In the way our fathers trod”—that seems to be the proud boast of the English country towns, and I am not sure that it is not a worthy one, though its application to certain cases is certainly humorous. I remember revisiting a town where I had once lived, and getting into conversation with an elderly and well-to-do inhabitant. I mentioned having met in London a surgeon who had been born in and lived in the town. He certainly enjoyed the largest practice in London, and, in addition to the K.C.B., bore as many continental orders as permitted of his wearing (which he did) a very dingy dress-coat without its dinginess being perceptible. His reputation had, however, eluded the cognizance of his native town.
“What a fool he was to go off to London, when he might have done so well here,” was the comment of the elderly citizen upon my proud boast that I had met Sir William in London. “If he had only held on here he might by this time have got the best dispensary in the town.”
I did not doubt it.
He took the same view in regard to the career of another eminent townsman, who, I mentioned, had just been made an F.R.S.
“If he had been wise and carried on his father's business here he might have been a J.P. by now,” was his solemn comment.
I thought it better to refrain from any further remarks, lest I should be made to feel more acutely than I did all that I had forfeited by my premature departure from a town that offered such prizes for obscurity.
There are still a large number of country towns in England where the feeling still remains that any departure from their precincts is, if not absolutely fatal, at any rate risky. I have met people in more than one town who looked on a man's going to America as equivalent to absconding. I suppose most of these places have some foundation of their own for the tradition. It is quite plausible that, seventy or eighty or even a hundred years ago, some wild young men may have found a voyage to America to offer them a satisfactory alternative to an appearance behind the spikes of the dock of the County Court-House, and America got a bad name in consequence, being looked on as a continent peopled by men who had gone wrong at home. However this may be, I must confess that I was startled, when I first came to Thurswell and mentioned that I heard that a young man who had played a good deal of lawn-tennis during the summer was going to the States, by the inquiry—
“Why, what has he been doing anyway?”
It did not come from one of the rustic population, but from a tradesman in quite a good way of business—a considerable proportion of it in canned provisions into the bargain.
I believe that when Dr. Watson, the author ofBeside the Bonnie Brier Bush, went on his first lecturing tour to America, the financial results of which were so satisfactory, an impression prevailed in certain directions that the act was unworthy of a clergyman of the Presbyterian Church, and he was made the object of a severe attack in some quarters.
One can easily appreciate the attitude of people who have lived all their lives in an English country town in regard to the restless members of a family. One has only to walk through a churchyard and read the names on the tombs to understand how deeply rooted in the soil are the people. So far as Thurs-well and Mallingham are concerned, a stroll through one of the churchyards is almost equivalent to studying a directory. The same names as are cut upon the tombs—some of them going back a hundred and fifty years—are to be seen over the shop windows to-day and on the dairy carts and the farm carts. In some cases the name of a yeoman ancestor reappears in a Grand Jury list, indicating a material advance in the social scale. The migration that has been going on in our county for the past two hundred years seems to be interparochial. Individuals moved from village to village and from village to town. It is only within the past twenty-five or thirty years that the ablest and the best have occasionally braved public opinion and set sail for a colony.
Even families that have “got on” seem to love to cling to the county which saw the very small beginnings of their ancestors. Why should they not? Love of one's county is only a subdivision of the grand virtue of love of one's country. It was only when a certain aged doctor, who had the family history of our neighbourhood at his fingers' ends for over sixty years, published a volume of interesting reminiscences, in the course of which he took occasion to refer to the very humble beginnings of some families that considered themselves very “swagger,” that we learned how tenaciously they had clung to their county. Even the slow-moving Mallingham is not without its romances of “getting on.” One of the most intrepid motorists in the borough is remembered by several middle-aged burgesses as the wearer of the green baize apron and the wielder of the broom of the caretaker and window-cleaner of a solicitor's office; and from what I know of him I am inclined to believe that that was the best kept office in the town when he had charge of it.
