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Way of All Flesh, The
CHAPTER XLV
Samuel Butler
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       _ 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 himself, 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, 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 Cambridge.
       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 bygones 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 Theobald'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 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 aspiring 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; greatness, 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 indeed 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
       Battersby 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 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 tutorship 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 pounds or 700 pounds 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 Theobald 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 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 himself.
       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 pounds 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 pounds and became independent of his father, 15 pounds or 20
       pounds served to cover the whole of his unauthorised expenditure.
       He joined the boat club, and was constant in his attendance 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 imagine 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
       temptation 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 look-out 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
       another 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. _