Framley Parsonage

by Anthony Trollope

  Lucy, instead of answering at the moment, looked down upon the carpet, to see if his memory were as good as hers. Yes; he was standing on the exact spot where he had stood before. No spot in all the world was more frequently clear before her own eyes.

  ‘Do you remember that day, Lucy?’ he said again.

  ‘Yes, I remember it,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you say it was impossible?’

  ‘Did I say impossible?’

  She knew that she had said so. She remembered how she had waited till he had gone, and that then, going to her own room, she had reproached herself with the cowardice of the falsehood. She had lied to him then; and now – how was she punished for it?

  ‘Well, I suppose it was possible,’ she said.

  ‘But why did you say so when you knew it would make me so miserable?’

  ‘Miserable! nay, but you went away happy enough! I thought I had never seen you look better satisfied.’

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘You had done your duty and had had such a lucky escape! What astonishes me is that you should have ever come back again. But the pitcher may go to the well once too often, Lord Lufton.’

  ‘But will you tell me the truth now?’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘That day, when I came to you, – did you love me at all then?’

  ‘We’ll let bygones be bygones, if you please.’

  ‘But I swear you shall tell me. It was such a cruel thing to answer me as you did, unless you meant it. And yet you never saw me again till after my mother had been over for you to Mrs Crawley’s.’

  ‘It was absence that made me – care for you.’

  ‘Lucy, I swear I believe you loved me then.’

  ‘Ludovic, some conjuror must have told you that.’

  She was standing as she spoke, and, laughing at him, she held up her hands and shook her head. But she was now in his power, and he had his revenge, – his revenge for her past falsehood and her present joke. How could he be more happy when he was made happy by having her all his own, than he was now?

  And in these days there again came up that petition as to her riding – with very different result now than on that former occasion. There were ever so many objections, then. There was no habit, and Lucy was – or said that she was – afraid; and then, what would Lady Lufton say? But now Lady Lufton thought it would be quite right; only were they quite sure about the horse? Was Ludovic certain that the horse had been ridden by a lady? And Lady Meredith’s habits were dragged out as a matter of course, and one of them chipped and snipped and altered, without any compunction. And as for fear, there could be no bolder horsewoman than Lucy Robarts. It was quite clear to all Framley that riding was the very thing for her. ‘But I never shall be happy, Ludovic, till you have got a horse properly suited for her,’ said Lady Lufton.

  And then, also, came the affair of her wedding garments, of her trousseau, – as to which I cannot boast that she showed capacity or steadiness at all equal to that of Lady Dumbello. Lady Lufton, however, thought it a very serious matter; and as, in her opinion, Mrs Robarts did not go about it with sufficient energy she took the matter mainly into her own hands, striking Lucy dumb by her frowns and nods, deciding on everything herself, down to the very tags of the boot-ties.

  ‘My dear, you really must allow me to know what I am about;’ and Lady Lufton patted her on the arm as she spoke. ‘I did it all for Justinia, and she never had reason to regret a single thing that I bought. If you’ll ask her, she’ll tell you so.’

  Lucy did not ask her future sister-in-law, seeing that she had no doubt whatever as to her future mother-in-law’s judgment on the articles in question. Only the money! And what could she want with six dozen pocket-handkerchiefs all at once? There was no question of Lord Lufton’s going out as governor-general to India! But twelve dozen pocket-handkerchiefs had not been too many for Griselda’s imagination.

  And Lucy would sit alone in the drawing-room at Framley Court, filling her heart with thoughts of that evening when she had first sat there. She had then resolved, painfully, with inward tears, with groanings of her spirit, that she was wrongly placed in being in that company. Griselda Grantly had been there, quite at her ease, petted by Lady Lufton, admired by Lord Lufton; while she had retired out of sight, sore at heart, because she felt herself to be no fit companion to those around her. Then he had come to her, making matters almost worse by talking to her, bringing the tears into her eyes by his good nature, but still wounding her by the feeling that she could not speak to him at her ease.

  But things were at a different pass with her now. He had chosen her – her out of all the world, and brought her there to share with him his own home, his own honours, and all that he had to give. She was the apple of his eye, and the pride of his heart. And the stern mother, of whom she had stood so much in awe, who at first had passed her by as a thing not to be noticed, and had then sent out to her that she might be warned to keep herself aloof, now hardly knew in what way she might sufficiently show her love, regard, and solicitude.

