Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

24. CHAPTER XXIV: MR SLOPE'S MANAGES MATTERS VERY CLEVERLY AT PUDDINGDALE (continued)

Why, moreover, should the Barchester clergy have looked so coldly on Mr Quiverful? Had they not all shown that they regarded with complacency the loaves and fishes of their mother church? Had they not all, by some hook or crook, done better for themselves than he had done? They were not burdened as he was burdened. Dr Grantly had five children, and nearly as many thousands a year on which to feed them. It was very well for him to turn up his nose at a new bishop who could do nothing for him, and a chaplain who was beneath his notice; but it was cruel in a man so circumstanced to set the world against the father of fourteen children because he was anxious to obtain for them an honourable support! He, Mr Quiverful, had not asked for the wardenship; he had not even accepted it till he had been assured that Mr Harding had refused it. How hard then that he should be blamed for doing that which not to have done would have argued a most insane imprudence!

Thus in this matter of the hospital poor Mr Quiverful had his trials; and he had also his consolations. On the whole the consolations were the more vivid of the two. The stern draper heard of the coming promotion, and the wealth of his warehouse was at Mr Quiverful's disposal. Coming events cast their shadows before, and the coming event of Mr Quiverful's transference to Barchester produced a delicious shadow in the shape of a new outfit for Mrs Quiverful and her three elder daughters. Such consolations come home to the heart of a man, and quite home to the heart of a woman. Whatever the husband might feel, the wife cared nothing for the frowns of the dean, archdeacon, or prebendary. To her the outsides and insides of her husband and fourteen children were everything. In her bosom every other ambition had been swallowed up in that maternal ambition of seeing them and him and herself duly clad and properly fed. It had come to that with her that life had now no other purpose. She recked nothing of the imaginary rights of others. She had no patience with her husband when he declared to her that he could not accept the hospital unless he knew that Mr Harding had refused it. Her husband had no right to be Quixotic at the expense of fourteen children. The narrow escape of throwing away his good fortune which her lord had had, almost paralysed her. Now, indeed, they had received the full promise not only from Mr Slope, but also from Mrs Proudie. Now, indeed, they might reckon with safety on their good fortune. But what if it all had been lost? What if her fourteen bairns had been resteeped to the hips in poverty by the morbid sentimentality of their father? Mrs Quiverful was just at present a happy woman, but yet it nearly took her breath away when she thought of the risk they had run.