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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Phoebe, Junior," Mrs. Oliphant intricately weaves a narrative that delves into the complexities of gender, class, and societal expectations in Victorian England. Through the lens of the titular character, Phoebe, the author explores themes of identity and self-discovery, presenting a rich tapestry of interpersonal relationships and societal commentary. Oliphant's prose is characterized by its keen psychological insight and a nuanced understanding of her characters' inner lives, making the novel both a captivating read and a profound exploration of contemporary issues surrounding womanhood and independence. Mrs. Oliphant, a prolific Victorian novelist, was deeply influenced by her experiences as a woman writer in a male-dominated literary landscape. Her keen observations of societal norms and her commitment to portraying the lives of women in all their complexity are evident in this work. Oliphant's early experiences of loss, coupled with her determination to support her family through her writing, informed her perspective on the struggles for autonomy that resonate throughout "Phoebe, Junior." This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in feminist literature, as well as those who appreciate well-crafted character studies. Mrs. Oliphant's empathetic exploration of Phoebe's journey will resonate with modern audiences, making it a timeless and essential addition to the canon of women's fiction. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Phoebe, Junior
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, Phoebe, Junior follows a keen-minded young woman as she tests the boundaries of conscience, class, and community in a society where reputation is a form of power.
Published in the 1870s as part of Margaret Oliphant’s Carlingford cycle, this is a Victorian realist novel set in the fictional English town of Carlingford and its surrounding social world. Written by the prolific Mrs. Oliphant, it draws on the period’s fascination with provincial life, where church, chapel, drawing room, and marketplace converge. The book is often regarded as a concluding chronicle of Carlingford, gathering the series’ abiding concerns into one witty and observant narrative. Within that frame, it offers a study of manners, ambition, and moral calculation in a time attentive to status and respectability.
The premise is straightforward and inviting: a young woman named Phoebe enters the Carlingford scene and quickly becomes a lens through which the town’s interlocking networks are revealed. She moves among households and congregations with composure and curiosity, registering subtle hierarchies while forming her own judgments. The story begins with ordinary visits and conversations, and from these social beginnings the novel builds its field of choices—about loyalty, self-advancement, and personal principle. The narrative promises an experience of close observation rather than melodrama, guided by an intelligent, gently ironic voice that emphasizes character, motive, and the quiet turns of everyday life.
One of the book’s central interests is the texture of social distinction: who counts as the right sort, who is admitted, and who must wait at the threshold. Carlingford’s world set between the Church of England and Nonconformist communities becomes a stage on which influence is negotiated. Mrs. Oliphant examines wealth, education, etiquette, and religious affiliation as currency in local exchange. The result is a nuanced map of Victorian belonging, less about doctrine than about habit and expectation. Readers encounter a society that rewards performance as much as virtue, where moral clarity must be balanced against the need to live among others.
Equally prominent is the question of women’s scope for action. Phoebe’s composure, tact, and practical intelligence exemplify the skills demanded of young women navigating family strategies and public opinion. The novel contemplates how far talent and prudence can carry a person within inherited structures—particularly the marriage market and the claims of kin. Without turning didactic, Mrs. Oliphant shows how choices appear within limits and how integrity may coexist with calculated self-possession. The heroine’s perspective foregrounds negotiation rather than rebellion, inviting reflection on the forms of agency available in respectable society and on the costs and benefits of social fluency.
Stylistically, the novel offers a calm, omniscient narration that blends humor with sympathy, noticing quiet ironies while preserving the dignity of its characters. Dialogue animates the drawing-room stage; small gestures and tonal shifts do the dramatic work. As a late Carlingford novel, it carries the texture of a community already familiar to Oliphant’s readers, yet it stands on its own by introducing fresh points of view. The “last chronicle” ambiance lends a retrospective steadiness: threads from the wider social fabric are woven into an elegant pattern that favors insight over surprise, inviting patient, reflective reading.
For contemporary readers, Phoebe, Junior matters because it illuminates how people build lives within institutions they did not design, an issue that remains as relevant as ever. It raises questions about merit and access, about the ethics of ambition, and about the stories communities tell to preserve their own cohesion. The book’s pleasures are cumulative: poised prose, deft characterization, and a humane intelligence that neither flatters nor scolds. It offers a quietly absorbing experience—part social comedy, part moral inquiry—that rewards attention to nuance and invites readers to consider how character, chance, and choice shape a public self.
Synopsis
Phoebe, Junior follows the fortunes of Phoebe Beecham, a poised and intelligent young woman moving between fashionable Nonconformist circles in London and the provincial society of Carlingford. As part of Mrs. Oliphant’s Carlingford narratives, the novel explores the intersection of class, religion, and respectability in Victorian England. The story opens by establishing the contrasts that frame Phoebe’s world: the prosperous confidence of new money, the guarded pride of old parish families, and the persistent scrutiny of a community where reputation is currency. Within this setting, the narrative traces Phoebe’s choices and their implications for families linked by affection, ambition, and long-standing sectarian divides.
Phoebe is the daughter of Dr. Beecham, a successful London physician, and the granddaughter of the Tozers, solid Nonconformist tradespeople of Carlingford. Her upbringing gives her social fluency across boundaries often kept rigid by habit and prejudice. When she travels to Carlingford to spend time with her grandparents, Phoebe carries with her metropolitan polish and a keen sense of social dynamics. The visit positions her at a point of observation and influence, as she moves easily between chapel and parish, shop and drawing room. This vantage allows the narrative to examine how personal histories and denominational loyalties shape the town’s daily life.
In Carlingford, Phoebe becomes acquainted with the May family, pillars of the Anglican side: the scholarly but pressured Rector, Mr. May, and his dutiful daughter, Ursula. Their household bears the strains of limited means and public expectations. Friendship grows between Phoebe and Ursula, highlighting differences in training, resources, and outlook while nurturing mutual respect. Through teas, parish calls, and quiet confidences, the story presents the May home as a counterpoint to the Tozers’ prosperous practicality. Each family embodies a social principle—gentility without wealth on one hand, substantial commerce without lineage on the other—framing the choices faced by the younger generation.
