 ever been imposed upon the English public, and Ernest 
 could stand it no longer, so he sold out, again this time 
 against Fryer's advice, so that when they went up, as 
 they shortly did, Pryer scored off Ernest a second time. 
 
 Ernest was not used to vicissitudes of this kind, and 
 they made him so anxious that his health was affected. 
 It was arranged therefore that he had better know noth- 
 ing of what was being done. Pryer was a much better 
 man of business than he was, and would see to it all. 
 This relieved Ernest of a good deal of trouble, and was 
 better after all for the investments themselves; for, as 
 Pryer justly said, a man must not have a faint heart if he 
 hopes to succeed in buying and selling upon the Stock
 
 282 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Exchange, and seeing Ernest nervous made Pryer nerv- 
 ous too at least, he said it did. So the money drifted 
 more and more into Fryer's hands. As for Pryer him- 
 self, he had nothing but his curacy and a small allow- 
 ance from his father. 
 
 Some of Ernest's old friends got an inkling from his 
 letters of what he was doing, and did their utmost to dis- 
 suade him, but he was as infatuated as a young lover of 
 two and twenty. Finding that these friends disapproved, 
 he dropped away from them, and they, being bored with 
 his egotism and high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let 
 him do so. Of course, he said nothing about his specu- 
 lations indeed, he hardly knew that anything done in 
 so good a cause could be called speculation. At Batters- 
 by, when his father urged him to look out for a next pre- 
 sentation, and even brought one or two promising ones 
 under his notice, he made objections and excuses, though 
 always promising to do as his father desired very shortly. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI 
 
 BY and by a subtle, indefinable malaise began to take 
 possession of him. I once saw a very young foal trying 
 to eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to 
 make up its mind whether it was good or no. Clearly 
 it wanted to be told. If its mother had seen what it was 
 doing she would have set it right in a moment, and as 
 soon as ever it had been told that what it was eating was 
 filth, the foal would have recognised it and never have 
 wanted to be told again ; but the foal could not settle the 
 matter for itself, or make up its mind whether it liked 
 what it was trying to eat or no, without assistance from 
 without. I suppose it would have come to do so by and 
 by, but it was wasting time and trouble, which a single 
 look from its mother would have saved, just as wort will 
 in time ferment of itself, but will ferment much more
 
 The Way of All Flesh 283 
 
 quickly if a little yeast be added to it. In the matter of 
 knowing what gives us pleasure we are all like wort, and 
 if unaided from without can only ferment slowly and 
 toilsomely. 
 
 My unhappy hero about this time was very much like 
 the foal, or rather he felt much what the foal would 
 have felt if its mother and all the other grown-up horses - 
 in the field had vowed that what it was eating was the 
 most excellent and nutritious food to be found any- 
 where. He was so anxious to do what was right, and 
 so ready to believe that every one knew better than him- 
 self, that he never ventured to admit to himself that he 
 might be all the while on a hopelessly wrong track. It 
 did not occur to him that there might be a blunder any- 
 where, much less did it occur to him to try and find out 
 where the blunder was. Nevertheless he became daily 
 more full of malaise, and daily, only he knew it not, more 
 ripe for an explosion should a spark fall upon him. 
 
 One thing, however, did begin to loom out of the gen- 
 eral vagueness, and to this he instinctively turned as try- 
 ing to seize it I mean, the fact that he was saving very 
 few souls, whereas there were thousands and thousands 
 being lost hourly all around him which a little energy 
 such as Mr. Hawke's might save. Day after day went 
 by, and what was he doing? Standing on professional 
 etiquette, and praying that his shares might go up and 
 down as he wanted them, so that they might give him 
 money enough to enable him to regenerate the universe. 
 But in the meantime the people were dying. How many 
 souls would not be doomed to endless ages of the most 
 frightful torments that the mind could think of, before 
 he could bring his spiritual pathology engine to bear upon 
 them? Why might he not stand and preach as he saw 
 the Dissenters doing sometimes in Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 and other thoroughfares? He could say all that Mr. 
 Hawke had said. Mr. Hawke was a very poor creature 
 in Ernest's eyes now, for he was a Low Churchman,
 
 284 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 but we should not be above learning from any one, and 
 surely he could affect his hearers as powerfully as Mr. 
 Hawke had affected him if he only had the courage to 
 set to work. The people whom he saw preaching in the 
 squares sometimes drew large audiences. He could at 
 any rate preach better than they. 
 
 Ernest broached this to Pryer, who treated it as some- 
 thing too outrageous to be even thought of. Nothing, 
 he said, could more tend to lower the dignity of the 
 clergy and bring the Church into contempt. His manner 
 was brusque, and even rude. 
 
 Ernest ventured a little mild dissent; he admitted it 
 was not usual, but something at any rate must be done, 
 and that quickly. This was how Wesley and Whitfield 
 had begun that great movement which had kindled relig- 
 ious life in the minds of hundreds of thousands. This 
 was no time to be standing on dignity. It was just be- 
 cause Wesley and Whitfield had done what the Church 
 would not that they had won men to follow them whom 
 the Church had now lost. 
 
 Pryer eyed Ernest searchingly, and after a pause said, 
 "I don't know what to make of you, Pontifex ; you are 
 at once so very right and so very wrong. I agree with 
 you heartily that something should be done, but it must 
 not be done in a way which experience has shown leads 
 to nothing but fanaticism and dissent. Do you approve 
 of these Wesleyans ? Do you hold your ordination vows 
 so cheaply as to think that it does not matter whether 
 the services of the Church are performed in her churches 
 and with all due ceremony or not? If you do then, 
 frankly, you had no business to be ordained ; if you do 
 not, then remember that one of the first duties of a 
 young deacon is obedience to authority. Neither the 
 Catholic Church, nor yet the Church of England allows 
 her clergy to preach in the streets of cities where there is 
 no lack of churches."
 
 The Way of All Flesh 285 
 
 Ernest felt the force of this, and Pryer saw that he 
 Wavered. 
 
 "We are living," he continued more genially, "in an 
 age of transition, and in a country which, though it 
 has gained much by the Reformation, does not perceive 
 how much it has also lost. You cannot and must not 
 hawk Christ about in the streets as though you were 
 in a heathen country whose inhabitants had never heard 
 of him. The people here in London have had ample 
 warning. Every church they pass is a protest to them 
 against their lives, and a call to them to repent. Every 
 church-bell they hear is a witness against them, everyone 
 of those whom they meet on Sundays going to or coming 
 from church is a warning voice from God. If these 
 countless influences produce no effect upon them, neither 
 will the few transient words which they would hear from 
 you. You are like Dives, and think that if one rose from 
 the dead they would hear him. Perhaps they might ; but 
 then you cannot pretend that you have risen from the 
 dead." 
 
 Though the last few words were spoken laughingly, 
 there was a sub-sneer about them which made Ernest 
 wince; but he was quite subdued, and so the conversa- 
 tion ended. It left Ernest, however, not for the first 
 time, consciously dissatisfied with Pryer, and inclined to 
 set his friend's opinion on one side not openly, but 
 quietly, and without telling Pryer anything about it. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII 
 
 HE had hardly parted from Pryer before there occurred 
 another incident which strengthened his discontent. He 
 had fallen, as I have shown, among a gang of spiritual 
 thieves or coiners, who passed the basest metal upon 
 him without his finding it out, so childish and inexperi- 
 enced was he in the ways of anything but those back
 
 286 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 eddies of the world, schools and universities. Among the 
 bad threepenny pieces which had been passed off upon 
 him, and which he kept for small hourly disbursement, 
 was a remark that poor people were much nicer than 
 the richer and better educated. Ernest now said that 
 he always travelled third class not because it was cheaper, 
 but because the people whom he met in third class car- 
 riages were so much pleasanter and better behaved. 
 As for the young men who attended Ernest's evening 
 classes, they were pronounced to be more intelligent and 
 better ordered generally than the average run of Oxford 
 and Cambridge men. Our foolish young friend having 
 heard Pryer talk to this effect, caught up all he said 
 and reproduced it more suo. 
 
 One evening, however, about this time, whom should 
 he see coming along a small street not far from his own 
 but, of all persons in the world, Towneley, looking as 
 full of life and good spirits as ever, and if possible even 
 handsomer than he had been at Cambridge. Much as 
 Ernest liked him he found himself shrinking from speak- 
 ing to him, and was endeavouring to pass him without 
 doing so when Towneley saw him and stopped him at 
 once, being pleased to see an old Cambridge face. He 
 seemed for the moment a little confused at being seen in 
 such a neighbourhood, but recovered himself so soon that 
 Ernest hardly noticed it, and then plunged into a few 
 kindly remarks about old times. Ernest felt that he 
 quailed as he saw Towneley's eye wander to his white 
 necktie and saw that he was being reckoned up, and 
 rather disapprovingly reckoned up, as a parson. It was 
 the merest passing shade upon Towneley's face, but 
 Ernest had felt it. 
 
 Towneley said a few words of common form to Ernest 
 about his profession as being what he thought would be 
 most likely to interest him, and Ernest, still confused and 
 shy, gave him for lack of something better to say his 
 little threepenny-bit about poor people being so very nice.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 287 
 
 Towneley took this for what it was worth and nodded 
 assent, whereon Ernest imprudently went further and 
 said, "Don't you like poor people very much yourself?" 
 
 Towneley gave his face a comical but good-natured 
 screw, and said quietly, but slowly and decidedly, "No, 
 no, no," and escaped. 
 
 It was all over with Ernest from that moment. As 
 usual he did not know it, but he had entered none the less 
 upon another reaction. Towneley had just taken Ernest's 
 threepenny-bit into his hands, looked at it and returned 
 it to him as a bad one. Why did he see in a moment 
 that it was a bad one now, though he had been unable to 
 see it when he had taken it from Pryer? Of course 
 some poor people were very nice, and always would be 
 so, but as though scales had fallen suddenly from his 
 eyes he saw that no one was nicer for being poor, and 
 that between the upper and lower classes there was a 
 gulf which amounted practically to an impassable bar- 
 rier. 
 
 That evening he reflected a good deal. If Towneley 
 was right, and Ernest felt that the "No" had applied not 
 to the remark about poor people only, but to the whole 
 scheme and scope of his own recently adopted ideas, 
 he and Pryer must surely be on a wrong track. Towne- 
 ley had not argued with him ; he had said one word only, 
 and that one of the shortest in the language, but Ernest 
 was in a fit state for inoculation, and the minute particle 
 of virus set about working immediately. 
 
 Which did he now think was most likely to have taken 
 the juster view of life and things, and whom would it 
 be best to imitate, Towneley or Pryer? His heart re- 
 turned answer to itself without a moment's hesitation. 
 The faces of men like Towneley were open and kindly; 
 they looked as if at ease themselves, and as though they 
 would set all who had to do with them at ease as far as 
 might be. The faces of Pryer and his friends were 
 not like this. Why had he felt tacitly rebuked as soon
 
 288 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as he had met Towneley? Was he not a Christian? 
 Certainly; he believed in the Church of England as a 
 matter of course. Then how could he be himself wrong 
 in trying to act up to the faith that he and Towneley held 
 in common ? He was trying to lead a quiet, unobtrusive 
 life of self-devotion, whereas Towneley was not, so far 
 as he could see, trying to do anything of the kind; he 
 was only trying to get on comfortably in the world, and 
 to look and be as nice as possible. And he was nice, and 
 Ernest knew that such men as himself and Pryer were 
 not nice, and his old dejection came over him. 
 
 Then came an even worse reflection; how if he had 
 fallen among material thieves as well as spiritual ones? 
 He knew very little of how his money was going on ; he 
 had put it all now into Fryer's hands, and though Pryer 
 gave him cash to spend whenever he wanted it, he seemed 
 impatient of being questioned as to what was being done 
 with the principal. It was part of the understanding, he 
 said, that that was to be left to him, and Ernest had better 
 stick to this, or he, Pryer, would throw up the College 
 of Spiritual Pathology altogether; and so Ernest was 
 cowed into acquiescence, or cajoled, according to the hu- 
 mour in which Pryer saw him to be. Ernest thought that 
 further questions would look as if he doubted Pryer 's 
 word, and also that he had gone too far to be able to re- 
 cede in decency or honour. This, however, he felt was 
 riding out to meet trouble unnecessarily. Pryer had been 
 a little impatient, but he was a gentleman and an admira- 
 ble man of business, so his money would doubtless come 
 back to him all right some day. 
 
 Ernest comforted himself as regards this last source of 
 anxiety, but as regards the other, he began to feel as 
 though, if he was to be saved, a good Samaritan must 
 hurry up from somewhere he knew not whence.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 289 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 NEXT day he felt stronger again. He had been listening 
 to the voice of the evil one on the night before, and 
 would parley no more with such thoughts. He had 
 chosen his profession, and his duty was to persevere 
 with it. If he was unhappy it was probably because he 
 was not giving up all for Christ. Let him see whether 
 he could not do more than he was doing now, and then 
 perhaps a light would be shed upon his path. 
 
 It was all very well to have made the discovery that 
 he didn't very much like poor people, but he had got to 
 put up with them, for it was among them that his work 
 must lie. Such men as Towneley were very kind and 
 considerate, but he knew well enough it was only on 
 condition that he did not preach to them. He could 
 manage the poor better, and, let Pryer sneer as he liked, 
 he was resolved to go more among them, and try the 
 effect of bringing Christ to them if they would not come 
 and seek Christ of themselves. He would begin with his 
 own house. 
 
 Who then should he take first ? Surely he could not do 
 better than begin with the tailor who lived immediately 
 over his head. This would be desirable, not only because 
 he was the one who seemed to stand most in need of 
 conversion, but also because, if he were once converted, 
 he would no longer beat his wife at two o'clock in the 
 morning, and the house would be much pleasanter in 
 consequence. He would therefore go upstairs at once, 
 and have a quiet talk with this man. 
 
 Before doing so, he thought it would be well if he 
 were to draw up something like a plan of a campaign ; he 
 therefore reflected over some pretty conversations which 
 would do very nicely if Mr. Holt would be kind enough 
 to make the answers proposed for him in their proper 
 places. But the man was a great hulking fellow, of a
 
 290 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 savage temper, and Ernest was forced to admit that un- 
 foreseen developments might arise to disconcert him. 
 They say it takes nine tailors to make a man, but Ernest 
 felt that it would take at least nine Ernests to make a 
 Mr. Holt. How if, as soon as Ernest came in, the tailor 
 were to become violent and abusive ? What could he do ? 
 Mr. Holt was in his own lodgings, and had a right to be 
 undisturbed. A legal right, yes, but had he a moral 
 right? Ernest thought not, considering his mode of life. 
 But put this on one side ; if the man were to be violent, 
 what should he do ? Paul had fought with wild beasts at 
 Ephesus that must indeed have been awful but per- 
 haps they were not very wild wild beasts ; a rabbit and a 
 canary are wild beasts ; but, formidable or not as wild 
 beasts go, they would, nevertheless, stand no chance 
 against St. Paul, for he was inspired ; the miracle would 
 have been if the wild beasts escaped, not that St. Paul 
 should have done so; but, however all this might be, 
 Ernest felt that he dared not begin to convert Mr. Holt 
 by fighting him. Why, when he had heard Mrs. Holt 
 screaming "murder," he had cowered under the bed 
 clothes and waited, expecting to hear the blood dripping 
 through the ceiling on to his own floor. His imagination 
 translated every sound into a pat, pat, pat, and once or 
 twice he thought he had felt it dropping on to his coun- 
 terpane, but he had never gone upstairs to try and rescue 
 poor Mrs. Holt. Happily it had proved next morning 
 that Mrs. Holt was in her usual health. 
 
 Ernest was in despair about hitting on any good way 
 of opening up spiritual communication with his neigh- 
 bour, when it occurred to him that he had better perhaps 
 begin by going upstairs, and knocking very gently at Mr. 
 Holt's door. He would then resign himself to the guid- 
 ance of the Holy Spirit, and act as the occasion, which, 
 I suppose, was another name for the Holy Spirit, sug- 
 gested. Triply armed with this reflection, he mounted 
 the stairs quite jauntily, and was about to knock when
 
 The Way of All Flesh 291 
 
 he heard Holt's voice inside swearing savagely at his 
 wife. This made him pause to think whether after all 
 the moment was an auspicious one, and while he was thus 
 pausing, Mr. Holt, who had heard that someone was on 
 the stairs, opened the door and put his head out. When 
 he saw Ernest, he made an unpleasant, not to say offen- 
 sive movement, which might or might not have been 
 directed at Ernest, and looked altogether so ugly that my 
 hero had an instantaneous and unequivocal revelation 
 from the Holy Spirit to the effect that he should con- 
 tinue his journey upstairs at once, as though he had never 
 intended arresting it at Mr. Holt's room, and begin by 
 converting Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, the Methodists in the 
 top floor front. So this was what he did. 
 
 These good people received him with open arms, and 
 were quite ready to talk. He was beginning to convert 
 them from Methodism to the Church of England, when 
 all at once he found himself embarrassed by discovering 
 that he did not know what he was to convert them from. 
 He knew the Church of England, or thought he did, but 
 he knew nothing of Methodism beyond its name. When 
 he found that, according to Mr. Baxter, the Wesleyans 
 had a vigorous system of Church discipline (which 
 worked admirably in practice) it appeared to him that 
 John Wesley had anticipated the spiritual engine which 
 he and Pryer were preparing, and when he left the room 
 he was aware that he had caught more of a spiritual Tar- 
 tar than he had expected. But he must certainly explain 
 to Pryer that the Wesleyans had a system of Church dis- 
 cipline. This was very important. 
 
 Mr. Baxter advised Ernest on no account to meddle 
 with Mr. Holt, and Ernest was much relieved at the ad- 
 vice. If an opportunity arose of touching the man's 
 heart, he would take it ; he would pat the children on the 
 head when he saw them on the stairs, and ingratiate 
 himself with them as far as he dared ; they were sturdy 
 and Ernest was afraid even of them, for
 
 292 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 they were ready with their tongues, and knew much for 
 their ages. Ernest felt that it would indeed be almost 
 better for him that a millstone should be hanged about 
 his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should 
 offend one of the little Holts. However, he would try 
 not to offend them ; perhaps an occasional penny or two 
 might square them. This was as much as he could do, 
 for he saw that the attempt to be instant out of season, 
 as well as in season, would, St. Paul's injunction not- 
 withstanding, end in failure. 
 
 Mrs. Baxter gave a very bad account of Miss Emily 
 Snow, who lodged in the second floor back next to Mr. 
 Holt. Her story was quite different from that of Mrs. 
 Jupp the landlady. She would doubtless be only too 
 glad to receive Ernest's ministrations or those of any 
 other gentleman, but she was no governess, she 
 was in the ballet at Drury Lane, and besides this, she 
 was a very bad young woman, and if Mrs. Baxter was 
 landlady would not be allowed to stay in the house a 
 single hour, not she indeed. 
 
 Miss Maitland in the next room to Mrs. Baxter's own 
 was a quiet and respectable young woman to all appear- 
 ance ; Mrs. Baxter had never known of any goings on in 
 that quarter, but, bless you, still waters run deep, and 
 these girls were all alike, one as bad as the other. She 
 was out at all kinds of hours, and when you knew that 
 you knew all. 
 
 Ernest did not pay much heed to these aspersions of 
 Mrs. Baxter's. Mrs. Jupp had got round the greater 
 number of his many blind sides, and had warned him 
 not to believe Mrs. Baxter, whose lip she said was some- 
 thing awful. 
 
 Ernest had heard that women were always jealous of 
 one another, and certainly these young women were more 
 attractive than Mrs. Baxter was, so jealousy was probably 
 at the bottom of it. If they were maligned there could be 
 no objection to his making their acquaintance; if not
 
 The Way of All Flesh 293 
 
 maligned they had all the more need of his ministrations. 
 He would reclaim them at once. 
 
 He told Mrs. Jupp of his intention. Mrs. Jupp at 
 first tried to dissuade him, but seeing him resolute, sug- 
 gested that she should herself see Miss Snow first, so 
 as to prepare her and prevent her from being alarmed by 
 his visit. She was not at home now, but in the course 
 of the next day, it should be arranged. In the meantime 
 he had better try Mr. Shaw, the tinker, in the front 
 kitchen. Mrs. Baxter had told Ernest that Mr. Shaw 
 was from the North Country, and an avowed free- 
 thinker ; he would probably, she said, rather like a visit, 
 but she did not think Ernest would stand much chance 
 of making a convert of him. 
 
 CHAPTER LIX 
 
 BEFORE going down into the kitchen to convert the tinker 
 Ernest ran hurriedly over his analysis of Paley's evi- 
 dences, and put into his pocket a copy of Archbishop 
 Whateley's "Historic Doubts." Then he descended the 
 dark rotten old stairs and knocked at the tinker's door. 
 Mr. Shaw was very civil; he said he was rather throng 
 just now, but if Ernest did not mind the sound of ham- 
 mering he should be very glad of a talk with him. Our 
 hero, assenting to this, ere long led the conversation to 
 Whateley's "Historic Doubts" a work which, as the 
 reader may know, pretends to show that there never was 
 any such person as Napoleon Buonaparte, and thus 
 satirises the arguments of those who have attacked the 
 Christian miracles. 
 
 Mr. Shaw said he knew "Historic Doubts" very well. 
 
 "And what you think of it?" said Ernest, who re- 
 garded the pamphlet as a masterpiece of wit and cogency. 
 
 "If you really want to know," said Mr. Shaw, with a 
 sly twinkle, "I think that he who was so willing and
 
 294 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 able to prove that what was was not, would be equally 
 able and willing to make a case for thinking that what 
 was not was, if it suited his purpose." Ernest was very 
 much taken aback. How was it that all the clever people 
 of Cambridge had never put him up to this simple re- 
 joinder? The answer is easy : they did not develop it for 
 the same reason that a hen had never developed webbed 
 feet that is to say, because they did not want to do so ; 
 but this was before the days of Evolution, and Ernest 
 could not as yet know anything of the great principle 
 that underlies it. 
 
 "You see," continued Mr. Shaw, "these writers all get 
 their living by writing in a certain way, and the more 
 they write in that way, the more they are likely to get on. 
 You should not call them dishonest for this any more 
 than a judge should call a barrister dishonest for earning 
 his living by defending one in whose innocence he does 
 not seriously believe ; but you should hear the barrister 
 on the other side before you decide upon the case." 
 
 This was another facer. Ernest could only stammer 
 that he had endeavoured to examine these questions as 
 carefully as he could. 
 
 "You think you have," said Mr. Shaw; "you Oxford 
 and Cambridge gentlemen think you have examined 
 everything. I have examined very little myself except 
 the bottoms of old kettles and saucepans, but if you will 
 answer me a few questions, I will tell you whether or no 
 you have examined much more than I have." 
 
 Ernest expressed his readiness to be questioned. 
 
 "Then," said the tinker, "give me the story of the 
 Resurrection of Jesus Christ as told in St. John's gos- 
 pel." 
 
 I am sorry to say that Ernest mixed up the four ac- 
 counts in a deplorable manner; he even made the angel 
 come down and roll away the stone and sit upon it. He 
 was covered with confusion when the tinker first told 
 him without the book of some of his many inaccuracies,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 295 
 
 and then verified his criticisms by referring to the New 
 Testament itself. 
 
 "Now," said Mr. Shaw good-naturedly, "I am an old 
 man and you are a young one, so perhaps you'll not mind 
 my giving you a piece of advice. I like you, for I believe 
 you mean well, but you've been real bad brought up, and 
 I don't think you have ever had so much as a chance yet. 
 You know nothing of our side of the question, and I have 
 just shown you that you do not know much more of your 
 own, but I think you will make a kind of Carlyle sort of a 
 man some day. Now go upstairs and read the accounts 
 of the Resurrection correctly without mixing them up, 
 and have a clear idea of what it is that each writer tells 
 us, then if you feel inclined to pay me another visit I 
 shall be glad to see you, for I shall know you have made 
 a good beginning and mean business. Till then, sir, I 
 must wish you a very good morning." 
 
 Ernest retreated abashed. An hour sufficed him to 
 perform the task enjoined upon him by Mr. Shaw; and 
 at the end of that hour the "No, no, no," which still 
 sounded in his ears as he heard it from Towneley, came 
 ringing up more loudly still from the very pages of the 
 Bible itself, and in respect of the most important of all 
 the events which are recorded in it. Surely Ernest's first 
 day's attempt at more promiscuous visiting, and at carry- 
 ing out his principles more thoroughly, had not been un- 
 fruitful. But he must go and have a talk with Pryer. 
 He therefore got his lunch and went to Fryer's lodg- 
 ings. Pryer not being at home, he lounged to the British 
 Museum Reading Room, then recently opened, sent for 
 the "Vestiges of Creation," which he had never yet seen, 
 and spent the rest of the afternoon in reading it. 
 
 Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversa- 
 tion with Mr. Shaw, but he did so next morning and 
 found him in a good temper, which of late he had rarely 
 been. Sometimes, indeed, he had behaved to Ernest in 
 a way which did not bode well for the harmony with
 
 296 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 which the College of Spiritual Pathology would work 
 when it had once been founded. It almost seemed as 
 though he were trying to get a complete moral ascend- 
 ency over him, so as to make him a creature of his 
 own. 
 
 He did not think it possible that he could go too far, 
 and, indeed, when I reflect upon my hero's folly and 
 inexperience, there is much to be said in excuse for the 
 conclusion which Pryer came to. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, it was not so. Ernest's 
 faith in Pryer had been too great to be shaken down all 
 in a moment, but it had been weakened lately more than 
 once. Ernest had fought hard against allowing himself 
 to see this, nevertheless any third person who knew the 
 pair would have been able to see that the connection be- 
 tween the two might end at any moment, for when the 
 time for one of Ernest's snipe-like changes of flight came, 
 he was quick in making it; the time, however, was not 
 yet come, and the intimacy between the two was appar- 
 ently all that it had ever been. It was only that horrid 
 money business (so said Ernest to himself) that caused 
 any unpleasantness between them, and no doubt Pryer 
 was right, and he, Ernest, much too nervous. However, 
 that might stand over for the present. 
 
 In like manner, though he had received a shock by 
 reason of his conversation with Mr. Shaw, and by look- 
 ing at the "Vestiges," he was as yet too much stunned to 
 realise the change which was coming over him. In each 
 case the momentum of old habits carried him forward 
 in the old direction. He therefore called on Pryer, and 
 spent an hour and more with him. 
 
 He did not say that he had been visiting among his 
 neighbours; this to Pryer would have been like a red 
 rag to a bull. He only talked in much his usual vein 
 about the proposed College, the lamentable want of in- 
 terest in spiritual things which was characteristic of mod- 
 ern society, and other kindred matters ; he concluded by
 
 The Way of All Flesh 297 
 
 saying that for the present he feared Pryer was indeed 
 right, and that nothing could be done. 
 
 "As regards the laity," said Pryer, "nothing; not until 
 we have a discipline which we can enforce with pains and 
 penalties. How can a sheep dog work a flock of 
 sheep unless he can bite occasionally as well as bark? 
 But as regards ourselves we can do much." 
 
 Pryer's manner was strange throughout the conversa- 
 tion, as though he were thinking all the time of some- 
 thing else. His eyes wandered curiously over Ernest, 
 as Ernest had often noticed them wander before: the 
 words were about Church discipline, but somehow or 
 other the discipline part of the story had a knack of drop- 
 ping out after having been again and again emphatically 
 declared to apply to the laity and not to the clergy : once 
 indeed Pryer had pettishly exclaimed : "Oh, bother the 
 College of Spiritual Pathology." As regards the clergy, 
 glimpses of a pretty large cloven hoof kept peeping out 
 from under the saintly robe of Pryer's conversation, to 
 the effect, that so long as they were theoretically per- 
 fect, practical peccadilloes or even peccadaccios, if there 
 is such a word, were of less importance. He was restless, 
 as though wanting to approach a subject which he did 
 not quite venture to touch upon, and kept harping (he did 
 this about every third day) on the wretched lack of 
 definition concerning the limits of vice and virtue, and 
 the way in which half the vices wanted regulating rather 
 than prohibiting. He dwelt also on the advantages of 
 complete unreserve, and hinted that there were mysteries 
 into which Ernest had not yet been initiated, but which 
 would enlighten him when he got to know them, as he 
 would be allowed to do when his friends saw that he was 
 strong enough. 
 
 Pryer had often been like this before, but never so 
 nearly, as it seemed to Ernest, coming to a point though 
 what the point was he could not fully understand. His 
 inquietude was communicating itself to Ernest, who
 
 298 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 would probably ere long have come to know as much as 
 Pryer could tell him, but the conversation was abruptly 
 interrupted by the appearance of a visitor. We shall 
 never know how it would have ended, for this was the 
 very last time that Ernest ever saw Pryer. Perhaps 
 Pryer was going to break to him some bad news about 
 his speculations. 
 
 CHAPTER LX 
 
 ERNEST now went home and occupied himself till lunch- 
 eon with studying Dean Alford's notes upon the various 
 Evangelistic records of the Resurrection, doing as Mr. 
 Shaw had told him, and trying to find out, not that they 
 were all accurate, but whether they were all accurate or 
 no. He did not care which result he should arrive at, but 
 he was resolved that he would reach one or the other. 
 When he had finished Dean Alford's notes he found 
 them come to this, namely, that no one yet had succeeded 
 in bringing the four accounts into tolerable harmony with 
 each other, and that the Dean, seeing no chance of suc- 
 ceeding better than his predecessors had done, recom- 
 mended that the whole story should be taken on trust 
 and this Ernest was not prepared to do. 
 
 He got his luncheon, went out for a long walk, and 
 returned to dinner at half past six. While Mrs. Jupp was 
 getting him his dinner a steak and a pint of stout she 
 told him that Miss Snow would be very happy to see^ 
 him in about an hour's time. This disconcerted him, for 
 his mind was too unsettled for him to wish to convert 
 anyone just then. He reflected a little, and found that, 
 in spite of the sudden shock to his opinions, he was be- 
 ing irresistibly drawn to pay the visit as though nothing 
 had happened. It would not look well for him not to go, 
 for he was known to be in the house. He ought not to 
 be in too great a hurry to change his opinions on such
 
 The Way of All Flesh 299 
 
 a matter as the evidence for Christ's Resurrection all of 
 a sudden besides he need not talk to Miss Snow about 
 this subject to-day there were other things he might 
 talk about. What other things? Ernest felt his heart 
 beat fast and fiercely, and an inward monitor warned him 
 that he was thinking of anything rather than of Miss 
 Snow's soul. 
 
 What should he do? Fly, fly, fly it was the only 
 safety. But would Christ have fled? Even though 
 Christ had not died and risen from the dead there could 
 be no question that He was the model whose example 
 we were bound to follow. Christ would not have fled 
 from Miss Snow ; he was sure of that, for He went about 
 more especially with prostitutes and disreputable people. 
 Now, as then, it was the business of the true Christian 
 to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. It 
 would be inconvenient to him to change his lodgings, 
 and he could not ask Mrs. Jupp to turn Miss Snow and 
 Miss Maitland out of the house. Where was he to draw 
 the line? Who would be just good enough to live in the 
 same house with him, and who just not good enough? 
 
 Besides, where were these poor girls to go ? Was he to 
 drive them from house to house till they had no place to 
 lie in ? It was absurd ; his duty was clear : he would go 
 and see Miss Snow at once, and try if he could not induce 
 her to change her present mode of life; if he found 
 temptation becoming too strong for him he would fly 
 then so he went upstairs with his Bible under his arm, 
 and a consuming fire in his heart. 
 
 He found Miss Snow looking very pretty in a neatly, 
 not to say demurely, furnished room. I think she had 
 bought an illuminated text or two, and pinned it up over 
 her fireplace that morning. Ernest was very much 
 pleased with her, and mechanically placed his Bible upon 
 the table. He had just opened a timid conversation and 
 was deep in blushes, when a hurried step came bounding 
 up the stairs as though of one over whom the force of
 
 3OO The Way of All Flesh 
 
 gravity had little power, and a man burst into the room 
 saying, "I'm come before my time." It was Towneley. 
 
 His face dropped as he caught sight of Ernest. "What, 
 you here, Pontifex ! Well, upon my word !" 
 
 I cannot describe the hurried explanations that passed 
 quickly between the three enough that in less than a 
 minute Ernest, blushing more scarlet than ever, slunk off, 
 Bible and all, deeply humiliated as he contrasted himself 
 and Towneley. Before he had reached the bottom of the 
 staircase leading to his own room he heard Towneley's 
 hearty laugh through Miss Snow's door, and cursed the 
 hour that he was born. 
 
 Then it flashed upon him that if he could not see Miss 
 Snow he could at any rate see Miss Maitland. He knew 
 well enough what he wanted now, and as for the Bible, 
 he pushed it from him to the other end of his table. It 
 fell over on to the floor, and he kicked it into a corner. 
 It was the Bible given him at his christening by his affec- 
 tionate aunt, Elizabeth Allaby. True, he knew very little 
 of Miss Maitland, but ignorant young fools in Ernest's 
 state do not reflect or reason closely. Mrs. Baxter had 
 said that Miss Maitland and Miss Snow were birds of a 
 feather, and Mrs. Baxter probably knew better than that 
 old liar, Mrs. Jupp. Shakespeare says : 
 
 O Opportunity, thy guilt is great, 
 'Tis thou that execut'st the traitor's treason : 
 Thou set'st the wolf where he the lamb may get; 
 Whoever plots the sin, thou 'point'st the season; 
 'Tis thou that spurn'st at right, at law, at reason; 
 And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, 
 Sits Sin, to seize the souls that wander by him. 
 
 If the guilt of opportunity is great, how much greater 
 is the guilt of that which is believed to be opportunity, but 
 in reality is no opportunity at all. If the better part 
 of valour is discretion, how much more is not discretion 
 the better part of vice? 
 
 About ten minutes after we last saw Ernest, a scared,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 301 
 
 insulted girl, flushed and trembling, was seen hurrying 
 from Mrs. Jupp's house as fast as her agitated state 
 would let her, and in another ten minutes two policemen 
 were seen also coming out of Mrs. Jupp's, between whom 
 there shambled rather than walked our unhappy friend 
 Ernest, with staring eyes, ghastly pale, and with despair 
 branded upon every line of his face. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI 
 
 PRYER had done well to warn Ernest against promiscuous 
 house to house visitation. He had not gone outside Mrs. 
 Jupp's street door, and yet what had been the result? 
 Mr. Holt had put him in bodily fear; Mr. and Mrs. 
 Baxter had nearly made a Methodist of him; Mr. Shaw 
 had undermined his faith in the Resurrection; Miss 
 Snow's charms had ruined or would have done so but 
 for an accident his moral character. As for Miss Mait- 
 land, he had done his best to ruin hers, and had damaged 
 himself gravely and irretrievably in consequence. The 
 only lodger who had done him no harm was the bellows' 
 mender, whom he had not visited. 
 
 Other young clergymen, much greater fools in many 
 respects than he, would not have got into these scrapes. 
 He seemed to have developed an aptitude for mischief 
 almost from the day of his having been ordained. He 
 could hardly preach without making some horrid -faux 
 pas. He preached one Sunday morning when the Bishop 
 was at his Rector's church, and made his sermon turn 
 upon the question what kind of little cake it was that the 
 widow of Zarephath had intended making when Elijah 
 found her gathering a few sticks. He demonstrated that 
 it was a seed cake. The sermon was really very amusing, 
 and more than once he saw a smile pass over the sea of 
 faces underneath him. The Bishop was very angry, and 
 gave my hero a severe reprimand in the vestry after
 
 302 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 service was over; the only excuse he could make was 
 that he was preaching ex tempore, had not thought of this 
 particular point till he was actually in the pulpit, and 
 had then been carried away by it. 
 
 Another time he preached upon the barren fig-tree, and 
 described the hopes of the owner as he watched the deli- 
 cate blossom unfold, and give promise of such beautiful 
 fruit in autumn. Next day he received a letter from a 
 botanical member of his congregation who explained to 
 him that this could hardly have been, inasmuch as the 
 fig produces its fruit first and blossoms inside the fruit, 
 or so nearly so that no flower is perceptible to an ordi- 
 nary observer. This last, however, was an accident 
 which might have happened to any one but a scientist or 
 an inspired writer. 
 
 The only excuse I can make for him is that he was 
 very young not yet four and twenty and that in mind 
 as in body, like most of those who in the end come to 
 think for themselves, he was a slow grower. By far the 
 greater part, moreover, of his education had been an at- 
 tempt, not so much to keep him in blinkers as to gouge 
 his eyes out altogether. 
 
 But to return to my story. It transpired afterwards 
 that Miss Maitland had had no intention of giving Ernest 
 in charge when she ran out of Mrs. Jupp's house. She 
 was running away because she was frightened, but almost 
 the first person whom she ran against had happened to be 
 a policeman of a serious turn of mind, who wished to 
 gain a reputation for activity. He stopped her, ques- 
 tioned her, frightened her still more, and it was he rather 
 than Miss Maitland who insisted on giving my hero in 
 charge to himself and another constable. 
 
