 Chapter 9 of Father and Son. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eugene Smith. Father and Son by Edmund Goss. Chapter 9. The result of my being admitted into the communion of saints was that as soon as the nine days wonder of the thing had passed by, my position became, if anything, more harassing and pressed than ever. It is true that freedom was permitted to me in certain directions. I was allowed to act a little more on my own responsibility and was not so incessantly informed what the Lord's will might be in this matter and in that, because it was now conceived that in such dilemmas I could command private intelligence of my own. But there was no relaxation of our rigid manner of life, and I think I now began by comparing it with the habits of others to perceive how very strict it was. The main difference in my lot as a communicant from that of a mere dweller in the tense of righteousness was that I was expected to respond with instant fervor to every appeal of conscience. When I did not do this, my position was almost worse than it had been before because of the livelier nature of the responsibility which weighed upon me. My little faults of conduct, too, assumed shapes of terrible importance since they proceeded from one so signally enlightened. My father was never tired of reminding me that, now that I was a professing Christian, I must remember, in everything I did, that I was an example to others. He used to draw dreadful pictures of supposititious little boys who were secretly watching me from afar and whose whole career in time and eternity might be disastrously affected if I did not keep my lamp burning. The year which followed upon my baptism did not open very happily at the room. Considerable changes had now taken place in the community. My father's impressive services, a certain prestige in his preaching, the mere fact that so vigorous a person was at the head of affairs had induced a large increase in the attendance. By this time, if my memory does not fail me as to dates, we had left the dismal loft over the stables and had built ourselves a perfectly plain but commodious and well-arranged chapel in the center of the village. This greatly added to the prosperity of the meeting. Everything had combined to make our services popular and had attracted to us a new element of younger people. Numbers of youthful masons and carpenters, shopgirls and domestic servants found the room a pleasant, tristing place and were more or less superficially induced to accept salvation as it was offered to them in my father's searching addresses. My father was very shrewd in dealing with mere curiosity or idle motive and sharply packed off any youths who simply came to make eyes of the girls or any maids whose only object was to display their new bonnet strings. But he was powerless against the temporary sincerity, the simulacrum of a true change of heart. I have often heard him say of some young fellow who had attended our services with fervor for a little while and then had turned cold and left us and I thought that the Holy Ghost had wrought in him. Such disappointments grievously depress an evangelist. Religious bodies are liable to strange and unaccountable fluctuations. At the beginning of the third year since our arrival, the congregation seemed to be in a very prosperous state as regards attendance, conversions and other outward signs of activity. Yet it was quite soon after this that my father began to be harassed by all sorts of troubles and the spring of 1860 was a critical moment in the history of the community. Although he loved to take a very high tone about the saints and involve them sometimes in a cloud of laudatory metaphysics, the truth was that there were nothing more than peasants of a somewhat primitive type not well instructed in the rules of conduct and liable to exactly the same weaknesses as invade the rural character in every country in latitude. That they were exhorted to behave as children of light and that the majority of them sincerely desired to do credit to their high calling could not prevent their being beset by the sins which had affected their forebears for generations past. The addition of so many young persons of each sex to the communion led to an entirely new class of embarrassment. Now there arose endless difficulties about engagements about youthful brethren who went out walking with even more youthful sisters. Glancing over my father's notes, I observed the ceaseless repetition of cases in which so-and-so is courting such-and-one followed by the melancholy record that he has deserted her. In my father's stern language, desertion would very often mean no more than that the amatory pair had blamelessly changed their minds. But in some cases it meant more and worse than this. It was a very great distress to him that sometimes the young men and women who showed the most lively interest in scripture and who had apparently accepted the way of salvation with the fullest intelligence were precisely those who seemed to struggle with least success against a temptation to unchastity. He put this down to the concentrated malignity of Satan who directed his most poisoned darts against the fairest of the flock. In addition to these troubles there came recriminations, mutual charges of drunkenness in private, all sorts of petty jealousy and scandal. There were frequent definite acts of backsliding on the part of members who had in consequence to be put away. No one of these cases might be in itself extremely serious, but when many of them came together they seemed to indicate that the church was in an unhealthy condition. The particulars of many of these scandals were concealed from me, but I was in a droid little picture and had cultivated the art of seeming to be interested in something else a book or a flower, while my elders were talking confidentially. As a rule, while I would feign have acquired more details, I was fairly well informed about the errors of the saints, although I was often quaintly ignorant of the real nature of those errors. Not infrequently, persons who had fallen into sin repented of it under my father's penetrating ministrations. They were apt, in their penance, to use strange symbolic expressions. I remember Mrs. Pewings, our washerwoman, who had been accused of intemperance and had been suspended from communion, reappearing with a face that shone with soap and sanctification, and saying to me, Oh, blessed child, you're wondering to see old Pewings here again, and but he rolled away my mountain. For once, I was absolutely at a loss, but she meant that the Lord had removed the load of her sins and restored her to a state of grace. It was in consequence of these backslidings, which had become alarmingly frequent, that early in 1860, my father determined on proclaiming a solemn fast. He delivered one Sunday what seemed to me an awe-inspiring address, calling upon us all closely to examine our consciences and reminding us of the appalling fate of the Church of Laodicea. He said that it was not enough to have made a satisfactory confession of faith nor even to have sealed that confession in baptism if we did not live up to our protestations. Salvation, he told us, must indeed precede holiness of life, yet both are essential. It was a dark and rainy winter morning when he made this terrible address which frightened the congregation extremely. When the marrow was congealed within our bones and when the bowed heads before him and the faintly audible sobs of the women in the background told him that his lesson had gone home, he pronounced the keeping of a day in the following week as a fast of contrition. Those of you who have to pursue your daily occupations will pursue them but sustained only by the bread of affliction and by the water of affliction. His influence over these gentle peasant people was certainly remarkable for no effort was made to resist his exhortation. It was his customary plan to stay a little while after the morning meeting was over and in a very affable fashion to shake hands with the saints. But on this occasion he stalked forth without a word holding my hand tight until we had swept out into the street. How the rest of the congregation kept this fast, I do not know but it was a dreadful day for us. I was awakened in the pitchy