The Chronicles of Barsetshire

by Anthony Trollope

  The hall was hung round with family female insipidities by Lely and unprepossessing male Thornes in red coats by Kneller, each Thorne having been let into a panel in the wainscoting, in the proper manner. At the further end of the room was a huge fireplace, which afforded much ground of difference between the brother and sister. An antiquated grate that would hold about a hundredweight of coal, had been stuck on to the hearth by Mr. Thorne’s father. This hearth had of course been intended for the consumption of wood faggots, and the iron dogs for the purpose were still standing, though half-buried in the masonry of the grate. Miss Thorne was very anxious to revert to the dogs. The dear good old creature was always glad to revert to anything, and had she been systematically indulged, would doubtless in time have reflected that fingers were made before forks and have reverted accordingly. But in the affairs of the fireplace Mr. Thorne would not revert. Country gentlemen around him all had comfortable grates in their dining-rooms. He was not exactly the man to have suggested a modern usage, but he was not so far prejudiced as to banish those which his father had prepared for his use. Mr. Thorne had indeed once suggested that with very little contrivance the front door might have been so altered as to open at least into the passage, but on hearing this, his sister Monica—such was Miss Thorne’s name—had been taken ill and had remained so for a week. Before she came downstairs she received a pledge from her brother that the entrance should never be changed in her lifetime.

  At the end of the hall opposite to the fireplace a door led into the drawing-room, which was of equal size, and lighted with precisely similar windows. But yet the aspect of the room was very different. It was papered, and the ceiling, which in the hall showed the old rafters, was whitened and finished with a modern cornice. Miss Thorne’s drawing-room, or, as she always called it, withdrawing-room, was a beautiful apartment. The windows opened on to the full extent of the lovely trim garden; immediately before the windows were plots of flowers in stiff, stately, stubborn little beds, each bed surrounded by a stone coping of its own; beyond, there was a low parapet wall on which stood urns and images, fawns, nymphs, satyrs, and a whole tribe of Pan’s followers; and then again, beyond that, a beautiful lawn sloped away to a sunk fence which divided the garden from the park. Mr. Thorne’s study was at the end of the drawing-room, and beyond that were the kitchen and the offices. Doors opened into both Miss Thorne’s withdrawing-room and Mr. Thorne’s sanctum from the passage above alluded to, which, as it came to the latter room, widened itself so as to make space for the huge black oak stairs which led to the upper regions.

  Such was the interior of Ullathorne Court. But having thus described it, perhaps somewhat too tediously, we beg to say that it is not the interior to which we wish to call the English tourist’s attention, though we advise him to lose no legitimate opportunity of becoming acquainted with it in a friendly manner. It is the outside of Ullathorne that is so lovely. Let the tourist get admission at least into the garden and fling himself on that soft sward just opposite to the exterior angle of the house. He will there get the double frontage and enjoy that which is so lovely—the expanse of architectural beauty without the formal dullness of one long line.

  It is the colour of Ullathorne that is so remarkable. It is of that delicious tawny hue which no stone can give, unless it has on it the vegetable richness of centuries. Strike the wall with your hand, and you will think that the stone has on it no covering, but rub it carefully, and you will find that the colour comes off upon your finger. No colourist that ever yet worked from a palette has been able to come up to this rich colouring of years crowding themselves on years.

  Ullathorne is a high building for a country-house, for it possesses three stories, and in each story the windows are of the same sort as that described, though varying in size and varying also in their lines athwart the house. Those of the ground floor are all uniform in size and position. But those above are irregular both in size and place, and this irregularity gives a bizarre and not unpicturesque appearance to the building. Along the top, on every side, runs a low parapet, which nearly hides the roof, and at the corners are more figures of fawns and satyrs.

  Such is Ullathorne House. But we must say one word of the approach to it, which shall include all the description which we mean to give of the church also. The picturesque old church of St. Ewold’s stands immediately opposite to the iron gates which open into the court, and is all but surrounded by the branches of the lime-trees which form the avenue leading up to the house from both sides. This avenue is magnificent, but it would lose much of its value in the eyes of many proprietors by the fact that the road through it is not private property. It is a public lane between hedgerows, with a broad grass margin on each side of the road, from which the lime-trees spring. Ullathorne Court, therefore, does not stand absolutely surrounded by its own grounds, though Mr. Thorne is owner of all the adjacent land. This, however, is the source of very little annoyance to him. Men, when they are acquiring property, think much of such things, but they who live where their ancestors have lived for years do not feel the misfortune. It never occurred either to Mr. or Miss Thorne that they were not sufficiently private because the world at large might, if it so wished, walk or drive by their iron gates. That part of the world which availed itself of the privilege was however very small.

  Such a year or two since were the Thornes of Ullathorne. Such, we believe, are the inhabitants of many an English country-home. May it be long before their number diminishes.

