The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Oliphant: the finer points of religion

The Perpetual Curate by Mrs Margaret Oliphant

published 1864

 

 

 

Blogfriend Marty recommended this as my next Oliphant book, when I posted on Phoebe Junior a while back. This is what she said: 'My recommendation of the Carlingford books would be The Perpetual Curate which came right before Miss Marjoribanks in the series. It has a male protagonist but also interesting female characters. It does talk a lot about the Dissenters versus "the Church" but theological expertise isn't needed, it goes more to motivation of the characters.'

That’s a very fair description – you do have to take on board some church business, and understand the way the religious world works, but it is like reading about any organization – you can pick it up.

The plot has a lot to do with livings, ie the appointment of a clergyman to a parish, where he can have some security and an income. These were often in the hands of families, as the squire explains:

"I'd never have any peace of mind if I filled up a family living with a stranger—unless, of course," Mr Wentworth added in a parenthesis—an unlikely sort of contingency which had not occurred to him at first—"you should happen to have no second son.—The eldest the squire, the second the rector. That's my idea, Leonora, of Church and State."

But apparently the sons can’t always count on getting what they want…

“He was always brought up for it, as everybody knows; and to disappoint him, who is so good and so nice, for a fat young man, buttered all over like—like—a pudding-basin," cried poor Miss Dora, severely adhering to the unity of her desperate metaphor.

There is a very unnerving plotline where the eponymous curate is suspected of misdemeanours with a young woman – it is very convincing how easy it is for him to look guilty, and how hard to clear his name. There is an annoying rector, but more than saved by his absolutely splendid wife, a very nice woman who hates the carpet in her sitting-room:

It would be difficult to explain what influence the drawing-room carpet in the Rectory had on the fortunes of the Perpetual Curate; but when Mr Wentworth's friends come to hear the entire outs and ins of the business, it will be seen that it was not for nothing that Mr Proctor covered the floor of that pretty apartment with roses and lilies half a yard long.

She is as generous and Christian as the rector’s wife should be, but just occasionally it all gets too much for her:

she had no patience for a tiresome, middle-aged lover, who no doubt was going to disappoint and disenchant another woman.

Will he? There is a gloriously awkward wooing scene between the older couple…

"You see we are neither of us young," said Mr Proctor; and he stood by the table turning over the books nervously, without looking at her, which was certainly an odd commencement for a wooing.

"That is quite true," said Miss Wodehouse, rather primly. She had never disputed that fact by word or deed, but still it was not pleasant to have the statement thus thrust upon her without any apparent provocation. It was not the sort of thing which a woman expects to have said to her under such circumstances.

[Reminiscent of a discussion in this blogpost – where Dickens and George Eliot have similar moments]

He doesn’t even know her first name (Mary). And yet – the reader is rooting for them, and thinks they will be able to finally find peace and happiness together, when both of them seemed to face a bleak future.

That’s the religious side. The Perpetual Curate is also a member of a hilariously awful, and bizarrely complex, family. His father the squire has outlived several wives and keeps having more children, who all annoy him. (That’s why he can’t imagine not having enough sons, see above).

Oliphant is so good on awful family conversations:

“Butterflies," said Mr Wentworth, looking at [his daughters] in their pretty dresses, as they sat regarding him with dismay, "that don't understand any reason for doing anything except liking it or not liking it. I daresay by this time your sister knows better."

"My sister is married, papa," said Letty, with her saucy look.

"I advise you to get married too, and learn what life is like," said the savage Squire; and conversation visibly flagged after this effort.

There is a hilarious running feature of ‘the Wentworth complaint’  - ‘When a man has all the suffering attendant upon a special complaint, it is hard not to have all the dignity.’ The Squire is outraged when annoying Miss Dora ‘with a sob of fright’ thinks her sister might have it - "It has been in our family for two hundred years," said Mr Wentworth; "and I don't think there is a single instance of its attacking a woman—not even slightly.”

The book is wonderfully involving – the religious difficulties, the livings, the clergyman who is going to do something spectacularly inconvenient to everyone else: all become vitally important. There are characters who behave badly or stupidly, but Mrs O has that wonderful good-heartedness that means she makes you understand them.

The rather heroic curate does have one sharp remark at the end, which I enjoyed enormously: (not really a very slight spoiler…)

[Miss Leonora says] ‘Of course, you are going to marry, and live happy ever after, like a fairy tale."

"It is possible I may be guilty of that additional enormity," said the Curate, "which, at all events, will not be your doing, my dear aunt, if I might suggest a consolation. You cannot help such things happening, but, at least, it should be a comfort to feel you have done nothing to bring them about."

The top photo is a daguerreotype of an American clergyman, Rollin Heber Neale, ‘one of the most eloquent and successful preachers of his day’. (A faint look of Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker?)

Anne Chalmers Hanna, 1813 - 1891. Daughter of Rev. Dr Thomas Chalmers; wife of Rev. William Hanna, 1844, from the National Galleries of Scotland.