night to go off with my father to the room where a scanty gathering held a penitential prayer meeting. We came home as dawn was breaking and in process of time sat down to breakfast which consisted, at that dismal hour, of slices of dry bread and a tumbler of cold water each. During the morning I was not allowed to paint or write or withdraw to my study in the box room. We sat in a state of depression not to be described in the breakfast room, reading books of a devotional character with occasional wailing of some very doleful hymn. Our midday dinner came at last. The meal was strictly confined, as before, to dry slices of the loaf and a tumbler of water. The afternoon would have been spent as the morning was and so my father spent it. But Miss Marks, seeing my white cheeks and dark rings around my eyes, he sought leave to take me out for a walk. This was permitted with a pledge that I should be given no species of refreshment. Although I told Miss Marks, in the course of the walk, that I was feeling so leer, our Devonshire phrase for hungry, she dare not break her word. Our last meal was of the former character and the day ended by our traipsing through the wet to another prayer meeting once I returned in a state bordering on collapse and was put to bed without further nourishment. There was no great hardship in all this, I dare say, but it was certainly rigorous. My father took pains to see that what he said about the bread and water of affliction was carried out in the bosom of his own family and by no one more unflinchingly than by himself. My attitude to other people's souls when I was out of my father's sight was now a constant anxiety to me in our tattling world of small things he had extraordinary opportunities of learning how I behaved when I was away from home. I did not realize this and I used to think his acquaintance with my deeds and words savored almost of wizardry. He was accustomed to urge upon me the necessity of speaking for Jesus and season and out of season and he so worked upon my feelings and I would start forth like St. Teresa while for the moors and martyrdom. But any actual impact with persons marvelously cooled my zeal and I should hardly ever have spoken at all if it had not been for that unfortunate phrase out of season. It really seemed that one must talk of nothing else since if an occasion was not in season it was out of season. There was no alternative, no close time for souls. My father was very generous. He used to magnify any little effort that I made with stammering tongue to sanctify a visit and people I now see were accustomed to give me a friendly lead in this direction so that they might please him by reporting that I had testified in the Lord's service. The whole thing however was artificial and was part of my father's restless inability to let well alone. It was not in harshness or in ill nature that he worried me so much. On the contrary, it was all part of his too anxious love. He was in a hurry to see me become a shining light, everything that he had himself desired to be yet with none of his shortcomings. It was about this time that he howled my whole soul into painful agitation by a phrase that he let fall without, I believe, attaching any particular importance to it at the time. He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishing my faith and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascend the pulpit to preach my first sermon. Oh, if I may be there out of sight and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then I shall say, Poor work is done. Oh, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I cannot express that this may, which this aspiration gave me, the horror with which I anticipated such a noot dimitus. I felt like a small and solitary bird, caught and hung out hopelessly and endlessly in a great glittering cage. The clearness of the personal image affected me as all the texts and prayers and predictions had failed to do. I saw myself imprisoned forever in the religious system which had caught me and would whirl my helpless spirit as in the concentric wheels of my nightly vision. I did not struggle against it because I believed that it was inevitable and that there was no other way of making peace with the terrible and ever-watchful God who is a jealous God. But I looked forward to my fate without zeal and without exhilaration and the fear of the Lord altogether who has swallowed up and canceled any notion of the love of Him. I should do myself an injustice, however, if I described my attitude to faith at this time as wanting in candor. I did very earnestly desire to follow where my father led. That passion for imitation, which I've already discussed, was strongly developed at this time and it induced me to repeat the language of pious books in godly ejaculations that greatly edified my grown-up companions and were, so far as I can judge, perfectly sincere. I wished extremely to be good and holy and I had no doubt in my mind the absolute infallibility of my father as a guide in heavenly things. But I am perfectly sure that there never was a moment in which my heart truly responded with native ardor to the words which flowed so readily in such a stream of unction from my anointed lips. I cannot recall anything but an intellectual surrender. There was never joy in the act of resignation, never the mystic's rapture at feeling his phantom self, his threadbare soul, suffused, thrilled through, robed again in glory by a fire which burns up everything personal and individual about Him. Through thick and thin a hard nut of individuality deep down in my childish nature. To the pressure from without I resigned everything else, my thoughts, my words, my anticipations, my assurances. But there was something which I never resigned, my innate and persistent self. Meek as I seemed and gently respondent, I was always conscious of that innermost quality which I had learned in my eyes in my earlier days in Islington, that existence of two in the depths who could speak to one another in inviolable secrecy. This a natural man may discourse of and that very knowingly and give a kind of natural credit to it as to a history that may be true but firmly to believe that there is divine truth in all these things and to have a persuasion of it given of the very thing we see with our eyes. Such an ascent as this is the peculiar work of the spirit of God and is certainly saving faith. This passage is not to be found in the writings of any extravagant, polemic brother but in one of the most solid classics of the church in Archbishop Layton's commentary on the first epistle of Peter. I quote it because it defines more exactly than words of my own could hope to do the difference which already existed and in secrecy began forthwith to be more and more acutely accentuated between my father and myself. He did indeed possess this saving faith which could move mountains of evidence that suffer no diminution under the action of failure or disappointment. I on the other hand, as I began to feel dimly then and see luminously now had only acquired the habit of giving what the Archbishop means by a kind of natural credit to the doctrine so persistently impressed upon my conscience. From its very nature this could not be but molten in the do's and exhaled in the sunshine of life and thought and experience. My father, by an indulgent act for the caprice of which I cannot wholly account presently led in a flood of imaginative light which was certainly hostile to my heavenly calling. My instinctive interest in geography had as already been mentioned. This was the one branch of knowledge in which I needed no instruction. Geographical information seemed to soak into the cells of my brain without an effort. At the age of eleven I knew a great deal more of maps and of the mutual relation of localities all over the globe than most rona people do. It was almost a mechanical acquirement. I was now greatly taken with the geography of the West Indies of every part of which I had made manuscript maps. There was something powerfully attractive to my fancy in the great chain of the Antilles lying on the sea like an open bracelet with its big jewels and little jewels strung on an invisible thread. I like to shut my eyes and see it all in a mental panorama stretched from the cape