BROADMINSTER IS ONE OF THE LESSER cathedral towns of England. There is nothing remarkable about the Minster except its antiquity. It does not convey the idea of vastness as do some of these venerable buildings. One would never imagine oneself in the midst of a petrified forest on passing through the porch. The carving about the pillars does not suggest lacework in stone, though it is admirable in its way, and the screen shows signs of having been “restored” in the days when restoration meant spoliation. The coloured glass of the windows is not especially good, but the oldest is undoubtedly the best. The modern memorial windows were apparently estimated for and the specification of the lowest-priced competitor accepted; but, really, the Chapter should have prevented the perpetration of such a blunder as that of the artist who, in his representation of the entrance to the sacred tomb, with the sleeping Roman guards on each side, put a crescent moon in the very blue sky! But for that matter, when I pointed out the mistake to one of the higher canons, he did not perceive for some time that the Paschal moon was bound to be within a few days of the full.
The old Minster is, however, worthy of every respect, if it does not quite inspire such feelings of reverence and awe as does Westminster Abbey or Canterbury or Durham or Santa Croce at Florence. One feels that it is the sort of building one can trust. It is solid throughout, and that is something. I remember years ago, when I was lecturing a long-suffering group on the marvels of Milan, calling attention to the wonderful scheme of lighting by which the High Altar was made the centre of illumination, I observed some shadows of the stone spandrels on the roof for which I could not account. There the light spines and ridges flowed upward to meet at the apex, and there the shadows slept, increasing the effect amazingly. Only after some patient investigation did I find that the groins were painted on the woodwork to imitate the stone where the stonework ended!
If there is nothing to wonder at in the interior of Broadminster, there is at least something to trust. It is sound throughout.
But why, oh! why, should that old woman be allowed to stand just outside the porch with a basket of nuts on her arm, offering them for sale to all visitors?
A stranger within our gates was puzzled by this apparition at the door of the church. He had just come from London, and he had been taken to the Zoo. He looked for some reason for the nuts at Broadminster—reason and consistency. If nuts, why not buns, he wished me to explain to him.
I felt incapable of clearing away this mystery. I could not tell him, under the shadow of the sacred building, the legend that I invented to account for the nuts, but I told him in full when we got away from that influence of veracity: it had to do with a crusader who, forsaken by his comrades in the Lebanon, was forced to sustain himself with nuts, and vowed that if ever he should get back to England he would endow a Minster and decree that nuts should be offered at the porch between prime and angelus every day for a thousand years. He kept his vow, hence——
That was eight hundred and eighty-two years ago, so that only one hundred and twenty of the vow had yet to run, and then——
He was barely satisfied with this explanation. I could scarcely blame him: it did not satisfy myself.
There are some people who think that the best part of St. Ursula—the Minster is dedicated to St. Ursula—is the Close. The Deanery, and the residences of the canons, major and minor, and all the officials of the Cathedral, lay as well as clerical, stand on two sides of a square, with the old building in the centre. Green meadows with a glimpse of green hills beyond are on the other sides of the square, and just behind the houses of the Close flows the Avonbeck, a narrow winding river in which trout may be caught by the dozen by the least skilful fisherman.
The beautiful gardens of the Close slope down to the banks of the river.
I was told a pathetic story by the wife of one of the dignitaries respecting a young man who had never any especial leaning for the Church as a career, but who made up his mind, when he saw this Close and walked through the gardens and fished in the Avonbeck, that the Church was the only possible profession for him. He went through the usual course, was ordained, and appointed to a parish in a slum in the Midlands, where he has remained ever since—and that was twenty-five years ago.
Equally pathetic, however, to some people may be the case of the clergyman who practically started life as one of the lesser dignitaries of the Cathedral and has remained there ever since—and that was thirty-five years ago. It was said that he was once a good preacher, and even now he seldom falls more than a couple of tones in going from the Responses to the Prayers. He began with high ideas regarding Greek texts, but now he devotes himself to Canadian trout. He has great hopes, he told me, for the future of Canadian trout.
