Impressions of Theophrastus Such

A Half-Breed

An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its unfailing

Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all newer joys

by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment of change. I

refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love of ideas,

practical beliefs, and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a

gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to

seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a

mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. In

this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the melancholy lot; for an

abandoned belief may be more effectively vengeful than Dido. The child

of a wandering tribe caught young and trained to polite life, if he

feels an hereditary yearning can run away to the old wilds and get his

nature into tune. But there is no such recovery possible to the man who

remembers what he once believed without being convinced that he was in

error, who feels within him unsatisfied stirrings towards old beloved

habits and intimacies from which he has far receded without conscious

justification or unwavering sense of superior attractiveness in the new.

This involuntary renegade has his character hopelessly jangled and out

of tune. He is like an organ with its stops in the lawless condition of

obtruding themselves without method, so that hearers are amazed by the

most unexpected transitions--the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and

the ob** confounding both.

Hence the lot of Mixtus affects me pathetically, notwithstanding that he

spends his growing wealth with liberality and manifest enjoyment. To

most observers he appears to be simply one of the fortunate and also

sharp commercial men who began with meaning to be rich and have become

what they meant to be: a man never taken to be well-born, but

surprisingly better informed than the well-born usually are, and

distinguished among ordinary commercial magnates by a personal kindness

which prompts him not only to help the suffering in a material way

through his wealth, but also by direct ministration of his own; yet with

all this, diffusing, as it were, the odour of a man delightedly

conscious of his wealth as an equivalent for the other social

distinctions of rank and intellect which he can thus admire without

envying. Hardly one among those superficial observers can suspect that

he aims or has ever aimed at being a writer; still less can they imagine

that his mind is often moved by strong currents of regret and of the

most unworldly sympathies from the memories of a youthful time when his

chosen associates were men and women whose only distinction was a

religious, a philanthropic, or an intellectual enthusiasm, when the lady

on whose words his attention most hung was a writer of minor religious

literature, when he was a visitor and exhorter of the poor in the alleys

of a great provincial town, and when he attended the lectures given

specially to young men by Mr Apollos, the eloquent congregational

preacher, who had studied in Germany and had liberal advanced views then

far beyond the ordinary teaching of his sect. At that time Mixtus

thought himself a young man of socially reforming ideas, of religious

principles and religious yearnings. It was within his prospects also to

be rich, but he looked forward to a use of his riches chiefly for

reforming and religious purposes. His opinions were of a strongly

democratic stamp, except that even then, belonging to the class of

employers, he was opposed to all demands in the employed that would

restrict the expansiveness of trade. He was the most democratic in

relation to the unreasonable privileges of the aristocracy and landed

interest; and he had also a religious sense of brotherhood with the

poor. Altogether, he was a sincerely benevolent young man, interested in

ideas, and renouncing personal ease for the sake of study, religious

communion, and good works. If you had known him then you would have

expected him to marry a highly serious and perhaps literary woman,

sharing his benevolent and religious habits, and likely to encourage

his studies--a woman who along with himself would play a distinguished

part in one of the most enlightened religious circles of a great

provincial capital.

How is it that Mixtus finds himself in a London mansion, and in society

totally unlike that which made the ideal of his younger years? And whom

_did_ he marry?

Why, he married Scintilla, who fascinated him as she had fascinated

others, by her prettiness, her liveliness, and her music. It is a common

enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly

the opposite of his ideal; or if not wholly captivated, at least

effectively captured by a combination of circumstances along with an

unwarily manifested inclination which might otherwise have been

transient. Mixtus was captivated and then captured on the worldly side

of his disposition, which had been always growing and flourishing side

by side with his philanthropic and religious tastes. He had ability in

business, and he had early meant to be rich; also, he was getting rich,

and the taste for such success was naturally growing with the pleasure

of rewarded exertion. It was during a business sojourn in London that he

met Scintilla, who, though without fortune, associated with families of

Greek merchants living in a style of splendour, and with artists

patronised by such wealthy entertainers. Mixtus on this occasion became

familiar with a world in which wealth seemed the key to a more brilliant

sort of dominance than that of a religious patron in the provincial

circles of X. Would it not be possible to unite the two kinds of sway? A

man bent on the most useful ends might, _with a fortune large enough_,

make morality magnificent, and recommend religious principle by showing

it in combination with the best kind of house and the most liberal of

tables; also with a wife whose graces, wit, and accomplishments gave a

finish sometimes lacking even to establishments got up with that

unhesitating worldliness to which high cost is a sufficient reason.