San Antonio to the serpent's mouth. Several of these lovely islands these emeralds and amethysts set on the Caribbean Sea my father had known well at his youth and I was important in questioning him about them. One day as I multiplied inquiries he rose in his impetuous way and climbing to the top of a bookcase brought down a thick volume and presented it to me. You'll find all about the Antilles there, he said, and left me with Tom Kringle's log in my possession. The embargo laid upon every species of fiction by my mother's powerful scruple had never been raised although she had been dead four years. As I have said in an earlier chapter this was a point on which I believed that my father had never entirely agreed with her. He had, however, yielded to her prejudice and no work of romance, no fictitious story had ever come in my way. It is remarkable that among our books which amounted to many hundreds I had never discovered a single work of fiction until my father himself revealed the existence of Michael Scott's wild masterpiece. So little did I understand what was allowable in the way of literary invention that I began the story without a doubt that it was true and I think it was my father himself who in answer to an inquiry explained to me that it was all made up. He advised me to read the descriptions of the sea and of the mountains of Jamaica and skip the pages which gave imaginary adventures and conversations. But I did not take his counsel. These latter were the flower of the book to me. I had never read, never dreamed of anything like them and they filled my whole horizon with glory and with joy. I suppose that when my father was a younger man and less pietistic, he had read Tom Kringle's log with pleasure because it recalls familiar scenes to him. Much was explained by the fact that the frontispiece of this edition was a delicate line engraving of blue fields. The great lonely house in a garden of Jamaican allspice where for 18 months he had worked as a naturalist. He could not look at this print without recalling exquisite memories and heirs that blew from a terrestrial paradise. But Michael Scott's noisy, amorous novel of adventure was an extraordinary book to put in the hands of a child that had never been allowed to glance at the mildest and most febriphical storybook. It was like getting a glass of brandy neat to someone who had never been weaned from a milk diet. I have not read Tom Kringle's log from that day to this and I think I should be unwilling now to break the charm of memory which may be largely illusion. But I remember a great deal of the plot and not a little of the language and while I am sure it is enchantingly spirited I am quite assured that the persons it describes were far from being unspotted by the world. The scenes at night in the streets of Spanish town surpassed not only my experience but thank goodness my imagination. The nautical personages used in their conversation what is called a class of language. In there ran, if I am not mistaken, a glow and gust of life through the romance from beginning to end which was nothing if it was not resolutely pagan. There were certain scenes and images in Tom Kringle's log which made not merely a lasting impression upon my mind but tinged my outlook upon life. The long adventures, fightings, and escapes sudden storms without and newtonies within drawn forth as they were surely with great skill upon the fiery blue of the boundless tropical ocean produced on my inner mind a sort of glimmering hope very vaguely felt at first slowly developing long stationary and fate but always tending towards a belief that I should escape at last from the narrowness of the life we led at home from this bondage to the law and the prophets. I must not define too clearly nor endeavor too formally to insist on the blind movements of a childish mind but of this I am quite sure that the reading and rereading of Tom Kringle's log did more than anything else in this critical 11th year of my life to give fortitude to my individuality which was in great danger, as I now see of succumbing to the pressure my father brought to bear upon it from all sides. My soul was shut up like Fatima in a tower to which no external influences could come and it might really have been starved to death or have lost the power of recovery and rebound if my captor, by some freak not yet perfectly accounted for had not gratuitously opened a little window in it and added a powerful telescope. The daring chapters of Michael Scott's Picker-esque romance of the tropics were that telescope and that window. In the spring of this year I began to walk about the village and even proceed for considerable distances into the country by myself. And after reading Tom Kringle's log those expeditions were accompanied by a constant hope of meeting with some adventures. I did not court events, however, except in fancy or I was very shy of real people and would break off some gallant dream of prowess on the high seas to boat into a field and hide behind a hedge while a couple of laboring men went by. Sometimes, however, the wave of a great purpose would bear me on, as when once but certainly at an earlier date than I have now reached hearing the dangers of a persistent drought much dwelt upon. Now I carried my small red watering pot full of water up to the top of the village and then all the way down Pettitur Lane and discharged its contents in a cornfield hoping by this act to improve the prospects of the harvest. A more eventful excursion must be described because of the moral impression that left indelibly upon me. I have described the sequestered and beautiful hamlet of Barton to which I was so often taken visiting by Mary Grace Bermington. At Barton there lived a couple who were objects of peculiar interest to me because of the rather odd fact that having come out of pure curiosity to see me baptized they had been then and there deeply convinced of their spiritual danger. These were John Brooks and Irish Quarerman and his wife Anne Brooks. These people had not merely been hitherto unconverted but they had openly treated the brethren with anger and contempt. They came, indeed, to my baptism to mock but they went away, impressed. Next morning, when Mrs. Brooks was at the wash tub, as she told us, hell opened at her feet and the devil came out holding a long scroll on which the list of her sins was written. She was so much excited that the motion brought about a miscarriage and she was seriously ill. Meanwhile, her husband who had been equally moved at the baptism was also converted and as soon as she was well enough they were baptized together and then broke bread with us. The case of the Brookses was much talked about and was attributed in a distant sense to me. That is to say, if I had not been an object of public curiosity the Brookses might have remained in the bond of iniquity. I, therefore, took a very particular interest in them and as I presently heard that they were extremely poor I was filled with a fervent longing to minister to their necessities. Somebody had lately given me a present of money and I begged little sums here and there until I reached the very considerable figure of seven shillings and sixpence. With these coins, safe in a little linen bag, I started one Sunday afternoon without saying anything to anyone and I arrived at the Brookses Cottage in Barton. John Brooks was a heavy dirty man with a pockmarked face and two left legs. His broad and red face carried small side whiskers in the manner of that day that was otherwise shaved. When I reached the cottage, husband and wife were at home doing nothing at all in the approved Sunday style, I was received by them with some surprise but I quickly explained my mission and produced my linen bag. To my disgust, all John Brooks said was I know the Lord would provide and after emptying my little bag into the palm of an enormous hand he swept the contents into his trousers pocket and slapped his leg. He said not one single word of thanks or appreciation but I was absolutely cut to the heart. I think that in the course of a long life I have never experienced a bitterer disappointment. A woman who was quicker and more sensitive doubtless saw my embarrassment but the form of comfort which she chose was even more wounding to my pride. Never mind