Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire TaleBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction
From that day forth the rector of the parish was known far and wide as
“Dr. Upandown,” even among those who loved him best. For the name well
described his benevolent practice of undoing any harsh thing he might
have said, sometimes by a smile, and very often with a shilling, or a
basket of spring cabbages. So that Mrs. Upround, when buttoning up his
coat--which he always forgot to do for himself--did it with the words,
“My dear, now scold no one; really it is becoming too expensive.” “Shall
I abandon duty,” he would answer, with some dignity, “while a shilling
is sufficient to enforce it?”
Dr. Upround's people had now found out that their minister and
magistrate discharged his duty toward his pillow, no less than to his
pulpit. His parish had acquired, through the work of generations, a
habit of getting up at night, and being all alive at cock-crow; and the
rector (while very new amongst them) tried to bow--or rather rise--to
night-watch. But a little of that exercise lasted him for long; and he
liked to talk of it afterward, but for the present was obliged to drop
it. For he found himself pale, when his wife made him see himself; and
his hours of shaving were so dreadful; and scarcely a bit of fair dinner
could be got, with the whole of the day thrown out so. In short, he
settled it wisely that the fishers of fish must yield to the habits of
fish, which can not be corrected; but the fishers of men (who can live
without catching them) need not be up to all their hours, but may take
them reasonably.
His parishioners--who could do very well without him, as far as
that goes, all the week, and by no means wanted him among their
boats--joyfully left him to his own time of day, and no more worried
him out of season than he worried them so. It became a matter of right
feeling with them not to ring a big bell, which the rector had put up to
challenge everybody's spiritual need, until the stable clock behind the
bell had struck ten and finished gurgling.
For this reason, on St. Swithin's morn, in the said year 1782, the
grannies, wives, and babes of Flamborough, who had been to help the
launch, but could not pull the laboring oar, nor even hold the tiller,
spent the time till ten o'clock in seeing to their own affairs--the
most laudable of all pursuits for almost any woman. And then, with some
little dispute among them (the offspring of the merest accident), they
arrived in some force at the gate of Dr. Upround, and no woman liked to
pull the bell, and still less to let another woman do it for her. But an
old man came up who was quite deaf, and every one asked him to do it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account