SHIRLEY
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË
T. Nelson & Sons
CONTENTS.
I. LEVITICAL 3
II. THE WAGONS 16
III. MR. YORKE 31
IV. MR. YORKE (CONTINUED) 40
V. HOLLOW'S COTTAGE 51
VI. CORIOLANUS 66
VII. THE CURATES AT TEA 85
VIII. NOAH AND MOSES 110
IX. BRIARMAINS 125
X. OLD MAIDS 147
XI. FIELDHEAD 164
XII. SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE 181
XIII. FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS 201
XIV. SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS 226
XV. MR. DONNE'S EXODUS 239
XVI. WHITSUNTIDE 253
XVII. THE SCHOOL FEAST 264
XVIII. WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW
PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED 279
XIX. A SUMMER NIGHT 290
XX. TO-MORROW 306
XXI. MRS. PRYOR 319
XXII. TWO LIVES 336
XXIII. AN EVENING OUT 346
XXIV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH 365
XXV. THE WEST WIND BLOWS 384
XXVI. OLD COPY-BOOKS 392
XXVII. THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING 410
XXVIII. PHŒBE 433
XXIX. LOUIS MOORE 453
XXX. RUSHEDGE--A CONFESSIONAL 461
XXXI. UNCLE AND NIECE 475
XXXII. THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH 491
XXXIII. MARTIN'S TACTICS 502
XXXIV. CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION--REMARKABLE INSTANCE
OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS
DUTIES 513
XXXV. WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH 521
XXXVI. WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM 534
XXXVII. THE WINDING-UP 555
SHIRLEY.
CHAPTER I.
LEVITICAL.
Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of
England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more
of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing
a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we
are going back to the beginning of this century: late years--present
years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it
in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.
If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is
preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you
anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion,
and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a
lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you;
something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with
the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It
is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the
exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is
resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a
Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in
Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall
be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.
Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the
north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent
rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral
Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to
worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to
pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present
successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the
Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or
undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You
could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the
Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a
preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or
St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long
night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to
exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its
old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like
raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.
Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious
plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in
the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming
within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into
this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the
little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to
you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield;
Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being
the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly
invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party,
see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present,
however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.
These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity
of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars would
fain turn into the channel of their pastoral duties, often expressing a
wish to see it expended in a diligent superintendence of the schools,
and in frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But the
youthful Levites feel this to be dull work; they prefer lavishing their
energies on a course of proceeding which, though to other eyes it appear
more heavy with _ennui_, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of
the weaver at his loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of
enjoyment and occupation.
I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and
from their respective lodgings--not a round, but a triangle of visits,
which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and
autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal
they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine,
or drink tea, or sup with each other. What attracts them it would be
difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they
quarrel. It is not religion--the thing is never named amongst them;
theology they may discuss occasionally, but piety--never. It is not the
love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and
pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at his own lodgings, as
is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs.
Whipp--their respective landladies--affirm that "it is just for naught
else but to give folk trouble." By "folk" the good ladies of course mean
themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continual "fry" by this system
of mutual invasion.
Mr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits
on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She
considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal
occasionally, without additional charge (a privilege included in the
terms on which she lets her lodgings), has been quite sufficiently
exercised of late. The present week is yet but at Thursday, and on
Monday Mr. Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and
stayed dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely came to
tea, remained to supper, occupied the spare bed, and favoured her with
their company to breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they
are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all
night. "C'en est trop," she would say, if she could speak French.
Mr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast beef on his plate, and
complaining that it is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. Ay,
that is the worst of it: if they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't
mind it so much, if they would only seem satisfied with what they get
she wouldn't care; but "these young parsons is so high and so scornful,
they set everybody beneath their 'fit.' They treat her with less than
civility, just because she doesn't keep a servant, but does the work of
the house herself, as her mother did afore her; then they are always
speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk," and by that very
token Mrs. Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or
come of gentle kin. "The old parsons is worth the whole lump of college
lads; they know what belongs to good manners, and is kind to high and
low."
"More bread!" cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to
utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of
shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of
the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built
personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely
national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O'Connell's style, but the
high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a
certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look,
better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord
of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a gentleman: he
was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.
Mrs. Gale offered the loaf.
"Cut it, woman," said her guest; and the "woman" cut it accordingly. Had
she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her
Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.
The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was "tough," they
ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of
the "flat beer," while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of
vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too,
received distinguished marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake,"
which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no
more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's
son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion
thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted
up his voice and wept sore.
The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of