II
Let me speak, reverently, as indeed I must, of the home life and the family circle. My father was the youngest of ten children; he was born at the beginning of the year 1800; consequently, he belonged to the eighteenth century. His father, who was in some branch of the Civil Service, died, I believe, about the year 1825. Of him I have no tradition save that he went to his club every evening—this means his tavern—returning home for supper at nine punctually; that he was somewhat austere—or was it only of uncertain temper?—and that his daughters on hearing the paternal footstep outside always retreated to bed. Out of the ten children I only know of eight. Two of them were in the Navy; one died young, the other got into some trouble and had to leave the Service—perhaps, however, he was one of the officers who were dismissed on the reduction of the Navy to a peace footing. Another entered the Civil Service and rose to a highly respectable position; he was the first of the name whose portrait was ever exhibited at the Royal Academy. Two of the daughters married, one of them a man of considerable fortune; the other an official of the Dockyard. As for my father, he tried many things. For sometime he was in very low water; then he got up again and settled in a quiet office. He was not a pushing man, nor did he know how to catch at opportunities. Mostly, he waited. Meantime he was a studious man, whose chief delight was in reading; he was especially well acquainted with the English drama, from Shakespeare to Sheridan; and he had a good collection of plays, which he parted with when he thought that they might do harm to his boys. I had, however, by that time read them all, and I am sure that they never did any harm to me. He was a shy man, and very retiring; he never went into any kind of society; he belonged to no Masonic Lodge or other fraternity: he would not take any part in municipal affairs; he was fond of gardening, and had a very good garden, in which he spent the greater part of every morning; and he asked for nothing more than an occasional visit in the afternoon from a friend and an evening quiet and free from interruption.
He was never in the least degree moved by the Calvinistic fanaticism of the time. So called “religious” people, those who had been under “conviction,” the “Lord’s People” (as they arrogantly called themselves), were very much exercised about the Elect, their limited number, and the extreme uncertainty that any of their friends belonged to that select body. As for themselves, of course, they had no doubt. What was the meaning of Conviction unless it was also Election? The Devils, they would say, believe and tremble. Assuredly they were not Devils. Therefore—but the conclusion was illogical. Now my father took the somewhat original line of sticking to the rules and regulations. “The Lord,” he said, “has laid down Rules plain and simple. There they are, written up on the wall of the Church and read out every Sunday for everybody to hear. Very good; I keep these Rules, and I go to Church every Sunday out of respect to the Almighty who drew up those Rules. No more can be expected of any man. As for what they talk, my boy, they can’t talk away the plain Rules—because there they are; and I don’t find that the man who keeps those Rules is going to be damned, but quite the contrary.” I have often wondered at this singular attitude, which was so entirely contrary to the habit of the time. But then my father did not altogether belong to the time. Although regular in attendance at church, he never ventured to present himself at Holy Communion. In this respect he did follow his own generation, in which the participation in the Sacrament was a profession of peculiar sanctity. Since we were warned how we might, by unworthily partaking, cause our own damnation, it was generally felt that it was wiser not to run the risk.
When I consider the extent of the Calvinistic teaching; its dreadful narrowness; the truly heartless and pitiless way in which those solemn faces above the wobbling Geneva bands spoke of the small number of the Elect and the certainty of endless torment for the multitude—the whole illustrating the ineffable Love of God—I am amazed that people were as cheerful as they were. I suppose that people were accustomed to this kind of talk; there was no question of rebellion; nobody dared to doubt or disbelieve; only, you see, the doctrine if realised would have made life intolerable; the human affections only the source and spring of agony; religion a selfish, individual, doubtful hope; the closing years of old age a horrible anticipation of what was to follow. Therefore the thing was put away in silence; it was brought out in two sermons every week; it was regarded as a theological exercise in which the congregation could admire the intellectual subtleties by which every gracious word of Christ was, by some distortion of half a verse from Paul, turned into the exact opposite of what it meant. For my own part, I now understand what an excellent discipline the Sunday services were. No getting out of it on any terms; two services and at each a sermon an hour long and sometimes more—doctrinal, Evangelical and Calvinistic. One had to sit quite still and awake; not to wriggle; not to whisper; not to titter. As for the sermon itself, I enjoyed it very much. Of course I understood very early that the sermon had no bearing on my own conduct nor on any prospects I might have entertained concerning the life to come. Indeed, after I had read the Book of Revelation, which I did early, I disconnected Heaven altogether from the man with the white bands, and made up my mind that he was talking about something which was quite unconnected with the Apostle of Patmos—as indeed was the case. In church, therefore, I found many consolations for the length of the service. During the Litany and the Prayers I could bury my face in my hands and go off in dreams and imaginations—they were dreams of delight. During the sermon I could drop my eyes and carry on these dreams. To this day I can never listen to a sermon. The preachers begin—I try to give them a chance. Then the old habit returns. Involuntarily my eyes drop, I fly away, I am again John-o’-dreams. Perhaps that is the reason why I have not been to church, except once or twice, for nearly thirty years. I except the Cathedral service, which does not mean a sermon. I go into St. Paul’s or Westminster if I am passing by, and sit in a corner till the anthem is over. Then I get up and walk out, my soul refreshed with the prayer and praise of the choir and organ.
