Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford 6: Phoebe, Junior

Phoebe, Junior by Margaret Oliphant (1876)

Self-confidence of this assured and tranquil sort serves a great many excellent purposes---it made her even generous in her way. She believed in her star, in her own certain good-fortune, in herself; and therefore her mind was free to think and to work for other people. She knew very well by all her mother said, and by all the hesitations of both her parents, that she would have many disagreeable things to encounter in Carlingford, but she felt so sure that nothing could really humiliate her, or pull her down from her real eminence, that the knowledge conveyed no fears to her mind...

Welcome to the group read of Margaret Oliphant's Phoebe, Junior, the 7th work in her 'Chronicles of Carlingford' series.

Previously in this project, we have read:
- The Executor (1861) {short story} and The Rector (1861) {short story} - thread here
- The Doctor's Family (1861) {novella} - thread here
- Salem Chapel (1863) {novel} - thread here
- The Perpetual Curate (1864) {novel} - thread here
- Miss Marjoribanks (1866) {novel} - thread here

There is also background material about Oliphant at the beginning of the thread for The Executor and The Rector.

There is also background material about Oliphant at the beginning of the thread for The Executor and The Rector.

There was a lapse of ten years between Miss Marjoribanks, the penultimate work in the Chronicles of Carlingford, and Phoebe, Junior, which was written and published in 1876---as Oliphant then said, just to "amuse myself".

She may not have been amused when her long-term publishers, Blackwoods, declined the novel. It was published instead by Hurst and Blackett.

The first edition appeared as three volumes, though the novel is somewhat shorter than its predecessors (and in fact H&B used the trick of wider margins to push it to three volumes).

Originally the chapters began numbering again at the beginning of each volume, with each containing 15 chapters. Most editions now number the chapters consecutively from 1 through to 45 (or I through to XLV); please let us know if you have a different arrangement in your edition.

I suggest a pace of 2-3 chapters per day, which will allow plenty of time for discussion---including our reactions to this series as a whole.

The novel is available in print from the usual sources, Virago and Penguin; it is also readily available as an ebook, either through Project Gutenberg or on Kindle.

The usual guidelines apply for this group read:

1. When posting, please begin by noting which chapter you are referring to in bold.

2. Be mindful of others: if you have read the book before, or if you get ahead of the group, please use spoiler tags as necessary.

You may also do this to avoid forgetting a point you want to make: we will always come back to consider comments at the appropriate time.

3. If you are reading an edition with an introduction and/or endnotes, *do not* read them until you have completed the novel. Too often these adjuncts are full of spoilers.

4. Please speak up! Experience shows that group reads work best with lots of conversation and different contributions, so if you have any comments or questions at all, post them here so that everyone can benefit.

As always, remember that if you're thinking it, probably someone else is too. :)

In our previous group read, we had to consider the correct pronunciation of "Marjoribanks".

This time around we have the vexed question of what this novel's title actually is.

Noting that the Virago edition uses all three alternatives:

- Phoebe Junior on the cover;
- Phoebe, Junior on its title page;
- and Phœbe, Junior as its first-page header.

We won't insist upon the ligature, but it does seem that the comma should be "canon". :)

Cast of characters:

Henry Beecham - Dissenting minister
Phoebe (Tozer) Beecham - his wife
Phoebe - their daughter
Tozer - their son

Mr Copperhead - a very wealthy contractor; the leading member of Mr Beecham's congregation
Mrs Copperhead - his second wife
Clarence Copperhead - their son

Mr Tozer - Phoebe's grandfather
Mrs Tozer - his wife
Tom Tozer - their son
Amelia ("Mrs Tom") Tozer - his wife

Mr Horace Northcote - a Dissenting minister and reform campaigner

Sir Robert Dorset - a baronet who lives in the environs of Carlingford; a connection of Mrs Copperhead
Miss Anne Dorset - his elder daughter
Miss Sophy Dorset - his younger daughter

Mr May - rector of St. Roque's in Carlingford
Reginald May - his son; a newly ordained minister
Ursula May - his daughter; a connection of the Dorsets through her late mother
Janey May - his younger daughter
Johnnie May / Amy May / Robin May
Betsy - their cook

Mrs Sam Hurst - the Mays' neighbour

Please check in and let us know whether you plan to participate (or lurk)!.

I'm in. I'm assuming Phoebe Tozer Beecham is the daughter of the Tozers in Salem Chapel. But is Henry Beecham the same as Mr Beecher from Salem Chapel, or is this a different character?

And are either Phoebe Tozer or Phoebe, Junior in any way related to the Phoebe we meet in The Executor?

I have an ebook copy and the Virago edition and will be reading one or the other (or bits of both!).

>8 kac522:

Hi, Kathy!

Ha! - yes, you've picked that up correctly. :)

I thought of that too at the outset, but no, it's the former Phoebe Tozer and her daughter we're dealing with here. We are back among the characters from Salem Chapel (and I'm trying to decide how far the two novels line up).

>9 CDVicarage:

Welcome, Kerry!

Hello, I'm in! I have an old ebook from Gutenberg lurking on my Kobo and hope the OCR is good. I much prefer scanned PDFs (love the old typeface), but found only volumes 1 and 2 in this form.
I'm off to my sister's for the Easter holidays on Wednesday and will probably not comment before I'm back.

>11 MissWatson:

Hi, Birgit! Please take lots of notes so you have lots of comments to make when you get back. :)

I am in as well!

I'm in! Looking forward to this. I haven't read anything by Oliphant and have been meaning to.

I have just requested the book through a local public library in the US which has access to libraries across the country. I have used the system many times in the past.

>13 cbl_tn:

Hi, Carrie!

>14 surtsey:

Welcome, Sarah - always great to have new participants. :)

I hope you will be okay with this book: it is the last in a series as noted, however, this is not a series that builds directly on each entry, but rather has the same setting and some of the same characters. There will be some referencing of events in earlier books during our discussion, though.

These books deal with the different religious factions of the time and there interactions: if there is anything at all that you're not clear about in this respect, please ask.

>15 kayclifton:

Hi, Kay - sounds like you have a good system; I don't know what I'd do without my ILLs!

Okay, then. :)

In Phoebe, Junior, Margaret Oliphant returns to the Dissenting community of Carlingford, which we spent most time with in Salem Chapel.

As we have seen before, there is no strict chronology to the Carlingford novels: self-evidently, this book is set some twenty years after the events of Salem Chapel, which concluded with the departure of Arthur Vincent, and the assumption of his role as minister for "the connection" by Henry Beecham.

(Then Henry Beecher, as Kathy noted in >8 kac522:: Oliphant was sometimes a bit careless over names. I wonder if this would have been picked up if she was still with Blackwood's? Or perhaps she decided that Beecham was a preferable name for her heroine, and it was deliberate?)

It will be some time before we actually find ourselves back in Carlingford in Phoebe, Junior, however.

Chapter 1 opens with an amusing potted history of the rise and rise of Henry Beecham and his wife, the former Phoebe Tozer, daughter to that Mr Tozer who defended Arthur Vincent so vigorously in the earlier novel. We may remember that Mrs Tozer (and perhaps Phoebe) had certain "hopes" of Arthur Vincent, which he entirely failed to fulfill; but it is soon clear that Miss Tozer's marital venture has been a success in solid worldly terms as well as in other ways:

    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..

****

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...

So unexpectedly we open in London.

Oliphant then spends some time delineating the change in attitude that has accompanied the very changing circumstances of the Beechams---the great softening of their hostility towards the Established Church and its people---so that we appreciate the atmosphere in which Miss Phoebe Beecham is raised.

That softening is a matter of both geography and time: the blending of populations in London, the different ideas about what makes people "acceptable" or not, social ambitions detached from professional ambitions, and the decreased importance of religion per se later in the 19th century, have produced what we might call a "liberal" ambience in the Beecham household, which would be unthinkable to the Dissenting community of Carlingford.

Oliphant also makes an interesting distinction between Dissenters and what she calls "political dissenters"---meaning that they're not actively fighting the system any more, or defining themselves in terms of the Church; in terms of what they are not:

Chapter 1:

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...

Most remarkable of all, we get this regarding the leading (the richest, and most powerful) member of Mr Beecham's congregation:

“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.

Recall that Oxford was still the training ground of Church clergymen, the bulwark of the Established Church: for a leading Dissenter to decide that the social (not so much educational) advantages attached to Oxford outweighed the religious environment into which he was sending his son is extraordinary.

We are in a very different world here.

>17 lyzard: I'm wondering if Oliphant was aware of the outspoken American minister Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe), who had a bit of scandal surrounding him not long before Phoebe, Junior was published. She may have wanted to avoid any confusion or association with the American Beecher family.

A little bit more about him (and the Beecher-Tilton scandal) here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ward_Beecher

>19 kac522:

That's an interesting suggestion: if it was "one of the most widely reported trials of the century", and noting the timing, as you say, you might be right about that. The name might have had too much of a shocking (or snickering) connotation.

We saw in Salem Chapel exactly how much power the congregation generally, and its "leading members" in particular, had over a Dissenting minister, who was appointed and employed by them. Promotion to London means "promotion" of the leading member, too, and Oliphant gives us an excoriating portrait of the Beechams' own congregational incubus, Mr Copperhead---who among other delightful qualities, is one of those people who likes to practise emotional abuse in the guise of "a joke":

Chapter 2:

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.”

We should note this passage, going forward: we see that Clarence does have slightly finer shadings than his father, but is self-absorbed to the point where only a ruckus under his nose gets his attention: breakfast first, sympathy for his mother second. It also seems that Mrs Copperfield's heroic deflections have actually convinced her son that she really doesn't mind, which doesn't say much for his perception or perspicacity:

    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.

>20 lyzard: Particularly since the first names are the same, too. If her character had been George or Tom or Frank or something, I don't think it would have the same association.

>21 lyzard: Copperhead, not Copperfield :) Do you think she did that on purpose???

>22 kac522:

Another good point, though readers were more likely to forget 'Henry' (or 'Henery') than 'Beecher', I think.

>23 kac522:

Ugh, thanks. No, I don't think that's an allusion, though there are others to other authors. :)

Oliphant also gives us an amusing if worrying picture of how the congregation "processes" Mr Copperhead and his uncongregational behaviour.

His money is not the problem: most Dissenters, as we have seen, were in business or trade and there was no religious bar to profit-making; but Mr Copperhead's extravagance and the "wordly" things he spends his money on force the rest of the congregation to find ways of justifying his behaviour, and their own tolerance of it, to themselves---"these amiable casuists", as Oliphant calls them.

It ends up being Mr Beecham who sets the tone for all this, with respect to the Copperheads' ball---another thing that would not happen in Carlingford now, and wouldn't have happened in any Dissenting community twenty years before---nor would any Dissenting minister have dared rationalise matters like this, even if he had felt the inclination:

Chapter 3:

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...

Chapter 3 also gives us our first detailed insight into Phoebe Beecham - Phoebe, junior - and there are some important allusions here that we need to consider, with respect to the standing of women at this time and the opportunities available to them:

Phœbe had, as her parents were happy to think, had every advantage in her education. She had possessed a German governess all to herself, by which means, even Mr Beecham himself supposed, a certain amount of that philosophy which Germans communicate by their very touch must have got into her, besides her music and the language which was her primary study. And she had attended lectures at the ladies' college close by, and heard a great many eminent men on a great many different subjects. She had read, too, a great deal. She was very well got up in the subject of education for women, and lamented often and pathetically the difficulty they lay under of acquiring the highest instruction; but at the same time she patronised Mr Ruskin's theory that dancing, drawing, and cooking were three of the higher arts which ought to be studied by girls. It is not necessary for me to account for the discrepancies between those two systems, in the first place because I cannot, and in the second place, because there is in the mind of the age some ineffable way of harmonising them which makes their conjunction common. Phœbe was restrained from carrying out either to its full extent. She was not allowed to go in for the Cambridge examinations because Mr Beecham felt the connection might think it strange to see his daughter's name in the papers, and, probably, would imagine he meant to make a schoolmistress of her, which he thanked Providence he had no need to do. And she was not allowed to educate herself in the department of cooking, to which Mrs Beecham objected, saying likewise, thank Heaven, they had no need of such messings; that she did not wish her daughter to make a slave of herself, and that Cook would not put up with it. Between these two limits Phœbe's noble ambition was confined, which was a “trial” to her. But she did what she could, bating neither heart nor hope. She read Virgil at least, if not Sophocles, and she danced and dressed though she was not allowed to cook.

All of this is terribly important in terms of what we have discussed previously, in both our Oliphant and Trollope group reads, about how women's lives were changing in the second half of the 19th century.

Phoebe, after all, is "just" a Dissenting minister's daughter; yet all sorts of opportunities were open to her---in theory, at least: it is only her parents' view of what is proper for her that has held her back.

We've touched before on how Germany was considered a seat of advanced learning in the 19th century, and a simple reference to anything German would have carried such connotations: the Beechams wouldn't send her to school, but giving her a German governance suggests their best efforts at higher education within the home.

Meanwhile Phoebe has---

---attended lectures at the ladies' college close by; though, She was not allowed to go in for the Cambridge examinations...

By this time, two women's colleges had been established at Cambridge - Girton and Newnham - the so-called "Girton girls" were a byword in the last decades of the century, the first Englishwomen to receive formal higher education, and the first to do so with a career in mind.

(Though weirdly having gone this far, Cambridge stopped dead: it was the last university to admit women to its main degree courses.)

This passage also alludes to the ongoing public brawl over the "proper" sphere for women, conducted by the conservative John Ruskin, who championed domesticity and "the angel in the house", and John Stuart Mill, the era's leading feminist (who gets name-checked later on). Interestingly, the Beechams apparently don't want Phoebe to be "too" domestic---which they seem to think is "beneath" her.

But this---

She read Virgil at least, if not Sophocles...

Meaning that she has learned Latin but not Greek.

That she did either is fairly striking, particularly given the casual way it is mentioned. (Greek seems to have been interdicted, like cooking---not because she wasn't capable, but because her parents disapproved.) Greek and Latin were still the great barriers in terms of female education, male-only preserves that separated a "real" education from just "learning".

(See---this is why I get angry with Trollope, with his marry-or-starve plots: he simply would not acknowledge that the world was changing, that any of this was happening, that women did have other options. Not just a blind spot, almost a blindfold.)

I am curious about the comments on fashion in Chapter 3. In the passage about Phoebe's hair is the statement:

To be sure the pomades of twenty years ago are, Heaven be praised! unknown to this generation, and washing also has become the fashion, which accounts for something.

Can I take from this that women didn't wash their hair very often twenty years earlier? Or does "washing" actually refer something like a rinse?

Sorry, got called away yesterday, I will try to do better today.

>27 cbl_tn:

The logistics of getting long hair washed, dried and styled were much more difficult before showers and hair-dryers. :)

Yes, this is one of those realistic details that is often not acknowledged: hair washing could be intermittent. But like bathing itself, it was something that became more frequent as the century wore on. (And was a vast improvement from the 18th century when hair often wasn't washed at all: there are plenty of horror stories about that.) Though Oliphant suggests here that it was done for fashion rather than health.

Of course it depended on individual circumstances. Like everything else, getting your hair washed was easier if you were rich enough for servants and fires and professional hair-dressers. There were times when being "properly feminine" meant not cutting your hair at all, which made it even more difficult. And different fashions meant different complications---like pomade, which assisted with styling but was really hard to get out again. It usually wasn't mentioned, but we've encountered hairstyles involving shaped ringlets hanging around the face, which is where it was used.

Sometimes women made things easier for themselves by cutting their hair and then using the early versions of hair extensions to still be fashionable. Think of the different kinds of false hair we've encountered in our Victorian reading (mostly in Trollope, for whom it was obviously a bugbear): Lady Belton's "false front" in The Belton Estate, the chignons in He Knew He Was Right.

(Noting in context that there's a remark by Mrs Tozer about Phoebe's hair later that we need to look out for.)

Following on from this, the discussion between Phoebe and her mother in Chapter 3 about what colours were appropriate for young women to wear is very interesting: that too shows how things were changing. We have Mrs Beecham's remark about "Fair girls wore greens and blues, and dark girls wore reds and yellows" in her youth (so about 1850); while earlier in the century again it was pastels.

The Victorians of this time loved bright colours, whether they were appropriate or not. Phoebe's choice of black - and at a time when it was still associated with formal mourning and was rarely worn otherwise - is radical. (I like the touch of black velvet for her mother, black tulle for her: tulle was very fashionable at this time.) No-one wore white: the fact that Ursula May does marks her as a poor relation (and the colour may have been deliberately chosen for that reason by the Dorsets; or maybe white was cheap because no-one was buying it).

And clearly Phoebe knows what she's doing:

And the consequence of this toilette, and of the fact that Phœbe did her duty by her parents and by Providence, and looked her very best, was that Clarence Copperhead fell a hopeless victim to her fascinations, and scarcely could be induced to leave her side all night...

:D

On the other hand:

Chapter 3:

Amid this throng of people, however, there could be little doubt that the one young lady who attracted his son was the least eligible person there, being no other than Phœbe Beecham, the pastor's daughter...

****

    Mr Copperhead himself came up to them more than once, with meaning in his eyes.
    “Don't be too entertaining, Miss Phœbe,” he said; for he saw no reason why he should not speak plainly in his own house, especially to the minister's daughter...

The fact that Mr Copperhead, though the Beechams' host, thinks he has the right to talk to Phoebe like this - and that Mrs Beecham thinks he does too - gives us another uncomfortable insight into the power imbalance in the relationship of Dissenting minister to his congregation---or more correctly, in that between the congregation and "their" minister.

Ouch:

Chapter 3:

“Confound him! there he is now for ever with that girl in white,” said his father to himself, with great rage. Dozens of good partners in pink and blue were going about the room. What did the boy mean by bestowing himself upon the two poor ones, the black and the white...

****

    “I am a fool if you like,” he said, “the biggest fool going. I like a thing that costs a deal, and is of no use. That's what I call luxury. My boy, Clarence, and my big picture, they're dear; but I can afford 'em, if they were double the price.”
    “If I were you,” said his friend, “I wouldn't hang my picture in this little bit of a hole, nor let my boy waste his time with all the riff-raff in the room. There's Smith's girl and Robinson's niece, both of them worth a cool hundred thousand; and you leave him to flourish about all over the place with a chit in a white frock, and another in a black one. I call that waste, not luxury, for my part.”

This initial, accidental pairing of Phoebe and Ursula will play out interestingly over the rest of the novel.

I started reading chapter 1 today (the free Amazon Kindle version). Was the S.P.G. the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel? And was this a specifically Anglican organization?

>33 NinieB:

Welcome, Ninie!

Yes, that was the Church of England society for sending clergymen to "the colonies"

Thanks, Liz.

>29 lyzard: Great discussion of hair. I love when we get glimpses of everyday life in Victorian novels.

>29 lyzard: Thanks, Liz!

I can remember what an ordeal Saturday nights were when I was little, getting my hair washed and curled for church on Sunday.

>35 NinieB:

Yes, me too. :)

>36 cbl_tn:

The Saturday night bath was a ritual for many communities for a very long time---the end of the six-day work week and getting ready for church. So you had a lot of fellow-sufferers. :D

It's worth remembering too that a lot of places in England, especially in the country, didn't have (what we would consider) proper plumbing until after WWII. So prior to that, whatever was done, was done by manual labour, including heating enough water.

Oliphant paints a harsh picture of Mr Copperhead, but she's not much kinder to Sir Robert Dorset---for all that he is "county" and "Church".

