Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford 3: Salem Chapel

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Margaret Oliphant's Chronicles of Carlingford 3: Salem Chapel

1lyzard
Set 3, 2021, 9:35 pm



Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant (1863)

The young Nonconformist had enough to think of as he took his way once more to the railway, and tea at Mrs Tozer’s was anything but attractive to his own fancy; yet in the midst of his wretchedness he could not overcome the personal sense of annoyance which this trifling incident produced. It came like a prick of irritating pain, to aggravate the dull horror which throbbed through him. He despised himself for being able to think of it at all, but at the same time it came back to him, darting unawares again and again into his thoughts. Little as he cared for the entertainments and attention of his flock, he was conscious of a certain exasperation in discovering their eagerness to entertain another. He was disgusted with Phoebe for bringing the message, and disgusted with Beecher for looking pleased to receive it. “Probably he thinks he will supersede me,” Vincent thought, in sudden gusts of disdain now and then, with a sardonic smile on his lip, waking up afterwards with a thrill of deeper self-disgust, to think that anything so insignificant had power to move him. When he plunged off from Carlingford at last, in the early falling darkness of the winter afternoon, and looked back upon the few lights struggling red through the evening mists, it was with a sense of belonging to the place where he had left an interloper who might take his post over his head, which, perhaps, no other possible stimulant could have given him. He thought with a certain pang of Salem, and that pulpit which was his own...

2lyzard
Set 3, 2021, 9:45 pm

Welcome!

This is the third in a series of planned group reads encompassing the works by Margaret Oliphant now known as the "Chronicles of Carlingford":

The Executor (1861)
The Rector (1861)
The Doctor's Family (1862 / 1863)
Salem Chapel (1863)
The Perpetual Curate (1864)
Miss Marjoribanks (1866)
Phoebe Junior (1876)

The discussion thread for the short stories, The Executor and The Rector, may be accessed here. The discussion thread for the novella, The Doctor's Family, may be found here.

These threads contain background information about Margaret Oliphant, her career, and the writing of her Carlingford series.

This month, we will be examining the first novel in the series, Salem Chapel, which was originally serialised in Blackwood's Magazine from February 1862 - January 1863, before being reissued in book form also in 1863.

In addition to a number of hard-copy editions, the 1870 two-volume Tauchnitz edition may be accessed through Project Gutenberg. The entire Carlingford series may also be found inexpensively on Kindle as part of the Delphi "Complete Works" series.

3lyzard
Set 3, 2021, 9:52 pm

Salem Chapel was originally published in two volumes, with 20 chapters in Volume I and 23 chapters in Volume II.

For this group read, I would suggest that we aim at two chapters per day.

I am working from the Project Gutenberg two-volume edition, which begins renumbering its chapters at the beginning of Volume II. If anyone has a single volume edition (including of course the Virago version, which I hope some of you have access to!), could you please let me know if the chapters are numbered consecutively, or if they retain their original designations?

4lyzard
Modificato: Set 3, 2021, 10:01 pm

During this group read, please follow these guidelines:

1. When posting, please begin by noting which chapter (or volume and chapter) you are referring to in bold.

2. Be mindful of others: if you have read the book before, or if you get ahead of the group, please use spoiler tags as necessary.

You may also do this to avoid forgetting a point you want to make: we will always come back to consider comments at the appropriate time.

3. If you are reading an edition with an introduction and/or endnotes, do not read them until you have completed the novel. Too often these adjuncts are full of spoilers.

4. Please speak up! Experience shows that group reads work best with lots of conversation and different contributions, so if you have any comments or questions at all, post them here so that everyone can benefit.

With respect to this novel, some of the language around the characters' religion and religious practice may be unfamiliar: some of us have dealt with the language of "mainstream" 19th century religion via Anthony Trollope's Barchester series (High Church, Low Church, etc.), but this time we are dealing with a Nonconformist society.

If there is *anything* that you do not understand as we read this novel, please ask! And be sure that if you're wondering, someone else will be too. :)

5lyzard
Modificato: Set 26, 2021, 6:47 pm

Cast of characters:

Arthur Vincent - the newly appointed Dissenting minister of Carlingford
Mrs Vincent - his mother, a minister's widow
Susan Vincent - his young sister
Mary - her maid

Mr Tozer - senior deacon of Salem Chapel - a butterman
Mrs Tozer - his wife
Phoebe Tozer - their daughter

Mr Brown - a deacon - a dairyman
Mr Pigeon - a deacon - a poulterer

Mr Tufton - the previous Dissenting minister
Mrs Tufton - his wife
Adelaide Tufton - their disabled adult daughter

Mrs Hilyard - a lady living alone

Lady (Alice) Western - the young widow of Sir Joseph Western

The Reverend Mr Wentworth - the perpetual curate of St. Roque's
Mr Beecher - another young Dissenting minister

Mr Herbert Fordham - a gentleman

Colonel Mildmay - the half-brother of Lady Western
Alice Mildmay - his daughter
Miss Smith - her governess

6lyzard
Set 3, 2021, 10:03 pm

I think that will do.

Please post and let us know if you will be joining in (or just lurking).

7cbl_tn
Set 3, 2021, 10:55 pm

I will give it a go.

8kac522
Modificato: Set 4, 2021, 1:14 am

Raises hand!

Virago edition has Chapters I through XLIII, with an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald.

9kac522
Set 4, 2021, 1:45 am

Here's something curious:

The "publishing" information page says:

Published by VIRAGO PRESS Limited 1986

First published in Great Britain by W. Blackwood & Sons 1983
Virago edition offset from W. Blackwood & Sons 1985 edition


Shouldn't this be 1883 and 1885?? Or was Blackwood still publishing in the 1980s?

10CDVicarage
Set 4, 2021, 3:40 am

I shall be following along.

11lyzard
Set 4, 2021, 4:48 am

>7 cbl_tn:

Good to see you here, Carrie. :)

>8 kac522:

Hi, Kathy! Thank you for that, I must remember to do both sets of chapter numbers.

>9 kac522:

Blackwood's released the first book version as well as the magazine serial; there were several editions during 1863, and after that 1869 and through the 1870s. As far as I can tell the last Blackwood's edition as such was 1897, after that I think Blackwood's became Thomas Nelson.

So I have no idea what those dates mean. :D

>10 CDVicarage:

Welcome, Kerry!

12NinieB
Set 4, 2021, 3:24 pm

Checking in! I'm planning to read the Virago edition.

13japaul22
Set 4, 2021, 4:23 pm

I'm not sure I'm going to get to this in September, but I will try! If not, I'll check in with the thread whenever I get to it.

14lyzard
Set 5, 2021, 6:05 pm

>12 NinieB:

Welcome, Ninie!

>13 japaul22:

Hi, Jennifer - it would be great if you could join us! :)

15lyzard
Modificato: Set 5, 2021, 7:22 pm

I thought some brief history and explanation of terms might be helpful at the outset.

(If anyone knows better on anything, please feel free to butt in. Kerry??)

After the Reformation under Henry VIII, every citizen was expected to attend the new Church of England. Refusal to attend services or to comply with church practice was considered treasonous, as the head of this new church was the Crown (in place of the Pope), and those who did so were persecuted. Some of these Separatists, as they were known, left England to establish colonies in other countries, including the group that in 1620 left for Massachusetts.

In England, the next critical point was the declaration of James I, "no bishop, no king", which emphasised the conjunction of church and state. The Dissenters, as they had become known, flourished under Oliver Cromwell (who abolished both bishops and kings), but after the Restoration new laws surrounding religion were enforced including the Act of Uniformity, which required Anglican ordination for all clergymen. This resulted in a split, with some ministers withdrawing from the Church and establishing their own places of worship. They and their followers became known as Nonconformists. However, they were still Protestant.

Subsequently, the term "Nonconformist" was applied to all groups of Protestants who dissented from Anglicanism (Presbyterians, Methodists, Unitarians, Baptists, Congregationalists), but also to independent groups including the Quakers, Plymouth Brethren, English Moravians, Churches of Christ, and the Salvation Army.

(In Scotland, where the established church is Presbyterian, members of other churches, including Anglicans, are considered Nonconformists.)

While the dissenting groups continued, for most of England the Established Church was dominant and over the next two centuries arose the traditional image of the country parish run by the (feudal) lord or squire hand-in-hand with the minister.

The next critical phase was the Industrial Revolution which during the 19th century saw a massive population shift from the country to the city, and the explosion of trade centres such as Manchester.

This is a big and difficult subject, but briefly this new working-class population rejected the established church as having no place for them in its traditional hierarchy, and for not meeting their needs, and embraced the dissenting factions instead.

So for our purposes, the important point there is that Dissenters tended to be working-class, or at least "in trade".

With respect to terminology, my understanding is that the terms "Dissenter" and "Nonconformist" are generally used interchangeably. However, in some contexts a distinction is made between an objection to orthodox doctrine ("dissent") and an objection to orthodox practice ("nonconformity").

16lyzard
Modificato: Set 5, 2021, 7:30 pm

One other thing I should mention:

In the late 17th century, a Congregation Fund was established to pay for the education of Calvinist ministers, who were barred from attending Oxford or Cambridge. Later a Society was founded to sponsor which sponsored young men wishing to attend dissenting academies, and eventually this program became important enough, and financially secure enough, to need a formal headquarters. For this purpose, a large property was purchased in Homerton High Street, in the East End of London. This become known as "Homerton Academy Society", later "Homerton College Society".

The institution subsequently underwent many shifts in purpose and identity (including a vital, early acceptance of female students), including the shifting of its theological training to New College London in 1850. Today, Homerton College is a constituent college of Cambridge.

17lyzard
Modificato: Set 5, 2021, 7:38 pm

The other thing that we need to keep in mind as we start is that Salem Chapel was the first mainstream English novel to deal in detail with a Dissenting community.

Chapter 1

Towards the west end of Grove Street, in Carlingford, on the shabby side of the street, stood a red brick building, presenting a pinched gable terminated by a curious little belfry, not intended for any bell, and looking not unlike a handle to lift up the edifice by to the public observation. This was Salem Chapel, the only Dissenting place of worship in Carlingford. It stood in a narrow strip of ground, just as the little houses which flanked it on either side stood in their gardens, except that the enclosure of the chapel was flowerless and sombre, and showed at the farther end a few sparsely-scattered tombstones---unmeaning slabs, such as the English mourner loves to inscribe his sorrow on. On either side of this little tabernacle were the humble houses---little detached boxes, each two storeys high, each fronted by a little flower-plot---clean, respectable, meagre, little habitations, which contributed most largely to the ranks of the congregation in the Chapel...

Margaret Oliphant manages to convey a great deal in these opening sentences of Salem Chapel through her choice of language, particularly the reiteration of 'little'.

She also sets up the strict divide which exists in Carlingford between the Established Church community and her Dissenting community - which we note is social quite as much as religious - which will become critical in her plot:

To name the two communities, however, in the same breath, would have been accounted little short of sacrilege in Carlingford. The names which figured highest in the benevolent lists of Salem Chapel, were known to society only as appearing, in gold letters, upon the backs of those mystic tradesmen’s books, which were deposited every Monday in little heaps at every house in Grange Lane. The Dissenters, on their part, aspired to no conquests in the unattainable territory of high life, as it existed in Carlingford. They were content to keep their privileges among themselves, and to enjoy their superior preaching and purity with a compassionate complacence. While Mr Proctor was rector, indeed, Mr Tozer, the butterman, who was senior deacon, found it difficult to refrain from an audible expression of pity for the “Church folks” who knew no better; but, as a general rule, the congregation of Salem kept by itself, gleaning new adherents by times at an “anniversary” or the coming of a new minister, but knowing and keeping “its own place” in a manner edifying to behold...

Those of us who have read the early short works in the Carlingford series will not only understand the slighting reference to Mr Proctor (whose failed ministry is the subject of The Rector), but recognise the significance of "Grange Lane", the residence of Carlingford's homegrown aristocracy.

18lyzard
Modificato: Set 6, 2021, 6:17 pm

An important aspect of the schism between the Established Church and the Dissenters was the view that the ministers of the former were basically government employees and obliged to toe the party line. Dissenting ministers were therefore "free" in a way that their Church of England brethren were not.

HOWEVER---

I haven't read that much Dissenting fiction, but I'm yet to come across any in which the fact that a Dissenting minister was hired and paid by the officials of his congregation wasn't a critical (and usually dismaying) detail. The implication - and I should stress that this point is generally made even in fiction supportive of the Dissenters - is that the officials could both hire and fire, and expected "bang for their buck".

Thus there is an ominous note already in the way that Arthur Vincent is thinking of the people who are, after all, his employers:

Chapter 1

Young Vincent, well educated and enlightened according to his fashion, was yet so entirely unacquainted with any world but that contracted one in which he had been brought up, that he believed all this as devoutly as Mr Wentworth believed in Anglicanism, and would have smiled with calm scorn at any sceptic who ventured to doubt. Thus it will be seen he came to Carlingford with elevated expectations---by no means prepared to circulate among his flock, and say grace at Mrs Tozer’s “teas,” and get up soirees to amuse the congregation, as Mr Tufton had been accustomed to do. These secondary circumstances of his charge had little share in the new minister’s thoughts...

19lyzard
Set 6, 2021, 6:29 pm

In fact Oliphant does a devastatingly efficient job over Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 in delineating the social hierarchy of Carlingford, the community of Salem Chapel, and Arthur Vincent's mental processes---including what we may begin to feel is an unwarrantedly high opinion of himself.

Also important here is the indirect introduction of Mrs Vincent, his mother, at which point we begin to get a split-vision---with Vincent's ideas of his mother in parallel with the narrator's better-informed portraiture.

A couple of key touches:

Chapter 2

...one was from his mother, a minister’s widow, humbly enough off, but who had brought up her son in painful gentility, and had done much to give him that taste for good society which was to come to so little fruition in Carlingford.

****

He could fancy her trim little figure in that traditionary black silk gown which never wore out, and the whitest of caps, gazing aghast at Mrs Brown and Mrs Tozer. But, nevertheless, Mrs Vincent understood all about Mrs Brown and Mrs Tozer, and had been very civil to such, and found them very serviceable in her day, though her son, who knew her only in that widowed cottage where she had her own way, could not have realised it...

Perhaps the first debatable point in this novel is how we are to take this.

Mrs Vincent has sacrificed enormously to give her son a "gentleman's education", but in doing so has she unfitted him for his work? Did she (naturally enough) aspire to - or even assume that he would secure - a different walk in life than that once occupied by his father? Her own familiarity with "Mrs Brown and Mrs Tozer" tells us where the late Mr Vincent was placed. However, for better or worse - and assuming Vincent would have listened - she has not tried to prepare her son for their reality.

But quite possibly he would not have listened: I think there are wide implications in the passing observation that Vincent "knew {his mother} only in that widowed cottage"; it does not occur to him that she has a better understanding of the world than a man who has attended Homerton...

20lyzard
Set 6, 2021, 6:38 pm

Though most of this novel is very serious, Oliphant does - at least in the early stages - offer some wry humour in her depiction of the Tozers and their circle, and Phoebe Tozer's pursuit of the handsome young new minister---and conversely in the juxtapositioning of Vincent's lofty aspirations and good opinion of himself, and the prosaic reality of his situation.

The latter will become a major and serious plot-thread, but at the outset we have this brilliantly mortifying detail:

Chapter 2

Carrying his head higher than usual, and thrilling with offence and indignation, the young pastor made his way along George Street. It was a very trifling circumstance, certainly; but just when an enthusiastic companion writes to you about the advance of the glorious cause, and your own high vocation as a soldier of the Cross, and the undoubted fact that the hope of England is in you, to have a shape of jelly, left over from last night’s tea-party, sent across the street with complacent kindness, for your refreshment---!

21lyzard
Set 6, 2021, 7:09 pm

A few details:

The Nonconformist was a weekly newspaper published between 1841 and 1879. It was founded in protest against a move to establish "a true national religion", and though overtly religious in intent, it was aimed at a broader liberal readership and had a political focus, campaigning vigorously for the separation of Church and State.

The Patriot was founded in 1832 by a committee of Baptists and Congregationalists, and maintained a religious focus; though it considered itself a family paper, and also included articles on international news and literature.

Exeter Hall was a London auditorium that became the site of many religious and philanthropic gatherings---mostly importantly, and famously, the Anti-Slavery Society.

22lyzard
Modificato: Set 6, 2021, 7:22 pm

Chapter 2 also introduces the mysterious Mrs Hilyard, who takes Vincent's measure a great deal more easily and accurately that he does hers:

"I’ve led a wandering life, and heard an infinity of sermons of late years. When there are any brains in them at all, you know, they are about the only kind of mental stimulant a poor woman in my position can come by, for I’ve no time for reading lately. Down here, in these regions, where the butterman comes to inquire after your spiritual interests, and is a superior being,” added this singular new adherent of Salem, looking full for a single moment in her visitor’s eyes, with a slight movement of the muscles of her thin face, and making a significant pause, “the air’s a trifle heavy..."

****

"I sent for you for no particular reason, but a kind of yearning to talk to somebody. I beg your pardon sincerely---but you know,” she said, once more with a direct sudden glance and that half-visible movement in her face which meant mischief, “you are a minister, and are bound to have no inclinations of your own, but to give yourself up to the comfort of the poor.”

****

    The worn woman looked over the dark world of her own experience, of which she was conscious in every nerve, but of which he knew nothing, and smiled at his youth out of the abysses of her own life, where volcanoes had been, and earthquakes. He perceived it dimly, without understanding how, and faltered and blushed, yet grew angry with all the self-assertion of youth.
    “I don’t doubt you know that as well as I do---perhaps better; but notwithstanding, I find my life leaves little room for laughter,” said the young pastor, not without a slight touch of heroics.
    “Mr Vincent,” said Mrs Hilyard, with a gleam of mirth in her eye, “in inferring that I perhaps know better, you infer also that I am older than you, which is uncivil to a lady. But for my part, I don’t object to laughter. Generally it’s better than crying, which in a great many cases I find the only alternative...”

23lyzard
Modificato: Set 6, 2021, 7:45 pm

Though it eventually comes down to a particular position - or seems to - one of the interesting things about Salem Chapel, particularly as a religiously-themed novel, is how far it expresses impatience with, and even dismissal of, the tenets of submission to God's will---and how far such expressions are allowed to stand.

Chapter 3 introduces the Tuftons, including their disabled daughter, Adelaide, who is a far cry from the sort of suffering saint we usually encounter in this sort of scenario. On the contrary she is sharp-tongued and impatient, and entertains herself by tormenting anyone who wanders into her orbit.

This clash between Adelaide and her father, uncontradicted and uneditorialised, is remarkable:

    "Providence has laid you aside, my love, from temptations; and you remember how often I used to say in early days, No doubt it was a blessing, Jemima, coming when it did, to wean our girl from the world; she might have been as fond of dress as other girls, and brought us to ruin, but for her misfortune. Everything is for the best.”
    “Oh, bother!” said Adelaide, sharply---“I don’t complain, and never did; but everybody else finds my misfortune, as they call it, very easy to be borne, Mr Vincent---even papa, you see. There is a reason for everything, to be sure; but how things that are hard and disagreeable are always to be called for the best, I can’t conceive..."


24lyzard
Set 6, 2021, 7:50 pm

...and on the back of his conversation with Mrs Hilyard, Vincent finds another supporter (of sorts) in Adelaide Tufton.

I wonder what we are meant to conclude about these rebellious women? Are we to sympathise, or take it as a warning against Vincent's own impatient independence?

Chapter 3

    “Dear Tozer said to me just yesterday, ‘You point out the pitfalls to him, Mr Tufton, and give him your advice, and I’ll take care that he shan’t go wrong outside,’ says dear Tozer. Ah, an invaluable man!”
    “But a little disposed to interfere, I think,” said Vincent, with an irrestrainable inclination to show his profound disrelish of all the advice which was about to be given him.
    Mr Tufton raised his heavy forefinger and shook it slowly. “No---no. Be careful, my dear brother. You must keep well with your deacons. You must not take up prejudices against them. Dear Tozer is a man of a thousand---a man of a thousand! Dear Tozer, if you listen to him, will keep you out of trouble. The trouble he takes and the money he spends for Salem Chapel is, mark my words, unknown---and,” added the old pastor, awfully syllabling the long word in his solemn bass, “in-con-ceiv-able.”
    “He is a bore and an ass for all that,” said the daring invalid opposite, with perfect equanimity, as if uttering the most patent and apparent of truths. “Don’t you give in to him, Mr. Vincent. A pretty business you will have with them all,” she continued, dropping her knitting-needles and lifting her pale-blue eyes, with their sudden green gleam, to the face of the new-comer with a rapid perception of his character, which, having no sympathy in it, but rather a certain mischievous and pleased satisfaction in his probable discomfiture, gave anything but comfort to the object of her observation...


As I say, I'm not sure how we're supposed to take these women in a religious / social context; but I am sure we're supposed to sympathise with their mutual amusement with Arthur Vincent...