 Towneley was still in Mrs. Jupp's house when the 
 policeman came. He had heard a disturbance, and going 
 down to Ernest's room while Miss Maitland was out of 
 doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at the 
 foot of the moral precipice over which he had that mo-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 303 
 
 ment fallen. He saw the whole thing at a glance, but 
 before he could take action, the policemen came in and 
 action became impossible. 
 
 He asked Ernest who were his friends in London. 
 Ernest at first wanted not to say, but Towneley soon gave 
 him to understand that he must do as he was bid, and 
 selected myself from the few whom he had named. 
 "Writes for the stage, does he?" said Towneley. "Does 
 he write comedy ?" Ernest thought Towneley meant that 
 I ought to write tragedy, and said he was afraid I wrote 
 burlesque. "Oh, come, come," said Towneley, "that will 
 do famously. I will go and see him at once." But on 
 second thoughts he determined to stay with Ernest and 
 go with him to the police court. So he sent Mrs. Jupp 
 for me. Mrs. Jupp hurried so fast to fetch me, that in 
 spite of the weather's being still cold she was "giving 
 out," as she expressed it, in streams. The poor old 
 wretch would have taken a cab, but she had no money 
 and did not like to ask Towneley to give her some. I 
 saw that something very serious had happened, but was 
 not prepared for anything so deplorable as what Mrs. 
 Jupp actually told me. As for Mrs. Jupp, she said her 
 heart had been jumping out of its socket and back again 
 ever since. 
 
 I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the 
 police station. She talked without ceasing. 
 
 "And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, 
 I'm sure it ain't no thanks to him if they're true. Mr. 
 Pontifex never took a bit o' notice of me no more than 
 if I had been his sister. Oh, it's enough to make anyone's 
 back bone curdle. Then I thought perhaps my Rose 
 might get on better with him, so I set her to dust him 
 and clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such 
 a beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no notice 
 of her no more than he did of me, and she didn't want 
 no compliment neither; she wouldn't have taken not a 
 shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn't
 
 304 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 seem to know anything at all. I can't make out what the 
 young men are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow 
 for me and the worms take me this very night, if it's not 
 enough to make a woman stand before God and strike 
 the one half on 'em silly to see the way they goes on, and 
 many an honest girl has to go home night after night 
 without so much as a fourpenny-bit and paying three and 
 sixpence a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in 
 the place and a dead wall in front of the window. 
 
 "It's not Mr. Pontifex," she continued, "that's so bad ; 
 he's good at heart. He never says nothing unkind. And 
 then there's his dear eyes but when I speak about that 
 to my Rose she calls me an old fool and says I ought to 
 be poleaxed. It's that Pryer as I can't abide. Oh, he! 
 He likes to wound a woman's feelings, he do, and to chuck 
 anything in her face, he do he likes to wind a woman 
 up and to wound her down." (Mrs. Jupp pronounced 
 "wound" as though it rhymed to "sound.") "It's a gen- 
 tleman's place to soothe a woman, but he, he'd like to tear 
 her hair out by handfuls. Why, he told me to my face 
 that I was a-getting old ; old, indeed ! there's not a woman 
 in London knows my age except Mrs. Davis down in the 
 Old Kent Road, and beyond a haricot vein in one of my 
 legs I'm as young as ever I was. Old, indeed ! There's 
 many a good tune played on an old fiddle. I hate his 
 nasty insinuendos." 
 
 Even if I had wanted to stop her, I could not have done 
 so. She said a great deal more than I have given above. 
 I have left out much because I could not remember it, but 
 still more because it was really impossible for me to print 
 it. 
 
 When we got to the police station I found Towneley 
 and Ernest already there. The charge was one of as- 
 sault, but not aggravated by serious violence. Even so, 
 however, it was lamentable enough, and we both saw 
 that our young friend would have to pay dearly for his 
 inexperience. We tried to bail him out for the night,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 305 
 
 but the Inspector would not accept bail, so we were forced 
 to leave him. 
 
 Towneley then went back to Mrs. Jupp's to see if he 
 could find Miss Maitland and arrange matters with her. 
 She was not there, but he traced her to the house of her 
 father, who lived at Camberwell. The father was furi- 
 ous and would not hear of any intercession on Towneley 's 
 part. He was a Dissenter, and glad to make the most of 
 any scandal against a clergyman; Towneley, therefore, 
 was obliged to return unsuccessful. 
 
 Next morning, Towneley who regarded Ernest as a 
 drowning man, who must be picked out of the water 
 somehow or other if possible, irrespective of the way 
 in which he got into it called on me, and we put the 
 matter into the hands of one of the best known attor- 
 neys of the day. I was greatly pleased with Towneley, 
 and thought it due to him to tell him what I had told no 
 one else. I mean that Ernest would come into his aunt's 
 money in a few years' time, and would therefore then 
 be rich. 
 
 Towneley was doing all he could before this, but I 
 knew that the knowledge I had imparted to him would 
 make him feel as though Ernest was more one of his own 
 class, and had therefore a greater claim upon his good 
 offices. As for Ernest himself, his gratitude was greater 
 than could be expressed in words. I have heard him 
 say that he can call to mind many moments, each one 
 of which might well pass for the happiest of his life, 
 but that this night stands clearly out as the most painful 
 that he ever passed, yet so kind and considerate was 
 Towneley that it was quite bearable. 
 
 But with all the best wishes in the world neither 
 Towneley nor I could do much to help beyond giving our 
 moral support. Our attorney told us that the magistrate 
 before whom Ernest would appear was very severe on 
 cases of this description, and that the fact of his being 
 a clergyman would tell against him. "Ask for no re-
 
 306 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 mand," he said, "and make no defence. We will call Mr. 
 Pontifex's rector and you two gentlemen as witnesses for 
 previous good character. These will be enough. Let us 
 -then make a profound apology and beg the magistrate 
 to deal with the case summarily instead of sending it for 
 trial. If you can get this, believe me, your young friend 
 will be better out of it than he has any right to expect." 
 
 CHAPTER LXII 
 
 THIS advice, besides being obviously sensible, would end 
 in saving Ernest both time and suspense of mind, so 
 we had no hesitation in adopting it. The case was called 
 on about eleven o'clock, but we got it adjourned till three, 
 so as to give time for Ernest to set his affairs as straight 
 as he could, and to execute a power of attorney enabling 
 me to act for him as I should think fit while he was in 
 prison. 
 
 Then all came out about Pryer and the College of 
 Spiritual Pathology. Ernest had even greater difficulty 
 in making a clean breast of this than he had had in 
 telling us about Miss Maitland, but he told us all, and 
 the upshot was that he had actually handed over to Pryer 
 every halfpenny that he then possessed with no other 
 security than Pryer's I.O.U.'s for the amount. Ernest, 
 though still declining to believe that Pryer could be 
 guilty of dishonourable conduct, was becoming alive to 
 the folly of what he had been doing; he still made sure, 
 however, of recovering, at any rate, the greater part of 
 his property as soon as Pryer should have had time to 
 sell. Towneley and I were of a different opinion, but 
 we did not say what we thought. 
 
 It was dreary work waiting all the morning amid such 
 unfamiliar and depressing surroundings. I thought how 
 the Psalmist had exclaimed with quiet irony, "One day 
 in thy courts is better than a thousand," and I thought
 
 The Way of All Flesh 307 
 
 that I could utter a very similar sentiment in respect of 
 the courts in which Towneley and I were compelled to 
 loiter. At last, about three o'clock the case was called 
 on, and we went round to the part of the court which 
 is reserved for the general public, while Ernest was 
 taken into the prisoner's dock. As soon as he had col- 
 lected himself sufficiently he recognised the magistrate 
 as the old gentleman who had spoken to him in the train 
 on the day he was leaving school, and saw, or thought he 
 saw, to his great grief, that he too was recognised. 
 
 Mr. Ottery, for this was our attorney's name, took the 
 line he had proposed. He called no other witnesses than 
 the rector, Towneley and myself, and threw himself on 
 the mercy of the magistrate. When he had concluded, the 
 magistrate spoke as follows : "Ernest Pontif ex, yours is 
 one of the most painful cases that I have ever had to 
 deal with. You have been singularly favoured in your 
 parentage and education. You have had before you the 
 example of blameless parents, who doubtless instilled 
 into you from childhood the enormity of the offence 
 which by your own confession you have committed. You 
 were sent to one of the best public schools in England. 
 It is not likely that in the healthy atmosphere of such a 
 school as Roughborough you can have come across con- 
 taminating influences ; you were probably, I may say cer- 
 tainly, impressed at school with the heinousness of any 
 attempt to depart from the strictest chastity until such 
 time as you had entered into a state of matrimony. At 
 Cambridge you were shielded from impurity by every 
 obstacle which virtuous and vigilant authorities could de- 
 vise, and even had the obstacles been fewer, your parents 
 probably took care that your means should not admit of 
 your throwing' money away upon abandoned characters. 
 At night proctors patrolled the street and dogged your 
 steps if you tried to go into any haunt where the presence 
 of vice was suspected. By day the females who were ad- 
 mitted within the college walls were selected mainly on
 
 308 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the score of age and ugliness. It is hard to see what 
 more can be done for any young man than this. For the 
 last four or five months you have been a clergyman, and 
 if a single impure thought had still remained within your 
 mind, ordination should have removed it: nevertheless, 
 not only does it appear that your mind is as impure as 
 though none of the influences to which I have referred 
 had been brought to bear upon it, but it seems as though 
 their only result had been this that you have not even 
 the common sense to be able to distinguish between a 
 respectable girl and a prostitute. 
 
 "If I were to take a strict view of my duty I should 
 commit you for trial, but in consideration of this being 
 your first offence, I shall deal leniently with you and sen- 
 tence you to imprisonment with hard labour for six calen- 
 dar months." 
 
 Towneley and I both thought there was a touch of 
 irony in the magistrate's speech, and that he could have 
 given a lighter sentence if he would, but that was neither 
 here nor there. We obtained leave to see Ernest for a 
 few minutes before he was removed to Coldbath Fields, 
 where he was to serve his term, and found him so thank- 
 ful to have been summarily dealt with that he hardly 
 seemed to care about the miserable plight in which he 
 was to pass the next six months. When he came out, he 
 said, he would take what remained of his money, go off 
 to America or Australia and never be heard of more. 
 
 We left him full of this resolve, I, to write to Theo- 
 bald, and also to instruct my solicitor to get Ernest's 
 money out of Fryer's hands, and Towneley to see the 
 reporters and keep the case out of the newspapers. He 
 was successful as regards all the higher-class papers. 
 There was only one journal, and that of the lowest class, 
 which was incorruptible.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 309 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII 
 
 I SAW my solicitor at once, but when I tried to write to 
 Theobald, I found it better to say I would run down and 
 see him. I therefore proposed this, asking him to meet 
 me at the station, and hinting that I must bring bad news 
 about his son. I knew he would not get my letter more 
 than a couple of hours before I should see him, and 
 thought the short interval of suspense might break the 
 shock of what I had to say. 
 
 Never do I remember to have halted more between two 
 opinions than on my journey to Battersby upon this un- 
 happy errand. When I thought of the little sallow-faced 
 lad whom I had remembered years before, of the long 
 and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in 
 childhood cruelty none the less real for having been 
 due to ignorance and stupidity rather than to deliberate 
 malice; of the atmosphere of lying and self-laudatory 
 hallucination in which he had been brought up; of the 
 readiness the boy had shown to love anything that would 
 be good enough to let him, and of how affection for his 
 parents, unless I am much mistaken, had only died in 
 him because it had been killed anew, again and again and 
 again, each time that it had tried to spring. When I 
 thought of all this I felt as though, if the matter had 
 rested with me, I would have sentenced Theobald and 
 Christina to mental suffering even more severe than that 
 which was about to fall upon them. But on the other 
 hand, when I thought of Theobald's own childhood, of 
 that dreadful old George Pontifex his father, of John 
 and Mrs. John, and of his two sisters, when again I 
 thought of Christina's long years of hope deferred that 
 maketh the heart sick, before she was married, of the life 
 she must have led at Crampsford, and of the surround- 
 ings in the midst of which she and her husband both 
 lived at Battersby, I felt as though the wonder was that
 
 3io The Way of All Flesh 
 
 misfortunes so persistent had not been followed by even 
 graver retribution. 
 
 Poor people ! They had tried to keep their ignorance 
 of the world from themselves by calling it the pursuit of 
 heavenly things, and then shutting their eyes to anything 
 that might give them trouble. A son having been born 
 to them they had shut his eyes also as far as was prac- 
 ticable. Who could blame them ? They had chapter and 
 verse for everything they had either done or left undone ; 
 there is no better thumbed precedent than that for being 
 a clergyman and a clergyman's wife. In what respect 
 had they differed from their neighbours ? How did their 
 household differ from that of any other clergyman of 
 the better sort from one end of England to the other? 
 Why then should it have been upon them, of all people 
 in the world, that this tower of Siloam had fallen ? 
 
 Surely it was the tower of Siloam that was naught 
 rather than those who stood under it; it was the system 
 rather than the people that was at fault. If Theobald 
 and his wife had but known more of the world and of 
 the things that are therein, they would have done little 
 harm to anyone. Selfish they would have always been, 
 but not more so than may very well be pardoned, and not 
 more than other people would be. As it was, the case 
 was hopeless ; it would be no use their even entering into 
 their mothers' wombs and being born again. They must 
 not only be born again but they must be born again each 
 one of them of a new father and of a new mother and of 
 a different line of ancestry for many generations before 
 their minds could become supple enough to learn anew. 
 The only thing to do with them was to humour them 
 and make the best of them till they died and be thank- 
 ful when they did so. 
 
 Theobald got my letter as I had expected, and met me 
 at the station nearest to Battersby. As I walked back 
 with him towards his own house I broke the news to him 
 as gently as I could. I pretended that the whole thing
 
 The Way of All Flesh 311 
 
 was in great measure a mistake, and that though Ernest 
 no doubt had had intentions which he ought to have re- 
 sisted, he had not meant going anything like the length 
 which Miss Maitland supposed. I said we had felt how 
 much appearances were against him, and had not dared 
 to set up this defence before the magistrate, though we 
 had no doubt about its being the true one. 
 
 Theobald acted with a readier and acuter moral sense 
 than I had given him credit for. 
 
 "I will have nothing more to do with him," he ex- 
 claimed promptly. "I will never see his face again ; do not 
 let him write either to me or to his mother; we know 
 of no such person. Tell him you have seen me, and that 
 from this day forward I shall put him out of my mind as 
 though he had never been born. I have been a good 
 father to him, and his mother idolised him ; selfishness and 
 ingratitude have been the only return we have ever had 
 from him ; my hope henceforth must be in my remaining 
 children." 
 
 I told him how Ernest's fellow curate had got hold of 
 his money, and hinted that he might very likely be penni- 
 less, or nearly so, on leaving prison. Theobald did not 
 seem displeased at this, but added soon afterwards : "If 
 this proves to be the case, tell him from me that I will 
 give him a hundred pounds if he will tell me through you 
 when he will have it paid, but tell him not to write and 
 thank me, and say that if he attempts to open up direct 
 communication either with his mother or myself, he shall 
 not have a penny of the money." 
 
 Knowing what I knew, and having determined on vio- 
 lating Miss Pontifex's instructions should the occasion 
 arise, I did not think Ernest would be any the worse for 
 a complete estrangement from his family, so I acquiesced 
 more readily in what Theobald had proposed than that 
 gentleman may have expected. 
 
 Thinking it better that I should not see Christina, I left 
 Theobald near Battersby and walked back to the station.
 
 312 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 On my way I was pleased to reflect that Ernest's father 
 was less of a fool than I had taken him to be, and had 
 the greater hopes, therefore, that his son's blunders might 
 be due to postnatal, rather than congenital misfortunes. 
 Accidents which happen to a man before he is born, in 
 the persons of his ancestors, will, if he remembers them 
 at all, leave an indelible impression on him; they will 
 have moulded his character so that, do what he will, it 
 is hardly possible for him to escape their consequences. 
 If a man is to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, he must 
 do so, not only as a little child, but as a little embryo, or 
 rather as a little zoosperm and not only this, but as one 
 that has come of zoosperms which have entered into the 
 Kingdom of Heaven before him for many generations. 
 Accidents which occur for the first time, and belong to 
 the period since a man's last birth, are not, as a general 
 rule, so permanent in their effects, though of course they 
 may sometimes be so. At any rate, I was not displeased 
 at the view which Ernest's father took of the situation. 
 
 + CHAPTER LXIV 
 
 AFTER Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to 
 the cells to wait for the van which should take him to 
 Coldbath Fields, where he was to serve his term. 
 
 He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness 
 with which events had happened during the last twenty- 
 four hours to be able to realise his position. A great 
 chasm had opened between his past and future; never- 
 theless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and 
 speak. It seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated 
 by the blow that had fallen on him, but he was not pros- 
 trated; he had suffered from many smaller laches far 
 more acutely. It was not until he thought of the pain 
 his disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that 
 he felt how readily he would have given up all he had,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 313 
 
 rather than have fallen into his present plight. It would 
 break his mother's heart. It must, he knew it would 
 and it was he who had done this. 
 
 He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, 
 but as he thought of his father and mother, his pulse 
 quickened, and the pain in his head suddenly became 
 intense. He could hardly walk to the van, and he found 
 its motion insupportable. On reaching the prison he 
 was too ill to walk without assistance across the hall to 
 the corridor or gallery where prisoners are marshalled 
 on their arrival. The prison warder, seeing at once that 
 he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, 
 as he might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; 
 he therefore sent for the doctor. When this gentleman 
 arrived, Ernest was declared to be suffering from an 
 incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away to 
 the infirmary. Here he hovered for the next two months 
 between life and death, never in full possession of his 
 reason and often delirious, but at last, contrary to the 
 expectation of both doctor and nurse, he began slowly 
 to recover. 
 
 It is said that those who have been nearly drowned 
 find the return to consciousness much more painful than 
 the loss of it had been, and so it was with my hero. 
 As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a refine- 
 ment of cruelty that he had not died once for all during 
 his delirium. He thought he should still most likely re- 
 cover only to sink a little later on from shame and sor- 
 row; nevertheless from day to day he mended, though 
 so slowly that he could hardly realise it to himself. 
 One afternoon, however, about three weeks after he had 
 regained consciousness, the nurse who tended him, and 
 who had been very kind to him, made some little rallying 
 sally which amused him; he laughed, and as he did so 
 she clapped her hands and told him he would be a man 
 again. The spark of hope was kindled, and again he 
 wished to live. Almost from that moment his thoughts
 
 314 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 began to turn less to the horrors of the past, and more 
 to the best way of meeting the future. 
 
 His worst pain was on behalf of his father and 
 mother, and how he should again face them. It still 
 seemed to him that the best thing both for him and them 
 would be that he should sever himself from them com- 
 pletely, take whatever money he could recover from 
 Pryer, and go to some place in the uttermost parts of the 
 earth, where he should never meet anyone who had 
 known him at school or college, and start afresh. Or 
 perhaps he might go to the gold fields in California 
 or Australia, of which such wonderful accounts were 
 then heard ; there he might even make his fortune, and 
 return as an old man many years hence, unknown to 
 everyone, and if so, he would live at Cambridge. As he 
 built these castles in the air, the spark of life became a 
 flame, and he longed for health, and for the freedom 
 which, now that so much of his sentence had expired, was 
 not after all very far distant. 
 
 Then things began to shape themselves more definitely. 
 Whatever happened he would be a clergyman no longer. 
 It would have been practically impossible for him to have 
 found another curacy, even if he had been so minded, but 
 he was not so minded. He hated the life he had been 
 leading ever since he had begun to read for orders; he 
 could not argue about it, but simply he loathed it and 
 would have no more of it. As he dwelt on the prospect 
 of becoming a layman again, however disgraced, he re- 
 joiced at what had befallen him, and found a blessing in 
 this very imprisonment which had at first seemed such 
 an unspeakable misfortune. 
 
 Perhaps the shock of so great a change in his sur- 
 roundings had accelerated changes in his opinions, just 
 as the cocoons of silkworms, when sent in baskets by 
 rail, hatch before their time through the novelty of heat 
 and jolting. But however this may be, his belief in 
 the stories concerning the Death, Resurrection and Ascen-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 315 
 
 sion of Jesus Christ, and hence his faith in all the other 
 Christian miracles, had dropped off him once and for 
 ever. The investigation he had made in consequence of 
 Mr. Shaw's rebuke, hurried though it was, had left a 
 deep impression upon him, and now he was well enough 
 to read he made the New Testament his chief study, 
 going through it in the spirit which Mr. Shaw had de- 
 sired of him, that is to say as one who wished neither 
 to believe nor disbelieve, but cared only about finding 
 out whether he ought to believe or no. The more he 
 read in this spirit the more the balance seemed to lie 
 in favour of unbelief, till, in the end, all further doubt 
 became impossible, and he saw plainly enough that, what- 
 ever else might be true, the story that Christ had died, 
 come to life again, and been carried from earth through 
 clouds into the heavens could not now be accepted by 
 unbiassed people. It was well he had found it out so 
 soon. In one way or another it was sure to meet him 
 sooner or later. He would probably have seen it years 
 ago if he had not been hoodwinked by people who were 
 paid for hoodwinking him. What should he have done, 
 he asked himself, if he had not made his present dis- 
 covery till years later, when he was more deeply com- 
 mitted to the life of a clergyman ? Should he have had 
 the courage to face it, or would he not more probably 
 have evolved some excellent reason for continuing to 
 think as he had thought hitherto? Should he have had 
 the courage to break away even from his present curacy ? 
 He thought not, and knew not whether to be more 
 thankful for having been shown his error or for having 
 been caught up and twisted round so that he could hardly 
 err farther, almost at the very moment of his having dis- 
 covered it. The price he had had to pay for this boon 
 was light as compared with the boon itself. What is too 
 heavy a price to pay for having duty made at once clear 
 and easy of fulfilment instead of very difficult? He was 
 sorry for his father and mother, and he was sorry for
 
 316 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Miss Maitland, but he was no longer sorry for him- 
 self. 
 
 It puzzled him, however, .that he should not have 
 known how much he had hated being a clergyman till 
 now. He knew that he did not particularly like it, but if 
 anyone had asked him whether he actually hated it, he 
 would have answered no. I suppose people almost al- 
 ways want something external to themselves, to reveal 
 to them their own likes and dislikes. Our most assured 
 likings have for the most part been arrived at neither 
 by introspection nor by any process of conscious reason- 
 ing, but by the bounding forth of the heart to welcome 
 the gospel proclaimed to it by another. We hear some 
 say that such and such a thing is thus or thus, and in a 
 moment the train that has been laid within us, but whose 
 presence we knew not, flashes into consciousness and per- 
 ception. 
 
 Only a year ago he had bounded forth to welcome Mr. 
 Hawke's sermon; since then he had bounded after a 
 College of Spiritual Pathology; now he was in full cry 
 after rationalism pure and simple ; how could he be sure 
 that his present state of mind would be more lasting than 
 his previous ones? He could not be certain, but he felt 
 as though he were now on firmer ground than he had 
 ever been before, and no matter how fleeting his present 
 opinions might prove to be, he could not but act accord- 
 ing to them till he saw reason to change them. How 
 impossible, he reflected, it would have been for him to do 
 this, if he had remained surrounded by people like his 
 father and mother, or Pryer and Fryer's friends, and 
 his rector. He had been observing, reflecting, and as- 
 similating all these months with no more consciousness 
 of mental growth than a school-boy has of growth' of 
 body, but should he have been able to admit his growth 
 to himself, and to act up to his increased strength if he 
 had remained in constant close connection with people 
 who assured him solemnly that he was under a hallucina-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 317 
 
 tion? The combination against him \yas greater than 
 his unaided strength could have broken through, and he 
 felt doubtful how far any shock less severe than the 
 one from which he was suffering would have sufficed to 
 free him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXV 
 
 As he lay on his bed day after day slowly recovering, he 
 woke up to the fact which most men arrive at sooner or 
 later, I mean that very few care two straws about truth, 
 or have any confidence that it is righter and better to 
 believe what is true than what is untrue, even though 
 belief in the untruth may seem at first sight most ex- 
 pedient. Yet it is only these few who can be said to 
 believe anything at all ; the rest are simply unbelievers in 
 disguise. Perhaps, after all, these last are right. They 
 have numbers and prosperity on their side. They have 
 all which the rationalist appeals to as his tests of right 
 and wrong. Right, according to him, is what seems right 
 to the majority of sensible, well-to-do people ; we know 
 of no safer criterion than this, but what does the decision 
 thus arrived at involve? Simply this, that a conspiracy 
 of silence about things whose truth would be immediately 
 apparent to disinterested enquirers is not only tolerable 
 but righteous on the part of those who profess to be 
 and take money for being par excellence guardians and 
 teachers of truth. 
 
 Ernest saw no logical escape from this conclusion. 
 He saw that belief on the part of the early Christians 
 in the miraculous nature of Christ's Resurrection was 
 explicable, without any supposition of miracle. The ex- 
 planation lay under the eyes of anyone who chose to 
 take a moderate degree of trouble ; it had been put before 
 the world again and again, and there had been no serious 
 attempt to refute it. How was it that Dean Alford, for 
 example, who had made the New Testament his specialty,
 
 3i8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 could not or would not see what was so obvious to 
 Ernest himself? Could it be for any other reason than 
 that he did not want to see it, and if so was he not a 
 traitor to the cause of truth? Yes, but was he not 
 also a respectable and successful man, and were not the 
 vast majority of respectable and successful men, such 
 for example, as all the bishops and archbishops, doing 
 exactly as Dean Alford did, and did not this make their 
 action right, no matter though it had been cannibalism 
 or infanticide, or even habitual untruth fulness of mind? 
 
 Monstrous, odious falsehood ! Ernest's feeble pulse 
 quickened and his pale face flushed as this hateful view 
 of life presented itself to him in all its logical consistency. 
 It was not the fact of most men being liars that shocked 
 him that was all right enough ; but even the momentary 
 doubt whether the few who were not liars ought not to 
 become liars too. There was no hope left if this were so ; 
 if this were so, let him die, the sooner the better. "Lord," 
 he exclaimed inwardly, "I don't believe one word of it. 
 Strengthen Thou and confirm my disbelief." It seemed 
 to him that he could never henceforth see a bishop going 
 to consecration without saying to himself : "There, but 
 for the grace of God, went Ernest Pontifex." It was no 
 doing of his. He could not boast ; if he had lived in the 
 time of Christ he might himself have been an early Chris- 
 tian, or even an Apostle for aught he knew. On the 
 whole, he felt that he had much to be thankful for. 
 
 The conclusion, then, that it might be better to believe 
 error than truth, should be ordered out of court at once, 
 no matter by how clear a logic it had been arrived at ; but 
 what was the alternative ? It was this, that our criterion 
 of truth i.e. that truth is what commends itself to the 
 great majority of sensible and successful people is not 
 infallible. The rule is sound, and covers by far the 
 greater number of cases, but it has its exceptions. 
 
 He asked himself, what were they? Ah! that was a 
 difficult matter ; there were so many, and the rules which
 
 The Way of All Flesh 319 
 
 governed them were sometimes so subtle that mistakes 
 always had and always would be made; it was just this 
 that made it impossible to reduce life to an exact science. 
 There was a rough-and-ready, rule-of-thumb test of truth, 
 and a number of rules as regards exceptions which could 
 be mastered without much trouble, yet there was a resi- 
 due of cases in which decision was difficult so difficult 
 that a man had better follow his instinct than attempt to 
 decide them by any process of reasoning. 
 
 Instinct then is the ultimate court of appeal. And 
 what is instinct? It is a mode of faith in the evidence 
 of things not actually seen. And so my hero returned 
 almost to the point from which he had started originally, 
 namely, that the just shall live by faith. 
 
 And this is what the just that is to say reasonable 
 people do as regards those daily affairs of life which 
 most concern them. They settle smaller matters by the 
 exercise of their own deliberation. More important ones, 
 such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of 
 those whom they love, the investment of their money, 
 the extrication of their affairs from any. serious mess 
 these things they generally entrust to others of whose 
 capacity they know little save from general report ; they 
 act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge. 
 So the English nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and 
 naval defences to a First Lord of the Admiralty, who, not 
 being a sailor, can know nothing about these matters ex- 
 cept by acts of faith. There can be no doubt about faith' 
 and not reason being the ultima ratio. 
 
 Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the 
 charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, can- 
 not get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first prem- 
 ise. He requires postulates and axioms which tran- 
 cend demonstration, and without which he can do noth- 
 ing. His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his 
 ground is faith. Nor again can he get further than tell- 
 ing a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from
 
 32O The Way of All Flesh 
 
 him. He says "which is absurd," and declines to discuss 
 the matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove 
 to be as necessary for him as for anyone else. "By faith 
 in what, then," asked Ernest of himself, "shall a just man 
 endeavour to live at this present time?" He answered 
 to himself, "At any rate not by faith in the supernatural 
 element of the Christian religion." 
 
 And how should he best persuade his fellow-country- 
 men to leave off believing in this supernatural element? 
 Looking at the matter from a practical point of view, he 
 thought the Archbishop of Canterbury afforded the most 
 promising key to the situation. It lay between him and 
 the Pope. The Pope was perhaps best in theory, but in 
 practice the Archbishop of Canterbury would do suffi- 
 ciently well. If he could only manage to sprinkle a pinch 
 of salt, as it were, on the Archbishop's tail, he might con- 
 vert the whole Church of England to free thought by a 
 coup de main. There must be an amount of cogency 
 which even an Archbishop an Archbishop whose per- 
 ceptions had never been quickened by imprisonment for 
 assault would not be able to withstand. When brought 
 face to face with the facts, as he, Ernest, could arrange 
 them, his Grace would have no resource but to admit 
 them ; being an honourable man he would at once resign 
 his Archbishopric, and Christianity would become extinct 
 in England within a few months' time. This, at any rate, 
 was how things ought to be. But all the time Ernest had 
 no confidence in the Archbishop's not hopping off just 
 as the pinch was about to fall on him, and this seemed 
 so unfair that his blood boiled at the thought of it. If 
 this was to be so, he must try if he could not fix him by 
 the judicious use of bird-lime or a snare, or throw the 
 salt on his tail from an ambuscade. 
 
 To do him justice, it was not himself that he greatly 
 cared about. He knew he had been humbugged, and he 
 knew also that the greater part of the ills which had 
 afflicted him were due, indirectly, in chief measure to
 
 The Way of All Flesh 321 
 
 the influence of Christian teaching; still, if the mischief 
 had ended with himself, he should have thought little 
 about it, but there was his sister, and his brother Joey, 
 and the hundreds and thousands of young people through- 
 out England whose lives were being blighted through 
 the lies told them by people whose business it was to 
 know better, but who scamped their work and shirked 
 difficulties instead of facing them. It was this which 
 made him think it worth while to be angry, and to con- 
 sider whether he could not at least do something towards 
 saving others from such years of waste and misery as he 
 had had to pass himself. If there was no truth in the 
 miraculous accounts of Christ's Death and Resurrection, 
 the whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth 
 of those events tumbled to the ground. "Why," he ex- 
 claimed, with all the arrogance of youth, "they put a 
 gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for getting money out 
 of silly people who think they have supernatural power; 
 why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pre- 
 tending that he can absolve sins, or turn bread and wine 
 into the flesh and blood of One who died two thousand 
 years ago? What," he asked himself, "could be more 
 pure 'hanky-panky' than that a bishop should lay his 
 hands upon a young man and pretend to convey to him 
 the spiritual power to work this miracle ? It was all very 
 well to talk about toleration ; toleration, like everything 
 else, had its limits ; besides, if it was to include the bishop, 
 let it include the fortune-teller too." He would explain 
 all this to the Archbishop of Canterbury by and by, but as 
 he ceuld not get hold of him just now, it occurred to him 
 that he might experimentalise advantageously upon the 
 viler soul of the prison chaplain. It was only those who 
 took the first and most obvious step in their power who 
 ever did great things in the end, so one day, when Mr. 
 Hughes for this was the chaplain's name was talking 
 with him, Ernest introduced the question of Christian 
 evidences, and tried to raise a discussion upon them.
 
 322 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Mr. Hughes had been very kind to him, but he was more 
 than twice my hero's age, and had long taken the measure 
 of such objections as Ernest tried to put before him. I 
 do not suppose he believed in the actual objective truth 
 of the stories about Christ's Resurrection and Ascension 
 any more than Ernest did, but he knew that this was a 
 small matter, and that the real issue lay much deeper than 
 this. 
 
 Mr. Hughes was a man who had been in authority for 
 many years, and he brushed Ernest on one side as if he 
 had been a fly. He did it so well that my hero never 
 ventured to tackle him again, and confined his conversa- 
 tion with him for the future to such matters as what he 
 had better do when he got out of prison; and here Mr. 
 Hughes was ever ready to listen to him with sympathy 
 and kindness. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI 
 
 ERNEST was now so far convalescent as to be able to sit 
 up for the greater part of the day. He had been three 
 months in prison, and, though not strong enough to 
 leave the infirmary, was beyond all fear of a relapse. 
 He was talking one day with Mr. Hughes about his 
 future, and again expressed his intention of emigrating 
 to Australia or New Zealand with the money he should 
 recover from Pryer. Whenever he spoke of this he no- 
 ticed that Mr. Hughes looked grave '-and was silent: he 
 had thought that perhaps the chaplain wanted him to 
 return to his profession, and disapproved of his evident 
 anxiety to turn to something else; now, however, he 
 asked Mr. Hughes point blank why it was that he disap- 
 proved of his idea of emigrating. 
 
 Mr. Hughes endeavoured to evade him, but Ernest was 
 not to be put off. There was something in the chaplain's 
 manner which suggested that he knew more than Ernest
 
 The Way of All Flesh 323 
 
 did, but did not like to say it. This alarmed him so much 
 that he begged him not to keep him in suspense ; after a 
 little hesitation Mr. Hughes, thinking him now strong 
 enough to stand it, broke the news as gently as he could 
 that the whole of Ernest's money had disappeared. 
 
 The day after my return from Battersby I called on 
 my solicitor, and was told that he had written to Pryer, 
 requiring him to refund the monies for which he had 
 given his I.O.U.'s. Pryer replied that he had given 
 orders to his broker to close his operations, which un- 
 fortunately had resulted so far in heavy loss, and that 
 the balance should be paid to my solicitor on the following 
 settling day, then about a week distant. When the time 
 came, we heard nothing from Pryer, and going to his 
 lodgings, found that he had left with his few effects on 
 the very day after he had heard from us, and had not 
 been seen since. 
 
 I had heard from Ernest the name of the broker who 
 had been employed, and went at once to see him. He 
 told me Pryer had closed all his accounts for cash on 
 the day that Ernest had been sentenced, and had received 
 2315, which was all that remained of Ernest's original 
 5000. With this he had decamped, nor had we enough 
 clue as to his whereabouts to be able to take any steps 
 to recover the money. There was in fact nothing to be 
 done but to consider the whole as lost. I may say here 
 that neither I nor Ernest ever heard of Pryer again, nor 
 have any idea what became of him. 
 
 This placed me in a difficult position. I knew, of 
 course, that in a few years Ernest would have many 
 times over as much money as he had lost, but I knew also 
 that he did not know this, and feared that the supposed 
 loss of all he had in the world might be more than he 
 could stand when coupled with his other misfortunes. 
 
 The prison authorities had found Theobald's address 
 from a letter in Ernest's pocket, and had communicated 
 with him more than once concerning his son's illness, but
 
 324 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Theobald had not written to me, and I supposed my god- 
 son to be in good health. He would be just twenty-four 
 years old when he left prison, and if I followed out his 
 aunt's instructions, would have to battle with fortune 
 for another four years as well as he could. The question 
 before me was whether it was right to let him run so 
 much risk, or whether I should not to some extent trans- 
 gress my instructions which there was nothing to pre- 
 vent my doing if I thought Miss Pontifex would have 
 wished it and let him have the same sum that he would 
 have recovered from Pryer. 
 
 If my godson had been an older man, and more fixed 
 in any definite groove, this is what I should have done, 
 but he was still very young, and more than commonly 
 unformed for his age. If, again, I had known of his 
 illness I should not have dared to lay any heavier burden 
 on his back than he had to bear already; but not being 
 uneasy about his health, I thought a few years of rough- 
 ing it and of experience concerning the importance of 
 not playing tricks with money would do him no harm. 
 So I decided to keep a sharp eye upon him as soon as 
 he came out of prison, and to let him splash about in 
 deep water as best he could till I saw whether he was 
 able to swim, or was about to sink. In the first case I 
 would let him go on swimming till he was nearly eight- 
 and-twenty, when I would prepare him gradually for the 
 good fortune that awaited him; in the second I would 
 hurry up to the rescue. So I wrote to say that Pryer had 
 absconded, and that he could have 100 from his father 
 when he came out of prison. I then waited to see what 
 effect these tidings would have, not expecting to receive 
 an answer for three months, for I had been told on en- 
 quiry that no letter could be received by a prisoner till 
 after he had been three months in gaol. I also wrote to 
 Theobald and told him of Pryer's disappearance. 
 