But I think the interest of Chapter 4, and particularly in the wake of Miss Marjoribanks, with its (for the most part) rather gloomy attitude towards marriage, is the discussion here between the Dorset sisters---about the Copperhead marriage, about "interested" marriages and "good matches", which (per Sophy) has a surprising note of cynicism (or practicality, if you prefer) in it:

    “Poor Clara!” said Sir Robert. “She was always a frightened creature. When I recollect her, a poor little governess, keeping behind backs at the nursery parties---and to see her in all her splendour now!”
    “She would keep behind backs still, if she could,” said Miss Dorset.
    “Think of that, Ursula,” cried Sophy; “there is an example for you. She was a great deal worse off than you are; and to see her now, as papa says! You may have a house in Portland Place too, and ask us to balls, and wear diamonds. Think of that! Though last night you looked as frightened as she.”
    “Don't put such demoralising ideas into the child's head. How it is that girls are not ruined,” said Miss Dorset, shaking her head, “ruined! by such examples, I cannot tell. They must have stronger heads than we think. As poor as Cinderella one day, and the next as rich as the Queen---without any merit of theirs, all because some chance man happens to take a fancy to them.”
    “Quite right,” said Sir Robert; “quite right, my dear. It is the natural course of affairs.”
    Miss Dorset shook her head. She went on shaking her head as she poured out the tea...

****

    “If you talk like that,” said Anne Dorset to Sophy, “you will set her little head afloat about good matches, and spoil her too.”
    “And a very good thing,” said Sophy. “If you had put the idea into my head, I should not be Sophy Dorset now. Why shouldn't she think of a good match? Can she live there for ever in that dreadful Parsonage, among all those children whom she does not know how to manage? Don't be absurd, Anne; except an elder daughter like you here and there, you know, girls must marry if they are to be of any consequence in the world. Let them get it into their heads; we can't change what is the course of nature, as papa says.”
    “Oh, Sophy! it is so unwomanly.”
    “Never mind; when a man chuckles and jeers at me because I am unmarried, I think it is unmanly; but they all do it, and no one finds any fault.”
    “Not all surely; not near all.”
    “Don't they? Not to our faces, perhaps; but whenever they write, whenever they speak in public. When men are so mean, why should we train girls up to unnatural high-mindedness? Why, that is the sort of girl who ought to make a good marriage; to 'catch' somebody, or have somebody 'hooked' for her. She is pretty, and soft, and not very wise. I am doing the very best thing in the world for her, when I laugh at love and all that nonsense, and put a good match into her mind.”

There's a lot to unpack in that last passage; and of course, I should concede that, while I highlight increased opportunities for women at this time, this was still the reality for many of them---particularly those who were ladies, but also poor.

And as Sophy points out, being unmarried would still get a woman mocked or insulted (which horrifyingly enough is sometimes still the case even now, though it might be in terms of "being in a relationship").

At the same time, Mrs Copperhead is being tacitly held up to Ursula not as a role-model, but as a warning: be careful what you pray for.

The back end of Chapter 4 also indirectly introduces the May family of Carlingford, with whom we will spend considerable time:

Ursula was as different as possible from Phœbe Beecham. She had no pretensions to be intellectual. She preferred the company even of her very smallest brothers and sisters to the conversation of her papa, though he was known to be one of the most superior men in the diocese. Even when her elder brother Reginald, of whom she was very fond, came home from college, Ursula was more than indifferent to the privileged position of elder sister, by which she was permitted to sit up and assist at the talks which were carried on between him and his father. Reginald was very clever too; he was making his own way at the university by means of scholarships, the only way in which a son of Mr May's was likely to get to the university at all, and to hear him talk with his father about Greek poetry and philosophy was a very fine thing indeed; how Phœbe Beecham, if the chance had been hers, would have prized it; but Ursula did not enjoy the privilege... Her father was no more than Incumbent of St. Roque, an old perpetual curacy merged in a district church, which was a poor appointment for an elderly man with a family; he was very clever and superior, but not a man who got on, or who did much to help his children to get on...

I'm struck by Oliphant's phrasing in that last remark about Mr May: not "not a man who could do much to help his children get on", but "not a man...who did much..."

Something to keep in mind.

Chapter 5:

“Phœbe don't know Carlingford, nor the folks there,” said Mrs Beecham, flushed by the thought, and too much excited to think of the elegancies of diction. She had suffered more than her husband had, and retained a more forcible idea of the perils; and in the pause which ensued, all these perils crowded into her mind. As her own ambition rose, she had felt how dreadful it was to be shut in to one small circle of very small folks. She had felt the injurious line of separation between the shopkeepers and the rest of the world; at least she thought she had felt it. As a matter of fact, I think it very doubtful whether Phœbe Tozer had felt anything of the kind; but she thought so now; and then it was a fact that she was born Phœbe Tozer, and was used to that life, whereas Phœbe Beecham had no such knowledge. She had never been aware of the limitations of a small Dissenting community in a small town, and though she knew how much the Crescent congregation thought of a stray millionnaire like Mr Copperhead (a thing which seemed too natural to Miss Beecham to leave any room for remark), her mother thought that it might have a bad effect upon Phœbe's principles in every way, should she find out the lowly place held by the connection in such an old-fashioned, self-conceited, Tory town as Carlingford...

This is a curious novel in some ways: the class and religious divisions are, I think, as harshly delineated here as at any point in the Carlingford series - everyone seems more conscious of them, perhaps because of their own changes circumstances, and some of the snobbery and prejudice is quite extreme - yet perhaps there is also more of boundaries being broken down here than anywhere else, too. Perhaps the very permeability of those divisions is what prompts the louder declarations in their favour: people protesting too much?

There is also a sense here (one that becomes even stronger later on) of Carlingford getting smaller---stagnating, and even dying. It isn't just the perception of London eyes.

It is the illness of her grandmother, Mrs Tozer---and the need to guard a potential inheritance against the depredations of the relatives on the spot, Tom Tozer and his wife, Mrs Beecham's brother and sister-in-law---that takes Phoebe Beecham from London to Carlingford. Her reactions to the town and her relatives are powerfully negative to an uncomfortable degree---but as everyone agrees, she's a sensible girl, and she finds her ways to adjust.

Chapter 5:

She had a book in her hand, which of itself was a proof of Phœbe's pretensions. It was, I think, one of the volumes of Mr Stuart Mill's “Dissertations.” Phœbe was not above reading novels or other light literature, but this only in the moments dedicated to amusement, and the present hour was morning, a time not for amusement, but for work...

Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical by John Stuart Mill, a three-volume collection of essays originally written for the magazines.

>40 lyzard: This is a curious novel in some ways: the class and religious divisions are, I think, as harshly delineated here as at any point in the Carlingford series

Oh, completely agree--I'm a bit ahead--I'm up to Chapter XVI: The New Gentleman--and the conversation between Phoebe and the "new gentleman" Mr Northcote is so strange. They are trying to "place" one another in terms of class and wealth and religious affiliation. It's like they're sending arrows back and forth, trying to hit the bullseye about each other, but consistently missing the mark.

>42 kac522:

Yes, we really need to talk about that. Also where Oliphant takes it from there, but we won't get ahead of ourselves. :)

Mr Copperhead is quite the creation, isn't he? Oliphant walks a line between making his awfulness almost amusing, at least if you're thick-skinned enough to enjoy it, and his deliberate tormenting of his wife.

Indeed the suggestion is there that he married her chiefly so that he would always have someone around he can torment at his leisure; who will always react, but never respond.

Chapter 6:

    “That would never suit me,” said the rich man; “holding my tongue ain't my way, is it, Mrs Copperhead? What! going, after all, without your tea? I am afraid, ma'am, the Baronet is touchy, and doesn't like what I said. But nobody minds me, I assure you. I say what I think, but I don't mean any harm.”
    “Oh, no,” said Anne, drawing herself up, while her father took leave of poor little tremulous Mrs Copperhead. “We really must go; we have stayed longer than we meant to stay. Ursula---”
    “Your little companion?” said Mr Copperhead. “Ah; you should take care, Miss Dorset, of these little persons. They stand in the way of the young ladies themselves often enough, I can tell you. And so can Mrs Copperhead; she knows.”
    He laughed, and both Anne and Ursula became aware that something offensive was meant; but what it was, neither of them could make out. Mrs Copperhead, whose intelligence had been quickened on that point, perceived it, and trembled more and more...

****

    He went down to the door with them in an excess of civility, offering Anne his arm, which she was obliged to take, much against her will; and even Ursula felt a passing pang of humiliation when the footman threw open the great door before them, and no carriage was visible.
    “Oh, you are walking!” said Mr Copperhead, with one of his big laughs.
    After all, a laugh could hurt nobody. Why was it that they all felt irritated and injured?

But we should also note this from Chapter 2:

    “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...

Poor Mrs Copperhead, as absolutely everyone calls the wife of a millionaire who lives surrounded by every possible luxury...

Oliphant's Carlingford series as a whole is notable for some fascinating female characters, but while Phoebe herself is another of them, I would argue that what really stands out Phoebe, Junior is Mr Copperhead and Mr May---and particularly since the latter is a clergyman.

Again, I don't want to get ahead of things but I am really looking forward to getting reactions about these two, and about how Mr May's subplot fits into Oliphant's depiction of the clashing attitudes of Church and Dissent.

Chapter 7 is curious: Oliphant means it, I think, as something of an explanation of the Copperhead marriage. Comparisons have already been drawn between Mrs Copperhead and Ursula in terms of their personal circumstances; the further suggestion is that they are alike also in being unable to see past the surface of things. As Mrs Copperhead married with visions of luxury in her head, only to discover it poor compensation for her new reality, Ursula is similarly dazzled by her contact with the Copperhead wealth---and perhaps we are to understand, similarly in danger from Clarence:

    “I do not know how to thank you,” said Ursula, “you have been so kind---so very kind.”
    “I have been kind to myself,” said Mrs Copperhead, “I have so enjoyed it; and, my dear,” she added, with some solemnity, still holding Ursula by the hands, “promise you will do me one favour more. It will be such a favour. Whenever you want anything for yourself or your sister will you write to me? I am always in London except in autumn, and I should so like to do your commissions. People who live in London know how to get bargains, my dear. You must promise to let me do them for you. It will make me so happy. Promise!” cried the little woman, quite bright in her excitement. Ursula looked at the two others who were looking on, and did not know what to say.
    “She thinks you are too expensive an agent for her,” said Sophy Dorset, “and I think so too.”
    Mrs Copperhead's face faded out of its pleasant glow.
    “There are two things I have a great deal too much of,” she said, “money and time...”

****

Ursula, for her part, was sorry when the walk was over. She had enjoyed it so much. It was half Regent Street and half Carlingford, with the pleasure of both mixed up together; and she was half little Ursula May with her head in the air, and half that very great lady in the dream-chariot, who had it in her power to make everybody so happy...

Ursula is a more---well, not a complex character, but unusually shaded by Oliphant in a way that wasn't often found in novels of this time.

She is young and pretty and a lady and does her duty (as best she can) towards her father and siblings; but she doesn't like it and makes that quite clear, though she is a clergyman's daughter: literature has taught us to expect more high-mindedness; however Ursula's resentment of her circumstances perhaps makes her more sympathetic than would her being "above" the unpleasantness of her life. And it is unpleasant.

(We should remember all this when assessing Mr May.)

She's the type who would have been presented as a suffering innocent by a male novelist, but Oliphant doesn't allow us wholly to buy into that: there are too many moments when she jars on us:

Chapter 8:

    “But, my dear, think of poor Mrs Copperhead, for example---”
    “Why do you always call her poor Mrs. Copperhead? she is very rich. She can make other people happy when she pleases. She has a beautiful house, and everything---”
    “And a bear, a brute of a husband.”
    “Ah! Does she mind very much?” asked Ursula, with composure. This drawback seemed to her insignificant, in comparison with Mrs Copperhead's greatness. It was only Sophy's laugh that brought her to herself. She said with some haste, putting in her dresses, with her back turned, “I do not mean to say anything silly. When people are as old as she is, do they mind? It cannot matter so much what happens when you are old.”

Just noting the odd introduction of the Dorset children in Chapter 8: astonishing to think that the practice of sending children "home" from India went on well into the 20th century; Oliphant captures in this strange little side-subplot the terror that this dislocation could inflict upon those dispatched across the world to relatives or worse, to boarding-school, in some cases resulting in permanent emotional damage.

In Chapter 9 we finally do arrive in Carlingford, but courtesy of Urula May rather than Phoebe Beecham.

    One of the railway porters, when all the rest of the passengers were disposed of, condescended to carry her trunk, and thus they set out on their way home. The parsonage was close to St. Roque, at the other end of Grange Lane. They had to walk all the way down that genteel and quiet suburban road, by the garden walls over which, at this season, no scent of flowers came, or blossomed branches hung forth. There were red holly-berries visible, and upon one mossy old tree a gray bunch of mistletoe could be seen on the other side of the street. But how quiet it was! They scarcely met a dozen people between the station and St. Roque.
    “Oh, Janey, is everybody dead?” said Ursula. “How dull it is! You should see London---”

There is, on one level, an elegiac feel to Phoebe, Junior---a sense that Carlingford has stagnated, or is even dying. Much later in the book there is a reference to the people who have moved away or died since this series started (many of the characters we know); while the thought of the Tozers actually moving into Grange Lane would have been unthinkable earlier on.

Which brings me to---

Oliphant had a curious relationship to Anthony Trollope: he was one of the authors she was often compared with unfavourably (ironically enough, since critics also liked comparing him unfavourably with other authors), obviously to her own exasperation; yet she clearly appreciated his novels in their own right

The broad resemblance between the Carlingford series and the Barchester books was widely noted, and in this case we have Oliphant deliberately invoking The Last Chronicle Of Barset in her own novel's subtitle, A Last Chronicle Of Carlingford.

On the other hand, when he gets name-checked here, it isn't without a note of criticism.

Meanwhile, Oliphant's novels are peppered with references to Trollope's works, with various incidents and settings reused to her own purpose.

One of the most overt of these nods surely occurs here in Phoebe, Junior, in Reginald May's situation: newly ordained, he has been offered the chaplaincy of a local "college" which provides a residence for a dozen pensioners, but objects to the position as a sinecure. This is a blatant reworking of the central premise of The Warden, wherein Septimus Harding belatedly awakes to the question of whether he is earning his extremely comfortable income in a similar position:

Chapter 9:

    “Oh, Reginald!” cried Ursula. “You have come home!”
    “Yes---for good,” he said with a half-laugh, half-sigh. “Or for bad---who can tell? At all events, here I am.”
    “Why should it be for bad?” cried Janey, whose voice was always audible half-way up the street. “Oh, Ursula, something very nice has happened. He is to be warden of the old college, fancy! That is being provided for, papa says; and a beautiful old house.”
    “Warden of the old college! I thought it was always some old person who was chosen.”
    “But papa says he can live at home and let the house,” cried Janey. “There is no reason why it should be an old gentleman, papa thinks; it is nice, because there is no work---but look at Reginald, he does not like it a bit; he is never satisfied, I am sure, I wish it was me---”

>50 lyzard: I have one comment and one question about Chapter IX:

Comment: I think the first sentence of this chapter is eye-opening:

The party which set out from Suffolk Street next morning was a mighty one; there were the children, the ayah, the new nurse whom Anne had engaged in town, to take charge of her little nephews as soon as they got accustomed to their new life; and Seton, the ancient serving-woman whom the sisters shared between them; and Sir Robert's man, not to speak of Sir Robert himself and the Miss Dorsets and Ursula.

It is so rare (and refreshing) to see all the servants identified as part of the traveling party. I can't remember when I've read all the servants listed before. It reminds you that traveling by persons of this class meant at least one servant (if not more) for every person in the family.

Question: Within the last two pages of this chapter, Ursula shows Janey the presents she has brought:

"Just wait a moment! See what Cousin Anne, whom you think so little of, has sent you," said Ursula, sitting down on the floor with the great parcel in her lap, carefully undoing the knots; for she had read Miss Edgeworth's stories in her youth, and would not have cut the strings for the world...

Does this refer to Maria Edgeworth, and if so, which stories?

>50 lyzard: And yes, the first thought that struck me about Reginald's situation was Mr Harding in The Warden. Except Reginald doesn't have a cello, poor man.

I'm re-reading The Last Chronicle of Barset at the moment, so the parallels and opposites are interesting. I can also see how Mr May and Mr Josiah Crawley (up to this point) have some things in common, and yet are exact opposites in others.

>51 kac522:

When people at this level of society travelled there were usually two carriages involved: sometimes that gets mentioned but rarely the actual servants (you're more likely to get something like, "The servants and the luggage..."). You're right that this sort of roll-call is very unusual.

It does indeed refer to Maria Edgeworth who was one of the first authors to write stories designed for children. Her literature was didactic (of course) but she understood how to engage her readers too. It would have been a rare 19th century child who hadn't read any of them.

The string business is a reference to her story Waste Not, Want Not; or, Two Strings To Your Bow, from her collection The Parent's Assistant; or, Stories For Children: two boys receive parcels, one impatiently cuts off the bindings, one carefully unties the string and keeps it...guess which one's the hero? :D

ETA: Here:

    The two parcels were exactly alike, both of them well tied up with good whip-cord. Ben took his parcel to a table, and, after breaking off the sealing-wax, began carefully to examine the knot, and then to untie it. Hal stood still, exactly in the spot where the parcel was put into his hands, and tried first at one corner, and then at another, to pull the string off by force. “I wish these people wouldn't tie up their parcels so tight, as if they were never to be undone,” cried he, as he tugged at the cord; and he pulled the knot closer instead of loosening it.
    “Ben! why, how did ye get yours undone, man!---what's in your parcel---I wonder what is in mine. I wish I could get this string off---I must cut it.”
    “O, no,” said Ben, who now had undone the last knot of his parcel, and who drew out the length of string with exultation, “don’t cut it, Hal---look what a nice cord this is, and yours is the same: it’s a pity to cut it; 'Waste not, want not', you know.”
    “Pooh!” said Hal, “what signifies a bit of packthread?”
    “It is whip-cord,” said Ben.
    “Well, whip-cord! what signifies a bit of whip-cord! you can get a bit of whip-cord twice as long as that for twopence; and who cares for twopence! Not I, for one! so here it goes,” cried Hal, drawing out his knife; and he cut the cord, precipitately, in sundry places...

>52 kac522:

I wondered whether the business of Frank Wentworth going amongst the poor in Wharfside in The Perpetual Curate was a reference to Mr Crawley and the brickmakers---both doing work that the "nice" clergymen of the district wouldn't touch.

>54 lyzard: Yes, that's true; I didn't think of it at the time. I was thinking in the way that Mr May and Mr Crawley both have large families that they can't support and seem to be (mostly) clueless about money, but they are certainly different men taking vastly different measures.

I am about half-way through both books; it's been some years since I read The Last Chronicle of Barset, so it's in some ways new. (I had completely forgotten about the Dobbs-Broughton/Van Siever/Demolines subplot--probably because it bored me to tears the first time through, and isn't catching my interest much this time, either.)

>53 lyzard: Well, now I'm going to have to find the whole story after that teaser😊 I need to know my fate the next time I break the strings. I only know the superstition about bridal shower gifts: the number of ribbons the bride breaks as she opens her gifts will supposedly equal the number of children she will have.

>54 lyzard:

There's quite a lot I want to say about that but it's too spoileriffic for both novels so I will leave it until the end (and use plenty of tags even then!).

I understand why it's there, but yeah. :)

>56 kac522:

I've never heard that before, that's horrifying! (Particularly for someone as clutzy as *I* am!)

I think we've been in agreement about the strength of Oliphant's female characters in this series, but this novel is certainly notable for its men---at least, the older ones.

The introduction of Mr May in Chapter 10 is jarring, with its slide from an apparently affectionate father (though note the suggestion that he is posing for any spectators: He was not himself unconscious of this...) to his sudden rage and insulting language towards Ursula, when the matter of Reginald's "sinecure" comes up:

    “He thinks it better to be idle at his father's expense than to do a little work for a handsome salary,” said Mr May; “everything is right that is extracted from his father's pocket, though it is contrary to a high code of honour to accept a sinecure. Fine reasoning that, is it not? The one wrongs nobody, while the other wrongs you and me and all the children, who want every penny I have to spend; but Reginald is much too fine to think of that. He thinks it quite natural that I should go on toiling and stinting myself.”
    “Papa, it may be very wrong what he is doing; but if you think he wants to take anything from you---”
    “Hold your tongue,” said her father; “I believe in deeds, not in words. He has it in his power to help me, and he chooses instead, for a miserable fantastic notion of his own, to balk all my care for him. Of course the hospital was offered to him out of respect for me. No one cares for him. He is about as much known in Carlingford as---little Amy is. Of course it is to show their respect to me. And here he comes with his fantastic nonsense about a sinecure!”

