In Mrs. Turner's Cautionary Stories in Verse he occurs
again and again. Mr. Fairchild was a perfect type of him. Mr. Bennet,
when the Misses Lizzie, Jane and Lydia were in pinafores, must have
been another perfect type: we can reconstruct him as he was then from
the many fragments of his awfulness which still clung to him when the
girls had grown up. John Ruskin's father, too, if we read between the
lines of Praeterita, seems to have had much of the authentic monster
about him. He, however, is disqualified as a type by the fact that he
was `an entirely honest merchant.' For one of the most salient
peculiarities in the true Georgian Papa was his having apparently no
occupation whatever--his being simply and solely a Papa. Even in
social life he bore no part: we never hear of him calling on a
neighbour or being called on. Even in his own household he was seldom
visible. Except at their meals, and when he took them for their walk,
and when they were sent to him to be reprimanded, his children never
beheld him in the flesh. Mamma, poor lady, careful of many other
things, superintended her children unremittingly, to keep them in the
thorny way they should go. Hers the burden and heat of every day, hers
to double the ro^les of Martha and Cornelia, that her husband might be
left ever calmly aloof in that darkened room, the Study.
Pages:
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269