  I must not say that Lucy was not proud in these moments -that her heart was not elated at these thoughts. Success does beget pride, as failure begets shame. But her pride was of that sort which is in no way disgraceful to either man or woman, and was accompanied by pure true love, and a full resolution to do her duty in that state of life to which it had pleased her God to call her. She did rejoice greatly to think that she had been chosen, and not Griselda. Was it possible that having loved she should not so rejoice, or that, rejoicing, she should not be proud of her love?

  They spent the whole winter abroad, leaving the dowager Lady Lufton to her plans and preparations for their reception at Framley Court; and in the following spring they appeared in London, and there set up their staff. Lucy had some inner tremblings of the spirit, and quiverings about the heart, at thus beginning her duty before the great world, but she said little or nothing to her husband on the matter. Other women had done as much before her time, and by courage had gone through with it. It would be dreadful enough, that position in her own house with lords and ladies bowing to her, and stiff members of Parliament for whom it would be necessary to make small talk; but, nevertheless, it was to be endured. The time came and she did endure it. The time came, and before the first six weeks were over she found that it was easy enough. The lords and ladies got into their proper places and talked to her about ordinary matters in a way that made no effort necessary, and the members of Parliament were hardly more stiff than the clergymen she had known in the neighbourhood of Framley.

  She had not been long in town before she met Lady Dumbello. At this interview also she had to overcome some little inward emotion. On the few occasions on which she had met Griselda Grantly at Framley they had not much progressed in friendship, and Lucy had felt that she had been despised by the rich beauty. She also in her turn had disliked, if she had not despised, her rival. But how would it be now? Lady Dumbello could hardly despise her, and yet it did not seem possible that they should meet as friends. They did meet, and Lucy came forward with a pretty eagerness to give her hand to Lady Lufton’s late favourite. Lady Dumbello smiled slightly – the same old smile which had come across her face when they two had been first introduced in the Framley drawing-room; the same smile without the variation of a line, – took the offered hand, muttered a word or two, and then receded. It was exactly as she had done before. She had never despised Lucy Robarts. She had accorded to the parson’s sister the amount of cordiality with which she usually received her acquaintance; and now she could do no more for the peer’s wife. Lady Dumbello and Lady Lufton have known each other ever since, and have occasionally visited at each other’s houses, but the intimacy between them has never gone beyond this.

  The dowager came up to town for about a month, and while there was contented to All a second place. She had no desire to be the great lady in London. But then came the trying period when they commenced their life together at Framley Court. The elder
lady formally renounced her place at the top of the table, – formally persisted in renouncing it though Lucy with tears implored her to resume it. She said also, with equal formality – repeating her determination over and over again to Mrs Robarts with great energy – that she would in no respect detract by interference of her own from the authority of the proper mistress of the house; but, nevertheless, it is well known to every one at Framley that old Lady Lufton still reigns paramount in the parish.

  ‘Yes, my dear; the big room looking into the little garden to the south was always the nursery; and if you ask my advice, it will still remain so. But, of course, any room you please –’

  And the big room, looking into the little garden to the south, is still the nursery at Framley Court.

  Notes

  CHAPTER 1

  1 (p. 33). Omnes omnia bona dicere: Terence, Andria, 96–7, in which a father declares (as Trollope renders it) 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’.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 (p. 44). vineyard of Naboth: I Kings xxi.

  2 (p. 45). Mr Bright: Prominent Quaker and Radical member of Parliament in the manufacturing interest.

  3 (p. 47). Lord Palmerston… Lord Aberdeen… Lord Derby: When the coalition government of Lord Aberdeen was defeated over the mismanagement of the Crimean War, he was succeeded by the Whig Palmerston, and not the Tory Derby.

  4 (p. 49) the Jupiter: Trollope’s name for The Times, which was often known as ‘The Thunderer’,

  5 (p. 49). war to the knife:

  ‘War, war is still the cry, “War even to the knife!”’

  – Byron, Childe Harold, I, lxxxvi.

  CHAPTER 3

  1 (p. 61). Mr Spurgeon: Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–92), popular Baptist preacher in London.

  2 (p. 64). The labour we delight in physics pain: Macbeth, II, iii, 48.

