A Champion in the Seventies, being the true record of some passages in a conflict of social faiths

Front matter

THcw iRevcls sot mocccjcviil Price 6s. each DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO By I. ZANGWILL THE LONDONERS Bv ROBERT HICHENS THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Bv H. G. WELLS THE FOURTH NAPOLEON By CHARLES BENHAM THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO THE MINISTER OF STATE By J. A STEUART CLEO THE MAGNIFICENT By Z. Z. THE BROOM OF THE WAR-GOD By H. N. BRAILSFORD THE LAKE OF WINE By BERNARD CAPES GOD'S FOUNDLING By A. J. DAWSON EZEKIEL'S SIN Bv J. A. PEARCE- LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, w.c. Being the True Record of some Passages in a Conflict of Social Faiths By Edith A. Barnett London William Heinemann A ll rights reserved

Preface

If ever it be justifiable to tell a true story of life, it is when the telling may quell lively dissensions, or explain present-day actions now grievously misunderstood. And if ever it be possible to tell a true story of life, it is when the teller, once a hot combatant, is, in the course of nature, shifted into the reserves, keen still to watch the pro gress of the fight, but quietly remote from any chance of being called out to share it. The teller must have been a partisan, or nothing will be known of either side of the strife ; must have grown past partisanship, or nothing will be known of any side but one. Kindly nature, as time wears on, forces each one of us into sympathy with the men and women of each succeeding growth. All we must do is to cultivate a lively memory, lest we forget our old lessons while we con the new.

The chief regret is that we may not wait till the very end of life to write our stories ; that when the cup of experience is filled to the brim, the frail porcelain or the rough earthenware (there are both materials among us writers) is sure to shatter and spill. So that here, as elsewhere, is a balance of drawbacks ; writing too young, I shall not know all ; waiting till too old, finis will not be written according to my intention. We English are twitted with our readiness for compromise ; yet, when one looks over the field of past battles, it is more and not less of the spirit of compromise that one fain would see. If Primus could but have peeped for a moment through Secundus' eyes ; could but have guessed in what strange guise he himself appeared ; could but have known that in Secundus' eyes (and he does not keep a pair for change) there were unholy growths at his back, and a suspicion of cleavage in the foot planted so firmly forward on mother earth ! W?hen Primus looks in the glass, those growths have the appearance of budding wings, and the foot is that of a hero ; and for my part,

PREFACE.

VI standing as I do midway between tlie two, that is what they look most like to me. But what is the good of talking ? It was Primus himself who taught Secundus to fight valiantly against the devil in all his shapes and disguises whenever he was sure he saw him. Seeing is believing. And truth, before now, has lain with a minority of one. This much seems to me to be certain ; the historian of his or her own time should at least wait till bitterness of mind has passed. There is always the other side. Those who see both sides have a chance of being right ; those who see but one side have a certainty of being wrong. We all know how easy it is to grow up ignorant of such a physical defect as blindness of one eye ; they who have never seen the world rounded off by normal double vision must needs believe that all things to all men are flat ; and the mood that follows when the oculist assures them of their error must be rather of the nature of verbal assent than of innermost conviction.

And this one thing seems first to bear in mind. Both sides meant well. All strove for the best as each saw it. Neither adversary was wholly base : had one been so, he would have been so speedily vanquished that there would have been no conflict worth telling of. And neither adversary was wholly noble : had one been that, the issue of the conflict would never for a moment have been doubtful. But the fault was not wickedness, but rather stupidity ; what they lacked, what we all lack, was not good-will, but rather wisdom. And the stupidest action of all the many that we commit is to fancy that our party collectively, or that any one of us individually, may hold a monopoly of truth. After all, I cannot find it in me to regret the war. This is a fighting world, and the one unpardonable sin is laziness.