Noting who it is that sees Mr May with his youngest children:

Chapter 10:

    He was a tall man, and the sight of him triumphantly dragged in by these imps, the youngest of whom was about up to his knees, was pretty, and would have gone to the heart of any spectator. He was not himself unconscious of this, and when he was in a good humour, and the children were neat and tolerably dressed, he did not object to being seen by the passers-by dragged up his own steps by those two little ones. The only passers-by, however, on this occasion were a retired shopkeeper and his wife, who had lately bought one of the oldest houses in Grange Lane, and who had come out for a walk as the day was fine. “Mark my words, Tozer,” the lady was saying, “that's a good man though he's a church parson. Them as children hangs onto like that, ain't got no harm in them.”
    “He's a rum un, he is,” said Mr Tozer in reply. It was a pity that the pretty spectacle of the clergyman with his little boy and girl should have been thus thrown away upon a couple of Dissenters, yet it was not without its effect...

Chapter 11:

Phœbe was quite ready to allow that Clarence was everything that her mother had said, and she had fully worked out her own theory on marriage, which will probably be hereafter expounded in these pages, so that she was not at all shocked by having his advantages thus pointed out to her. But there was no hurry, she said to herself. If it was not Clarence Copperhead, it would be some one else, and why should she, at this early stage of her career, attempt to precipitate the designs of Providence? She had plenty of time before her, and was in no hurry for any change; and a genuine touch of nature in her heart made her anxious for an opportunity of showing her independence to that arrogant and offensive “leading member,” who made the life of the office-bearers in the Crescent a burden to them. If she could only so drive him into a corner, that he should be obliged to come to her in his despair, and beg her to accept his son's hand to save him from going off in a galloping consumption, that would have been a triumph after Phœbe's heart. To be sure this was a perfectly vain and wildly romantic hope---it was the only bit of wild and girlish romance in the bosom of a very well-educated, well-intentioned, and sensible young woman...

I've just gotten a copy of the book from a university library so I will try to speed read to catch up.

>61 kayclifton:

No worries, Kay: I'm dawdling because of a difficult week and need to catch up myself. :)

Chapter 12 finally sees Phoebe Beecham arrive in Carlingford.

Phoebe's reaction to her grandparents and her surroundings are strikingly negative---though in this we are probably imposing novelistic convention over realism. Her response is understandable if uncomfortably coloured with the class prejudice we touched on earlier; but these are not the sentiments we expect from the protagonist of a Victorian novel.

This is one of a number of places where, I think, Oliphant surprises us.

Moreover, Phobe never really gets past this, though she learns to cope; and this fact influences some of her later choices.

Phœbe, however, knew her grandfather perfectly well as soon as she saw him, though he had not perceived her, and was wandering anxiously up and down in search of her. She held back in her corner for the moment, to overcome the shock. Yes, there could be no doubt about it; there he was, he whom she was going to visit, under whose auspices she was about to appear in Carlingford. He was not even like an old Dissenting minister, which had been her childish notion of him. He looked neither more nor less than what he was, an old shopkeeper, very decent and respectable, but a little shabby and greasy, like the men whose weekly bills she had been accustomed to pay for her mother. She felt an instant conviction that he would call her “Ma'am,” if she went up to him, and think her one of the quality. Poor Phœbe! she sat back in her corner and gave a gasp of horror and dismay..

****

And these were, indeed, the dutiful sentiments with which she made her entry upon this passage in her life, not minding anything but to be of use. The first glimpse of old Tozer, indeed, made it quite evident to Phœbe that nothing but duty could be within her reach. Pleasure, friends, society, the thought of all such delights must be abandoned. And as for Clarence Copperhead and the Miss Dorsets, the notion of meeting or receiving them was too absurd. But Duty remained, and Phœbe felt herself capable of the sacrifice demanded from her...

****

Notwithstanding all her courage, her heart sank. She had expected “a difference,” but she had not looked for her grandfather's greasy coat and wisp of neckcloth, or her grandmother's amazing cap, or the grammatical peculiarities in which both indulged. She had a good hot fit of crying, and for the moment felt so discouraged and depressed, that the only impulse in her mind was to run away...

Chapter 13:

    “A shop is a cheerful sort of thing. I dare say your mother has told you---”
    “No,” said Phœbe, under her breath; but the reply was not noticed. She nearly dropped the teapot out of her hand when she heard the word---Shop! Yes, to be sure, that was what being “in trade” meant, but she had never quite realised it till now. Phœbe was going through a tremendous piece of mental discipline in these first days. She writhed secretly, and moaned to herself---why did not mamma tell me? but she sat quite still outside, and smiled as if it was all quite ordinary and natural, and she had heard about the shop all her life. It seemed cruel and unkind to have sent her here without distinct warning of what she was going to meet.

...and things go from bad to worse when Phoebe is introduced to Tom and Mrs Tom; though it does strengthen her resolve not to leave her grandmother "unguarded":

Chapter 13:

    “How do you do? My mother wished me to come at once, to bring her kind regards. Is my uncle at home?”
    “No, Miss, your uncle ain't at home,” said Mrs. Tom, “but you might be civil, all the same, and put a name to me, more nor if I was a dog. I'm your aunt, I am---and I likes all my titles, I do---and proper respect.”
    “Surely,” said Phœbe, with a bow and a gracious smile---but she did not add that name. She was pleased to think that “Tom's wife” was her mother's favourite aversion, and that a dignified resistance to her claims was, so to speak, her duty.

But of course, Phoebe's not the only one guilty of class and religious snobbery.

In the wake of Phoebe's involuntary recoil from her grandparents, Oliphant gives us, in essence, a rolling joke over the next chapter or so, with all sorts of people being mistaken about other people's identities and social standings: a joke in which Phoebe herself is on the receiving end, not that she is aware of it.

Dissenters and Churchpeople alike stand exposed in some very irreligious attitudes! :)

Chapter 14:

    “You don't know the plague of relations, and how people have got to humble themselves to keep money in the family, or keep up appearances, especially people that have risen in the world. I declare I think they pay dear for rising in the world, or their poor children pay dear---”
    “You seem to take a great deal of interest in the Tozers,” said Ursula, glad to administer a little correction; “even if they came to St. Roque's I could understand it---but Dissenters!” This arrow struck home.
    “Well,” said Mrs Hurst, colouring, “of all people to take an interest in Dissenters I am the last...”

(We have a double joke here, since that really is why Phoebe has come to Carlingford.)

****

“I don't suppose she has any position, being old Tozer's grandchild. But she wasn't amiss in her looks, and I declare I should have taken her for a lady if I had met her in the street. It shows how one may be taken in. And this is a lesson for you, young girls; you must never trust to appearances.”

****

There was some one there, however, who came down the muddy path, all cut up by the wheel-barrows, with a smile upon his face. A gentleman? Janey called him so without a doubt on the subject; but Ursula, more enlightened and slightly irritated, had her doubts...

I think we're also given a pretty clear idea of the social limitations of modern-day Carlingford, in Janey May's reaction to the sight of a strange man:

Chapter 14:

    “I don't care,” cried Janey; “you're just as fond of news as I am, only you won't confess it. I am dying to know who he is. He is quite nice-looking, and tall and grand. A new gentleman! Come, quick, Ursula; let us get back and see where he goes.”
    “Janey!” cried the elder sister. She was half curious herself, but Ursula was old enough to know better, and to be ashamed of the other's naïve and undisguised curiosity. “Oh, what would Cousin Anne say! A girl running after a gentleman (even if he is a gentleman), to see where he goes!”
    “Well!” cried Janey, “if she wants to know, what else is she to do? Who cares for Cousin Anne? She is an old maid. Why, if it had been a lady, I shouldn't have minded. There are so many ladies; but a new gentleman!”

(I can't help here but think back to Lucilla Marjoribanks' Thursday evening parties: where have all the young men gone?)

Joke's on---well, everyone:

Chapter 14:

    “Ursula, oh,” cried Janey, suddenly changing her tone, and looking at her sister with eyes which had widened to twice their natural size with the grandeur of the idea, “you will have to ask her to tea!”
    “Oh, you silly girl, do you think she would come? you should have seen her at the ball. She knew everybody, and had such quantities of partners. Mr Clarence Copperhead was always dancing with her. Fancy her coming to tea with us.”

These scenes of social manoeuvring and snobbery, and the wry tone that Oliphant uses during the preceding chapter or two, makes the sudden shift to Mr May's extraordinary outburst towards his children all the more jolting.

Chapter 15:

    “And what do you call your nominal curateship,” said his father, “is not that a sinecure too?”
    “If it is,” said Reginald, growing red, but feeling bolder, for here the family veered round, and placed itself on his side, “it is of a contrary kind. It is sine pay. My work may be bad, though I hope not, but my pay is nothing. I don't see any resemblance between the two.”
    “Your pay nothing!” cried the father, enraged; “what do you call your living, your food that you are so fastidious about, your floods of beer and all the rest of it---not to speak of tailors' bills much heavier than mine?”
    “Which are never paid.”
    “Whose fault is it that they are never paid? yours and the others who weigh me down to the ground, and never try to help or do anything for themselves. Never paid! how should I have gone on to this period and secured universal respect if they had never been paid? I have had to pay for all of you,” said Mr May, bitterly, “and all your vagaries; education, till I have been nearly ruined; dresses and ribbons, and a hundred fooleries for these girls, who are of no use, who will never give me back a farthing.”
    “Papa!” cried Ursula and Janey in one breath.
    “Hold your tongues! useless impedimenta, not even able to scrub the floors, and make the beds, which is all you could ever be good for---and you must have a servant forsooth to do even that. But why should I speak of the girls?” he added, with a sarcastic smile, “they can do nothing better, poor creatures; but you! who call yourself a man---a University man, save the mark---a fine fellow with the Oxford stamp upon you, twenty-three your next birthday. It is a fine thing that I should still have to support you.”

Perhaps the only thing more unexpected than this speech on the lips of an English country clergyman in a Victorian novel is the response from the May children, which is equally unprecedented---particularly the language used by Janey, without criticism:

“Whose fault is it that he gets such a reception?” burst forth Janey, the moment her father had closed the door. “Who does it all, I wonder? Who treats us like a set of wretches without any feeling? I can't hush, I won't hush! Oh, shouldn't I be glad to go out as a housemaid, to do anything!”

****

As for Janey, she made a dash at the writing-table and brought him paper and pens and ink, “Say yes, say yes,” she cried; “oh, Reginald, if it was only to spite papa!”

I'm just back from a holiday so I'll grab my copy and try to catch up!

The volume that I have is a "Broadview Literary Text' and has background information on the Victorian era and other interesting information including Oliphant's biography. She had an interesting and unusual life especially for someone of her generation.

>69 Sakerfalcon:

Hope you had a nice time, Claire, join in when you can.

>70 kayclifton:

I didn't know there was a Broadview edition, brilliant! Be careful of spoilers, though. :)

Noting that Mr May's explosion at his children would originally have marked the end of Volume I.

Volume II opens with the formal introduction of "the new gentleman"; and we see that Ursula was correct to hesitate over the classification of "gentleman".

Oliphant spends some time offering up contradictory evidence about Mr Northcote. He is a kind of Dissenter we haven't seen before, better born and educated, and independently wealthy to the point that he can afford to ignore the usual social demands of his congregation. Perhaps fortunately, he's only in Carligford temporarily, because we saw how evading that particular duty worked out for Arthur Vincent in Salem Chapel.

Of course with that background, Northcote also struggles to fit in with the local Dissenting community: he, too, suffers from the religious and class conflict that we have already observed via Phoebe (and soon will with Ursula, when she finds out who Phoebe is). Oxford aside, he is a Dissenter with a Churchman's upbringing.

(Yes, something to keep in mind: Mr Northcote did not attend Oxford, but Clarence Copperhead did.)

The class barrier in this respect remains impermeable, but the way in which Oliphant shows the similarities taking precedence over the differences between characters of similar "standing" is an interesting comment on the way things were changing. (Again, recall Arthur Vincent's total failure to penetrate Lady Western's social circle.)

Chapter 16:

    “Yes; society is flat enough,” said the young man. “But---it is strange and rather painful, though perhaps it is wrong to say so---why, I wonder, are all our people of one class? Perhaps you have not seen much of them here? All of one class, and that---”
    “Not an attractive class,” said Phœbe, with a little sigh. “Yes, I know.”
    “Anything but an attractive class; not the so-called working men and such like. One can get on with them. It is very unpleasant to have to say it; buying and selling now as we have it in Manchester does not contract the mind. I suppose we all buy and sell more and less. How is it? When it is tea and sugar---”
    “Or butter and cheese,” said Phœbe with a laugh, which she could not quite keep from embarrassment. “I must be honest and tell you before you go any further. You don't know that I belong to the Tozers, Mr Northcote, who are in that line of business. Don't look so dreadfully distressed. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you, had you not been sure to find out. Old Mr Tozer is my grandfather, and I am staying there. It is quite simple. Papa came to Carlingford when he was a young clergyman, newly ordained. He was pastor at Salem Chapel, and married mamma, who was the daughter of one of the chief members. I did not know myself when I came to Carlingford that they actually kept a shop, and I did not like it. Don't apologise, please. It is a very difficult question,” said Phœbe philosophically, partly to ease herself, partly to set him at his ease, “what is best to do in such a case. To be educated in another sphere and brought down to this, is hard. One cannot feel the same for one's relations; and yet one's poor little bit of education, one's petty manners, what are these to interfere with blood relationships? And to keep everybody down to the condition they were born, why, that is the old way---”
    “Miss Beecham, I don't know what to say. I never meant---I could not tell. There are excellent, most excellent people in all classes.”
    “Exactly so,” said Phœbe, with a laugh. “We all know that; one man is as good as another---if not better. A butterman is as good as a lord; but---” she added, with a little elevation of her eyebrows and shrug of her shoulders...

This is an important chapter in terms of the issues touched upon above.

But it also allows Oliphant, via Phoebe, to have some fun with Mr Northcote, when his lecture to Phoebe about the unimportance of the personal evaporates in the face of being trapped into tea with the Tozers:

Chapter 16:

    “I don't think England would be much nicer if we were all Dissenters. To be sure we might be more civil to each other.”
    “If there were no Dissenters, you mean.”
    “It comes to much the same thing; congregations are not pleasant masters, are they, Mr Northcote? I know some people---one at least,” said Phœbe, “who is often very insolent to papa; and we have to put up with it---for the sake of peace, papa says. I don't think in the Church that any leading member could be so insolent to a clergyman.”
    “That is perhaps rather---forgive me---a narrow, personal view.”
    “Wait till you get a charge, and have to please the congregation and the leading members!” cried Phœbe. “I know what you are thinking: it is just like a woman to look at a public question so. Very well; after all women are half the world, and their opinion is as good as another.”
    “I have the greatest respect for your opinion,” said young Northcote; “but we must not think of individual grievances. The system, with all its wrongs, is what occupies me.”

****

    “What of the meeting, Mr Northcote? I hope you'll give it them Church folks 'ot and strong, sir. They do give themselves airs, to be sure, in Carlingford. Most of our folks is timid, seeing for one thing as their best customers belong to the Church. That don't touch me, not now-a-days,” said Tozer, with a laugh, “not that I was ever one as concealed my convictions. I hope you'll give it 'em 'ot and strong.”
    “I shall say what I think,” said the young man bewildered. He was by no means broken into the ways of the connection, and his pride rebelled at the idea of being schooled by this old shopkeeper; but the sight of Phœbe standing by not only checked his rebellious sentiments, but filled him with a sympathetic thrill of feeling. What it must be for that girl to own this old man, to live with him, and feel herself shut into his society and friends of his choosing---to hear herself spoken of as Phœbe, junior! The idea made him shiver, and this caught old Tozer's always hospitable eye.
    “You're chilly,” he said, “and I don't wonder after the dreadful weather we've had. Few passes my door without a bite or a sup, specially at tea-time, Mr Nor'cote, which is sociable time, as I always says. Come in and warm yourself and have a cup of tea...”

Oliphant continues to cut Mr Northcote down to size---not to his face, but in terms of how other people think of him, as opposed to how he sees himself:

Chapter 16:

“My old woman always said as our Phœbe was cut out for a minister's wife. And Phœbe junior's just such another,” cried the admiring grandfather. Heavens above! did this mean traps and snares for himself, or did the old shopkeeper think of him, Horace Northcote, as another possible victim? If he had but known with what sincere compassionate toleration Phœbe regarded him, as a young man whom she might be kind to, he might have been saved all alarm on this point. The idea that a small undistinguished Dissenting minister should think her capable of marrying him, was a humiliation which did not enter into Phœbe's head.

Chapter 17:

“Besides, it's very instructive, as I've always heard: and you as is clever, of course you'll understand every word. Mr Northcote is a nicish-looking sort of young man. Ministers mayn't be much,” said Mrs Tozer, “though just see how your papa has got on, my dear...”

Ah!

Time for some notes on fashion. :D

When we had our discussion of hair up-thread (in >27 cbl_tn: and >29 lyzard:) and this is the remark by Mrs Tozer that I was thinking of:

Chapter 17:

“Run, there's a darling, and put on something bright, and a nice lace collar. You can have mine if you like. I shouldn't grudge nothing, not a single thing I've got, to see you looking as nice as the best there; and so you will if you take a little pains. I'd do up my hair a bit higher if I was you; why, Phœbe, I declare! you haven't got a single pad. Now what is the use of neglecting yourself, and letting others get ahead of you like that?”

When I was talking earlier about ringlet styles and the need for pomade, this is what I was referring to: this is mid-19th century:



But then I found this, which is brilliant, and which we should keep for reference in future:

This is an exemplar of 19th century hairstyles from the 1850s through to the 1880s. You can see that they get simpler as time passes. (For those of you who were with us for He Knew He Was Right, note the chignon in the third row!) The bottom row is more or less where we are in Phoebe, Junior, when pomade was out and washing was in:



However, women were still "cheating" to get the necessary body of hair, and one of the ways they did so was either using outright false hair, or by making hair-pads using the hair collected from their own brushes: since these were the woman's own hair they would match in a way that false hair might not. These pads were named according to how they were used. This is a quote from a fashion magazine of the 1860s:

“The rats are the long frizetts of curled hair for the side rolls; the mice are the smaller ones above them; the cat is for the roll laid over the top of the head; and the cataract is for the chignon at the back of the head---which is sometimes called waterfall, cataract, and jet d’eau.”

All this reached its peak in the 1860s, fading out of fashion over the next two decades. (Since we find Mrs Tozer agitating for a pad here, we can assume they were entirely "out" in London!)

Big hair - and false hair - would come roaring back in the Edwardian era, however, with the need to support the extraordinary sweeping hats of the era.

Fashion note #2:

Chapter 16:

His dress was one of the signs of his character and meaning. Strong in a sense of his own clerical position, he believed in uniform as devoutly as any Ritualist, but he would not plagiarise the Anglican livery and walk about in a modified soutane and round hat like “our brethren in the Established Church,” as Mr Beecham kindly called them. To young Northcote they were not brethren, but enemies, and though he smiled superior at the folly which stigmatised an M.B. waistcoat, yet he scorned to copy. Accordingly his frock coat was not long, but of the extremest solemnity of cut and hue...

There's a lot to unpack here.

Certainly all through Trollope's Barchester books but also in other Victorian novels we have noted the "signifiers" that followed the Oxford Movement and the High Church / Low Church conflict that followed.

Seriously or not, we have seen how certain objects were considered a sign that a minister was not just High Church, but very High Church, or too High Church---the latter terms being hints that he was probably a secret Catholic intent on "corrupting" his flock. Trollope was always fond of a red cross on someone's prayer-book as a suggestion that a minister might be straying too far. (As for candles, tsk!)

The critical detail here, though, is this:

...he smiled superior at the folly which stigmatised an M.B. waistcoat...

