And my mother knew it all, yet she admired him. She thought him an infinitely more wonderful man than my father. Why, in heaven’s name· Because he was a chapel man, and far more than that, because he was successful. I can see now, that my mother found it so bitter to be very poor, with a husband who came home drunk and who was by no means “respected” in the village, and a dreary family of young children to bring up, that she had really just one idol, success. She felt herself humiliated beyond endurance by her conditions. Successful men succeeded in making money and passing beyond such conditions. Then let us have success at any price.
Now I am forty, I realise that my mother deceived me. She stood for all that was lofty and noble and delicate and sensitive and pure, in my life. And all the time, she was worshipping success, because she hadn’t got it. She was worshipping a golden calf of a Henry Saxton.
I must say, it was not her nature to worship Henry Saxton. She could say very cutting things about him, very jeering. She would pull the tail of the golden calf very shrewdly. For instance, she would tell of people who came to his shop for sugar. Sugar in those days was very cheap. “What else do yer want besides sugar·” said Henry—“Nothing.”—“Then you can go. I shan’t serve sugar to them as buys nothing else. ”—And off went the unfortunate collier’s wife. Henry lost a tiny bit on sugar.
I think my mother admired even that in him. She thought it“strength”. I remember the story from my very small childhood. Even then I thought it rudeness. But it is what makes success.
My mother was all the time sitting down between two stools: My father had charm and a certain warm, uncurbed vitality that made a glow in the house, when he was not in an evil temper. He loved my mother, in his own way, and thought her a much higher being than himself. She loved him physically, felt his charm always, and hated him for being false and mean in money matters. There was so little money. And he kept so much for himself, selfishly. He made“conditions” so wretched. So she despised him, and fought him tooth and nail.
