The Fall of Doctor Onslow

by Frances Vernon

  ‘Pray tell me Dr Onslow, which do you think presents the graver danger to faith – geology or neology?’

  ‘Neology, madam,’ he said briefly.

  ‘How very interesting. May I ask why so?’

  ‘How very interested you are in my opinions. I must be flattered.’ The boys of Charton would have recognised his tone as sarcastic, but the lady inclined her head and said:

  ‘Certainly I am. I am always anxious to discover what clergymen think upon serious subjects. I am surprised, however, that you consider neology the greater threat, for the foolish essays of these German professors are more easily dismissed than the discoveries of science,’ she asserted.

  ‘I do not deny that, Mrs Reynolds, though I have no reverence for science. I mean only that once a man has decided that Our Lord worked no miracles, or even that the Book of Daniel is later than the prophet Daniel, in no time at all he is an atheist – though to be sure he may not call himself an atheist. It seems not to be the case that men end similarly who, like myself indeed, come to accept let us say the proposition that the Flood did not cover the whole earth. You must notice that like a scientist, I judge from observation. I own that the geologists have cast doubt on the literal accuracy of the first chapters of Genesis, but the rest of our faith they have left untouched.’

  ‘I do not think I agree with you, Dr Onslow.’

  ‘Do you not, madam?’

  ‘I am persuaded that geology presents a greater danger than you appear to believe. The Book of Genesis is as much a sacred text as the Gospels, and if it must be questioned, that is but the first step towards universal infidelity.’

  Onslow said coldly: ‘A shocking prospect, madam, and possibly you are right. I will observe only that the Church has survived the assaults of scientists before – how many lost their faith when at last we were obliged to accept that the world is not flat, and that the sun does not go round the earth? A mere handful of men already disaffected.’

  ‘Perhaps you speak justly, Dr Onslow, but I am not sure that I agree.’

  ‘But you believe in a round earth and a heliocentric universe, and remain a Christian, madam, even though both acknowledged facts are contrary to traditional Christian wisdom.’

  ‘Certainly I am a Christian!’

  ‘Our beliefs about the world are incidentals,’ said Onslow, forgetting he was talking at a dinner-party to a woman he disliked, ‘incidental to the core of our faith in Christ. Greater knowledge of God’s design can never shake our faith in Him. No, madam, I fear a man who doubts the morality of the Old Testament or the reality of eternal punishment infinitely more than I fear any scientist.’ As he said this, he glanced at Primrose, and bit his lip. As firmly as he disbelieved in Hell, Primrose believed everything the geologists told him, and the less compatible their views were with traditional Christian beliefs the more he liked them. He was not one to prefer the catastrophist theory to the uniformitarian because, distorted a little, it seemed rather more compatible with Genesis.

  ‘You said that you take the gravest view of a man who doubts that Our Lord worked miracles. You forget that geologists, scientists, are more prone irreligiously to doubt miracles than other men,’ said Mrs Reynolds.

  Onslow thought of the great clerical geologist Dr Buckland, who had put his tongue to the liquefying martyr’s blood on the floor of an Italian church, and identified it as bat urine. He smiled, and merely said:

  ‘Certain miracles, madam.’

  Mrs Reynolds suddenly changed the conversation.

  ‘I am very glad to have had this little talk upon so many subjects with you, Dr Onslow, for a particular reason. Mr Reynolds and I are considering consigning our grandson to your care.’

  ‘Indeed, madam?’

  ‘Therefore I wished to assure myself that your views on serious subjects are broadly in accordance with our own. They are, I find, sufficiently so.’

  ‘I am obliged to you, though you surprise me.’

  ‘But one thing more remains for me to ask. Dr Onslow, the reputation of Charton is excellent, but upon one point I am not yet satisfied – I wish to know how carefully you think it proper to enquire into your prospective pupils’ social antecedents.’

  Onslow looked her in the eye, and said:

  ‘Dear madam, so long as your grandson behaves himself and his fees are paid, no questions will be asked about his social antecedents.’

