The Vicar of Bullhampton quotes

Nevertheless, the people of Bullhampton had gloried in being a borough, and the shame, or at least the regret of their downfall, had not yet altogether passed away when the tidings of a new Reform Bill came upon them.

The people of Bullhampton are notoriously slow to learn, and slow to forget.

It was told of a farmer of Bullhampton, in old days, that he asked what had become of Charles I, when told that Charles II had been restored. Cromwell had come and gone, and had not disturbed him at Bullhampton.

The curves of the nostrils, with their almost transparent membranes, told of the working of the mind within, as every portion of human face should tell—in some degree. And the mouth was equally expressive, though the lips were thin.

It was a mouth to watch, and listen to, and read with curious interest, rather than a mouth to kiss.

Not but that the desire to kiss would come, when there might be a hope to kiss with favour;—but they were lips which no man would think to ravage in boisterous play.

“You fool, you!” said the parson. “Do you think that it is to save anything that I might lose, that I let you go now?

Don’t you know that the thing I want to save is you⁠—you⁠—you; you helpless, idle, good-for-nothing reprobate?

Go home, and be sure that I shall do the best I can according to my lights. I fear that my lights are bad lights, in that they have allowed me to let you go.”

and I do not think that it would be so with any man over you. Perhaps I may assure you that, as far as I know myself at present, all my future happiness must depend on your answer.

It will not kill me⁠—to be refused; at least, I suppose not. But it will make me wish that it would.

” Having so spoken he waited for her reply.

I know it would be best for you. You will go on examining your own feelings and doubting about your heart, and waiting for something that will never come till you will have lost your time.

That is the way old maids are made.

If you married Harry, by the time your first child was born you would think that he was Jupiter—just as I think that Frank is.”

“

But iron won’t remain long at red heat,

” said he. “What she says herself would be the best for him. He’ll break up and go away for a time, and then, when he comes back, there’ll be somebody else. She’ll live to repent it.”

But of this he thought he was sure—that were Mr. Gilmore to attempt to do such a thing, all Wiltshire would cry out against the deed, and probably the heavens would fall and crush the doer.

He was a man with an unlimited love of justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to himself.

He brooded over injuries done to him—injuries real or fancied—till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might be crucified for the hurt they did to him. He never forgot, and never wished to forgive.

but the justice which he loved best was justice to himself. He brooded over injuries done to him—injuries real or fancied—till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might be crucified for the hurt they did to him.

He never forgot, and never wished to forgive.

If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that his own heart might be so hardened that when vengeance came in his way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the moment. And yet he was not a cruel man.

… an old Pagan, going to no place of worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed—with some vague idea that a supreme power would bring him right at last, if he worked hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way.

To pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its joy.

In that matter of his quarrel with his landlord he was very bitter. The Squire’s father some fifteen years since had given to the miller a verbal promise that the house and mill should be repaired.

Cousins are Tom, and Jack, and George, and Dick. Cousins probably know all or most of your little family secrets. Cousins, perhaps, have romped with you, and scolded you, and teased you, when you were young.

Cousins are almost the same as brothers, and yet they may be lovers.

There is certainly a great relief in cousinhood.

The old woman swore that he slept there the whole of Saturday night, but of course the policemen had not believed her statement.

When does any policeman ever believe anything?

Of the pony and cart the old woman declared she knew nothing. Her son had no pony, and no cart, to her knowing. Then she went on to declare that she knew very little about her son, who never lived with her;

in which case the whole story of the father’s iniquity must, of course, be proved. Or it might be that by threatening to do this, the lady’s friends would relax their grasp on receiving a certain present out of the money.

“We would offer them £50, and perhaps they would take £500,” said Messrs. Block and Curling.

All this irritated the Captain. He was intensely averse to any law proceedings by which the story should be made public.

“

He was always one of those thirsty sandbags that swallow small drops and large alike.

He got £10,000 out of poor Gregory about the time that you were born, and Gregory is fretting about it yet.”

