In the epilogue of Father and Son, Edmund Gosse reflects on the experience of receiving a letter from his father that “buried itself like an arrow in my heart” (249). While Gosse does not specifically acknowledge the effects of the letter on his development, he explains how his father’s words offered no truce or compromise between individualism and religious belief. Even further still, in many moments in the story, the unwilling nature of his father alienates Gosse from his peers, his family, his family’s friends, and finally, himself. Susan Fraiman’s description of development as “a struggle among diverse narratives” is particularly apt in considering the path of maturation that Gosse describes in Father and Son. What is missing from the “endless negotiation of a crossroads,” however, are the feelings of alienation associated with such negotiation: the metaphorical arrows shot into Gosse’s heart in the name of filial love. Although Gosse acknowledges the costs of development, Father and Son ultimately advocates a definition of development rooted in an individual’s search for truth.
The negotiation of duality from the outset of Father and Son is a central theme, which is apparent in the memoir’s first sentence: “This book is record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences, and almost two epochs” (35). Echoing this theme is the title, “Father and Son,” which connotes the fact that the two sides are “father” and “son.” What compounds the “struggle” is the parents’ attempts to instill intense piety into a child who is simply not capable of understanding or choosing freely. As the narrator grows older, his beliefs begin to occupy a liminal space between the traditional Christian piety of his parents and the secular influence of science (characterized by Lyell, Hooker, and other writers). This “middle ground” is ironic, however, because it is precipitated by his father’s attempts to ground him in theological thought. His father, Gosse writes, “sought to build spires and battlements without having been at the pains to settle a foundation beneath them” (93). The illustration is fundamentally ironic; how can “spires” and “battlements” stand without a “foundation”? At the same time, the irony serves as a metaphor for the father’s actions—he is feeding the boy theological “meat” that he cannot digest, confusing the young Gosse. His mother’s final words, “Take our lamb, and walk with me!” serve as an especially poignant dedication (81). The passage continues as the narrator reflects, “Thus was my dedication, that had begun in my cradle, sealed with the most solemn, and the most poignant and irresistible insistence, at the death-bed of the holiest and purest of women. But what a weight, intolerable as the burden of Atlas, to lay on the shoulders of a little fragile child” (81). For all their efforts to raise the child in a Christian light, the parents only succeed in instilling a terrible fear. Consequently, Gosse’s beliefs occupy a liminal space between faith and skepticism (echoing the theme of duality), a space that is ironic simply because it is not his intended destination.
The language of Philip and Emily in the Gosse household is heavily influenced by Christian thought, as metaphor and Biblical terminology; such Biblical grounding both guides and impedes Gosse’s development throughout the novel. Indeed, Emily Gosse’s last words to her husband and son are “Won’t you take our lamb and walk with me?” (81). The lamb has a dual meaning, alluding to Christ’s status as the “Lamb of God” and to Edmund himself, who is likened to a small animal. Philip Gosse carries on this particular form of rhetoric perhaps precipitated by her early death; Gosse writes, “He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishing my faith, and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascend the pulpit to preach my first sermon. ‘Oh!’ If I may be there, out of sight, and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then I shall say, ‘My poor work is done. Oh! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’” (167). In this case, the word “work” can be understood in several way: the “work” of raising Edmund or “work” as in symbolizing his life’s work as a preacher and a man of God. In addition, Emily and Philip both use different forms of the word “me,” either to spur action or to express a connection with the intangible. Philip’s statement, poignant as Emily’s last, expresses a sense of deference to God and Jesus Christ; yet preceding each, Gosse reminds the audience of the incredible burden such pronouncements put on him as a little child. What might be the purpose of the theological language? It is not immediately clear, but, in some sense, it is a powerful impetus for much of Edmund’s doubt and guilt regarding his own faith.
Gosse’s exploration of Tom Cringle’s Log serves as a powerful introduction to fiction and the kinds of truth present in works of literature. The “lasting impression” of the novel, Gosse explains metaphorically, was akin to “giving a glass of brandy to some one who had never been weaned from a milk diet” (171). Gosse writes,
The long adventures, fightings and escapes, sudden storms without, and mutinies within, fiery blue of the boundless tropical ocean, produced on my first, slowly developing, long stationary and faint, but always tending toward a belief that I should escape at last from the narrowness of the life we led at home, from this bondage to the Law and the Prophets (171).
Contained in this marvelous sentence are a few key phrases and words that show the patterns of Gosse’s mind. The sentence begins with the phrase “long adventures,” perhaps in cognizance of the nature of “the life we led at home.” Successive commas and qualifications—fightings and escapes ... fiery blue of the boundless tropical ocean—serve to slow the rhythm of the sentence and create a buildup of emotion. Only gradually does Gosse get to the point; he is “slowly developing,” but eventually the words “belief,” and “bondage” are used. Tom Cringle’s Log gave him hope; in subsequent paragraphs he discloses that after “reading Tom Cringle’s Log those expeditions were accompanied by a constant hope of meeting with some adventures” (172). Again, Gosse uses the word “adventure,” in parallel to his description on the previous page. Regarding page 171, it is interesting that Gosse connotes “bondage” to “the Law and the Prophets”; he has come to see isolated study of the Bible as limiting to his intellectual and mental development, especially when such study comes at the expense of the imaginative worlds created by literature.
