The Rector's Daughter Read online

  THE RECTOR’S DAUGHTER

  F.M. Mayor

  {Swift Editions}

  First published digitally in Great Britain in 2012

  by Swift Editions

  www.bookeditor.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  A Note on the Text

  The Rector’s Daughter

  Explanatory Notes

  Links to Further Reading

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  This digital edition of The Rector’s Daughter by F.M. Mayor (1872–1932) is based on the text published by the Hogarth Press in 1924.

  Some minor stylistic changes have been made: words such as ‘to-day’, ‘to-night’ and ‘to-morrow’ are no longer hyphenated, for example. A few typographical errors and inconsistencies in spelling have been corrected.

  Clicking on the asterisks next to words and phrases in the text takes the reader to the relevant explanatory notes.

  —S.C., 2012

  1

  Dedmayne is an insignificant village in the Eastern counties. There were no motor buses in the days of which I write, and Cayley, the nearest station, was six miles off. Dedmayne was ashamed of this, because without a station the most interesting feature for a picture post-card was not available. There was no great house with park or garden to give character to the village. Progress had laid hold of it fifty years before, and pulled down and rebuilt the church, the Rectory, and most of the cottages. Part of Dedmayne was even ugly; there was a bit of straight flat road near the church, with low dusty hedges, treeless turnip fields, and corrugated iron roofs of barns which might rank with Canada. Dedmayne was on the way to nowhere; it was not troubled by motors or bicycles, except native bicycles. The grimy ‘Blue Boar’ did not induce any one to stop for tea. Artists and weekend Londoners wanted something picturesque. Still, being damp, it was bound to have certain charms; the trunks were mossy, and the walls mouldy. There were also those tall flowery trees in the hedgerows, and little pleasant risings in the meadows, which are so common in England one forgets to notice them.

  The social advantages of Dedmayne were on a par with the scenery. There were no gentry, not even the customary deceased clergyman’s daughter or widow to help in the parish work. The late schoolmaster had been there thirty years, and had lost heart; Miss Gage, the new mistress struggled not to lose heart too. The late Rector had been at Dedmayne fifty years, and drank. The present, Canon Jocelyn with his daughter Mary of thirty-five, were the only outside influences, if they could be called outside, since he had lived there forty-three years and had seldom left the village, even when he was younger, and never in the last seven years. He was now eighty-two.

  Mary was born at Dedmayne; she also had rarely gone outside its neighbourhood. She had charge of her imbecile sister Ruth, who could not be left. When Mary was a young girl she had grumbled at the remoteness, and envied the Redlands from the next village, who moved to Southsea. But gradually she became attached to Dedmayne, and felt that the more isolated it was, the more it had its own flavour, unpolluted by towns. ‘We just go mouldering along year after year,’ she said to a friend, ‘and it is always the same.’ What has been known from childhood must be lovable, whether it is ugly or beautiful. Perhaps because its natural charms were not great she loved it the more, in case its feelings might be hurt.

  Canon Jocelyn was conspicuous in the neighbourhood. His thin, stately figure, finely chiselled features, and eyes, severe, satirical, and melancholy by turns, would have made him noticeable in any society.

  His daughter Mary was a decline. Her uninteresting hair, dragged severely back, displayed a forehead lined too early. Her complexion was a dullish hue, not much lighter than her hair. She had her father’s beautiful eyes, and hid them with glasses. She was dowdily dressed, but she had many companions in the neighbourhood, from labourers’ wives to the ladies of the big houses, to share her dowdiness. It was not observed; she was as much a part of her village as its homely hawthorns.

  If Dedmayne Rectory, with its white stucco, outside shutters, and verandah, could not be called beautiful, it had a character of its own. The shutters and verandah were intended as a protection against the sun in summer. But what about the winter with its true country cold, the chill, chill dawns and twilights of January? The Rector before Canon Jocelyn planted laurels and deodars near the house to protect it against the wind. They made the study and dining-room as dark as a vault, and the wind rushed in all the same. Canon Jocelyn was fond of the dark, as his generation was, and fond of the laurels and deodars, giving them a special place in his heart with elms and oaks, because they had grown in his childhood’s garden, and so he instinctively felt them to be extremely English.

  A crumbling decay pervaded the whole place; it would have been the despair of energetic natures. There was a little black oblong pond in the garden, never full and never empty; it looked like a monster slug. The hens were seldom killed off, they laid an egg a week, and the shrivelled, woody, herbaceous plants dwindled to the size of field flowers. The real field flowers came in unchecked and joined them; all was unweeded. There was a round bed in the front drive, supposed by the gardener to be Canon Jocelyn’s favourite. But those geraniums, petunias, lobelias, calceolarias, and variegated plants, each in their crooked circle one within another, were never observed by him from one summer’s end to another. He was indifferent to flowers; he sighed over the childish preoccupation of the clergy in their pergolas. Mary herself liked wild flowers best. There is a surfeit of neat bright gardens in the country; sometimes she felt she would be glad never to see a sweet-pea again. She could not stop muddle and decay, she had neither the money nor the capacity; she could not fight battles with her father, Cook, Emma, the gardener, and the pony. So she let things go, and came to like decay.

  Not a new piece of furniture had been bought in the house within Mary’s memory, not a room had been papered or painted, not a chintz renewed for thirty years. Everything had faded to mellowness. The walls were hidden by portraits of former Jocelyns: the men, handsome, mostly clergymen and soldiers; the women, plain and distinguished. The drawing-room with its straight-backed arm-chairs and striped chintz, had been getting old-fashioned forty years before, when Canon Jocelyn had wanted it to look like his mother’s drawing-room. Now the circle was coming round, the new archdeacon’s wife was enthusiastic about it. A charming drawing of the dead Mrs Jocelyn hung over the mantel-piece, lovely, graceful, and serene. Why could she not have given at least one of those attributes to her daughter?

  Books streamed everywhere, all over the house, even up the attic stairs. They were on every subject imaginable. There was hardly any branch of knowledge which Canon Jocelyn’s inquiring mind had not investigated. He read many languages as easily as his own. His learning he considered simply what was suitable for a scholar and a gentleman. He was not elated by it, but he was aware that he knew far more than any one in the neighbourhood. He was gentle with the squires and with ladies, and from all below him in standing he expected ignorance. From the clergy he did require something, and not getting it, he put them down as neither scholars nor gentlemen. He kept up his marvellous range of reading till about 1895. Then his mind closed to new ideas. Books published after that date he would not trouble to read: ‘I have enough here to last me my few remaining years.’ This weakness enabled the clergy to triumph over him sometimes, and even ladies, only they would much rather have his polite attentions than triumph, which he did not like.

  Canon Jocelyn’s study was filled with his own particular friends in literature. There was a bust of Socrates from civility to the Greeks, but, unlike most Englishmen, his passion was for the Romans. He really preferred Virgil to all Christian classics. Donne, Barrow, and Jeremy Taylor lay about on the floor, and early fathers
were piled on the chairs. Engravings of Dante, Sir Thomas More, Dr Johnson, and Pascal were hung up the stairs.

  There was a difficulty with Pascal. He was French, and Canon Jocelyn despised the French. The Revolution, Napoleon, and the Commune still rankled, so he always said of Pascal, ‘He had a great mind, and I think, much as one respects the brilliance and lucidity of the French, one may say it was an English mind!’

  He extended his patriotic antipathy to the French language. ‘The French have a number of useful expressions; the turn of their phrases is often more subtle and delicate than ours. English is too noble a vehicle.’ When there were subtle and delicate terms in Greek, he did not think English too noble a vehicle. He felt the French pronunciation of French was what was to be expected from them. He would not demean his English lips. If any English person, particularly any English man, tried to pronounce French correctly, Canon Jocelyn would say afterwards, ‘There is a little affectation about him; I cannot tell precisely what it is.’