  CHAPTER 4

  1 (p. 66). Bedford Row. Near Bloomsbury and hence unfashionable, as opposed to the highly fashionable Park Lane.

  2 (p. 66). disinclination to a bishopric: A reference to ‘nolo episcopari’, the formal reply supposed to be made to the offer of a bishopric: literally, ‘I do not wish to be made a bishop’.

  CHAPTER 5

  1 (p. 75). Amantium Irae Amoris Integratio: ‘lovers’ quarrels are love’s renewal’, – Terence, Andria, 555.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 (p. 95) grammarians of the Latin language as exemplified at Eton school: A reference to the Eton Latin Grammar, or an Introduction to the Latin Tongue, the textbook universally used by the youngest learners, and which had run into at least forty editions by 1860.

  CHAPTER 8

  1 (p. 108). ten-pound note: In Chapter 5 Fanny encloses two five-pound notes in her letter.

  2 (p. 109). Wardour Street: The centre of the London trade in antiques and imitations.

  3, (p. III), the poor gentleman they’ve put into a statue: Presumably Actaeon, who was torn apart by his hounds after seeing Diana bathing.

  4 (p. 116). The then Prime Minister: Palmerston, who is later fictionalized as Lord Brock. The Governor-General of India who is mentioned was Lord Canning.

  5 (p. 117). throw in our shells against him: To banish or ostracize. ‘Shell’ is a misinterpretation of the Greek ‘ostrakon’, which can mean oystershell, but should be taken in its other sense of the fragment of pottery on which the name of the person to be banished would be written in the voting on an ostracism.

  6 (p. 117). despised charms: The judgement of Paris preferred Venus to Juno and Minerva.

  7 (p. 117). Has not Greece as noble sons as him?; Byron, Childe Harold, IV, x.

  8 (p. 117). too close an intimacy: During a period of international tension and fear of French invasion, Palmerston was defeated in a vote on the Conspiracy to Murder Bill in February 1858, because he was seen to favour Napoleon III, who was regarded as a threat to the peace of Europe, and suspected of having close links with the enemy Russia, ‘away in the East’, during as well as after the Crimean War.

  9 (p. 117). One does not like partridge every day: The confessor of Henry IV of France, who had preached a sermon to the king against adultery, was given partridge every day, until he complained ‘Semper perdrix!’ (‘always partridge!’), whereupon the king pointed out that the confessor had himself preached against variety.

  10 (p. 118). The Manchester men: John Bright and his Radical supporters.

  11 (p. 118). the high and dry gentlemen: Nickname for the old High Church party, as distinguished from the new Oxford Movement.

  12 (p. 118). war then going on: The worst of the Indian Mutiny was over in 1858, though there were civilian risings in Bihar and Bengal while Trollope was writing in 1860. Meanwhile the peace of Europe was threatened by the events leading up to Garibaldi’s War of Liberation of Italy (1859), his defeat of the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (1860), and the French annexation of Savoy.

  13 (p. 118). Vox populi vox Dei: ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’; Alcuin in a letter to Charlemagne, quoted by Walter Reynolds in a sermon preached before Edward III.

  14 (p. 118). Et tu, Brute!: Alleged dying words of Julius Caesar.

  15 (p. 119). If ignorance be bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise: Lord Boanerges misquotes Thomas Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’, stanza X, which reads, ‘where ignorance is bliss,/’Tis folly to be wise.’

  16 (p. 119). What tho’ I trace…all I knew: Aria from Handel’s oratorio Solomon.

  17 (p. 122). a camel to go through the eye of a needle: Matthew xix, 24.

  CHAPTER 9

  1 (p. 126). The German student… bargain with the devil: Faustus.

  2 (p. 130). himself in bonds under Philistian yoke: Milton, Samson Agonistes, 42.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 (p. 136). cannot get into the Petty Bag Office… at his option: Competitive examinations for entry to the Civil Service were introduced after the Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Organization of the Permanent Civil Service (1853), and were strongly opposed by Trollope.

  2 (p. 139). et vera incessu patuit Dea: ‘and the true goddess was evident in her step’ – Virgil, Aeneid, I, 405.

  3 (p. 142). horses’ shoes cocked: Having edges turned down and sharpened to provide a grip in frost.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 (p. 154). an excellent thing in woman: Lear, V, iii, 272–3.

