The Fall of Doctor Onslow (19 page)
Read The Fall of Doctor Onslow Online
Authors: Frances Vernon
Louisa had been right in guessing that Onslow’s resignation would be attended by gossip. Had he not also resigned Charton so swiftly four years before, there would have been few to question the official story of his acting out of admirable if eccentric scruples, but as it was, there were some who did not hesitate to question his real motives. Among these was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford.
One afternoon a little while before Christmas, the Bishop came upon Martin Primrose in a quiet room at their London club. The room was empty but for themselves, a circumstance which delighted him.
‘Why, Mr Primrose! How long it is since I last saw you.’ They had not met since shortly after the bishop attempted to demolish Darwin’s arguments at the meeting of the British Association.
Primrose put down his newspaper. ‘Good afternoon, my lord,’ he said. He was not surprised by the other’s friendly manner: it was the bishop’s wish to charm and please all who met him, and it was this characteristic which had earned him the nickname ‘Soapy Sam’. A long time ago, Primrose had been on good terms with him, but that was when he had been a very young clergyman, and delighted to be treated graciously by one far more eminent than himself. Later, he began to think Wilberforce insincere, too fond of advancement, and too desirous to be all things to all men.
‘Do you know, you are the very man I wish to see,’ said the bishop. ‘It has been too long, upon my word!’
‘Yes, my lord?’
‘I well remember our old friendship. I am presuming upon it to ask you a question.’
‘I hope it will be in my power to answer it.’
‘You, I know, are Dr Onslow’s brother-in-law.’
‘I am,’ said Primrose. He put nothing beyond Wilberforce. He had been in London for two weeks, and during that time he had heard plenty of speculation at parties.
‘My dear Mr Primrose, will you not tell me what lies behind this sudden resignation? Had he declined the bishopric one might not have been altogether surprised, but to accept it and then decline it so quickly – it presents a very odd appearance.’ The bishop was so forthright largely because he feared someone else would soon walk into the room and put a stop to the conversation.
‘My lord, my brother-in-law promised himself long ago that he would accept neither a bishopric nor a deanery. His motives are his own affair.’
‘Did he so? But then why accept one?’
‘He was overcome by a momentary temptation,’ said Primrose, thinking the bishop looked just like an ape.
‘I always knew he was not so unnaturally humble as he appears.’
‘Onslow is extremely humble. Why else would he have resigned?’
‘Do you know, Mr Primrose, I suspect you of misleading me. I am very sure there is a story behind all this, and I fancy it is one which the Archbishop ought to know.’
‘You may suspect me as much as you please, my lord, but I give you my word that nothing disgraceful lies behind my brother-in-law’s resignation.’ Passionately he wished that Onslow would not force him to stain his mouth and reputation with a lie, Dr Arnold’s most hated sin.
‘Why,’ said the bishop innocently, raising his heavy brows, ‘I never suspected there was anything disgraceful.’
‘I think you did.’
‘So you will not tell me?’
‘There is nothing to tell.’
‘Mr Primrose, I do not believe you.’
‘I have given you my word, my lord,’ said Primrose.
The bishop hesitated, then said:
‘Very true. I ought not to have said I did not believe you.’
‘No,’ said Primrose.
‘Well! I must be glad of your assurance.’ Then the bishop took up a newspaper. He sat down at the opposite end of the room from Primrose, and the two read together in hostile silence. Neither was willing to leave the room, because it seemed to both of them that to do so would be to grant the other some kind of victory.
*
After Christmas, Primrose met Bishop Wilberforce again, this time on the doorstep of the club. Primrose was going back to his hotel for the night, and, always ready to forgive, he accepted the bishop’s claim to be going in the same direction and his offer to share his umbrella. The night was wet and he had forgotten his own.
In the middle of the unavoidable Haymarket, where the prostitutes clustered thickly, the bishop told Primrose that he had heard the true story of Onslow’s resignation from a lady next to whom he had been sitting at a dinner party.
‘I need scarcely say that I was shocked beyond measure. Your reticence no longer surprises me, Mr Primrose.’
Primrose said nothing.