But when, in telling this story of the early campaign, I import thereinto any bitterness of feeling, then, and in so far, I have failed to do what I intended. That victory will be for the right I do not for one moment doubt. Nor am I doubtful on which side the balance of right hangs. A judge may be impartial, yet, when all the stories have been heard, he should have his clear opinion as to the verdict that the jury should return. CONTENTS Chapter Page 'a I The Head of the Family .... I II The Mother of thc Children ... , /// The Girls 16 IV The Things that shall be .... 29 V The New-comer 40 VI Books and other Things .... 49 VII A Quiet Home Life 57 VHP Old and Young Eyes 66 IX A Diversion 7S X Struggles with J Fords 84 XI Tabitha's Way 93 XII Seen from Benscote and in London . no XIII Company with Ideas 117 XIV Pleas for Tolerance 127 XV A Wedding 133 XVI A New Acquaintance 142 XVII A Question of Ten Pounds . . . 155 XVIII Views of Home 161 XIX A Clear-headed Adviser . . . . 16S XX A Perplexed Adviser 175 XXI Faith, Hope, and Charity. . . . 1S5 XXII On Abstinence 194 XXIII The Least of the Little Ones ... 199 XXIV Thc Heart of a Nun . 209 XXV A Chance of Reconciliation . . . 220 XXVI Irreeoncilables 226 XXVII Friends in Need 237 XXVIII An Alien in thc Land CONTENTS Vill Chapter raZ< XXIX Visitors at Benscote 261 XXX The Sale of a Picture .... 271 XXXI Everybody's Opinions .... 2S0 XXXII Money or a Life 286 XXXIII Tabitha's Visitor 293 XXXIV Brother and Sister 3°5 XXXV The End of a Chapter .... 314 XXXVI Documents and an Inquiry . . 324 XXXVII A Happy Ending . . • . . ■ 531 XXX 1'/ II Some Views concerning Illness . . 341 XXXIX A New Beginning 35° XL The Origin of a Now Woman . . 35S

Chapter I The Head Of The Family The

family means ten of them, children of a country gentleman, owner of his few acres, and of Benscote Manor. Twenty years ago it was as retired a spot as you could now find treble the distance from London. Seven miles away, measured on a good turnpike-road, or three miles in the opposite direction, over a rough hilly track, was a railway-station ; small wayside stations both, with very few stopping trains. Half-way there, at the top of the long hill, are the church and the vicarage, and down a lane, notable for the hot perennial strife between the parish and the squire as to its privacy or publicity, is the Hall, empty for two-thirds of the year. All these things have now been brought nearer to the rush of life. Mr. Vassie had inherited his house and his income, and his favourite virtue was content with things as they arc.

So, as thc elder girls grew up, they were rather tightly packed in the low, small rooms, and there was not much chance of movement, for of course there were three servants and a man out of doors ; to say that is i; only another way of saying that the Vassies were gentle folks according to their own rigid standard. Mr. Vassie spent most of his time shut up in his own room, which looked out on a part of the garden where the children never played games. No one was admitted except for urgent business. There was a legend in the family that papa was always engaged in study, and the room where he carried on these occult performances was dignified by that name. There were books round the walls ; a casual observer would have said that there were many books ; only close inspection showing that the backs of some of them were shams, cupboard-doors with a literary trimming.

That should, I think, be shocking to no idea. It passes my comprehension to understand why steady perusal of antique history or of bound volumes of forgotten periodicals should be supposed to be more valuable to the father of a family of growing boys and girls than a capacious cupboard, where he may keep old fishing tackle and last year's newspapers. Mr. Vassie had not placed those cupboards himself; the names on the books' backs could prove that. He had altered next to nothing in all the house. But had thc history been modern, what good would it have done him ; except that it kept him quiet and amused, which in his wife's eyes was the first consideration in life for a man of means, and for girls of all ages ; in fact, for all persons except for boys in term-time, and for busy mothers of families ?

In my opinion it is better to read the daily paper, or to go to sleep, than to spend time and money in buying learned treatises that lead down a blind alley. And Mr. Vassie did not reproduce in writing his thoughts on what he read ; he was not specially well able to read the signs of his own times by the light of what has gone before ; he did not communicate his views, profound THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY 3 though they may have been, to his children ; nor, I may in parenthesis add, to his rare visitors : the boys did not care to hear, and girls, so Mr, Vassie thought, are better without much knowledge. But girls' humble capacity fitly ministers to parental learning. Mr. Vassie belonged to a library, and once a fortnight, all the year round, his books were fetched from that station three miles off, by three of the girls, carrying them turn and turn about.

There were philosophical and historical works, which often arrived uncut, but always departed cut. Or should I rather say that Mr. Vassie and his family believed them to be cut? Once upon a time Mr. Vassie held forth at some length upon the acute logic and deep learning displayed in a certain book written by a well-known theologian and philosopher. Mr. Vassie's remarks were characterized by general fervour rather than by particular analysis. His companion in this dialogue should have felt flattered at this rare proof of his confidence. Instead of that (inspired let us hope by a genuine desire to verify a reference), this person, in Mr. Vassie's absence, took up Mr. Vassie's book, and behold ! in the very nick of thc argument pages were still uncut. It strikes one as almost an indecent action, thus to catch a respectable middle-aged man out in such a fault on his own study table.

