Читать книгу Tracks of a Rolling Stone - Henry J. Coke - Страница 11

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It was settled that after a course of three years at a private tutor’s I was to go to Cambridge. The life I had led for the past three years was not the best training for the fellow-pupil of lads of fifteen or sixteen who had just left school. They were much more ready to follow my lead than I theirs, especially as mine was always in the pursuit of pleasure.

I was first sent to Mr. B.’s, about a couple of miles from Alnwick. Before my time, Alnwick itself was considered out of bounds. But as nearly half the sin in this world consists in being found out, my companions and I managed never to commit any in this direction.

We generally returned from the town with a bottle of some noxious compound called ‘port’ in our pockets, which was served out in our ‘study’ at night, while I read aloud the instructive adventures of Mr. Thomas Jones. We were, of course, supposed to employ these late hours in preparing our work for the morrow. One boy only protested that, under the combined seductions of the port and Miss Molly Seagrim, he could never make his verses scan.

Another of our recreations was poaching. From my earliest days I was taught to shoot, myself and my brothers being each provided with his little single-barrelled flint and steel ‘Joe Manton.’ At—we were surrounded by grouse moors on one side, and by well-preserved coverts on the other. The grouse I used to shoot in the evening while they fed amongst the corn stooks; for pheasants and hares, I used to get the other pupils to walk through the woods, while I with a gun walked outside. Scouts were posted to look out for keepers.

Did our tutor know? Of course he knew. But think of the saving in the butcher’s bill! Besides which, Mr. B. was otherwise preoccupied; he was in love with Mrs. B. I say ‘in love,’ for although I could not be sure of it then, (having no direct experience of the amantium iræ,) subsequent observation has persuaded me that their perpetual quarrels could mean nothing else. This was exceedingly favourable to the independence of Mr. B.’s pupils. But when asked by Mr. Ellice how I was getting on, I was forced in candour to admit that I was in a fair way to forget all I ever knew.

By the advice of Lord Spencer I was next placed under the tuition of one of the minor canons of Ely. The Bishop of Ely—Dr. Allen—had been Lord Spencer’s tutor, hence his elevation to the see. The Dean—Dr. Peacock, of algebraic and Trinity College fame—was good enough to promise ‘to keep an eye’ on me. Lord Spencer himself took me to Ely; and there I remained for two years. They were two very important years of my life. Having no fellow pupil to beguile me, I was the more industrious. But it was not from the better acquaintance with ancient literature that I mainly benefited—it was from my initiation to modern thought. I was a constant guest at the Deanery; where I frequently met such men as Sedgwick, Airey the Astronomer-Royal, Selwyn, Phelps the Master of Sydney, Canon Heaviside the master of Haileybury, and many other friends of the Dean’s, distinguished in science, literature, and art. Here I heard discussed opinions on these subjects by some of their leading representatives. Naturally, as many of them were Churchmen, conversation often turned on the bearing of modern science, of geology especially if Sedgwick were of the party, upon Mosaic cosmogony, or Biblical exegesis generally.

The knowledge of these learned men, the lucidity with which they expressed their views, and the earnestness with which they defended them, captivated my attention, and opened to me a new world of surpassing interest and gravity.

What startled me most was the spirit in which a man of Sedgwick’s intellectual power protested against the possible encroachments of his own branch of science upon the orthodox tenets of the Church. Just about this time an anonymous book appeared, which, though long since forgotten, caused no slight disturbance amongst dogmatic theologians. The tendency of this book, ‘Vestiges of the Creation,’ was, or was then held to be, antagonistic to the arguments from design. Familiar as we now are with the theory of evolution, such a work as the ‘Vestiges’ would no more stir the odium theologicum than Franklin’s kite. Sedgwick, however, attacked it with a vehemence and a rancour that would certainly have roasted its author had the professor held the office of Grand Inquisitor.

Though incapable of forming any opinion as to the scientific merits of such a book, or of Hugh Miller’s writings, which he also attacked upon purely religious grounds, I was staggered by the fact that the Bible could possibly be impeached, or that it was not profanity to defend it even. Was it not the ‘Word of God’? And if so, how could any theories of creation, any historical, any philological researches, shake its eternal truth?

Day and night I pondered over this new revelation. I bought the books—the wicked books—which nobody ought to read. The Index Expurgatorius became my guide for books to be digested. I laid hands on every heretical work I could hear of. By chance I made the acquaintance of a young man who, together with his family, were Unitarians. I got, and devoured, Channing’s works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came to the ‘Dialogues Philosophiques.’ The world is too busy, fortunately, to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as flashes through an ‘entretien’ like that between ‘Frère Rigolet’ and ‘L’Empereur de la Chine.’ Every French man of letters knows it by heart; but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here. Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: ‘Or vous voyez bien … qu’un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit être brûlé dans ce monde ci, et dans l’autre.’ To which ‘L’Empereur’ replies: ‘Ça c’est clair comme le jour.’

Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit, as he met with here?

Then followed Rousseau; ‘Emile’ became my favourite. Froude’s ‘Nemesis of Faith’ I read, and many other books of a like tendency. Passive obedience, blind submission to authority, was never one of my virtues, and once my faith was shattered, I knew not where to stop—what to doubt, what to believe. If the injunction to ‘prove all things’ was anything more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St. Paul’s eyes at any rate, could not be sacrilege.

It was not happiness I sought—not peace of mind at least; for assuredly my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me anything but peace. I never was more restless, or, at times, more unhappy. Shallow, indeed, must be the soul that can lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at the roots of our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used to wander about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered spots, longing for some friend, some confidant to take counsel with. I knew no such friend. I did not dare to speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my earnest desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of childhood’s influences was impossible to shake off. I could not rid my conscience of the sin of doubt.

It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child’s first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: ‘Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum!’