 85 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 any one 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 tacit understanding the subject was seldom referred to between us, and I did not know that he was actually publishing, till one day he brought me a book and told me flat it was his own. I opened it and found it to be a series of semi-theological semi-social essays purporting to have been written by six or seven different 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 internal suggestion, and their prima facie purport to be the work of some half-dozen men of experience in 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 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 evidence, 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 caviling at the Queen's right to reign, on the ground that William the Conqueror was illegitimate. One article maintained that though it would be inconvenient to change the words of our prayer book and 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 adaptation and had in all ages been found a righteous and convenient 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 insofar as it had fostered beauty and it had fostered much beauty. It was false insofar as it fostered ugliness and it had fostered much ugliness. It was therefore not a little true and not a little false. On the whole one might go farther and fair 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 lukewarm churchmen, in as much 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 was compatible with her continuing to be a church at all, and each individual member should only be hot and striving to be as lukewarm as possible. The book rang with a courage, a like 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 steering 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 pre-pence, and for what they held to be sufficient reason. The conclusions 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 cornerstone 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, manner, 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 decider random and the same with a woman, the greatest number of these well bred men and women and the greatest happiness of these well bred men and women. This is the highest good. Towards this all government, all social conventions, all art, literature and science should directly or indirectly tend. Only men and holy women are those who keep this unconsciously 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 stillborn 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 someone 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, omnignotum pro magnifico. The book was really an able one and abounded with humor, 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 declared 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 ought they know they are padding a duke or even a 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. Air 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 published. 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. Pontifex has written another book, Mrs. Jupp. Lord now, she said, has he really, dear gentlemen, 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 Belle 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 longer. And when dear Mr. Pontifex sees me in my coffin, he'll say, poor old Jupp, she'll never talk broad any more. Good bless you, I'm not so old as all that. And I'm taking lessons and 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 next. 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 understood 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 honor us with another visit, which she knows she is privileged from time to time to do. For Ernest likes her. Chapter 86. 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 80 years old, and though well in health, cannot conceal from myself that I am no longer young. Ernest himself is 47, though he hardly looks it. He is richer than ever, for he has never married, and his London and Northwestern shares have nearly doubled themselves. Through sheer inability to spend his income, he has been obliged to hoard in self-defense. 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 four penny and takes it out every Monday morning for four and a half penny when she gets her allowance, and has done this for the last 10 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 out to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr. Pontifex's paw put his bells above old head out the window. So she had come on to me for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsy, 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 today 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 going to die and drinks a half a bottle of champagne a day. And then Grig, him as preaches, you know, as bell if I really was too gay, but not when I was young, I'd snap my fingers at any flyby knight in Holborn. And if I was tugged 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 bronchytics. 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 dare say 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, nevermind 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 livings to get, et cetera, et cetera. And yet age does not wither this godless old sinner as people would say it ought to. 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 10 years. She would rather have a mutton chop any day. But ah, you should have seen me when I was sweet 17. 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 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 Feeb. Ah, yes, she answered. But Feeb 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 we'll do so with many more. Georgie though only 21 is owner of a fine steamer which his father has bought for him. He began when about 13 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 many 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 humor 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 neighboring 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 a 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 12 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 I 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 chivvy him there and he would never come back anymore I should not be sorry. Lord Harrington 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 the little worries and now that Joey is married too I don't know what I should do if one or the 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 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 in reality taken place some six years previously she being then about 38 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 he 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 of terms. The poor were in consternation the wells 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 nearest commonplace all went well. But if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt that his father's instinct 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 the able 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 earnest having been imprisoned. Theobald forgot all about that much sooner than nine fathers out of 10 would have done. Partly no doubt it was due to the 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 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 witt 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 ableist 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 proof that he felt her loss too keenly to be able to ever 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 the many years with such exquisite neatness and a huge collection of manuscript sermons being all in fact that he had ever written. These in the harmony fetched nine pence 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 deotenbatone 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 Yule. And heather or no heather the cliffs are always beautiful and if you come your room shall be cozy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and six pence 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, Ernest said 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 to say, there now, don't you think you're 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 dare say 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 of 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 traveling on the Metropolitan Railway and finding herself at Shepherd's Bush without quite knowing where she wants to go. 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 termony 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 Ruffborough and had become dean of a cathedral in one of our Midland counties, a position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the neighborhood, Ernest called for old acquaintance's 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 wanted pomp. Yes, the Quirinal, or as I myself prefer to call it, the Quirinal. After this triumph, he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth and flung it back again into the face of heaven as in his finest form during his head-mastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, next to impossible to think of anything else. But he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas. After which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr. Skinner's works upon the bookshelves in the Deenery 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 the 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 semi-quaver 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 want. 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 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 this, Ernest departed. A month or two afterwards Dr. Skinner was gathered to his father's. 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 color of his hair and that he must write as he does or not at all. With the public, generally, he is not a favorite. 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 ingest. 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 about 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 someday, 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 libre, 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 hopes, 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 only one word, 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 it to 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 soft 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 interests 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. End of chapter 86, End of the Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler, recording by Rhonda Fetterman.