25lyzard
Modificato: Set 6, 2021, 7:55 pm

And there is one more meeting in store for Vincent:

Chapter 3

...a brilliant vision suddenly appeared before him, rustling forth upon the crowded pavement, where the dirty children stood still to gape at her. A woman---a lady---a beautiful dazzling creature, resplendent in the sweetest English roses, the most delicate bewildering bloom. Though it was but for a moment, the bewildered young minister had time to note the dainty foot, the daintier hand, the smiling sunshiny eyes, the air of conscious supremacy, which was half command and half entreaty---an ineffable combination. That vision descended out of the heavenly chariot upon the mean pavement just as Mr Vincent came up...

(Note Vincent's abrupt mental shift from a woman to a lady.)

26kac522
Modificato: Set 7, 2021, 1:16 am

I read this a few months ago, and will be re-reading parts of the book. I especially love these beginning chapters, where Oliphant gives us such wonderful descriptions of the people and homes of Carlingford: poor, mysterious Mrs Hilyard and her lodgings; the Tuftons in their "'umble 'ome"; and in Chapter 4 the Tozers' crowded back parlor, with the incessant aroma of hams and cheeses. I've got the map of Carlingford at hand as Mr Vincent calls on his congregants.

Oliphant is so good with speech. You get an immediate sense of who these people are by the way they talk: Mr Vincent and Mr Tufton are worlds away from the Tozers, for example. And how about the two daughters: Adelaide Tufton, the invalid with the sharp tongue, and Phoebe Tozer gushing and blurting out at every turn--while the mothers feel it necessary to apologize for their daughters after each remark. The family dynamics are immediately apparent in both these households.

One thing I am noticing this time: the subtle foreshadowing that Oliphant has planted in the text (and in our minds).

27lyzard
Set 7, 2021, 3:24 am

>26 kac522:

She really does cover an enormous amount of ground in those first few chapters: apart from the wicked characterisations, you really get a sense of all of this just coming at Vincent and catching him unprepared.

Agreed! - noticing that as I browse back.

28MissWatson
Set 7, 2021, 1:18 pm

I am just returned from a seaside holiday and will need a few days to catch up, but I'll be around.

29cbl_tn
Set 7, 2021, 4:09 pm

I decided to read the short stories and novella first. I'll catch up eventually!

30lyzard
Set 7, 2021, 5:14 pm

>28 MissWatson:

Welcome, Birgit!

>29 cbl_tn:

That's a good idea, and it shouldn't put you too far behind us. :)

31lyzard
Modificato: Set 7, 2021, 5:41 pm

In Chapter 4, Vincent falls back into the social clutches of the Tozers, and uses the opportunity to try and elicit information about---well, both ladies; but mostly Lady Western.

We are also given another tacit lesson in the harsh reality of the distance between Vincent's lofty aspirations and the prosaic reality of Mr Tozer's management of Salem Chapel:

    The minister and the deacon were accordingly left alone.
    “Three more pews applied for this week---fifteen sittings in all,” said Mr Tozer; “that’s what I call satisfactory, that is. We mustn’t let the steam go down---not on no account. You keep well at them of Sundays, Mr Vincent, and trust to the managers, sir, to keep ’em up to their dooty. Me and Mr Tufton was consulting the other day. He says as we oughtn’t to spare you, and you oughtn’t to spare yourself. There hasn’t been such a opening not in our connection for fifteen year. We all look to you to go into it, Mr Vincent. If all goes as I expect, and you keep up as you’re doing, I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to put another fifty to the salary next year.”
    “Oh!” said poor Vincent, with a miserable face. He had been rather pleased to hear about the “opening,” but this matter-of-fact encouragement and stimulus threw him back into dismay and disgust.


Set against this we have the ominous story of Vincent's predecessor, Mr Bailey, and how it all went wrong for him after he married a woman the "Deaconesses" disapproved of.

Oliphant keeps a note of humour through this, but in spite of Vincent's self-satisfaction there is an important touch we should note:

    "...if you was to ask my advice, I’d say to give it ’em a little more plain---meaning the Church folks. It’s expected of a new man. I’d touch ’em up in the State-Church line, Mr Vincent, if I was you. Give us a coorse upon the anomalies, and that sort of thing—the bishops in their palaces, and the fisherman as was the start of it all; there’s a deal to be done in that way. It always tells; and my opinion is as you might secure the most part of the young men and thinkers, and them as can see what’s what, if you lay it on pretty strong. Not,” added the deacon, remembering in time to add that necessary salve to the conscience---“not as I would have you neglect what’s more important; but, after all, what is more important, Mr Vincent, than freedom of opinion and choosing your own religious teacher? You can’t put gospel truth in a man’s mind till you’ve freed him out of them bonds. It stands to reason---as long as he believes just what he’s told, and has it all made out for him the very words he’s to pray, there may be feelin’, sir, but there can’t be no spiritual understandin’ in that man.”
    “Well, one can’t deny that there have been enlightened men in the Church of England,” said the young Nonconformist, with lofty candour. “The inconsistencies of the human mind are wonderful; and it is coming to be pretty clearly understood in the intellectual world, that a man may show the most penetrating genius, and even the widest liberality, and yet be led a willing slave in the bonds of religious rite and ceremony. One cannot understand it, it is true; but in our clearer atmosphere we are bound to exercise Christian charity. Great as the advantages are on our side of the question, I would not willingly hurt the feelings of a sincere Churchman, who, for anything I know, may be the best of men.”


The expression "free church" was often applied to the Dissenting faiths, and it was one of their most important tenets that an individual must be "called" and to become a congregant of their own free will: there was consequently no infant baptism. There was an emphasis upon individual experience and practice.

The Established Church, conversely, was viewed as an obligation rather than a choice; while its various rituals and occasions were an invitation to rote attendance and responses rather than genuine worship.

The Church as a state body, headed by the monarch and with bishops sitting in Parliament, was considered a political rather than a religious institution.

Although again Oliphant puts its in a way that highlights the characters and mental processes of Vincent and Mr Tozer, these details help to delineate the schism between the two bodies.

32kayclifton
Set 8, 2021, 3:00 pm

I have read most of the work's on the list except for Phoebe Juniorand The Executor and will be following the discussion. I may reread The Rector and the Doctor's Family when you begin with those books.

33lyzard
Set 8, 2021, 5:51 pm

>32 kayclifton:

Hi, Kay - welcome! :)

We discussed the three preceding short works earlier this year: the thread for The Executor and The Rector is here, and the thread for The Doctor's Family is here.

34lyzard
Set 8, 2021, 6:11 pm

Chapter 5 first brings to our attention the situation of Arthur Vincent's mother and sister, who occupy a cottage in a village called Lonsdale.

We get an immediate sense of the limitations of their life and their straitened circumstances---and can deduce how many sacrifices have been made to give the son of the house his "gentleman's education". The language here is pretty devastating, although Vincent himself clearly takes it all for granted:

...instead of the limited household atmosphere hitherto breathing in them---an atmosphere confined by the strait cottage walls, shutting in the little picture which the absent son knew so well, and in which usually no figure appeared but those of his pretty sister Susan, and their little servant, and a feminine neighbour or two---instead of those strict household limits, the world, as we have said, had expanded round the widow’s pen; the cottage walls or windows seemed to have opened out to disclose the universe beyond...

Some of Vincent's indignation seems directed at the fact that his womenfolk are escaping their stifling exisyence---behind his back, as it were.

However, in the terms of their society, his concern over the stranger, Mr Fordham, is understandable: clearly he has not come into the orbit of Mrs Vincent and Susan by the usual channels of vouched-for introduction.

35lyzard
Modificato: Set 8, 2021, 6:34 pm

The second half of Chapter 5 finds Vincent's infatuation with Lady Western leading him to barge into the surprising meeting between the dazzling young widow and the solitary needlewoman of Back Grove Street.

It is indirectly evident that these two know each other quite well: Lady Western's casual use of Mrs Hilyard's first name is revealing; and it is obvious that it is *not* a charity call, from Mrs Hilyard's wry joking about Lady Western covering her actions via reference to non-existent "tea and sugar".

Obvious to the reader, anyway: Vincent is in no state to absorb the significance of such details:

And She, sitting there in all her splendour, casting extraordinary lights of beauty round her upon the mean apartment, perfuming the air and making it musical with that rustle of woman’s robes which had never been out of poor Vincent’s ears since he saw her first;---She lifted her lovely face, smiled, and bowed her beautiful head to the young man, who could have liked to go down on his knees, not to ask anything, but simply to worship. As he dared not do that, he sat down awkwardly upon the chair Mrs Hilyard pointed to, and said, with embarrassment, that he feared he had chosen a wrong time for his visit, and would return again---but nevertheless did not move from where he was...

Following Lady Western's departure, we get a doubly significant conversation between Mrs Hilyard and Vincent. Her teasing of him, as usual, is very much on point---questioning his own understanding of his faith and his position in Carlingford (though again, we probably see what she's getting at better than Vincent himself).

More unexpected is her sudden interest in Vincent's family. It is, as Mrs Hilyard observes, Lady Western who has mentioned Lonsdale (otherwise Vincent may not have noticed); but it is she who follows up with apparently unmotivated inquiries into how Mrs Vincent and Susan occupy their time:

    Another thought, however, seemed to strike Mrs Hilyard as she shook hands with him.
    “Do your mother and sister in Lonsdale keep a school?” she said. “Nay, pray don’t look affronted. Clergymen’s widows and daughters very often do in the Church. I meant no impertinence in this case. They don’t? well, that is all I wanted to know. I daresay they are not likely to be in the way of dangerous strangers. Good-bye; and you must come again on Monday, when I shall be alone.”
    “But---dangerous strangers---may I ask you to explain?” said Vincent, with a little alarm, instinctively recurring to his threatened brother-in-law, and the news which had disturbed his composure that morning before he came out.
    “I can’t explain; and you would not be any the wiser,” said Mrs Hilyard, peremptorily. “Now, good morning. I am glad they don’t keep a school; because, you know,” she added, looking full into his eyes, as if defying him to make any meaning out of her words, “it is very tiresome, tedious work, and wears poor ladies out. There!---good-bye; next day you come I shall be very glad to see you, and we’ll have no fine ladies to put us out.”


Noting that use of the phrase fine lady, which we have discussed before via Trollope: over the 19th century it became, increasingly, a pejorative term, meaning a woman devoted (whether voluntarily or because of her husband's insistence) to clothes and jewellery and display, rather than duties; a woman who was ornamental rather than useful.

Mrs Hilyard probably doesn't mean it, but by using it she underscores the distance between Lady Western and Vincent, and the inappropriate nature of his infatuation.

36lyzard
Set 8, 2021, 6:44 pm

Not that his infatuation is going anywhere: on the contrary.

In Lady Western's defence we should acknowledge that she probably speaking the exact truth about herself here, though Vincent no doubt thinks this is polite self-deprecation.

This conversation also highlights Vincent's general inexperience of the world:

Chapter 6

    “She seems a very remarkable person,” said Vincent. “To see her where she is, makes one feel how insignificant are the circumstances of life.”
    “Really! now, how do you make out that?” said Lady Western; “for, to tell the truth, I think, when I see her, oh, how important they are! and that I’d a great deal rather die than live so. But you clever people take such strange views of things. Now tell me how you make that out?”
    “Nay,” said Vincent, lowering his voice with a delicious sense of having a subject to be confidential upon, “you know what conditions of existence all her surroundings imply; yet the most ignorant could not doubt for a moment her perfect superiority to them---a superiority so perfect,” he added, with a sudden insight which puzzled even himself, “that it is not necessary to assert it.”
    “Oh, to be sure,” said Lady Western, colouring a little, and with a momentary hauteur, “of course a Russell---I mean a gentlewoman---must always look the same to a certain extent; but, alas! I am only a very commonplace little woman,” continued the beauty, brightening into those smiles which perhaps might be distributed too liberally, but which intoxicated for the moment every man on whom they fell. “I think those circumstances which you speak of so disrespectfully are everything! I have not a great soul to triumph over them. I should break down, or they would overcome me—oh, you need not shake your head! I know I am right so far as I myself am concerned.”


That remark about Lady Western's "liberally distributed smiles", however, does bring a note of criticism into Oliphant's depiction of her. She is quite well aware from this point of Vincent's feelings, but accepts the flattery of it rather than check him, as she should have done.

Instead she invites him to tea...

37lyzard
Modificato: Set 9, 2021, 5:39 pm

The other interesting detail in Chapter 6 is that business at the beginning about the rival bookstores.

I haven't been able to determine whether Master's was a real book chain (anyone?).

Master's is obviously the mainstream bookseller of Carlingford, whereas Bury's is a specialty store dealing in religious works and, probably, approved non-fiction.

The Evangelicals and the Dissenters disapproved of novels and other forms of light literature, with their reading restricted to tracts and other improving works; so we may understand that Master's would not have been patronised by any of "the connection".

We can infer that Master's stocks the usual supply of fashionable fiction; but it would also have supplied works aimed at the Anglican population of Carlingford. Small wonder it has been the target of an explicit interdict:

...it was the last place in the world which his masters at the chapel would have advised him to enter. For there was another bookseller in the town, an evangelical man, patronised by Mr Bury, the whilom rector, where all the Tract Society’s publications were to be had, not to speak of a general range of literature quite wide enough for the minister of Salem. Masters’s was a branch of the London Master's, and, as might be supposed, was equally amazed and indignant at the intrusion of a Dissenter among its consecrated book-shelves.

We also get a hint here of a general alliance between the Low Church or Evangelical people and the Dissenters against the more worldly High Church faction. (We're back on Trollope turf here!)

38lyzard
Set 9, 2021, 5:45 pm

And of course the tea at Lady Western's goes exactly as we expect, if not Arthur Vincent:

Chapter 7

    What business had he there? No link of connection existed between him and this little world of unknown people except herself. She had brought him here; she alone knew even so much of him as his name. He had not an inch of ground to stand on in the little alien assembly when she was not there. He broke off his conversation with his unknown sympathiser abruptly, and rushed out, meaning to leave the place. But somehow, fascinated still, in a hundred different moods a minute, when he got outside, he too lingered about the paths, where he continually met with groups and stray couples who stared at him, and wondered again, sometimes not inaudibly, who he was. He met her at last under the shadow of the lime-trees with a train of girls about her, and a following of eager male attendants. When he came forward lonely to make his farewell, with a look in which he meant to unite a certain indignation and reproach with still chivalrous devotion, the unconscious beauty met him with unabated sweetness, held out her hand as before, and smiled the most radiant of smiles.
    “Are you going to leave us already?” she said, in a tone which half persuaded the unlucky youth to stay till the last moment, and swallow all his mortifications. “So sorry you must go away so soon! and I wanted to show you my pictures too. Another time, I hope, we may have better fortune. When you come to me again, you must really be at leisure, and have no other engagements. Good-bye! It was so kind of you to come, and I am so sorry you can’t stay!”
    In another minute the green door had opened and closed, the fairy vision was gone, and poor Vincent stood in Grange Lane between the two blank lines of garden-wall, come back to the common daylight after a week’s vain wandering in the enchanted grounds, half stupefied, half maddened by the disappointment and downfall. He made a momentary pause at the door, gulped down the big indignant sigh that rose in his throat, and, with a quickened step and a heightened colour, retraced his steps along a road which no longer gleamed with any rosy reflections, but was harder, more real, more matter-of-fact than ever it had looked before...


This ought to have been a sufficient lesson, but...

Vincent's awkward interactions with Lady Western and her set underscore the fact that the "gentleman's education" that his mother fought so hard for has placed him in a false position---unfitted him for the realities of life amongst the tradespeople who make up his flock - and will largely do so wherever he goes - and given him a taste for "high society" that in the nature of things (since such people were invariably Established Church) will never be within his grasp.

39lyzard
Modificato: Set 10, 2021, 5:25 pm

Oliphant finds a lot of ironic humour in Vincent's reaction to his treatment at Lady Western's: in his mortification at being shown his true position, for the first time he gives his flock want they really want from him---with his wounded ego being misinterpreted as loftiness of mind and soul, and as true religious zeal:

Chapter 8

An attempt on the part of the Government to repeal the Toleration Act, or reinstate the Test, could scarcely have produced a more permanent and rapid effect than Lady Western’s neglect, and the total ignorance of Mr Vincent displayed by polite society in Carlingford. No shame to him. It was precisely the same thing in private life which the other would have been in public. Repeal of the Toleration Act, or re-enactment of the Test, are things totally impossible; and when persecution is not to be apprehended or hoped for, where but in the wrongs of a privileged class can the true zest of dissidence be found? Mr Vincent, who had received his dissenting principles as matters of doctrine, took up the familiar instruments now with a rush of private feeling. He was not conscious of the power of that sentiment of injury and indignation which possessed him. He believed in his heart that he was but returning, after a temporary hallucination, to the true duties of his post; but the fact was, that this wound in the tenderest point---this general slight and indifference---pricked him forward in all that force of personal complaint which gives warmth and piquancy to a public grievance. The young man said nothing of Lady Western even to his dearest friend---tried not to think of her except by way of imagining how she should one day hear of him, and know his name when it possessed a distinction which neither the perpetual curate of St. Roque’s, nor any other figure in that local world, dared hope for. But with fiery zeal he flew to the question of Church and State, and set forth the wrongs which Christianity sustained from endowment, and the heinous evils of rich livings, episcopal palaces, and spiritual lords...

The Test Act of 1673 required anyone holding public office to take an oath of allegiance, to take Anglican communion, and to openly reject certain Catholic doctrines. It was aimed at excluding Catholics from office, but it excluded Nonconformists too on the first two grounds.

The Toleration Act was a law passed in 1689 following the forced abdication of James II (who had actually introduced certain religious freedoms in England, but in support of the Catholics, not because he believed in general freedoms). The Act was, effectively, a concession that there would never be a comprehensive or united Church of England: under it, Nonconformists were permitted their own places of worship and their own ministers. However, they were still required to take oaths of allegiance, and barred from holding political office.

40lyzard
Set 10, 2021, 5:33 pm

Despite the humorous overtones in Oliphant's description of Vincent's sermons and lectures, at this point we also we get a shift in the overall tone of the novel, and the introduction of some unexpected material.

Oliphant does not tip her hand at once, however, but merely begins to hint at which way things will unfold:

Chapter 8

On the very skirts of the crowd, far back at the door, stood his friend of Back Grove Street. In that momentary pause, he saw her standing alone, with the air of a person who had risen up unconsciously in sudden surprise and consternation. Her pale dark face looked not less confused and startled than Vincent himself was conscious of looking, and her eyes were turned in the same direction as his had been the previous moment. The crowd of Carlingford hearers died off from the scene for the instant, so far as the young Nonconformist was concerned. He knew but of that fair creature in all her sweet bloom and blush of beauty---the man who accompanied her---Mrs Hilyard, a thin, dark, eager shadow in the distance—and himself standing, as it were, between them, connecting all together...

41NinieB
Set 10, 2021, 5:37 pm

It seems like Arthur Vincent must be quite young, based on what we know of his backstory--maybe 22 or 23? Does this sound right?

42lyzard
Set 10, 2021, 5:39 pm

But before we follow that plot-thread, there's another touch here that we need to consider---namely, Lady Western's reaction to Vincent's lecture:

Chapter 8

“But it did please me,” said the young Dowager; “only that it was so very wicked and wrong. Where did you learn such dreadful sentiments? I am so sorry I shan’t hear you again, and so glad you are finished. You never came to see me after my little fête. I am afraid you thought us stupid. Good-night: but you really must come to me, and I shall convert you. I am sure you never can have looked at the Church in the right way: why, what would become of us if we were all Dissenters? What a frightful idea! Thank you for such a charming evening. Good-night.”

That speech should, in all its components, have been enough to cure Vincent of his infatuation; and his persistence becomes harder and harder to sympathise with.

43lyzard
Set 10, 2021, 5:55 pm

>41 NinieB:

Twenty-five, as noted in Chapter 2 (apropos of the dreaded leftover "shape"!):

To old Mrs Tufton, indeed, who had an invalid daughter, it might have seemed a Christian bounty; but to Arthur Vincent, five-and-twenty, a scholar and a gentleman---ah me! If he had been a Christchurch man, or even a Fellow of Trinity, the chances are he would have taken it much more graciously; for then he would have had the internal consciousness of his own dignity to support him...

...and young and inexperienced for his age, as a result of his upbringing; granted, but still... :)

44cbl_tn
Set 10, 2021, 10:29 pm

Caught up now!

My thought so far is that Arthur Vincent is as unsuited for his position as Proctor was in The Rector. At least Proctor had the self-awareness to recognize his shortcomings. I'm finding it hard to muster much sympathy for Arthur.

45lyzard
Modificato: Set 10, 2021, 11:46 pm

>44 cbl_tn:

Well done!

That's a fair comparison, though I wonder whether Oliphant was making a point about the inadequacy of ministerial training (whatever the denomination), or about what a vocation actually is?

Proctor is a minister for many years before he ventures out into the world and discovers himself unfitted for the practical duties of his situation, something he clearly hasn't thought about prior to becoming the Rector. Vincent at least does have the excuse of his youth and inexperience, though he seems equally unprepared for the realities of Carlingford.

I think we need to concede, though, that Proctor's failures are spiritual, while Vincent's are social.

What strikes me in this context (I suppose this counts as a very mild spoiler, so---):

When we meet Mrs Vincent later on we discover she understands exactly what is required with respect to the townspeople and how important it is for her son to meet their demands. So did she never say anything to him? Did she consider it "not her place", or did she think his training would have prepared him better?

