A Tale of a Lonely Parish

A Tale of a Lonely Parish

F. Marion Crawford's "A Tale of a Lonely Parish" opens with the Reverend Augustin Ambrose, aging vicar of the small Essex parish of Billingsfield, who supplements his meager income by tutoring pupils for university entrance. Once a promising Trinity College Fellow, he sacrificed brilliant prospects by marrying young and settling for the modest living of Billingsfield, where he and his practical, orderly wife raised two successful children. Among his pupils are the idle but amiable Honourable Cornelius Angleside and John Short, a poor but brilliant boy Ambrose tutors out of charity for the sake of an old friendship with John's struggling literary father. One summer day, John glimpses a beautiful, sorrowful lady in black and her small daughter Nellie visiting the vicarage; he falls into a boyish infatuation, writing odes to her without even knowing her name. John then departs for Trinity College, where he throws himself into poverty-stricken but determined study, winning scholarships and acclaim while corresponding little with Billingsfield. Meanwhile, the mysterious lady, Mrs. Mary Goddard, writes to Ambrose asking to rent the parish's empty cottage, having confided some painful, disgraceful secret to him alone. She settles in Billingsfield with Nellie, living in deliberate obscurity, and gradually becomes part of the small vicarage social circle, though Mrs. Ambrose remains faintly suspicious of her. Two years later, the long-disputed Juxon estate finally clears Chancery, and Charles James Juxon, an amiable, well-traveled bachelor and book collector, arrives to take up residence at the Hall. He quickly befriends the vicarage and grows steadily attached to his charming tenant Mrs. Goddard, visiting her almost daily, though neither speaks of it as courtship. Mrs. Goddard, wary of exposure and entanglement, nonetheless finds herself drawn to him too. After two and a half years away, John returns to Billingsfield for a Christmas visit, now a confident young scholar on the verge of competing for the Tripos. Meeting Mrs. Goddard again, he instantly rekindles and intensifies his old infatuation, now directed at a real, known woman rather than a nameless ideal. He confesses his history of secret odes to her, half-charms and half-amuses her, and quickly falls into open rivalry with Juxon for her attention—pushing her chair, monopolizing conversation, and bristling with jealousy. Mrs. Goddard, flattered but treating him as a clever boy a decade her junior, does not take his devotion seriously, though she enjoys the novelty of his youthful ardor. Increasingly desperate, John privately asks Ambrose whether Juxon intends to marry Mrs. Goddard, inadvertently revealing his own infatuation. The horrified vicar declares the idea of John proposing to a woman ten years his senior absurd and forbids any rash action, extracting John's promise to wait until after his examinations. Mrs. Ambrose, meanwhile, deduces the secret herself and grows coolly disapproving. John abruptly announces he must leave early, seeks out Mrs. Goddard for a final private meeting (interrupted by Nellie's presence), and departs still resolved to win honors and eventually declare himself. The narrative breaks off mid-conversation between John and Mrs. Goddard, with his hopes, her ambivalence, and Juxon's quiet, steady claim on her affection all still unresolved.

By F. Marion Crawford · First published 1891 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age, Drama · 24 chapters · 126,281 words

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The Reverend Augustin Ambrose would gladly have given up taking pupils. He was growing old and his sight was beginning to trouble him; he was very weary of Thucydides, of Homer, of the works of Mr. Todhunter of which the green bindings expressed a hope still unrealised, of conic sections -- even of his beloved Horace. He was tired of the stupidities of the dull young men who were sent to him because they could not "keep up", and he had long ceased to be surprised or interested by the remarks of the clever ones who were sent to him because their education had not prepared them for an English University. The dull ones could never be made to understand anything, though Mr. Ambrose generally succeeded in making them remember enough to matriculate, by dint of ceaseless repetition and a system of _memoria technica_ which embraced most things necessary to the salvation of dull youth.

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Gothic fiction · Mystery · Supernatural · Rural setting · Isolation · Loneliness · Parish life · Clergy · Village drama · Secrets · Suspense · Atmospheric

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More by F. Marion Crawford