Framley Parsonage Anthony Trollope (best english novels for beginners .TXT) đ
- Author: Anthony Trollope
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But as regards Mrs. Grantly it may be said that she moved in an unending procession of stately ovation. It must not be supposed that she continually talked to her friends and neighbours of Lord Dumbello and the marchioness. She was by far too wise for such folly as that. The coming alliance having been once announced, the name of Hartletop was hardly mentioned by her out of her own domestic circle. But she assumed, with an ease that was surprising even to herself, the airs and graces of a mighty woman. She went through her work of morning calls as though it were her business to be affable to the country gentry. She astonished her sister, the deanâs wife, by the simplicity of her grandeur; and condescended to Mrs. Proudie in a manner which nearly broke that ladyâs heart. âI shall be even with her yet,â said Mrs. Proudie to herself, who had contrived to learn various very deleterious circumstances respecting the Hartletop family since the news about Lord Dumbello and Griselda had become known to her.
Griselda herself was carried about in the procession, taking but little part in it of her own, like an Eastern god. She suffered her motherâs caresses and smiled in her motherâs face as she listened to her own praises, but her triumph was apparently within. To no one did she say much on the subject, and greatly disgusted the old family housekeeper by declining altogether to discuss the future Dumbello mĂ©nage. To her aunt, Mrs. Arabin, who strove hard to lead her into some openhearted speech as to her future aspirations, she was perfectly impassive. âOh, yes, aunt, of course,â and âIâll think about it, aunt Eleanor,â or âOf course I shall do that if Lord Dumbello wishes it.â Nothing beyond this could be got from her; and so, after half-a-dozen ineffectual attempts, Mrs. Arabin abandoned the matter.
But then there arose the subject of clothesâ âof the wedding trousseau! Sarcastic people are wont to say that the tailor makes the man. Were I such a one, I might certainly assert that the milliner makes the bride. As regarding her bridehood, in distinction either to her girlhood or her wifehoodâ âas being a line of plain demarcation between those two periods of a womanâs lifeâ âthe milliner does do much to make her. She would be hardly a bride if the trousseau were not there. A girl married without some such appendage would seem to pass into the condition of a wife without any such line of demarcation. In that moment in which she finds herself in the first fruition of her marriage finery she becomes a bride; and in that other moment, when she begins to act upon the finest of these things as clothes to be packed up, she becomes a wife.
When this subject was discussed Griselda displayed no lack of a becoming interest. She went to work steadily, slowly, and almost with solemnity, as though the business in hand were one which it would be wicked to treat with impatience. She even struck her mother with awe by the grandeur of her ideas and the depth of her theories. Nor let it be supposed that she rushed away at once to the consideration of the great fabric which was to be the ultimate sign and mark of her status, the quintessence of her briding, the outer veil, as it were, of the tabernacleâ ânamely, her wedding-dress. As a great poet works himself up by degrees to that inspiration which is necessary for the grand turning point of his epic, so did she slowly approach the hallowed ground on which she would sit, with her ministers around her, when about to discuss the nature, the extent, the design, the colouring, the structure, and the ornamentation of that momentous piece of apparel. No; there was much indeed to be done before she came to this; and as the poet, to whom I have already alluded, first invokes his muse, and then brings his smaller events gradually out upon his stage, so did Miss Grantly with sacred fervour ask her motherâs aid, and then prepare her list of all those articles of underclothing which must be the substratum for the visible magnificence of her trousseau.
Money was no object. We all know what that means; and frequently understand, when the words are used, that a blaze of splendour is to be attained at the cheapest possible price. But, in this instance, money was no object;â âsuch an amount of money, at least, as could by any possibility be spent on a ladyâs clothes, independently of her jewels. With reference to diamonds and suchlike, the archdeacon at once declared his intention of taking the matter into his own handsâ âexcept in so far as Lord Dumbello, or the Hartletop interest, might be
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