The Last Chronicle of Barset (132 page)

2.
lictor… fasces
: A
lictor
was an officer who attended a high-ranking magistrate in ancient Rome; he carried the
fasces
, a bundle of rods usually tied around an axe, to symbolize the magistrate's power and authority.

3.
shall physic my pain
:
Macbeth
II.iii.48: ‘The labour we delight in physics pain.'

1.
prebends
: Prebendaries are clergymen serving the cathedral who receive a stipend (also called a prebend) given out of its revenues.

2.
the retrenchments of the ecclesiastical commission had come into full force
: The Ecclesiastical Commission was appointed by the Tory Prime Minister, Robert Peel, in 1835 to reform the Church of England. It was initially concerned with correcting the considerable disparities in bishops' incomes, and the Established Church Act of 1836 succeeded in this to some extent. The Pluralities Act of 1838 is relevant here, particularly because it restricted the number of benefices that could be held by a clergyman to two, thus reducing the number of prebends in a cathedral; this would explain why fewer clergy have the means or the need to have a house in Barchester. The Dean and Chapter Act of 1840 went further and suppressed all non-resident prebends. The numerous and complex reforms of this commission were far-reaching, and are topical to almost all of the Chronicles of Barset. See also Chapter
13
, note
1
.

1.
to go about like a roaring lion
: Ezekiel 22:25: ‘There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey; they have devoured souls…'

2.
T. Barnum
: Bishops often traditionally sign their letters with the name of their diocese. Trollope perhaps invented Barnum as a Latin name for Barchester, following the model of Sarum/Salisbury, which inspired the fictional Barchester (see
An Autobiography
, Chapter
5
).

3.
auricular confession
: Mrs Proudie (being Low Church) would disapprove of private confession spoken to a priest who acts as intercessor between the penitent and God. Roman Catholic priests hear confessions and can grant absolution in their role as intercessor, but even those members of the Church of England with High Church beliefs, who sympathized with this practice, did not go so far as to believe that the priest had power of absolution.

1.
a bare bodkin or a leaf of hemlock
: Mr Crawley invokes figures who considered or committed suicide, respectively: Hamlet (III.i.76), and Socrates, who, when sentenced to death, refused to escape and drank a cup of hemlock.

1.
stolen from the bishops
: Mrs Proudie is indignant because her husband's seat is one which had been very well-endowed, but is now less lucrative due to the levelling effects of the Ecclesiastical Commission's recommendations. See also Chapter
10
, note
2
.

2.
certified teacher… Government aid
: Certified teachers from the new teachers' training colleges began to enter schools from 1853. Government national schools were also being established to replace the local community's provisions
for a village school, and education became increasingly standardized across Britain, sometimes with controversial effects.

3.
‘The Seven against Thebes'
: Tragedy by Aeschylus (525–456 BC).

1.
an old nobleman
: The story of John Eames saving Lord de Guest from a bull's attack, and their subsequent friendship, begins in
The Small House at Allington
. It is referred to again in Chapter
27
.

2.
Since competitive examinations had come into vogue
: In
An Autobiography
Trollope describes his entry into the Civil Service, before the days of competitive examination. He admits that if he had been required to take examinations he would probably have failed, but claims that ‘had I been so rejected the Civil Service would have lost a valuable public servant' (Chapter
3
). The Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1853 recommended competition for entrance and promotion within the Civil Service, and in 1870 the Service was opened to competitive examination.

3.
lived through it
: See Chapter
34
of
The Small House at Allington
.

4.
with his stockings ungartered
: Cf.
Hamlet
II.i.79–80, and
As You Like It
III.ii. 368–9.

5.
out-Jacobed Jacob
: Jacob served Laban for fourteen years in order to marry Rachel (see Genesis 29). John Eames's constancy is compared to that of Jacob several times in the novel although John seems unsure of the details of the story (see Chapter
35
: ‘Jacob did not live half as long as that').

1.
a Pope Joan board
: Popular card game of the period for three or more players, using an ordinary pack without the eight of diamonds. The board had eight compartments for holding the stakes. For Pope Joan, see Chapter
62
, note
5.

1.
a crisis which had come in the life of another clerg yman
: See Chapter
44
of
Framley Parsonage
. This scandal involving Mark Robarts is referred to again in Chapter
34
.

2.
laches
: Legal term designating negligence in carrying out a legal duty or undue delay in making a claim.

3.
who had treated her very badly
: The clergyman was Mr Slope, the bishop's chaplain, whose rise and fall is told in the second Barsetshire novel,
Barchester Towers
(1857).

1.
I will repay, saith the Lord
: Romans 12:19: ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'

1.
mens sana
: (Latin) Healthy or sound mind.

1.
go and live at Pau
: In 1814 Wellington's troops discovered Pau, a southern French town with a pleasant climate, just north of the Pyrenees. Many ex-soldiers returned in subsequent years, as tourists or to settle there. The climate was considered particularly healthy, and by the 1850s Pau had become a little England, known for its beautiful gardens and upper-class pursuits.
Not everyone went to the Continent for pleasure, however; many settled there because of the cheaper cost of living, or to escape creditors, like Trollope's parents.

