CHAPTER XXII

The Thornes of Ullathorne

On the following Sunday Mr. Arabin was to read himself in at his new

church. It was agreed at the rectory that the archdeacon should go

over with him and assist at the reading desk, and that Mr. Harding

should take the archdeacon's duty at Plumstead Church. Mrs. Grantly

had her school and her buns to attend to, and professed that she could

not be spared, but Mrs. Bold was to accompany them. It was further

agreed also that they would lunch at the squire's house and return

home after the afternoon service.

Wilfred Thorne, Esq., of Ullathorne, was the squire of St.

Ewold's--or, rather, the squire of Ullathorne, for the domain of the

modern landlord was of wider notoriety than the fame of the ancient

saint. He was a fair specimen of what that race has come to in our

days which, a century ago, was, as we are told, fairly represented

by Squire Western. If that representation be a true one, few classes

of men can have made faster strides in improvement. Mr. Thorne,

however, was a man possessed of quite a sufficient number of foibles

to lay him open to much ridicule. He was still a bachelor, being

about fifty, and was not a little proud of his person. When living

at home at Ullathorne, there was not much room for such pride, and

there therefore he always looked like a gentleman and like that which

he certainly was, the first man in his parish. But during the month

or six weeks which he annually spent in London, he tried so hard

to look like a great man there also, which he certainly was not,

that he was put down as a fool by many at his club. He was a man of

considerable literary attainment in a certain way and on certain

subjects. His favourite authors were Montaigne and Burton, and he

knew more perhaps than any other man in his own county and the

next to it of the English essayists of the two last centuries. He

possessed complete sets of the Idler, the Spectator, the Tatler, the

Guardian, and the Rambler, and would discourse by hours together on

the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been

produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. He was proficient in all

questions of genealogy, and knew enough of almost every gentleman's

family in England to say of what blood and lineage were descended

all those who had any claim to be considered as possessors of any

such luxuries. For blood and lineage he himself had a most profound

respect. He counted back his own ancestors to some period long

antecedent to the Conquest, and could tell you, if you would listen

to him, how it had come to pass that they, like Cedric the Saxon,

had been permitted to hold their own among the Norman barons. It was

not, according to his showing, on account of any weak complaisance on

the part of his family towards their Norman neighbours. Some Ealfried

of Ullathorne once fortified his own castle and held out, not only

that, but the then existing cathedral of Barchester also, against one

Geoffrey De Burgh, in the time of King John; and Mr. Thorne possessed

the whole history of the siege written on vellum and illuminated in

a most costly manner. It little signified that no one could read the

writing, as, had that been possible, no one could have understood the

language. Mr. Thorne could, however, give you all the particulars in

good English, and had no objection to do so.

It would be unjust to say that he looked down on men whose families

were of recent date. He did not do so. He frequently consorted with

such, and had chosen many of his friends from among them. But he

looked on them as great millionaires are apt to look on those who

have small incomes; as men who have Sophocles at their fingers' ends

regard those who know nothing of Greek. They might doubtless be good

sort of people, entitled to much praise for virtue, very admirable

for talent, highly respectable in every way, but they were without

the one great good gift. Such was Mr. Thorne's way of thinking on

this matter; nothing could atone for the loss of good blood; nothing

could neutralize its good effects. Few indeed were now possessed of

it, but the possession was on that account the more precious. It

was very pleasant to hear Mr. Thorne descant on this matter. Were

you in your ignorance to surmise that such a one was of a good family

because the head of his family was a baronet of an old date, he

would open his eyes with a delightful look of affected surprise, and

modestly remind you that baronetcies only dated from James I. He

would gently sigh if you spoke of the blood of the Fitzgeralds and De

Burghs; would hardly allow the claims of the Howards and Lowthers;

and has before now alluded to the Talbots as a family who had hardly

yet achieved the full honours of a pedigree.

In speaking once of a wide-spread race whose name had received

the honours of three coronets, scions from which sat for various

constituencies, some one of whose members had been in almost every

cabinet formed during the present century, a brilliant race such as

there are few in England, Mr. Thorne had called them all "dirt."