The Copperheads, a wealthy manufacturing family linked to the Dissenting world, enter the scene with a sweep of moneyed importance. Mr. Copperhead is brusque, authoritative, and ambitious; his son Clarence, amiable but uncertain, is susceptible to stronger wills and impressions. Social gatherings bring them into Phoebe’s orbit, where her tact and intelligence attract attention. The Copperheads’ presence throws questions of class and sect into relief: whether success alone commands respect, and how far community boundaries will yield to wealth. Under the scrutiny of Carlingford’s talk, the possibility of alliances and the cost of misalliances begin to crystallize around Phoebe’s movements.
Local dynamics sharpen as chapel and parish each court influence. The Nonconformist congregation—solid, prosperous, and self-assured—assesses the advantages of association with metropolitan figures like the Beechams and industrial magnates like the Copperheads. The Anglican establishment, more fragile than it appears, weighs decorum against necessity. Phoebe navigates both spheres with an instinct for tone and timing, assisting her grandparents without compromising friendships across the way. Conversations at lectures and soirées, pastoral calls, and Sunday appearances become testing grounds for character. The narrative shows how small choices—an invitation accepted, a word withheld—reverberate through the town’s tightly interlaced reputations.
Personal attachments develop within this web of observation. Clarence Copperhead’s admiration for Phoebe intensifies, encouraged by her poise yet unsettled by his father’s expectations. Ursula, steadfast and practical, becomes a confidante as Phoebe measures attention against autonomy. On the Anglican side, a returning figure associated with the Mays introduces an alternative path, complicating perceptions of status and sympathy. The courtship undercurrents remain delicately handled, with the narrative emphasizing how motives—affection, duty, ambition—blend and diverge. Phoebe’s weighing of prospects reflects both her affection for her elders and her refusal to be defined by any single circle’s agenda.
A public crisis brings latent tensions to the surface. Financial and legal pressures converge upon the Mays, threatening their standing and peace, while industrial interests press the Copperheads toward decisive action. Gossip intensifies, and a prospective engagement becomes the focus of communal judgment. The situation tests loyalties, exposing the fault lines between conviction and convenience. In this phase, the narrative highlights the moral and practical dimensions of choice: who will risk reputation for principle, who will bend to expediency, and how families manage the gap between public face and private strain without revealing final outcomes prematurely.
Phoebe responds with composure and initiative. She manages confidences carefully, shields those vulnerable to hasty opinion, and refuses to accept arrangements that compromise her judgment. Through quiet interventions and firm decision-making, she influences reconciliations and averts unnecessary breaches. The town adjusts as consequences unfold: some connections tighten, others loosen, and prospects realign. Without disclosing specific resolutions, the narrative emphasizes that character—steady, discerning, and humane—can redirect the currents of fortune. By the close, Phoebe’s position reflects choices made on her own terms, while the families around her find paths that balance dignity with the realities they must face.
The novel concludes the Carlingford sequence by affirming the power of integrity over pedigree and of mutual respect over sectarian rivalry. It portrays social mobility without sentimentality, revealing the costs and responsibilities that accompany it. Through Phoebe’s example, Mrs. Oliphant depicts female agency exercised within, and sometimes against, restrictive expectations, without resorting to overt rebellion. The book’s central message is measured but clear: communities are healthiest when conscience, competence, and kindness carry as much weight as custom and class. Phoebe, Junior thus offers a calm, incisive portrait of Victorian society negotiating change through the choices of its most observant participant.
Historical Context
Set in the later Victorian decades, the novel unfolds in the fictional provincial town of Carlingford, a composite of prosperous Home Counties boroughs linked by rail to London by the 1860s. Its geography maps a characteristic English hierarchy: a parish church dominating Grange Lane, dissenting chapels along commercial streets, new villas at the edges, and civic rooms where committees meet. The time is one of municipal polish and expanding respectability, when shopkeepers and professionals press into local influence. The proximity of London culture, newspapers, and visitors, made feasible by the matured railway network after the 1850s, shapes ambitions and social comparisons that the narrative dramatizes in everyday encounters.
The novel’s central tension mirrors the nineteenth-century ascent of English Nonconformity against the Anglican establishment. After the Toleration Act of 1689, dissenters gradually gained civil equality through pivotal measures: repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829 (which also signaled broader confessional pluralism), and the Marriage Act of 1836, allowing civil and Nonconformist marriages outside the Church of England. The Dissenters’ Chapels Act of 1844 secured congregational property, while the Liberation Society (founded 1844) coordinated campaigns to end Anglican privileges, notably church rates, which were effectively abolished for dissenters by 1868. In parallel, the Oxford Movement (from 1833) invigorated High Church Anglicanism, sharpening doctrinal and cultural contrasts that were keenly felt in mixed towns. By mid-century, Nonconformists controlled substantial urban networks of chapels, schools, mutual-aid societies, and periodicals, and they cultivated what contemporaries called the Nonconformist conscience, a moralized political bloc influential in borough elections. Their influence expanded further in civic negotiations over education after the Elementary Education Act of 1870 and in debates about temperance and Sabbath observance. Carlingford’s Salem Chapel, its deacons, and its shopkeeping elite evoke this institutional world. Phoebe’s lineage in a dissenting family and her movement across Anglican drawing rooms and chapel parlors embody the social permeability and tensions produced by these reforms. Conflicts over respectability, religious authority, and civic status in the book echo real disputes over pew rents, burial rights, and the allocation of public funds to denominational causes, situating the plot within the concrete legal and organizational advances of Nonconformity between 1828 and the 1870s.
Electoral transformation frames the novel’s portrayal of local ambition. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 widened the franchise, with the 1867 measure roughly doubling the UK electorate to about 2.5 million, enfranchising male householders and some lodgers in boroughs. The Ballot Act of 1872 introduced secret voting, curtailing open intimidation and treating, while the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 had earlier rationalized town councils. These changes empowered organized urban voters, including Nonconformist shopkeepers. The book’s canvassing scenes, committee-room tactics, and careful courting of the chapel vote reflect post-1867 borough politics, where disciplined blocs and civic respectability could eclipse old patronage rooted in landed influence.
