EBZ318H Rector’s kind and ceremonious

Considering how entirely26 he secluded27 himself, my father was, as many people living remember, wonderfully popular in his county. He was neighbourly in everything except in seeing company and mixing in society. He had magnificent shooting, of which he was extremely liberal. He kept a pack of hounds at Dollerton, with which all his side of the county hunted through the season. He never refused any claim upon his purse which had the slightest show of reason. He subscribed28 to every fund, social, charitable, sporting, agricultural, no matter what, provided the honest people of his county took an interest in it, and always with a princely hand; and although he shut himself up, no one could say that he was inaccessible29, for he devoted30 hours daily to answering letters, and his checque-book contributed largely in those replies. He had taken his turn long ago as High Sheriff; so there was an end of that claim before his oddity and shyness had quite secluded him. He refused the Lord–Lieutenancy of his county; he declined every post of personal distinction connected with it. He could write an able as well as a genial31 letter when he pleased; and his appearances at public meetings, dinners, and so forth32 were made in this epistolary fashion, and, when occasion presented, by magnificent contributions from his purse.

 

If my father had been less goodnatured in the sporting relations of his vast estates, or less magnificent in dealing33 with his fortune, or even if he had failed to exhibit the intellectual force which always characterised his letters on public matters, I dare say that his oddities would have condemned34 him to ridicule35, and possibly to dislike. But every one of the principal gentlemen of his county, whose judgment36 was valuable, has told me that he was a remarkably37 able man, and that his failure in public life was due to his eccentricities38, and in no respect to deficiency in those peculiar39 mental qualities which make men feared and useful in Parliament.

 

I could not forbear placing on record this testimony40 to the high mental and the kindly qualities of my beloved father, who might have passed for a misanthrope41 or a fool. He was a man of generous nature and powerful intellect, but given up to the oddities of a shyness which grew with years and indulgence, and became inflexible with his disappointments and affliction.

 

There was something even in the Rector’s kind and ceremonious greeting which oddly enough reflected the mixed feelings in which awe8 was not without a place, with which his neighbours had regarded my dear father.

 

Having done these honours — I am sure looking woefully pale — I had time to glance quietly at the only figure there with which I was not tolerably familiar. This was the junior partner in the firm of Archer42 and Sleigh who represented my uncle Silas — a fat and pallid43 man of six-and-thirty, with a sly and evil countenance, and it has always seemed to me, that ill dispositions45 show more repulsively46 in a pale fat face than in any other.