Trials of my infancy. Varieties of indigestion. I suffer from a local
erythema. Instance of my father’s unselfishness. Difficulty in
providing a second godfather. Unexpected solution of the problem.
The ceremony of my baptism. A narrow escape. Was it culpable
carelessness? My father transfers his worship to St.
James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye.
WITH the portion of my life that intervened between my birth and my
baptism I do not propose, owing to exigencies of space, to deal in the
fullest detail. But it may be of some comfort to weaker fellow-sufferers
to be assured that, from the outset, the ill-health to which I have been
a life-long martyr played its part in testing my character. Singularly
well formed, of a sanguine complexion, and weighing not less than four
and three-quarter pounds, Providence saw fit almost immediately to purge
me without medicinal aid. Whether this was due, under Higher
Supervision, as my father several times forcibly suggested to her, to
some dietary excess or indiscretion on the part of my mother was never
determined. But the fact remained that for several weeks I suffered from
indigestion in two main directions.
Twice indeed, on the grounds of health, the ceremony of my baptism had
to be postponed; and for hours together, I have been told, I lay upon my
back, with my knees drawn up and my fingers clenched, in an anguished
endeavour to stifle the moans that I was too enfeebled wholly to
suppress. Time after time, too, my mother’s mother, the aunt that had
stood with her at the bottom of the stairs, and various of my mother’s
sisters would recommend alternative forms of nourishment. But although,
at my father’s desire, each of these suggestions was given an immediate
trial, it was not for two months, and until I had been subjected to a
heart-breaking period of starvation, that an affliction abated to which
I have since been liable at any moment of undue excitement.
Chastened within, however, as I had been, I was not to escape
chastisement without. For no sooner had I begun, in some small measure,
to assimilate the food provided for me than I became the victim of an
unfortunate skin complaint known, as I am informed, as erythema. This
was happily local, but it gave rise to a very profound irritation, and
one that proved, as my father has often assured me, to be of a
peculiarly obstinate character. Naturally diffident, owing to the site
of the affection, to mention it even to the family doctor, my parents
exhausted their every resource without procuring the least alleviation.
Though for night after night they made it a matter of prayer, my
sufferings were pitiful, I have been told, to the last extreme; and
almost hourly, from supper-time to breakfast, the darkness was rent with
my cries.
Unable at last, owing to his acute sensibilities, to witness my agony
any longer, my father was obliged, with the deepest reluctance, to
confine himself to a separate bedroom. But it was in this extremity that
his almost Quixotic unselfishness shone if possible with an added
lustre. From the time of his marriage to the day of my birth, and as
soon thereafter as the doctor had permitted her to rise, my father had
been in the habit of enabling my mother to provide him with an early cup
of tea. And this he had done by waking her regularly a few minutes
before six o’clock. In view of the fact, however, that he was now
occupying a different bedroom, and that, owing to my indisposition, she
was awake most of the night, he offered to excuse her should she chance
to be asleep at that hour, from the performance of this wifely duty.
Needless to say, it was not an offer that she could accept. Indeed, in
his heart he had not expected her to do so. And I have even considered
the incident, in later days, as illustrative of a certain weakness in my
father’s character. But I have never been able to regard it without
affection or to forbear mentioning it on appropriate occasions.
That in most respects, however, my father’s temperament was an
exceptionally unflinching one was amply corroborated by the
circumstances attendant upon the choice of my second godfather. This
gave rise, as my father has frequently told me, to the most prolonged
and anxious discussions, and entailed an enormous amount of
correspondence, some of which has been preserved among the family
documents. For with his ruthless determination, inherited by myself, to
discover and expose every kind of wrong-doing, with his life-long habit
of informing those in authority of any dereliction of duty in themselves
and their subordinates, and with the passion for truth that compelled
him on every occasion instantly to correct what he deemed the reverse,
my father had necessarily but little leisure to cultivate the easy art
of friendship. Amongst his acquaintances, indeed, there were but few
that even remotely approximated to his standards; and he had found none
that his conscience had permitted him to select for the purposes of
personal friendship.
It was for this reason that, on the occasion of his marriage, he had
dispensed with the services of a best man. And although the vicar had
eventually agreed to act as one of my male sponsors, the appointment of
a second began to assume the proportions of an almost insoluble problem.
It being manifestly impossible to hope for a suitable candidate among
such persons as occasionally called at the house, and my father’s
character having long ago isolated him from his more immediate masculine
relatives, he resolved at last to appeal to the public sense of the
higher officials of the Church of England.