The rise of a commercial middle class underpins the Carlingford milieu. Britain’s mid-Victorian prosperity (c. 1850–1873), showcased at the Great Exhibition of 1851, elevated retailers, manufacturers, and professionals who leveraged credit and national markets, aided by limited liability (Limited Liability Act 1855; Companies Acts 1856, 1862). In provincial towns, the shopocracy converted profits into social capital through chapels, school boards, and philanthropy. The Tozer family’s butter business and deacon status reflect this trajectory from trade to civic voice. The novel’s negotiations over visits, entertainments, and benefactions dramatize how consumption, respectability, and community oversight functioned as currencies of status and engines of mobility.
Shifts in women’s education and legal capacity inform Phoebe’s self-possession. The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 created civil divorce courts; the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 incrementally secured wives’ earnings and property; and universities opened new avenues, with Girton College founded in 1869 and Newnham in 1871. These reforms fostered a discourse of female prudence and competence. The novel’s depiction of a well-educated young woman navigating kinship claims, inheritance prospects, and philanthropic committees mirrors this context, where genteel daughters increasingly weighed marriage against autonomy, and where female organizational skill could translate into real, if informal, civic influence.
Elementary schooling became a crucible of sectarian politics after the Elementary Education Act 1870 (Forster Act) established elected school boards to fill gaps left by voluntary denominational schools. The National Education League (1869) pushed for nonsectarian, rate-supported schooling; Anglican and Catholic bodies defended catechetical influence. Board elections in 1870–1873 polarized many towns. Funding formulas, conscience clauses, and management of pupil attendance under the 1870 and 1876 Education Acts turned classrooms into political terrain. The novel’s attention to committees, subscriptions, and cross-class negotiations echoes these disputes, as chapel and parish elites vie for curricular authority and public money, revealing how education policy recast local power.
Victorian regimes of relief and philanthropy shape the social conscience on display. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 centralized aid in union workhouses, seeking to deter outdoor relief, while urban distress and cholera crises spurred voluntary responses. The Charity Organization Society (founded 1869) promoted coordinated, investigatory charity to discourage indiscriminate almsgiving. Ragged Schools (from the 1840s) and temperance associations multiplied. In Carlingford, visiting societies, chapel funds, and parish charities serve as theaters of moral judgment. The novel’s scrutiny of deservingness, reputation, and the strategic deployment of benevolence illustrates how relief practices disciplined the poor and legitimized middle-class authority.
The book functions as a social and political critique by anatomizing respectability as a currency that masks power. It exposes class barriers that persist despite reform, the transactional nature of borough politics after 1867, and sectarian rivalries that subordinate public goods (education, relief) to denominational advantage. Through Phoebe’s calculated freedoms and constraints, it interrogates the limits of women’s agency amid property and reputation regimes. By staging chapel–parish competition, committee maneuvering, and genteel anxieties, the narrative indicts the hypocrisies of moral stewardship in provincial England, revealing how civic modernization could entrench inequity even as it proclaimed liberal progress.
Phoebe, Junior
A Last Chronicle of Carlingford.
Top
CHAPTER I.
THE PASTOR'S PROGRESS.
Miss Phœbe Tozer, the only daughter of the chief deacon and leading member of the Dissenting connection[1] in Carlingford, married, shortly after his appointment to the charge of Salem Chapel, in that town, the Reverend Mr. Beecham, one of the most rising young men in the denomination. The marriage was in many ways satisfactory to the young lady's family, for Mr. Beecham was himself the son of respectable people in a good way of business, and not destitute of means; and the position was one which they had always felt most suitable for their daughter, and to which she had been almost, it may be said, brought up. It is, however, scarcely necessary to add that it was not quite so agreeable to the other leading members of the congregation. I should be very sorry to say that each family wished that preferment for its own favourite daughter; for indeed there can be no doubt, as Mrs. Pigeon asserted vigorously, that a substantial grocer, whose father before him had established an excellent business, and who had paid for his pew in Salem as long as any one could recollect, and supported every charity, and paid up on all occasions when extra expense was necessary, was in every way a more desirable son-in-law than a poor minister who was always dependent on pleasing the chapel folks, and might have to turn out any day. Notwithstanding, however, the evident superiority of the establishment thus attained by Maria Pigeon, there is a certain something attached to the position of a clerical caste, even among such an independent body as the congregation at Salem Chapel, which has its own especial charms, and neither the young people who had been her companions nor the old people who had patronized and snubbed her, felt any satisfaction in seeing Phœbe thus advanced over them to the honours and glories inalienable from the position of minister's wife. All her little airs of bridal vanity were considered as so many offensive manifestations of delight and exultation in her rise in life. Her trousseau[3], though pronounced by all competent judges not half so abundant or fine as Maria Pigeon's, still called forth comments which nobody ventured to indulge in, in respect to the grocer's blooming bride. A grocer's lady[2] has a right to anything her parents can afford; but to see a minister's wife swelling herself up, and trying to ape the quality, filled the town with virtuous indignation. The sight of young Mrs. Beecham walking about with her card-case in her hand, calling on the Miss Hemmingses, shaking hands with Mrs. Rider the doctor's wife, caused unmitigated disgust throughout all the back streets of Carlingford; and “that Phœbe a-sweeping in as if the chapel belonged to her,” was almost more than the oldest sitter could bear. Phœbe, it must be added, felt her elevation to the full, and did not spare her congregation. Sometimes she would have the audacity to walk from the vestry to the pew, as if she were an office-bearer, instead of coming in humbly by the door as became a woman. She would sit still ostentatiously until every one had gone, waiting for her husband. She quite led the singing, everybody remarked, paying no more attention to the choir than if it did not exist; and once she had even paused on her way to her seat, and turned down the gas, which was blazing too high, with an air of proprietorship that nobody could endure.
“Does Salem belong to them Tozers, I should like to know?” said Mrs. Brown. “Brown would never be outdone by him in subscriptions you may be sure, nor Mr. Pigeon neither, if the truth was known. I never gave my money to build a castle for the Tozers.”
