Coming up from the ranks, we reach the intellectual aristocrat, whose culture enables him to add polish to his satiric pith and point. It happens that the two most representative characters of this type are furnished by the two authors who stand at chronological extremes, though the volumes in which they occur are only three years apart.[150]
Kenelm Chillingly is the melancholy Victorian. After the initial lapse into a bit of grotesque caricature in the account of his babyhood,—a thing that would have been avoided by a writer of more restrained taste,—the author paints his portrait with skill, distinction, and truth. His Coming of Age speech to the assembled tenants and guests on that joyful occasion is truly startling, but far from incredible. The audacious youngster, with his grave, serene, matter of fact pessimism, exposes in a searching analysis the discrepancy between the supposed reality they were felicitating themselves and him upon and an ideal which is quite beyond their comprehension. Yet it is an unquestionably practical ideal, and it breaks like a slow, cold, somber light through the shallow sentiment that had been screening some disconcerting depths.
It is true, he says, that the Chillinglys come from a remote race, but length of tenure has meant only so much more inanity.[151]
“They were born to eat as long as they could eat, and when they could eat no longer they died. Not that in this respect they were a whit less insignificant than the generality of their fellow creatures.”
He reminds his gaping, rural audience that man merely represents a stage in the course of evolution.[152]
“The probability is that, some day or other, we shall be exterminated by a new development of species.”
He goes on ruthlessly to assert that, contrary to the popular belief, his father was not a good landlord, because he was too indulgent to the individual and too heedless of national welfare, ignoring the highest duty of the employer, maximum production through competitive examination. As to his own college record:[153]
“Some of the most useless persons—especially narrow-minded and bigoted—have acquired far higher honours at the university than have fallen to my lot.”
And then, after a brilliant Schopenhauerish conclusion, he drinks to their very good healths.
Thus launched, the meditative young man continues in a career of ironic candor, although he learns later the wisdom of being candid only with oneself at times, and less communicative to others; as for instance when he soliloquizes on a request by farmer Saunderson:[154]