Framley Parsonage quotes

Here it may suffice to say that he was no born heaven’s cherub, neither was he a born fallen devil’s spirit. Such as his training made him, such he was.

He had large capabilities for good⁠—and aptitudes also for evil, quite enough: quite enough to make it needful that he should repel temptation as temptation only can be repelled.

Much had been done to spoil him, but in the ordinary acceptation of the word he was not spoiled. He had too much tact, too much common sense, to believe himself to be the paragon which his mother thought him.

Harold Smith had not been perspicacious. Mr. Harold Smith was not personally a popular man with any party, though some judged him to be eminently useful.

He was laborious, well-informed, and, on the whole, honest; but he was conceited, long-winded, and pompous.

Mrs. Harold Smith was the very opposite of her lord.

… nose at him—for Lady Lufton, who spent ten months of the year at Framley Court, and who during those ten months, and for the matter of that, during the two months also which she spent in London, saw no one out of her own set.

Women did not understand such things, the vicar said to himself

; even his own wife—good, and nice, and sensible, and intelligent as she was—even she did not understand that a man in the world must meet all sorts of men;

“

He sends forth to his clergy either blessings or blowings-up, according to the state of his digestive organs.

But Mrs. Proudie can explain all that to you with the greatest accuracy.”

and a place in one of the carriages had been set apart for him: but since that, he and Mrs. Proudie had discussed the matter in private, and at breakfast his lordship declared that he had changed his mind.

Mr. Sowerby was one of those men who are known to be very poor⁠—as poor as debt can make a man⁠—but who, nevertheless, enjoy all the luxuries which money can give.

It was believed that he could not live in England out of jail but for his protection as a member of Parliament; and yet it seemed that there was no end to his horses and carriages, his servants and retinue.

and yet it seemed that there was no end to his horses and carriages, his servants and retinue. He had been at this work for a great many years, and practice, they say, makes perfect. Such companions are very dangerous.

There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no smallpox more contagious than debt.

If one lives habitually among embarrassed men, one catches it to a certainty. No one had injured the community in this way more fatally than Mr. Sowerby. But still he carried on the game himself;

“He is very anxious to know you, I can assure you,” said Fothergill.

What could a young flattered fool of a parson do, but say that he would go?

Mark did say that he would go; and in the course of the evening his friend Mr. Sowerby congratulated him, and the bishop joked with him and said that he knew that he would not give up good company so soon;

“Well; I suppose he is going to stay another week at Chaldicotes. For my part I should be as well pleased;” and Lady Lufton’s voice was not friendly, for she was thinking of that farm in Oxfordshire.

The imprudence of the young is very sore to the prudence of their elders.

No woman could be less covetous, less grasping than Lady Lufton; but the sale of a portion of the old family property was to her as the loss of her own heart’s blood.

“Of course we do.

Friends are not to be picked up on the roadside every day; nor are they to be thrown away lightly.

And now sit down, my love, and let us have a little talk. There, I must take my bonnet off. You have pulled the strings so that you have almost choked me.”

Even his minister there, the governor whom he had sent out, was not allowed in those days any credit for the success which was achieved under his orders. There was great reason to doubt the man at the helm. But nevertheless he had been lucky.

There is no merit in a public man like success!

But now, when the evil days were well nigh over, came the question whether he had not been too successful. When a man has nailed fortune to his chariot-wheels he is apt to travel about in rather a proud fashion.

“Has it not been so always?” he says to himself, as he gets up and as he goes to bed. And then Mr. Supplehouse felt that he was the mastermind there at Gatherum Castle, and that those there were all puppets in his hand.

It is such a pleasant thing to feel that one’s friends are puppets, and that the strings are in one’s own possession. But what if Mr. Supplehouse himself were a puppet?

Some months afterwards, when the much-belaboured head of affairs was in very truth made to retire, when unkind shells were thrown in against him in great numbers, when he exclaimed, “Et tu, Brute!”

“And the nine hundred and ninety-nine have the best of it,” said Miss Dunstable. “

What pleasure can one have in a ghost after one has seen the phosphorus rubbed on?

”

And then Mr. Gresham thought of a former day when he had once been at Gatherum Castle. He had been poor enough then, and the duke had not treated him in the most courteous manner in the world.

How hard it is for a rich man not to lean upon his riches! harder, indeed, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

All Barsetshire knew—at any rate all West Barsetshire—that Miss Dunstable had been brought down in those parts in order that Mr. Sowerby might marry her.

