The Fall of Doctor Onslow

by Frances Vernon

  There was another consideration which made it likely that the bishopric of Shrewsbury would be offered to him: the fact that Lord Palmerston liked him personally. He and Onslow had met twice, and on both occasions Onslow had succeeded in making him laugh. Onslow sat now looking at the books on his desk, remembering the glittering dinner at which he had first been introduced to Palmerston, thinking: no self-pity.

  ‘Dear George,’ said Primrose, who saw the pain he was in.

  In all his mild life, he had never guessed that men could do such things as Onslow had done, and he wondered at it very much. Like Louisa, he was secretly more puzzled than horrified by the lusts of Onslow, though he had been distressed to learn that Onslow had any weaknesses at all, apart from his tendency to deviate from Dr Arnold’s religious teachings. Primrose thought that he had never once sat in judgement on a sinner, but doing what he could to help the sinners who came his way was, for all his sorrow at their deeds, his greatest excitement and emotional interest. This did not trouble his conscience, even after his dearest friend had proved himself to be the most fascinatingly endangered of the fallen, in the worldly sphere if not in God’s eyes.

  ‘You have never told me what you think of Dr Anstey-Ward’s demands, Martin,’ said Onslow, pulling his chair a few inches nearer Primrose’s. ‘Do you think he is right? Or wrong? You have said nothing, either way, though you have done so much for me – so much I can never express my gratitude.’

  There was what seemed to Onslow a long silence. Then Primrose said:

  ‘I have been cowardly. I ought to have told you. I believe he is in the right, George, though I could wish he were less –.’

  ‘So,’ said Onslow. He whitened, for he had not realised till this moment how much he relied upon Primrose to tell him that he was the victim of Mrs Grundy, not justice. ‘So, sins of the flesh are unpardonable in a clergyman, as our upright atheist maintains? I am a hypocrite?’

  ‘No,’ said Primrose.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘It is not that you have, er, lusted, or been to an extent a hypocrite,’ said Primrose. ‘Good gracious no, for of whom could that not be said?’

  Of you, thought Onslow, but he said nothing.

  ‘It is that you – you have misused your authority, the power given to you.’

  Unlike Anstey-Ward, who had been chiefly disgusted by the hypocrisy of Onslow, Primrose had seen this point at once – as soon as he read Onslow’s letter, which showed penitence for everything but that. Onslow now stared at him with incomprehension.

  ‘Are you implying that I have been guilty of using force?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Primrose.

  ‘I can assure you it was far otherwise. Do not tell me either that they were too young to know what it was they did. Not one of them was a child. Not one of them was less than sixteen years old.’

  ‘But you were still their headmaster, George.’

  ‘I loved them,’ said Onslow, thinking only of Bright.

  ‘I do not doubt it,’ said Primrose, ‘but it was nonetheless wrong. There. I am honest with you. You asked me to judge, and I –’

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Onslow. ‘God help me.’

  Primrose leant forward. ‘In your heart, don’t you know that? Don’t you know that you ought to have resigned your post if you could not resist temptation, instead of revelling in it? George, I would never say this to you if you were not my friend, and the man whom I shall always respect more than all others living. Don’t you know, underneath, that you ought not now to hold a position of authority in the church?’

  ‘No!’ said Onslow: yet before Anstey-Ward’s letter came, and even before Primrose had agreed to support him, he had made himself miserable over this possibility. It was being discovered which had killed the conscience that tortured him.

  Primrose was far more shocked by Onslow’s negative than he had been by the first revelation of his behaviour.

  ‘Your letter to me was penitent,’ he said, settling back in his chair. His voice was not cold, but wounded. ‘Though it is hardly before me that you ought to appear penitent.’

  ‘I do not deny that I have sinned. I say only that I have sinned no more greatly than some who now sit on the bench of bishops.’

  He was thinking of a story which had made the rounds of the London clubs, and which had not come to Primrose’s ears. It was a funny story, and Onslow’s lips twitched as he thought of it.

