Without any figure of speech I feel quite ashamed when I think of you,
Bertie. I send you one or two enormously long letters, burdened, as far
as I can remember them, with all sorts of useless detail. Then, in spite
of your kindly answers and your sympathy, which I have done so little to
deserve, I drop you completely for more than six months. By this J pen
I swear that it shall not happen again; and this letter may serve to
bridge the gap and to bring you up to date in my poor affairs, in which,
of all outer mankind, you alone take an interest.
To commence with what is of most moment, you may rest assured that what
you said in your last letter about religion has had my most earnest
attention. I am sorry that I have not got it by me to refer to (I
lent it to Charlie), but I think I have the contents in my head. It is
notorious, as you say, that an unbeliever may be as bigoted as any of
the orthodox, and that a man may be very dogmatic in his opposition to
dogma. Such men are the real enemies of free thought. If anything could
persuade me to turn traitor to my reason, it would, for example, be
the blasphemous and foolish pictures displayed in some of the agnostic
journals.
But every movement has its crowd of camp followers, who straggle and
scatter. We are like a comet, bright at the head but tailing away into
mere gas behind. However, every man may speak for himself, and I do
not feel that your charge comes home to me. I am only bigoted against
bigotry, and that I hold to be as legitimate as violence to the violent.
When one considers what effect the perversion of the religious instinct
has had during the history of the world; the bitter wars, Christian and
Mahomedan, Catholic and Protestant; the persecutions, the torturings,
the domestic hatreds, the petty spites, with ALL creeds equally
blood-guilty, one cannot but be amazed that the concurrent voice of
mankind has not placed bigotry at the very head of the deadly sins.
It is surely a truism to say that neither smallpox nor the plague have
brought the same misery upon mankind.
I cannot be bigoted, my dear boy, when I say from the bottom of my heart
that I respect every good Catholic and every good Protestant, and that
I recognise that each of these forms of faith has been a powerful
instrument in the hands of that inscrutable Providence which rules
all things. Just as in the course of history one finds that the most
far-reaching and admirable effects may proceed from a crime; so in
religion, although a creed be founded upon an entirely inadequate
conception of the Creator and His ways, it may none the less be the very
best practical thing for the people and age which have adopted it. But
if it is right for those to whom it is intellectually satisfying to
adopt it, it is equally so for those to whom it is not, to protest
against it, until by this process the whole mass of mankind gets
gradually leavened, and pushed a little further upon their slow upward
journey.
Catholicism is the more thorough. Protestantism is the more reasonable.
Protestantism adapts itself to modern civilisation. Catholicism expects
civilisation to adapt itself to it. Folk climb from the one big branch
to the other big branch, and think they have made a prodigious change,
when the main trunk is rotten beneath them, and both must in their
present forms be involved sooner or later in a common ruin. The movement
of human thought, though slow, is still in the direction of truth, and
the various religions which man sheds as he advances (each admirable in
its day) will serve, like buoys dropped down from a sailing vessel, to
give the rate and direction of his progress.
But how do I know what is truth, you ask? I don’t. But I know
particularly well what isn’t. And surely that is something to have
gained. It isn’t true that the great central Mind that planned all
things is capable of jealousy or of revenge, or of cruelty or of
injustice. These are human attributes; and the book which ascribes
them to the Infinite must be human also. It isn’t true that the laws of
Nature have been capriciously disturbed, that snakes have talked, that
women have been turned to salt, that rods have brought water out of
rocks. You must in honesty confess that if these things were presented
to us when we were, adults for the first time, we should smile at them.
It isn’t true that the Fountain of all common sense should punish a race
for a venial offence committed by a person long since dead, and then
should add to the crass injustice by heaping the whole retribution upon
a single innocent scapegoat. Can you not see all the want of justice
and logic, to say nothing of the want of mercy, involved in such a
conception? Can you not see it, Bertie? How can you blind yourself to
it! Take your eyes away from the details for a moment, and look at this
root idea of the predominant Faith. Is the general conception of it
consistent with infinite wisdom and mercy? If not, what becomes of the
dogmas, the sacraments, the whole scheme which is founded upon this
sand-bank? Courage, my friend! At the right moment all will be laid
aside, as the man whose strength increases lays down the crutch which
has been a good friend to him in his weakness. But his changes won’t be
over then. His hobble will become a walk, and his walk a run. There is
no finality--CAN be none since the question concerns the infinite. All
this, which appears too advanced to you to-day, will seem reactionary
and conservative a thousand years hence.
