FRAMLEY PARSONAGE
by
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
CONTENTS
I. “OMNES OMNIA BONA DICERE.”
II. THE FRAMLEY SET, AND THE CHALDICOTES SET.
III. CHALDICOTES.
IV. A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE.
V. AMANTIUM IRÆ AMORIS INTEGRATIO.
VI. MR. HAROLD SMITH’S LECTURE.
VII. SUNDAY MORNING.
VIII. GATHERUM CASTLE.
IX. THE VICAR’S RETURN.
X. LUCY ROBARTS.
XI. GRISELDA GRANTLY.
XII. THE LITTLE BILL.
XIII. DELICATE HINTS.
XIV. MR. CRAWLEY OF HOGGLESTOCK.
XV. LADY LUFTON’S AMBASSADOR.
XVI. MRS. PODGENS’ BABY.
XVII. MRS. PROUDIE’S CONVERSAZIONE.
XVIII. THE NEW MINISTER’S PATRONAGE.
XIX. MONEY DEALINGS.
XX. HAROLD SMITH IN THE CABINET.
XXI. WHY PUCK, THE PONY, WAS BEATEN.
XXII. HOGGLESTOCK PARSONAGE.
XXIII. THE TRIUMPH OF THE GIANTS.
XXIV. MAGNA EST VERITAS.
XXV. NON-IMPULSIVE.
XXVI. IMPULSIVE.
XXVII. SOUTH AUDLEY STREET.
XXVIII. DR. THORNE.
XXIX. MISS DUNSTABLE AT HOME.
XXX. THE GRANTLY TRIUMPH.
XXXI. SALMON FISHING IN NORWAY.
XXXII. THE GOAT AND COMPASSES.
XXXIII. CONSOLATION.
XXXIV. LADY LUFTON IS TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
XXXV. THE STORY OF KING COPHETUA.
XXXVI. KIDNAPPING AT HOGGLESTOCK.
XXXVII. MR. SOWERBY WITHOUT COMPANY.
XXXVIII. IS THERE CAUSE OR JUST IMPEDIMENT?
XXXIX. HOW TO WRITE A LOVE LETTER.
XL. INTERNECINE.
XLI. DON QUIXOTE.
XLII. TOUCHING PITCH.
XLIII. IS SHE NOT INSIGNIFICANT?
XLIV. THE PHILISTINES AT THE PARSONAGE.
XLV. PALACE BLESSINGS.
XLVI. LADY LUFTON’S REQUEST.
XLVII. NEMESIS.
XLVIII. HOW THEY WERE ALL MARRIED, HAD TWO CHILDREN,
AND LIVED HAPPY EVER AFTER.
ILLUSTRATIONS
LORD LUFTON AND LUCY ROBARTS. CHAPTER XI.
“WAS IT NOT A LIE?” CHAPTER XVI.
THE CRAWLEY FAMILY. CHAPTER XXII.
LADY LUFTON AND THE DUKE OF OMNIUM. CHAPTER XXIX.
MRS. GRESHAM AND MISS DUNSTABLE. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“MARK,” SHE SAID, “THE MEN ARE HERE.” CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER I.
“OMNES OMNIA BONA DICERE.”
When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well
declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to
extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a
disposition.
This father was a physician living at Exeter. He was a gentleman
possessed of no private means, but enjoying a lucrative practice,
which had enabled him to maintain and educate a family with all the
advantages which money can give in this country. Mark was his eldest
son and second child; and the first page or two of this narrative
must be consumed in giving a catalogue of the good things which
chance and conduct together had heaped upon this young man’s head.
His first step forward in life had arisen from his having been
sent, while still very young, as a private pupil to the house of a
clergyman, who was an old friend and intimate friend of his father’s.
This clergyman had one other, and only one other, pupil—the young
Lord Lufton; and between the two boys, there had sprung up a close
alliance.
