Maygrove. A family history

Front matter

MAYGROVE A FAMILY HISTORY BY W. FRASER RAE, AUTHOR OF " MISS BAYLE'S ROMANCE," " A MODERN URIGAND," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. III. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, in ©roinarg to S?tt fHajfstg tijt ©ueen. 1890. (All rights resavcd!) CONTENTS OF VOL. III. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Master of Maygrove ... ... i II. Love or Marriage ... ... 49 III. A New Departure ... ... 81 IV. Married and Unsettled ... 112 V. Sydney in Manitoba ... ... 157 VI. The Honeymoon and After ... 192 VII. The Talk of the Town ... ... 229 VIII. A Crisis ... ... ... 267 IX. A Catastrophe ... ... ... 305 X. Dorian's Dilemma ... ... MAYGROVE.

Chapter I. The Master Of Maygrove

A man may put away childish things or should do so, yet he cannot emancipate himself from all his youthful ideas and im pressions, even when he has attained full age in the eye of the law and has become his own master. When Elfric visited Maygrove as its head and proprietor he did not feel that the change in his legal status had materially altered his position. It is true that he had no longer to ask Mr. Tarbold's permission when he desired to make any change in the house or in his mode of life ; but as that permission had seldom been withheld, as he had been' vol. hi. MA YGRO VE. allowed his own way in nearly everything, he was independent in fact long before his emancipation from legal tutelage. Elfric had often wondered what he would do on becoming a man and the Master of Maygrove. He had formed the notion that a man has the advantage over a boy of doing whatever he thinks best, and he found that, as a man, his position and opportunities were not appreciably different from those which he occupied and enjoyed as a boy.

Of course he might have felt the change more keenly if his youth had been passed in leading strings, and if whatever he desired the most were removed the farthest from his reach. Injudicious parents or guardians could have rendered his early days a burden and might have made him feel, on passing from their control, that he was like the slave who escapes from bondage and breathes the air of freedom. From his youth upwards Elfric had been subjected to no galling restraint; he had not been the victim either of iron discipline or foolish laxity ; at the time when he most required sage control he was a helpless invalid owing to an accident. There fore his lot was altogether exceptional. He had grown to manhood without experiencing the restraints which most youths have to undergo, while he had enjoyed comparative independence without being the worse for having been left almost entirely to himself.

A human being, like a tree, may thrive better in a state of nature than in a hothouse. Just as the tree may be stunted by the biting winds, or blasted by lightning, so may the human being over whom no parent or relation exercises an affectionate and unremitting watchfulness, be blighted and ruined. There are trees, however, which though they grow without supports are yet perfectly symmetrical. A little training may be advantageous to a tree and a human being, while too much may be mischievous to both. So far from Elfric Dorian having been injured by the independence which he had enjoyed, his best qualities were largely due to the absence of restraint and to the natural manner in which he had grown up. When he was actually free to do whatever he pleased MAYGROVE. he did not feel either happier than he had been when under the care of his guardians, nor did he realize that he was in the slightest degree more independent.

Several changes had taken place at May grove since he last saw it. James Pogson lay in the churchyard, his visits to The Green Man and Still having shortened his days. Jane, the cook and housekeeper, was an old woman who sat by the fire and kept up the pretence of governing the household, though her niece Mary, to whom she went through the form of giving orders, really filled her place. A young man, named John Elcot, who had been James Pogson's helper in the garden and the stable, discharged his duties till some definite arrangement was made. Anna Pogson lived in the village with her aunt. Jane had proposed that she should fill the vacant place of housemaid ; but Anna intimated that she had no intention of entering service. " Do you think of going on the parish, then ? " asked old Jane when her proposal was rejected with something like scorn.

" No fear of my troubling you, Jane, whatever I do," was Anna's reply, which caused Jane to say when she had left the kitchen : — " Now, Mary, I have never been mistaken in my life and remember my words ; Anna Pogson won't come to no good. She is always reading books and a girl that reads too many books is never satisfied with the station in which God has placed her. Don't you take to reading, Mary." "Me take to reading!" exclaimed Mary, "Why ! I never thought of such a thing! I had enough of that when at school. I hate books." It is quite true that Anna availed herself of the permission given to read what she liked in the library at Maygrove, and a result of her reading was shown in the letter which she sent to Elfric announcing her mother's death ; one or two sentences having been copied from one ofthe letters signed Araminta or Arabella in The Spectator.

