The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

I.--Hiram's Hospital

The Rev. Septimus Harding was a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of Barchester.

Mr. Harding had married early in life, and was the father of two daughters. The elder, Susan, had been married some twelve years since to the Rev. Dr. Theophilus Grantly, son of the bishop, archdeacon of Barchester, and rector of Plumstead Episcopi, and a few months after her marriage her father became precentor of Barchester Cathedral. The younger daughter, Eleanor, was twenty-four years of age.

Now there are peculiar circumstances connected with the precentorship which must be explained. In the year 1434 there died at Barchester one John Hiram, who had made money in the town as a wool-stapler, and in his will he left the house in which he died and certain meadows and closes near the town for the support of twelve superannuated wool-carders; he also appointed that an alms-house should be built for their abode, with a fitting residence for a warden, which warden was also to receive a certain sum annually out of the rents of the said meadows and closes. He, moreover, willed that the precentor of the cathedral should have the option of being also warden of the alms-house, if the bishop approved.

From that day to this the charity had gone on and prospered--at least, the charity had gone on, and the estates had prospered. The bedesmen received one shilling and fourpence a day and a comfortable lodging. The stipend of the precentor was £80 a year. The income arising from the wardenship of the hospital was £800, besides the value of the house.

Murmurs had been heard in Barchester--few indeed and far between--that the proceeds of John Hiram's property had not been fairly divided; the thing had been whispered, and Mr. Harding had heard it. And Mr. Harding, being an open-handed, just-minded man, had, on his instalment, declared his intention of adding twopence a day to each man's pittance.

Mr. Harding was a small man, now verging on sixty years. His warmest admirers could not say that he had ever been an industrious man; the circumstances of his life had not called on him to so; and yet he could hardly be called an idler. He had greatly improved the choir of Barchester, and taken something more than his fair share in the cathedral services. He was generous to all, but especially to the twelve old men who were under his care. With an income of £800 a year and only one daughter, Mr. Harding should have been above the world, but he was not above Archdeacon Grantly, and was always more or less in debt to his son-in-law, who had to a certain extent assumed the management of the precentor's pecuniary affairs.

Mr. Harding had been precentor of Barchester for ten years when the murmurs respecting the proceeds of Hiram's estate again became audible. He was aware that two of his old men had been heard to say that if everyone had his own, they might each have their hundred pounds a year, and live like gentlemen, instead of a beggarly one shilling and sixpence a day. One of this discontented pair, Abel Handy, had been put into the hospital by Mr. Harding himself; he had been a stonemason in Barchester, and had broken his thigh by a fall from a scaffolding. (Dr. Grantly had been very anxious to put into it instead an insufferable clerk of his at Plumstead, who had lost all his teeth, and whom the archdeacon hardly knew how to get rid of by other means.) There was living at Barchester a young man, a surgeon, named John Bold, and both Mr. Harding and Dr. Grantly were well aware that to him was owing the pestilent rebellious feeling which had shown itself in the hospital; and the renewal, too, of that disagreeable talk about Hiram's estates which was again prevalent in Barchester. Nevertheless, Mr. Harding and Mr. Bold were acquainted with each other, and were friends in spite of the great disparity in their years; for John Bold--whose father had been a physician in London, who had bought property in Barchester and retired to die there--was not more than twenty-seven years old at this time.

John Bold was a clever man, but, having enough to live on since his father's death, he had not been forced to work for bread. In three years he had not taken three fees, but he frequently bound up the bruises and set the limbs of such of the poorer classes as professed his way of thinking. Bold was a strong reformer. His passion was the reform of all abuses, and he was thoroughly sincere in his patriotic endeavours to mend mankind. No wonder that Dr. Grantly regarded Bold as a firebrand and a demagogue, and would have him avoided as the plague. But the old Doctor and Mr. Harding had been fast friends and young Johnny Bold used to play as a boy on Mr. Harding's lawn.

Eleanor Harding had not plighted her troth to John Bold, but she could not endure that anyone should speak harshly of him; she cared little to go to houses where she would not meet him, and, in fact, she was in love. Nor was there any reason why Eleanor Harding should not love John Bold. His character was in all respects good; he had sufficient income to support a wife, and, above all, he was in love with her. Mr. Harding himself saw no reason why his daughter should not love John Bold.