Now! Then! A lustful evangelical vicar approaches a childish parishioner in a high-church novel from London, today suppressed by the low-church Leeds Library

4 June 1838: A lustful evangelical vicar approaches a childish parishioner in a high-church novel from London, today suppressed by the low-church Leeds Library

Frances Milton Trollope. 1840. The Vicar of Wrexhill. London: Richard Bentley. Get it:

Excerpt

“How sweetly does youth, when blessed with such a cheek and eye as yours, Miss Fanny, accord with the fresh morning of such a day as this! – I feel,” he added, taking her hand and looking in her blushing face, “that my soul never offers adoration more worthy of my Maker than when inspired by intercourse with such a being as you!” “Oh! Mr Cartwright!” cried Fanny, avoiding his glance by fixing her beautiful eyes upon the ground. “My dearest child! fear not to look at me – fear not to meet the eye of a friend, who would watch over you, Fanny, as the minister of Heaven should watch over that which is best and fairest, to make and keep it holy. Let me have that innocent heart in my keeping, my dearest child, and all that is idle, light, and vain shall be banished thence, while heavenward thoughts and holy musings shall take its place. Have you essayed to hymn the praises of your God, Fanny, since we parted yesterday?” This question was accompanied by an encouraging pat upon her glowing cheek, and Fanny, her heart beating with vanity, shyness, hope, fear, and sundry other feelings, drew the manuscript containing a fairly-written transcript of her yesterday’s labours from her bosom, and placed it in his hand. Mr Cartwright pressed it with a sort of pious fervour to his lips, and laid it carefully within his waistcoat, on the left side of his person, and as near as possible to that part of it appropriated for the residence of the heart.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Date:

4th June, 1838. Suppressed: Mrs. Trollope’s ‘Vicar of Wrexhill,’ on the ground of its appearing to be indecent and of an immoral tendency (Smith 1882).

Trollope seems to have been satirising the Vicar of Harrow-on-the-Hill, the Rev J.W. Cunningham.

Original

The intelligent reader will not be surprised to hear that Mr. Cartwright did not suffer himself to be long expected in vain on the following morning. Fanny, however, was already in the garden when he arrived; and as it so happened that he saw her as she was hovering near the shrubbery gate, he turned from the carriage-road and approached her.

“How sweetly does youth, when blessed with such a cheek and eye as yours, Miss Fanny, accord with the fresh morning of such a day as this!—I feel,” he added taking her hand and looking in her blushing face, “that my soul never offers adoration more worthy of my Maker than when inspired by intercourse with such a being as you!”

“Oh! Mr. Cartwright!” cried Fanny, avoiding his glance by fixing her beautiful eyes upon the ground.

“My dearest child! fear not to look at me—fear not to meet the eye of a friend, who would watch over you, Fanny, as the minister of Heaven should watch over that which is best and fairest, to make and keep it holy. Let me have that innocent heart in my keeping, my dearest child, and all that is idle, light, and vain shall be banished thence, while heavenward thoughts and holy musings shall take its place. Have you essayed to hymn the praises of your God, Fanny, since we parted yesterday?”

This question was accompanied by an encouraging pat upon her glowing cheek; and Fanny, her heart beating with vanity, shyness, hope, fear, and sundry other feelings, drew the MS. containing a fairly-written transcript of her yesterday’s labours from her bosom, and placed it in his hand.

Mr. Cartwright pressed it with a sort of pious fervour to his lips, and enclosing it for greater security in a letter which he drew from his pocket, he laid it carefully within his waistcoat, on the left side of his person, and as near, as possible to that part of it appropriated for the residence of the heart.

“This must be examined in private, my beloved child,” said he solemnly. “The first attempt to raise such a spirit as yours in holy song has, to my feelings, something as awful in it as the first glad movement of a seraph’s wing!… Where is your mother, Fanny?”

“She is in the library.”

“Alone?”

“Oh yes!—at least I should think so, for I am sure she is expecting you.”

“Farewell, then, my dear young friend!—Pursue your solitary musing walk; and remember, Fanny, that as by your talents you are marked and set apart, as it were, from the great mass of human souls, so will you be looked upon the more fixedly by the searching eye of God. It is from him you received this talent—keep it sacred to his use, as David did, and great shall be your reward!—Shall I startle your good mother, Fanny, if I enter by the library window?”

“Oh no! Mr. Cartwright—I am sure mamma would be quite vexed if you always went round that long way up to the door, especially in summer you know, when the windows are always open.”

“Once more, farewell, then!”

Fanny’s hand was again tenderly pressed, and they parted.

573 words.