But the person who did it was punished for unintentional prying, if it were unintentional, for she never could forget ; and when Mr. Vassie talked books in her presence (it was a woman's deed) she thought of his paper-knife, which was a gigantic affair, and worked hard. Mr. Vassie had taught each of his daughters to cut the leaves of a book, after a manner which he con sidered good ; it is a fitting thing for the daughters of a student to know. Go in when one might a stout volume was lying on the table near the master. He was sometimes so deep in study that it took several knocks to rouse him ; and he would come and unlock the door with his hair dishevelled and a dazed look in his light eyes. He did not like to be disturbed. Mrs. Vassie said that students never did. She would come back and tell thc girls for the hundredth time how clever their papa was, and how good it is when a generation possesses learned men content with learning for its own sake, striving after no vulgar notoriety.

Mr. Vassie was not even on the council of any learned society, and his fitful correspondence was carried on with unlearned persons. These were subjects for deep regret to his wife, but she did her best to forget herself in compensating him for his share of these misfortunes. " We ought to show, my dears," she would say to the girls, "that we do not measure worth by so false a standard. I often wonder that papa is so patient as he is when he thinks how his gifts have been overlooked. When he was only twenty-three, before we were engaged, his tutor and his coach at the University said he had unusual capacity, and might rise to any post. And if that can be said of a man of three-and-twenty — just your age, Tabitha — what ought he not to be by fifty ? And you know what a brilliant degree he took !

And think how he studies! Though, having an independent fortune, of course he need not. If only one of the boys would show the same love of learning ! " Mr. Vassie kept his books locked up. He said there were sceptical and unsettling works among them, unfit for servants to look into. He also locked up the many modern works that he bought ; of these he had a lar^e and heterogeneous collection ; and the review that had led to each purchase was, as a rule, carefully laid or pasted into thc front : Mr. Vassie was nothing if not a stickler for recognized authority; in matters such as THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY 5 these he rendered to many men more than their due ; and in household matters he laid his accounts for a like exaggeration. Mrs. Vassie tried hard to keep up the idea of privilege in connection with personal service upon the head of the family.

While the children were children it had been her fond notion to reward the best marks in the school room with the carrying of papa's tea to the study, and one of the many things she lamented now the elder girls were growing up was that the habit had fallen into desuetude. She often carried it herself, as she had been used to do in the early days of her marriage. " It is not a duty I could delegate to a servant," she would say. " When the brain is irritable and overworked a gentle footfall makes all the difference." " Dear papa works so hard with his brain that he must have his tea strong." " Your papa has so powerful a brain that we who have only hands are honoured in ministering to him." It was hard for Mr. Vassie to disappoint such per tinacity. And with a large family in these democratic times, it is both rare and comforting to feel that by a diligence not our own, a halo that we dare not lay claim to is made to shine round our head.

And in any days it must warm the heart to know that the faith of the wife of one's bosom is still as firm as in the days when we ourselves thought that grand performances of one sort or another were well within our accomplishment. The intrinsic merit of no man increases by sitting down to do nothing on a small income. But it does not con clude this matter to talk about false pretences : is there nothing: owed to the wife ? Wives of men with limited incomes, and large families, and a position to keep up have not too easy a time of it. For a fancied idea of rectitude, which di good to any one, dare cue rob them of their one bit of romance ? As for Mrs. Vassie, she held that it was her duty to invent fancy employment for her family, chiefly, I have thought, in order that she might uninterruptedly do herself everything that was necessarily done.

Men, as well as children, are doubtless happier employed. If, in earlier days, Mr. Vassie found it irksome to be shut up alone day by day to engage in study for which he felt a chastened desire, he had got by this time to follow the habit as a matter of course. It passed the mornings, and gave him some feeling of business in the afternoons, where all his outdoor errands came consequently to be heaped. I never heard Mr. Vassie argue thus ; but it is the obvious line to take when I constitute myself his special pleader. And what is a writer of fiction if not a special pleader for each and all of her characters, with advantage duly given to the favourite heroine ?