I suspect, Carrie, that we are supposed to be critical of Arthur Vincent, as we are of Edward Rider in The Doctor's Family: being an Oilphant protagonist clearly has nothing to do with being a hero! :)

46lyzard
Set 11, 2021, 7:22 pm

We've been quite hard on Arthur Vincent, but Chapter 9 correctly emphasises his treatment of Mrs Hilyard (at least in the absence of Lady Western), which may be the best thing about him. This is at least partly because she, too, understands the rules; and so he is able to be "a gentleman" with her in a way that his interactions with his parishioners do not allow.

However, more dark hints about Vincent's mother and sister emerge in this late-night conversation:

    When she had made one or two rapid steps in advance, Mrs Hilyard turned back, as if with a sudden impulse.
    “Do you know I have an uneasiness about these ladies in Lonsdale?” she said; “I know nothing whatever about them---not so much as their names; but you are their natural protector; and it does not do for women to be as magnanimous and generous in the reception of strangers as you are. There! don’t be alarmed. I told you I knew nothing. They may be as safe, and as middle-aged, and as ugly as I am; instead of a guileless widow and a pretty little girl, they may be hardened old campaigners like myself; but they come into my mind, I cannot tell why. Have them here to live beside you, and they will do you good.”
    “My sister is about to be married,” said Vincent, more and more surprised, and looking very sharply into her face in the lamplight, to see whether she really did not know anything more than she said.
    A certain expression of relief came over her face.
    “Then all is well,” she said, with strange cordiality, and again held out her hand to him...


I highlight those words because it's a point I want to come back to later.

47lyzard
Set 11, 2021, 7:31 pm

And after starting out on a comedic note, by describing the (for Vincent) excruciating tea-meeting, in Chapter 10 we suddenly take a dark turn into frank melodrama:

    “She-devil! murderess!” cried her companion, not without a certain shade of alarm in his voice; “if your power were equal to your will---”
    “In that case my power should be equal to my will,” said the steady, delicate woman’s voice, as clear in very fine articulation as if it were some peaceful arrangement of daily life for which she declared herself capable: “you should not escape if you surrounded yourself with a king’s guards. I swear to you, if you do what you say, that I will kill you somehow, by whatever means I can attain---and I have never yet broken my word.”
    An unsteady defiant laugh was the only reply. The man was evidently more impressed with the sincerity, and power to execute her intentions, of the woman than she with his. Apparently they stood regarding each other for another momentary interval in silence. Again Mrs Hilyard was the first to speak.
    “I presume our conference is over now,” she said, calmly; “how you could think of seeking it is more than I can understand. I suppose poor pretty Alice, who thinks every woman can be persuaded, induced you to attempt this. Don’t let me keep you any longer in a place so repugnant to your taste. I am going to the tea-meeting at Salem Chapel to hear my young friend the minister speak: perhaps this unprofitable discussion has lost me that advantage. You heard him the other night, and were pleased, I trust. Good-night. I suppose, before leaving you, I should thank you for having spared my life.”
    Vincent heard the curse upon her and her stinging tongue, which burst in a growl of rage from the lips of the other, but he did not see the satirical curtsy with which this strange woman swept past, nor the scarcely controllable impulse which made the man lift his stick and clench it in his hand as she turned away from him those keen eyes, out of which even the gloom of night could not quench the light. But even Mrs Hilyard herself never knew how near, how very near, she was at that moment to the unseen world...

48lyzard
Set 11, 2021, 7:44 pm

...and we need to stop and talk about this plot, which will run parallel with (and then collide with) another equally dark.

Those of you who participated in the group read of Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm will recall that we considered that novel in the context of the increasingly popular "sensation fiction" of the 1860s, as best represented by the works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Wilkie Collins.

Many more conservative novelists - including Trollope and Margaret Oliphant - expressed their disapproval of this genre of writing, believing that its focus on crime and immorality was pandering to the worst instincts in readers.

But the fact is that they were fighting a losing battle: Orley Farm was published in 1862 and Salem Chapel---the year when the runaway smash best-seller was Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret.

What's interesting is that, despite their disapproval, both Trollope and Oliphant dabbled in plots that could have been the basis of a sensation novel---Oliphant, if anything, more so.

I'm inclined to wonder whether, in spite of everything, the authors felt the need to write to the marketplace, or whether their publishers encouraged them - or pressured them - into including material that met this new and growing taste.

We saw how Trollope pushed back against the demands of the genre in the structuring of his novel and the point at which he makes its most significant revelation.

In going forward with Salem Chapel, we should also be alert to how Oliphant handles her material, how far she is prepared to go with it, and where she draws the line.

49NinieB
Set 11, 2021, 10:28 pm

I have been enjoying the sensation-novel plot of Salem Chapel.

If her publisher/the market wanted Mrs. Oliphant to feed the sensation novel craze, she had the incentive to cater to the desire, since she was the only financial support for her children. Also, unlike Trollope she was not already successful when the sensation novel hit the market.

50lyzard
Modificato: Set 11, 2021, 11:43 pm

>49 NinieB:

That's a fair point, Ninie.

I must say I was surprised how far Oliphant took that aspect of Salem Chapel, and how important it became in the overall narrative. I'm not sure about the blending of that and the semi-comic social plot, however, but we can talk about that later.

51lyzard
Modificato: Set 11, 2021, 11:43 pm

Anyway---

Chapter 10 finds Arthur Vincent - and his mother and sister - drawn into the dark mystery surrounding Mrs Hilyard:

    ...he was suddenly confronted by Mrs Hilyard out of her corner with the fly-leaf of the hymn-book the unscrupulous woman had been writing in, torn out in her hand.
    “Stop a minute!” she cried; “I want to speak to you. I want your help, if you will give it me. Don’t be surprised at what I ask. Is your mother a good woman---was it she that trained you to act to the forlorn as you did to me last night? I have been too hasty---I take away your breath;---never mind, there is no time to choose one’s words. The butterman is looking at us, Mr Vincent. The ladies are alarmed; they think I want spiritual consolation at this unsuitable moment. Make haste---answer my question. Would she do an act of Christian charity to a woman in distress?”
    “My mother is---yes, I know she would, what do you want of her?---my mother is the best and tenderest of women,” cried Vincent, in utter amazement.
    “I want to send a child to her---a persecuted, helpless child, whom it is the object of my life to keep out of evil hands,” said Mrs Hilyard, her dark thin face growing darker and more pallid, her eyes softening with tears. “She will be safe at Lonsdale now, and I cannot go in my own person at present to take her anywhere. Here is a message for the telegraph,” she added, holding up the paper which Vincent had supposed to be notes of Mr. Pigeon’s speech; “take it for me---send it off to-night---you will? and write to your mother; she shall suffer no loss, and I will thank her on my knees. It is life or death.”

52cbl_tn
Set 12, 2021, 9:15 am

>45 lyzard: I admit I am biased when it comes to ministerial training and vocation. My father was an ordained minister, although he ended up spending most of his career in higher education. I've spent most of my career at an institution that includes ministerial training as one of its degree programs. Homiletics/rhetoric is only a small part of the curriculum. The course of study also includes pastoral care/pastoral theology, the area where Arthur Vincent seems to be deficient. Perhaps it wasn't a part of Homerton's curriculum. I also wonder if Arthur may not have a vocation for ministry. It seems as if Arthur was very young when his father died, since he seems to have no memory of his mother as a clergyman's wife. Maybe his mother pushed him into ministry so that he could become his father.

53NinieB
Set 12, 2021, 10:04 am

>52 cbl_tn: Interesting . . . in my imagination, a 19th century minister's education would be focused on theology, not pastoral care.

I was wondering too about much time Arthur spent with the deceased Mr. Vincent in his role as a minister.

54cbl_tn
Set 12, 2021, 3:27 pm

>52 cbl_tn: >53 NinieB: Question partially answered in Chapter 11:

...visitation of the poor had not been a branch of study at Homerton.

55lyzard
Set 12, 2021, 6:52 pm

>52 cbl_tn:

Between this and The Rector, Oliphant's point seems to be that the practical / spiritual part of a minister's duties was neglected in training on both sides of the Church---or perhaps that an aptitude for such duties was not given enough emphasis when considering vocation.

Mr Proctor as we saw had no idea how to address a dying woman, whereas Mr Wentworth was able to give the woman what she needed from him. (Note, though, Lucy Wodehouse's contribution: the qualities necessary are not confined to ministers, or even men.)

To be fair to Vincent, part of his problem in Carlingford is a lack of serious demands upon him. The real poor, the ones who might need real help, are nearly all Wentworth's parishioners, as we hear in Chapter 2:

The other letter was from a Homerton chum, a young intellectual and ambitious Nonconformist like himself, whose epistle was full of confidence and hope, triumph in the cause, and its perpetual advance. “We are the priests of the poor,” said the Homerton enthusiast, encouraging his friend to the sacrifices and struggles which he presumed to be already surrounding him. Mr Vincent bundled up this letter with a sigh. Alas! there were no grand struggles or sacrifices in Carlingford. “The poor” were mostly church-goers, as he had already discovered. It was a tolerably comfortable class of the community, that dreadful “connection” of Browns, Pigeons, and Tozers. Amid their rude luxuries and commonplace plenty, life could have no heroic circumstances...

Though as Carrie points out (>54 cbl_tn:), perhaps he has not previously looked deeply enough into Carlingford? When he does Oliphant makes it clear that he doesn't know what he's doing, which brings us back to our original point:

Chapter 11

Mr Vincent made deeper investigations into this day than he had made before during all the time he had been in Carlingford. He kept clear of the smug comfort of the leading people of “the connection.” Absolute want, suffering, and sorrow, were comparatively new to him; and being as yet a stranger to philanthropic schemes, and not at all scientific in the distribution of his sympathies, the minister of Salem conducted himself in a way which would have called forth the profoundest contempt and pity of the curate of St. Roque’s. He believed everybody’s story, and emptied his purse with the wildest liberality; for, indeed, visitation of the poor had not been a branch of study at Homerton.

Perhaps in this respect, the Church system of curacies worked as a kind of apprenticeship, so that a young minister could gain experience in these sorts of practicalities? (Mr Proctor, we recall, had no such experience.)

56lyzard
Set 12, 2021, 7:01 pm

>52 cbl_tn:, >53 NinieB:

The point about Arthur's father is a very good one. I'm not sure that he ever actually thinks about his own duties in the context of his father's life. (This is something to look out for.)

This is slightly odd. We will later hear that Mrs Vincent's was "a minister's wife for thirty years", and plenty about what she learned about handling the deacons in that capacity, but Arthur himself does not seem to have such understanding. Even if the children came late, which seems to be the suggestion, Arthur must have growing up with his father as his own minister, yet nothing of that seems to have rubbed off.

57lyzard
Set 12, 2021, 7:09 pm

And while this is slightly getting ahead of things, I was just struck by what Mrs Vincent says of her husband in Chapter 12:

"...but Mr Fordham might have one,” said the widow. “He is not like you or your dear father, Arthur. He looks as if he might have been in the army, and had seen a great deal of life."

Is she saying that her husband was a minister for thirty years *without* seeing a great deal of life?

58lyzard
Set 12, 2021, 7:16 pm

As we go forward into the Fordham plot, there's something I'd like to hear opinions on:

How far are we to be critical of Susan's upbringing?

I'm not sure in my own mind whether Oliphant is attacking the Victorian system of keeping girls ignorant of the world, or whether conversely we are to see that this system is "all for the best" in the long run (under Providence).

However, the fact that Mrs Vincent allowed Mr Fordham access to her house and her daughter without knowing much about him seems to be incredibly irresponsible.

And while I remember, two quotes in context (the second a little ahead, but I think we're okay):

Chapter 9

If any danger threatened Susan, his simple mother could suffer with her, but was ill qualified to protect her: but what danger could threaten Susan? He consoled himself with the thought that these were not the days of abductions or violent love-making. To think of an innocent English girl in her mother’s house as threatened with mysterious danger, such as might have surrounded a heroine of the last century, was impossible.

Chapter 20

...the brightest picture flashed back upon Vincent’s eyes with an indescribably subtle anguish of contrast; how he had come up to her once---the frank, fair Saxon girl---in the midst of a group of gypsies---how he found she had done a service to one of them, and the whole tribe did homage---how he had asked, “Were you not afraid, Susan?” and how the girl had looked up at him with undoubting eyes, and answered, “Afraid, Arthur?---yes, of wild beasts if I saw them, not of men and women.”

59cbl_tn
Set 12, 2021, 7:34 pm

>55 lyzard: Perhaps in this respect, the Church system of curacies worked as a kind of apprenticeship, so that a young minister could gain experience in these sorts of practicalities?

I believe you're right about this! It seems that, by encouraging Arthur to spend time with Mr. Tufton, the Salem deacons are trying to facilitate mentoring on some level, but Arthur doesn't seem to be very teachable.

60cbl_tn
Set 12, 2021, 7:41 pm

Oliphant seems to be telegraphing the connection between Mrs. Hilyer's drama and the Vincent family drama. We have Colonel Mildmay in Lonsdale looking for Mrs. Hilyer's daughter, and we have Susan's suitor, a newcomer to Lonsdale, who gives the impression of having been in the miliatry and who may already be married and using a false name.

61NinieB
Set 12, 2021, 8:15 pm

>58 lyzard: I don't have any real sense of Susan yet. I do agree that we're being told that Mrs. Vincent was irresponsible in letting Susan get to know Fordham.

62lyzard
Set 12, 2021, 9:21 pm

>59 cbl_tn:

Although Mr Tufton isn't presented in a particularly positive way either; however it's mostly his careless attitude to his sermons that is criticised.

Mind you, a curate was already ordained when he got to that point: apparently there wasn't any "work experience" on either side. It occurs to me that we meet a lot of curates in literature who are tutors or taking in pupils: maybe that wasn't just about needing the money or being unable to secure a position, but about unfitness for a minister's duties?

>61 NinieB:

No, but we are getting a sense of her home life, I think.

63lyzard
Modificato: Set 12, 2021, 9:23 pm

>60 cbl_tn:

Agreed, but I also think that Mrs Hilyard is on such high alert that she's picking up small hints that Vincent is oblivious to. At this point she can't explain herself without telling her whole story, but she does what she can to prod Vincent into checking in properly at home---which he should be doing anyway, based on what his mother has written to him---not just "dashing off" impatient letters.

64kac522
Modificato: Set 13, 2021, 1:27 am

>58 lyzard: the fact that Mrs Vincent allowed Mr Fordham access to her house and her daughter without knowing much about him seems to be incredibly irresponsible.

I guess I see Mrs Vincent as too trusting and to a certain extent gullible (after all, she wants to get her daughter married). But I attributed it more to Fordham as a great charmer--certainly they are not the first women he has "charmed", as proven by Mrs Hilyard.

My impression is that Mrs Vincent, as a clergyman's wife, probably had visited all kinds of people and had entertained people from all walks of life in her home. To do that she would need a trusting nature that people are essentially good and trustworthy and that they are who they appear to be. She says that Fordham seemed to be "nice and good and refined", and despite having known "so much of the world" he was pleased with their simple way of life (Chapter XII).

Plus, she recognizes that she has made a grave error of judgment when she gets the anonymous letter. If she were really an irresponsible mother, she wouldn't have taken the letter seriously. Instead she hops on the the first train to Carlingford and brings it to her son.

I don't get the impression that Oliphant is trying to criticize Susan's upbringing, at least at this point, but rather that this was more of a way of sliding into the sensation plot, with a naive mother and an obedient loving daughter.

65lyzard
Modificato: Set 13, 2021, 5:27 pm

>64 kac522:

But we've seen with Vincent the social divide that generally existed between the Dissenters and the Church people---which is to say, between the tradespeople and the upper classes. Mrs Vincent probably has not had a lot to do with gentlemen, and probably not had ladies and gentlemen in her home as visitors.

Clearly Fordham has not been introduced to Mrs Vincent - there is no-one to vouch for him, in the way that social interaction usually required - yet has managed to ingratiate himself with her. As the mother of a pretty young daughter, that's exactly the kind of thing she should have been on guard against.

We can appreciate that Mrs Vincent is lonely, and that Fordham's attentions and company were as welcome for her as for Susan; but the immediacy of her reaction to the letter indicates that there was always doubt, and where that sort of doubt existed, the door should have been shut. She absolutely should have demanded Fordhan's credentials before the matter got anywhere near an engagement---or sent him to Vincent if she didn't want to do it herself.

What's striking, in Vincent's absence, is the apparent lack of anyone Mrs Vincent can consult. There doesn't even seem to be a minister she can trust. Or is she loath to tell anyone what she has done?

66lyzard
Modificato: Set 13, 2021, 5:46 pm

Anyway, we are a little ahead of ourselves here: Chapter 12 does indeed bring both Mrs Vincent and the anonymous letter, claiming that Mr Fordham is using a false name, and is already married:

    “Did he know anybody---in Lonsdale, or anywhere? Did he never speak of his friends?”
    “He had been living abroad,” said Mrs Vincent, slowly. “He talked of gentlemen sometimes, at Baden, and Homburg, and such places. I am afraid you would think it very silly, and---and perhaps wrong, Arthur; but he seemed to know so much of the world---so different from our quiet way of life---that being so nice and good and refined himself with it all---I am afraid it was rather an attraction to Susan. It was so different to what she was used with, my dear. We used to think a man who had seen so much, and known so many temptations, and kept his nice simple tastes through it all---oh, dear, dear! If it is true, I was never so deceived in all my life.”
    “But you have not told me,” said Arthur, morosely, “if he had any friends?”
    “Nobody in Lonsdale,” said Mrs Vincent. “He came to see some young relative at school in the neighbourhood---”
    At this point Mrs Vincent broke off with a half scream, interrupted by a violent start and exclamation from her son, who jumped off his seat, and began to pace up and down the room in an agitation which she could not comprehend...


By now 'school' has become a trigger word. :)

One of the things I found interesting about Salem Chapel is how much overt doubting both Vincent and Mrs Vincent are allowed to express in their troubles, which isn't something commonly found in such novels. That begins here with this unexpected retort from Vincent:

    The mother took his hand again, and put her handkerchief to her eyes---“God bless my dear boy,” she said, with a mother’s tearful admiration---“Oh, what a thing for me, Arthur, that you are grown up and a man, and able to do what is right in such a dreadful difficulty as this! You put me in mind more and more of your dear father when you settle so clearly what is to be done. He was always ready to act when I used to be in a flutter, which was best. And, oh, how good has the Father of the fatherless been to me in giving me such a son!”
    “Ah, mother,” said the young minister, “you gave premature thanks before, when you thought the Father of the fatherless had brought poor Susan a happy lot. Do you say the same now?”


Towards the end of the chapter we see that Vincent, in his way, is as naive as his mother:

Vincent started again with an unexplainable thrill of alarm when he thought how utterly unprotected his mother’s sudden journey had left that little house in Lonsdale. Susan had no warning, no safeguard. He started up in momentary fright, but as suddenly sat down again with a certain indignation at his own thoughts. Nobody could carry her off, or do any act of violence; and as for taking advantage of her solitude, Susan, a straightforward, simple-minded English girl, was safe in her own pure sense of right.

67lyzard
Set 13, 2021, 6:04 pm

One of the most frustrating things about Arthur Vincent is how often he has himself at the forefront of his thoughts.

Of course to be fair we all do that - how is this going to affect ME?? - but the fact that his infatuation with Lady Western overbears his concern for Susan so often becomes more and more aggravating.

I'm inclined to think that Oliphant does intend a criticism here, comparing Vincent's self-absorption through the crisis that follows with his mother's almost desperately selfless efforts to fight his fight with the congregation.

It's not what Vincent says and does so much as the way Oliphant phrases it and the emphasis she uses, which presents these moments in the most exasperating way.

For example---Vincent's mission to London is a failure, and despite what he says to his mother every alarm bell should have been ringing; yet we still get this:

Chapter 13

    The widow dropped heavily into her chair, and sobbed aloud. “I can read it in your face,” she said. “Oh! my dear boy, have you seen that---that villain? Does he confess it? Oh, my Susan, my Susan! I will never forgive myself; I have killed my child.”
    From this passion it was difficult to recover her, and Vincent had to represent so strongly the fact that he had ascertained nothing certain, and that, for anything he could tell, Fordham might still prove himself innocent, that he almost persuaded his own mind in persuading hers.
    “His letters might be taken in at a place where he did not live, for convenience sake,” said Vincent. “The man might think me a dun, or something disagreeable. Fordham himself, for anything we can tell, may be very angry about it. Cheer up, mother; things are no worse than they were last night. I give you my word I have made no discovery, and perhaps to-morrow may bring us a letter clearing it all up.”
    “Ah! Arthur, you are so young and hopeful. It is different with me, who have seen so many terrors come true,” said the mother, who notwithstanding was comforted. As for Vincent, he felt neither the danger nor the suspense. His whole soul was engrossed with the fact that it was time to dress...


68kac522
Set 14, 2021, 1:44 pm

I'm struck by the parallel between Mrs Vincent's handling of Mr Fordham (an apparent gentleman) and Arthur being mesmerized by Lady Western. I'm inclined to think that Oliphant is making a statement about class here--the normal discernment of character is thrown out the window with a person of higher rank--and thus the resulting consequences.