He had not intended any disrespect to these men. He admired them

in many senses, and allowed them their privileges without envy. He

had merely meant to express his feeling that the streams which ran

through their veins were not yet purified by time to that perfection,

had not become so genuine an ichor, as to be worthy of being called

blood in the genealogical sense.

When Mr. Arabin was first introduced to him, Mr. Thorne had

immediately suggested that he was one of the Arabins of Uphill

Stanton. Mr. Arabin replied that he was a very distant relative

of the family alluded to. To this Mr. Thorne surmised that the

relationship could not be very distant. Mr. Arabin assured him that

it was so distant that the families knew nothing of each other. Mr.

Thorne laughed his gentle laugh at this and told Mr. Arabin that

there was now existing no branch of his family separated from the

parent stock at an earlier date than the reign of Elizabeth, and

that therefore Mr. Arabin could not call himself distant. Mr. Arabin

himself was quite clearly an Arabin of Uphill Stanton.

"But," said the vicar, "Uphill Stanton has been sold to the De Greys

and has been in their hands for the last fifty years."

"And when it has been there one hundred and fifty, if it unluckily

remain there so long," said Mr. Thorne, "your descendants will not

be a whit the less entitled to describe themselves as being of the

family of Uphill Stanton. Thank God no De Grey can buy that--and

thank God no Arabin, and no Thorne, can sell it."

In politics Mr. Thorne was an unflinching conservative. He looked on

those fifty-three Trojans who, as Mr. Dod tells us, censured free

trade in November, 1852, as the only patriots left among the public

men of England. When that terrible crisis of free trade had arrived,

when the repeal of the Corn Laws was carried by those very men whom

Mr. Thorne had hitherto regarded as the only possible saviours of

his country, he was for a time paralysed. His country was lost; but

that was comparatively a small thing. Other countries had flourished

and fallen, and the human race still went on improving under God's

providence. But now all trust in human faith must forever be at an

end. Not only must ruin come, but it must come through the apostasy

of those who had been regarded as the truest of true believers.

Politics in England, as a pursuit for gentlemen, must be at an end.

Had Mr. Thorne been trodden under foot by a Whig, he could have

borne it as a Tory and a martyr, but to be so utterly thrown over

and deceived by those he had so earnestly supported, so thoroughly

trusted, was more than he could endure and live. He therefore ceased

to live as a politician, and refused to hold any converse with the

world at large on the state of the country.

Such were Mr. Thorne's impressions for the first two or three years

after Sir Robert Peel's apostasy, but by degrees his temper, as did

that of others, cooled down. He began once more to move about, to

frequent the bench and the market, and to be seen at dinners shoulder

to shoulder with some of those who had so cruelly betrayed him. It

was a necessity for him to live, and that plan of his for avoiding

the world did not answer. He, however, and others around him who

still maintained the same staunch principles of protection--men like

himself who were too true to flinch at the cry of a mob--had their

own way of consoling themselves. They were, and felt themselves to

be, the only true depositaries left of certain Eleusinian mysteries,

of certain deep and wondrous services of worship by which alone the

gods could be rightly approached. To them and them only was it now

given to know these things and to perpetuate them, if that might

still be done, by the careful and secret education of their children.

We have read how private and peculiar forms of worship have been

carried on from age to age in families which, to the outer world,

have apparently adhered to the services of some ordinary church. And

so by degrees it was with Mr. Thorne. He learnt at length to listen

calmly while protection was talked of as a thing dead, although he

knew within himself that it was still quick with a mystic life. Nor

was he without a certain pleasure that such knowledge, though given

to him, should be debarred from the multitude. He became accustomed

to hear even among country gentlemen that free trade was after all

not so bad, and to hear this without dispute, although conscious

within himself that everything good in England had gone with his old

palladium. He had within him something of the feeling of Cato, who

gloried that he could kill himself because Romans were no longer

worthy of their name. Mr. Thorne had no thought of killing himself,

being a Christian and still possessing his £4000 a year, but the

feeling was not on that account the less comfortable.