  2 (p. 160). he ‘dreamt that he dwelt in marble halls’: ‘I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls’ was a very popular song from The Bohemian Girl (1843), with music by M. W. Balfe and words by Alfred (‘Poet’) Bunn.

  3 (p. 160). Culpepper’s other song has not been identified.

  CHAPTER 14

  1 (p. 181). Cake and ale… and ginger…hot in the mouth: Twelfth Night, II, iii, 109–12.

  2 (p. 186). Doddington… Stanhope: Reputedly the two richest livings in the country, worth £8,000 and £4,000 a year respectively, and both the subject of scandal since the incumbent of the former was a dandy, while Henry Phillpotts had proposed to retain the latter after his appointment as Bishop of Exeter in 1830.

  3 (p. 186). only five the next: The incomes of Church dignitaries were rationalized when positions fell vacant following the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Act of 1840.

  CHAPTER 17

  1 (p. 214). Exeter Hall: The building in the Strand where missionary societies held their meetings.

  2 (p. 214). a certain terrible prelate in the Midland counties: Unidentified. The only ‘terrible prelate’ of the day with such views was Henry Phillpotts of Exeter.

  3 (p. 217). carnifer: Nonce-word from ‘carniferous’ and meaning ‘meat-bearer’; cf. conifer.

  CHAPTER 18

  1 (p. 226). Greek… with the present of a prebendal stall in his hands: A submerged quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, II, 49: ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’ (‘I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts’).

  2 (p. 229). the Prime Minist
er’s ideas on Indian Reform: In February 1858 Palmerston had introduced a bill to transfer civil and military control of India from the East India Company to the Crown.

  3 (p. 229). The last great appointment… the cabinet: The Marquess of Clanricarde, whose appointment hastened Palmerston’s downfall.

  4 (p. 231). from such a sharp and waspish word as No to pluck the sting: Sir Henry Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde (1834), Part One, I, ii, 23–4.

  CHAPTER 19

  1 (p. 234). a praiseworthy spoiling of the Amalekites: When God commands Saul, ‘go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not’, ‘spoiling’ is not ‘praiseworthy’, and Saul offends by letting the Israelites take spoil and prisoners – 1 Samuel xv.

  2 (p. 240). consideration: The correct term for the value received by the acceptor of a bill. Mark has twice accepted a ‘bill of accommodation’ drawn by Sowerby: that is ‘a bill accepted… without value by the acceptor… to accommodate the drawer, or some other party; i.e. that the party accommodated may raise money upon it, or otherwise make use of it’ – (Byles on Bills of Exchange, 24th edn, 1979, pp. 221–2). But Mark might now be thought to have signed a promissory note in exchange for the221–2). But Mark might now be thought to have signed a promissory note in exchange for the prebendal stall. prebendal stall.

  CHAPTER 20

  1 (p. 248). not altogether successfully: Cornhill and subsequent editions read ‘unsuccessfully’, even though Trollope specifically requested George Smith in a letter of 6 June 1860 to restore the original ‘as first printed – i.e. “not altogether successfully”’– the reading of the manuscript. The mistake, which was perpetuated, seems to have occurred between the first and second stage of proofs for the July instalment. Trollope’s letter continues, ‘I don’t know whether you will understand the point with reference to the paper duties’ (Letters, vol. 1, p. 106). Gladstone’s measure to abolish the paper duties as part of a shift from indirect to direct taxation, received its third reading in the Commons on 8 May 1860, but a constitutional embarrassment arose when a Tory majority of the Lords, led by Derby, though constitutionally unable to reverse a Commons decision on taxation, succeeded in delaying the measure by six months. This reference is one of a number of106). Gladstone’s measure to abolish the paper duties as part of a shift from indirect to direct taxation, received its third reading in the Commons on 8 May 1860, but a constitutional embarrassment arose when a Tory majority of the Lords, led by Derby, though constitutionally unable to reverse a Commons decision on taxation, succeeded in delaying the measure by six months. This reference is one of a number of instances in instances in Framley Parsonage, and in this chapter in particular, when Trollope is writing simultaneously about 1858 and 1860. Gladstone is ‘that quaint tinkering Vulcan’, but the other mythological references seem to have no significance beyond showing that the ‘Olympians’ are in power.