69lyzard
Modificato: Set 14, 2021, 5:58 pm

>68 kac522:

You might be right about that, particularly if we put it in the context of this from Chapter 12, even at the height of their mutual concern about the Fordham situation:

    “To dinner, Arthur? I thought your people only gave teas,” said Mrs Vincent, with a smile.
    “The Salem people do; but this—is not one of the Salem people,” said the minister, still hesitating. “In fact, it would be ungracious of me not to go, and cowardly, too---for that curate, I believe, is to meet me---and Lady Western would naturally think---”
    “Lady Western!” said Mrs Vincent, with irrestrainable pleasure; “is that one of the great people in Carlingford?” The good woman wiped her eyes again with the very tenderest and purest demonstration of that adoration of rank which is said to be an English instinct. “I don’t mean to be foolish, dear,” she said, apologetically; “I know these distinctions of society are not worth your caring about; but to see my Arthur appreciated as he should be, is---” She could not find words to say what it was---she wound up with a little sob. What with trouble and anxiety, and pride and delight, and bodily fatigue added to all, tears came easiest that night.
    Vincent did not say whether or not these distinctions of society were worth caring about. He sat abstractedly, untying the knots in his handkerchief, with a faint smile on his face...


Though perhaps it isn't clear where Oliphant's criticisms are directed: English society generally, the Dissenting education and training, or maybe just the Vincents?

70lyzard
Modificato: Set 14, 2021, 6:10 pm

Anyway, we get an ironic echo of that conversation in Chapter 13:

Mr Vincent took no notice when Miss Wodehouse launched tiny arrows of argument at him. She was the only member of the party who seemed to recollect his heresies in respect to Church and State---which, indeed, he had forgotten himself, and the state of mind which led to them. No such world existed now as that cold and lofty world which the young man of genius had seen glooming down upon his life, and shutting jealous barriers against his progress. The barriers were opened, the coldness gone---and he himself raised high on the sunshiny heights, where love and beauty had their perennial abode. He had gained nothing---changed in nothing---from his former condition: not even the golden gates of society had opened to the dissenting minister; but glorious enfranchisement had come to the young man’s heart. It was not Lady Western who had asked him to dinner---a distinction of which his mother was proud. It was the woman of all women who had brought him to her side, whose sweet eyes were sunning him over, whose voice thrilled to his heart. By her side he forgot all social distinctions, and all the stings contained in them. No prince could have reached more completely the ideal elevation and summit of youthful existence. Ambition and its successes were vulgar in comparison.

I'm curious as to how people think we are to take Arthur Vincent?

He launches into his sermons and lectures attacking the Established Church out of hurt feelings when he is slighted (he thinks) at Lady Western's tea-party, and makes a name for himself for zeal in the Dissenting cause; but all that evaporates - which, indeed, he had forgotten himself, and the state of mind which led to them - as soon as Lady Western is nice to him.

Are we to take him as insincere? shallow? parroting doctrine he doesn't believe in? Or just young and rather stupid? :D

It does bother me that - granting the social annoyances associated with Carlingford - his attitude to his position and his execution of his duties (or not) are swayed so entirely by his emotional state. There doesn't seem to be much genuine dedication about him.

In fact he puts me in mind of the state of the Established Church during the 18th and early 19th centuries, when younger sons went into the Church simply as an acceptable profession without any particular vocation. Is Oliphant drawing a deliberate parallel? - suggesting that here, too, vocation isn't sufficiently taken into consideration by young men training for the Dissenting ministry---and not sufficiently demanded by those doing the training?

71lyzard
Modificato: Set 14, 2021, 6:17 pm

In any event, Vincent's Elysium is short-lived: drawn on to speak of himself, he gets into his journey to London and his search for Mr Fordham---not anticipating for a moment the effect of his words upon Lady Western, or her subsequent unwitting revelation.

Two unwitting revelations:

Chapter 13

    “What is his name?” said Lady Western, with a smile as radiant as a sunbeam.
    “His name is Fordham---Herbert Fordham: I do not know where he comes from, nor whether he is of any profession; nor, indeed, anything but his name. I have been in town to-day---”
    Here Vincent came to a sudden stop. He had withdrawn his eyes from that smile of hers for the moment. When he raised them again, the beautiful picture was changed as if by magic. Her eyes were fixed upon him dilated and almost wild. Her face was deadly pale. Her hands, which had been lying lightly crossed, grasped each other in a grasp of sudden anguish and self-control. He stopped short with a pang too bitter and strange for utterance. At that touch all his fancies dispersed into the air. He came to himself strangely, with a sense of chill and desolation. In one instant, from the height of momentary bliss down to the miserable flat of conscious unimportance...


****

    “I know that gentleman,” she said, quickly, with a momentary flush of colour, and shortening of breath; “at least I knew him once; and the address you mention is my brother’s address. If you will tell me what you want to know, I will ask for you. My brother and he used not to be friends, but I suppose--- What did you want to know?”
    “Only,” said Vincent, with involuntary bitterness, “if he was a man of honour, and could be trusted; nothing else.”
    The young Dowager paused and sighed; her beautiful eyes softened with tears. “Oh, yes---yes; with life---to death!” she said, with a low accompaniment of sighing, and a wistful melancholy smile upon her lovely face.

72lyzard
Modificato: Set 14, 2021, 6:32 pm

However, in Chapter 14 it is evident that Vincent - his focus elsewhere - has failed to put two and two together:

    “The fact is, I heard of Mr Fordham last night,” said Vincent, walking about the room, lifting up and setting down again abstractedly the things on the table. “Lady Western knows him, it appears; perhaps Mrs Hilyard does too.”
    “Lady Western knows him? Oh, Arthur, tell me---what did she say?” cried his mother, clasping her hands.
    “She said he could be trusted---with life---to death,” said Vincent, very low, with an inaudible groan in his heart. He was prepared for the joy and the tears, and the thanksgiving with which his words were received; but he could not have believed, how sharply his mother’s exclamation, “God bless my Susan! now I am happy about her, Arthur. I could be content to die,” would go to his heart. Susan, yes;---it was right to be happy about her; and as for himself, who cared? He shut up his heart in that bitterness; but it filled him with an irritation and restlessness which he could not subdue.


Don't you want to slap him? :D

Mrs Hilyard, however, is quicker on the uptake:

    “And you admitted him first?” said Mrs Hilyard, interrogatively, “because---?” She paused. Mrs Vincent became embarrassed and nervous.
    “It was very foolish, very foolish,” said the widow, wringing her hands; “but he came to make inquiries, you know. I answered him civilly the first time, and he came again and again. It looked so natural. He had come down to see a young relation at school in the neighbourhood.”
    Mrs Hilyard uttered a sudden exclamation---very slight, low, scarcely audible; but it attracted Vincent’s attention. He could see that her thin lips were closed, her figure slightly erected, a sudden keen gleam of interest in her face. “Did he find his relation?” she asked, in a voice so ringing and distinct that the young minister started, and sat upright, bracing himself for something about to happen. It did not flash upon him yet what that meaning might be; but his pulses leapt with a prescient thrill of some tempest or earthquake about to fall.
    “No; he never could find her---it did not turn out to be our Lonsdale, I think---what is the matter?” cried Mrs. Vincent; “you both know something I don’t know---what has happened? Arthur, have I said anything dreadful?---oh, what does it mean?”
    “Describe him if you can,” said Mrs Hilyard, in a tone which, sharp and calm, tingled through the room with a passionate clearness which nothing but extreme excitement could give...


73NinieB
Set 14, 2021, 6:46 pm

>68 kac522: Nice point, Kathy!

>70 lyzard: I take Arthur as young (remember my question earlier).

74kac522
Set 15, 2021, 3:15 am

>69 lyzard: Though perhaps it isn't clear where Oliphant's criticisms are directed: English society generally, the Dissenting education and training, or maybe just the Vincents?

From the PhD thesis by Kamper, which I sort of dipped in and out, I recall that she said Oliphant rarely portrays the upper classes and very lowest classes in her fiction; she is primarily concerned with the various middle classes, and the variations between them. Thinking back to the previous books we read, I don't recall anyone from the upper classes; that is, equivalent to Lady Western, for example--but I may have forgotten someone. In any case Lady Western, et al, are outliers to a certain extent in Oliphant's fiction.

Kamper also made the point that Oliphant was less interested with the beliefs and tenets of the various faiths, but more with how the different congregations and/or individuals of those congregations resolved (or failed to resolve) their differences on matters of mutual interest in Carlingford.

So for me it seems that Oliphant's criticisms are directed at English society generally, while using the Vincents as particular exaggerated examples, and that their Dissenter faith would not be a factor, except in how they attempt to navigate Carlingford society as representatives of that faith. And we will find that Arthur has quite the navigating to do with his congregants about his relationship with Lady Western.

75kac522
Modificato: Set 15, 2021, 3:18 am

>72 lyzard: Don't you want to slap him? :D

Yep...like every 5 pages or so. My hand is getting sore.

76lyzard
Set 15, 2021, 6:36 am

>74 kac522:

Thanks for those points. Yes, dissecting out the gradations of the middle classes in Victorian fiction is pretty much a fulltime occupation!

It's hard to deduce with any confidence Oliphant's meaning because we're unused to the Dissenters as our protagonists in this sort of literature and don't have the same feel for them as we do when dealing with the more conventional view of English society.

The specific conflict here between the Dissenting view of life and the almost instinctive worship of rank - from the Vincents, not from the congregation, although there's certainly envy there - would seem to make this more a matter of individual character.

>75 kac522:

:D

BUT---to go back to Ninie's point:

>73 NinieB:

Honestly, I think I'm either too old or not old enough to be tolerant of this sort of thing!

(Disclosure: I've had a surfeit lately of English thrillers which - Ninie, you know the kind of thing I mean! - have the hero falling in love in the first chapter with "the most beautiful woman he had ever seen". I think it's impacting my reaction! :D )

77NinieB
Set 15, 2021, 7:03 am

For discussion when we are all finished, what is it about the sibling pair of Lady Western and Colonel Mildmay? Mrs Hilyard/Mildmay suffers bad treatment at the hands of Colonel Mildmay, just as Susan does. Arthur is not treated badly per se by Lady Western, but his infatuation with her is a major cause of his problems with his congregation. I'm not *quite* finished yet, and I'm anxious to see how this plays out.

78kac522
Set 15, 2021, 10:52 am

>76 lyzard: I should have added that Oliphant is also interested in how social groups resolve conflict among themselves, and it seems to be what she's exploring in Salem Chapel.

>77 NinieB: Good question; will take some thought.

79cbl_tn
Set 15, 2021, 8:02 pm

In Chapter 16 we get:

...but as for himself, all astray from duty and sober life, devoured with a consuming fancy, loathing the way and the work to which he had been trained to believe that Father had called him...

Arthur is showing some self-awareness here. Also, it seems that he did not have a vocation or "call" to ministry, but he was "trained to believe" that he had a calling.

80lyzard
Set 16, 2021, 6:13 pm

>77 NinieB:

Yes, good point, remind us to come back to that.

>78 kac522:

Something that gets more relevant towards the end, so we should come back to that too.

>79 cbl_tn:

Good catch, Carrie! I think we have to look at these touches carefully, setting their implications against Vincent's state of mind.

81lyzard
Modificato: Set 16, 2021, 6:30 pm

From here, however, one thing we can say with certainty is that Oliphant very much intends the growing contrast between Vincent and his mother. He cannot keep himself from the forefront of his thoughts, while Mrs Vincent is determined to put him first if it kills her.

The contrast is stark:

Chapter 15

In the mean time, the fact glared upon him that it was her brother who had aimed this deadly blow at the honour and peace of his own humble house; and his heart grew sad with the thought that, however indifferent she might be to him, however unattainable, here was a distinct obstacle which must cut off all that bewildering tantalising intercourse which at present was still possible, notwithstanding every other hindrance. He thought of this, and not of Susan, as the floor of the little vestry thrilled under his feet.

****

She knew, by many teachings of experience, what would be said by all the connection, when it was known that the minister’s mother had been in Carlingford without going to see anybody---not even Mrs Tufton, the late minister’s wife, or Mrs Tozer, who was so close at hand. Though her heart was racked, Mrs Vincent knew her duty.

****

    “I am quite rested, Arthur dear,” said Mrs Vincent; “and it will be right for me to call at Mrs Tozer’s too. I wish I could have gone to Mrs Tufton’s, and perhaps some others of your people. But you must tell them, dear, that I was very hurried---and---and not very well; and that it was family business that brought me here.”
    “I do not see they have any business with the matter,” said the rebellious minister.
    “My dear, it will of course be known that I was in Carlingford; and I know how things are spoken of in a flock,” said Mrs Vincent, rising; “but you must tell them all I wanted to come, and could not---which, indeed, will be quite true. A minister’s family ought to be very careful, Arthur,” added the much-experienced woman. “I know how little a thing makes mischief in a congregation.”


****

She, tremulous, watchful, noting everything; now lost in thought as to how the dreadful truth was to be broken to Susan; now in anxious plans for impressing upon Arthur the necessity of considering his people---he, stinging with personal wounds and bitterness, much more deeply alarmed than his mother, and burning with consciousness of all the complications which she was totally ignorant of. Fury against the villain himself, bitter vexation that he was Lady Western’s brother, anger at his mother for admitting, at Susan for giving him her heart, at Mrs Hilyard for he could not tell what, because she had added a climax to all, burned in Vincent’s mind as he went on to George Street with his mother leaning on his arm, who asked him after every wayfarer who passed them, Who was that? It was not wonderful that the young man gradually grew into a fever of excitement and restless misery. Everything conspired to exasperate him...

Again we note the personal understanding of Mrs Vincent, which has clearly never reaches her son---because she didn't try before, or because he wasn't listening, or thought he knew better?

This will evolve into a series of scenes between Mrs Vincent and her son's congregants, in which she does everything she can to maintain his standing in the face of what looks like neglect of his duties.

She is facing a harder fight than she knows, as she does not understand how Vincent's dining with Lady Western is perceived---she sharing his views on "great people". She does not know how this will exacerbate Vincent's offence in leaving town.

82lyzard
Modificato: Set 16, 2021, 6:59 pm

Yes. Can't really move on without this:

Chapter 15

Phoebe’s chair was by the minister’s side during that substantial meal; and the large fire which burned behind Mrs Tozer at the head of the table, and the steaming viands on the hospitable board, and the prevailing atmosphere of cheese and bacon which entered when the door was opened, made even Mrs Vincent pale and flush a little in the heroic patience and friendliness with which she bent all her powers to secure the support of these adherents to her son. “I could have wished, Arthur, they were a little more refined,” she said, faintly, when the dinner was over, and they were at last on their way to the train; “but I am sure they are very genuine, my dear; and one good friend is often everything to a pastor; and I am so glad we went at such a time.” So glad! The young Nonconformist heaved a tempestuous sigh, and turned away not without a reflection upon the superficial emotions of women who at such a time could he glad. But Mrs Vincent, for her part, with a fatigue and sickness of heart which she concealed from herself as much as she could, let down her veil, and cried quietly behind it...

Actually, I would like to discuss this point later on: how does Oliphant intend us to take her depiction of the community---or perhaps, of the Dissenters generally? How are we to take this "lack of gentility"? - to recoil as Vincent does, or see the "genuineness" as Mrs Vincent does, or says she does?

Obviously, from Mrs Vincent's understanding of the issues and her skill in handling the congregants, she's been through these situations before; so it's not just a Carlingford thing---not just a matter of incompatibility between minister and flock (though of course that is part of it here).

Kathy's reading might be a help here too.

83lyzard
Modificato: Set 16, 2021, 7:13 pm

Bad as things are, they immediately get immeasurably worse:

Chapter 16

    “He had ladies with him; it is dreadful to think of such villany. Oh, Arthur, do you imagine it could be his wife?---and somebody in a blue veil.”
    “A blue veil!”---Mrs Hilyard’s message suddenly occurred to Vincent’s mind, with its special mention of that article of disguise. “If this man is the man we suppose, he has accomplished one of his wishes,” said the minister, slowly; “and she will kill him as sure as he lives.”


This is one of the points in this novel where Oliphant seems to be allowing herself an unusual degree of irony---setting Mrs Vincent's (at the moment, seemingly misplaced) faith in Providence against her son's emotional rebellion.

It is not often in the literature of this time that we find a minister so far "astray" (to use his own word; or perhaps this honest about himself:

    “That is just what I was afraid of; I have been saying to myself all day, ‘What if he should go to Lonsdale too, and deny it all?’ but Providence, you see, dear, has ordered it for us, and now he shall never come near my poor child again.”
    “Do you think he has been to Lonsdale?” asked Vincent.
    “My poor Susan!” said his simple mother, “she will be happier than ever when we come to her with this dreadful news. Yes; I suppose he must have been seeing her, Arthur---and I am glad it has happened while I was away, and before we knew; and now he is gone,” said the widow, looking out of the carriage with a sigh of relief, as if she could still see the road by which he had disappeared---“now he is gone, there will be no need for any dreadful strife or arguments. God always arranges things for us so much better than we can arrange them for ourselves...”


****

Pray!---who was he to pray for? Susan, forlorn and innocent, disappointed in her first love, but unharmed by any worldly soil or evil passion?---or the other sufferers involved in more deadly sort, himself palpitating with feverish impulses, broken loose from all his peaceful youthful moorings, burning with discontents and aspirations, not spiritual, but of the world? Vincent prayed none as he asked himself that bitter question...

And of course as we know, there's a darker irony in Vincent's thoughts of Susan as "unharmed"...

    He called out his sister’s name in an involuntary outburst of dread and excitement, “Susan! Susan!” The words pealed into the midnight echoes---but there was no Susan to answer to the call.
    “It is God that keeps her asleep to keep her happy,” said his mother, with her white lips. She dropt from his arm upon the sofa in a dreadful pause of determination, facing them with wide-open eyes---daring them to undeceive her---resolute not to hear the terrible truth, which already in her heart she knew. “Susan is asleep, asleep!” she cried, in a terrible idiocy of despair, always facing the frightened woman before her with those eyes which knew better, but would not be undeceived...

84lyzard
Set 16, 2021, 7:25 pm

This is also remarkable from Mrs Hilyard:

Chapter 17

"...if it is more honourable to be a wicked man’s wife than to have gone astray, as you call it, then there is no one in the world who can breathe suspicion upon me. Ask this other good woman here, who knows all about me, but fears me, like you. Fears me! What do you suppose there can be to fear, Mr Vincent, you who are a scholar, and know better than these soft women,” said Mrs Hilyard, suddenly dropping the widow’s hand, and turning round upon the young minister, with an instant throwing off of all emotion, which had the strangest horrifying effect upon the little agitated company, “in a woman who was born to the name of Rachel Russell, the model English wife? Will the world ever believe harm, do you imagine, of such a name? I will take refuge in my ancestress. But we go different ways, and have different ends to accomplish,” she continued, with a sudden returning gleam of the subdued horror..."

(Note to self: return to this point for discussion.)

85MissWatson
Set 17, 2021, 3:41 am

I am almost caught up to you, I finished chapter 15 yesterday. More tomorrow.

86lyzard
Set 17, 2021, 4:58 pm

>85 MissWatson:

Well done, Birgit! :)

87lyzard
Modificato: Set 17, 2021, 6:14 pm

There is an excruciating mixing of material in Chapter 19, where again we get this tart contrast between Mrs Vincent's absorption in her children - her determination to think that all will be well with Susan, her equal determination to hold up Arthur's end in his absence - and her son's inability to see past his personal problems:

    ...self-restraint was natural to the woman who had been, as she said, a minister’s wife for thirty years. She clasped her hands tight, and took up her burden again. “I will see Mr Beecher when he comes, dear, and—and speak to him,” she said, with a sigh, “and I will see the Tozers and---and your people, Arthur; and if it should be God’s will to keep us so long in suspense, if---if---I can keep alive, dear, I may be of some use. Oh, Arthur, Arthur, the Lord have pity upon us! if my darling comes back, will she come here or will she go home? Don’t you think she will come here? If I go back to Lonsdale, I will not be able to rest for thinking she is at Carlingford; and if I stay---oh, Arthur, where do you think Susan will go to? She might be afraid to see you, and think you would be angry, but she never could distrust her poor mother, who was the first to put her in danger; and to think of my dear child going either there or here, and not finding me, Arthur! My dear, you are not eating anything. You can never go through it all without some support. For my sake, try to eat a little, my own boy; and oh, Arthur, what must I do?”
    “These Tozers and people will worry you to death if you stay here,” said the minister, with an impatient sigh, as he thought of his own difficulties...


And into this painful situation, Olipant introduces a note of almost grotesque comedy, with the arrival of Mr Beecher (and the non-arrival of his aitches):

“Vincent would not come back to introduce me,” said Mr Beecher, “but he said I should find you here. I have known him many years, and it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance. Sometimes he used to show me your letters years ago. Is Miss Vincent with you? It is pleasant to get out of town for a little, even though one has to preach; and they will all be interested in ’Omerton to hear how Vincent is getting on. Made quite a commotion in the world, they say, with these lectures of his. I always knew he would make an ’it if he had fair-play.”

****

But the lively young man from ’Omerton perceived that there was something wrong. Vincent’s black looks when he met him at the door, and the exceeding promptitude of that invitation to tea, were two and two which he could put together. He concluded directly that the pastor, though he had made “an ’it,” was not found to suit the connection in Carlingford; and that possibly another candidate for Salem might be required ere long. “I would not injure Vincent for the world,” he said to himself, “but if he does not ’it it, I might.” The thought was not unpleasant. Accordingly, while Vincent’s mother kept her place there in the anguish of her heart, thinking that perhaps, even in this dreadful extremity, she might be able to do something for Arthur with his people, and conciliate the authorities, her guest was thinking, if Vincent were to leave Carlingford, what a pleasant distance from town it was, and how very encouraging of the Tozers to ask him to tea. It might come to something more than preaching for a friend; and if Vincent did not “’it it,” and a change were desirable, nobody could tell what might happen. All this smiling fabric the stranger built upon the discomposed looks of the Vincents and Phœbe’s invitation to tea...

---blending the two tones of horror and humour when the beginning of Chapter 20 circles back to show us that Vincent has indeed added the threat of Mr Beecher to the long list of *his* problems:

...yet in the midst of his wretchedness he could not overcome the personal sense of annoyance which this trifling incident produced. It came like a prick of irritating pain, to aggravate the dull horror which throbbed through him. He despised himself for being able to think of it at all, but at the same time it came back to him, darting unawares again and again into his thoughts. Little as he cared for the entertainments and attention of his flock, he was conscious of a certain exasperation in discovering their eagerness to entertain another. He was disgusted with Phoebe for bringing the message, and disgusted with Beecher for looking pleased to receive it. “Probably he thinks he will supersede me,” Vincent thought, in sudden gusts of disdain now and then, with a sardonic smile on his lip, waking up afterwards with a thrill of deeper self-disgust, to think that anything so insignificant had power to move him. When he plunged off from Carlingford at last, in the early falling darkness of the winter afternoon, and looked back upon the few lights struggling red through the evening mists, it was with a sense of belonging to the place where he had left an interloper who might take his post over his head, which, perhaps, no other possible stimulant could have given him. He thought with a certain pang of Salem, and that pulpit which was his own, but in which another man should stand to-morrow, with a quickened thrill of something that was almost jealousy; he wondered what might be the sentiments of the connection about his deputy---perhaps Brown and Pigeon would prefer that florid voice to his own---perhaps Phoebe might find the substitute more practicable than the incumbent. Nothing before had ever made Salem so interesting to the young pastor as Beecher’s complacence over that invitation to tea.

88lyzard
Modificato: Set 18, 2021, 6:32 pm

Chapter 19 reveals that Colonel Mildmay has been guilty of the 19th century version of identity theft, as Vincent confronts the real Herbert Fordham.

And once again, Vincent's infatuation is allowed to take precedence of Susan's situation.

It is very evident that there is, or was, something between Fordham and Lady Western; and in his anger and jealousy, Vincent nearly rejects this source of critical information.

Fordham, in his turn, reads Vincent's own emotion: the two are immediately mutually antagonistic.

    “Mildmay! Rachel Russell’s husband? under my name?” said Mr Fordham, slowly. “I have been beholden to Christian men, and that for very life. You make a strong appeal: who are you that are so desperate? and what was that you said?”
    “I am Susan Vincent’s brother,” said the young Nonconformist; “that is enough. This devil has taken your name; help me, for heaven’s sake, to find him out!”
    “Mildmay?---devil? yes, he is a devil! you are right enough: I owe him no love,” said Fordham; then he paused and turned away, as if in momentary perplexity. “To help that villain to his reward would be a man’s duty; but,” said the stranger, with a heavy sigh, upon which his words came involuntarily, spoken to himself, breathing out of his heart---“he is her brother, devil though he is!”
    “Yes!” cried Vincent, with passion, “he is her brother.” When he had said the words, the young man groaned aloud. Partly he forgot that this man, who looked upon him with so much curiosity, was the man who had brought tears and trembling to Her; partly he remembered it, and forgot his jealousy for the moment in a bitter sense of fellow-feeling. In his heart he could see her, waving her hand to him out of her passing carriage, with that smile for which he would have risked his life. Oh, hideous fate! it was her brother whom he was bound to pursue to the end of the world. He buried his face in his hands, in a momentary madness of anguish and passion. Susan floated away like a mist from that burning personal horizon...


****

Poor Susan, for whom her mother sat hopelessly watching with many a thrill of agony at home! Poor lost one, far away in the depths of the strange country in the night and darkness! Whether despair and horror enveloped her, or delirious false happiness and delusion, again she stood secondary even in her brother’s thoughts. He tried to imagine it was she who occupied his mind, and wrote a hurried note to his mother to that purport; but with guilt and self-disgust, knew in his own mind how often another shadow stood between him and his lost sister---a shadow bitterly veiled from him, turning its sweetness and its smiles upon the man who was about to help him, against whom he gnashed his teeth in the anguish of his heart...

Noting that in >77 NinieB: Ninie made a spoiler-point about Lady Western and Colonel Mildmay which is underlined here, and which warrants discussion later.

My own discussion point is a comparison between Mrs Hilyard's view of herself as quoted in >84 lyzard: and the suggestion - is it the novel's, or just Vincent's? - that Susan's "guilt" and "ruin" are the same "whether despair and horror enveloped her, or delirious false happiness and delusion".

In fact the whole Susan subplot requires some careful unpacking, in my opinion.

89lyzard
Modificato: Set 18, 2021, 6:38 pm

I've mentioned before that there are some very unusual expressions of doubt and despair permitted in this novel, and one of the most striking occurs as Vincent and Fordham are approaching the latter's country house in search of Susan.

This from a minister:

Chapter 20

Natural love rushed back upon the young man’s heart. He settled with himself, as he stood waiting, how he would wrap her in his coat, and hurry her away without letting any cold eye fall upon the lost creature. Oh, hard and cruel fate! oh, wonderful heart-breaking indifference of Heaven! The Innocents are murdered, and God looks on like a man, and does not interfere.

Oliphant finds much bitter irony in Vincent's Sunday away from Carlingford, the constant reminder - via Established Church bells - that this most horrifying of days is a Sunday and that he is as far away from his ministerial duties, both physically and emotionally, as he well could be:

    As they drove along the bleak moorland road, an early church-bell tingled into the silence, and struck, with horrible iron echoes, upon the heart of the minister of Salem. Sunday morning! Life all disordered, incoherent, desperate—all its usages set at nought and duties left behind. Nothing could have added the final touch of conscious derangement and desperation like the sound of that bell; all his existence and its surroundings floated about him in feverish clouds, as it came to his mind that this wild morning, hysterical with fatigue and excitement, was the Sunday---the day of his special labours---the central point of all his former life. Chaos gloomed around the poor minister, who, in his misery, was human enough to remember Beecher’s smile and Phoebe Tozer’s invitation, and to realise how all the “Chapel folks” would compare notes, and contrast their own pastor, to whom they had become accustomed, with the new voice from Homerton, which, half in pride and half in disgust, Vincent acknowledged to be more in their way. He fancied he could see them all collecting into their mean pews, prepared to inaugurate the “coorse” for which Tozer had struggled, and the offence upon their faces when the minister’s absence was known, and the sharp stimulus which that offence would give to their appreciation of the new preacher---all this, while he was driving over the bleak Northumberland wilds, with the cutting wind from the hills in his face, and the church-bell in his distracted ear, breaking the Sunday! Not a bright spot, so far as he could perceive, was anywhere around him, in earth, or sky, or sea.
    Sunday night!---once more the church-bells, the church-going groups, the floating world, which he had many a time upbraided from the pulpit seeking its pleasure. But it was in London now, where he stood in utter exhaustion, but incapable of rest, not knowing where to turn...

90lyzard
Set 18, 2021, 6:42 pm

Oliphant concludes the first volume of Salem Chapel at the end of this chapter---and offers startling proof that however much she may have disapproved of sensation fiction, she certainly knew how to write it:

Chapter 20

Now the tedious line glides into gradual motion. Good Heaven! what was that? the flash of a match, a sudden gleam upon vacant cushions, the profile of a face, high-featured, with the thin light locks and shadowy mustache he knew so well, standing out for a moment in aquiline distinctness against the moving space. Vincent rushed forward with a hoarse shout, which scared the crowd around him. He threw himself upon the moving train with a desperate attempt to seize and stop it; but only to be himself seized by the frantic attendants, who caught him with a dozen hands. The travellers in the later carriages were startled by the commotion. Some of them rose and looked out with surprised looks; he saw them all as they glided past, though the passage was instantaneous. Saw them all! Yes; who was that, last of all, at the narrow window of a second-class carriage, who looked out with no surprise, but with a horrible composure in her white face, and recognised him with a look which chilled him to stone. He stood passive in the hands of the men, who had been struggling to hold him, after he encountered those eyes; he shuddered with a sudden horror, which made the crowd gather closer, believing him a maniac. Now it was gone into the black night, into the chill space, carrying a hundred innocent souls and light hearts, and among them deadly crime and vengeance—the doomed man and his executioner. His very heart shuddered in his breast as he made a faltering effort to explain himself, and get free from the crowd which thought him mad. That sight quenched the curses on his own lips, paled the fire in his heart. To see her dogging his steps, with her dreadful relentless promise in her eyes, overwhelmed Vincent, who a moment before had thrilled with all the rage of a man upon whom this villain had brought the direst shame and calamity. He could have dashed him under those wheels, plunged him into any mad destruction, in the first passionate whirl of his thoughts on seeing him again; but to see Her behind following after---pale with her horrible composure, a conscious Death tracking his very steps---drove Vincent back with a sudden paralysing touch. He stood chilled and horror-stricken...

91lyzard
Set 18, 2021, 6:42 pm

In fact this passage makes me wonder how sincere Oliphant's disapproval really was: you can't tell me she didn't enjoy every moment of constructing that scene!

92lyzard
Set 19, 2021, 6:51 pm

Now that we have reached the end of Volume I, I will speed things up and make sure we have time for general discussion towards the end of the month.

Can I get a check-in, please? Who's finished and who's still reading?

93kac522
Set 19, 2021, 6:53 pm

I have been side-tracked by a library book due soon and a book for my book club. Will get back on track later in the week.

94lyzard
Set 19, 2021, 7:00 pm

The first few chapters of Volume II deal with Mrs Vincent's situation---and again Oliphant draws a sharp contrast between Vincent and his mother, the former unable to stop self intruding in the crisis, the latter putting her sufferings aside to cover for her son with his congregation. (Note that at various points here, Oliphant refers to Mrs Vincent as "Arthur's mother" or "the minister's mother".)

It is of course a cruel situation: the nature of it precludes taking anyone into their confidence, so it looks as if Vincent is neglecting his duties---and on the back of his offense of dining with Lady Western.

On the other hand, I wonder if Oliphant intends us to feel a greater sympathy with Vincent by showing his mother even more tormented by the inquiries and curiosity of the congregation---underlining that it isn't just a matter of his impatience or his unwillingness to deal with the people?

Volume II Chapter 2 / Chapter 22

She had her veil over her face, on which that shadow had settled, and no one could have suspected her of carrying a broken heart through those sunshiny ways. She could not think or anticipate or even fear anything further. Susan might die under that load of shame and anguish, but her mother apprehended, was sensible of, nothing more. The worst had come, except for Arthur, who might be helped out of his troubles. So, stunned and hopeless, she set out to visit Arthur’s people, with a courage more desperate than that of battle. That was the duty which must be done if the world went to pieces---to talk to Adelaide Tufton and hear her sharp criticism and bitter gossip—to listen to the old minister dawdling forth his slow sentiments---to visit the Tozers and soothe their feelings, and hear what they had to say. An auto-da-fé in the old Spanish fashion would have been easier, to be sure; but this was how the minister’s mother, in the depths of unknown anguish and calamity, was expected to exert herself, the only way she could serve her son...

95lyzard
Modificato: Set 19, 2021, 7:11 pm

It is also at this point that Adelaide Tufton (finally) clarifies for us the behind-the-scenes relationships in the Western / Mildmay / Russell tangle.

From here I think we need to consider very carefully how we are supposed to respond to the actions of---let's still call her Mrs Hilyard.

Adelaide here spells out what has been implicit before, and which provides the motive for Mrs Hilyard's conduct:

Volume II Chapter 2 / Chapter 22

    “What does he mean, thrusting himself into other people’s messes? As far as I can make out, it’s quite a little tragedy. There was that Mrs Hilyard, you know---the woman in Back Grove Street. Ah, you know her!” said Adelaide, keenly, seeing the little shiver with which the visitor received the name.
    “I have heard my son speak of her,” said the widow, faintly.
    “She was some connection of the Bedford family,” said Adelaide, going on, with her curious eyes fixed on Mrs Vincent’s face, who quailed before her, “and she married a half brother of Lady Western’s---a desperate rascal he was. They had one baby, and then she left him---one baby, a girl, that has grown up an idiot; and here this lady lives---a poor needle-woman---to keep the girl safe, somehow, out of her father’s hand. Why he should want to have her I can’t exactly tell. I suspect, because she’s pretty, to make a decoy of her, and sell her somehow, either to be married, or worse---”
    “Adelaide!” cried Mrs Tufton; “oh, my dear, do mind what you’re saying; Mrs Vincent does not know you. What can she think if you talk like that?”
    “Mrs Vincent sees well enough I am not a girl to be frightened for words,” said the sick woman. “Now, what I want to know is, what has your son to do with it? He’s gone off after them, now, for some reason or other; of course I don’t expect you to tell me. Perhaps Lady Western has sent him?—never mind, I will find out; but I know it has something to do with Mrs Hilyard, for they both went off from Carlingford the same day...”


One of the things that we need to discuss with respect to Mrs Hilyard is that she is one of the few women in Victorian literature who frankly leaves her husband. Social convention and enormous social pressure worked entirely the other way; does Oliphant intend to justify her, or is this one more transgression on her part?

We also have the question of what Colonel Mildmay actually intended to do with their daughter. Was he acting just out of spite and retaliation, or are Adelaide's suggestions - which align with Mrs Hilyard's terrors - correct?

96lyzard
Set 19, 2021, 7:11 pm

>93 kac522:

Thanks, Kathy!

97lyzard
Modificato: Set 20, 2021, 6:12 pm

Ha! - well, I'm not sure I'm actually getting along any faster, but anyhoo... :D

I was just struck again by the scene in which Mrs Vincent has to deal with Lady Western and Mr Fordham.

Here we find Fordham's self-absorption mirroring Vincent's own: he knows what the situation is and yet all he can think about is vindicating himself---as if Mrs Vincent is going to care about that. I think we can take this as a broad if muted criticism of the male sex, always putting their own interests first.

But of course, in this case Fordham isn't alone: Lady Western is every bit as thoughtless in her intrusion upon Mrs Vincent's misery.

The difference is, we expect it of her: from the outset we have seen a general careless of others - a lack of empathy, perhaps - in her conduct, that is usually disguised by her beauty and manners.

The Tozers and Co. don't know the truth, so the pain they inflict (which is bad enough) is all unknowing; but these two do know and carry on regardless. Neither of them considers the effect of their actions until they are face to face with Mrs Vincent; neither of them gives a thought to the humiliation of her discovering that Susan's secret is known to others:

Volume II Chapter 2 / Chapter 22

    “His mother?” said the beautiful creature in the carriage; she had alighted in a moment, and was by Mrs Vincent’s side---“Oh, I am so glad to see Mr Vincent’s mother! I am Lady Western---he has told you of me?” she said, taking the widow’s hand; “take us in, please, and let us talk to you---we will not tease you---we have something important to say.”
    “Important to us---not to Mrs. Vincent,” said the gentleman who followed her, a remarkable figure, in his loose light-coloured morning dress; and his eyes fell with a remorseful pity upon the widow, standing, drawn-back, and self-restrained, upon the ground of her conscious misery, not knowing whether to hope that they brought her news, or to steel herself into a commonplace aspect of civility. This man had a heart; he looked from the brilliant creature before him, all flushed and radiant with her own happiness, to the little woman by her side, in her pitiful widow’s dress, in her visible paleness and desperation of self-control. It was he who had brought Lady Western here to put his own innocence beyond doubt, but the cruelty of that selfish impulse struck him now as he saw them stand together...


****

    “Oh, dear Mrs. Vincent, I am so sorry for you!” said Lady Western again; “I know it all, and it makes my heart bleed to think of it. I will be your friend and your daughter’s friend as long as I live, if you will let me. Oh, don’t shut your heart against me! Mr Vincent trusts me, and so must you; and I am heartbroken to think all that you must have gone through---”
    “Stop!” said Mrs. Vincent, with a gasp. “I---I cannot tell---what you mean,” she articulated, with difficulty, holding by the table to support herself, but looking with unflinching eyes in her new persecutor’s face.


****

    Surely, in this forlorn room, where she had passed so many wretched hours, her privacy might have been sacred; and she was jealous and angry at the sight of Fordham for Arthur’s sake. It was another touch in the universal misery. She looked at Lady Western’s beauty with an angry heart. For these two, who ventured to come to her in their happiness, affronting her anguish, was Arthur’s heart to be broken too?
    “We wanted---our own ends,” said Fordham, coming forward. “I was so cruel as to think of myself, and that you would prove it was another who had assumed my name. Forgive me---it was I who brought Lady Western here; and if either of us can serve you, or your daughter---or your son---” added Fordham, turning red, and looking round at his beautiful companion---
    Mrs Vincent could bear it no longer. She made a hasty gesture of impatience, and pointed to the door. “I am not well enough, nor happy enough, to be civil,” cried Arthur’s mother; “we want nothing---nothing.”


98NinieB
Set 19, 2021, 7:48 pm

>92 lyzard: I've finished.

99cbl_tn
Set 19, 2021, 10:24 pm

I'm still reading. I've finished through chapter 24.

100lyzard
Set 20, 2021, 12:00 am

>98 NinieB:, >99 cbl_tn:

Thank you, ladies! :)

101MissWatson
Set 20, 2021, 2:52 am

I'm also still reading, didn't make much progress this weekend, real life took over. Sigh. Still following, though.

102lyzard
Set 20, 2021, 6:08 pm

>101 MissWatson:

No worries, Carrie, we have time to be flexible.

103lyzard
Modificato: Set 20, 2021, 6:14 pm

So Oliphant didn't like sensation fiction, huh? :D

Volume II, Chapter 3 / Chapter 23

Mrs Vincent, in the poignant anguish of her awakening, grew superstitious; some other breath---some other presence---seemed in the room besides her own. She called “Mary,” but there was no answer. In her excited condition anything was possible---the bounds of the living world and the possible seemed gone for ever. She might see anything---hear anything---in the calm of her desperation. She got up, and hastily lighted the candle which stood on the table. As she looked over the little light a great cry escaped her. What was it? rising darkly, rising slowly, out of the shadows in which it had been crouching, a huddled indistinct figure. Oh God! not Susan! not her child! As it rose slowly facing her, the widow cried aloud once more, and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the dreadful vision. Ghastly white, with fixed dilated eyes---with a figure dilated and grandiose---like a statue stricken into marble, raised to grandeur---could it be Susan who stood there, without a word, without a movement, only with a blank dark gaze at the horrified woman, who dared not meet those dreadful eyes?

****

    “Know her, doctor! you are speaking of my child,” cried Mrs Vincent, who faced the intruder with blazing eyes. The man held his ground, not impertinently, but with steadiness.
    “I know her fast enough,” he said; “I’ve tracked her every step of the way; not to hurt the lady’s feelings, I can’t help what I’m doing, sir. It’s murder;---I can’t let her out of my sight.”
    Mrs Vincent clasped her hands together with a grasp of desperation. “What is murder?” she said, in a voice that echoed through the room. The doctor, with an exclamation of horror, repeated the same question. Murder! it seemed to ring through the shuddering house.
    “It’s hard upon a lady, not to say her mother,” said the man, compassionately; “but I have to do my duty. A gentleman’s been shot where she’s come from...”


Perhaps we should look at it the other way around: if even a writer as generally conservative as Oliphant could feel the pull of the sensation novel, it isn't surprising that it became such a powerful and influential genre.

104lyzard
Set 20, 2021, 6:24 pm

Oliphant continues "writing backwards", as it were, building suspense by showing us the fallout from her pivotal incident before revealing the incident itself:

Volume II, Chapter 4 / Chapter 24

It was no fancy of his that painted that pale countenance upon the darkness---the same face that he had seen in the railway carriage following Colonel Mildmay---the same, but with a new look of horror and desperation in its eyes. The young man investigated, as he thought, every doorway, every corner which could have given shelter to such a fugitive. He returned, excited and agitated, to the inn, to ask if there was any passage through the line of houses which he might have overlooked, but could hear of none. It was on his lips to ask if they had heard of any crime or accident during the night---any---murder; but prudence restrained the incautious utterance. He went out with the wildest agitation in his mind; something had happened. Mrs Hilyard’s face, gleaming in unconscious at the window, betrayed to him much more clearly than any confession, that some new and awful event had been added to that woman’s strange experiences of life...