If there be one class of men whose names would be found more frequent on the backs of bills in the provincial banks than another, clergymen are that class. Come, old fellow, you won’t throw me over when I am so hard pushed.”

Mark Robarts took the pen and signed the bill. It was the first time in his life that he had ever done such an act.

Sowerby then shook him cordially by the hand, and he walked off to his own bedroom a wretched man.

but was he to tell her of that transaction? At any rate he would not do it now, while his two boys were in his arms, rubbing the moisture from his whiskers with their kisses.

After all, what is there equal to that coming home?

“And so Lufton is here. I say, Frank, gently, old boy,”—Frank was his eldest son—“you’ll have baby into the fender.”

Alas, alas, it is very hard to break asunder the bonds of the latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them?

There is no horseleech that sticks so fast as your latter-day Philistine.

“So you have caught Sir George, after all,” said Lady Lufton; and that was nearly all she did say in allusion to his absence.

In regard to the neck and colour, poor girl, she could not help herself; but in that other respect she must be held as having wasted her opportunities.

But then what eyes she had!

Mrs. Pole was right there. They flashed upon you—not always softly; indeed not often softly, if you were a stranger to her; but whether softly or savagely, with a brilliancy that dazzled you as you looked at them.

It leads to conversation of some sort among people, and perhaps to a kind of sympathy. Mrs. Jones will look at Mrs. White’s linen-chest, hoping that Mrs. White may be induced to look at hers.

One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.

For the most of us, if we do not talk of ourselves, or at any rate of the individual circles of which we are the centres, we can talk of nothing.

Mrs. Grantly, however, had been heard to say, that she was in no hurry to see her daughter established in the world;—ordinary young ladies are merely married, but those of real importance are established:—and this, if anything, added to the value of the prize.

Mothers sometimes depreciate their wares by an undue solicitude to dispose of them.

But to tell the truth openly and at once—a virtue for which a novelist does not receive very much commendation—Griselda Grantly was, to a certain extent, already given away.

Lady Lufton after receiving her guests introduced Lucy to Griselda Grantly. Miss Grantly smiled graciously, bowed slightly, and then remarked in the lowest voice possible that it was exceedingly cold.

A low voice, we know, is an excellent thing in woman.

Lucy, who thought that she was bound to speak, said that it was cold, but that she did not mind it when she was walking. And then Griselda smiled again, somewhat less graciously than before, and so the conversation ended.

I must make some arrangement then.” And in this way his mind was easier during the last of those three months than it had been during the two former.

That feeling of overdue bills, of bills coming due, of accounts overdrawn, of tradesmen unpaid, of general money cares, is very dreadful at first; but it is astonishing how soon men get used to it.

A load which would crush a man at first becomes, by habit, not only endurable, but easy and comfortable to the bearer. The habitual debtor goes along jaunty and with elastic step, almost enjoying the excitement of his embarrassments. There was Mr. Sowerby himself;

But at last he did sign the bill, and sent it off, as Sowerby had directed. What else was he to do?

Fool that he was. A man always can do right, even though he has done wrong before.

But that previous wrong adds so much difficulty to the path—a difficulty which increases in tremendous ratio, till a man at last is choked in his struggling, and is drowned beneath the waters.

I wonder whether they cautioned Griselda Grantly when she was here? I suppose when young lords go about, all the girls are cautioned as a matter of course.

Why do they not label him ‘dangerous’?

” And then again they were silent for a moment, as Mrs. Robarts did not feel that she had anything further to say on the matter.

They settled themselves, and again began their struggles against man’s hardness and the devil’s zeal. I have said that Mr. Crawley was a stern, unpleasant man; and it certainly was so.

The man must be made of very sterling stuff, whom continued and undeserved misfortune does not make unpleasant.

This man had so far succumbed to grief, that it had left upon him its marks, palpable and not to be effaced. He cared little for society, judging men to be doing evil who did care for it.

“

If the ears be too delicate to hear the truth, the mind will be too perverse to profit by it.

” And then Mr. Crawley got up to take his leave.

But, then, his mother! and the sneers of the world, which would have declared that she had set her trap, and caught the foolish young lord! Her pride would not have submitted to that.

Strong as her love was, yet her pride was, perhaps, stronger

—stronger at any rate during that interview.

