Part 1

Produced by Paul Haxo with special thanks to Cornell University, Princeton University, the Internet Archive, and Google.

ROUND THE CORNER

_On veut essayer de peindre à la postérité, non les actions d'un seul homme, mais l'esprit des hommes dans le siècle le plus éclairé qui fut jamais._--SIÈCLE DE LOUIS XIV.

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ PETER HOMUNCULUS LITTLE BROTHER

ROUND THE CORNER

BEING THE LIFE AND DEATH OF FRANCIS CHRISTOPHER FOLYAT, BACHELOR OF DIVINITY AND FATHER OF A LARGE FAMILY

BY GILBERT CANNAN

NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY MCMXIII

_TO MY MOTHER_

_We were happy, you and I, In the days so long gone by, When you gave me of the store Of rich legendary lore, Part saga, and part truth, Of the days of your own youth. Ah! The world was golden then! How we scorned the world of men In the days so long gone by! We were happy, you and I._

_First published_ 1913

CONTENTS

PAGE

A LITTLE PREFACE vii

I. FRANCIS OBLIGES 1

II. THE CURATE MARRIES 9

III. ST. WITHANS 19

IV. FERN SQUARE 29

V. HOSTILITIES 40

VI. FREDERIC'S FRIENDS 50

VII. YOUNG WOMEN 58

VIII. SERGE 71

IX. INTERIOR 83

X. SUNDAY SUPPER 95

XI. ART AND DRAMA 107

XII. ANNETTE 119

XIII. IMBROGLIO 131

XIV. WHITE BEARD AND GREY 143

XV. WALKING HOME 156

XVI. MRS. FOLYAT DISSECTED 170

XVII. FREDERIC SNARED 177

XVIII. EXCURSION 186

XIX. GERTRUDE 200

XX. EDUCATION 210

XXI. MRS. ENTWISTLE'S HEART 218

XXII. LOVE 227

XXIII. BENNETT TELLS HIS MOTHER 241

XXIV. ANNETTE TELLS HER FATHER 247

XXV. LAWRIEAN PHILOSOPHY 260

XXVI. MINNA'S CHOICE 266

XXVII. GERTRUDE MAKES THE BEST OF IT 274

XXVIII. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 280

XXIX. DISCUSSION 288

XXX. FREDERIC IN THE TOILS 295

XXXI. NEWS FROM MINNA 309

XXXII. THE CUTTING OF A KNOT 323

XXXIII. THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER 334

XXXIV. NUNC DIMITTIS 341

A LITTLE PREFACE

Care I for the limbs, the thews, the stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit. HENRY IV, Part II.

_Being of such a strange temper and vision that when I aim my pen at a man I am as likely as not to hit his grandfather, I have in this instance endeavoured to forestall the treachery of my faculties and to go straight for the grandfather, though my interest is centred in the man. In a sense I have written his life as it was long before he was born, when he was nothing more than a growing presentiment. I have found it instructive and entertaining to observe and follow the evolution of the material, moral, and intellectual atmosphere which was to bear on him first of all through his mother's mind, and then through his own senses as soon as his life was separated from hers._

_I launch my hero upon the world and leave it to anybody who likes to kill him, and I pray that those who are in process of morally slaughtering their own innocents may take my imaginary child instead, for there is no remedy for the murder of a living soul, but, should it ever happen that my bantling demanded the right to continue his existence and in his turn to become a father, I have only to revive him, give him another name, and let him do his worst._

_My conscience has been greatly exercised for some time now over the many errors and literary sins I have committed in the past--sins not against the rules (there are none) but against the persons whom I have forced to live in a mutilated, limited sort of life in the printed page, and those other excellent persons whom I have invited to collaborate in the fun of watching them. Upon these two sets of persons I have too often forced my beliefs without making it clear to them what my beliefs are. And here again I shall often seem to offend, because, honestly, I can neither codify my beliefs nor force them into any existing code. I can, however, give a hint at them by saying that, in my view, we can only accept life with dignity and without injury to our self-respect in perfect freedom--by which I shall be taken to mean Licence. Freedom is a much-abused word, and when you use it to seven men and women out of ten they at once think of a world full of satyrs. When I use the word Freedom, I think of a world full of what Walt Whitman, who had no sense of humour when he took pen in hand, called "superb persons," that is, men and women who are not imprisoned in their own thoughts. Only a man's own mind can make him a slave, and every healthy human being from first to last of conscious life struggles for the freedom of his own mind. We set about it often in strange ways and make dreadful muddles, but the fight itself renders life enjoyable, even if the aim be never attained. Freedom, of course, like everything else, is subject to the limitations of this existence. A man's thoughts, like his life, are bounded by birth and death. When he tries to cast them beyond death they fall cold and lifeless, as will be seen in much imaginative poetry, many spiritualistic theories, and all presentations of Heaven. For reasons quite explicable when we consider the dying belief in a sort of straight-line human progress, men have never been interested in events antecedent to birth. I look forward to the day when they will be as little interested in events after death. A man's father and his son (mother and daughter included) are all the past and future vouchsafed to him, and if he will take the trouble to understand them he will find satisfaction and to spare for what is at present called his thirst for immortality._

