I enjoy reading books about life in villages pre-industrial revolution wherever in the world they may be. Asking ChatGPT to recommend books like this returned this title and so I read it. I was a bit weary since it was a “Duke Classic book” and it also had the flavor of being something like Middlemarch, which I had to stop reading. Although this book was a bit of a slog, I like stories that go through different generations such as one of my favorites, “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” This book is nowhere near as enjoyable as One Hundred Years of Solitude but it did satisfy the generation preference.
Let’s get to my highlights and thoughts.
Theobald, however, had not been kindled by Christina’s enthusiasm, so she fell back upon the Church of Rome – an enemy more dangerous, if possible, than paganism itself. A combat with Romanism might even yet win for her and Theobald the crown of martyrdom. True, the Church of Rome was tolerably quiet just then, but it was the calm before the storm, of this she was assured, with a conviction deeper than she could have attained by any argument founded upon mere reason.
I know very little about the schism of the Anglican church from the Roman Catholic church. Yes, I know it was due to King Henry the 8th and Cromwell. I also know that the monasteries had gotten a bit too powerful as well. But those are just the 10,000 foot view of what occurred, a schism of this magnitude is no small thing so I enjoy little insights such as this to get a grasp of the whole.
There is no time at which what the Italians call la figlia della Morte lays her cold hand upon a man more awfully than during the first half hour that he is alone with a woman whom he has married but never genuinely loved.
“The Daughter of Death.” This is referring to how marriage in Victorian times often leads to spiritual and emotional death. It is a cynical view and as I think about it, I wonder if it is because life was so formal during those times. Pondering further, marital relations seemed to be pretty formal right up until the 1960s’ when attitudes started to change.
I asked ChatGPT about this and in the author’s view “the passions of love and marriage eventually turn into disillusionment, constraint, and decay.”
I would like to think things are a bit better in modern times but this post isn’t about marital relations so let’s move on.
Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Romane, donec tampla refeceris Aedesque labentes deorum et Foeda nigro simulacra fumo.
“You, Roman, though blameless, will pay for the sins of your ancestors,
until you restore the temples and the crumbling shrines of the gods
and the images made foul with black smoke.” – The Roman poet Horace
Why Butler uses it in The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler quotes it ironically. He was deeply critical of Victorian religion and morality, which he saw as hypocritical and oppressive, inherited blindly from previous generations.
By invoking Horace, Butler is making a kind of mock-serious commentary:
- Victorian society suffers for the “sins of its ancestors” — not pagan ones, but the rigid moral and religious codes passed down.
- The “temples” that need rebuilding are not literal churches, but the moral and intellectual foundations of society.
- He uses the Latin to sound “highbrow” in the way educated Victorians often did, but his readers would recognize the irony — he’s poking at their habit of quoting classical moralists while ignoring the real decay in their own moral institutions.
He had read not long since of an Eastern traveller, who, while exploring somewhere in the more remote parts of Arabia and Asia Minor, had come upon a remarkably hardy, sober, industrious little Christian community – all of them in the best of health – who had turned out to be the actual living descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rechab;
Could it be the author is referring to Ibn Battúa? I can’t be sure and don’t feel like going down a rabbit hole but this might be the case and it just so happens, I read about these travels which I found fascinating.
I had to ask ChatGPT about the connection and this lost tribe of Jonadab but again, do not want to go down a rabbit hole here. ChatGPT is a dangerous thing whey trying to finish a post. My fear and awe of it would take a novel so let’s move on.
I have often thought that the Church of Rome does wisely in not allowing her priests to marry. Certainly it is a matter of common observation in England that the sons of clergymen are frequently unsatisfactory. The explanation is very simple, but is so often lost sight of that I may perhaps be pardoned for giving it here.
Again, a reference to the Church of Rome. I grew up Catholic and everyone we interacted with were Catholic as well. It is fascinating for me to see how those in the Anglican church think about them, especially in the Victorian era.
