feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/novelguide/Tess of the d'Urbervilles/section_3_part_3.txt
feat_book_id: Tess of the d'Urbervilles.chapter xviii
feat_summary_id: chapter xviii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210213065711/https://www.novelguide.com/tess-of-the-durbervilles/summaries/phase3-chapter16-24", "summary": "Twenty-six-year-old Mr. Angel Clare, the handsome and well-educated son of a prominent Wessex clergyman, fails to heed his father's wishes to join the church like his two older brothers, chooses instead to become a gentleman farmer and hopes to farm in America: \"he quite the gentleman born\". He is at the Dairy to learn. He plays a harp. Tess shies away from him, believing that she is impure and not good enough for him", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  
  Angel Clare rises out of the past not altogether as a distinct
  figure, but as an appreciative voice, a long regard of fixed,
  abstracted eyes, and a mobility of mouth somewhat too small and
  delicately lined for a man's, though with an unexpectedly firm close
  of the lower lip now and then; enough to do away with any inference
  of indecision.  Nevertheless, something nebulous, preoccupied, vague,
  in his bearing and regard, marked him as one who probably had no very
  definite aim or concern about his material future.  Yet as a lad
  people had said of him that he was one who might do anything if he
  tried.
  
  He was the youngest son of his father, a poor parson at the other end
  of the county, and had arrived at Talbothays Dairy as a six months'
  pupil, after going the round of some other farms, his object being
  to acquire a practical skill in the various processes of farming,
  with a view either to the Colonies or the tenure of a home-farm, as
  circumstances might decide.
  
  His entry into the ranks of the agriculturists and breeders was a
  step in the young man's career which had been anticipated neither
  by himself nor by others.
  
  Mr Clare the elder, whose first wife had died and left him a
  daughter, married a second late in life.  This lady had somewhat
  unexpectedly brought him three sons, so that between Angel, the
  youngest, and his father the Vicar there seemed to be almost a
  missing generation.  Of these boys the aforesaid Angel, the child of
  his old age, was the only son who had not taken a University degree,
  though he was the single one of them whose early promise might have
  done full justice to an academical training.
  
  Some two or three years before Angel's appearance at the Marlott
  dance, on a day when he had left school and was pursuing his studies
  at home, a parcel came to the Vicarage from the local bookseller's,
  directed to the Reverend James Clare.  The Vicar having opened it and
  found it to contain a book, read a few pages; whereupon he jumped up
  from his seat and went straight to the shop with the book under his
  arm.
  
  "Why has this been sent to my house?" he asked peremptorily, holding
  up the volume.
  
  "It was ordered, sir."
  
  "Not by me, or any one belonging to me, I am happy to say."
  
  The shopkeeper looked into his order-book.
  
  "Oh, it has been misdirected, sir," he said.  "It was ordered by Mr
  Angel Clare, and should have been sent to him."
  
  Mr Clare winced as if he had been struck.  He went home pale and
  dejected, and called Angel into his study.
  
  "Look into this book, my boy," he said.  "What do you know about it?"
  
  "I ordered it," said Angel simply.
  
  "What for?"
  
  "To read."
  
  "How can you think of reading it?"
  
  "How can I?  Why--it is a system of philosophy.  There is no more
  moral, or even religious, work published."
  
  "Yes--moral enough; I don't deny that.  But religious!--and for YOU,
  who intend to be a minister of the Gospel!"
  
  "Since you have alluded to the matter, father," said the son, with
  anxious thought upon his face, "I should like to say, once for
  all, that I should prefer not to take Orders.  I fear I could not
  conscientiously do so.  I love the Church as one loves a parent.
  I shall always have the warmest affection for her.  There is no
  institution for whose history I have a deeper admiration; but I
  cannot honestly be ordained her minister, as my brothers are, while
  she refuses to liberate her mind from an untenable redemptive
  theolatry."
  
  It had never occurred to the straightforward and simple-minded Vicar
  that one of his own flesh and blood could come to this!  He was
  stultified, shocked, paralysed.  And if Angel were not going to
  enter the Church, what was the use of sending him to Cambridge?  The
  University as a step to anything but ordination seemed, to this man
  of fixed ideas, a preface without a volume.  He was a man not merely
  religious, but devout; a firm believer--not as the phrase is now
  elusively construed by theological thimble-riggers in the Church and
  out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school:
  one who could
  
  
                Indeed opine
          That the Eternal and Divine
          Did, eighteen centuries ago
          In very truth...
  
  
  Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.
  
  "No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave alone the rest),
  taking it 'in the literal and grammatical sense' as required by the
  Declaration; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state
  of affairs," said Angel.  "My whole instinct in matters of religion
  is towards reconstruction; to quote your favorite Epistle to the
  Hebrews, 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things
  that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.'"
  