  A certain bishop was keeping his mistress in lodgings in the town where he had his palace. One day, she happened to mention that she had never been confirmed. Her lover, deeply shocked, persuaded her that she would be in danger of hell-fire if this ceremony continued to be neglected. He proceeded to prepare her for confirmation during his visits, before or perhaps after attending to other matters, and finally confirmed her with his own hands in the cathedral. After that, his conscience was said to have left him in peace.

  Not everyone thought this story amusing, and some, thought Onslow, appeared to believe that the humour lay in the fact of a bishop’s having a mistress. Their laughs were those of children first learning that adults are not what they make themselves out to be, who would think foul details more amusing than all the delicate ridiculousness in the world. Onslow remembered how he had once repeated the story to a small circle of men whom he knew not to be like that, in a soft deadpan voice. He had told it extremely well, though he had made sure he did not tell it in such a way as would make his audience think he excused the bishop’s conduct.

  His thoughts returned to his own deed, which included kissing boys after confirmation classes. He wondered why it was that punishment had not led him to sincere and useful repentance as all punishment was supposed to do, and why, even if Anstey-Ward had been a Christian, he would have thought he was suffering unjustly. Not even Primrose’s remarks could make him believe that he had sinned too greatly to be a bishop, because his sins were in the past. He had not touched a boy since Bright left Charton – but before others thought fit to judge me, thought Onslow wearily, that consideration did not lessen my internal pain, did not banish my conscience’s picture of Dr Arnold and God behind him.

  Intellectually, he did repent of his old sins, but he could no longer feel. It was not the kind of agonised repentance which his mother, waiting throughout his childhood for the Evangelical ‘conversion’ of his heart from that of a lost one into that of one saved, would have approved. And neither she nor Dr Arnold would have approved of the spurts of emotional repentance he had sometimes felt in the years before Anstey-Ward’s letter came, because so far from leading to action, they had been crushed by him as he strove to cling to his sin.

  He turned his mind away from this question, and made an effort to understand what Primrose had said about the abuse of power and authority.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that I have set the worst possible example to those boys who were the recipients of my affections. Is it for that you consider I am rightly forbidden to enjoy a bishopric?’

  ‘No – not precisely. My meaning is rather that they could not have been able to – to consent to do as you wished altogether freely, George, and therefore you – you must be partially guilty of their error as well as your own.’ He hurried on: ‘Master and pupil are too unequal in possession of wisdom and of – of powers of influence. So the case is that you – why will you force me to say what will hurt you? – you have not merely, er, lusted, you have seduced, and I do think, that in a clergyman with authority over others –.’ He finished: ‘George, I never knew before that you felt no real regret for what you have done!’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Onslow, ignoring this. ‘And are not all human beings unequal in wisdom and powers of influence? According to your logic, relations between men and women are monstrous corruption, for the difference between master and pupils is as nothing in comparison with that between man and woman!’

  23

  Term began to draw to a close, and as it did so, the rigid form of life at Charton started to dissolv
e. Lessons were learned in a perfunctory manner even by good pupils. Boys talked of what they were to do in the holidays, and of arrangements for next term, and were less unkind to each other than usual. Lovers promised to write to each other. Those who were to leave the school said farewell to Onslow and received their leaving-presents, while Onslow himself received from the Sixth Form an edition of the Aeneid, bound in vellum, as a token of their respect. Those who were to stay speculated about the new headmaster, who was not yet chosen, and wondered whether he would be more strict than Onslow.

  August 11th, 1859, was the last day of term, and on that day, at a special morning service, Onslow preached his farewell sermon. While outside the chapel sweating porters struggled with boys’ trunks, he preached on the subject of loneliness to an audience of pupils, former pupils, and parents. The carriages of boys’ parents wanting to attend the service had inundated the village of Charton Underhill, for Onslow was a much admired headmaster, and had been recommended by The Times for the bishopric of Shrewsbury almost as soon as the news of his surprising resignation was made public.

