_ 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 my 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 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 allowance 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 4.5d. 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. 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; 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--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 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 business 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
vegetables 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 persisted, 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 written the following letter to
his son:-
"Dear Ernest,--I've nothing particular to write about, but your
letter has been lying for some days in the limbo of unanswered
letters, to wit my pocket, and it's time it was answered.
"I keep wonderfully well and am able to walk my five or six miles
with comfort, but at my age there's no knowing how long it will
last, and time flies quickly. I have been busy potting plants all
the morning, but this afternoon is wet.
"What is this horrid Government going to do with Ireland? I don't
exactly wish they'd blow up Mr Gladstone, but if a mad bull would
chivy him there, and he would never come back any more, I should not
be sorry. Lord Hartington is not exactly the man I should like to
set in his place, but he would be immeasurably better than
Gladstone.
"I miss your sister Charlotte more than I can express. She kept my
household accounts, and I could pour out to her all little worries,
and now that Joey is married too, I don't know what I should do if
one or other of them did not come sometimes and take care of me. My
only comfort is that Charlotte will make her husband happy, and that
he is as nearly worthy of her as a husband can well be.--Believe me,
Your affectionate father,
"THEOBALD PONTIFEX."
I may say in passing that though Theobald speaks of Charlotte's
marriage as though it were recent, it had really taken place some
six years previously, she being then about thirty-eight years old,
and her husband about seven years younger.
There was no doubt that Theobald passed peacefully away during his
sleep. Can a man who died thus be said to have died at all? He has
presented the phenomena of death to other people, but in respect of
himself he has not only not died, but has not even thought that he
was going to die. This is not more than half dying, but then
neither was his life more than half living. He presented so many of
the phenomena of living that I suppose on the whole it would be less
trouble to think of him as having been alive than as never having
been born at all, but this is only possible because association does
not stick to the strict letter of its bond.
This, however, was not the general verdict concerning him, and the
general verdict is often the truest.
Ernest was overwhelmed with expressions of condolence and respect
for his father's memory. "He never," said Dr Martin, the old doctor
who brought Ernest into the world, "spoke an ill word against
anyone. He was not only liked, he was beloved by all who had
anything to do with him."
"A more perfectly just and righteously dealing man," said the family
solicitor, "I have never had anything to do with--nor one more
punctual in the discharge of every business obligation."
"We shall miss him sadly," the bishop wrote to Joey in the very
warmest terms. The poor were in consternation. "The well's never
missed," said one old woman, "till it's dry," and she only said what
everyone else felt. Ernest knew that the general regret was
unaffected as for a loss which could not be easily repaired. He
felt that there were only three people in the world who joined
insincerely in the tribute of applause, and these were the very
three who could least show their want of sympathy. I mean Joey,
Charlotte, and himself. He felt bitter against himself for being of
a mind with either Joey or Charlotte upon any subject, and thankful
that he must conceal his being so as far as possible, not because of
anything his father had done to him--these grievances were too old
to be remembered now--but because he would never allow him to feel
towards him as he was always trying to feel. As long as
communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well,
but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably
felt that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate
opposition to his own. When he was attacked his father laid
whatever stress was possible on everything which his opponents said.
If he met with any check his father was clearly pleased. What the
old doctor had said about Theobald's speaking ill of no man was
perfectly true as regards others than himself, but he knew very well
that no one had injured his reputation in a quiet way, so far as he
dared to do, more than his own father. This is a very common case
and a very natural one. It often happens that if the son is right,
the father is wrong, and the father is not going to have this if he
can help it.
It was very hard, however, to say what was the true root of the
mischief in the present case. It was not Ernest's having been
imprisoned. Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine
fathers out of ten would have done. Partly, no doubt, it was due to
incompatibility of temperament, but I believe the main ground of
complaint lay in the fact that he had been so independent and so
rich while still very young, and that thus the old gentleman had
been robbed of his power to tease and scratch in the way which he
felt he was entitled to do. The love of teasing in a small way when
he felt safe in doing so had remained part of his nature from the
days when he told his nurse that he would keep her on purpose to
torment her. I suppose it is so with all of us. At any rate I am
sure that most fathers, especially if they are clergymen, are like
Theobald.
He did not in reality, I am convinced, like Joey or Charlotte one
whit better than he liked Ernest. He did not like anyone or
anything, or if he liked anyone at all it was his butler, who looked
after him when he was not well, and took great care of him and
believed him to be the best and ablest man in the whole world.
Whether this faithful and attached servant continued to think this
after Theobald's will was opened and it was found what kind of
legacy had been left him I know not. Of his children, the baby who
had died at a day old was the only one whom he held to have treated
him quite filially. As for Christina he hardly ever pretended to
miss her and never mentioned her name; but this was taken as a proof
that he felt her loss too keenly to be able ever to speak of her.
It may have been so, but I do not think it.
Theobald's effects were sold by auction, and among them the Harmony
of the Old and New Testaments which he had compiled during many
years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of MS.
sermons--being all in fact that he had ever written. These and the
Harmony fetched ninepence a barrow load. I was surprised to hear
that Joey had not given the three or four shillings which would have
bought the whole lot, but Ernest tells me that Joey was far fiercer
in his dislike of his father than ever he had been himself, and
wished to get rid of everything that reminded him of him.
It has already appeared that both Joey and Charlotte are married.
Joey has a family, but he and Ernest very rarely have any
intercourse. Of course, Ernest took nothing under his father's
will; this had long been understood, so that the other two are both
well provided for.
