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_ Old Mr Pontifex had married in the year 1750, but for fifteen years
his wife bore no children. At the end of that time Mrs Pontifex
astonished the whole village by showing unmistakable signs of a
disposition to present her husband with an heir or heiress. Hers
had long ago been considered a hopeless case, and when on consulting
the doctor concerning the meaning of certain symptoms she was
informed of their significance, she became very angry and abused the
doctor roundly for talking nonsense. She refused to put so much as
a piece of thread into a needle in anticipation of her confinement
and would have been absolutely unprepared, if her neighbours had not
been better judges of her condition than she was, and got things
ready without telling her anything about it. Perhaps she feared
Nemesis, though assuredly she knew not who or what Nemesis was;
perhaps she feared the doctor had made a mistake and she should be
laughed at; from whatever cause, however, her refusal to recognise
the obvious arose, she certainly refused to recognise it, until one
snowy night in January the doctor was sent for with all urgent speed
across the rough country roads. When he arrived he found two
patients, not one, in need of his assistance, for a boy had been
born who was in due time christened George, in honour of his then
reigning majesty.
To the best of my belief George Pontifex got the greater part of his
nature from this obstinate old lady, his mother--a mother who though
she loved no one else in the world except her husband (and him only
after a fashion) was most tenderly attached to the unexpected child
of her old age; nevertheless she showed it little.
The boy grew up into a sturdy bright-eyed little fellow, with plenty
of intelligence, and perhaps a trifle too great readiness at book
learning. Being kindly treated at home, he was as fond of his
father and mother as it was in his nature to be of anyone, but he
was fond of no one else. He had a good healthy sense of meum, and
as little of tuum as he could help. Brought up much in the open air
in one of the best situated and healthiest villages in England, his
little limbs had fair play, and in those days children's brains were
not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason
that the boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or eight years
old he could read, write and sum better than any other boy of his
age in the village. My father was not yet rector of Paleham, and
did not remember George Pontifex's childhood, but I have heard
neighbours tell him that the boy was looked upon as unusually quick
and forward. His father and mother were naturally proud of their
offspring, and his mother was determined that he should one day
become one of the kings and councillors of the earth.
It is one thing however to resolve that one's son shall win some of
life's larger prizes, and another to square matters with fortune in
this respect. George Pontifex might have been brought up as a
carpenter and succeeded in no other way than as succeeding his
father as one of the minor magnates of Paleham, and yet have been a
more truly successful man than he actually was--for I take it there
is not much more solid success in this world than what fell to the
lot of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex; it happened, however, that about the
year 1780, when George was a boy of fifteen, a sister of Mrs
Pontifex's, who had married a Mr Fairlie, came to pay a few days'
visit at Paleham. Mr Fairlie was a publisher, chiefly of religious
works, and had an establishment in Paternoster Row; he had risen in
life, and his wife had risen with him. No very close relations had
been maintained between the sisters for some years, and I forget
exactly how it came about that Mr and Mrs Fairlie were guests in the
quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of their sister and brother-
in-law; but for some reason or other the visit was paid, and little
George soon succeeded in making his way into his uncle and aunt's
good graces. A quick, intelligent boy with a good address, a sound
constitution, and coming of respectable parents, has a potential
value which a practised business man who has need of many
subordinates is little likely to overlook. Before his visit was
over Mr Fairlie proposed to the lad's father and mother that he
should put him into his own business, at the same time promising
that if the boy did well he should not want some one to bring him
forward. Mrs Pontifex had her son's interest too much at heart to
refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, and about a
fortnight after the Fairlies had left, George was sent up by coach
to London, where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was
arranged that he should live.
This was George's great start in life. He now wore more fashionable
clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and any little rusticity
of gait or pronunciation which he had brought from Paleham, was so
quickly and completely lost that it was ere long impossible to
detect that he had not been born and bred among people of what is
commonly called education. The boy paid great attention to his
work, and more than justified the favourable opinion which Mr
Fairlie had formed concerning him. Sometimes Mr Fairlie would send
him down to Paleham for a few days' holiday, and ere long his
parents perceived that he had acquired an air and manner of talking
different from any that he had taken with him from Paleham. They
were proud of him, and soon fell into their proper places, resigning
all appearance of a parental control, for which indeed there was no
kind of necessity. In return, George was always kindly to them, and
to the end of his life retained a more affectionate feeling towards
his father and mother than I imagine him ever to have felt again for
man, woman, or child.
George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the distance from
London was under fifty miles and there was a direct coach, so that
the journey was easy; there was not time, therefore, for the novelty
to wear off either on the part of the young man or of his parents.
George liked the fresh country air and green fields after the
darkness to which he had been so long accustomed in Paternoster Row,
which then, as now, was a narrow gloomy lane rather than a street.
Independently of the pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the
farmers and villagers, he liked also being seen and being
congratulated on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young
fellow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a bushel.
His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek of an evening; he had
taken kindly to these languages and had rapidly and easily mastered
what many boys take years in acquiring. I suppose his knowledge
gave him a self-confidence which made itself felt whether he
intended it or not; at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of
literature, and from this to being a judge of art, architecture,
music and everything else, the path was easy. Like his father, he
knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostentatious and
less liberal than his father; while yet a boy he was a thorough
little man of the world, and did well rather upon principles which
he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as principles,
than from those profounder convictions which in his father were so
instinctive that he could give no account concerning them.
His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone. His
son had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father
knew it perfectly well. After a few years he took to wearing his
best clothes whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he
discard them for his ordinary ones till the young man had returned
to London. I believe old Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and
affection, felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of
something which he could not thoroughly understand, and whose ways,
notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his
ways. Mrs Pontifex felt nothing of this; to her George was pure and
absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought she saw, with pleasure,
that he resembled her and her family in feature as well as in
disposition rather than her husband and his.
When George was about twenty-five years old his uncle took him into
partnership on very liberal terms. He had little cause to regret
this step. The young man infused fresh vigour into a concern that
was already vigorous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in
the receipt of not less than 1500 pounds a year as his share of the
profits. Two years later he married a lady about seven years
younger than himself, who brought him a handsome dowry. She died in
1805, when her youngest child Alethea was born, and her husband did
not marry again. _
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