Doctor Thorne | Page 7

from the village road or house.
Indeed, the ground on this side was so broken up into abrupt hills, and
conical-shaped, oak-covered excrescences, which were seen peeping up
through and over each other, that the true extent of the park was much
magnified to the eye. It was very possible for a stranger to get into it
and to find some difficulty in getting out again by any of its known
gates; and such was the beauty of the landscape, that a lover or scenery
would be tempted thus to lose himself.
I have said that on one side lay the kennels, and this will give me an
opportunity of describing here one especial episode, a long episode, in
the life of the existing squire.
He had once represented his county in Parliament, and when he ceased
to do so he still felt an ambition to be connected in some peculiar way
with that county's greatness; he still desired that a Gresham of
Greshamsbury should be something more in East Barsetshire, than
Jackson of the Grange, or Baker of Mill Hill, or Bateson of Annesgrove.
They were all his friends, and very respectable country gentlemen; but
Mr Gresham of Greshamsbury should be more than this: even he had
enough ambition to be aware of such a longing. Therefore, when an
opportunity occurred he took to hunting the county.
For this employment he was in every way well suited;--unless it was in
the matter of finance. Though he had in his very earliest manly years

given such great offence by indifference to his family politics, and had
in a certain degree fostered the ill-feeling by contesting the county in
opposition to the wishes of his brother squires, nevertheless, he bore a
loved and popular name. Men regretted that he should not have been
what they wished him to be, that he should not have been such as was
the old squire; but when they found that such was the case, that he
could not be great among them as a politician, they were still willing
that he should be great in any other way if there were county greatness
for which he was suited. Now he was known as an excellent horseman,
as a thorough sportsman, as one knowing in dogs, and tender-hearted as
a sucking mother to a litter of young foxes; he had ridden in the county
since he was fifteen, and had a fine voice for a view-hallo, knew every
hound by name, and could wind a horn with sufficient music for all
hunting purposes; moreover, he had come to his property, as was well
known through all Barsetshire, with a clear income of fourteen
thousand a year.
Thus, when some old worn-out master of hounds was run to ground,
about a year after Mr Gresham's last contest for the county, it seemed to
all parties to be a pleasant and rational arrangement that the hounds
should go to Greshamsbury. Pleasant, indeed, to all except the Lady
Arabella; and rational, perhaps, to all except the squire himself.
All this time he was already considerable encumbered. He had spent
much more than he should have done, and so indeed had his wife, in
those two splendid years in which they had figured as great among the
great ones of the earth. Fourteen thousand a year ought to have been
enough to allow a member of Parliament with a young wife and two or
three children to live in London and keep up their country family
mansion; but then the De Courcys were very great people, and Lady
Arabella chose to live as she had been accustomed to do, and as her
sister-in-law the countess lived; now Lord de Courcy had much more
than fourteen thousand a year. Then came the three elections, with their
vast attendant cost, and then those costly expedients to which
gentlemen are forced to have recourse who have lived beyond their
income and find it impossible to reduce their establishments as to live
much below it. Thus when the hounds came to Greshamsbury, Mr

Gresham was already a poor man.
Lady Arabella said much to oppose their coming; but Lady Arabella,
though it could hardly be said of her that she was under her husband's
rule, certainly was not entitled to boast that she had made him under
hers. She then made her first grand attack as to the furniture in Portman
Square; and was then for the first time specially informed that the
furniture there was not matter of much importance, as she would not in
future be required to move her family to that residence during the
London seasons. The sort of conversation which grew from such a
commencement may be imagined. Had Lady Arabella worried her lord
less, he might perhaps have considered with