Framley Parsonage Read online

  You take me too closely au pied de la lettre as touching husbands & lovers. As to myself personally, I have daily to wonder at the continued run of domestic & worldly happiness which has been granted me… [N]o pain or misery has as yet come to me since the day I married; & if any man should speak well of the married state, I should do so.

  But I deny that I have done other. There is a sweet young blushing joy about the first acknowledged reciprocal love, which is like the bouquet of the first glass of wine from the bottle – It goes when it has been tasted. But for all that who will compare the momentary aroma with the lasting joys of the still flowing bowl?27

  Trollope had every reason to be grateful for his happiness, and the pressure brought about by George Smith’s commission for the Cornhill Magazine was a fit occasion to celebrate the virtues of a working Victorian marriage and a supportive Victorian wife.

  It may be that the story of courtship was the chief attraction to many thousands of the original readers of the Cornhill, but the Robarts marriage has an enduring value which better represents Trollope’s strengths as an analyst of social and domestic behaviour. He later wrote far more searching accounts of successful and unsuccessful marriages, but even a rather light novel like Framley Parsonage marks an important stage in the development of conventional subject-matter in English fiction.

  In so many ways the launch of the Cornhill at the end of the year which saw the publication of The Origin of Species, came at a watershed in English literary, intellectual and social history. It may be seen as apt that one of the great geniuses of the previous age expired just at that moment, when Macaulay died in his library at the end of December 1859 with the first issue of the Cornhill Magazine open in front of him. 1860 is a year in which we seem to enter a recognizably new world.

  The Writing and Printing of ‘Framley Parsonage’

  As has already been explained, in 1859 Trollope contracted with the publishers Smith, Elder to write a novel of three-volume length which in the first instance would appear in their new venture the Cornhill Magazine. Framley Parsonage was consequently first published (anonymously) as a monthly serial of sixteen instalments, each instalment consisting of three chapters. The serial ran from the magazine’s first issue in January 1860 (in which it occupied pride of place) until April 1861, and accompanying Trollope’s story were six illustrations by John Everett Millais. In April 1861, with the conclusion of the serial, the bookform edition of the novel duly appeared, the title-page identifying the author as Anthony Trollope.

  Unlike most printings of Framley Parsonage, the text of the present Penguin edition is based on that of the Cornhill. Trollope’s letters, together with his Autobiography, suggest both that the practical and artistic demands made by the serial format of publication – as opposed to those of the three-decker – entered significantly into his processes of composition, and also that he gave a fair amount of personal attention to the printing of his novel in the Cornhill. This was his first attempt at a serial novel –the ‘rushing mode of publication’, as he termed it28 – and Trollope very quickly became conscious of the constraints and priorities of the medium, and in turn adapted his writing to suit them. In a letter of 25 November 1859 he refers to having cut a page out of the proof of his first submitted instalment in deference to the publisher’s requirements regarding length. Of this surgery he comments, ‘but it was as tho you asked for my hearts blood’; and he further frustratedly protests, in justification of his overrunning, that ‘I had even the words counted, so that I might give you exactly what I had undertaken to give & no more’.29 A year later, however, he is sufficiently at home with his new medium to comment quite equably in returning a proof, ‘I have cut out five or six lines to bring in that last bit of a page’.30 Artistic freedom, it seems, is now content to bow to the practicalities of publishing a novel in instalments.

  Trollope’s letters further indicate his degree of involvement in allowing the inference that he often worked through two stages of proofs for the Cornhill printing. On occasion this proof stage provided him with opportunities not just to correct mistakes, but to polish his writing and to develop conceptions. A comparison between the Cornhill printing and the manuscript of Framley Parsonage reveals a number of self-evidently authorial changes which must have been made in proof, notably, for example, in the elaborate mock-heroic opening of Chapter 20. (The manuscript, which comprises Chapters 19–48 and which is held by Harrow School,31 seems to constitute the original printer’s copy, for not only was it donated to the school by the family of Trollope’s publisher, George Smith, but it is regularly marked up in other hands with the names of the individual compositors assigned to set up each section of the novel in type. Such authorial variants from the manuscript as appear in the Cornhill printing must thus have been made by the author in proof.) In his letters, indeed, Trollope gives the impression of his being a first-rate proofreader, keeping the printers on their toes. He conscientiously asks his publisher to return the manuscript copy with the first proof (to enhance the accuracy of his corrections), and he also requests duplicate sets of the second proof or ‘revise’ (presumably so that he can keep a record of his final changes and thus ensure that he will be able to check the final published text).32

  In April 1860 Trollope is found fuming in a letter, though not without humour, about the misinterpretation of one of his proof corrections: ‘see what the printer has done for me by changing a word in one line instead of the one below. Utterly destroyed the whole character of my own [?most] interesting personage. If he dont put the word back I shall resign.’33 In consequence, a remark he makes in the course of July seems uncharacteristically casual: ‘I suppose I did correct 25-26–& 27, but I dont remember.’34 In November, freed from the distractions of an intervening trip to Italy, he returns to his previous manner:

