Anthony à Wood

“ He travelled a good deal on the continent, and spent the latter part of his life on his estate at Sunningwell, Berkshire. Anthony à Wood, who visited him there in February 1658–9, found him to be a melancholy and retired man, and was told that he gave the third or fourth part of his estate to the poor. ”

“ As the year 1679 is also within the stated date-range of Ward's departure, the existence of the broadsheet must count marginally against his being the author of PdT.
I can cast no further light on this mystery beyond proposing that if the story of the exiled poet is in fact a fabrication, the poem may have been the work of a younger (b. 1661) and Protestant "T.W." in the person of Thomas Wood, Anthony à Wood's nephew, later celebrated as a legal writer, poet, and controversialist and for his fondness for anonymous and pseudonymous publication. ”

“ The entire absence of a tacitly recognized masculine superiority subconsciously made him uneasy, and he took refuge in imponderable silence.
“Besides,” she continued airily, “you are too physically normal to think, all normal people are stupid.... You are like one of those wood creatures in the classic pastorals.”
A faint grin overspread Anthony's countenance; among so many unintelligible words he had regained his poise—this was the usual, the familiar feminine chatter, endless, inconsequential, by means of which all girls presented the hopeless tangle of their thoughts and emotions ”

“ That same night he and John Bent, being abroad together, see you cross the road from this Chapel Lane, that leads direct from your house, you know, and enter the Friar's Keep; young Anthony runs over in your wake, and enters it also: and from that blessed moment he is never seen by mortal eyes again. People outside hear a shot and a scream--and that's all. Look dispassionately at the circumstances for yourself, and see if they do not afford grounds for suspicion. ”

“ Anthony went round the corner of the house to look after him. Not being anything great in horsemanship himself, he admired those who were. He admired also the tall, fine form, the handsome face, and the free, frank bearing of Harry Castlemaine; and a hope in that moment arose in his heart that they might become good friends if he remained in England. He stood and watched him up the road until its bending hid him from view. Harry's route lay past the Grey Nunnery, past the coastguard station higher up, and so onwards. Newerton was a town of some importance, at about ten miles distance. ”

“ He had a sincere abhorrence of everything mean and servile; and if he is guilty at any time of misrepresenting the character of others, it is owing to his first being deceived himself."
Anthony for a time was coached at Merton by his elder brother Edward Wood, who, now and then, applied bodily punishment to the junior. "Edward was inclined to be peevish," and would ever and anon become angry if Anthony could not take in or understand logical notions as well as he. He would sometimes—the statement is Anthony's own—become so angry that he would beat Anthony, and turn him out of his chamber. ”

“ Anthony's must have deceived him. Why, the night was as light as day."
"Eyes do deceive sometimes," remarked Mr. Castlemaine. "I know that mine have on occasion deceived me at night, good though their sight is. And of all deceptive lights, the moon's light is the worst."
"Sir, if it was not you it must have been your wraith," said John Bent, evidently not inclined to give in. "You passed close by us sideways, coming out of the Chapel Lane, and crossed the road in front of us. Had you just turned your head sharp to the right, you must have seen us under the hedge." ”

“ It is not like reality. It is not like any story I ever heard before. Anthony comes over here, all those hundreds of weary miles, over that miserable sea, and finds himself amid his family; his family whom he had never seen. 'Greylands' Rest is mine, I think,' he says to them; 'will you give it to me?' And they deny that it is his. 'Then,' says he, 'what you say may be so; but you should just show me the deeds--the proofs that it is not mine.' And they decline to show them; and his uncle, James Castlemaine, at an interview in the field, seeks to strike him. ”

“ Silence supervened, and her terror grew somewhat less intense. "Is your grave here, Anthony?" she murmured; "are you buried in some corner of this lonesome place, away from the eye of man? Oh, hear me while I repeat my vow to search out this dreadful mystery! To the utmost of the power that circumstances and secrecy leave me, will I strive to find you, Anthony; and bring home to Mr. Castlemaine----"
A worse noise than before; an awful fluttering and flapping right above her head. She screamed out now, terrified nearly to death. The echoes repeated her scream ”