She -was unaware that these letters were not the pro ductions of fine ladies in Addison's time, and MAYGROVE. that they were mere imitations. Yet they were far less unnatural than the letters to which Dr. Johnson affixed female names in The Rambler. It was said of him that he would make little fishes talk like whales ; he certainly represented the women of his day writing as artificially as himself. Another result was caused by the liberty of multifarious reading which Anna enjoyed. Her ideas widened, and the lowly sphere in which she was born appeared too narrow for her newly aroused ambition. Books created a new world for her, a world which was more varied as well as finer than that of which Maygrove was the centre. This kind of self-education was that which Mr. Ruskin recommended as being the best for young girls.

In his lecture at Manches ter entitled " Queens' Gardens," Mr. Ruskin stated that while modern magazines and novels should be kept out of a girl's way, there would be benefit rather than harm in giving a girl unlimited access to a library of old and classical books ; " there she will find what is good for her ; you cannot : for there is just this difference between the making of a girl's character and a boy's — you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does — she will wither without sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as a narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough ; she may fall and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some moments of her life ; but you cannot fetter her ; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take any, and in mind as in body, must have always — " ' Her household motions light and free And steps of virgin liberty.' " Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field.

It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than you, and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought would have been so." What Anna gained on the one hand, she lost on the other. It is an advantage, no MAYGROVE. doubt, to have one's mind filled and formed by reading English classics in prose and verse, yet the advantage is not always obvious or absolute. In her case she felt herself more isolated than she was before. Her companions took no pleasure in subjects with which she had become familiar and fond ; she lost her interest in the prosaic matters of everyday life which occupied them. Indeed, it seemed to be true, as old Jane averred, that too much reading had done Anna harm. Immediately after her father's death she left Maygrove and went to live in the village with a widowed aunt who kept a small shop there.

Anna had no more inten tion of helping in the shop than of becoming a servant, her plan being to live genteelly, as she called it, as a dressmaker, for which purpose she was taking lessons. The daughters of the poorer class in England resort to dressmaking when in a state of dependence just as those of another class become governesses when in similar circumstances, and both have generally a harder struggle for existence than the domestic servants whom they look down upon and despise. Elfric met Miss Tarbold at Maygrove. She had come there at his request and for a short time only, as she was now most reluctant to quit her cottage and pined when long absent from it ; the simple round of her daily home-life having become a second nature. Still, when asked as a favour to give advice and help towards putting Maygrove in order, she did not like to decline ; but she made it a condition that her stay was to be limited to a month.

The season was early spring and then Maygrove was at its best, this being an inducement which weighed with her. She delighted in the large garden at Maygrove, the one before her cottage being a tiny patch in comparison. In the autumn five years before Elfric had left the ancestral home of which he was now the master. He had seen many things and places in the interval, and he was a different being from the timid youth who started for Westmoreland with the feeling that he was engaged in a bold adventure. Happily for himself, he had pre served his youthful freshness and enthusiasm, and he retained the illusion that life, when accompanied with robust health, is well worth living. His cosmopolitan sightseeing and experience had not destroyed his appetite for simple pleasures. The unhappy young men who, like Sir Charles Coldstream in the play, have been prematurely used up, are far more pitiable objects than the old men who have outlived their senses and their faculties and who vegetate rather than live.

Though stunted in his growth and delicate in appearance and looking as if a breath would blow him away, Elfric ate his meals with a healthy appetite, slept soundly through the watches of the night and was able to boast that he always felt well. It might be said of him that he must be supremely* happy, having nothing to desire that would render his condition essentially better. There is a well-known story which Scott narrated in verse, of the melancholy Sultan Soliman setting forth from Serendib in quest of a happy man's shirt in order that, by obtaining possession of it, he might be happy also. The happy man proved to be a shirtless Irishman, so the Sultan returned to Serendib " as sad as he came." While Elfric had not lost his interest in life and his zest for its purest delights, he was nearly as dissatisfied as Sultan Soliman, or as Prince Rasselas was when dwelling in the Happy Valley in the Kingdom of Amhara.

Like other men who have little to complain of and who desire relief from imaginary discomforts, he could not precisely tell what ailed him. No misery is so intolerable and lasting as that which is styled purely imaginary. A person of a dull nature and lymphatic temperament is easily pleased, an abundance of food, drink and raiment, and the satisfaction of the baser and material appetites, being sufficient to gratify such a one. But when a particular mental state is the root of the mischief, then the keener the imagination the deeper lies the pain and the more difficult is its removal. Without having grown unnaturally morbid, Elfric had worked himself into an unwholesome mental condition, giving himself far too much concern about things which a man of a less sensitive nature would have regarded with equanimity, if not entire indifference.

