Francis was cut to the quick, but he had never in his life doubted the truth of anything his mother said, and, when she pointed out the temptations of a soldier’s life, he began to see himself as a feeble will-less wastrel utterly unfitted to wear the king’s uniform. Better never to wear it than to disgrace it! It was quite as easy for him to see himself in this light as to dream heroically of warlike deeds and successful prowess. His mother played upon his foible and stripped him mercilessly of red coat, sword, epaulets, cocked hat, and glorious future. He capitulated and agreed that he was incapable of saying “No,” and was therefore unfitted to take up the commission so kindly obtained for him by his cousin Bampfield.
Having been robbed of his dream, he did not very much care what the future held for him. His mother explained to him that she had very little money and could leave him less, and that if he would go into the Church his Cousin Bampfield could provide him with a living as soon as he had been ordained. She could not send him to Oxford or Cambridge, since the estate of a gentleman in those universities was costly, but she had made inquiries and found that the University of Dublin, the Irish being notoriously poor, could equip a divinity student with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, theology, and a degree for a modest annual sum.
Francis embraced this plan miserably enough, and began to study the Greek Testament with the vicar. The subject of the commission was never reopened, and his mother was more amiable to him than she had ever been.
A few months later it was announced that William was to stay with Cousin Bampfield, and Francis learned that the commission had been transferred to his detested young brother. He lost his temper, waylaid William, dragged him behind the stables, and thumped his aquiline nose until it swelled and assumed a red and purple hue, and William howled and vowed that if ever he could do his brother a mischief he would. No hint of the combat ever reached their mother, in spite of her distress at the damage to her William’s beautiful nose, and the brothers went their ways—William abroad, to stay with his aunt by marriage, the Comtessa di Sangiorgi, and Francis to Dublin, where he lodged with a slatternly Irishwoman, who corrupted his habits and encouraged him in his natural indolence of mind and excessive good-nature.
Of his university life nothing very definite is known. He was in every way unremarkable. He was too simple and direct to achieve notoriety by conflict with his fellow-undergraduates. He recognised that he was in Dublin to procure a degree, and set himself to achieve that purpose with the minimum of trouble. He acquired a taste for the Latin poets, especially Juvenal, Horace, and Lucretius, and he was never weary of reading the fragmentary novel of Petronius Arbiter. He had many acquaintances and few friends, and he devoted much time to the growth and cultivation of a long golden beard, which, together with his snub nose, earned him the nickname of Socrates, or Old Soc. In Ireland he was happier than he ever was again in all his long life, though, with his large capacity for enjoyment, it cannot be said that he was ever genuinely unhappy. In Ireland he found an atmosphere altogether congenial to his temperament, which found its food in Rabelais, Montaigne (Voltaire he would not read as he was going to be a clergyman), and so led him to the conviction that English literature was diverted from its true channel after the death of Henry Fielding. (He once took a chaplaincy in Lisbon because he wished to see and to honour the novelist’s grave.) He made friends enough to be asked to spend his vacations away from home, and was glad to have excuses to give to his mother—excuses which he conveyed to her in letters beginning “Dear Madam” and subscribed “Your obedient son.”
Nothing occurred to disturb his equable determination to enter the Church, and after he had taken the degree of Bachelor of Divinity he swallowed the Thirty-nine Articles without blinking and proceeded to ordination at the hands of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, shortly after the marriage of Queen Victoria with her cousin Prince Albert, not yet either great or good, and almost within a week of his brother William’s departure with his regiment for India.
For a few months he acted as chaplain in his cousin Lord Folyat’s household, and was amused to find his position as spiritual adviser and curate of souls gave him a status slightly above that of the butler and, so far as cordiality went, distinctly below that of the huntsman who fed and trained the hounds. He comforted himself with the reflection that his condition was at any rate better than that of Parson Adams, though his deserts were less, and took steps to obtain work independently of his family. This greatly upset madam, his mother, who warned him that he might be jeopardising his chances of the next family living. Within himself he argued that, being by profession a shepherd of souls, he must not waste time in places where there was not one to be found. He did not, however, lay this argument before his mother, but accepted a curacy at one hundred and ten pounds in South Devon, on a pleasant estuary, in a little town that had been a seaport in old days, trading busily with France and the Netherlands, and once familiar ground to Francis Drake and many another Elizabethan adventurer. Here there might or might not be souls for his charge, but there was the sea, and romance, and a heronry, and woods that were a perfect paradise for birds. He went down to the place and wrote his mother a very fine literary description of its natural beauties, which he sent to her by the new penny post and promised that he would stay with her for six days before he entered upon his new life.
He arrived to find her in her great four-poster bed, shrivelled and very little, and looking very old in the shadow of its massive hangings. Her appearance shocked him. He had never seen anybody die, and he had a strange feeling that he was being very unfairly treated, and he realised painfully that in honouring his father’s memory and his mother he had enjoyed only a very unsatisfactory relationship. His brother William was in India; Peter was on the high seas, and no word was to be expected from him for three years or more. He was alone, and he felt ashamed of his incapacity to grapple with the situation. His mother, perhaps as a tactful tribute to the profession into which she had forced him, asked him to read the Bible, and automatically he turned to the Book of Ecclesiastes and read her the passage in the last chapter which contains some of the soundest and most neglected advice ever given to mankind. He made no attempt to reconcile it with Christian teaching and his work, but found himself delighting in the spiritual health of the words. His mother said:
“Francis, you must read better than that.”
This rather irritated him, though he knew it was selfish and inappropriate at such a time. He replied: