The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler

THE WAY OF ALL FLESH
Samuel Butler
A critical paper by
Nicholas Ogan

Samuel Butler wrote The Way of All Flesh in the 1870s and 1880s, but did not publish the novel during his lifetime.  Butler was reluctant to take the heat for publishing a volume that can be construed as attacking the Church of England, and, apparently, he felt that this obviously autobiographical book was so scathing in its portrayal of his family that he did not want to be around to experience his family’s reaction to it.  Note well, however, that he did arrange to have it published immediately after his death.  His sister was alive when the novel was published posthumously in 1903, and we can only wonder how she reacted to the odious Charlotte.

There is little to shock the modern reader in The Way of All Flesh, but there is much to entertain and amuse.  The book is narrated by the worldly, sophisticated Mr. Overton, whose dry humor helps us avoid taking any of the sometimes ghastly characters and events in the book too seriously.  Overton chronicles four generations in the Pontifex family (or five, if we count Ernest’s illegitimate children).  The multigenerational narrative is not a mere literary device, but integral to our understanding of the main focus of the book, the troubled relationship of Theobald Pontifex and his son, “our hero” Ernest (with “our hero” notably in inverted commas).  There is not much to say about old John Pontifex, and his wife Ruth.  As George put it in their epitaph, “They were unostentatious but exemplary in the discharge of their religious, moral, and social duties.”   As for George Pontifex, who can argue with his rapid success as a publisher of religious books?  Overton makes it clear that he thinks George, who inherits a large and successful business, is more lucky than good.  As he says, with characteristic Overtonian irony: “[George] was too religious to consider Fortune a deity at all; he took whatever she gave and never thanked her, being firmly convinced that whatever he got to his own advantage was of his own getting.  And so it was, after Fortune had made him able to get it.” 

George is a vivid character.  Overton paints him as a philistine and a hypocrite who cares more for his money than for his children. He is physically abusive to his children, just as Theobald will be to Ernest.  “He thrashed his boys two or three times a week and some weeks a good deal oftener, but in those days fathers were always thrashing their boys.”  George is miserly, as Theobald will be in turn.  George decides, mostly for business reasons, that Theobald is to be a clergyman, and though he has no interest whatsoever in Theobald’s wishes, George manages to be totally hypocritical about the situation.  “He had the greatest horror, he would exclaim, of driving any young man into a profession which he did not like.  Far be it from him to put pressure upon a son of his as regards any profession and much less when so sacred a calling as the ministry was concerned.”  George basically forces Theobald into the clergy, and his brutal, controlling behavior is also to be repeated, when Theobald manipulates Ernest in the same fashion.

The scene shifts to Crampsford, which, like Battersby, Roughborough, Coldbath Fields, and Ashpit Place, is aptly named.  The courtship and eventual marriage of Theobald and Christina form a comic episode reminiscent, like much else in this novel, of Jane Austen.

In Battersby, Theobald proceeds to treat his son Ernest as badly as his father had treated him.  Theobald is a remarkably well-developed character.  He is cold, sadistic, manipulative, bullying, passive-aggressive, untruthful, hypocritical, withholding, shallow, dull, sanctimonious, miserly, self-aggrandizing, petulant, and vindictive. The Way of All Flesh is obviously a roman a clef, and Theobald is obviously meant to represent Butler’s father, yet he is something more as well.  Perhaps he represents the Church of England, and more generally Victorian society as a whole.   Interestingly, Ernest, representing the young Butler, loathes and fears Theobald, while Overton, representing the mature Butler, regards Theobald with a kind of amused contempt.