Nothing disarranges a man's mental economy so much as the advent and ex plosion of religious doubts, especially when, as in a case such as that of Elfric Dorian, there has been no fixed habit of life. In religion as in politics the children of a family generally follow the example of their parents. To object, and still more decline to do what others have done and professed in certain cases, is not only accounted rebellion against the established social order, but it requires either unusual courage or inherent folly to make the attempt. Hence it is that reformers are either in advance of their age or else in ferior in intellectual' capacity to their fellows. The man who does not dread public opinion is either very bold or else is deficient in the power of calculating chances. The picture which Macaulay painted of George Fox, though somewhat exaggerated, is not wantin<> in truth.

As a young man George Fox saw visions and thought that he could cast out devils. He was then in what it was the fashion, many years ago, to call a parlous state. From the scientific point of view he would now be pronounced scarcely responsible for his actions. Those who are too fearful of incurring responsibility never stir out of the beaten track, they are like the officials who served out raw coffee-beans to soldiers in the field on the ground that nothing is said in the army regulations about coffee being roasted and ground. That the soldiers cannot roast and grind the coffee does not give them any more concern than they would feel if they were told to serve them with cannon-balls, though knowing all the time that unless gunpowder were served out also the cannon-balls could not be discharged from the guns.

George Fox found, as many others have done before and after his day that the clergy men belonging to the Established Church could not give him any help. If he had simply desired to join any recognized Church his path might have been made smooth. But his doubts and mental difficulties were puzzles which those to whom he appealed for aid either could not solve or else refused to do so. One jolly old clergyman of the Church of England advised him to smoke tobacco and to sing psalms, another recommended him to lose blood in order to be relieved from the troubles which beset him. Dissenting ministers could not give him any assistance, and what they said made him stigmatize them as blind guides. Failing to obtain advice or consolation in the quarters where he hoped to find it, George Fox brooded over his unruly thoughts till he received what he considered to be a revelation, and then he set up as a religious reformer and did many eccentric things while founding the demure Society of Friends.

There was little of the social or religious innovator in Elfric Dorian ; his mind was neither ambitious nor ill-regulated. His reflection on the established order of religious professions and creeds had not led him to commit any startling act, nor had he indulged in any wild speculations about the salvation of his fellows. Indeed, till Miss Tarbold came to live in Maygrove, he was a very irregular church-goer. His father had quarrelled with the parish clergyman shortly before Elfric's birth and when a new rector filled the place of the one with whom his father had been at daggers drawn, Maygrove was an empty house without a resident head. At Rothay Rectory there were many discussions about religion from the historical rather than from the practical point of view, and nothing in the short sermons preached by Mr. Ranford to his small flock every Sunday* morning either excited intellectual doubts or soothed any objections which might be entertained.

It was at Rothay, however, as has already been stated that Elfric had been incited by Miss Norwich to reconsider his convictions, if his hazy and inherited views can be so designated, and to read the works of Auguste Comte of which she had formed a high opinion and which she had done her best to render attractive and popular. That Comte was a great man cannot be disputed by any one who has read his writings ; whether he MAYGROVE. were as great as some of his admirers contend is a question to which the answers may not be unanimous. But, whether undervalued by those who know him by name only, or over praised by those who fear to criticize one whom they revere as the " Master," the fact that Elfric was powerfully impressed by the grandiose theories and aims of Comte cannot be denied. Mr. Ranford's opposition gave a stimulus to Elfric's determination to accept and help to propagate a new philosophy and a scientific religion.

And when Margaret denounced Comte in a lady's strong language and said she hoped that Elfric would never be duped by his nonsense, Elfric's desire to justify his liking led him to laud Comte's works with redoubled ardour. Mr. Ranford regarded Elfric's admiration for the philosophical religion which it was the aim of the founder of Positivism to establish, as a boyish whim which would soon lose its charm and pass away. Margaret Ranford appeared to shrink with physical terror from the suggestion that another religious system than that which her father taught could have a foundation in truth. He was intellectually indifferent to all competing forms of faith and worship, being thoroughly convinced of the perfection of his own, while she was emotionally upset whenever any attempt was made to call in question the faith of her childhood and the practice of her later years.