Since I am upon this topic, may I say just a little more without boring
you? You say that criticism such as mine is merely destructive, and that
I have nothing to offer in place of what I pull down. This is not quite
correct. I think that there are certain elemental truths within our
grasp which ask for no faith for their acceptance, and which are
sufficient to furnish us with a practical religion, having so much of
reason in it that it would draw thinking men into its fold, not drive
them forth from it.
When we all get back to these elemental and provable facts there will
be some hopes of ending the petty bickerings of creeds, and of including
the whole human family in one comprehensive system of thought.
When first I came out of the faith in which I had been reared, I
certainly did feel for a time as if my life-belt had burst. I won’t
exaggerate and say that I was miserable and plunged in utter spiritual
darkness. Youth is too full of action for that. But I was conscious of a
vague unrest, of a constant want of repose, of an emptiness and hardness
which I had not noticed in life before. I had so identified religion
with the Bible that I could not conceive them apart. When the foundation
proved false, the whole structure came rattling about my ears. And then
good old Carlyle came to the rescue; and partly from him, and partly
from my own broodings, I made a little hut of my own, which has kept me
snug ever since, and has even served to shelter a friend or two besides.
The first and main thing was to get it thoroughly soaked into one that
the existence of a Creator and an indication of His attributes does in
no way depend upon Jewish poets, nor upon human paper or printing ink.
On the contrary, all such efforts to realise Him must only belittle Him,
bringing the Infinite down to the narrow terms of human thought, at
a time when that thought was in the main less spiritual than it is
at present. Even the most material of modern minds would flinch at
depicting the Deity as ordering wholesale executions, and hacking kings
to pieces upon the horns of altars.
Then having prepared your mind for a higher (if perhaps a vaguer)
idea of the Deity, proceed to study Him in His works, which cannot be
counterfeited or manipulated. Nature is the true revelation of the Deity
to man. The nearest green field is the inspired page from which you may
read all that it is needful for you to know.
I confess that I have never been able to understand the position of the
atheist. In fact, I have come to disbelieve in his existence, and
to look upon the word as a mere term of theological reproach. It may
represent a temporary condition, a passing mental phase, a defiant
reaction against an anthropomorphic ideal; but I cannot conceive that
any man can continue to survey Nature and to deny that there are laws at
work which display intelligence and power. The very existence of a world
carries with it the proof of a world-maker, as the table guarantees
the pre-existence of the carpenter. Granting this, one may form what
conception one will of that Maker, but one cannot be an atheist.
Wisdom and power and means directed to an end run all through the scheme
of Nature. What proof do we want, then, from a book? If the man who
observes the myriad stars, and considers that they and their innumerable
satellites move in their serene dignity through the heavens, each
swinging clear of the other’s orbit--if, I say, the man who sees this
cannot realise the Creator’s attributes without the help of the book of
Job, then his view of things is beyond my understanding. Nor is it only
in the large things that we see the ever present solicitude of some
intelligent force. Nothing is too tiny for that fostering care. We see
the minute proboscis of the insect carefully adjusted to fit into the
calyx of the flower, the most microscopic hair and gland each with its
definite purposeful function to perform. What matter whether these came
by special creation or by evolution? We know as a matter of fact that
they came by evolution, but that only defines the law. It does not
explain it.
But if this power has cared for the bee so as to furnish it with its
honey bag and its collecting forceps, and for the lowly seed so as to
have a thousand devices by which it reaches a congenial soil, then is it
conceivable that we, the highest product of all, are overlooked? It is
NOT conceivable. The idea is inconsistent with the scheme of creation as
we see it. I say again that no faith is needed to attain the certainty
of a most watchful Providence.
And with this certainty surely we have all that is necessary for an
elemental religion. Come what may after death, our duties lie clearly
defined before us in this life; and the ethical standard of all creeds
agrees so far that there is not likely to be any difference of opinion
as to that. The last reformation simplified Catholicism. The coming one
will simplify Protestantism. And when the world is ripe for it another
will come and simplify that. The ever improving brain will give us an
ever broadening creed. Is it not glorious to think that evolution
is still living and acting--that if we have an anthropoid ape as an
ancestor, we may have archangels for our posterity?