‘And to think you said there was nothing disgraceful!’ Having made this point, the bishop went on: ‘Do you not think it is truly astonishing that the young man in question has not been more discreet? It seems he has told several persons with whom he was up at Cambridge, and the story has spread widely since then.’
‘A lady told you?’ said Primrose at last.
‘Yes, the news has even reached female ears. I was shocked myself, but ladies nowadays have so little modesty – impure minds and painted faces. Now my dear sir, who is it who is using his hold over Dr Onslow?’
Primrose pulled himself together. Furious at the bishop’s smug, unchristian tone, he said:
‘That is no concern of yours or anyone’s, my lord. And I am astonished that a man in your position cares to credit idle gossip.’
‘Idle gossip, Mr Primrose! A most shameful circumstance, a highly reputed clergyman discovered to be – corrupt, and you call it idle gossip! You surely do not still deny that it is true?’
‘Will you tell me precisely what you have learnt from your lady informant?’
There was a pause, then the bishop said:
‘She told me, Mr Primrose, that Dr Onslow is known to have been over-fond, shall I say, of the young man I mentioned, and she believes that someone, she does not know who, who knows this, is using his knowledge to force Dr Onslow to resign the preferment.’
‘We are all of us sinners, Onslow included,’ said Primrose. ‘I believe neither you nor I have the right to sit in judgement on him.’
‘But I fancy,’ said the bishop, ‘that both the Prime Minister and the Archbishop have the right to sit in judgement on him. And I have told them the whole.’
Primrose was thinking of how it would affect Onslow if he ever knew that his secret was common knowledge in certain circles, that Bright had boasted about his love for him: it was a moment or two before he took in the sense of the bishop’s words.
*
Lord Palmerston, who had failed to be in the least shocked, and who was getting very old, forgot all about someone’s hold on Onslow and offered him the next vacant deanery, which Onslow refused. The Archbishop of Canterbury was horrified enough to satisfy the bishop, but he did not think of taking any action against Onslow. He dreaded a public scandal involving an eminent clergyman, as did most of those who knew and relished their knowledge. Even Bishop Wilberforce dreaded it. He, in telling the Prime Minister and the Archbishop, had not meant to have Onslow
hounded out of the country. It was only his wish to make sure that the man would never again be offered a high preferment – he was in perfect agreement with Dr Anstey-Ward.
Onslow never found out that there were many people who knew at least a part of his story. Such people were, in any case, still a minority. To most he remained a modest man of stern faith, the decliner of bishoprics on principle, a suitable example for young clergymen to follow. Invited to preach in Westminster Abbey, he was at first inclined to say no, but then the thought of how this would irritate Anstey-Ward roused him to accept. He still had spirit enough for that. In August 1864, the sermons he preached there were published, just as they used to be in his Charton days. And so, as he remained for the most part immured at Hinterton, his reputation quietly grew and grew.
On April 30th 1865, some eighteen months after he had resigned the bishopric of Ipswich, Onslow wrote to Primrose.
My dear Martin,
I know that I have neglected you of late, but I hope you will excuse me. I have done so because I have been struggling for many weeks to write a letter of immense personal importance, and it seemed to me impossible to fob you off, as it were, with trivial reports of my doings. For you must be my judge, now that I am at last writing this letter.
How to begin? I can only think to write quite bluntly: I have lost my faith in God. This calamity came upon me quite suddenly some three months ago. I did not climb down the chasm of unbelief by the steps of doubt: no, I fell from its edge straight into the abyss, and there I remain. Daily I pray to the God in Whom I cannot believe for the restoration of the faith which has sustained me all my life, but it is of no avail.
How ironical it is that this should have happened to me. Am I not celebrated for the straitness of my faith? my utter lack of patience with all cavillers, doubters,
latitudinarians? Have I not poured scorn on those who doubt that the Book of Daniel was written by the prophet Daniel, as Christ Himself believed? Did I not consider Dr Arnold himself to be too lax in his interpretation of doctrine, his tolerance of dissenters? Has not only my exceeding love for you enabled me to tolerate your
religious beliefs? All my life I have known that you and Dr Arnold were the best Christians of my acquaintance, yet still in my arrogance I condemned you. I know still that you, Martin, are the best Christian alive, and how I long to be in every way like you! How I long even to resemble the various authors of Essays and Reviews, whom I condemned and you defended in the Edinburgh, so much to my disgust! With all my heart now I wish I could be a generous Broad Churchman, but I cannot. To me now it is all or nothing, Rome or scepticism – and I cannot believe in the dogmas of Rome.