Thus the whole congregation expressed itself with more or less eloquence, and though the attendance never diminished, everybody being too anxious to see “what they would do next,” the feeling could not be ignored. Phœbe herself, with a courage which developed from the moment of her marriage, took the initiative.
“It never answers,” she said, solemnly, “to marry one of the flock; I knew it, Henery, and I told you so; and if you would be so infatuated, and marry me when I told you not, for your own interests—”
“They're all jealous of you, my pet, that's what it is,” said Mr. Beecham, and laughed. He could bear the annoyance in consideration of that sweet consciousness of its cause which stole over all his being. Phœbe laughed, too, but not with so delicious a gratification. She felt that there were people, even in Salem, who might be jealous of him.
“The end of it all is, we must not stay here,” she said. “You must find another sphere for your talents, Henery, and I'm sure it will not be difficult. If you get put on that deputation that is going down to the North, suppose you take a few of your best sermons, dear. That can never do any harm—indeed it's sure to do good, to some poor benighted soul at least, that perhaps never heard the truth before. And likewise, perhaps, to some vacant congregation. I have always heard that chapels in the North were very superior to here. A different class of society, and better altogether[1q]. These Pigeons and Browns, and people are not the sort of society for you.”
“Well, there's truth in that,” said Mr. Beecham, pulling up his shirt-collar. “Certainly it isn't the sort of thing one was accustomed to.” And he lent a serious ear to the suggestion about the sermons. The consequence was that an invitation followed from a chapel in the North, where indeed Mrs. Phœbe found herself in much finer society, and grew rapidly in importance and in ideas. After this favourable start, the process went on for many years by which a young man from Homerton was then developed into the influential and highly esteemed pastor of an important flock. Things may be, and probably are, differently managed now-a-days. Mr. Beecham had unbounded fluency and an unctuous manner of treating his subjects. It was eloquence of a kind, though not of an elevated kind. Never to be at a loss for what you have to say is a prodigious advantage to all men in all positions, but doubly so to a popular minister. He had an unbounded wealth of phraseology. Sentences seemed to melt out of his mouth without any apparent effort, all set in a certain cadence. He had not, perhaps, much power of thought, but it is easy to make up for such a secondary want when the gift of expression is so strong. Mr. Beecham rose, like an actor, from a long and successful career in the provinces, to what might be called the Surrey side of congregational eminence in London; and from thence attained his final apotheosis in a handsome chapel near Regent's Park, built of the whitest stone, and cushioned with the reddest damask, where a very large congregation sat in great comfort and listened to his sermons with a satisfaction no doubt increased by the fact that the cushions were soft as their own easy-chairs, and that carpets and hot-water pipes kept everything snug under foot.
It was the most comfortable chapel in the whole connection. The seats were arranged like those of an amphitheatre, each line on a slightly higher level than the one in front of it, so that everybody saw everything that was going on. No dimness or mystery was wanted there; everything was bright daylight, bright paint, red cushions, comfort and respectability. It might not be a place very well adapted for saying your prayers in, but then you could say your prayers at home—and it was a place admirably adapted for hearing sermons in, which you could not do at home; and all the arrangements were such that you could hear in the greatest comfort, not to say luxury. I wonder, for my own part, that the poor folk about did not seize upon the Crescent Chapel[5] on the cold Sunday mornings, and make themselves happy in those warm and ruddy pews. It would be a little amusing to speculate what all the well-dressed pew-holders would have done had this unexpected answer to the appeal which Mr. Beecham believed himself to make every Sunday to the world in general, been literally given. It would have been extremely embarrassing to the Managing Committee and all the office-bearers, and would have, I fear, deeply exasperated and offended the occupants of those family pews; but fortunately this difficulty never did occur. The proletariat of Marylebone had not the sense or the courage, or the profanity, which you will, to hit upon this mode of warming themselves. The real congregation embraced none of the unwashed multitude. Its value in mere velvet, silk, lace, trinkets, and furs was something amazing, and the amount these comfortable people represented in the way of income would have amounted to a most princely revenue. The little Salems and Bethesdas, with their humble flocks, could not be supposed to belong to the same species; and the difference was almost equally marked between such a place of worship as the Crescent Chapel and the parish churches, which are like the nets in the Gospel, and take in all kinds of fish, bad and good. The pew-holders in the Crescent Chapel were universally well off; they subscribed liberally to missionary societies, far more liberally than the people in St. Paul's close by did to the S. P. G. They had everything of the best in the chapel, as they had in their houses. They no more economized on their minister than they did on their pew-cushions, and they spent an amount of money on their choir which made the singing-people at St. Paul's gnash their teeth. From all this it will be seen that the atmosphere of the Crescent Chapel was of a very distinct and individual kind. It was a warm, luxurious air, perfumy, breathing of that refinement which is possible to mere wealth. I do not say there might not be true refinement besides, but the surface kind, that which you buy from upholsterers and tailors and dressmakers, which you procure ready made at schools, and which can only be kept up at a very high cost, abounded and pervaded the place. Badly dressed people felt themselves out of place in that brilliant sanctuary; a muddy footprint upon the thick matting in the passages was looked at as a crime. Clean dry feet issuing out of carriage or cab kept the aisles unstained, even on the wettest day. We say cab, because many of the people who went to the Crescent Chapel objected to take out their own carriages or work their own horses on Sunday; and there were many more who, though they did not possess carriages, used cabs with a freedom incompatible with poverty. As a general rule, they were much better off than the people at St. Paul's, more universally prosperous and well-to-do. And they were at the same time what you might safely call well-informed people—people who read the newspapers, and sometimes the magazines, and knew what was going on. The men were almost all liberal in politics, and believed in Mr. Gladstone with enthusiasm; the women often “took an interest” in public movements, especially of a charitable character. There was less mental stagnation among them probably than among many of their neighbours. Their life was not profound nor high, but still it was life after a sort. Such was the flock which had invited Mr. Beecham to become their pastor when he reached the climax of his career. They gave him a very good salary, enough to enable him to have a handsome house in one of the terraces overlooking Regent's Park. It is not a fashionable quarter, but it is not to be despised in any way. The rooms were good-sized and lofty, and sometimes have been known to suffice for very fine people indeed, a fact which the Beechams were well aware of; and they were not above the amiable weakness of making it known that their house was in a line with that of Lady Cecilia Burleigh. This single fact of itself might suffice to mark the incalculable distance between the Reverend Mr. Beecham of the Crescent Chapel, and the young man who began life as minister of Salem in Carlingford. And the development outside was not less remarkable than the development within.