As the son of a practitioner of natural science, Edmund Gosse describes spending extensive amounts of time in his childhood drawing imaginary sea creatures—learning valuable lessons in his development. His father, put off by Edmund’s poor imitative efforts, stops his efforts, but not before the child is able to glean useful insight from the sketching process. Gosse writes:
These extraordinary excursions into science, falsely so called, occupied a large part of my time. There was a little spare room at the back of our house, dedicated to lumber and to empty portmanteaux. There was a table in it already, and I added a stool; this cheerless apartment now became my study. I spent so many hours here, in solitude and without making a sound, that my Father’s curiosity, if not his suspicion, was occasionally roused, and he would make a sudden raid on me (147).
The phrase “extraordinary excursions into science” is interesting especially considering Philip Gosse’s Omphalos debacle—his father’s failed excursion into science. Gosse delves into a description of his work environment; he begins the second and third sentence with the adverb “there,” and continues with a description by employing nouns such “room,” “house,” “table,” and “stool.” The use of these words provides the reader with a mental image of the young Gosse’s “study,” and may have emotive connotations—audiences may themselves have spent hours at a particular desk in Gosse’s time. Emotional still is the image of an Edmund Gosse spending hours in solitude—the supposedly lonely and “cheerless” apartment is made into a quiet respite from his father. Somewhat disconcerting and creepy is his father’s Panopticon-like presence: “he would make a sudden raid on me.” It is not as though the “raid” itself is problematic (which it might be), it is that Gosse acts out of fear and not out of deferential respect. Young Gosse fears he will be caught for a deed that is in many ways harmless and in many ways beneficial to his learning. In the subsequent pages, Gosse writes he “cannot look upon the mental discipline as useless. It taught me to concentrate my attention, to define the nature of distinctions, to see accurately, and to name what I saw. Moreover, it gave me the habit of going on with any piece of work I had in hand, not flagging because the interest or picturesqueness of the theme had declined, but pushing forth toward a definite goal, well foreseen and limited beforehand” (149). What Gosse gleans from the hours of drawing is, along with attentive power, a sense of determination. Of development, he has chosen a path of learning—that makes excursion into science—that father disapproves of. Gosse chooses to negotiate this crossroads even “discouraged by everyone around me” (147).
Toward the end of the novel, Gosse reflects on his boarding-school days and gives readers a glimpse into his adult persona—showing a personality quite removed from his adolescence and comfortable in his own developed status. He writes:
We are the victims of hallowed proverbs, and one of the most classic of these tells us that ‘the child is the father of the man’. But in my case I cannot think that this was true. In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To be marooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit a lighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have always seemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even in imagination (216).
He implicates the audience as well as himself with the phrase “we are the victims”: “hallowed proverbs” being the victimizers. In a developmental sense, the young Gosse disavows the idea that his constrained adolescence made him who he is. The adult Gosse, he claims, is a social and gregarious creature dependent on his friends whom he loves—he dislikes being marooned or being “shut up in a solitary cell.” He cannot stand it—yet, could it be Gosse cannot stand camping “alone” precisely because he cannot stand the thought of his childhood and his “imaginations”? Such a question would be difficult to answer, but it is clear Gosse has developed. He is no longer the shy ten-year-old on a stool drawing in fear of being found out; he is a man and independent expositor of his life. Gosse is vested in “the pulse of moral life” and not in the hallowed proverbs of his past.
As for the account put forth in Father and Son of Gosse’s development, he writes, “this record can ... have no value that is not based on its rigorous adhesion to the truth” (219). Clearly Gosse’s attempts to portray his father and his experiences objectively are sincere, although whether they are part of “truth” is a separate claim altogether. In the epilogue, Gosse quotes his father who projects onto Edmund a “horrid, insidious infidelity” (250). In the process of development, Gosse seems to suggest growing pains—the feelings of alienation from one’s parents—are somewhat inevitable. As Philip and Edmund Gosse struggle against one another, Gosse himself undergoes a struggle to define who he is and what he believes. Of course, the negotiation of the crossroads never ends in Father and Son; Philip Gosse continues to torment his son even into adulthood with his letters. While Edmund acknowledges the crossroads, he writes that his father would have accepted no kind of compromise (251). Unlike Philip Gosse, Edmund Gosse chooses to develop and to reject his father’s exhortations. He embarks on a search for truth, taking a “human being’s privilege to fashion his inner life for himself” (251).