  Remember I have not corrected any further in F. P. I fear I must ask your people for a revise, which I have not had for the last few numbers, as I think I trace a little independent punctuation – no doubt better than my own, – but soil not my own. I am not clear also that I have not come across a slight omission or two…35

  One may well suspect that some of this was bluster on Trollope’s part, an attempt to impress upon his valued publisher just how seriously the new author took his literary responsibilities. (Later he in fact admitted that he had been wrong about the omissions he thought he had spotted.) It must be admitted that Trollope’s own punctuation in the manuscript (like his spelling) is erratic and often ambiguous, and hardly constitutes a platform from which to complain about ‘a little independent punctuation’ stemming from the printing house. Indeed, one may well conclude that the Cornhill printing probably does contain rather a lot of ‘independent punctuation’, but that it is punctuation needed by the novel, and punctuation tacitly accepted by Trollope rather more than he cares to admit. Putting his protestations to one side, Trollope’s practice as a proofreader is not that impressive, at least given the amount of variation in the conventions – of typography, spelling, punctuation and capitalization – that the Cornhill printing displays, and which Trollope seems not to have rectified. There are also a number of inconsistencies of plotting and circumstantial detail which passed the author undetected. However, the fact remains that evidence, internal or external, for Trollope having had any direct hand in the succeeding bookform editions of Framley Parsonage is minimal. Whatever his limitations in supervising the Cornhill printing, his involvement with that edition was far greater than with any succeeding one. Indeed, having done the job on the novel once, Trollope seems to have been reluctant ever to do it again. In a letter first published in N. J. Hall’s 1983 edition of Trollope’s letters, the author is found, in March 1861, writing to George Smith: ‘I do not care to correct the sheets of F. P. again, unless you wish it. I dare say I shall see you before it comes out in its new shape.’ Later that month he is writing again to George Smith asking for some copies of the three-volume edition and remarking on the difficulty of seein
g the publisher now that he has two offices.36 Trollope’s involvement with the printing would seem to have been negligible. If his attitude towards the book edition of The Small House at Allington (four years later) is anything to go by, he was positively blasé about such follow-up printings: ‘Your men I have no doubt will see the book properly thro’ the press without my correcting it. I have put one error right in the portion I have returned.’37 So, in short, if the manuscript of Framley Parsonage shows an incompletely developed text, the first book-form edition signals the withdrawal of the author and, for the most part, the instigation of a process of corruption of the text. The Cornhill text is the only printing reflecting a period of sustained supervision by the author.

  Since the Cornhill printing a number of words and phrases have dropped out of the text of Framley Parsonage, and other readings, through slight misrepresentation, have lost their pointedness or even been totally reversed in meaning. While one printing may have Lady Lufton (redundantly – and astonishingly naively) ask whether there has been any ‘encouragement’ between Lucy Robarts and Lord Lufton, the Cornhill has her ladyship pose the far more relevant and pressing question of whether there has been any ‘engagement’ (Chapter 35).38 Some texts present a remark of Miss Dunstable’s, on her first appearance in the novel, as being made by ‘the lady, with a loud voice’; the Cornhill preserves a more vivid touch of characterization encoded in the expression ‘the lady with the loud voice’ (Chapter 3).39 A hint of ironic fantasy in speculation about Lord Lufton making an ‘excursion’ to the Hudson Bay Territories is lost when the term is replaced by the sadly straight-faced word ‘expedition’ (Chapter 34).40 And it is certainly disturbing to have found Lady Lufton’s gracious hope that ‘it may be long before any cloud comes across the brightness’ of Fanny’s heaven corrupted to a hope that it will not be long before such an occurrence (Chapter 41).41 On these occasions the Cornhill is on the side of the angels.

  Most remarkable, however, has been the compression of Trollope’s text into long, unwieldy paragraphs. The paragraphing of the Cornhill printing largely reflects that of the manuscript but subsequent editions of the novel eroded this feature to a point where, for example, one recent edition indents some eight hundred fewer times than does Trollope in the Cornhill. And Trollope most certainly did want his paragraphs in Framley Parsonage: ‘Were I to lessen the number of paragraphs it would make it read heavy’ wrote author to publisher.42 More than making it read ‘heavy’, running Trollope’s text together has tended to disguise the nature of the novel’s local movement and has masked numerous local nuances of dramatic timing, of irony, contrast and emphasis, in which lies much of the enjoyment of reading Trollope, and something of the essence of his art. In restoring Trollope’s paragraphs it is hoped that the Penguin edition will restore access to more of these qualities of his writing.