 As a matter of fact, when my letter arrived the gover- 
 nor of the gaol read it, and in a case of such importance
 
 The Way of All Flesh 325 
 
 would have relaxed the rules if Ernest's state had allowed 
 it; his illness prevented this, and the governor left it to 
 the chaplain and the doctor to break the news to him 
 when they thought him strong enough to bear it, which 
 was now the case. In the meantime I received a formal 
 official document saying that my letter had been received 
 and would be communicated to the prisoner in due 
 course; I believe it was simply through a mistake on 
 the part of a clerk that I was not informed of Ernest's 
 illness, but I heard nothing of it till I saw him by his own 
 desire a few days after the chaplain had broken to him 
 the substance of what I had written. 
 
 Ernest was terribly shocked when he heard of the 
 loss of his money, but his ignorance of the world pre- 
 vented him from seeing the full extent of the mischief. 
 He had never been in serious want of money yet, and 
 did not know what it meant. In reality, money losses 
 are the hardest to bear of any by those who are old 
 enough to comprehend them. 
 
 A man can stand being told that he must submit to a 
 severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease 
 which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or 
 blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings 
 must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greater 
 number of mankind ; most men, indeed, go coolly enough 
 even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before finan- 
 cial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, 
 as a general rule, is their prostration. Suicide is a com- 
 mon consequence of money losses ; it is rarely sought as 
 a means of escape from bodily suffering. If we feel 
 that we have a competence at our backs, so that we can 
 die warm and quietly in our beds, with no need to worry 
 about expense, we live our lives out to the dregs, no 
 matter how excruciating our torments. Job probably felt 
 the loss of his flocks and herds more than that of his 
 wife and family, for he could enjoy his flocks and herds 
 without his family, but not his family not for long if
 
 326 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 he had lost all his money. Loss of money indeed is not 
 only the worst pain in itself, but it is the parent of all 
 others. Let a man have been brought up to a moderate 
 competence, and have no specialty ; then let his money be 
 suddenly taken from him, and how long is his health 
 likely to survive the change in all his little ways which 
 loss of money will entail ? How long again is the esteem 
 and sympathy of friends likely to survive ruin? People 
 may be very sorry for us, but their attitude towards us 
 hitherto has been based upon the supposition that we 
 were situated thus or thus in money matters ; when this 
 breaks down there must be a restatement of the social 
 problem so far as we are concerned; we have been ob- 
 taining esteem under false pretences. Granted, then, 
 that the three most serious losses which a man can suffer 
 are those affecting money, health and reputation. Loss 
 of money is far the worst, then comes ill-health, and 
 then loss of reputation ; loss of reputation is a bad third, 
 for, if a man keeps health and money unimpaired, it will 
 be generally found that his loss of reputation is due to 
 breaches of parvenu conventions only, and not to viola- 
 tions of those older, better established canons whose 
 authority is unquestionable. In this case a man may 
 grow a new reputation as easily as a lobster grows a 
 new claw, or, if he have health and money, may thrive in 
 great peace of mind without any reputation at all. The 
 only chance for a man who has lost his money is that 
 he shall still be young enough to stand uprooting andj 
 transplanting without more than temporary derangement, 
 and this I believed my godson still to be. 
 
 By the prison rules he might receive and send a letter 
 after he had been in gaol three months, and might also 
 receive one visit from a friend. When he received my 
 letter, he at once asked me to come and see him, which 
 of course I did. I found him very much changed, and 
 still so feeble that the exertion of coming from the in- 
 firmary to the cell in which I was allowed to see him,
 
 The Way of All Flesh 327 
 
 and the agitation of seeing me were too much for him. 
 At first he quite broke down, and I was so pained at the 
 state in which I found him, that I was on the point of 
 breaking my instructions then and there. I contented 
 myself, however, for the time, with assuring him that I 
 would help him as soon as he came out of prison, and 
 that, when he had made up his mind what he would do, 
 he was to come to me for what money might be necessary, 
 if he could not get it from his father. To make it easier 
 for him I told him that his aunt, on her deathbed, had 
 desired me, to do something of this sort should an emer- 
 gency arise, so that he would only be taking what his 
 aunt had left him. 
 
 "Then," said he, "I will not take the 100 from 
 my father, and I will never see him or my mother 
 again." 
 
 I said : "Take the 100, Ernest, and as much more as 
 you can get, and then do not see them again if you do 
 not like." 
 
 This Ernest would not do. If he took money from 
 them, he could not cut them, and he wanted to cut them. 
 I thought my godson would get on a great deal better 
 if he would only have the firmness to do as he proposed, 
 as regards breaking completely with his father and 
 mother, and said so. "Then don't you like them?" said 
 he, with a look of surprise. 
 
 "Like them !" said I, "I think they're horrid." 
 
 "Oh, that's the kindest thing of all you have done for 
 me," he exclaimed. "I thought all all middle-aged peo- 
 ple liked my father and mother." 
 
 He had been about to call me old, but I was only 
 fifty-seven, and was not going to have this, so I made a 
 face when I saw him hesitating, which drove him into 
 "middle-aged." 
 
 "If you like it," said I, "I will say all your family are 
 horrid except yourself and your Aunt Alethea. The 
 greater part of every family is always odious; if there
 
 328 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 are one or two good ones in a very large family, it is as 
 much as can be expected." 
 
 "Thank you," he replied, gratefully, "I think I can 
 now stand almost anything. I will come and see you as 
 soon as I come out of gaol. Goodbye." For the warder 
 had told us that the time allowed for our interview was 
 at an end. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVII 
 
 As soon as Ernest found that he had no money to look 
 to upon leaving prison he saw that his dreams about 
 emigrating and farming must come to an end, for he 
 knew that he was incapable of working at the plough or 
 with the axe for long together himself. And now it 
 seemed he should have no money to pay any one else 
 for doing so. It was this that resolved him to part once 
 and for all with his parents. If he had been going 
 abroad he could have kept up relations with them, for 
 they would have been too far off to interfere with him. 
 
 He knew his father and mother would object to being 
 cut ; they would wish to appear kind and forgiving ; they 
 would also dislike having no further power to plague 
 him ; but he knew also very well that so long as he and 
 they ran in harness together they would be always pulling 
 one way and he another. He wanted to drop the gentle- 
 man and go down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest 
 rung of the ladder, where no one would know of his 
 disgrace or mind it if he did know ; his father and 
 mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on 
 to the fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with 
 no prospect of advancement. Ernest had seen enough 
 in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink 
 and attended to his business, could earn more money than 
 a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of 
 show was required of him. The tailor also had more
 
 The Way of All Flesh 329 
 
 liberty, and a better chance of rising. Ernest resolved 
 at once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower 
 promptly, gracefully and with the idea of rising again, 
 rather than cling to the skirts of a respectability which 
 would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and make 
 him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which 
 he could do better without. 
 
 He arrived at this result more quickly than he might 
 otherwise have done through remembering something he 
 had once heard his aunt say about "kissing the soil." 
 This had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by 
 reason of its brevity ; when later on he came to know the 
 story of Hercules and Antaeus, he found it one of the 
 very few ancient fables which had a hold over him his 
 chiefest debt to classical literature. His aunt had wanted 
 him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil 
 should his Hercules ever throw him. It was too late for 
 this now or he thought it was but the mode of carrying 
 out his aunt's idea was a detail; there were a hundred 
 ways of kissing the soil besides becoming a carpenter. 
 
 He had told me this during our interview, and I had 
 encouraged him to the utmost of my power. He showed 
 so much more good sense than I had given him credit for 
 that I became comparatively easy about him, and deter- 
 mined to let him play his own game, being always, how- 
 ever, ready to hand in case things went too far wrong. 
 It was not simply because he disliked his father and 
 mother that he wanted to have no more to do with them ; 
 if it had been only this he would have put up with them; 
 but a warning voice within told him distinctly enough 
 that if he was clean cut away from them he might still 
 have a chance of success, whereas if they had anything 
 whatever to do with him, or even knew where he was, 
 they would hamper him and in the end ruin him. Abso- 
 lute independence he believed to be his only chance of 
 very life itself. 
 
 Over and above this if this were not enough Ernest
 
 330 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 had a faith in his own destiny such as most young men, 
 I suppose, feel, but the grounds of which were not ap- 
 parent to any one but himself. Rightly or wrongly, in a 
 quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which, if 
 he were only free to use it in his own way, might do 
 great things some day. He did not know when, nor 
 where, nor how his opportunity was to come, but he never 
 doubted that it would come in spite of all that had 
 happened, and above all else he cherished the hope that 
 he might know how to seize it if it came, for whatever 
 it was it would be something that no one else could do 
 so well as he could. People said there were no dragons 
 and giants for adventurous men to fight with nowadays ; 
 it was beginning to dawn upon him that there were just 
 as many now as at any past time. 
 
 Monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was 
 qualifying himself for a high mission by a term of im- 
 prisonment, he could no more help it than he could help 
 breathing; it was innate in him, and it was even more 
 with a view to this than for other reasons that he wished 
 to sever the connection between himself and his parents ; 
 for he knew that if ever the day came in which it should 
 appear that before him too there was a race set in which 
 it might be an honour to have run among the foremost, 
 his father and mother would be the first to let him and 
 hinder him in running it. They had been the first to say 
 that he ought to run such a race ; they would also be the 
 first to trip him up if he took them at their word, and 
 then afterwards upbraid him for not having won. 
 Achievement of any kind would be impossible for him 
 unless he was free from those who would be for ever 
 dragging him back into the conventional. The conven- 
 tional had been tried already and had been found want- 
 ing. 
 
 He had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of 
 escaping once for all from those who at once tormented 
 him and would hold him earthward should a chance of
 
 The Way of All Flesh 331 
 
 soaring open before him. He should never have had it 
 but for his imprisonment ; but for this the force of habit 
 and routine would have been too strong for him; he 
 should hardly have had it if he had not lost all his 
 money ; the gap would not have been so wide but that 
 he might have been inclined to throw a plank across it. 
 He rejoiced now, therefore, over his loss of money 
 as well as over his imprisonment, which had made it 
 more easy for him to follow his truest and most lasting 
 interests. 
 
 At times he wavered, when he thought of how his 
 mother, who in her way, as he thought, had loved him, 
 would weep and think sadly over him, or how perhaps 
 she might even fall ill and die, and how the blame would 
 rest with him. At these times his resolution was near 
 breaking, but when he found I applauded his design, the 
 voice within, which bade him see his father's and mother's 
 faces no more, grew louder and more persistent. If he 
 could not cut himself adrift from those who he knew 
 would hamper him, when so small an effort was wanted, 
 his dream of a destiny was idle ; what was the prospect of 
 a hundred pounds from his father in comparison with 
 jeopardy to this? He still felt deeply the pain his dis- 
 grace had inflicted upon his father and mother, but he 
 was getting stronger, and reflected that as he had run his 
 chance with them for parents, so they must run theirs 
 with him for a son. 
 
 He had nearly settled down to this conclusion when 
 he received a letter from his father which made his de- 
 cision final. If the prison rules had been interpreted 
 strictly, he would not have been allowed to have this 
 letter for another three months, as he had already heard 
 from me, but the governor took a lenient view, and con- 
 sidered the letter from me to be a business communica- 
 tion hardly coming under the category of a letter from 
 friends. Theobald's letter therefore was given to his 
 son. It ran as follows :
 
 332 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "My dear Ernest, My object in writing is not to up- 
 braid you with the disgrace and shame you have inflicted 
 upon your mother and myself, to say nothing of your 
 brother Joey, and your sister. Suffer of course we 
 must, but we know to whom to look in our affliction, and 
 are filled with anxiety rather on your behalf than our 
 own. Your mother is wonderful. She is pretty well 
 in health, and desires me to send you her love. 
 
 "Have you considered your prospects on leaving pris- 
 on? I understand from Mr. Overton that you have lost 
 the legacy which your grandfather left you, together with 
 all the interest that accrued during your minority, in the 
 course of speculation upon the Stock Exchange! If you 
 have indeed been guilty of such appalling folly it is diffi- 
 cult to see what you can turn your hand to, and I sup- 
 pose you will try to find a clerkship in an office. Your 
 salary will doubtless be low at first, but you have made 
 your bed and must not complain if you have to lie upon 
 it. If you take pains to please your employers they will 
 not be backward in promoting you. 
 
 "When I first heard from Mr. Overton of the unspeak- 
 able calamity which had befallen your mother and my- 
 self, I had resolved not to see you again. I am unwilling, 
 however, to have recourse to a measure which would 
 deprive you of your last connecting link with respectable 
 people. Your mother and I will see you as soon as you 
 come out of prison; not at Battersby we do not wish 
 you to come down here at present but somewhere else, 
 probably in London. You need not shrink from seeing 
 us; we shall not reproach you. We will then decide 
 about your future. 
 
 "At present our impression is that you will find a fairer 
 start probably in Australia or New Zealand than here, 
 and I am prepared to find you 75 or even if necessary 
 so far as 100 to pay your passage money. Once in 
 the colony you must be dependent upon your own ex- 
 ertions.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 333 
 
 "May Heaven prosper them and you, and restore you 
 to us years hence a respected member of society. Your 
 affectionate father, T. PONTIFEX." 
 
 Then there was a postscript in Christina's writing. 
 
 "My darling, darling boy, pray with me daily and 
 hourly that we may yet again become a happy, united, 
 God-fearing family as we were before this horrible pain 
 fell upon us. Your sorrowing but ever loving mother, 
 
 "C. P." 
 
 This letter did not produce the effect on Ernest that it 
 would have done before his imprisonment began. His 
 father and mother thought they could take him up as 
 they had left him off. They forgot the rapidity with 
 which development follows misfortune, if the sufferer is 
 young and of a sound temperament. Ernest made no 
 reply to his father's letter, but his desire for a total break 
 developed into something like a passion. "There are 
 orphanages," he exclaimed to himself, "for children who 
 have lost their parents oh ! why, why, why, are there no 
 harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost 
 them?" And he brooded over the bliss of Melchisedek 
 who had been born an orphan, without father, without 
 mother, and without descent. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII 
 
 WHEN I think over all that Ernest told me about his 
 prison meditations, and the conclusions he was drawn to, 
 it occurs to me that in reality he was wanting to do the 
 very last thing which it would have entered into his head 
 to think of wanting. I mean that he was trying to give 
 up father and mother for Christ's sake. He would have 
 said he was giving them up because he thought they hin- 
 dered him in the pursuit of his truest and most lasting
 
 334 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 happiness. Granted, but what is this if it is not Christ? 
 What is Christ if He is not this? He who takes the 
 highest and most self-respecting view of his own welfare 
 which it is in his power to conceive, and adheres to it 
 in spite of conventionality, is a Christian whether he 
 knows it and calls himself one, or whether he does not. 
 A rose is not the less a rose because it does not know its 
 own name. 
 
 What if circumstances had made his duty more easy 
 for him than it would be to most men? That was his 
 luck, as much as it is other people's luck to have other 
 duties made easy for them by accident of birth. Surely 
 if people are born rich or handsome they have a right to 
 their good fortune. Some, I know, will say that one man 
 has no right to be born with a better constitution than 
 another ; others again will say that luck is the only right- 
 eous object of human veneration. Both, I daresay, can 
 make out a very good case, but whichever may be right 
 surely Ernest had as much right to the good luck of 
 finding a duty made easier as he had had to the bad for- 
 tune of falling into the scrape which had got him into 
 prison. A man is not to be sneered at for having a 
 trump card in his hand ; he is only to be sneered at if he 
 plays his trump card badly. 
 
 Indeed, I question whether it is ever much harder for 
 anyone to give up father and mother for Christ's sake 
 than it was for Ernest. The relations between the par- 
 ties will have almost always been severely strained be- 
 fore it comes to this. I doubt whether anyone was ever 
 yet required to give up those to whom he was tenderly 
 attached for a mere matter of conscience: he will have 
 ceased to be tenderly attached to them long before he is 
 called upon to break with them ; for differences of 
 opinion concerning any matter of vital importance spring 
 from differences of constitution, and these will already 
 have led to so much other disagreement that the "giving 
 up," when it comes, is like giving up an aching but very
 
 The Way of All Flesh 335 
 
 loose and hollow tooth. It is the loss of those whom we 
 are not required to give up for Christ's sake which is 
 really painful to us. Then there is a wrench in earnest. 
 Happily, no matter how light the task that is demanded 
 from us, it is enough if we do it; we reap our reward, 
 much as though it were a Herculean labour. 
 
 But to return, the conclusion Ernest came to was that 
 he would be a tailor. He talked the matter over with the 
 chaplain, who told him there was no reason why he should 
 not be able to earn his six or seven shillings a day by the 
 time he came out of prison, if he chose to learn the trade 
 during the remainder of his term not quite three 
 months ; the doctor said he was strong enough for this, 
 and that it was about the only thing he was as yet fit for ; 
 so he left the infirmary sooner than he would otherwise 
 have done and entered the tailor's shop, overjoyed at 
 the thoughts of seeing his w r ay again, and confident of 
 rising some day if he could only get a firm foothold to 
 start from. 
 
 Everyone whom he had to do with saw that he did not 
 belong to what are called the criminal classes, and finding 
 him eager to learn and to save trouble always treated him 
 kindly and almost respectfully. He did not find the work 
 irksome : it was far more pleasant than making Latin 
 and Greek verses at Roughborough ; he felt that he would 
 rather be here in prison than at Roughborough again 
 yes, or even at Cambridge itself. The only trouble he 
 was ever in danger of getting into was through exchang- 
 ing words or looks with the more decent-looking of his 
 fellow-prisoners. This was forbidden, but he never 
 missed a chance of breaking the rules in this respect. 
 
 Any man of his ability who was at the same time 
 anxious to learn would of course make rapid progress, 
 and before he left prison the warder said he was as good 
 a tailor with his three months' apprenticeship as many a 
 man was with twelve. Ernest had never before been so 
 much praised by any of his teachers. Each day as he
 
 336 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 grew stronger in health and more accustomed to his 
 surroundings he saw some fresh advantage in his posi- 
 tion, an advantage which he had not aimed at, but which 
 had come almost in spite of himself, and he marvelled at 
 his own good fortune, which had ordered things so 
 greatly better for him than he could have ordered them 
 for himself. 
 
 His having lived six months in Ashpit Place was a case 
 in point. Things were possible to him which to others 
 like him would be impossible. If such a man as Towne- 
 ley were told he must live henceforth in a house like 
 those in Ashpit Place it would be more than he could 
 stand. Ernest could not have stood it himself if he had 
 gone to live there of compulsion through want of money. 
 It was only because he had felt himself able to run away 
 at any minute that he had not wanted to do so; now, 
 however, that he had become familiar with life in Ashpit 
 Place he no longer minded it, and could live gladly in 
 lower parts of London than that so long as he could pay 
 his way. It was from no prudence or forethought that 
 he had served this apprenticeship to life among the 
 poor. He had been trying in a feeble way to be thorough 
 in his work : he had not been thorough, the whole thing 
 had been a fiasco; but he had made a little puny effort in 
 the direction of being genuine, and behold, in his hour 
 of need it had been returned to him with a reward far 
 richer than he had deserved. He could not have faced 
 becoming one of the very poor unless he had had such 
 a bridge to conduct him over to them as he had found 
 unwittingly in Ashpit Place. True, there had been draw- 
 backs in the particular house he had chosen, but he need 
 not live in a house where there was a Mr. Holt, and he 
 should no longer be tied to the profession which he so 
 much hated ; if there were neither screams nor scripture 
 readings he could be happy in a garret at three shillings 
 a week, such as Miss Maitland lived in. 
 
 As he thought further he remembered that all things
 
 The Way of All Flesh 337 
 
 work together for good to them that love God; was it 
 possible, he asked himself, that he too, however imper- 
 fectly, had been trying to love him? He dared not an- 
 swer Yes, but he would try hard that it should be so. 
 Then there came into his mind that noble air of Handel's : 
 "Great God, who yet but darkly known," and he felt it 
 as he had never felt it before. He had lost his faith 
 in Christianity, but his faith in something he knew not 
 what, but that there was a something as yet but darkly 
 known, which made right right and wrong wrong his 
 faith in this grew stronger and stronger daily. 
 
 Again there crossed his mind thoughts of the power 
 which he felt to be in him, and of how and where it was 
 to find its vent. The same instinct which had led him to 
 live among the poor because it was the nearest thing to 
 him which he could lay hold of with any clearness came 
 to his assistance here too. He thought of the Australian 
 gold and how those who lived among it had never seen it 
 though it abounded all around them: "Here is gold 
 everywhere," he exclaimed inwardly, "to those who look 
 for it." Might not his opportunity be close upon him 
 if he looked carefully enough at his immediate sur- 
 roundings ? What was his position ? He had lost all. 
 Could he not turn his having lost all into an opportunity ? 
 Might he not, if he too sought the strength of the Lord, 
 find, like St. Paul, that it was perfected in weakness ? 
 
 He had nothing more to lose ; money, friends, charac- 
 ter, all were gone for a very long time if not for ever; 
 but there was something else also that had taken its flight 
 along with these. I mean the fear of that which man 
 could do unto him. Cantabit vacuus. Who could hurt 
 him more than he had been hurt already? Let him but 
 be able to earn his bread, and he knew of nothing which 
 he dared not venture if it would make the world a hap- 
 pier place for those who were young and lovable. 
 Herein he found so much comfort that he almost wished 
 he had lost his reputation even more completely for
 
 338 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 he saw that it was like a man's life which may be found 
 of them that lose it and lost of them that would find it. 
 He should not have had the courage to give up all for 
 Christ's sake, but now Christ had mercifully taken all, 
 and lo ! it seemed as though all were found. 
 
 As the days went slowly by he came to see that Chris- 
 tianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as 
 much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about 
 names not about things ; practically the Church of 
 Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have 
 the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for 
 he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gen- 
 tleman. Then he saw also that it matters little what 
 profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may 
 make, provided only he follows it out with charitable in- 
 consistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. 
 It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held 
 and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger 
 lies. This was the crowning point of the edifice; when 
 he had got here he no longer wished to molest even the 
 Pope. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have hopped 
 about all round him and even picked crumbs out of his 
 hand without running risk of getting a sly sprinkle of 
 salt. That wary prelate himself might perhaps have been 
 of a different opinion, but the robins and thrushes that 
 hop about our lawns are not more needlessly distrustful 
 of the hand that throws them out crumbs of bread in 
 winter, than the Archbishop would have been of my 
 hero. 
 
 Perhaps he was helped to arrive at the foregoing con- 
 clusion by an event which almost thrust inconsistency 
 upon him. A few days after he had left the infirmary the 
 chaplain came to his cell and told him that the prisoner 
 who played the organ in chapel had just finished his sen- 
 tence and was leaving the prison ; he therefore offered the 
 post to Ernest, who he already knew played the organ. 
 Ernest was at first in doubt whether it would be right for
 
 The Way of All Flesh 339 
 
 him to assist at religious services more than he was 
 actually compelled to do, but the pleasure of playing the 
 organ, and the privileges which the post involved, made 
 him see excellent reasons for not riding consistency to 
 death. Having, then, once introduced an element of in- 
 consistency into his system, he was far too consistent 
 not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long 
 into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appear- 
 ance differed but little from the indifferentism from 
 which Mr. Hawke had aroused him. 
 
 By becoming organist he was saved from the tread- 
 mill, for which the doctor had said he was unfit as yet, 
 but which he would probably have been put to in due 
 course as soon as he was stronger. He might have es- 
 caped the tailor's shop altogether and done only the com- 
 paratively light work of attending to the chaplain's rooms 
 if he had liked, but he wanted to learn as much tailoring 
 as he could, and did not therefore take advantage of this 
 offer; he was allowed, however, two hours a day in the 
 afternoon for practice. From that moment his prison 
 life ceased to be monotonous, and the remaining two 
 months of his sentence slipped by almost as rapidly as 
 they would have done if he had been free. What with 
 music, books, learning his trade, and conversation with 
 the chaplain, who was just the kindly, sensible person 
 that Ernest wanted in order to steady him a little, the 
 days went by so pleasantly that when the time came for 
 him to leave prison, he did so, or thought he did so, not 
 without regret. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIX 
 
 IN coming to the conclusion that he would sever the con- 
 nection between himself and his family once for all 
 Ernest had reckoned without his family. Theobald 
 wanted to be rid of his son, it is true, in so far as he
 
 340 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 wished him to be no nearer at any rate than the Antipo- 
 des; but he had no idea of entirely breaking with him. 
 He knew his son well enough to have a pretty shrewd 
 idea that this was what Ernest would wish himself, and 
 perhaps as much for this reason as for any other he was 
 determined to keep up the connection, provided it did not 
 involve Ernest's coming to Battersby nor any recurring 
 outlay. 
 
 When the time approached for him to leave prison, his 
 father and mother consulted as to what course they 
 should adopt. 
 
 "We must never leave him to himself," said Theobald 
 impressively; "we can neither of us wish that." 
 
 "Oh, no! no! dearest Theobald," exclaimed Christina. 
 "Whoever else deserts him, and however distant he may 
 be from us, he must still feel that he has parents whose 
 hearts beat with affection for him no matter how cruelly 
 he has pained them." 
 
 "He has been his own worst enemy," said Theobald. 
 "He has never loved us as we deserved, and now he will 
 be withheld by false shame from wishing to see us. He 
 will avoid us if he can." 
 
 "Then we must go to him ourselves," said Christina; 
 "whether he likes it or not we must be at his side to sup- 
 port him as he enters again upon the world." 
 
 "If we do not want him to give us the slip we must 
 catch him as he leaves prison." 
 
 "We will, we will ; our faces shall be the first to gladden 
 his eyes as he comes out, and our voices the first to ex- 
 hort him to return to the paths of virtue." 
 
 "I think," said Theobald, "if he sees us in the street 
 he will turn round and run away from us. He is in- 
 tensely selfish." 
 
 "Then we must get leave to go inside the prison, and 
 see him before he gets outside." 
 
 After a good deal of discussion this was the plan they
 
 The Way of All Flesh 341 
 
 decided on adopting, and having so decided, Theobald 
 wrote to the governor of the gaol asking whether he could 
 be admitted inside the gaol to receive Ernest when his 
 sentence had expired. He received answer in the affirma- 
 tive, and the pair left Battersby the day before Ernest 
 was to come out of prison. 
 
 Ernest had not reckoned on this, and was rather sur- 
 prised on being told a few minutes before nine that he 
 was to go into the receiving room before he left the 
 prison, as there were visitors waiting to see him. His 
 heart fell, for he guessed who they were, but he screwed 
 up his courage and hastened to the receiving room. 
 There, sure enough, standing at the end of the table 
 nearest the door were the two people whom he regarded 
 as the most dangerous enemies he had in all the world 
 his father and mother. 
 
 He could not fly, but he knew that if he wavered he 
 was lost. 
 
 His mother was crying, but she sprang forward to meet 
 him and clasped him in her arms. "Oh, my boy, my boy," 
 she sobbed, and she could say no more. 
 
 Ernest was as white as a sheet. His heart beat so that 
 he could hardly breathe. He let his mother embrace him, 
 and then withdrawing himself stood silently before her 
 with the tears falling from his eyes. 
 
 At first he could not speak. For a minute or so the 
 silence on all sides was complete. Then, gathering 
 strength, he said in a low voice : 
 
 "Mother" (it was the first time he had called her any- 
 thing but "mamma"), "we must part." Oh this, turning 
 to the warder, he said : "I believe I am free to leave the 
 prison if I wish to do so. You cannot compel me to re- 
 main here longer. Please take me to the gates." 
 
 Theobald stepped forward. "Ernest, you must not, 
 shall not, leave us in this way." 
 
 "Do not speak to me," said Ernest, his eyes flashing
 
 342 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with a fire that was unwonted in them. Another warder 
 then came up and took Theobald aside, while the first 
 conducted Ernest to the gates. 
 
 "Tell them," said Ernest, "from me that they must 
 think of me as one dead, for I am dead to them. Say 
 that my greatest pain is the thought of the disgrace I have 
 inflicted upon them, and that above all things else I will 
 study to avoid paining them hereafter; but say also that 
 if they write to me I will return their letters unopened, 
 and that if they come and see me I will protect myself in 
 whatever way I can." 
 
 By this time he was at the prison gate, and in another 
 moment was at liberty. After he had got a few steps out 
 he turned his face to the prison wall, leant against it for 
 support, and wept as though his heart would break. 
 
 Giving up father and mother for Christ's sake was not 
 such an easy matter after all. If a man has been pos- 
 sessed by devils for long enough they will rend him as 
 they leave him, however imperatively they may have 
 been cast out. Ernest did not stay long where he was, 
 for he feared each moment that his father and mother 
 would come out. He pulled himself together and turned 
 into the labyrinth of small streets which opened out in 
 front of him. 
 
 He had crossed his Rubicon not perhaps very heroi- 
 cally or dramatically, but then it is only in dramas that 
 people act dramatically. At any rate, by hook or by crook, 
 he had scrambled over, and was out upon the other side. 
 Already he thought of much which he would gladly have 
 said, and blamed his want of presence of mind; but, 
 after all, it mattered very little. Inclined though he was 
 to make very great allowances for his father and mother, 
 he was indignant at their having thrust themselves upon 
 him without warning at a moment when the excitement 
 of leaving prison was already as much as he was fit for. 
 It was a mean advantage to have taken over him, but he 
 was glad they had taken it, for it made him realise more
 
 The Way of All Flesh 343 
 
 fully than ever that his one chance lay in separating him- 
 self completely from them. 
 
 The morning was grey, and the first signs of winter 
 fog were beginning to show themselves, for it was now 
 the 3Oth of September. Ernest wore the clothes in which 
 he had entered prison, and was therefore dressed as a 
 clergyman. No one who looked at him would have seen 
 any difference between his present appearance and his 
 appearance six months previously ; indeed, as he walked 
 slowly through the dingy crowded lane called Eyre 
 Street Hill (which he well knew, for he had clerical 
 friends in that neighbourhood), the months he had passed 
 in prison seemed to drop out of his life, and so power- 
 fully did association carry him away that, finding himself 
 in his old dress and in his old surroundings, he felt 
 dragged back into his old self as though his six months 
 of prison life had been a dream from which he was now 
 waking to take things up as he had left them. This was 
 the effect of unchanged surroundings upon the unchanged 
 part of him. But there was a changed part, and the 
 effect of unchanged surroundings upon this was to make 
 everything seem almost as strange as though he had never 
 had any life but his prison one, and was now born into 
 a new world. 
 
 All our lives long, every day and every hour, we are 
 engaged in the process of accommodating our changed 
 and unchanged selves to changed and unchanged sur- 
 roundings ; living, in fact, in nothing else than this proc- 
 ess of accommodation ; when we fail in it a little we are 
 stupid, when we fail flagrantly we are mad, when we sus- 
 pend it temporarily we sleep, when we give up the at- 
 tempt altogether we die. In quiet, uneventful lives the 
 changes internal and external are so small that there is 
 little or no strain in the process of fusion and accommo- 
 dation ; in other lives there is great strain, but there is 
 also great fusing and accommodating power; in others 
 great strain with little accommodating power. A life will
 
 344 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 be successful or not according as the power of accommo- 
 dation is equal to or unequal to the strain of fusing and 
 adjusting internal and external changes. 
 
 The trouble is that in the end we shall be driven to 
 admit the unity of the universe so completely as to be 
 compelled to deny that there is either an external or an 
 internal, but must see everything both as external and 
 internal at one and the same time, subject and object 
 external and internal being unified as much as every- 
 thing else. This will knock our whole system over, but 
 then every system has got to be knocked over by some- 
 thing. 
 
 Much the best way out of this difficulty is to go in for 
 separation between internal and external subject and 
 object when we find this convenient, and unity between 
 the same when we find unity convenient. This is illogi- 
 cal, but extremes are alone logical, and they are always 
 absurd, the mean is alone practicable and it is always 
 illogical. It is faith and not logic which is the supreme 
 arbiter. They say all roads lead to Rome, and all philoso- 
 phies that I have ever seen lead ultimately either to some 
 gross absurdity, or else to the conclusion already more 
 than once insisted on in these pages, that the just shall 
 live by faith, that is to say that sensible people will get 
 through life by rule of thumb as they may interpret it 
 most conveniently without asking too many questions 
 for conscience sake. Take any fact, and reason upon it to 
 the bitter end, and it will ere long lead to this as the 
 only refuge from some palpable folly. 
 
 But to return to my story. When Ernest got to the 
 top of the street and looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen 
 walls of his prison filling up the end of it. He paused for 
 a minute or two. "There," he said to himself, "I was 
 hemmed in by bolts which I could see and touch ; here I 
 am barred by others which are none the less real poverty 
 and ignorance of the world. It was no part of my busi- 
 ness to try to break the material bolts of iron and escape
 
 The Way of All Flesh 345 
 
 from prison, but now that I am free I must surely seek 
 to break these others." 
 
 He had read somewhere of a prisoner who had made 
 his escape by cutting up his bedstead with an iron spoon. 
 He admired and marvelled at the man's mind, but could 
 not even try to imitate him; in the presence of imma- 
 terial barriers, however, he was not so easily daunted, 
 and felt as though, even if the bed were iron and the 
 spoon a wooden one, he could find some means of mak- 
 ing the wood cut the iron sooner or later. 
 
 He turned his back upon Eyre Street Hill and walked 
 down Leather Lane into Holborn. Each step he took, 
 each face or object that he knew, helped at once to link 
 him on to the life he had led before his imprisonment, 
 and at the same time to make him feel how completely 
 that imprisonment had cut his life into two parts, the 
 one of which could bear no resemblance to the other. 
 
 He passed down Fetter Lane into Fleet Street and so 
 to the Temple, to which I had just returned from my 
 summer holiday. It was about half past nine, and I 
 was having my breakfast, when I heard a timid knock at 
 the door and opened it to find Ernest. 
 
 CHAPTER LXX 
 
 I HAD begun to like him on the night Towneley had sent 
 for me, and on the following day I thought he had shaped 
 well. I had liked him also during our interview in prison, 
 and wanted to see more of him, so that I might make up 
 my mind about him. I had lived long enough to know 
 that some men who do great things in the end are not very 
 wise when they are young ; knowing that he would leave 
 prison on the 3Oth, I had expected him, and, as I had a 
 spare bedroom, pressed him to say with me till he could 
 make up his mind what he would do. 
 
 Being so much older than he was, I anticipated no
 
 346 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 trouble in getting my own way, but he would not hear 
 of it. The utmost he would assent to was that he should 
 be my guest till he could find a room for himself, which 
 he would set about doing at once. 
 
 He was still much agitated, but grew better as he ate a 
 breakfast, not of prison fare and in a comfortable room. 
 It pleased me to see the delight he took in all about him ; 
 the fireplace with a fire in it ; the easy chairs, the Times, 
 my cat, the red geraniums in the window, to say nothing 
 of coffee, bread and butter, sausages, marmalade, etc. 
 Everything was pregnant with the most exquisite pleasure 
 to him. The plane trees were full of leaf still; he kept 
 rising from the breakfast table to admire them ; never till 
 now, he said, had he known what the enjoyment of these 
 things really was. He ate, looked, laughed and cried by 
 turns, with an emotion which I can neither forget nor 
 describe. 
 
 He told me how his father and mother had lain in 
 wait for him, as he was about to leave prison. I was 
 furious, and applauded him heartily for what he had 
 done. He was very grateful to me for this. Other peo- 
 ple, he said, would tell him he ought to think of his 
 father and mother rather than of himself, and it was 
 such a comfort to find someone who saw things as he 
 saw them himself. Even if I had differed from him I 
 should not have said so, but I was of his opinion, and 
 was almost as much obliged to him for seeing things as 
 I saw them, as he to me for doing the same kind office by 
 himself. Cordially as I disliked Theobald and Christina, 
 I was in such a hopeless minority in the opinion I had 
 formed concerning them that it was pleasant to find some- 
 one who agreed with me. 
 
 Then there came an awful moment for both of us. 
 
 A knock, as of a visitor and not a postman, was heard 
 at my door. 
 
 "Goodness gracious," I exclaimed, "why didn't we 
 sport the oak? Perhaps it is your father. But surely
 
 The Way of All Flesh 347 
 
 he would hardly come at this time of day! Go at once 
 into my bedroom." 
 