But the elder among them would remember with regret the unsparing, openhanded hospitality of Barchester palace in the good old days of Bishop Grantly—God rest his soul! One old vicar’s wife there was whose answer had not been so courteous—

“When we are hungry, Mrs. Proudie,” she had said, “we do all have sensual propensities.”

“It would be much better, Mrs. Athill, if the world would provide for all that at home,” Mrs. Proudie had rapidly replied; with which opinion I must here profess that I cannot by any means bring myself to coincide.

Then four times during the two hours’ period of her conversazione tea and cake were to be handed round on salvers.

It is astonishing how far a very little cake will go in this way, particularly if administered tolerably early after dinner.

The men can’t eat it, and the women, having no plates and no table, are obliged to abstain. Mrs. Jones knows that she cannot hold a piece of crumbly cake in her hand till it be consumed without doing serious injury to her best dress.

“An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating—can we?”

“No,” said Lord Dumbello, “not always.” And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.

And then Mrs. Proudie passed on to Mrs. Grantly. The two ladies were quite friendly in London; though down in their own neighbourhood they waged a war so internecine in its nature. But nevertheless Mrs.

“I! Lord bless you, no!

Nobody hates grandeur so much as I do.

Of course I must do as I am told. I must live in a big house, and have three footmen six feet high. I must have a coachman with a top-heavy wig, and horses so big that they frighten me.

“I am not sure of that. She has no conversation, you see; not a word. She has been sitting there with Lord Dumbello at her elbow for the last hour, and yet she has hardly opened her mouth three times.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Proudie, who on earth could talk to Lord Dumbello?”

Mrs. Proudie thought that her own daughter Olivia would undoubtedly be able to do so, if only she could get the opportunity. But, then, Olivia had so much conversation.

“As to you personally, Mark,” he said, coming back to the spot on which Robarts was standing, “

I do not wish to say anything that shall annoy you.

”

Not that it must be supposed that Lord Lufton had come there with any intention of making love to Griselda, or that he ever had any fixed thought that he was doing so.

Young men in such matters are so often without any fixed thoughts! They are such absolute moths.

They amuse themselves with the light of the beautiful candle, fluttering about, on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, …

… on and off, in and out of the flame with dazzled eyes, till in a rash moment they rush in too near the wick, and then fall with singed wings and crippled legs, burnt up and reduced to tinder by the consuming fire of matrimony.

Happy marriages, men say, are made in heaven, and I believe it. Most marriages are fairly happy, in spite of Sir Cresswell Cresswell; and yet how little care is taken on earth towards such a result!

“I hope my mother is using you well?” said Lord Lufton to Griselda, as they were standing together in a doorway between the dances.

Then he could have enjoyed himself; then he could have talked; then old days would have come back to them. But now!—“Arabin always rides on a sleek, fine horse, nowadays,” he once said to his wife with a sneer.

His poverty had been so terrible to himself that it was not in his heart to love a rich friend.

“Fiddlestick!” said Mrs. Harold Smith. “

You millionaires always talk of Christian resignation, because you never are called on to resign anything.

If I had any Christian resignation, I shouldn’t have cared for such pomps and vanities. Think of it, my dear; a cabinet minister’s wife for only three weeks!”

All this was delightful in the extreme; but not the less did ordinary men seem to expect that the usual battle would go on in the old customary way.

It is easy to love one’s enemy when one is making fine speeches; but so difficult to do so in the actual everyday work of life.

But there was and always has been this peculiar good point about the giants, that they are never too proud to follow in the footsteps of the gods.

“And where will you find men honester than they?

The tiger tears you up because he is hungry and wants to eat you. That’s what Supplehouse does.

But there are so many among us tearing up one another without any excuse of hunger. The mere pleasure of destroying is reason enough.”

“

Ah, you think that anything naked must be indecent; even truth.

”

“I think it is more proper-looking, and better suited, too, for the world’s work, when it goes about with some sort of a garment on it.

We are so used to a leaven of falsehood in all we hear and say, nowadays, that nothing is more likely to deceive us than the absolute truth.

If a shopkeeper told me that his wares were simply middling, of course, I should think that they were not worth a farthing. But all that has nothing to do with my poor brother. Well, what was I saying?”

Those high political grapes had become sour, my sneering friends will say. Well?

Is it not a good thing that grapes should become sour which hang out of reach?

