Victorian Social Activists' Novels Vol 1

Oliver Lovesey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000419078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The writers of these novels were involved in various types of activism, using approaches ranging from conservative amelioration to radical militancy. Their works employ a broad variety of genres from the novel of manners, sensation, education and vocation, to allegory, romance and lesbian fiction. Volume 1 includes a general introduction ' The Wife' and 'Janet Doncaster'.

JANET DONCASTER

BY
MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT

CONTENTS

I.	NORBOROUGH
II.	MRS. DONCASTER
III.	JANET MAKES A FRIEND
IV.	WHY MRS. DONCASTER WAS A MATCH-MAKING MAMMA
V.	THE TENANTS OF NORBOROUGH HALL
VI.	NORBOROUGH MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF THE ARISTOCRACY
VII.	LADY ANN’S SCHEME
VIII.	FRIENDSHIP AND SEA-BREEZES
IX.	FORSYTH
X.	WAITING FOR THE VERDICT
XI.	LADY ANN ROUTS THE ENEMY WITH GREAT SLAUGHTER
XII.	JANET’S HONEYMOON
XIII.	NORBOROUGH HALL AGAIN
XIV.	THE OLD HOME AND A NEW ONE
XV.	NEW KNOWLEDGE AND NEW HAPPINESS
XVI.	FRIENDS AGAIN
XVII.	FOREST WALKS
XVIII.	JANET’S TOWER
XIX.	LEAVING OAKHURST
XX.	CHOOSING
XXI.	THE END

JANET DONCASTER.

CHAPTER I.
NORBOROUGH.

No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer’s day

Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass.

KEATS.¹

THERE are probably few English people who do not know many such villages as Norborough. Its distinctive features were its situation on the sea-coast, its mayor and corporation, and its charter dating from James I.;² it had also the distinction of having once returned two members to Parliament, and of having been one of the rottenest of the rotten boroughs disfranchised in 1832.³ Its non-distinctive features were its long rambling street of nearly a mile from end to end, breaking out fitfully now and then into little dreary patches of common, ornamented with clothes’-lines and fishermen’s nets; its two thousand inhabitants, of whom about ten families were prosperous, twenty on the border land between poverty and prosperity, and all the rest belonging to the adventurous and improvident seafaring population. The leaders of Norborough society consisted of one well-to-do merchant’s family, the clergyman, two retired naval officers, the commander of the coastguard, and one doctor. There were from time to time other ‘distinguished residents,’ who made Norborough their summer quarters, but these were hardly considered real Norborians by the natives. There was no squire in the village. The house on the top of the hill a mile away from the sea, that ought to have been occupied by the squire, had been tenantless for many years. Norborough was not a lively place. The principal source of interest and excitement to its inhabitants was derived from watching the struggle for existence of the second doctor, and reporting the scandalous doings of the lieutenant of the coastguard. For Norborough was graced by the presence of two medical men, who divided the practice of the neighbourhood between them. Acting on the economic principle of the division of labour, each undertook a special class of practice, and confined himself thereto. Mr. Grey, the old-established Norborough doctor, attended all the patients who paid; the other doctor – there was a new one about every eighteen months – attended all the patients who did not pay. Mr. Grey was always most affable to the new comer; he thought it an excellent thing for a young and inexperienced practitioner to have the opportunity of trying his ‘prentice hand. This charitable expression of good feeling towards a man who might be regarded as a rival, was thought by Mr. Grey’s paying patients to indicate great elevation of character; at the same time it precluded any idea they might otherwise have entertained of allowing the ‘prentice hand any chance of operating on themselves. If it was ever suggested to Mr. Grey that the ‘Bob Sawyer’ for the time being, and his wife and children, were on the verge of starvation, and that a living was not to be had by a second doctor in Norborough, he would elevate his eyebrows, and say, ‘Why, the club and the parish alone are worth 70l. a year to him.’ He was apparently oblivious of the fact, which he had reduced to a very simple sum in subtraction a score of years ago, that when the offices of club and parish doctor involve driving a circuit of twenty miles three times a week, the consequent necessity of keeping a gig, two horses, and a groom, materially reduces the pecuniary value of the appointments; bringing it down, in fact, on the most moderate calculation, to about 20l. a year less than nothing. The most awful rumours were whispered in Norborough about the ‘goings on’ of the new doctor’s family. It was known for a fact, for Hooky Ward’s little boy had been in the yard when it was being cut up, that the Connells had eaten the horse that Mr. Connell used to drive – the one that fell down dead in the street, you know. When Mrs. Connell’s fifth baby was born, Mrs. Sedgely declared that if ever a woman wanted the loan of the mother’s linen-box, it was Mrs. Connell; many a labourer’s^a wife was better provided; she never in all her life had seen, &c., &c. To think that anybody calling herself a lady, &c. The Connells were succeeded by the Greenwoods, the Greenwoods by the Findons, and so on, in a rapid succession; each new comer affording, in his brief and unsuccessful struggle, material for gossip of a most ghastly description.