Well, I really never intended to inflict all this upon you, Bertie. I
thought I could have made my position clear in a page or so. But you can
see how one point has brought up another. Even now I am leaving so much
unsaid. I can see with such certainty exactly what you will say. “If
you deduce a good Providence from the good things in nature, what do
you make of the evil?” That’s what you will say. Suffice it that I am
inclined to deny the existence of evil. Not another word will I say upon
the subject; but if you come back to it yourself, then be it on your own
head.
You remember that when I wrote last I had just returned from visiting
the Cullingworths at Avonmouth, and that he had promised to let me know
what steps he took in appeasing his creditors. As I expected, I have not
had one word from him since. But in a roundabout way I did get some news
as to what happened. From this account, which was second-hand, and may
have been exaggerated, Cullingworth did exactly what I had recommended,
and calling all his creditors together he made them a long statement as
to his position. The good people were so touched by the picture that
he drew of a worthy man fighting against adversity that several of them
wept, and there was not only complete unanimity as to letting their
bills stand over, but even some talk of a collection then and there to
help Cullingworth on his way. He has, I understand, left Avonmouth, but
no one has any idea what has become of him. It is generally supposed
that he has gone to England. He is a strange fellow, but I wish him luck
wherever he goes.
When I came back I settled down once more to the routine of my father’s
practice, holding on there until something may turn up. And for six
months I have had to wait; a weary six months they have been. You see I
cannot ask my father for money--or, at least, I cannot bring myself to
take an unnecessary penny of his money--for I know how hard a fight
it is with him to keep the roof over our heads and pay for the modest
little horse and trap which are as necessary to his trade as a goose
is to a tailor. Foul fare the grasping taxman who wrings a couple of
guineas from us on the plea that it is a luxury! We can just hold
on, and I would not have him a pound the poorer for me. But you can
understand, Bertie, that it is humiliating for a man of my age to have
to go about without any money in my pocket. It affects me in so many
petty ways. A poor man may do me a kindness, and I have to seem mean in
his eyes. I may want a flower for a girl, and must be content to appear
ungallant. I don’t know why I should be ashamed of this, since it is no
fault of mine, and I hope that I don’t show it to any one else that I AM
ashamed of it; but to you, my dear Bertie, I don’t mind confessing that
it hurts my self-respect terribly.
I have often wondered why some of those writing fellows don’t try their
hands at drawing the inner life of a young man from about the age of
puberty until he begins to find his feet a little. Men are very fond
of analysing the feelings of their heroines, which they cannot possibly
know anything about, while they have little to say of the inner
development of their heroes, which is an experience which they have
themselves undergone. I should like to try it myself, but it would need
blending with fiction, and I never had a spark of imagination. But I
have a vivid recollection of what I went through myself. At the time I
thought (as everybody thinks) that it was a unique experience; but since
I have heard the confidences of my father’s patients I am convinced that
it is the common lot. The shrinking, horrible shyness, alternating with
occasional absurd fits of audacity which represent the reaction against
it, the longing for close friendship, the agonies over imaginary
slights, the extraordinary sexual doubts, the deadly fears caused by
non-existent diseases, the vague emotion produced by all women, and the
half-frightened thrill by particular ones, the aggressiveness caused
by fear of being afraid, the sudden blacknesses, the profound
self-distrust--I dare bet that you have felt every one of them, Bertie,
just as I have, and that the first lad of eighteen whom you see out of
your window is suffering from them now.
This is all a digression, however, from the fact that I have been six
months at home and am weary of it, and pleased at the new development
of which I shall have to tell you. The practice here, although
unremunerative, is very busy with its three-and-sixpenny visits and
guinea confinements, so that both the governor and I have had plenty
to do. You know how I admire him, and yet I fear there is little
intellectual sympathy between us. He appears to think that those
opinions of mine upon religion and politics which come hot from my
inmost soul have been assumed either out of indifference or bravado. So
I have ceased to talk on vital subjects with him, and, though we affect
to ignore it, we both know that there is a barrier there. Now, with my
mother--ah, but my mother must have a paragraph to herself.
