"Twenty times the use a man is": Two Chronicles of Carlingford

Can there be too much of a good thing? I was once among those who approached the extremely prolific writers of the nineteenth century with skepticism and condescension. Given their astonishing productivity, how could authors such as Anthony Trollope (47 novels), Ellen Wood (51 novels), or George Sand (70 novels) be any good?

But more prolific than any of them was Margaret Oliphant, who published 98 novels before her death in 1897 at age 69. In an earlier post on her novel Miss Marjoribanks I discussed Oliphant's lifelong need to write in order to escape her deceased husband's debts and provide for two brothers (one an alcoholic, one a widowed business failure), two nieces, a nephew, and her two adult sons. None of her male dependents could bestir themselves to find gainful employment; they all lived off her earnings from publication, and all predeceased her.

The contrast between capable women and weak, ineffectual, vacillating, indolent, selfish, or just plain helpless men is a recurring theme in Oliphant's fiction. As Nettie Underwood says in The Doctor's Family, "a woman is, of course, twenty times the use a man is, in most things" (p. 170).

Oliphant was hugely popular in her day; in the 1860s she outsold Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope. But almost immediately after her death she fell into obscurity and her books went out of print. It wasn't until the late 1960s that her work found a champion in the critic Q.D. Leavis, and over the next two decades some of her books were reissued.

The Oliphant novels that are most often reprinted are the Chronicles of Carlingford series, possibly inspired by Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford novels and stories. By common consensus Miss Marjoribanks (pronounced "Marchbanks," 1866) is the best of her novels, and both it and Phoebe, Junior (1876), the final two books in the Carlingford series, made my Favorites of 2020: Books list.

Margaret Oliphant, ca. 1860. From The Bookman. Image source: Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two

Oliphant is still little known and undervalued, however: apparently deemed unsellable, a copy of the 1986 Virago Classics edition of The Rector and The Doctor's Family (1861), the second entry in the Carlingford series, recently showed up on the free cart at my local library book sale, and so found its way onto my shelves.  [1]

The Rector and The Doctor's Family brings together two works in which a character must take on a heavy and unanticipated duty. The title character of the 35-page The Rector is the new Rector of Carlingford, Morley Proctor, who is suddenly called to the deathbed of one of his parishioners. But Proctor is a socially awkward bachelor scholar of ancient Greek who has taken his new post primarily to provide his widowed mother with a comfortable home; he has no idea how to provide spiritual ease to a dying person.

The sufferer lay breathing heavily in the poor apartment. She did not look very ill to Mr Proctor's inexperienced eyes. Her colour was bright, and her face full of eagerness. Near the door stood Miss Wodehouse, looking compassionate but helpless, casting wistful glances at the bed, but standing back in a corner as confused and embarrassed as the Rector himself. [Miss Wodehouse's sister] Lucy was standing by the pillow of the sick woman with a watchful readiness visible to the most unskilled eye—ready to raise her, to change her position, to attend to her wants almost before they were expressed. . .The poor Rector, taking the seat which the little maid placed for him directly in the centre of the room, looked at the nurse and the patient with a gasp of perplexity and embarrassment. A deathbed, alas! was an unknown region to him.

"Oh, sir, I'm obliged to you for coming—oh, sir, I'm grateful to you," cried the poor woman in the bed. "I've been ill, off and on, for years, but never took thought to it as I ought. I've put off and put off, waiting for a better time—and now, God help me, it's perhaps too late. Oh, sir, tell me, when a person's ill and dying, is it too late?"

Before the Rector could even imagine what he could answer, the sick woman took up the broken thread of her own words, and continued—

"I don't feel to trust as I ought to—I don't feel no confidence," she said, in anxious confession. "Oh, sir, do you think it matters if one feels it?—don't you think things might be right all the same though we were uneasy in our minds? My thinking can't change it one way or another. Ask the good gentleman to speak to me, Miss Lucy, dear—he'll mind what you say."

A look from Lucy quickened the Rector's speech, but increased his embarrassments. "It—it isn't her doctor she has no confidence in?" he said, eagerly.

The poor woman gave a little cry. "The doctor—the doctor! what can he do to a poor dying creature? Oh, Lord bless you, it's none of them things I'm thinking of; it's my soul—my soul!"

"But my poor good woman," said Mr Proctor, "though it is very good and praiseworthy of you to be anxious about your soul, let us hope that there is no such—no such haste as you seem to suppose."