Mr. Thorne was a sportsman, and had been active though not outrageous

in his sports. Previous to the great downfall of politics in his

county, he had supported the hunt by every means in his power. He

had preserved game till no goose or turkey could show a tail in the

parish of St. Ewold's. He had planted gorse covers with more care

than oaks and larches. He had been more anxious for the comfort of

his foxes than of his ewes and lambs. No meet had been more popular

than Ullathorne; no man's stables had been more liberally open to

the horses of distant men than Mr. Thorne's; no man had said more,

written more, or done more to keep the club up. The theory of

protection could expand itself so thoroughly in the practices of a

county hunt! But when the great ruin came; when the noble master of

the Barsetshire hounds supported the recreant minister in the House

of Lords and basely surrendered his truth, his manhood, his friends,

and his honour for the hope of a garter, then Mr. Thorne gave up the

hunt. He did not cut his covers, for that would not have been the

act of a gentleman. He did not kill his foxes, for that according

to his light would have been murder. He did not say that his covers

should not be drawn, or his earths stopped, for that would have been

illegal according to the by-laws prevailing among country gentlemen.

But he absented himself from home on the occasion of every meet at

Ullathorne, left the covers to their fate, and could not be persuaded

to take his pink coat out of his press, or his hunters out of his

stable. This lasted for two years, and then by degrees he came

round. He first appeared at a neighbouring meet on a pony, dressed

in his shooting-coat, as though he had trotted in by accident; then

he walked up one morning on foot to see his favourite gorse drawn,

and when his groom brought his mare out by chance, he did not

refuse to mount her. He was next persuaded, by one of the immortal

fifty-three, to bring his hunting materials over to the other side

of the county and take a fortnight with the hounds there; and

so gradually he returned to his old life. But in hunting as in

other things he was only supported by an inward feeling of mystic

superiority to those with whom he shared the common breath of outer

life.

Mr. Thorne did not live in solitude at Ullathorne. He had a sister,

who was ten years older than himself and who participated in his

prejudices and feelings so strongly that she was a living caricature

of all his foibles. She would not open a modern quarterly, did not

choose to see a magazine in her drawing-room, and would not have

polluted her fingers with a shred of the Times for any consideration.

She spoke of Addison, Swift, and Steele as though they were still

living, regarded Defoe as the best known novelist of his country,

and thought of Fielding as a young but meritorious novice in the

fields of romance. In poetry, she was familiar with names as late

as Dryden, and had once been seduced into reading "The Rape of the

Lock;" but she regarded Spenser as the purest type of her country's

literature in this line. Genealogy was her favourite insanity.

Those things which are the pride of most genealogists were to her

contemptible. Arms and mottoes set her beside herself. Ealfried of

Ullathorne had wanted no motto to assist him in cleaving to the

brisket Geoffrey De Burgh, and Ealfried's great grandfather, the

gigantic Ullafrid, had required no other arms than those which nature

gave him to hurl from the top of his own castle a cousin of the

base invading Norman. To her all modern English names were equally

insignificant: Hengist, Horsa, and such like had for her ears the

only true savour of nobility. She was not contented unless she

could go beyond the Saxons, and would certainly have christened her

children, had she had children, by the names of the ancient Britons.

In some respects she was not unlike Scott's Ulrica, and had she been

given to cursing, she would certainly have done so in the names of

Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock. Not having submitted to the embraces

of any polluting Norman, as poor Ulrica had done, and having

assisted no parricide, the milk of human kindness was not curdled

in her bosom. She never cursed therefore, but blessed rather. This,

however, she did in a strange uncouth Saxon manner that would have

been unintelligible to any peasants but her own.

As a politician, Miss Thorne had been so thoroughly disgusted with

public life by base deeds long antecedent to the Corn Law question

that that had but little moved her. In her estimation her brother

had been a fast young man, hurried away by a too ardent temperament

into democratic tendencies. Now happily he was brought to sounder

views by seeing the iniquity of the world. She had not yet reconciled

herself to the Reform Bill, and still groaned in spirit over the

defalcations of the Duke as touching the Catholic Emancipation. If

asked whom she thought the Queen should take as her counsellor, she

would probably have named Lord Eldon, and when reminded that that

venerable man was no longer present in the flesh to assist us, she

would probably have answered with a sigh that none now could help us

but the dead.