The Captain almost thought that the earth and skies should be brought together, and the clouds clap with thunder, and the mountains be riven in twain at the very mention of his father’s wickedness.

But then sins committed against oneself are so much more sinful than any other sins.

The Captain had much more sympathetic listeners in Uphill Lane; not that either of the ladies there spoke severely against his father, but that they entered more cordially into his own distresses.

“Marry him,” said Janet, “and you will adore him afterwards.”

“I want to adore him first,” said Mary.

So she resolved that she would tell Walter Marrable what was her position.

He had replied that he hoped no such sacrifice would be demanded from her. “There can be no sacrifice on my part,” she had replied, “unless I am required to give up you.” Of course he had taken her in his arms and kissed her.

There are moments in one’s life in which not to be imprudent, not to be utterly, childishly forgetful of all worldly wisdom, would be to be brutal, inhuman, and devilish.

“Had he told Parson John?” she asked.

Trumbull’s farm, the very spot on which he had last seen Mary Lowther; but when he was there he could not endure to go through to the Vicarage.

There is something mean to a man in the want of success in love.

If a man lose a venture of money he can tell his friend; or if he be unsuccessful in trying for a seat in parliament; or be thrown out of a run in the hunting-field; or even if he be blackballed for a club;

It is often very curious to trace the sources of greatness.

With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he had of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited him better to be silent, and say nothing.

Of outside deportment, no doubt, he was a master.

I think we will try it now.” The coffee was brought, and the Prebendary shook his head—the least shake in the world—and smiled blandly.

“Coffee is the very devil in the country,” said Harry Gilmore, who did not dare to say that the mixture was good in opposition to his uncle’s opinion.

After the coffee, which was served in the library, the two men sat silent together for half an hour, and Gilmore was endeavouring to think what it was that made his uncle come to Bullhampton.

“What thing is that, Carry?”

“To die and have done with it,” she said, bursting out into loud sobs.

“What’s the use o’ living? Nobody’ll see me, or speak to me. Ain’t I just so bad that they’d hang me if they knew how to catch me?”

Do you remember, Carry, where you sat in church, and the singing, and what trouble we had together with the chaunts? There are one or two at Bullhampton who never will forget it?”

“Nobody loves me now,” she said, talking at him over her shoulder, which was turned to him.

He thought for a moment that he would tell her that the Lord loved her;

Mrs. Fenwick on the occasion was more pugnacious than her husband. She could not forgive the man who had hinted to the bishop that her husband held his living from unworthy motives, and that he was a bad clergyman.

“My dear girl,” said Fenwick, “what can you expect from an ass but his ears?”

“I don’t expect downright slander from such a man as the Marquis of Trowbridge, and if I were you I should tell the bishop so.”

“You wouldn’t do anything of the kind; and it isn’t proper to talk about it; and I shall go to bed.”

“It is very difficult to make crooked things straight,” said the Vicar, as he walked about the room after his wife had left him.

“I suppose she ought to go into a reformatory. But I know she wouldn’t; and I shouldn’t like to ask her after what she said.”

“He can’t eat me,” he said to himself, as the low willows round the mill came in sight.

When a man is reduced to that consolation, as many a man often is, he may be nearly sure that he will be eaten.

When he got over the stile into the lane close to the mill-door, he found that the mill was going. Gilmore had told him that it might probably be so, as he had heard that the repairs were nearly finished.

We are apt to suppose that love should follow personal acquaintance; and yet love at third sight is probably as common as any love at all, and it takes a great many sights before one human being can know another.

Years are wanted to make a friendship, but days suffice for men and women to get married.

Mary was, after a fashion, aware that she had been too quick in giving away her heart, and that now, when the gift had been made in full, it became her business to learn what sort of man was he to whom she had given …

and though they did not personally love the Colonel, they had a professional feeling that the blackness of a black sheep of a family should not be made public, at any rate by the family itself or by the family solicitors.

Almost every family has a black sheep, and it is the especial duty of a family solicitor to keep the family black sheep from being dragged into the front and visible ranks of the family.