Vincent gets confirmation of his worst fears soon enough:

“What is it?” he cried, aware of putting away some women and babies from the door with mechanical kindness, but unconscious that he had stumbled up the steps like a man in a dream, and was demanding an answer to his question with an almost wild vehemence. The question was answered by a dozen eager voices. It was murder---murder! He could make out nothing but the word in the confusion of many speakers and of his own mind. Nobody opposed his entrance or asked what business he had there. He sprang up the stairs in two or three steps, pressed forward to a half-open door, within which he saw some people assembled, and, unawares thrusting aside a man who stopped him, went into that chamber of death. Several people were around the bed---one, a surgeon, occupied with the prostrate figure there. Vincent, over the heads of the spectators, gazed with burning eyes at this horrible spectacle...

105lyzard
Modificato: Set 20, 2021, 7:43 pm

I'm disturbed by this passage towards the end of Volume II, Chapter 5 / Chapter 25:

She cried a little upon his breast, and then wiped her eyes and looked up at him with quivering lips. “Oh, Arthur, what my poor darling must have come through!” said Mrs. Vincent, with a wistful appeal to him in her tender eyes. She said nothing of the darker horror. It lay upon her soul a frightful, inarticulate shadow; but in the mean time she could only think of Susan and her fever---that fever which afforded a kind of comfort to the mother---a proof that her child had not lost her innocence lightly, but that the shock had been to Susan a horrible convulsion, shaking earth and heaven. The mother and son went together to the bedside to look at the unhappy cause of all their sorrows---she clinging with her tender hand to his arm, wistful now, and afraid in the depths of her heart lest Arthur, who was only a man, might be hard upon Susan in her terrible abasement...

So what exactly is Mrs Vincent thinking here? Clearly not of the accusation of murder.

What does she think happened? Is Susan's "terrible abasement" that she went with Mildmay willingly, or that she did not? It is hard to know in a society where (as we noted earlier) the same degree of culpability is involved "whether despair and horror enveloped her, or delirious false happiness and delusion".

It is interesting, though, that the landlady at the scene of the crime assumes that Susan shot Mildmay to defend her honour, whereas her mother---well, doesn't.

106MissWatson
Set 22, 2021, 4:54 am

I have caught up, finally, and have been able to finish it. (There came a point where I simply had to know how it ends, insofar sensation fiction is effective!)
I must say that Arthur irritates me immensely, of course he is young and has probably no experience of "real" life, coming straight from the Academy. But I also think he is very selfish, having been spoilt by being the only boy for whom everything must be sacrificed. The way his mother fusses over him is also vexing. I find most characters a bit too much: Lady Western too insipid, Mrs Vincent too clinging, Arthur too selfish.

>105 lyzard: My impression is that she thinks Susan gave in to him.

107lyzard
Modificato: Set 22, 2021, 5:15 am

>106 MissWatson:

Well done!

They're not called page-turners for nothing. :D

Yes, there's a lot there we need to come back to, including the unsettling workings of Mrs Vincent's mind...

108lyzard
Set 22, 2021, 5:23 am

I've highlighted before some of the very unministerly things that Arthur Vincent says and does, but this is really striking:

Volume II, Chapter 6 / Chapter 26

The minister read it over again and again before he could comprehend it, and when he did comprehend it, the fact seemed rather an aggravation than a comfort to his misery. He was not dead---this destroyer. Perhaps at this moment, when his unhappy victim lay struggling between life and death, he, with the horrible good fortune of wickedness, was coming back from the edge of the grave. At the first shock it did not seem good news to Vincent. Not dead!---“the cursed villain,” he said through his clenched teeth. The earth was not rid of that pitiless wretch. It looked like another grand injustice in the world, where all the landmarks were overturned, and only evil seemed to prosper. He did not connect it anyhow with possible relief or deliverance to Susan; on the contrary, it raised in his own mind all the resentment and rage which had been quenched by Mildmay’s supposed death. He could scarcely compose himself after that unexpected information. If all went well, it would naturally change the character of the case---perhaps, under the circumstances, there might be no prosecution, said the lawyer’s letter. Vincent was young---excited out of all self-command or prudential considerations. In his soul he resented even this hope, which might still save his sister, and grudged what he felt to be the diabolical good-luck of her destroyer. Not dead!---not going to die!---not punished anyhow. About, after all the misery he had occasioned, to recover, and go on prosperously again, and spread wretchedness and ruin upon others. “He shall render me an account,” cried the minister fiercely to himself. “He shall answer for it to me!” He felt it intolerable, that this guilty soul should escape its punishment.

109lyzard
Modificato: Set 22, 2021, 5:39 am

But much as some of us might criticise Vincent, this is just brutal:

Volume II, Chapter 7 / Chapter 27

“It’s next Sunday as is all the battle. Get that over, and things will come straight. When they see you in the pulpit in your old way, and all things as they was, bless you, they’ll get used to it, and won’t mind the papers no more nor---nor I do. I tell you, sir, it’s next Sunday as is the battle. I don’t undertake to answer for the consequences, not if you gives in, and has Mr Beecher down for next Sunday. It ain’t the thing to do, Mr Vincent; Salem folks won’t put up with that. Your good mother, poor thing, wouldn’t say no different. If you mean to stay and keep things straight in Carlingford, you’ll go into that pulpit, and look as if nothing had happened. It’s next Sunday as is the battle.”

****

“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll begin your coorse all the same,” said Tozer; “it would have a good effect, that would. When folks are in a state of excitement, and a-looking for something, to come down upon them as before, and accordin’ to intimation, would have a wonderful effect, Mr Vincent. You take my word, sir, it would be very telling---would that. Don’t lose no time, but begin your coorse as was intimated. It’s a providence, is the intimation. I wouldn’t say nothing about what’s happened---not plain out; but if you could bring in a kind of an inference like, nothing as had anything to do with the story in the papers, but just as might be understood---”

****

He was thinking of Salem, and all those rows of gazing eyes. He could see them all in their pews, imagination, with a cruel freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all the finery of Mrs Pigeon and Mrs Brown upon that vivid canvass. The minister groaned at the thought of them; but to put it down on paper, and record the pang of exasperation and intolerable wretchedness which was thus connected with the fine winter bonnets of the poulterer’s wife and the dairy-woman would make a picture rather grotesque than terrible to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful earnest to poor Vincent, thinking how he should stand before them on that inexorable Sunday, and preach “as if nothing had happened;” reading all the while, in case his own mind would let him forget them, the vulgarest horrors of all that had happened in all that crowd of eyes...

Of course we need to be very clear that Mr Tozer is doing his best and, in his way, being as kind as he can; but still... :D

110lyzard
Set 22, 2021, 5:38 am

But as we saw before with Vincent, the very emotional strain under which he is suffering lifts him to unexpected heights---even as his anger with Lady Western provoked him to his anti-Church lectures.

Far from any sense of a genuine vocation in any of this, there is rather a further revelation of how unfit for his position Vincent is---following on from the quote that Carrie highlighted in >79 cbl_tn::

Volume II, Chapter 7 / Chapter 27

Could he, and such as he, unwitting of half the mysteries of life, do anything to that prodigious work? Could words help it---vain syllables of exhortation or appeal? God knows. The end of it all was a confused recognition of the One half-known, half-identified, who, if any hope were to be had, held that hope in His hands. The preacher, who had but dim acquaintance with His name, paused, in the half idiocy of his awakened genius, to wonder, like a child, if perhaps his simple mother knew a little more of that far-off wondrous figure...

111lyzard
Modificato: Set 22, 2021, 5:42 am

Wow:

Volume II, Chapter 7 / Chapter 27

When he made that sudden pause, it was not for nought. Effective though it was, it was no trick of oratory which caught the breath at his lips, and transfixed him for the moment. There, among the crowded pews of Salem, deep in the further end of the chapel, half lost in the throng of listeners, suddenly, all at once, had flashed upon him a face---a face, unchanged from its old expression, intent as if no deluge had descended, no earthquake fallen; listening, as of old, with gleaming keen eyes and close-shut emphatic mouth. The whole building reeled in Vincent’s eyes, as he caught sight of that thin head, dark and silent, gleaming out in all its expressive refinement and intelligence from the common faces round...

I may say that I was a bit disappointed with how Mrs Hilyard's subplot worked out after this outrageous moment, though of course I understand that It Had To Be.

112cbl_tn
Set 22, 2021, 11:36 am

>110 lyzard: I caught that as well. It makes you wonder why he chose to do this, other than perhaps that the rules of class society left him no other options. I don't think he was suited for a military career.

113cbl_tn
Set 22, 2021, 3:52 pm

I won't finish until next week. I have 15 chapters left and 2 chapters a day is about all I can stand of Vincent at one sitting!

114lyzard
Set 22, 2021, 6:10 pm

>112 cbl_tn:

Yes, I think this is similar to the point I was making in >70 lyzard:, with younger sons going into the Established Church regardless of vocation. Here, rather, it's an opportunity for education and potentially for an influential position, but again vocation doesn't seem to come into it.

As a minister's son, it may have been taken for granted Vincent was fitted; he may have taken it for granted himself.

And he may have been able, under normal circumstances, to discharge the actual duties, but clearly he was entirely unprepared for the social aspects of his position, which formed such an important part of life in a Dissenting community.

While it sounds a little silly, Mrs Vincent's insistence that Vincent has "her temper" may be as close as she can get to acknowledging his professional shortcomings.

115lyzard
Modificato: Set 22, 2021, 6:12 pm

>113 cbl_tn:

Ouch! :D

That's fine, Carrie (as long as you finish in time for our TIOLI shared read, of course!).

116lyzard
Set 22, 2021, 6:51 pm

There have been touches of this before throughout Salem Chapel but the scene between Vincent and (as we will continue to call her) Mrs Hilyard makes it explicit.

We discussed with respect to The Doctor's Family, and the relationship between Edward Rider and Nettie Underwood, Oliphant's views on the relative positions of men and women---also about the givers and the takers, and who really did the heavy lifting.

Here it is unexpectedly Mrs Vincent who uses the expression "only a man", applying it to her son---but still more unexpected are the implications of what Mrs Hilyard says to Vincent after he confronts her in her room and calls for a policeman:

Volume II, Chapter 8 / Chapter 28

    “Come here---here! and understand what I have to say.”
    “It does not matter,” said Vincent, closing the window. “What you say can make no difference. There is but one thing possible now.”
    “Yes, you are a man!” cried the desperate woman, clasping her hands tight, and struggling with herself to keep down all appearance of her anxiety. “You are deaf, blind! You have turned your back upon reason. That is what it always comes to...”


The suggestion that it is actually men who let emotion overcome reason and act accordingly is fascinating and rather daring.

Oliphant follows this up by showing Vincent caught between two powerful impulses, when Lady Western appears on the scene (remember, this is the first time he has seen her since his misinterpretation of her distress in Chapter 26):

“She is ill, she is fainting---oh, Mr Vincent, what have you been saying to her? She was not to blame,” cried the new-comer, in her ignorance. Vincent attempted no reply, offered no help. In his heart he could have snatched away those beautiful hands which embraced and comforted his “prisoner,” thus rescued out of his grasp. It was hard to see her touch that guilty conscious woman whom his own heart refused to pity. He stood by looking on, watching her still; the instinct of vengeance had been awakened within him. He was reluctant to let her go...

We can debate the word 'vengeance' - vengeance for what, exactly? - but the more significant detail is the entire absence of any suggestion of justice. As Mrs Hilyard understands, Vincent is lashing out here---not helping to apprehend a criminal.

(I could almost suggest that he's angry at her for not killing her husband!)

117lyzard
Set 22, 2021, 6:57 pm

Really?

Volume II, Chapter 9 / Chapter 29

The news was true. Either remorse had seized upon Mildmay in the prospect of death, or the lingering traditions of honour in his heart had asserted themselves on Susan’s behalf. He had declared her entirely innocent; he had even gone farther, he had sworn that it was only as the companion of his daughter that Susan had accompanied them, and as such that he had treated her. The deposition taken by the magistrates was sent to Vincent in an abridged form, but what it conveyed was clear beyond dispute. So far as the words of this apparently dying man could be received, Susan was spotless---without blood on her hand, or speck upon her good fame. The lesser and the greater guilt were both cleared from that young head which had not been strong enough to wait for this vindication...

118lyzard
Modificato: Set 22, 2021, 7:28 pm

Two important points here:

Volume II, Chapter 9 / Chapter 29

He told his audience with the unpremeditated skill of a natural orator, that while Reason considered all the desperate chances, and concluded that wonderful work impossible, God, with the lifting of His countenance, with the touch of His power, made the darkness light before Him, and changed the very earth and heavens around the wondering soul. Lifted out of the region of reasonableness himself, he explained to his astonished audience how Reason halts in her conclusions, how miracle and wonder are of all occurrences the most natural, and how, between God and man, there are no boundaries of possibility...

This comes on the back of Mrs Hilyard's accusation of Vincent acting on emotion and not reason---and I wonder how we're supposed to take it?

There is a huge distance between Vincent seeking "vengeance" at that moment and the declaration of unreasoning faith he makes here, and yet the language that Oliphant uses is similar.

Here, though, I want to make a literary point:

The family, so worn out with labour, and trial, and sorrow, slept profoundly under the quiet stars. Those hard heavens, from which an indifferent God saw the Innocents murdered and made no sign, had melted into the sweet natural firmament, above which the great Father watches unwearied. The sudden change was more than mere deliverance to the young Nonconformist. He slept and took rest in the sweet surprise and thankfulness of his soul. His life and heart, still young and incapable of despair, had got back out of hard anguishes and miseries which no one could soften, to the sweet miraculous world in which circumstances are always changing, and God interferes for ever...

I don't want to get into matters of faith, or even a life / art debate, but---I have to say I am no fan of the miraculous deliverances that are so frequently found throughout 18th and 19th century literature (partly, at least, because they are so frequent). There is almost always a sense of artificiality and contrivance about them, probably because they come with an insistence that God always will deliver the innocent, which even Mrs Vincent knows is not the case (Volume I, Chapter 17: "I know God does not always save the Innocents, as you say---but He knows why, though we don’t...").

But while we have another such deliverance here, what are we to make of its circumstances? We can't doubt what would have happened if Susan had been in Colonel Mildmay's possession much longer; but ultimately, Susan is delivered - Susan is "spotless" - because Mrs Hilyard shoots her husband in the head---and there is no acknowledgement of that anywhere in the narrative, beyond some oblique aspects of Mrs Hilyard's own pleading with Vincent.

119MissWatson
Set 23, 2021, 11:03 am

>116 lyzard: The phrase "only a man" pops up quite frequently, I find, and it is often implied in the way the women in the connection deal with their husbands.

120lyzard
Modificato: Set 23, 2021, 10:10 pm

>119 MissWatson:

Perhaps with a different degree of seriousness, more like the usual wifely exasperation? :)

Mind you, though, we get this ominous observation at the end of Volume II, Chapter 10 / Chapter 30:

“Oh, my dear boy, be very careful,” said Mrs Vincent; “your dear papa always said that a minister’s flock was his first duty; and now that Susan is getting better, O Arthur! you must not let people talk about your sister;---and have patience, O have patience, dear!” This was said in wistful whispers, with looks which only half confided in Arthur’s prudence; and the widow sank into her chair when he left her, folding her hands in a little agony of self-restraint and compulsory quietness. She felt equal for it herself, if she had been at liberty to go out upon the flock once more in Arthur’s cause; but who could tell how he might commit himself, he who was a young man, and took his own way, and did not know, as Tozer said, how to keep all things straight? When Mrs Vincent thought of her son in personal conflict with Mrs Pigeon, she lost faith in Arthur. She herself might have conquered that difficult adversary, but what weapons had he to bring forth against the deacon’s wife, he who was only a minister and a man?

And then indeed the battle is joined:

Volume II, Chapter 11 / Chapter 31

    “...Pigeon and them, you see, as went off in a huff yesterday---that’s what the minister has got to do. You shan’t be kep’ no longer, sir, in my house. Duty afore pleasure, that’s my maxim. Good mornin’, and I hope as you won’t meet with no unpleasantness; but if you should, Mr Vincent, don’t be disheartened, sir—we’ll pull you through.”
    With this encouraging sentiment, Vincent was released from Mrs Tozer’s parlour. He drew a long breath when he got out to the fresh air in the street, and faced the idea of the Pigeons and other recusants whom he was now bound to visit...


:D

121lyzard
Modificato: Set 23, 2021, 10:20 pm

But he doesn't go to the Pigeons: he goes to Grange Lane, and gets exactly what he deserves:

Volume II, Chapter 11 / Chapter 31

Vincent went slowly up Grange Lane, trying to make up his mind to his inevitable duty. When he was nearly opposite the house of Dr Marjoribanks, he paused to look back. The garden door was again open, and somebody else was going into the enchanted house. Somebody else;---a tall slight figure, in a loose light-coloured dress, which he recognised instinctively with an agony of jealous rage. A minute before he had allowed to himself, in an exquisite despair, that to hope was madness; but the sight of his rival awoke other thoughts in the mind of the minister. With quick eyes he identified the companion of his midnight journey---he in whose name all Susan’s wretchedness had been wrought---he whom Lady Western could trust “with life---to death.” Vincent went back at the sight of him, and found the door now close shut, through which his steps had passed. Close shut---enclosing the other---shutting him out in the cold external gloom...

122lyzard
Modificato: Set 23, 2021, 10:28 pm

Meanwhile---

Volume II, Chapter 12 / Chapter 32

    “You women are incomprehensible,” said the young man, with an irritation he could not subdue---“what does it matter about the lamp? but if the world were going to pieces you must still be intent upon such trifles---leave that to the people of the house.”
    “But, my dear, the people of the house don’t understand it,” said Mrs Vincent. “Oh Arthur, it is often the trifles that are the most important. I have had Mrs Tozer calling upon me to-day, and Mrs Tufton. I don’t wonder, dear, if you find them a little tiresome; but that is what every pastor has to expect. I daresay you have been worried to-day paying so many visits. Hush, there is some one coming up-stairs. It is Mr Tozer, Arthur. I can hear his voice.”
    Upon which the minister, conscious of not being prepared for Tozer’s questions, gave vent to an impatient ejaculation. “Never a moment’s respite! And now I shall have to give an account of myself,” said the unfortunate Nonconformist.


He never gets a moment's respite...

But this is interesting in light of what we were discussing earlier about Mr Vincent Sr, and what if anything Arthur took away from his father's ministry.

I wonder how much of what Mrs Vincent says here is strictly true?

    “I did not see him;---I mean I am sorry I was not able to call on Pigeon to-day,” said Vincent, hastily; “I was unexpectedly detained,” he added, growing rather red, and looking Tozer in the face. “Indeed, I am not sure that I ought to call on Pigeon,” continued the minister, after a pause; “I have done nothing to offend him. If he chooses to take an affront which was never intended, I can’t help it. Why should I go and court every man who is sulky or ill-tempered in the congregation? Look here, Tozer---you are a sensible man---you have been very kind, as my mother says. I set out to-day intending to go and see this man for your sake; but you know very well this is not what I came to Carlingford for. If I had known the sort of thing that was required of me!” cried Vincent, rising up and resuming his place on the hearthrug---“to go with my hat in my hand, and beg this one and the other to forgive me, and receive me into favour:---why, what have I ever done to Pigeon? if he has anything to find fault with, he had much better come to me, and have it out.”
    “Mr Vincent, sir,” said Tozer solemnly, pushing away his empty teacup, and leaning forward over the table on his folded arms, “them ain’t the sentiments for a pastor in our connection. That’s a style of thing as may do among fine folks, or in the church where there’s no freedom; but them as chooses their own pastor, and pays their own pastor, and don’t spare no pains to make him comfortable, has a right to expect different. Them ain’t the sentiments, sir, for Salem folks. I don’t say if they’re wrong or right--- I don’t make myself a judge of no man; but I’ve seen a deal of our connection and human nature in general, and this I know, that a minister as has to please his flock, has got to please his flock whatever happens, and neither me nor no other man can make it different; and that Mrs Vincent, as has seen life, can tell you as well as I can. Pigeon ain’t neither here nor there. It’s the flock as has to be considered---and it ain’t preaching alone as will do that; and that your good mother, sir, as knows the world, will tell you as well as me.”
    “But Arthur is well aware of it,” said the alarmed mother, interposing hastily, conscious that to be thus appealed to was the greatest danger which could threaten her. “His dear father always told him so; yet, after all, Mr Vincent used to say,” added the anxious diplomatist, “that nothing was to be depended on in the end but the pulpit. I have heard him talking of it with the leading people in the connection, Mr Tozer. They all used to say that, though visiting was very good, and a pastor’s duty, it was the pulpit, after all, that was to be most trusted to...”


But there is only so much Mrs Vincent can do---because it isn't really Arthur's visiting the connection or not that is the issue, but his visiting Lady Western; and though we know that that is over, the damage has been done...

123MissWatson
Set 24, 2021, 3:57 am

>120 lyzard: Yes, that phrase struck me forcibly, and it runs through all Mrs Vincent's efforts to secure his position.

>122 lyzard: Well, it can't be. Either Arthur has spent little time at home or else he has always been so self-centred that he didn't take notice of his father's work.