While they were both so placed, Lady Lufton had visited her son,
and then invited young Robarts to pass his next holidays at Framley
Court. This visit was made; and it ended in Mark going back to Exeter
with a letter full of praise from the widowed peeress. She had been
delighted, she said, in having such a companion for her son, and
expressed a hope that the boys might remain together during the
course of their education. Dr. Robarts was a man who thought much of
the breath of peers and peeresses, and was by no means inclined to
throw away any advantage which might arise to his child from such a
friendship. When, therefore, the young lord was sent to Harrow, Mark
Robarts went there also.
That the lord and his friend often quarrelled, and occasionally
fought,—the fact even that for one period of three months they never
spoke to each other—by no means interfered with the doctor’s hopes.
Mark again and again stayed a fortnight at Framley Court, and Lady
Lufton always wrote about him in the highest terms.
And then the lads went together to Oxford, and here Mark’s good
fortune followed him, consisting rather in the highly respectable
manner in which he lived, than in any wonderful career of collegiate
success. His family was proud of him, and the doctor was always ready
to talk of him to his patients; not because he was a prizeman, and
had gotten medals and scholarships, but on account of the excellence
of his general conduct. He lived with the best set—he incurred no
debts—he was fond of society, but able to avoid low society—liked
his glass of wine, but was never known to be drunk; and, above all
things, was one of the most popular men in the university.
Then came the question of a profession for this young Hyperion,
and on this subject, Dr. Robarts was invited himself to go over to
Framley Court to discuss the matter with Lady Lufton. Dr. Robarts
returned with a very strong conception that the Church was the
profession best suited to his son.
Lady Lufton had not sent for Dr. Robarts all the way from Exeter for
nothing. The living of Framley was in the gift of the Lufton family,
and the next presentation would be in Lady Lufton’s hands, if it
should fall vacant before the young lord was twenty-five years of
age, and in the young lord’s hands if it should fall afterwards. But
the mother and the heir consented to give a joint promise to Dr.
Robarts. Now, as the present incumbent was over seventy, and as the
living was worth £900 a year, there could be no doubt as to the
eligibility of the clerical profession.
And I must further say, that the dowager and the doctor were
justified in their choice by the life and principles of the young
man—as far as any father can be justified in choosing such a
profession for his son, and as far as any lay impropriator can be
justified in making such a promise. Had Lady Lufton had a second son,
that second son would probably have had the living, and no one would
have thought it wrong;—certainly not if that second son had been
such a one as Mark Robarts.
Lady Lufton herself was a woman who thought much on religious
matters, and would by no means have been disposed to place any one in
a living, merely because such a one had been her son’s friend. Her
tendencies were High Church, and she was enabled to perceive that
those of young Mark Robarts ran in the same direction. She was very
desirous that her son should make an associate of his clergyman, and
by this step she would insure, at any rate, that. She was anxious
that the parish vicar should be one with whom she could herself fully
co-operate, and was perhaps unconsciously wishful that he might in
some measure be subject to her influence. Should she appoint an elder
man, this might probably not be the case to the same extent; and
should her son have the gift, it might probably not be the case at
all. And therefore it was resolved that the living should be given to
young Robarts.
He took his degree—not with any brilliancy, but quite in the manner
that his father desired; he then travelled for eight or ten months
with Lord Lufton and a college don, and almost immediately after his
return home was ordained.
The living of Framley is in the diocese of Barchester; and, seeing
what were Mark’s hopes with reference to that diocese, it was by no
means difficult to get him a curacy within it. But this curacy he was
not allowed long to fill. He had not been in it above a twelvemonth,
when poor old Dr. Stopford, the then vicar of Framley, was gathered
to his fathers, and the full fruition of his rich hopes fell upon his
shoulders.
But even yet more must be told of his good fortune before we can come
to the actual incidents of our story. Lady Lufton, who, as I have
said, thought much of clerical matters, did not carry her High Church
principles so far as to advocate celibacy for the clergy. On the
contrary, she had an idea that a man could not be a good parish
parson without a wife. So, having given to her favourite a position
in the world, and an income sufficient for a gentleman’s wants, she
set herself to work to find him a partner in those blessings.