Is he not wise who can regard all grapes as sour which are manifestly too high for his hand?

and though she had of course defended her child, and on the whole had defended her successfully, yet she confessed to herself that Griselda’s chance of a first-rate establishment would be better if she were a little more impulsive.

A man does not wish to marry a statue, let the statue be ever so statuesque.

She could not teach her daughter to be impulsive, any more than she could teach her to be six feet high; but might it not be possible to teach her to seem so? The task was a very delicate one, even for a mother’s hand.

But it was not that that did it all, Fanny. I could have stood against that. I think I could at least. It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a lord before.

Oh, me! what a fool, what a beast I have been!

” And then she burst out into tears.

Why am I so weak in body that I cannot take exercise? Why cannot I keep my mind on a book for one moment? Why can I not write two sentences together? Why should every mouthful that I eat stick in my throat?

Oh, Fanny, is it his legs, think you, or is it his title?

”

But now all this had come upon her so suddenly, that she was unable to think whether it would be well that she should become the depositary of such a secret—not to be mentioned to Lucy’s brother, not to be mentioned to her own husband.

But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?

Who at least ever declined a love secret? What sister could do so? Mrs. Robarts therefore gave the promise, smoothing Lucy’s hair as she did so, and kissing her forehead and looking into her eyes, which, like a rainbow, were the brighter for her tears.

ay, and in so doing will have twice more the flavour of the cake than he who with gourmandizing maw will devour his dainty all at once.

Cakes in this world will grow by being fed on, if only the feeder be not too insatiate.

On all which wisdom Mr. Sowerby pondered with sad heart and very melancholy mind as he walked away from the premises of Messrs. Gumption and Gagebee.

Cranbourn House it had been named, and its present owner had made no change in this respect; but the world at large very generally called it Ointment Hall, and Miss Dunstable herself as frequently used that name for it as any other.

It was impossible to quiz Miss Dunstable with any success, because she always joined in the joke herself.

Not a word further had passed between Mrs. Gresham and Dr. Thorne on the subject of their last conversation;

“And why not?

I copy everybody that I see, more or less.

You did not at first begin to wear big petticoats out of your own head? If Mrs. Proudie has any such pride as that, pray don’t rob her of it. Here’s the doctor and the Greshams. Mary, my darling, how are you?”

“Oh, quite so,” said Sir George; “perhaps rather the largest half.”

“The men divide the world into gods and giants,” said Miss Dunstable. “We women have our divisions also. We are saints or sinners according to our party. The worst of it is, that we rat almost as often as you do.”

Whereupon Sir George laughed and passed on.

She was altogether at variance with Mrs. Proudie on this matter, and gave Miss Dunstable great credit for her innovation.

In society Griselda’s toes were more serviceable to her than her tongue, and she was to be won by a rapid twirl much more probably than by a soft word.

The offer of which she would approve would be conveyed by two all but breathless words during a spasmodic pause in a waltz;

and though that moment never returned, still he suffered from some feeling akin to disappointment when he learned that Griselda had been won and was to be worn. He was, then, a dog in the manger, you will say.

Well; and are we not all dogs in the manger, more or less actively? Is not that manger-doggishness one of the most common phases of the human heart?

But not the less was Lord Lufton truly in love with Lucy Robarts. Had he fancied that any Dumbello was carrying on a siege before that fortress, his vexation would have manifested itself in a very different manner.

It might be that, when she came to reconsider the matter, she would not be quite so well satisfied as was her brother. Her grandeur of demeanour and slow propriety of carriage lasted her till she was well into her own room.

There are animals who, when they are ailing in any way, contrive to hide themselves, ashamed, as it were, that the weakness of their suffering should be witnessed.

Indeed, I am not sure whether all dumb animals do not do so more or less; and in this respect Lucy was like a dumb animal.

Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are always at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don’t owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them!

It would seem that there is no gratification so costly as that of keeping out of debt.

But then it is only fair that, if a man has a hobby, he should pay for it.

Mr. Sowerby then got into another cab, and had himself driven to his sister’s house.

It is a remarkable thing with reference to men who are distressed for money⁠—distressed as was now the case with Mr. Sowerby⁠—that they never seem at a loss for small sums, or deny themselves those luxuries which small sums purchase.

Cabs, dinners, wine, theatres, and new gloves are always at the command of men who are drowned in pecuniary embarrassments, whereas those who don’t owe a shilling are so frequently obliged to go without them!