  Mounting the pulpit, Onslow said to his mixed congregation:

  ‘My text is taken from the Book of Isaiah, chapter fifty-three, verse three – “I have trodden the winepress alone”.’ Then he paused, and massaged the sides of the pulpit with his hands. ‘Brethren,’ he said, ‘in this morning’s second lesson you heard the well-known history of our Saviour’s sufferings. In the light of my chosen text, I wonder whether you have stopped to think that perhaps the chief among them was His loneliness. Remember His cry from the cross: My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? At that hour God seemed to have forsaken Him, and man had done so. His own disciples forsook him and fled. In that hour He tasted the fullness of solitude towards both God and man. But was loneliness not the greatest of His sorrows throughout His earthly life? Was He not always alone – most of all when the multitude crowded round Him, but also in the society of the chosen few whom He condescended to call His friends? Truly, He trod the winepress alone.’

  Onslow saw a father at the back nodding sagely. ‘And so must we sometimes do so. I wonder how often you have thought what it means to be alone?’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Perhaps you may think that solitude is a great good. In youth you know little of it, and in manhood too you may lead a very busy life, and thus be glad of those rare moments when you are able to be alone, able to refresh your minds in peace. Yet this solitude which is voluntary and occasional is but half solitude. Solitude which we can exchange at will for the society which we love is a widely different thing from that solitude which is either the consequence of bereavement, or the punishment of a crime, or the result of a protracted illness. From the second solitude a merciful Providence has yet kept you, but of the first and third some among you may know something. Some among you may have suffered the bitter sorrow of bereavement. Others may at some time have been confined to a sickroom, where you have been almost as much cut off from the companions of school as from the more tender solaces of a loving home. At such times have you not felt a heavy demand made upon your cheerfulness? Have you not found disagreeable reflections and painful forebodings more likely to occupy your mind than visions of hope and thoughts of thankfulness?

  ‘Then there are those among you who have returned here today from the outer world, who, I am sure, have experienced at times the sudden sense of isolation and even desolation which may come to a man when he finds himself alone in his lodging, his chambers, his college rooms, with no one to share with him the pleasures and trials of life. In such circumstances a young man, for all his love of new independence, may feel he would give the world to be once more the object of care and affection to others around and above him. And if this can be, how hard is the lot of the man who must leave his very country in the pursuit of fortune or at the call of duty! What a sense of loneliness he must have – the loneliness, if not precisely of solitude, yet of separation, of severance, of isolation! He will surely retain a lifelong recollection of that moment when the last farewells have been exchanged and the removal of the gangway has finally separated the going from the staying. What an impression he will have then of the religious trial of solitude, which reveals what manner of spirit we have, reveals to us whether we have any vitality in ourselves, or are only the creatures of society and circumstance. Yes, some of you may one day know how hard it is to remove ourselves from familiar surroundings and face a new life in solitude.’

  Onslow paused again. He had decided not to refer directly to his leaving Charton, but he hoped his audience had taken the point – it seemed to him that a lady on his left was smiling encouragement.

  ‘And,’ he said gently, his voice descending the scale, ‘there is the loneliness of sorrow. Is it not the feeling of loneliness which gives its sting to bereavement? In the terrible loss of a sister or a mother, a wife or a husband, is not the heart’s loneliness the heaviest and bitterest part of the sorrow?

  ‘But none of these is the most painful form of solitude. More painful by far is the loneliness of sin: not sin committed, for too often we have companions in sin, but sin felt in our hearts. For sin by its very nature separates us from God, who is present in the sickroom, in the prison, in far countries, and even in bereavement. And yet despite this, when the sense of sin is upon us, then God must be our one refuge. And He is so, if we will only repent. At such times we must seek to be alone with God. No other man can help us – by the sense of sin we are separated from the world about us, and cast upon the bosom of our almighty Father.

  ‘Such is the loneliness of repentance, but what must be the loneliness of remorse, which is repentance without God, without Christ, and therefore without hope? If repentance is loneliness, remorse is desolation. Repentance makes us lonely towards man, remorse makes us desolate towards God. That is indeed to be alone, when (to use the inspired figure) not only earth is iron, but also heaven brass. From such loneliness may God in His mercy save us all through His Son Jesus Christ.’