 I went to the door, and, sure enough, there were both 
 Theobald and Christina. I could not refuse to let them 
 in and was obliged to listen to their version of the story, 
 which agreed substantially with Ernest's. Christina cried 
 bitterly Theobald stormed. After about ten minutes, 
 during which I assured them that I had not the faintest 
 conception where their son was, I dismissed them both. 
 I saw they looked suspiciously upon the manifest signs 
 that someone was breakfasting with me, and parted from 
 me more or less defiantly, but I got rid of them, and poor 
 Ernest came out again, looking white, frightened and up- 
 set. He had heard voices, but no more, and did not feel 
 sure that the enemy might not be gaining over me. We 
 sported the oak now, and before long he began to re- 
 cover. 
 
 After breakfast, we discussed the situation. I had 
 taken away his wardrobe and books from Mrs. Jupp's, 
 but had left his furniture, pictures and piano, giving 
 Mrs. Jupp the use of these, so that she might let her room 
 furnished, in lieu of charge for taking care of the furni- 
 ture. As soon as Ernest heard that his wardrobe was at 
 hand, he got out a suit of clothes he had had before he 
 had been ordained, and put it on at once, much, as I 
 thought, to the improvement of his personal appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Then we went into the subject of his finances. He had 
 had ten pounds from Pryer only a day or two before 
 he was apprehended, of which between seven and eight 
 were in his purse when he entered the prison. This 
 money was restored to him on leaving. He had always 
 paid cash for whatever he bought, so that there was 
 nothing to be deducted for debts. Besides this, he had 
 his clothes, books and furniture. He could, as I have 
 said, have had 100 from his father if he had chosen to 
 emigrate, but this both Ernest and I (for he brought me
 
 348 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 round to his opinion) agreed it would be better to decline. 
 This was all he knew of as belonging to him. 
 
 He said he proposed at once taking an unfurnished top 
 back attic in as quiet a house as he could find, say at 
 three or four shillings a week, and looking out for work 
 as a tailor. I did not think it much mattered what he 
 began with, for I felt pretty sure he would ere long find 
 his way to something that suited him, if he could get 
 a start with anything at all. The difficulty was how to 
 get him started. It was not enough that he should be 
 able to cut out and make clothes that he should have the 
 organs, so to speak, of a tailor; he must be put into a 
 tailor's shop and guided for a little while by someone 
 who knew how and where to help him. 
 
 The rest of the day he spent in looking for a room, 
 which he soon found, and in familiarising himself with 
 liberty. In the evening I took him to the Olympic, 
 where Robson was then acting in a burlesque on Macbeth, 
 Mrs. Keeley, if I remember rightly, taking the part of 
 Lady Macbeth. In the scene before the murder, Mac- 
 beth had said he could not kill Duncan when he saw his 
 boots upon the landing. Lady Macbeth put a stop to her 
 husband's hesitation by whipping him up under her arm, 
 and carrying him off the stage, kicking and screaming. 
 Ernest laughed till he cried. "What rot Shakespeare is 
 after this," he exclaimed, involuntarily. I remembered 
 his essay on the Greek tragedians, and was more epris 
 with him than ever. 
 
 Next day he set about looking for employment, and 
 I did not see him till about five o'clock, when he came 
 and said that he had had no success. The same thing 
 happened the next day and the day after that. Wherever 
 he went he was invariably refused and often ordered 
 point blank out of the shop ; I could see by the expression 
 of his face, though he said nothing, that he was getting 
 frightened, and began to think I should have to come to 
 the rescue. He said he had made a great many enquiries
 
 The Way of All Flesh 349 
 
 and had always been told the same story. He found that 
 it was easy to keep on in an old line, but very hard to 
 strike out into a new one. 
 
 He talked to the fishmonger in Leather Lane, where 
 he went to buy a bloater for his tea, casually as though 
 from curiosity and without any interested motive. "Sell," 
 said the master of the shop, "why, nobody wouldn't be- 
 lieve what can be sold by penn'orths and twopenn'orths 
 if you go the right way to work. Look at whelks, for in- 
 stance. Last Saturday night me and my little Emma 
 here, we sold ij worth of whelks between eight and half 
 past eleven o'clock and almost all in penn'orths and two- 
 penn'orths a few hap'orths, but not many. It was the 
 steam that did it. We kept a-boiling of 'em hot and hot, 
 and whenever the steam came strong up from the cellar 
 on to the pavement, the people bought, but whenever the 
 steam went down they left off buying; so we boiled them 
 over and over again till they was all sold. That's just 
 where it is; if you know your business you can sell, if 
 you don't you'll soon make a mess of it. Why, but for 
 the steam, I should not have sold los. worth of whelks 
 all the night through." 
 
 This and many another yarn of kindred substance 
 which he heard from other people determined Ernest 
 more than ever to stake on tailoring as the one trade 
 about which he knew anything at all, nevertheless, here 
 were three or four days gone by and employment seemed 
 as far off as ever. 
 
 I now did what I ought to have done before, that is 
 to say, I called on my own tailor whom I had dealt with 
 for over a quarter of a century and asked his advice. 
 He declared Ernest's plan to be hopeless. "If," said Mr. 
 Larkins, for this was my tailor's name, "he had begun 
 at fourteen, it might have done, but no man of twenty- 
 four could stand being turned to work into a workshop 
 full of tailors; he would not get on with the men, nor 
 the men with him; you could not expect him to be 'hail
 
 350 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 fellow, well met' with them, and you could not expect his 
 fellow-workmen to like him if he was not. A man must 
 have sunk low through drink or natural taste for low 
 company, before he could get on with those who have had 
 such a different training from his own." 
 
 Mr. Larkins said a great deal more and wound up by 
 taking me to see the place where his own men worked. 
 "This is a paradise," he said, "compared to most work- 
 shops. What gentleman could stand this air, think you, 
 for a fortnight?" 
 
 I was glad enough to get out of the hot, fetid atmos- 
 phere in five minutes, and saw that there was no brick of 
 Ernest's prison to be loosened by going and working 
 among tailors in a workshop. 
 
 Mr. Larkins wound up by saying that even if my pro- 
 tege were a much better workman than he probably was, 
 no master would give him employment, for fear of creat- 
 ing a bother among the men. 
 
 I left, feeling that I ought to have thought of all this 
 myself, and was more than ever perplexed as to whether 
 I had not better let my young friend have a few thousand 
 pounds and send him out to the colonies, when, on my 
 return home at about five o'clock, I found him waiting for 
 me, radiant, and declaring that he had found all he 
 wanted. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXI 
 
 IT seems he had been patrolling the streets for the last 
 three or four nights I suppose in search of something 
 to do at any rate knowing better what he wanted to get 
 than how to get it. Nevertheless, what he wanted was 
 in reality so easily to be found that it took a highly 
 educated scholar like himself to be unable to find it. But, 
 however this may be, he had been scared, and now saw 
 lions where there were none, and was shocked and fright-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 351 
 
 ened, and night after night his courage^.had failed him 
 and he had returned to his lodgings in Laystall Street 
 without accomplishing his errand. He had not taken me 
 into his confidence upon this matter, and I had not en- 
 quired what he did with himself in the evenings. At last 
 he had concluded that, however painful it might be to 
 him, he would call on Mrs. Jupp, who he thought would 
 be able to help him if anyone could. He had been walk- 
 ing moodily from seven till about nine, and now resolved 
 to go straight to Ashpit Place and make a mother con- 
 fessor of Mrs. Jupp without more delay. 
 
 Of all tasks that could be performed by mortal woman 
 there was none which Mrs. Jupp would have liked better 
 than the one Ernest was thinking of imposing upon her ; 
 nor do I know that in his scared and broken-down state 
 he could have done much better than he now proposed. 
 Mrs. Jupp would have made it very" easy for him to 
 open his grief to her; indeed, she would have coaxed it all 
 out of him before he knew where he was ; but the fates 
 were against Mrs. Jupp, and the meeting between my 
 hero and his former landlady was postponed sine die, for 
 his determination had hardly been formed and he had not 
 gone more than a hundred yards in the direction of Mrs. 
 Jupp's house, when a woman accosted him. 
 
 He was turning from her, as he had turned from so 
 many others, when she started back with a movement 
 that aroused his curiosity. He had hardly seen her face, 
 but being determined to catch sight of it, followed her 
 as she hurried away, and passed her ; then turning round 
 he saw that she was none other than Ellen, the housemaid 
 who had been dismissed by his mother eight years pre- 
 viously. 
 
 He ought to have assigned Ellen's unwillingness to see 
 him to its true cause, but a guilty conscience made him 
 think she had heard of his disgrace and was turning away 
 from him in contempt. Brave as had been his resolu- 
 tions about facing the world, this was more than he was
 
 352 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 prepared for. "What! you too shun me, Ellen?" he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 The girl was crying bitterly and did not understand 
 him. "Oh, Master Ernest," she sobbed, "let me go; 
 you are too good for the likes of me to speak to now." 
 
 "Why, Ellen," said he, "what nonsense you talk; you 
 haven't been in prison, have you?" 
 
 "Oh, no, no, no, not so bad as that," she exclaimed 
 passionately. 
 
 "Well, I have," said Ernest, with a forced laugh; "I 
 came out three or four days ago after six months with 
 hard labour." 
 
 Ellen did not believe him, but she looked at him with a 
 "Lor' ! Master Ernest," and dried her eyes at once. The 
 ice was broken between them, for as a matter of fact 
 Ellen had been in prison several times, and though she 
 did not believe Ernest, his merely saying he had been in 
 prison made her feel more at ease with him. For her 
 there were two classes of people, those who had been in 
 prison and those who had not. The first she looked upon 
 as fellow-creatures and more or less Christians, the sec- 
 ond, with few exceptions, she regarded with suspicion, 
 not wholly unmingled with contempt. 
 
 Then Ernest told her what had happened to him dur- 
 ing the last six months, and by-and-by she believed him. 
 
 "Master Ernest," said she, after they had talked for a 
 quarter of an hour or so, "there's a place over the way 
 where they sell tripe and onions. I know you was always 
 very fond of tripe and onions; let's go over and have 
 some, and we can talk better there." 
 
 So the pair crossed the street and entered the tripe 
 shop; Ernest ordered supper. 
 
 "And how is your pore dear mamma, and your dear 
 papa, Master Ernest," said Ellen, who had now recov- 
 ered herself and was quite at home with my hero. "Oh, 
 dear, dear me," she said, "I did love your pa ; he was a
 
 The Way of All Flesh 353 
 
 good gentleman, he was, and your ma too; it would do 
 anyone good to live with her, I'm sure." 
 
 Ernest was surprised and hardly knew what to say. He 
 had expected to find Ellen indignant at the way she had 
 been treated, and inclined to lay the blame of her having 
 fallen to her present state at his father's and mother's 
 door. It was not so. Her only recollection of Battersby 
 was as of a place where she had had plenty to eat and 
 drink, not too much hard work, and where she had not 
 been scolded. When she heard that Ernest had quarrelled 
 with his father and mother she assumed as a matter of 
 course that the fault must lie entirely with Ernest. 
 
 "Oh, your pore, pore ma!" said Ellen. "She was 
 always so very fond of you, Master Ernest: you was 
 always her favourite ; I can't abear to think of anything 
 between you and her. To think now of the way she 
 used to have me into the dining-room and teach me my 
 catechism, that she did! Oh, Master Ernest, you really 
 must go and make it all up with her ; indeed you must." 
 
 Ernest felt rueful, but he had resisted so valiantly 
 already that the devil might have saved himself the 
 trouble of trying to get at him through Ellen in the mat- 
 ter of his father and mother. He changed the subject, 
 and the pair warmed to one another as they had their 
 tripe and pots of beer. Of all people in the world Ellen 
 was perhaps the one to whom Ernest could have spoken 
 most freely at this juncture. He told her what he thought 
 he could have told to no one else. 
 
 "You know, Ellen," he concluded, "I had learnt as a 
 boy things that I ought not to have learnt, and had never 
 had a chance of that which would have set me straight." 
 
 "Gentlefolks is always like that," said Ellen musingly. 
 
 "I believe you are right, but I am no longer a gentle- 
 man, Ellen, and I don't see why I should be 'like that' 
 any longer, my dear. I want you to help me to be like 
 something else as soon as possible."
 
 354 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 "Lor' ! Master Ernest, whatever can you be meaning ?" 
 
 The pair soon afterwards left the eating-house and 
 walked up Fetter Lane together. 
 
 Ellen had had hard times since she had left Battersby, 
 but they had left little trace upon her. 
 
 Ernest saw only the fresh-looking, smiling face, the 
 dimpled cheek, the clear blue eyes and lovely, sphinx-like 
 lips which he had remembered as a boy. At nineteen she 
 had looked older than she was, now she looked much 
 younger; indeed she looked hardly older than when 
 Ernest had last seen her, and it would have taken a man 
 of much greater experience than he possessed to suspect 
 how completely she had fallen from her first estate. It 
 never occurred to him that the poor condition of her 
 wardrobe was due to her passion for ardent spirits, and 
 that first and last she had served five or six times as much 
 time in gaol as he had. He ascribed the poverty of her 
 attire to the attempts to keep herself respectable, which 
 Ellen during supper had more than once alluded to. 
 He had been charmed with the way in which she had de- 
 clared that a pint of beer would make her tipsy, and had 
 only allowed herself to be forced into drinking the whole 
 after a good deal of remonstrance. To him she appeared 
 a very angel dropped from the sky, and all the more easy 
 to get on with for being a fallen one. 
 
 As he walked up Fetter Lane with her towards Laystall 
 Street, he thought of the wonderful goodness of God 
 towards him in throwing in his way the very person of 
 all others whom he was most glad to see, and whom, of 
 all others, in spite of her living so near him, he might 
 have never fallen in with but for a happy accident. 
 
 When people get it into their heads that they are being 
 specially favoured by the Almighty, they had better as a 
 general rule mind their p's and q's, and when they think 
 they see the devil's drift with more special clearness, let 
 them remember that he has had much more experience 
 than they have, and is probably meditating mischief.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 355 
 
 Already during supper the thought that in Ellen at last 
 he had found a woman whom he could love well enough 
 to wish to live with ancl marry had flitted across his mind, 
 and the more they had chatted the more reasons kept 
 suggesting themselves for thinking that what might be 
 folly in ordinary cases would not be folly in his. 
 
 He must marry someone; that was already settled. 
 He could not marry a lady; that was absurd. He must 
 marry a poor woman. Yes, but a fallen one? Was he 
 not fallen himself? Ellen would fall no more. He had 
 only to look at her to be sure of this. He could not live 
 with her in sin, not for more than the shortest time that 
 could elapse before their marriage ; he no longer believed 
 in the supernatural element of Christianity, but the Chris- 
 tian morality at any rate was indisputable. Besides, 
 they might have children, and a stigma would rest upon 
 them.- Whom had he to consult but himself now? His 
 father and mother never need know, and even if they did, 
 they should be thankful to see him married to any woman 
 who would make him happy as Ellen would. As for not 
 being able to afford marriage, how did poor people do? 
 Did not a good wife rather help matters than not? Where 
 one could live two could do so, and if Ellen was three or 
 four years older than he was well, what was that ? 
 
 Have you, gentle reader, ever loved at first sight? 
 When you fell in love at first sight, how long, let me ask, 
 did it take you to become ready to fling every other con- 
 sideration to the winds except that of obtaining posses- 
 sion of the loved one? Or rather, how long would it have 
 taken you if you had had no father or mother, nothing to 
 lose in the way of money, position, friends, professional 
 advancement, or what not, and if the object of your 
 affections was as free from all these impedimenta as you 
 were yourself? 
 
 If you were a young John Stuart Mill, perhaps it 
 would have taken you some time, but suppose your na- 
 ture was Quixotic, impulsive, altruistic, guileless; sup-
 
 356 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 pose you were a hungry man starving for something to 
 love and lean upon, for one whose burdens you might 
 bear, and who might help you to bear yours. Suppose 
 you were down on your luck, still stunned by a horrible 
 shock, and this bright vista of a happy future floated 
 suddenly before you, how long under these circumstances 
 do you think you would reflect before you would decide 
 on embracing what chance had thrown in your way? 
 
 It did not take my hero long, for before he got past the 
 ham and beef shop near the top of Fetter Lane, he had 
 told Ellen that she must come home with him and live 
 with him till they could get married, which they would do 
 upon the first day that the law allowed. 
 
 I think the devil must have chuckled and made toler- 
 ably sure of his game this time. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXII 
 
 ERNEST told Ellen of his difficulty about finding employ- 
 ment. 
 
 "But what do you think of going into a shop for, my 
 dear," said Ellen. "Why not take a little shop your- 
 self?" 
 
 Ernest asked how much this would cost. Ellen told 
 him that he might take a house in some small street, 
 say near the "Elephant and Castle," for 175. or i8s. a 
 week, and let off the two top floors for ios., keeping the 
 back parlour and shop for themselves. If he could raise 
 five or six pounds to buy some second-hand clothes to 
 stock the shop with, they could mend them and clean 
 tbem, and she could look after the women's clothes while 
 he did the men's. Then he could mend and make, if he 
 could get the orders. 
 
 They could soon make a business of 2 a week in this 
 way ; she had a friend who began like that and had now 
 moved to a better shop, where she made 5 or 6 a week
 
 The Way of All Flesh 357 
 
 at least and she, Ellen, had done the greater part of the 
 buying and selling herself. 
 
 Here was a new light indeed. It was as though he had 
 got his 5000 back again all of a sudden, and perhaps 
 ever so much more later on into the bargain. Ellen 
 seemed more than ever to be his good genius. 
 
 She went out and got a few rashers of bacon for his 
 and her breakfast. She cooked them much more nicely 
 than he had been able to do, and laid breakfast for him 
 and made coffee, and some nice brown toast. Ernest 
 had been his own cook and housemaid for the last few 
 days and had not given himself satisfaction. Here he 
 suddenly found himself with someone to wait on him 
 again. Not only had Ellen pointed out to him how he 
 could earn a living when no one except himself had 
 known how to advise him, but here she was so pretty 
 and smiling, looking after even his comforts, and 
 restoring him practically in all respects that he much 
 cared about to the position which he had lost or rather 
 putting him in one that he already liked much better. 
 No wonder he was radiant when he came to explain his 
 plans to me. 
 
 He had some difficulty in telling all that had happened. 
 He hesitated, blushed, hummed and hawed. Misgivings 
 began to cross his mind when he found himself obliged to 
 tell his story to someone else. He felt inclined to slur 
 things over, but I wanted to get at the facts, so I helped 
 him over the bad places, and questioned him till I had 
 got out pretty nearly the whole story as I have given it 
 above. 
 
 I hope I did not show it, but I was very angry. I had 
 begun to like Ernest. I don't know why, but I never have 
 heard that any young man to whom I had become at- 
 tached was going to get married without hating his in- 
 tended instinctively, though I had never seen her; I 
 have observed that most bachelors feel the same thing, 
 though we are generally at some pains to hide the fact.
 
 358 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Perhaps it is because we know we ought to have got 
 married ourselves. Ordinarily we say we are delighted 
 in the present case I did not feel obliged to do this, 
 though I made an effort to conceal my vexation. That 
 a young man of much promise who was heir also to what 
 was now a handsome fortune, should fling himself away 
 upon such a person as Ellen was quite too provoking, and 
 the more so because of the unexpectedness of the whole 
 affair. 
 
 I begged him not to marry Ellen yet not at least until 
 he had known her for a longer time. He would not hear 
 of it; he had given his word, and if he had not given it 
 he should go and give it at once. I had hitherto found 
 him upon most matters singularly docile and easy to man- 
 age, but on this point I could dp nothing with him. His 
 recent victory over his father and mother had increased 
 his strength, and I was nowhere. I would have told him 
 of his true position, but I knew very well that this would 
 only make him more bent on having his own way for 
 with so much money why should he not please himself? 
 I said nothing, therefore, on this head, and yet all that 
 I could urge went for very little with one who believed 
 himself, to be an artisan or nothing. 
 
 Really from his own standpoint there was nothing very 
 outrageous in what he was doing. He had known and 
 been very fond of Ellen years before. He knew her to 
 come of respectable people, and to have borne a good 
 character, and to have been universally liked at Battersby. 
 She was then a quick, smart, hard-working girl and a 
 very pretty one. When at last they met again she was on 
 her best behaviour in fact, she was modesty and de- 
 mureness itself. What wonder, then, that his imagination 
 should fail to realise the changes that eight years must 
 have worked? He knew too much against himself, and 
 was too bankrupt in love to be squeamish; if Ellen had 
 been only what he thought her, and if his prospects had 
 been in reality no better than he believed they were, I
 
 The Way of All Flesh 359 
 
 do not know that there is anything much more imprudent 
 in what Ernest proposed than there is in half the mar- 
 riages that take place every day. 
 
 There was nothing for it, however, but to make the 
 best of the inevitable, so I wished my young friend good 
 fortune, and told him he could have whatever money he 
 wanted to start his shop with, if what he had in hand was 
 not sufficient. He thanked me, asked me to be kind 
 enough to let him do all my mending and repairing, and 
 to get him any other like orders that I could, and left me 
 to my own reflections. 
 
 I was even more angry when he was gone than I had 
 been while he was with me. His frank, boyish face had 
 beamed with a happiness that had rarely visited it. Ex- 
 cept at Cambridge he had hardly known what happiness 
 meant, and even there his life had been clouded as of 
 a man for whom wisdom at the greatest of its entrances 
 was quite shut out. I had seen enough of the world 
 and of him to have observed this, but it was impossible, 
 or I thought it had been impossible, for me to have helped 
 him. 
 
 Whether I ought to have tried to help him or not I do 
 not know, but I am sure that the young of all animals 
 often do want help upon matters about which anyone 
 would say a priori that there should be no difficulty. 
 One would think that a young seal would want no teach- 
 ing how to swim, nor yet a bird to fly, but in practice a 
 young seal drowns if put out of its depth before its par- 
 ents have taught it to swim ; and so again, even the young 
 hawk must be taught to fly before it can do so. 
 
 I grant that the tendency of the times is to exaggerate 
 the good which teaching can do, but in trying to teach 
 too much, in most matters, we have neglected others in 
 respect of which a little sensible teaching would do no 
 harm. 
 
 I know it is the fashion to say that young people must 
 find out things for themselves, and so they probably
 
 360 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 would if they had fair play to the extent of not having 
 obstacles put in their way. But they seldom have fair 
 play ; as a general rule they meet with foul play, and foul 
 play from those who live by selling them stones made into 
 a great variety of shapes and sizes so as to form a toler- 
 able imitation of bread. 
 
 Some are lucky enough to meet with few obstacles, 
 some are plucky enough to override them, but in the 
 greater number of cases, if people are saved at all they 
 are saved so as by fire. 
 
 While Ernest was with me Ellen was looking out for a 
 shop on the south side of the Thames near the "Elephant 
 and Castle," which was then almost a new and a very 
 rising neighbourhood. By one o'clock she had found 
 several from which a selection was to be made, and be- 
 fore night the pair had made their choice. 
 
 Ernest brought Ellen to me. I did not want to see 
 her, but could not well refuse. He had laid out a few 
 of his shillings upon her wardrobe, so that she was neatly 
 dressed, and, indeed, she looked very pretty and so good 
 that I could hardly be surprised at Ernest's infatuation 
 when the other circumstances of the case were taken into 
 consideration. Of course we hated one another instinc- 
 tively from the first moment we set eyes on one another, 
 but we each told Ernest that we had been most favour- 
 ably impressed. 
 
 Then I was taken to see the shop. An empty house is 
 like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed. 
 Decay sets in at once in every part of it, and what mould 
 and wind and weather would spare, street boys commonly 
 destroy. Ernest's shop in its untenanted state was a 
 dirty, unsavoury place enough. The house was not old, 
 but it had been run up by a jerry-builder and its con- 
 stitution had no stamina whatever. It was only by being 
 kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for 
 many months together. Now it had been empty for 
 some weeks and the cats had got in by night, while the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 361 
 
 boys had broken the windows by day. The parlour floor 
 was covered with stones and dirt, and in the area was a 
 dead dog which had been killed in the street and been 
 thrown down into the first unprotected place that could 
 be found. There was a strong smell throughout the 
 house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, 
 or a compound of all four, I could not determine. The 
 sashes did not fit, the flimsy doors hung badly ; the skirt- 
 ing was gone in several places, and there were not a few 
 holes in the floor; the locks were loose, and paper was 
 torn and dirty; the stairs were weak and one felt the 
 treads give as one went up them. 
 
 Over and above these drawbacks the house had an ill 
 name, by reason of the fact that the wife of the last oc- 
 cupant had hanged herself in it not very many weeks 
 previously. She had set down a bloater before the fire 
 for her husband's tea, and had made him a round of 
 toast. She then left the room as though about to return 
 to it shortly, but instead of doing so she went into the 
 back kitchen and hanged herself without a word. It 
 was this which had kept the house empty so long in spite 
 of its excellent position as a corner shop. The last 
 tenant had left immediately after the inquest, and if the 
 owner had had it done up then people would have got 
 over the tragedy that had been enacted in it, but the com- 
 bination of bad condition and bad fame had hindered 
 many from taking it, who, like Ellen, could see that it had 
 great business capabilities. Almost anything would have 
 sold there, but it happened also that there was no second- 
 hand clothes shop in close proximity, so that everything 
 combined in its favour, except its filthy state and its 
 reputation. 
 
 When I saw it, I thought I would rather die than live 
 in such an awful place but then I had been living in the 
 Temple for the last five and twenty years. Ernest was 
 lodging in Laystall Street and had just come out of 
 prison ; before this he had lived in Ashpit Place, so that
 
 362 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 this house had no terrors for him provided he could get 
 it done up. The difficulty was that the landlord was hard 
 to move in this respect. It ended in my rinding the money 
 to do everything that was wanted, and taking a lease of 
 the house for five years at the same rental as that paid 
 by the last occupant. I then sublet it to Ernest, 
 of course taking care that it was put more efficiently 
 into repair than his landlord was at all likely to have 
 put it. 
 
 A week later I called and found everything so com- 
 pletely transformed that I should hardly have recognised 
 the house. All the ceilings had been whitewashed, all 
 the rooms papered, the broken glass hacked out and rein- 
 stated, the defective wood-work renewed, all the sashes, 
 cupboards and doors had been painted. The drains had 
 been thoroughly overhauled, everything in fact that could 
 be done had been done, and the rooms now looked as 
 cheerful as they had been forbidding when I had last 
 seen them. The people who had done the repairs were 
 supposed to have cleaned the house down before leaving, 
 but Ellen had given it another scrub from top to bottom 
 herself after they were gone, and it was as clean as a 
 new pin. I almost felt as though I could have lived in it 
 myself, and as for Ernest, he was in the seventh heaven. 
 He said it was all my doing and Ellen's. 
 
 There was already a counter in the shop and a few 
 fittings, so that nothing now remained but to get some 
 stock and set them out for sale. Ernest said he could not 
 begin better than by selling his clerical wardrobe and his 
 books, for though the shop was intended especially for the 
 sale of second-hand clothes, yet Ellen said there was no 
 reason why they should not sell a few books too; so a 
 beginning was to be made by selling the books he had had 
 at school and college at about one shilling a volume, tak- 
 ing them all round, and I have heard him say that he 
 learned more that proved of practical use to him through 
 stocking his books on a bench in front of his shop and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 363 
 
 selling them, than he had done from all the years of study 
 which he had bestowed upon their contents. 
 
 For the enquiries that were made of him, whether he 
 had such and such a book, taught him what he could sell 
 and what he could not; how much he could get for this, 
 and how much for that. Having made ever such a little 
 beginning with books, he took to attending book sales as 
 well as clothes sales, and ere long this branch of his 
 business became no less important than the tailoring, and 
 would, I have no doubt, have been the one which he 
 would have settled down to exclusively, if he had been 
 called upon to remain a tradesman ; but this is anticipat- 
 ing. 
 
 I made a contribution and a stipulation. Ernest wanted 
 to sink the gentleman completely, until such time as he 
 could work his way up again. If he had been left to 
 himself he would have lived with Ellen in the shop back 
 parlour and kitchen, and have let out both the upper floors 
 according to his original programme. I did not want him, 
 however, to cut himself adrift from music, letters and 
 polite life, and feared that unless he had some kind of 
 den into which he could retire he would ere long become 
 the tradesman and nothing else. I therefore insisted on 
 taking the first floor front and back myself, and furnish- 
 ing them with the things which had been left at Mrs. 
 Jupp's. I bought these things of him for a small sum 
 and had them moved into his present abode. 
 
 I went to Mrs. Jupp's to arrange all this, as Ernest did 
 not like going to Ashpit Place. I had half expected to 
 find the furniture sold and Mrs. Jupp gone, but it was 
 not so ; with all her faults the poor old woman was per- 
 fectly honest. 
 
 I told her that Pryer had taken all Ernest's money and 
 run away with it. She hated Pryer. "I never knew any- 
 one," she exclaimed, "as white-livered in the face as that 
 Pryer; he hasn't got an upright vein in his whole body. 
 Why, all that time when he used to come breakfasting
 
 364 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 with Mr. Pontifex morning after morning, it took me to 
 a perfect Shadow the way he carried on. There was no 
 doing anything to please him right. First I used to get 
 them eggs and bacon, and he didn't like that ; and then I 
 got him a bit of fish, and he didn't like that, or else it was 
 too dear, and you know fish is dearer than ever ; and then 
 I got him a bit of German, and he said it rose on him; 
 then I tried sausages, and he said they hit him in the eye 
 worse even than German ; oh ! how I used to wander my 
 room and fret about it inwardly and cry for hours, and 
 all about them paltry breakfasts and it wasn't Mr. Ponti- 
 fex ; he'd like anything that anyone chose to give him. 
 
 "And so the piano's to go," she continued. "What 
 beautiful tunes Mr. Pontifex did play upon it, to be sure ; 
 and there was one I liked better than any I ever heard. I 
 was in the room when he played it once and when I said, 
 'Oh, Mr. Pontifex, that's the kind of woman I am/ he 
 said, 'No, Mrs. Jupp, it isn't, for this tune is old, but no 
 one can say you are old.' But, bless you, he meant noth- 
 ing by it, it was only his mucky flattery." 
 
 Like myself, she was vexed at his getting married. 
 She didn't like his being married, and she didn't like his 
 not being married but, anyhow, it was Ellen's fault, not 
 his, and she hoped he would be happy. "But after all," 
 she concluded, "it ain't you and it ain't me, and it ain't 
 him and it ain't her. It's what you must call the fortunes 
 of matterimony, for there ain't no other word for it." 
 
 In the course of the afternoon the furniture arrived 
 at Ernest's new abode. In the first floor we placed the 
 piano, table, pictures, bookshelves, a couple of arm- 
 chairs, and all the little household gods which he had 
 brought from Cambridge. The back room was furnished 
 exactly as his bedroom at Ashpit Place had been new 
 things being got for the bridal apartment downstairs. 
 These two first-floor rooms I insisted on retaining as 
 my own, but Ernest was to use them whenever he 
 pleased ; he was never to sublet even the bedroom, but
 
 The Way of All Flesh 365 
 
 was to keep it for himself in case his wife should be ill 
 at any time, or in case he might be ill himself. 
 
 In less than a fortnight from the time of his leaving 
 prison all these arrangements had been completed, and 
 Ernest felt that he had again linked himself on to the 
 life which he had led before his imprisonment with a 
 few important differences, however, which were greatly 
 to his advantage. He was no longer a clergyman ; he was 
 about to marry a woman to whom he was much attached, 
 and he had parted company for ever with his father 
 and mother. 
 
 True, he had lost all his money, his reputation, and 
 his position as a gentleman ; he had, in fact, had to burn 
 his house down in order to get his roast sucking pig; 
 but if asked whether he would rather be as he was now 
 or as he was on the day before his arrest, he would not 
 have had a moment's hesitation in preferring his present 
 to his past. If his present could only have been pur- 
 chased at the expense of all that he had gone through, 
 it was still worth purchasing at the price, and he would 
 go through it all again if necessary. The loss of the 
 money was the worst, but Ellen said she was sure they 
 would get on, and she knew all about it. As for the loss 
 of reputation considering that he had Ellen and me left, 
 it did not come to much. 
 
 I saw the house on the afternoon of the day on which 
 all was finished, and there remained nothing but to buy 
 some stock and begin selling. When I was gone, after 
 he had had his tea, he stole up to his castle the first 
 floor front. He lit his pipe and sat down to the piano. 
 He played Handel for an hour or so, and then set him- 
 self to the table to read and write. He took all his 
 sermons and all the theological works he had begun to 
 compose during the time he had been a clergyman and 
 put them in the fire; as he saw them consume he felt 
 as though he had got rid of another incubus. Then he 
 took up some of the little pieces he had begun to write
 
 366 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 during the latter part of his undergraduate life at Cam- 
 bridge, and began to cut them about and rewrite them. 
 As he worked quietly at these till he heard , the clock 
 strike ten and it was time to go to bed, he felt that he 
 was now not only happy but supremely happy. 
 
 Next day Ellen took him to Debenham's auction 
 rooms, and they surveyed the lots of clothes which were 
 hung up all round the auction room to be viewed. Ellen 
 had had sufficient experience to know about how much 
 each lot ought to fetch; she overhauled lot after lot, 
 and valued it; in a very short time Ernest himself be- 
 gan to have a pretty fair idea what each lot should go 
 for, and before the morning was over valued a dozen 
 lots running at prices about which Ellen said he would 
 not hurt if he could get them for that. 
 
 So far from disliking this work or finding it tedious, 
 he liked it very much, indeed he would have liked any- 
 thing which did not overtax his physical strength, and 
 which held out a prospect of bringing him in money. 
 Ellen would not let him buy anything on the occasion of 
 this sale; she said he had better see one sale first an 1 
 watch how prices actually went. So at twelve o'clock 
 when the sale began, he saw the lots sold which he and 
 Ellen had marked, and by the time the sale was over he 
 knew enough to be able to bid with safety whenever 
 he should actually want to buy. Knowledge of this sort 
 is very easily acquired by anyone who is in bona fide 
 want of it. 
 
 But Ellen did not want him to buy at auctions not 
 much at least at present. Private dealing, she said, was 
 best. If I, for example, had any cast-off clothes, he was 
 to buy them from my laundress, and get a connection 
 with other laundresses, to whom he might give a trifle 
 more than they got at present for whatever clothes their 
 masters might give them, and yet make a good profit. If 
 gentlemen sold their things, he was to try and get them 
 to sell to him. He flinched at nothing ; perhaps he would
 
 The Way of All Flesh 367 
 
 have flinched if he had had any idea how outre his pro- 
 ceedings were, but the very ignorance of the world 
 which had ruined him up till now, by a happy irony be- 
 gan to work its own cure. If some malignant fairy had 
 meant to curse him in this respect, she had overdone her 
 malice. He did not know he was doing anything strange. 
 He only knew that he had no money, and must provide 
 for himself, a wife, and a possible family. More than 
 this, he wanted to have some leisure in an evening, so 
 that he might read and write and keep up his music. 
 If anyone would show him how he could do better than 
 he was doing, he should be much obliged to them, but to 
 himself it seemed that he was doing sufficiently well ; for 
 at the end of the first week the pair found they had made 
 a clear profit of 3. In a few weeks this had increased to 
 4, and by the New Year they had made a profit of 5 
 in one week. 
 
 Ernest had by this time been married some two months, 
 for he had stuck to his original plan of marrying Ellen 
 on the first day he could legally do so. This date was a 
 little delayed by the change of abode from Laystall 
 Street to Blackfriars, but on the first day that it could 
 be done it was done. He had never had more than 250 
 a year, even in the times of his affluence, so that a profit 
 of 5 a week, if it could be maintained steadily, would 
 place him where he had been as far as income went, and, 
 though he should have to feed two mouths instead of 
 one, yet his expenses in other ways were so much cur 
 tailed by his changed social position, that, take it ah 
 round, his income was practically what it had . been a 
 twelvemonth before. The next thing to do was to in- 
 crease it, and put by money. 
 
 Prosperity depends, as we all know, in great measure 
 upon energy and good sense, but it also depends not a 
 little upon pure luck that is to say, upon connections 
 which are in such a tangle that it is more easy to say 
 that they do not exist than to try to trace them. A
 
 368 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 neighbourhood may have an excellent reputation as being 
 likely to be a rising one, and yet may become suddenly 
 eclipsed by another, which no one would have thought 
 so promising. A fever hospital may divert the stream of 
 business, or a new station attract it ; so little, indeed, can 
 be certainly known, that it is better not to try to know 
 more than is in everybody's mouth, and to leave the rest 
 to chance. 
 