  CHAPTER 4

  Mr. Arabin Reads Himself in at St. Ewold’s

  On the Sunday morning the archdeacon with his sister-in-law and Mr. Arabin drove over to Ullathorne, as had been arranged. On their way thither the new vicar declared himself to be considerably disturbed in his mind at the idea of thus facing his parishioners for the first time. He had, he said, been always subject to mauvaise honte and an annoying degree of bashfulness, which often unfitted him for any work of a novel description; and now he felt this so strongly that he feared he should acquit himself badly in St. Ewold’s reading-desk. He knew, he said, that those sharp little eyes of Miss Thorne would be on him, and that they would not approve. All this the archdeacon greatly ridiculed. He himself knew not, and had never known, what it was to be shy. He could not conceive that Miss Thorne, surrounded as she would be by the peasants of Ullathorne and a few of the poorer inhabitants of the suburbs of Barchester, could in any way affect the composure of a man well accustomed to address the learned congregation of St. Mary’s at Oxford, and he laughed accordingly at the idea of Mr. Arabin’s modesty.

  Thereupon Mr. Arabin commenced to subtilize. The change, he said, from St. Mary’s to St. Ewold’s was quite as powerful on the spirits as would be that from St. Ewold’s to St. Mary’s. Would not a peer who, by chance of fortune, might suddenly be driven to herd among navvies be as afraid of the jeers of his companions as would any navvy suddenly exalted to a seat among the peers? Whereupon the archdeacon declared with a loud laugh that he would tell Miss Thorne that her new minister had likened her to a navvy. Eleanor, however, pronounced such a conclusion to be unfair; a comparison might be very just in its proportions which did not at all assimilate the things compared. But Mr. Arabin went on subtilizing, regarding neither the archdeacon’s raillery nor Eleanor’s defence. A young lady, he said, would execute with most perfect self-possession a difficult piece of music in a room crowded with strangers, who would not be able to express herself in intelligible language, even on any ordinary subject and among her most intimate friends, if she were required to do so standing on a box somewhat elevated among them. It was all an affair of education, and he at forty found it difficult to educate himself anew.

  Eleanor dissented on the matter of the box, and averred she could speak very well about dresses, or babies, or legs of mutton from any box, provided it were big enough for her to stand upon without fear, even though all her friends were listening to her. The archdeacon was sure she would not be able to say a word, but this proved
nothing in favour of Mr. Arabin. Mr. Arabin said that he would try the question out with Mrs. Bold, and get her on a box some day when the rectory might be full of visitors. To this Eleanor assented, making condition that the visitors should be of their own set, and the archdeacon cogitated in his mind whether by such a condition it was intended that Mr. Slope should be included, resolving also that, if so, the trial would certainly never take place in the rectory drawing-room at Plumstead.

  And so arguing, they drove up to the iron gates of Ullathorne Court.

  Mr. and Miss Thorne were standing ready dressed for church in the hall, and greeted their clerical visitors with cordiality. The archdeacon was an old favourite. He was a clergyman of the old school, and this recommended him to the lady. He had always been an opponent of free trade as long as free trade was an open question, and now that it was no longer so, he, being a clergyman, had not been obliged, like most of his lay Tory companions, to read his recantation. He could therefore be regarded as a supporter of the immaculate fifty-three, and was on this account a favourite with Mr. Thorne. The little bell was tinkling, and the rural population of the parish were standing about the lane, leaning on the church-stile, and against the walls of the old court, anxious to get a look at their new minister as he passed from the house to the rectory. The archdeacon’s servant had already preceded them thither with the vestments.

  They all went forth together, and when the ladies passed into the church, the three gentlemen tarried a moment in the lane, that Mr. Thorne might name to the vicar with some kind of one-sided introduction the most leading among his parishioners.

  “Here are our churchwardens, Mr. Arabin—Farmer Greenacre and Mr. Stiles. Mr. Stiles has the mill as you go into Barchester; and very good churchwardens they are.”

  “Not very severe, I hope,” said Mr. Arabin. The two ecclesiastical officers touched their hats, and each made a leg in the approved rural fashion, assuring the vicar that they were very glad to have the honour of seeing him, and adding that the weather was very good for the harvest. Mr. Stiles, being a man somewhat versed in town life, had an impression of his own dignity, and did not quite like leaving his pastor under the erroneous idea that he being a churchwarden kept the children in order during church time. ‘Twas thus he understood Mr. Arabin’s allusion to his severity and hastened to put matters right by observing that “Sexton Clodheve looked to the young’uns, and perhaps sometimes there may be a thought too much stick going on during sermon.” Mr. Arabin’s bright eye twinkled as he caught that of the archdeacon, and he smiled to himself as he observed how ignorant his officers were of the nature of their authority, and of the surveillance which it was their duty to keep even over himself.

  Mr. Arabin read the lessons and preached. It was enough to put a man a little out, let him have been ever so used to pulpit reading, to see the knowing way in which the farmers cocked their ears, and set about a mental criticism as to whether their new minister did or did not fall short of the excellence of him who had lately departed from them. A mental and silent criticism it was for the existing moment, but soon to be made public among the elders of St. Ewold’s over the green graves of their children and forefathers. The excellence, however, of poor old Mr. Goodenough had not been wonderful, and there were few there who did not deem that Mr. Arabin did his work sufficiently well, in spite of the slightly nervous affliction which at first impeded him, and which nearly drove the archdeacon beside himself.

