Father and son : a study of two temperaments / by Edmund Gosse.

  • Gosse, Edmund, 1849-1928.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Father and son : a study of two temperaments / by Edmund Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    hypocritical ingenuity in drawing my Father’s attention away, if possible, as the terrible subject was seen to be looming and approaching. In this my stepmother would aid and abet, sometimes producing incongruous themes, likely to attract my Father aside, with a skill worthy of a parlour conjurer, and much to my admiration. If, how- ever, she was not unwilling to come, in this way, to the support of my feebleness, there was no open collusion between us. She always described my Father, when she was alone with me, admir- ingly, as one “ whose trumpet gave no uncertain sound.” There was not a tinge of infidelity upon her candid mind, but she was human, and I think that now and then she was extremely bored. My Father was entirely devoid of the prudence which turns away its eyes and passes as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction. The peculiar kind of drama in which every sort of social dis- comfort is welcomed rather than that the char- acters should be happy when guilty of “ acting a lie,” was not invented in those days, and there can hardly be imagined a figure more remote from my Father than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far later date, to read “ The Wild Duck,” memories of the embarrassing household of my infancy helped me to realise Gregers Werle, with his determination to pull the veil of illusion away from every compromise that makes life bearable. I was docile, I was plausible, I was anything