little master she said you shall come and see me feed the pigs but there is a limit to endurance and with a sense of having been cruelly torn by the tooth of ingratitude I fled from the threshold of the books never to return. At tea that afternoon I was very much downcast and under cross examination from Miss Marks all my little story came out. My father who had been floating away in a meditation as he very often did caught a word that interested him and descended to consciousness. I had to tell my tale over again this time very sadly and with a fear that I should be reprimanded but on the contrary both my father and Miss Marks were attentive and most sympathetic and I was much comforted. We must remember they are the Lord's children said my father even the Lord can't make a silk purse of a sow's ear said Miss Marks who was considerably ruffled alas alas replied my father waving his hand with a deprecating gesture the dear child said Miss Marks bristling with indignation and patting my hand across the tea table the Lord will reward your zealous loving care of his poor even if they have neither the grace nor the knowledge to thank you said my father and rested his brown eyes beltingly upon me Brutes said Miss Marks thinking of John and Ann Brooks oh no no replied my father but he was of wood and drawers of water we must bear with the limited intelligence all this was in a maliant to my wounds and I became consoled but the springs of benevolence were dried up within me and to this day I have never entirely recovered from the shock of John Brooks's course leer and his I know the Lord would provide the infant plant of philanthropy was burned in my bosom as if by quick line in the course of the summer a young schoolmaster called on my father to announce to him that he had just opened a day school for the sons of gentlemen in our vicinity and he begged for the favor of a visit my father returned his call he lived in one of the small white villas buried in laurels which gave a discrete animation to our laborhood Mr. M was frank and modest deferential to my father's opinions and yet capable of defending his own his school had he produced an excellent impression and in August I began to be one of his pupils the school was very informal it was held in the two principal dwelling rooms on the ground floor of the villa and I do not remember that Mr. M had any help from an usher there were perhaps twenty boys in the school at most and often fewer I made the excursion between home and school four times a day if I walked fast the transit might take five minutes and as there were several objects of interest in the way it might be spread over an hour and find whether the going to and from school was very delightful and small as the scope of it was it could be varied almost indefinitely I would sometimes meet with a school fellow proceeding in the same direction and my father, observing us over the wall one morning was amused to notice that I always progressed by dancing along the curb stone's sideways my face turned inwards and my arms beating against my legs conversing loudly all the time this was a case of pure heredity or so he used to go to his school forty years before along the streets of pool one day when fortunately I was alone I was accosted by an old gentleman dressed as a dissenting minister he was pleased with my replies and he presently made it a habit to be taking his constitutional when I was likely to be on the high road we became great friends and he took me at last to his house a very modest place where to my great amazement there hung in the dining room two large portraits one of a man, the other of a woman an extravagant fancy dress my old friend told me that the former was a picture of himself as he had appeared long ago in my unconverted days on the stage I was so ignorant as not to have the slightest conception of what was meant by the stage and he explained to me that he had been an actor and a poet before the Lord had opened his eyes to better things I knew nothing about actors but poets were already the objects of my veneration my friend was the first poet I had ever seen he was no less a person than James Sheridan Knowles the famous author of Virginia's and The Hunchback who had become a Baptist minister in his old age when at home I mentioned this acquaintance it awakened no interest I believed that my father had never heard or never noticed the name of one who had been by far the most eminent English playwright of that age it was from Sheridan Knowles' lips that I first heard fall the name of Shakespeare he was surprised I fancy to find me so curiously advanced in some branches of knowledge and so utterly ignorant of others he could hardly credit that the names Hamlet and Falstaff and Prospero met nothing to a little boy who knew so much theology and geography as I did Mr. Knowles suggested that I should ask my schoolmaster to read some of the plays of Shakespeare with the boys and he proposed the Merchant of Venice as particularly well suited for this purpose I repeated what my aged friend, Mr. Sheridan Knowles must have been nearly 80 at that time, had said and Mr. Em accepted the idea with promptitude all my memories of this my earliest schoolmaster present him to me as intelligent, amiable, and quick although I think not very soundly prepared for his profession accordingly it was announced that the reading of Shakespeare would be one of our lessons and on the following afternoon we began the Merchant of Venice it was one large volume and it was handed about the class I was permitted to read the part of the sonnium and I set forth with ecstatic pipe how in Belmont is a lady richly left and she is fairer and fairer than that word Mr. Em must have had some fondness for the stage himself his pleasure in the Shakespeare scenes was obvious and nothing else that he taught me made so much impression on me as what he said about a proper emphasis in reading aloud I was in the seventh heaven of delight but alas we had only reached the second act of the play when the readings mysteriously stopped I never knew the cause but I suspect that it was at my father's desire he prided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare and I'm never having entered a theater but once I think I must have spoken at home about the readings and that he must have given the schoolmaster a hint to return to the ordinary school curriculum the fact that I was a believer as it was our custom to call one who had been admitted to the Arcata of our religion and that therefore in all commerce with unbelievers it was my duty to be testifying for my lord in season and out of season this prevented me from forming any intimate friendships at my first school I shrieked from the toil-summon embarrassing act of button-holding a school fellow as he rushed out of class and the pressing upon him the probably unintelligible question have you found Jesus? it was simpler to avoid him to slip like a lizard through the laurels and emerge into solitude the boys had a way of plunging out into the road in front of the school villa when afternoon school was over it was a pleasant rural road lined with high hedges and shadowed by elm trees here especially towards the summer twilight I used to linger and play vague games swooping and whirling in the declining sunshine and I was glad to join these bat-like sports but my company though not avoided was not greatly sought for I think that something of my curious history was known and that I was not unkindly but instinctively avoided as an animal of a different species not allied to the herd the conventionality of little boys is constant the color of their traditions is uniform at the same time although I made no friends I found no enemies in class except in my extraordinary aptitude for geography which was looked upon as incomprehensible and almost uncanny I was rather behind than in front of the others I therefore awakened no jealousies and intent on my own dreams I think my little shadowy presence escaped the notice of most of my school fellows by the side of the road I have mentioned between the school and my home there was a large horse pond the hedge folded around three sides of it while ancient Pollard Elms bent over it and checkered with their foliage in it the reflection of the sky the roadside