Name and Fame: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

The Reverend Lawrence Campion, Rector of Angleford, was at this time a prosperous and contented man. Before he reached his fortieth year, he had been presented by an old college friend to a comfortable living. Married to the woman of his early choice, he had become the father of two straight-limbed, healthy, and intelligent children; and then, for another twenty years, he felt that he would not care to change his lot with that of the most enviable of his fellow-creatures.

Being himself a scholar and a student, he determined that his boy and girl, so far as he could shape their lives, should be scholars also. To teach them all he knew was henceforth his chief occupation; for he would not hand over to another a task which for him was a simple labor of love. Day by day he sat between them in his comfortable study, where roses tapped at the lozenge-shaped window panes all through the summer, and in winter the glow of the great logs upon the hearth was reflected from the polished binding and gilt lettering of his books in a thousand autumnal hues, as pleasing to his eyes as the tints of the summer flowers. Day by day he sat between his children, patiently laying the foundation of all they could thereafter learn or know. He made no distinction for age or sex; and in their case, at any rate, nature had set no stigma of inferiority on the intelligence of the girl. Sydney was the older of the two by eighteen months, and at first it seemed as though his mind was readier to grasp a new idea; but there awoke in Lettice a spirit of generous rivalry and resolution, which saved her from being far out-stripped by her brother. Together they studied Greek and Latin; they talked French and read German; they picked up as much of mathematics as their father could explain to them—which was little enough; and, best of all, they developed a literary faculty such as does not always accompany a knowledge of half-a-dozen dead and living languages.

The day came when Mr. Campion, not without misgiving, resolved to test the value of the education which he had given to his children. He had held a fellowship at Peterhouse up to the time of his marriage, and had intended that Sydney should try for a scholarship at the same college. But the boy aimed at a higher mark; he was bent on being a Scholar of Trinity. Perhaps it might have done him good to fail once or twice on the threshold of his life, had his father assured himself beforehand that he would not be disappointed if his pupil was sent back to him for another year of preparation. But, as we have already seen, Sidney succeeded, and, if the truth must be told, Mr. Campion was in no way surprised at his success.

From that time forward none of the Campions ever dreamed of failure in connection with Sydney's efforts. He certainly did not dream of failure for himself. He had that sublime confidence which swells the heart of every young man in the flush of his first victory. We laugh in the middle age at the ambitions which we nursed at twenty; but we did not laugh when the divine breath was in us, and when our faith removed mountains of difficulty from our path.

Sydney's career at Cambridge was one long triumph. He gained the Craven and Porson scholarships; his epigrams were quoted by college tutors as models of vigor and elegance; he was President of the Union; he took an excellent degree, and was elected to a fellowship in due course. He had, in fact, done brilliant things; and at the age of twenty-four he was—to those who knew him best, and especially to those who liked him least—that shining, glorified, inspired, and yet sophisticated product of modern university culture, an academic prig. The word is not of necessity a term of reproach. Perhaps we are all prigs at some season in our lives, if we happen to have any inherent power of doing great things. There are lovable prigs, who grow into admirable men and women; but, alas! for the prig whose self-love coils round him like a snake, until it crushes out the ingenuous fervor of youth, and perverts the noblest aspirations of manhood!

From Cambridge Sydney went to London, and was called to the bar. Here, of course, his progress was not so rapid. Briefs do not come for wishing, nor even for merit alone. Nevertheless he was advancing year by year in the estimation of good judges; and it was known to his father, and to his intimate friends, that he only waited a favorable opportunity to stand for a seat in parliament.

At Angleford, in the meantime, they watched his career with proud hearts and loving sympathy. Mrs. Campion, in particular, doted on her son. She even scanned the paper every morning, never by any chance missing an item of law intelligence, where occasionally she would be rewarded by coming across Sydney's name. She would not have considered any distinction, however great, to be more than his due.

Lettice never thought of disagreeing with her mother when she sang the praises of Sydney; but it must be confessed that both the rector and his wife displayed less than their ordinary balance of judgment in discussing the merits of their son. They unconsciously did much injustice to the girl, by their excessive adulation of her brother, and her interests were constantly sacrificed to his. She would have been the last to admit that it was so; but the fact was clear enough to the few persons who used to visit them at Angleford. Her friend, Clara Graham, for instance, the wife of a London journalist, who came down now and then to spend a holiday in her native village, would attempt to commiserate Lettice on the hardness of her lot; but Lettice would not listen to anything of the kind. She was too loyal to permit a word to be spoken in her presence which might seem to reflect upon her parents or her brother.

Yet it would have been impossible that she should not be in some way affected by the change which had come over her life since Sydney went to Cambridge. From that day her regular reading with her father had ceased, and she was left to direct her studies as she thought best. Mr. Campion was almost entirely absorbed in the prospects of his son, and if Lettice needed his assistance she had to ask for it, often more than once. The consequence was that she soon gave up asking, and her mind, left to its own devices, gradually found its true bent. She did not read much more Latin or Greek, but devoured all the Modern literature that came in her way. After that she began to write—not fiction in the first instance, but more or less solid essays on criticism and social philosophy, following the pattern of certain writers in the half-crown monthly magazines, which her father was wont to take in. If she had known that the time would come when she would have to earn her living by her pen, she could scarcely have adopted a better plan to prepare herself for the task.

In the first instance, whatever she did in this way had been for her own pleasure and distraction, without any clear idea of turning her abilities to practical account. She had no inclination for an idle life, but there was a limited period during which it rested with her father to say what her occupation as a woman should be. When Sidney went to Cambridge, Lettice had entreated that she might be sent to Girton or Newnham; but the young Scholar of Trinity had fought shy of the notion, and it was dropped at once. That, indeed, was the beginning of Lettice's isolation—the beginning of a kind of mental estrangement from her brother, which the lapse of time was to widen and perpetuate.