The Captain had been fatally wrong in signing the paper which he had signed, and must take the consequences. “I don’t think, Captain Marrable, that you would save yourself in any way by proceeding against the Colonel,” said Mr. Curling.

And men will lend them money too—well knowing that there is no chance of repayment. Now and then one hears a horrid tale of some young girl who surrenders herself to such a one, absolutely for love! Upon the whole the Colonel Marrables are popular.

It is hard to follow such a man quite to the end and to ascertain whether or no he does go out softly at last, like the snuff of a candle⁠—just with a little stink.

“I will say it as quickly as I can,” said the Captain. “I can gain nothing I know by staying here in your company.”

“Because of your age, and because you are my father. I suppose you have no heart, and that I cannot make you feel it.”

“My dear boy, I have an appetite, and I must go and satisfy it.”

So saying the Colonel escaped, and the Captain allowed his father to make his way down the stairs and into the cab before he followed.

“So do I love her. And as for being bad, which of us isn’t bad? The world is very hard on her offence.”

“Down on it, like a dog on a rat.”

“It is not for me to make light of her sin;—but her sin can be washed away as well as other sin. I love her too. She was the brightest, kindest, sauciest little lass in all the parish, when I came here.”

But still, when there came anything good, in the way of a run, and when our Captain could get near to hounds, he enjoyed the fun, and forgot his troubles for a while.

Is a man to know no joy because he has an ache at his heart?

In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection, men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more happily circumstanced. Such sorrow a woman feeds;—but a man starves it.

In this matter of disappointed and, as it were, disjointed affection, men are very different from women, and for the most part, much more happily circumstanced.

Such sorrow a woman feeds;⁠—but a man starves it.

Many will say that a woman feeds it, because she cannot but feed it; and that a man starves it, because his heart is of the starving kind.

“You never had any need, sir. The plums fell into your mouth too easily.”

“Plums shouldn’t be too difficult,” said the Vicar, “or they lose their sweetness.”

A few days after this Mr. Fenwick was standing at his own gate, watching the building of the chapel and talking to the men, when Fanny Brattle from the mill came up to him.

“Mrs. Brattle,” he said, “your husband and I have been talking about his poor sister Carry.”

“The least said the soonest mended about that one, I’m afeared,” said the dame.

“Indeed, I agree with you. Were she once placed in safe and kind hands, the less then said the better. She has left the life she was leading—”

but now they are enemies, and as enemies I will regard them. I should think myself disgraced if I were to sit down in the presence of the Marquis of Trowbridge; I should, indeed.”

“You can easily manage that by standing up when you meet him,” said Mr. Quickenham.

Mr. Quickenham could be very funny at times, but those who knew him would remark that whenever he was funny he had something to hide.

“There I’m afraid I can’t help you,” said Mr. Quickenham.

“Good law is not defined very clearly here in England; but good manners have never been defined at all.”

“I don’t want anyone to help me on such a matter as that,” said Mr. Chamberlaine, who did not altogether like Mr. Quickenham.

“No, my dear. If he suddenly had the power to turn me out of the living I don’t believe he’d do it—any more than I would him out of his estate.

Men indulge in little injuries who can’t afford to be wicked enough for great injustice.

My dear, you will do me a great favour—the greatest possible kindness—if you’ll give up all outer, and, as far as possible, all inner hostility to the chapel.”

He had said what he had got to say, and the Marquis was left to act for himself. But the old lord had learned to feel that he was sure to fall into some pit whenever he declined to follow his son’s advice.

His son had a painful way of being right that was a great trouble to him.

And this was a question which touched him very nearly. It was not only that he must yield to Mr. Fenwick before the eyes of Mr. Puddleham and all the people of Bullhampton;

“I can only answer for myself,” said Mary.

“I don’t mean to be a sacrifice.”

There were many such conversations, and by degrees they did have an effect upon Mary Lowther.