It was another great stroke of good luck—see what good things were provided for me by Fortune!—that we had a small library. Very few middleclass people in my childhood had any books to speak of, except a few shelves filled with dreary divinity or old Greek and Latin Classics. We had an excellent collection of books. There were, I remember, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Bunyan’s works, Marryat’s works, and those of Dickens which were then written; all Miss Edgeworth’s books, Hume and Smollett’s History, Conder’s Traveller, the Spectator and the Guardian; Sterne’s works, and some of Swift’s; Pope’s Homer and some of his other poems; Goldsmith’s works complete; the Waverley Novels; Byron, Wordsworth, and a number of minor poets; whole shelves of plays; some volumes of an Encyclopædia; two volumes, very useful to me, called Elegant Extracts; histories of France, Rome, and Greece; Washington Irving’s works, and a good many others. Besides which, I saved up my pocket-money and belonged to the “Athenæum,” which had a small lending library. For a boy who loved books beyond and above everything, here was a collection that lasted till I was twelve, at least. I was encouraged to read not only by my father’s example, but by my mother’s exhortations and approval. She saw in learning a hope for the future; she had ambitions for her boys, though she kept these ambitions to herself.
Let me speak once for all about my mother. She was a New Forest girl, born and brought up in a village called Dibden, near Hythe and Beaulieu (Bewlay). The church stands actually in the Forest; a peaceful, quiet church, to which I once paid a pilgrimage. My mother was the youngest of a large family. During her childhood she ran about on the outskirts of the Forest, catching and riding the bare-backed ponies, and drinking in the folklore and old-wife wisdom of that sequestered district. At eighteen years of age, I think in 1825, she married and came to Portsmouth to live. Her father was not a New Forest man; he came from Lincolnshire, his name being Eddis. Her mother belonged to an old New Forest race of farmers or yeomen named Nowell. Her father was by trade or profession a builder, contractor, and architect. Some portions of Hurst Castle were built by him. I imagine that his business lay chiefly in Southampton, and that his family lived for convenience of country air across the water. He died comparatively young, and his large family seems to have dwindled down to a very few descendants, one branch of whom alone is known to me at the present moment.
My mother was the cleverest woman I have ever known: the quickest witted; the surest and safest in her judgments; the most prophetic for those she loved; the most far-seeing. Her education had been what you might expect in a village between the years 1807, when she was born, and 1825, when she married. But it sufficed—because it was not book-learning that she wanted for the care and upbringing of the children, for whom she rose early and worked late. I have said that ours was a household in which economy had to be practised, but without privation. The comfort of the house, the well-being of the children, were alike due to my mother’s genius for administration. Imagine, if you can, her pride and joy when her eldest child, her eldest son, took prizes and scholarships at Cambridge; was first, year after year, in his college examinations, and finished by becoming senior wrangler and first Smith’s Prizeman! It was my happiness, twenty years afterwards, to make her proud of her third son, who was gaining some success in other fields. When I think of such imaginative gifts as I have possessed, I go back in memory to the old times when we sat at my mother’s feet in blindman’s holiday, when the sun had gone down, but the lights were not brought in, and she would tell us stories of the New Forest; when I, for one, would listen, gazing into the red coals and seeing, as in a procession, the figures of the story pass before me and act their parts between the bars. She gave me such imaginative powers as have enabled me to play my part as a novelist; it is my inheritance from her. To others of her children she gave other gifts; to one the mathematical mind; to another a marvellous memory and a grasp of figures quite remarkable; to a third she gave the rapid mind which seizes facts and jumps at conclusions while others are groping after the main issues; to another she gave the eye and the hand of the artist—though this gift was unhappily wasted.