The patient opened her eyes wide, and stared, with the anxious look of disease, in his face.

"I mean," said the good man, faltering under that gaze, "that I see no reason for your making yourself so very anxious. Let us hope it is not so bad as that. You are very ill, but not so ill—I suppose."

Here the Rector was interrupted by a groan from the patient, and by a troubled, disapproving, disappointed look from Lucy Wodehouse. This brought him to a sudden standstill. He gazed for a moment helplessly at the poor woman in the bed. If he had known anything in the world which would have given her consolation, he was ready to have made any exertion for it; but he knew nothing to say—no medicine for a mind diseased was in his repositories. He was deeply distressed to see the disappointment which followed his words, but his distress only made him more silent, more helpless, more inefficient than before.

After an interval which was disturbed only by the groans of the patient and the uneasy fidgeting of good Miss Wodehouse in her corner, the Rector again broke silence. The sick woman had turned to the wall, and closed her eyes in dismay and disappointment—evidently she had ceased to expect anything from him.

"If there is anything I can do," said poor Mr Proctor, "I am afraid I have spoken hastily. I meant to try to calm her mind a little; if I can be of any use?"

". . .If you'd tell me—if you'd say a prayer—ah, Miss Lucy, it's coming on again."

In a moment Lucy had raised the poor creature in her arms, and in default of the pillows which were not at hand, had risen herself into their place, and supported the gasping woman against her own breast. It was a paroxysm dreadful to behold, in which every labouring breath seemed the last. The Rector sat like one struck dumb, looking on at that mortal struggle. Miss Wodehouse approached nervously from behind, and went up to the bedside, faltering forth questions as to what she could do. Lucy only waved her hand, as her own light figure swayed and changed, always seeking the easiest attitude for the sufferer. As the elder sister drew back, the Rector and she glanced at each other with wistful mutual looks of sympathy. Both were equally well-disposed, equally helpless and embarrassed. How to be of any use in that dreadful agony of nature was denied to both. They stood looking on, awed and self-reproaching. (pp. 22–24)

After his abject failure at this moment of crisis the Rector is confronted with unwelcome self-knowledge and faced with a life-altering choice.

The young doctor whose services are irrelevant to the dying woman's needs in "The Rector" is the focus of the novella The Doctor's Family. Edward Rider is struggling to establish a medical practice in Carlingford when his precarious situation is made catastrophically worse by the arrival in town of his ne'er-do-well brother Fred. [2]

Soon afterwards Fred's long-suffering wife Susan and Susan's younger but more active and competent sister Nettie show up on the doctor's doorstep, having followed Fred from Australia. This meeting marks the moment that Dr. Rider first learns that Fred has a family.

"Be seated, please," said the doctor, with dreadful civility, "and compose yourselves. Fred is well enough; as well as he ever is. I don't know," added poor Rider, with irrestrainable bitterness, "whether he is quite presentable to ladies; but I presume, madam, if you're his wife, you're acquainted with his habits. Excuse me for being quite unprepared for such a visit. I have not much leisure for anything out of my profession. I can scarcely spare these minutes, that is the truth; but if you will favour me with a few particulars, I will have the news conveyed to my brother. I—I beg your pardon. When a man finds he has new relations he never dreamed of, it naturally embarrasses him at the moment. May I ask if you ladies have come from Australia alone?"

"Oh, not alone; the children are at the hotel. Nettie said it was no use coming unless we all came," said his new sister-in-law, with a half-sob.

"The children!" Dr Rider's gasp of dismay was silent, and made no sound. He stood staring blankly at those wonderful invaders of his bachelor house, marvelling what was to be done with them in the first place. Was he to bring Fred down all slovenly and half-awakened? was he to leave them in possession of his private sanctuary? The precious morning moments were passing while he pondered, and his little groom fidgeted outside with a message for the doctor. While he stood irresolute, the indefatigable Nettie once more darted forward.

"Give me Fred's address, please," said this managing woman. "I'll see him, and prepare him for meeting Susan. He can say what he pleases to me; I don't mind it in the very least; but Susan of course must be taken care of. Now, look here, Dr Edward; Susan is your sister-in-law, and I am her sister. We don't want to occupy your time. I can manage everything; but it is quite necessary in the first place that you should confide in me."

