The Fall of Doctor Onslow (17 page)

The next afternoon, Dr Powell and his party went along to the hall where the meeting was to take place. It was a larger hall than the one which had served the members of the British Association till that Saturday, and had been chosen at the last moment, for so many people wished to hear Bishop Wilberforce that the old hall could not contain them. There were over seven hundred present in all, including noisy undergraduates and ladies in billowing bright dresses, but the majority of those who had come to listen were members of the Association.

‘Gracious me, what a crush,’ said Louisa as they pushed their way through towards a row of empty seats. It was not so very bad, but her crinoline was making it difficult for her to move, and seriously inconveniencing those she passed.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Primrose. ‘But here we are.’

As they prepared to sit down, Onslow noticed that a man seated some feet away was looking intently in their direction: then he saw that it was Anstey-Ward. For a moment the two men stared at each other. Slowly, Anstey-Ward gave a kind of half salute, to which Onslow replied with the hint of a bow. Then Louisa, observing this, also recognised Anstey-Ward. She gave a gasp of surprise as he raised his hat to her.

‘Who is that man, Louie?’ said Primrose.

‘It’s Dr Anstey-Ward.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Yes. I believe he must be a member of the Association –
his house as I remember was full of rocks and dead animals.’

Onslow began to talk about the Bishop.

‘I can only imagine that Soapy Sam is attempting to restore his family’s reputation. When two of one’s brothers have gone over to Rome, it is desirable to make it quite clear that one remains such a sound Low Churchman as one’s father would have approved. I can only hope he does not carry it too far.’

In contrast Anstey-Ward, like Primrose, was hoping that the Bishop would make a fool of himself – though he supposed there was not much chance of that, for he knew that both Sir Joseph Hooker and Mr Huxley expected him to be a formidable opponent.

Having acknowledged Onslow’s presence, Anstey-Ward took out his watch and wound it, though it did not need winding. As he did so he thought that he ought not to be so very surprised at the Onslows being here. The room was full of women and clergymen, even though the meeting was not officially open to the public. And it was quite possible and allowable for Onslow to come down occasionally from his northern fastness.

Anstey-Ward had been almost as impressed as Primrose by
The
Origin
of
Species,
but it worried him, as it had done with earlier theories of transmutation, that the fossil record provided so little which could be called evidence in favour of the hypothesis. Now he forgot this worry: he remembered the interview he had had eleven months ago with Onslow in his library, and he became a determined, instead of a moderate, supporter of Darwin. He had no doubts what Onslow was thinking. Neither had Onslow about the thoughts of Anstey-Ward.

A hush descended: the speakers had begun to arrive and make their way towards the platform.

The proceedings began with the reading of a paper by a Dr John William Draper, the title of which was ‘The Intellectual Development of Europe with reference to the views of Mr Darwin’. Dr Draper was an admirer of Darwin, and in his hour-long speech he drew parallels between the
gradual upward development of species and the progress of the human intellect towards enlightenment. Few people in the audience were interested in his views, for the majority of listeners regarded the expression of them as a tiresome preliminary to the bishop’s speech, while the professional scientists in the audience thought them wholly irrelevant to the real issue. But Anstey-Ward and Onslow listened intently, and were agreed that the paper consisted largely of crass generalisations. Onslow was delighted.

‘Well, I am glad that has come to an end at last,’ said Mrs Powell, fanning herself with a piece of paper. ‘Are we now to hear the bishop?’

‘Presently, my dear,’ said her husband, who saw quite a different man rise to begin the discussion. The man was an economist, and he objected to Darwin’s views on religious grounds, but he was not allowed to develop his ideas, for the undergraduates grouped in one part of the hall shouted him down in their impatience for Bishop Wilberforce. They treated the next speaker similarly, but this had nothing to do with their being in favour of Darwin, for when a third man rose to say something, this time in Darwin’s defence, they behaved in just the same way. The speaker wished to give a mathematical demonstration of the truth of Darwin’s views, and drew a diagram on a blackboard, saying: ‘Let this point A be man, and let that point B be the monkey’. He pronounced ‘monkey’ as ‘mawnkey’, and this gave the undergraduates the opportunity to yell: ‘Mawnkey! Mawnkey!’

The chairman of the meeting tried to keep order, but to no avail. The audience would be satisfied with nothing less than the bishop.