 Luck, which certainly had not been too kind to my 
 hero hitherto, now seemed to have taken him under her 
 protection. The neighbourhood prospered, and he with 
 it. It seemed as though he no sooner bought a thing and 
 put it into his shop, than it sold with a profit of from 
 thirty to fifty per cent. He learned bookkeeping, and 
 watched his accounts carefully, following up any success 
 immediately ; he began to buy other things besides clothes 
 such as books, music, odds and ends of furniture, etc. 
 Whether it was luck or business aptitude, or energy, or 
 the politeness with which he treated all his customers, 
 I cannot say but to the surprise of no one more than 
 himself, he went ahead faster than he had anticipated, 
 even in his wildest dreams, and by Easter was established 
 in a strong position as the owner of a business which 
 was bringing him in between four and five hundred a 
 year, and which he understood how to extend. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII 
 
 ELLEN and he got on capitally, all the better, perhaps, 
 because the disparity between them was so great, that 
 neither did Ellen want to be elevated, nor did Ernest 
 want to elevate her. He was very fond of her, and very 
 kind to her ; they had interests which they could serve in 
 common ; they had antecedents with a good part of 
 which each was familiar ; they had each of them excellent 
 tempers, and this was enough. Ellen did not seem jeal-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 369 
 
 ous at Ernest's preferring to sit the greater part of his 
 time after the day's work was done in the first floor 
 front where I occasionally visited him. She might have 
 come and sat with him if she had liked, but, somehow 
 or other, she generally found enough to occupy her down 
 below. She had the tact also to encourage him to go out 
 of an evening whenever he had a mind, without in the 
 least caring that he should take her too and this suited 
 Ernest very well. He was, I should say, much happier 
 in his married life than people generally are. 
 
 At first it had been very painful to him to meet any of 
 his old friends, as he sometimes accidentally did, but this 
 soon passed ; either they cut him, or he cut them ; it 
 was not nice being cut for the first time or two, but 
 after that, it became rather pleasant than not, and when 
 he began to see that he was going ahead, he cared very 
 little what people might say about his antecedents. The 
 ordeal is a painful one, but if a man's moral and intel- 
 lectual constitution is naturally sound, there is nothing 
 which will give him so much strength of character as 
 having been well cut. 
 
 It was easy for him to keep his expenditure down, for 
 his tastes were not luxurious. He liked theatres, outings 
 into the country on a Sunday, and tobacco, but he did not 
 care for much else, except writing and music. As for 
 the usual run of concerts, he hated them. He wor- 
 shipped Handel; he liked Offenbach, and the airs that 
 went about the streets, but he cared for nothing between 
 these two extremes. Music, therefore, cost him little. 
 As for theatres, I got him and Ellen as many orders as 
 they liked, so these cost them nothing. The Sunday 
 outings were a small item ; for a shilling or two he could 
 get a return ticket to some place far enough out of town 
 to give him a good walk and a thorough change for the 
 day. Ellen went with him the first few times, but she 
 said she found it too much for her, there were a few of 
 her old friends whom she should sometimes like to see,
 
 370 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and they and he, she said, would not hit it off perhaps 
 too well, so it would be better for him to go alone. This 
 seemed so sensible, and suited Ernest so exactly that he 
 readily fell into it, nor did he suspect dangers which 
 were apparent enough to me when I heard how she had 
 treated the matter. I kept silence, however, and for a 
 time all continued to go well. As I have said, one of 
 his chief pleasures was in writing. If a man carries with 
 him a little sketch book and is continually jotting down 
 sketches, he has the artistic instinct; a hundred things 
 may hinder his due development, but the instinct is there. 
 The literary instinct may be known by a man's keeping 
 a small note-book in his waistcoat pocket, into which he 
 jots down anything that strikes him, or any good thing 
 that he hears said, or a reference to any passage which 
 he thinks will come in useful to him. Ernest had such 
 a note-book always with him. Even when he was at 
 Cambridge he had begun the practice without anyone's 
 having suggested it to him. These notes he copied out 
 from time to time into a book, which as they accumu- 
 lated, he was driven into indexing approximately, as he 
 went along. When I found out this, I knew that he had 
 the literary instinct, and when I saw his notes I began 
 to hope great things of him. 
 
 For a long time I was disappointed. He was kept back 
 by the nature of the subjects he chose which were 
 generally metaphysical. In vain I tried to get him away 
 from these to matters which had a greater interest for 
 the general public. When I begged him to try his hand 
 at some pretty, graceful, little story which should be full 
 of whatever people knew and liked best, he would imme- 
 diately set to work upon a treatise to show the grounds 
 on which all belief rested. 
 
 "You are stirring mud," said I, "or poking at a sleep- 
 ing dog. You are trying to make people resume con- 
 sciousness about things, which, with sensible men, have 
 already passed into the unconscious stage. The men
 
 The Way of All Flesh 371 
 
 whom you would disturb are in front of you, and not, as 
 you fancy, behind you ; it is you who are the lagger, not 
 they" 
 
 He could not see it. He said he was engaged on an 
 essay upon the famous quod semper, quod ubique, quod 
 ab omnibus of St. Vincent de Lerins. This was the 
 more provoking because he showed himself able to do 
 better things if he had liked. 
 
 I was then at work upon my burlesque, "The Impatient 
 Griselda," and was sometimes at my wits' end for a piece 
 of business or a situation ; he gave me many suggestions, 
 all of which were marked by excellent good sense. Never- 
 theless I could not prevail with him to put philosophy on 
 one side, and was obliged to leave him to himself. 
 
 For a long time, as I have said, his choice of sub- 
 jects continued to be such as I could not approve. He 
 was continually studying scientific and metaphysical writ- 
 ers, in the hope of either finding or making for himself 
 a philosopher's stone in the shape of a system which 
 should go on all fours under all circumstances, instead 
 of being liable to be upset at every touch and turn, as 
 every system yet promulgated has turned out to be. 
 
 He kept to the pursuit of this will-o'-the-wisp so long 
 that I gave up hope, and set him down as another fly 
 that had been caught, as it were, by a piece of paper 
 daubed over with some sticky stuff that had not even the 
 merit of being sweet, but to my surprise he at last de- 
 clared that he was satisfied, and had found what he 
 wanted. 
 
 I supposed that he had only hit upon some new "Lo, 
 here!" when to my relief, he told me that he had con- 
 cluded that no system which should go perfectly upon 
 all fours was possible, inasmuch as no one could get be- 
 hind Bishop Berkeley, and therefore no absolutely in- 
 controvertible first premise could ever be laid. Having 
 found this he was just as well pleased as if he had 
 found the most perfect system imaginable. All he
 
 372 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 wanted, he said, was to know which way it was to be 
 that is to say whether a system was possible or not, and 
 if possible then what the system was to be. Having 
 found out that no system based on absolute certainty was 
 possible he was contented. 
 
 I had only a very vague idea who Bishop Berkeley 
 was, but was thankful to him for having defended us 
 from an incontrovertible first premise. I am afraid I 
 said a few words implying that after a great deal of 
 trouble he had arrived at the conclusion which sensible 
 people reach without bothering their brains so much. 
 
 He said : ''Yes, but I was not born sensible. A child 
 of ordinary powers learns to walk at a year or two old 
 without knowing much about it ; failing ordinary pow- 
 ers he had better learn laboriously than never learn at 
 all. I am sorry I was not stronger, but to do as I did 
 was my only chance." 
 
 He looked so meek that I was vexed with myself for 
 having said what I had, more especially when I remem- 
 bered his bringing-up, which had doubtless done much 
 to impair his power of taking a common-sense view of 
 things. He continued 
 
 "I see it all now. The people like Towneley are the 
 only ones who know anything that is worth knowing, and 
 like that of course I can never be. But to make Towne- 
 leys possible there must be hewers of wood and drawers 
 of water men in fact through whom conscious knowl- 
 edge must pass before it can reach those who can apply 
 it gracefully and instinctively as the Towneleys can. I 
 am a hewer of wood, but if I accept the position frankly 
 and do not set up to be a Towneley, it does not mat- 
 ter." 
 
 He still, therefore, stuck to science instead of turning 
 to literature proper as I hoped he would have done, but 
 he confined himself henceforth to enquiries on specific 
 subjects concerning which an increase of our knowledge 
 as he said was possible. Having in fact, after infinite
 
 The Way of All Flesh 373 
 
 vexation of spirit, arrived at a conclusion which cut at 
 the roots of all knowledge, he settled contentedly down 
 to the pursuit of knowledge, and has pursued it ever 
 since in spite of occasional excursions into the regions 
 of literature proper. 
 
 But this is anticipating, and may perhaps also convey 
 a wrong impression, for from the outset he did occa- 
 sionally turn his attention to work which must be more 
 properly called literary than either scientific or meta- 
 physical. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV 
 
 ABOUT six months after he had set up his shop his pros- 
 perity had reached its climax. It seemed even then as 
 though he were likely to go ahead no less fast than 
 heretofore, and I doubt not that he would have done 
 so, if success or non-success had depended upon himself 
 alone. Unfortunately he was not the only person to be 
 reckoned with. 
 
 One morning he had gone out to attend some sales, 
 leaving his wife perfectly well, as usual in good spirits, 
 and looking very pretty. When he came back he found 
 her sitting on a chair in the back parlour, with her hair 
 over her face, sobbing and crying as though her heart 
 would break. She said she had been frightened in the 
 morning by a man who had pretended to be a customer, 
 and had threatened her unless she gave him some things, 
 and she had had to give them to him in order to save her- 
 self from violence ; she had been in hysterics ever since 
 the man had gone. This was her story, but her speech 
 was so incoherent that it was not easy to make out what 
 she said. Ernest knew she was with child, and thinking 
 this might have something to do with the matter, would 
 have sent for a doctor if Ellen had not begged him not 
 to do so.
 
 374 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Anyone who had had experience of drunken people 
 would have seen at a glance what the matter was, but 
 my hero knew nothing about them nothing, that is to 
 say, about the drunkenness of the habitual drunkard, 
 which shows itself very differently from that of one who 
 gets drunk only once in a way. The idea that his wife 
 could drink had never even crossed his mind, indeed she 
 always made a fuss about taking more than a very little 
 beer, and never touched spirits. He did not know much 
 more about hysterics than he did about drunkenness, 
 but he had always heard that women who were about to 
 become mothers were liable to be easily upset and were 
 often rather flighty, so he was not greatly surprised, 
 and thought he had settled the matter by registering the 
 discovery that being about to become a father has its 
 troublesome as well as its pleasant side. 
 
 The great change in Ellen's life consequent upon her 
 meeting Ernest and getting married had for a time 
 actually sobered her by shaking her out of her old ways. 
 Drunkenness is so much a matter of habit, and habit so 
 much a matter of surroundings, that if you completely 
 change the surroundings you will sometimes get rid of 
 the drunkenness altogether. Ellen had intended remain- 
 ing always sober henceforward, and never having had so 
 long a steady fit before, believed she was now cured. 
 So she perhaps would have been if she had seen none 
 of her old acquaintances. When, however, her new life 
 was beginning to lose its newness, and when her old 
 acquaintances came to see her, her present surroundings 
 became more like her past, and on this she herself began 
 to get like her past too. At first she only got a little 
 tipsy and struggled against a relapse ; but it was no use, 
 she soon lost the heart to fight, and now her object was 
 not to try to keep sober, but to get gin without her hus- 
 band's finding it out. 
 
 So the hysterics continued, and she managed to make 
 her husband still think that they were due to her being
 
 The Way of All Flesh 375 
 
 about to become a mother. The worse her attacks were, 
 the more devoted he became in his attention to her. At 
 last he insisted that a doctor should see her. The doctor 
 of course took in the situation at a glance, but said noth- 
 ing to Ernest except in such a guarded way that he did 
 not understand the hints that were thrown out to him. 
 He was much too downright and matter-of-fact to be 
 quick at taking hints of this sort. He hoped that as soon 
 as his wife's confinement was over she would regain 
 her health and had no thought save how to spare her as 
 far as possible till that happy time should come. 
 
 In the mornings she was generally better, as long that 
 is to say as Ernest remained at home; but he had to go 
 out buying, and on his return would generally find that 
 she had had another attack as soon as he had left the 
 house. At times she would laugh and cry for half an 
 hour together, at others she would lie in a semi-comatose 
 state upon the bed, and when he came back he would 
 find that the shop had been neglected and all the work 
 of the household left undone. Still he took it for granted, 
 that this was all part of the usual course when women 
 were going to become mothers, and when Ellen's share 
 of the work settled down more and more upon his own 
 shoulders he did it all and drudged away without a mur- 
 mur. Nevertheless, he began to feel in a vague way 
 more as he had felt in Ashpit Place, at Roughborough, 
 or at Battersby, and to lose the buoyancy of spirits which 
 had made another man of him during the first six months 
 of his married life. 
 
 It was not only that he had to do so much household 
 work, for even the cooking, cleaning up slops, bed- 
 making and fire-lighting ere long devolved upon him, but 
 his business no longer prospered. He could buy as hith- 
 erto, but Ellen seemed unable to sell as she had sold 
 at first. The fact was that she sold as well as ever, but 
 kept back part of the proceeds in order to buy gin, and 
 she did this more and more till even the unsuspecting
 
 3?6 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest ought to have seen that she was not telling the 
 truth. When she sold better that is to say when she 
 did not think it safe to keep back more than a certain 
 amount, she got money out of him on the plea that she 
 had a longing for this or that, and that it would perhaps 
 irreparably damage the baby if her longing was denied 
 her. All seemed right, reasonable, and unavoidable, 
 nevertheless Ernest saw that until the confinement was 
 over he was likely to have a hard time of it. All, how- 
 ever, would then come right again. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXV 
 
 IN the month of September, 1860, a girl was born, and 
 Ernest was proud and happy. The birth of the child, 
 and a rather alarming talk which the doctor had given to 
 Ellen sobered her for a few weeks, and it really seemed 
 as though his hopes were about to be fulfilled. The 
 expenses of his wife's confinement were heavy, and he 
 was obliged to trench upon his savings, but he had no 
 doubt about soon recouping this, now that Ellen was 
 herself again; for a time indeed his business did revive 
 a little, nevertheless it seemed as though the interruption 
 to his prosperity had in some way broken the spell of 
 good luck which had attended him in the outset ; he was 
 still sanguine, however, and worked night and day with 
 a will, but there was no more music, or reading, or writ- 
 ing now. His Sunday outings were put a stop to, and 
 but for the first floor being let to myself, he would 
 have lost his citadel there too, but he seldom used it, for 
 Ellen had to wait more and more upon the baby, and, 
 as a consequence, Ernest had to wait more and more 
 upon Ellen. 
 
 One afternoon, about a couple of months after the 
 baby had been born, and just as my unhappy hero was 
 beginning to feel more hopeful and therefore better able
 
 The Way of All Flesh 377 
 
 to bear his burdens, he returned from a sale, and found 
 Ellen in the same hysterical condition that he had found 
 her in in the spring. She said she was again with child, 
 and Ernest still believed her. 
 
 All the troubles of the preceding six months began 
 again then and there, and grew worse and worse con- 
 tinually. Money did not come in quickly, for Ellen 
 cheated him by keeping it back, and dealing improperly 
 with the goods he bought. When it did come in she got 
 it out of him as before on pretexts which it seemed in- 
 human to inquire into. It was always the same story. 
 By and by a new feature began to show itself. Ernest 
 had inherited his father's punctuality and exactness as 
 regards money; he liked to know the worst of what he 
 had to pay at once ; he hated having expenses sprung 
 upon him which if not foreseen might and ought to have 
 been so, but now bills began to be brought to him for 
 things ordered by Ellen without his knowledge, or for 
 which he had already given her the money. This was 
 awful, and even Ernest turned. When he remonstrated 
 with her not for having bought the things, but for hav- 
 ing said nothing to him about the moneys being owing 
 Ellen met him with hysteria and there was a scene. She 
 had now pretty well forgotten the hard times she had 
 known when she had been on her own resources and 
 reproached him downright with having married her on 
 that moment the scales fell from Ernest's eyes as they 
 had fallen when Towneley had said, "No, no, no." He 
 said nothing, but he woke up once for all to the fact that 
 he had made a mistake in marrying. A touch had again 
 come which had revealed him to himself. 
 
 He went upstairs to the disused citadel, flung himself 
 into the armchair, and covered his face with his hands, 
 He still did not know that his wife drank, but he could 
 no longer trust her, and his dream of happiness was 
 over. He had been saved from the Church so as by 
 fire, but still saved but what could now save him from
 
 3?8 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 his marriage? He had made the same mistake that he 
 had made in wedding himself to the Church, but with a 
 hundred times worse results. He had learnt nothing by 
 experience: he was an Esau one of those wretches 
 whose hearts the Lord had hardened, who, having ears, 
 heard not, having eyes saw not, and who should find no 
 place for repentance though they sought it even with 
 tears. 
 
 Yet had he not on the whole tried to find out what 
 the ways of God were, and to follow them in singleness 
 of heart? To a certain extent, yes; but he had not been 
 thorough ; he had not given up all for God. He knew 
 that very well ; he had done little as compared with what 
 he might and ought to have done, but still if he was 
 being punished for this, God was a hard taskmaster, and 
 one, too, who was continually pouncing out upon his 
 unhappy creatures from ambuscades. In marrying Ellen 
 he had meant to avoid a life of sin, and to take the 
 course he believed to be moral and right. With his 
 antecedents and surroundings it was the most natural 
 thing in the world for him to have done, yet in what a 
 frightful position had not his morality landed him. 
 Could any amount of immorality have placed him in a 
 much worse one? .What was morality worth if it was 
 not that which on the whole brought a man peace at the 
 last, and could anyone have reasonable certainty that 
 marriage would do this? It seemed to him that in his 
 attempt to be moral he had been following a devil which 
 had disguised itself as an angel of light. But if so, what 
 ground was there on which a man might rest the sole of 
 his foot and tread ,in reasonable safety ? 
 
 He was still too young to reach the answer, "On com- 
 mon sense" an answer which he would have felt to be 
 unworthy of anyone who had an ideal standard. 
 
 However this might be, it was plain that he had now 
 done for himself. It had been thus with him all his life. 
 If there had come at any time a gleam of sunshine and
 
 The Way of All Flesh 379 
 
 hope, it was to be obscured immediately why, prison 
 was happier than this! There, at any rate, he had had 
 no money anxieties, and these were beginning to weigh 
 upon him now with all their horrors. He was happier 
 even now than he had been at Battersby or at Rough- 
 borough, and he would not now go back, even if he 
 could, to his Cambridge life, but for all that the out- 
 look was so gloomy, in fact so hopeless, that he felt as 
 if he could have only too gladly gone to sleep and died 
 in his armchair once for all. 
 
 As he was musing thus and looking upon the wreck 
 of his hopes for he saw well enough that as long as 
 he was linked to Ellen he should never rise as he had 
 dreamed of doing he heard a noise below, and pres- 
 ently a neighbour ran upstairs and entered his room 
 hurriedly. 
 
 "Good gracious, Mr. Pontifex," she exclaimed, "for 
 goodness' sake come down quickly and help. Mrs. Pon- 
 tifex is took with the horrors and she's orkard." 
 
 The unhappy man came down as he was bid and found 
 his wife mad with delirium tremens. 
 
 He knew all now. The neighbours thought he must 
 have known that his wife drank all along, but Ellen 
 had been so artful, and he so simple, that, as I have said, 
 he had had no suspicion. "Why," said the woman who 
 had summoned him, "she'll drink anything she can stand 
 up and pay her money for." Ernest could hardly believe 
 his ears, but when the doctor had seen his wife and 
 she had become more quiet, he went over to the public 
 house hard by and made enquiries, the result of which 
 rendered further doubt impossible. The publican took 
 the opportunity to present my hero with a bill of sev- 
 eral pounds for bottles of spirits supplied to his wife, 
 and what with his wife's confinement and the way busi- 
 ness had fallen off, he had not the money to pay with, 
 for the sum exceeded the remnant of his savings. 
 
 He came to me not for money, but to tell me his
 
 380 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 miserable story. I had seen for some time that there 
 was something wrong, and had suspected pretty shrewdly 
 what the matter was, but of course I said nothing. Er- 
 nest and I had been growing apart for some time. I 
 was vexed at his having married, and he knew I was 
 vexed, though I did my best to hide it. 
 
 A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by 
 marriage but they are also no less invalidated by the 
 marriage of his friends. The rift in friendship which 
 invariably makes its appearance on the marriage of either 
 of the parties to it was fast widening, as it no less in- 
 variably does, into the great gulf which is fixed between 
 the married and the unmarried, and I was beginning to 
 leave my protege to a fate with which I had neither right 
 nor power to meddle. In fact I had begun to feel him 
 rather a burden; I did not so much mind this when I 
 could be of use, but I grudged it when I could be of 
 none. He had made his bed and he must lie upon it. 
 Ernest had felt all this and had seldom come near me 
 till now, one evening late in 1860, he called on me, and 
 with a very woe-begone face told me his troubles.^ 
 
 As soon as I found that he no longer liked his wife I 
 forgave him at once, and was as much interested in him 
 as ever. There is nothing an old bachelor likes better 
 than to find a young married man who wishes he had not 
 got married especially when the case is such an ex- 
 treme one that he need not pretend to hope that matters 
 will come all right again, or encourage his young friend 
 to make the best of it. 
 
 I was myself in favour of a separation, and said I 
 would make Ellen an allowance myself of course in- 
 tending that it should come out of Ernest's money; but 
 he would not hear of this. He had married Ellen, he 
 said, and he must try to reform her. He hated it, but 
 he must try ; and finding him as usual very obstinate I 
 was obliged to acquiesce, though with little confidence as 
 to the result. I was vexed at seeing him waste himself
 
 The Way of All Flesh 381 
 
 upon such a barren task, and again began to feel him 
 burdensome. I am afraid I showed this, for he again 
 avoided me for some time, and, indeed, for many months 
 I hardly saw him at all. 
 
 Ellen remained very ill for some days, and then grad- 
 ually recovered. Ernest hardly left her till she was out 
 of danger. When she had recovered he got the doctor 
 to tell her that if she had such another attack she would 
 certainly die; this so frightened her that she took the 
 pledge. 
 
 Then he became more hopeful again. When she was 
 sober she was just what she was during the first days of 
 her married life, and so quick was he to forget pain, 
 that after a few days he was as fond of her as ever. 
 But Ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he 
 did. She knew that he was on the watch to shield her 
 from temptation, and though he did his best to make her 
 think that he had no further uneasiness about her, she 
 found the burden of her union with respectability grow 
 more and more heavy upon her, and looked back more 
 and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life 
 she had led before she met her husband. 
 
 I will dwell no longer on this part of my story. Dur- 
 ing the spring months of 1861 she kept straight she 
 had had her fling of dissipation, and this, together with 
 the impression made upon her by her having taken the 
 pledge, tamed her for a while. The shop went fairly 
 well, and enabled Ernest to make the two ends meet. In 
 the spring and summer of 1861 he even put by a little 
 money again. In the autumn his wife was confined of 
 a boy a very fine one, so everyone said. She soon re- 
 covered, and Ernest was beginning to breathe freely 
 and be almost sanguine when, without a word of warn- 
 ing, the storm broke again. He returned one afternoon 
 about two years after his marriage, and found his wife 
 lying upon the floor insensible. 
 
 From this time he became hopeless, and began to
 
 382 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 go visibly down hill. He had been knocked about too 
 much, and the luck had gone too long against him. The 
 wear and tear of the last three years had told on him, 
 and though not actually ill he was overworked, below 
 par, and unfit for any further burden. 
 
 He struggled for a while to prevent himself from find- 
 ing this out, but facts were too strong for him. Again 
 he called on me and told me what had happened. I was 
 glad the crisis had come; I was sorry for Ellen, but a 
 complete separation from her was the only chance for 
 her husband. Even after this last outbreak he was un- 
 willing to consent to this, and talked nonsense about 
 dying at his post, till I got tired of him. Each time I 
 saw him the old gloom had settled more and more deeply 
 upon his face, and I had about made up my mind to put 
 an end to the situation by a coup de main, such as brib- 
 ing Ellen to run away with somebody else, or some- 
 thing of that kind, when matters settled themselves as 
 usual in a way which I had not anticipated. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVI 
 
 THE winter had been a trying one. Ernest had only paid 
 his way by selling his piano. With this he seemed to 
 cut away the last link that connected him with his 
 earlier life, and to sink once for all into the small shop- 
 keeper. It seemed to him that however low he might 
 sink his pain could not last much longer, for he should 
 simply die if it did. 
 
 He hated Ellen now, and the pair lived in open want 
 of harmony with each other. If it had not been for 
 his children, he would have left her and gone to Amer- 
 ica, but he could not leave the children with Ellen, and 
 as for taking them with him he did not know how to 
 do it, nor what to do with them when he had got them 
 to America. If he had not lost energy he would prob-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 383 
 
 ably in the end have taken the children and gone off, 
 but his nerve was shaken, so day after day went by 
 and nothing was done. 
 
 He had only got a few shillings in the world now, 
 except the value of his stock, which was very little; he 
 could get perhaps 3 or 4 by selling his music and what 
 few pictures and pieces of furniture still belonged to 
 him. He thought of trying to live by his pen, but his 
 writing had dropped off long ago; he no longer had 
 an idea in his head. Look which way he would he saw 
 no hope ; the end, if it had not actually come, was within 
 easy distance, and he was almost face to face with actual 
 want. When he saw people going about poorly clad, or 
 even without shoes and stockings, he wondered whether 
 within a few months' time he too should not have to go 
 about in this way. The remorseless, resistless hand of 
 fate had caught him in its grip and was dragging him 
 down, down, down. Still he staggered on, going his 
 daily rounds, buying second-hand clothes, and spending 
 his evenings in cleaning and mending them. 
 
 One morning, as he was returning from a house at 
 the West End where he had bought some clothes from 
 one of the servants, he was struck by a small crowd 
 which had gathered round a space that had been railed 
 off on the grass near one of the paths in the Green 
 Park. 
 
 It was a lovely soft spring morning at the end of 
 March, and unusually balmy for the time of year; even 
 Ernest's melancholy was relieved for a while by the look 
 of spring that pervaded earth and sky; but it soon re- 
 turned, and smiling sadly he said to himself: "It may 
 bring hope to others, but for me there can be no hope 
 henceforth." 
 
 As these words were in his mind he joined the small 
 crowd who were gathered round the railings, and saw 
 that they were looking at three sheep with very small 
 lambs only a day or two old, which had been penned
 
 384 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 off for shelter and protection from the others that ranged 
 the park. 
 
 They were very pretty, and Londoners so seldom 
 get a chance of seeing lambs that it was no wonder 
 every one stopped to look at them. Ernest observed 
 that no one seemed fonder of them than a great lub- 
 berly butcher boy, who leaned up against the railings 
 with a tray of meat upon his shoulder. He was looking 
 at this boy and smiling at the grotesqueness of his ad- 
 miration, when he became aware that he was being 
 watched intently by a man in coachman's livery, who 
 had also stopped to admire the lambs, and was leaning 
 against the opposite side of the enclosure. Ernest knew 
 him in a moment as John, his father's old coachman at 
 Battersby, and went up to him at once. 
 
 "Why, Master Ernest," said he, with his strong north- 
 ern accent, "I was thinking of you only this very morn- 
 ing," and the pair shook hands heartily. John was in 
 an excellent place at the West End. He had done very 
 well, he said, ever since he had left Battersby, except 
 for the first year or two, and that, he said, with a screw 
 of the face, had well nigh broke him. 
 
 Ernest asked how this was. 
 
 "Why, you see," said John, "I was always main fond 
 of that lass Ellen, whom you remember running after, 
 Master Ernest, and giving your watch to. I expect you 
 haven't forgotten that day, have you?" And here he 
 laughed. "I don't know as I be the father of the child 
 she carried away with her from Battersby, but I very 
 easily may have been. Anyhow, after I had left your 
 papa's place a few days I wrote to Ellen to an address 
 we had agreed upon, and told her I would do what I 
 ought to do, and so I did, for I married her within a 
 month afterwards. Why, Lord love the man, what- 
 ever is the matter with him?" for as he had spoken the 
 last few words of his story Ernest had turned white 
 as a sheet, and was leaning against the railings.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 385 
 
 "John," said my hero, gasping for breath, "are you 
 sure of what you say are you quite sure you really mar- 
 ried her?" 
 
 "Of course I am," said John ; "I married her before 
 the registrar at Letchbury on the I5th of August, 1851." 
 
 "Give me your arm," said Ernest, "and take me into 
 Piccadilly, and put me into a cab, and come with me at 
 once, if you can spare time, to Mr. Overton's at the 
 Temple." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVII 
 
 I DO not think Ernest himself was much more pleased 
 at finding that he had never been married than I was. 
 To him, however, the shock of pleasure was positively 
 numbing in its intensity. As he felt his burden removed, 
 he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his move- 
 ments; his position was so shattered that his identity 
 seemed to have been shattered also ; he was as one wak- 
 ing up from a horrible nightmare to find himself safe 
 and sound in bed, but who can hardly even yet believe 
 that the room is not full of armed men who are about 
 to spring upon him. 
 
 "And it is I," he said, "who not an hour ago com- 
 plained that I was without hope. It is I, who for weeks 
 have been railing at fortune, and saying that though 
 she smiled on others she never smiled at me. Why, 
 never was anyone half so fortunate as I am." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "you have been inoculated for mar- 
 riage, and have recovered." 
 
 "And yet," he said, "I was very fond of her till she 
 took to drinking." 
 
 "Perhaps ; but is it not Tennyson who has said : 
 ' 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have 
 loved at all'?" 
 
 "You are an inveterate bachelor," was the rejoinder.
 
 386 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave 
 a 5 note upon the spot. He said, "Ellen had used to 
 drink at Battersby; the cook had taught her; he had 
 known it, but was so fond of her, that he had chanced 
 it and married her to save her from the streets and in 
 the hope of being able to keep her straight. She had 
 done with him just as she had done with Ernest made 
 him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober, but a 
 very bad one afterwards." 
 
 "There isn't," said John, "a sweeter-tempered, handier, 
 prettier girl than she was in all England, nor one as 
 knows better what a man likes, and how to make him 
 happy, if you can keep her from drink; but you can't 
 keep her; she's that artful she'll get it under your very 
 eyes, without you knowing it. If she can't get any more 
 of your things to pawn or sell, she'll steal her neigh- 
 bours'. That's how she got into trouble first when I 
 was with her. During the six months she was in prison 
 I should have felt happy if I had not known she would 
 come out again. And then she did come out, and be- 
 fore she had been free a fortnight, she began shop-lifting 
 and going on the loose again and all to get money to 
 drink with. So seeing I could do nothing with her 
 and that she was just a-killing of me, I left her, and 
 came up to London, and went into service again, and I 
 did not know what had become of her till you and Mr. 
 Ernest here told me. I hope you'll neither of you say 
 you've seen me." 
 
 We assured him we would keep his counsel, and then 
 he left us, with many protestations of affection towards 
 Ernest, to whom he had been always much attached. 
 
 We talked the situation over, and decided first to 
 get the children away, and then to come to terms with 
 Ellen concerning their future custody; as for herself, 
 I proposed that we should make her an allowance of, 
 say, a pound a week to be paid so long as she gave no 
 trouble. Ernest did not see where the pound a week
 
 The Way of All Flesh 387 
 
 was to come from, so I eased his mind by saying I would 
 pay it myself. Before the day was two hours older we 
 had got the children, about whom Ellen had always ap- 
 peared to be indifferent, and had confided them to the 
 care of my laundress, a good motherly sort of woman, 
 who took to them and to whom they took at once. 
 
 Then came the odious task of getting rid of their un- 
 happy mother. Ernest's heart smote him at the notion 
 of the shock the break-up would be to her. He was al- 
 ways thinking that people had a claim upon him for some 
 inestimable service they had rendered him, or for some 
 irreparable mischief done to them by himself; the case 
 however was so clear, that Ernest's scruples did not 
 offer serious resistance. 
 
 I did not see why he should have the pain of an- 
 other interview with his wife, so I got Mr. Ottery to 
 manage the whole business. It turned out that we need 
 not have harrowed ourselves so much about the agony 
 of mind which Ellen would suffer on becoming an out- 
 cast again. Ernest saw Mrs. Richards, the neighbour 
 who had called him down on the night when he had first 
 discovered his wife's drunkenness, and got from her 
 some details of Ellen's opinions upon the matter. She 
 did not seem in the least conscience-stricken; she said: 
 "Thank goodness, at last !" And although aware that 
 her marriage was not a valid one, evidently regarded 
 this as a mere detail which it would not be worth any- 
 body's while to go into more particularly. As regards 
 his breaking with her, she said it was a good job both for 
 him and for her. 
 
 "This life," she continued, "don't suit me. Ernest is 
 too good for me; he wants a woman as shall be a bit 
 better than me, and I want a man that shall be a bit 
 worse than him. We should have got on all very well 
 if we had not lived together as married folks, but I've 
 been used to have a little place of my own, however 
 small, for a many years, and I don't want Ernest, or
 
 388 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 any other man, always hanging about it. Besides, he is 
 too steady: his being in prison hasn't done him a bit 
 of good he's just as grave as those as have never been 
 in prison at all, and he never swears nor curses, come 
 what may; it makes me afeared of him, and therefore 
 I drink the worse. What us poor girls wants is not to 
 be jumped up all of a sudden and made honest women 
 of ; this is too much for us and throws us off our perch ; 
 what we wants is a regular friend or two, who'll just 
 keep us from starving, and force us to be good for a 
 bit together now and again. That's about as much as 
 we can stand. He may have the children; he can do 
 better for them than I can; and as for his money, he 
 may give it or keep it as he likes; he's never done me 
 any harm, and I shall let him alone ; but if he means me 
 to have it, I suppose I'd better have it." And have it 
 she did. 
 
 "And I," thought Ernest to himself again when the 
 arrangement was concluded, "am the man who thought 
 himself unlucky!" 
 
 I may as well say here all that need be said further 
 about Ellen. For the next three years she used to call 
 regularly at Mr. Ottery's every Monday morning for her 
 pound. She was always neatly dressed, and looked so 
 quiet and pretty that no one would have suspected her 
 antecedents. At first she wanted sometimes to antici- 
 pate, but after three or four ineffectual attempts on 
 each of which occasions she told a most pitiful story 
 she gave it up and took her money regularly without 
 a word. Once she came with a bad black eye, "which a 
 boy had throwed a stone and hit her by mistake" ; but 
 on the whole she looked pretty much the same at the 
 end of the three years as she had done at the beginning. 
 Then she explained that she was going to be married 
 again. Mr. Ottery saw her on this, and pointed out 
 to her that she would very likely be again committing 
 bigamy by doing so. "You may call it what you like,"
 
 The Way of All Flesh 389 
 
 she replied, "but I am going off to America with Bill 
 the butcher's man, and we hope Mr. Pontifex won't be 
 too hard on us and stop the allowance." Ernest was 
 little likely to do this, so the pair went in peace. I be- 
 lieve it was Bill who had blacked her eye, and she liked 
 him all the better for it. 
 
 From one or two little things I have been able to 
 gather that the couple got on very well together, and 
 that in Bill she has found a partner better suited to her 
 than either John or Ernest. On his birthday Ernest 
 generally receives an envelope with an American post- 
 mark containing a book-marker with a flaunting text 
 upon it, or a moral kettle-holder, or some other similar 
 small token of recognition, but no letter. Of the chil- 
 dren she has taken no notice. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVIII 
 
 ERNEST was now well turned twenty-six years old, and in 
 little more than another year and a half would come into 
 possession of his money. I saw no reason for letting 
 him have it earlier than the date fixed by Miss Pontifex 
 herself ; at the same time I did not like his continuing 
 the shop at Blackfriars after the present crisis. It was 
 not till now that I fully understood how much he had 
 suffered, nor how nearly his supposed wife's habits had 
 brought him to actual want. 
 
 I had indeed noted the old, wan, worn look settling 
 upon his face, but was either too indolent or too hope- 
 less of being able to sustain a protracted and successful 
 warfare with Ellen to extend the sympathy and make 
 the inquiries which I suppose I ought to have made. 
 And yet I hardly know what I could have done, for 
 nothing short of his finding out what he had found out 
 would have detached him from his wife, and nothing
 
 39O The Way of All Flesh 
 
 could do him much good as long as he continued to live 
 with her. 
 
 After all I suppose I was right; I suppose things did 
 turn out all the better in the end for having been left to 
 settle themselves at any rate whether they did or did 
 not, the whole thing was in too great a muddle for me 
 to venture to tackle it so long as Ellen was upon the 
 scene; now, however, that she was removed, all my in- 
 terest in my godson revived, and I turned over many 
 times in my mind what I had better do with him. 
 
 It was now three and a half years since he had come 
 up to London and begun to live, so to speak, upon his 
 own account. Of these years, six months had been spent 
 as a clergyman, six months in gaol, and for two and a 
 half years he had been acquiring twofold experience 
 in the ways of business and of marriage. He had failed, 
 I may say, in everything that he had undertaken, even 
 as a prisoner; yet his defeats had been always, as it 
 seemed to me, something so like victories, that I was sat- 
 isfied of his being worth all the pains I could bestow 
 upon him; my only fear was lest I should meddle with 
 him when it might be better for him to be let alone. 
 On the whole I concluded that a three and a half years' 
 apprenticeship to a rough life was enough; the shop 
 had done much for him ; it had kept him going after 
 a fashion, when he was in great need; it had thrown 
 him upon his own resources, and taught him to see 
 profitable openings all around him, where a few months 
 before he would have seen nothing but insuperable diffi- 
 culties; it had enlarged his sympathies by making him 
 understand the lower classes, and not confining his view 
 of life to that taken by gentlemen only. When he went 
 about the streets and saw the books outside the sec- 
 ond-hand book-stalls, the bric-a-brac in the curiosity 
 shops, and the infinite commercial activity which is omni- 
 present around us, he understood it and sympathised
 
 The Way of All Flesh 391 
 
 with it as he could never have done if he had not kept 
 a shop himself. 
 