When I grew older I began to desire to see things of which the books that I had read were full. Now Portsea Island is excellently placed to give a boy a right understanding of the sea and of ships, and of the folk who go upon the sea in ships; but it is a perfectly flat island, nowhere more than a few feet above the high tide level; there are no streams upon it; there are no woods; there are no hills; there are no villages; there are no village churches; there is no pleasant country. Only in one place, on the east side where they once began to make a canal leading from nothing to nowhere, there is a wild tract of land looking out across Langston Harbour, a lagoon on whose broad bosom there are no ships, and the only boats are the duck hunters’ broad flat craft with outriggers. Beyond the island, however, and on the mainland, there was another kind of country, a Delectable Land.
When I was about twelve or so it was a joy to me to walk four miles to the little village of Cosham, on the mainland, and so over Portsdown Hill into the lovely country beyond; the lane led past a picturesque old church, concealed among the trees and far from any village. I have found many Hampshire churches hidden away in woods far from any hamlet. The church of Rowner, near Gosport, that of Widley, behind Portsdown, that of Dibden, near Hythe, where my mother’s people are buried, occur to me. I suppose that the parishes were large, and that the church, having to serve several hamlets, was placed in a spot most convenient for all. It was at Widley Church that I first felt the charm of things ancient. To sit in a lonely churchyard among trees and mouldering mounds, and to gaze upon a venerable house which has soothed and consoled generations—say from the time when King Alfred brought back the scattered priests to Wessex—to be all alone, with the imagination of a child and the knowledge of a bookish boy; to feed the imagination with the long thoughts of childhood, was a kind of ecstasy. It seemed as if I was nearer the gates of heaven than I have ever since attained—
—“but now ’tis little joy
To find that heaven is farther off
Than when I was a boy.”
Beyond the church, the lane led to a stream—the first stream I had ever seen, bright, swift, babbling and bubbling over the stones. Over it grew the trees—I forget what trees—indeed, I knew not then what they were; a fallen branch lay across the stream; dragon flies gleamed in bright flashes over the water; the forest was loud with the song of birds; the heavy bumble-bee droned about the flowers; and I am sure that there were more butterflies, especially the little blue ones—perhaps the prettiest of all—than I have seen elsewhere. I should be afraid to go to Widley Church again. I should perhaps find it restored or rebuilt; and perhaps the lane has houses in it. Let it remain a memory.
I was therefore a town lad—or a seaport lad; the things of Nature, the birds, the flowers, the trees, the woods, the stream, the creatures, were not, so to speak, a part of me. To begin with, I was always shortsighted. I therefore saw little of the endless variety in form, colour, and curve. The shapes of the leaves; the variations of the flowers; the flight and the differences of the birds; the small things of Nature; these I have never seen, to my infinite loss. I went among the woods as a stranger; I had no plant lore, wild flower lore, wood lore; I have never acquired any. In all the years since then I have read but little in the book of Nature. In the printed book, to be sure, I have read a great deal about Nature. It is something, but not everything. And as regards Nature I do not know whether it is better to read of what you know or of what you know nothing. Richard Jefferies walks along a hedge and talks to me. It is like the uplifting of a veil; I am conscious that my senses are imperfect; I am not only short-sighted but I am slow-sighted; it takes time for me to make out things clearly. Again, in the sense of smell I have not, I am convinced, anything like the acuteness of those who have lived much in the country. I have a companion (who has tried to teach me all she knows), who finds, I am aware, a thousand breaths of fragrance where I find only one. She hears in the warbling of the woods a hundred notes, and distinguishes them all—to me they are mostly alike; she knows all the trees, with the infinite varieties of leaf, of colour, of bough and branch, with the loveliness and the charm that belong to each—I take them all together; she knows all the wild flowers and loves them everyone for its own sake and for its own special charm—I love them all together. This comes of a childhood spent in streets and on the seashore; and of a boyhood wherein the leisure hours were chiefly passed coiled up in a corner, nose in book.