The Palace of the Bishop of Broadminster is not, of course, among the buildings of the Close. It stands in its own grounds about two miles away, and it bears tokens of having been built within the last quarter of a century. It did not start life as a palace, but as the country house of a business man in a bustling town. The story of how it became the Palace is a curious one.
The original Palace was a big square barrack of a place, costing a great deal to keep up and giving no adequate return for its upkeep. It was a survival of the days when a bishop was expected to maintain a retinue of servants and never to go out for a quiet drive unless four horses were harnessed to the coach. The stables were built to accommodate twenty-two horses: it seemed to be understood that no self-respecting bishop could do with less, so long-lived are the Church traditions of the Middle Ages; and the servant retinue was expected to be maintained in the same proportion. The consequence was that the revenues of the diocese were quite insufficient to do more than keep up the place; they left nothing over for the poor Bishop himself, who could do very well with a 15 h.p. motor and a garage 25' x 15', a single chauffeur, and a gardener, instead of six horses, a coachman, an under-coachman, four grooms, and nine gardeners.
Every now and again the question of the requirements of the Palace as opposed to the requirements of the Bishop was cropping up, and certain newspapers published letters from ignorant and irresponsible correspondents in which the phrases “bloated revenues,” “princely prelates,” “modern Wolseys,” and the like recurred, particular emphasis being laid upon the fact that his lordship kept no fewer than eleven gardeners—a very moderate exaggeration—for his own personal gratification as a horticulturist. And all this was very harassing for the poor Bishop.
Now in the years when the upkeep of both the Bishop and the Palace was becoming a serious problem, there was living in a bustling manufacturing town a hundred miles from Broadminster a quiet little business man named Robinson. He had begun life in a rather small way; but before he was forty, having no expensive tastes and being engaged in a lucrative business, he had made a fortune—not, of course, such a fortune as may be made in the United States in these days, but still a fortune for an English provincial town. It so happened that he lodged with two maiden sisters slightly older than himself, and when he was about fifty he asked the elder to marry him. She agreed, and married they were.
After living a year or two in the house in which he had lodged they started a one-horse brougham, and a little later Mrs. Robinson had a fancy to live in the country; and as her husband invariably thought as she did on every subject, he at once set about building a house that would always be worth (his architect assured him) the money he spent upon it. Mrs. Robinson being a pious woman and liking the Cathedral service, the site of the house should be, they determined, within easy reach of Broadminster.
It was an admirable house when it was finished, and the three-acre garden could easily be managed by one man and a boy. This was in the days when a financial episode, known as the brewery boom, was beginning to be felt throughout the country, and it was known that Mr. Robinson had made as much in a week out of brewery shares as paid for the house he had built and the gardens that had been laid out for him by a competent landscape architect. And on the first morning that he breakfasted in their new home he presented his wife with the title-deeds of the whole, and made over the furniture to her as well.
For five years they lived there in great happiness, and it was known that they were devoted to each other; but before they entered on their sixth year Mrs. Robinson died, and her husband found that she had made a will leaving the house and grounds and furniture to the Church authorities—whoever they were—for the use of the existing Bishop of Broadminster and his successors for ever.
It appeared that Mrs. Robinson had become aware of the Palace difficulty, and made up her mind that she should do her best to solve the question of providing a reasonable residence for the Bishop in place of that insatiable monstrous barrack which he had been compelled to occupy, and upon which he was forced to spend every penny of his income.
Although the will rather startled Mr. Robinson—for his wife had not confided in him that it was her intention to provide for the Bishop and his successors—he had no fault to find with it. He confessed to a friend that his dear wife had solved a question that might have perplexed himself; for he had no relative to whom he might reasonably be expected to leave the place.
But before many days had passed he received a message from the ecclesiastical solicitors begging him to have the goodness to let them know at his convenience when it would suit him to give their clients possession of the house: and then he was really startled. A visit to his own solicitor made him aware of the fact that no provision had been made in his wife's will for allowing him to continue residing in the house or using the furniture therein—that he was, in fact, a trespasser in the house that he had built for himself!