‘How shockingly all these young men are behaving,’ said Louisa, who had a certain sympathy for them.

‘Yes,’ said Onslow, ‘and I see that some of them are former Charton boys.’

On the platform, a professor rose to ask for a fair hearing, and then at last, Bishop Wilberforce took the floor.

His speech was a sweetly-phrased mockery of Darwin’s work and its supporters, referring to ‘our unsuspected
cousinship with the mushrooms’. ‘Is it credible,’ he asked, ‘that all favourable varieties of turnip are tending to become men, and yet that the closest microscopic observation has never detected the faintest tendency in the highest of the Algae to improve into the very lowest Zoophyte?’ The Onslows approved of this, but Anstey-Ward and Primrose thought it inaccurate and unfair.

Having described Professor Owen’s scientific objections to the theory of evolution, the bishop made an objection of his own: he asked whether woman, as well as man, could possibly be descended from an ape. The ladies in the audience were for the most part well pleased by this gallantry. Some waved their handkerchiefs in token of appreciation. Then the bishop turned to Mr Huxley and said:

‘Is it through his grandmother or his grandfather that Mr Huxley claims descent from a monkey?’

At this there was laughter from many people. Onslow sucked in his cheeks, while Anstey-Ward reddened with anger at the frivolity of the question.

Mr Huxley did not reply, merely whispered something to his neighbour, and the bishop wound up with a fluent denunciation of Darwin’s theory as plainly contrary to scripture. He insisted that it was not only incompatible with the revealed Word of God, but also with God’s works and spirit: incompatible with Man’s supremacy on earth, with his gift of reason, with the Incarnation of God’s Son. And if Mr Darwin’s theories were to be believed, Man would sink into brutish sensuality. These remarks, thought Anstey-Ward, proved Wilberforce to be a mere bigot, a man like Onslow. Onslow, for his part, thought the bishop had made a mistake in appealing directly to the revealed Word and to theological reasoning. He believed he ought rather to have clung to scientific arguments which were compatible with revelation, for to do otherwise was to bring a great Voltairean axe down between religion and reason, and damage the unity of truth.

When the bishop had finished, the delighted audience called for a reply to his speech, and Mr Huxley finally got
to his feet. Anstey-Ward and Onslow watched him keenly as he spoke, beginning with a simple defence of evolution as a legitimate hypothesis. He admitted that Mr Darwin had not proved that natural selection did in fact operate to produce new species, but insisted that he had proved all that was provable. The hypothesis agreed with all available facts, and explained many things which had hitherto been puzzling. Next he explained that there was no question of man’s being descended from the ape, but only a question of both ape and man being descended from a remote common ancestor. And then Mr Huxley turned to the remarks about his own ancestry which had won the bishop such applause. Fixing his eyes on him, he said:

‘A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’

There was uproar in the hall. No one had expected the bishop to be denounced so plainly, and in his own diocese at that. One lady swooned with shock at the crude words ‘religious prejudice’, and was carried out. Out of nerves, Louisa giggled as she had done at the bishop’s remark about Mr Huxley’s grandmother; while Anstey-Ward, Onslow saw, looked grimly satisfied. He wished he could tell the man that his champion had met wit with mere rudeness, and that the bishop remained in the right – yet all the while, he knew that Mr Huxley’s reply had been a good one.

The meeting was not over. When Mr Huxley was finished, an Oxford don rose and told the audience that the theory of upward development could not be true, because Homer had lived three thousand years ago and his like had not been seen since. Anstey-Ward was pleased by the
foolishness of this, thinking that if no better argument could be found by Darwin’s opponents, the day was won. He was pleased even though many in the audience did not seem to perceive the folly of the don’s observation. Some of them appeared not to have heard at all: there was still a good deal of noise and confusion in the hall.

Then, speaking as a partisan of Darwin, Sir John Lubbock sought to expose some of the frauds which had been perpetrated with the aim of discrediting theories of development. He instanced a grain of wheat which had been supposed to have come from a mummy’s tomb in Egypt. He had been told that this single grain showed that wheat had not changed since the time of the Pharaohs – but the wheat, he said, had turned out to be made of French chocolate.

‘What a particularly stupid thing to do,’ remarked Louisa. ‘Who could have imagined that such a crude fraud as that would remain undiscovered? Why not make use of a real grain of wheat?’

