Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

  10 (p. 90). a lesson from Germany: Bertie is treading on a very tender corn here. It was in the name of the secularized German univerisities, with their system of professorial rather than tutorial teaching, and scholarship untrammelled by considerations of religious orthodoxy, that clerical Oxford had been belaboured by many of the reformers: see note 9 above.

  11 (p. 91). ci-devant: Former.

  12 (p. 94). Grimaldi: Joseph Grimaldi (1779–1837), famous English pantomime clown and dancer.

  CHAPTER 12

  1 (p. 98). sizarship: See Chapter 4, note 2.

  CHAPTER 13

  1 (p. 103). if that cacoethes be upon us: An uncontrollable urge to do something, especially something harmful.

  CHAPTER 14

  1 (pp. 116–17). The frogs and the mice…the angers of Agamemnon and Achilles: The angers of Agamemnon and Achilles are the subject of Homer’s Iliad, which was parodied in The Battle of the Frogs and the Mice (Batrachomyomachia), written c. 500 kg

  CHAPTER 15

  1 (p. 123). young raven: See Psalm 147, 9 (‘He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry’), and Luke xii, 24 (‘Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them…’).

  2 (p. 123). said Bertie: Quoting Matthew vi, 34: Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’

  3 (p. 123). Cela dépend: That depends.

  4 (p. 123). as the maid-servant said: Excusing her illegitimate baby in Chapter 3 of Captain Marryat’s Mr Midshipman Easy (1836).

  5 (p. 125). burning of her husband’s body: A reference to the one-time Hindu practice of suttee, the burning of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre.

  6 (p. 127). Mrs Radcliffe’s solemn curtain: The mysterious black veil behind which the heroine looks in Mrs Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).

  7 (p. 127). mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian: A reference to the two pairs of twin brothers in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, whose separation causes the misunderstandings on which the play is based.

  CHAPTER 16

  1 (p. 129). that voluptuous Rubens beauty: Sir Peter Paul Rubens(1577–1640), famous Flemish painter of the Baroque era.

  2 (p. 129). asphodel: The flower, possibly narcissus, which grew on the Elysian Fields in Greek mythology.

  3 (p. 133). de trop: Too much, here ‘in the way’, unwanted.

  CHAPTER 17

  1 (p. 141). whose courage like Bob Acres’ had oozed out: In Sheridan’s play The Rivals (1775), Bob Acres feels his valour ‘oozing out as it were at the palms of my hands’ at the prospect of fighting a duel (V, iii, 87–8).

  CHAPTER 18

  1 (p. 147). sotto voce. In an undertone.

  2 (p. 152). tartuffe: A religious hypocrite, after the character in MoliÈre’s comedy of that name (1664).

  3 (p. 152). beaux yeux: Beautiful eyes, hence good looks.

  CHAPTER 19

  1 (p. 154). the end at which the Stoics aimed: The Stoics were followers of the Greek thinker Zeno (335–263 bc), who held that the aim of life was philosophical submission to the law of nature, which was in harmony with divine reason.

  2 (p. 156). custom of his youth: Until 1838 a creditor could take by law only the movable property of a debtor, but had the power of arrest on mesne process (i.e. before legal proof of debt had been established) to compel him to pay. In 1838 this was abolished and the creditor given power of execution over the debtor’s other property, which made it easier to recover debts. Bertie could still have been arrested for debt, but only, as Charlotte says, when his debt had been legally established in the courts.

  3 (p. 156). wine-warrants: ‘a warrant authorizing the delivery of wine from bond’ (OED).

  4 (p. 158). took the remainder in paving-stones and rocking-horses: Bertie has borrowed money abroad at an illegally high rate of interest, and in order to circumvent the usury laws there has resorted to the device of cambium fictivum, or false exchange, obtaining the balance in the form of goods which, supposedly purchased abroad, could be turned into cash at home. [Skilton]

  5 (p. 160). the chaste goddess might become: Diana, Roman goddess of the moon and hunting, was traditionally held to be a virgin.

  6 (p. 160). a Whewellite or a Brewsterite, or a t’othermanite: A reference to the recent debate between William Whewell (1794–1866) and Sir David Brewster (1781–1868) on the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. In Of the Plurality of Worlds (1853) Whewell had argued against that possibility on scientific and religious grounds, and Brewster had attacked him in More Worlds than One (1854). The theological irony in their dispute is that it was the liberal Anglican Whewell who defended the traditional idea of God’s ‘special creation’ of Earth, whereas the Scottish evangelical Brewster, in arguing for the plurality of worlds, was upholding a doctrine that in the past had been used against Christianity by radicals like Tom Paine. Bertie’s remarks about ‘the pulpy gelatinous matter’ and ‘nothing but fish in Jupiter’ refer to Whewell’s contention that the only life-forms capable of existing on Jupiter would be ‘boneless, watery, pulpy creatures’. A ‘t’othermanite’ would presumably support one of the other contributions to the debate, such as Dionysius Lardner’s The Planets: Are they Inhabited Worlds? (1854) or Baden Powell’s Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Creation (1855).

