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Title: Doctor Thorne
Author: Anthony Trollope
Release Date: April, 2002 [eBook #3166]
[Date this title first posted: January 30, 2001]
[Most recently updated: July 5, 2010]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR THORNE***
E-text prepared by Kenneth David Cooper
and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
DOCTOR THORNE
by
Anthony Trollope
First published in 1858
CONTENTS
I. The Greshams of Greshamsbury
II. Long, Long Ago
III. Dr Thorne
IV. Lessons from Courcy Castle
V. Frank Gresham’s First Speech
VI. Frank Gresham’s Early Loves
VII. The Doctor’s Garden
VIII. Matrimonial Prospects
IX. Sir Roger Scatcherd
X. Sir Roger’s Will
XI. The Doctor Drinks His Tea
XII. When Greek Meets Greek, Then Comes the Tug of War
XIII. The Two Uncles
XIV. Sentence of Exile
XV. Courcy
XVI. Miss Dunstable
XVII. The Election
XVIII. The Rivals
XIX. The Duke of Omnium
XX. The Proposal
XXI. Mr Moffat Falls into Trouble
XXII. Sir Roger Is Unseated
XXII. Retrospective
XXIV. Louis Scatcherd
XXV. Sir Roger Dies
XXVI. War
XXVII. Miss Thorne Goes on a Visit
XXVIII. The Doctor Hears Something to His Advantage
XXIX. The Donkey Ride
XXX. Post Prandial
XXXI. The Small End of the Wedge
XXXII. Mr Oriel
XXXIII. A Morning Visit
XXXIV. A Barouche and Four Arrives at Greshamsbury
XXXV. Sir Louis Goes Out to Dinner
XXXVI. Will He Come Again?
XXXVII. Sir Louis Leaves Greshamsbury
XXXVIII. De Courcy Precepts and de Courcy Practice
XXXIX. What the World Says about Blood
XL. The Two Doctors Change Patients
XLI. Doctor Thorne Won’t Interfere
XLII. What Can You Give in Return?
XLIII. The Race of Scatcherd Becomes Extinct
XLIV. Saturday Evening and Sunday Morning
XLV. Law Business in London
XLVI. Our Pet Fox Finds a Tail
XLVII. How the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked
to the Wedding
The Greshams of Greshamsbury
Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical
practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following
tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some
particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among
whom, our doctor followed his profession.
There is a county in the west of England not so full of life, indeed,
nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing leviathan
brethren in the north, but which is, nevertheless, very dear to those
who know it well. Its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep
and shady and—let us add—dirty lanes, its paths and stiles, its
tawny-coloured, well-built rural churches, its avenues of beeches,
and frequent Tudor mansions, its constant county hunt, its social
graces, and the general air of clanship which pervades it, has made
it to its own inhabitants a favoured land of Goshen. It is purely
agricultural; agricultural in its produce, agricultural in its poor,
and agricultural in its pleasures. There are towns in it, of course;
dépôts from whence are brought seeds and groceries, ribbons and
fire-shovels; in which markets are held and county balls are carried
on; which return members to Parliament, generally—in spite of Reform
Bills, past, present, and coming—in accordance with the dictates
of some neighbouring land magnate: from whence emanate the country
postmen, and where is located the supply of post-horses necessary
for county visitings. But these towns add nothing to the importance
of the county; they consist, with the exception of the assize town,
of dull, all but death-like single streets. Each possesses two
pumps, three hotels, ten shops, fifteen beer-houses, a beadle, and a
market-place.
Indeed, the town population of the county reckons for nothing when
the importance of the county is discussed, with the exception, as
before said, of the assize town, which is also a cathedral city.
Herein is a clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its
due weight. A resident bishop, a resident dean, an archdeacon, three
or four resident prebendaries, and all their numerous chaplains,
vicars, and ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society
sufficiently powerful to be counted as something by the county
squirearchy. In other respects the greatness of Barsetshire depends
wholly on the landed powers.
Barsetshire, however, is not now so essentially one whole as it was
before the Reform Bill divided it. There is in these days an East
Barsetshire, and there is a West Barsetshire; and people conversant
with Barsetshire doings declare that they can already decipher some
difference of feeling, some division of interests. The eastern moiety
of the county is more purely Conservative than the western; there
is, or was, a taint of Peelism in the latter; and then, too, the
residence of two such great Whig magnates as the Duke of Omnium and
the Earl de Courcy in that locality in some degree overshadows and
renders less influential the gentlemen who live near them.