  His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite ill to see him.
  
  "What is the good of your mother and me economizing and stinting
  ourselves to give you a University education, if it is not to be used
  for the honour and glory of God?" his father repeated.
  
  "Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of man, father."
  
  Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to Cambridge like
  his brothers.  But the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a
  stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family tradition; and so
  rooted was the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear to
  the sensitive son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, and
  wrong the pious heads of the household, who had been and were, as his
  father had hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
  this uniform plan of education for the three young men.
  
  "I will do without Cambridge," said Angel at last.  "I feel that I
  have no right to go there in the circumstances."
  
  The effects of this decisive debate were not long in showing
  themselves.  He spent years and years in desultory studies,
  undertakings, and meditations; he began to evince considerable
  indifference to social forms and observances.  The material
  distinctions of rank and wealth he increasingly despised.  Even the
  "good old family" (to use a favourite phrase of a late local worthy)
  had no aroma for him unless there were good new resolutions in its
  representatives.  As a balance to these austerities, when he went to
  live in London to see what the world was like, and with a view to
  practising a profession or business there, he was carried off his
  head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself, though
  luckily he escaped not greatly the worse for the experience.
  
  Early association with country solitudes had bred in him an
  unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion to modern town life,
  and shut him out from such success as he might have aspired to by
  following a mundane calling in the impracticability of the spiritual
  one.  But something had to be done; he had wasted many valuable
  years; and having an acquaintance who was starting on a thriving life
  as a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this might be a lead
  in the right direction.  Farming, either in the Colonies, America, or
  at home--farming, at any rate, after becoming well qualified for the
  business by a careful apprenticeship--that was a vocation which would
  probably afford an independence without the sacrifice of what he
  valued even more than a competency--intellectual liberty.
  
  So we find Angel Clare at six-and-twenty here at Talbothays as a
  student of kine, and, as there were no houses near at hand in which
  he could get a comfortable lodging, a boarder at the dairyman's.
  
  His room was an immense attic which ran the whole length of the
  dairy-house.  It could only be reached by a ladder from the
  cheese-loft, and had been closed up for a long time till he arrived
  and selected it as his retreat.  Here Clare had plenty of space, and
  could often be heard by the dairy-folk pacing up and down when the
  household had gone to rest.  A portion was divided off at one end by
  a curtain, behind which was his bed, the outer part being furnished
  as a homely sitting-room.
  
  At first he lived up above entirely, reading a good deal, and
  strumming upon an old harp which he had bought at a sale, saying when
  in a bitter humour that he might have to get his living by it in the
  streets some day.  But he soon preferred to read human nature by
  taking his meals downstairs in the general dining-kitchen, with the
  dairyman and his wife, and the maids and men, who all together formed
  a lively assembly; for though but few milking hands slept in the
  house, several joined the family at meals.  The longer Clare resided
  here the less objection had he to his company, and the more did he
  like to share quarters with them in common.
  
  Much to his surprise he took, indeed, a real delight in their
  companionship.  The conventional farm-folk of his imagination--
  personified in the newspaper-press by the pitiable dummy known as
  Hodge--were obliterated after a few days' residence.  At close
  quarters no Hodge was to be seen.  At first, it is true, when Clare's
  intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society, these friends with
  whom he now hobnobbed seemed a little strange.  Sitting down as a
  level member of the dairyman's household seemed at the outset an
  undignified proceeding.  The ideas, the modes, the surroundings,
  appeared retrogressive and unmeaning.  But with living on there,
  day after day, the acute sojourner became conscious of a new aspect
  in the spectacle.  Without any objective change whatever, variety
  had taken the place of monotonousness.  His host and his host's
  household, his men and his maids, as they became intimately known to
  Clare, began to differentiate themselves as in a chemical process.
  The thought of Pascal's was brought home to him: "_A mesure qu'on a
  plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux.  Les
  gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les hommes._"
  The typical and unvarying Hodge ceased to exist.  He had been
  disintegrated into a number of varied fellow-creatures--beings of
  many minds, beings infinite in difference; some happy, many serene, a
  few depressed, one here and there bright even to genius, some stupid,
  others wanton, others austere; some mutely Miltonic, some potentially
  Cromwellian--into men who had private views of each other, as he had
  of his friends; who could applaud or condemn each other, amuse or
  sadden themselves by the contemplation of each other's foibles or
  vices; men every one of whom walked in his own individual way the
  road to dusty death.
  