“ He was in a passion this afternoon and perhaps did not quite understand me: when he shall have had time to reflect he may be more reasonable."
John Bent shook his head. In his own mind he did not believe that fifty fresh appeals would have any effect on Mr. Castlemaine.
"I say this to myself," went on Anthony: "Whether Greylands' Rest is his by right or not, he is in possession of it. Nobody can deny that. And I have tried to put myself in imagination in his place, and I see how cruel a blow it would seem if a stranger came to seek to deprive me of it. I might be as angry as he is." ”

“ Whether, if poor Anthony be really no more, his destroyers may have cause to wish the Friar's Keep to remain unexplored, lest traces of him might be found, and so have improvised a revenant, as you call it, to scare people away. ”

“ Men whose minds are at ease cannot sigh like that.
"It has been an unlucky year for the Castlemaines: a fatal year. After a long tide of prosperity such years do come, I suppose, to a family. Peter's trouble first, and his uncertain death:--and what a near shave it was, the staving off disgrace from his name! Anthony's intrusion and the trouble he gave me, and then his death: that, unfortunately, had nothing uncertain about it. The cloud that fell upon me, and that lasts still; and now, Teague's doubts; and now again, Harry! ”

“ The more than hinted-at doubts of Charlotte Guise--that Anthony had been vat out of the world for ever by Mr. Castlemaine--failed to find their response in George North's mind. The mere thought of it appeared to him to be absurd: the suspicion far-fetched and impossible; the implied doubt of the Master of Greylands little less than a libel on the name of Castlemaine. Men of the world are inclined to be practical in their views, rather than imaginative: and the young and hopeful look ever on the bright side of all things.
That Anthony's disappearance was most unaccountable, George North felt ”

“ Dare was about to follow them when a sudden thought appeared to strike him, and he turned back and addressed Anthony.
"You young men take care that you don't get quarrelling with each other. Do you hear, Anthony?" ”

“ Anthony, Mary Ursula, George North, and Emma. The elder daughter died young: the wife died just as her other children had grown up. Anthony married Charlotte Guise; Emma married Monsieur de Rhone, a gentleman who was now the chief partner in the Silk Mills, with which Basil Castlemaine had been connected. The two young Castlemaines, Anthony and George, had both declined to engage in commerce. Their father pointed to them that a share in the Silk Mills was open to each, and no doubt a good fortune at the end of a few years' connection with the business ”

“ They say there is no opening to the sea. Mr. Castlemaine may have dragged him across the chapel ruins and filing him from thence."
"But could he have done that without being seen? John Bent, you say, was outside the gates, waiting for Anthony."
"But John Bent was not there all the time. When he got tired of waiting he went home, thinking Anthony might have come out without his seeing him--but not in his heart believing it possible that he had. Finding Anthony had not returned to the inn, John Bent went again and searched the Keep with Mr. Nettleby, the superintendent of these coastguardsmen." ”

“ But that the propensity, which we all have, to take likes and dislikes seems to obey no rule or law, and is never to be accounted for, it might be noticed as a curious circumstance here. When Mr. Castlemaine first saw the unfortunate Anthony, he had taken a dislike to him. How far the avowed errand of that young man--the putting in a claim to Greylands' Rest--may have conduced to this, cannot be told: Mr. Castlemaine would have said that it had nothing to do with it; that he disliked him by instinct. Most people had seen nothing in Anthony but what was to be liked ”

“ I went into the Dolphin to get something for mamma, and began to help Mrs. Bent to do them, for she said she should be late with her pudding. Old Squire Dobie came in and saw me at them. When he found me at home here at dinner, I know he was puzzled."
"What a--strange manner he had;--what curious things he said to Mr. Castlemaine!" spoke Madame, seizing upon the opportunity.
"Yes," said Ethel, flushing scarlet. "I thought him very rude."
"He seemed to think that--that the young Mr. Anthony I have heard tell of was really killed in secret."
"You cannot help people thinking things." ”