In religion Miss Thorne was a pure Druidess. We would not have it

understood by that that she did actually in these latter days assist

at any human sacrifices, or that she was in fact hostile to the

Church of Christ. She had adopted the Christian religion as a milder

form of the worship of her ancestors, and always appealed to her

doing so as evidence that she had no prejudices against reform, when

it could be shown that reform was salutary. This reform was the most

modern of any to which she had as yet acceded, it being presumed that

British ladies had given up their paint and taken to some sort of

petticoats before the days of St. Augustine. That further feminine

step in advance which combines paint and petticoats together had not

found a votary in Miss Thorne.

But she was a Druidess in this, that she regretted she knew not what

in the usages and practices of her Church. She sometimes talked and

constantly thought of good things gone by, though she had but the

faintest idea of what those good things had been. She imagined that

a purity had existed which was now gone, that a piety had adorned our

pastors and a simple docility our people, for which it may be feared

history gave her but little true warrant. She was accustomed to speak

of Cranmer as though he had been the firmest and most simple-minded

of martyrs, and of Elizabeth as though the pure Protestant faith of

her people had been the one anxiety of her life. It would have been

cruel to undeceive her, had it been possible; but it would have been

impossible to make her believe that the one was a time-serving priest,

willing to go any length to keep his place, and that the other was in

heart a papist, with this sole proviso, that she should be her own

pope.

And so Miss Thorne went on sighing and regretting, looking back to

the divine right of kings as the ruling axiom of a golden age, and

cherishing, low down in the bottom of her heart of hearts, a dear

unmentioned wish for the restoration of some exiled Stuart. Who

would deny her the luxury of her sighs, or the sweetness of her soft

regrets!

In her person and her dress she was perfect, and well she knew her

own perfection. She was a small, elegantly made old woman, with

a face from which the glow of her youth had not departed without

leaving some streaks of a roseate hue. She was proud of her colour,

proud of her grey hair which she wore in short crisp curls peering

out all around her face from her dainty white lace cap. To think of

all the money that she spent in lace used to break the heart of poor

Mrs. Quiverful with her seven daughters. She was proud of her teeth,

which were still white and numerous, proud of her bright cheery eye,

proud of her short jaunty step; and very proud of the neat, precise,

small feet with which those steps were taken. She was proud also,

ay, very proud, of the rich brocaded silk in which it was her custom

to ruffle through her drawing-room.

We know what was the custom of the lady of Branksome--

Nine-and-twenty knights of fame

Hung their shields in Branksome Hall.

The lady of Ullathorne was not so martial in her habits, but hardly

less costly. She might have boasted that nine-and-twenty silken

skirts might have been produced in her chamber, each fit to stand

alone. The nine-and-twenty shields of the Scottish heroes were less

independent and hardly more potent to withstand any attack that might

be made on them. Miss Thorne when fully dressed might be said to

have been armed cap-a-pie, and she was always fully dressed, as far

as was ever known to mortal man.

For all this rich attire Miss Thorne was not indebted to the

generosity of her brother. She had a very comfortable independence

of her own, which she divided among juvenile relatives, the

milliners, and the poor, giving much the largest share to the latter.

It may be imagined, therefore, that with all her little follies she

was not unpopular. All her follies have, we believe, been told.

Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently

interesting to deserve description.

While we are on the subject of the Thornes, one word must be said of

the house they lived in. It was not a large house, nor a fine house,

nor perhaps to modern ideas a very commodious house, but by those

who love the peculiar colour and peculiar ornaments of genuine Tudor

architecture it was considered a perfect gem. We beg to own ourselves

among the number, and therefore take this opportunity to express our

surprise that so little is known by English men and women of the

beauties of English architecture. The ruins of the Colosseum, the

Campanile at Florence, St. Mark's, Cologne, the Bourse and Notre Dame

are with our tourists as familiar as household words; but they know

nothing of the glories of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire.

