A few white
locks hung about his ears, his shoulders were bent and his knees feeble,
but he was still hale, and was much respected in our little world of
Paleham. His name was Pontifex.
His wife was said to be his master; I have been told she brought him a
little money, but it cannot have been much. She was a tall,
square-shouldered person (I have heard my father call her a Gothic woman)
who had insisted on being married to Mr Pontifex when he was young and
too good-natured to say nay to any woman who wooed him. The pair had
lived not unhappily together, for Mr Pontifex's temper was easy and he
soon learned to bow before his wife's more stormy moods.
Mr Pontifex was a carpenter by trade; he was also at one time parish
clerk; when I remember him, however, he had so far risen in life as to be
no longer compelled to work with his own hands. In his earlier days he
had taught himself to draw. I do not say he drew well, but it was
surprising he should draw as well as he did. My father, who took the
living of Paleham about the year 1797, became possessed of a good many of
old Mr Pontifex's drawings, which were always of local subjects, and so
unaffectedly painstaking that they might have passed for the work of some
good early master.
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