edge of this pond was my favorite station it consisted of a hard clay which could be molded into fairly tenacious forms here I created a maritime empire islands, a seaboard with harbors, lighthouses, fortifications my geographical amutativeness had its full swing sometimes while I was creating a cart would be driven roughly into the pond and a horse would drink deep of my ocean his hooves trampling my archipelagos and shattering my ports with what was worse than a typhoon but I immediately set to work as soon as the cart was gone and the mud had settled to tidy up my coastline again and to scoop out anew my harbors my pleasure in this sport was endless and what I was able to see in my mind's eye was not the edge of a morass of mud but a splendid line of coast and gulfs of the type of Torre Bay I do not recollect a sharper double humiliation when old Sam Lambeau, the blacksmith who was one of the saints, being asked by my father whether he had met me, replied, yes, I see him up long making mud pies in the road what a position for one who had been received into communion as an adult what a blot on the scutching of a would-be Columbus mud pies indeed yet I had an appreciator one afternoon as I was busy on my geographical operations a good-looking middle-aged lady with a soft pink cheek and a sparkly hazel eye paused and asked me if my name was not what it was I had seen her before a stranger to our parts with a voice without a trace in it of the Devonshire Droll I knew dimly that she came sometimes to the meeting that she was lodging at Upton with some friends of ours who accepted paying guests in an old house that was simply a basket of roses she was Miss Brightwin and I now conversed with her for the first time her interest in my harbors and islands was marked she did not smile she asked questions about my peninsulas which were intelligent and pertinent I was even persuaded alas to leave my creations and to walk with her towards the village I was pleased with her voice her refinements, her dress which was more delicate and her manners which were more easy than what I was accustomed to we had some very pleasant conversation and when we parted I had the satisfaction of feeling that our intercourse had been both agreeable to me and instructive to her I told her that I should be glad to tell her more on a future occasion she thanked me very gravely and then she laughed a little I confess I did not see that there was anything to laugh at we parted on warm terms of mutual esteem but I little thought that this sympathetic quakerish lady was to become my mother End of chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Father and Son This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Eugene Smith Father and Son by Edmund Goss Chapter 10 I slept in a little bed in the corner of the room and my father in the Ancestral Four-Poster nearer to the door very early one bright September morning at the close of my eleventh year my father called me over to him I climbed up and was snugly wrapped in the cover lid and then we held a momentous conversation it began abruptly by his asking me whether I should like to have a new mama I was never a sentimentalist and I therefore answered cannily that that would depend on who she was he parried this and announced that anyway a new mama was coming I was sure to like her still in a noncommittal mood I asked will she go with me to the back of the Lime Kiln? this question caused my father a great bewilderment I had to explain that the ambition of my life was to go up behind the Lime Kiln on the top of the hill that hung over Barton a spot which was forbidden ground he locally held one of extreme danger oh I dare say she will my father then said but you must guess who she is I guessed one or two of the less comely of the female saints and this embarrassing my father since the second I mentioned was a married woman who kept a sweet shop in the village he cut my inquiry short by saying it is Miss Brightwin so far so good and I was well pleased but unfortunately I remembered that it was my duty to testify in season and out of season I therefore asked with much earnestness but papa is she one of the Lord's children? he replied with gravity that she was has she taken up her cross in baptism? I went on for this was my own strong point as a believer my father looked a little shame-faced and replied well she has not as yet seen the necessity of that but we must pray that the Lord may make her way clear before her you see she has been brought up hitherto in the so-called church of England our positions were now curiously changed it seemed as if it were I who was the jealous monitor and my father the deprecating penitent I sat up in the cover lid and I shook a finger at him papa I said don't tell me that she's a pedobaptist I had lately acquired that valuable word and I seized this remarkable opportunity of using it it affected my father painfully but he repeated his assurance that if we united our prayers and set the scripture plan plainly before Miss Brightwin there could be no doubt that she would see her way to accepting the doctrine of adult baptism and he said we must judge not lest we ourselves be judged I had just enough tact to let that pass but I was quite aware that our whole system was one of judging and that we had no intention whatever of being judged ourselves yet even at the age of eleven one sees that on certain occasions to press home the truth is not convenient just before Christmas on a piercing night of frost my father brought to us his bride the smartening up of the house the new furniture the removal of my own possessions to a private bedroom the wedding gifts of the saints all these things paled in interest before the fact that Miss Marks had made a scene in the course of the afternoon I was dancing about the drawing room oh I'm so glad my new mama is coming when Miss Marks called out in an unnatural voice oh you cruel child I stopped in amazement and stared at her whereupon she threw prudence to the winds and moaned I once thought I should be your dear mama I was simply stupefied and I expressed my horror in terms that were clear and strong thereupon Miss Marks had a wild fit of hysterics while I looked on wholly unsympathetic and still deeply affronted she was right I was cruel alas but then what a silly woman she had been the consequence was that she withdrew in a moist and quivering condition to her boudoir where she had locked herself in when I, all smiles and caresses was welcoming the bride room on the doorstep as politely as if I'd been a valued old family retainer my stepmother immediately became a great ally of mine she was never a tower of strength to me but at least she was always a lodge in my garden of cucumbers she was a very well-meaning pious lady but she was not a fanatic and her mind did not naturally revel in spiritual aspirations almost her only social fault was that she was sometimes a little fretful this was the way in which her bruised individuality asserted itself but she was affectionate, serene and above all refined her refinement was extraordinarily pleasant to my nerves on which much else in our surroundings jarred how life may have jarred poor insulated lady on her during her first experience of our life at the room I know not but I think she was a philosopher she had with surprising rashness and in opposition to the wishes of every member of her own family taken her cake and now she realized that she must eat it to the last crumb over her wishes and prejudices my father exercised a constant cheerful and quiet pressure he was never unkind or abrupt but he went on adding avoir du poit until her will gave way under the sheer weight even to public immersion which as was natural and a shy and sensitive lady of advancing years she regarded with a horror which was long insurmountable even to baptism she yielded and my father had the joy to announce to the saints one Sunday morning at the breaking of bread my beloved wife has been able at length to see the Lord's will in the matter of baptism and will testify to the faith which is in her on Thursday evening next no wonder my stepmother was sometimes fretful on the physical side I owe her an endless debt of gratitude her relations who objected strongly to her marriage had told her among other