I showed my father the letter.
The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, and had known him for many years as a clergyman and a rural dean of unblemished character. He wrote to them himself to assure them that they had made a mistake, that I was not the author of the obnoxious work.
But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a pained uprootal of their respect and long affection for him. And they both died some years later, and (presumably) went up to heaven, convinced of my guilt, in spite of the unscrupulous parental ruridiaconal effort to whitewash me.
Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. Clifford, but it did not cause her surprise. She had had her own experiences. She told me that when "Aunt Anne" appeared, she had many letters from persons with whom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having portrayed their aunt.
The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. So primitive was the circle in which my youth was passed that an adverse review, if seen by one of the community, was at once put down to a disaffected and totally uneducated person in our village.
A witty but unfavourable criticism in Punch of my first story was always believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by one of the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the person in question could not by any possibility be on the staff of Punch. They only shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they "had reasons for knowing he had written it."
When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare better. But evidently I had been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved to be only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the
Breakers of the boundless deep.
After the publication of "Red Pottage" a storm burst respecting one of the characters—Mr. Gresley—which even now I have not forgotten. The personal note was struck once more with vigour, but this time by the clerical arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. A Church newspaper which shall be nameless suggested that my portrait of Mr. Gresley was merely a piece of spite on my part, as I had probably been jilted by a clergyman. I will not pretend that the turmoil gave me unmixed pain. If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. But when a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on his clergy the study of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it was not possible for me to remain permanently depressed.
The character was the outcome of long, close observation of large numbers of clergymen, but not of one particular parson. Why, then, was it so exactly like individual clergymen that I received excited or enthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how many parishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and he alone, could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley? I was frequently implored to go down and "see for myself." Their most adorable platitudes were chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it was too late to insert them in "Red Pottage."[1] For they all fitted Mr. Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had been possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright in platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the property and birthright of the race.