The lieutenant of the coastguard was another perennial source of interest at Norborough; not on account of his misery, but on account of his unparalleled depravity. He not only cheated at cards, and sat up all night, after taking his rounds, playing billiards and drinking brandy-and-water at the ‘Blue Lion.’ He not only got drunk if he was asked out to dinner, but, worst of all, he had once, in a moment of inebriation, called the rector ‘old hoss,’ and had been known to go out fishing on a Sunday. This latter delinquency was severely reproved by his superior officer; and the reprobate lieutenant was heard, in the coffee-room of the ‘Blue Lion,’ to give an accurate reproduction of Captain Macduff’s sermon on the occasion, concluding with the remark, ‘Pity I didn’t remember to send the old boy half-a-dozen pairs of soles the first thing on Monday morning.’ Such an imputation on the sincerity of Captain Macduff’s piety was disgraceful. Mrs. Sedgely agreed with Mrs. Grey that the Government ought to remove Lieutenant Smalley from the service.

Beside these topics of conversation, which may be described as supplying the tragic element in Norborough gossip, there were other kinds of gossip that may be described as genteel comedy and screaming farce. The particulars of Mrs. Connell’s domestic economy and Lieutenant Smalley’s misbehaviour were communicated in sepulchral whispers to Mr. Grey after the younger members of his family had gone to bed, by Mr. Sedgely. When the subject was more ghastly and horrible than usual, the two gentlemen generally retired to enjoy it in Mr. Grey’s little dispensing room, where they were absolutely safe from female intrusion. This precaution, however, was not taken with any mean desire to exclude the women-folk from sharing the fruit of the Norborough tree of knowledge of good and evil;⁴ but it was resorted to simply in order that Mr. Sedgely should be entirely at his ease in giving all particulars of his narrative. The more horrible the revelation, the more certain was Mr. Grey to recount it all to Mrs. Grey directly their visitor had gone; and Mrs. Grey could seldom resist the temptation of telling the tale to the elder Miss Grey, as the mother and daughter sat over their needlework on the following morning. Mrs. Sedgely generally brought her contribution of gossip first to the Greys. If a tale had the sanction of Mrs. Grey, Mrs. Sedgely always felt much greater confidence in repeating it; so, for the sake of her own peace of mind, she generally brought her story up to Mrs. Grey to receive its credentials. For instance, about eleven o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Sedgely would come slowly into the warm dining-room where Mrs. Grey and her two daughters were sitting, give them each in silence a damp kiss, then sink into a chair, and say solemnly, ‘I suppose you have heard, dear Mrs. Grey?’ ‘Heard what, Miss Trotter?’ Mrs. Grey would say, in a snappish voice. Mrs. Sedgely had been, previous to her marriage, governess in Mrs. Grey’s family; and when Mrs. Grey wished to impress Mrs. Sedgely with a sense of her own superiority, she generally called her late dependant by her maiden name. This always had the effect of afflicting Mrs. Sedgely with a kind of nervous imbecility which made her longer in coming to the point than usual.

‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ she would say, with a melancholy smile. ‘They do say such things here. I am sure not more than half of them are true.’

‘What is it, Mrs. Sedgely?’ breaks in one of the young ladies.

‘Well, dear, I may be wrong. I shouldn’t like it repeated on my authority, but they do say that Mr. Hope, the new brush-maker, who married Miss Spence, has returned here with his bride in a third-class carriage.’

If Mrs. Grey replied to this, ‘Nonsense, Miss Trotter, I was in Mrs. Spence’s shop yesterday, and she told me that her daughter had not returned at all at present,’ Mrs. Sedgely would never regain sufficient confidence in her tale to be able to repeat it to her other friends. Whereas, if Mrs. Grey replied, ‘The Norborough tradesmen are mean enough for anything, Mrs. Sedgely,’ the good lady would go away with a light heart and repeat the story of this astonishing instance of stinginess half a dozen times a day for the next fortnight. At the end of which time the story had assumed the form that Mr. Hope was so mean that he had actually compelled his young wife to walk all the way from Gipping, the county town, to Norborough, a distance of twenty miles; that she had fainted on the doorstep of her new home, and that her life was now despaired of. In vain Mrs. Hope appeared at church, rosy and smiling, in her wedding bonnet and in a shawl of extraordinary splendour. Norborough insisted on shaking its head and saying, ‘Ah, poor thing! it’s all very well to put a good face upon it; she does bear up wonderful! But we know very well what she’s had to go through.’