And here also, as in other matters, he fell in with the views of
his patroness—not, however, that they were declared to him in that
marked manner in which the affair of the living had been broached.
Lady Lufton was much too highly gifted with woman’s craft for that.
She never told the young vicar that Miss Monsell accompanied her
ladyship’s married daughter to Framley Court expressly that he, Mark,
might fall in love with her; but such was in truth the case.
Lady Lufton had but two children. The eldest, a daughter, had been
married some four or five years to Sir George Meredith, and this
Miss Monsell was a dear friend of hers. And now looms before me the
novelist’s great difficulty. Miss Monsell,—or, rather, Mrs. Mark
Robarts,—must be described. As Miss Monsell, our tale will have
to take no prolonged note of her. And yet we will call her Fanny
Monsell, when we declare that she was one of the pleasantest
companions that could be brought near to a man, as the future partner
of his home, and owner of his heart. And if high principles without
asperity, female gentleness without weakness, a love of laughter
without malice, and a true loving heart, can qualify a woman to be a
parson’s wife, then was Fanny Monsell qualified to fill that station.
In person she was somewhat larger than common. Her face would have
been beautiful but that her mouth was large. Her hair, which was
copious, was of a bright brown; her eyes also were brown, and, being
so, were the distinctive feature of her face, for brown eyes are not
common. They were liquid, large, and full either of tenderness or of
mirth. Mark Robarts still had his accustomed luck, when such a girl
as this was brought to Framley for his wooing.
And he did woo her—and won her. For Mark himself was a handsome
fellow. At this time the vicar was about twenty-five years of age,
and the future Mrs. Robarts was two or three years younger. Nor did
she come quite empty-handed to the vicarage. It cannot be said that
Fanny Monsell was an heiress, but she had been left with a provision
of some few thousand pounds. This was so settled, that the interest
of his wife’s money paid the heavy insurance on his life which
young Robarts effected, and there was left to him, over and above,
sufficient to furnish his parsonage in the very best style of
clerical comfort,—and to start him on the road of life rejoicing.
So much did Lady Lufton do for her _protégé_, and it may well be
imagined that the Devonshire physician, sitting meditative over his
parlour fire, looking back, as men will look back on the upshot of
their life, was well contented with that upshot, as regarded his
eldest offshoot, the Rev. Mark Robarts, the vicar of Framley.
But little has as yet been said, personally, as to our hero himself,
and perhaps it may not be necessary to say much. Let us hope that by
degrees he may come forth upon the canvas, showing to the beholder
the nature of the man inwardly and outwardly. Here it may suffice
to say that he was no born heaven’s cherub, neither was he a born
fallen devil’s spirit. Such as his training made him, such he was.
He had large capabilities for good—and aptitudes also for evil,
quite enough: quite enough to make it needful that he should repel
temptation as temptation only can be repelled. Much had been done to
spoil him, but in the ordinary acceptation of the word he was not
spoiled. He had too much tact, too much common sense, to believe
himself to be the paragon which his mother thought him. Self-conceit
was not, perhaps, his greatest danger. Had he possessed more of it,
he might have been a less agreeable man, but his course before him
might on that account have been the safer.
In person he was manly, tall, and fair-haired, with a square
forehead, denoting intelligence rather than thought, with clear white
hands, filbert nails, and a power of dressing himself in such a
manner that no one should ever observe of him that his clothes were
either good or bad, shabby or smart.
Such was Mark Robarts when at the age of twenty-five, or a little
more, he married Fanny Monsell. The marriage was celebrated in his
own church, for Miss Monsell had no home of her own, and had been
staying for the last three months at Framley Court. She was given
away by Sir George Meredith, and Lady Lufton herself saw that the
wedding was what it should be, with almost as much care as she had
bestowed on that of her own daughter. The deed of marrying, the
absolute tying of the knot, was performed by the Very Reverend the
Dean of Barchester, an esteemed friend of Lady Lufton’s. And Mrs.