124cbl_tn
Set 24, 2021, 8:08 am

It seems to me that the person who really "gets" Arthur is the one person nobody listens to - Phoebe Tozer. From Chapter XI: "Oh, ma, dear! didn't I always say he was full of feeling?"

She's right, isn't she? His emotions always seem to get the upper hand.

125lyzard
Set 24, 2021, 6:49 pm

>123 MissWatson:

Yes, I'd like more information there. With what's given, I can't get a picture of the Vincents' home life. Neither Arthur's ignorance of Dissenting ministerial life (he wouldn't have been sent away to school, unlike some "Church" boys) nor Susan's naivety seem to accord with what their parents' lives must have been.

>123 MissWatson:, >124 cbl_tn:

That accords with Mrs Hilyard's view that it is men who can't control their emotions. :)

126lyzard
Modificato: Set 24, 2021, 7:08 pm

I mentioned Orley Farm earlier, and it seems to me we're on some of the same ground here---though I'm getting a little ahead of the narrative.

So just in case:

Spoilers for Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm

Also spoilers for the rest of Salem Chapel


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****

When we did the group read of Orley Farm, we discussed that novel's need to find a way to punish its transgressing woman, without recourse to the law.

It's not quite the same situation, inasmuch as Lady Mason is formally acquitted, whereas Mrs Hilyard never comes under the cognisance of the police.

But in both cases we have a novelist who feels they just can't be allowed to get away with it (as might have happened if either work was an outright sensation novel; this one one of the reasons critics objected to them): therefore, Lady Mason must surrender the estate, and acquires permanent punishment in her son's condemnation of her actions; while Mrs Hilyard loses the child she has fought so desperately to protect from her father: Alice does not know the mother she has been separated from for so long and wants nothing to do with her; turning instead to the affectionate Susan.

The two cases also make an interesting comparison with respect to the emotional reaction of the women. Trollope insists that Lady Mason has been wracked by guilt for twenty years, of which there is no narrative sign and which I don't believe at all.

Mrs Hilyard, meanwhile, does go to pieces after she has committed her crime---which is somewhat disappointing after her earlier coolness and deliberation, though perhaps Oliphant didn't dare show her as unaffected.

BUT---it is not guilt or remorse that overtakes Mrs Hilyard - she never expresses any contrition for her actions - but sheer personal fear that Vincent is going to hand her over to the police.

That is another quite remarkable touch.

127lyzard
Set 24, 2021, 7:29 pm

More spoilers for Orley Farm and Salem Chapel

****

****

****

If you'll pardon a bit of a digression, this point about the handling of these novels' guilty parties raises an interesting point about the evolution of this sort of fiction.

One of my areas of reading interest is the direct evolutionary line that can be traced through British fiction: Gothic novel -> domestic Gothic -> sensation fiction -> detective fiction.

At some point in this process, there is an important thematical shift (though still with overlap) from "we must cover up this scandal at all cost" to "we must call the police regardless".

I may say that this shift happened much later in American, probably because there was a deep distrust of the police there that did not exist in Britain.

Even so, into the 1920s you still get British crime novels where cover-ups occur---sometimes with police connivance. The argument is that "nice people" deserve to be protected from scandal, that it would "ruin their lives" if such-and-such became public knowledge. You also get novels that kill off the guilty parties (often - too often - in a car crash while fleeing arrest) rather than leave the grim inevitability of a trial and execution.

In Orley Farm, it is part of Trollope's point that the law actively conspires to get a guilty woman acquitted. There, everyone does eventually know the truth though, which is part of Lady Mason's punishment.

The handling of this theme in Salem Chapel is rather interesting: though in Susan's defence, in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Vincent does tell his solicitor about Mrs Hilyard, nothing comes of it; and when he later threatens her with the police, there is no thought of justice about it, merely vengeance. He finally takes no action, so that Colonel Mildmay's (false*) statement is allowed to be the final word on the subject.

(*False but - as it is presented - honourable. There's a point for discussion... :D )

But meanwhile the Vincents have had their situation made public. Despite Susan's complete acquittal, the fact that everyone knows is the overriding factor in the subsequent actions of both Vincent and Mrs Vincent.

Through Mrs Vincent's struggle to keep Susan's situation private and Vincent's agonies over the newspapers - and Mr Tozer's well-meant but excruciating conversation - we see the contemporary power of "scandal".

128MissWatson
Set 25, 2021, 10:44 am

>127 lyzard: That's an interesting point about covering up for "nice people" in early British detective fiction. I noticed this in Georgette Heyer's mysteries where it is ofte the "head" of the house or family who does the covering up. The idea of the pater familias seems to run strong still.
I was also struck by the desperate attempts of Mrs Vincent to keep up appearances, this obsession to sweep everything under the carpet and maintain a lilywhite façade has always struck me as very English.

129lyzard
Modificato: Set 26, 2021, 5:50 pm

>128 MissWatson:

Not an illegal cover-up, I should clarify (at least not in most cases): more like, "Well, the bad person is dead so there's nothing to be gained from making this public, why make the innocent suffer?"

Fun fact: the proverb about not washing your dirty linen in public is actually French. :D

I don't think it's confined to any one society or nation, but perhaps the English have analysed it more closely in their literature? Perhaps the workings of the class system meant there was a greater vulnerability to the "flow-on effect" of scandal: off the top of my head think of the way - Pride And Prejudice spoilers, if this is needed - the Bennet family reacts to Lydia running away with Wickham: there is an immediate awareness that her actions will negatively impact her sisters, and that is indeed one of the things that Lady Catharine throws in Lizzie's face.

Mrs Vincent is a complicated case, because it is part "keeping up appearances", and part fighting for Arthur's place in Carlingford. She understands that he's hanging by a thread, as indeed we see in the next few chapters...

130lyzard
Set 26, 2021, 6:12 pm

As Kathy mentioned in >78 kac522:, the resolution of conflict is important in Oliphant's works; and in Volume II, Chapters 15 and 16 / Chapters 35 and 36 we are given this fascination sketch of the Dissenting community sitting in judgement upon their minister.

This was one of the big splits between the Established Church and the Dissenters: in the former only the church hierarchy had this sort of authority, but the Dissenters, as we've said, hired and fired their ministers---not just over major transgressions, but simply out of "dissatisfaction", if they chose.

Given that we've been privy to Arthur's thoughts and feelings, we know even better than the connection the grounds they have to be dissatisfied; yet we know that the crux of the matter is the perception that he prefers the company of "grand folks" to that of his parishioners.

This isn't entirely unjust, but there's a level of pettiness about it that shows how vulnerable Dissenting ministers could be. It isn't a question of Arthur's faith, or his preaching, or even his absence from Carlingford; it isn't any of the things that we might feel should be the basis for judgement; in fact it is quite explicitly not those things:

Chapter 36

The beautiful speech had done poor Vincent a great deal more harm than Pigeon’s oration. Salem folks, being appealed to on this side, found out that they had, after all, made great allowances for their minister, and that he had not on his part shown a due sense of their indulgence. Somebody else immediately after went on in the same strain: a little commotion began to rise in the quiet meeting. “Mr Tufton’s ’it it,” said a malcontent near Mrs Vincent; “we’ve been a deal too generous, that’s what we’ve been; and he’s turned on us.” “He was always too high for my fancy,” said another. “It ain’t the thing for a pastor to be high-minded; and them lectures and things was never nothing but vanity; and so I always said.”

131lyzard
Set 26, 2021, 6:25 pm

As a sidelight to this---

As I said at the outset, I haven't read that much Dissenting fiction---though that is in part because there is not that much Dissenting fiction to read. Like the Evangelicals, the Dissenters disapproved of novels, so you don't get the same body of religiously-themed literature as you do with the High Church and the Catholics (there are some Low Church novels but they're basically just propaganda).

Consequently, Dissenting novels tend to be written either by outsiders or by ex-Dissenters and usually aren't very flattering.

The most famous Dissenting novel of this time was William Hale White's The Autobiography Of Mark Rutherford. This is a semi-autobiographical work about the worst phases in White's own life: "Rutherford" describes his upbringing in a Dissenting community, his struggles with his faith, his being forced into the ministry against his will, and his complete failure. He, too, suffers from the compulsory "visiting"; and while he has no taste for "grand folks", the best friend he makes is the local atheist, so the results are the same. He falls foul of a nasty Deacon (much more actively nasty than any of the Carlingford people), gets sacked, tries again, fails again, and quits.

This is art imitating life imitating art, if you like: this novel came about fifteen years after Salem Chapel, yet White / Rutherford's experiences are in some respects eerily similar to what Arthur Vincent goes through.

What I have not yet found, if such a thing exists, is a Dissenting novel that shows a minister working happily and successfully in his community---"The Mr Beecher Story", if you will. :D

This makes it hard to get an accurate view of such a community, because all the fictional portraits are so negative.

132lyzard
Modificato: Set 26, 2021, 6:40 pm

What Oliphant does do, though, is give Mr Tozer his moment in the sun.

Volume II, Chapter 16 / Chapter 36

    “Mr Vincent, I say, as you’re all collected here to knock down in the dark, if so be as you are willing to be dictated to---the same, ladies and gentlemen, as we’re a-discussing of to-night---told us all, it ain’t so very long ago, in the crowdedest meeting as I ever see, in the biggest public hall in Carlingford---as we weren’t keeping up to the standard of the old Nonconformists, nor showing, as we ought, what a voluntary church could do. It ain’t pleasant to hear of, for us as thinks a deal of ourselves; but that is what the pastor said, and there was not a man as could contradict it. Now, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what is the reason? It’s all along of this as we’re doing to-night. We’ve got a precious young man, as Mr Tufton tells you, and a clever young man, as nobody tries for to deny; and there ain’t a single blessed reason on this earth why he shouldn’t go on as he’s been a-doing, till, Salem bein’ crowded out to the doors (as it’s been two Sundays back), we’d have had to build a new chapel, and took a place in our connection as we’ve never yet took in Carlingford!”
Mr Tozer paused to wipe his heated forehead, and ease his excited bosom with a long breath; his audience paused with him, taking breath with the orator in a slight universal rustle, which is the most genuine applause. The worthy butterman resumed in a lowered and emphatic tone.
    “But it ain’t to be,” said Tozer, looking round him with a tragic frown, and shaking his head slowly. “Them as is always a-finding fault, and always a-setting up to dictate, has set their faces again’ all that. It’s the way of some folks in our connection, ladies and gentlemen; a minister ain’t to be allowed to go on building up a chapel, and making hisself useful in the world. He ain’t to be left alone to do his dooty as his best friends approve. He’s to be took down out of his pulpit, and took to pieces behind his back, and made a talk and a scandal of to the whole connection! It’s not his preaching as he’s judged by, nor his dooty to the sick and dyin’, nor any of them things as he was called to be pastor for; but it’s if he’s seen going to one house more nor another, or if he calls often enough on this one or t’other, and goes to all the tea-drinkings...
    “...to go for to judge the pastor of a flock, not by the dooty he does to his flock, but by the times he calls at one house or another, and the way he makes hisself agreeable at one place or another, ain’t a thing to be done by them as prides themselves on being Christians and Dissenters. It’s not like Christians---and if it’s like Dissenters the more’s the pity...”


133lyzard
Modificato: Set 26, 2021, 6:54 pm

---though of course even in this there's an unavoidable touch of crude reality:

The Dissenters prided themselves upon their ability to hire their own minister, rather than take whoever the Church hierarchy and/or the local gentry chose to thrust upon them, but the way in which their parishes were run meant that a minister's success or failure depended very much upon his ability to put bums on seats.

This note has woven itself through the novel and it cannot help but intrude again despite the justice of Mr Tozer's other arguments: as the Senior Deacon, he has to worry about how many pews he can rent out - which depends upon the size of the congregation the minister can draw - and which impacts how the congregation meets its expenses---including their minister's salary.

And Vincent, whatever his other failings, has brought in the crowds (and therefore the funds): a point that blends into Mr Tozer's better-motivated arguments in his favour:

Chapter 36

“It shall never be said in our connection as a clever young man was drove away from Carlingford, and I had part in it. There’s the credit o’ the denomination to keep up among the Church folks---and there’s the chapel to fill, as never had half the sittings let before---and there’s Mr Vincent, as is the cleverest young man I ever see in our pulpit, to be kep’ in the connection; and there ain’t no man living as shall dictate to me or them as stands by me! Them as is content to lose the best preaching within a hundred miles, because the minister don’t call on two or three families in Salem, not as often as they would like to see him,” said Tozer, with trenchant sarcasm, “can put down their names again’ Mr Vincent; but for me, and them as stands by me, we ain’t a-going to give in to no such dictation: we ain’t a-going to set up ourselves against the spread of the Gospel, and the credit o’ the connection, and toleration and freedom of conscience, as we’re bound to fight for!”

134lyzard
Set 26, 2021, 7:02 pm

As mentioned in >126 lyzard:, Mrs Hilyard's punishment for her transgressions is losing the daughter she has done all this to protect.

Oliphant makes that explicit in Volume II, Chapter 17 / Chapter 37:

“Who am I? I am a woman that was once young and had friends. They married me to a man, who was not a man, but a fine organisation capable of pleasures and cruelties. Don’t speak. You are very good; you are a minister’s wife. You don’t know what it is, when one is young and happy, to find out all at once that life means only so much torture and misery, and so many lies, either done by you or borne by you---what does it matter which? My baby came into the world with a haze on her sweet soul because of that discovery. If it had been but her body!” said Mrs Vincent’s strange companion, with bitterness. “A dwarfed creature, or deformed, or--- But she was beautiful---she is beautiful, as pretty as Alice; and if she lives, she will be rich. Hush, hush! you don’t know what my fears were,” continued Mrs Hilyard, with a strange humility, once more putting her hand on the widow’s arm. “If he could have got possession of her, how could I tell what he might have done?---killed her---but that would have been dangerous; poisoned what little mind she had left---made her like her mother. I stole her away. Long ago, when I thought she might have been safe with you, I meant to have told you. I stole her out of his power. For a little while she was with me, and he traced us---then I sent the child away. I have not seen her but in glimpses, lest he should find her. It has cost me all I had, and I have lived and worked with my hands,” said the needlewoman of Back Grove Street, lifting her thin fingers to the light and looking at them, pathetic vouchers to the truth of her story. “When he drove me desperate,” she went on, labouring in vain to conceal the panting, long-drawn breath which impeded her utterance, “you know? I don’t talk of that. The child put her arms round that old woman after her mother had saved her. She had not a word, not a word for me, who had done--- But it was all for her sake. This is what I have had to suffer. She looked in my face and waved me away from her and said, ‘Susan, Susan!’ Susan meant your daughter---a new friend, a creature whom she had not seen a week before---and no word, no look, no recognition for me!”

(The implication that Colonel Mildmay meant to "sell" his daughter - supported by Adelaide Tufton's view of the case, so we can assume that Mrs Hilyard's fears are justified - is pretty shocking in a novel of this time.)

135MissWatson
Set 27, 2021, 2:39 am

>134 lyzard: I have been wondering about the Colonel's role in this. What benefits would he have from marrying his daughter to a rich man? Is it just about the connections?

136lyzard
Modificato: Set 27, 2021, 3:01 am

>135 MissWatson:

It isn't spelled out, which makes the implications even more shocking, but this is what Adelaide says (and she's right about everything else she says, so we have no reason not to take this as accurate):

Volume II, Chapter 2 / Chapter 22

    “There was that Mrs Hilyard, you know---the woman in Back Grove Street. Ah, you know her!” said Adelaide, keenly, seeing the little shiver with which the visitor received the name.
    “I have heard my son speak of her,” said the widow, faintly.
    “She was some connection of the Bedford family,” said Adelaide, going on, with her curious eyes fixed on Mrs Vincent’s face, who quailed before her, “and she married a half brother of Lady Western’s---a desperate rascal he was. They had one baby, and then she left him---one baby, a girl, that has grown up an idiot; and here this lady lives---a poor needle-woman---to keep the girl safe, somehow, out of her father’s hand. Why he should want to have her I can’t exactly tell. I suspect, because she’s pretty, to make a decoy of her, and sell her somehow, either to be married, or worse---”


The suggestion is that a very young, very pretty girl without much will of her own would be an attractive proposition for a lot of Victorian men.

According to Mrs Hilyard, Alice will also have money, which makes marriage the more likely option. "Settlements" that include a large lump-sum payment to the Colonel might be the arrangement, perhaps in lieu of settling that money on Alice herself, as would usually be the procedure (leaving her completely vulnerable to future mistreatment or abandonment).

Still---the lengths to which Mrs Hilyard goes to protect Alice from her father does tend to suggest something worse. (It might all depend upon *how* the money is to come to Alice.)

Mothers at this time had no legal control over their children, so Mrs Hilyard stealing Alice away and hiding her is the only way she can keep her husband from doing whatever he likes with her. And legally he can do anything he likes: she is legally in the wrong by interfering.

137NinieB
Set 27, 2021, 8:36 am

>136 lyzard: . . . Wasn't there a plot line in Orley Farm about the girl's father getting the money?

138MissWatson
Set 28, 2021, 3:42 am

>136 lyzard: I found Adelaide's comment a bit vague, to be honest. But I guess snatching part of Alice's money, whatever form it has, could be a motive. We don't learn enough about the Colonel's character to be sure.

139lyzard
Modificato: Set 28, 2021, 7:06 pm

>137 NinieB:

I don't think so: we had the usual pairing of romantically successful and unsuccessful young women, but it wasn't really about their money. Unless I've really forgotten something, which isn't out of the question. :)

>138 MissWatson:

Yes, again we're not given enough information---although in light of the nature of the implication, that's not surprising. But the fact that Adelaide has heard gossip on this point tends to suggest that Mrs Hilyard's fears are justified, which perhaps is Oliphant's own justification for not punishing her legally.

ETA:

This later point definitely indicates Colonel Mildmay's guilty intentions:

Volume II, Chapter 21 / Chapter 41?

“Yes, Arthur dear; but the poor child never did any one any harm. They have made her a ward in Chancery now. It should have been done long ago but for the wickedness and the disputes...”

140cbl_tn
Modificato: Set 28, 2021, 6:39 pm

I'm done!

In my opinion, the shorter works that preceded this were much better written. If she'd stuck to that pattern, I think Oliphant would have ended up with a better tale.

I'm not sure that I took away from this what the author intended to convey. It seems like Arthur had a crisis of faith, and he was right to resign. He was not a good fit for Salem Chapel, and the congregation would be better off with a minister who didn't despise them.

141NinieB
Set 28, 2021, 6:39 pm

>139 lyzard: OK, I've refreshed my memory. What I was thinking of was Felix Graham who is educating Mary Snow for marriage. Mary's drunken father wanted money from Felix, either as part of the marriage, or when Felix breaks the engagement. Not really the same thing.

142lyzard
Modificato: Set 28, 2021, 6:57 pm

Actually (speaking again of Orley Farm) it is very interesting how very little the conventional view of guilt and law and justice comes into this situation.

Again and again Vincent threatens to turn Mrs Hilyard in, but each time their is a motive beyond the mere fact of her guilt: the word 'vengeance' is used more than once (again, a minister!), and finally Mrs Hilyard's fate gets perversely tangled up in the face-off between Vincent and Mr Fordham---which as Mrs Hilyard herself knows full well has nothing to do with her at all!---

Volume II, Chapter 19 / Chapter 39

    “But I offer to be answerable for her appearance,” said Fordham, hastily. “I undertake to produce her if need be. You know me. I am a---a relation of the family. I am a man sufficiently known to satisfy any magistrate. You have no legal right to detain her. What would you have more? Is not my guarantee enough for you?”
    “No,” said Vincent, slowly. The two men stood defiant opposite to each other, contending for this woman, whom neither of them looked at, for whom neither of them cared. She, in the mean time, sat still in an agony of suspense and concealed anguish, with her eyes fixed on Vincent’s face. She knew very well it was not of her that either of the two was thinking; yet it was her fate, perhaps her very life, which hung trembling in the balance...


We can forgive this only because of the entire avoidance of conventional justice in this novel.

As we touched upon in >126 lyzard: and >127 lyzard:, it was not at all unusual for a crime to be hushed up in the literature of this time, though the pay-off was usually an insistence (convincing or not) that the guilty party will be wracked with guilt for the rest of their life and that is their punishment.

We get that here, although how far we believe it is another matter:

“No, no,” said Mrs Mildmay, suddenly. “Escape! who believes in escape? Mr Vincent knows better. Hush, you are a happy man just now---you are not qualified to judge; but we know better. Escape!---he means from prisons, and such like,” she continued, turning to Vincent with a half-disdainful wave of her hand towards her companion. “But you know, and so do I, that there is no escape---not in this world. I know nothing about the next,” said the strange woman, curbing once more the flush of excitement which had overpowered her as she spoke---“nothing; neither do you, though you are a priest. But there is enough of retribution here. The criminal---Mr Vincent---you know---will not escape.”