pleasant prophecies that the first thing you will have to do will be to bury that poor child under the old world's sway of miss marks I had slept me as a load of blankets had never gone out save waited with great coat and comforter and had been protected from fresh air as if from a pestilence with real courage my stepmother reversed all this my bedroom window stood wide open all night long wraps were done away with or exchange for flannel garments next to skin and I was urged to be out and about as much as possible all the quidnunks among the saints shook their heads Mary Grace Bermington a little embittered by the downfall of her marks made a solemn remonstrance to my father who, however allowed my stepmother to carry out her excellent plan my health responded rapidly to this change of regime but increase of health did not bring increase of spirituality my father fully occupied with molding the will and the flaming the piety of my stepmother left me now to a degree not precedented in undisturbed possession of my own devices I did not lose my faith but many other things took a prominent place in my mind in will I suppose be admitted that there is no greater proof of complete religious sincerity than fervor in private prayer if an individual along by the side of his bed prolongs his intercessions lingers wrestling with his divine companion and will not leave off until he has what he believes to be evidence of a reply to his entreaties then no matter what the character of his public protestations or what the frailty of his actions it is absolutely certain that he believes in what he professes my father prayed in private in what I may almost call a spirit of violence he entreated for spiritual guidance with nothing less than importunity it might be said that he stormed the citadels of God's grace refusing to be baffled urging his intercessions without mercy upon a deity who sometimes struck me as inattentive to his prayers or weary by them my father's acts of supplication as I used to witness them at night when I was supposed to be asleep were accompanied by stretchings out of the hands by crackings of the joints of the fingers by deep breathing by murmurous sounds which seemed just breaking out of silence like Virgil's bees out of the hive magnus clamoribus my father fortified his religious life by prayer as an athlete does his physical life by lung gymnastics and vigorous rubbings it was a trouble to my conscience that I could not emulate this fervor the poverty of my prayers had now long been a source of distress to me but I could not discover how to enrich them my father used to warn us very solemnly against lip service which he meant singing hymns of experience and joining administrations in which our hearts took no vital or personal part this was an outward act a tendency of which I could well appreciate but there was a lip service even more deadly than that against which it never occurred to him to warn me it assailed me when I had come alone by my bedside and had blown out the candle in my knees in my nightgown then it was that my deadness made itself felt in the mechanical address I put up the emptiness of my language the absence of all real unction I never could contrive to ask God for spiritual gifts in the same voice and spirit in which I could ask a human being for objects which I knew he could give me what I honestly desired to possess that sense of the reality of intercession was forever denied me and it was, I now see the stigma of my want of faith but at the time of course I suspected nothing of the kind and I tried to keep up my zeal by a desperate mental flogging as if my soul had been a peg top in nothing did I gain from the advent of my stepmother more than in the encouragement she gave to my friendships with a group of boys my own age of whom I had now lately formed the acquaintance these friendships she not merely tolerated but fostered it was even due to her kind arrangements that they took a certain set form that our excursions started from this house on regular days I hardly know by what stages I ceased to be a lonely little creature of mock monographs and mud pies and became a member of a sort of club of 8 or 10 active boys long summer holidays of 1861 were set in enchanting brightness looking back I cannot see a cloud on the terrestrial horizon I see nothing but a blaze sunshine the scents of slippery grass to moons of snow white shingle cold to the bare flesh red promontories running out into a sea that was like sapphire and our happy clan climbing, bathing boating, lounging, chattering all the hot day through once more I have to record the fact which I think is not without interest that precisely as my life ceases to be solitary it ceases to be distinct I have no difficulty in recalling with the minuteness of a photograph scenes in which my father and I were the sole actors within the four walls of a room but of the glorious life among the wild boys on the margin of the sea I have nothing but vague and broken impressions delicious and elusive it was a remarkable truth of my father's temporary lapse into indulgence that he made no effort to thwart my intimacy with these my new companions he was in an unusually humane mood himself his marriage was one proof of it another was the composition at this time of the most picturesque easy and graceful of all his writings the romance of natural history even now a sort of classic everything combined to make him believe that the blessing of the Lord was upon him and to clothe the darkness of the world with at least a mist of rose color I do not recollect that ever at this time he bethought him when I started in the morning for a long day with my friends on the edge of the sea to remind me that I must speak to them in season and out of season of the blood of Jesus and I, young coward that I was, let sleeping dogmas lie my companions were not all of them the sons of saints in our communion their parents belong to that professional class which we were only now beginning to attract to our services they were brought up in religious but not in fanatical families and I was the only converted one among them Mrs. Paget of whom I shall have presently to speak characteristically said that it grieved her to see one lamb among so many kids but kid is a word of varied significance and the symbol did not seem to us effectively applied as a matter of fact we made what I still feel was an excellent tacit compromise my young companions never jeered at me for being in communion with the saints I, on my part, never urged the atonement upon them I began in fact more and more to keep my own religion for use on Sundays it will I hope have been observed that among the very curious grown up people into whose company I was thrown although many were frail and some were foolish none so far as I can discern were hypocritical I'm not one of those who believe that hypocrisy is a vice that grows on every bush of course in religious more than in any other matters there is a perpetual contradiction between our thoughts and our deeds which is inevitable to our social order and is bound to lead to cette pomperie mutuelle of which Pascal speaks but I have often wondered while admiring the splendid portrait of Tartuffe whether such a monster ever often has walked the stage of life whether Maudière observed or only invented him to adopt a scheme of religious pretension with no belief whatever and it's being true merely for sensuous advantage openly acknowledging to one's inner self the brazen system of deceit such a course may endow us has been trodden yet surely much less frequently than love to suggest but at the juncture which I have now reached in my narrative I had the advantage of knowing a person who was branded before the whole world and punished by the law of his country as a felonious hypocrite my father himself could only sigh and admit the charge and yet I doubt about halfway between our village and the town there lay a comfortable villa inhabited by a retired solicitor or perhaps attorney whom I shall name Mr. Dormant we often call that his halfway house and although he was a member of the town meeting he not infrequently came to us for the breaking of bread Mr. Dormant was a solid pink man of a cozy habit he had beautiful white hair a very soft voice and a welcoming weedling