Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers

43. CHAPTER XLIII: MR AND MRS QUIVERFUL ARE MADE HAPPY. MR SLOPE ENCOURAGED BY THE PRESS (continued)

It has been said that Mr Slope, as he started for Ullathorne, received a despatch from his friend Mr Towers, which had the effect of putting him in that high good-humour which subsequent events somewhat untowardly damped. It ran as follows. Its shortness will be its sufficient apology:

My dear Sir,--I wish you every success. I don't know that I can help you, but if I can I will. 'Yours ever' T.T. '30/9/185-'

There was more in this than in all Sir Nicholas Fitzwiggin's flummery; more than in all the bishop's promises, even had they been ever so sincere; more than in any archbishop's good work, even had it been possible to obtain it. Tom Towers would do for him what he could.

Mr Slope had from his youth upwards been a firm believer in the public press. He had dabbled in it himself ever since he had taken his degree, and regarded it as the great arranger and distributor of all future British terrestrial affairs whatever. He had not yet arrived at the age, an age which sooner or later comes to most of us, which dissipates the golden dreams of youth. He delighted in the idea of wresting power from the hands of his country's magnates, and placing it in a custody which was at any rate nearer to his own reach. Sixty thousand broad sheets dispersing themselves daily among his reading fellow-citizens, formed in his eyes a better depot for supremacy than a throne at Windsor, a cabinet in Downing Street, or even an assembly at Westminster. And on this subject we must not quarrel with Mr Slope, for the feeling is too general to be met with disrespect.

Tom Towers was as good, if not better than his promise. On the following morning the Jupiter, spouting forth public opinion with sixty thousand loud clarions, did proclaim to the world that Mr Slope was the fittest man for the vacant post. It was pleasant for Mr Slope to read the following line in the Barchester news-room, which he did within thirty minutes after the morning train from London had reached the city.