A little thought, however, convinced him that as soon as the facts of the case became known to the Church authorities there would be no trouble in obtaining their consent to his remaining on in the house; but it soon appeared that he had been rather too sanguine on this point. It was explained to him that the authorities were unfortunately left without any option in the matter, and possession of the place must be given to them within three months, rent for this period to be paid by him at a rate that might be agreed between his solicitor and themselves. They were ecclesiastically courteous, but legally firm, and so Mr. Robinson had to leave the house on which he had spent many hours of loving and intelligent thought the gardens to which he had given particular attention while they were being laid out, and the furniture which he had selected piece by piece from the best makers.
He was allowed to take away his own clothes, however, and he began to feel that this was a concession.
He went to Lausanne and died there a few years later, leaving about a hundred thousand pounds to various charities, but none of them having any connection with Broadminster.
Before the end of the year in which the property was acquired by the Church it became the Palace, Broadminster: previously it had been called Leighside Hall.
And from that day it is understood that the Bishop has been saving money to make up for the years which the early locust abode of his had eaten.
Curiously enough, there stands within view of the new Palace another house with a history attached to it which may strike some people as illustrating, with a humour that is still more grim, the inconvenience resulting from ante-mortem generosity on a large scale: post-mortem generosity may occasionally be risky, but its display on even the most lavish scale has never been known to cause any personal inconvenience to the one who indulges in it.
The house is an interesting old Jacobean one, standing on the side of a mound within a loop of the river.
It has consequently a series of terrace gardens which are quite delightful at all seasons. For years it was occupied by a Captain Hesketh and his wife, the latter having inherited it with a handsome fortune from her mother, who was the heiress of a family of considerable importance in the county. At her husband's death Mrs. Hesketh continued to live alone in the old house with a niece—for she had no children of her own—and in course of time the girl fell in love with a man who seemed in every way the right sort of person for her to marry, only for the fact of his having a very limited income. The girl's aunt, however, having nothing to live for except the witnessing of the happiness of the young couple, was generous enough to make over to them all her property, retaining only a sufficient sum to enable her to live in comfort for the remainder of her life.
At this time she was sixty-three years of age, and her wants were very simple. It is said that the annuity which she purchased amounted to no more than three hundred pounds a year. Twelve years later, however, the lawyer whom she had entrusted to carry out this portion of the transaction for her died, and an examination of his affairs revealed the fact that, instead of spending the money which she had handed to him in the purchase of an annuity guaranteed by an Insurance Company of good reputation, he had treated it as his own, and had merely paid her a quarterly allowance. He died a bankrupt, owing thousands of pounds to clients whose money he had appropriated; so that at the age of seventy-five the unfortunate lady found herself penniless.
Her position was annoying, she told the man from whom I had the story, but she did not feel it to be serious. Of course, she had only to explain matters to her niece and her niece's husband and they would take care that she should not suffer through the swindling agent. She hastened to have an interview with them on the subject, and was actually smiling as she told them what had happened. She was not smiling, however, when the interview terminated; for she found herself treated by them as a begging stranger. They gave her a sound scolding for her unbusinesslike credulity: the idea of entrusting her money to such a man without taking the trouble to find out how he had invested it! The thing was absurd—grossly absurd, and they thought that she deserved to suffer for her culpable carelessness!
Of course, though surprised and hurt at this want of sympathy, the old lady readily admitted that she had been very careless; but the man had been her lawyer and her husband's lawyer for over thirty years, and she had implicit confidence in him, she said. After all, she reminded her relations that she was an old woman, and that in all probability she would not be a burden to them for more than a few years.
This plea did not seem to soften them in any way; at any rate, it did not prevent her niece from expressing the opinion that it was most inconsiderate on her part to expect that she and her husband should accept the responsibility of keeping her for the rest of her life. They had two children to educate, she explained, and it was going too far to expect that they should be made to suffer because of her stupidity.