Nay, we much question whether many noted travellers, men who have

pitched their tents perhaps under Mount Sinai, are not still ignorant

that there are glories in Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire.

We beg that they will go and see.

Mr. Thorne's house was called Ullathorne Court--and was properly so

called, for the house itself formed two sides of a quadrangle, which

was completed on the other two sides by a wall about twenty feet

high. This wall was built of cut stone, rudely cut indeed, and now

much worn, but of a beautiful, rich, tawny yellow colour, the effect

of that stonecrop of minute growth which it had taken three centuries

to produce. The top of this wall was ornamented by huge, round stone

balls of the same colour as the wall itself. Entrance into the court

was had through a pair of iron gates so massive that no one could

comfortably open or close them--consequently, they were rarely

disturbed. From the gateway two paths led obliquely across the

court: that to the left reaching the hall-door, which was in the

corner made by the angle of the house, and that to the right leading

to the back entrance, which was at the further end of the longer

portion of the building.

With those who are now adepts in contriving house accommodation, it

will militate much against Ullathorne Court that no carriage could be

brought to the hall-door. If you enter Ullathorne at all, you must

do so, fair reader, on foot, or at least in a bath-chair. No vehicle

drawn by horses ever comes within that iron gate. But this is

nothing to the next horror that will encounter you. On entering the

front door, which you do by no very grand portal, you find yourself

immediately in the dining-room. What, no hall? exclaims my luxurious

friend, accustomed to all the comfortable appurtenances of modern

life. Yes, kind sir, a noble hall, if you will but observe it;

a true old English hall of excellent dimensions for a country

gentleman's family; but, if you please, no dining-parlour.

Both Mr. and Miss Thorne were proud of this peculiarity of their

dwelling, though the brother was once all but tempted by his friends

to alter it. They delighted in the knowledge that they, like Cedric,

positively dined in their true hall, even though they so dined

_tête-à-tête_. But though they had never owned, they had felt and

endeavoured to remedy the discomfort of such an arrangement. A huge

screen partitioned off the front door and a portion of the hall, and

from the angle so screened off a second door led into a passage which

ran along the larger side of the house next to the courtyard. Either

my reader or I must be a bad hand at topography, if it be not clear

that the great hall forms the ground-floor of the smaller portion

of the mansion, that which was to your left as you entered the iron

gate, and that it occupies the whole of this wing of the building.

It must be equally clear that it looks out on a trim mown lawn,

through three quadrangular windows with stone mullions, each window

divided into a larger portion at the bottom, and a smaller portion at

the top, and each portion again divided into five by perpendicular

stone supporters. There may be windows which give a better light

than such as these, and it may be, as my utilitarian friend observes,

that the giving of light is the desired object of a window. I will

not argue the point with him. Indeed I cannot. But I shall not the

less die in the assured conviction that no sort or description of

window is capable of imparting half so much happiness to mankind as

that which had been adopted at Ullathorne Court. What, not an oriel?

says Miss Diana de Midellage. No, Miss Diana, not even an oriel,

beautiful as is an oriel window. It has not about it so perfect a

feeling of quiet English homely comfort. Let oriel windows grace a

college, or the half-public mansion of a potent peer, but for the

sitting room of quiet country ladies, of ordinary homely folk,

nothing can equal the square, mullioned windows of the Tudor

architects.

The hall was hung round with family female insipidities by Lely and

unprepossessing male Thornes in red coats by Kneller, each Thorne

having been let into a panel in the wainscoting, in the proper

manner. At the further end of the room was a huge fire-place, which

afforded much ground of difference between the brother and sister.

An antiquated grate that would hold about a hundredweight of coal,

had been stuck on to the hearth by Mr. Thorne's father. This hearth

had of course been intended for the consumption of wood faggots, and

the iron dogs for the purpose were still standing, though half-buried

in the masonry of the grate. Miss Thorne was very anxious to revert

to the dogs. The dear good old creature was always glad to revert to

anything, and had she been systematically indulged, would doubtless

in time have reflected that fingers were made before forks and have

reverted accordingly. But in the affairs of the fire-place Mr.