You met her, Bertie! You must remember her sweet face, her sensitive
mouth, her peering, short-sighted eyes, her general suggestion of a
plump little hen, who is still on the alert about her chickens. But you
cannot realise all that she is to me in our domestic life. Those helpful
fingers! That sympathetic brain! Ever since I can remember her she has
been the quaintest mixture of the housewife and the woman of letters,
with the highbred spirited lady as a basis for either character. Always
a lady, whether she was bargaining with the butcher, or breaking in a
skittish charwoman, or stirring the porridge, which I can see her doing
with the porridge-stick in one hand, and the other holding her Revue
des deux Mondes within two inches of her dear nose. That was always her
favourite reading, and I can never think of her without the association
of its browny-yellow cover.
She is a very well-read woman is the mother; she keeps up to date in
French literature as well as in English, and can talk by the hour about
the Goncourts, and Flaubert, and Gautier. Yet she is always hard at
work; and how she imbibes all her knowledge is a mystery. She reads when
she knits, she reads when she scrubs, she even reads when she feeds
her babies. We have a little joke against her, that at an interesting
passage she deposited a spoonful of rusk and milk into my little
sister’s car-hole, the child having turned her head at the critical
instant. Her hands are worn with work, and yet where is the idle woman
who has read as much?
Then, there is her family pride. That is a very vital portion of the
mother. You know how little I think of such things. If the Esquire were
to be snipped once and for ever from the tail of my name I should be
the lighter for it. But, ma foi!--to use her own favourite expletive--it
would not do to say this to her. On the Packenham side (she is a
Packenham) the family can boast of some fairly good men--I mean on the
direct line--but when we get on the side branches there is not a monarch
upon earth who does not roost on that huge family tree. Not once, nor
twice, but thrice did the Plantagenets intermarry with us, the Dukes
of Brittany courted our alliance, and the Percies of Northumberland
intertwined themselves with our whole illustrious record. So in my
boyhood she would expound the matter, with hearthbrush in one hand and
a glove full of cinders in the other, while I would sit swinging my
knickerbockered legs, swelling with pride until my waistcoat was as
tight as a sausage skin, as I contemplated the gulf which separated me
from all other little boys who swang their legs upon tables. To this
day if I chance to do anything of which she strongly approves, the dear
heart can say no more than that I am a thorough Packenham; while if I
fall away from the straight path, she says with a sigh that there are
points in which I take after the Munros.
She is broad-minded and intensely practical in her ordinary moods,
though open to attacks of romance. I can recollect her coming to see me
at a junction through which my train passed, with a six months’ absence
on either side of the incident. We had five minutes’ conversation, my
head out of the carriage window. “Wear flannel next your skin, my dear
boy, and never believe in eternal punishment,” was her last item of
advice as we rolled out of the station. Then to finish her portrait
I need not tell you, who have seen her, that she is young-looking and
comely to be the mother of about thirty-five feet of humanity. She
was in the railway carriage and I on the platform the other day. “Your
husband had better get in or we’ll go without him,” said the guard. As
we went off, the mother was fumbling furiously in her pocket, and I know
that she was looking for a shilling.
Ah! what a gossip I have been! And all to lead up to the one sentence
that I could not have stayed at home this six months if it had not been
for the company and the sympathy of my mother.
Well, now I want to tell you about the scrape that I got myself into. I
suppose that I ought to pull a long face over it, but for the life of me
I can’t help laughing. I have you almost up to date in my history now,
for what I am going to tell you happened only last week. I must mention
no names here even to you; for the curse of Ernulphus, which includes
eight and forty minor imprecations, be upon the head of the man who
kisses and tells.
You must know, then, that within the boundaries of this city there are
two ladies, a mother and a daughter, whom I shall call Mrs. and Miss
Laura Andrews. They are patients of the governor’s, and have become
to some extent friends of the family. Madame is Welsh, charming
in appearance, dignified in her manners, and High Church in her
convictions. The daughter is rather taller than the mother, but
otherwise they are strikingly alike. The mother is thirty-six and
the daughter eighteen. Both are exceedingly charming. Had I to choose
between them, I think, entre nous, that the mother would have attracted
me most, for I am thoroughly of Balzac’s opinion as to the woman of
thirty. However, fate was to will it otherwise.