Such were the subjects of thrilling interest that from time to time agitated the calm of Norborough society. Of the general course of foreign and domestic politics the Norborians took no heed. They knew that the Duke of Wellington was dead;⁵ they had been aware of the Crimean war and of the Indian mutiny.⁶ Towards the end of1870 some of the more active minds among them were beginning to seize the fact that Lord Palmerston⁷ had gone the way of all flesh; but of politics in the ordinary sense they were entirely innocent. Mr. Grey voted yellow;⁸ so did the rector; Mr. Ralph, the corn merchant, voted blue.⁹ So blue and yellow were pretty evenly balanced in the little town, for Mr. Ralph’s custom was worth as much as Mr. Grey’s and the rector’s put together. Mr. Ralph attended the London corn market on the first and third Monday in every month. He was therefore regarded by his neighbours as a prodigy of activity and business capacity. The other Norborians seldom ‘paid a visit to the great metropolis,’ as they called it. It required a Great Exhibition,¹⁰ or a National Thanksgiving, or a Duke of Wellington’s Funeral to draw them thither. Hence there was curious stillness and stagnation in the little place. The extravagance of Miss Spence in the matter of Sunday bonnets excited more interest in Norborough than the Orissa famine;¹¹ the misdoings of kings, emperors, and prime ministers sank into insignificance in comparison with the dissipations of Lieutenant Smalley.

Such was Norborough, the home for the first twenty years of her life of the heroine of this tale, Janet Doncaster.

CHAPTER II.
MRS. DONCASTER.

MRS. DONCASTER had come to Norborough, a widow, when Janet was three months old. She was a reserved woman, one who did not make friends quickly. Her manner was cold and unsympathetic, and repelled friendship more quickly than the pensive beauty of her features, the sweetness of her voice, or the sterling integrity of her character attracted it. She never had the power of attaching those about her very strongly to herself. She was upright and habitually unselfish. She was, however, blind to the fact that her life was narrow and dull, and presented but few attractions to the eager, enthusiastic child that shared her solitude. There were two things that lifted Mrs. Doncaster’s life out of the grey common-place in which so much of it was passed. The first, and by far the most important, was her deep religious fervour. The second was her love for Janet. Mrs. Doncaster’s religion was not of a very attractive sort: it was after the straitest sect of the Puritans – evangelical; but it gave her interests that transcended to her all earthly interests. Had it not been for her religion, her life would have been passed in the unbroken routine of domestic duties. She would have had no other interest more absorbing than that of making 350l. a year do the work of 400l. But her religion shot the dull fabric of her life with a golden thread. The Bible to her was a priceless treasure. It was read and re-read; the various passages were compared, annotated, and scored like a scholar’s Plato. The intensity of her love for Janet was based on her religious fervour. Janet was not merely her child; she was a precious soul, graciously vouchsafed to the keeping of her earthly parent, to be brought up to the honour and glory of her heavenly Father. Janet’s conversion was a possibility that tinged the whole of Mrs. Doncaster’s life with eager hopefulness. She would say to herself sometimes that she was certain that in His own time Janet would be brought into the fold of the one Shepherd. The child of so many prayers would never be allowed to become a castaway. At other times, when Janet’s conversion seemed as far off as ever, her mother’s despondency would deepen; she would appear for days with a white face and red eyes, because, perhaps, she had heard Janet singing ‘Auld Robin Gray’¹² in the garden on Sunday morning. Janet would be all the while profoundly unconscious of the cause of her mother’s distress. She was probably altogether unaware of having been guilty of singing a secular song on a sacred day. She would notice her mother’s depression, and think that perhaps she had had a disagreeable letter from grandpapa, or perhaps she had heard Lieutenant Smalley swearing at his dogs; for bad words disagreed with Mrs. Doncaster worse than heavy pastry. The relations between the mother and child did not admit of janet frankly asking her mother what was wrong; so Janet would be more than usually thoughtful and attentive to her mother; Mrs. Doncaster would recognise these loving offices as some sign that Janet was not at present dead in her sins, and her despondency would gradually disappear until it was renewed by some equally innocent transgression.

Mrs. Doncaster’s marriage had been a cause of a great rupture between herself and her parents. While yet a girl she had strongly disapproved what she considered the worldly and godless life of her family. She frequently felt herself bound to bear testimony to the faith that was in her by protesting against card-playing and frivolous conversation. Her example did not consequently make active Christianity popular in her immediate circle. She was a member of a wealthy family, and a liberal allowance was made to her, with the expectation that she would spend the greater part of it in dress, so that she might be an ornamental piece of the domestic furniture. She, however, never wore anything but a brown stuff gown, and devoted every shilling she could spare to Missionary Societies and Sunday Schools. Great was the chagrin of Mr. and Mrs. Finch, her father and mother, when she appeared at an evening party dressed, as her brothers and sisters said, ‘like a charity girl, and looking as if she saw nothing nearer than the land of Canaan.’ When remonstrated with on the subject she would rejoin, that she wished for nothing more than to be excused from joining such assemblies, as she believed them to be one of the great instruments for evil used by the enemy of souls. More than this she dared n...