ON the evening of the third day from the arrival of Mr. Mivers, he,
the Parson, and Sir Peter were seated in the host's parlour, the
Parson in an armchair by the ingle, smoking a short cutty-pipe; Mivers
at length on the couch, slowly inhaling the perfumes of one of his own
choice /trabucos/. Sir Peter never smoked. There were spirits and
hot water and lemons on the table. The Parson was famed for skill in
the composition of toddy. From time to time the Parson sipped his
glass, and Sir Peter less frequently did the same. It is needless to
say that Mr. Mivers eschewed toddy; but beside him, on a chair, was a
tumbler and a large carafe of iced water.
SIR PETER.--"Cousin Mivers, you have now had time to study Kenelm, and
to compare his character with that assigned to him in the Doctor's
letter."
MIVERS (languidly).--"Ay."
SIR PETER.--"I ask you, as a man of the world, what you think I had
best do with the boy. Shall I send him to such a tutor as the Doctor
suggests? Cousin John is not of the same mind as the Doctor, and
thinks that Kenelm's oddities are fine things in their way, and should
not be prematurely ground out of him by contact with worldly tutors
and London pavements."
"Ay," repeated Mr. Mivers more languidly than before. After a pause
he added, "Parson John, let us hear you."
The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of
toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great
Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking
somewhat through his nose,--
"At the morning of life--"
Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his couch, and
closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning himself to a homily.
"At the morning of life, when the dews--"
"I knew the dews were coming," said Mivers. "Dry them, if you please;
nothing so unwholesome. We anticipate what you mean to say, which is
plainly this, When a fellow is sixteen he is very fresh: so he is;
pass on; what then?"
"If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cynicism," said the
Parson, "why did you ask to hear me?"
"That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you
were going to commence in that florid style? Morning of life indeed!
bosh!"
"Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing John's style
in 'The Londoner;' and I will beg you to remember that my son's
morning of life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped
in its bud by a cousin. Proceed, John!"
Quoth the Parson, good-humouredly, "I will adapt my style to the taste
of my critic. When a fellow is at the age of sixteen, and very fresh
to life, the question is whether he should begin thus prematurely to
exchange the ideas that belong to youth for the ideas that properly
belong to middle age,--whether he should begin to acquire that
knowledge of the world which middle-aged men have acquired and can
teach. I think not. I would rather have him yet a while in the
company of the poets; in the indulgence of glorious hopes and
beautiful dreams, forming to himself some type of the Heroic, which he
will keep before his eyes as a standard when he goes into the world as
man. There are two schools of thought for the formation of
character,--the Real and the Ideal. I would form the character in the
Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and grander and lovelier when
it takes its place in that every-day life which is called Real. And
therefore I am not for placing the descendant of Sir Kenelm Digby, in
the interval between school and college, with a man of the world,
probably as cynical as Cousin Mivers and living in the stony
thoroughfares of London."
MR. MIVERS (rousing himself).--"Before we plunge into that Serbonian
bog--the controversy between the Realistic and the Idealistic
academicians--I think the first thing to decide is what you want
Kenelm to be hereafter. When I order a pair of shoes, I decide
beforehand what kind of shoes they are to be,--court pumps or strong
walking shoes; and I don't ask the shoemaker to give me a preliminary
lecture upon the different purposes of locomotion to which leather can
be applied. If, Sir Peter, you want Kenelm to scribble lackadaisical
poems, listen to Parson John; if you want to fill his head with
pastoral rubbish about innocent love, which may end in marrying the
miller's daughter, listen to Parson John; if you want him to enter
life a soft-headed greenhorn, who will sign any bill carrying 50 per
cent to which a young scamp asks him to be security, listen to Parson
John; in fine, if you wish a clever lad to become either a pigeon or a
ring-dove, a credulous booby or a sentimental milksop, Parson John is
the best adviser you can have."
"But I don't want my son to ripen into either of those imbecile
developments of species."
"Then don't listen to Parson John; and there's an end of the
discussion."
"No, there is not. I have not heard your advice what to do if John's
advice is not to be taken."
Mr. Mivers hesitated. He seemed puzzled.
"The fact is," said the Parson, "that Mivers got up 'The Londoner'
upon a principle that regulates his own mind,--find fault with the way
everything is done, but never commit yourself by saying how anything
can be done better."
"That is true," said Mivers, candidly. "The destructive order of mind
is seldom allied to the constructive. I and 'The Londoner' are
destructive by nature and by policy. We can reduce a building into
rubbish, but we don't profess to turn rubbish into a building. We are
critics, and, as you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the
proposition of amendments that can be criticised by others.