  7 (p. 161). sidereal questions: Concerning the stars.

  VOLUME II

  CHAPTER 1

  1 (p. 167). daguerrotype: Early form of photography invented in 1838 by Louis Daguerre (1789–1851).

  2 (p. 168). Labor omnia vincit improbus: Hard work overcomes all difficulties. From Virgil, Georgics, I, 145.

  3 (p. 168). little go: The first examination for the BA degree.

  4 (p. 169). Froude’s Remains: Although not, as Trollope says, the start of the Oxford Movement, the posthumous publication in 1838 of the private papers of the young Tractarian Hurrell Proude (1803–36) proved a turning-point in its fortunes. His Remains revealed a hatred of the Reformation (he described it as ‘a limb badly set’ which ‘must be broken again in order to be righted’) and a morbid taste for private mortification. To the hostile and the undecided the book seemed to expose the Rome-wards tendency of Tractarianism and so served to polarize attitudes as nothing previously had done.

  5 (p. 169). the great Newman: John Henry Newman (1801–90), the intellectual leader of the Oxford Movement, who was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. The power of his sermons at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin was legendary.

  6 (p. 169). éclat: Brilliant success.

  7 (p. 170). waters of Jordan: In 2 Kings v, Naaman the leper objected to Elisha’s simple command that he should ‘Go and wash in Jordan seven times’ to be cured, because it seemed too humble a requirement. ‘Are not Abana and Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?’ (12–13). So too Mr Arabin longs for ‘some great thing’ that would declare his faith to the world.

  8 (p. 171). Thirty-nine Articles: The doctrinal foundation of the Church of England, to which every clergyman was required to subscribe.

  9 (p. 173). marriage…had been out of the question: At this time a college fellow could not marry without resigning his fellowship.

  10 (p. 174). façon de parler. Manner of speaking.

  11 (p. 175). Exeter Hall: A large auditorium in the Strand used for public meetings and concerts, especially associated at this time with the Evangelicals.

  12 (p. 176). mitres…diaconal residences…pleasant glebes: A mitre, the high headdress of a
bishop, came to symbolize the bishop’s office. ‘Diaconal’ is the adjective from ‘deacon’, and the diaconal residence in Mr Arabin’s mind is Archdeacon Grantly’s. A glebe is land granted to a clergyman as part of his living.

  13 (p. 177). The philosophy of Zeno: See Volume I, Chapter 19, note 1.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 (p. 181). savoir vivre: Literally ‘knowing how to live’, hence good breeding, sophistication.

  2 (p. 181). dilapidations: The state of disrepair into which an ecclesiastical property has fallen at the end of one incumbency, and therefore the repairs necessary to make it good for the next..

  3 (p. 185). ‘Let dogs delight to bark and bite’: From Isaac Watts’s Divine Songs for Children (1715), no. 16, ‘Against Quarrelling and Fighting’.

  4 (p. 187). leaving a cloth on the table: The archdeacon prefers the traditional custom, observed at Plumstead (see p. 259), of removing the tablecloth as a sign for the ladies to leave the room to the gentlemen and their wine.

  CHAPTER 3

  1 (p. 190). Squire Western: The hard-drinking, rough-mannered, comic Tory squire in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749).

  2 (p. 190). Montaigne and Burton: Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533–92), famous French essayist, widely current in English through Florio’s 1603 translation. Robert Burton (1577–1640) was the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Both works were standard classics likely to be found in any country gentleman’s library.

  3 (p. 190). complete sets of…the Rambler. Dr Johnson wrote essays twice weekly for the Rambler (1750–52), and weekly essays for another paper which were later collected as the Idler (1761). In doing this he was carrying on the tradition of the polite essay, which had its heyday at the start of the eighteenth century in the Tatler (1709–11) and the Spectator (1711–14), written by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, and the Guardian (1713), written by Steele.

  4 (p. 190). our Edinburghs, and Quarterlies: The two most powerful periodicals of the early nineteenth century, published quarterly. The Whig Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802, the Tory Quarterly in 1809.

  5 (p. 190). Cedrtc the Saxon: The Saxon landowner in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820).

  6 (p. 191)- Sophocles: Greek dramatist (496–406 bc).

  7 (p. 191). Fitzgeralds and De Burghs: Names which reveal French, and therefore ‘Norman’ descent. Ivanhoe was one of Trollope’s favourite novels and throughout this chapter he is making affectionate fun of Scott’s contrast between the indigenous, freedom-loving Saxons and the Norman invaders, here expressed in terms of a ‘Saxon’ gentry and a ‘Norman’ aristocracy.

  8 (p. 191). ichor. In Greek mythology the fluid supposed to flow in the veins of the gods.

  9 (p. 192). fifty-three Trojans, who…censured free trade in November 1852: In November 1852 a Parliamentary resolution in favour of Free Trade was carried by 468 votes to 53. Although this motion was embarrassing to politicians like Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had vigorously opposed the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 (see below, note 10), only 53 diehards were prepared to register publicly their allegiance to protection, which was by then a lost cause.