It was the coming home from a dance which first brought Laura and
me together. You know how easily and suddenly these things happen,
beginning in playful teasing and ending in something a little warmer
than friendship. You squeeze the slender arm which is passed through
yours, you venture to take the little gloved hand, you say good night
at absurd length in the shadow of the door. It is innocent and very
interesting, love trying his wings in a first little flutter. He will
keep his sustained flight later on, the better for the practice. There
was never any question of engagements between us, nor any suggestion of
harm. She knew that I was a poor devil with neither means nor prospects,
and I knew that her mother’s will was her law, and that her course
was already marked out for her. However, we exchanged our little
confidences, and met occasionally by appointment, and tried to make our
lives brighter without darkening those of any one else. I can see you
shake your head here and growl, like the comfortable married man that
you are, that such relations are very dangerous. So they are, my boy:
but neither of us cared, she out of innocence and I out of recklessness,
for from the beginning all the fault in the matter was mine.
Well, matters were in this state when one day last week a note came up
to the Dad saying that Mrs. Andrews’ servant was ill, and would he come
at once. The old man had a touch of gout, so I donned my professional
coat and sallied forth, thinking that perhaps I might combine pleasure
with business, and have a few words with Laura. Sure enough, as I passed
up the gravel drive which curves round to the door, I glanced through
the drawing-room window, and saw her sitting painting, with her back
to the light. It was clear that she had not heard me. The hall door was
ajar, and when I pushed it open, no one was in the hall. A sudden fit
of roguishness came over me. I pushed the drawing-room door very slowly
wider, crept in on tiptoe, stole quietly across, and bending down, I
kissed the artist upon the nape of her neck. She turned round with a
squeal, and it was the mother!
I don’t know whether you have ever been in a tighter corner than that,
Bertie. It was quite tight enough for me. I remember that I smiled as
I stole across the carpet on that insane venture. I did not smile again
that evening. It makes me hot now when I think of it.
Well, I made the most dreadful fool of myself. At first, the good lady
who (as I think I told you) is very dignified and rather reserved, could
not believe her senses. Then, as the full force of my enormity came upon
her she reared herself up until she seemed the tallest and the coldest
woman I had ever seen. It was an interview with a refrigerator. She
asked me what I had ever observed in her conduct which had encouraged
me to subject her to such an outrage. I saw, of course, that any excuses
upon my part would put her on the right track and give poor Laura away;
so I stood with my hair bristling and my top hat in my hand, presenting,
I am sure, a most extraordinary figure. Indeed, she looked rather funny
herself, with her palette in one hand, her brush in the other, and the
blank astonishment on her face. I stammered out something about hoping
that she did not mind, which made her more angry than ever. “The
only possible excuse for your conduct, sir, is that you are under the
influence of drink,” said she. “I need not say that we do not require
the services of a medical man in that condition.” I did not try to
disabuse her of the idea, for really I could see no better explanation;
so I beat a retreat in a very demoralised condition. She wrote a letter
to my father about it in the evening, and the old man was very angry
indeed. As to the mother, she is as staunch as steel, and quite prepared
to prove that poor Mrs. A. was a very deep designing person, who had
laid a trap for innocent Johnnie. So there has been a grand row; and not
a soul upon earth has the least idea of what it all means, except only
yourself as you read this letter.
You can imagine that this has not contributed to make life here more
pleasant, for my father cannot bring himself to forgive me. Of course,
I don’t wonder at his anger. I should be just the same myself. It does
look like a shocking breach of professional honour, and a sad disregard
of his interests. If he knew the truth he would see that it was nothing
worse than a silly ill-timed boyish joke. However, he never shall know
the truth.
And now there is some chance of my getting something to do. We had
a letter to-night from Christie & Howden, the writers to the Signet,
saying that they desire an interview with me, in view of a possible
appointment. We can’t imagine what it means, but I am full of hopes. I
go to-morrow morning to see them, and I shall let you know the result.
Good-bye, my dear Bertie! Your life flows in a steady stream, and mine
in a broken torrent. Yet I would have every detail of what happens to
you.