_ The foregoing letter shows how much greater was Christina's anxiety
for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her sons. One
would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats
by this time, 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 Theobald'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, affectionate, attentive to his wishes, self-denying and
diligent," a goodly string forsooth of all the virtues most
convenient 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! Solicitude 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 suspicion. 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
authoress is silent--how was it possible that a lad so trained
should grow up in any healthy or vigorous development, 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 business 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
Englishman, 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 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 representation 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 hereafter, 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 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. _