effort to high College and University office.
It was at least widely acknowledged that he had married for love, which is a noble thing for a man of ambition and limited personal means to do. The lady in question, though undeniably a beauty and of acceptable parentage, was of delicate constitution, and had no fortune. Yet love is its own justification, and of course is irresistible.
When Dr Daunt conveyed his decision to the Master of his College, that placid gentleman did his kindly best to dissuade him from a step that would certainly delay, if it did not actually curtail, his University career. For the fact was that the College just then had only one vacant living of which to dispose. Dr Passingham spoke frankly: he did not think that this living would do for a man of Daunt’s temper and standing. The stipend was small, barely enough for a single man; the parish was poor, and the work hard, with no curate to lend his aid.
And then the place itself: an utterly unlovely spot, scarred by long-established mine workings and, in latter years, by numerous foundries, workshops, and other manufactories, around which had grown up a waste of smoke-blackened brick. Dr Passingham did not say so, but he considered Millhead, which he had visited only once, to be the kind of place with which no gentleman would wish willingly to be associated.
After some minutes of attempting quiet persuasion, it began to vex the Master somewhat that Dr Daunt did not respond to his well-meant words in the way that he had hoped, persisting instead in a desire to accept the living, and its attendant hardships, at all costs. At last, Dr Passingham had no choice but to shake his head sadly and agree to put the arrangements in hand with all speed.
And so, on a cold day in December 1818, the Reverend Achilles Daunt took up residence, with his new wife, at Millhead Vicarage. The house – which I have personally visited and inspected – stands, squat and dismal, with its back to a desolate tract of moor, facing a gloomy view of tall black chimneys and ugly, close-packed dwellings in the valley below. Here, indeed, was a change for Dr Daunt. Gone were the lawns and groves and mellow stone courts of the ancient University. To his daily contemplation now lay a very different prospect, peopled by a very different humanity.
But the new incumbent of Millhead Vicarage was determined to work hard for his Northern flock; and certainly it could not be denied that in this, his first, ministry he performed his duties with unswerving diligence. He became especially celebrated in the district for his well-prepared sermons, delivered with intellectual passion and dramatic power, which soon began to draw large congregations to St Symphorian’s of a Sunday.
In appearance, he matched the heroic Christian name that his parents had seen fit to bestow upon him: a tall and confident figure, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, bearded like a prophet. As he tramped the wet and dirty streets of Millhead, he exuded an intimidating air of conscious merit. To the world at large, he seemed a rock and a rampart, a citadel against which nothing could prevail. Yet, by degrees, he began to find that great things were not easy to accomplish in this place of toil, where kindred spirits were few. His work amongst the working poor of the town began to depress him more than he felt it ought to have done; nor did preferment and removal from Millhead come quickly, as he had hoped it would. In short, Dr Daunt became something of a disappointed man.
The imminent birth of his first child did a little to lift his spirits; but, alas, the arrival in the world of baby Phoebus brought tragedy in its wake. Within three days of presenting Dr Daunt with his son and heir, his pretty little wife was dead, and he was left alone, save for the perpetually howling infant, in the dreary house on the hill, with no prospect that he could see of ever being able to leave.
The extremity of his grief brought him to the brink of despair. Great silences descended on the house when, for days on end, the Vicar would shun all human contact. During this black period, solicitous friends from their little circle came to offer succour to him in his bewilderment. Amongst the most attentive was Miss Caroline Petrie, one of those who had sat admiringly before Dr Daunt’s pulpit at St Symphorian’s. Gradually, Miss Petrie became established as the chief agent of the Vicar’s recuperation; she concluded matters most satisfactorily by becoming the second Mrs Daunt in the autumn of 1821.
Of the transition from a state of spiritual and mental annihilation to another of restituted faith and confidence, Dr Daunt never spoke; one can only guess at the compromises that he had to make with both soul and conscience. But make them he did, with some advantage to himself, and grave disadvantage to me.
The formidable Miss Caroline Petrie, who brought with her to Millhead Vicarage a small but welcome annuity, was as different from the first Mrs Daunt as could be. Despite her years, she exhibited a well-matured strength of mind at every point. Her bearing was what one would naturally call regal, conveying a dignity of form and expression that immediately commanded attention in both high and low. Partly this was due to her unusual height (she was fully a head taller even than Dr Daunt, and had the advantage of literally looking down upon practically everyone to whom she spoke); partly it arose from her striking physiognomy.
At this time she was four-and-twenty, and had been living quietly with her uncle, both her parents having died together in an accident some time before. She was no beauty in the conventional sense, as the first Mrs Daunt had been, the impression created by her features being rather of tribulation vanquished. Indeed, she carried the visible signature of suffering overcome in the disfiguring etchings of smallpox.
Yet any poet worth his laurels, or painter hungry for inspiration, would have flown instantly into a fine frenzy at first sight of that imperious face. It seemed always set in an austere intensity of expression, as though she had at that very moment looked up from the absorbed perusal of some improving work of irresistible interest – though such works were in fact largely unknown to her. But there was a mitigating softness, too, a yielding about the mouth and eyes that, as one became aware of it, transposed the whole effect of her countenance from the minor to the major key. Besides which she had spirit, the most charming manners when she wished, and blunt good sense. Furthermore, she had ambition, as events were soon to show.
With the money she brought to the marriage, a nurse – Mrs Tackley by name – was employed to watch over the infant Phoebus, which she did most capably until the boy was two years old, when his step-mamma assumed full responsibility for his upbringing and welfare. As a consequence, the boy’s character grew to resemble hers in many points, particularly with regard to her worldly outlook, which stood in distinct contrast to the longing of her husband to take up the life of the cloistered scholar once again. It was extraordinary how close they became, and how often Dr Daunt would encounter them locked closely together in conversation, like two conspirators. Though the Vicar was still, of course, responsible for the boy’s formal education, in all other respects it seemed that his second wife had taken over from him as the dominant influence on his son’s life; and even here, in the study, his authority was frequently undermined. The boy generally applied himself well to his lessons; but if he wished at any time to go and ride his pony, or fish in the stream at the bottom of the garden, instead of getting declensions into his head, then he only had to appeal to his step-mamma and he would be instantly released from his labours. On other occasions, too, the Vicar would find his wishes thwarted, and his orders countermanded. One day, he required the boy to accompany him to one of the worst parts of the town, where utter poverty and hopelessness were starkly manifest on every corner, feeling no doubt that the experience would be useful in awakening in his son some compassion for the plight of those so much less fortunate than himself. But they were intercepted at the front door by his furious wife, who proclaimed that under no circumstances was dear Phoebus to be exposed to such disgusting and dangerous sights. The Vicar protested; but argument was useless. He went down into the town alone, and never again attempted to take his son with him. From these and other instances of the second Mrs Daunt’s ascendancy, it is impossible not to conclude that, gradually, and by means that he was unable to resist, Dr Daunt’s son was being taken away from him.
