HE-S1ftR;^-C!E-0Ut\- UVSS-p^K'Y^B^JD^Ji: COJ>lDUCTED-BY' VKITR WHICH IS IflCOl^QI^TED "^ 3lQlfS£H0LD'V0iy)S " SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, -ill r beginning, or the real novel readers wiU IS HE POPEWOY? not like it. The plan of jumping at once BY ANTHONT TROLLOPE. into the middle has been often tried, and sometimes seductively enough for a chapter or two; but the writer still has to hark CHAPIEE I. INTEODUCTOBT—^mJMBEE ONE. back, and to begin again from the begin­ I WOULD that it were possible so to tell ning—not always very comfortably after a story, that a reader should beforehand the abnormal brightness of his few opening know every detail of it up to a certain pages; and the reader, who is then in­ point, or be so circumstanced that he volved in some ancient family history, or might be auppoaed to know. In telling long local explanation, feels himself to the little novelettes of our life, we com­ have been defrauded. It is aa though ona mence our narrationa with the presumption were aaked to eat boiled mutton after that these details are borne in mind, and woodcocks, caviare, or macaroni cheese. though they be all forgotten, the storiea I hold that it is better to have the come out intelligible at last. "Ton re­ boiled mutton firat, if boiled mutton there member Mary Walker. Oh yea, you do; must be. —that pretty girl, but such a queer The atory which I have to tell ia aome­ temper! And how she was engaged to thing in ite nature akin to that of poor marry Harry Jones, and said she wouldn't Mra. Jones, who was happy enough down at the church-door, till her father threat­ in Devonahire till that wicked Lieutenant ened her with bread and water ; and how Smith came and persecuted her; not quite they have been living ever aince aa happy so tragic, perhaps, as it is stained neither as two turtle-doves down in Devonshire, by murder nor madness. But before I tUl that scoundrel. Lieutenant Smith, can hope to interest readers in the per­ went to Bideford ! Smith has been found plexed details of the life of a not unworthy dead at the bottom of a saw-pit. Nobody's lady, I mnst do more than remind them sorry for him. She's in a madhouse at that they do know, or might have known, Exeter; and Jones has disappeared, and or should have known, the antecedents of couldn't have had more than thirty my personages. I mnst let them under­ shillings in his pocket." This ia quite as stand how it came to pass that so pretty, much aa anybody ought to want to know, so pert, so gay, so good a girl as Mary previoua to the unraveUing of the tragedy Lovelace, without any great fault on her of the Joneses. But such stories as those part, married a man so grim, so gaunt, so I have to tell cannot be written after that somljre, and so old as Lord George Ger­ fashion. We novelists are constantly main. It wUl not suffice to say that she twitted with being long ; and to the gen­ had done so. A hundred and twenty little tlemen who condescend to review us, and incidents must be dribbled into the reader's who take up our volumes with a view to intelligence, many of them,* let me hope, in business rather than pleasure, we must be such manner that he shall himself be in­ infinite in length and tedium. But the sensible to the process. But unless I make story must be made inteUigible from the each one of them understood and appre- — •« ijj •,•* J • 463 y^ st=- c<= 218 [October 13,1877.] ALL THE TEAR ROUND. [Condaotedby oiated by my ingenious, open-hearted, at Manor Crosa, abont nine miles from rapid reader—by my reader who wiU the city. The wealth of the family of the always have his fingers impatiently ready Germaina was not equal to their rank, and to turn the page—he will, I know, begin the circumatances of the family were not made more comfortable by the peculiarities to masticate the real kernel of mystery of the present marquis. He was an idle, with infinite prejudices against Mary Love­ self-indulgent, ill-conditioned man, ivho lace. found that it suited hia taatea better to Mary Lovelace was bom in <a country live in Italy, where hia meana were ample, parsonage; but at the age of fourteen, than on hia own property, where he would when her life was in truth beginning, was have been comparatively a poor man. transferred by her father to the deanery And he had a mother and four sisters, of Brotherton. Dean Lovelace had been a and a brother with whom he would hardly fortunate man in lite. When a poor cnrate, have known how to deal had he remained a <man of very humble origin, with none of at Manor Cross. As it waa, he allowed what we commonly caU Church interest, them to keep the house, while he simply with nothing to recommend him bnt a rtook the revenue of the estate. With the handsome peraon, moderate education, and marquis I do not know that it will be a quick inteUect, he had married a lady necessary to trouble the reader much at with a considerable fortune, whose family present. The old marchioness and her had bought for him a living. Here he daughters lived always at Manor Cross, in preached himself into fame. It is not at possession of a fine old hoose in which aU to be implied from thia that he had not they conld have entertained halt the deserved the fame he acquired. He had county, and a magnificent park—which, been active and resolute in his work, hold­ however, was let for grazing up to the ing opinions which, if not peculiar, were garden-gates—and a modest income un­ at any rate advanced, and never being equal to the splendour which should have afraid of the opinions which he held. His been displayed by the inhabitants of Manor bishop had not loved him, nor had he made Cross. himself dear to the bench of bishopa gene­ raUy. He had the reputation of baring And here also lived Lord George been in early life a aporting parson. He Germain, to whom at a very early period had written a book which had been cha­ of his Ufe had been entrusted the ditficalt racterised as tending to infidelity, and had task of living as the head ot his family more than once been inrited to state dog- vrith little or no means for the purpose. maticaUy what waa his own belief. He When the old marquis died—^very sud­ had never quite done ao, and had then denly, and soon after the dean's coming been made a dean. Brotherton, as aU the to Brotherton—^the widow had her jointare, world knows, ia a moat interesting little some two thousand a year, out of the city, neither a Manchester nor a SaUsbmy; property, and the younger chUdren had fall of architectural excellences, given to each a smaU settled sum. That the four literature, and fond of hospitality. The ladiea—Sarah, Alice, Susanna, and Amelia Bishop of Brotherton—who did not love —should have sixteen thousand pounds the dean—was not a general favourite, among them, did not seem to be so very being strict, ascetic, and utterly hostUe much amiss to those who knew how poor to all compromises. At first there were was the Germain family; but what was certain hostUe passagea between him and Lord George to do with four thousand the new dean. But the dean, who waa, pounds, and no meana of earning a shiUing? and is, urbanity itself, won the day, and He had been at Eton, and had taken a soon became certainly the most popular degree at Oxford with credit, but had man in Brotherton. Hia wife's fortune gone into no profeaaion. There was a doubled his clerical income, and he lived living in the family, and both father and iu all respects as a dean ought to live. mother had hoped that he would consent His wife had died very shortly after his to take orders ; bnt he had decHned to do promotion, and he had been left with one so, and there had seemed to be nothing for only daughter on whom to lavish his cares him but to come and live at Manor Crosa. and his {Section. Then the old marquis had died, and the Now we must turn for a few lines to elder brother, who had long been abroad, the family of Lord George Germain. Lord remained abroad. Lord George, who was George was the brother of the Marquis of the youngest of the family, and at that Brotherton, whose family residence was time abont five-and-twenty, remained at =F W'" Charles Cioketis.] IS HE POPENJOT? [October 13,1877.] 219 Manor Cross, and became not only osten­ one doubted her dash, her wit, her grace, sibly but in very truth the managing head or her toilet. Some also gave her credit of the family. for beauty; but there were those who said He was a man whom no one could that, though she would behave herself despise, and in whom few could find much decently at Manor Cross and houses of to blame. In the first place he looked his that class, she could be loud elsewhere.