Father and Son | Page 4

will not need to have it explained to
them that the comedy was superficial and the tragedy essential.
September 1907

CHAPTER I
THIS book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two
consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in
disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to
fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. There
came a time when neither spoke the same language as the other, or
encompassed the same hopes, or was fortified by the same desires. But,
at least, it is some consolation to the survivor, that neither, to the very
last hour, ceased to respect the other, or to regard him with a sad
indulgence.
The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in
comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place
introduce are as nothing. It is a mournful satisfaction, but yet a
satisfaction, that they were both of them able to obey the law which
says that ties of close family relationship must be honoured and
sustained. Had it not been so, this story would never have been told.
The struggle began soon, yet of course it did not begin in early infancy.
But to familiarize my readers with the conditions of the two persons
(which were unusual) and with the outlines of their temperaments

(which were, perhaps innately, antagonistic), it is needful to open with
some account of all that I can truly and independently recollect, as well
as with some statements which are, as will be obvious, due to
household tradition.
My parents were poor gentlefolks; not young; solitary, sensitive, and
although they did not know it, proud. They both belonged to what is
called the Middle Class, and there was this further resemblance
between them that they each descended from families which had been
more than well-to-do in the eighteenth century, and had gradually
sunken in fortune. In both houses there had been a decay of energy
which had led to decay in wealth. In the case of my Father's family it
had been a slow decline; in that of my Mother's, it had been rapid. My
maternal grandfather was born wealthy, and in the opening years of the
nineteenth century, immediately after his marriage, he bought a little
estate in North Wales, on the slopes of Snowdon. Here he seems to
have lived in a pretentious way, keeping a pack of hounds and
entertaining on an extravagant scale. He had a wife who encouraged
him in this vivid life, and three children, my Mother and her two
brothers. His best trait was his devotion to the education of his children,
in which he proclaimed himself a disciple of Rousseau. But he can
hardly have followed the teaching of 'Emile' very closely, since he
employed tutors to teach his daughter, at an extremely early age, the
very subjects which Rousseau forbade, such as history, literature and
foreign languages.
My Mother was his special favourite, and his vanity did its best to
make a bluestocking of her. She read Greek, Latin and even a little
Hebrew, and, what was more important, her mind was trained to be
self-supporting. But she was diametrically opposed in essential matters
to her easy-going, luxurious and self-indulgent parents. Reviewing her
life in her thirtieth year, she remarked in some secret notes: 'I cannot
recollect the time when I did not love religion.' She used a still more
remarkable expression: 'If I must date my conversion from my first
wish and trial to be holy, I may go back to infancy; if I am to postpone
it till after my last wilful sin, it is scarcely yet begun.' The irregular
pleasures of her parents' life were deeply distasteful to her, as such

were to many young persons in those days of the wide revival of
Conscience, and when my grandfather, by his reckless expenditure,
which he never checked till ruin was upon him, was obliged to sell his
estate, and live in penury, my Mother was the only member of the
family who did not regret the change. For my own part, I believe I
should have liked my reprobate maternal grandfather, but his conduct
was certainly very vexatious. He died, in his eightieth year, when I was
nine months old.
It was a curious coincidence that life had brought both my parents
along similar paths to an almost identical position in respect to
religious belief. She had started from the Anglican standpoint, he from
the Wesleyan, and each, almost without counsel from others, and after
varied theological experiments, had come to take up precisely the same
attitude towards all divisions of the Protestant Church-- that, namely, of
detached and unbiased contemplation. So far as the sects agreed with
my Father