Perhaps if Elfric had found agreement where he found an tagonism and ridicule, he might have felt less disposed than he did to give a close attention to what he was pre-disposed to regard as a new revelation. When persons whose minds have been disquieted with intel lectual doubts are humoured, they may con tinue firm in the faith which they inherited ; but violent objection, like persecution, may render them stiff-necked and prone to follow their new course. There would be no martyrs if there were no persecutors. The Holy In quisition has made more infidels than Hume's writings. No Auto da Fd can be laid to the charge of the Church of England, yet the Puritans, and the Dissenters of a later day could bear witness to the intolerance of provol. in. MAYGROVE. fessed members of it, among whom Charles the Second and Lord Bolingbroke were the most scandalous examples.

Contrary to the anticipation which he had formed from a few conversations at the out set, Elfric found that, while admitting the novelty and value of the Positivist philosophy, Allan Dyott was more antagonistic than he expected to the Positivist religion. They often discussed the subject together. Allan Dyott had the advantage over Elfric Dorian of friendship with one of the earliest and most notable English converts to the new creed, who was its first apostle and afterwards its prophet in this country. Allan had made Dr. Rocket's personal acquaintance when the latter was the tutor of his college. He was a man who exercised an almost inexplicable fascination over every one who came in contact with him. As a scholar he might have ranked in literature, had he desired it, with the Bentleys and Parrs of a bygone age.

But Dr. Rocket was far superior to him who thinks that his life has been profitably spent if he should succeed in throwing a new light upon a corrupt text, or interpreting an accepted classical text in a new fashion. He was accomplished, so to say, to his finger-tips, yet his modesty was more remarkable than his knowledge. When he embraced the religion of Positivism, he began the work of self-education as if, till then, he had been utterly uninstructed, and he persevered till he had mastered every book in the Positivist library and made him self an adept in all the duties with which, as he understood, an aspirant for the leading place in the Society of Positivists ought to be intimately acquainted. Younger men, not his inferiors in suavity or talent, had been influenced by his teaching and example and they became disciples of Comte and zealous propagators of the new religion.

Allan Dyott introduced Elfric to Dr. Rocket and also to Mr. Francis West bourne, the two great apostles of Positivism in this country. It is a distinguishing mark of the nine teenth century that a man or woman living in it may profess antagonism to the religion MAYGROVE. of the majority without being generally denounced as an emissary from Satan. It is possible that a large proportion of in difference mingles with the toleration which now exists ; but that it does exist cannot be denied. This toleration is a bar to the foundation of new religions. However wicked persecution may be in the abstract, it has the practical effect of stimulating zeal. No body of men in our day has been more successful than the Mormons in founding a new religious and social hierarchy and no body has been persecuted with such great and unremitting cruelty.

The Mormons were driven at the point of the bayonet out of Nauvoo in Missouri, where they had built for themselves homes and a beautiful temple. Then, after many days' journeying and after undergoing hardships as great as those of the Israelites in the Wilderness, they reached the Great Salt Lake amid the Rocky Moun tains, and built for themselves a city within sight of that inland sea. They gradually reclaimed the desert; they peacefully pur sued their course without annoying those who were opposed to them. Indeed, they lived far apart from those of their country men whom they styled Gentiles, and whom they regarded with the contempt and despair which Christians manifest for the worshippers of stocks and stones. When it was found that the mountains and canyons of the Territory of Utah abounded in silver the Gentiles flocked to them and eagerly sought for the precious metal.

Then the persecution of the Mormons recommenced and then they became more steadfast than they had been in the religion which Joe Smith founded and for which he suffered death. If the Mormons had remained a peculiar and a neglected people, if they had been allowed to carry their theories into practice for a series of years, if the zeal of the generation which had known persecution had been succeeded by the laxity of the generation which was allowed to have its own way, and if the schisms which could not be avoided had been suffered to produce their natural result, then Mormonism might now be numbered among the eccentric faiths of a few enthusiasts, might be as MAYGROVE. surely doomed to die out as the faith for which the Shakers sacrificed the perpetua tion of the species on the supposition that the sooner the human race died out the better.

But repeated persecution has given Mor monism a new lease of life, and the greater the efforts to extinguish it the more fiercely does it blaze. The Positivists can boast of a Master who was a man of exceptional intellect, of re markable self-denial, of great mental power and of an unbending will. Auguste Comte made many sacrifices to maintain his position ; but the Positivists have never been subjected to the treatment which might be thought suitable for wild dogs and which inevitably converts men into wild animals. They have never been hunted and harried to death like the Scottish Covenanters. They7 know nothing of the torments which were inflicted upon the Quakers in this country and in New England. They have been suffered to walk in peace along the path which ends in the apotheosis of Humanity.