‘People are very odd,’ said her brother.

‘Very,’ Onslow agreed.

‘Now who is this man waving a Bible above his head?’ said Louisa, referring to a person in the audience who had leapt from his seat.

‘I happen to be able to tell you. That is Admiral Fitzroy,’ Dr Powell replied. ‘He was captain of the ship in which Mr Darwin sailed to South America, years ago. I confess, I pity Mr Darwin for having been the companion of such a man. I had the misfortune of meeting him the other day.’

Admiral Fitzroy was begging the audience to reject presumptuous human reason. He cried:

‘The Book! I call on you to reject with abhorrence an attempt to substitute human conjecture and human institutions for the explicit revelation which the Almighty has himself made in that Book!’

When he had calmed down a little, the last speaker rose on the platform – it was Sir Joseph Hooker, who replied not to the Admiral but to the bishop, thinking that Mr Huxley had not gone far enough. His was a devastating
attack, if less pertinent than Mr Huxley’s. The bishop, though he was accused by Sir Joseph both of never having read
The
Origin
of
Species
and of being ignorant of the merest rudiments of botany, made no reply. He allowed himself to be attacked. Onslow, as the meeting closed, felt that Wilberforce had failed him.

The speakers came down from the platform and walked out of the hall. Onslow and Anstey-Ward both noticed that the members of the Darwinian party were treated very coldly by the crowd, and Onslow tried to take comfort from the fact that the Darwinians were not being granted a victory, that there were many present loyal to religion and common sense. Yet he could not stop thinking that this was Anstey-Ward’s second hour of triumph. Anstey-Ward, however, was less certain of this. He knew that not all those scientists who mattered had been converted to the Darwinian view, even though a great battle of wits had been won.

He glanced across at Onslow. Their eyes met for the second time that day. Anstey-Ward rose from his chair, raised his hat, and smiled. It did not occur to him that this farewell would make his opponent think he was gloating. He had wanted to indicate that theirs was, for the moment, in fact a drawn battle, for he felt pity for Onslow.

Three years had passed since the meeting in Oxford. It was the morning of 6th November, 1863, and at Hinterton the Onslows were eating their breakfast.

They ate in silence. Onslow did not regale Louisa with a description of his post, for he assumed that nothing in it would interest her as letters from boys’ parents used to do. He received few letters now in any case: Primrose was his only regular correspondent, for most of his other friends had gradually dropped away over the course of years. To them, Onslow in Derbyshire was an admirable but not an interesting figure. Yet their neglect of him was not entirely blameworthy. Onslow was too proud to thrust himself upon those who might not wish to see him now that he was no longer a person of importance, and so he did not attempt to keep in touch with his old acquaintances. They, in their turn, thought he wished to have nothing to do with them in his new, unworldly life – but it did not occur to Onslow that this might be so.

Now, as Louisa finished her muffin, Onslow reached for the second and last of that morning’s letters. It was addressed in a hand he did not know, and he thought it must be a bill. Then he turned it over and recognised, unbelieving, the seal of the Prime Minister. Quickly he slit open the envelope, and read:

‘My dear sir, I have much pleasure in informing you that I have received the Queen’s command to offer you the See of Ipswich, which has become vacant owing to the demise of the late Bishop. This offer is subject to the condition that the Estates of the See shall be placed under the management of
the
Ecclesiastical Commission. If as I hope you should be willing to accept the offer, you will perhaps have the goodness to inform me of it without delay. I am, my dear Sir, yours faithfully, Palmerston.’

Onslow’s hands trembled a little as he read, just as they had done when he first received Anstey-Ward’s letter. He opened his mouth to blurt something out to Louisa, but then, quite suddenly, he decided not to say anything yet. He re-read the letter and saw that it was true, then quietly folded it and sat thinking. Louisa poured him more coffee, and he said ‘Thank you’ quite naturally. He gazed out at the grey world beyond the window, and felt warm inside, as though he had in some way triumphed.