 He has often told me that when he used to travel on 
 a railway that overlooked populous suburbs, and looked 
 down upon street after street of dingy houses, he used 
 to wonder what kind of people lived in them, what they 
 did and felt, and how far it was like what he did and 
 felt himself. Now, he said, he knew all about it. I am 
 not very familiar with the writer of the Odyssey (who, 
 by the way, I suspect strongly of having been a clergy- 
 man), but he assuredly hit the right nail on the head 
 when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing "the 
 ways and farings of many men." What culture is com- 
 parable to this? What a lie, what a sickly, debilitating 
 debauch did not Ernest's school and university career 
 now seem to him, in comparison with his life in prison 
 and as a tailor in Blackfriars. I have heard him say 
 he would have gone through all he had suffered if it 
 were only for the deeper insight it gave him into the 
 spirit of the Grecian and the Surrey pantomimes. What 
 confidence again in his own power to swim if thrown 
 into deep waters had not he won through his experi- 
 ences during the last three years! 
 
 But, as I have said, I thought my godson had now 
 seen as much of the under currents of life as was likely 
 to be of use to him, and that it was time he began to 
 live in a style more suitable to his prospects. His aunt 
 had wished him to kiss the soil, and he had kissed it with 
 a vengeance; but I did not like the notion of his coming 
 suddenly from the position of a small shopkeeper to 
 that of a man with an income of between three and 
 four thousand a year. Too sudden a jump from bad 
 fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good 
 to bad ; besides, poverty is very wearing ; it is a quasi- 
 embryonic condition, through which a man had better 
 pass if he is to hold his later developments securely, but
 
 392 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 like measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly 
 and get it over early. 
 
 No man is safe from losing every penny he has in 
 the world, unless he has had his facer. How often 
 do I not hear middle-aged women and quiet family 
 men say that they have no speculative tendency; they 
 never had touched, and never would touch, any but the 
 very soundest, best reputed investments, and as for un- 
 limited liability, oh, dear ! dear ! and they throw up their 
 hands and eyes. 
 
 Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be 
 recognised as the easy prey of the first adventurer who 
 comes across him; he will commonly, indeed, wind up 
 his discourse by saying that in spite of all his natural 
 caution, and his well knowing how foolish speculation is, 
 yet there are some investments which are called specu- 
 lative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of 
 his pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine. It 
 is only on having actually lost money that one realises 
 what an awful thing the loss of it is, and finds out how 
 easily it is lost by those who venture out of the middle 
 of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his facer, 
 as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and suf- 
 ficiently badly for a sensible man to be little likely to 
 forget it. I can fancy few pieces of good fortune greater 
 than this as happening to any man, provided, of course, 
 that he is not damaged irretrievably. 
 
 So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my 
 way I would have a speculation master attached to every 
 school. The boys would be encouraged to read the 
 Money Market Review, the Railway News, and all the 
 best financial papers, and should establish a stock ex- 
 change amongst themselves in which pence should stand 
 as pounds. Then let them see how this making haste 
 to get rich moneys out in actual practice. There might 
 be a prize awarded by the head-master to the most pru- 
 dent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time
 
 The Way of All Flesh 393 
 
 after time should be dismissed. Of course if any boy 
 proved to have a genius for speculation and made money 
 well and good, let him speculate by all means. 
 
 If Universities were not the worst teachers in the 
 world I should like to see professorships of speculation 
 established at Oxford and Cambridge. When I reflect, 
 however, that the only things worth doing which Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket, 
 rowing and games, of which there is no professorship, 
 I fear that the establishment of a professorial chair 
 would end in teaching young men neither how to specu- 
 late, nor how not to speculate, but would simply turn 
 them out as bad speculators. 
 
 I heard of one case in which a father actually carried 
 my idea into practice. He wanted his son to learn how 
 little confidence was to be placed in glowing prospec- 
 tuses and flaming articles, and found him five hundred 
 pounds which he was to invest according to his lights. 
 The father expected he would lose the money; but it 
 did not turn out so in practice, for the boy took so much 
 pains and played so cautiously that the money kept 
 growing and growing till the father took it away again, 
 increment and all as he was pleased to say, in self 
 defence. 
 
 I had made my own mistakes with money about the 
 year 1846, when everyone else was making them. For 
 a few years I had been so scared and had suffered 
 so severely, that when (owing to the good advice of the 
 broker who had advised my father and grandfather be- 
 fore me) I came out in the end a winner and not a loser, 
 I played no more pranks, but kept henceforward as 
 nearly in the middle of the middle rut as I could. I 
 tried in fact to keep my money rather than to make 
 more of it. I had done with Ernest's money as with my 
 own that is to say I had let it alone after investing 
 it in Midland ordinary stock according to Miss Ponti- 
 fex's instructions. No amount of trouble would have
 
 394 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 been likely to have increased my godson's estate one 
 half so much as it had increased without my taking any 
 trouble at all. 
 
 Midland stock at the end of August 1850, when I sold 
 out Miss Pontifex's debentures, stood at 32 per 100. 
 I invested the whole of Ernest's 15,000 at this price, 
 and did not change the investment till a few months 
 before the time of which I have been writing lately 
 that is to say until September, 1861. I then sold at 129 
 per share and invested in London and North-Western 
 ordinary stock, which I was advised was more likely to 
 rise than Midlands now were. I bought the London 
 and North-Western stock at 93 per 100, and my god- 
 son now in 1882 still holds it. 
 
 The original 15,000 had increased in eleven years to 
 over 60,000 ; the accumulated interest, which, of course, 
 I had re-invested, had come to about 10,000 more, so 
 that Ernest was then worth over 70,000. At present he 
 is worth nearly double that sum, and all as the result 
 of leaving well alone. 
 
 Large as his property now was, it ought to be increased 
 still further during the year and a half that remained 
 of his minority, so that on coming of age he ought to 
 have an income of at least 3500 a year. 
 
 I wished him to understand bookkeeping by double 
 entry. I had myself as a young man been compelled to 
 master this not very difficult art; having acquired it, I 
 have become enamoured of it, and consider it the most 
 necessary branch of any young man's education after 
 reading and writing. I was determined, therefore, that 
 Ernest should master it, and proposed that he should 
 become my steward, bookkeeper, and the manager of 
 my hoardings, for so I called the sum which my ledger 
 showed to have accumulated from 15,000 to 70,000. 
 I told him I was going to begin to spend the income 
 as soon as it had amounted up to 80,000. 
 
 A few days after Ernest's discovery that he was still
 
 a bachelor, while he was still at the very beginning of 
 the honeymoon, as it were, of his renewed unmarried 
 life, I broached my scheme, desired him to give up his 
 shop, and offered him 300 a year for managing (so far 
 indeed as it required any managing) his own property. 
 This 300 a year, I need hardly say, I made him charge 
 to the estate. 
 
 If anything had been wanting to complete his happi- 
 ness it was this. Here, within three or four days he 
 found himself freed from one of the most hideous, hope- 
 less liaisons imaginable, and at the same time raised from 
 a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what would 
 to him be a handsome income. 
 
 "A pound a week," he thought, "for Ellen, and the 
 rest for myself." 
 
 "No," said I, "we will charge Ellen's pound a week 
 to the estate also. You must have a clear 300 for your- 
 self." 
 
 I fixed upon this sum, because it was the one which 
 Mr. Disraeli gave Coningsby when Coningsby was at the 
 lowest ebb of his fortunes. Mr. Disraeli evidently 
 thought 300 a year the smallest sum on which Coningsby 
 could be expected to live, and make the two ends meet; 
 with this, however, he thought his hero could manage 
 to get along for a year or two. In 1862, of which I am 
 now writing, prices had risen, though not so much as 
 they have since done; on the other hand Ernest had 
 had less expensive antecedents than Coningsby, so on 
 the whole I thought 300 a year would be about the right 
 thing for him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIX 
 
 THE question now arose what was to be done with the 
 children. I explained to Ernest that their expenses 
 must be charged to the estate, and showed him how small
 
 396 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 a hole all the various items I proposed to charge would 
 make in the income at my disposal. He was beginning 
 to make difficulties, when I quieted him by pointing out 
 that the money had all come to me from his aunt 
 over his own head, and reminded him there had 
 been an understanding between her and me that I 
 should do much as I was doing, if occasion should 
 arise. 
 
 He wanted his children to be brought up in the fresh 
 pure air, and among other children who were happy 
 and contented ; but being still ignorant of the fortune 
 that awaited him, he insisted that they should pass their 
 earlier years among the poor rather than the rich. I 
 remonstrated, but he was very decided about it; and 
 when I reflected that they were illegitimate, I was not 
 sure but that what Ernest proposed might be as well for 
 everyone in the end. They were still so young that 
 it did not much matter where they were, so long as 
 they were with kindly, decent people, and in a healthy 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 "I shall be just as unkind to my children," he said, 
 "as my grandfather was to my father, or my father to 
 me. If they did not succeed in making their children 
 love them, neither shall I. I say to myself that I should 
 like to do so, but so did they. I can make sure that 
 they shall not know how much they would have hated 
 me if they had had much to do with me, but this is all 
 I can do. If I must ruin their prospects,, let me do so 
 at a reasonable time before they are old enough to 
 feel it." 
 
 He mused a little and added with a laugh: 
 
 "A man first quarrels with his father about three- 
 quarters of a year before he is born. It is then he insists 
 on setting up a separate establishment; when this has 
 been once agreed to, the more complete the separation 
 for ever after the better for both." Then he said more 
 seriously: "I want to put the children where they will
 
 The Way of All Flesh 397 
 
 be well and happy, and where they will not be betrayed 
 into the misery of false expectations." 
 
 In the end he remembered that on his Sunday walks 
 he had more than once seen a couple who lived on the 
 waterside a few miles below Gravesend, just where the 
 sea was beginning, and who he thought would do. They 
 had a family of their own fast coming on and the chil- 
 dren seemed to thrive ; both father and mother indeed 
 were comfortable, well grown folks, in whose hands 
 young people would be likely to have as fair a chance 
 of coming to a good development as in those of any 
 whom he knew. 
 
 We went down to see this couple, and as I thought 
 no less well of them than Ernest did, we offered them 
 a pound a week to take the children and bring them up 
 as though they were their own. They jumped at the 
 offer, and in another day or two we brought the chil- 
 dren down and left them, feeling that we had done as 
 well as we could by them, at any rate for the present. 
 Then Ernest sent his small stock of goods to Deben- 
 ham's, gave up the house he had taken two and a half 
 years previously, and returned to civilisation. 
 
 I had expected that he would now rapidly recover, 
 and was disappointed to see him get as I thought de- 
 cidedly worse. Indeed, before long I thought him look- 
 ing so ill that I insisted on his going with me to consult 
 one of the most eminent doctors in London. This gen- 
 tleman said there was no acute disease but that my 
 young friend was suffering from nervous prostration, 
 the result of long and severe mental suffering, from 
 which there was no remedy except time, prosperity and 
 rest. 
 
 He said that Ernest must have broken down later on, 
 but that he might have gone on for some months yet. 
 It was the suddenness of the relief from tension which 
 had knocked him over now. 
 
 "Cross him," said the doctor, "at once. Crossing is
 
 398 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the great medical discovery of the age. Shake him out 
 of himself by shaking something else into him." 
 
 I had not told him that money was no object to us, 
 and I think he had reckoned me up as not over rich. 
 He continued : 
 
 "Seeing is a mode of touching, touching is a mode 
 of feeding, feeding is a mode of assimilation, assimilation 
 is a mode of re-creation and reproduction, and this is 
 crossing shaking yourself into something else and some- 
 thing else into you." 
 
 He spoke laughingly, but it was plain he was serious. 
 He continued: 
 
 "People are always coming to me who want crossing, 
 or change, if you prefer it, and who I know have not 
 money enough to let them get away from London. This 
 has set me thinking how I can best cross them even if 
 they cannot leave home, and I have made a list of cheap 
 London amusements which I recommend to my patients ; 
 none of them cost more than a few shillings or take 
 more than half a day or a day." 
 
 I explained that there was no occasion to consider 
 money in this case. 
 
 "I am glad of it," he said, still laughing. "The homoeo- 
 pathists use aurum as a medicine, but they do not give 
 it in large doses enough ; if you can dose your young 
 friend with this pretty freely you will soon bring him 
 round. However, Mr. Pontifex is not well enough to 
 stand so great a change as going abroad yet; from 
 what you tell me I should think he had had as much 
 change lately as is good for him. If he were to go 
 abroad now he would probably be taken seriously ill 
 within a week. We must wait till he has recovered tone 
 a little more. I will begin by ringing my London changes 
 on him." 
 
 He thought a little and then said : 
 
 "I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to 
 many of my patients. I should prescribe for Mr. Pon-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 399 
 
 tifex a course of the larger mammals. Don't let him 
 think he is taking them medicinally, but let him go to 
 their house twice a week for a fortnight, and stay with 
 the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the elephants, till 
 they begin to bore him. I find these beasts do my pa- 
 tients more good than any others. The monkeys are 
 not a wide enough cross; they do not stimulate suffi- 
 ciently. The larger carnivora are unsympathetic. The 
 reptiles are worse than useless, and the marsupials are 
 not much better. Birds again, except parrots, are not 
 very beneficial ; he may look at them now and again, 
 but with the elephants and the pig tribe generally he 
 should mix just now as freely as possible. 
 
 "Then, you know, to prevent monotony I should send 
 him, say, to morning service at the Abbey before he goes. 
 He need not stay longer than the Te Deum. I don't 
 know why, but Jubilates are seldom satisfactory. Just 
 let him look in at the Abbey, and sit quietly in Poets' 
 Corner till the main part of the music is over. Let him 
 do this two or three times, not more, before he goes to 
 the Zoo. 
 
 "Then next day send him down to Gravesend by boat. 
 By all means let him go to the theatres in the evenings 
 and then let him come to me again in a fortnight." 
 
 Had the doctor been less eminent in his profession I 
 should have doubted whether he was in earnest, but I 
 knew him to be a man of business who would neither 
 waste his own time nor that of his patients. As soon as 
 we were out of the house we took a cab to Regent's 
 Park, and spent a couple of hours in sauntering round 
 the different houses. Perhaps it was on account of 
 what the doctor had told me, but I certainly became 
 aware of a feeling I had never experienced before. I 
 mean that I was receiving an influx of new life, or de- 
 riving new ways of looking at life which is the same 
 thing by the process. I found the doctor quite right 
 in his estimate of the larger mammals as the ones which
 
 400 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 on the whole were most beneficial, and observed that 
 Ernest, who had heard nothing of what the doctor had 
 said to me, lingered instinctively in front of them. As 
 for the elephants, especially the baby elephant, he seemed 
 to be drinking in large draughts of their lives to the re- 
 creation and regeneration of his own. 
 
 We dined in the gardens, and I noticed with pleasure 
 that Ernest's appetite was already improved. Since this 
 time, whenever I have been a little out of sorts myself 
 I have at once gone up to Regent's Park, and have in- 
 variably been benefited. I mention this here m the hope 
 that some one or other of my readers may find the hint 
 a useful one. 
 
 At the end of his fortnight my hero was much better, 
 more so even than our friend the doctor had expected. 
 "Now," he said, "Mr. Pontifex may go abroad, and the 
 sooner the better. Let him stay a couple of months." 
 
 This was the first Ernest had heard about his going 
 abroad, and he talked about my not being able to spare 
 him for so long. I soon made this all right. 
 
 "It is now the beginning of April," said I ; "go down to 
 Marseilles at once, and take steamer to Nice. Then 
 saunter down the Riviera to Genoa from Genoa go to 
 Florence, Rome and Naples, and come home by way of 
 Venice and the Italian lakes." 
 
 "And won't you come too?" said he, eagerly. 
 
 I said I did not mind if I did, so we began to make 
 our arrangements next morning, and completed them 
 within a very few days. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXX 
 
 WE left by the night mail, crossing from Dover. The 
 night was soft, and there was a bright moon upon the 
 sea. "Don't you love the smell of grease about the 
 engine of a Channel steamer? Isn't there a lot of hope
 
 The Way of All Flesh 401 
 
 in it?" said Ernest to me, for he had been to Normandy 
 one summer as a boy with his father and mother, and 
 the smell carried him back to days before those in 
 which he had begun to bruise himself against the great 
 outside world. "I always think one of the best parts of 
 going abroad is the first thud of the piston, and the first 
 gurgling of the water when the paddle begins to 
 strike it." 
 
 It was very dreamy getting out at Calais, and trudging 
 about with luggage in a foreign town at an hour when 
 we were generally both of us in bed and fast asleep, 
 but we settled down to sleep as soon as we got into the 
 railway carriage, and dozed till we had passed Amiens. 
 Then waking when the first signs of morning crispness 
 were beginning to show themselves, I saw that Ernest 
 was already devouring every object we passed with quick 
 sympathetic curiousness. There was not a peasant in 
 a blou-se driving his cart betimes along the road to mar- 
 ket, not a signalman's wife in her husband's hat and 
 coat waving a green flag, not a shepherd taking out his 
 sheep to the dewy pastures, not a bank of opening cow- 
 slips as we passed through the railway cuttings, but he 
 was drinking it all in with an enjoyment too deep for 
 words. The name of the engine that drew us was Mo- 
 zart, and Ernest liked this too. 
 
 We reached Paris by six, and had just time to get 
 across the town and take a morning express train to 
 Marseilles, but before noon my young friend was tired 
 out and had resigned himself to a series of sleeps which 
 were seldom intermitted for more than an hour or so 
 together. He fought against this for a time, but in the 
 end consoled himself by saying it was so nice to have 
 so much pleasure that he could afford to throw a lot 
 of it away. Having found a theory on which to justify 
 himself, he slept in peace. 
 
 At Marseilles we rested, and there the excitement 
 of the change proved, as I had half feared it would, too
 
 4O2 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 much for my godson's still enfeebled state. For a few 
 days he was really ill, but after this he righted. For 
 my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleas- 
 ures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged 
 to work till one is better. I remember being ill once 
 in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. 
 To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, 
 and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clink- 
 ing of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion 
 rinsed them and put them by ; to watch the soft shadows 
 come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or 
 went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmur- 
 ing of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking 
 of the bells on the horses' collars and the clink of their 
 hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not 
 only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's 
 duty to be a lotus-eater. "Oh," I thought to myself, "if 
 I could only now, having so forgotten care, drop off to 
 sleep for ever, would not this be a better piece of for- 
 tune than any I can ever hope for?" 
 
 Of course it would, but we would not take it though 
 it were offered us. No matter what evil may befall us, 
 we will mostly abide by it and see it out. 
 
 I could see that Ernest felt much as I had felt my- 
 self. He said little, but noted everything. Once only 
 did he frighten me. He called me to his bedside just 
 as it was getting dusk and said in a grave, quiet manner 
 that he should like to speak to me. 
 
 "I have been thinking," he said, "that I may perhaps 
 never recover from this illness, and in case I do not I 
 should like you to know that there is only one thing 
 which weighs upon me. I refer," he continued after a 
 slight pause, "to my conduct towards my father and 
 mother. I have been much too good to them. I treated 
 them much too considerately," on which he broke into 
 a smile which assured me that there was nothing seri- 
 ously amiss with him.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 403 
 
 On the walls of his bedroom were a series of French 
 Revolution prints representing events in the life of Ly- 
 curgus. There was "Grandeur d'ame de Lycurgue," and 
 "Lycurgue consulte 1'oracle," and then there was "Cal- 
 ciope a la Cour." Under this was written in French 
 and Spanish: "Modele de grace et de beaute, la jeune 
 Calciope non moins sage que belle avait merite 1'estime 
 et 1'attachement du vertueux Lycurgue. Vivement epris 
 de tant de charmes, 1'illustre philosophe la conduisait 
 dans le temple de Junon, ou ils s'unirent par un serment 
 sacre. Apres cette auguste ceremonie, Lycurgue s'em- 
 pressa de conduire sa jeune epouse au palais de son frere 
 Polydecte, Roi de Lacedemon. Seigneur, lui dit-il, la 
 vertueuse Calciope vient de recevoir mes voeux aux pieds 
 des autels, j'ose vous prier d'approuver cette union. Le 
 Roi temoigna d'abord quelque surprise, mais 1'estime 
 qu'il avait pour son, frere lui inspira une reponse pleine 
 de bienveillance. II s'approcha aussitot de Calciope 
 qu'il embrassa tendrement, combla ensuite Lycurgue de 
 prevenances et parut tres satisfait." 
 
 He called my attention to this and then said some- 
 what timidly that he would rather have married Ellen 
 than Calciope. I saw he was hardening and made no 
 hesitation about proposing that in another day or two 
 we should proceed upon our journey. 
 
 I will not weary the reader by taking him with us over 
 beaten ground. We stopped at Siena, Cortona, Orvieto, 
 Perugia and many other cities, and then after a fort- 
 night passed between Rome and Naples went to the Ve- 
 netian provinces and visited all those wondrous towns 
 that lie between the southern slopes of the Alps and 
 the northern ones of the Apennines, coming back at last 
 by the S. Gothard. I doubt whether he had enjoyed 
 the trip more than I did myself, but it was not till we 
 were on the point of returning that Ernest had recovered 
 strength enough to be called fairly well, and it was not 
 for many months that he so completely lost all sense of
 
 404 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 the wounds which the last four years had inflicted on 
 him as to feel as though there were a scar and a scar 
 only remaining. 
 
 They say that when people have lost an arm or a foot 
 they feel pains in it now and again for a long while 
 after they have lost it. One pain which he had almost 
 forgotten came upon him on his return to England, I 
 mean the sting of his having been imprisoned. As long 
 as he was only a small shop-keeper his imprisonment 
 mattered nothing; nobody knew of it, and if they had 
 known they would not have cared ; now, however, though 
 he was returning to his old position he was returning 
 to it disgraced, and the pain from which he had been 
 saved in the first instance by surroundings so new that 
 he had hardly recognised his own identity in the middle 
 of them, came on him as from a wound inflicted yes- 
 terday. 
 
 He thought of the high resolves which he had made 
 in prison about using his disgrace as a vantage ground 
 of strength rather than trying to make people forget it. 
 "That was all very well then," he thought to himself, 
 "when the grapes were beyond my reach, but now it is 
 different." Besides, who but a prig would set himself 
 high aims, or make high resolves at all ? 
 
 Some of his old friends, on learning that he had got 
 rid of his supposed wife and was now comfortably off 
 again, wanted to renew their acquaintance ; he was grate- 
 ful to them and sometimes tried to meet their advances 
 half way, but it did not do, and ere long he shrank back 
 into himself, pretending not to know them. An infernal 
 demon of honesty haunted him which made him say to 
 himself : "These men know a great deal, but do not 
 know all if they did they would cut me and therefore 
 I have no right to their acquaintance." 
 
 He thought that everyone except himself was sans 
 peur et sans reproche. Of course they must be, for 
 if they had not been, would they not have been bound
 
 The Way of All Flesh 405 
 
 to warn all who had anything to do with them of their 
 deficiencies? Well, he could not do this, and he would 
 not have people's acquaintance under false pretences, so 
 he gave up even hankering after rehabilitation and fell 
 back upon his old tastes for music and literature. 
 
 Of course he has long since found out how silly all 
 this was, how silly I mean in theory, for in practice it 
 worked better than it ought to have done, by keeping 
 him free from liaisons which would have tied his tongue 
 and made him see success elsewhere than where he came 
 in time to see it. He did what he did instinctively and 
 for no other reason than because it was most natural 
 to him. So far as he thought at all, he thought wrong, 
 but what he did was right. I said something of this 
 kind to him once not so very long ago, and told him he 
 had always aimed high. "I never aimed at all," he re- 
 plied a little indignantly, "and you may be sure I should 
 have aimed low enough if I had thought I had got the 
 chance." 
 
 I suppose after all that no one whose mind was not, 
 to put it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high 
 out of pure malice aforethought. I once saw a fly alight 
 on a cup of hot coffee on which the milk had formed 
 a thin skin ; he perceived his extreme danger, and I noted 
 with what ample strides and almost supermuscan effort 
 he struck across the treacherous surface and made for 
 the edge of the cup for the ground was not solid enough 
 to let him raise himself from it by his wings. As I 
 watched him I fancied that so supreme a moment of 
 difficulty and danger might leave him with an increase 
 of moral and physical power which might even descend 
 in some measure to his offspring. But surely he would 
 not have got the increased moral power if he could have 
 helped it, and he will not knowingly alight upon an- 
 other cup of hot coffee. The more I see, the more sure 
 I am that it does not matter why people do the right 
 thing so long only as they do it, nor why they may
 
 406 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 have done the wrong if they have done it. The result 
 depends upon the thing done and the motive goes for 
 nothing. I have read somewhere, but cannot remember 
 where, that in some country district there was once a 
 great scarcity of food, during which the poor suffered 
 acutely ; many indeed actually died of starvation, and all 
 were hard put to it. In one village, however, there was 
 a poor widow with a family of young children, who, 
 though she had small visible means of subsistence, still 
 looked well-fed and comfortable, as also did all her little 
 ones. "How," everyone asked, "did they manage to 
 live?" It was plain they had a secret, and it was equally 
 plain that it could be no good one ; for there came a hur- 
 ried, hunted look over the poor woman's face if any- 
 one alluded to the way in which she and hers throve 
 when others starved; the family, moreover, were some- 
 times seen out at unusual hours of the night, and evi- 
 dently brought things home, which could hardly have 
 been honestly come by. They knew they were under 
 suspicion, and, being hitherto of excellent name, it made 
 them very unhappy, for it must be confessed that they 
 believed what they did to be uncanny if not absolutely 
 wicked; nevertheless, in spite of this they throve, and 
 kept their strength when all their neighbours were 
 pinched. 
 
 At length matters came to a head and the clergyman 
 of the parish cross-questioned the poor woman so closely 
 that with many tears and a bitter sense of degradation 
 she confessed the truth; she and her children went into 
 the hedges and gathered snails, which they made into 
 broth and ate could she ever be forgiven? Was there 
 any hope of salvation for her either in this world or 
 the next after such unnatural conduct? 
 
 So again I have heard of an old dowager countess 
 whose money was all in Consols ; she had had many sons, 
 and in her anxiety to give the younger ones a good start, 
 wanted a larger income than Consols would give her.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 407 
 
 She consulted her solicitor and was advised to sell her 
 Consols and invest in the London and North- Western 
 Railway, then at about 85. This was to her what eating 
 snails was to the poor widow whose story I have told 
 above. With shame and grief, as of one doing an un- 
 clean thing but her boys must have their start she 
 did as she was advised. Then for a long while she could 
 not sleep at night and was haunted by a presage of 
 disaster. Yet what happened? She started her boys, 
 and in a few years found her capital doubled into the 
 bargain, on which she sold out and went back again to 
 Consols and died in the full blessedness of fund-holding. 
 
 She thought, indeed, that she was doing a wrong and 
 dangerous thing, but this had absolutely nothing to do 
 with it. Suppose she had invested in the full confidence 
 of a recommendation by some eminent London banker 
 whose advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, 
 and suppose she had done this with a light heart and 
 with no conviction of sin would her innocence of evil 
 purpose and the excellence of her motive have stood her 
 in any stead? Not they. 
 
 But to return to my story. Towneley gave my hero 
 most trouble. Towneley, as I have said, knew that Er- 
 nest would have money soon, but Ernest did not of 
 course know that he knew it. Towneley was rich him- 
 self, and was married now; Ernest would be rich soon, 
 had bona fide intended to be married already, and would 
 doubtless marry a lawful wife later on. Such a man 
 was worth taking pains with, and when Towneley one 
 day met Ernest in the street, and Ernest tried to avoid 
 him, Towneley would not have it, but with his usual 
 quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him, morally 
 speaking, by the scruff of his neck, and turned him laugh- 
 ingly inside out, telling him he would have no such non- 
 sense. 
 
 Towneley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he 
 had ever been, and Ernest, who was very easily touched,
 
 408 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 felt more gratefully and warmly than ever towards him, 
 but there was an unconscious something which was 
 stronger than Towneley, and made my hero determine 
 to break with him more determinedly perhaps than with 
 any other living person ; he thanked him in a low, hurried 
 voice and pressed his hand, while tears came into his 
 eyes in spite of all his efforts to repress them. "If we 
 meet again," he said, "do not look at me, but if here- 
 after you hear of me writing things you do not like, 
 think of me as charitably as you can," and so they parted. 
 
 "Towneley is a good fellow," said I, gravely, "and 
 you should not have cut him." 
 
 "Towneley," he answered, "is not only a good fellow, 
 but he is without exception the very best man I ever saw 
 in my life except," he paid me the compliment of say- 
 ing, "yourself ; Towneley is my notion of everything 
 which I should most like to be but there is no real 
 solidarity between us. I should be in perpetual fear of 
 losing his good opinion if I said things he did not like, 
 and I mean to say a great many things," he continued 
 more merrily, "which Towneley will not like." 
 
 A man, as I have said already, can give up father and 
 mother for Christ's sake tolerably easily for the most 
 part, but it is not so easy to give up people like Towne- 
 ley. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXI 
 
 So he fell away from all old friends except myself and 
 three or four old intimates of my own, who were as sure 
 to take to him as he to them, and who like myself en- 
 joyed getting hold of a young fresh mind. Ernest at- 
 tended to the keeping of my account books whenever 
 there was anything which could possibly be attended to, 
 which there seldom was, and spent the greater part of 
 the rest of his time in adding to the many notes and 
 tentative essays which had already accumulated in his
 
 The Way of All Flesh 409 
 
 portfolios. Anyone who was used to writing could see 
 at a glance that literature was his natural development, 
 and I was pleased at seeing him settle down to it so 
 spontaneously. I was less pleased, however, to observe 
 that he would still occupy himself with none but the 
 most serious, I had almost said solemn, subjects, just 
 as he never cared about any but the most serious kind 
 of music. 
 
 I said to him one day that the very slender reward 
 which God had attached to the pursuit of serious in- 
 quiry was a sufficient proof that He disapproved of it, 
 or at any rate that He did not set much store by it nor 
 wish to encourage it. 
 
 He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at 
 Milton, who only got 5 for 'Paradise Lost.' " 
 
 "And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. 
 "I would have given him twice as much myself not to 
 have written it at all." 
 
 Ernest was a little shocked. "At any rate," he said 
 laughingly, "I don't write poetry." 
 
 This was a cut at me, for my burlesques were, of 
 course, written in rhyme. So I dropped the matter. 
 
 After a time he took it into his head to reopen the 
 question of his getting 300 a year for doing, as he said, 
 absolutely nothing, and said he would try to find some 
 employment which should bring him in enough to live 
 upon. 
 
 I laughed at this but let him alone. He tried and 
 tried very hard for a long while, but I heed hardly say 
 was unsuccessful. The older I grow, the more con- 
 vinced I become of the folly and credulity of the public; 
 but at the same time the harder do I see it is to impose 
 oneself upon that folly and credulity. 
 
 He tried editor after editor with article after article. 
 Sometimes an editor listened to him and told him to 
 leave his articles ; he almost invariably, however, had 
 them returned to him in the end with a polite note say-
 
 410 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 ing that they were not suited for the particular paper 
 to which he had sent them. And yet many of these 
 very articles appeared in his later works, and no one 
 complained of them, not at least on the score of bad 
 literary workmanship. "I see," he said to me one day, 
 "that demand is very imperious, and supply must be very 
 suppliant." 
 
 Once, indeed, the editor of an important monthly 
 magazine accepted an article from him, and he thought 
 he had now got a footing in the literary world. The 
 article was to appear in the next issue but one, and he 
 was to receive proof from the printers in about ten 
 days or a fortnight; but week after week passed and 
 there was no proof; month after month went by and 
 there was still no room for Ernest's article; at length 
 after about six months the editor one morning told him 
 that he had filled every number of his review for the 
 next ten months, but that his article should definitely 
 appear. On this he insisted on having his MS. returned 
 to him. 
 
 Sometimes his articles were actually published, and 
 he found the editor had edited them according to his 
 own fancy, putting in jokes which he thought were 
 funny, or cutting out the very passage which Ernest 
 had considered the point of the whole thing, and then, 
 though the articles appeared, when it came to paying for 
 them it was another matter, and he never saw his money. 
 "Editors," he said to me one day about this time, "are 
 like the people who bought and sold in the book of 
 Revelation; there is not one but has the mark of the 
 beast upon him." 
 
 At last after months of disappointment and many a 
 tedious hour wasted in dingy ante-rooms (and of all an- 
 te-rooms those of editors appear to me to be the dreari- 
 est), he got a bona fide offer of employment from one 
 of the first class weekly papers through an introduction 
 I was able to get for him from one who had powerful
 
 The Way of All Flesh 411 
 
 influence with the paper in question. The editor sent 
 him a dozen long books upon varied and difficult sub- 
 jects, and told him to review them in a single article 
 within a week. In one book there was an editorial note 
 to the effect that the writer was to be condemned. Er- 
 nest particularly admired the book he was desired to 
 condemn, and feeling how hopeless it was for him to 
 do anything like justice to the books submitted to him, 
 returned them to the editor. 
 
 At last one paper did actually take a dozen or so of 
 articles from him, and 'gave him cash down a couple 
 of guineas apiece for them, but having done this it ex- 
 pired within a fortnight after the last of Ernest's arti- 
 cles had appeared. It certainly looked very much as if 
 the other editors knew their business in declining to have 
 anything to do with my unlucky godson. 
 
 I was not sorry that he failed with periodical litera- 
 ture, for writing for reviews or newspapers is bad train- 
 ing for one who may aspire to write works of more per- 
 manent interest. A young writer should have more time 
 for reflection than he can get as a contributor to the 
 daily or even weekly press. Ernest himself, however, 
 was chagrined at rinding how unmarketable he was. 
 "Why," he said to me, "if I was a well-bred horse, or 
 sheep, or a pure-bred pigeon or lop-eared rabbit I should 
 be more salable. If I was even a cathedral in a colonial 
 town people would give me something, but as it is they 
 do not want me" ; and now that he was well and rested 
 he wanted to set up a shop again, but this, of course, I 
 would not hear of. 
 
 "What care I," said he to me one day, "about being 
 what they call a gentleman?" And his manner was al- 
 most fierce. 
 
 "What has being a gentleman ever done for me ex- 
 cept make me less able to prey and more easy to be 
 preyed upon? It has changed the manner of my being 
 swindled, that is all. But for your kindness to me I
 
 412 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 should be penniless. Thank heaven I have placed my 
 children where I have." 
 
 I begged him to keep quiet a little longer and not talk 
 about taking a shop. 
 
 "Will being a gentleman," he said, "bring me money 
 at the last, and will anything bring me as much peace 
 at the last as money will? They say that those who 
 have riches enter hardly into the kingdom of Heaven. 
 By Jove, they do; they are like Struldbrugs; they live 
 and live and live and are happy for many a long year 
 after they would have entered into the kingdom of 
 Heaven if they had been poor. I want to live long and 
 to raise my children, if I see they would be happier for 
 the raising; that is what I want, and it is not what I 
 am doing now that will help me. Being a gentleman is 
 a luxury which I cannot afford, therefore I do not want 
 it. Let me go back to my shop again, and do things 
 for people which they want done and will pay "me for 
 doing for them. They know what they want and what 
 is good for them better than I can tell them." 
 
 It was hard to deny the soundness of this, and if he 
 had been dependent only on the ^300 a year which he 
 was getting from me I should have advised him to open 
 his shop again next morning. As it was, I temporised 
 and raised obstacles, and quieted him from time to time 
 as best I could. 
 
 Of course he read Mr. Darwin's books as fast as 
 they came out and adopted evolution as an article of 
 faith. "It seems to me," he said once, "that I am like 
 one of those caterpillars which, if they have been in- 
 terrupted in making their hammock, must begin again 
 from the beginning. So long as I went back a long 
 way down in the social scale I got on all right, and 
 should have made money but for Ellen ; when I try to 
 take up the work at a higher stage I fail completely." 
 I do not know whether the analogy holds good or not, 
 but I am sure Ernest's instinct was right in telling him
 
 The Way of All Flesh 413 
 
 that after a heavy fall he had better begin life again 
 at a very low stage, and as I have just said, I would have 
 let him go back to his shop if I had not known what 
 I did. 
 