The poor old lady felt herself turned out of her old house—the house in which she might still have been living if she had not been so foolishly generous.
The next day, however, she received a letter from her niece's husband informing her that, after due consideration of the matter, he and his wife had come to the conclusion that, although she had no claim whatsoever upon them, they might be able to allow her a pound a week for life. He trusted that she had saved enough during the previous twelve years to allow of her living comfortably—many women, he reminded her, were compelled to live on much less. The final sentence in his letter was equivalent to an exhortation to her to thank Heaven for having given her a niece of so generous a disposition.
The story reached the ears of a lady who had been her friend for many years, and she insisted on her rejecting the alms of her niece, offering her a home with herself, and expressing her happiness to receive her under her roof. The old lady accepted her friend's invitation; but at the same time she made application to be admitted as an inmate to a certain almshouse which had been founded and endowed by one of her own ancestors. This step, however, she took in secret, and at least a year would have to elapse before she could hope for admission to the charity.
It so happened, however, that her generous friend had a son who had obtained some eminence at the Bar, and it seemed that the grim humour of the whole story appealed to him very strongly. But on thinking over the matter he perceived that this element in the story was not so finished as he thought it should be, if properly worked out by an ironic fate. He considered himself to be something of a critic in such matters, and it was possibly his artistic instinct that prompted him to make a move with a view to remedy the deficiency that he perceived in the story. He had acquired a pretty fair knowledge of men and their characteristics, and it occurred to him that a solicitor who gave up so much of his attention to the movements of stocks and shares as did this dishonest one who was the cause of the old lady's disaster, might possibly have been guilty of some neglect in respect of the deeds of gift conveying her property to her niece, and he turned his attention in this direction. He knew exactly what legal machinery to put in motion for the purpose of his inquiry, and the result he considered highly satisfactory; but it is doubtful if the ungrateful niece of the poor lady for whom the solicitor he had engaged was acting was of the same opinion when she received notice that a motion was about to be made before His Majesty's judges to set aside the deed of gift made twelve years earlier on account of a vital flaw in the document itself.
The ungrateful niece and her husband consulted their solicitor when they received their shock. He laughed reassuringly at first.
“Sounds very like a bit of bluff,” said he. “What does it mean? Why should your aunt want to get into her hands again the property that she made over to you?”
The man told him that the lady had been the victim of a rascally solicitor, and so was left without a penny.
“And now she seems to have got into the hands of another of the same stamp, only worse,” said the lawyer. “I don't think you need be uneasy. I'll get a copy of the original deed and get counsel's opinion about it. Trent will be the man. I'll send it to Trent. He is the leading man for that sort of thing. If there's any flaw in it he'll be able to lay his finger on it.”
The two clients looked at each other with something like dismay on their faces.
“My aunt has been living for the past three months with a Mrs. Trent, I have heard,” said the lady.
The lawyer opened his eyes unusually wide and screwed up his mouth into the form of a puckered O.
“She is his mother,” he said after a pause. “But why—why should he bother about such a piece of business as this? Why should he be interested in upsetting the deed when it was obviously the intention of your aunt to present you with the property? You have not quarrelled with her, have you?”
“Oh no, there was no quarrel. She came to us with her story, of course, and we at once offered to do something for her,” replied the niece.
“Of course. That was the sensible thing to do. But this only makes the matter seem more mysterious. She accepted your offer, I suppose, and why, then, she should——”
“She didn't accept it.”
“What! Did she make a demand on you to return the whole property?”
“Never. But she suggested that we should make good the three hundred a year of her annuity.”
“But isn't that what you say you promised her?”
“We told her we couldn't afford that; but we offered her fifty-two pounds a year.”
“A pound a week—one pound a week? Oh, my dear lady! A pound a week! Surely you are joking.”
“We thought that she must surely have saved a good deal during the twelve years.”
“Three hundred a year, when you deduct the in-come tax, doesn't leave a gentlewoman much margin for saving.”