Enough.

Mixtus married Scintilla. Now this lively lady knew nothing of

Nonconformists, except that they were unfashionable: she did not

distinguish one conventicle from another, and Mr Apollos with his

enlightened interpretations seemed to her as heavy a bore, if not quite

so ridiculous, as Mr Johns could have been with his solemn twang at the

Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a local preacher among the

Methodists. In general, people who appeared seriously to believe in any

sort of doctrine, whether religious, social, or philosophical, seemed

rather absurd to Scintilla. Ten to one these theoretic people pronounced

oddly, had some reason or other for saying that the most agreeable

things were wrong, wore objectionable clothes, and wanted you to

subscribe to something. They were probably ignorant of art and music,

did not understand _badinage_, and, in fact, could talk of nothing

amusing. In Scintilla's eyes the majority of persons were ridiculous and

deplorably wanting in that keen perception of what was good taste, with

which she herself was blest by nature and education; but the people

understood to be religious or otherwise theoretic, were the most

ridiculous of all, without being proportionately amusing and invitable.

Did Mixtus not discover this view of Scintilla's before their marriage?

Or did he allow her to remain in ignorance of habits and opinions which

had made half the occupation of his youth?

When a man is inclined to marry a particular woman, and has made any

committal of himself, this woman's opinions, however different from his

own, are readily regarded as part of her pretty ways, especially if they

are merely negative; as, for example, that she does not insist on the

Trinity or on the rightfulness or expediency of church rates, but simply

regards her lover's troubling himself in disputation on these heads as

stuff and nonsense. The man feels his own superior strength, and is sure

that marriage will make no difference to him on the subjects about which

he is in earnest. And to laugh at men's affairs is a woman's privilege,

tending to enliven the domestic hearth. If Scintilla had no liking for

the best sort of nonconformity, she was without any troublesome bias

towards Episcopacy, Anglicanism, and early sacraments, and was quite

contented not to go to church.

As to Scintilla's acquaintance with her lover's tastes on these

subjects, she was equally convinced on her side that a husband's queer

ways while he was a bachelor would be easily laughed out of him when he

had married an adroit woman. Mixtus, she felt, was an excellent

creature, quite likable, who was getting rich; and Scintilla meant to

have all the advantages of a rich man's wife. She was not in the least a

wicked woman; she was simply a pretty animal of the ape kind, with an

aptitude for certain accomplishments which education had made the most

of.