In recalling those days it is difficult to separate them from the imaginary characters of my novel—By Celia’s Arbour. When I think of the Dockyard I see the two boys, Ladislas and Leonard, peering into the twilight of the long rope-walk; being launched on board a three-decker; rowing about in the mast pond; watching the semaphore and trying to read its signals; looking into the building-sheds and standing aside to let the Port Admiral pass. When I think of Southsea Common, I see an open heath behind a bank of shingle and sand, with a marsh and a tiny rivulet on one side and a broader marsh on the other; and, standing by itself, the grey old castle on the shore. It is not myself who is running across that heath, but those two boys, who share between them my identity; one is tall and handsome, with a brave and gallant air; the other is short and hump-backed. These two boys take my place on the beach and plunge side by side through the breakers; they row out to Spithead on summer evenings after sunset, when the grey twilight falls upon the sea, and no knell of the bell buoy saddens the soul; they pull that dead man out of the water whom once I found rolled over and over on the shingle; they row about among the hulks and worn out ships up the harbour; they stand on the “logs” and watch the man-o’-war’s boat come alongside under charge of the little middy, who marches along the wooden pier with so much pride, the object of envy and of longing.
The boys are imaginary; the real hero of that story “the Captain” is not. To thy memory, dear old Captain, let me write one more line. He was the friend of all boys; he was the benefactor of many boys; he pulled them out of the gutter, and had them taught and sent them into the Navy; and this silently, so that his left hand knew not what was done by his right hand. There were women whom he pulled out of the lowest gutters and befriended—but I know not how; to me and mine he was a kind of “pal,” to use the word which then we knew not; he understood children and he understood boys. We talked freely together, as a young boy with an old boy. In winter the Captain was dressed all in blue, with the navy button; in summer he wore white ducks, a white waistcoat, and a big coat with the navy button—the crown and anchor. I think that he wore this half-pay uniform on Sundays only. On other days he was in mufti. He was a bachelor, and lived in a house overlooking the mill-dam. At church his pew was next to ours; and as we were too many for our square box, we overflowed into his long box. The hymn books, I remember, were locked up in a receptacle at the end of the pew. When the hymns were given out he produced a bunch of keys. “Get out the tools, my boy,” he would say in a loud whisper; “they are now going to squall.” I never understood his objection to the hymns, but I think he disliked the assistance of a paid choir. To be sure, it was a very bad choir, and the squalling was slow and prolonged. The Captain’s behaviour in church was in other respects exemplary. He sat bolt upright, preserving the appearance of attention in the same attitude for the Litany as for the sermon. Church, for him, as to most old sailors, was part of the day’s duty; the performance of duty qualified the soul for promotion; a simple religion, but one which works admirably in every branch of both Services, and should, I think, be transplanted into the life of the civilian.
The church was large, and contained galleries; the living was small, but the incumbent during the forties was a fine scholar, at one time Fellow of his college at Oxford, who had taken the church coupled with a school which was then attached to it. The school was, I think, founded with the church about the year 1730. Unfortunately it was not endowed. My father was educated at this school, and so were his brothers. Among his fellow-scholars and private friends was the late Sir Frederick Madden, the great antiquary. The school somehow or other—I know not why—went to pieces, somewhere in the forties.
The Rev. H. A——, the “perpetual curate”—an excellent and historical title,—was a short, sturdy man of corpulent habit and a very red face. He had an aggressive way of walking; he marched about fearlessly in all the courts and slums, of which there were many. He was of the school then called “High”—and I believe that he was as far above his brethren, who were all Evangelical, in ecclesiastical history as he was in Latin and Greek. Afterwards I learned more about him. He had been captain of Westminster school; at Oxford he had distinguished himself in the noble art of self-defence, and was champion light bruiser. That accounted for his aggressive walk. He also distinguished himself by his scholarship. His sermons were written in excellent English. I have a volume of them still. He was further remarkable for a fine and discriminating taste in port; such small additions as he made to his slender stipend by private tuition were expended, I have reason to believe, in that most excellent of wines.
I heard, long years after, a piece of scandal concerning this scholar, which I repeat because it explains the man. In a book of small edification called the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, there occurs what may be called an episode in the life of a noble lord. Harriette was one of a large family of daughters, all beautiful, who were one after the other placed by the thoughtfulness of their parents under the protection of certain noblemen and gentlemen. The youngest sister, for Instance, was sold to Lord B——, an aged person who retained the habits of his youth. Harriette relates how the girl went off crying and refused to be comforted, even when her sisters reminded her of the brilliant position she was about to occupy. However, she succeeded in making her protector marry her, and was left a very young widow. She resided at Melton Mowbray, and Mr. H. A——, then a young don at Oxford, was accustomed to pay visits of condolence and consolation to her. I daresay it was not true, but the story somehow raised the subject of it in my estimation. A man incapable of love is only half a man; a man who has loved, if not wisely, is still a man.