  10 (p. 192). repeal of the corn laws: The corn laws subjected the import of foreign wheat to a sliding-scale of duties which ensured a high price for the home-grown product, and therefore protection for the landed and agricultural interests. But political pressure in the ‘hungry forties’ from bad harvests, trade depression, the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League and finally the 1845 potato famine in Ireland persuaded Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) of the necessity of repealing the corn laws, which he did in 1846, despite opposition from protectionists in his own party led by Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck. Shortly thereafter his minority Tory government fell from power. The repeal of the corn laws was an event of great symbolic as well as political importance in the nineteenth century, a decision for free trade and cheap bread to feed an expanding industrial society, as against the agricultural interests which had hitherto been dominant.

  11 (p. 192). Sir Robert Peel’s apostasy: Repeal of the com laws split the Tory party for many years, and Mr Thorne follows the diehard protectionists in accusing Peel of betraying the landed interests on which, they believed, true Toryism was based.

  12 (p. 193). certain Eleusinian mysteries: The mysterious rites of Demeter, the Greek corn-goddess, and her daughter Persephone, which were celebtrated each September in classical antiquity at Eleusis, near Athens.

  13 (p. 193). palladium: A statue of Pallas Athene, in particular the one upon which the safety of Troy depended.

  14 (p. 193). Cato: Marcius Porcius Cato (95–46 bc). Stoic and Roman statesman, who committed suicide after Caesar’s victory in the Civil War. His name was a byword for public rectitude and devotion to liberty.

  15 (p.194). garter. Membership of the Order of the Garter, the highest order of British knighthood.

  16 (p. 194). his covers should not be drawn: To draw a cover is to search a wood or other shelter for game, in this case foxes.

  17 (p. 195). fidds of romance: Famous eighteenth-century writers. Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was a poet and essayist, Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729) an essayist and dramatist, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) a poet and satirist. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) and Henry Fielding (1707–54) were both novelists.

  18 (p. 195). literature in this line: John Dryden (1631–1700) was a poet and playwright, and as verse satirist the most important immediate predecessor of Alexander Pope, whose The Rape of the Lock (1714) is a masterpiece of the mock-heroic. Edmund Spenser (1552–99) was the author of The Faerie Queene (1590–96), an allegorical romance whose story of knightly quests and archaic style would appeal strongly to Miss Thorne.

  19 (p. 195). Hengist, Horsa: Leaders of the first Jutish settlement in Britain in the fifth century ad.

  20 (p. 195). Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock: Saxon gods invoked by Ulrica when she taunts the dying Norman nobleman Front-de-Boeuf in Ivanhoe,Chapter 30.

  21 (p. 195). Catholic Emancipation: Miss Thorne, like her brother, is doomed to be disappointed by Tory statesmen. It was under the premiership of the Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), from whom a staunch defence of the Protestant constitution could have been expected, that an Act removing the civil disabilities of Roman Catholics was passed in 1829. This was followed by Lord Grey’s Reform Act of 1832, which abolished rotten boroughs, redistributed seats to increase the representation of the new towns, and extended the franchise.

  22 (p. 195). Lord Eldon: John Scott, 1st Earl of EIdon (1751–1838), was Lord Chancellor from 1801 to 1827 and renowned as an opponent of Catholic emancipation and political reform.

  23 (p. 195). Druidess: The Druids were a pre-Christian order of priests or magi, well established in Britain before the Roman invasion and commonly thought to engage in human sacrifice.

  24 (p. 196). St Augustine: Roman monk who brought Christianity to England and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury (601–4).

  25 (p. 196). most simple-minded of martyrs: Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556) was made Archbishop of Canterbury by Henry VIII in 1533. Although not quite the ‘time-serving priest’ Trollope calls him, Cranmer’s support for the royal supremacy in religion was politically opportune in Henry’s reign. On the accession of the Catholic Mary in 1553, Protestantism and the royal supremacy came into conflict, and Cranmer was executed as a heretic.

  26 (p. 196). some exiled Stuart: The royal house of Stuart, traditionally associated with autocratic rule and Catholic sympathies, whose last occupant of the throne, James II (1633–1701) was driven into exile in 1688.

  27 (p. 197). Hung their shields in Branksome Hall: See Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto I, stanza 3.

  28 (p. 197). cap-à-pie: From head to foot.

  29 (p. 199). oriel window: A projecting or bay window.

  30 (p. 199). Lely…Kneller. Sir Peter Lely (1618–80) and Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646?-1723), portrait painters.

  31 (p. 200).
a whole tribe of Pan’s followers: Pan was the Greek god of flocks and shepherds, portrayed as a man with goat’s legs, horns and ears; satyrs and fauns were similarly shaped woodland spirits.

  CHAPTER 4

  1 (p. 204). surveillance…even over himself: Although the modern churchwarden’s responsibility usually extends only to the secular affairs of the parish church, traditionally he had authority (derived from the bishop) to report any infringements of ecclesiastical law by the incumbent clergyman.