 As the time fixed upon by his aunt drew nearer I pre- 
 pared him more and more for what was coming, and 
 at last, on his twenty-eighth birthday, I was able to tell 
 him all and to show him the letter signed by his aunt 
 upon her death-bed to the effect that I was to hold the 
 money in trust for him. His birthday happened that 
 year (1863) to be on a Sunday, but on the following 
 day I transferred his shares into his own name, arid 
 presented him with the account books which he had been 
 keeping for the last year and a half. 
 
 In spite of all that I had done to prepare him, it was a 
 long while before I could get him actually to believe 
 that the money was his own. He did not say much 
 no more did I, for I am not sure that I did not feel as 
 much moved at having brought my long trusteeship to a 
 satisfactory conclusion as Ernest did at finding himself 
 owner of more than 70,000. When he did speak it was 
 to jerk out a sentence or two of reflection at a time. 
 "If I were rendering this moment in music," he said, "I 
 should allow myself free use of the augmented sixth." 
 A little later I remember his saying with a laugh that 
 had something of a family likeness to his aunt's : "It 
 is not the pleasure it causes me which I enjoy so, it is 
 the pain it will cause to all my friends except yourself 
 and Towneley." 
 
 I said: "You cannot tell your father and mother it 
 would drive them mad." 
 
 "No, no, no," said he, "it would be too cruel ; it would 
 be like Isaac offering up Abraham and no thicket with 
 a ram in it near at hand. Besides, why should I? We 
 have cut each other these four years."
 
 414 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXII 
 
 IT almost seemed as though our casual mention of Theo- 
 bald and Christina had in some way excited them from 
 a dormant to an active state. During the years that 
 had elapsed since they last appeared upon the scene they 
 had remained at Battersby, and had concentrated their 
 affection upon their other children. 
 
 It had been a bitter pill to Theobald to lose his power 
 of plaguing his first-born ; if the truth were known I 
 believe he had felt this more acutely than any disgrace 
 which might have been shed upon him by Ernest's im- 
 prisonment. He had made one or two attempts to re- 
 open negotiations through me, but I never said anything 
 about them to Ernest, for I knew it would upset him. 
 I wrote, however, to Theobald that I had found his son 
 inexorable, and recommended him for the present, at 
 any rate, to desist from returning to the subject. This 
 I thought would be at once what Ernest would like best 
 and Theobald least. 
 
 A few days, however, after Ernest had come into his 
 property, I received a letter from Theobald enclosing 
 one for Ernest which I could not withhold. 
 
 The letter ran thus : 
 
 "To MY SON ERNEST, Although you have more than 
 once rejected my overtures I appeal yet again to your 
 better nature. Your mother, who has long been ailing, 
 is, I believe, near her end ; she is unable to keep anything 
 on her stomach, and Dr. Martin holds out but little hopes 
 of her recovery. She has expressed a wish to see you, 
 and says she knows you will not refuse to come to her, 
 which, considering her condition, I am unwilling to sup- 
 pose you will. 
 
 "I remit you a Post Office order for your fare, and 
 will pay your return journey.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 415 
 
 "If you want clothes to come in, order what you con- 
 sider suitable, and desire that the bill be sent to me; I 
 will pay it immediately, to an amount not exceeding 
 eight or nine pounds, and if you will let me know what 
 train you will come by, I will send the carriage to meet 
 you. Believe me, Your affectionate father, 
 
 "T. PONTIFEX." 
 
 Of course there could be no hesitation on Ernest's 
 part. He could afford to smile now at his father's offer- 
 ing to pay for his clothes, and his sending him a Post 
 Office order for the exact price of a second-class ticket, 
 and he was of course shocked at learning the state his 
 mother was said to be in, and touched at her desire to 
 see him. He telegraphed that he would come down at 
 once. I saw him a little before he started, and was 
 pleased to see how well his tailor had done by him. 
 Towneley himself could not have- been appointed more 
 becomingly. His portmanteau, his railway wrapper, 
 everything he had about him, was in keeping. I thought 
 he had grown much better-looking than he had been at 
 two or three and twenty. His year and a half of peace 
 had effaced all the ill effects of his previous suffering, 
 and now that he had become actually rich there was an 
 air of insouciance and good humour upon his face, as 
 of a man with whom everything was going perfectly 
 right, which would have made a much plainer man good- 
 looking. I was proud of him and delighted with him. 
 "I am sure," I said to myself, "that whatever else he 
 may do, he will never marry again." 
 
 The journey was a painful one. As he drew near to 
 the station and caught sight of each familiar feature, 
 so strong was the force of association that he felt as 
 though his coming into his aunt's money had been a 
 dream, and he were again returning to his father's house 
 as he had returned to it from Cambridge for the va- 
 cations. Do what he would, the old dull weight of
 
 416 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 home-sickness began to oppress him, his heart beat fast 
 as he thought of his approaching meeting with his father 
 and mother. "And I shall have," he said to himself, "to 
 kiss Charlotte."- 
 
 Would his father meet him at the station? Would 
 he greet him as though nothing had happened, or would 
 he be cold and distant? How, again, would he take the 
 news of his son's good fortune? As the train drew up 
 to the platform, Ernest's eye ran hurriedly over the few 
 people who were in the station. His father's well-known 
 form was not among them, but on the other side of the 
 palings which divided the station yard from the platform, 
 he saw the pony carriage, looking, as he thought, rather 
 shabby, and recognised his father's coachman. In a few 
 minutes more he was in the carriage driving towards 
 Battersby. He could not help smiling as he saw the 
 coachman give a look of surprise at finding him so much 
 changed in personal appearance. The coachman was the 
 more surprised because when Ernest had last been at 
 home he had been dressed as a clergyman, and now he 
 was not only a layman, but a layman who was got up 
 regardless of expense. The change was so great that 
 it was not till Ernest actually spoke to him that the coach- 
 man knew him. 
 
 "How are my father and mother ?" he asked hurriedly, 
 as he got into the carriage. "The Master's well, sir," 
 was the answer, "but the Missis is very sadly." The 
 horse knew that he was going home and pulled hard at 
 the reins. The weather was cold and raw the very ideal 
 of a November day; in one part of the road the floods 
 were out, and near here they had to pass through a 
 number of horsemen and dogs, for the hounds had met 
 that morning at a place near Battersby. Ernest saw sev- 
 eral people whom he knew, but they either, as is most 
 likely, did not recognise him, or did not know of his good 
 luck. When Battersby church tower drew near, and he 
 saw the Rectory on the top of the hill, its chimneys just
 
 The Way of All Flesh 417 
 
 showing above the leafless trees with which it was sur- 
 rounded, he threw himself back in the carriage and cov- 
 ered his face with his hands. 
 
 It came to an end, as even the worst quarters of an 
 hour do, and in a few minutes more he was on the steps 
 in front of his father's house. His father, hearing the 
 carriage arrive, came a little way down the steps to meet 
 him. Like the coachman he saw at a glance that Ernest 
 was appointed as though money were abundant with him, 
 and that he was looking robust and full of health and 
 vigour. 
 
 This was not what he had bargained for. He wanted 
 Ernest to return, but he was to return as any respectable, 
 well-regulated prodigal ought to return abject, broken- 
 hearted, asking forgiveness from the tenderest and most 
 long-suffering father in the whole world. If he should 
 have shoes and stockings and whole clothes at all, it 
 should be only because absolute rags and tatters had been 
 graciously dispensed with, whereas here he was swagger- 
 ing in a grey ulster and a blue and white necktie, and 
 looking better than Theobald had ever seen him in his 
 life. It was unprincipled. Was it for this that he had 
 been generous enough to offer to provide Ernest with 
 decent clothes in which to come and visit his mother's 
 death-bed? Could any advantage be meaner than the 
 one which Ernest had taken? Well, he would not go a 
 penny beyond the eight or nine pounds which he had 
 promised. It was fortunate he had given a limit. Why, 
 he, Theobald, had never been able to afford such a port- 
 manteau in his life. He was still using an old one 
 which his father had turned over to him when he went 
 up to Cambridge. Besides, he had said clothes, not a 
 portmanteau. 
 
 Ernest saw what was passing through his father's 
 mind, and felt that he ought to have prepared him in 
 some way for what he now saw ; but he had sent his tele- 
 gram so immediately on receiving his father's letter, and
 
 418 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 had followed it so promptly that it would not have been 
 easy to do so even if he had thought of it. He put out 
 his hand and said laughingly, "Oh, it's all paid for I am 
 afraid you do not know that Mr. Overton has handed 
 over to me Aunt Alethea's money." 
 
 Theobald flushed scarlet. "But why," he said, and 
 these were the first words that actually crossed his lips 
 "if the money was not his to keep, did he not hand it 
 over to my brother John and me?" He stammered a 
 good deal and looked sheepish, but he got the words out. 
 
 "Because, my dear father," said Ernest still laughing, 
 "my aunt left it to him in trust for me, not in trust 
 either for you or for my Uncle John and it has accu- 
 mulated till it is now over 70,000. But tell me how is 
 my mother ?" 
 
 "No, Ernest," said Theobald excitedly, "the matter 
 cannot rest here; I must know that this is all open and 
 above board." 
 
 This had the true Theobald ring and instantly brought 
 the whole train of ideas which in Ernest's mind were 
 connected with his father. The surroundings were the 
 old familiar ones, but the surrounded were changed al- 
 most beyond power of recognition. He turned sharply 
 on Theobald in a moment. I will not repeat the words 
 he used, for they came out before he had time to con- 
 sider them, and they might strike some of my readers 
 as disrespectful ; there were not many of them, but they 
 were effectual. Theobald said nothing, but turned al- 
 most of an ashen colour; he never again spoke to his son 
 in such a way as to make it necessary for him to repeat 
 what he had said on this occasion. Ernest quickly re- 
 covered his temper and again asked after his mother. 
 Theobald was glad enough to take this opening now, 
 and replied at once in the tone he would have assumed 
 towards one he most particularly desired to conciliate, 
 that she was getting rapidly worse in spite of all he had 
 been able to do for her, and concluded by saying she had
 
 The Way of All Flesh . 419 
 
 been the comfort and mainstay of his life for more 
 than thirty years, but that he could not wish it pro- 
 longed. 
 
 The pair then went upstairs to Christina's room, the 
 one in which Ernest had been born. His father went 
 before him and prepared her for her son's approach. The 
 poor woman raised herself in bed as he came towards 
 her, and weeping as she flung her arms around him, 
 cried : "Oh, I knew he would come, I knew, I knew he 
 could come." 
 
 Ernest broke down and wept as he had not done for 
 years. 
 
 "Oh, my boy, my boy," she said as soon as she could 
 recover her voice. "Have you never really been near us 
 for all these years ? Ah, you do not know how we have 
 loved you and mourned over you, papa just as much as I 
 have. You know he shows his feelings less, but I can 
 never tell you how very, very deeply he has felt for you. 
 Sometimes at night I have thought I have heard foot- 
 steps in the garden, and have got quietly out of bed lest 
 I should wake him, and gone to the window to look out, 
 but there has been only dark or the greyness of the 
 morning, and I have gone crying back to bed again. Still 
 I think you have been near us though you were too proud 
 to let us know and now at last I have you in my arms 
 once more, my dearest, dearest boy." 
 
 How cruel, how infamously unfeeling Ernest thought 
 he had been. 
 
 "Mother," he said, "forgive me the fault was mine; 
 I ought not to have been so hard; I was wrong, very 
 wrong" ; the poor blubbering fellow meant what he said, 
 and his heart yearned to his mother as he had never 
 thought that it could yearn again. "But have you never," 
 she continued, "come although it was in the dark and 
 we did not know it oh, let me think that you have not 
 been so cruel as we have thought you. Tell me that you 
 came if only to comfort me and make me happier."
 
 420 . The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Ernest was ready. "I had no money to come with, 
 mother, till just lately." 
 
 This was an excuse Christina could understand and 
 make allowance for : "Oh, then you would have come, 
 and I will take the will for the deed and now that I 
 have you safe again, say that you will never, never leave 
 me not till not till oh, my boy, have they told you I 
 am dying?" She wept bitterly, and buried her head in 
 her pillow. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIII 
 
 JOEY and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now 
 ordained, and was curate to Theobald. He and Ernest 
 had never been sympathetic, and Ernest saw at a glance 
 that there was no chance of a rapprochement between 
 them. He was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as 
 a clergyman, and looking so like what he had looked 
 himself a few years earlier, for there was a good deal 
 of family likeness between the pair ; but Joey's face was 
 cold and was illumined with no spark of Bohemianism; 
 he was a clergyman and was going to do as other clergy- 
 men did, neither better nor worse. He greeted Ernest 
 rather de haut en bos, that is to say he began by trying 
 to do so, but the affair tailed off unsatisfactorily. 
 
 His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. 
 How he hated it; he had been dreading it for the last 
 three hours. She, too, was distant and reproachful in 
 her manner, as such a superior person was sure to be. 
 She had a grievance against him inasmuch as she was 
 still unmarried. She laid the blame of this at Ernest's 
 door; it was his misconduct, she maintained in secret, 
 which had prevented young men from making offers to 
 her, and she ran him up a heavy bill for consequential 
 damages. She and Joey had from the first developed 
 an instinct for hunting with the hounds, and now these 
 two had fairly identified themselves with the older gen-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 421 
 
 eration that is to say as against Ernest. On this head 
 there was an offensive and defensive alliance between 
 them, but between themselves there was subdued but 
 internecine warfare. 
 
 This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from 
 his recollections of the parties concerned, and partly from 
 his observation of their little ways during the first half- 
 hour after his arrival, while they were all together in his 
 mother's bedroom for as yet of course they did not 
 know that he had money. He could see that they eyed 
 him from time to time with a surprise not unmixed with 
 indignation^ and knew very well what they were think- 
 ing. 
 
 Christina saw the change which had come over him 
 how much firmer and more vigorous both in mind and 
 body he seemed than when she had last seen him. 
 She saw too how well he was dressed, and, like the 
 others, in spite of the return of all her affection for her 
 first-born, was a little alarmed about Theobald's pocket, 
 which she supposed would have to be mulcted for all this 
 magnificence. Perceiving this, Ernest relieved her mind 
 and told her all about his aunt's bequest, and how I had 
 husbanded it, in the presence of his brother and sister 
 who, however, pretended not to notice, or at any rate 
 to notice as a matter in which they could hardly be 
 expected to take an interest. 
 
 His mother kicked a little at first against the money's 
 having gone to him as she said "over his papa's head." 
 "Why, my dear," she said in a deprecating tone, "this 
 is more than ever your papa has had" ; but Ernest calmed 
 her by suggesting that if Miss Pontifex had known how 
 large the sum would become she would have left the 
 greater part of it to Theobald. This compromise was 
 accepted by Christina who forthwith, ill as she was, en- 
 tered with ardour into the new position, and taking it as 
 a fresh point of departure, began spending Ernest's 
 money for him.
 
 422 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 I may say in passing that Christina was right in say- 
 ing that Theobald had never had so much money as his 
 son was now possessed of. In the first place he had not 
 had a fourteen years' minority with no outgoings to pre- 
 vent the accumulation of the money, and in the second 
 he, like myself and almost everyone else, had suffered 
 somewhat in the 1846 times not enough to cripple him 
 or even seriously to hurt him, but enough to give him a 
 scare and make him stick to debentures for the rest of his 
 life. It was the fact of his son's being the richer man of 
 the two, and of his being rich so young, which rankled 
 with Theobald even more than the fact of his having 
 money at all. If he had had to wait till he was sixty or 
 sixty-five, and become broken down from long failure 
 in the meantime, why then perhaps he might have been 
 allowed to have whatever sum should suffice to keep him 
 out of the workhouse and pay his death-bed expenses; 
 but that he should come in to 70,0x30 at eight and twenty, 
 and have no wife and only two children it was intol- 
 erable. Christina was too ill and in too great a hurry to 
 spend the money to care much about such details as the 
 foregoing, and she was naturally much more good- 
 natured than Theobald. 
 
 "This piece of good fortune" she saw it at a glance 
 "quite wiped out the disgrace of his having been im- 
 prisoned. There should be no more nonsense about that. 
 The whole thing was a mistake, an unfortunate mistake, 
 true, but the less said about it now the better. Of course 
 Ernest would come back and live at Battersby until he 
 was married, and he would pay his father handsomely 
 for board and lodging. In fact it would be only right 
 that Theobald should make a profit, nor would Ernest 
 himself wish it to be other than a handsome one; this 
 was far the best and simplest arrangement ; and he could 
 take his sister out more than Theobald or Joey cared to 
 do, and would also doubtless entertain very handsomely 
 at Battersby.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 423 
 
 "Of course he would buy Joey a living, and make large 
 presents yearly to his sister was there anything else? 
 Oh! yes he would become a county magnate now; a 
 man with nearly 4000 a year should certainly become a 
 county magnate. He might even go into Parliament. 
 He had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching 
 such genius as Dr. Skinner's, nor even as Theobald's, still 
 he was not deficient and if he got into Parliament so 
 young too there was nothing to hinder his being Prime 
 Minister before he died, and if so, of course, he would 
 become a peer. Oh! why did he not set about it all at 
 once, so that she might live to hear people call her son 
 'my lord' Lord Battersby she thought would do very 
 nicely, and if she was well enough to sit he must certainly 
 have her portrait painted at full length for one end of 
 his large dining-hall. It should be exhibited at the Royal 
 Academy: 'Portrait of Lord Battersby's mother/ she 
 said to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wonted 
 vivacity. If she could not sit, happily, she had been 
 photographed not so very long ago, and the portrait had 
 been as successful as any photograph could be of a face 
 which depended so entirely upon its expression as her 
 own. Perhaps the painter could take the portrait suffi- 
 ciently from this. It was better after all that Ernest had 
 given up the Church how far more wisely God arranges 
 matters for us than ever we can do for ourselves ! She 
 saw it all now it was Joey who would become Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and Ernest would remain a layman 
 and become Prime Minister" . . . and so on till her 
 daughter told her it was time to take her medicine. 
 
 I suppose this reverie, which is a mere fragment of 
 what actually ran through Christina's brain, occupied 
 about a minute and a half, but it, or the presence of her 
 son, seemed to revive her spirits wonderfully. Ill, dying 
 indeed, and suffering as she was, she brightened up so 
 as to laugh once or twice quite merrily during the course 
 of the afternoon. Next day Dr. Martin said she was
 
 424 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 so much better that he almost began to have hopes of 
 her recovery again. Theobald, whenever this was 
 touched upon as possible, would shake his head and say : 
 "We can't wish it prolonged," and then Charlotte caught 
 Ernest unawares and said : "You know, dear Ernest, that 
 these ups and downs of talk are terribly agitating to 
 papa ; he could stand whatever comes, but it is quite too 
 wearing to him to think half-a-dozen different things 
 backwards and forwards, up and down in the same 
 twenty-four hours, and it would be kinder of you not to 
 do it I mean not to say anything to him even though 
 Dr. Martin does hold out hopes." 
 
 Charlotte had meant to imply that it was Ernest who 
 was at the bottom of all the inconvenience felt by Theo- 
 bald, herself, Joey and everyone else, and she had actually 
 got words out which should convey this ; true, she had 
 not dared to stick to them and had turned them off, but 
 she had made them hers at any rate for one brief mo- 
 ment, and this was better than nothing. Ernest noticed 
 throughout his mother's illness, that Charlotte found im- 
 mediate occasion to make herself disagreeable to him 
 whenever either doctor or nurse pronounced her mother 
 to be a little better. When she wrote to Crampsford to 
 desire the prayers of the congregation (she was sure her 
 mother would wish it, and that the Crampsford people 
 would be pleased at her remembrance of them), she was 
 sending another letter on some quite different subject at 
 the same time, and put the two letters into the wrong en- 
 velopes. Ernest was asked to take these letters to the 
 village postoffice, and imprudently did so; when the 
 error came to be discovered Christina happened to 
 have rallied a little. Charlotte flew at Ernest imme- 
 diately, and laid all the blame of the blunder upon his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Except that Joey and Charlotte were more fully de- 
 veloped, the house and its inmates, organic and inorganic, 
 were little changed since Ernest had last seen them.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 425 
 
 The furniture and the ornaments on the chimney-piece 
 were just as they had been ever since he could remember 
 anything at all. In the drawing-room, on either side of 
 the fireplace there hung the Carlo Dolci and the Sassofer- 
 rato as in old times ; there was the water colour of a 
 scene on the Lago Maggiore, copied by Charlotte from 
 an original lent her by her drawing master, and finished 
 under his direction. This was the picture of which one 
 of the servants had said that it must be good, for Mr. 
 Pontifex had given ten shillings for the frame. The 
 paper on the walls was unchanged; the roses were still 
 waiting for the bees ; and the whole family still prayed 
 night and morning to be made "truly honest and con- 
 scientious." 
 
 One picture only was removed a photograph of him- 
 self which had hung under one of his father and between 
 those of his brother and sister. Ernest noticed this at 
 prayer time, while his father was reading about Noah's 
 ark and how they daubed it with slime, which, as it hap- 
 pened, had been Ernest's favourite text when he was a 
 boy. Next morning, however, the photograph had found 
 its way back again, a little dusty and with a bit of the 
 gilding chipped off from one corner of the frame, but 
 there sure enough it was. I suppose they put it back 
 when they found how rich he had become. 
 
 In the dining-room the ravens were still trying to feed 
 Elijah over the fireplace; what a crowd of reminiscences 
 did not this picture bring back! Looking out of the 
 window, there were the flower beds in the front garden 
 exactly as they had been, and Ernest found himself look- 
 ing hard against the blue door at the bottom of the gar- 
 den to see if there was rain falling, as he had been used 
 to look when he was a child doing lessons with his 
 father. 
 
 After their early dinner, when Joey and Ernest and 
 their father were left alone, Theobald rose and stood 
 in the middle of the hearthrug under the Elijah picture,
 
 426 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 and began to whistle in his old absent way. He had two 
 tunes only one was "In my Cottage near a Wood," and 
 the other was the Easter Hymn ; he had been trying to 
 whistle them all his life, but had never succeeded; he 
 whistled them as a clever bullfinch might whistle them 
 he had got them, but he had not got them right; he 
 would be a semitone out in every third note as though 
 reverting to some remote musical progenitor, who had 
 known none but the Lydian or the Phrygian mode, or 
 whatever would enable him to go most wrong while 
 still keeping the tune near enough to be recognised. 
 Theobald stood before the middle of the fire and whistled 
 his two tunes softly in his own old way till Ernest left 
 the room ; the unchangedness of the external and chang- 
 edness of the internal he felt were likely to throw him 
 completely off his balance. 
 
 He strolled out of doors into the sodden spinney be- 
 hind the house, and solaced himself with a pipe. Ere 
 long he found himself at the door of the cottage of his 
 father's coachman, who had married an old lady's maid 
 of his mother's, to whom Ernest had been always much 
 attached as she also to him, for she had known him 
 ever since he had been five or six years old. Her name 
 was Susan. He sat down in the rocking-chair before her 
 fire, and Susan went on ironing at the table in front of 
 the window, and a smell of hot flannel pervaded the 
 kitchen. 
 
 Susan had been retained too securely by Christina to 
 be likely to side with Ernest all in a moment. He knew 
 this very well, and did not call on her for the sake of 
 support, moral or otherwise. He had called because he 
 liked her, and also because he knew that he should 
 gather much in a chat with her that he should not be able 
 to arrive at in any other way. 
 
 "Oh, Master Ernest," said Susan, "why did you not 
 come back when your poor papa and mamma wanted 
 you? I'm sure your ma has said to me a hundred times
 
 The Way of All Flesh 427 
 
 over if she has said it once that all should be exactly as 
 it had been before." 
 
 Ernest smiled to himself. It was no use explaining to 
 Susan why he smiled, so he said nothing. 
 
 "For the first day or two I thought she never would 
 get over it ; she said it was a judgment upon her, and 
 went on about things as she had said and done many 
 years ago, before your pa knew her, and I don't know 
 what she didn't say or wouldn't have said only I stopped 
 her ; she seemed out of her mind like, and said that none 
 of the neighbours would ever speak to her again, but the 
 next day Mrs. Bushby (her that was Miss Cowey, you 
 know) called, and your ma always was so fond of her, 
 and it seemed to do her a power o' good, for the next 
 day she went through all her dresses, and we settled how 
 she should have them altered ; and then all the neighbours 
 called for miles and miles round, and your ma came in 
 here, and said she had been going through the waters 
 of misery, and the Lord had turned them to a well. 
 
 " 'Oh, yes, Susan/ said she, 'be sure it is so. Whom 
 the Lord loveth he chasteneth, Susan,' and here she began 
 to cry again. 'As for him,' she went on, 'he has made his 
 bed, and he must lie on it ; when he comes out of prison 
 his pa will know what is best to be done, and Master Er- 
 nest may be thankful that he has a pa so good and so 
 long-suffering.' 
 
 "Then when you would not see them, that was a cruel 
 blow to your ma. Your pa did not say anything; you 
 know your pa never does say very much unless he's 
 downright waxy for the time; but your ma took on 
 dreadful for a few days, and I never saw the master look 
 so black ; but, bless you, it all went off in a few days, and 
 I don't know that there's been much difference in either 
 of them since then, not till your ma was took ill." 
 
 On the night of his arrival he had behaved well at 
 family prayers, as also on the following morning; his 
 father read about David's dying injunction to Solomon
 
 428 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 in the matter of Shimei, but he did not mind it. In the 
 course of the day, however, his corns had been trodden 
 on so many times that he was in a misbehaving humour, 
 on this the second night after his arrival. He knelt next 
 Charlotte and said the responses perfunctorily, not so 
 perfunctorily that she should know for certain that he 
 was doing it maliciously, but so perfunctorily as to make 
 her uncertain whether he might be malicious or not, and 
 when he had to pray to be made truly honest and con- 
 scientious he emphasised the "truly." I do not know 
 whether Charlotte noticed anything, but she knelt at 
 some distance from him during the rest of his stay. 
 He assures me that this was the only spiteful thing he 
 did during the whole time he was at Battersby. 
 
 When he went up to his bedroom, in which, to do them 
 justice, they had given him a fire, he noticed what indeed 
 he had noticed as soon as he was shown into it on his 
 arrival, that there was an illuminated card framed and 
 glazed over his bed with the words, "Be the day weary 
 or be the day long, at last it ringeth to evensong." He 
 wondered to himself how such people could leave such a 
 card in a room in which their visitors would have to 
 spend the last hours of their evening, but he let it alone. 
 "There's not enough difference between 'weary' and 'long' 
 to warrant an 'or/ " he said, "but I suppose it is all 
 right." I believe Christina had bought the card at a 
 bazaar in aid of the restoration of a neighbouring church, 
 and having been bought it had got to be used besides, 
 the sentiment was so touching and the illumination was 
 really lovely. Anyhow, no irony could be more complete 
 than leaving it in my hero's bedroom, though assuredly 
 no irony had been intended. 
 
 On the third day after Ernest's arrival Christina re- 
 lapsed again. For the last two days she had been in 
 no pain and had slept a good deal; her son's presence 
 still seemed to cheer her, and she often said how thankful 
 she was to be surrounded on her death-bed by a family so
 
 The Way of All Flesh 429 
 
 happy, so God-fearing, so united, but now she began to 
 wander, and, being more sensible of the approach of 
 death, seemed also more alarmed at the thoughts of the 
 Day of Judgment. 
 
 She ventured more than once or twice to return to the 
 subject of her sins, and implored Theobald to make 
 quite sure that they were forgiven her. She hinted that 
 she considered his professional reputation was at stake ; 
 it would never do for his own wife to fail in securing at 
 any rate a pass. This was touching Theobald on a tender 
 spot; he winced and rejoined with an impatient toss of 
 the head, "But, Christina, they are forgiven you"; and 
 then he entrenched himself in a firm but dignified manner 
 behind the Lord's prayer. When he rose he left the 
 room, but called Ernest out to say that he could not wish 
 it prolonged. 
 
 Joey was no more use in quieting his mother's anxiety 
 than Theobald had been indeed he was only Theobald 
 and water ; at last Ernest, who had not liked interfering, 
 took the matter in hand, and, sitting beside her, let her 
 pour out her grief to him without let or hindrance. 
 
 She said she knew she had not given up all for Christ's 
 sake ; it was this that weighed upon her. She had given 
 up much, and had always tried to give up more year by 
 year, still she knew very well that she had not been so 
 spiritually minded as she ought to have been. If she had, 
 she should probably have been favoured with some direct 
 vision or communication ; whereas, though God had 
 vouchsafed such direct and visible angelic visits to one of 
 her dear children, yet she had had none such herself 
 nor even had Theobald. 
 
 She was talking rather to herself than to Ernest as she 
 said these words, but they made him open his ears. He 
 wanted to know whether the angel had appeared to Joey 
 or to Charlotte. He asked his mother, but she seemed 
 surprised, as though she expected him to know all about 
 it; then, as if she remembered, she checked herself and
 
 430 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 said, "Ah ! yes you know nothing of all this, and perhaps 
 it is as well." Ernest could not of course press the sub- 
 ject, so he never found out which of his near relations it 
 was who had had direct communication with an immor- 
 tal. The others never said anything to him about it, 
 though whether this was because they were ashamed, or 
 because they feared he would not believe the story and 
 thus increase his own damnation, he could not determine. 
 
 Ernest has often thought about this since. He tried to 
 get the facts out of Susan, who he was sure would know, 
 but Charlotte had been beforehand with him. "No, Mas- 
 ter Ernest," said Susan, when he began to question her, 
 "your ma has sent a message to me by Miss Charlotte 
 as I am not to say nothing at all about it, and I never 
 will." Of course no further questioning was possible. 
 It had more than once occurred to Ernest that Charlotte 
 did not in reality believe more than he did himself, and 
 this incident went far to strengthen his surmises, but he 
 wavered when he remembered how she had misdirected 
 the letter asking for the prayers of the congregation. 
 "I suppose," he said to himself gloomily, "she does be- 
 lieve in it after all." 
 
 Then Christina returned to the subject of her own 
 want of spiritual-mindedness, she even harped upon the 
 old grievance of her having eaten black puddings true, 
 she had given them up years ago, but for how many 
 years had she not persevered in eating them after she had 
 had misgivings about their having been forbidden ! Then 
 there was something that weighed on her mind that had 
 taken place before her marriage, and she should like 
 
 Ernest interrupted : "My dear mother," he said, "you 
 are ill and your mind is unstrung ; others can now judge 
 better about you than you can; I assure you that to me 
 you seem to have been the most devotedly unselfish wife 
 and mother that ever lived. Even if you have not liter- 
 ally given up all for Christ's sake, you have done so prac- 
 tically as far as it was in your power, and more than this
 
 The Way of All Flesh 431 
 
 is not required of anyone. I believe you will not only be 
 a saint, but a very distinguished one." 
 
 At these words Christina brightened. "You give me 
 hope, you give me hope," she cried, and dried her eyes. 
 She made him assure her over and over again that this 
 was his solemn conviction; she did not care about being 
 a distinguished saint now ; she would be quite content to 
 be among the meanest who actually got into heaven, pro- 
 vided she could make sure of escaping that awful Hell. 
 The fear of this evidently was omnipresent with her, and 
 in spite of all Ernest could say he did not quite dispel it. 
 She was rather ungrateful, I must confess, for after 
 more than an hour's consolation from Ernest she prayed 
 for him that he might have every blessing in this world, 
 inasmuch as she always feared that he was the only one 
 of her children whom she should never meet in heaven ; 
 but she was then wandering, and was hardly aware of 
 his presence; her mind in fact was reverting to states 
 in which it had been before her illness. 
 
 On Sunday Ernest went to church as a matter of 
 course, and noted that the ever receding tide of Evan- 
 gelicalism had ebbed many a stage lower, even during 
 the few years of his absence. His father used to walk 
 to the church through the Rectory garden, and across a 
 small intervening field. He had been used to walk in 
 a tall hat, his Master's gown, and wearing a pair of 
 Geneva bands. Ernest noticed that the bands were worn 
 no longer, and lo ! greater marvel still, Theobald did not 
 preach in his Master's gown, but in a surplice. The 
 whole character of the service was changed; you could 
 not say it was high even now, for high-church Theobald 
 could never under any circumstances become, but the old 
 easy-going slovenliness, if I may say so, was gone for 
 ever. The orchestral accompaniments to the hymns had 
 disappeared while my hero was yet a boy, but there 
 had been no chanting for some years after the har- 
 monium had been introduced. While Ernest was at Cam-
 
 432 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 bridge, Charlotte and Christina had prevailed on Theo- 
 bald to allow the canticles to be sung; and sung they 
 were to old-fashioned double chants by Lord Morning- 
 ton and Dr. Dupuis and others. Theobald did not like 
 it, but he did it, or allowed it to be done. 
 
 f Then Christina said : "My dear, do you know, I really 
 think" (Christina always "really" thought) "that the 
 people like the chanting very much, and that it will be a 
 means of bringing many to church who have stayed 
 away hitherto. I was talking about it to Mrs. Goodhew 
 and to old Miss Wright only yesterday, and they quite 
 agreed with me, but they all said that we ought to chant 
 the 'Glory be to the Father' at the end of each of the 
 psalms instead of saying it." 
 
 Theobald looked black he felt the waters of chanting 
 rising higher and higher upon him inch by inch; but he 
 felt also, he knew not why, that he had better yield than 
 fight. So he ordered the "Glory be to the Father" to 
 be chanted in future, but he did not like it. 
 
 "Really, mamma dear," said Charlotte, when the battle 
 was won, "you should not call it the 'Glory be to the 
 Father' you should say 'Gloria.' " 
 
 "Of course, my dear," said Christina, and she said 
 "Gloria" for ever after. Then she thought what a won- 
 derfully clever girl Charlotte was, and how she ought to 
 marry no one lower than a bishop. By-and-by when 
 Theobald went away for an unusually long holiday one 
 summer, he could find no one but a rather high-church 
 clergyman to take his duty. This gentleman was a man 
 of weight in the neighbourhood, having considerable 
 private means, but without preferment. In the summer 
 he would often help his brother clergymen, and it was 
 through his being willing to take the duty at Battersby 
 for a few Sundays that Theobald had been able to get 
 away for so long. On his return, however, he found 
 that the whole psalms were being chanted as well as the 
 Glorias. The influential clergyman, Christina, and Char-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 433 
 
 lotte took the bull by the horns as soon as Theobald 
 returned, and laughed it all off; and the clergyman 
 laughed and bounced, and Christina laughed and coaxed, 
 and Charlotte uttered unexceptionable sentiments, and 
 the thing was done now, and could not be undone, and 
 it was no use grieving over spilt milk ; so henceforth the 
 psalms were to be chanted, but Theobald grisled over 
 it in his heart, and he did not like it. 
 
 During this same absence what had Mrs. Goodhew 
 and old Miss Wright taken to doing but turning towards 
 the east while repeating the Belief? Theobald disliked 
 this even worse than chanting. When he said something 
 about it in a timid way at dinner after service, Charlotte 
 said, "Really, papa dear, you must take to calling it the 
 'Creed' and not the 'Belief " ; and Theobald winced im- 
 patiently and snorted meek defiance, but the spirit of her 
 aunts Jane and Eliza was strong in Charlotte, and the 
 thing was too small to fight about, and he turned it off 
 with a laugh. "As for Charlotte," thought Christina, 
 "I believe she knows everything." So Mrs. Goodhew 
 and old Miss Wright continued to turn to the east during 
 the time the Creed was said, and by-and-by others fol- 
 lowed their example, and ere long the few who had 
 stood out yielded and turned eastward too; and then 
 Theobald made as though he had thought it all very 
 right and proper from the first, but like it he did not. 
 By-and-by Charlotte tried to make him say "Alleluia" 
 instead of "Hallelujah," but this was going too far, and 
 Theobald turned, and she got frightened and ran away. 
 
 And they changed the double chants for single ones, 
 and altered them psalm by psalm, and in the middle of 
 psalms, just where a cursory reader would see no reason 
 why they should do so, they changed from major to 
 minor and from minor back to major; and then they 
 got "Hymns Ancient and Modern," and, as I have said, 
 they robbed him of his beloved bands, and they made 
 him preach in a surplice, and he must have celebration
 
 434 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 of the Holy Communion once a month instead of only 
 five times in the year as heretofore, and he struggled in 
 vain against the unseen influence which he felt to be 
 working in season and out of season against all that he 
 had been accustomed to consider most distinctive of his 
 party. Where it was, or what it was, he knew not, nor 
 exactly what it would do next, but he knew exceedingly 
 well that go where he would it was undermining him; 
 that it was too persistent for him; that Christina and 
 Charlotte liked it a great deal better than he did, and 
 that it could end in nothing but Rome. Easter decora- 
 tions indeed! Christmas decorations in reason were 
 proper enough, but Easter decorations ! well, it might last 
 his time. 
 