It is astonishing how our prejudices change from youth to middle age, even without any remarkable interposition of fortune; I do not say dissipate, or even dispel, which is much more doubtful—but they change. When Mr. and Mrs. Beecham commenced life, they had both the warmest feeling of opposition to the Church and everything churchy. All the circumstances of their lives had encouraged this feeling. The dislike of the little for the great, the instinctive opposition of a lower class towards the higher, intensified that natural essence of separatism, that determination to be wiser than one's neighbour, which in the common mind lies at the bottom of all dissent. In saying this we no more accuse Dissenters in religion than Dissenters in politics, or in art, or in criticism. The first dissenter in most cases is an original thinker, to whom his enforced departure from the ways of his fathers is misery and pain. Generally he has a hard struggle with himself before he can give up, for the superlative truth which has taken possession of him, all the habits, the pious traditions of his life. He is the real Nonconformist—half martyr, half victim, of his convictions. But that Nonconformity[4] which has come to be the faith in which a large number of people are trained is a totally different business, and affects a very different kind of sentiments. Personal and independent conviction has no more to do with it than it has to do with the ardour of a Breton peasant trained in deepest zeal of Romanism, or the unbounded certainty of any other traditionary believer. For this reason we may be allowed to discuss the changes of feeling which manifested themselves in Mr. and Mrs. Beecham without anything disrespectful to Nonconformity. Not being persons of original mind, they were what their training and circumstances, and a flood of natural influences, made them. They began life, feeling themselves to be of a hopelessly low social caste, and believing themselves to be superior to their superiors in that enlightenment which they had been brought up to believe distinguished the connection. The first thing which opened their minds to a dawning doubt whether their enlightenment was, in reality, so much greater than that of their neighbours, was the social change worked in their position by their removal from Carlingford. In the great towns of the North, Dissent attains its highest social elevation, and Chapel people are no longer to be distinguished from Church people except by the fact that they go to Chapel instead of Church, a definition so simple as to be quite overwhelming to the unprepared dissenting intelligence, brought up in a little Tory borough, still holding for Church and Queen. The amazing difference which this made in the sentiments of Mrs. Phœbe Beecham, née Tozer, it is quite impossible to describe. Her sudden introduction to “circles” which Mrs. Pigeon had never entered, and to houses at the area-door of which Mr. Brown, the dairyman, would have humbly waited, would have turned the young woman's head, had she not felt the overpowering necessity of keeping that organ as steady as possible, to help her to hold her position in the new world. Phœbe was a girl of spirit, and though her head went round and round, and everything felt confused about her, she did manage desperately to hold her own and to avoid committing herself; but I cannot attempt to tell how much her social elevation modified her sectarian zeal. Phœbe was only a woman, so that I am free to assign such motives as having a serious power over her. Let us hope Mr. Beecham, being a man and a pastor, was moved in a more lofty, intellectual, and spiritual way.
But however that may be, the pair went conjugally together in this modification of sentiment, and by the time they reached the lofty eminence of the Crescent Chapel, were as liberal-minded Nonconformists as heart could desire. Mr. Beecham indeed had many friends in the Low, and even some in the Broad Church. He appeared on platforms, to promote various public movements, along with clergymen of the Church. He spoke of “our brethren within the pale of the Establishment” always with respect, sometimes even with enthusiasm. “Depend upon it, my dear Sir,” he would even say sometimes to a liberal brother, “the Establishment is not such an unmitigated evil as some people consider it. What should we do in country parishes where the people are not awakened? They do the dirty work for us, my dear brother—the dirty work.” These sentiments were shared, but perhaps not warmly, by Mr. Beecham's congregation, some of whom were hot Voluntaries, and gave their ministers a little trouble. But the most part took their Nonconformity very quietly, and were satisfied to know that their chapel was the first in the connection, and their minister justly esteemed as one of the most eloquent. The Liberation Society held one meeting at the Crescent Chapel, but it was not considered a great success. At the best, they were no more than lukewarm Crescent-Chapelites, not political dissenters. Both minister and people were Liberal, that was the creed they professed. Some of the congregations Citywards, and the smaller chapels about Hampstead and Islington, used the word Latitudinarian instead; but that, as the Crescent Chapel people said, was a word always applied by the bigoted and ignorant to those who held in high regard the doctrines of Christian charity. They were indeed somewhat proud of their tolerance, their impartiality, their freedom from old prejudices. “That sort of thing will not do now-a-days,” said Mr. Copperhead, who was a great railway contractor and one of the deacons, and who had himself a son at Oxford. If there had been any bigotry in the Crescent, Mr. Copperhead would have had little difficulty in transferring himself over the way to St. Paul's Church, and it is astonishing what an effect that fact had upon the mind of Mr. Beecham's flock.
Mr. Beecham's house was situated in Regent's Park, and was constructed on the ordinary model of such houses. On the ground-floor was a handsome dining-room, a room which both Mr. and Mrs. Beecham twenty years before would have considered splendid, but which now they condescended to, as not so large as they could wish, but still comfortable. The drawing-room above was larger, a bright and pleasant room, furnished with considerable “taste.” Behind the dining-room, a smaller room was Mr. Beecham's study, or the library, as it was sometimes called. It was lined with book-cases containing a very fair collection of books, and ornamented with portraits (chiefly engravings) of celebrated ministers and laymen in the connection, with a bust of Mr. Copperhead over the mantelpiece. This bust had been done by a young sculptor whom he patronized, for the great man's own house. When it was nearly completed, however, a flaw was found in the marble, which somewhat detracted from its perfection. The flaw was in the shoulder of the image, and by no means serious; but Mr. Copperhead was not the man to pass over any such defect. After a long and serious consultation over it, which made the young artist shake in his shoes, a solution was found for the difficulty.