2.
the camel and the needle's eye
: Matthew 19:24: ‘And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.'

3.
the Galignani
:
Galignani's Messenger
, an English language newspaper distributed on the Continent, was founded in Paris in 1814, and was read widely by English residents and travellers in Europe.

4.
That's what has come from Reform
: Archdeacon Grantly refers to the Great Reform Act of 1832 which extended the franchise to the middle classes (to include male householders paying an annual rent of at least ten pounds), and redistributed the number of parliamentary seats to reflect better the areas of rising population in Britain, such as the new industrial centres. Trollope probably also meant to refer indirectly to the Second Reform Act of 1867 which increased the franchise even more, and was being hotly debated as Trollope was writing
The Last Chronicle
.

1.
a hard pelican
: The ancient fable that the pelican wounds her breast to feed her young with her blood is found in Epiphanius and St Augustine. In Christian iconography the pelican symbolizes Christ's sacrifice, and is also a motif used in art and heraldry.

2.
the mouth speaketh
: Matthew 12:34: ‘O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.'

3.
just as we forgive
: From the Lord's Prayer or
Pater Noster
, taught by Christ to his disciples. Cf. Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2–4 and
The Book of Common Prayer
: ‘And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us.'

4.
grapes from thistles
: Matthew 7:16: ‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?' Mrs Dale does not go so far as to quote the previous verse (7:15), but Lily would know it: ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves', as Mrs Dale would describe Adolphus Crosbie.

1.
by which to tell it
: Mourning costume was far stricter and more pronounced for women than for men in the Victorian period. While entire fashion houses were devoted to women's mourning wear, men exhibited the outward signs of mourning by accessories such as a black armband, hatband, or shirt-studs.

2.
draw lots for precedence… Dean of Arches
: Victorian England was obsessed with the rules of social hierarchy or ‘precedence', and Mrs Dobbs Broughton could have consulted one of the numerous etiquette manuals which had become widely popular since the 1830s for guidance. A popular manual by Dr J. Trusler, for example, included a precedency table consisting of fifty-nine rungs above that of a gentleman. Order of precedence is also mentioned in Chapter
32
. The Dean of Arches is dean of the Court of Arches, for which see Chapter
34
, note
1
.

3.
Judith… Sisera
: Judith, the heroine of the apocryphal Book of Judith, enticed Holofernes, the leader of the enemy Assyrian camp, to invite her into his tent, where she beheaded him. Jael killed another enemy of the Israelites, the Canaanite general Sisera, by driving a tent-nail through his head into the ground, after she had offered him sanctuary in her tent (see Judges 4 and 5).

4.
Madame Rachel
: Rachel Leverson, the proprietress of the Temple of Beauty in New Bond Street, who claimed to make her clients ‘Beautiful For Ever' with such cosmetics as ‘Favourite of the Harem's Pearl White Powder'. She also owned the Arabian Baths next door to her shop, where genteel clients underwent beauty treatments, but they were also under the close and secret surveillance of Madame, and some of those who went to the baths for private liaisons were blackmailed.

5.
Brummagem
: Showy, inferior, fake; from an old form of Birmingham, which was once famous for the production of cheap goods.

1.
with my stockings cross-gartered
: As Malvolio in
Twelfth Night
, for example, II.v.153–4, III.ii.71.

1.
the Lucretias… the Charlotte Cordays… the Saint Cecilias
: Lucretia (1480–1519), the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), went through a number of engagements, marriages and annulments entered into for political reasons. Her second husband, Alfonso of Aragon, was murdered by order of her infamous brother Cesare (with whom she was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship). The tradition that she inherited the secret recipe for a fatal poison has not been historically verified but has had a place in both literary and popular imagination since the Elizabethan period. The twenty-five-year-old Charlotte Corday (1768–93) stabbed the French Revolutionary leader Marat in his bath at the height of the Reign of Terror. Beautiful and self-dramatizing, she asked to have her portrait painted before her execution. Saint Cecilia was the daughter of a patrician Roman family, brought up as a Christian. Despite her marriage to Valerian, she remained celibate, dedicating her life to God and converting hundreds to Christianity, until eventually she was suffocated and then beheaded by order of the Roman tribunal. Her martyrdom has inspired musicians, poets and painters.

2.
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides
: One of Hercules's twelve labours was to get the golden apples from a tree in the Garden of the Hesperides. The tree, a present to Hera upon her marriage to Zeus, was guarded by a dragon and three maidens. In
Love's Labour's Lost
, Biron asks ‘For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?' (IV.iii.336–7).

3.
break my head or comb my hair
: Conway is thinking of Clara as a Jael (see Judges 4 and 5), or a Delilah (see Judges 16).

1.
Saturday… Spectator… The Pall Mall Gazette
: The
Saturday Review
was an important literary and political periodical, founded in 1855. The
Spectator
was a weekly periodical, founded in 1828; its political tenor was moderately radical and it was dedicated to the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. The
Pall Mall Gazette
was an evening paper, founded in 1865, which combined news and literary features; Trollope was an early contributor.