Arabin, the dean’s wife, was of the party, though the distance from
Barchester to Framley is long, and the roads deep, and no railway
lends its assistance. And Lord Lufton was there of course; and people
protested that he would surely fall in love with one of the four
beautiful bridesmaids, of whom Blanche Robarts, the vicar’s second
sister, was by common acknowledgment by far the most beautiful.
And there was there another and a younger sister of Mark’s—who did
not officiate at the ceremony, though she was present—and of whom no
prediction was made, seeing that she was then only sixteen, but of
whom mention is made here, as it will come to pass that my readers
will know her hereafter. Her name was Lucy Robarts.
And then the vicar and his wife went off on their wedding tour, the
old curate taking care of the Framley souls the while.
And in due time they returned; and after a further interval, in due
course, a child was born to them; and then another; and after that
came the period at which we will begin our story. But before doing
so, may I not assert that all men were right in saying all manner of
good things to the Devonshire physician, and in praising his luck in
having such a son?
“You were up at the house to-day, I suppose?” said Mark to his wife,
as he sat stretching himself in an easy chair in the drawing-room,
before the fire, previously to his dressing for dinner. It was a
November evening, and he had been out all day, and on such occasions
the aptitude for delay in dressing is very powerful. A strong-minded
man goes direct from the hall-door to his chamber without
encountering the temptation of the drawing-room fire.
“No; but Lady Lufton was down here.”
“Full of arguments in favour of Sarah Thompson?”
“Exactly so, Mark.”
“And what did you say about Sarah Thompson?”
“Very little as coming from myself; but I did hint that you thought,
or that I thought that you thought, that one of the regular trained
schoolmistresses would be better.”
“But her ladyship did not agree?”
“Well, I won’t exactly say that;—though I think that perhaps she did
not.”
“I am sure she did not. When she has a point to carry, she is very
fond of carrying it.”
“But then, Mark, her points are generally so good.”
“But, you see, in this affair of the school she is thinking more of
her _protégée_ than she does of the children.”
“Tell her that, and I am sure she will give way.”
And then again they were both silent. And the vicar having thoroughly
warmed himself, as far as this might be done by facing the fire,
turned round and began the operation _à tergo_.
“Come, Mark, it is twenty minutes past six. Will you go and dress?”
“I’ll tell you what, Fanny: she must have her way about Sarah
Thompson. You can see her to-morrow and tell her so.”
“I am sure, Mark, I would not give way, if I thought it wrong. Nor
would she expect it.”
“If I persist this time, I shall certainly have to yield the next;
and then the next may probably be more important.”
“But if it’s wrong, Mark?”
“I didn’t say it was wrong. Besides, if it is wrong, wrong in some
infinitesimal degree, one must put up with it. Sarah Thompson is very
respectable; the only question is whether she can teach.”
The young wife, though she did not say so, had some idea that her
husband was in error. It is true that one must put up with wrong,
with a great deal of wrong. But no one need put up with wrong that
he can remedy. Why should he, the vicar, consent to receive an
incompetent teacher for the parish children, when he was able to
procure one that was competent? In such a case,—so thought Mrs.
Robarts to herself,—she would have fought the matter out with Lady
Lufton.
On the next morning, however, she did as she was bid, and signified
to the dowager that all objection to Sarah Thompson would be
withdrawn.
“Ah! I was sure he would agree with me,” said her ladyship, “when
he learned what sort of person she is. I know I had only to
explain;”—and then she plumed her feathers, and was very gracious;
for, to tell the truth, Lady Lufton did not like to be opposed in
things which concerned the parish nearly.
“And, Fanny,” said Lady Lufton, in her kindest manner, “you are not
going anywhere on Saturday, are you?”
“No, I think not.”
“Then you must come to us. Justinia is to be here, you know”—Lady
Meredith was named Justinia—“and you and Mr. Robarts had better stay
with us till Monday. He can have the little book-room all to himself
on Sunday. The Merediths go on Monday; and Justinia won’t be happy if
you are not with her.”