Miss Pontifex, as I have said, got hold of some of these youngsters through Ernest, and fed them well. No boy can resist being fed well by a good-natured and still handsome woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in this respect – give them a bone and they will like you at once.
I could not bear to see the house which had been my home for so many years of my life in the hands of strangers; to ring ceremoniously at a bell which I had never yet pulled except as a boy in jest; to feel that I had nothing to do with a garden in which I had in childhood gathered so many a nosegay, and which had seemed my own for many years after I had reached man’s estate; to see the rooms bereft of every familiar feature, and made so unfamiliar in spite of their familiarity.
I feel these sentiments very strongly. In fact, every time I return to Columbus I pass by my old homes if I have time. The sense of nostalgia pulls me there and I’ll sit for a moment and try to remember long forgotten memories.
Ernest through sheer force of habit, of the sofa, and of the return of the associated ideas, was still so moved by the siren’s voice as to yearn to sail towards her, and fling himself into her arms, but it would not do; there were other associated ideas that returned also, and the mangled bones of too many murdered confessions were lying whitening round the skirts of his mother’s dress, to allow him by any possibility to trust her further. So he hung his head and looked sheepish, but kept his own counsel.
The bond between Ernest and his mother is one of painful contradiction — a mixture of yearning and distrust. Her affection still draws him instinctively, but experience has turned that love into fear; the intimacy of family has become a trap.
his eagerness to regenerate the Church of England (and through this the universe) by the means which Pryer had suggested to him, it occurred to him to try to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going and living among them. I think he got this notion from Kingsley’s “Alton Locke,” which, High Churchman through he for the nonce was, he had devoured as he had devoured Stanley’s Life of Arnold, Dickens’s novels, and whatever other literary garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm; at any rate he actually put his scheme into practice, and took lodgings in Ashpit Place, a small street in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane Theatre, in a house of which the landlady was the widow of a cabman.
A young acolyte’s over enthusiasm for his new profession and which subsequently gets him into trouble. I also highlighted this passage due to the mention of “Drury Lane” which I know from fairy tales. It is a theater district where rich meets poor: the rich go to the theater and the poor looking for distributions through sales, begging or other activities.
And this is what the just – that is to say reasonable people- do as regards those daily affairs of life which most concern them. They settle smaller matters by the exercise of their own deliberation. More important ones, such as the cure of their own bodies and the bodies of those whom they love, the investment of their money, the extrication of their affairs from any serious mess – these things they generally entrust to others of whose capacity they know little save from general report; they act therefore on the strength of faith, not of knowledge. So the English nation entrusts the welfare of its fleet and naval defences to a First Lord of the Admirality, who, not being a sailor can know nothing about these matters except by acts of faith. There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultima ratio.
I like the point that so many important decisions are made on having faith in the experts. Fascinating how that ‘faith’ has been disintegrating in modern times due to a mix of relentless capitalism (everything for profit) and disinformation through the internet. Who or what can you trust these days??
If there was no truth in the miraculous accounts of Christ’s Death and Resurrection, the whole of the religion founded upon the historic truth of those events tumbled to the ground. “My,” he exclaimed, with all the arrogance of youth, “they put a gipsy or a fortune-teller into prison for getting money out of silly people who think they have supernatural power; why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One who died two thousand years ago? What, ” he asked himself, “could be more pure ‘hanky-panky’ than that a bishop should lay his hands upon a young man and pretend to convey to him the spiritual power to work this miracle.
Exactly! I made this point in a debate about 15 years ago and found it incredibly powerful. If Jesus didn’t die and rise from the dead then the whole of Christianity is built on nothing but a fairy tale.
As the author states, you’d put a swindler in jail for fooling people out of their money. But how about religion, which is simply man’s way of providing made up answers to the big questions? Christianity at least gains its strength through ‘faith,’ and all that ‘faith’ may be towards something that isn’t really true.
As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names – not about things; practically the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman.