  The expression on Onslow’s face was not malicious, but bland with a hint of solicitude. It took Mrs Reynolds a few seconds to understand his meaning, and when she had understood she wondered in horrified amazement at those who spoke of Dr Onslow as a likely future Archbishop of Canterbury. It was more because of his high reputation than because of her grandson that she had cross-examined him for half an hour, and she now looked forward to telling all who would listen that he was unfit to have charge of a few schoolboys, let alone to sit in Lambeth Palace.

  Onslow did not care that he had lost a prospective pupil: Charton was as full as it could hold.

  At the other end of the table, Louisa was talking to the fashionable young man on her right, who seemed very much out of place at an episcopal dinner table, but who was related to Dr Tait. They were discussing the question of whether it was possible or prudent to marry on £300 a year, which had recently been receiving attention in the press.

  ‘Would you not find it delightful, Mr Newsome? A little cottage at Brompton, and children round your knee, and fetching your linen home from the washerwoman? So agreeable a change after your nasty club, and curacao, and cigars!’

  ‘Ha! Deuced if I see it myself,’ said Mr Newsome, stroking one of his long whiskers as he leant towards her.

  ‘Come, come, don’t be so worldly. I am sure you will shock Dr Tait – has he overheard? No, you are safe.’

  At that moment, the Bishop turned round and looked kindly at her. He was a big, curly-haired man, handsome in a rather cold and too regular way.

  ‘Mr Newsome and I were discussing the Frugal Marriage question, my lord,’ said Louisa. ‘Do you think it steadies a young man’s character to marry on £300 a year?’

  ‘Why, my dear Mrs Onslow, I think the answer to that is simple. If a young man’s betrothed is content to do without the elegancies of life, he is justified in marrying on so small an income, and if not, not. As for steadying a young man’s character – it may have that effect if he is of good character already, but I am afraid I doubt whether it will otherwise.’

  ‘But then,’ said Louisa, ‘to return to your first point, it is not only the elegancies of life. There are unavoidable expenses in marriage – suppose either husband or wife were to fall ill, and require sea air, not to mention a physician’s attendance?’ She did not like to mention the expense of children, because it was less than two years since, in the space of a week, the Taits had lost all five of their little daughters to scarlet fever.

  ‘Very true,’ said the Bishop, who looked to Louisa’s eyes as though he were thinking of children. ‘What do you for your part consider an adequate income for a young couple, ma’am?’

  ‘I fear I cannot make up my mind, my lord.’

  He remarked:

  ‘Sea air can certainly be very expensive – one would never guess it was provided by the Almighty. Are you fond of the seaside, Mrs Onslow?’

  ‘Extremely! Bathing is my delight. But the difficulty of securing a comfortable lodging becomes worse and worse each year. I would not dream of sullying your dinner-table with a description of what Dr Onslow and I had to endure when we were at Ramsgate last summer.’

  As Dr Tait guessed, Louisa was referring to bedbugs: he smiled, giving Louisa some idea that while he thought her charming, he did not think her dignified.

  Two places along from Louisa, Primrose had turned away from a young lady now being entertained by Mr Newsome, and was talking to the spinster whom Onslow thought looked sensible, but who was in fact given to making disconnected and eccentric remarks. The young lady had been too shy to mak
e good conversation, and caught between two such women, Primrose wished he were in Onslow’s place between Mrs Tait and Mrs Reynolds. He always found it easier to talk to married women: spinsters made him wish, a little guiltily, that he desired to be married.

  Both Onslow and Primrose were pleased when at length, after dessert, the ladies left the dining room. They stood up with alacrity when Mrs Tait did so, and indulgently watched Louisa smile as the gauze scarf she had dropped was handed to her by Mr Newsome, who appeared to think it as frail as a spider’s web. When the last crinoline had been manoeuvred through the dining room door, they sat down again, and waited for the interesting part of the evening to begin.

  7

  Port was laid on the table, the servants withdrew, and the men moved closer to their host. They talked briefly about the coming abolition of the East India Company, and the French Emperor’s ludicrous fear of English assassins, but it was not long before they moved on to discuss a subject which was of far more concern to the four clergymen present. Even the very junior cleric whom Dr Tait had invited to make up the numbers at the last minute was more interested in the new ministry’s likely views on high ecclesiastical preferments, and who should fill them, than in French and Indian affairs. The laymen were not so fascinated.