“Tell you what, Sir,” said Mr. Copperhead; “I'll give it to the minister. It'll look famous in his little study. Works of art don't often come his way; and you'll get a block of the best, Mr. Chipstone—the very best, Sir, no expense spared—and begin another for me.”
This arrangement was perfectly satisfactory to all parties, though I will not say that it was not instrumental in bringing about certain other combinations which will be fully discussed in this history. The Beechams were mightily surprised when the huge marble head, almost as large as a Jupiter, though perhaps not otherwise so imposing, arrived at the Terrace; but they were also gratified.
“It is quite like receiving us into his own family circle,” Mrs. Beecham said with a glance at her daughter, Phœbe, junior, who, with all her pink fingers outspread, was standing in adoration before that image of wealth and fabulous luxury.
“What a grand head it is!” cried the young enthusiast, gazing rapt upon the complacent marble whisker so delightfully curled and bristling with realistic force.
“It looks well, I must say, it looks well,” said Mr. Beecham himself, rubbing his hands, “to receive such a token of respect from the leading member of the flock.” And certainly no more perfect representation of a bell-wether ever adorned any shepherd's sanctuary.
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CHAPTER II.
THE LEADING MEMBER.
Mr. Copperhead, to whom so much allusion has been made, was a well-known man in other regions besides that of the Crescent Chapel. His name, indeed, may be said to have gone to the ends of the earth, from whence he had conducted lines of railway, and where he had left docks, bridges, and light-houses to make him illustrious. He was one of the greatest contractors for railways and other public works in England, and, by consequence, in the world. He had no more than a very ordinary education, and no manners to speak of; but at the same time he had that kind of faculty which is in practical work what genius is in literature, and, indeed, in its kind is genius too, though it neither refines nor even (oddly enough) enlarges the mind to which it belongs. He saw the right track for a road through a country with a glance of his eye; he mastered all the points of nature which were opposed to him in the rapidest survey, though scientifically he was great in no branch of knowledge. He could rule his men as easily as if they were so many children; and, indeed, they were children in his hands. All these gifts made it apparent that he must have been a remarkable and able man; but no stranger would have guessed as much from his appearance or his talk. There were people, indeed, who knew him well, and who remained incredulous and bewildered, trying to persuade themselves that his success must be owing to pure luck, for that he had nothing else to secure it. The cause of this, perhaps, was that he knew nothing about books, and was one of those jeering cynics who are so common under one guise or another. Fine cynics are endurable, and give a certain zest often to society, which might become too civil without them; but your coarse cynic is not pleasant. Mr. Copperhead's eye was as effectual in quenching emotion of any but the coarsest kind as water is against fire. People might be angry in his presence—it was the only passion he comprehended; but tenderness, sympathy, sorrow, all the more generous sentiments, fled and concealed themselves when this large, rich, costly man came by. People who were brought much in contact with him became ashamed of having any feelings at all; his eye upon them seemed to convict them of humbug. Those eyes were very light grey, prominent, with a jeer in them which was a very powerful moral instrument. His own belief was that he could “spot” humbug wherever he saw it, and that nothing could escape him; and, I suppose, so much humbug is there in this world that his belief was justified. But there are few more awful people than those ignoble spectators whose jeer arrests the moisture in the eye, and strangles the outcry on their neighbour's lip.
Mr. Copperhead had risen from the ranks; yet not altogether from the ranks. His father before him had been a contractor, dealing chiefly with canals and roads, and the old kind of public works; a very rough personage indeed, but one to whose fingers gold had stuck, perhaps because of the clay with which they were always more or less smeared. This ancestor had made a beginning to the family, and given his son a name to start with. Our Mr. Copperhead had married young, and had several sons, who were all in business, and all doing well; less vigorous, but still moderately successful copies of their father. When, however, he had thus done his duty to the State, the first Mrs. Copperhead having died, he did the only incomprehensible action of his life—he married a second time, a feeble, pretty, pink-and-white little woman, who had been his daughter's governess; married her without rhyme or reason, as all his friends and connections said. The only feasible motive for this second union seemed to be a desire on Mr. Copperhead's part to have something belonging to him which he could always jeer at, and in this way the match was highly successful. Mrs. Copperhead the second was gushing and susceptible, and as good a butt as could be imagined. She kept him in practice when nobody else was at hand. She was one of those naturally refined but less than half-educated, timid creatures who are to be found now and then painfully earning the bread which is very bitter to them in richer people's houses, and preserving in their little silent souls some fetish in the shape of a scrap of gentility, which is their sole comfort, or almost their sole comfort. Mrs. Copperhead's fetish was the dear recollection that she was “an officer's daughter;” or rather this had been her fetish in the days when she had nothing, and was free to plume herself on the reflected glory. Whether in the depths of her luxurious abode, at the height of her good fortune, she still found comfort in the thought, it would be hard to tell. Everybody who had known her in her youth thought her the most fortunate of women. Her old school companions told her story for the encouragement of their daughters, as they might have told a fairy tale. To see her rolling in her gorgeous carriage, or bowed out of a shop where all the daintiest devices of fashion had been placed at her feet, filled passers-by with awe and envy. She could buy whatever she liked, festoon herself with finery, surround herself with the costliest knick-knacks; the more there were of them, and the costlier they were, the better was Mr. Copperhead pleased. She had everything that heart could desire. Poor little woman! What a change from the governess-chrysalis who was snubbed by her pupil and neglected by everybody! and yet I am not sure that she did not—so inconsistent is human nature—look back to those melancholy days with a sigh.
