The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler (beautiful books to read .TXT) ๐
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The Way of All Flesh is often considered to be Samuel Butlerโs masterpiece, and is frequently included in many lists of best English-language novels of the 20th century. Despite this acclaim, Butler never published it in his lifetimeโperhaps because the novel, a scathing, funny, and poignant satire of Victorian life, would have hit his contemporaries too close to home.
The novel traces four generations of the Pontifex family, though the central character is Ernest Pontifex, the third-generation wayward son. The reader follows Ernest through the eyes of his watchful godfather, Mr. Overton, as he strikes out from home to find his way in life. His struggles along the way illustrate the complex relationships between a son and his family, and especially his father; all while satirizing Victorian ideas about family, church, marriage, and schooling.
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- Author: Samuel Butler
Read book online ยซThe Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler (beautiful books to read .TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Samuel Butler
โCould you like,โ she wrote to him not long ago, โthe thoughts of a little sea change here? The top of the cliffs will soon be bright with heather: the gorse must be out already, and the heather I should think begun, to judge by the state of the hill at Ewell, and heather or no heatherโ โthe cliffs are always beautiful, and if you come your room shall be cosy so that you may have a resting corner to yourself. Nineteen and sixpence is the price of a return-ticket which covers a month. Would you decide just as you would yourself like, only if you come we would hope to try and make it bright for you; but you must not feel it a burden on your mind if you feel disinclined to come in this direction.โ
โWhen I have a bad nightmare,โ said Ernest to me, laughing as he showed me this letter, โI dream that I have got to stay with Charlotte.โ
Her letters are supposed to be unusually well written, and I believe it is said among the family that Charlotte has far more real literary power than Ernest has. Sometimes we think that she is writing at him as much as to say, โThere nowโ โdonโt you think you are the only one of us who can write; read this! And if you want a telling bit of descriptive writing for your next book, you can make what use of it you like.โ I daresay she writes very well, but she has fallen under the dominion of the words โhope,โ โthink,โ โfeel,โ โtry,โ โbright,โ and โlittle,โ and can hardly write a page without introducing all these words and some of them more than once. All this has the effect of making her style monotonous.
Ernest is as fond of music as ever, perhaps more so, and of late years has added musical composition to the other irons in his fire. He finds it still a little difficult, and is in constant trouble through getting into the key of C sharp after beginning in the key of C and being unable to get back again.
โGetting into the key of C sharp,โ he said, โis like an unprotected female travelling on the Metropolitan Railway, and finding herself at Shepherdโs Bush, without quite knowing where she wants to go to. How is she ever to get safe back to Clapham Junction? And Clapham Junction wonโt quite do either, for Clapham Junction is like the diminished seventhโ โsusceptible of such enharmonic change, that you can resolve it into all the possible termini of music.โ
Talking of music reminds me of a little passage that took place between Ernest and Miss Skinner, Dr. Skinnerโs eldest daughter, not so very long ago. Dr. Skinner had long left Roughborough, and had become Dean of a Cathedral in one of our Midland countiesโ โa position which exactly suited him. Finding himself once in the neighbourhood Ernest called, for old acquaintance sake, and was hospitably entertained at lunch.
Thirty years had whitened the Doctorโs bushy eyebrowsโ โhis hair they could not whiten. I believe that but for that wig he would have been made a bishop.
His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirฤญnal, he replied with all his wonted pomp: โYes, the Quirฤญnalโ โor as I myself prefer to call it, the Quirฤซnal.โ After this triumph he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his headmastership. At lunch he did indeed once say, โnext to impossible to think of anything else,โ but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, โnext to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas,โ after which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable. Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr. Skinnerโs works upon the bookshelves in the Deanery dining-room, but he saw no copy of Rome or the Bibleโ โWhich?
โAnd are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr. Pontifex?โ said Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.
โOf some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like modern music.โ
โIsnโt that rather dreadful?โ โDonโt you think you ratherโโ โshe was going to have added, โought to?โ but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.
โI would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow.โ
โAnd pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?โ
โWith Sebastian Bach.โ
โAnd donโt you like Beethoven?โ
โNo, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him.โ
โAh! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness.โ
Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her fatherโ โa likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mindโs ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:โ โ
โStay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohnโs Songs without Words.โ
After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. โThese expressions,โ he said,
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