It is to East Barsetshire that we are called. When the division above
spoken of was first contemplated, in those stormy days in which
gallant men were still combatting reform ministers, if not with hope,
still with spirit, the battle was fought by none more bravely than
by John Newbold Gresham of Greshamsbury, the member for Barsetshire.
Fate, however, and the Duke of Wellington were adverse, and in the
following Parliament John Newbold Gresham was only member for East
Barsetshire.
Whether or not it was true, as stated at the time, that the aspect of
the men with whom he was called on to associate at St Stephen’s broke
his heart, it is not for us now to inquire. It is certainly true that
he did not live to see the first year of the reformed Parliament
brought to a close. The then Mr Gresham was not an old man at the
time of his death, and his eldest son, Francis Newbold Gresham, was a
very young man; but, notwithstanding his youth, and notwithstanding
other grounds of objection which stood in the way of such preferment,
and which must be explained, he was chosen in his father’s place.
The father’s services had been too recent, too well appreciated, too
thoroughly in unison with the feelings of those around him to allow
of any other choice; and in this way young Frank Gresham found
himself member for East Barsetshire, although the very men who
elected him knew that they had but slender ground for trusting him
with their suffrages.
Frank Gresham, though then only twenty-four years of age, was a
married man, and a father. He had already chosen a wife, and by
his choice had given much ground of distrust to the men of East
Barsetshire. He had married no other than Lady Arabella de Courcy,
the sister of the great Whig earl who lived at Courcy Castle in the
west; that earl who not only voted for the Reform Bill, but had been
infamously active in bringing over other young peers so to vote,
and whose name therefore stank in the nostrils of the staunch Tory
squires of the county.
Not only had Frank Gresham so wedded, but having thus improperly and
unpatriotically chosen a wife, he had added to his sins by becoming
recklessly intimate with his wife’s relations. It is true that he
still called himself a Tory, belonged to the club of which his father
had been one of the most honoured members, and in the days of the
great battle got his head broken in a row, on the right side; but,
nevertheless, it was felt by the good men, true and blue, of East
Barsetshire, that a constant sojourner at Courcy Castle could not be
regarded as a consistent Tory. When, however, his father died, that
broken head served him in good stead: his sufferings in the cause
were made the most of; these, in unison with his father’s merits,
turned the scale, and it was accordingly decided, at a meeting held
at the George and Dragon, at Barchester, that Frank Gresham should
fill his father’s shoes.
But Frank Gresham could not fill his father’s shoes; they were too
big for him. He did become member for East Barsetshire, but he was
such a member—so lukewarm, so indifferent, so prone to associate
with the enemies of the good cause, so little willing to fight the
good fight, that he soon disgusted those who most dearly loved the
memory of the old squire.
De Courcy Castle in those days had great allurements for a young man,
and all those allurements were made the most of to win over young
Gresham. His wife, who was a year or two older than himself, was a
fashionable woman, with thorough Whig tastes and aspirations, such
as became the daughter of a great Whig earl; she cared for politics,
or thought that she cared for them, more than her husband did; for
a month or two previous to her engagement she had been attached to
the Court, and had been made to believe that much of the policy of
England’s rulers depended on the political intrigues of England’s
women. She was one who would fain be doing something if she only
knew how, and the first important attempt she made was to turn her
respectable young Tory husband into a second-rate Whig bantling. As
this lady’s character will, it is hoped, show itself in the following
pages, we need not now describe it more closely.
It is not a bad thing to be son-in-law to a potent earl, member of
Parliament for a county, and a possessor of a fine old English seat,
and a fine old English fortune. As a very young man, Frank Gresham
found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He
consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he
was greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more
thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like
a foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths,
of course he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member
of Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came.
Young members of three or four-and-twenty do not think much of
dissolutions, forget the fancies of their constituents, and are too
proud of the present to calculate much as to the future. So it was
with Mr Gresham. His father had been member for Barsetshire all his
life, and he looked forward to similar prosperity as though it were
part of his inheritance; but he failed to take any of the steps which
had secured his father’s seat.
In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with
his honourable lady wife and all the de Courcys at his back, found
that he had mortally offended the county. To his great disgust
another candidate was brought forward as a fellow to his late
colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and spent ten
thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his position. A
high Tory, with a great Whig interest to back him, is never a
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