Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope (historical books to read .txt) 📗

class="calibre1">that broad expanse of lawn by which our country houses are generally

surrounded; but the gardens of Greshamsbury have been celebrated for

two centuries, and any Gresham who would have altered them would have

been considered to have destroyed one of the well-known landmarks of

the family.

 

Greshamsbury Park—properly so called—spread far away on the other

side of the village. Opposite to the two great gates leading up

to the mansion were two smaller gates, the one opening on to the

stables, kennels, and farmyard, and the other to the deer park. This

latter was the principal entrance to the demesne, and a grand and

picturesque entrance it was. The avenue of limes which on one side

stretched up to the house, was on the other extended for a quarter of

a mile, and then appeared to be terminated only by an abrupt rise in

the ground. At the entrance there were four savages and four clubs,

two to each portal, and what with the massive iron gates, surmounted

by a stone wall, on which stood the family arms supported by two

other club-bearers, the stone-built lodges, the Doric, ivy-covered

columns which surrounded the circle, the four grim savages, and the

extent of the space itself through which the high road ran, and which

just abutted on the village, the spot was sufficiently significant of

old family greatness.

 

Those who examined it more closely might see that under the arms was

a scroll bearing the Gresham motto, and that the words were repeated

in smaller letters under each of the savages. “Gardez Gresham,”

had been chosen in the days of motto-choosing probably by some

herald-at-arms as an appropriate legend for signifying the peculiar

attributes of the family. Now, however, unfortunately, men were not

of one mind as to the exact idea signified. Some declared, with much

heraldic warmth, that it was an address to the savages, calling on

them to take care of their patron; while others, with whom I myself

am inclined to agree, averred with equal certainty that it was an

advice to the people at large, especially to those inclined to rebel

against the aristocracy of the county, that they should “beware the

Gresham.” The latter signification would betoken strength—so said

the holders of this doctrine; the former weakness. Now the Greshams

were ever a strong people, and never addicted to a false humility.

 

We will not pretend to decide the question. Alas! either construction

was now equally unsuited to the family fortunes. Such changes had

taken place in England since the Greshams had founded themselves that

no savage could any longer in any way protect them; they must protect

themselves like common folk, or live unprotected. Nor now was it

necessary that any neighbour should shake in his shoes when the

Gresham frowned. It would have been to be wished that the present

Gresham himself could have been as indifferent to the frowns of some

of his neighbours.

 

But the old symbols remained, and may such symbols long remain among

us; they are still lovely and fit to be loved. They tell us of the

true and manly feelings of other times; and to him who can read

aright, they explain more fully, more truly than any written history

can do, how Englishmen have become what they are. England is not yet

a commercial country in the sense in which that epithet is used for

her; and let us still hope that she will not soon become so. She

might surely as well be called feudal England, or chivalrous England.

If in western civilised Europe there does exist a nation among whom

there are high signors, and with whom the owners of the land are

the true aristocracy, the aristocracy that is trusted as being best

and fittest to rule, that nation is the English. Choose out the ten

leading men of each great European people. Choose them in France, in

Austria, Sardinia, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Spain (?), and

then select the ten in England whose names are best known as those of

leading statesmen; the result will show in which country there still

exists the closest attachment to, the sincerest trust in, the old

feudal and now so-called landed interests.

 

England a commercial country! Yes; as Venice was. She may excel

other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most

prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not

the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to

a merchant to become one of them. Buying and selling is good and

necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but

it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not

in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.

 

Greshamsbury Park was very large; it lay on the outside of the angle

formed by the village street, and stretched away on two sides without

apparent limit or boundaries visible from the village road or house.

Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills,

and conical-shaped, oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping

up through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was

much magnified to the eye. It was very possible for a stranger to get

into it and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of

its known gates; and such was the beauty of the landscape, that a

lover of scenery would be tempted thus to lose himself.

 

I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give

me an opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long

episode, in the life of the existing squire. He had once represented

his county in Parliament, and when he ceased to do so he still felt

an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way with that county’s

greatness; he still desired that Gresham of Greshamsbury should be

something more in East Barsetshire than Jackson of the Grange, or

Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove. They were all his

friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but Mr Gresham of

Greshamsbury should be more than this: even he had enough of ambition

to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an opportunity

occurred he took to hunting the county.

 

For this employment he was in every way well suited—unless it was in

the matter of finance. Though he had in his very earliest manly years

given such great offence by indifference to his family politics,

and had in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting

the county in opposition to the wishes of his brother squires,

nevertheless, he bore a loved and popular name. Men regretted that he

should not have been what they wished him to be, that he should not

have been such as was the old squire; but when they found that such

was the case, that he could not be great among them as a politician,

they were still willing that he should be great in any other way if

there were county greatness for which he was suited. Now he was known

as an excellent horseman, as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in

dogs, and tender-hearted as a sucking mother to a litter of young

foxes; he had ridden in the county since he was fifteen, had a fine

voice for a view-hallo, knew every hound by name, and could wind a

horn with sufficient music for all hunting purposes; moreover, he had

come to his property, as was well known through all Barsetshire, with

a clear income of fourteen thousand a year.

 

Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground,

about a year after Mr Gresham’s last contest for the county, it

seemed to all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that

the hounds should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except

the Lady Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire

himself.

 

All this time he was already considerably encumbered. He had spent

much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in

those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the

great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been

enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or

three children to live in London and keep up their country family

mansion; but then the de Courcys were very great people, and Lady

Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her

sister-in-law the countess lived: now Lord de Courcy had much more

than fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with

their vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which

gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their

income, and find it impossible so to reduce their establishments as

to live much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr

Gresham was already a poor man.

 

Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella,

though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her

husband’s rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had him

under hers. She then made her first grand attack as to the furniture

in Portman Square; and was then for the first time specially informed

that the furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she

would not in future be required to move her family to that residence

during the London seasons. The sort of conversations which grew from

such a commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her

lord less, he might perhaps have considered with more coolness the

folly of encountering so prodigious an increase to the expense of his

establishment; had he not spent so much money in a pursuit which his

wife did not enjoy, she might perhaps have been more sparing in her

rebukes as to his indifference to her London pleasures. As it was,

the hounds came to Greshamsbury, and Lady Arabella did go to London

for some period in each year, and the family expenses were by no

means lessened.

 

The kennels, however, were now again empty. Two years previous to the

time at which our story begins, the hounds had been carried off to

the seat of some richer sportsman. This was more felt by Mr Gresham

than any other misfortune which he had yet incurred. He had been

master of hounds for ten years, and that work he had at any rate done

well. The popularity among his neighbours which he had lost as a

politician he had regained as a sportsman, and he would fain have

remained autocratic in the hunt, had it been possible. But he so

remained much longer than he should have done, and at last they went

away, not without signs and sounds of visible joy on the part of Lady

Arabella.

 

But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenantry waiting under the

oak-trees by far too long. Yes; when young Frank came of age there

was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the

squire’s disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin,

one bullock. Frank’s virility came on him not quite unmarked, as

that of the parson’s son might do, or the son of the neighbouring

attorney. It could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative

Standard that “The beards wagged all” at Greshamsbury, now as they

had done for many centuries on similar festivals. Yes; it was so

reported. But this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow

of truth in it. “They poured the liquor in,” certainly, those who

were there; but the beards did not wag as they