The man of the law shook his head and assumed a very serious look.
“Of course, I can't say anything at this moment as to the sort of case they have against you; but I do not feel justified in concealing from you my impression that if it is as we suppose, and Mr. Trent has pronounced against the deed, the Court will take his view of it. Trent is not the man to try on any sharp practice. And my advice to you is to make any sacrifice to prevent the case from going before the Court. Trent, if he is moving in the matter, must feel the ground pretty firm under his feet. What a pity it was that you did not suggest three hundred a year to the lady instead of—oh, that was undoubtedly a mistake—a pound a week. Well, we can only do our best in the circumstances. Who are the solicitors that sent you the letter?”
The lady gave him the name of the firm, and in due course he communicated with them. An examination of the doubtful document removed the possibility of his retaining any doubt as to its being invalid, and his clients were assured that they could not contend the case there was against them.
After this, I suppose, there was a scene that could only have justice done to its varied features by the pen of a gifted novelist. I can see the weeping niece on her knees in front of the old lady who had been her benefactrix, but whom she had repaid with gross ingratitude. Her children would possibly be kneeling by her side—they certainly would on the lyric stage or in the last chapter of the novel. No doubt the aunt would be greatly affected, though properly reproachful. But I doubt if the gallery of the theatre or the readers of the novelette would be quite satisfied with the conclusion of the story; for the generous aunt allowed her original gift to stand, only stipulating for her three hundred a year out of the estate.
Whatever humour one may perceive in these stories is certainly of that unusual type which one might expect to find associated with a cathedral town. It is the humour of an Old Testament parable—hard, and with a lesson attached to it.
Not precisely of the same nature was the definition of the duties of the verger suggested by a promising youth, whom I had instructions to lead round the Minster by his relations: they intended him to become an architect, and thought that he should become acquainted with the design of all the cathedrals to begin with. At first he supposed that the dignified gentleman wearing the black gown and carrying a mysterious emblem of authority was an archbishop, and I fear I failed to place him in possession of the facts respecting the duties of the verger, for he nodded, saying—“Ah yes, I understand—a sort of dignified chuck-er-out.”
It is not on record that there was attached to any great ecclesiastical institution a dignitary who discharged the duties of a calcitrator. And, so far as Broadminster is concerned, one may say that, whatever brawls disturb the peace of other churches upon occasions, tranquillity reigns within these grey walls and harmony among the spirits of its fortunate aisles.
Only the merest echo of a rumour of years ago regarding a parson who managed to creep into the Chapter when he should have been excluded survives to-day. And even this attenuated scandal would have faded away long ago if some people had not kept it alive by a story which owes its point to the use made of the shady parson's name by an old reprobate who desired to score off a worthy clergyman. The worthy clergyman had come to pay a serious parochial visit of remonstrance to the old reprobate, and had made up his mind, in antique slang, to “let him have it hot.” He had tried the velvet glove of the kindly counsellor several times with the same man, and now he determined to see what the mailed fist would do. Chronic intoxication was the old reprobate's besetting sin, and that was—with more frequent intervals of repentance—the particular failing of that parson who had been a thorn in the flesh to the Cathedral Chapter. It was, however, the vice of which the visiting clergyman was most intolerant; so he launched out in fitting terms against the old reprobate, demonstrating to him how disgraceful, how senseless a thing it was to be a sot.
0211
The man listened to him until the first pause came, and then he sighed, saying—“Truer words were never spoken, sir, and no one knows that better than yourself, Mr. Weston.”
Now Weston was the name of the frail parson, who had been dead for several years, and to hear himself so addressed was very nettling to the teetotal clergyman.
“My name is not Weston,” he said sharply. “You know that I am Mr. Walters.”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” said the man. “But I hold with all you say, and no one has ever said the same better than yourself, Mr. Weston.”
“Don't call me Weston,” cried the clergyman. “The fact that you are muddled on a simple matter like this shows clearly to what condition you have sunk.”