"Confide!" cried the bewildered man. "Fred is not under my authority. He is here in my house much against my will. He is in bed, and not fit to be awakened; and I am obliged to tell you simply, ladies," said the unfortunate doctor, "that my house has no accommodation for a family. If you will go back to the hotel where you left the children"—and here the speaker gave another gasp of horror—"I'll have him roused and sent to you. It is the only thing I can do."

"Susan can go," said the prompt Nettie; "I'll stay here until Fred is ready, and take him to see them. It is necessary he should be prepared, you know. Don't talk nonsense, Susan—I shall stay here, and Dr Rider, of course, will call a cab for you."

"But Nettie, Nettie dear, it isn't proper. I can't leave you all by yourself in a strange house," remonstrated her sister.

"Don't talk such stuff; I am perfectly well able to take care of myself; I am not a London young lady," said the courageous Nettie. "It is perfectly unnecessary to say another word to me—I know my duty—I shall stay here."

With which speech she seated herself resolutely in that same easy-chair which Fred had lolled in last night. . .She sat there looking with her bright eyes into the vacant air before her, in a pretty attitude of determination and readiness, beating her little foot on the carpet. . .He could not tell in the world what to say to her. To order that creature out of his house was simply impossible; to remain there was equally so; to leave them in possession of the field—what could the unfortunate young doctor do? One thing was certain, the impatient patient could no longer be neglected; and after a few minutes longer of bewildered uncertainty, Dr Rider went off in the wildest confusion of mind, leaving his brother's unknown family triumphant in his invaded house. (pp. 50–52)

Of course, the doctor does not yet realize that he is utterly smitten by Nettie. Once he recognizes his own feelings, though, he is given pause by the prospect of Fred and his family hanging on as his dependents for the rest of their lives, and of Fred's deservedly poor reputation besmirching his own.

Some people are compelled to take the prose concerns of life into full consideration even when they are in love, and Edward Rider was one of these unfortunate individuals. The boldness which puts everything to the touch to gain or lose was not in this young man. He had been put to hard encounters enough in his day, and had learned to trust little to chance or good fortune. He did not possess the boldness which disarms an adverse fate, nor that confidence in his own powers which smooths down wounded pride, and accounts even for failure. He was, perhaps it is only right to say, not very capable of heroism: but he was capable of seeing the lack of the heroic in his own composition, and of feeling bitterly his own self-reproaches, and the remarks of the world, which is always so ready to taunt the very cowardice it creates. . .Dr Rider, eager as love and youth could make him, was yet incapable of shutting his eyes to the precipice at his feet. That he despised himself for doing so, did not make the matter easier. These were the limits of his nature, and beyond them he could not pass. (p. 97)

But even if Dr. Rider is able to overcome his concerns about his brother and his family, will Nettie's overwhelming sense of duty to her sister's children and their mother allow her to acknowledge and return Dr. Rider's feelings?

Nettie did not know why the wind went so chill to her heart after she had taken off her shawl. She did not see the unequal sod under her feet as she went back upon that dread and solemn road. Nothing in the world but what she had to do occupied the throbbing heroic heart. There was nobody else to do it. How could the girl help but execute the work put into her hand?. . .Nettie did not think over these particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She did not imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was nobody else to do it—that was the simple secret of her strength. (pp. 114, 118)

The stories brought together in The Rector and The Doctor's Family span nearly the full range of tone that Oliphant commands in the Chronicles of Carlingford, from the appalling horror of death to the familiar comedy of acute social discomfiture. As I wrote of Oliphant's fiction in the post on Miss Marjoribanks, "as long as there are readers who appreciate wicked irony, keen wit, emotional complexity, and independent, self-directed women, [it] will be (re)discovered, and treasured." The Chronicles of Carlingford are available as ebooks through Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and HathiTrust.

Margaret Oliphant by Frederick Sandys, 1881. Image source: National Portrait Gallery, London

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1. The Chronicles of Carlingford series includes the story "The Executor," (1861) and the volumes The Rector and The Doctor's Family (1861), Salem Chapel (1863), The Perpetual Curate (1864), Miss Marjoribanks (1866), and Phoebe, Junior (1876)
2. The established physician in Carlingford, who treats all the well-to-do patients in Grange Lane, is Dr. Marjoribanks. The old doctor is nearing retirement, and Dr. Rider has considered proposing marriage to his only daughter Lucilla as a means of ensuring that he will inherit the practice.