Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

CHAPTER VIII.

THE next morning Kenelm arrived at Oxford,—“Verum secretumque Mouseion.”

If there be a place in this busy island which may distract the passion of youth from love to scholarship, to Ritualism, to mediaeval associations, to that sort of poetical sentiment or poetical fanaticism which a Mivers and a Welby and an advocate of the Realistic School would hold in contempt,—certainly that place is Oxford,—home; nevertheless, of great thinkers and great actors in the practical world.

The vacation had not yet commenced, but the commencement was near at hand. Kenelm thought he could recognize the leading men by their slower walk and more abstracted expression of countenance. Among the Fellows was the eminent author of that book which had so powerfully fascinated the earlier adolescence of Kenelm Chillingly, and who had himself been subject to the fascination of a yet stronger spirit. The Rev. Decimus Roach had been ever an intense and reverent admirer of John Henry Newman,—an admirer, I mean, of the pure and lofty character of the man, quite apart from sympathy with his doctrines. But although Roach remained an unconverted Protestant of orthodox, if High Church, creed, yet there was one tenet he did hold in common with the author of the “Apologia.” He ranked celibacy among the virtues most dear to Heaven. In that eloquent treatise, “The Approach to the Angels,” he not only maintained that the state of single blessedness was strictly incumbent on every member of a Christian priesthood, but to be commended to the adoption of every conscientious layman.

It was the desire to confer with this eminent theologian that had induced Kenelm to direct his steps to Oxford.

Mr. Roach was a friend of Welby, at whose house, when a pupil, Kenelm had once or twice met him, and been even more charmed by his conversation than by his treatise.

Kenelm called on Mr. Roach, who received him very graciously, and, not being a tutor or examiner, placed his time at Kenelm’s disposal; took him the round of the colleges and the Bodleian; invited him to dine in his college-hall; and after dinner led him into his own rooms, and gave him an excellent bottle of Chateau Margeaux.

Mr. Roach was somewhere about fifty,—a good-looking man and evidently thought himself so; for he wore his hair long behind and parted in the middle, which is not done by men who form modest estimates of their personal appearance.

Kenelm was not long in drawing out his host on the subject to which that profound thinker had devoted so much meditation.

“I can scarcely convey to you,” said Kenelm, “the intense admiration with which I have studied your noble work, ‘Approach to the Angels.’ It produced a great effect on me in the age between boyhood and youth. But of late some doubts on the universal application of your doctrine have crept into my mind.”

“Ay, indeed?” said Mr. Roach, with an expression of interest in his face.

“And I come to you for their solution.”

Mr. Roach turned away his head, and pushed the bottle to Kenelm.

“I am quite willing to concede,” resumed the heir of the Chillinglys, “that a priesthood should stand apart from the distracting cares of a family, and pure from all carnal affections.”

“Hem, hem,” grunted Mr. Roach, taking his knee on his lap and caressing it.

“I go further,” continued Kenelm, “and supposing with you that the Confessional has all the importance, whether in its monitory or its cheering effects upon repentant sinners, which is attached to it by the Roman Catholics, and that it ought to be no less cultivated by the Reformed Church, it seems to me essential that the Confessor should have no better half to whom it can be even suspected he may, in an unguarded moment, hint at the frailties of one of her female acquaintances.”

“I pushed that argument too far,” murmured Roach.

“Not a bit of it. Celibacy in the Confessor stands or falls with the Confessional. Your argument there is as sound as a bell. But when it comes to the layman, I think I detect a difference.”

Mr. Roach shook his head, and replied stoutly, “No; if celibacy be incumbent on the one, it is equally incumbent on the other. I say ‘if.’”

“Permit me to deny that assertion. Do not fear that I shall insult your understanding by the popular platitude; namely, that if celibacy were universal, in a very few years the human race would be extinct. As you have justly observed, in answer to that fallacy, ‘It is the duty of each human soul to strive towards the highest perfection of the spiritual state for itself, and leave the fate of the human race to the care of the Creator.’ If celibacy be necessary to spiritual perfection, how do we know but that it may be the purpose and decree of the All Wise that the human race, having attained to that perfection, should disappear from earth? Universal celibacy would thus be the euthanasia of mankind. On the other hand, if the Creator decided that the human race, having culminated to this crowning but barren flower of perfection, should nevertheless continue to increase and multiply upon earth, have you not victoriously exclaimed, ‘Presumptuous mortal! how canst thou presume to limit the resources of the Almighty? Would it not be easy for Him to continue some other mode, unexposed to trouble and sin and passion, as in the nuptials of the vegetable world, by which the generations will be renewed? Can we suppose that the angels—the immortal companies of heaven—are not hourly increasing in number, and extending their population throughout infinity? and yet in heaven there is no marrying nor giving in marriage.’ All this, clothed by you in words which my memory only serves me to quote imperfectly,—all this I unhesitatingly concede.”