_I find immortality an admirable word upon which to end my preface, but, in face of the grey tints of this composition, I must protest my optimism, believing human life to be like a river, that, if it be fouled, will run itself clear in time. Only, you must trace the poison to its source and stop it._

I

FRANCIS OBLIGES

_One is One and all alone And ever more shall be so._ OLD SONG.

THERE was once a time, and not so long ago either, when gentle people were so gentle that the males could not (with the countenance of their families) enter upon any profession other than the Army, the Navy, or the Church.

Francis Christopher Folyat was a male member of a gentle family that had done no work for two generations and, unfortunately, had not been clever enough to keep its revenues from dwindling. He was the eldest son and he had two brothers, so that there was one Folyat for each of the three professions, if enough patronage could be collected from their various titled and more or less influential connections. Francis had a snub nose, William had an aquiline nose which his mother adored, and Peter had a nose which betrayed a very remote Jewish infection of the blood of the race.

Parenthetically let it be observed that the name Folyat should be written with two little _f_s--ffolyat, for so the name was spelt by the only really distinguished Folyat, Henry, who had been mixed up in the Gunpowder Plot, so that his name is printed to this day in more than one History of England, and to this day, in spite of its deep-rooted conservatism, the family is proud of that insurgent son. He marks its descent for all to see, and, as it is all so long ago, it is easy to forget that he failed to do that for which certain politicians have become infamous, namely, to blow up the House of Lords and, with it, his cousins, the Baron Folyat and the Viscount Bampfield of his day. He escaped from England, and the French Feuillats, of whom the present representative keeps a newspaper kiosk on the Rue de Rivoli, just outside the Métro station by the Louvre, are his direct descendants. English interest in that branch of the family ceases with the conspirator Henry.

The grandfather of Francis Folyat had a seat in the country and a mansion in London, also a coach and a barouche, an advowson or two, and a vast number of servants; also a large collection of portraits, including a Van Dyck, a Holbein, and a Sir Peter Lely. The father of Francis Folyat left the seat in the country in a dilapidated condition, and only so much else as he could not possibly avoid leaving. However, Baron Folyat and Viscount Bampfield behaved very handsomely and agreed to assist the widow with their patronage. Baron Folyat's magnanimity stopped short at his promise, but Viscount Bampfield was as good as his word, and when the time came for Francis to enter upon a career he procured him a commission in His Majesty's Army. Francis was highly delighted at this, and saw himself stepping into the Duke of Wellington's shoes when that illustrious man should be gathered to that fold where the most illustrious are even as the meanest of God's creatures. He spent a glorious day in the top of his favourite oak-tree in the park planning heroic wars for England and telling the birds that at last they had something to sing about. He had never thought of it before, but, as it had been decided that he was to be a soldier, he flared to the project, saw himself in a red coat charging like Marmion, or dancing at a ball like that described so melodramatically by the wicked poet, Lord Byron, when Belgium's capital had "gathered there her beauty and her chivalry"; more, since it might be his duty to die for England, he fetched up an England worth dying for, a heroic, majestic king, a cause, and a God cursing England's enemies. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and prepared a martial oration in good Ciceronic periods for his mother's benefit, when, as he knew she would, she gave him her blessing and delivered herself of a homily over her soldier-son.

"I will be," he said, "a true Folyat, worthy of the name I bear."

As he entered the house he met his brother William, whom he had always disliked more than any one in the world--he had often prayed to God to make him like William better--and he thought there was a curious look in his eyes. He put it down to envy and liked William less than ever. William sidled up to him and said:

"Mother wishes to see you."

