Eminent Victorians | Page 6

another
direction. 'Watch, my dear Samuel,' wrote the elder Wilberforce to his

son, 'watch with jealousy whether you find yourself unduly solicitous
about acquitting yourself; whether you are too much chagrined when
you fail, or are puffed up by your success. Undue solicitude about
popular estimation is a weakness against which all real Christians must
guard with the utmost jealous watchfulness. The more you can retain
the impression of your being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses of the
invisible world, to use the scripture phrase, the more you will be armed
against this besetting sin.' But suddenly it seemed as if such a warning
could, after all, have very little relevance to Manning; for, on his
leaving Oxford, the brimming cup was dashed from his lips. He was
already beginning to dream of himself in the House of Commons, the
solitary advocate of some great cause whose triumph was to be
eventually brought about by his extraordinary efforts, when his father
was declared a bankrupt, and all his hopes of a political career came to
an end forever.
It was at this time that Manning became intimate with a pious lady, the
sister of one of his College friends, whom he used to describe as his
Spiritual Mother. He made her his confidante; and one day, as they
walked together in the shrubbery, he revealed the bitterness of the
disappointment into which his father's failure had plunged him. She
tried to cheer him, and then she added that there were higher aims open
to him which he had not considered. 'What do you mean?' he asked.
'The kingdom of Heaven,' she answered; 'heavenly ambitions are not
closed against you.' The young man listened, was silent, and said at last
that he did not know but she was right. She suggested reading the Bible
together; and they accordingly did so during the whole of that Vacation,
every morning after breakfast. Yet, in spite of these devotional
exercises, and in spite of a voluminous correspondence on religious
subjects with his Spiritual Mother, Manning still continued to indulge
in secular hopes. He entered the Colonial Office as a supernumerary
clerk, and it was only when the offer of a Merton Fellowship seemed to
depend upon his taking orders that his heavenly ambitions began to
assume a definite shape. Just then he fell in love with Miss Deffell,
whose father would have nothing to say to a young man without
prospects, and forbade him the house. It was only too true; what WERE
the prospects of a supernumerary clerk in the Colonial Office?
Manning went to Oxford and took orders. He was elected to the Merton

Fellowship, and obtained through the influence of the Wilberforces a
curacy in Sussex. At the last moment he almost drew back. 'I think the
whole step has been too precipitate,' he wrote to his brother-in-law. 'I
have rather allowed the instance of my friends, and the allurements of
an agreeable curacy in many respects, to get the better of my sober
judgment.' His vast ambitions, his dreams of public service, of honours,
and of power, was all this to end in a little country curacy 'agreeable in
many respects'? But there was nothing for it; the deed was done; and
the Fates had apparently succeeded very effectively in getting rid of
Manning. All he could do was to make the best of a bad business.
Accordingly, in the first place, he decided that he had received a call
from God 'ad veritatem et ad seipsum'; and, in the second, forgetting
Miss Deffell, he married his rector's daughter. Within a few months the
rector died, and Manning stepped into his shoes; and at least it could be
said that the shoes were not uncomfortable. For the next seven years he
fulfilled the functions of a country clergyman. He was energetic and
devout; he was polite and handsome; his fame grew in the diocese. At
last he began to be spoken of as the probable successor to the old
Archdeacon of Chichester. When Mrs. Manning prematurely died, he
was at first inconsolable, but he found relief in the distraction of
redoubled work. How could he have guessed that one day he would
come to number that loss among 'God's special mercies? Yet so it was
to be. In after years, the memory of his wife seemed to be blotted from
his mind; he never spoke of her; every letter, every record, of his
married life he destroyed; and when word was sent to him that her
grave was falling into ruin: 'It is best so,' the Cardinal answered, 'let it
be. Time effaces all things.' But, when the grave was yet fresh, the
young Rector would sit beside it, day after day, writing his sermons.
II
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