  Unexpectedly he began to like the outdoor life for its own sake,
  and for what it brought, apart from its bearing on his own proposed
  career.  Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the
  chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with
  the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.  For the first time of
  late years he could read as his musings inclined him, without any eye
  to cramming for a profession, since the few farming handbooks which
  he deemed it desirable to master occupied him but little time.
  
  He grew away from old associations, and saw something new in life and
  humanity.  Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena
  which he had before known but darkly--the seasons in their moods,
  morning and evening, night and noon, winds in their different
  tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences, and the voices
  of inanimate things.
  
  
  The early mornings were still sufficiently cool to render a fire
  acceptable in the large room wherein they breakfasted; and, by
  Mrs Crick's orders, who held that he was too genteel to mess at
  their table, it was Angel Clare's custom to sit in the yawning
  chimney-corner during the meal, his cup-and-saucer and plate being
  placed on a hinged flap at his elbow.  The light from the long, wide,
  mullioned window opposite shone in upon his nook, and, assisted by a
  secondary light of cold blue quality which shone down the chimney,
  enabled him to read there easily whenever disposed to do so.  Between
  Clare and the window was the table at which his companions sat, their
  munching profiles rising sharp against the panes; while to the side
  was the milk-house door, through which were visible the rectangular
  leads in rows, full to the brim with the morning's milk.  At the
  further end the great churn could be seen revolving, and its
  slip-slopping heard--the moving power being discernible through the
  window in the form of a spiritless horse walking in a circle and
  driven by a boy.
  
  For several days after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly
  reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by
  post, hardly noticed that she was present at table.  She talked so
  little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not
  strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit
  of neglecting the particulars of an outward scene for the general
  impression.  One day, however, when he had been conning one of his
  music-scores, and by force of imagination was hearing the tune in
  his head, he lapsed into listlessness, and the music-sheet rolled
  to the hearth.  He looked at the fire of logs, with its one flame
  pirouetting on the top in a dying dance after the breakfast-cooking
  and boiling, and it seemed to jig to his inward tune; also at the two
  chimney crooks dangling down from the cotterel, or cross-bar, plumed
  with soot, which quivered to the same melody; also at the half-empty
  kettle whining an accompaniment.  The conversation at the table mixed
  in with his phantasmal orchestra till he thought: "What a fluty voice
  one of those milkmaids has!  I suppose it is the new one."
  
  Clare looked round upon her, seated with the others.
  
  She was not looking towards him.  Indeed, owing to his long silence,
  his presence in the room was almost forgotten.
  
  "I don't know about ghosts," she was saying; "but I do know that our
  souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive."
  
  The dairyman turned to her with his mouth full, his eyes charged
  with serious inquiry, and his great knife and fork (breakfasts were
  breakfasts here) planted erect on the table, like the beginning of
  a gallows.
  
  "What--really now?  And is it so, maidy?" he said.
  
  "A very easy way to feel 'em go," continued Tess, "is to lie on the
  grass at night and look straight up at some big bright star; and, by
  fixing your mind upon it, you will soon find that you are hundreds
  and hundreds o' miles away from your body, which you don't seem to
  want at all."
  
  The dairyman removed his hard gaze from Tess, and fixed it on his
  wife.
  
  "Now that's a rum thing, Christianer--hey?  To think o' the miles
  I've vamped o' starlight nights these last thirty year, courting, or
  trading, or for doctor, or for nurse, and yet never had the least
  notion o' that till now, or feeled my soul rise so much as an inch
  above my shirt-collar."
  
  The general attention being drawn to her, including that of the
  dairyman's pupil, Tess flushed, and remarking evasively that it was
  only a fancy, resumed her breakfast.
  
  Clare continued to observe her.  She soon finished her eating, and
  having a consciousness that Clare was regarding her, began to trace
  imaginary patterns on the tablecloth with her forefinger with the
  constraint of a domestic animal that perceives itself to be watched.
  
  "What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!" he
  said to himself.
  
  And then he seemed to discern in her something that was familiar,
  something which carried him back into a joyous and unforeseeing past,
  before the necessity of taking thought had made the heavens gray.  He
  concluded that he had beheld her before; where he could not tell.  A
  casual encounter during some country ramble it certainly had been,
  and he was not greatly curious about it.  But the circumstance was
  sufficient to lead him to select Tess in preference to the other
  pretty milkmaids when he wished to contemplate contiguous womankind.
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XVIII
target: Twenty-six-year-old Mr. Angel Clare, the handsome and well-educated son of a prominent Wessex clergyman, fails to heed his father's wishes to join the church like his two older brothers, chooses instead to become a gentleman farmer and hopes to farm in America: "he quite the gentleman born". He is at the Dairy to learn. He plays a harp. Tess shies away from him, believing that she is impure and not good enough for him