While Theobald is unrelievedly horrible, Ernest’s mother Christina is less appalling, if only slightly.  She is as manipulative and piously hypocritical as Theobald, but does seem to love her family, in her fashion.  While Theobald is wholly repellent, it is impossible not to enjoy a woman whose fantasies of social advancement are so comically rich.  Even on her death bed, she muses:  “’[Ernest] might even go into Parliament.  He had very fair abilities, nothing indeed approaching such genius as Dr Skinner’s, nor even as Theobald’s, still he was not deficient and if he got into Parliament—so young too—there was nothing to hinder his being Prime Minister before he died, and if so, of course, he would become a peer.  Oh! why did he not set about it all at once, so that she might live to hear people call her son “my lord”—Lord Battersby she thought would do very nicely, and if she was well enough to sit he must certainly have her portrait painted at full length for one end of his large dining-hall.  It should be exhibited at the Royal Academy:  “Portrait of Lord Battersby’s mother,’ she said to herself, and her heart fluttered with all its wonted vivacity.”  As Overton puts it, “[Christina] was an amiable, good-natured woman.  If it was not such as awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that she meant well.”
When Ernest leaves home for Roughborough, we cannot help hoping his life will be less dreadful  than in Battersby, but it is not to be.  The eminent educator Dr. Skinner is another amusingly drawn character.  Skinner is another pious hypocrite, and Ernest’s school days are only a little less miserable that his days at home.  Still, Butler manages to tell his story with much wit, and the reader cannot help thoroughly enjoying this part of the novel.  Particularly amusing is Theobald’s chart telling exactly which boys have been drinking beer at the Swan and Bottle, not to mention indulging in smoking and/or swearing and obscene language.   Butler is a fine comic writer.  No one can fail to be amused when Dr. Skinner says, “in a tone of almost super human solemnity”, that he will take “Nothing, Nothing whatever” for supper, only to see him demolish a “good plate of oysters, a scallop shell of mince veal nicely browned, some apple tart, and a hunk of bread and cheese,” along with a hot and stiff gin and water.

Ernest’s years at Cambridge seem to be an improvement over his years at Roughborough.   Overton tells us that Cambridge was the first place Ernest had ever been “consciously and continually happy.”  However, it does not really seem that Ernest develops much at Cambridge.  He is the same weak and conforming fellow he has always been, not questioning whether he really wants to become a clergyman, but just accepting this career as preordained, just as Theobald did before him.  He has no real religious vocation, but believes everything he has ever been told about Christianity, including the literal truth of all the miracles of the Bible.  And his inheritance of five thousand pounds, which we are told is a sufficient sum to make him independent of his father, does nothing to break Theobald’s hold over him.  So susceptible is Ernest to whatever he happens to encounter that his attendance at Mr. Hawke’s sermon turns him into a temporary  “religious enthusiast”, one who is ready to give up all for Christ, except, it turns out, his pipe.  Ernest is contrasted unfavorably with Towneley, who is am important character in the book, despite the limited time he is in view.  Towneley seems to Overton to represent a kind of ideal type—very much in contrast to the Pontifex clan.  He is handsome, athletic, good-natured, unpretentious, reasonable, and very rich.  As Overton says, “Fortune every now and then does things handsomely by a an all around; Towneley was one of those to whom she had taken a fancy, and the universal verdict in this case was that she had chosen wisely.”

