XXIV

THE CUSTODE AT PALERMO

15

He was

'Great God, Who yet but darkly known."" continually quoting it in all sorts of connections. Many years after the novel was written we were in Palermo and went to the Palazzo Reale to see the mosaics in the Cappella Palatina. Butler paid at the door and the custode gave him a bad lira among his change; he noticed it at once and they had words about it, but it was of no use. The custode was a lordly old gentleman, voluble in his speech and overwhelming in his gestures and manners; he carried too many guns and deafened us with his protestations-first, that it was a good lira; secondly, that it was not the one he had given us, and so on, and so We could not have felt more ashamed of ourselves if we had been foiled in an attempt to convict the CardinalArchbishop himself of uttering counterfeit coin. So we gave it up and passed in defeated. When we came out we had recovered a little, and the custode, who had forgotten all about so usual an occurrence, returned our umbrellas to us with an obsequiousness capable of but one interpretation.

"I shall not give him anything," said Butler severely to me. "Oh yes, I will though," he added, and his eyes twinkled as he fumbled in his pocket. Then, with a very fair approach to Sicilian politeness, he handed the bad lira back to the old gentleman.

The custode's face changed and changed again like a field of corn on a breezy morning. In spite of his archiepiscopal appearance he would have been contented. with a few soldi; seeing a whole lira he beamed with delight; then, detecting its badness, his countenance fell and he began to object; almost immediately he identified it as his own coin and was on the point of bursting with rage but, suddenly realising that he could have nothing to say, he laughed heartily, shook hands with both of us, and apologised for not being able to leave his post as he would so much have liked to drink a glass of wine with us.

"There, now we have made another friend for life," said Butler as we drove away. "This comes of doing the right thing. We must really be more careful. It is another illustration of what I am so constantly telling you:

16

FAITH IN GOD

XXIV

this is the sort of thing that must have been in the Apostle's mind when he said that about all things working together for good to them that love God."

All through his life, whatever he was engaged upon, whether it was an apparently trivial matter or one apparently of the first importance-whether at Palermo he was paying back the custode in his own coin, or in The Fair Haven paying back the cashiers of the musical banks in an ironical imitation of their own coin-nothing ever shook his belief that if a man loves God he cannot come to much harm. We may not always know very clearly what is meant by God, and things may not always work together for the particular kind of good that we desire; but there is "a something as yet but darkly known which makes right right and wrong wrong," and no man can ultimately fail who obeys the dictates of that voice which we can all hear within us if we will but listen. But he must obey without regard to theological dogmas or social conventions; he must never allow mistakes to dishearten him-mistakes made in good faith will teach him more than anything else; and he must never grow weary of taking pains. Then each difficulty will vanish like a morning mist, and his next step will be made clear.

Alethea realised that Ernest had this faith and that he was the sort of boy who would act steadfastly upon it, therefore she left him her money; and this led to Ernest's experiencing the trial of wealth, as well as that of poverty, and affected the particular form of his final success.

But

if he had had no Aunt Alethea, or if Edward Overton had lost the money, that would only have given rise to different incidents and, after some other trials, some other kind of happiness would have been reached in the end.

Had Butler re-written the book he might have thought it worth while to emphasise Ernest's final success and happiness which, it may be, is presented in a form that may strike some readers as not unlike failure. But I do not think he would have altered it, for we all know that happiness consists in doing what a man likes and not in doing what other people think he ought to like. Writing about his own literary position in 1893 he said:

XXIV

HAPPINESS

17

I should have liked notoriety and financial success well enough if they could have been had for the asking, but I was not going to take any trouble about them and, as a natural consequence, I did not get them. If I had wanted them with the same passionate longing that has led me to pursue every inquiry that I have pursued, I should have got them fast enough. It is very rarely that I have failed to get what I have really tried for and, as a matter of fact, I believe I have been a great deal happier for not trying than I should have been if I had had notoriety thrust upon me.

And so, having made Ernest as like himself as he could, he left him in the happy position of being free, like himself, to do and say the things he considered best worth doing and saying.

c

VOL. II

CHAPTER XXV

1885-PART II. 1886

LUCK OR CUNNING?

1885 IT must have been in June 1885 that some one sent Act. 49 Butler a copy of Il Dovere (a Ticinese newspaper) for

29th May, in which there was a reference to Alps and Sanctuaries, speaking of the author as a "ricco milionario." Butler made a note about how he brought this up to my chambers one morning, as he was on his way to the Museum, and began reading it to me. On arriving at the "rich millionaire " he stopped, and this is how his note proceeds:

At this point I could read no more. Fancy the growth of myth investing me with money! I was in Jones's sitting-room. Jones was in his bedroom finishing dressing. Ann [Jones's laundress] was preparing his breakfast in the pantry. I laughed rather dryly and said:

"The gentleman who wrote that does not do my washing." Ann heard this in the pantry and laughed, for she does my washing and knew what I meant.

"But," I continued, "my clothes are not worn out; they are only tired-they are only inexpressibly weary."

ANN AND MY CLOTHES

Ann, Jones's laundress, now does my washing. I could not get my things properly mended, and for want of this they got more and more ragged. Then Mrs. Doncaster took to washing for me; and this meant that she did not wash, but stuffed all my clothes into the dirty-clothes bag and let them lie there till, at the latest possible moment, she took from the top what would just do for Sunday and left the rest where they were. I remonstrated,

XXV

EDWARD CLODD

19

but the poor woman had more than she could do, and at last 1885 I struck and insisted that Ann should run my washing and Aet. 49 mending. Ann told Jones she found my things so ragged that she was ashamed to send them to her own mangler, but sent the boy with them to a mangler who did not know her name and address. She told Jones not to tell me, but he told me. It is all the fault of my books and of their reviewers that I put off getting new things until the last possible moment. [1885.]

In reply to a general invitation from Mr. Edward Clodd, Butler proposed to go and see him on a Sunday evening at the end of June. Clodd replied accepting the proposal, and telling Butler that he would meet Grant Allen, who was to call on Holman Hunt in the afternoon but would be at Clodd's in the evening. Butler, thinking

it better to prepare Clodd for the possibility of the meeting between himself and Grant Allen not being very cordial, wrote a letter of which he kept a copy that has no date. Here is the letter, followed by a letter to Miss Butler, and two notes arising out of or connected with the episode.

Butler to Mr. Edward Clodd.

DEAR CLODD-Grant Allen and I are both very good sort of people in our different ways, but the world is wide enough to let us, perhaps, do wisely in keeping out of each other's reach. We have each given the other cause to complain, I in saying that Grant Allen wrote an article which he did not sign, and he in writing the article in question. I consider myself justified-so, doubtless, and very likely with more reason, does he; but I am afraid of him, and don't want to meet him; besides he will have been to see Holman Hunt, and what good can I expect from a person who goes to see Holman Hunt?

I went by the Glen Rosa to Clacton-on-Sea yesterday and did not get back till 10 o'clock, so had no means of communicating with you sooner or I would have done so.-Believe me, yours truly, S. BUTLER.

Butler to Miss Butler.

30 June 1885-I went to an old acquaintance's on Sunday evening, or should have written then. He [Mr. Edward Clodd] is secretary to the Joint Stock Bank of London and writes mildly broad-church books. He had made what I am sure was a plant