Description

Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson

99 pages 

JOHN VAREY NICHOLSON was stupid; yet, stupider men than he are now sprawling in
Parliament, and lauding themselves as the authors of their own distinction. He was of a fat
habit, even from boyhood, and inclined to a cheerful and cursory reading of the face of life;
and possibly this attitude of mind was the original cause of his misfortunes. Beyond this
hint philosophy is silent on his career, and superstition steps in with the more ready
explanation that he was detested of the gods.
His father—that iron gentleman—had long ago enthroned himself on the heights of the
Disruption Principles. What these are (and in spite of their grim name they are quite
innocent) no array of terms would render thinkable to the merely English intelligence; but
to the Scot they often prove unctuously nourishing, and Mr. Nicholson found in them the
milk of lions. About the period when the churches convene at Edinburgh in their annual
assemblies, he was to be seen descending the Mound in the company of divers red-headed
clergymen: these voluble, he only contributing oracular nods, brief negatives, and the
austere spectacle of his stretched upper lip. The names of Candlish and Begg were frequent
in these interviews, and occasionally the talk ran on the Residuary Establishment and the
doings of one Lee. A stranger to the tight little theological kingdom of Scotland might have
listened and gathered literally nothing. And Mr. Nicholson (who was not a dull man) knew
this, and raged at it. He knew there was a vast world outside, to whom Disruption
Principles were as the chatter of tree-top apes; the paper brought him chill whiffs from it;
he had met Englishmen who had asked lightly if he did not belong to the Church of
Scotland, and then had failed to be much interested by his elucidation of that nice point; it
was an evil, wild, rebellious world, lying sunk in dozenedness, for nothing short of a Scots
word will paint this Scotsman’s feelings. And when he entered into his own house in
Randolph Crescent (south side), and shut the door behind him, his heart swelled with
security. Here, at least, was a citadel impregnable by right-hand defections or left-hand
extremes. Here was a family where prayers came at the same hour, where the Sabbath
literature was unimpeachably selected, where the guest who should have leaned to any
false opinion was instantly set down, and over which there reigned all week, and grew
denser on Sundays, a silence that was agreeable to his ear, and a gloom that he found
comfortable.