Barsetshire

“ The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments. ”

“ Everybody knows Walker in Barsetshire. I've been down at Barchester since I saw you."
"Have you indeed?" said Johnny.
"And I'll tell you what I've been about. You know Mr. Crawley; don't you?"
"The Hogglestock clergyman that has come to grief? I don't know him personally. He's a sort of cousin by marriage, you know."
"Of course he is," said Mr. Toogood. "His wife is my first-cousin, and your mother's first-cousin. He came here to me the other day;—or rather to the shop. I had never seen the man before in my life, and a very queer fellow he is too. ”

“ Herein is a clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its due weight. A resident bishop, a resident dean, an archdeacon, three or four resident prebendaries, and all their numerous chaplains, vicars, and ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society sufficiently powerful to be counted as something by the county squirearchy. In other respects the greatness of Barsetshire depends wholly on the landed powers. ”

“ I dare not tell my girl that I think she will do well to place her hand in yours. A lady, when she does that, should feel at least that her hand is clean."
"It is the cleanest and the sweetest and the fairest hand in Barsetshire," said the major. Mrs. Crawley could not restrain herself, but running up to him, took his hand in hers and kissed it. ”

“ This best is to be found chiefly, but not entirely, in what is called the "Barsetshire" series, clustering round a county and city which are more or less exactly Hampshire and Winchester, beginning in 1855 with The Warden, a good but rather immature sketch, and continuing through Barchester Towers (perhaps his masterpiece) , Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and The Small House at Allington (the two latter among the early triumphs of the Cornhill Magazine) , to The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) , which runs Barchester Towers very hard, if it does not surpass it. ”

“ Anthony Trollope did, indeed, give us Barchester, but Barchester is a shadow beside Sulaco. Mr Thomas Hardy’s Wessex map is the most fascinating document in modern fiction, with the possible exception of Stevenson’s chart in Treasure Island. Conrad, without any map at all, gives us a familiarity with a small town on the South American coast that far excels our knowledge of Barsetshire, Wessex and John Silver’s treasure. If any attentive reader of Nostromo were put down in Sulaco tomorrow he would feel as though he had returned to his native town. ”

“ At Barchester, the cathedral city of the county in which the Crawleys lived, opinion was violently against Mr. Crawley. In the city Mrs. Proudie, the wife of the bishop, was the leader of opinion in general, and she was very strong in her belief of the man's guilt. She had known much of clergymen all her life, as it behoved a bishop's wife to do, and she had none of that mingled weakness and ignorance which taught so many ladies in Barsetshire to suppose that an ordained clergyman could not become a thief. She hated old Lady Lufton with all her heart, and old Lady Lufton hated her as warmly. ”

“ I don't believe that the Partridges have a shilling among them."
"Then I suppose it's an heiress?" said Mrs. Dale.
"No; not an heiress; but she will have some money of her own. And she has connexions in Barsetshire, which makes it pleasant." ”

“ There were but few men now in the House whose connection with the same body of constituents had remained unbroken so long as had that which bound him to West Barsetshire, and he confidently hoped that that connection might be continued through another period of coming years till he might find himself in the glorious position of being the father of the county members of the House of Commons. ”

“ Grantly, "when Eleanor wrote she had not heard of that affair of poor Mr. Crawley's."
"Does she say anything about him?" asked the major.
"I'll read what she says. 'I see in Galignani that a clergyman in Barsetshire has been committed for theft. Pray tell me who it is. Not the bishop, I hope, for the credit of the diocese?' "
"I wish it were," said the archdeacon.
"For shame, my dear," said his wife.
"No shame at all. If we are to have a thief among us, I'd sooner find him in a bad man than a good one. Besides we should have a change at the palace, which would be a great thing." ”

“ It has been said that Major Grantly had thrown a favourable eye on Grace Crawley,—by which report occasion was given to all men and women in those parts to hint that the Crawleys, with all their piety and humility, were very cunning, and that one of the Grantlys was,—to say the least of it,—very soft, admitted as it was throughout the county of Barsetshire, that there was no family therein more widely awake to the affairs generally of this world and the next combined, than the family of which Archdeacon Grantly was the respected head and patriarch. ”

“ What else can one say after finishing a book in which the heroine, a poor girl of illegitimate birth but "the sweetest girl in the world," is changed at a stroke (although long anticipated) into the wealthiest heiress in the county, gaining the blessings of her lover's mother, Lady Arabella, for her marriage to the most eligible young bachelor in Barsetshire? So much for the plot. Trollope cared little, in general, for maintaining the reader's suspense and usually revealed in advance how it would turn out. ”

“ Proudie by no means despised a countess, and as this countess lived in the county and within a sort of extensive visiting distance of Barchester, she was glad to have this opportunity of ingratiating herself.
"My dear Lady De Courcy, I am so delighted," said she, looking as little grim as it was in her nature to do. "I hardly expected to see you here. It is such a distance, and then, you know, such a crowd."
"And such roads, Mrs. Proudie! I really wonder how the people ever get about. But I don't suppose they ever do." ”

“ The old bishop and his chaplains, the dean and his canons and minor canons, the old choir, and especially Mr. Harding who was at the head of it, had all been popular in Barchester. They had spent their money and done good; the poor had not been ground down; the clergy in society had neither been overbearing nor austere; and the whole repute of the city was due to its ecclesiastical importance. Yet there were those who had heard Mr. Slope with satisfaction.
It is so pleasant to receive a fillip of excitement when suffering from the dull routine of every-day life! ”