This lady was the mother of Clarence Copperhead, the young man who was at Oxford, her only child, upon whom (of course) she doted with the fondest folly; and whom his father jeered at more than at any one else in the world, more even than at his mother, yet was prouder of than of all his other sons and all his possessions put together. Clarence, whom I will not describe, as he will, I trust, show himself more effectually by his actions, was like his mother in disposition, or so, at least, she made herself happy by thinking; but by some freak of nature he was like his father in person, and carried his mouse's heart in a huge frame, somewhat hulking and heavy-shouldered, with the same roll which distinguished Mr. Copperhead, and which betrayed something of the original navvy who was the root of the race. He had his father's large face too, and a tendency towards those demonstrative and offensive whiskers which are the special inheritance of the British Philistine. But instead of the large goggle eyes, always jeering and impudent, which lighted up the paternal countenance, Clarence had a pair of mild brown orbs, repeated from his mother's faded face, which introduced the oddest discord into his physiognomy generally. In the family, that is to say among the step-brothers and step-sisters who formed Mr. Copperhead's first family, the young fellow bore no other name than that of the curled darling, though, indeed, he was as far from being curled as any one could be. He was not clever; he had none of the energy of his race, and promised to be as useless in an office as he would have been in a cutting or a yard full of men. I am not sure that this fact did not increase secretly his father's exultation and pride in him. Mr. Copperhead was fond of costly and useless things; he liked them for their cost, with an additional zest in his sense of the huge vulgar use and profit of most things in his own life. This tendency, more than any appreciation of the beautiful, made him what is called a patron of art. It swelled his personal importance to think that he was able to hang up thousands of pounds, so to speak, on his walls, knowing all the time that he could make thousands more by the money had he invested it in more useful ways. The very fact that he could afford to refrain from investing it, that he could let it lie there useless, hanging by so many cords and ribbons, was sweet to him. And so also it was sweet to him to possess a perfectly useless specimen of humanity, which had cost him a great deal, and promised to cost him still more. He had plenty of useful sons as he had of useful money. The one who was of no use was the apex and glory of the whole.
But these three made up a strange enough family party, as may be supposed. The original Copperheads, the first family, who were all of the same class and nature, would have made a much noisier, less peaceable household; but they would have been a much jollier and really more harmonious one. Mr. Copperhead himself somewhat despised his elder sons, who were like himself, only less rich, less vigorous, and less self-assertive. He saw, oddly enough, the coarseness of their manners, and even of their ways of thinking; but yet he was a great deal more comfortable, more at his ease among them, than he was when seated opposite his trembling, deprecating, frightened little wife, or that huge youth who cost him so much and returned him so little. Now and then, at regular periodical intervals, the head of the family would go down to Blackheath to dine and spend the night with his son Joe, the second and the favourite, where there were romping children and a portly, rosy young matron, and loud talk about City dinners, contracts, and estimates. This refreshed him, and he came home with many chuckles over the imperfections of the family.
“My sons buy their wives by the hundred-weight,” he would say jocularly at breakfast the day after; “thirteen stone if she is a pound, is Mrs. Joe. Expensive to keep up in velvet and satin, not to speak of mutton and beef. Your mother comes cheap,” he would add aside to Clarence, with a rolling laugh. Thus he did not in the least exempt his descendants from the universal ridicule which he poured on all the world; but when he sat down opposite his timid little delicate wife, and by his University man, who had very little on the whole to say for himself, Mr. Copperhead felt the increase in gentility as well as the failure in jollity. “You are a couple of ghosts after Joe and his belongings, you two. Speak louder, I say, young fellow. You don't expect me to hear that penny-whistle of yours,” he would say, chuckling at them, with a mixture of pride and disdain. They amused him by their dulness and silence, and personal awe of him. He was quite out of his element between these two, and yet the very fact pleasantly excited his pride.
“I speak as gentlemen generally speak,” said Clarence, who was sometimes sullen when attacked, and who knew by experience that his father was rarely offended by such an argument.
“And I am sure, dear, your papa would never wish you to do otherwise,” said anxious Mrs. Copperhead, casting a furtive frightened glance at her husband. He rolled out a mighty laugh from the head of the table where he was sitting. He contemplated them with a leer that would have been insulting, had he not been the husband of one and the father of the other. The laugh and the look called forth some colour on Mrs. Copperhead's cheek, well as she was used to them; but her son was less susceptible, and ate his breakfast steadily, and did not care.
“A pretty pair you are,” said Mr. Copperhead. “I like your gentility. How much foie gras would you eat for breakfast, I wonder, my lad, if you had to work for it? Luckily for you, I wasn't brought up to talk, as you say, like a gentleman. I'd like to see you managing a field of navvies with that nice little voice of yours—ay, or a mob before the hustings, my boy. You're good for nothing, you are; a nice delicate piece of china for a cupboard, like your mother before you. However, thank Heaven, we've got the cupboard,” he said with a laugh, looking round him; “a nice big 'un, too, well painted and gilded; and the time has come, through not talking like a gentleman, that I can afford you. You should hear Joe. When that fellow talks, his house shakes. Confounded bad style of house, walls like gingerbread. How the boards don't break like pie-crust under Mrs. Joe's fairy foot, I can't make out. By Jove, ma'am, one would think I starved you, to see you beside your daughter-in-law. Always had a fine healthy appetite had Mrs. Joe.”
There was nothing to answer to this speech, and therefore a dead silence ensued. When the master of the house is so distinctly the master, silence is apt to ensue after his remarks. Mrs. Copperhead sipped her tea, and Clarence worked steadily through his breakfast, and the head of the family crumpled the Times, which he read at intervals. All sorts of jokes had gone on at Joe's table the morning before, and there had been peals of laughter, and Mrs. Joe had even administered a slap upon her husband's ruddy cheek for some pleasantry or other. Mr. Copperhead, as he looked at his son and his wife, chuckled behind the Times. When they thought he was occupied they made a few gentle remarks to each other. They had soft voices, with that indescribable resemblance in tone which so often exists between mother and son. Dresden china; yes, that was the word; and to see his own resemblance made in that delicate pâte, and elevated into that region of superlative costliness, tickled Mr. Copperhead, and in the most delightful way.
“How about your ball?” was his next question, “or Clarence's ball, as you don't seem to take much interest in it, ma'am? You are afraid of being brought in contact with the iron pots, eh? You might crack or go to pieces, who knows, and what would become of me, a wretched widower.” Mr. Copperhead himself laughed loudly at this joke, which did not excite any mirth from the others, and then he repeated his question, “How about the ball?”