  The Monthly Packets* and Lives of missionaries were the taste of Mary’s aunt, who had lived with them at one time. They were packed away in the large sunny spare-room, which had been hers. The sunniest and largest was the invalid’s. Mary herself had kept always to a small dark chamber, which had been considered suitable for a schoolgirl. Some of the old lady visitors found the Monthly Packets a comfort; they blenched at the great leather backs and brown pages of most of the books, and at their s’s made like f’s.

  As to Mary’s room, it reflected her truly. There were childish animals and plush picture-frames on her mantelpiece, mixed with some precious china bequeathed to ‘My own dear Miss Mary’ from old village friends, and messy little pincushions made by their shaking fingers. There was rubbish she had bought at sales of work, all her children’s books, her favourite Miss Yonge and Trollope, a large collection of Elizabethan dramatists, and books of medieval mystics.

  Who that knows such households will wonder that every shelf and every drawer was crammed with papers and pamphlets? for Canon Jocelyn could not bear to throw away. There were, of course, Bibles in every room in the house, so that any one in a hurry to read the inspired Word should not waste a moment. There were six in the drawing-room and nine in the study. Honoured Jocelyn elders for generations had bequeathed them; some had their Bibles laid beside them in their coffins. These elders must have had wonderful eyes, for the print was often very fine. They were marked in several places; the marked texts shed a curious light on the markers. The favourites of the gentle great-aunt Eliza, a Calvinist, were, ‘Many are called but few are chosen’; ‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way.’ The pugnacious bishop, Canon Jocelyn’s father, chose ‘Pray for them that despitefully use you’; ‘I am meek and lowly of heart.’ Each found in the rich treasure-house something contradictory, and therefore satisfying to their natures.

  Shakespeare and the Prayer-book were in the same privileged position as Bibles. There were not more than three Miltons, because of undesirable views on kings, liberty, and divorce. Such was Mary’s home, the home of her whole life. She thought, as a child thinks, that most other homes were like it. But it was a frail, frail survival, lasting on out of its time, its companions vanished long since, and would fall at a touch when Canon Jocelyn died.

  2

  Mary’s childhood had been happy. She had three brothers and a sister, all older than herself. There were families of children, too, who had come and played with them. She lost the sweet mother of the portrait early. At the time she did not mourn, only to long for her more intensely later. Her sister went away and did not return, she was not told why. Aunt Lottie, her mother’s sister, came to live with them. Her brothers were sent to boarding-schools; she had dull governesses at home. As each brother grew up he went abroad, and became more or less lost to sight. By an unfortunate chance the families she had played with moved from the neighbourhood, and their places were taken by bachelors and childless couples.

  Her aunt was no companion. She was puzzled by Mary, who was stormy, ‘not like our family at all.’ She managed by saying ‘No’ to everything Mary wanted. That seemed strange to look back to. Now she was the dear old lady, always saying ‘Yes’, and the role suited her better.

  Canon Jocelyn was puzzled and alarmed with very young children, but from six onwards for two or three years he had found Mary a pleasant plaything. Then she passed to a less attractive stage. Faults showed themselves in stronger colours; Aunt Lottie grumbled about her. He withdrew himself; he was never a delightful playmate again. Besides, he became occupied with St Augustine, and had no leisure for her. From time to time his friends and their wives came to see him. Most of them took little notice of Mary, but some liked her. She liked them too, better than her own contemporaries, of whom she was afraid, she saw them so seldom. She fell back on reading, and got the reputation of being ‘learned.’

  She had longed for friends, and had cherished passions for two or three bright girls with pigtails, who never seemed shy. She had had some passions for elder ladies also, but they were impatient of uncouth adoration. She retired within herself, and fell in love instead with Mr Rochester, Hamlet, and Dr Johnson. Sometimes even now when she did not sleep, she indulged in these delightful fantasies, more vivid than any incident of ordinary life, and would be suddenly startled by seeing it was dawn. When she was eighteen, and should have come out, Aunt Lottie recollected that late hours were bad for rheumatism. Canon Jocelyn said that ‘since things had been so different’ (meaning his wife’s death) ‘he had not the heart for gaiety.’ At nearly seventy the zest for parties was gone; he was absorbed in his literary work. What little contact he required with the outside world was satisfied by intimacy with one or two of the neighbouring clergy. So Mary was seldom asked to dances, for it was certain no return dance could be got out of the Rectory, and still seldomer went.