A wish from their mother was a command, always obeyed, as he obeyed it now. She was a very handsome woman. She had been the celebrated Miss Cresitter and she never forgot it. She had been a toast, and queened it accordingly. Her portrait had been painted by an extremely fashionable and very indifferent painter and it hung in her room, the best in the house. She wore a beautiful lace fichu and black lace mittens, and the lines of her face were hard. Her hair was done in ringlets on either side of her face and drawn up into a knot at the back of her head. In front it was parted in the middle and plentifully oiled. The furniture in the room was handsome and ponderous, and there was nowhere an indication of any sort of recognition of the loveliness of the view from the window.

Francis stood, as he had been trained to do in his mother's presence, and waited for her to speak. She was in no hurry and kept him standing, and when she spoke he was startled, as he never failed to be, by the rich tones of her voice. It was a magnificent voice, and she knew it and used it caressingly, lingering on her favourite notes, which she threw cunningly upon the open vowels. Francis was a fine word for her purposes. She might have put a world of affection into her intonation of it, but that seems never to have occurred to her. It never occurred to Francis either.

"Francis," she said, "I have been thinking."

This called for no reply and Francis made none.

"I do not think," she went on, "that you are altogether suitable for the army. You are too gentle. You cannot say 'No.' You are--how shall I say it?--too emotional, too much given to dreams. The life of a soldier is stern and calls for resolution. The Folyats are, and always have been, weak. There have been exceptions it is true, but I have never seen any indication that you are one of them."

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:

"Mother, I could have wished to come to see you in a red coat. It has been ordered that I should wear a black. I do not think I shall ever be a bishop, but I will do my best to remain a gentleman and to be worthy of the name I bear."

His mother turned the subject and talked to him of material matters, and made him promise to preserve intact the family portraits--twelve in all. Certain articles of furniture and plate he was to keep in trust for his brothers when they should return to England. William, she said, was certain to be a general, and Peter could hardly fail, with so much influence, to become an admiral.

"And I," thought Francis, "am a stranger to ambition."

Suddenly tears came to his eyes and he had a feeling of immense pity, and it was so queer to him that he should have an overflowing emotion in his mother's presence that he was relieved when this colloquy was broken off by the entry of Dr. Fish, the physician from the town five miles away, who still wore a wig and knee-breeches and looked like a sparrow after a dust-bath.

Francis left him with his patient and went into the fruit-garden to enjoy a pipe of tobacco, a luxury which had mastered him in Dublin. He learned there to smoke a clay pipe and bird's-eye tobacco and never changed them for sixty years.

Dr. Fish was rather a long time closeted in the dark room with the great bed, and when he came down Francis met him with an anxious face.

"Die?" said Dr. Fish. "Not a bit of it. She'll live to be a hundred."

But to Francis she was already dead, and in his life thereafter she was a ghost whom he regarded with a friendly eye. Never again did he allow her to meddle in his affairs.

II

THE CURATE MARRIES

_She's extremely pretty and loves thee entirely. I have heard her breathe such raptures about thee._--THE OLD BACHELOR.

POTSHAM then was very much what it is now. It is doubtful if fifty houses were built in it in as many years. It had then a repairing dock which provided work for the poor. It has now a jam factory. Then its postmistress, with the aid of a kettle, opened all letters that looked interesting. Only the other day a new resident discovered that his private affairs were common property, and the postmistress was deposed. Then, as now, the church, standing high above the river, was the centre of the somnolent life of the place, and Francis Folyat lived upon an eminence. He liked it.

The little society of the place warmed to the curate when it was found that he was welcomed in the houses of one or two of the county families. When it was discovered that Viscount Bampfield was his first cousin once removed, and that Baron Folyat was half a degree nearer in kinship, he became a romantic figure. When a small girl read in her history book that Henry Folyat was associated with Guy Fawkes, she ran with her thumb between the leaves and showed the passage to her governess, who showed it to her mother, who gave a dinner-party to announce the discovery. Thenceforth the curate was bathed in a golden light.

He became the object of the most flattering attentions. Every woman in the town showed herself a mother to him, and Miss Martha Brett won from him the confession that his full name was Francis ffolyat Christopher ffolyat-Folyat. She hugged this information to her bosom, and gloated over the thought that it was hers and hers alone. She devoured romances, though, being not yet seventeen, she was supposed to confine her attentions to "The Fairchild Family" and Miss Maria Edgeworth. In all innocence Francis lent her the poems of a young man named Shelley who was still regarded as a blasphemous and immoral writer. She could not read them, but did not tell him so, though she distressed him by inviting him to read Mrs. Inchbald aloud to her in the gazebo at the end of the garden, above the wall that was washed by the river when the tide was up and slimed with mud when it was out.