An M. B. waistcoat was one that did not open down the front, but was perfectly plain. It was an item worn by High Church ministers from the 1830s onwards, which marks it another post-Oxford Movement signifier. I can find casual usage of the term in popular literature from about 1850.

Incredibly, "M. B." stood for Mark of the Beast. I'm assuming that the High Church ministers themselves didn't call it that! - but rather, like the candles and the red crosses, that it was considered another sign that someone was probably secretly Catholic.

Mr Northcote, to his credit, doesn't go in for this sort of labelling, but we see that he is nevertheless fully aware of the signlals that a minister sent by his choice of dress.

I just visited the Virago Phoebe Junior page and I am a bit disappointed at the illustration on the cover.

The Broadview edition has a wonderful black and white photo of a young woman of that era. it is a closeup photo and

her dress is exquisite.

>77 kayclifton: This cover?

>77 kayclifton:, >78 kac522:

I don't think either of them is quite correct: the Virago cover is later than the time / styles we're dealing with, and that one looks like it might be a bit early: does the Broadview copy give a source for its cover?

Chapter 17 has three different interesting things going on in it.

We've seen how the Dissenters rejected many forms of popular entertainment such as the theatre, but here we find them, in effect, treating a (supposedly) serious religious meeting more or less as a substitute---wearing their best, and going to see and be seen, quite as much as to hear speeches about the iniquities of the Church of England.

And in conjunction with that, poor Phoebe basically finds herself an exhibit---made to sit up front by her grandfather and having her outfit dissected by the crowd (Mrs Tom not least).

As always, though, she rises to the occasion:

Phœbe paid no more attention to the discomfited man at her elbow. She gathered up her shawl in her hand with a seeming careless movement, and let it drop lightly across her knee, where the gold threads in the embroidery caught the light; and she took off her hat, which she had thought proper to wear to show her sense that the Meeting was not an evening party; and prepared herself to listen. Her complexion and her hair, and the gold threads in the rich Indian work, thus blazed out together upon the startled audience. Many of them were as much struck by this as by the beginning of Mr. Northcote's speech...

But the highlight of the evening is Mr Northcote giving it to 'em 'ot and strong, as Mr Tozer would say, in a speech directed at Reginald May and the sinecure that he didn't want:

“I understand that this heavy and onerous duty has been offered---not to some other mouldy old gentleman, some decayed clergyman who might have ministered in peace to the decayed old burghers without any interference on my part: for a refuge for the aged and destitute has something natural in it, even when it is a wrong appropriation of public money. No, this would have been some faint approach perhaps to justice, some right in wrong that would have closed our mouths. But no! it is given to a young gentleman, able-bodied, as I have said, who has appeared more than once in the cricket-field with your victorious Eleven, who is fresh from Oxford, and would no more condescend to consider himself on a footing of equality with the humble person who addresses you, than I would, having the use of my hands, accept a disgraceful sinecure! Yes, my friends, this is what the State Church does. She so cows the spirit and weakens the hearts of her followers that a young man at the very beginning of his career, able to teach, able to work, able to dig, educated and trained and cultured, can stoop to accept a good income in such a position as this.”

But the double punchline to all this is the revelation that Mr May was present for this speech, and that at least some of his outrageous attack on his children in Chapter 15 was a put-on---intended to bullock Reginald into accepting the position at the college before he can hear about Mr Northcote's speech; after which he would certainly not take it.

In Chapter 18 Oliphant begins to flesh out the character of Mr May, and to reveal to us the hidden driving force behind many of his actions:

Mr May had always a bill coming due, which James's remittances arrived just in time to meet. Indeed, this was the normal condition of his life. He had always a bill coming due---a bill which some good-humoured banker had to be coaxed into renewing, or which was paid at the last moment by some skilful legerdemain in the way of pouring out of one vessel into another, transferring the debt from one quarter to another, so that there may have been said to be always a certain amount of quite fictitious and visionary money floating about Mr May, money which existed only in the shape of symbol, and which, indeed, belonged to nobody---which was borrowed here to-day, and paid there to-morrow, to be re-borrowed and repaid in the same way, never really reaching anybody's pocket, or representing anything but that one thing which money is supposed to be able to extinguish---debt. When human affairs reach this very delicate point, and there is nothing at any moment, except a semi-miraculous windfall, to keep a man going, the crisis is very serious. And it was no wonder that Mr May was anxious to drive his son into accepting any possible appointment, and that he occasionally railed unreasonably at his family. Unless a hundred pounds or so fell down from the skies within the next ten days, he saw nothing before him but ruin...

Bills and debts and borrowing are a staple of Victorian literature, but there is something almost shocking about finding a clergyman in this position---not in debt, as such (we've seen that before), but with respect to how Mr May handles, or mishandles, the situation.

We recall, too, Reginald's remark that it is not his tailor's bill that is never paid.

We also need to stop and give due tribute to Ursula, who is stuck with trying run the household under what we increasingly understand are extremely difficult conditions:

Nobody could say (he thought to himself) that he was an expensive man; he had no expensive habits. He liked good living, it is true, and a glass of good wine, but this amount of regard for the table does not ruin men. He liked books also, but he did not buy them, contenting himself with such as the library could afford, and those which he could obtain by the reviews he wrote for the Church Magazines. How then was it that he never could get rid of that rapidly maturing bill? He could not tell. Keeping out of debt is one thing, and getting rid of it when you have once taken its yoke upon your neck is another. His money, when he had any, “slipped through his fingers,” as people say. When James's remittance or any other piece of good fortune gave him enough to pay that hundred pounds without borrowing elsewhere, he borrowed elsewhere all the same. It was a mysterious fatality, from which he seemed unable to escape...

Now, though I said that debt-plots appear all through Victorian literature, if there is anything in this subplot that anyone does not understand, please speak up, because it's really important that we all grasp what's going on here.

Particularly shocking here is the revelation of how Mr May has taken advantage of poor Mr Cotsdean.

We understand that Mr May, having worn out his welcome with the Carlingford gentleman, has resorted to persuading (or bullying) one of the local tradesmen into signing his bill---that is, acting as guarantor for the amount borrowed.

If the bill is not paid or (somehow) renewed, it will mean ruin for both Mr May and Mr Cotsdean.

That said, there will be two very different kinds of ruin: Mr May will be exposed and shamed, but Mr Cotsdean will be literally ruined---bankrupted, with his property and his business sold from underneath him to pay the bill.

We need to keep that in mind all through the interactions of the two men, and as Oliphant reveals to us how each thinks about the other:

Chapter 18:

    “Cotsdean,” he said, “have I ever failed you yet? You have done a good deal for me, I don't deny it---you have had all the trouble, but beyond that what have you suffered except in imagination? If you choose to exaggerate dangers, it is not my fault. Your children are as safe as---as safe as the Bank of England. Now, have I ever failed you? answer me that.”
    “I can't say as you have, sir,” said Cotsdean, “but it's dreadful work playing with a man's ruin, off and on like this, and nobody knowing what might happen, or what a day or an hour might bring forth.”
    “That is very true,” said Mr May. “I might die, that is what you mean; very true, though not quite so kind as I might have expected from an old friend---a very old friend.”
    “I am sure, Sir, I beg your pardon,” cried the poor man, “it wasn't that; but only just as I'm driven out o' my seven senses with thinking and thinking.”
    “My dear Cotsdean, don't think; there could not be a more unnecessary exercise; what good does your thinking do, but to make you unhappy? leave that to me. We have been driven into a corner before now, but nothing has ever happened to us. You will see something will turn up this time. I ask you again, have I ever failed you?”

Sorry for being absent longer than I intended, we're having a crisis at work. I'll try to catch up over the weekend. I do have to say that Phoebe, junior reminds me a lot Miss Marjoribanks with her levelheadedness!

>83 MissWatson:

Sorry to hear that, but no worries.

I think Oliphant ends up doing some things with Phoebe she didn't quite dare do ten years earlier, with Lucilla. :)

Chapter 18:

There were still two days; but if before that he could not make some provision, what was to be done? He was not a cruel or bad man, and would have suffered keenly had anything happened to poor Cotsdean and his family on his account. But they must be sacrificed if it came to that...

There are many indications of how much Carlingford has changed over (what would be, internally) the last twenty years; this is almost shocking---

Chapter 19:

“And the house,” cried Ursula, when Mr May had left the breakfast-table, and left them free to chatter. “The house---I don't think you are likely to find a tenant for it. The houses in Grange Lane are so cheap now...”

Chapter 19:

    Phœbe represented to Ursula the only glimpse she had ever had into a world which looked gay and splendid to the country girl---a world in which Phœbe had appeared to her as a princess reigning in glory and delight. Ursula forgot both her companions and her recent occupation. Would the young lady in black notice her; stop, perhaps, and talk to her---remember her? Her eyes began to glow and dance with excitement. She stumbled as she went on in her anxiety, fixing her eyes upon the approaching figure. Phœbe, for her part, was taking a constitutional walk up and down Grange Lane, and she too was a little moved, recognising the girl, and wondering what it would be wisest to do---whether to speak to her, and break her lonely promenade with a little society, or remember her “place,” and save herself from further mortification by passing the clergyman's daughter, who was a cousin of the Dorsets, with a bow.
    “The Dorsets wouldn't recognise me, nor Miss May either,” Phœbe said to herself, “if they knew---”

Chapter 20:

    “Now do tell, as the Americans say. Who is that Tozer girl?”
    “That Tozer girl!” Ursula gave a little shriek, and grew first red and then pale with horror and dismay.
    “Yes; I told you about her; so well dressed and looking so nice. That was she; with the very same dress, such a charming dress! so much style about it. Who is she, Ursula? Mr May, tell me who is she? You can't imagine how much I want to know.”
    Ursula dropped into a chair, looking like a little ghost, faint and rigid...
    “There must be some mistake,” said Reginald, interposing. “This is a lady---my sister met her in town with the Dorsets.”
    “Oh, does she know the Dorsets too?” said the inquirer.     “That makes it still more interesting. Yes, that is the girl that is with the Tozers; there can be no mistake about it. She is the granddaughter.”

****

“Ursula, you take my advice, and don't go and mix yourself up with Dissenters and that kind of people. The Tozer girl may be very nice, but she is still Tozer's granddaughter, after all.”

Though we've talked about the overt class and religious divisions in this novel, the takeaway message might be that with changing social conditions, with people being more geographically and socially mobile, and with better educational opportunities, those divisions were under assault; the boundaries much more permeable. What Oliphant does with her characters from this point is very interesting.

Back to Chapter 19 for a moment:

    “Yes,” said Reginald, “if Miss---if we can make up a party---if you,” he added with a perfectly new inflection in his voice, “will come too.”
    “I see you don't know my name,” said Phœbe, with a soft little laugh. “It is Beecham. One never catches names at a party. I remembered yours because of a family in a novel that I used to admire very much in my girlish days---”
    “Oh! I know,” cried Janey, “the Daisy Chain. We are not a set of prigs like those people. We are not goody, whatever we are; we---”
    “I don't suppose Miss Beecham cares for your opinion of the family character,” said Reginald in a tone that made Janey furious...

If, when we are done with this final Carlingford novel, we do manage to get back on track with the chronological Virago reads, we should be tackling Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain.

I will be interested to see who agrees with Janey's assessment! :D

Meanwhile, it is only at this point that Reginald learns (more or less) what was said of him at the Dissenters' meeting.

He learns much more definitely when he gets his hands on a newspaper, in which Mr Northcote's speech has been printed; while the reality of the situation is another blow to poor Ursula's previously ill-informed hopes:

Chapter 20:

“Old Green in the chair! and old Tozer and the rest have all been sitting upon me,” he said, with that laugh which is proverbially described as from the wrong side of the mouth, whatever that may be. Ursula said nothing in reply, but in her heart she felt yet another stab. Tozer! This was another complication. She had taken so great a romantic interest in the heroine of that ball, which was the most entrancing moment of Ursula's life, that it seemed a kind of disloyalty to her dreams to give up thus completely, and dethrone the young lady in black; but what could the poor girl do? In the excitement of this question the personality of Reginald's special assailant was lost altogether: the girls did not even remember his name...

In between these two extremes we get the remarkable intimation that Clarence Copperhead is on his way to Carlingford, to be taken on as a pupil by Mr May.

This may seem inexplicable given that we know that Clarence is at Oxford---but it might be more correct to say that he *was* at Oxford.

Two different pieces of slang are applied to Clarence's university career going forward: we are informed that he has been both "plucked" and "ploughed".

As far as I understand it, "plucked" means that Clarence performed so badly in his examinations, he has failed to meet the necessary standard for continuing his studies. "Ploughed", I gather, means he failed his viva voce exams too, that is, couldn't answer any questions.

If anyone has anything to add here, please do!

>79 lyzard:

The Broadview cover is a photo of Miss Fanny Woodbury of Montreal QC by William Notman from the "McCord Museum of Canadian History"
As I was scanning the book's bibliography I found the title of a biography I had read a few years ago by Elisabeth Jay Mrs Oliphant: A Fiction to Herself and I recalled the troubles that Oliphant had to face during her life. I found this description of them online:

"Storytelling Provided an Escape from Tragedy
"During most of her writing career, Oliphant was responsible for supporting numerous dependents. Her brother Frank went bankrupt in 1868, and died a few years later, leaving his children in her care. There was also her alcoholic brother, Willie, to support, as well as her sons, who failed to become financially independent. Although Cyril attended Oxford University, he never graduated and instead rang up debts, and Cecco also required financial support"........

She certainly was remarkable.

I've finished, with mixed feelings.

>88 lyzard: Reviews I've seen of The Daisy Chain are mixed; I do want to read The Heir of Redclyffe one day.

>91 kayclifton:

Thanks for those notes, Kay.

Yes, we touched on some of that when we started out this series of reads: she got criticised at the time for the rapidity with which she worked but honestly I think it's remarkable that she maintained such quality given her circumstances and the pressure she was working under.

>92 kac522:

Well done, Kathy! Hold those thoughts, please. (Please!)

Well...that's what these reads are all about, isn't it? - diversions?? :D

I have read The Heir Of Redclyffe but so long ago the memories are vague. I would be happy to revisit if there was interest in doing that before we (or I) move on to The Daisy Chain.

>92 kac522:
>94 lyzard:
I have read both of them and if memory serves me I think that of the two, I enjoyed The Heir of Redclyffe the best.

Both of the books I obtained from university libraries.

The Daisy Chain was one of the first Viragos that I bought. It is very fat so I thought it would be good value! The story wasn't what I expected, although I don't know what I did expect. I next read The Pillars of the House - even longer, I think!

Sorry yet again, I ended up spending yesterday trying to overhaul my service providers. I don't know why a day spent on hold and accessing online chat help should be so EXHAUSTING but there it is. :D

I will try to push a bit faster from here.

The always inscrutable Mr May gives his blessing to Ursula's friendship with Phoebe, but I think we need to stop and consider the extremity of Ursula's reaction to the revelation of Phoebe's identity, in light of what we have been saying about, first, the overt nature of the various social barriers in this novel, and second, the way in which they are assailed over the second half of the novel.

Chapter 21:

    In that cordial meeting with the young lady who had turned out to be a person in such an embarrassing position, there had been a great deal said about future meetings, walks, and expeditions together, and Ursula had been very desirous that Phœbe should fix some time for their first encounter. She thought of this now with blushes that seemed to burn her cheeks. She was afraid to go out, lest she should meet the girl she had been so anxious to make a friend of. Not that, on her own account, after the first shock, Ursula would have been hard-hearted enough to deny her acquaintance to Tozer's granddaughter. In the seclusion of her chamber, she had cried over the downfall of her ideal friend very bitterly, and felt the humiliation for Phœbe more cruelly than that young lady felt it for herself; but Ursula, however much it might have cost her, would have stood fast to her friendship had she been free to do as she pleased.
    “I did not like her for her grandfather,” she said to Janey, of whom, in this case, she was less unwilling to make a confidant. “I never thought of the grandfather. What does it matter to me if he were a sweep instead of old Tozer?”
    “Old Tozer is just as bad as if he were a sweep,” said Janey; “if you had ever thought of her grandfather, and known he was old Tozer, you would have felt it would not do.”
    “What is there about a grandfather? I don't know if we ever had any,” said Ursula. “Mamma had, for the Dorsets are her relations---but papa. Mr Griffiths's grandfather was a candle-maker; I have heard papa say so---and they go everywhere.”
    “But he is dead,” said Janey, with great shrewdness, “and he was rich.”
    “You little nasty calculating thing! Oh, how I hate rich people; how I hate this horrid world, that loves money and loves fine names, and does not care for people's selves whether they are bad or good! I shall never dare to walk up Grange Lane again,” said Ursula, with tears. “Fancy changing to her, after being so glad to see her!”

Ursula's "but papa" is interesting: it underscores the fact that this was a time of increasing social mobility. In standard society that usually meant getting on in spite of being poor, or having parents or grandparents in some sort of low-paying white-collar work (as we would put it now), but required the usual markers of gentility. (And going into the church was one way to acquire at least the tacit standing of "gentleman".) "Trade" - or worse, "the shop" - was still the immovable object, but though that did not change in itself, Phoebe is an example of how the next generation could move away from their roots.

After what is, at base, a rather superficial social plot up to this point, for all of Phoebe and Ursula's difficulties, in Chapter 22 Phoebe, Junior takes a genuinely shocking turn.

This is the kind of subplot that often makes a re-read of a novel so rewarding: when you are in a position to reassess someone in light of complete knowledge.

Mr May thinks he's being very clever in his handling of Phoebe, but note that Oliphant follows this---

He could scarcely have told why he had permitted his daughter to pursue her acquaintance with Tozer's granddaughter. Partly it was because of Clarence Copperhead; out of curiosity, as, being about to be brought in contact with some South Sea Islander or Fijian, one would naturally wish to see another who was thrown in one's way by accident, and thus prepare one's self for the permanent acquaintance...

---with this: to an extent, at least, Phoebe is onto him:

    “You sneer at us, and look down upon us---”
    “I? I don't sneer at anybody.”
    “I don't mean you individually; but Churchmen do. They treat us as if we were some strange kind of creatures, from the heart of Africa perhaps. They don't think we are just like themselves: as well educated; meaning as well; with as much right to our own ideas.”

But the really striking passage here, in light of later events, is surely this: Mr May's internal conviction of his own innate superiority:

Mr May could scarcely restrain a laugh. “Just like themselves.” The idea of a Dissenter setting up to be as well educated, and as capable of forming an opinion, as a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman, was too novel and too foolish not to be somewhat startling as well. Mr May was aware that human nature is strangely blind to its own deficiencies, but was it possible that any delusion could go so far as this? He did laugh a little---just the ghost of a laugh---at the idea...

And the chapter that contains this self-congratulatory passage also offers this:

    Saml. Tozer! What was Saml. Tozer to him that his name should stare him in the face in this obtrusive way? Tozer, the old butterman! a mean and ignorant person, as far beneath Mr May's level as it is possible to imagine, whose handwriting it was very strange to see on anything but a bill. He fixed his eyes upon it mechanically; he had come, as it were, to the end of all things in those feverish musings; he had searched through his whole known world for help, and found there nothing and nobody to help him. Those whom he had once relied on were exhausted long ago; his friends had all dropped off from him, as far, at least, as money was concerned. Some of them might put out a hand to keep him and his children from starvation even now, but to pay Cotsdean's bill, never. There was no help anywhere, nor any hope. Natural ways and means were all exhausted, and though he was a clergyman, he had no such faith in the supernatural as to hope much for the succour of Heaven. Heaven! what could Heaven do for him? Bank-notes did not drop down out of the skies. There had been a time when he had felt full faith in “Providence;” but he seemed to have nothing to expect now from that quarter more than from any other. Samuel Tozer! why did that name always come uppermost, staring into his very eyes? It was a curious signature, the handwriting very rude and unrefined, with odd, illiterate dashes, and yet with a kind of rough character in it, easy to identify, not difficult to copy---
    What was it that brought beads of moisture all at once to Mr. May's forehead? He started up suddenly, pushing his chair with a hoarse exclamation, and walked up and down the room quickly, as if trying to escape from something. His heart jumped up in his breast, like a thing possessed of separate life, and thumped against his side, and beat with loud pulsations in his ears. When he caught sight of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he started as if he had seen a ghost...