When Ernest got to the top of the street and looked back, he saw the grimy, sullen walls of his prison filling up the end of it. He paused for a minute or two. “There,” he said to himself, “I was hemmed in by bolts which I could see and touch; here I am barred by others which are none the less real – poverty and ignorance of the world. It was no part of my business to try to break the material bolts of iron and escape from prison, but now that I am free I must surely seek to break these others.”
I like the example here of how prison was a physical barrier but we are likewise constrained by nonphysical barriers such as expectations others have of us. This could be family, a spouse, a social circle, a religion, work and so on. I feel as though we have a bit more freedom to break down these walls in modern times than they did in the Victorian era.
The great change in Ellen’s life consequent upon her meeting Ernest and getting married had for a time actually sobered her by shaking her out of her old ways. Drunkenness is so much a matter of habit, and habit so much a matter of surroundings, that if you completely change the surroundings you will sometimes get rid of the drunkenness altogether. Ellen had intended remaining always sober henceforward, and never having had so long a steady fit before, believed she was now cured. So she perhaps would have been if she had seen none of her old acquaintances. When, however, her new life was beginning to lose its newness, and when her old acquaintances came to see her, her present surroundings became more like her past, and on this she herself began to get like her past too. At first she only got a little tipsy and struggled against a relapse; but it was no use, she soon lost the heart to fight, and now her object was not to try and keep sober, but to get gin without her husband’s finding it out.
I’ve found this to be true: addiction is just as much of a habit as it is a physical need for a substance. In changing an environment it can be a chance to break the habit and thus the addiction to something.
Then he became more hopeful again. When she was sober she was just what she was during the first days of her married life, and so quick was he to forget pain, that after a few days he was as fond of her as ever. But Ellen could not forgive him for knowing what he did. She knew that he was on the watch to shield her from temptation, and though he did his best to make her think that he had no further uneasiness about her, she found the burden of her union with respectability grown more and more heavy upon her, and looked back more and more longingly upon the lawless freedom of the life she had led before she met her husband.
Interesting to see that breaking an addiction is only the first step to repairing a relationship. There are many other aspects to it that revolve around the addiction.
Too sudden a jump from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one from good to bad; besides, poverty is very wearing; it is a quasi-embryonic condition, through which a man had better pass if he is to hold his later developments securely, but like measles or scarlet fever he had better have it mildly and get it over early.
Poverty is a mindset just as it is a lack of money.
So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way I would have a speculation master attached to every school. The boys would be encouraged to read the Money Market Review, the Railway News, and all the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange amongst themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. Then let them see how this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual practice. There might be a prize awarded by the head-master to the most prudent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed. Of course if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money – well and good, let him speculate by all means.…………………
I heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea into practice. He wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles, and found him five hundred pounds which he was to invest according to his lights. The father expected he would lose the money; but it did not turn out so in practice, for the boy took so much pains and played so cautiously that the money kept growing and growing till the father took it away again, increment and all – as he was pleased to say, in self defence.
I enjoyed seeing this as it is a plan I have for my own boys. I have money set aside in their own brokerage which is growing over time. When they are ready, they’ll be able to learn through the actual trading of stocks which should make the lessons that much more interesting.
I’ll always remember a lesson or two in high school as well as quite a few more in college. Both would have been infinitely more interesting had I money of my own to work with. Instead, it was all just an exercise to see if we would have gained or lost money. By setting this up for my boys I hope that their interest is kindled much more than mine was. I plan to teach them the lessons about money that I had to learn on my own.
For my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the seiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses’ collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one’s duty to be a lotus-eater. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “if I could only now, having so forgotten care, drop off to sleep forever, would not this be a better piece of fortune than any I can ever hope for?”
As strange as it sounds, I enjoy a good flu or anything that keeps me in bed for a little while. There are so many demands on me that it is a relief to just be able to throw them all aside for a little while due to illness as a very potent reason. I wonder if I’ll feel the same when even death comes. Perhaps it will bring relief as all cares of this world would suddenly be released. I suppose even in death and as a spirit, I’d worry about my family. Perhaps nothingness is the way to go after death.