Thorne would not revert. Country gentlemen around him all had

comfortable grates in their dining-rooms. He was not exactly the man

to have suggested a modern usage, but he was not so far prejudiced

as to banish those which his father had prepared for his use. Mr.

Thorne had indeed once suggested that with very little contrivance

the front door might have been so altered as to open at least into

the passage, but on hearing this, his sister Monica--such was Miss

Thorne's name--had been taken ill and had remained so for a week.

Before she came downstairs she received a pledge from her brother

that the entrance should never be changed in her lifetime.

At the end of the hall opposite to the fire-place a door led into the

drawing-room, which was of equal size, and lighted with precisely

similar windows. But yet the aspect of the room was very different.

It was papered, and the ceiling, which in the hall showed the old

rafters, was whitened and finished with a modern cornice. Miss

Thorne's drawing-room, or, as she always called it, withdrawing-room,

was a beautiful apartment. The windows opened on to the full extent

of the lovely trim garden; immediately before the windows were

plots of flowers in stiff, stately, stubborn little beds, each bed

surrounded by a stone coping of its own; beyond, there was a low

parapet wall on which stood urns and images, fawns, nymphs, satyrs,

and a whole tribe of Pan's followers; and then again, beyond that, a

beautiful lawn sloped away to a sunk fence which divided the garden

from the park. Mr. Thorne's study was at the end of the drawing-room,

and beyond that were the kitchen and the offices. Doors opened into

both Miss Thorne's withdrawing-room and Mr. Thorne's sanctum from

the passage above alluded to, which, as it came to the latter room,

widened itself so as to make space for the huge black oak stairs which

led to the upper regions.

Such was the interior of Ullathorne Court. But having thus described

it, perhaps somewhat too tediously, we beg to say that it is not the

interior to which we wish to call the English tourist's attention,

though we advise him to lose no legitimate opportunity of becoming

acquainted with it in a friendly manner. It is the outside of

Ullathorne that is so lovely. Let the tourist get admission at

least into the garden and fling himself on that soft sward just

opposite to the exterior angle of the house. He will there get the

double frontage and enjoy that which is so lovely--the expanse of

architectural beauty without the formal dullness of one long line.

It is the colour of Ullathorne that is so remarkable. It is of that

delicious tawny hue which no stone can give, unless it has on it the

vegetable richness of centuries. Strike the wall with your hand,

and you will think that the stone has on it no covering, but rub it

carefully, and you will find that the colour comes off upon your

finger. No colourist that ever yet worked from a palette has been

able to come up to this rich colouring of years crowding themselves

on years.

Ullathorne is a high building for a country-house, for it possesses

three stories, and in each story the windows are of the same sort

as that described, though varying in size and varying also in their

lines athwart the house. Those of the ground floor are all uniform

in size and position. But those above are irregular both in size and

place, and this irregularity gives a bizarre and not unpicturesque

appearance to the building. Along the top, on every side, runs a low

parapet, which nearly hides the roof, and at the corners are more

figures of fawns and satyrs.

Such is Ullathorne House. But we must say one word of the approach

to it, which shall include all the description which we mean to give

of the church also. The picturesque old church of St. Ewold's stands

immediately opposite to the iron gates which open into the court, and

is all but surrounded by the branches of the lime-trees which form

the avenue leading up to the house from both sides. This avenue is

magnificent, but it would lose much of its value in the eyes of many

proprietors by the fact that the road through it is not private

property. It is a public lane between hedgerows, with a broad grass

margin on each side of the road, from which the lime-trees spring.

Ullathorne Court, therefore, does not stand absolutely surrounded by

its own grounds, though Mr. Thorne is owner of all the adjacent land.

This, however, is the source of very little annoyance to him. Men,

when they are acquiring property, think much of such things, but they

who live where their ancestors have lived for years do not feel the

misfortune. It never occurred either to Mr. or Miss Thorne that they

were not sufficiently private because the world at large might, if it

so wished, walk or drive by their iron gates. That part of the world

which availed itself of the privilege was however very small.

Such a year or two since were the Thornes of Ullathorne. Such, we

believe, are the inhabitants of many an English country-home. May it

be long before their number diminishes.