Why was I so blind? It was made clear to me from the first that it is those who question who are the best Christians, that it is those who question who are truly engaged in the struggle to obey God’s will and not their own. I was so firm in my belief because I never gave that belief earnest consideration – in short, my faith was never truly of the heart, as yours is, or even of the brain, but only that of unquestioning assent. Even in my Tractarian days, I never struggled, truly struggled – although I suppose that I did have a vision of how it would be if I began to question, did perceive that in my case to acknowledge a single difficulty would be to doubt all, and was thus attracted to that sternly sheltering faith. Yet I never asked myself as so many did, as I would have done had I been an honest man – if Canterbury, why not Rome?
And now all doctrine appears to me to be utterly false. Instead of believing in God and His Church, I believe all that the sceptics have said, and can do no other. The faith I thought so secure was as brittle as an eggshell, smashed the first time I devoted a single moment’s earnest thought to it, instead merely of rejoicing in complicated arguments designed to show that that which seems against reason in fact conforms to it, such as Mr Mansel has given us.
Martin, I woke one morning thinking idly of Roman Catholic beliefs. And then for the first time I asked myself in all seriousness why men such as we should believe one
mysterious doctrine which seems to confound reason, such as the Trinity or the Incarnation, and reject others. On what grounds, save those of inherited orthodoxy and prejudice? Thus it seemed to me. If God became Man, born of a virgin, why should not He become flesh when a priest mutters words over a wafer of bread? Why indeed should the Holy House of Loretto not have flown through the air? I could think of no answer, where once I believe I would have thought of a score. But I experienced no desire to turn to Rome. Instead of thinking if one belief be true then so must the others, I thought if one be false, then so must the others. With hideous suddenness, I began to envisage this world not as a Catholic but, let us have the word with no bark on it, as an atheist sees it. I saw Man as an automaton, descended from monkeys, in a vast and godless universe – and it seemed to me a blinding revelation of terrible truth. All the sceptics’ arguments I had ever heard poured into my brain, and I found I could not reject them as I used to. All counter-arguments seemed false.
Onslow had found himself obsessed by thoughts of what Anstey-Ward had said to him that evening at Poplar House, but he did not say this. Not even to Primrose had he confessed that he and Anstey-Ward had spent the evening in that manner, for it seemed to him ridiculous, shameful.
I believe my faith must for years have been like burnt paper which keeps its shape in ashes till lightly blown upon, for the least little thing destroyed it. Naturally, I prayed, prayed hard, and I pray still – but the longer I pray the less real does God seem to me. I think of His Son, our Redeemer, on the cross, and it means nothing to me. I cry Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani? for I can no longer believe that He died to save us. I cannot believe in His divinity, I see only an unfortunate man. All at once the Christian vision has been taken away from me, because I now see that never, in my whole life, except perhaps when we were in the Sixth at Rugby, has it been wholly real to
me. I believe now that always, inside me, there was an atheist buried.
I have told myself that I lost my faith because of my personal misfortunes. I have told myself that had I succeeded in becoming a bishop, there would have been no question of my doubting His existence, His justice, His mercy – but even self-mockery has been of no avail. My new vision of this world is as immoveable as a mountain, and Martin, I do not think that it will ever change. I despair of winning back my faith, but I long for it more than I have ever longed for anything in the whole course of my life. For though, as I have said, my Christianity was never that of the heart, but only that of the will, such as it was it was my greatest stay and comfort. How should it not be? I knew myself to be deserving of the fires of hell, but yet I trusted in His mercy. But Martin, I know now that had my Christianity been as deep as yours, I never would have sinned as I did.