Chapter II The Mother Of The Children Mrs

VASSIE had married at twenty, and had her first baby before she came of age ; since when she had always possessed a nursery full of children and a husband and four or five servants to keep happy and busy. When she had time to think about herself, or even to think according to her own prompting, there was the baby presently coming, or the baby just come ; or the old days that seemed already so far away, when Mr. Vassie had not been content unless she lived by his side. That experience had not lasted long, but our memories are bad time-keepers, and it occupied a great space. She wondered occasionally whether anything she could have done would have prolonged it ; or whether all mothers of ten children are unable to keep pace with their husbands' flights of learning. She hoped she might find a little more spare time, before she and her husband both grew quite old, in the suture, when the babies would be big, and the girls would be grown up, and when the children would have got past measles, and lessons, and would no longer grow every month or two out of frocks that are still in good condition.

But she did not often indulge in such unpractical regrets or visions. She had enough to do to cope with the facts of to-day. A fixed income and a growing family call for much careful adaptation. She had spent so many sighs and tears over her account-books that she had few left for the pages of the past ; and she had trembled so often before engaging in an actual struggle for authority with an autocratic cook, that she ceased to tremble before imaginary trials of the future. She had never been able to travel or to pay visits ; there were always the babies or the children, and Mrs. Vassie held views about leaving them to servants. She had not made new friends, nor kept the old ones close ; to do that means leisure for brain and body, and Mr. Vassie did not find much pleasure in the society of his wife's friends.

Yet not to be a lady's man may reckon as positive or negative virtue. She had not been able to read ; there was the price of new books to be con sidered ; and in her work-basket, standing in a con spicuous place near the window, was always a heap of miscellaneous needlework, silently accusing her of waste of time when she sat down for half-an-hour to read. And an accusing conscience makes a bad third for a book and a reader. It will not lie still. It absolutely forbids concentration of thought on the printed page. In its company only the lightest literature can be read, and that not very attentively. And the greatest admirer of book-learning (among whom I do not pretend to class myself) cannot say that this lightest literature is of great service to the mother of a long family, or that it deserves any more consideration than may be accorded to another idle pastime.

It was a case of conscience. Mr. Vassie usually said his say upon household finance before he paid the half-yearly bills. His wife humbly received his rebukes and counsel. Perhaps some will think she was a poor-spirited creature so to do, seeing that, in the opinion of outsiders qualified to judge, Mr. Vassie's weakest spot was on the side of household finance presided over by male genius ; I see her folly, but accord to it some respect and admiration, and I would not for worlds grudge her the comfort of believing that the father of those many children was a man of exceptional attainments. But, though she often had a sore heart after one of those half-yearly conversations, she had not an evil conscience, when she knew that she had spent all her spare moments in needlework, and that she had kept the children tidy.

It was the hope of a good conscience that encouraged her to persevere. And there are but two half-years in a year, and few years go to the making of a big girl, who suddenly, in the midst of nursery and dressmaking cares, demands advice on a subject that her mother has never had the time or the opportunity to face. Mrs. Vassie had married at twenty. Before Tabitha was twenty-three a quarter of a century had passed. How shall the best of us begin all over again after a quarter of a century ? And forty-five is not the time to acquire new knowledge, but to do on the strength of the old. But Mrs. Vassie was not wanting in energy of purpose. She borrowed some books, and read them with a marker carefully placed, and wish such frequent interruptions that the ideas in the books were not very easy to follow, when there were ideas.

And when followed, the ideas did not fit comfortably with those left over from Mrs. Vassie's girlhood. These had had a good many years in which to root themselves, and much unoccupied space in which to grow. What wonder if they had left no room for new things ? I do not know what books Mrs. Vassie happened upon, but she was out of the way of literary knowledge, and probably the collection was mixed. Ancl it is easy to believe that there were things said about religion, and about women, and about society, and even about health, that would not have been thought suitable to say when Mrs. Vassie was young. Of course that for us proves nothing as to their moral or intel lectual worth, but for her it meant everything. It was perplexing. It was still more perplexing to find that Tabitha and even Bella seized the books as soon as she laid them down.

Mary was a very good girl, and did not care for reading. She consulted her husband, who thought that Tabitha and Fella would be better em ployed in minding the household or in mending stockings than in entering upon such disquisitions. He took the opportunity of saying as much at table. " I liked it," said Tabitha, holding up her head. " And even if it were stupid I like to know what people are saying. Are you obliged to agree with everything and everybody ? " "And even the family socks and stockings do not take up all the time of us three, thank goodness," said Bella, flippantly, with small appreciation of the semi sacredness of papa's garments. " We want something else to amuse us." " The proper place of a girl is in a comfortable home, attending to her household duties ; and those who know what's good for them never wish for anything else.