My first school was kept by three sisters, daughters of a retired naval surgeon. It was a cheerful school, and we all laughed a good deal. Two of the sisters were “serious,” in the Evangelical language of the day; they had received “conviction”; in the words of the preacher, they were of the “Lord’s people.” The other, who was the eldest, was never “serious”; she was a clever, thoughtful, kindly woman. She was a lifelong friend of my sisters, and married D. A——, who, as I have said, used to accompany us every year to Porchester.
My first independent reading was Robinson Crusoe, to which was added Pilgrim’s Progress, the Book of Revelation, and certain tracts. How I came to read the Book of Revelation I do not know; it terrified me horribly, while it attracted me. As regards the tracts, I suppose they were brought to the house by some of our “serious” friends. One of them spoke of a soul winging its flight to heaven, and I remember watching the tombs, especially those which were old and broken, in the hope of seeing with my own eyes a soul wing its flight to heaven. But I never did.
At the age of nine I was sent as a private pupil to the Rev. H. A——, already mentioned. He made me begin Greek and Latin at the same time. I had to learn by heart great quantities of Virgil and Homer before I could construe them. I also learned grammar in vast quantities. Most of the work was learning by heart and repetition. When I began to translate, which was very soon, my tutor took me along at a rapid rate; I acquired a fair vocabulary, and learned to translate both Latin and Greek with commendable facility. Also I began to do Latin verses as soon as I could string a few words together.
One thing I really could not approve in my experience of H. A——. It was his determination to drive the Church Catechism into my head. Every Monday morning I had to repeat the whole of it. Now for some perverse reason, although I could rattle off miles of Virgil and Homer, I could never get through the Catechism without breaking down. Generally it was in the answer to the question—“What desirest thou in the Lord’s Prayer?” There I met my fate; there I broke down; the cane was at hand—Whack! whack!
I stayed with this tutor for two years or more. I declare that when I left him, at twelve years of age, I knew more Latin and Greek, I could write better verses, I could translate more readily than when I was eighteen. Alas! had I continued with him for three or four years longer, he would have made me, I am certain, a fine scholar. But I left him.
There had been, formerly, a grammar school at Portsmouth. It was endowed, I think, with an income of £200 a year; but in my time it was in decay; very few boys went to it, and I am not certain whether it was still kept up. In Portsea there had been a grammar school—St. George’s Grammar School—this was now closed. A new school had been created at Southsea, called St. Paul’s Grammar School. It was a “proprietary” school, under a committee. It was founded about the year 1830, I believe, and had some reputation for turning out good scholars. My brother, the best man that ever came out of the school, was the captain in 1846, going to Cambridge in October of that year. In 1848, I was taken from my private tutor and placed at St. Paul’s. I was then twelve years of age, and on account of my good Latin and Greek was put at once into the Fifth, among the boys of sixteen or seventeen. They used to bully me a little because I was very small and young, and I was generally at the top. The “head” had taken a fair place in mathematical honours, but, oh! the difference in the classics! There was no more learning by heart; there was no more translating rapidly and with enthusiasm; the Latin verses were scamped. The school was ill-taught; the masters quarrelled; the boys were caned all day long. I think it must have been a good thing for everybody when the committee, I know not why, agreed to shut up the school. They sold the building for a Wesleyan chapel, which it has continued to be until the present day. By this time I knew considerably less of Greek and Latin than when I left my tutor. On the other hand there were gains. There were games, and fights; the boys fought continually. And I made a beginning with mathematics; my former tutor, poor man! could hardly add up, and knew nothing of algebra or Euclid.