  But the sermon was the thing to try the man. It often surprises us that very young men can muster courage to preach for the first time to a strange congregation. Men who are as yet but little more than boys, who have but just left what indeed we may not call a school, but a seminary intended for their tuition as scholars, whose thoughts have been mostly of boating, cricketing, and wine-parties, ascend a rostrum high above the heads of the submissive crowd, not that they may read God’s word to those below, but that they may preach their own word for the edification of their hearers. It seems strange to us that they are not stricken dumb by the new and awful solemnity of their position. “How am I, just turned twenty-three, who have never yet passed ten thoughtful days since the power of thought first came to me, how am I to instruct these greybeards who, with the weary thinking of so many years, have approached so near the grave? Can I teach them their duty? Can I explain to them that which I so imperfectly understand, that which years of study may have made so plain to them? Has my newly acquired privilege as one of God’s ministers imparted to me as yet any fitness for the wonderful work of a preacher?”

  It must be supposed that such ideas do occur to young clergymen, and yet they overcome, apparently with ease, this difficulty which to us appears to be all but insurmountable. We have never been subjected in the way of ordination to the power of a bishop’s hands. It may be that there is in them something that sustains the spirit and banishes the natural modesty of youth. But for ourselves we must own that the deep affection which Dominie Sampson felt for his young pupils has not more endeared him to us than the bashful spirit which sent him mute and inglorious from the pulpit when he rose there with the futile attempt to preach God’s gospel.

  There is a rule in our church which forbids the younger order of our clergymen to perform a certain portion of the service. The absolution must be read by a minister in priest’s orders. If there be no such minister present, the congregation can have the benefit of no absolution but that which each may succeed in administering to himself. The rule may be a good one, though the necessity for it hardly comes home to the general understanding. But this forbearance on the part of youth would be much more appreciated if it were extended likewise to sermons. The only danger would be that congregations would be too anxious to prevent their young clergymen from advancing themselves in the ranks of the ministry. Clergymen who could not preach would be such blessings that they would be bribed to adhere to their incompetence.

  Mr. Arabin, however, had not the modesty of youth to impede him, and he succeeded with his sermon even better than with the lessons. He took for his text two verses out of the second epistle of St. John, “Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed.” He told them that the house of theirs to which he alluded was this their church, in which he now addressed them for the first time; that their most welcome and proper manner of bidding him God-speed would be their patient obedience to his teaching of the gospel; but that he could put forward no claim to such conduct on their part unless he taught them the great Christian doctrine of works and faith combined. On this he enlarged, but not very amply, and after twenty minutes succeeded in sending his new friends home to their baked mutton and pudding well pleased with their new minister.

  Then came the lunch at Ullathorne. As soon as they were in the hall Miss Thorne took Mr. Arabin’s hand and assured him that she received him into her house, into the temple, she said, in which she worshipped, and bade him God-speed with all her heart. Mr. Arabin was touched and squeezed the spinster’s hand without uttering a word in reply. Then Mr. Thorne expressed a hope that Mr. Arabin found the church well adapted for articulation, and Mr. Arabin having replied that he had no doubt he should as soon as he had learnt to pitch his voice to the building, they all sat down to the good things before them.

  Miss Thorne took special care of Mrs. Bold. Eleanor still wore her widow’s weeds, and therefore had about her that air of grave and sad maternity which is the lot of recent widows. This opened the soft heart of Miss Thorne, and made her look on her young guest as though too much could not be done for her. She heaped chicken and ham upon her plate and poured out for her a full bumper of port wine. When Eleanor, who was not sorry to get it, had drunk a little of it, Miss Thorne at once essayed to fill it again. To this Eleanor objected, but in vain. Miss Thorne winked and nodded and whispered,
saying that it was the proper thing and must be done, and that she knew all about it; and so she desired Mrs. Bold to drink it up and not mind anybody.

  “It is your duty, you know, to support yourself,” she said into the ear of the young mother; “there’s more than yourself depending on it;” and thus she coshered up Eleanor with cold fowl and port wine. How it is that poor men’s wives, who have no cold fowl and port wine on which to be coshered up, nurse their children without difficulty, whereas the wives of rich men, who eat and drink everything that is good, cannot do so, we will for the present leave to the doctors and the mothers to settle between them.

  And then Miss Thorne was great about teeth. Little Johnny Bold had been troubled for the last few days with his first incipient masticator, and with that freemasonry which exists among ladies, Miss Thorne became aware of the fact before Eleanor had half-finished her wing. The old lady prescribed at once a receipt which had been much in vogue in the young days of her grandmother, and warned Eleanor with solemn voice against the fallacies of modern medicine.

  “Take his coral, my dear,” said she, “and rub it well with carrot-juice; rub it till the juice dries on it, and then give it him to play with—”