This is one argument that Mrs Hilyard makes in her own favour; in the other, she explicitly declares what I pointed out in >118 lyzard:: that although that's not the reason she did it, it was her actions that saved Susan; and the language she uses in making her point is again very daring:

Volume II, Chapter 17 / Chapter 37

    “...if you were like me, do you think you could sit still in one place, with so much upon your heart? You never could be like me---but if you had lost your child---”
    “I did,” said Mrs Vincent, drawing a painful breath at the recollection, and drawn unwittingly by the sight of the terrible anxiety before her into a reciprocation of confidence---“my child who had been in my arms all her life--- God gave her back again; and now, while I am speaking, He may be taking her away,” said the mother, with a sudden return of all her anxiety. “I cannot do you any good, and Susan may want me: good-night---good-night.”
    “It was not God who gave her back to you,” said Mrs Hilyard, grasping the widow’s hand closer---“it was I---remember it was I. When you think hardly of me, recollect---I did it. She might have been---but I freed her---remember; and if you hear anything, if it were but a whisper, of my child, think of it, and have pity on me...”


Volume II, Chapter 19 / Chapter 39

“You are a man and cruel; you are in trouble, and you think you will avenge yourself. No, no---I don’t mean what I say. Your son is a---a true knight, Mrs Vincent; I told you so before. He will never be hard upon a woman: if I had not known that, why should I have trusted him? I came back, as he knows, of my own will. Don’t go away; I am willing you should know---the whole,” said the excited woman, with a sudden pause, turning upon Vincent, her face blanching into deadly whiteness---“the whole---I consent; let her be the judge. Women are more cruel than men; but I saved her daughter---I am willing that she should hear it all.”

It isn't clear if we are to be shocked by Mrs Hilyard's repudiation of God's hand, or to take this as a particularly extreme example of God moving in mysterious
ways. :)

Oliphant allows herself one more irony: the wrong motivations that prompt Vincent to turn Mrs Hilyard in are also what finally save her; while Vincent himself circles back to his earlier expressions of lack of faith:

He turned away and went to the window when he had spoken. There he stood, with his back to them, listening to the bells of St. Roque’s, as they came and went in irregular breaks upon the wind. His heart was bursting with wild throbs of bitterness and despair; it was all he could do to keep the tumult down, and contain himself in that flush of passion. He turned away from them, and stood gazing out at that tedious window into the blank world. What did it matter? Let her escape if she would---let things go as they might; nothing was of any further importance---certainly on earth---perhaps even in heaven...

143lyzard
Modificato: Set 28, 2021, 7:00 pm

>140 cbl_tn:, >141 NinieB:

I will be wrapping up altogether in a couple more posts, and then I will come back to these points.

144lyzard
Set 28, 2021, 7:15 pm

Poor Mr Tozer! - for all his efforts, there isn't any doubt about how it's all going to end; nor, I'm agraid, that on some level Vincent is enjoying himself: he doesn't get his 'vengeance' on Mrs Hilyard, but this is how he pays back his parishioners:

Volume II, Chapter 22 / Chapter 42

“Wait before you applaud me,” said the Nonconformist. “I have said nothing that calls for applause. I have something more to tell you---more novel than what I have been saying. I am going to leave Carlingford. It was you who elected me, it is you who have censured me, it was you last night who consented to look over my faults and give me a new trial. I am one of those who have boasted in my day that I received my title to ordination from no bishop, from no temporal provision, from no traditionary church, but from the hands of the people. Perhaps I am less sure than I was at first, when you were all disposed to praise me, that the voice of the people is the voice of God; but, however that may be, what I received from you I can but render up to you. I resign into your hands your pulpit, which you have erected with your money, and hold as your property. I cannot hold it as your vassal. If there is any truth in the old phrase which calls a church a cure of souls, it is certain that no cure of souls can be delegated to a preacher by the souls themselves who are to be his care. I find my old theories inadequate to the position in which I find myself, and all I can do is to give up the post where they have left me in the lurch. I am either your servant, responsible to you, or God’s servant, responsible to Him---which is it? I cannot tell; but no man can serve two masters, as you know. Many of you have been kind to me---chief among all,” said Vincent, turning once round to look in Tozer’s anxious face, “my friend here, who has spared no pains either to make me such a pastor as you wished, or to content me with that place when he had secured it. I cannot be content. It is no longer possible. So there remains nothing but to say good-bye---good-bye!---farewell! I will see you again to say it more formally. I only wish you to understand now that this is the decision I have come to, and that I consider myself no longer the minister of Salem from this night.”

This is effectively a rejection of the entire Dissenting system.

Whether we are to take it as Oliphant's own point of view is (as so often) uncertain. This is another point where the lack of Dissenting fiction "from the inside" hurts us, because we have no way of telling if this is just Vincent's own view, or if we are to take this as the novel's true thesis.

145lyzard
Set 28, 2021, 7:17 pm

In fact I think I might leave it there. :)

146lyzard
Set 28, 2021, 7:19 pm

>141 NinieB:

Of course! - good catch. I suppose the point is that this is something we might expect of a drunken old working-class retrobate, but not of "a gentleman".

147lyzard
Set 28, 2021, 7:33 pm

Well done, everyone!

I have two major responses to Salem Chapel. Firstly, as Carrie touches upon in >140 cbl_tn:, it can be interpreted as a 'crisis of faith' work; though I remain unconvinced about the nature of Vincent's faith, which is clearly unsteady and not what we would expect or require from a minister.

Perhaps this is more correctly an examination of his unfitness for his profession: it is probably to his credit that he finally steps away from the ministry altogether, rather than trying to find a position that suits him better socially.

We're not given much cause to admire him in any other way. I can't get past the fact that his infatuation with Lady Western is actually the driving cause for almost everything that happens: Vincent's own dissatisfaction, and the connection's dissatisfaction with him. Probably Oliphant is right about the big things being manageable and the petty things that do all the damage, but it's hard to sympathise with either party.

Overall, I have to say that I don't find the two halves of this novel well-blended: Vincent's interfering crisis didn't have to be this extreme.

Certainly the contemporary taste for sensation fiction played a big role here---whether Oliphant herself made the call, or whether her publisher pushed her into it, as we suggested earlier. There's no doubt that it makes the novel more readable, but the melodrama sits oddly beside the semi-comic scenes of Vincent struggling to cope with life in Carlingford.

But in a way it is this very confusion and this shifting of tones that makes the novel interesting---the very fact that we can't always tell what Oliphant intends, which is at any rate a pleasant change from the didacticism of much Victorian fiction.

148MissWatson
Set 29, 2021, 4:16 am

Thanks for the comments and explanations, Liz. I think the novel focuses far too much on Arthur, whom I like even less at the end than I did at the beginning, whereas the sensational plot around Mrs Hilyard and Susan is frustratingly patchy, there is so much left unsaid or unresolved. It is not helped by those last passages about her return to England, they read as if they belong to a different book.

149cbl_tn
Set 29, 2021, 3:35 pm

>148 MissWatson: I think the novel focuses far too much on Arthur, whom I like even less at the end than I did at the beginning

I completely agree!

>147 lyzard: I do think a crisis of faith is appropriate to describe what Arthur went through. Oliphant wrote this more than 100 years before James Fowler published Stages of Faith. However, young adulthood is, according to Fowler, when one reaches the individuative-reflective stage of faith development, which involves questioning one's beliefs. That seems to be what's going on with Arthur. His upbringing as a minister's son and whatever education and training he received at Homerton have not prepared him for the realities of ministry, or encouraged him to develop his personal faith beyond what he "ought" to believe.

150lyzard
Set 29, 2021, 10:49 pm

>149 cbl_tn:

I suppose I was making a distinction between a crisis of faith and a crisis of vocation: you can have faith yet not be fitted to be a minister. Oliphant, does, however, allow a surprising amount of "doubting" comments in Artur's speech and thought---I wonder if, as we know he never really thought about the realities of ministerial work, he never really thought about his faith either, until it was challenged by what had (apparently) happened to Susan?

151lyzard
Modificato: Set 29, 2021, 10:54 pm

>148 MissWatson:

Thanks for joining in, Birgit! :)

I agree it's an odd sort of book, "neither fish nor foul", as they say.

I've found myself wondering - and Kathy with her reading might be able to chime in on this - how far Oliphant intended Salem Chapel to be a criticism of the Dissenting religion? We've largely focused, naturally enough, on Arthur Vincent and his failings as a minister, but are we intended to see the connection as likewise lacking?

Emphasis is placed on the social life of Dissenting; and while we indirectly hear about the success of Arthur's lectures and (some of) his sermons, Oliphant seems to be suggesting the congregation is more interested in their minister "putting on a show" than in the religious content and usefulness of his preaching.

We've touched on how the financial management of the parish was necessarily a significant aspect of Dissenting life, but I wonder if Oliphant is implying that this very necessity undermined the purity of their worship?

152cbl_tn
Set 30, 2021, 11:35 am

>150 lyzard: I think it's both. I think Arthur's crisis of faith made him realize he wasn't suited for the ministry. Thus, you see Arthur going into writing/publishing at the end. He's still wearing clerical garb, leaving his mother to hope he'll eventually find his way back into the pulpit, but I think it's more likely that he'll abandon the clerical garb after her death.

>151 lyzard: I am also undecided as to how we're meant to view the Salem Chapel folks. If Oliphant intended this novel to be a criticism of Dissenters, then I think she failed. It's just not clear. But maybe it would have been more clear to her original audience?

153lyzard
Ott 1, 2021, 5:35 pm

>152 cbl_tn:

Yes, you might be right about that.

The problem I have is that too much of it feels (whether intended or not) like class-mockery: there's so much focus on the social pettiness of the Dissenters and so little on their religious practice. Again that's not necessarily what was meant - Lady Western's tea-parties may be more "refined", but they're not all that different from the tea-gatherings - but the emphasis makes it hard to get away from that. Perhaps it's simply meant to be Arthur's own focus, and that would certainly make sense in light of what we've said about him, but it's uncomfortable.

154lyzard
Modificato: Ott 2, 2021, 10:42 pm

To wrap up, I've just been looking back to see if there was anything we made notes on for discussion that we haven't touched upon yet.

In >77 NinieB: Ninie made a point about the damaging roles played in the narrative by Colonel Mildmay and Lady Western---one knowingly, one thoughtlessly at least. So to be fair to Oliphant, there we have criticism of her "great people", too, who do a lot more active harm than any of the Dissenters.

I was struck by the fact that although she understands why Mrs Hilyard has gone to such extremes, Lady Western sees no reason to separate herself from her half-brother. If what Adelaide Tufton says is true, she is condoning some shocking behaviour---and this even though Herbert Fordham (quoted in >88 lyzard:) considers Mildmay a "villain" and a "devil". This goes beyond mere "thoughtlessness".

The other striking thing in this context (quoted in >84 lyzard:) is Mrs Hilyard's contention that marrying such a man is more dishonourable than a woman "going astray", as Mrs Vincent calls it. That's a fairly radical viewpoint for the time---and all the more so in context, given Mrs Vincent's extreme reaction to Susan's presumed loss of virginity (however it happened).

As we touched on earlier, Mrs Hilyard is one of the very few women in Victorian literature to leave her husband and to be, at least in some ways, vindicated. This was very thin ice at the time: there was enormous social pressure on women to put up with whatever was dished out; and the reality was that most women couldn't leave, either because they couldn't afford it, or because they had nowhere to go: families rarely took back deserting wives, no matter how justified they were.

Mrs Hilyard choosing to support herself through long hours of poorly-paid needlework is rare and significant.

I can think offhand of only two Victorian novels that deal at length with this subject---and I'm afraid of spoilers here (you can judge for yourselves if you're likely to have read them):

In Anthony Trollope's Phineas Redux, Lady Laura Kennedy leaves her husband and is supported in that choice by her father and husband, so she gets away with it (also she's aristocratic, not middle-class); but it ruins her life anyway.

Anne Bronte's The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is the *only* novel I know of to wholeheartedly applaud and justify such behaviour, and Bronte was pilloried for it by the critics (particularly after they found out that the author was a woman).

So this puts Salem Chapel into fairly rarefied company. The strange thing is, it never feels like this is what the book is "about"; but perhaps Oliphant felt she could best get away with this material by keeping it behind a smokescreen?

155lyzard
Ott 2, 2021, 10:22 pm

Okay, that's it from me:

Can I get final check-ins and thoughts from the rest of you?

156NinieB
Ott 3, 2021, 8:54 am

Where I've ended up is--I enjoyed this novel, sensation plot and all. But the mashup of the loss-of-faith/vocation plot and the sensation plot does not work well, and as you say, Liz, Mrs Hilyard's story is successfully camouflaged as well.

At the same time I was reading Salem Chapel, I was reading Squire Arden from 1870. Squire Arden also has the bones of a sensation plot, but Oliphant's writing had matured to the point where the sensation plot works successfully as the carrier for an intensely psychological novel.

Mrs Oliphant was incredibly prolific, but all that practice seems to have paid off in some of her later novels.

157lyzard
Ott 3, 2021, 5:23 pm

>156 NinieB:

Thank you for that recommendation, it is now On The List. :)

158NinieB
Ott 3, 2021, 6:33 pm

>157 lyzard: Yes, I do recommend Squire Arden, and I'm looking forward to reading its sequel, For Love and Life.

159kayclifton
Ott 4, 2021, 3:56 pm

When recently googling a list of books by Oliphant I discovered Hester which I then recalled reading quite a few years ago. She (Oliphant was certainly prolific and was an amazing woman.

160kac522
Modificato: Ott 4, 2021, 4:00 pm

I ended up re-reading about half the novel and skimming the rest. I am in agreement with Ninie in >156 NinieB: that the sensation/vocation combination didn't work for me either.

>154 lyzard: I can think of one other book, Liz, with women supporting themselves, although it is much later. It's rather an obscure novel: The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy (1888), in which 4 sisters, left orphans, decide to open a photography shop in London. They encounter all kinds of obstacles in setting up their business, but eventually they are successful. In the end several get married, and only 1 sister remains a photographer.

Re: Oliphant's view of dissenters: from my skimmed reading of Kamper's thesis Margaret Oliphant's Carlingford Series, I did not come away with a sense that Oliphant was particularly interested in criticizing or applauding the Dissenters. One quote that I copied from the thesis:
"Margaret Oliphant, in her novels, does not set out to devise a solution to the differences between Church and Dissent, but rather describes the way individuals can overcome prejudices and misunderstandings, and focus on the values and aspirations they share instead."

And this was the attitude I took while reading the book: looking more how the Tozers and the Tuftons and the Pigeons, et. al., resolved their differences. Certainly Kamper's opinion can be challenged, but I didn't see a lot that implied otherwise in this book.

A couple of other observations:
--I found Oliphant's musings on what's going on in Arthur's head (and others, but mostly Arthur) got boring after awhile. Which surprises me, because I love this type of internal thought processes in Trollope, but here it just seemed tedious. Or maybe Arthur was just tedious, which brings me to:

--I'm not sure why Oliphant makes Arthur so unlikeable. Except for the love of his mother and his final acknowledgement of Tozer's help and efforts, he is not a nice (or interesting) person. It's hard to enjoy a story when you don't like (and mostly don't care) about the main character.

--Mrs Vincent is also an enigma to me, or perhaps she's a "type" that Oliphant wanted to portray. She is almost completely clueless (or perhaps unrealistic?) in handling her own children, and yet she is always in control when dealing with virtually all the other people she meets. She knows exactly what to say and/or when to hold back and how to treat individuals with respect and grace, from servants to Lady Western. And she is particularly good with all the congregants. She doesn't particularly like Mrs Hilyard/Mildmay, but she is still civil.

Oliphant herself had issues with all of her children, and yet she seems to perceive human nature so well. I'm probably taking that a step too far, but something to consider.

>158 NinieB: Glad to hear you liked a later book; I do plan to continue with the Carlingford series with hopes that the later books will improve. Will put Squire Arden on the wishlist; I also have a copy of Hester to read.

161lyzard
Ott 4, 2021, 4:46 pm

>159 kayclifton:

Hi, Kay - agreed! We will be seeing more of her going forward in this Virago project but there are a lot of others to choose from too. :)

162lyzard
Modificato: Ott 4, 2021, 5:09 pm

>160 kac522:

A generation later, and the whole issue of women working had undergone a fairly revolutionary change---and so had fiction about it: there were lots of books and, more frequently, magazine stories featuring "typewriter girls" and "office girls" and "shop girls"; though as you note most of them ended in marriage. (Girton College was established in 1869, and the "Girton Girls" were the vanguard of the professional woman in England.)

But in Mrs Hilyard's time - and even more so, Mrs Hilyard's situation - the only option for "working from home" was poorly paid needlework, of the kind she undertakes.

I don't really see conflict resolution in this book: it seems more about irreconcilable differences. The meeting scene is fascinating but it about the Pigeons getting out-manoeuvred and shouted down, rather than convinced they're wrong.

I wonder whether Mrs Vincent was so busy being a minister's wife - I wonder whether her husband, like Arthur, needed a LOT of help - that she wasn't really watching her children?

There is certainly a significant difference between Mrs Vincent's handling of the connection and her interaction with her children, although there's probably some truth to that! Arthur as the boy of the family may always have been a law unto himself; Susan's naivety isn't convincing to me, and I still don't buy "Mr Fordham" infiltrating their home like that---even less so after seeing Mrs Vincent's correct readings of the Carlingford-ites. I suppose the implication is that she hadn't the experience to read a gentleman (least of all a dishonourable gentleman) in the same way, but surely then she should have been more not less wary?

Arthur's self-centredness and his infatuation with Lady Western certainly make him a wearying protagonist, and the immediacy of his rejection of his situation - there's no honeymoon period in his ministry - removes much potential complexity from the situation.

(I will say this, though: as an introvert I share his horror at all the forced socialisation! :D )

163MissWatson
Ott 5, 2021, 5:30 am

Sorry to be late, I was away for the weekend.

>154 lyzard: If Mrs Oliphant meant to discuss women leaving their husbands for good reasons, she hid it well.
>160 kac522: You put into words exactly what I vaguely felt about Mrs Vincent, thanks.

All in all, I think it would have been a more enjoyable book if Arthur hadn't been so very prominent. But it's not like I felt it was a waste of time. I rather liked Mrs Hilyard.

164kayclifton
Ott 5, 2021, 3:53 pm

I found this information excerpt from the BBC archives.

(her experience with men who were dependent must certainly have colored her attitude toward them)

"Margaret Oliphant (1828-97) was born in Wallyford, near Edinburgh. Her father was a clerk, and growing up she lived in Glasgow and Liverpool. Her mother was keen that her daughter should be well read and so Oliphant was given a superior education to many of her sex. Her first novel, Passages in the Life of Margaret Maitland (1849), achieved some success and was followed two years later with further novels. She began contributing to magazines including Blackwoods, for whom she was to write hundreds of short stories, essays, articles and serialised novels such as Katie Stewart (1853). She often contributed several pieces for a single edition and so many of these works were anonymous.

By 1857, Oliphant married her cousin Frank Wilson Oliphant, an artist, but he was to die seven years later from tuberculosis. This left Oliphant as the breadwinner with three young children and a pile of debts. In addition to these burdens, she later supported her alcoholic brother, Willie, and the three children of her other brother, Frank.

In the 19th century there were few career options for women. Oliphant produced over a hundred novels in her lifetime, many of them three volumes in length, which provided for her family's needs. An extremely prolific writer, her novels and short-stories make her one of the most important writers of Victorian fiction, but Oliphant has suffered for having produced too much. She wrote continuously out of financial necessity, but it has been to the detriment of her critical reputation."

165lyzard
Ott 6, 2021, 6:30 pm

>163 MissWatson:

Well, you weren't supposed to be discussing it: like the rest of the Hilyard plot, it has to stay behind a smokescreen. But the fact that it's there at all is still pretty remarkable at this date.

Arthur is a problematic character all around and certainly impacts against the enjoyment of the book. Even if he has undergone a slow process of disillusionment it would have been easier to take, but his immediate (emotional, if not actual) rejection of his position doesn't leave much room for complexity.

>164 kayclifton:

Yes, it's staggering when you think about how many women at that time had to produce publishing-quality work under such relentless pressure. Oliphant was an extreme example of it; it's hard that it led to criticism and dismissal of her work.

166lyzard
Ott 31, 2021, 12:52 am

Sorry, people! I meant to have formally wrapped this up but the last few weeks went a bit pear-shaped.

Thank you all for joining in, and I hope you got some interest and enjoyment out of this group read.

Looking forward, our read through of the lesser-known Trollope novels will continue in December with Rachel Ray. I will post reminders around closer to the time.

As for the Virago project(s), I need some input as we have a choice to make:

Would participants prefer to keep on with Oliphant's Carlingford novels, and move on to The Perpetual Curate, or would you prefer to pick up the chronology with Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Aurora Floyd?

Please leave comments either here or in my main thread in the 75 Books group.

Either way, the group read will probably be happening in February.

Thanks again!

167MissWatson
Ott 31, 2021, 10:52 am

Hi Liz, I'm looking forward to Rachel Ray and I would prefer The Perpetual Curate as I haven't read that before.

168lyzard
Ott 31, 2021, 4:03 pm

>167 MissWatson:

Thanks, Birgit!

169lyzard
Dic 3, 2021, 6:13 pm

The thread is now up for the group read of Rachel Ray; I look forward to seeing you all there. :)

Here

170Matke
Nov 22, 2022, 9:44 am

Bump

An observation: Mr Pigeon is a poulterer? Really, Mrs O., I’m surprised at you.