A Tale of a Lonely Parish

Tale of a Lonely Parish, A

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Title: A Tale of a Lonely Parish
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: October 4, 2004 [eBook #13597]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH
by

F. MARION CRAWFORD
1886

TO My MOTHER
I DEDICATE THIS TALE A MEAN TOKEN OF A LIFELONG
AFFECTION
SORRENTO, Christmas Day, 1885
CHAPTER I.
The Reverend Augustin Ambrose would gladly have given up taking
pupils. He was growing old and his sight was beginning to trouble him;
he was very weary of Thucydides, of Homer, of the works of Mr.
Todhunter of which the green bindings expressed a hope still unrealised,
of conic sections--even of his beloved Horace. He was tired of the
stupidities of the dull young men who were sent to him because they
could not "keep up", and he had long ceased to be surprised or
interested by the remarks of the clever ones who were sent to him
because their education had not prepared them for an English
University. The dull ones could never be made to understand anything,
though Mr. Ambrose generally succeeded in making them remember
enough to matriculate, by dint of ceaseless repetition and a system of
memoria technica which embraced most things necessary to the
salvation of dull youth. The clever ones, on the other hand, generally
lacked altogether the solid foundation of learning; they could construe
fluently but did not know a long syllable from a short one; they had
vague notions of elemental algebra and no notion at all of arithmetic,
but did very well in conic sections; they knew nothing of prosody, but
dabbled perpetually in English blank verse; altogether they knew most
of those things which they need not have known and they knew none of
those things thoroughly which they ought to have known. After twenty
years of experience Mr. Ambrose ascertained that it was easier to teach
a stupid boy than a clever one, but that he would prefer not to teach at

all.
Unfortunately the small tithes of a small country parish in Essex did not
furnish a sufficient income for his needs. He had been a Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, within a few years of taking his degree,
wherein he had obtained high honours. But he had married and had
found himself obliged to accept the first living offered to him, to wit,
the vicarage of Billingsfield, whereof his college held the rectory and
received the great tithes. The entire income he obtained from his cure
never at any time exceeded three hundred and forty-seven pounds, and
in the year when it reached that high figure there had been an unusually
large number of marriages. It was not surprising that the vicar should
desire to improve his circumstances by receiving one or two pupils. He
had married young, as has been said, and there had been children born
to him, a son and a daughter. Mrs. Ambrose was a good manager and a
good mother, and her husband had worked hard. Between them they
had brought up their children exceedingly well. The son had in his turn
entered the church, had exhibited a faculty of pushing his way which
had not characterised his father, had got a curacy in a fashionable
Yorkshire watering-place, and was thought to be on the way to obtain a
first-rate living. In the course of time, too, the daughter had lost her
heart to a young physician who had brilliant prospects and some
personal fortune, and the Reverend Augustin Ambrose had given his
consent to the union. Nor had he been disappointed. The young
physician had risen rapidly in his profession, had been elected a
member of the London College, had transferred himself to the capital
and now enjoyed a rising practice in Chelsea. So great was his success
that it was thought he would before long purchase the goodwill of an
old practitioner who dwelt in the neighbourhood of Brompton Crescent,
and who, it was said, might shortly be expected to retire.
It will be seen, therefore, that if Mr. Ambrose's life had not been very
brilliant, his efforts had on the whole been attended with success. His
children were both happy and independent and no longer needed his
assistance or support; his