  ‘How good to think that for a while at least we will no longer have Lord Shaftesbury packing the bench with bad scholars and narrow Evangelicals,’ said Primrose, finishing his first glass of port. ‘It always astonished me that Lord Palmerston listened to him; I suppose it was sheer lack of interest combined with affection made him give Lord Shaftesbury his head.’

  ‘So long as he chose men not likely to vote against the Government in the House of Lords,’ said Onslow.

  ‘I think, my dear Primrose,’ said Dr Tait, smiling, ‘that you are forgetting I was one of Lord Palmerston’s and Lord Shaftesbury’s choices.’

  ‘Tait! My dear fellow, you know perfectly well that I did not mean you. Yours was his one truly admirable appointment – no one in his senses would call you a narrow Evangelical.’

  ‘But I am not so good a scholar as I ought to be.’

  Looking at Dr Tait now, Onslow remembered how sixteen years ago, immediately after Dr Arnold’s death, they had been rivals competing for the Headmastership of Rugby. He remembered how Tait had been chosen by the trustees even though he was the inferior scholar: Onslow, the Cambridge Senior Classic, had been rejected as too young at twenty-six.

  ‘I only wish I were such a scholar as your lordship,’ said the junior cleric.

  ‘Of one thing I’m very sure. Soapy Sam has been hankering after a more important bishopric for I don’t know how many years, but there was not a scrap of hope for him while Lord Palmerston remained in office. Oh, I do hope we shall not see him translated to Winchester or Durham, he is intolerable enough as it is, with his mixture of pugnacity and toadying,’ said Primrose. Soapy Sam was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.

  ‘Mr Gladstone wanted to send him to York, Martin, and I am sure was very nearly successful,’ Onslow teased. ‘Perhaps he will be so when he is back in office, if the Archbishop obliges him by dying in the meantime.’

  Primrose went on regardless. ‘I detest men with ingratiating manners, and no one has ever been able to discover whether he has any consistent views. I am surprised he did not turn himself almost into a follower of Mr Spurgeon to please Lord Shaftesbury, instead of making a fool of himself with that attempt of his to make adultery a criminal offence. But I suppose I must do him justice: in some respects he has been growing steadily Higher, even though it is contrary to his temporal interests.’

  ‘Very true, alas,’ said Dr Tait. He added: ‘I must point out, Primrose, that in attacking Lord Palmerston’s appointments you find yourself in perfect agreement with the man you so dislike. Does not that appal you?’

  ‘So I do! you are quite right – I must retract my abuse at once. After all,’ he said, suddenly grave again, ‘it is more important for a bishop to be a good pastor than anything else.’

  Dr Tait, as a good host, thought of trying to bring the laymen into this discussion, but he saw they were absorbed in a three-cornered conversation of their own.

  ‘Dr Onslow, what do you think the new ministry is likely to do?’ he said.

  Onslow gently swung the port in his glass and said:

  ‘It is a pity the Bishops of Oxford and Exeter between them have given both the public and any prospective government a distaste for the mere idea of bishops with High Church sympathies, however vague. I doubt Lord Derby will seek to correct the real imbalance of parties on the bench of bishops – though I daresay he will not prefer even more Evangelicals, Lord Palmerston’s policy has been too unpopular.’

  ‘I think you are right in thinking that all parties ought to be represented on the bench,’ said Dr Tait, ‘but I cannot think of a High Churchman of note who ought to be preferred. Dr Pusey is out of the question.’

  ‘Quite so, my lord,’ said Onslow, without denying his real beliefs – he was nothing like so High Church as Dr Pusey.

  ‘It is time Dr Pusey followed Newman to Rome,’ struck in the young clergyman. ‘He ought not to remain in the Church of England.’

  ‘You are too harsh, Mr Lincoln,’ said Dr Tait, making him blush.

