Jane and the Canterbury Tale by Stephanie Barron

Author:Stephanie Barron
Language: nld
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Austeniana, female sleuth, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780553386714
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2010-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Correspondence

The worm of conscience will shudder, and somehow show

Wickedness its face, which may well be

Hidden from all the world but God and he.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE PHYSICIAN’S TALE”

SUNDAY, 24 OCTOBER 1813

MR. SHERER, OUR EXCELLENT AND MOST REVEREND MR. Sherer of St. Lawrence Church, whose sermons so frequently envigour the flagging Christian spirit, is vicar also of Westwell—a neighbouring village in Kent—and from this multiplicity of livings, which any clergyman’s wife must rejoice in, as ensuring the Sherers’ worldly comfort and survival, has come a peculiar evil, in that Mr. Sherer is forced to quit his excellent vicarage here at Godmersham, and repair to Westwell for a period of full three years—the curate charged with supplying Mr. Sherer’s duties in that place having failed to suit the parishioners so well as they should like. The complaints that have come to Mr. Sherer’s ears in recent months have so alarmed that assiduous gentleman, that nothing will do but the curate must be got rid of. What the poor fellow’s crimes may have been—a disinclination for sermon-making, a persistent stutter, or perhaps too glad an eye to the ladies of Westwell—I cannot tell; Mr. Sherer will not speak of them, but only look grave, while Mrs. Sherer casts up her eyes to Heaven.

“These young men, Miss Austen, ought not to consider Holy Orders, if the vocation is not upon them,” she says, with all the vicarious complaisance of one who has married an Emissary of Providence. “Too many are simply out for all they can get.”

“And if they are, who can blame them?” Mr. Sherer observed heavily as he quaffed my brother’s sherry, tea being too dangerous an offering for the Sabbath. “The world offers such young men but poor examples of clerical life! If one were to credit the world of Fashion, we are all scoundrels and renegades! Only consider the insults to which the Divine Work of Holy Orders is subjected, among the novelists and playwrights of the stage!”

“Oh, the stage,” Mrs. Sherer returned dismissively. She is a plump woman with protuberant blue eyes, much given to fondling the bugle beads that adorn her bodice, of which she is inordinately proud. “If you look for respect for the Cloth, my dear, among the swaggerers of Covent Garden, I despair of you! But surely there are many admirable portraits of the Clergy in works of literature? I do not speak of novels—”

“I beg you will not utter the word, my dear,” Mr. Sherer declared, with a look of pain, and a hand pressed to his brow. “When I consider of the hectic success of that vulgar work—you know the one I would mean, that all the young ladies hereabouts are forever consulting—and the shameful picture of its clergyman, so very worthy a young man I thought, and feeling just as he ought about his Patroness—so quick to apologise whenever his natural feelings outstripped his good sense—”

“I think you must refer to Mr. Collins,” Fanny interposed, without a hint of betrayal in her voice.

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