“I don't doubt it, sir,” acquiesced the man sadly. “It's not a condition for any human to be, though mayhap it's worse when it overtakes a passon, as I'm sure you'll hold with me, Mr. Weston.”
“I was informed that you had been sober for some days,” said the clergyman. “But I now begin to fear that you are far from being anything like sober. Have you had anything to drink to-day?”
“Not a drop—not a drop, I'm sorry to confess to you, Mr. Weston.”
The good parson sprang to his feet.
“You are a wretched man!” he cried. “You are clearly so bemuddled with that poison that you are incapable of recognising who is speaking to you.”
“Nay, nay, sir; I'm not so far gone as that. I'm never so far gone but that I can know when a passon's a-speaking to me, Mr. Weston. I s'pose 'tis summit in their manner o' speech, Mr. Weston.”
The tortured clergyman caught up his hat and rushed from the cottage.
Few people would have given the old reprobate credit for striking upon so subtle a scheme of retaliation upon the clergyman who was a model of rectitude, had not the clergyman himself been indiscreet enough to complain, as he did with great bitterness, that the horrid old man was so fuddled with drink as to be incapable of differentiating between a cleric who had never been in the shadow of a cloud and one who had never been otherwise than shady, and who, moreover, had been among the shades for several years.
There were, however, some people who had had experience of the readiness of resources of the old reprobate, and who knew how he had aimed at getting even with his upright visitor. And so the story spread, and was the means of keeping green, if one may be allowed the metaphor, the unsavoury memory of the thorn in the flesh of the Chapter.
But if the wicked old man only simulated for his own base purposes a mistake as to the identity of Mr. Walters, there was certainly no such evil intention on the part of a young woman who, when on a visit to a relation living in Broadminster, was invited to a dinner party and was taken in by a fine-looking man of military appearance whose name was pronounced by their hostess as Colonel Trelawney. The lady rather prided herself on being equal to converse with men of any profession, and she at once started with her partner at the table on a military topic, and continued to ply him with questions of a more or less technical sort, on most of which he professed an ignorance surprising in one who had attained to the rank of a commanding officer. She almost became cross with the completeness of her failure to draw him out; but just as the cheese straws were going round she asked him in desperation if there was any branch of the Service in which he was interested.
“Well,” he said, “of course I am interested in every part of it, but just now I have been studying all the authorities on the order of the Creeds, and I must confess that I find them enthralling.”
She was puzzled.
“Are you in the Sappers?” she asked after a long pause. She had heard that some of the Sappers had peculiarities.
“The Sappers?” he repeated. “The Sappers? I'm afraid I don't quite understand your question. How could I——”
“Are you not Colonel Trelawney?” she cried.
“I am Canon Trelawney,” he replied. “What! Is it possible that you fancied—oh, it must be so. That is why you have been talking on military topics all this time. Colonel! Oh, this is really amusing! Colonel!”
“I thought that our hostess had said 'Colonel,'” she murmured. “You must have fancied that I was mad.”
“It was largely my own fault,” said he. “I am a little old-fashioned, and I have never taken kindly to the modern innovation in evening dress adopted by my brethren. My father was a parson and he habitually wore ordinary evening dress, and I followed him in this particular. I think I shall have to get a dog collar and satin stock after all.”
The lady did not care whether he did or not. She felt she had wasted an evening.
NO ONE WHO HAS LIVED FOR ANY length of time in a cathedral town can fail to appreciate the perfection of Anthony Trollope's Barchester series of novels. In my opinion no more artistic achievement than the creation of Barchester and its people exists on the same scale in the English language. I do not think that there is a false note in any scene—a crude tone in any character. Certainly no writer ever dealt with the members of any profession with such completeness and without ceasing to interest a reader from page to page, from chapter to chapter, from volume to volume. Fancy any writer venturing upon five long novels with all the chief characters solicitors or solicitors' wives and daughters! Fancy a dozen medical men stethoscoping their way through a thousand closely printed pages! We know what military novels we have been treated to from time to time—stuff to send guffaws round every mess-room—as crude as the red of the tunics that gave the marksmen of other armies every chance in the old days.