He is not a hard landlord; and were he to stick dissenting chapels all about the county, I should be a liar and a slanderer were I to say that he was.”

“But then, you see, you are not a fool, Frank.”

This brought the conversation to an end. The Vicar was willing enough to turn upon his heel and say nothing more on a matter as to which he was by no means sure that he was in the right;

“Frank, don’t be ill-natured. She will be doing what all her friends advise.”

“If I were to die, your friends would advise you not to grieve; but they would think you very unfeeling if you did not.”

“Are you going to turn against her?”

George had whistled. Now he showed the bishop’s letter to his son. St. George read the letter, refolded it slowly, shrugged his shoulders, and said, as he returned it to his father—

“Well, my lord, I suppose you like a hornet’s nest.”

This was the uncomfortable position of things at Bullhampton about the beginning of June, at which time Mary Lowther was again staying with her friend Mrs. Fenwick.

She promised that she would go with him at any hour that he might appoint. Then there was something said as to fixing the day of the wedding. “It is not to be immediately,” she replied; “he promised me that he would give me time.”

“She speaks of it as though she was going to be hung,”

the Vicar said afterwards to his wife.

A month or two ago he would have given the world for permission to kiss her; and now it seemed as though the thing itself were a matter but of little joy.

A kiss to be joyful should be stolen, with a conviction on the part of the offender that she who has suffered the loss will never prosecute the thief.

She had meant to be good to him, but the favour would have gone further with him had she made more of it.

Now about this paper that the policeman had handed to her, and the threatened journey to Heytesbury, there was no uncertainty—unless she might possibly escape the evil by running away. Therefore she ran away.

The straight-going people of the world, in dealing with those who go crooked, are almost always unreasonable.

“Because you have been bad,” say they who are not bad to those who are bad, “because you have hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach, because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to restraint, because you have been a drunkard, …

It is hardly recognised that a sudden change from billiards to good books requires a strength of character which, if possessed, would probably have kept the young man altogether from falling into bad habits.

If we left the doors of our prisons open, and then expressed disgust because the prisoners walked out, we should hardly be less rational.

The hours at Mrs. Stiggs’s house had been frightfully heavy to poor Carry Brattle, and at last she escaped.

She had no plan—nothing before her; no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road.

It is the lack of object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that gives to them the most terrible element of their misery.

Think of it!

that had been her destiny. There was never a woman to whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that her mind could produce.

Fate had made her plain, and no man had loved her.

The same chance had made Carry pretty—the belle of the village, the acknowledged beauty of Bullhampton. And there she lay, a thing said to be so foul that even a father could not endure to have her name mentioned in his ears!

The miller still did not speak, but turned his face round upon his daughter with a gaze of such agony that she threw herself on the sack beside him, and clung to him with her arms round his neck.

“If she were such as thee, Fan,” he said. “Oh, if she were such as thee!”

Then again he turned away his face that she might not see the tear that was forcing itself into the corner of his eye.

And though he saw that there was no evidence against Sam, he did not, therefore, necessarily think that the young man was innocent.

It may be doubted whether, to the normal policeman’s mind, any man is ever altogether absolved of any crime with which that man’s name has been once connected.

He felt, therefore, somewhat sore against the Brattles;—and then there was the fact that Carry Brattle, who had been regularly “subpoenaed,” had kept herself out of the way—most flagitiously, illegally and damnably.

There must be something to be conquered, something to be got over, after such an episode. But you may set your face against doing that, or you may strive to do it. For his sake, if not for your own, the struggle should be made.”

“A man may struggle to draw a loaded wagon, but he won’t move it.”

“The load in this case is of your own laying on. One hour of frank kindness on your part would dispel his gloom. He is not gloomy by nature.”

but that to forgive him, till he should have been so forced, would be weak and injurious to the community. As to that, he had quite made up his mind, in spite of all doctrine to the contrary.

Men in this world would have to go naked if they gave their coats to the robbers who took their cloaks; and going naked is manifestly inexpedient.