  ‘How would Denison do for a High Church bishop?’ said Primrose, looking innocent. Onslow raised his eyebrows.

  ‘My dear Martin, what an excellent idea. Yes, he is exactly what we need – another bishop prepared to spend his time taking those who disagree with his views to law with all possible publicity.’

  ‘You are quite right, he would be a second Philpotts,’ said Dr Tait, who appeared to have taken Primrose’s suggestion seriously. ‘I hope we are spared – but in all honesty I cannot think it likely the question will arise.’

  ‘I suppose now that he has been vindicated by the judicial committee there will be no holding him even in Convocation, one dreads to think what he might do in the House of Lords,’ said Primrose.

  ‘I heard that his parishioners dragged his carriage home themselves after the decision,’ said Onslow. ‘Is it true, or a mere rumour?’

  ‘True, I believe,’ replied Dr Tait. ‘I sincerely wish the prosecution had never been begun – he has been made to look a martyr to Low Church and dissenting bigotry, and nothing could be more unfortunate.’

  ‘No, indeed!’ said the young clergyman.

  Primrose said happily: ‘But I am so glad that in spite of the legal decision in his favour the purely doctrinal question remains effectively undecided. I don’t mean that I have the least sympathy with the Archdeacon’s view of the sacrament or anything else, but latitude is the glory of the Church of England – exactly the view he was trying to combat, of course.’

  Dr Tait saw that Onslow was frowning, and said:

  ‘Do you like matters to be a little more clear-cut, Dr Onslow?’

  In general, Onslow did: but he was glad that thanks to the muddled case of Archdeacon Denison, it was now possible to hold that the sacrament could be inwardly received by the wicked as well as the faithful. Though he doubted its Anglican legitimacy, that view was a comfort to him. He told Dr Tait:

  ‘It comes of having been a schoolmaster for fourteen years. Latitude and lessons do not mix well – one learns to demand exactness in all things.’

  ‘Oh come,’ said Primrose, ‘in Dr Arnold’s case latitude and lessons mixed perfectly.’

  ‘Martin,’ said Onslow suddenly, ‘do you never think that even Dr Arnold had his faults?’

  ‘Faults?’ said Primrose.

  Since the beginning of Primrose’s visit to Charton two weeks before, Onslow had listened to constant praise of Arnold, and had agreed with every word of it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Consider his temper – remember March.’

  March was a boy whom Arnold had flogged harshly and unjustly in 1832; a scandal had been made of the case in the newspapers.

  ‘But – think how noble
was his apology, his public apology to him when he discovered he had not lied and it was all a dreadful mistake! The Northampton Herald took up the case out of dislike for his politics – you cannot deny it!’ exclaimed Primrose.

  Onslow looked at the decanter in front of him.

  ‘No, I don’t deny it. But he had no business to lose his temper in such a way. A flogging of eighteen strokes is impermissible in even the worst cases.’ Like Arthur’s incorrigible idleness, he thought, and flushed. The light in the room was too dim for others to notice his changed complexion.

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Dr Tait.

  ‘I am glad of it,’ Onslow told him.

  ‘None of us is perfect,’ said Primrose unwillingly. ‘And a hasty temper is a very natural failing – his nature was passionate, not cold like –’ He stopped: he had been about to say ‘like yours’. Onslow guessed it, and his lips twisted in a kind of smile. After a moment’s pause, he said, finishing his port:

  ‘You must not think I do not reverence him as I ever did. I have tried not to share his faults, but I do not share his virtues either – and if I could only have the half of them, I would willingly have ten times his faults. Believe me.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Primrose.

  One of the laymen, a member of Parliament, said:

  ‘I was a fag at Rugby when you and Dr Onslow were in the Sixth, Mr Primrose. A very grubby urchin! I lived in mortal terror of Dr Arnold – and of you.’

  All the clergymen were surprised at his entering into the conversation, but Primrose laughed and said politely:

  ‘Oh, surely not!’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘So you are inclined to my view?’ said Onslow.

  ‘I suppose I might say so, but I never was properly acquainted with him, for I never reached the Sixth.’