  Onslow spoke these words clearly, but inwardly he was in turmoil. When writing the sermon yesterday, he had been perfectly calm, and had not consciously applied it to his own case, his own sense of sin. But hearing his own voice he did so now. He struggled on to his next paragraph, but the struggle was not visible to his audience.

  ‘I have spoken of loneliness through which we shall probably all pass, before we leave the world. But there remain one or two through which we must undoubtedly all pass, whatever we are.

  ‘There is the loneliness of death. In death we shall be alone, and shall feel ourselves to be so. Friends may be around us, they will not be with us. The soul is already alone with God, viewing itself as in His sight, and preparing for a yet closer access. The words of a Christian friend may suggest thoughts of solemnity or hope; his prayers may encourage, comfort, and help us; but he is no longer with us as he once was.’ Onslow thought of Primrose, who was sitting at the back of the chapel.

  ‘Can we then follow the soul one step further, and see it standing in judgement before the throne of God? At that moment we shall be alone, alone for the last time before we enter forever into the society of the good or the evil. In the one case, there is no such thing as a separate existence because all are gathered together and lost in God – while in the other there can be no separate existence because evil is at last gathered to its kind. Not for sympathy, for there can be no sympathy, amongst the evil, but for the mutual repulsion and unceasing discord which is everywhere where God is not. That discord and repulsion may be regarded as one half of the future punishment which awaits the despisers of an offered mercy in another world.’ Onslow gripped the pulpit and went on a little more loudly than before, seeing that some of those beneath him were looking as unhappy as he felt.

  ‘If you are to die alone, and if you are to be judged alone, be not afraid to think alone, and to pray alone, and if necessary to act alone. What good will it do any of us to have had a whole multitude with us in doing wrong? for the
beloved company of others is all too often an evil influence. What will that excuse be worth at a judgement seat before which we are standing alone – the excuse that others said so, that everyone did so? That is not the question. The question is was it right to do so? was your conscience satisfied that it was right to do so? My brethren, we would not be such servile followers of one another if we could only realise and remember the fact that we must stand alone before God. Far better to be singular now than to be condemned then, far better to face God alone now in prayer, however difficult it may be, than to incur the wrath of Him who is able to destroy soul and body in Hell.

  ‘Perhaps the view of life I have presented to you seems dreary, even grim,’ he said to the bowed heads of some of his pupils, whom he would never see again. ‘Yet let any who think so remember that though we must pray and think alone, and die and be judged alone, there is still a reality of sympathy which we may find and rejoice in if we wish. It is a sympathy unchangeable and eternal, sympathy with Him who so loved us that He died for us, and who is the same yesterday and today and forever. My brethren, He is with us in all our lonely trials, and He will save us, if we will but hearken to His voice within us.’

  As he spoke these words, Onslow came close to tears. He raised his head proudly. Looking down at those below him, nearly all of whom he supposed would side with Anstey-Ward, he thought: yes, I still have Thee. Thou art with me. Thou wilt extend Thy mercy to a sinner who has repented. Lord, now permit Thy servant to depart in peace!

  24

  When it became known that Dr Onslow of Charton had turned down both the bishopric of Shrewsbury and the deanery of Launceston, and wished to spend the rest of his life in the obscurity of a country parsonage, considerable astonishment was felt by the many people who had never suspected him of undue humility. Some of them wondered whether anything could be behind it, but for the most part they concluded that surprising though it was, Onslow was struggling with the demon of worldly ambition, which most clergymen in his position would never have recognised, let alone fought. Onslow allowed this to be known: he told one person that he was indeed afraid of ambition, and waited for the news to spread. He became an even more highly respected figure than he used to be, and was soon offered the choice of three suitable livings. One was in Surrey, one in Devon, and one, by a slender margin the most generously endowed, was in Derbyshire. He chose the Derbyshire rectory, though Louisa, who had never been north of Warwick in her life, wanted the Surrey vicarage in spite of the fact that it was worth only six hundred a year. She believed it would be a comfort to both of them to be close to London and Primrose in their poverty, but, perversely she thought, Onslow opted for the more absolute exile of Hinterton in Derbyshire. It was almost as though he really were fighting an internal demon of worldly ambition.