His office of parish priest would be lowered in the world if he forgave, out of hand, such offences as these which had been committed against him by Lord Trowbridge. This he understood clearly.

… no doctor to deny him tobacco, champagne, or made dishes, still, if he be conscious of failure there where he has striven to succeed, even though it be in the humbling of an already humble adversary, he will stretch, and roll, and pine—a wretched being.

How happy is he who can get his fretting done for him by deputy!

Lord St. George wrote to the parson a few days after his interview with his father. He and Lord Trowbridge occupied the same house in London, and always met at breakfast;

Here am I, who have suffered pretty nearly as much as St. Paul, have forgiven all my enemies all round, and shaken hands with the Marquis by proxy, while Puddleham has been man enough to maintain the dignity of his indignation.

The truth is, that the possession of a grievance is the one state of human blessedness.

As long as the chapel was there, malgré moi, I could revel in my wrong. It turns out now that I can send poor Puddleham adrift tomorrow, and he immediately becomes the hero of the hour.

They would bicker with each other, and not unfrequently abuse each other. Chance threw them much together, but they never did anything to assist chance.

Women, who love each other as well, will always be expressing their love, always making plans to be together, always doing little things each for the gratification of the other, constantly making presents backwards and forwards.

These two men had never given anything, one to the other, beyond a worn-out walking-stick, or a cigar. They were rough to each other, caustic, and almost ill-mannered. But they thoroughly trusted each other;

“I’m thinking of her always, Muster Fenwick;—day and night. When the mill’s agoing, it’s all the same. It’s just as though there warn’t nothing else in the whole world as I minded to think on.

I’ve been a man all my life, Muster Fenwick; and now I ain’t a man no more.

”

“It ain’t easy to leave disgrace behind, anyways. For ought I knows a girl may be made right arter a while; but as for her father, nothing’ll ever make him right again.

It’s in here, Muster Fenwick⁠—in here.

There’s things as is hard on us; but when they comes one can’t send ’em away just because they is hardest of all to bear.

“Why ain’t she been gentle along of me? I hates such gentility, Muster Fenwick. I’ll be honest with her, anyway.” But he thought better of it before he let the Vicar go. “I shan’t do her no hurt, Muster Fenwick.

Bad as she’s been, she’s my own flesh and blood still.

”

“Then why can’t he come round, if it was ever so little?

I’d sooner he’d beat me; that I would.

”

“Of course not. Do not ask anybody for anything—but just wait. I have quite made up my mind that forty-five for the gentleman, and thirty-five for the lady, is quite time enough for marrying.”

“The grapes are sour,” said Walter.

“They are not sour at all, sir,” said Mary.

And yet, when he got to the theatre, it was so full that he could hardly find a seat on which to sit.

In all the world around us there is nothing more singular than the emptiness and the fullness of London.

He was up early the next morning and breakfasted before he went out, thinking that even should he succeed in catching the Squire, he would not be able to persuade the unhappy man to come and breakfast with him.

“

Because he is a coward, and runs away from the burden which he ought to bear gallantly.

He throws his load down on the roadside, and does not care who may bear it, or who may suffer because he is too poor a creature to struggle on!

Bad as I am I could preach to you if there were a matter to preach about. I don’t know that there is anything much easier than preaching. But as for practising, you can’t do it if you have not got the strength.

A man can’t walk if you take away his legs. If you break a bird’s wing he can’t fly, let the bird be ever so full of pluck.

All that there was in me she has taken out of me. I could fight him, and would willingly, if I thought there was a chance of his meeting me.”

“

I feel that I can’t fly because my wing is broken,

” said the Squire.

The amount of the burly barrister’s achievement was simply this—that for the moment a sort of sympathy was excited on behalf of the prisoners by the disapprobation which was aroused against the wicked man who hadn’t cared twopence.

Sympathy, like electricity, will run so quick that no man may stop it.

If sympathy might be made to run through the jury-box there might perchance be a man or two there weak enough to entertain it to the prejudice of his duty on that day.