The school was closed, and masters and boys dispersed, multivious. I do not think that in after life I ever came across any of those who had been boys with me at that school. The French master, however, remained a friend of ours until his death, a great many years after, at a very advanced age. I have introduced him in a story called All in a Garden Fair, as a teacher of French in a girls’ school:—
“He was a little man, though his daughter looked as if she would be tall; yet not a very little man. His narrow sloping shoulders—a feature one may remark more often in Paris than in London—his small head, and the neatness of his figure made him look smaller than he was. Small Englishmen—this man was a Frenchman—are generally sturdy and broad-shouldered, and nearly always grow fat when they reach the forties. But this was a thin man. In appearance he was extremely neat; he wore a frock-coat buttoned tightly; behind it was a white waistcoat; he had a flower in his button-hole; he wore a pink and white necktie, very striking; his shirt-front and cuffs were perfect; his boots were highly polished; he was five-and-forty, but looked thirty; his hair was quite black and curly, without a touch of white in it; he wore a small black beard; his eyes were also black, and as bright as steel. It is perhaps misleading to compare them with steel, because it is always the villain whose eye glitters like steel. Now M. Hector Philipon was not a villain at all—by no means. The light in his eyes came from the kindness of his heart, not from any villainous aims or wicked passions, and in fact, though his beard and his hair were so very black—black of the deepest dye, such as would have graced even a wicked uncle—he frightened nobody, not even strangers. And of course everybody in those parts knew very well that he was a most harmless and amiable person. He had a voice deep and full, like the voice of a church organ; honey-sweet, too, as well as deep. And at sight of his little girl those bright eyes became as soft as the eyes of a maiden in love. When he spoke, although his English was fluent and correct, you perceived a foreign accent. But he had been so long in the country, and so far away from his own countrymen, that the accent was slight.”
I was then sent, for a stop-gap, to a private school, recently opened by a clergyman who had been a dissenting minister, sometime a student, at Homerton. He was a kindly man, most anxious to do well by his boys, but unfortunately no scholar and no teacher. His school I believe lasted only for two or three years, when he gave it up and became chaplain to a gaol. I have nothing to record of the eighteen months spent with him, except that I forgot more of my Latin and Greek, and having very little to do for school work, I read pretty nearly everything that there was in the house to read.
A boy who is ignorant of things may read the worst books in the world without harm. For my own part, I read, Tristram Shandy through with the keenest delight. I adored the Captain and Corporal Trim, I found Dr. Slop delightful; as to the double entendre with which this work is crammed from beginning to end, I understood nothing, not a single word. When, in after years, I took up the book again, I was amazed at the discovery of what was really meant in passages which had amused me even in my ignorance.
This childish ignorance may sometimes lead one into strange confusions. I was one afternoon reading Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak when two ladies called. After a few minutes of “manners”—i.e., I put down the book and sat bolt upright with folded hands—as no one noticed me I relapsed into the book, became absorbed, and forgot that anyone was present. Presently I came upon a passage at which I burst out laughing.
“What is your book, dear boy?” asked one of the visitors. “Will you read us the amusing passage?”
The words were as follows. Alice was in the presence of the king. “Your Majesty,” she said, “if indeed I kneel before King Charles, is the father of your subjects.” “Of a good many of them,” said the Duke of Buckingham, apart.
The passage was an unfortunate one. I laughed because the immensity of the family tickled me. And in reading it again, I burst out into a fresh and inextinguishable laugh. Suddenly I became aware that no one else laughed, and that all faces were stony and all eyes directed into unconscious space. I stopped laughing with many blushes. But why no one laughed I could not tell. When they were gone I ran to my own room and read the passage again and again. I laughed till I cried. But I felt guilty, and I could not tell why no one else laughed—“Of a good many of them!” What a family! I am certain, however, that I was regarded ever after by those ladies, who did know what his Grace of Buckingham meant, as a boy of strange and precocious vice.
After a time it was recognised that if I were to be perfectly equipped for the university and for holy orders I must no longer stay at this worthy person’s private academy. For some reason or other I had always said that when I grew up I should be a clergyman. I should have preferred being a midshipman, but that was not possible when one was grown up. A clergyman—not that I had the least feeling of the responsibilities and the sacred character of the profession; but it was clearly a beautiful thing to put on a white robe and make everybody sit quiet and orderly, and mute as mice while he read. My mother, like many women, was pleased to think that one of her children should take holy orders, and my decision was accepted as the sign of a true vocation. It was accepted, in fact, by myself as well as by my folk until, at the age of twenty-four, I made the discovery which forbade the fulfilment of my early promise. Had the prophet Samuel seceded from the temple, his mother Hannah would not have grieved more than my mother to think that her ambitions for me in this direction were closed.