manner extremely fluent and zealous in using the pious phraseology of the sack my father had never been very much attracted to him but the man professed and I think felt an overwhelming admiration from my father Mr. Dormant was not very well off and in the previous year he had persuaded an aged gentleman of wealth to come and board with him when in the course of the winter this gentleman died his surprise was felt at the report that he had left almost his entire fortune which was not inconsiderable to Mr. Dormant much surprise for the old gentleman had a son to whom he had always been warmly attached who was far away I think in South America practicing a perfectly respectable profession of which his father entirely approved my own father always preserved a delicacy and a sense of honor about money which could not have been more sensitive if he had been an ungodly man and I am very much pleased to remember that when the legacy was first spoken of he regretted that Mr. Dormant should have allowed the old gentleman to make his will if he knew the intention it would have shown a more proper sense of his responsibility if he had dissuaded the testator from so unbecoming a disposition that was long before an illegal question arose and now Mr. Dormant came into his fortune and began to make handsome gifts to missionary societies and to his own meeting in the town if I do not mistake he gave, unsolicited a sum to our building fund which my father afterwards returned but in process of time we heard that the son had come back from the antipodes and was making investigations before we knew where we were the news burst upon us like a bombshell that Mr. Dormant had been arrested on a criminal charge and was now in jail at Exeter sympathy was at first much extended amongst us to the prisoner but it was lessened when we understood that the old gentleman had been converted while under Dormant's roof and had given the fact that his son was a believer as a reason for disinheriting him all doubt was set aside when it was divulged under pressure by the nurse who attended on the old gentleman herself one of the saints that Dormant had traced the signature to the will by drawing the fingers of the testator over the document when he was already and finally comatose my father setting aside by a strong effort of will the repugnance which he felt visited the prisoner in jail before this final evidence had been extracted when he returned he said that Dormant appeared to be enjoying a perfect confidence of heart and had expressed a sense of his joy and peace in the Lord my father regretted that he had not been able to persuade him to admit any error even of judgment when the facts were proved and not by him denied was still more extraordinary he could be induced to exhibit no species of remorse and to the obvious anger of the judge himself stated that he had only done his duty as a Christian in preventing this wealth from coming into the hands of an ungodly man who would have spent it in the service of the flesh and of the devil sternly reprimanded by the judge he made the final statement that at that very moment he was conscious of his Lord's presence in the dark at his side whispering to him, well done now good and faithful servant in this frame of conscience and with a glowing countenance he was hurried away to penal servitude this was a very painful incident and it is easy to see how compromising, how cruel it was in its effect upon our communion what occasion it gave to our enemies to blaspheme no one in either meeting could or would raise a voice to defend Mr. Dormant we had to bow our heads when we met our enemies in the gate the blow fell more heavily on the meeting of which he had been a prominent and communicating member but it fell on us too and my father felt it severely for many years he would never mention the man's name and he refused all discussion of the incident yet I was never sure and I'm not sure now that the wretched being was a hypocrite there are as many vulgar fanatics as there are distinguished ones and I'm not convinced that Dormant coarse and narrow as he was may not have sincerely believed that it was better for the money to be used in religious propaganda than the pleasures of the world of which he doubtless formed a very vague idea on this affair I meditated much and it awakened in my mind for the first time a doubt whether our exclusive system of ethics was an entirely salutary one if it could lead the conscience of a believer to tolerate such acts as these acts which my father himself had denounced as dishonorable and disgraceful my stepmother brought with her a little library of such books as we had not previously seen but which were known to all the world except us prominent among these was a set of poems by Walter Scott and in his unwanted geniality and provisional spirit of compromise my father must do no less than read these works aloud to my stepmother in the quiet spring evenings this was a sort of aftermath of courtship a tribute of song to his bride very sentimental and pretty she would sit sedately at her work box while he facing her poured forth the verses at her like a blackbird I was not considered in this arrangement which was wholly matrimonial but I was present and the exercise made more impression upon me than it did upon either of the principal agents my father read the verse admirably with a full some people but not I might say with a two full perception of the meter as well as of the rhythm rolling out the rhymes and glorying in the proper names he began and it was a happy choice with the lady of the lake it gave me singular pleasure to hear his large voice do justice to Don Cranon and come Bus Kenneth and wake the echoes of Rotary Fick Iroi I almost gassed with excitement while a shutter floated down my backbone when we came to a sharp and shrieking echo gave queer risk in thy goblin cave and the gray pass where birches wave on Biala Nambo a passage which seemed to me to achieve the ideal of sublime romance my thoughts were occupied all day long with the adventures of Fitz James and the denizens of Ellen's Isle it became an obsession and when I was asked whether I remembered the name of the cottage where the minister of the Bible Christians lodged I answered dreamily yes, the Allah Nambo seeing me so much fascinated thrown indeed into a temporary frenzy by the epic poetry of Sir Walter Scott my stepmother asked my father whether I might not start reading the Waverly novels but he refused to permit this on the ground that those tales gave faults and disturbing pictures of life and would lead away my attention from heavenly things I do not fully apprehend what distinction he drew between the poems which he permitted and the novels which he refused but I suppose he regarded to work in verse as more artificial and therefore less likely to make a realistic impression than one in prose there is something quite in the conscientious scruple which allows the Lord of the Isles and excludes Rob Roy but Stranger still an amounting almost to a whim was his sudden decision that although I might not touch the novels of Scott I was free to read those of Dickens I recollect that my stepmother showed some surprise at this and that my father explained to her that Dickens exposes the passion of love in a ridiculous light she did not seem to follow this recommendation which indeed tends to the ultra subtle but she procured for me a copy of Pickwick by which I was instantly and gloriously enslaved my shouts of laughing at the richer passages were almost scandalous and led to my being reprude for disturbing my father while engaged in an upper room in the study of God's word I must have expended months on the perusal of Pickwick for I used to rush through a chapter and then read it over again very slowly word for word I realized to realize the figures and the action I suppose no child will ever again enjoy that rapture of unresisting humorous appreciation of Pickwick I felt myself to be in the company of a gentleman so extremely funny that I began to laugh before he began to speak no sooner did he remark the sky was dark and gloomy the air was damp and raw then I was in a sense of hilarity my retirement in our sequestered corner of life made me perhaps even in this matter somewhat old fashioned and possibly