Nor was the result ungratifying, as various letters still in my
possession go to prove. Though unable, owing to so many similar and
previously acquired obligations, to accede to my father’s suggestion,
all of them replied with the greatest courtesy. Thus the Dean of St.
Paul’s wrote in person wishing me every success in life; the Bishop of
London trusted that my father’s aspirations as to my personal holiness
would be realized; while the Archbishop of Canterbury commanded his
secretary to express his gratification at the suggestion of an honour
that only the exigencies of his position as Primate forbade him to
accept. Needless to say, those in charge of the State, whom my father
next approached, behaved very differently. Neither the Prime Minister
nor the Home Secretary saw fit to reply at all, while the President of
the Board of Trade merely expressed a formal regret. And yet in the end,
as is so often the case, the solution proved quite a simple one. Turn
but a stone, says a poet, and start a wing. And my father did not even
need to turn a stone. Sick at heart, he was returning home one night
when he suddenly caught sight of himself in a cheesemonger’s window. It
was as though Providence, he said, had touched him on the shoulder.
Whereas he had been blind, he said, then he saw. For a moment the shock
was almost too much for him. A member of the constabulary, indeed,
actually asked him to move on. But the solution was there, staring him
in the face. Involuntarily he raised his hat. _He himself was the man._
With my aunt, Mrs. Emily Smith, only too eager to be my godmother,
everything now seemed to be propitious for the happy consummation of my
baptism, and no more earnest or reverent gathering could have been found
that day in any metropolitan church. The vicar being godfather, the
actual ceremony was, at my father’s suggestion, performed by the senior
curate, the junior curate, in deference to my father’s position as
sidesman, being on the vicar’s right hand between him and my mother.
On the senior curate’s left stood my father, flanked on his own left by
the verger, the circle round the font being completed by Mrs. Emily
Smith, my mother’s mother, my mother’s father, her eight sisters and the
aunt that had stood with my mother’s mother at the foot of the stairs. A
soft April rain was refreshing the outside world, and the first part of
the service had been successfully performed, when an incident occurred
that might well have been attended with the most tragic and irreparable
consequences. For there suddenly took place, just as I had been handed
to the senior curate, so acute an exacerbation of the erythema that, in
the ensuing convulsion, he was quite unable to retain me in his grasp.
I say unable, but, as my father pointed out to him immediately after the
close of the service, had I suffered any provable damage he would
certainly have taken legal advice. Falling from his arms, however, I
remained poised for a moment upon the extreme brim of the font, and then
fell forward, colliding with the vicar, who stumbled backwards in his
efforts to save me. From the tottering vicar I then ricochetted, in what
I believe is a military phrase, towards the feet of the junior curate,
who became unexpectedly the instrument of Providence. I do not myself
practise, nor do I greatly approve, any form of merely athletic
exercise. But it was perhaps fortunate that the curate in question
happened to be a skilful player of cricket. For just as my head was
within an inch of the floor and the blood had receded from every
countenance, he shot out his hand and succeeded in catching me in a
position technically known, I believe, as the slips.
“Oh, well held, sir!” cried the senior curate, and then for a moment or
two his emotion overcame him.
The vicar, still pale, recovered his balance.
“Poor little Augustus,” said my mother; “it’s the irritation.”
My father frowned at her.
“Without prejudice,” he said. And then for perhaps half a minute there
was a deathly silence. It was fractured, I have been told, by myself, as
the junior curate handed me back to the senior.
But my father intervened.
“Not again,” he said. “Never again; never in this world.”
The silence was resumed, broken only by myself. My father stood holding
me, trembling with emotion. The vicar took a deep breath.
“Is the service to proceed?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said my father. “But in other hands.”
It was another instance of his dominating character, but also of his
innate sense of justice.
“I am not insensible,” he said to the senior curate, “of the services
that you have already rendered. But in the interests of my son, as you
must surely agree, I cannot again trust him to your care.”
The senior curate bowed, but did not articulate a reply, and my father
then handed me once more to the junior. For a moment the latter
hesitated, but at the vicar’s request accepted the privilege of
concluding my baptism. Later, I have been told, there was a certain
amount of argument, in which my father more than held his own, finally
absolving the vicar from further sponsorial duties and notifying his
decision to transfer his worship elsewhere.
For a man of my father’s position this was a serious step. But it was
one that he did not hesitate to take. And within a year, as I have
always been proud to remember, he had made himself a sidesman at St.
James-the-Lesser-Still, Peckham Rye.
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