Barchester Towers

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In religion Miss Thorne was a pure Druidess. We would not have it
understood by that that she did actually in these latter days assist
at any human sacrifices, or that she was in fact hostile to the
Church of Christ. She had adopted the Christian religion as a milder
form of the worship of her ancestors, and always appealed to her
doing so as evidence that she had no prejudices against reform, when
it could be shown that reform was salutary. This reform was the most
modern of any to which she had as yet acceded, it being presumed that
British ladies had given up their paint and taken to some sort of
petticoats before the days of St. Augustine. That further feminine
step in advance which combines paint and petticoats together had not
found a votary in Miss Thorne.

But she was a Druidess in this, that she regretted she knew not what
in the usages and practices of her Church. She sometimes talked and
constantly thought of good things gone by, though she had but the
faintest idea of what those good things had been. She imagined that
a purity had existed which was now gone, that a piety had adorned our
pastors and a simple docility our people, for which it may be feared
history gave her but little true warrant. She was accustomed to speak
of Cranmer as though he had been the firmest and most simple-minded
of martyrs, and of Elizabeth as though the pure Protestant faith of
her people had been the one anxiety of her life. It would have been
cruel to undeceive her, had it been possible; but it would have been
impossible to make her believe that the one was a time-serving priest,
willing to go any length to keep his place, and that the other was in
heart a papist, with this sole proviso, that she should be her own
pope.

And so Miss Thorne went on sighing and regretting, looking back to
the divine right of kings as the ruling axiom of a golden age, and
cherishing, low down in the bottom of her heart of hearts, a dear
unmentioned wish for the restoration of some exiled Stuart. Who
would deny her the luxury of her sighs, or the sweetness of her soft
regrets!

In her person and her dress she was perfect, and well she knew her
own perfection. She was a small, elegantly made old woman, with
a face from which the glow of her youth had not departed without
leaving some streaks of a roseate hue. She was proud of her colour,
proud of her grey hair which she wore in short crisp curls peering
out all around her face from her dainty white lace cap. To think of
all the money that she spent in lace used to break the heart of poor
Mrs. Quiverful with her seven daughters. She was proud of her teeth,
which were still white and numerous, proud of her bright cheery eye,
proud of her short jaunty step; and very proud of the neat, precise,
small feet with which those steps were taken. She was proud also,
ay, very proud, of the rich brocaded silk in which it was her custom
to ruffle through her drawing-room.

We know what was the custom of the lady of Branksome--


Nine-and-twenty knights of fame
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall.


The lady of Ullathorne was not so martial in her habits, but hardly
less costly. She might have boasted that nine-and-twenty silken
skirts might have been produced in her chamber, each fit to stand
alone. The nine-and-twenty shields of the Scottish heroes were less
independent and hardly more potent to withstand any attack that might
be made on them. Miss Thorne when fully dressed might be said to
have been armed cap-a-pie, and she was always fully dressed, as far
as was ever known to mortal man.

For all this rich attire Miss Thorne was not indebted to the
generosity of her brother. She had a very comfortable independence
of her own, which she divided among juvenile relatives, the
milliners, and the poor, giving much the largest share to the latter.
It may be imagined, therefore, that with all her little follies she
was not unpopular. All her follies have, we believe, been told.
Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently
interesting to deserve description.

While we are on the subject of the Thornes, one word must be said of
the house they lived in. It was not a large house, nor a fine house,
nor perhaps to modern ideas a very commodious house, but by those
who love the peculiar colour and peculiar ornaments of genuine Tudor
architecture it was considered a perfect gem. We beg to own ourselves
among the number, and therefore take this opportunity to express our
surprise that so little is known by English men and women of the
beauties of English architecture. The ruins of the Colosseum, the
Campanile at Florence, St. Mark's, Cologne, the Bourse and Notre Dame
are with our tourists as familiar as household words; but they know
nothing of the glories of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire.
Nay, we much question whether many noted travellers, men who have
pitched their tents perhaps under Mount Sinai, are not still ignorant
that there are glories in Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire.
We beg that they will go and see.

Mr. Thorne's house was called Ullathorne Court--and was properly so
called, for the house itself formed two sides of a quadrangle, which
was completed on the other two sides by a wall about twenty feet
high. This wall was built of cut stone, rudely cut indeed, and now
much worn, but of a beautiful, rich, tawny yellow colour, the effect
of that stonecrop of minute growth which it had taken three centuries
to produce. The top of this wall was ornamented by huge, round stone
balls of the same colour as the wall itself. Entrance into the court
was had through a pair of iron gates so massive that no one could
comfortably open or close them--consequently, they were rarely
disturbed. From the gateway two paths led obliquely across the
court: that to the left reaching the hall-door, which was in the
corner made by the angle of the house, and that to the right leading
to the back entrance, which was at the further end of the longer
portion of the building.

With those who are now adepts in contriving house accommodation, it
will militate much against Ullathorne Court that no carriage could be
brought to the hall-door. If you enter Ullathorne at all, you must
do so, fair reader, on foot, or at least in a bath-chair. No vehicle
drawn by horses ever comes within that iron gate. But this is
nothing to the next horror that will encounter you. On entering the
front door, which you do by no very grand portal, you find yourself
immediately in the dining-room. What, no hall? exclaims my luxurious
friend, accustomed to all the comfortable appurtenances of modern
life. Yes, kind sir, a noble hall, if you will but observe it;
a true old English hall of excellent dimensions for a country
gentleman's family; but, if you please, no dining-parlour.

Both Mr. and Miss Thorne were proud of this peculiarity of their
dwelling, though the brother was once all but tempted by his friends
to alter it. They delighted in the knowledge that they, like Cedric,
positively dined in their true hall, even though they so dined
_tete-a-tete_. But though they had never owned, they had felt and
endeavoured to remedy the discomfort of such an arrangement. A huge
screen partitioned off the front door and a portion of the hall, and
from the angle so screened off a second door led into a passage which
ran along the larger side of the house next to the courtyard. Either
my reader or I must be a bad hand at topography, if it be not clear
that the great hall forms the ground-floor of the smaller portion
of the mansion, that which was to your left as you entered the iron
gate, and that it occupies the whole of this wing of the building.
It must be equally clear that it looks out on a trim mown lawn,
through three quadrangular windows with stone mullions, each window
divided into a larger portion at the bottom, and a smaller portion at
the top, and each portion again divided into five by perpendicular
stone supporters. There may be windows which give a better light
than such as these, and it may be, as my utilitarian friend observes,
that the giving of light is the desired object of a window. I will
not argue the point with him. Indeed I cannot. But I shall not the
less die in the assured conviction that no sort or description of
window is capable of imparting half so much happiness to mankind as
that which had been adopted at Ullathorne Court. What, not an oriel?
says Miss Diana de Midellage. No, Miss Diana, not even an oriel,
beautiful as is an oriel window. It has not about it so perfect a
feeling of quiet English homely comfort. Let oriel windows grace a
college, or the half-public mansion of a potent peer, but for the
sitting room of quiet country ladies, of ordinary homely folk,
nothing can equal the square, mullioned windows of the Tudor
architects.

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 fire-place, 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 fire-place 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 fire-place 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 XXIII

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 younguns,
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.