“ Harding, the vicar of St. Ewolds, who was the father of my wife and of Mrs. Arabin, has been taken from us. The loss to us of so excellent and so dear a man has been very great. I have conferred with my friend the Dean of Barchester as to a new nomination, and I venture to request your acceptance of the preferment, if it should suit you to move from Hogglestock to St. Ewolds. It may be as well that I should state plainly my reasons for making this offer to a gentleman with whom I am not personally acquainted. ”

“ Nobody was milder in his dislikings than Mr. Harding; but there were ladies in Barchester upon whose arm he would always decline to lean, bowing courteously as he did so, and saying a word or two of constrained civility. There were others whom he would allow to accompany him home to the door of the deanery, with whom he delighted to linger and chat if the morning was warm, and to whom he would tell little stories of his own doings in the cathedral services in the old days, when Bishop Grantly had ruled in the diocese. ”

“ Then he went to Barchester; not open-mouthed with inquiry, but rather with open ears, and it seemed to him that all men in Barchester were of one mind. There was a county-club in Barchester, and at this county-club nine men out of every ten were talking about Mr. Crawley. It was by no means necessary that a man should ask questions on the subject. Opinion was expressed so freely that no such asking was required; and opinion in Barchester,—at any rate in the county-club,—seemed now to be all of one mind. There had been every disposition at first to believe Mr. Crawley to be innocent. ”

“ When the bishop of Barchester raised his first glass of champagne to his lips, the deanship of Barchester was a good thing in the gift of the prime minister. Before the bishop of Barchester had left the table, the minister of the day was made aware of the fact at his country seat in Hampshire, and had already turned over in his mind the names of five very respectable aspirants for the preferment. It is at present only necessary to say that Mr. Slope's name was not among the five. ”

“ It was not often that the rectory carriage-horses were allowed to make long journeys. A run into Barchester and back, which altogether was under ten miles, was generally the extent of their work. "I meant to have posted from Barchester," said the major. "You may as well take the horses through," said the archdeacon. "Your mother will not want them. And I suppose you might as well bring your friend Toogood back to dinner. We'll give him a bed."
"He must be a good sort of man," said Mrs. Grantly; "for I suppose he has done all this for love?" ”

“ Crawley, and would make both the archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly tell him all that they heard, and what they thought of the case. This of course had been before the all-important news had been received from Mrs. Arabin. Mr. Harding was very anxious, "Firstly," as he said, "for the welfare of the poor man, of whom I cannot bring myself to think ill; and then for the honour of the cloth in Barchester." "We are as liable to have black sheep here as elsewhere," the archdeacon replied. "But, my dear, I do not think that the sheep is black; and we never have had black sheep in Barchester." ”

“ Crawley, that your husband should be—detained at Barchester——"
"You mean imprisoned, Lady Lufton."
"Yes, I mean imprisoned. If it should be so, then do you bring yourself and your children,—all of them,—over to Framley, and I will find a home for you while he is lost to you."
"Oh, Lady Lufton; I could not do that."
"Yes, you can. You have not heard me yet. It would not be a comfort to you in such a home as that to sit at table with people who are partly strangers to you. But there is a cottage nearly adjoining to the house, which you shall have all to yourself. ”

“ Proudie. "I'm quite sure that I shall not," said the archdeacon. For this last sally his wife scolded him bitterly on their way home. "You know very well," she said, "that the times are changed, and that if you were Bishop of Barchester yourself you would not have whist played in the palace." "I only know," said he, "that when we had the whist we had some true religion along with it, and some good sense and good feeling also." "You cannot be right to sneer at others for doing what you would do yourself," said his wife. ”

“ This is another typical New England village, embowered by the stateliest of elms, spreading along its broad green-bordered street, with a galaxy of hills encircling the intervale in which it stands, and lofty Mount Everett rising grandly over its southwestern verge. To the eastward is the special hill of Great Barrington, giving the town its name. ”

“ Barham, as all Yorkshire knows, lies at the foot of a long valley, where it emerges into the flatter district round Harrogate. It has a railway all to itself, which goes no further, for Barham is shut in on the north by tall hills and moors, and lies on the way to nowhere. It is almost wholly an agricultural town, and has a curious humped bridge, right in the middle of the town, where men stand about on market days and discuss the price of bullocks. ”

“ The archdeacon had almost turned pale at the idea. What if Mr. Slope should become Dean of Barchester? To be sure there was no adequate ground, indeed no ground at all, for presuming that such a desecration could even be contemplated. But nevertheless it was on the cards. Dr. Proudie had interest with the government, and the man carried as it were Dr. Proudie in his pocket. How should they all conduct themselves if Mr. Slope were to become Dean of Barchester? ”

“ Never was an historian so readily and so affluently supplied! Whoever now sees the ponderous quarto of Barrett's History of Bristol, with all the wonders palmed upon the author by Chatterton, must be equally amazed at the daring of the lad and the credulity of the man. He restored in a fine drawing the ancient castle, in a style of architecture such as surely never was seen in any castle before. ”

“ Proudie went upstairs to her chamber, and locked her door.
Mr. Thumble returned to Barchester that day, leading the broken-down cob; and a dreadful walk he had. He was not good at walking, and before he came near Barchester had come to entertain a violent hatred for the beast he was leading. The leading of a horse that is tired, or in pain, or lame, or even stiff in his limbs, is not pleasant work. The brute will not accommodate his paces to the man, and will contrive to make his head very heavy on the bridle. ”

“ I am very much obliged to you for coming." Then Henry got out of his cart and shook hands with his father, and the archdeacon began to talk about the weather. "Your mother has gone into Barchester to see your grandfather," said the archdeacon. "If you are not tired, we might as well take a walk. I want to go up as far as Flurry's cottage." The major of course declared that he was not at all tired, and that he should be delighted of all things to go up and see old Flurry, and thus they started. Young Grantly had not even been into the house before he left the yard with his father. ”