Nevertheless, for your sake, Cousin Peter, and on the condition that
if I give my advice you will never say that I gave it, and if you take
it that you will never reproach me if it turns out, as most advice
does, very ill,--I will depart from my custom and hazard my opinion."
"I accept the conditions."
"Well then, with every new generation there springs up a new order of
ideas. The earlier the age at which a man seizes the ideas that will
influence his own generation, the more he has a start in the race with
his contemporaries. If Kenelm comprehends at sixteen those
intellectual signs of the time which, when he goes up to college, he
will find young men of eighteen or twenty only just /prepared/ to
comprehend, he will produce a deep impression of his powers for
reasoning and their adaptation to actual life, which will be of great
service to him later. Now the ideas that influence the mass of the
rising generation never have their well-head in the generation itself.
They have their source in the generation before them, generally in a
small minority, neglected or contemned by the great majority which
adopt them later. Therefore a lad at the age of sixteen, if he wants
to get at such ideas, must come into close contact with some superior
mind in which they were conceived twenty or thirty years before. I am
consequently for placing Kenelm with a person from whom the new ideas
can be learned. I am also for his being placed in the metropolis
during the process of this initiation. With such introductions as are
at our command, he may come in contact not only with new ideas, but
with eminent men in all vocations. It is a great thing to mix betimes
with clever people. One picks their brains unconsciously. There is
another advantage, and not a small one, in this early entrance into
good society. A youth learns manners, self-possession, readiness of
resource; and he is much less likely to get into scrapes and contract
tastes for low vices and mean dissipation, when he comes into life
wholly his own master, after having acquired a predilection for
refined companionship under the guidance of those competent to select
it. There, I have talked myself out of breath. And you had better
decide at once in favour of my advice; for as I am of a contradictory
temperament, myself of to-morrow may probably contradict myself of
to-day."
Sir Peter was greatly impressed with his cousin's argumentative
eloquence.
The Parson smoked his cutty-pipe in silence until appealed to by Sir
Peter, and he then said, "In this programme of education for a
Christian gentleman, the part of Christian seems to me left out."
"The tendency of the age," observed Mr. Mivers, calmly, "is towards
that omission. Secular education is the necessary reaction from the
special theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of
Christians to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists
will not agree how religion is to be taught, either there must be no
teaching at all, or religion must be eliminated from the tuition."
"That may do very well for some huge system of national education,"
said Sir Peter, "but it does not apply to Kenelm, as one of a family
all of whose members belong to the Established Church. He may be
taught the creed of his forefathers without offending a Dissenter."
"Which Established Church is he to belong to?" asked Mr.
Mivers,--"High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Puseyite Church,
Ritualistic Church, or any other Established Church that may be coming
into fashion?"
"Pshaw!" said the Parson. "That sneer is out of place. You know very
well that one merit of our Church is the spirit of toleration, which
does not magnify every variety of opinion into a heresy or a schism.
But if Sir Peter sends his son at the age of sixteen to a tutor who
eliminates the religion of Christianity from his teaching, he deserves
to be thrashed within an inch of his life; and," continued the Parson,
eying Sir Peter sternly, and mechanically turning up his cuffs, "I
should /like/ to thrash him."
"Gently, John," said Sir Peter, recoiling; "gently, my dear kinsman.
My heir shall not be educated as a heathen, and Mivers is only
bantering us. Come, Mivers, do you happen to know among your London
friends some man who, though a scholar and a man of the world, is
still a Christian?"
"A Christian as by law established?"
"Well--yes."
"And who will receive Kenelm as a pupil?"
"Of course I am not putting, such questions to you out of idle
curiosity."
"I know exactly the man. He was originally intended for orders, and
is a very learned theologian. He relinquished the thought of the
clerical profession on succeeding to a small landed estate by the
sudden death of an elder brother. He then came to London and bought
experience: that is, he was naturally generous; he became easily taken
in; got into difficulties; the estate was transferred to trustees for
the benefit of creditors, and on the payment of L400 a year to
himself. By this time he was married and had two children. He found
the necessity of employing his pen in order to add to his income, and
is one of the ablest contributors to the periodical press. He is an
elegant scholar, an effective writer, much courted by public men, a
thorough gentleman, has a pleasant house, and receives the best
society. Having been once taken in, he defies any one to take him in
again. His experience was not bought too dearly. No more acute and
accomplished man of the world. The three hundred a year or so that
you would pay for Kenelm would suit him very well. His name is Welby,
and he lives in Chester Square."
"No doubt he is a contributor to 'The Londoner,'" said the Parson,
sarcastically.
"True. He writes our classical, theological, and metaphysical
articles. Suppose I invite him to come here for a day or two, and you
can see him and judge for yourself, Sir Peter?"
"Do."