E-text prepared by
Delphine Lettau and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
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| Waiting-Room at the Assize Court. Click to ENLARGE |
THE
VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON.
BY
ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
WITH THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. WOODS.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., 11, BOUVERIE STREET.
1870.
PREFACE.
The writing of prefaces is, for the most part, work thrown away; andthe writing of a preface to a novel is almost always a vain thing.Nevertheless, I am tempted to prefix a few words to this novel on itscompletion, not expecting that many people will read them, butdesirous, in doing so, of defending myself against a charge which maypossibly be made against me by the critics,—as to which I shall beunwilling to revert after it shall have been preferred.
I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a girlwhom I will call,—for want of a truer word that shall not in itstruth be offensive,—a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow her withqualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought her back atlast from degradation at least to decency. I have not married her toa wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain that though therewas possible to her a way out of perdition, still things could not bewith her as they would have been had she not fallen.
There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, whoprofesses to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,should allow himself to bring upon his stage such a character as thatof Carry Brattle? It is not long since,—it is well within the memoryof the author,—that the very existence of such a condition of life,as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and daughters,and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that ignorancewas good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer is beyondquestion. Then arises that further question,—how far the conditionof such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern to the sweetyoung hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness of thought is amatter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women, who are good, pitythe sufferings of the vicious, and do something perhaps to mitigateand shorten them, without contamination from the vice? It will beadmitted probably by most men who have thought upon the subject thatno fault among us is punished so heavily as that fault, often solight in itself but so terrible in its consequences to the lessfaulty of the two offenders, by which a woman falls. All her own sexis against her,—and all those of the other sex in whose veins runsthe blood which she is thought to have contaminated, and who, ofnature, would befriend her were her trouble any other than it is.
She is what she is, and remains in her abject, pitiless, unutterablemisery, be