Ernest is ordained at age twenty-three.  His foolishness and inexperience lead him into a series of misadventures that are quite comic, at least until he finally gets into serious trouble.  First, our hero fall under the influence of the slippery Pryer, who convinces him of the necessity of founding the preposterous College of Spiritual Pathology, defined as “an institution or college for placing the nature and treatment of sin on a more scientific basis than it rests at present.”  It is to be a facility “where young men … may study the nature and treatment of the sins of the soul as medical students study those of the bodies of their patients.”  Naturally, the College of Spiritual Pathology will need to be endowed, and our hero, naïve as ever, hands over his inheritance to Pryer to speculate in the stock market in order to enlarge his purse sufficiently to accomplish this noble goal. There are numerous references throughout the novel to the dangers of stock market speculation, no doubt related to some unhappy experiences of Butler himself, and Overton’s narrative of the emotional roller-coaster these speculations make Ernest experience is quite entertaining.  In any case, Ernest manages to buy high, and sell low, and Overton details these misadventures with comic zest.   Finally, of course, we find that Pryer, having first lost more than half of Ernest’s inheritance, next absconds with what is left, never to be seen again.  In a proper bildungsroman, the hero must have many difficulties along the way, before attaining maturity, and Ernest is about to experience more than his share.
Ernest fairs no better in his ineffectual efforts to instruct the poor in religion than he does in his market speculations.  The redoubtable, wife-beating Mr. Holt so terrifies our hero that he easily convinces himself not to attempt a conversion, after all.  Instead, he resolves to convert Mr. and Mrs. Baxter from Methodism to the Church of England, only to find that their system may have more merit than his own.  His encounter with Mr. Shaw, the tinker from the North Country who is a freethinker, defeats him and embarrasses him into realizing that he is not all that familiar with the contents of the New Testament.  When Ernest asks Towneley whether he likes the poor, he answers “No, no, no,” and Ernest is coming to realize that, as in most things, Towneley is right.
But Ernest is to have an even worse encounter with the poor.  He is under the impression that two of Mrs. Jupp’s lodgers—Miss Snow and Miss Maitland—are prostitutes.  He begins by convincing himself that he wants to convert Miss Snow, and resolves to visit her, Bible in hand.  In fact, his interest is Miss Snow is more erotic than theological.  As Overton primly declares, “Ernest felt his heart beat fast and fiercely, and an inward monitor warned him that he was thinking of anything rather than of Miss Snow’s soul.”  Miss Snow is indeed a prostitute, and as Ernest awkwardly opens a conversation with her, who should arrive but her next customer, none other than our friend Towneley?  The embarrassment is excruciating.   Ernest slinks away.  In a highly overwrought state, he kicks his Bible into the corner, and decides to visit Miss Maitland, this time without any pretense of an ecclesiastical motive.  Unfortunately for our hero, Miss Maitland is not a prostitute, but a respectable young lady.  Exactly what transpires in her chambers we will never know.  Apparently Overton’s Victorian sense of prudery is too great to allow him to reveal exactly what happens.  Suffice it to say that there is some kind of sexual assault.  Knowing our hero, we may suspect that whatever occurred was bumbling and ridiculous rather than truly violent.
In any case, Ernest is sentenced to six months in prison, where he is diagnosed to have an incipient attack of brain fever (whatever that is), and spends two months at death’s door.  When he does recover, he reexamines his life.  He finally acknowledges that he hated being a clergyman.  He loses his belief in Christian miracles, without exactly losing his belief in God. And, at long last, he finds the strength and resolve to declare himself independent of his father.  We are beginning to like him a little better.  His chance meeting with, and subsequent marriage to Ellen, and the modest success of his small business are signs that Ernest is finally beginning to grow into manhood and independence.  Alas, things can never go that smoothly for Ernest, and the discovery that Ellen is an alcoholic and a bigamist is a setback, to say the least.
Enter the deus ex machina in the form of the inheritance from Alethea.  The sum of seventy thousand pounds, which Ernest receives in 1862, is equivalent to five million pounds in today’s money, according to one web site, and equivalent to three million pounds, according to an equally authoritative-looking second site.  Let’s split the difference and call it four million pounds, certainly sufficient for Ernest to leave off tailoring.  Now things really begin to look up.  Ernest becomes, as much as he ever can, more like Towneley, that is to say, more of an English gentleman.  Travel, leisure, writing, a better frame of mind, and, not least, better clothes all go to show that Ernest has come a long, long way. 

Ernest never really comes to a definite resolution of his religious and philosophical beliefs and doubts.  Initially, in prison, he comes to sense that any rigid system of philosophical belief is undesirable.  “...he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names—not about things; practically, the Church of Rome,  the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman;  for he is the most perfect saint that is the most perfect gentleman.  Then he saw also that it mattered little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only that he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end.  It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.”

Eventually, Ernest comes to understand that there is no such thing as absolute truth and certainty, and therefore that there is no such thing as a perfect system of philosophical or religious belief.  Overton reacts with characteristic modesty, wit, and charm:  “I had only a very vague idea who Bishop Berkley was, but was thankful to him for having defended us from an incontrovertible first premise.  I am afraid I said a few words implying that after a great deal of trouble he had arrived at the conclusion which sensible people reach without bothering their brains so much.”   Amen.
In The Way of All Flesh, we have a well-executed bildungsroman, a satisfying novel of ideas, a passionate indictment of the less savory side of Victorian life, and, not least, a witty, engaging book that is a delight to read, and well deserves its status as a great classic.

Questions for Discussion

1.  Is Overton an atheist?  Is Butler?

2. In a bildungsroman we expect the hero to overcome many difficultiesbefore attaining maturity.  Ernest certainly experiences many difficulties.  Does he attain a satisfactory maturity?

3. Overton’s tone throughout is one of amused ironic distance from the story.  Given that there is a great deal of really bad stuff going on here – think physical and emotional abuse, sexual assalt, prison, for openers – does this work artistically?

4.  High Church, Low Church, Catholic Church, Evangelicalism, Methodism – the mind reels. Is there a member of the Novel Club whose knowledge of ecclesiastical history is sufficient to untangle it all and explain what Butler is attempting to accomplish with his extensive discussion of Victorian Church affairs?

5.  Ernest’s treatment of his two children seems a bit cavalier, at least by contemporary standards.  Is the reader meant to approve of it as much as Overton seems to?

6. What do you make of the relationship of Overton and Alethea, a relationship about which Overton implies much but says little?