 This was the course things had taken in the Church of 
 England during the last forty years. The set has been 
 steadily in one direction. A few men who knew what 
 they wanted made catspaws of the Christinas and the 
 Charlottes, and the Christinas and the Charlottes made 
 catspaws of the Mrs. Goodhews and the old Miss 
 Wrights, and the Mrs. Goodhews and old Miss Wrights 
 told the Mr. Goodhews and young Miss Wrights what 
 they should do, and when the Mr. Goodhews and the 
 young Miss Wrights did it the little Goodhews and the 
 rest of the spiritual flock did as they did, and the Theo- 
 balds went for nothing; step by step, day by day, year 
 by year, parish by parish, diocese by diocese this was 
 how it was done. And yet the Church of England looks 
 with no friendly eyes upon the theory of Evolution or 
 Descent with Modification. 
 
 My hero thought over these things, and remembered 
 many a ruse on the part of Christina and Charlotte, and 
 many a detail of the struggle which I cannot further 
 interrupt my story to refer to, and he remembered his 
 father's favourite retort that it could only end in Rome. 
 When he was a boy he had firmly believed this, but he 
 smiled now as he thought of another alternative clear
 
 The Way of All Flesh 435 
 
 enough to himself, but so horrible that it had not even 
 occurred to Theobald I mean the toppling over of the 
 whole system. At that time he welcomed the hope that 
 the absurdities and unrealities of the Church would end 
 in her downfall. Since then he has come to think very 
 differently, not as believing in the cow jumping over the 
 moon more than he used to, or more, probably, than 
 nine-tenths of the clergy themselves who know as well 
 as he does that their outward and visible symbols are 
 out of date but because he knows the baffling com- 
 plexity of the problem when it comes to deciding what is 
 actually to be done. Also, now that he has seen them 
 more closely, he knows better the nature of those wolves 
 in sheep's clothing, who are thirsting for the blood of 
 their victim, and exulting so clamorously over its an- 
 ticipated early fall into their clutches. The spirit behind 
 the Church is true, though her letter true once is 
 now true no longer. The spirit behind the High Priests 
 of Science is as lying as its letter. The Theobalds, who 
 do what they do because it seems to be the correct thing, 
 but who in their hearts neither like it nor believe in 
 it, are in reality the least dangerous of all classes to the 
 peace and liberties of mankind. The man to fear is he 
 who goes at things with the cocksureness of pushing vul- 
 garity and self-conceit. These are not vices which can 
 be justly laid to the charge of the English clergy. 
 
 Many of the farmers came up to Ernest when serv- 
 ice was over, and shook hands with him. He found every 
 one knew of his having come into a fortune. The fact 
 was that Theobald had immediately told two or three of 
 the greatest gossips in the village, and the story was not 
 long in spreading. "It simplified matters," he had said 
 to himself, "a good deal." Ernest was civil to Mrs. 
 Goodhew for her husband's sake, but he gave Miss 
 Wright the cut direct, for he knew that she was only 
 Charlotte in disguise. 
 
 A week passed slowly away. Two or three times the
 
 436 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 family took the sacrament together round Christina's 
 death-bed. Theobald's impatience became more and more 
 transparent daily, but fortunately Christina (who even if 
 she had been well would have been ready to shut her 
 eyes to it) became weaker and less coherent in mind 
 also, so that she hardly, if at all, perceived it. After 
 Ernest had been in the house about a week his mother 
 fell into a comatose state which lasted a couple of days, 
 and in the end went away so peacefully that it was like 
 the blending of sea and sky in mid-ocean upon a soft 
 hazy day when none can say where the earth ends and 
 the heavens begin. Indeed she died to the realities of 
 life with less pain than she had waked from many of 
 its illusions. 
 
 "She has been the comfort and mainstay of my life 
 for more than thirty years," said Theobald as soon as all 
 was over, "but one could not wish it prolonged," and 
 he buried his face in his handkerchief to conceal his want 
 of emotion. 
 
 Ernest came back to town the day after his mother's 
 death, and returned to the funeral accompanied by my- 
 self. He wanted me to see his father in order to prevent 
 any possible misapprehension about Miss Pontifex's in- 
 tentions, and I was such an old friend of the family 
 that my presence at Christina's funeral would surprise 
 no one. With all her faults I had always rather liked 
 Christina. She would have chopped Ernest or any one 
 else into little pieces of mincemeat to gratify the slightest 
 wish of her husband, but she would not have chopped 
 him up for any one else, and so long as he did not cross 
 her she was very fond of him. By nature she was of an 
 even temper, more willing to be pleased than ruffled, very 
 ready to do a good-natured action, provided it did not 
 cost her much exertion, nor involve expense to Theobald. 
 Her own little purse did not matter ; any one might have 
 as much of that as he or she could get after she had 
 reserved what was absolutely necessary for her dress.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 437 
 
 I could not hear of her end as Ernest described it to me 
 without feeling very compassionate towards her, indeed 
 her own son could hardly have felt more so; I at once, 
 therefore, consented to go down to the funeral; perhaps 
 I was also influenced by a desire to see Charlotte and 
 Joey, in whom I felt interested on hearing what my god- 
 son had told me. 
 
 I found Theobald looking remarkably well. Every one 
 said he was bearing it so beautifully. He did indeed 
 once or twice shake his head and say that his wife had 
 been the comfort and mainstay of his life for over thirty 
 years, but there the matter ended. I stayed over the next 
 day which was Sunday, and took my departure on the 
 following morning after having told Theobald all that 
 his son wished me to tell him. Theobald asked me to 
 help him with Christina's epitaph. 
 
 "I would say," said he, "as little as possible; eulogies 
 of the departed are in most cases both unnecessary and 
 untrue. Christina's epitaph shall contain nothing which 
 shall be either the one or the other. I should give her 
 name, the dates of her birth and death, and of course 
 say she was my wife, and then I think I should wind up 
 with a simple text her favourite one for example, none 
 indeed could be more appropriate, 'Blessed are the pure 
 in heart for they shall see God.' " 
 
 I said I thought this would be very nice, and it was 
 settled. So Ernest was sent to give the order to Mr. 
 Prosser, the stonemason in the nearest town, who said 
 it came from "the Beetitudes." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIV 
 
 ON our way to town Ernest broached his plans for spend- 
 ing the next year or two. I wanted him to try and get 
 more into society again, but he brushed this aside at
 
 438 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 once as the very last thing he had a fancy for. For 
 society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a 
 few intimate friends, he had an unconquerable aversion. 
 "I always did hate those people," he said, "and they 
 always have hated and always will hate me. I am an 
 Ishmael by instinct as much as by accident of circum- 
 stances, but if I keep out of society I shall be less 
 vulnerable than Ishmaels generally are. The moment i 
 a man goes into society, he becomes vulnerable all! 
 round." 
 
 I was very sorry to hear him talk in this way; for 
 whatever strength a man may have he should surely be 
 able to make more of it if he act in concert than alone. 
 I said this. 
 
 "I don't care," he answered, "whether I make the 
 most of my strength or not; I don't know whether I 
 have any strength, but if I have I dare say it will find 
 some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, 
 not as other people would like me to live ; thanks to my 
 aunt and you, I can afford the luxury of a quiet, unob- 
 trusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I 
 mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added 
 after a pause of some minutes ; "I have been a scribbler 
 for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it must be 
 by writing." 
 
 I had already long since come to that conclusion my- 
 self. 
 
 "Well," he continued, "there are a lot of things that 
 want saying which no one dares to say, a lot of shams 
 which want attacking, and yet no one attacks them. It 
 seems to me that I can say things which not another 
 man in England except myself will venture to say, and 
 yet which are crying to be said." 
 
 I said : "But who will listen ? If you say things which 
 nobody else would dare to say, is not this much the same 
 as saying what everyone except yourself knows to be 
 better left unsaid just now?"
 
 The Way of All Flesh 439 
 
 "Perhaps," said he, "but I don't know it ; I am bursting 
 with these things, and it is my fate to say them." 
 
 I knew there would be no stopping him, so I gave in 
 and asked what question he felt a special desire to burn 
 his fingers with in the first instance. 
 
 "Marriage," he rejoined promptly, "and the power of 
 disposing of his property after a man is dead. The ques- 
 tion of Christianity is virtually settled, or if not settled 
 there is no lack of those engaged in settling it. The 
 question of the day now is marriage and the family 
 system." 
 
 "That," said I drily, "is a hornet's nest indeed." 
 
 "Yes," said he no less drily, "but hornet's nests are 
 exactly what I happen to like. Before, however, I begin 
 to stir up this particular one I propose to travel for a 
 few years, with the especial object of finding out what 
 nations now existing are the best, comeliest and most 
 lovable, and also what nations have been so in times 
 past. I want to find out how these people live, and have 
 lived, and what their customs are. 
 
 "I have very vague notions upon the subject as yet, 
 but the general impression I have formed is that, putting 
 ourselves on one side, the most vigorous and amiable of 
 known nations are the modern Italians, the old Greeks 
 and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders. I believe 
 that these nice peoples have not as a general rule been 
 purists, but I want to see those of them who can yet be 
 seen ; they are the practical authorities on the question 
 What is best for man ? and I should like to see them and 
 find out what they do. Let us settle the fact first and 
 fight about the moral tendencies afterwards." 
 
 "In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high 
 old times." 
 
 "Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than 
 those people whom I can find to have been the best in 
 all ages. But let us change the subject." He put his 
 hand into his pocket and brought out a letter, "My
 
 440 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 father," he said, "gave me this letter this morning with 
 the seal already broken." He passed it over to me, and 
 I found it to be the one which Christina had written 
 before the birth of her last child, and which I have given 
 in an earlier chapter. 
 
 "And you do not find this letter," said I, "affects the 
 conclusion which you have just told me you have come 
 to concerning your present plans?" 
 
 He smiled, and answered : "No. But if you do what 
 you have sometimes talked about and turn the adventures 
 of my unworthy self into a novel, mind you print this 
 letter." 
 
 "Why so?" said I, feeling as though such a letter as 
 this should have been held sacred from the public gaze. 
 
 "Because my mother would have wished it published ; 
 if she had known you were writing about me and had 
 this letter in your possession, she would above all things 
 have desired that you should publish it. Therefore pub- 
 lish it if you write at all." 
 
 This is why I have done so. 
 
 Within a month Ernest carried his intention into effect, 
 and having made all the arrangements necessary for his 
 children's welfare, left England before Christmas. 
 
 I heard from him now and again and learnt that he 
 was visiting almost all parts of the world, but only stay- 
 ing in those places where he found the inhabitants un- 
 usually good-looking and agreeable. He said he had filled 
 an immense quantity of note-books, and I have no doubt 
 he had. At last in the spring of 1867 he returned, his 
 luggage stained with the variation of each hotel adver- 
 tisement 'twixt here and Japan. He looked very brown 
 and strong, and so well favoured that it almost seemed 
 as if he must have caught some good looks from the 
 people among whom he had been living. He came back 
 to his old rooms in the Temple, and settled down as 
 easily as if he had never been away a day. 
 
 One of the first things we did was to go and see the
 
 The Way of All Flesh 441 
 
 children ; we took' the train to Gravesend, and walked 
 thence for a few miles along the riverside till we came to 
 the solitary house where the good people lived with whom 
 Ernest had placed them. It was a lovely April morning, 
 but with a fresh air blowing from off the sea; the tide 
 was high, and the river was alive with shipping coming 
 up with wind and tide. Sea-gulls wheeled around us 
 overhead, sea-weed clung everywhere to the banks which 
 the advancing tide had not yet covered, everything was 
 of the sea sea-ey, and the fine bracing air which blew 
 over the water made me feel more hungry than I had 
 done for many a day; I did not see how children could 
 live in a better physical atmosphere than this, and ap- 
 plauded the selection which Ernest had made on behalf 
 of his youngsters. 
 
 While we were still a quarter of a mile off we heard 
 shouts and children's laughter, and could see a lot of boys 
 and girls romping together and running after one an- 
 other. We could not distinguish our own two, but when 
 we got near they were soon made out, for the other chil- 
 dren were blue-eyed, flaxen-pated little folks, whereas 
 ours were dark and straight-haired. 
 
 We had written to say that we were coming, but had 
 desired that nothing should be said to the children, so 
 these paid no more attention to us than they would have 
 done to any other stranger, who happened to visit a spot 
 so unfrequented except by sea-faring folk, which we 
 plainly were not. The interest, however, in us was much 
 quickened when it was discovered that we had got our 
 pockets full of oranges and sweeties, to an extent greater 
 than it had entered into their small imaginations to 
 conceive as possible. At first we had great difficulty in 
 making them come near us. They were like a lot of 
 wild young colts, very inquisitive, but very coy and not 
 to be cajoled easily. The children were nine in all 
 five boys and two girls belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Roll- 
 ings, and two to Ernest. I never saw a finer lot of
 
 442 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 children than the young Rollings the boys were hardy, 
 robust, fearless little fellows with eyes as clear as hawks ; 
 the elder girl was exquisitely pretty, but the younger 
 one was a mere baby. I felt as I looked at them that 
 if I had had children of my own I could have wished 
 no better home for them, nor better companions. 
 
 Georgie and Alice, Ernest's two children, were evi- 
 dently quite as one family with the others, and called 
 Mr. and Mrs. Rollings uncle and aunt. They had been 
 so young when they were first brought to the house that 
 they had been looked upon in the light of new babies 
 who had been born into the family. They knew nothing 
 about Mr. and Mrs. Rollings being paid so much a week 
 to look after them. Ernest asked them all what they 
 wanted to be. They had only one idea; one and all, 
 Georgie among the rest, wanted to be bargemen. Young 
 ducks could hardly have a more evident hankering after 
 the water. 
 
 "And what do you want, Alice?" said Ernest. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I'm going to marry Jack here, and be 
 a bargeman's wife." 
 
 Jack was the eldest boy, now nearly twelve, a sturdy 
 little fellow, the image of what Mr. Rollings must have 
 been at his age. As we looked at him, so straight and 
 well grown and well done all round, I could see it was 
 in Ernest's mind as much as in mine that she could 
 hardly do much better. 
 
 "Come here, Jack, my boy," said Ernest, "here's a 
 shilling for you." The boy blushed and could hardly be 
 got to come in spite of our previous blandishments; he 
 had had pennies given him before, but shillings never. 
 His father caught him good-naturedly by the ear and 
 lugged him to us. 
 
 "He's a good boy, Jack is," said Ernest to Mr. 
 Rollings, "I'm sure of that." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Rollings, "he's a werry good boy, 
 only that I can't get him to learn his reading and writing.
 
 The Way of All Flesh 443 
 
 He don't like going to school that's the only complaint 
 I have against him. I don't know what's the matter with 
 all my children, and yours, Mr. Pontifex, is just as bad, 
 but they none of 'em likes book learning, though they 
 learn anything else fast enough. Why, as for Jack here, 
 he's almost as good a bargeman as I am." And he 
 looked fondly and patronisingly towards his offspring. 
 
 "I think," said Ernest to Mr. Rollings, "if he wants to 
 marry Alice when he gets older he had better do so, and 
 he shall have as many barges as he likes. In the mean- 
 time, Mr. Rollings, say in what way money can be of 
 use to you, and whatever you can make useful is at your 
 disposal." 
 
 I need hardly say that Ernest made matters easy for 
 this good couple ; one stipulation, however, he insisted 
 on, namely, there was to be no more smuggling, and that 
 the young people were to be kept out of this ; for a little 
 bird had told Ernest that smuggling in a quiet way was 
 one of the resources of the Rollings family. Mr. Rollings 
 was not sorry to assent to this, and I believe it is now 
 many years since the coastguard people have suspected 
 any of the Rollings family as offenders against the 
 revenue law. 
 
 "Why should I take them from where they are," said 
 Ernest to me in the train as we went home, "to send 
 them to schools where they will not be one half so happy, 
 and where their illegitimacy will very likely be a worry 
 to them ? Georgie wants to be a bargeman, let him begin 
 as one, the sooner the better ; he may as well begin with 
 this as with anything else ; then if he shows developments 
 I can be on the lookout to encourage them and make 
 things easy for him ; while if he shows no desire to go 
 ahead, what on earth is "the good of trying to shove him 
 forward ?" 
 
 Ernest, I believe, went on with a homily upon educa- 
 tion generally, and upon the way in which young people 
 should go through the embryonic stages with their money
 
 444 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 as much as with their limbs, beginning life in a much 
 lower social position than that in which their parents 
 were, and a lot more, which he has since published ; but 
 I was getting on in years, and the walk and the bracing 
 air had made me sleepy, so ere we had got past Green- 
 hithe Station on our return journey I had sunk into a 
 refreshing sleep. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXV 
 
 ERNEST being about two and thirty years old and having 
 had his fling for the last three or four years, now settled 
 down in London, and began to write steadily. Up to this 
 time he had given abundant promise, but had produced 
 nothing, nor indeed did he come before the public for 
 another three or four years yet. 
 
 He lived as I have said very quietly, seeing hardly 
 anyone but myself, and the three or four old friends with 
 whom I had been intimate for years. Ernest and we 
 formed our little set, and outside of this my godson was 
 hardly known at all. 
 
 His main expense was travelling, which he indulged 
 in at frequent intervals, but for short times only. Do 
 what he would he could not get through more than about 
 fifteen hundred a year; the rest of his income he gave 
 away if he happened to find a case where he thought 
 money would be well bestowed, or put by until some 
 opportunity arose of getting rid of it with advantage. 
 
 I knew he was writing, but we had had so many little 
 differences of opinion upon this head that by a tacit 
 understanding the subject was seldom referred to be- 
 tween us, and I did not know that he was actually 
 publishing till one day he brought me a book and told 
 me that it was his own. I opened it and found it to 
 be a series of semi-theological, semi-social essays, pur- 
 porting to have been written by six or seven different
 
 The Way of All Flesh 445 
 
 people, and viewing the same class of subjects from 
 different standpoints. 
 
 People had not yet forgotten the famous "Essays and 
 Reviews," and Ernest had wickedly given a few touches 
 to at least two of the essays which suggested vaguely 
 that they had been written by a bishop. The essays were 
 all of them in support of the Church of England, and 
 appeared both by implied internal suggestion, and their 
 prima facie purport to be the work of some half-dozen 
 men of experience and high position who had determined 
 to face the difficult questions of the day no less boldly 
 from within the bosom of the Church than the Church's 
 enemies had faced them from without her pale. 
 
 There was an essay on the external evidences of the 
 Resurrection; another on the marriage laws of the most 
 eminent nations of the world in times past and present; 
 another was devoted to a consideration of the many 
 questions which must be reopened and reconsidered on 
 their merits if the teaching of the Church of England 
 were to cease to carry moral authority with it; another 
 dealt with the more purely social subject of middle class 
 destitution ; another with the authenticity or rather the 
 unauthenticity of the fourth gospel; another was headed 
 "Irrational Rationalism," and there were two or three 
 more. 
 
 They were all written vigorously and fearlessly as 
 though by people used to authority; all granted that the 
 Church professed to enjoin belief in much which no one 
 could accept who had been accustomed to weigh evi- 
 dence ; but it was contended that so much valuable truth 
 had got so closely mixed up with these mistakes that the 
 mistakes had better not be meddled with. To lay great 
 stress on these was like cavilling at the Queen's right to 
 reign, on the ground that William the Conqueror was 
 illegitimate. 
 
 One article maintained that though it would be incon- 
 venient to change the words of our prayer book and
 
 446 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 articles, it would not be inconvenient to change in a quiet 
 way the meanings which we put upon those words. This, 
 it was argued, was what was actually done in the case of 
 law ; this had been the law's mode of growth and adapta- 
 tion, and had in all ages been found a righteous and con- 
 venient method of effecting change. It was suggested 
 that the Church should adopt it. 
 
 In another essay it was boldly denied that the Church 
 rested upon reason. It was proved incontestably that its 
 ultimate foundation was and ought to be faith, there 
 being indeed no other ultimate foundation than this for 
 any of man's beliefs. If so, the writer claimed that the 
 Church could not be upset by reason. It was founded, 
 like everything else, on initial assumptions, that is to say 
 on faith? and if it was to be upset it was to be upset by 
 faith, by the faith of those who in their lives appeared 
 more graceful, more lovable, better bred, in fact, and 
 better able to overcome difficulties. Any sect which 
 showed its superiority in these respects might carry all 
 before it, but none other would make much headway 
 for long together. Christianity was true in so far as it \ 
 had fostered beauty, and it had fostered much beauty. ) 
 It was false in so far as it fostered ugliness, and it had 
 fostered much ugliness. It was therefore not a little i 
 true and not a little false ; on the whole one might go ' 
 farther and fare worse; the wisest course would be to 
 live with it, and make the best and not the worst of it. 
 The writer urged that we become persecutors as a matter 
 of course as soon as we begin to feel very strongly upon 
 any subject ; we ought not therefore to do this ; we ought 
 not to feel very strongly even upon that institution which 
 was dearer to the writer than any other the Church of 
 England. We should Be churchmen, but somewhat luke- 
 warm churchmen, inasmuch as those who care very much 
 about either religion or irreligion are seldom observed 
 to be very well bred or agreeable people. The Church 
 herself should approach as nearly to that of Laodicea as
 
 The Way of All Flesh 447 
 
 was compatible with her continuing to be a Church at all, 
 and each individual member should only be hot in striving 
 to be as lukewarm as possible. 
 
 The book rang with the courage alike of conviction 
 and of an entire absence of conviction ; it appeared to be 
 the work of men who had a rule-of -thumb way of steer- 
 ing between iconoclasm on the one hand and credulity on 
 the other; who cut Gordian knots as a matter of course 
 when it suited their convenience; who shrank from no 
 conclusion in theory, nor from any want of logic in 
 practice so long as they were illogical of malice prepense, 
 and for what they held to be sufficient reason. The con- 
 clusions were conservative, quietistic, comforting. The 
 arguments by which they were reached were taken from 
 the most advanced writers of the day. All that these 
 people contended for was granted them, but the fruits 
 of victory were for the most part handed over to those 
 already in possession. 
 
 Perhaps the passage which attracted most attention in 
 the book was one from the essay on the various marriage 
 systems of the world. It ran : 
 
 "If people require us to construct," exclaimed the 
 writer, "we set good breeding as the corner-stone of our 
 edifice. We would have it ever present consciously or 
 unconsciously in the minds of all as the central faith in 
 which they should live and move and have their being, 
 as the touchstone of all things whereby they may be 
 known as good or evil according as they make for good 
 breeding or against it. 
 
 "That a man should have been bred well and breed 
 others well ; that his figure, head, hands, feet, voice, man- 
 ner and clothes should carry conviction upon this point, 
 so that no one can look at him without seeing that he has 
 come of good stock and is likely to throw good stock 
 himself, this is the desiderandum. And the same with 
 a woman. The greatest number of these well-bred men 
 and women, and the greatest happiness of these well-
 
 448 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 bred men and women, this is the highest good ; towards 
 this all government, all social conventions, all art, litera- 
 ture and science should directly or indirectly tend. Holy 
 men and holy women are those who keep this uncon- 
 sciously in view at all times whether of work or pastime." 
 
 If Ernest had published this work in his own name I 
 should think it would have fallen still-born from the 
 press, but the form he had chosen was calculated at that 
 time to arouse curiosity, and as I have said he had 
 wickedly dropped a few hints which the reviewers did 
 not think anyone would have been impudent enough to 
 do if he were not a bishop, or at any rate some one in 
 authority. A well-known judge was spoken of as being 
 another of the writers, and the idea spread ere long that 
 six or seven of the leading bishops and judges had laid 
 their heads together to produce a volume, which should 
 at once outbid "Essays and Reviews" and counteract the 
 influence of that then still famous work. 
 
 Reviewers are men of like passions with ourselves, 
 and with them as with everyone else omne ignotum pro 
 magnifico. The book was really an able one and 
 abounded with humour, just satire, and good sense. It 
 struck a new note, and the speculation which for some 
 time was rife concerning its authorship made many turn 
 to it who would never have looked at it otherwise. One 
 of the most gushing weeklies had a fit over it, and de- 
 clared it to be the finest thing that had been done since 
 the "Provincial Letters" of Pascal. Once a month or so 
 that weekly always found some picture which was the 
 finest that had been done since the old masters, or some 
 satire that was the finest that had appeared since Swift 
 or some something which was incomparably the finest 
 that had appeared since something else. If Ernest had 
 put his name to the book, and the writer had known that 
 it was by a nobody, he would doubtless have written in 
 a very different strain. Reviewers like to think that 
 for aught they know they are patting a duke or even a
 
 The Way of All Flesh 449 
 
 prince of the blood upon the back, and lay it on thick 
 till they find they have been only praising Brown, Jones 
 or Robinson. Then they are disappointed, and as a 
 general rule will pay Brown, Jones or Robinson out. 
 
 Ernest was not so much up to the ropes of the literary 
 world as I was, and I am afraid his head was a little 
 turned when he woke up one morning to find himself 
 famous. He was Christina's son, and perhaps would not 
 have been able to do what he had done if he was not 
 capable of occasional undue elation. Ere long, however, 
 he found out all about it, and settled quietly down to 
 write a series of books, in which he insisted on saying 
 things which no one else would say even if they could, 
 or could even if they would. 
 
 He has got himself a bad literary character. I said 
 to him laughingly one day that he was like the man in 
 the last century of whom it was said that nothing but 
 such a character could keep down such parts. 
 
 He laughed and said he would rather be like that than 
 like a modern writer or two whom he could name, whose 
 parts were so poor that they could be kept up by nothing 
 but by such a character. 
 
 I remember soon after one of these books was pub- 
 lished I happened to meet Mrs. Jupp to whom, by the 
 way, Ernest made a small weekly allowance. It was at 
 Ernest's chambers, and for some reason we were left 
 alone for a few minutes. I said to her : "Mr. Pontif ex 
 has written another book, Mrs. Jupp." 
 
 "Lor' now," said she, "has he really ? Dear gentleman ! 
 Is it about love ?" And the old sinner threw up a wicked 
 sheep's eye glance at me from under her aged eyelids. 
 I forget what there was in my reply which provoked it 
 probably nothing but she went rattling on at full speed 
 to the effect that Bell had given her a ticket for the opera. 
 "So, of course," she said, "I went. I didn't understand 
 one word of it, for it was all French, but I saw their legs. 
 Oh dear, oh dear! I'm afraid I shan't be here much
 
 450 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 longer, and when dear Mr. Pontifex sees me in my coffin 
 he'll say, Toor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any 
 more' ; but bless you I'm not so old as all that, and I'm 
 taking lessons in dancing." 
 
 At this moment Ernest came in and the conversation 
 was changed. Mrs. Jupp asked if he was 'still going on 
 writing more books now that this one was done. "Of 
 course I am," he answered ; "I'm always writing books ; 
 here is the manuscript of my text"; and he showed her 
 a heap of paper. 
 
 "Well now," she exclaimed, "dear, dear me, and is that 
 manuscript? I've often heard talk about manuscripts, 
 but I never thought I should live to see some myself. 
 Well! well! So that is really manuscript?'' 
 
 There were a few geraniums in the window and they 
 did not look well. Ernest asked Mrs. Jupp if she under- 
 stood flowers. "I understand the language of flowers," 
 she said, with one of her most bewitching leers, and on 
 this we sent her off till she should choose to honour us 
 with another visit, which she knows she is privileged 
 from time to time to do, for Ernest likes her. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXVI 
 
 AND now I must bring my story to a close. 
 
 The preceding chapter was written soon after the 
 events it records that is to say in the spring of 1867. 
 By that time ^iiy story had been written up to this point ; 
 but it has been altered here and there from time to time 
 occasionally. It is now the autumn of 1882, and if I am 
 to say more I should do so quickly, for I am eighty years 
 old and though well in health cannot conceal from myself 
 that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is forty- 
 seven, though he hardly looks it. 
 
 He is richer than ever, for he has never married and 
 his London and North- Western shares have nearly
 
 The Way of All Flesh 451 
 
 doubled themselves. Through sheer inability to spend 
 his income he has been obliged to hoard in self-defence. 
 He still lives in the Temple in the same rooms I took 
 for him when he gave up his shop, for no one has been 
 able to induce him to take a house. His house, he says, 
 is wherever there is a good hotel. When he is in town 
 he likes to work and to be quiet. When out of town 
 he feels that he has left little behind him that can go 
 wrong, and he would not like to be tied to a single 
 locality. "I know no exception," he says, "to the rule 
 that it is cheaper to buy milk than to keep a cow." 
 
 As I have mentioned Mrs. Jupp, I may as well say 
 here the little that remains to be said about her. She 
 is a very old woman now, but no one now living, as she 
 says triumphantly, can say how old, for the woman in the 
 Old Kent Road is dead, and presumably has carried her 
 secret to the grave. Old, however, though she is, she 
 lives in the same house, and finds it hard work to make 
 the two ends meet, but I do not know that she minds 
 this very much, and it has prevented her from getting 
 more to drink than would be good for her. It is no use 
 trying to do anything for her beyond paying her allow- 
 ance weekly, and absolutely refusing to let her anticipate 
 it. She pawns her flat iron every Saturday for 4d., and 
 takes it out every Monday morning for 4^d. when she 
 gets her allowance, and has done this for the last ten 
 years as regularly as the week comes round. As long as 
 she does not let the flat iron actually go we know that 
 she can still worry out her financial problems in her own 
 hugger-mugger way and had better be left to do so. If 
 the flat iron were to go beyond redemption, we should 
 know that it was time to interfere. I do not know why, 
 but there is something about her which always reminds 
 me of a woman who was as unlike her as one person 
 can be to another I mean Ernest's mother. 
 
 The last time I had a long gossip with her was about 
 two years ago when she came to me instead of to Ernest.
 
 452 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 She said she had seen a cab drive up just as she was 
 going to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr. Pontifex's 
 pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window, so 
 she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides 
 for no curtsey, not for the likes of him. She professed to 
 be very much down on her luck. Her lodgers did use 
 her so dreadful, going away without paying and leaving 
 not so much as a stick behind, but to-day she was as 
 pleased as a penny carrot. She had had such a lovely 
 dinner a cushion of ham and green peas. She had had 
 a good cry over it, but then she was so silly, she was. 
 
 "And there's that Bell," she continued, though I could 
 not detect any appearance of connection, "it's enough to 
 give anyone the hump to see him now that he's taken to 
 chapel-going, and his mother's prepared to meet Jesus 
 and all that to me, and now she ain't a-going to die, and 
 drinks half a bottle of champagne a day, and then Grigg, 
 him as preaches, you know, asked Bell if I really was 
 too gay, not but what when I was young I'd snap my 
 fingers at any 'fly by night' in Holborn, and if I was 
 togged out and had my teeth I'd do it now. I lost my 
 poor dear Watkins, but of course that couldn't be helped, 
 and then I lost my dear Rose. Silly faggot to go and 
 ride on a cart and catch the bronchitics. I never thought 
 when I kissed my dear Rose in Pullen's Passage and she 
 gave me the chop, that I should never see her again, 
 and her gentleman friend was fond of her too, though 
 he was a married man. I daresay she's gone to bits by 
 now. If she could rise and see me with my bad finger, 
 she would cry, and I should say, 'Never mind, ducky, 
 I'm all right.' Oh ! dear, it's coming on to rain. I do 
 hate a wet Saturday night poor women with their nice 
 white stockings and their living to get," etc., etc. 
 
 And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner, 
 as people would say it ought to do. Whatever life she 
 has led, it has agreed with her very sufficiently. At times 
 she gives us to understand that she is still much solicited ;
 
 The Way of All Flesh 453 
 
 at others she takes quite a different tone. She has not 
 allowed even Joe King so much as to put his lips to hers 
 this ten years. She would rather have a mutton chop 
 any day. "But ah! you should have seen me when I 
 was sweet seventeen. I was the very moral of my poor 
 dear mother, and she was a pretty woman, though I say 
 it that shouldn't. She had such a splendid mouth of 
 teeth. It was a sin to bury her in her teeth." 
 
 I only knew of one thing at which she professes to 
 be shocked. It is that her son Tom and his wife Topsy 
 are teaching the baby to swear. "Oh ! it's too dreadful 
 awful," she exclaimed ; "I don't know the meaning of the 
 words, but I tell him he's a drunken sot." I believe the 
 old woman in reality rather likes it. 
 
 "But surely, Mrs. Jupp," said I, "Tom's wife used 
 not to be Topsy. You used to speak of her as Pheeb." 
 
 "Ah! yes," she answered, "but Pheeb behaved bad, 
 and it's Topsy now." 
 
 Ernest's daughter Alice married the boy who had been 
 her playmate more than a year ago. Ernest gave them 
 all they said they wanted and a good deal more. They 
 have already presented him with a grandson, and I doubt 
 not will do so with many more. Georgie though only 
 twenty-one is owner of a fine steamer which his father 
 has bought for him. He began when about thirteen 
 going with old Rollings and Jack in the barge from 
 Rochester to the upper Thames with bricks; then his 
 father bought him and Jack barges of their own, and 
 then he bought them both ships, and then steamers. I 
 do not exactly know how people make money by having 
 a steamer, but he does whatever is usual, and from all 
 I can gather makes it pay extremely well. He is a good 
 deal like his father in the face, but without a spark 
 so far as I have been able to observe of any literary 
 ability ; he has a fair sense of humour and abundance of 
 common sense, but his instinct is clearly a practical one. 
 I am not sure that he does not put me in mind almost
 
 454 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 more of what Theobald would have been if he had been 
 a sailor, than of Ernest. Ernest used to go down to 
 Battersby and stay with his father for a few days twice 
 a year until Theobald's death, and the pair continued on 
 excellent terms, in spite of what the neighbouring clergy 
 call "the atrocious books which Mr. Ernest Pontifex" 
 has written. Perhaps the harmony, or rather absence 
 of discord, which subsisted between the pair was due to 
 the fact that Theobald had never looked into the inside 
 of one of his son's works, and Ernest, of course, never 
 alluded to them in his father's presence. The pair, as 
 I have said, got on excellently, but it was doubtless as 
 well that Ernest's visits were short and not too frequent. 
 Once Theobald wanted Ernest to bring his children, but 
 Ernest knew they would not like it, so this was not done. 
 
 Sometimes Theobald came up to town on small busi- 
 ness matters and paid a visit to Ernest's chambers ; he 
 generally brought with him a couple of lettuces, or a 
 cabbage, or half-a-dozen- turnips done up in a piece of 
 brown paper, and told Ernest that he knew fresh vege- 
 tables were rather hard to get in London, and he had 
 brought him some. Ernest had often explained to him 
 that the vegetables were of no use to him, and that he 
 had rather he would not bring them ; but Theobald per- 
 sisted, I believe through sheer love of doing something 
 which his son did not like, but which was too small to 
 take notice of. 
 
 He lived until about twelve months ago, when he was 
 found dead in his bed on the morning after having writ- 
 ten 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 know-
 
 The Way of All Flesh 455 
 
 ing how long it will last, and time flies quickly. I have 
 been busy potting plants all the morning, but this after- 
 noon is wet. 
 
 "What is this horrid Government going to do with 
 Ireland ? I don't exactly wish they'd blow up Mr. Glad- 
 stone, 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 my 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 hus- 
 band 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 phe- 
 nomena of death to other people, but in respect of him- 
 self 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.
 
 456 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 This, however, was not the general verdict concerning 
 him, and the general verdict is often the truest. 
 
 Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of con- 
 dolence 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 consterna- 
 tion. "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 invari- 
 ably 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 every- 
 thing 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
 
 The Way of All Flesh 457 
 
 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 \ery 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 incom- 
 patibility of temperament, but I believe the main ground 
 of complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independ- 
 ent 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
 
 458 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 dis- 
 like 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 under- 
 stood, 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 hant 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 Way of All Flesh 459 
 
 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. Some- 
 times 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 "lit- 
 tle," and can hardly write a page without introduc- 
 ing 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 Rail- 
 way, 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 Clap- 
 ham Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junc- 
 tion is like the diminished seventh susceptible of such 
 enharmonic change, that you can resolve it into all the 
 possible termini of music."
 
 460 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that 
 took place between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr. Skin- 
 ner'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 Quirmal, he replied 
 with all his wonted pomp : "Yes, the Quirmal or as I 
 myself prefer to call it, the Quirmal." 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 book- 
 shelves 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. 
 Pontif ex ?" 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 suffi- 
 ciently conveyed her meaning. 
 
 "I would like modern music, if I could; I have been
 
 The Way of All Flesh 461 
 
 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 epi- 
 taph : 
 
 "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 sud, "are very valuable to 
 me." "They are but a small part, sir," rejoined Ernest, 
 "of what any one 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
 
 462 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 this Ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the 
 Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his critics 
 were <TK\rjpol KCU avrtVu-Troi, and at the same time weWXTjKToi. 
 Ernest remembered cr/cX^poi, 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 Theo- 
 bald 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
 
 The Way of All Flesh 463 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 hope- 
 less 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 now- 
 adays. 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
 
 464 The Way of All Flesh 
 
 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 in- 
 timately do not know that they wish him greatly different 
 from what he actually is.
 
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