Charlotte is as clever as ever, and sometimes asks Ernest to come
and stay with her and her husband near Dover, I suppose because she
knows that the invitation will not be agreeable to him. There is a
de haut en bas tone in all her letters; it is rather hard to lay
one's finger upon it but Ernest never gets a letter from her without
feeling that he is being written to by one who has had direct
communication with an angel. "What an awful creature," he once said
to me, "that angel must have been if it had anything to do with
making Charlotte what she is."
"Could you like," she wrote to him not long ago, "the thoughts of a
little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright
with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I
should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and
heather or no heather--the cliffs are always beautiful, and if you
come your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner
to yourself. Nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return-ticket
which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself
like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for
you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel
disinclined to come in this direction."
"When I have a bad nightmare," said Ernest to me, laughing as he
showed me this letter, "I dream that I have got to stay with
Charlotte."
Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe
it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real
literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is
writing at him as much as to say, "There now--don't you think you
are the only one of us who can write; read this! And if you want a
telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make
what use of it you like." I daresay she writes very well, but she
has fallen under the dominion of the words "hope," "think," "feel,"
"try," "bright," and "little," and can hardly write a page without
introducing all these words and some of them more than once. All
this has the effect of making her style monotonous.
Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late
years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire.
He finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble
through getting into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key
of C and being unable to get back again.
"Getting into the key of C sharp," he said, "is like an unprotected
female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself
at Shepherd's Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to.
How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham
Junction won't quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the
diminished seventh--susceptible of such enharmonic change, that you
can resolve it into all the possible termini of music."
Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place
between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr Skinner's eldest daughter, not
so very long ago. Dr Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had
become Dean of a Cathedral in one of our Midland counties--a
position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the
neighbourhood Ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was
hospitably entertained at lunch.
Thirty years had whitened the Doctor's bushy eyebrows--his hair they
could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have
been made a bishop.
His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon
a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the
Quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: "Yes, the QuirInal--
or as I myself prefer to call it, the QuirInal." After this triumph
he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung
it back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during
his head-mastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, "next to
impossible to think of anything else," but he immediately corrected
himself and substituted the words, "next to impossible to entertain
irrelevant ideas," after which he seemed to feel a good deal more
comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr Skinner's works
upon the 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 Pontifex?" said Miss
Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.
"Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did
like modern music."
"Isn't that rather dreadful?--Don't you think you rather"--she was
going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling
doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.
"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my
life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."
"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"
"With Sebastian Bach."
"And don't you like Beethoven?"
"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that
I never really liked him."
"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could
say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven
is enough. This is happiness."
Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a
likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which
extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he
had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor
in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner
saying, as though it were an epitaph:-
"Stay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."
After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so
with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old
gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and
bowed. "These expressions," he said, voce sua, "are very valuable
to me." "They are but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what
anyone of your old pupils must feel towards you," and the pair
danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining-room table in
front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn.
On this Ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the Doctor wrote
him a letter and told him that his critics were a [Greek text], and
at the same time [Greek text]. Ernest remembered [Greek text], and
knew that the other words were something of like nature, so it was
all right. A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner was gathered to
his fathers.
"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent
towards him."
"I could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost
like playing with a child."
Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks
himself, and then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful
encounters with Dr Skinner or Theobald in his sleep--but beyond this
neither of these two worthies can now molest him further.
To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half
afraid--as for example when I talk to him about his books--that I
may have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I
trust he has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention
between us. I want him to write like other people, and not to
offend so many of his readers; he says he can no more change his
manner of writing than the colour of his hair, and that he must
write as he does or not at all.
With the public generally he is not a favourite. He is admitted to
have talent, but it is considered generally to be of a queer
unpractical kind, and no matter how serious he is, he is always
accused of being in jest. His first book was a success for reasons
which I have already explained, but none of his others have been
more than creditable failures. He is one of those unfortunate men,
each one of whose books is sneered at by literary critics as soon as
it comes out, but becomes "excellent reading" as soon as it has been
followed by a later work which may in its turn be condemned.
He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him
over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the
only thing I can say to him which makes him angry with me.
"What can it matter to me," he says, "whether people read my books
or not? It may matter to them--but I have too much money to want
more, and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-
by. I do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not.
What opinion can any sane man form about his own work? Some people
must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third
class poll men. Why should I complain of being among the
mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him
be thankful--besides, the books will have to stand by themselves
some day, so the sooner they begin the better."
I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. "Mr Pontifex,"
he said, "is a homo unius libri, but it doesn't do to tell him so."
I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in
Ernest's literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose
failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once
made a coup. "He is in a very solitary position, Mr Overton,"
continued the publisher. "He has formed no alliances, and has made
enemies not only of the religious world but of the literary and
scientific brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a
man wishes to get on he must belong to a set, and Mr Pontifex
belongs to no set--not even to a club."
I replied, "Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a
difference--he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the
literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and
they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and
if he were brought into contact with them his last state would be
worse than his first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps
clear of them, and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it--
in the hope, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him
more willingly than the present."
"Can anything,"' said the publisher, "be conceived more
impracticable and imprudent?"
To all this Ernest replies with one word only--"Wait."
Such is my friend's latest development. He would not, it is true,
run much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual
Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is
not a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of
Spiritual Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the
next generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there
is not, and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis
lest he should again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather
fatigues him, but "no man's opinions," he sometimes says, "can be
worth holding unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully
upon occasion in the cause of charity." In politics he is a
Conservative so far as his vote and interest are concerned.
In all other respects he is an advanced Radical. His father and
grandfather could probably no more understand his state of mind than
they could understand Chinese, but those who know him intimately do
not know that they wish him greatly different from what he actually is.
THE END.
The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler. _