It would be unjust to say that Lady Lufton had determined not to
invite the Robartses if she were not allowed to have her own way
about Sarah Thompson. But such would have been the result. As it
was, however, she was all kindness; and when Mrs. Robarts made some
little excuse, saying that she was afraid she must return home in the
evening, because of the children, Lady Lufton declared that there was
room enough at Framley Court for baby and nurse, and so settled the
matter in her own way, with a couple of nods and three taps of her
umbrella.
This was on a Tuesday morning, and on the same evening, before
dinner, the vicar again seated himself in the same chair before the
drawing-room fire, as soon as he had seen his horse led into the
stable.
“Mark,” said his wife, “the Merediths are to be at Framley on
Saturday and Sunday; and I have promised that we will go up and stay
over till Monday.”
“You don’t mean it! Goodness gracious, how provoking!”
“Why? I thought you wouldn’t mind it. And Justinia would think it
unkind if I were not there.”
“You can go, my dear, and of course will go. But as for me, it is
impossible.”
“But why, love?”
“Why? Just now, at the school-house, I answered a letter that was
brought to me from Chaldicotes. Sowerby insists on my going over
there for a week or so; and I have said that I would.”
“Go to Chaldicotes for a week, Mark?”
“I believe I have even consented to ten days.”
“And be away two Sundays?”
“No, Fanny, only one. Don’t be so censorious.”
“Don’t call me censorious, Mark; you know I am not so. But I am so
sorry. It is just what Lady Lufton won’t like. Besides, you were away
in Scotland two Sundays last month.”
“In September, Fanny. And that is being censorious.”
“Oh, but, Mark, dear Mark; don’t say so. You know I don’t mean it.
But Lady Lufton does not like those Chaldicotes people. You know Lord
Lufton was with you the last time you were there; and how annoyed she
was!”
“Lord Lufton won’t be with me now, for he is still in Scotland. And
the reason why I am going is this: Harold Smith and his wife will be
there, and I am very anxious to know more of them. I have no doubt
that Harold Smith will be in the government some day, and I cannot
afford to neglect such a man’s acquaintance.”
“But, Mark, what do you want of any government?”
“Well, Fanny, of course I am bound to say that I want nothing;
neither in one sense do I; but nevertheless, I shall go and meet the
Harold Smiths.”
“Could you not be back before Sunday?”
“I have promised to preach at Chaldicotes. Harold Smith is going to
lecture at Barchester, about the Australasian archipelago, and I am
to preach a charity sermon on the same subject. They want to send out
more missionaries.”
“A charity sermon at Chaldicotes!”
“And why not? The house will be quite full, you know; and I dare say
the Arabins will be there.”
“I think not; Mrs. Arabin may get on with Mrs. Harold Smith, though
I doubt that; but I’m sure she’s not fond of Mrs. Smith’s brother.
I don’t think she would stay at Chaldicotes.”
“And the bishop will probably be there for a day or two.”
“That is much more likely, Mark. If the pleasure of meeting Mrs.
Proudie is taking you to Chaldicotes, I have not a word more to say.”
“I am not a bit more fond of Mrs. Proudie than you are, Fanny,” said
the vicar, with something like vexation in the tone of his voice,
for he thought that his wife was hard upon him. “But it is generally
thought that a parish clergyman does well to meet his bishop now and
then. And as I was invited there, especially to preach while all
these people are staying at the place, I could not well refuse.”
And then he got up, and taking his candlestick, escaped to his
dressing-room.
“But what am I to say to Lady Lufton?” his wife said to him, in the
course of the evening.
“Just write her a note, and tell her that you find I had promised to
preach at Chaldicotes next Sunday. You’ll go, of course?”
“Yes: but I know she’ll be annoyed. You were away the last time she
had people there.”
“It can’t be helped. She must put it down against Sarah Thompson. She
ought not to expect to win always.”
“I should not have minded it, if she had lost, as you call it, about
Sarah Thompson. That was a case in which you ought to have had your
own way.”
“And this other is a case in which I shall have it. It’s a pity that
there should be such a difference; isn’t it?”
Then the wife perceived that, vexed as she was, it would be better
that she should say nothing further; and before she went to bed, she
wrote the note to Lady Lufton, as her husband recommended.