I should be grieved, grieved indeed, if any of my daughters were to fill their heads with the foolish notions that are abroad now among a small section of the community, about the equality of men and women. Men will never take any notice of a girl who pretends to such false equality." " Men will never take any notice of anybody about here," said Bella, with a sigh and a little sneer, " for there are no men at all for miles around." " There's old Mr. Mooney at the vicarage, and young Sawday, the land-agent and auctioneer," said Tabitha, pretending to take an impartial view of the situation, as she spread her bread with jam. " Sh ! sh ! Tabitha, my dear ! " said Mrs. Vassie, glancing apologetically at her husband. "Bella, dear! Before the children too ! What can you be thinking of?" " If these are the ideas that fill the minds of your girls, my dear, about the sacred duties of home, I think the less we have of modern literature in the house the better," said Mr. Vassie.

And he looked severely across the table at his wife. Like many another man, he held his wife responsible for the girls and all their doings. He scarcely recognized that he had any share in that part of the family. " Your daughters, my dear," he would say, "your daughters do not seem to attract much notice. Your daughter Tabitha is developing a turn for sharp answers; I hope you will correct it in her. Your daughter Bella is rather too short. Your daughter Mary doesn't hold herself up." He was very short himself and stooped a bit, but there was no one in the world who dared to remind him of that. Truly we lead ourselves into sore temptation when we cause our nearest and dearest to fear our wrath ! " I shall certainly stop the subscription to the library at once," said Mrs. Vassie. " The girls cannot have read all the good books that we have already in the house, and if they have they will bear reading over again."

It was a personal disappointment to her, for she had looked forward to reading ; and she had no fear of books doing her harm, for she knew that no book that is printed could alter her views on important matters. But a mother must first of all be unselfish. The girls' ad vantage is paramount. And it was already evident that young persons may learn from books ; may pick SEVEN I 12 up from them opinions different from those in which they have been brought up, and therefore dangerous opinions. I think there can be no question that Mrs. Vassie, from her own point of view, was entirely in the right. If you intend to keep girls at home and happy in a small space and with nothing to do, you must shut out new ideas. There is no social disintegrator save a new and living idea, and even twenty years ago there were abroad in the world many living ideas that cannot live or let live beside idleness and stagnant thought.

And once allow that you are the depositary of final truth in matters social or divine, you owe it to your children to keep them at all costs and hazards from deserting your opinions. Mrs. Vassie had no doubt or hesitation in condemning opinions about women, and religion, and books (she was not greatly interested in topics outside these) which differed from the opinions in which she had been brought up. She told me one day in so many words when we were arguing on some small thing, that her mother had taught her to think thus and thus, and that though she was now a grey-haired old woman, it would to her have savoured of filial impiety to depart from that faith. She asked no more from her own girls than she had ungrudgingly given to her own mother. Nevertheless to keep out new ideas and to prevent the growth of opinion is no easy task.

It can scarcely be accomplished save by a little of what passes for persecu tion in these tender days. And yet many persons who shrink from persecution, who will condemn Mrs. Vassie for trying to starve the new ideas out of Tabitha's brain, hold themselves to be entirely right, and all the rest of the world, Mrs. Vassie included, to be entirely wrong. If final truth is reached by the adults of your own generation, or can be enveloped in the single conception of any one person, then persecution ought logically to follow, slight or terrible according to the nature of thc persecutor. Theoretically, it ought to go all lengths ; but though the spirit is willing the flesh is weak, and the victim is generally left to convert by pity those outsiders who can never be touched by argument. However, even partial persecution has its advantages to the party in power, for a very little suffices to call back to orthodoxy the half-hearted ; and the public, counting heads on a division, and the mothers, loving for love's sake, do not stay to weigh intellects or to balance motives.

The situation is a very common one. Here was the mother, her strength half worn, her adult energies taken up with household and nursery cares, called upon to direct the career of women in the prime of life, women with at least as good an education as her own, women whose whole energies, nervous and physical, were un tapped. She had been occupied all the best years of her life in bearing children and in tiding them over the first trials of existence ; and she had done her task well, for not one of the ten was born crippled or grew up sickly. For eight years of her life she had been more or less of an invalid, suffering, it is true, for the holiest of all causes, but still suffering, and lifted out of the bustle of life. There have been in all ages and countries martyr-prisoners, men and women, who, for the world's progress, have been shut up from the wagging of the world and who have emerged old and grey-headed, with yet a few years to look about them before this present book of lessons shall be closed in death.