  The Rectory tennis court was uneven and small. No one with pretensions to tennis could be expected to play on it. Mary and Will, her youngest brother, who was still at home, asked that it might be put in order. Canon Jocelyn answered, ‘It is quite unnecessary.’ He was at that moment helping a friend with almost more money than he could afford. Not a hint of this was given to his children. ‘Stingy Jew,’ said Will to Mary. Thus Mary got no practice in tennis. This, her short sight, and her learnedness made her a responsibility to hostesses, so she was not asked to afternoon parties either.

  She became shyer, and from shyness awkward. Here was a source of annoyance for Canon Jocelyn. He had always been able to charm; he would have preferred a daughter who could continue the tradition. Mary accepted his decisions unquestioningly. She did not enjoy parties; it was no hardship to stay at home. Her bent was to work in the village. But here again she was crushed by the invincible force of her father’s inaction.

  He was glad she should carry on the old-established Sunday School, Bible Class, and Mothers’ Meeting; it was different when she initiated something new. She had read Mill’s Political Economy, and burned to impart her knowledge to the village. A class of girls was formed. It soon dropped away, even tea could not keep it alive, all but one stupid, silent girl, and a class could not be kept up for her.

  From the first Canon Jocelyn had damped the undertaking with his favourite ‘I should hardly have thought it was worth while.’ He said it again when the class failed, and Mary was feeling very sore.

  For once she turned round on him. ‘Whenever I do anything, you say it’s not worth while. It’s unbearable.’ She rushed out of the room, and when she was alone she burst into tears. He followed her and said stiffly, though he did not mean to be stiff, ‘Mary, why are you crying?’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘It’s useless telling you.’

  He stood by her in silence; she went on sobbing.

  ‘As nothing I do is any good, I wish I hadn’t been born.’

  Never had words stabbed him so much.

  ‘My dear child,’ he said earnestly. ‘Never say that again. I did not mean –
let me explain myself.’ He continued hesitatingly, confused at the strange step he was taking. ‘I do not consider Mill’s Political Economy a subject suited to your class. Political economy is an interesting and by no means unprofitable branch of study for trained minds, but it can never be an exact science. The wild claims made for political economy by that inspector who lunched with us yesterday are based on an erroneous conception of what science can do.’ (To see Canon Jocelyn’s expression as he pronounced the word ‘wild’!) ‘Sykes tells me there is a real danger of political economy taking the place of mathematics at Cambridge. I can only say that will be the end of Cambridge. Not that I think, Mary, it was possible you would have advanced far with your class. The people here have not much zeal or energy of mind. I had my ambitions for them long ago when I first came to Dedmayne, but I abandoned them. If the people can be persuaded to continue along the old rut, one must be satisfied.’

  Mary did not understand what he was saying but he had called her ‘my dear child’, and she was grateful for his confidence. It was almost the only time he did so speak. She looked back on it with gratitude; he soon forgot it.

  After some other failures she stopped initiating schemes of utility in the village, and confined herself to the usual round. Years afterwards the silent remnant of the economics class came to see Mary. Ellen had left Dedmayne, gone to service, and married. Sometimes she wrote, Mary thought with the intent of jogging her memory about Christmas presents.

  ‘Oh, Miss Mary.’ Ellen cried, ‘it is nice to see you after all these years. Cook said you was pale, but I shouldn’t have known you. I’m changed too, such a stout one as I am, and talk! “Why, you’ve found your tongue,” they all say that at home. Oh, the dear old days! Do you remember the class? Dad used to have a rare laugh when I come back and told him what you said. I wouldn’t set by you at tea, I was too frightened. Oh, that riddle, “What single word describes Miss Jocelyn?” and then I was too shy to tell the answer. “Perfection.” I got it out of a book. “You silly,” Mother says, “it’s only Miss Jocelyn after all,” but I thought you was quite a little goddess; there’ll never be anything like it again, Miss Mary.’