E-Text created by Martin Adamson
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Father and Son
A study of two temperaments
by Edmund Gosse
Der Glaube ist wie der Liebe:
Er Lasst sich nicht erzwingen.
Schopenhauer
AT the present hour, when fiction takes forms so ingenious and sospecious, it is perhaps necessary to say that the followingnarrative, in all its parts, and so far as the punctiliousattention of the writer has been able to keep it so, isscrupulously true. If it were not true, in this strict sense, topublish it would be to trifle with all those who may be inducedto read it. It is offered to them as a document, as a record ofeducational and religious conditions which, having passed away,will never return. In this respect, as the diagnosis of a dyingPuritanism, it is hoped that the narrative will not be altogetherwithout significance.
It offers, too, in a subsidiary sense, a study of the developmentof moral and intellectual ideas during the progress of infancy.These have been closely and conscientiously noted, and may havesome value in consequence of the unusual conditions in which theywere produced. The author has observed that those who havewritten about the facts of their own childhood have usuallydelayed to note them down until age has dimmed theirrecollections. Perhaps an even more common fault in suchautobiographies is that they are sentimental, and are falsifiedby self-admiration and self-pity. The writer of theserecollections has thought that if the examination of his earliestyears was to be undertaken at all, it should be attempted whilehis memory is still perfectly vivid and while he is stillunbiased by the forgetfulness or the sensibility of advancingyears.
At one point only has there been any tampering with precise fact.It is believed that, with the exception of the Son, there is butone person mentioned in this book who is still alive.Nevertheless, it has been thought well, in order to avoid anyappearance of offence, to alter the majority of the proper namesof the private persons spoken of.
It is not usual, perhaps, that the narrative of a spiritualstruggle should mingle merriment and humour with a discussion ofthe most solemn subjects. It has, however, been inevitable thatthey should be so mingled in this narrative. It is true that mostfunny books try to be funny throughout, while theology isscandalized if it awakens a single smile. But life is notconstituted thus, and this book is nothing if it is not a genuineslice of life. There was an extraordinary mixture of comedy andtragedy in the situation which is here described, and those whoare affected by the pathos of it will not need to have itexplained to them that the comedy was superficial and the tragedyessential.
September 1907
THIS book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments,two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as wasinevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings heredescribed, one was born to fly backward, the other could not helpbeing carried forward. There came a time when neither spoke thesame language as the other, or encompassed the same hopes, or wasfortified by the same desires. But, at least, it is someconsolation to the survivor, that neither, to the very last hour,ceased to respect the other, or to regard him with a sadindulgence.
The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces incomparison with which the changes that health or f