“The invitations are all sent out, Mr. Copperhead; ninety-five—I—I mean a hundred and thirty-five. I—I beg your pardon, they were in two lots,” answered the poor woman nervously. “A hundred and thirty-eight—and there is—a few more—”
“Take your time, ma'am, take your time, we'll get at the truth at last,” said her husband; and he laid down his paper and looked at her. He was not angry nor impatient. The twinkle in his eye was purely humorous. Her stumblings amused him, and her nervousness. But oddly enough, the most furious impatience could not have more deeply disconcerted her.
“There are a few more—some old friends of mine,” she went on, confused. “They were once rather—kind—took an interest; that is—”
“Oh, the baronet and his daughters,” said Mr. Copperhead, “by all means let's have the baronet and his daughters. Though as for their taking an interest—if you had not been a rich man's wife, ma'am, living in a grand house in Portland Place—”
“It was not now,” she said, hurriedly. “I do not suppose that any one takes an interest—in me now—”
Mr. Copperhead laughed, and nodded his head. “Not many, ma'am, I should think—not many. You women must make up your minds to that. It's all very well to take an interest in a pretty girl; but when you come to a certain age—Well, let's proceed, the baronet—”
“And his two girls—”
“Ah, there's two girls! that's for you, Clarence, my boy. I thought there must be a motive. Think that fellow a good parti, eh? And I would not say they were far wrong if he behaves himself. Make a note of the baronet's daughter, young man. Lord, what a world it is!” said Mr. Copperhead, reflectively. “I should not wonder if you had been scheming, too.”
“I would not for the world!” cried the poor little woman, roused for once. “I would not for anything interfere with a marriage. That is the last thing you need fear from me. Whether it was a girl I was fond of, or a girl I disliked—so long as she was Clarence's choice. Oh, I know the harm that is done by other people's meddling—nothing, nothing, would induce me to interfere.”
Mr. Copperhead laid down his paper, and looked at her. I suppose, however little a man may care for his wife, he does not relish the idea that she married him for anything but love. He contemplated her still with amused ridicule, but with something fiercer in his eyes. “Oh—h!” he said, “you don't like other people to interfere? not so much as to say, it's a capital match, eh? You'll get so and so, and so and so, that you couldn't have otherwise—carriages perhaps, and plenty of money in your pocket (which it may be you never had in your life before), and consideration, and one of the finest houses in London, let us say in Portland Place. You don't like that amount of good advice, eh? Well, I do—I mean to interfere with my son, to that extent at least—you can do what you like. But as you're a person of prodigious influence, and strong will, and a great deal of character, and all that,” Mr. Copperhead broke out with a rude laugh, “I'm afraid of you, I am—quite afraid.”
Fortunately, just at this moment his brougham came round, and the great man finished his coffee at a gulp, and got up. “You look out for the baronet's daughters, then—” he said, “and see all's ready for this ball of yours; while I go and work to pay the bills, that's my share. You do the ornamental, and I do the useful, ha, ha! I'll keep up my share.”
It was astonishing what a difference came upon the room the moment he disappeared. Somehow it had been out of harmony. His voice, his look, his heavy person, even his whiskers had been out of character. Now the air seemed to flutter after the closing of the door like water into which something offensive has sunk, and when the ripples of movement were over the large handsome room had toned down into perfect accord with its remaining inhabitants. Mrs. Copperhead's eyes were rather red—not with tears, but with the inclination to shed tears, which she carefully restrained in her son's presence. He still continued to eat steadily—he had an admirable appetite. But when he had finished everything on his plate, he looked up and said, “I hope you don't mind, mamma; I don't suppose you do; but I don't like the way my father speaks to you.”
“Oh, my dear!” cried the mother, with an affected little smile, “why should I mind? I ought to know by this time that it's only your papa's way.”
“I suppose so—but I don't like it,” said the young man, decisively. He did not notice, however, as after second thoughts he returned to the game-pie, that his mother's eyes were redder than ever.
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CHAPTER III.
MR. COPPERHEAD'S BALL.
This ball was an event, not only in Mr. Copperhead's household, but even in the connection itself, to which the idea of balls, as given by leading members of the flock, was somewhat novel. Not that the young people were debarred from that amusement, but it was generally attained in a more or less accidental manner, and few professing Christians connected with the management of the chapel had gone the length of giving such an entertainment openly and with design. Mr. Copperhead, however, was in a position to triumph over all such prejudices. He was so rich that any community would have felt it ought to extend a certain measure of indulgence to such a man. Very wealthy persons are like spoilt children, their caprices are allowed to be natural, and even when we are angry with them we excuse the vagaries to which money has a right. This feeling of indulgence goes a very great way, especially among the classes engaged in money-making, who generally recognize a man's right to spend, and feel the sweetness of spending more acutely than the hereditary possessors of wealth. I do not believe that his superior knowledge of the best ways of using money profitably ever hinders a money-making man from lavish expenditure; but it gives him a double zest in spending, and it makes him, generally, charitable towards the extravagances of persons still richer than himself. A ball, there was no doubt, was a worldly-minded entertainment, but still, the chapel reflected, it is almost impossible not to be a little worldly-minded when you possess such a great share of the world's goods, and that, of course, it could not be for himself that Mr. Copperhead was doing this, but for his son. His son, these amiable casuists proceeded, was being brought up to fill a great position, and no doubt society did exact something, and as Mr. Copperhead had asked all the chief chapel people, his ball was looked upon with very indulgent eyes. The fact that the minister and his family were going staggered some of the more particular members a little, but Mr. Beecham took high ground on the subject and silenced the flock. “The fact that a minister of religion is one of the first persons invited, is sufficient proof of the way our friend means to manage everything,” said the pastor. “Depend upon it, it would be good for the social relations of the country if your pastors and teachers were always present. It gives at once a character to all the proceedings.” This, like every other lofty assertion, stilled the multitude. Some of the elder ladies, indeed, groaned to hear, even at the prayer-meetings, a whisper between the girls about this ball and what they were going to wear; but still it was Christmas, and all the newspapers, and a good deal of the light literature which is especially current at that season, persistently represented all the world as in a state of imbecile joviality, and thus, for the moment, every objection was put down.