But we have seen what has been the result to poor Mixtus. He has become

richer even than he dreamed of being, has a little palace in London, and

entertains with splendour the half-aristocratic, professional, and

artistic society which he is proud to think select. This society regards

him as a clever fellow in his particular branch, seeing that he has

become a considerable capitalist, and as a man desirable to have on the

list of one's acquaintance. But from every other point of view Mixtus

finds himself personally submerged: what he happens to think is not felt

by his esteemed guests to be of any consequence, and what he used to

think with the ardour of conviction he now hardly ever expresses. He is

transplanted, and the sap within him has long been diverted into other

than the old lines of vigorous growth. How could he speak to the artist

Crespi or to Sir Hong Kong Bantam about the enlarged doctrine of Mr

Apollos? How could he mention to them his former efforts towards

evangelising the inhabitants of the X. alleys? And his references to his

historical and geographical studies towards a survey of possible markets

for English products are received with an air of ironical suspicion by

many of his political friends, who take his pretension to give advice

concerning the sss, the Euphrates, and the Niger as equivalent to the

currier's wide views on the applicability of leather. He can only make a

figure through his genial hospitality. It is in vain that he buys the

best pictures and statues of the best artists. Nobody will call him a

judge in art. If his pictures and statues are well chosen it is

generally thought that Scintilla told him what to buy; and yet Scintilla

in other connections is spoken of as having only a superficial and

often questionable taste. Mixtus, it is decided, is a good fellow, not

ignorant--no, really having a good deal of knowledge as well as sense,

but not easy to classify otherwise than as a rich man. He has

consequently become a little uncertain as to his own point of view, and

in his most unreserved moments of friendly intercourse, even when

speaking to listeners whom he thinks likely to sympathise with the

earlier part of his career, he presents himself in all his various

aspects and feels himself in turn what he has been, what he is, and what

others take him to be (for this last status is what we must all more or

less accept). He will recover with some glow of enthusiasm the vision of

his old associates, the particular limit he was once accustomed to trace

of freedom in religious speculation, and his old ideal of a worthy life;

but he will presently pass to the argument that money is the only means

by which you can get what is best worth having in the world, and will

arrive at the exclamation "Give me money!" with the tone and gesture of

a man who both feels and knows. Then if one of his audience, not having

money, remarks that a man may have made up his mind to do without money

because he prefers something else, Mixtus is with him immediately,

cordially concurring in the supreme value of mind and genius, which

indeed make his own chief delight, in that he is able to entertain the

admirable possessors of these attributes at his own table, though not

himself reckoned among them. Yet, he will proceed to observe, there was

a time when he sacrificed his sleep to study, and even now amid the

press of business he from time to time thinks of taking up the

manuscripts which he hopes some day to complete, and is always

increasing his collection of valuable works bearing on his favourite

topics. And it is true that he has read much in certain directions, and

can remember what he has read; he knows the history and theories of

colonisation and the social condition of countries that do not at

present consume a sufficiently large share of our products and

manufactures. He continues his early habit of regarding the spread of

Christianity as a great result of our commercial intercourse with black,

brown, and yellow populations; but this is an idea not spoken of in the

sort of fashionable society that Scintilla collects round her husband's

table, and Mixtus now philosophically reflects that the cause must come

before the effect, and that the thing to be directly striven for is the

commercial intercourse, not excluding a little war if that also should

prove needful as a pioneer of Christianity. He has long been wont to

feel bashful about his former religion; as if it were an old attachment

having consequences which he did not abandon but kept in decent privacy,

his avowed objects and actual position being incompatible with their

public acknowledgment.

There is the same kind of fluctuation in his aspect towards social

questions and duties. He has not lost the kindness that used to make him

a benefactor and succourer of the needy, and he is still liberal in

helping forward the clever and industrious; but in his active

superintendence of commercial undertakings he has contracted more and

more of the bitterness which capitalists and employers often feel to be

a reasonable mood towards obstructive proletaries. Hence many who this

is an idea not spoken of in the sort of fashionable society that

Scintilla collects round her husband's table, and Mixtus now

philosophically reflects that the cause must come before the effect, and

that the thing to be directly striven for is the commercial intercourse,

not excluding a little war if that also should prove needful as a

pioneer of Christianity. He has long been wont to feel bashful about his

former religion; as if it were an old attachment having consequences

which he did not abandon but kept in decent privacy, his avowed objects

and actual position being incompatible with their public acknowledgment.

There is the same kind of fluctuation in his aspect towards social

questions and duties. He has not lost the kindness that used to make him

a benefactor and succourer of the needy, and he is still liberal in

helping forward the clever and industrious; but in his active

superintendence of commercial undertakings he has contracted more and

more of the bitterness which capitalists and employers often feel to be

a reasonable mood towards obstructive proletaries. Hence many who have

occasionally met him when trade questions were being discussed, conclude

him to be indistinguishable from the ordinary run of moneyed and

money-getting men. Indeed, hardly any of his acquaintances know what

Mixtus really is, considered as a whole--nor does Mixtus himself know

it.