We need to be very clear about the seriousness of what happens next.

In the first decades of the 19th century, forgery was a capital offense---though increasingly, on that basis, juries refused to convict (thus indirectly expressing "public opinion" on the subject). Finally there was a sort of capitulation, with the numerous strands of anti-forgery law that had proliferated into 18th century cut back and rolled into a single statute, and with forgery ceasing to bring the death penalty from 1837 onwards.

However, it was still considered one of the most serious and disgraceful of crimes and could bring a long-term of imprisonment with hard labour.

The other disturbing thing is the class implications of Mr May's actions.

We've already noted (>85 lyzard:) that nasty little passage in which Mr May acknowledges his willingness to sacrifice Mr Cotsdean to his own security.

There is also, I think, a measure of the same attitude in him taking this step---that "it's just old Tozer".

All this in the wake of Mr May preening himself upon being "a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman".

Chapter 22:

After all, what was it? Not such a great matter; a loan of something which would neither enrich him who took, nor impoverish him who, without being aware of it, should give---a nothing! Why people should entertain the prejudices they did on the subject, it was difficult to see, though, perhaps, he allowed candidly to himself, it might be dangerous for any ignorant man to follow the same strain of thinking; but in the hands of a man who was not ignorant, who knew, as he himself did, exactly how far to go, and what might be innocently done; innocently done---in his own mind he put a great stress on this---why, what was it?”

And this, of course, is an outright, bare-faced lie:

Chapter 23:

    Cotsdean opened out the new bill with trembling hands. “Tozer!” he said faintly, between relief and dismay.
    “Yes. You must know that I am taking a pupil---one who belongs to a very rich Dissenting family in London. Tozer knows something about him, from his connection with the body, and through this young man I have got to know something of him. He does it upon the admirable security of the fees I am to receive with this youth; so you see, after all, there is no mystery about it...”

To follow up on that last point---

There's a moment later in the book where Mr Copperhead tells Phoebe that "honour" is only for men: an attitude we've struck before in 18th and 19th century literature, the idea that the tenets of honourable behaviour did not apply to women, that in fact they were incapable of understanding such an abstract concept.

(The unspoken implication being that men were not required to behave honourably towards women.)

There's something similar, I think, about Mr May's conduct here: he doesn't feel obliged to behave honourably, or indeed honestly, towards people who are not gentlemen, who are only in trade. There's the same perverse twist in the reasoning---as if "honour" is wasted on people who can't understand it.

Oliphant will go on from here to give us an unnerving dissection of Mr May's mental processes as his drastic act plays out, an interesting piece of psychological analysis that sits oddly beside the novel's social comedy plots.

(Of course we've seen this before in the Carlingford novels, an odd blending of tones and plots that rub rather uncomfortably against one another.)

From here Phoebe, Junior runs its two plots in parallel: the overt plot of the social manoeuvring that occurs following the arrival in Carlingford of Clarence Copperhead, with the secret plot of Mr May's bill weaving in and out as time passes.

We get something more of an explanation for Clarence becoming Mr May's pupil in a letter to the latter from Sir Robert Dorset, who puts things for us in a way that Mr May certainly never does in talking to his family: plus his opinion of Clarence:

Chapter 24:

In my private opinion, he is a cub of the most disagreeable kind; but the girls like his mother, who is a kind of cousin, as you know. It is not only because he has failed to take his degree (you know how I hate the hideous slang in which this fact is generally stated), but that his father, who is one of the rich persons who abound in the lower circles of society, is ambitious, and would like to see him in Parliament, and that sort of thing---a position which cannot be held creditably without some sort of education: at least, so I am myself disposed to think. Therefore, your pleasing duty will be to get him up in a little history and geography, so that he may not get quite hopelessly wrong in any of the modern modifications of territory, for instance; and in so much Horace as may furnish him with a few stock quotations, in case he should be called upon, in the absence of any more hopeful neophyte, to move the Address. He is a great hulking fellow, not very brilliant, you may suppose, but not so badly mannered as he might be, considering his parentage...

And here we go back to the point made in >86 lyzard: about how much Carlingford has changed. There will be another, much more blunt assessment of the town later on, but here we think back to Lucilla Marjoribanks' successful evening parties:

Chapter 24:

It was the first invitation to dinner which Ursula had ever received. The dinner-parties in Carlingford were little frequented by young ladies. The male population was not large enough to afford a balance for the young women of the place, who came together in the evening, and took all the trouble of putting on their pretty white frocks, only to sit in rows in the drawing-room, waiting till the old gentlemen came in from the dining-room, after which everybody went away. There were no young gentlemen to speak of in Carlingford, so that when any one was bold enough to attempt a dancing-party, or anything of an equally amusing description, friends were sent out in all directions, as the beaters are sent into the woods to bring together the unfortunate birds for a battue, to find men...

It is also here that we get this rather critical passage---

:D

Chapter 24:

    “You are pleased to laugh, but I am quite in earnest. A pupil is a nuisance. For instance, no man who has a family should ever take one. I know what things are said.”
    “You mean about the daughters? That is true enough, there are always difficulties in the way; but you need not be afraid of Clarence Copperhead. He is not the fascinating pupil of a church-novel. There's nothing the least like the Heir of Redclyffe about him.”
    “You are very well up in Miss Yonge's novels, Miss Beecham.”
    “Yes,” said Phœbe; “one reads Scott for Scotland (and a few other things), and one reads Miss Yonge for the church. Mr Trollope is good for that too, but not so good. All that I know of clergymen's families I have got from her. I can recognise you quite well, and your sister, but the younger ones puzzle me; they are not in Miss Yonge; they are too much like other children, too naughty. I don't mean anything disagreeable. The babies in Miss Yonge are often very naughty too, but not the same. As for you, Mr. May---”
    “Yes. As for me?”
    “Oh, I know everything about you. You are a fine scholar, but you don't like the drudgery of teaching. You have a fine mind, but it interferes with you continually. You have had a few doubts---just enough to give a piquancy; and now you have a great ideal, and mean to do many things that common clergymen don't think of. That was why you hesitated about the chaplaincy? See how much I have got out of Miss Yonge. I know you as well as if I had known you all my life; a great deal better than I know Clarence Copperhead; but then, no person of genius has taken any trouble about him.”
    “I did not know I had been a hero of fiction,” said Reginald, who had a great mind to be angry...

We've touched before on Oliphant's slightly ambivalent relationship with Trollope: her novels were unfavourably compared with the Barchester books by critics, which clearly exasperated her (not least because, in spite of their overt similarities, it was rather apples-and-oranges), in spite of her own obvious admiration of Trollope.

Trollope, we may recall, was always quite explicit about not trying to write his clergymen as clergymen, but as men---as gentlemen---whose professions are treated as just that. Except in the most superficial way, he steered clear of matters of faith (it was just taken for granted that everyone had enough of that), feeling it wasn't his business to be dealing with anyone's spiritual situation.

Female novelists, curiously, did tend to go a bit more into that area---perhaps because women asked more of their clergymen than that they went to the right schools. (It would be a woman, Mary Humphry Ward, who would write England's first major novel about a crisis of faith, Robert Elsmere.)

But Phoebe puts her finger on something else here, this matter of families and children in novels. Charlotte Yonge specialised in families---not just young couples with a baby in the nursery and servants to keep it out of sight, but whole families of all ages, where the children are real characters. This is another thing you don't get from the male novelists of this period, whether they thought it uninteresting material or whether they thought themselves unqualified. Yonge's novels often did deal with clergymen's families and the particular difficulties (monetary and otherwise) of their position---although she never confronted them with anything like Mr May's situation...

This is also part of Oliphant's shaded depiction of Reginald.

On one hand it becomes clear that he is working hard enough for his "sinecure", doing all sorts of things outside his official remit (that, in fact, the older clergymen are taking advantage of him).

But there are various remarks that suggest that Reginald's new independence has gone to his head, and that while he is turning into a good clergyman, he is a bit lacking as a man.

Certainly he is as deeply imbued with the religious and class prejudices we have been talking about as anyone (though I suppose we can forgive him the former, in light of Mr Northcote's speech!).

But his superiority and snottiness towards Ursula, when he of all people knows how difficult her situation is, is unnecessary---even in a big brother.

So we get moments like this:

Chapter 24:

    “What does he want with a pupil?” Reginald was saying, as he had said before. “A fellow no one knows, coming and taking possession of the house as if it belonged to him. There is plenty to do in the parish without pupils, and if I were not on the spot he would get into trouble, I can tell you. A man that has been ploughed, 'a big hulking fellow' (Sir Robert says so, not I). Mind, I'll have no flirting, Ursula; that is what always happens with a pupil in the house.”
    “Reginald, how dare you---”
    “Oh, yes, I dare; my courage is quite equal to facing you, even if you do shoot thunderbolts out of your eyes. Mind you, I won't have it. There is a set of fellows who try it regularly, and if you were above them, would go in for Janey; and it would be great fun and great promotion for Janey; she would feel herself a woman directly; so you must mind her as well as yourself. I don't like it at all,” Reginald went on...

****

“She is the cleverest girl I ever met; not like one of you bread-and-butter girls, though she is not much older than you. A man finds a girl like that worth talking to,” said the young clergyman, holding himself erect. Certainly Reginald had not improved; he had grown ever so much more self-important since he got a living of his own...

But Reginald gets what he deserves - as does Mr Northcote, we might think - when Phoebe corrals both of them into tea with the Tozers:

Chapter 25:

“Well,” he said, “Mr Northcote, sir, it can't be denied as this is a strange meeting; you and Mr May, as mightn't be, perhaps, just the best of friends, to meet quite comfortable over a cup of tea. But ain't it the very best thing that could happen? Men has their public opinions, sir, as every one should speak up bold for, and stick to; that's my way of thinking. But I wouldn't bring it no farther; not, as might be said, into the domestic circle. I'm clean against that. You say your say in public, whatever you may think on a subject, but you don't bear no malice; it ain't a personal question; them's my sentiments. And I don't know nothing more elevatin', nothing more consolin', than for two public opponents, as you may say, to meet like this quite cozy and comfortable over a cup o' tea.”

:D

>105 lyzard: A little OT, here, but I'm nearly at the end of The Last Chronicle of Barset and it seems like this novel is the closest that Trollope gets to touching on clergymen as clergymen. I'm thinking particularly when it comes to the "replacements" for Mr Crawley, who don't come up to Mr Crawley's standards. And the only time I can recall Trollope mentioning Dissenters is in Chapter 79, when Lady Lufton is discussing the judges who will be at Mr Crawley's trial: "Judge Medlicote was a Dissenter, and old Lady Lufton was in despair. When she was assured by some liberally-disposed friend that this would certainly make no difference, she shook her head woefully. 'I don't know why we are to have Dissenters at all,' she said, 'to try people who belong to the Established Church'....She would not have minded it, she said, if he had been a Roman Catholic."

Re: Charlotte Mary Yonge--I haven't read any of her books, but I understand some of them, especially those aimed at young people, were tales of moral instruction, similar to some of Louisa May Alcott's books for children.

>106 lyzard: I found Reginald's comments not that surprising, considering how rude Mr May can be to the children.

>107 lyzard: For me, the Tozers come off as decent and likable folks in the end.

I have just finished reading The Broadview edition and unlike the Virago edition, the book was divided into Chapters. I enjoyed reading it.

Has the The Daisy Chain been chosen for the next read? It would be a reread for me and I would need to borrow it from a university library as I did with

Phoebe, Junior. Are there any other possible choices e.g. other Victorian era novelists?

>108 kac522:

Yes, I would agree with that. But as I say, he was quite frank about not wanting to go into that side of things too much. We see his clergymen as social constructs much more than, as you put it, as clergymen.

"Young adult", as we would say now. She was an important novelist of this time but she she was very antifeminist which can make her hard to swallow at times. The Clever Woman Of The Family is also a Virago, isn't it? - that one in particular ("clever" is of course a derogatory term for a young woman).

Reginald has certainly had a role model for that but the fact that he was being treated like that himself about five minutes ago makes it a bit rich.

I think Oliphant walks a line between their fundamental decency and well-meaningness and those characteristocs which make Phoebe (and maybe us) flinch. It's a nice balance. :)

>109 kayclifton:

Well done, Kay! - that's good to hear.

We haven't made any definite decision. Those of us doing the Trollope reads will probably go that way next, which gives us some time to agree on where to go with the Viragos. Some of us were working through them chronologically, but we chose to divert into the Carlingford series as a whole.

The friendship that develops between Reginald and Mr Northcote is curious (the term "frenemy" is not inappropriate), and in the first conversation between them Oliphant allows each of them to state their cases quite fairly, I think---she comes down on the side of the Church, but we might argue that this is because (as her Dissenting ministers have discovered before) Carlingford offers so little scope for work: the real poor, the genuinely disadvantaged, are all Church people.

Chapter 27:

They stood together for a moment under the vaulted roof, both young, in the glory of their days, both with vague noble meanings in them, which they knew so poorly how to carry out. They meant everything that was fine and great, these two young men, standing upon the threshold of their life, knowing little more than that they were fiercely opposed to each other, and meant to reform the world each in his own way; one by careful services and visitings of the poor, the other by the Liberation Society and overthrow of the State Church; both foolish, wrong and right, to the utmost bounds of human possibility. How different they felt themselves standing there, and yet how much at one they were without knowing it!

Northcote's "vague noble meanings" lead him to idealise the May family, which is more than a little ironic as well as flat-out wrong.

There is an interesting touch here: recall in The Rector that Oliphant has Mr Proctor suddenly doubting his calling when he is called to a dying woman and doesn't know how to proceed: here she gives us this---

He walked quite respectfully by the young clergyman's side along the crowded High Street, though without any intention of going to the hospital, or of actually witnessing the kind of work undertaken by his new friend. Northcote himself had no turn that way. To go and minister at a sick-bed had never been his custom; he did not understand how to do it; and though he had a kind of sense that it was the right thing to do, and that if any one demanded such a service of him he would be obliged to render it, he was all in the dark as to how he could get through so painful an office; whereas May went to it without fear, thinking of it only as the most natural thing in the world.

Oliphant begins her psychological dissection of Mr May in earnest in Chapter 28, creating a sense of a Sword of Damocles hanging over the social interactions of the young people:

The additional income represented a great deal of additional comfort, and that general expansion of expenditure, not going into any special extravagances, but representing a universal ease and enlargement which was congenial to him, and which was one of the great charms of money in his eyes. To be sure, when he reflected on the matter, he felt that the first half-year of Clarence's payment ought to be appropriated to that bill, which for the present had brought him so much relief; but this would be so entirely to lose the benefit of the money so far as he was himself concerned, that it was only in moments of reflection that this appeared urgent... Mr May felt that he had only to go to the bank, which generally did not encourage his visits, and tell them of his pupil, to have the money at once. Nobody could reject such unmistakeable security. So that really there was no further occasion for so much as thinking of Tozer; that was provided for; with the freest conscience in the world he might put it out of his mind. But how he could feel this so strongly, and at the same time revel in the consciousness of a fuller purse, more to enjoy, and more to spend, is a mystery which it would be difficult to solve. He did so, and many others have done so besides him, eating their cake, yet believing that they had their cake with the fullest confidence. He was a sensible man, rather priding himself on his knowledge of business, with much experience in human nature, and a thoughtful sense (fully evidenced in his writings) of all the strange inconsistencies and self-deceits of mankind; but he dropped into this strain of self-delusion with the calmest satisfaction of mind, and was as sure of his own good sense and kindness as if he had never in all his life taken a step out of the rigidest of the narrow ways of uprightness...

And just to cap things off, Oliphant juxtaposes this examination of Mr May's thought processes with this outrageously unjust and ignorant attack on Ursula's money management---

(---am I the only one who feels like this is worse than forgery??---)

Chapter 28:

    “...but if you read your cookery-book, as I have often said, when you were reading those novels, and learned how to toss up little dishes out of nothing, and make entrées, and so forth, at next to no expense---”
    The tears came into Ursula's eyes at this unjust assault.
    “Papa,” she said, “you ought to know better at your age. One forgives the boys for saying such silly things. How can I toss up little dishes out of nothing? If you only knew the price of butter, not to talk of anything else. Made dishes are the most expensive things! A leg of mutton, for instance; there it is, and when one weighs it, one knows what it costs; but there is not one of those entrées but costs shillings for herbs and truffles and gravy and forcemeat, and a glass of white wine here, and a half pint of claret there. It is all very well to talk of dishes made out of nothing. The meat may not be very much---and men never think of the other things, I suppose.”
    “It is management that is wanted,” said Mr May, “to throw nothing away, to make use of everything, to employ all your scraps. If you once have a good sauce---which is as easy as daylight when you take the trouble---you can make all sorts of things out of a cold joint; but women never will take the trouble, and that is the secret of poor dinners.”

Poor Ursula! - of course her entrées are a disaster. So bad that they get a chapter heading to themselves!

The story has been told in various places of Oliphant having exactly this experience, suffering through a dinner-party in which her entrées went disastrously wrong. Clearly it was something she never got over. :D

The focus of Chapter 29 is the dinner-party and its consequences, but we really have to stop and contemplate this in terms of the whole Carlingford series. This is the passage of time with a vengeance:

Pride prevented him from knocking at the closed door. The old Tozers were fearful people to encounter, people whom to visit would be to damn himself in Carlingford; but then the Miss Griffiths were very insipid by the side of Phœbe, and the variety of her talk, though he had seen so little of her, seemed to have created a new want in his life. He thought of a hundred things which he should like to discuss with her---things which did not interest Ursula, and which the people about him did not understand much. Society at that time, as may be presumed, was in a poor way in Carlingford. The Wentworths and Wodehouses were gone, and many other nice people; the houses in Grange Lane were getting deserted, or falling into inferior hands, as was apparent by the fact that the Tozers---old Tozer, the butterman---had got one of them. The other people were mostly relics of a bygone state of things: retired old couples, old ladies, spinsters, and widows---excellent people, but not lively to talk to---and the Griffiths, above mentioned, put up with in consideration of tolerable good looks and “fun,” became tiresome when anything better was to be had...

>114 lyzard: I can't say it's worse than forgery, but it's pretty damn bad. If he's such a Mr-Know-It-All, let him make the dinner.

I really felt for Ursula throughout this book, but especially at the dinner.

>115 lyzard:

:D

That exchange made me think of that insufferable passage in Our Mutual Friend where Dickens treats housekeeping like (shall we use the word?) a sinecure.

Just a side-note here:

A reredos (first mentioned in Chapter 27 and then again here) is a decorative screen that placed behind the altar in a church.

The remark---

The Rector was very great indeed on the reredos question, and the necessity of reviving the disused “Church” customs; but Reginald could not go so far as he did as to the importance of the reredos...

---suggests that the reredos was another of those touches (as per >76 lyzard:) that indicated that perhaps a clergyman was "too High Church". Many disused Church customs were so because they had become associated with Anglo-Catholicism.

Meanwhile---Ursula's entrées have had an impact that no-one could have anticipated:

Chapter 29:

    Alas, the entrées were not good, and Ursula had the mortification to see the dishes she had taken so much trouble with, rejected by one and another. Reginald ate some, for which she blessed him, and so did Phœbe, but Mr May sent his plate away with polite execrations.
    “Tell your cook she shall go if she sends up such uneatable stuff again, Ursula,” her father cried from the other end of the table.
    Two big tears dashed up hot and scalding into Ursula's eyes. Oh, how she wished she could be dismissed like Betsy! She turned those two little oceans of trouble piteously, without knowing it, upon Northcote, who had said something to her, without being able to reply to him. And Northcote, who was but a young man, though he was a fiery political Dissenter, and who had come to the Parsonage with a curious mixture of pleasure and reluctance, immediately threw down any arms that nature might have provided him with, and fell in love with her there and then on the spot...