  Nevertheless, the Penguin text is an emended version of the Cornhill printing. Spelling, capitalization and italicization have generally been regularized to conform with that printing’s own dominant practices. Obvious mistakes have been corrected, but there has been no thoroughgoing attempt to impose a formal consistency upon the Cornhill’s free – and sometimes idiosyncratic – punctuation scheme. A small amount of punctuation has been introduced where there is risk of ambiguity in the Cornhill’s readings. A few readings from the manuscript have been newly restored. These include the word ‘successfully’ for ‘unsuccessfully’ in the first paragraph of Chapter 20, a point on which Trollope angrily and specifically wrote to his publisher – though to no avail.43 A few readings have been newly emended by the present editors in the interests of logic and consistency. At one point Trollope misremembered the name of Mark Robarts’s Welsh curate, and at another he forgot that he had earlier changed the price of Sowerby’s horse from £150 (the original manuscript reading) to the resonant figure of £130 – presumably, again, in the proofs.44 Where contextual considerations make emendations of inconsistencies impracticable (as, for example, in Trollope’s confusion about Burslem and Stanhope)45 the Cornhill’s readings have been allowed to stand and the terms of the inconsistency indicated in the notes. Individual instalments, as they appear in the Cornhill, have been numbered throughout in sequence. Our aim has been to provide the modern reader with a consistent text of Framley Parsonage closer than any currently available to the form in which Trollope expected his first Victorian readers to encounter it – and which, indeed, he showed little inclination thereafter to change.

  Peter Miles

  David Skilton

  FRAMLEY PARSONAGE

  Contents

  [I]

  1 Omnes omnia bona dicere

  2 The Framley Set, and the Chaldicotes Set

  3 Chaldicotes

  [2]

  4 A Matter of Conscience

  5 Amantium Irae Amoris Integratio

  6 Mr Harold Smith’s Lecture

  [3]

  7 Sunday Morning

  8 Gatherum Castle

  9 The Vicar’s Return

  [4]

  10 Lucy Robarts

  11 Griselda Grantly

  12 The Little Bill

  [5]

  13 Delicate Hints

  14 MrCrawley of Hogglestock

  15 Lady Lufton’s Ambassador

  [6]

  16 Mrs Podgens’Baby

  17 Mrs Proudie’s Conversazione

  18 The New Minister’s Patronage

  [7]

  19 Money Dealings

  20 Harold Smith in the Cabinet

  21 Why Puck, the Pony, was Beaten

  [8]

  22 Hogglestock Parsonage

  23 The Triumph of the Giants

  24 Magna est Veritas

  [9]

  25 Non-Impulsive

  26 Impulsive

  27 South Audley Street

  [10]

  28 Dr Thorne

  29 Miss Dunstable at Home

  30 The Grantly Triumph

  [11]

  31 Salmon Fishing in Norway

  32 The Goat and Compasses

  33 Consolation

  [12]

  34 Lady Lufton is taken by Surprise

  35 The Story of King Cophetua

  36 Kidnapping at Hogglestock

  [13]

  37 Mr Sowerby without Company

  38 Is there Cause or Just Impediment?

  39 How to write a Love Letter

  [14]

  40 Internecine

  41 Don Quixote

  42 Touching Pitch

  [15]

  43 Is She not Insignificant?

  44 The Philistines at the Parsonage

  45 Palace Blessings

  [16]

  46 Lady Lufton’s Request

  47 Nemesis

  48 How they were all Married, had Two Children, and lived Happy ever after

  Notes

  [1]

  CHAPTER 1

  Omnes omnia bona dicere1

  WHEN young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a disposition.

  This father was a physician living at Exeter. He was a gentleman possessed of no private means, but enjoying a lucrative practice, which had enabled him to maintain and educate a family with all the advantages which money can give in this country. Mark was his eldest son and second child; and the first page or two of this narrative must be consumed in giving a catalogue of the good things which chance and conduct together had heaped upon this young man’s head.

  His first step forward in life had arisen from his having been sent, while still very young, as a private pupil to the house of a clergyman, who was an old friend and intimate friend of his father’s. This clergyman had one other, and only one other, pupil – the young Lord Lufton, and, between the two boys, there had sprung up a close alliance.

  While they were both so placed, Lady Lufton had visited her son, and then invited you
ng Robarts to pass his next holidays at Framley Court. This visit was made; and it ended in Mark going back to Exeter with a letter full of praise from the widowed peeress. She had been delighted, she said, in having such a companion for her son, and expressed a hope that the boys might remain together during the course of their education. Dr Robarts was a man who thought much of the breath of peers and peeresses, and was by no means inclined to throw away any advantage which might arise to his child from such a friendship. When, therefore, the young lord was sent to Harrow, Mark Robarts went there also.

  That the lord and his friend often quarrelled, and occasionally fought, – the fact even that for one period of three months they never spoke to each other – by no means interfered with the doctor’s hopes. Mark again and again stayed a fortnight at Framley Court, and Lady Lufton always wrote about him in the highest terms.