Do not think, that because I can no longer give intellectual assent to the Christian faith, I have come to despise its morality. On the contrary, I am more sensible than ever I was of the fact that I am a sinner. Do you remember once saying to me that my sin lay not in giving way to fleshly lust, but in the fact that I had gravely misused my authority? I did not understand you then, but I understand you now. I am loaded with my burden of sin, and can seek no relief, no forgiveness, for there is no Christ to forgive me.
I am determined, wholly determined, to sin no more – not only in that manner (as of course I have no choice but to do) but in all others. I used to be a monster of arrogance. I used to despise the whole world and everyone in it, yourself excluded, but I do so no longer. I never knew how proud I was, how full of the worst kind of spiritual pride, until I lost my faith. And now, if I cannot believe in Christ, I can nonetheless attempt to follow His way. When did I ever forgive those who trespassed against me? Never, and I never knew it till now. When
was I ever thankful for my daily bread? Never, but as the merest form.
I have no longer the slightest wish to be a great man in the eyes of the world. That gnawing passion of mine is a thing of the past. I wish only to try to be a good man – for the first time in my life I can say that with all sincerity. If we have nothing in this universe but our own selves, then, it seems to me, it is of the utmost importance that we should obey the dictates of our consciences, in order that this world, which is all we have, be not a vale of suffering. We sin against humanity, not against God. I used to believe that to own that was to deny all morality, that the absence of a Judge in Heaven would mean the collapse of all moral order: but it is not so. God does not exist, but yet we must be good.
But how I wish, Martin, that I could be a Christian once more: a true Christian this time, with a more than nominal awareness of sin. Faith in God, though it was so inadequate a faith, has supported me through these last five unhappy years, and how hard I find it now to live without it! If I could only believe, truly believe, as you do. Every Sunday since the calamity befell, I have preached sermons, sermons in which I cannot believe. Am I the worst of hypocrites? Martin, may I, because I strive to recapture my lost faith, remain a clergyman even though I do not believe? Or is it my duty to resign my living and declare that I am an atheist? The thought of the scandal makes me shudder, but of course, that must not deter me.
I am a coward, but not so great a coward as I would be had I concealed my loss of faith from you. Will you, Martin, decide for me? I know how great a burden I am placing on your shoulders, but I beg you, on my knees, to do so. I am all unfit to guide myself, I cannot trust my own judgement. But I can trust yours. Please, do not fail me.
It seemed to Onslow appropriate to let a Primrose decide his future. At the last crisis of his life the sister had
decided; now he turned to the brother. The Primroses were the most Christian family in England, though not one of them held by a stern, dogmatic faith, and the old Bishop of Ipswich had been suspected of Sabellianism.
I have read through this letter, and how poor a thing it seems, how feeble an expression of what has happened to me. But I can do no more. I shall wait anxiously for your reply, for the decision as to my fate, and I am, as ever, yours affectionately, George Onslow.
*
A week later the reply from Primrose came. It was very brief.
My
dear
George,
he wrote,
It is unnecessary for me to tell you that your letter has caused me very great distress. Yet I still have a little hope. Are you perfectly sure you are not simply passing through a period of painful spiritual dryness, such as we all of us endure from time to time?
I am not going to write at length, for I think we had best discuss this matter face to face. I shall come up to Hinterton as soon as I may. But meanwhile, I must tell you that it is quite impossible for me to decide whether or not you should continue as a clergyman. It is a decision which only you can make, according to the dictates of your conscience, and I can advance no opinion. I am, my dear George, yours as ever, Martin Primrose.
Onslow had not counted on being rebuffed by Primrose. He had been certain that his friend would decide for him, and to know that he refused was very painful.
Onslow’s conscience told him that in spite of the scandal, in spite of Anstey-Ward, even in spite of the effect on Louisa, he ought to resign his living, decare himself an unbeliever, and struggle to live on his two hundred a year. Yet he began his career as a good man by refusing to obey
these stern inner promptings, telling himself that to struggle to lead a Christian life was much the same thing as to be a believing Christian.
Thus Onslow remained for nearly twenty years the beloved rector of Hinterton, and throughout those twenty years he was conscious of the fact that Anstey-Ward’s triumph and his own fall were both complete.