I was the latest of the generation who accepted Mr. Pickwick with an unquestioning and hysterical abandonment certainly a few young people now seemed sensitive as I was and as thousands before me had been to the quality of his fascination living in a household where a certain delicate art of painting was diligently cultivated I had yet never seen a real picture and was scarcely familiar with the design of one in engraving my stepmother however brought a flavor of the fine arts with her a kind of aesthetic odor like that of lavender clung to her as she moved she had known authentic artists in her youth she had watched old chrome painting and had taken a course of drawing lessons from no less a person than Kotlin she painted small watercolor landscapes herself with a delicate economy of means and a graceful Norwich convention her sketchbooks were filled with abbeys gently washed in river banks in sepia by which the elect might be dimly reminded of Lieber's studio and woodland scenes over which the ghost of magic had faintly breathed it was not exciting art but it was so far as it went in its ladylike reserve the real thing our sea anemones are tropic birds are bits of spongy rock filled and sprayed with coralines had been very conscientious and skillful but essentially so far as art was concerned the wrong thing thus I began to acquire without understanding the value of it some conception of the elegant phases of early English watercolor painting and there was one singular piece of a marble well brimming with water and a grayish blue sky over it and dark green poplars shaped like wet brooms menacing the middle distance which Kotlin himself had painted and this seemed beautiful and curious to me in its dim flat frame it was hoisted to a place on our drawing room wall but still I had never seen a subject picture although my stepmother used to talk of the joys of the royal academy and it was therefore with a considerable sense of excitement that I went with my father to examine Mr. Holman Hunt's finding of Christ in the temple which at this time was announced to be on public show at our neighboring town we made our shillings and ascended with others to an upper room bare of every disturbing object in which a strong top light raked the large and uncompromising picture we looked at it for some time in silence and then my father pointed out to me various details such as the phylacteries and the miters and the robes which distinguished a high priest some of the other visitors as I recollect astonishment and dislike of what they call the pre-Raphaelite treatment but we were not affected by that indeed if anything the exact, minute, and hard execution of Mr. Hunt was in sympathy with the methods we ourselves were in the habit of using when we painted butterflies and seaweeds placing perfectly pure pigments side by side without any nonsense about chiaroscuro this large, bright, comprehensive picture made a very deep impression upon me not exactly as a work of art but as a brilliant natural specimen I was pleased to have seen it as I was pleased to have seen the comet and the whale which was brought to our front door on a truck it was a prominent addition to my experience the slender expansions of my interest which were now buddying hither and thither were not seen to have alarmed my father at all his views were short if I appeared to be contented and obedient if I responded pleasantly when he appealed to me he was not concerned to discover the source of my cheerfulness he put it down to my happy sense of joy in Christ a reflection of the sunshine of grace beaming upon me through no intervening clouds of sin or doubt however as a rule very easy to comprehend their emotions lay upon the surface if they were gay it was because they had no burden on their consciences while if they were depressed the symptom might be depended upon as showing that their consciences were troubling them and if they were indifferent and cold it was certain that they were losing their faith and becoming hostile to godliness it was almost a mechanical matter with these simple souls but although I was so much younger I was more complex and more crafty than the peasant saints my father, not a very subtle psychologist applied to me the same formulas which served him well at the chapel but in my case the results were less uniformly successful the excitement of school life and the enlargement of my circle of interests combined to make Sunday by contrast a very tedious occasion the absence of every species in recreation on the Lord's Day grew to be a burden which might scarcely be born I have said that my freedom during the week had now become considerable if I was at home punctually at mealtons the rest of my leisure was not challenged but this liberty which in the summer holidays came to surpass that of fishes that tippled in the deep was put into more and more painful contrast with the unbroken servitude of Sunday my father objected very strongly to the expression Sabbath Day as it is commonly used by Presbyterians and others he said quite justly that it was an inaccurate modern innovation that Sabbath was Saturday on Thursday of the week not the first a Jewish festival and not a Christian commemoration yet his exaggerated view with regard to the observance of the first day namely that it must be exclusively occupied with public and private exercises of divine worship was based much more upon a Jewish than upon a Christian law in fact I do not remember that my father ever produced a definite argument from the New Testament in support of his excessive passivity on the Lord's Day it followed the early Puritan practice except that he did not extend his observance as I believe the old Puritans did from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday the observance of the Lord's Day has already become universally so lax that I think there may be some value in preserving an accurate record of how our Sundays were spent and 40 years ago we came down to breakfast at the usual time my father prayed briefly before we began the meal after it the bell was rung and before the breakfast was cleared away we had a lengthy service of exposition and prayer with the servants if the weather was fine we then walked about the garden doing nothing for about half an hour we then sat each in a separate room open and some commentary on the text beside us and prepared our minds for the morning service a little before 11 a.m. we sallied forth carrying our Bibles and hymn books and went through the morning service of two hours at the room this was the central event of Sunday we then came back to dinner curiously enough to a hot dinner always with a joint vegetables and puddings so that the cook at least must have been busily at work and after it my father and my stepmother took a nap each in a different room while I slipped out into the garden for a little while but never venturing further afield in the middle of the afternoon my stepmother and I proceeded up the village to Sunday school where I was early promoted to the tuition of a few very little boys we returned in time for tea after which we all marched forth again armed as in the morning with Bibles and hymn books and we went through the evening service at which my father preached the hour was now already past my weekday bedtime but we had another service to attend the believers prayer meeting which commonly occupied 40 minutes more then we used to creep home I often so tired that the weariness was like physical pain and I was permitted without further worship to slip upstairs to bed what made these Sundays the observance of which was absolutely uniform so peculiarly trying was that I was not permitted the indulgence of any secular respite I might not open a scientific book nor make a drawing nor examine a specimen I was not allowed to go into the road to proceed with my parents to the room nor to discuss worldly subjects at meals nor to enter the little chamber where I kept my treasures I was hotly and tightly dressed in black all day long as though ready at any moment to attend a funeral with decorum sometimes towards evening I used to feel the monotony and weariness of my position to be almost unendurable but at this time I was meek and I bowed to what I supposed to be the order of the universe End of chapter 10