I've just finished The Last Chronicle of Barset. When I finish a Trollope novel, I usually read the relevant critical pieces collected in Trollope: The Critical Heritage, edited by Donald Smalley (1969). These are contemporary critical reviews of most of Trollope's novels that were printed in the periodicals of the day (Saturday Review, The Examiner, The Spectator, etc.). Most are unsigned, but a handful have an author, including an essay by Margaret Oliphant that appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in September, 1867 about The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Your quote in >119 lyzard: about Northcote (who had come to the Parsonage with a curious mixture of pleasure and reluctance, immediately threw down any arms that nature might have provided him with, and fell in love with her there and then on the spot...) seems relevant to this observation by Mrs Oliphant about Archdeacon Grantly, who has come to give a stern lecture to Grace Crawley, lover of the Archdeacon's son and daughter of the poor, disgraced clergyman Josiah Crawley. Mrs Oliphant says:

The Archdeacon's fierce wrath against his son, who is going to marry against his will--his suspicion of everybody conspiring against him to bring this about, and at the same time his instant subjugation by pretty Grace, and rash adoption of her on the spot--is altogether charming.

Perhaps Mrs Oliphant was inspired by the above scene (and the two little tears running down the Archdeacon's nose)?

A bit later Mrs Oliphant makes the following assessment of Mrs Grantly, the Archdeacon's wife:

Trollope is about the only writer we know (with, perhaps, one or two exceptions) who realizes the position of a sensible and right-minded woman among the ordinary affairs of the world. Mrs Grantly's perception at once of her husband's character and his mistakes--her careful abstinence from active interference--her certainty to come in right at the end--her half-amused, half-troubled spectatorship, in short, of all the annoyances her men-kind make for themselves, her consciousness of the futility of all decided attempts to set them right, and patient waiting upon the superior logic of events, is one of those "bits" which may scarcely call the attention of the careless reader, and yet is a perfect triumph of profound and delicate observation.

This description reminds me in some ways of Phoebe--astutely observing and cautiously waiting for the right time and place to make her moves, particularly when it comes to "her men-kind": Reginald, Clarence, grandfather Tozer and especially Mr May.

>120 kac522:

Thank you for all that. Yes, that's quite suggestive---or perhaps it's that, in a society where people had to be so cautious, these moments of sudden capitulation had a particular power.

Though the logic there is that it was easier for men to capitulate, while women were forced to pause and consider---which is interesting, because it's the reverse of the usual dogma about women being controlled by their emotions.

And as you point out, in a way it aligns Phoebe with Mrs Grantly, though the two women are at very different points in their lives. Still, the observation and the careful pondering of the next move are comparable.

After all we've said about the religious and class consciousness on display in this novel, the gatherings at the Mays are strikingly unexpected---no wonder Carlingford is confused!

This is one a several really unusual touches in this novel, partly for what it tells us about societal change---but also because it is an example of something that (as I've said before in these group reads) we don't get enough of in Victorian literature: a picture of young people being young people, interacting in a group with all the shifting dynamics.

Chapter 30:

The society formed by these two young pairs, with Clarence Copperhead as a heavy floating balance, and Mr May and Janey---one philosophical, wise and mistaken; the other sharp-sighted and seeing everything---as spectators, was very pleasant to the close little coterie themselves, and nobody else got within the charmed circle. They grew more and more intimate daily, and had a whole vocabulary of domestic jokes and allusions which no one else could understand. It must be allowed, however, that the outside world was not pleased with this arrangement on either side of the question...

Meanwhile, the fifth (!) wheel---

Chapter 31:

Clarence never called them anything but Miss Ursula and Miss Phœbe, dropping the prefix in his thoughts. He felt that he was “a little sweet upon” them both; and, indeed, it had gleamed dully across his mind that a man who could marry them both need never be bored, but was likely always to find something “to do.” Choice, however, being necessary, he did not see his way so clearly as to which he would choose. “The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter,” he said to himself, if not in these immortal words, yet with full appreciation of the sentiment. Ursula began to understand dinners with a judicious intelligence, which he felt was partly created by his own instructions and remarks; but in the evening it was Phœbe who reigned supreme. She was so sensible that most likely she could invent a menu all out of her own head, he thought, feeling that the girl who got him through the “Wedding March” with but six mistakes, was capable of any intellectual feat. He had not the slightest doubt that it was in his power to marry either of the girls as soon as he chose to intimate his choice; and in the mean time he found it very agreeable to maintain a kind of mental possibility of future proprietorship of them both...

I had to stop reading halfway through Chapter 20 this morning, which leaves me in the middle of a most dramatic scene! So far, these are the points which have struck me:

The abusive behaviour of Mr Copperhead and Mr May, both domestic tyrants in their own ways. I don't accept that Mr May's debts give him any excuse for his behaviour, as we are shown that he is able to control his temper and use it at will to achieve his ends. Both these men are supposedly religious but I find them both abhorrent.

I like both Phoebe and Ursula; they are nicely contrasting heroines. Phoebe is a lady to all appearances, yet is socially lower because of her ancestry and Dissenting faith. Ursula works like an unpaid servant in her household and has little education but has the higher social standing. I'm at the point in Chapter 20 where it looks as though the class difference will divide them.

Poor Reginald! I've read The Warden so this plot is very familiar so far.

I'm very much enjoying the discussions around hair and fashion.

>124 Sakerfalcon: Yes, completely agree about the two fathers. In particular Mr May is so highly respected in his community, but treats his family abysmally. And your summaries of Phoebe & Ursula are right on the mark. Well said.

>124 Sakerfalcon:

What's interesting is the gap between how we perceive them and how they are perceived internally: for all her own woes, and for all Phoebe's advantages, Ursula automatically considers herself Phoebe's "superior": the Tozer connection outweighs everything else.

But having raised all this, Oliphant goes on to interrogate it in a very interesting way---but I'll let you read on and we can discuss that later. :)

With regard to the men, I think Oliphant also invites this sort of interrogation: how different from one another really are Mr May and Mr Copperhead? Both of them are domestic tyrants, but additionally, both of them choose to treat their families like that to their own ends, even to their own amusement. The same impulses drive them in spite of their overt social, educational and religious differences.

I finished tonight (after being behind for quite a while) and am looking forward to discussion.

>114 lyzard: This hit me even harder than the chapters dealing with Mr May's forgery and class prejudice! I read chapter 28 this morning and his remarks to Ursula when she is concerned about the cost of providing dinner for Clarence are so hypocritical! "Women just need to know how to manage" - this from a man who has doubtless never set foot in a kitchen, not to mention his own complete inability to manage money!! Of course, his attitudes to Tozer and similar "inferiors" are appalling too.

I'm now part-way through Chapter XXXI

>127 NinieB:

Well done, Ninie! Please hold ALL those thoughts. :)

>128 Sakerfalcon:

Yes, that's how I felt. :D

Of course Oliphant herself knew plenty about trying to cope without enough money so it isn't surprising that these passages hit hard.

It's fascinating how Oliphant fleshes out Mr May's awfulness, so to speak: that early scene with him losing his temper - choosing to lose his temper, as it turns out - establishes him with a shock, and then all this other stuff comes creeping in.

That little touch of the Tozers spotting him with his two youngest kids and thinking what a nice person he must be - another staged moment - acts as a metaphor for all the rest: he's been performing for the world, and for his family, for years. There's so much façade---to the point he doesn't always seem to realise it himself---he certainly thinks of himself as, a cultivated Anglican, an Oxford man, and a beneficed clergyman, as it is put when he is mentally sneering at Phoebe.

Behind the manoeuvring of the young people, Oliphant continues to dissect Mr May's contradictory thoughts and actions about the money situation. This is striking (and rather appalling)---

Chapter 31:

But all this pleasant society, though father and daughter both agreed that it cost nothing, for what is a cake and a cup of tea? and the late dinners and the extra maid, and the additional fires, and general enlargement of expenditure made immense inroads, it must be allowed, into the additional income brought by Clarence Copperhead. The first quarter's payment was spent, and more than spent, before it came. The money that was to be laid up for that bill of Tozer's---perhaps---had now no saving peradventure left in it; for the second half would not be due till two months after the Tozer bill, and would but be half, even if procurable at once. Mr May felt a slight shock while this gleamed across his mind, but only for a moment. There was still a month, and a month is a long time, and in the mean time James was almost certain to send something, and his Easter offerings might, probably would, this year be something worth having. Why they should be better than usual this year Mr May did not explain to himself; his head was a little turned it must be supposed by the momentary chance of having more money in his hands than he used to have. Already he had got into the habit of ordering what he wanted somewhat recklessly, without asking himself how the things he ordered were to be paid for, and, as so often happened, followed up that first tampering with the rules of right and wrong by a general recklessness of the most dangerous kind...

---and while this is another example of this self-destructive behaviour, surely Mr May has never been more sympathetic to this group? :D

Chapter 34:

...he extended his walk into the town, and strayed, half by chance, half by intention, to the old furniture shop at the other end of the High Street, which was a favourite resort of the higher classes in Carlingford, and where periodically there was an auction, at which sometimes great bargains were to be had. Mr. May went into this dangerous place boldly. The sale was going on; he walked into the midst of temptation, forgetting the prayer against it, which no doubt he had said that morning. And as evil fate would have it, a carved book-case, the very thing he had been sighing for, for years, was at that moment the object of the auctioneer's praises. It was standing against the wall, a noble piece of furniture, in which books would show to an advantage impossible otherwise, preserved from dust and damp by the fine old oak and glass door. Mr May's heart gave a little jump...

Meanwhile, the pairing-offs among "the whole party" are beginning to get serious. Northcore and Ursula understand one another, albeit silently; but the other three are forming into a triangle. Reginald is sincere enough; but Clarence, we understand, is motivated chiefly by a feeling that he is being "cut out" - and by a man poorer than himself! - and by the challenge to his conviction that his money means he can have any woman he wants. How much real feeling is mixed in with all these less-than "eloquent sentiments" is hard to say:

Chapter 32:

Reginald May had fallen in love with her, and Clarence Copperhead, after considerable resistance and hanging off, was making up his mind to propose. Yes. Phœbe felt with unerring instinct that this was the state of affairs. He was making up his mind to propose. So much of her and so little of her had at length made an end of all the prudent hesitations that lay under the crisp pie-crust of that starched and dazzling shirt front. That he should never be able to speak a word to her without that May! that fellow! “the son of my coach!” poking himself in, was a thing which at length had fired his cool blood to fever heat. Nobody else could play his accompaniments like that, or pull him through the “Wedding March” like that; and who would look better at the head of a table, or show better at a ball, or get on better in society? No one he knew, certainly. It was true she was only a Minister's daughter, and without a penny; for the little fortune Mr. and Mrs Beecham had carefully gathered together and preserved for their daughter, what was that to the Copperheads?---nothing, not a penny. But, on the other hand, Clarence felt that he himself, or rather his father, was rich enough to be able to afford a wife without money. There was no reason why he should marry money; and a wife like Phœbe, what a relief that would be, in the way of education! No need of any more coaching. She was clever, and fond of reading, and so forth. She would get everything up for him, if he went into parliament, or that sort of thing; why, she'd keep him posted up. “There ain't many girls that could do that,” he said to himself. She would save him worlds of trouble; save his money even, for coaches and that sort of thing cost money; and then that fellow May would be out of it; his nose would be put out of joint. These are not eloquent sentiments, but so it was that Clarence's natural feelings expressed themselves.

I finished the book last night, and think this is possibly my favourite volume in the series - up there with Miss Marjoribanks.

>130 lyzard: Yes, these passages stood out for me too. It's like when you have a deadline to meet and are panicking about it, swearing that next time you will NEVER procrastinate, then the deadline gets extended, you feel relief, the sense of urgency goes away, and you fall back into denial. But Mr May's carelessness, when so many people depend upon him honouring his commitments, is inexcusable. Not just Cotsdean's fate, but his own family's reputation and futures are at stake - although we have seen how much he really cares about them!

I will hold the rest of my thoughts until we've all finished.

Hi, I am finally in a headspace where I can think about the book. I have finished it and it's also my favourite in the series. There's so much real life in it, we learn so much about normal, daily life here, and Phoebe is a remarkable character. And the people are real, I was often reminded of Zola.
>130 lyzard: I think this is one of the best analyses of the psychology of a debtor I have come across.

>132 Sakerfalcon:

Well done, Claire! Yes, please do hold those thoughts. :)

Yes, I'm sadly familiar with the psychology of procrastination myself! - but as you rightly point out, knowing what is at stake for the Mays and Mr Cotsdean makes this behaviour quite horrifying.

>133 MissWatson:

Congratulations to you too, Birgit! Great to hear that you enjoyed it, we should have some excellent discussion coming up (as soon as I can get my butt in gear!).

Mrs Sam Hurst does her worst when she finds out that the Dissenting minister whom the Mays have been entertaining is the same person who attacked Reginald---assuming that the Mays cannot possibly know this.

In the case of Ursula and Janey, she is of course right.

Ursula has enough strength of character to confront Mr Northcote, who is appalled and ashamed in turn, having mistakenly thought that he had already been forgiven by Ursula, not that she was acting towards him in ignorance...and somewhat counterintuitively, this painful episode leads to a proposal of marriage.

But what we take away from this chapter, I think, is this:

Chapter 33:

    “Your father and brother knew what I had done, they met me separately, quite independent of each other, and both of them held out their hands to me; why, except that I had offended them, I cannot tell. A stranger, belonging to an obscure class, I had no claim upon them except that I had done what ought to have closed their house against me. And you know how they have interpreted that. They have shown me what the Bible means.”
    The two girls sat listening, both with their heads bent towards him, and their eyes fixed upon his face. When he stopped, Janey got up with her work in her lap, and coming a little nearer to Ursula, addressed her in a wondering voice.
    “Is it papa he is talking of like that?” she said, under her breath.

****

As for Ursula, she had floated a hundred miles away from that sensation of last night which, had no stronger feeling come in to bewilder her, would have made his errand very plain to her mind. She had ceased to think about him, she was thinking with a certain tenderness, and wondering, half-awed, half-amused, self-questioning, about her father. Was he so good as this? had he done this Christian action? were they all perhaps doing papa injustice?

While the overrating of Mr May's Christian charity by all three is rather exasperating, it is Janey's well-founded astonishment that tends to linger.

As we have already touched upon, Chapter 34 deals predominantly with Mr May's peculiar psychology in action, with his impulsive purchase of the bookcase:

How it filled up his bare room, and made it, Mr May thought, all at once into a library, though the old writing-table and shabby chairs looked rather worse perhaps than before, and suggested renewal in the most urgent way. To make it all of a piece, to put a soft Turkey carpet instead of the drugget, how pleasant it would be!---not extravagant, only a natural inclination towards the seemly, and a desire to have things around him becoming his position. No doubt such things were things which he ought to have in his position; a gentleman and a scholar, how humiliating it was that nothing but the barest elements of comfort should be within his reach. This was not how life ought to be; a poor creature like Clarence Copperhead, without birth, or breeding, or brains, or anything but money, was able to gratify every wish, while he---his senior, his superior! Instead of blaming himself, therefore, for his self-indulgence, Mr May sympathised with himself, which is a much less safe thing to do...

---but this chapter also introduces an ominous note, in the dispute between Mr May and Mr Cotsdean over the due date for their bill---and I think we know who is the more likely to have made a mistake:

Mr May's countenance paled, and the laugh went off; he opened a drawer in his writing-table and took out a book, and anxiously consulted an entry in it. It was the 18th certainly, as clear as possible. Something had been written on the opposite page, and had blotted slightly the one on which these entries were written; but there it stood, the 18th April. Mr May prided himself on making no mistakes in business. He closed the book again with a look of relief, the smile coming back once more to his face. The 18th, it was three days additional, and in the time there was no doubt that he would find out what was the right thing to do...

****

Chapter 35

Certainly he was right, and Cotsdean was wrong. Cotsdean was a puzzle-headed being, making his calculations by the rule of thumb; but he had put down the date, and there could be no possible mistake about it. He got up disposed to smile at the poor man's ignorance and fussy restlessness of mind. “I have never left him in the lurch, he may trust to me surely in the future,” Mr May said to himself, and smiled with a kind of condescending pity for his poor agent's timidity...

There is one curious point in all this that I think we have to make, particularly after >135 lyzard:: the fact that, apparently, Mr May did once intervene to some good effect in the troubled Cotsdown marriage (we learn later that Mrs Cotsdean has, or had, a drinking problem), which I think is the only piece of actual clergyman-like behaviour we hear of on Mr May's part in the entire novel.

The irony, of course, is that it is this that delivers Mr Cotsdean into Mr May's hands financially.

>136 lyzard: Of course, buying the bookcase in his financial circumstances was reprehensible. But I could relate so much to his enjoyment when he arranged his books in it!

>138 MissWatson:

Very sneaky on Oliphant's part, she must have known how her readers would feel. :)

In Chapters 35 and 36, we - like the characters - have the sheer awfulness of Mr Copperhead thrust upon us:

“Kill 'em off---no; it's against what you benevolent humbugs call the spirit of the time, and Christianity, and all that; but there's such a thing as carrying Christianity too far; that's my opinion. There's your almshouses now. What's the principle of them? I call it encouraging those old beggars to live,” said Mr Copperhead; “giving them permission to burden the community as long as they can manage it; a dead mistake, depend upon it, the greatest mistake in the world... All this fuss about the poor, all the row about dragging up a lot of poor little beggars to live that had far better die, and your almshouses to keep the old ones going, past all nature! Shovel the mould over them, that's the thing for the world; let 'em die when they ought to die; and let them live who can live...”

What was most horrifying about this last was how much you can imagine some of our politicians and certain sections of our media today saying exactly this---if they had the nerve. (Nor I think would they have the nerve to call it "carrying Christianity too far", since most of them pretend they are Christians.)

But with all due respect to Mr May's subplot, it is here that what is in some ways the most shocking part of this novel makes itself felt:

Chapter 36

    “I will come if you wish it, dear,” she said; “but I don't want to meet Mr Copperhead. I don't like him.”
    “Neither do I like him,” cried Ursula. “He said something disagreeable the little moment he was here. Oh, I don't remember what it was, but something. Please stay. What am I to do with them all by myself? If you will help me, I may get through.”
    Phœbe kissed her with a tremulous kiss; perhaps she was not unwilling to see with her own eyes what the father of Clarence meant, and what brought him here. She sat down at the window, and was the first to see them coming along the street.
    “What a gentleman your father looks beside them,” cried Phœbe; “both of them, father and son; though Clarence, after all, is a great deal better than his father, less like a British snob.”
    Ursula came and stood by her, looking out.
    “I don't think he is much better than his father,” she said.
    Phœbe took her hand suddenly and wrung it, then dropped it as if it had hurt her. What did it all mean? Ursula, though rays of enlightenment had come to her, was still perplexed, and did not understand.

****

    “He is not so severe now, I'll be bound,” said Mr. Copperhead. “Lets you have your fun a little, as Clarence tells me; don't you, May? Girls will be girls, and boys, boys, whatever we do; and I am sure, Miss Phœbe, you have been very entertaining, as you always were.”
    “I have done my best,” said Phœbe, looking him in the face. “I should have had a dull life but for the Parsonage, and I have tried to be grateful. I have accompanied your son on the violin a great many evenings, and I hope our friends have liked it. Mr Clarence is a promising player, though I should like him to trust less to his ear; but we always pulled through.”
    “Thanks to you,” said Clarence, in the middle of his cutlet
    He did not quite see why she should flourish this music in his father's face; but still he was loyal in a dull fashion, and he was obstinate, and did not mean to be “sat upon,” to use his own words. As for Phœbe, her quick mind caught at once the best line of policy. She determined to deliver Ursula, and she determined at the same time to let her future father-in-law (if he was to be her father-in-law) see what sort of a person he had to deal with...

To my knowledge, Oliphant's handling of what we can hardly call this novel's romantic subplot is unprecedented: I am not aware of any other novel that has its protagonist making up her mind to this sort of marriage and carrying out her plans without a hint of authorial criticism. Ordinarily this would be the cue for all sorts of disaster and angst and moralising, but Phoebe's campaign is carried on with an absence of fuss that is even more surprising than the campaign itself.

This is one of those weirdly contradictory moments that you occasionally strike when reading a novel, when you know on one hand that a novel is actually being realistic, while your conditioning through reading makes it all seem outrageous.