It was so good simply to be remembered. Nearly four years had passed since he was last offered anything deeply desirable, and he had begun to fear that he was yesterday’s man: for though naturally it pained him to be offered what he could not take, he needed to be thought still worthy of temptation. Onslow wondered whether such an offer would ever be repeated, whether this was the last time. Lord Palmerston had met him and liked him and remembered him. When Palmerston was dead, there would be no one to offer splendid preferments. But perhaps not. Perhaps he would always be at least a reserve candidate in the minds of politicians: Dr Onslow, celebrated Headmaster of Charton, celebrated even after years in obscurity. Some of those politicians would be his ex-pupils.

Onslow took up his letter and left the room. He wanted to treasure the offer in his study, out of Louisa’s sight. Briefly, he wondered why her knowing would spoil the pleasure. Perhaps it was because the proffered see was that of Ipswich, Ipswich where she had always hoped to live with him in the palace of her childhood. Louisa might well feel bitter at the fact that at last, too late, Ipswich had been offered to him.

It was odd, thought Onslow in his study, that he did not feel bitter himself. For he had reason to feel so, as had Louisa. He ought not to feel something akin to delight, not when it was impossible for him to accept.

Onslow sprang out of his chair and strode over to the mantelpiece. There he saw his reflection in the glass which hung above the fireplace, and he paused to study his forty-seven year old face. It had not changed greatly in the last four years. His hair was still moderately thick, and had not turned grey. There were a couple of light lines in his forehead, and the indentations running down from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth were a little deeper than they had been, but that was all. Louisa had aged far more than he had done. At times she looked almost like a little old woman, but he, Onslow, looked youthful enough still to be reckoned a young man to hold a bishopric.

And he would hold a bishopric. He would accept.

It was as though his heart, his whole body, had expanded to fill the room. The discovery of his own intention excited him so much that he wanted to cry out and run. Pacing the floor, he was sure that Anstey-Ward would do nothing, not after all these years. He was suddenly convinced that Anstey-Ward had not meant what he said, convinced that he had made his demand that he accept no high preferment in the mere heat of the moment. He would let the matter rest when it was announced that Dr Onslow was to be the new bishop of Ipswich, for his anger would be quite cool by now. And then, there was a very important consideration. If Anstey-Ward were to make a scandal after more than three years had passed, he would show himself in a bad light. People would wonder why he had not spoken at the time. And in any case, his threat to make a public scandal had been bluff, mere bluff – Onslow wondered why he had not seen this before.

Anstey-Ward was not an unkindly man, thought Onslow for the first time. Only three months ago he had met Primrose in London, and had asked in the pleasantest way, so Primrose said, after the health of Louisa. He had liked Louisa. He would not wish to disgrace her, to drag her down. For her sake at least, even if for no other reason, he would not object. Onslow had never been so sure of anything in his life.

Then he felt a qualm. He remembered how Anstey-Ward
had smiled at him at that meeting in Oxford, smiled in triumph the last time he saw him. But that, Onslow thought, was over three years ago. Besides, Anstey-Ward was probably so well satisfied by the excellent headway Mr Darwin’s views were making in the scientific world and in the popular mind that he would be the more inclined to allow Onslow, the loser, a little compensation.

Onslow sat down at his desk and wrote a letter of acceptance to Lord Palmerston. Then he had the gig brought round and drove himself into Ashbourne, where he posted it. Only once the letter was gone did he begin to grow calmer, and to think of his wife and what she would say. She would surely be delighted to learn that her husband was to occupy her beloved father’s see – but it was possible, Onslow realised on his way back to Hinterton, that she would not think he was to occupy it. Telling her, in fact, would be difficult.

*

‘My dear,’ said Onslow that evening after dinner, when Louisa was occupied with some Berlin wool-work, ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘Yes?’ she said, looking up.

He came to sit beside her on the sofa, and put a hand on her knee, which surprised her very much.

‘You may be much astonished. This morning I received a letter from the Prime Minister, offering me Ipswich. Of course you knew that the see had fallen vacant?’

Louisa, who had refrained from commenting on the death of the old man she had wished to die for years, said:

‘It was offered to you?’ She felt a pang of mingled anger and regret as she thought of this: no such pleasure as Onslow had experienced.

‘Yes, it was offered to me. And I have accepted it.’

There was a long pause; then Louisa said:

‘Accepted it?’

‘Are you not pleased? Is this not what you have always longed for?’

‘Are you mad, George? Have you forgotten?’ Louisa pushed her work aside. ‘I cannot believe it!’