Mr. Roach rose and brought another bottle of the Chateau Margeaux from his cellaret, filled Kenelm’s glass, reseated himself, and took the other knee into his lap to caress.

“But,” resumed Kenelm, “my doubt is this.”

“Ah!” cried Mr. Roach, “let us hear the doubt.”

“In the first place, is celibacy essential to the highest state of spiritual perfection; and, in the second place, if it were, are mortals, as at present constituted, capable of that culmination?”

“Very well put,” said Mr. Roach, and he tossed off his glass with more cheerful aspect than he had hitherto exhibited.

“You see,” said Kenelm, “we are compelled in this, as in other questions of philosophy, to resort to the inductive process, and draw our theories from the facts within our cognizance. Now looking round the world, is it the fact that old maids and old bachelors are so much more spiritually advanced than married folks? Do they pass their time, like an Indian dervish, in serene contemplation of divine excellence and beatitude? Are they not quite as worldly in their own way as persons who have been married as often as the Wife of Bath, and, generally speaking, more selfish, more frivolous, and more spiteful? I am sure I don’t wish to speak uncharitably against old maids and old bachelors. I have three aunts who are old maids, and fine specimens of the genus; but I am sure they would all three have been more agreeable companions, and quite as spiritually gifted, if they had been happily married, and were caressing their children, instead of lapdogs. So, too, I have an old bachelor cousin, Chillingly Mivers, whom you know. As clever as a man can be. But, Lord bless you! as to being wrapped in spiritual meditation, he could not be more devoted to the things of earth if he had married as many wives as Solomon, and had as many children as Priam. Finally, have not half the mistakes in the world arisen from a separation between the spiritual and the moral nature of man? Is it not, after all, through his dealings with his fellow-men that man makes his safest ‘approach to the angels’? And is not the moral system a very muscular system? Does it not require for healthful vigour plenty of continued exercise, and does it not get that exercise naturally by the relationships of family, with all the wider collateral struggles with life which the care of family necessitates?

“I put these questions to you with the humblest diffidence. I expect to hear such answers as will thoroughly convince my reason, and I shall be delighted if so. For at the root of the controversy lies the passion of love. And love must be a very disquieting, troublesome emotion, and has led many heroes and sages into wonderful weaknesses and follies.”

“Gently, gently, Mr. Chillingly; don’t exaggerate. Love, no doubt, is—ahem—a disquieting passion. Still, every emotion that changes life from a stagnant pool into the freshness and play of a running stream is disquieting to the pool. Not only love and its fellow-passions, such as ambition, but the exercise of the reasoning faculty, which is always at work in changing our ideas, is very disquieting. Love, Mr. Chillingly, has its good side as well as its bad. Pass the bottle.”

KENELM (passing the bottle).—“Yes, yes; you are quite right in putting the adversary’s case strongly, before you demolish it: all good rhetoricians do that. Pardon me if I am up to that trick in argument. Assume that I know all that can be said in favour of the abnegation of common-sense, euphoniously called ‘love,’ and proceed to the demolition of the case.”

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH (hesitatingly).—“The demolition of the case? humph! The passions are ingrafted in the human system as part and parcel of it, and are not to be demolished so easily as you seem to think. Love, taken rationally and morally by a man of good education and sound principles, is—is—”

KENELM.—“Well, is what?”

THE REV. DECIMUS ROACH.—“A—a—a—thing not to be despised. Like the sun, it is the great colourist of life, Mr. Chillingly. And you are so right: the moral system does require daily exercise. What can give that exercise to a solitary man, when he arrives at the practical age in which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female companion by one’s side; innocent little children climbing one’s knee,—lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it out, who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon sitting alone on a pillar? Take another glass. You don’t drink enough, Mr. Chillingly.”

“I have drunk enough,” replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, “to think I see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of the insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I listen to a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the other Decimus Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom.”

“Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided. Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love may hurry weak intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before said, rationally,—taken rationally, my young friend. At that period of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companionship of an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and prevent that morose hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and made rigid by increasing years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred in the opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world. And I am about next month to enter into the matrimonial state with a young lady who—”

“Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must be a painful subject to you. Let us drop it.”

“It is not a painful subject at all!” exclaimed Mr. Roach, with warmth. “I look forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the pleasure which a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting a fallacious doctrine. But you do me the justice to understand that of course I do not take this step I propose—for my personal satisfaction. No, sir, it is the value of my example to others which purifies my motives and animates my soul.”

After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation drooped. Host and guest both felt they had had enough of each other. Kenelm soon rose to depart.

Mr. Roach, on taking leave of, him at the door, said, with marked emphasis,—

“Not for my personal satisfaction,—remember that. Whenever you hear my conversion discussed in the world, say that from my own lips you heard these words,—NOT FOR MY PERSONAL SATISFACTION. No! my kind regards to Welby,—a married man himself, and a father: he will understand me.”