Chapter 36:

Meanwhile Phœbe had not ceased to look at his father, and held him with a pair of eyes not like the Ancient Mariner's. Mr Copperhead was confused, his power even of insolence was cowed for the moment. He obeyed quite docilely the movement made to leave the table. Was it possible that she defied him, this Minister's daughter, and measured her strength against his? Mr Copperhead felt as if he could have shaken the impertinent girl, but dared not, being where he was...

The other striking thing here is how our perception of Clarence is manipulated by Oliphant.

The best anyone has said of Clarence so far is that "he's not as bad as his father", which is hardly praising him to the skies! - and even Phoebe can go no further than (as Oliphant puts it in Chapter 37) a "poor thing, but mine own".

But Mr Copperhead is so awful that Clarence's defiance of him here, first in the smaller matter of leaving the parsonage, then increasingly in the matter of Phoebe herself, makes him seem more admirable than he is. We know it is obstinacy and self-will rather than principle, but there is such pleasure in Mr Copperhead being told "no" by anyone that we give it more weight than we should:

Chapter 36:

    “Go!” said Clarence, coming in startled, with his eyebrows rising almost into his hair. “Go? What do you mean? Out of the Parsonage? The Governor's been having too much sherry,” he said, coming close to Mr May's arm; he had himself been taking too much of the sherry, for the good reason that nobody had taken any notice of what he did, and that he had foreseen the excitement that was coming. “You don't mean it, I know,” he added aloud; “I'll go over for the night if Sir Robert will have me, and see my mother---”
    “Ask May,” said Mr Copperhead, “you'll believe him, I suppose; he's as glad to get rid of you as I am to take you away.”
    “Is this true?” cried Clarence, roused and wondering, “and if so, what's happened? I ain't a baby, you know, to be bundled about from one to another. The Governor forgets that.”
    “Your father,” said Mr May, “chooses to remove you, and that is all I choose to say.”
    “But, by George, I can say a deal more,” said Mr Copperhead. “You simpleton, do you think I am going to leave you here where there's man-traps about? None of such nonsense for me. Put your things together, I tell you. Phœbe Beecham's bad enough at home; but if she thinks she's to have you here to pluck at her leisure, she and her friends---”
    “W---hew!” said Clarence, with a long whistle. “So that's it. I am very sorry, father, if these are your sentiments; but I may as well tell you at once I shan't go.”
    “You---must go.”
    “No,” he said, squaring his shoulders and putting out his shirt front; he had never been roused into rebellion before, and perhaps without these extra glasses of sherry he would not have had the courage now. But what with sherry, and what with amour propre, and what with the thing he called love, Clarence Copperhead mounted all at once upon a pedestal...

>140 lyzard: Mr Copperhead is truly dreadful. Even more dreadful than Mr May. If I could choose a father in this book, I'd go with Tozer.

>144 NinieB:

I'd rather be an orphan than choose a father from this book. :D

But we've seen this before with Oliphant, the absent father / awful father dichotomy. Really, I guess Mr Beecham is the best of the bunch (though possibly because we see so much less of him!).

After all this, it's hard not to suspect that Oliphant was being ironic when she titled Chapter 37 "A Pleasant Evening".

This offers another striking scenario, with Phoebe consciously distancing herself from Reginald and the alternative he represents:

As soon as she had got safe within these walls, she stooped down over the primroses to get rid of Martha, and then in the darkness had a cry, all by herself, on one side of the wall, while the young lover, with his head full of her, checked, but not altogether discouraged, went slowly away on the other. She cried, and her heart contracted with a real pang. He was very tender in his reverential homage, very romantic, a true lover, not the kind of man who wants a wife or wants a clever companion to amuse him, and save him the expense of a coach, and be his to refer to in everything. That was an altogether different kind of thing. Phœbe went in with a sense in her mind that perhaps she had never touched so close upon a higher kind of existence, and perhaps never again might have the opportunity..

Whatever we make of Phoebe's resolution with regard to Clarence, the unspoken reality here is that while Reginald represents "a higher kind of existence", he also means life in Carlingford as "that Tozer girl".

Having taken us to this point, Oliphant shifts her focus back to Mr May and his increasingly desperate situation.

Passages such as this, which occur throughout, and which at first seem intended straight - particularly Phoebe's similar musings - are also now impossible to take other than ironically:

Chapter 38:

Mrs Sam Hurst at her window, wondering where her neighbour could be going, heaved a deep sigh of admiration, which though she was not “in love,” as the girls thought, with Mr May, was a passing tribute to his good looks and training. He looked a gentleman every inch of him---an English gentleman, spotless in linen, speckless in broadcloth, though his dress was far from new; the freshness of sound health and a clear conscience on his handsome face, though he was no longer young. His abundant hair, steel-grey, slightly crisped under his hat, not curling exactly, but with a becoming twist in it---clerical, yet not too clerical, a man given to no extremes, decorously churchmanlike, yet liberal and tolerant of the world...

I think we also need to read this in the specific light of Mr May's exploitation of Mr Tozer's name. I think it's self-evident that it would never have crossed Mr May's mind to use another gentleman the way he uses Mr Tozer: the same ingrained contempt that shows itself in his dealings with Mr Cotsdean is apparent here. On some level Mr May thinks he has an inherent right to take advantage of these men because they are not - like him - gentlemen.

Meanwhile we are let in on Mr Copperhead's Achilles' heel:

Chapter 38:

Mr Copperhead said nothing; but he stared too, rather aghast at this new revelation. What! his porcelain, his Dresden figure of a son, his crowning curiosity, was he going to show a will of his own? The despot felt a thrill go over him. What kind of a sentiment love was in his mind it would be hard to tell; but his pride was all set on this heavy boy. To see him a man of note, in Parliament, his name in the papers, his speeches printed in the “Times,” was the very heaven of his expectations. “Son of the famous Copperhead, the great contractor.” He did not care about such distinction in his own person; but this had been his dream ever since Clarence came into being. And now there he stood gloomy, obdurate. If he had made up his mind to make a low marriage, could his father hinder him---could anything hinder him? Mr. Copperhead looked at his son and quailed for the first time in his life.

Place this against Mr May' conduct: another form of snobbery but snobbery just the same. Who is Mr Copperhead to consider Phoebe "low"? For him it is all about the money, but the contempt he expresses is the same as that felt by Mr May for his Dissenting victims; the latter is simply quieter about it.

And if we had any doubt about it, Mr May soon makes it clear how far he considers Phoebe to be Ursula's inferior:

Chapter 39:

    “Fall in love with me!” cried Ursula. “Oh, papa, where are your eyes? He has fallen in love, but not with me. Can't you see it? It is Phœbe he cares for.”
    Mr May was startled. He raised his head with a curious smile in his eyes, which made Ursula wonder painfully whether her father had taken much wine at the Hall.
    “Ah, ha! is that what they are frightened for?” he said, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “She will show bad taste, Ursula; she might do better; but I suppose a girl of her class has not the delicacy---”

But before this, there is this ominous passage that let's us know that Mr May has reached the end of his tether:

Chapter 39:

The night was mild and soft, the hedgerows all rustling with the new life of the spring, and the stars beginning to come out as he went on; and on the whole the walk was pleasant, though the roads were somewhat muddy. As he went along, he felt himself fall into a curious dreamy state of mind, which was partly fatigue perhaps, but was not at all unpleasant. Sometimes he almost seemed to himself to be asleep as he trudged on, and woke up with a start, thinking that he saw indistinct figures, the skirt of a dress or the tail of a long coat, disappearing past him, just gone before he was fully awake to what it was. He knew there was no one on the lonely road, and that this was a dream or illusion, but still he kept seeing these vanishings of indistinct wayfarers, which did not frighten him in the least, but half-amused him in the curious state of his brain. He had got rid of his anxiety. It was all quite plain before him what to do,---to go to the Bank, to tell them what he had coming in, and to settle everything as easily as possible. The consciousness of having this to do acted upon him like a gentle opiate or dream-charm. When he got to the railway station, and got into a carriage, he seemed to be floating somehow in a prolonged vision of light and streaks of darkness, not quite aware now far he was going, or where he was going, across the country; and even when he arrived at Carlingford he roused himself with difficulty, not quite certain that he had to get out; then he smiled at himself, seeing the gas-lights in a sort of vague glimmer about him, not uncomfortable, but misty and half-asleep...

And the final blow comes soon enough---because of course Mr Cotsdean was right: it was the 15th:

    Several bits of torn paper were lying on the floor; but only one of these was big enough to contain any information. It was torn in a kind of triangular shape, and contained a corner of a letter, a section of three lines,
            “must have mistaken the date
            presented to-day,
            paid by Tozer,”
was what she read. She could not believe her eyes. What transactions could there be between her grandfather and Mr May? She secured the scrap of paper, furtively putting it into her pocket. It was better to say nothing either to the doctor, or any one else, of anything so utterly incomprehensible. It oppressed Phœbe with a sense of mystery and of personal connection with the mystery, which even her self-possession could scarcely bear up against...

Yes:

Chapter 39:

“Don't say nothing, Miss,” said Betsy, sinking her voice, “but you take my word it's money. Money's at the bottom of everything. It's something, as sure as you're alive, as master has got to pay. I've been a deal with gentlefolks,” added Betsy, “and ne'er a one of them can abide that.”

>140 lyzard: Those comments by Mr Copperhead were truly shocking. Was this a common stance? Or was she venting her anger against someone specific?

>151 MissWatson:

It was one view of how society should function; I think plenty of people today still think along those lines, though perhaps they don't express it quite so crudely. You're more likely to hear sneers about dole bludgers and welfare cheats, but it's the same underlying attitude. (Our previous government here began treating the age pension as "welfare" rather than an entitlement: it's something that crops up in Pentacostal religions which run on the God-likes-rich-people principle. If you're poor you must have done something wrong and therefore you deserve punishment...like having your payment cut. If it's not enough to live on that's just too bad...)

There are two different aspects of what happens next that we need to consider: Phoebe's behaviour; and Mr Tozer's reaction when he discovers that someone has forged his name.

I think we need to be aware that covering up a criminal act, in circumstances where that crime affected "nice" people, is something found in literature well into the 20th century. Mostly it was about trying to protect the family of the criminal, though it could also be about covering up the victim's secrets, for example.

So Phoebe's impulse here is well within the boundaries of accepted (novel) conduct.

Her motivation is to protect, not Mr May specifically, but "the Mays", "the Parsonage":

Chapter 40:

She felt that she had obligations to all of them, to the parson-father for submitting to her presence, nay, encouraging it, and to Ursula for receiving her with that affectionate fervour of friendship which had completely changed the tenor of Phœbe's life at Carlingford. She was obliged to them, and she knew that she was obliged to them. How different these three months would have been but for the Parsonage; what a heavy leaden-coloured existence without variety and without interest she must have lived; whereas it had gone by like a summer day, full of real life, of multiplied interests, of everything that it was most desirable to have. Not at home and in London could she have had the advantages she had enjoyed here...

And Phoebe is honest enough to admit that it was her admittance to the Parsonage that gave her a chance with Clarence: he would never have called upon her at the Tozers' or, if he did, would have despised her. The "setting" provided by the Parsonage made all the difference.

Mr Tozer's reaction is of course very different. We see another kind of snobbery here, one that more or less aligns Mr Tozer with Mr Copperhead: the contempt of the rich for the poor. He has no trouble at all believing that Mr Cotsdean is the guilty party, because Mr Cotsdean is poor and has troubles at home. He's pays no attention to his banker's counter-assertion that Mr Cotsdean is a man of good character. (Of course he is, or Mr May wouldn't have made use of him.)

But we need to be clear about the nature of Mr Tozer's violent reaction here: it isn't the money so much (though that certainly comes into it, as we shall see), as the fact that someone has appropriated his name, and that he has - to appearances - been drawn into a disreputable financial transaction. It is the damage to his reputation that infuriates him quite as much as the loss of money.

Chapter 40:

“Once I get him, see if I let him go,” he cried, his voice thick with fast-coming words and the foam of fury. “Let the bank do as it likes; I'll have him, I will. I'll see justice on the man as has dared to make free with my name. It ain't nothing to you, my name; but I've kep' it honest, and out of folk's mouths, and see if I'll stand disgrace thrown on it now. A bill on me as never had such a thing, not when I was struggling to get on! Dash him! damn him!” cried the old man, transported with rage...

****

“Well,” said Tozer, “you've seen it, and now what do you think of it? That's my name, mind you, my name! I hope the Almighty will grant me patience. Stuck on to what they calls a kite, an accommodation bill. What do you think of that, Miss Phœbe? A-a-ah! if I had hold of himif ---I had him under my fists---if I had him by the scruff of the neck!”

I'm intrigued here by the mixture of dash, damn and d---: perhaps Oliphant meant her publisher to pick one? :D

Whatever we think of the orality of Phoebe's conduct, we have to admire her quick thinking and determination---all the more so because she's only picking up the whole story piecemeal. It is not until she is talking to her grandfather, for instance, that she realises the extent of Mr May's wrongdoing, that it is literally a case of criminal forgery.

But she's not the girl to let a detail like that stop her:

Chapter 40:

    She had a handkerchief in her hand, and almost without consciousness of what she was doing, she crushed up the miserable bit of paper, which was the cause of so much evil and misery, in its folds. He was far too impassioned and excited to observe such a simple proceeding. It was the suggestion of a moment, carried out in another moment like a flash of lightning. And as soon as she had done this, and perceived what she had done, fortitude and comfort came back to Phœbe's soul.
    “You will not hear what I have found out, and now I do not choose to tell you, grandpapa,” she said, with an air of offence. “Unless you wish to be ill, you will do much better to go to bed. It is your usual hour, and I am going to grandmamma. Say good-night, please. I am going out again to stay all night Mr. May is ill, and I ought to help poor Ursula.”
    “You go a deal after them Mays,” said Tozer, with a cloud over his face.
    “Yes. I wonder whom else I should go after? Who has been kind to me in Carlingford except the Mays? Nobody. Who has asked me to go to their house, and share everything that is pleasant in it? None of your Salem people, grandpapa. I hope I am not ungrateful, and whatever happens, or whatever trouble they are in,” cried Phœbe, fervently, “I shall stand up for them through thick and thin, wherever I go.”

Chapter 41:

     “I wanted to speak to you, please,” said Phœbe. “Will you mind if I speak very plainly, without any ceremony? Mr Cotsdean, I am Mr Tozer's granddaughter, and live with him at No. 6 in the Lane. I dare say you have often seen me with Miss May.”
     “Yes---yes, Miss, certainly,” he said, with a thrill of alarm and excitement running through him. He felt his knees knock together under cover of the counter, and yet he did not know what he feared.
     “Will you please tell me frankly, in confidence, about---the bill which was brought to my grandfather yesterday?” said Phœbe, bringing out the question with a rush.
     Whether she was doing wrong, whether she might bring insult upon herself, whether it was an interference unwarrantable and unjustifiable, she could not tell. She was in as great a fright as Cotsdean, and more anxious still than he was; but fortunately her agitation did not show.
     “What am I to tell you about it, Miss?” said the man, terrified. “Is it Mr Tozer as has sent you? Lord help me! I know as he can sell me up if he has a mind; but he knows it ain't me.”
     “Don't speak so loud,” said Phœbe, trembling too. “Nobody must hear; and remember, you are never, never to talk of this to any one else; but tell me plainly, that there may be no mistake. Is it---Mr May?”

And this, I suppose we may say, prepares us for the next great thing that Phoebe chooses to undertake:

Chapter 41:

It was characteristic of Phœbe's nature that she had no doubt as to being perfectly right in the matter, no qualm lest she should be making a mistake. She felt the weight upon her of the great thing she had undertaken to do, with a certain half-pleasing sense of the solemnity of the position and of its difficulties; but she was not afraid that she was going wrong or suffering her fancy to stray further than the facts justified; neither was she troubled by any idea of going beyond her sphere by interfering thus energetically in her friend's affairs. Phœbe did not easily take any such idea into her head. It seemed natural to her to do whatever might be wanted, and to act upon her own responsibility. Her self-confidence reached the heroic point. She knew that she was right, and she knew moreover that in this whole matter she alone was right. Therefore the necessity of keeping up, of keeping alert and vigilant, of holding in her hand the threads of all these varied complications was not disagreeable to her, though she fully felt its importance---nay, almost exaggerated it in her own mind if that could be. She felt the dangerous character of the circumstances around her, and her heart was sore with pity for the culprit, or as she called him to herself the chief sufferer; and yet all the same Phœbe felt a certain sense of satisfaction in the great role she herself was playing. She felt equal to it, though she scarcely knew what was the next step she ought to take...

Which happens along soon enough:

Chapter 41:

    “Look here,” he said, “I wish I could speak to you, Miss Phœbe, somewhere better than in the street. Yes, in the garden---that will do. It ain't much of a place either to make a proposal in, for that's what I've come to do; but you don't want me to go down on my knees, or make a fuss, eh? I got up in the middle of the night to be here first thing and see you. I never had a great deal to say for myself,” said Clarence, “you won't expect me to make you fine speeches; but I am fond of you---awfully fond of you, Phœbe, that's the truth. You suit me down to the ground, music and everything. There's no girl I ever met that has taken such a hold upon me as you.”
    Phœbe heard him very quietly, but her heart beat loud. She stood on the gravel between the flower-borders, where the primroses were beginning to wither, and glanced over her life of the past and that of the future, which were divided by this moment like the two beds of flowers; one homely, not very distinguished, simple enough---the other exalted by wealth to something quite above mediocrity. Her heart swelled, full as it was with so many emotions of a totally different kind. She had gained a great prize, though it might not be very much to look at; more or less, she was conscious this golden apple had been hanging before her eyes for years, and now it had dropped into her hand. A gentle glow of contentment diffused itself all over her, not transport, indeed, but satisfaction, which was better...

So at this moment, Phoebe has two great battles before her: she must overcome her grandfather's rage on behalf of Mr May; and she must outface Mr Copperhead.

Rather her than me. :D

Though there is a note of humour in Oliphant's description of Phoebe's self-satisfaction, there is nothing funny about the way Mr May's affairs play out. It seems at first that Mr Tozer's blind rage will defeat Phoebe's ends, but ultimately her faith in her grandfather proves not misplaced:

Chapter 43:

    “I believe as you've got it!” he cried, giving her a shake. It was a shot at a venture, said without the least idea of its truth; but before the words had crossed his lips, he felt with a wild passion of rage and wonder that it was true. “Give it up, you hussy!” he shrieked, with a yell of fury, his face convulsed with sudden rage, thickly and with sputtering lips.
    “Tozer!” cried his wife, flinging herself between them, “take your hands off the child. Run, run to your room, my darling; he's out of his senses. Lord bless us all, Sam, are you gone stark staring mad?”
    “Grandpapa,” said Phœbe, trembling, “if I had it, you may be sure it would be safe out of your way. I told you I knew something about it, but you would not hear me. Will you hear me now? I'll make it up to you---double it, if you like. Grandmamma, it is a poor man he would drive to death if he is not stopped. Oh!” cried Phœbe, clasping her hands, “after what has happened this morning, will you not yield to me? and after all the love you have shown me? I will never ask anything, not another penny. I will make it up; only give in to me, give in to me---for once in my life! Grandpapa! I never asked anything from you before.”
    “Give it up, you piece of impudence! you jade! you d----d deceitful---”

****

    “Grandpapa,” said Phœbe in his ear, “here it is, your bill; it was he who did it---and it has driven him mad. Look! I give it up to you; and there he is---that is your work. Now do what you please---”
    Trembling, the old man took the paper out of her hand. He gazed wondering at the other, who somehow moved in his excitement by a sense that the decisive moment had come, stood still too, his arm half-pulled out of his coat, his face wild with dread and horror. For a moment they looked at each other in a common agony, neither the one nor the other clear enough to understand, but both feeling that some tremendous crisis had come upon them. “He---done it!” said Tozer appalled and almost speechless. “He done it!” They all crowded round, a circle of scared faces. Phœbe alone stood calm. She was the only one who knew the whole, except the culprit, who understood nothing with that mad confusion in his eyes. But he was overawed too, and in his very madness recognized the crisis. He stood still, struggling no longer, with his eyes fixed upon the homely figure of the old butterman, who stood trembling, thunderstruck, with that fatal piece of paper in his hand...