The personages inBarchester Towers, The Warden, and The Last Chronicle of Barsetare such finished pieces of characterisation that they strike one as being photographs from life. One feels that the author must have had intimate acquaintance with the originals of his portraits, as well as with their entourage, before he could produce such transcripts from nature.
I suppose there was a good deal of speculation when the Barchester novels were appearing as to the identity of the various cathedral dignitaries. It seems to me that such a “placing” of the people was inevitable. But an example was given me of the artistic way in which Trollope went to work in the case of one of his best remembered characters that let me see what a master of his art he was. I was some years under twenty whenThe Last Chroniclefell into my hands: it was the first novel of Trollope's that I read, so that was the first acquaintance I had with Mrs. Proudie. Before I had got through many chapters I knew that I was listening to the voice of the wife of an Irish Prelate—a lady whose character and temperament had been a twenty years' tradition in the household of which I was a member, and whose reputation had followed her from one city to another. The more I read of the book the more impressed I was that this lady had been the model for Mrs. Proudie in spite of the fact that the two had practically nothing in common—nothing except the essentials that go to make up a character.
Mrs. Proudie was a plain, rather stout little woman, but my Mrs. Proudie was a tall, slight, and undoubtedly beautiful woman, even when middle-aged—the most perfect type of the traditional aristocrat. It would have been impossible for her to do any of the pettifogging of Trollope's vulgar person, in the way that Mrs. Proudie did it, but it was quite clearly understood—by no one better than the Bishop himself—that she was the ruler of the diocese. She was the mother of a family every member of which was remarkably good-looking; but Trollope laid emphasis upon the commonplace daughters of the Proudies.
Only an artist of the highest rank could create a character such as Mrs. Proudie from the suggestions he had derived from the rumours respecting our Bishop's wife, and only an artist of the highest rank could create a personage which compelled all readers who knew the original to recognise the source of his inspiration and feel certain of its identity in spite of the absence of all outward marks of identification.
For several years after reading the Barchester series I was accustomed to hear people in the neighbourhood in which I lived refer to the Bishop's wife as Mrs. Proudie—several clergymen certainly did so; but quite fifteen years had passed before I heard that, previous to his writingBarchester Towers, the author had been stationed in the same neighbourhood as an Inspector in the Post Office Department.
“In those days,” said my informant, who had served under Trollope, “the Bishop's wife was at the height of her fame. Every one was talking about her and the way she kept the poor Bishop under her thumb. We expected that Mr. Trollope would make something out of her.”
When I asked him how he could reconcile the difference between Mrs. Proudie and the other lady—how he could reconcile Mrs. Proudie's death inThe Last Chroniclewith the other's still active life, he told me that he had never read any of Trollope's books: the only writings of Trollope that had come under his cognizance were the official reports which he made to the head of the Department!
Beautiful to the last, and ruling to the last,ourMrs. Proudie survived the published record of the other Mrs. Proudie by nearly thirty years. I write this chapter sitting on a sofa which I bought out of the Palace. The fact that the receipt of my cheque was signed by the Bishop and not by the lady, suggests that in financial matters his lordship was permitted to discharge the humblest of clerical duties.
In Broadminster there has never been a rumour of a Mrs. Proudie; but occasionally there comes a discordant note from the belfry of the Cathedral. Only a quick ear can detect it, but having detected it, one is conscious of an impression of uneasiness, and asks oneself or anybody else if it is possible that all is not well in the Close.
What sounds like the merest tinkle of discord outside Broadminster reverberates throughout the Close, causing uneasiness and even perturbation at times.
During the past three years there have been two threatenings of huge upheavals in Minster circles. The rumblings of an earthquake were heard by some people of acute hearing, and the local seismometer—her name is Lady Birnam—foretold a cataclysm. But happily the centre of the disturbance passed away in another direction, and the foundations of the Cathedral remained intact.