He said: ‘No, I have not forgotten. But I believe I am in no danger. After this length of time Dr Anstey-Ward –’

‘After this length of time! He said that you should
never
accept any high preferment – length of time has nothing to do with it.’

‘I tell you I am certain that he could not have meant it. He made his demand merely in anger. I am very sure he will wish to be involved in no scandal.’

‘You did this without once consulting me. You have exposed us to terrible danger without saying one word. I shall never forgive you, George, never.’

‘Louisa, do you not wish me to explain why I have done it?’

She got to her feet. ‘Explain! What explanation can you give? I tell you George, if you are forced to live abroad I shall not go with you. I shall go to live with Martin and Mamma.’

‘Please listen to me.’ He had not seen Louisa so angry for years, not since they quarrelled in the train coming back from Poplar House. He did not know what to do – it was worse for him now than it had been then, for now he depended upon her.

She made no reply, but stood staring down at the fire, breathing heavily and clenching her fists. Eventually she said:

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes,’ said Onslow, ‘I heard. I apologise for not having consulted you, that was ill done of me. But you must listen to me, Louisa – you must learn why I think there will be no question of our being forced to live abroad.’

‘Very well,’ she said coldly. ‘Explain if you can, not that I will believe you.’

He began: ‘My dear, Dr Anstey-Ward will not be able to stomach being involved in a scandal. He will be forced to let the matter rest. Only think. If he were to expose me, he would expose himself as a species of blackmailer. Remember that he has kept silence for years upon conditions. If he
were to reveal all he knows, there would be much wondering at his not having done so immediately. He could not present himself as an upholder of morality – he might have been able to do so had he spoken at the time. And then, do you suppose he will care to have his son’s name bandied about?’

‘It is not as though his son had done anything wrong. I doubt very much that Dr Anstey-Ward would have scruples about everyone’s pointing a finger at Arthur Bright.’

Onslow winced at her naming that name.

‘But do you understand what I said? Do you see that I have very little cause to fear he will hold by his word? Louisa, my dear, can you not see that there is hope – a great deal of hope, even if you demand certainty, which I own we cannot have?’

She said nothing, because for all her fear and anger, she was beginning to see that there was hope, agonising hope. Onslow had not made a wild claim that Anstey-Ward must have forgiven him by now: he had produced a cynical reason for the man’s keeping silence, and Louisa trusted cynical reasoning.

‘Dear, come and sit beside me again.’

After a moment’s hesitation she did so.

‘If you had only consulted me!’ she said, sitting down.

He was delighted by this progress, and said:

‘I am sorry for that. I have said so, and do not object to saying it again. But Louisa, I did it largely for your sake. I know how long you have wished me to occupy that see above all others, and I was so much excited – I did not think.’

‘Knowing that I would wish it is scarcely a reason for not consulting me,’ she snapped. ‘Indeed, if you thought you were acting for my sake, you ought above all to have asked my opinion. And I hope that if the worst comes to the worst, you will not turn round and blame me.’

‘No, certainly not.’

His submissiveness pacified her. She said:

‘George, you have explained matters very glibly, but I am sure that Dr Anstey-Ward is a man who will stop at
nothing. I cannot believe it will be as you say, and the alternative is so terrible!’

‘At nothing, perhaps, except the desire to show himself in a virtuous light. Dr Anstey-Ward, my dear, is an eminently respectable man – or has the desire to appear so.’ Even as he spoke, Onslow suffered a moment’s doubt, remembering that Anstey-Ward was an atheist. Louisa did not know that, for he had never told her. But atheists seemed to have changed their nature. Few of them were revolutionaries, as Shelley had been, and Tom Paine. They desired to be thought of as respectable.

There was a long pause, then Louisa sighed:

‘Hope is so painful. Far worse in its way than the certainty of disaster.’

‘Then you have a little hope, at least?’

She ignored this, and replied: ‘But if anything goes amiss, George, remember what I said. I will not go with you.’

‘No, my dear,’ said Onslow, once more putting a hand on her knee. He knew that there would be no question of his going anywhere other than Ipswich, and so did not remind her that it would be her duty to go with him.

‘I am afraid,’ said Louisa.

Then Onslow put his arm round her waist, something he had not done for years, and thought with satisfaction that they were truly husband and wife.