We need to have a proper discussion of the Phoebe / Clarence situation, in terms of its significance in the literature of this time, but what is most striking here, I think, is Clarence's own perception that Phoebe can make him a better person.

While we spend most of the book wincing at Clarence, as Oliphant no doubt intended, I think in fairness we should highlight this:

Chapter 44:

    “By Jove!” cried that young man, who had been hanging in the background, dark and miserable. He came close up to her, and caught first her sleeve and then her elbow; the contact seemed to give him strength. “Look here, sir,” he said, ingratiatingly, “we don't want to offend you---I don't want to fly in your face; but I can't go on having coaches for ever, and here's the only one in the world that can do the business instead of coaches. Phœbe knows I'm fond of her, but that's neither here nor there. Here is the one that can make something of me. I ain't clever, you know it as well as I do---but she is. I don't mind going into parliament, making speeches and that sort of thing, if I've got her to back me up. But without her I'll never do anything, without her you may put me in a cupboard, as you've often said. Let me have her, and I'll make a figure, and do you credit. I can't say any fairer,” said Clarence, taking the rest of her arm into his grasp, and holding her hand. He was stupid---but he was a man, and Phœbe felt proud of him, for the moment at least.
    “You idiot!” cried his father, “and I was an idiot too to put any faith in you; come away from that artful girl. Can't you see that it's all a made-up plan from beginning to end? What was she sent down here for but to catch you, you oaf, you fool, you! Drop her, or you drop me. That's all I've got to say.”
    “Yes, drop me, Clarence,” said Phœbe, with a smile; “for in the mean time you hurt me. See, you have bruised my arm. While you settle this question with your father, I will go to grandmamma. Pardon me, I take more interest in her than in this discussion between him and you.”
    “You shan't go,” cried her lover, “not a step. Look here, sir. If that's what it comes to, her before you. What you've made of me ain't much, is it? but I don't mind what I go in for, as long as she's to the fore. Her before you.”

All the same, we can hardly blame Phoebe for this moment of appalled apprehension:

Chapter 44:

Phœbe was silenced altogether when this had happened. He was a blockhead, but he was a man, and could stand up for his love, and for his own rights as a man, independent of the world. She felt a genuine admiration for her lout at that moment; but this admiration was accompanied by a very chill sense of all that might be forfeited if Mr Copperhead stood out. Clarence, poor and disowned by his father, would be a very different person from the Clarence Copperhead who was going into parliament, and had “a fine position” in prospect. She did not form any resolutions as to what she would do in that case, for she was incapable of anything dishonourable; but it made her shiver as with a cold icy current running over...

But we know Mr Copperhead's weakness---

Chapter 44:

He could not give up his cherished scheme, his Member of Parliament, his crown of glory. It was what he had been looking forward to for years. He tried to realise the failure of his hopes, and could not---nay, would not, feeling it more than he could bear. No; without his gentleman son, his University man, his costly, useless production, who was worth so much money to him, yet brought in nothing, he felt that he must shrink in the opinion of all his friends, even of his own sons, the “first family,” who had so envied, sneered at, undervalued Clarence, yet had been forced to be civil to him, and respect their father's imperious will as he chose that it should be respected. What a sorry figure he should cut before all of them if he cast off Clarence, and had to announce himself publicly as foiled in all his plans and hopes! He could not face this prospect; he shrank from it as if it had involved actual bodily pain. The men who would laugh at his failure were men of his own class, to whom he had bragged at his ease, crowing and exulting over them, and he felt that he could not face them if all his grand anticipations collapsed. There was nothing for it but to give in. And on the other hand this girl Phœbe was a very clever girl, able not only to save the expense of coaches, but to cram the boy, and keep him up better than any coach could do. She could make his speeches for him, like enough, Mr. Copperhead thought, and a great many reasons might be given to the world why she had been chosen instead of a richer wife for the golden boy. Golden girls, as a general rule, were not of so much use. “Fortune ain't worth thinking of in comparison with brains. It was brains I wanted, and I've bought 'em dear; but I hope I can afford it,” he almost heard himself saying to an admiring, envious assembly; for Mr Copperhead so far deserved his success that he could accept a defeat when it was necessary, and make the best of it...

Those two quotes together, goodness me. In spite of everything you almost have to say, "Poor Clarence." :D

But in the end, they all get what they want:

Chapter 45:

Phœbe was the best of daughters-in-law, and ended by making her husband's mother dependent on her for most of the comforts of her life. And Clarence got into Parliament, and the reader, perhaps (if Parliament is sitting), may have had the luck to read a speech in the morning paper of Phœbe's composition, and if he ever got the secret of her style would know it again, and might trace the course of a public character for years to come by that means...

Finally, in terms of the Carlingford series overall, I think there's one more passage we need to note---with its passing allusion to Arthur Vincent, who did not become the father of Phoebe, Junior:

Chapter 45:

The chorus was so strong that the echo of it moved Tozer, who was a kind of arch-deacon and leading member too, in his way, where he sat twiddling his thumbs in his little room. “I'm one as is qualified to give what you may call a casting vote,” said Tozer, “being the oldest deacon in Salem, and one as has seen generations coming and going. And as for Church and Chapel, I've served 'em both, and seen the colour of their money, and there's them as has their obligations to me, though we needn't name no names. But this I will say, as I'm cured of clever men and them as is thought superior. They ain't to be calculated upon. If any more o' them young intellectuals turns up at Carlingford, I'll tell him right out, 'You ain't the man for my money.' I'll say to him as bold as brass, 'I've been young, and now I'm old, and it's my conviction as clever young men ain't the sort for Salem. We want them as is steady-going, and them as is consistent; good strong opinions, and none o' your charity, that's what we wants here.'” Now Tozer had loved clever young men in his day more well than wisely, as everybody knew, and this deliverance carried all the more weight in consequence, and was echoed loudly by one general hum of content and applause...

:D

And we will leave it there.

Thank you, all! - and apologies again for this dragging out so long. As I mentioned up above, I've been sorting out my internet and cable and it's just eaten away a ridiculous amount of my time and energy.

But anyway---please bring on those thoughts, about this novel and the series generally.

Just so we all understand Mr. Tozer's rage--I checked the value in today's pounds of the 150 pounds--and it is over 13,000 pounds.

>167 NinieB:

And yet the rage isn't predominantly about the money: we understand from this the value Mr Tozer puts on his reputation.

It is also worth pointing out in this context what the novel means when it calls Mr Copperhead a millionaire (do the maths on that!), and why a debt of fifty pounds, which seems small to us, could have ruined Mr Cotsdean.

It also throws new light on Mr May's recklessness after the forgery.

>167 NinieB: That is a staggering sum! It puts a different light on Mr Cotsdean's panic, it's always hard to keep a sense of the value of money in those times when we are used to today's prices.
What strikes me most about this book is how domestic it is. We get to see little of other families or households, no feeling that there is any social life going on in Carlingford. Or is that a wrong impression?

>167 NinieB:, >169 MissWatson:

Yes, that was very helpful---thanks, Ninie! :)

>169 MissWatson:

I think this ties back to what I was saying in >49 lyzard: and >115 lyzard:: it seems that most of the "nice" people have moved on from Carlingford; there is a definite sense of stagnation, or worse. If the Tozers are living in Grange Lane - if the Mays represent the pinnacle of Church society* - then this is not the Carlingford we knew.

Even the Dissenting community doesn't seem to be entertaining as it used to, Mr Northcote's meeting aside; but that might be a wrong impression given by the avoidance of such entertainment by Mr Northcote and Phoebe.

(*Not that the Mays seem to have any social life before Phoebe arrives, but in terms of their standing in the community.)

C'mon, people, what happened to all those thoughts you were having? :)

Phoebe's marriage to Clarence is definitely comparable with Lucilla's to Tom, but I felt more positive about the former even though the relationship dynamics are similar.

Spoilers for Miss Marjoribanks

I hated that despite being repeatedly rejected by Lucilla, Tom still feels entitled to marry her and acts as though if he perseveres she will give in eventually. We still see this plot being treated as "romantic" today! In the years they are apart he does nothing to earn her regard or respect, so when she agrees to marry him I felt as though she was giving in to the inevitable, whereas Phoebe has clearly thought through her options, based on her self-knowledge and her understanding of Clarence's character, and made a positive decision based on her analysis. I don't love it, but I wasn't rooting for Reginald either. I don't envy Phoebe her father-in-law but I have no doubt that she will be able to manage him!

I would have liked more detail about Ursula and Northcote's marriage; they seem to be dismissed at the end. I presume they live off his money, as no career is mentioned after we are told that he leaves the ministry. I'd love to read a book about Janey, as she seems like someone who will not be willing to lead a conventional life!

The outcome of the forgery plot was as compassionate as it could be, due to Phoebe's efforts, and I loved seeing how she thinks on her feet to try and protect all those whom she cares about. It might have been satisfying if the odious Mr May had faced legal justice for his actions, but the children didn't deserve the disgrace that would have followed for them. I found the psychological portrait of Mr May fascinating and realistic.

Yes, I do think this is my favourite of the series.

I'm always impressed by how Mrs. Oliphant kept getting better and better as a writer. Yes, Phoebe Junior is very good indeed. I would have been happy to call the book Ursula as I felt like she was more alive for me through most of the book, but of course in the last few chapters Phoebe really comes into her own.

>168 lyzard: I suppose you are right about the source of Mr. Tozer's rage. In today's world his reputational concerns are hard to appreciate, since this kind of financial transaction doesn't really play the role it does in Victorian novels. And I still think it's pretty remarkable that Phoebe talked him out of pursuing the matter.

>169 MissWatson: I always have to run these numbers when I'm reading a Victorian novel to make the figures seem real.

Brigit's right, Carlingford seems really dead compared to its liveliness in, for example, Miss Marjoribanks.

>172 Sakerfalcon:

I think there's a facetious note in the final section of Miss Marjoribanks that invites us not to take it too seriously, which is absent from Phoebe's carefully considered choices.

What's also missing is any real sense of judgement. What Oliphanr says, in effect, is that some people (meaning you, Reader) might disapprove; but that disapproval isn't authorial.

It may have taken that extra ten years for Oliphant to work up the nerve to do this. This is obviously realistic, but so alien to the conventions of Victorian literature that it's shocking to us.

You only have to compare this to, for example---

{---spoilers for Phineas Finn---}

The Kennedy marriage in Phineas Finn, which Lady Laura makes for all sorts of carefully calculated reasons but without love: it's a complete disaster., which is what we've been conditioned to expect where such a marriage is made in a novel.

The other thing that's striking is the cross-religious currents in the suggested relationships, particularly after the religious and social conflict we noted early in the novel. It's even surprising that, as the minor or secondary couple, Northcote and Ursula do marry, though we are given little hint of how that works out. And not that it was going to happen, but Reginald gives no apparent thought to Phoebe's position as a Dissenter, and the daughter of a Dissenting minister. Her connection to the Tozers' might have been more of an obstacle if it had come to that.

I suppose what this suggests ultimately is that the characters' social standing is more important that their doctrinal differences.

>173 NinieB:

I think the reason Ursula is real to us is that Oliphant put so much of her own domestic struggles into her---not an unreasonable father, but a constantly demanding family.

Sorry to keep going back to Trollope, but what we have with Mr Tozer seems to me the flipside of what Trollope was saying in The Way We Live Now in particular (which we really need to get to one day!), where he expresses his concern that society - meaning the middle- and upper-classes - were becoming less honest, something he puts down to the increased focus on making money through practices like stock manipulation and company trading---the whole purpose of which, in his opinion, is effectively to take advantage of others. Deceit and chicanery were becoming away of life; honour and honesty, and a reputation, were losing their value.

But at Mr Tozer's level the reverse is still true: he has no social standing; what he has is his reputation for clean financial practice.

Phoebe plays a significant part of course, but had it been Mr Cotsdean I think Mr Tozer would have crushed him like a bug: ironically in terms of this argument, it's being confronted with a gentleman that baulks him.

This is Carlingford twenty years later in its own terms and ten years in Oliphant's. I suppose Mr Copperhead is right about that at least, there's no real way in which Carlingford can grow, no opportunities for investment; it can only stagnate or die.

I was sorry not to hear more about the Dorsets and their Indian children. I am always surprised how little room there is in these "domestic" Victorian novels for the people abroad looking after the Empire.

>176 MissWatson:

It's always unnerving how casually these things are treated. The striking detail here is that the children don't speak English---they've been raised by the servants, not their parents.

It seems to have been treated as something severed from normal domestic life. Or perhaps the reality that people out there were mostly "in trade" placed them beyond the pale. (It was all right if they came home with a fortune, of course, like Tom Marjoribanks.)

There is more non-fiction than fiction on that during the 19th century, I think; collections of letters home and travel memoirs and that sort of thing. It's as if they didn't really start writing about it until it was becoming genuinely controversial.

>177 lyzard: That's an interesting aspect, about these people being in trade. From a few historical fiction novels set in the times I certainly got that vibe.

>178 MissWatson:

It's hard to know whether it was looked upon like that: for the most part these people weren't doing small-scale buying and selling like the Tozers or Mr Cotsdean; many of them would have been part of big business concerns, with office jobs or responsibility for import / export, or for overseeing shipments. It might have been viewed as being on a higher level. Perhaps people did exactly what Phoebe does here, make a distinction between "trade" and "the shop".

Anyway!---

Can I get last comments from people, please? Particularly can anyone who hasn't commented yet to check in with a few thoughts?

Do we have anyone who is still reading? Don't feel rushed if so, but do please let us know how you're getting on.

I finished a few days ago and have been following all the comments here. As ever with this type of book I am grateful for Liz's tutoring, the significance of the class, religious etc differences would have passed me by (although I am more familiar with the religious set-up of the time!) and would have merely irritated me -'How can they be so stupid/snobbish?' as they are so removed from my 21st century attitudes. Of course I have been learning about the mores of the era from previous threads but I certainly need help with some details still.

I liked Phoebe - her clear-sighted attitude and self-awareness. I felt she realised that the 'system' wasn't right or fair but decided that she should work with it (for her own benefit) rather than attempt to fight against it.

I think Mr Copperhead will come to appreciate his daughter-in-law a lot more once she got Clarence into Parliament.

Others have already expressed thoughts similar to my own reaction. I have just one comment. I don't see Phoebe second-guessing her choice at mid-life.

I felt as I was reading the book that Oliphant was working through her own feelings about the problems she was facing with her next of kin: her husband's early death, her brother's 'financial ruin' and her not so successful sons and having to become a breadwinner during an era when that was unusual.

>181 CDVicarage:

Thanks, Kerry! Yes, though her doing so is very startling in this form of literature.

>182 MissWatson:

I would imagine a mixture of respect and resentment, and a few more pitched battles going forward. She's the only one who ever outfaced him, after all, even if in doing it she gave him what he wanted. Also the suggestion that she takes on the job of caring for Mrs Copperhead, which would necessarily mean defending her from attack (maybe by drawing her father-in-law's fire?).

>183 cbl_tn:

No, she's no Mrs Copperhead. (Well, she is, but...) She's knows what she's doing and what she wants out of it, and is prepared for the downsides of her choice: some tough times ahead but no disillusionment.

>184 kayclifton:

You can't really call it wish fulfillment when it comes with Clarence Copperhead as the price but you can certainly feel Oliphant's longing for financial security, I think. To that we can probably attribute the remarkable lack of judgement about Phoebe's proceedings.

Thanks, everyone! I found this a very striking novel for the reasons we have discussed: Phoebe's calculated campaign, the analysis of Mr May, the absence of conventional romance, and the suggestion that religious affiliation is not that important in marriage.

And at the end of this series, we are also given a glimpse into the slow death of Carlingford. Sad to reflect that Lucilla Marjoribanks' Thursday parties represented the town at its peak!

My favourite touch is the late revelation that Phoebe is writing Clarence's Parliamentary speeches for him---another daring detail fifty years before women got the vote.

My only other thought is to wonder, after all that, where the Tozers did leave their money---and on the principle of "To them that has shall be given" - or to put it another way, them that has, gets - I'm guessing it went quite unnecessarily to Phoebe, Junior. :D

Now---frying pan / fire time. :)

For those of us doing the Trollope reads, next up we have The Claverings---probably in July, if that suits everyone.

With respect to the Virago reads, things are a bit more unsettled.

If you can remember back that far, these reads started as part of my chronological read project, working through (mostly) previously unread Viragos by original publication date.

Then we separately got diverted into the Carlingford series, and a bit into my Mary Elizabeth Braddon side-project.

However in doing this, we have skipped three earlier Virago works:
- The Daisy Chain by Charlotte Yonge
- Curious, If True by Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Lifted Veil by George Eliot

Along the way here, we have also mentioned Yonge's first novel, The Heir Of Redclyffe.

For myself, I will be reading all three of these, and am happy to turn them into group projects if there is sufficient interest. I have read The Heir Of Redclyffe (which is not a Virago) but would be happy to revisit it if others wanted.

Meanwhile, the Gaskell book is a collection of five stories, and the Eliot is a novella; both of these could be done without any heavy time demand, and really at any time that suited people.

So these are our options. Please check in below and let me know whether you are interested in any or all of these, so that we can start to make a plan.

Thank you, Liz, for your stellar guidance through Phoebe Junior. You put so much work into these reads.

>187 lyzard: I'm in for it all. I don't feel a need to hit The Heir of Redclyffe before The Daisy Chain but I'm in if others are interested.

>188 NinieB:

Thanks, Ninie! Happy to keep doing it if others are getting something out of it. :)

Yes, that's basically how I feel too, we'll see what kind of consensus we get.

Yes to everything/anything from me.

The Daisy Chain was one of the first Viragos that I bought and read - thirty five years ago, now! - and I haven't re-read it since. I think one of my reasons for choosing it then was its thickness - value for money!

Thanks, Liz, for the effort you put into explaining things. I'll be along for The Claverings, and I'll look up Ms Yonge to see if that would interest me.

>187 lyzard: I have read both The Heir of Reddclyffe and The Daisy Chain not too long ago so would consider reading Curious, If True and/or The Lifted Veil

Thank you Liz, I really appreciate your guidance in these group reads! I really need a shove to get me reading Victorian prose these days and this does the trick every time!

I'd very much appreciate a group read of The daisy chain; I've started it several times and never made it past the first few chapters.

>188 NinieB:, >190 CDVicarage:, >191 MissWatson:, >192 kayclifton:, >193 Sakerfalcon:

Thanks, everyone! - thank you for participating. I will take all of that onboard.

For now we will pencil in The Claverings for July, and revisit the rest then.

The question to consider is whether you would prefer to treat each of the shorter works as a full-on group read, or try to push through those more quickly to the novel (which would be either The Heir Of Redclyffe or The Daisy Chain as people chose).

>194 lyzard: I'm in for The Claverings; July is fine--Trollope will get squeezed in between Jane Austen July.

I have read the Gaskell stories and The Lifted Veil, and I think we could possibly put them into one month. There's a lot to chew on in The Lifted Veil.

I would participate in The Heir of Redclyffe, but would probably pass on The Daisy Chain.

>194 lyzard: I'm fine to put Gaskell and Eliot into one month.

I have read The lifted veil recently and I think I would like to re-visit it, it is quite strange.
And I am very fond of Elizabeth Gaskell's books, so a few short stories look manageable.

>195 kac522:, >196 NinieB:, >197 MissWatson:

Thanks for that.

My own thought is to do the three over three consecutive months, either August-September-October or October-November-December, whichever worked better for people, to keep each of them distinct. Appreciate that might be too much of a time commitment, though.

Anyway...the take-home message here is that people are mostly 'in' which is great! We will nail it down later on when people have a better idea of their commitments. Thanks, everyone!

A reminder to those of you participating that we are scheduled for the group read of The Claverings next month: I will set the thread up over the weekend and we can make a proper start next Monday.

Hope to see you there!

>199 lyzard: I'll be there!