The smoother their path the greater have been their difficulties. There are many men who will sacrifice anything for an idea and who are energetic and obstinate in proportion to the obstacles which strew their paths. The un doing of wrongs and the redressing of grievances have been the favourite occupa tion of enthusiasts from the days of the Crusades down to those in which slavery has been abolished throughout civilized Europe and America. Yet, if the Positivists have made less way than they would have done had theyr been treated as James the First and his son treated the Puritans in England and as Louis the Fourteenth treated the Hugue nots in France, it is a subject of congratulation that the accomplished and amiable men who direct the Positivist societies in this country have not been converted into martyrs.

No one of common sense or right feeling would wish their lives to be shortened. Good men ought not to be burnt at the stake even though their deaths should benefit their cause. There is something artificial in the Church which is the offspring of a martyr's blood. It is true that cruel persecution will MAYGROVE. make more converts to the religion which is under a ban than the most perfect syllogisms and the most persuasive arguments, yet it is better for the world that every form of faith, as well as every flower or tree, should have fair play and be allowed to develop or decay according to natural selection and natural laws. Allan Dyott did his utmost to dissuade Elfric from joining the Positivist Society ; he could not understand how any sensible man could be other than an Agnostic, and he put his views so strongly before Elfric that the latter was strengthened in his determi nation to be a Positivist.

Allan aided in making Elfric a Positivist just as Laud con tributed to convert recalcitrant members of the Church of England into Puritans. If the Separatists who fled from England to Holland because they were persecuted and then passed from Holland to America and founded New Plymouth had been allowed to worship God in their own way when they first became a sect, the settlement of New England would have been retarded. In our own day when a member of a family desires to change from the form of religion in which he or she has been trained to one which is regarded by the family with abhorrence, the convert or pervert is the more resolved upon the change in proportion to the vehemence of the opposition. Let the change be treated as a matter of indifference and it may never be made. It was in the nature of things, then, that the warnings and denunciations of Allan should have contributed to make Elfric become a Positivist and to take pride in so doing.

The influence of a religion is less active than that of its professors. A Francis Xavier will convert thousands ; another man will fail to make a single convert. In the same way and for the same reasons one public speaker will empty a hall and another will excite the enthusiasm of his hearers. If it had not been that the exponents of Positivism were men of exceptional talent and character Elfric might never have become a professor of the Positivist religion. He was somewhat puzzled which branch of the society in this country MAYGROVE. he should join, whether he should give his adherence to the one over which Dr. Rocket presides or that which recognizes Mr. Francis Westbourne as its head. Dr. Rocket was the older man of the two. He had more apostolic sweetness than vigour ; he was too mild a man to inspirit a forlorn hope, though he was as ready as any sufferer for conscience sake to make personal sacrifices and to follow the path which he deemed the right one.

Yet Elfric was specially impressed with the younger and more fervent of the two Positivist leaders, the burning and brilliant words of Mr. Francis Westbourne arousing and im pressing his mind. Both of these men would have made their mark in anything to which they set their hands, and each had originality enough to move the world by announcing his own opinions rather than by promulgating those of another. Indeed, Mr. Francis Westbourne was intellectually the equal of him whom he humbly and reverently hailed as "the Master." A new religion owes as much to its exponents as to its founder. Great though Comte's power was, he lacked many things which his disciples possess and among them no one has displayed greater zeal and capacity than Mr. Francis West bourne. The most conscientious man who yearns for the truth, whose face is turned towards the goal of his hopes and whose highest aim is to benefit his fellows, is often regarded by the ignorant, and by the half-educated who are more intolerant than the ignorant, as an evil doer because he declines to tread the beaten path.

Such a man is apt to be un compromising in turn. He regards half measures as odious ; he wishes to prove his sincerity by making no allowance for others. As a new believer in the Positivist faith Elfric Dorian was delighted to exhibit his emancipation from what he stigmatized as old superstitions. He became eager to sever his connexion with the Church of his fathers, and he was anxious to let it be known how great a mental change had occurred in his person. When Miss Tarbold proposed that they should drive to church on Sunday as MAYGROVE. they used to do when she was last an inmate of Maygrove, he startled her by saying : — " I am sorry, Aunt Tarbold, that I cannot go to church with you." "Why not, Elfric ? Though if you prefer your own parish church to mine, I have nothing to say. The distance is about the same to both, and you used to like the one I go to."