Was he not her husband? She was so glad she knew it, that she might comfort him. And she did comfort him, making the weight seem lighter and lighter on his shoulders as he talked of it. And such weights do thus become lighter.

A burden that will crush a single pair of shoulders will, when equally divided⁠—when shared by two, each of whom is willing to take the heavier part⁠—become light as a feather.

Is not that sharing of the mind’s burdens one of the chief purposes for which a man wants a wife? For there is no folly so great as keeping one’s sorrows hidden.

and when he sat, as he did that evening, discussing it all, not only with his wife, but with Lucy, he wondered how it was that his troubles were now so light.

Whether or no a man should have his own private pleasures, I will not now say; but it never can be worth his while to keep his sorrows private.

“No—yes;—it is a species of pride, but not that pride of which you spoke. A man cannot be honest if he have not some pride. You yourself;—would you not rather starve than become a beggar?”

“I would rather beg than see my wife starve,” said Arabin.

Crawley when he heard these words turned sharply round, and stood with his back to the dean, with his hands still behind him, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground.

I should take to him in the same sort of way, and we might do very well. But, as it is, how is it possible that any disinterested person should learn to like me? How could such a man set about it?

If a sheep have two heads, is not the fact of the two heads the first and, indeed, only thing which the world regards in that sheep?

Must it not be so as a matter of course? I am a sheep with two heads. All this money which my father put together, and which has been growing since like grass under May showers, has turned me into an abortion.

How could such a man set about it? If a sheep have two heads, is not the fact of the two heads the first and, indeed, only thing which the world regards in that sheep? Must it not be so as a matter of course?

I am a sheep with two heads.

All this money which my father put together, and which has been growing since like grass under May showers, has turned me into an abortion. I am not the giantess eight feet high, or the dwarf that stands in the man’s hand—”

“I think that we are both doing that—absolute nonsense; such as schoolgirls of eighteen talk to each other. But there is a relief in it; is there not?

It would be a terrible curse to have to talk sense always.

Well, that’s done; and now let us go out.”

Olivia Proudie had just accepted a widowed preacher at a district church in Bethnal Green—a man with three children, who was dependent on pew-rents; and Griselda Grantly was engaged to the eldest son of the Marquis of Hartletop!

When women are enjoined to forgive their enemies it cannot be intended that such wrongs as these should be included.

But Mrs. Proudie’s courage was nothing daunted. It may be boasted of her that nothing could daunt her courage.

“Exactly; the story that is as old as the world, and which will continue as long as people are born into it.

It is a story of God’s own telling!

”

“How am I to go into the church, and take my place before them all, when everyone will know that bailiffs are in the house?” And then, dropping his head on to the table, he sobbed aloud.

Mark Robarts’ mistake had been mainly this⁠—he had thought to touch pitch and not to be defiled.

He, looking out from his pleasant parsonage into the pleasant upper ranks of the world around him, had seen that men and things in those quarters were very engaging.

He had done the best for the young clergyman according to his lights, and perhaps, in a worldly view, his advice had not been bad. But Mark dreaded the very name of a bill.

He was as a dog that had been terribly scorched, and nothing should again induce him to go near the fire.

“Was not that the man from the bank?” said Fanny, coming into the room when the sound of the wheels had died away.

She stood near him, with one hand on the breakfast-table, gazing at him almost furtively, not quite daring to meet the full view of his eye. There was only one thing on earth which Lady Lufton feared, and that was her son’s displeasure.

The sun of her earthly heaven shone upon her through the medium of his existence.

If she were driven to quarrel with him, as some ladies of her acquaintance were driven to quarrel with their sons, the world to her would be over.

“Because we is sworn, my lord,” said the second. But, nevertheless, in spite of their oaths, and in spite also of the stern necessity which they pleaded, they ceased their operations at the instance of the peer.

For the name of a lord is still great in England.

“And now leave this, and let Mrs. Robarts go into her drawing-room.”

as did also the dean’s wife—at first; and those who generally sided with the Grantlys in the diocesan battles pooh-poohed the tidings, saying to each other that both the archdeacon and Mrs. Grantly were very well able to take care of their own affairs.

But dripping water hollows a stone; and at last it was admitted on all sides that there was ground for fear⁠—on all sides, except at Plumstead.

“I am sure there is nothing in it; I really am sure of it,” said Mrs. Arabin, whispering to her sister; “but after turning it over in my mind, I thought it right to tell you.