“ It is caused by Anthony—and be hanged to him!"
"Anthony is worth ten of you!" fiercely responded mademoiselle.
"Every one to his own liking," carelessly remarked Herbert. "It's well for me that all the world does not think as you do, mademoiselle." ”

“ However, the Anthonys were free from all demoralizing influences. At sea, you know, there is no gallery. You hear no tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either a great elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elemental silence seems to be part of the infinite stillness of the universe.
Remembering Flora de Barral in the depths of moral misery, and Roderick Anthony carried away by a gust of tempestuous tenderness, I asked myself, Is it all forgotten already? ”

“ The appearance of the new-comer was extremely prepossessing; and, after his trepidation had a little subsided, Wood began to regard him with some degree of interest. Evidently in the flower of his age, he was scarcely less remarkable for symmetry of person than for comeliness of feature; and, though his attire was plain and unpretending, it was such as could be worn only by one belonging to the higher ranks of society. His figure was tall and commanding, and the expression of his countenance (though somewhat disturbed by his recent exertion) was resolute and stern. ”

“ For these and similar hits, his uncle, a Roman catholic, ‘dashed his name out of his last will.’ Owen's epigrams, which exhibit what Wood calls ‘an ingenious liberty of joking,’ won great popularity, and retained it longer abroad than at home. He deals freely in anagrams, puns, and the like, and at best is an imitator of Martial; but he will always be read with interest for his contemporary allusions and his sprightly good sense. ”

“ Anthony, a little awed, as one is by a range of feelings stretching beyond one’s grasp, comforted himself by the thought that probably the old fellow would have little to say. He wouldn’t want to talk about it. No man would. It must have been a real hell to him.
And then Anthony, at the end of the day in which he had gone through a marriage ceremony with Flora de Barral, ceased to think of Flora’s father except, as in some sort, the captive of his triumph. ”

“ He comes and throws at him more talk than he had ever heard boomed out in an hour, and certainly touching the deepest things Anthony had ever discovered in himself, and flings words like "unfair" whose very sound is abhorrent to him. ”

“ Anthony trudged along the empty village street, past the gleaming squares of ruddy gold, starting on either side out of the darkness. Now and then he looked furtively backwards. The straight open road lay behind him, glimmering wanly: the organ seemed to have ceased: the figure on the bridge had left the parapet, and appeared to be moving away towards the church. Anthony halted, watching it till it had disappeared into the blackness beneath the churchyard trees. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he left the road, and mounted an upland meadow towards his mother's farm. ”

“ Radiant in all its girlish beauty, the angelic face smiled down upon him with life-like fidelity. The rose that decked her dark floating locks, less vividly bright than the glowing cheeks and lips of happy youth; the large black eyes, "half languor and half fire," that had wept tears of unmitigated anguish over his forlorn infancy—rested upon his own, as if they were conscious of his presence. Anthony continued to gaze upon the portrait till the blinding tears hid it from his sight. ”

“ And Anthony was extremely careful in preparing for himself and for the luckless Flora, an impossible existence. He went about it with no more tremors than if he had been stuffed with rags or made of iron instead of flesh and blood. An existence, mind you, which, on shore, in the thick of mankind, of varied interests, of distractions, of infinite opportunities to preserve your distance from each other, is hardly conceivable; but on board ship, at sea, _en tete-a-tete_ for days and weeks and months together, could mean nothing but mental torture, an exquisite absurdity of torment. ”

“ Disgusted with his cousin and his dissipated associates, Anthony withdrew entirely from their society, and shut himself up in his own apartments, rarely leaving his books to mingle in scenes in which he could not sympathize, and in which, from his secluded habits, he was not formed to shine. He became a dreamer. He formed a world for himself, and peopled it with beings whose imaginary perfections had no counterpart on earth. ”