Archidiaconissa de Silverbridge in comitatu Barnensi
I invite a brief Trollopean account of what Mr Archdeacon Grantley said when he heard that Dr Proudie had preferred Miss Slope to the Archdeaconry of Silverbridge.
It is not to be countenanced; it is impossible. Slope! Slope! That odious, obsequious, officious snake. Is it not enough that, swept along by the crinolines of the bishop’s wife, he disturbed the good order of the diocese and degraded the good name of its clergy? Oh no! Being banished he has bred his venom and dispatches to us Miss Slope. I tell you, Dean, this preferment must be prevented, stopped in its tracks. Are we now to be ruled by a prissy miss, a Sunday school fanatic, a Sabbatarian in zealots’ stockings? We must to the bishop straightaway and make him see the error of his ways. We know well, do we not, that the bishop’s mind, such as it is, having shunted up the hill, is quite as likely to roll back down the self-same incline. The only apron that Miss Slope will wear is that of the kitchen.
It is not to be countenanced; it is impossible. Slope! Slope! That odious, obsequious, officious snake. Is it not enough that, swept along by the crinolines of the bishop’s wife, he disturbed the good order of the diocese and degraded the good name of its clergy? Oh no! Being banished he has bred his venom and dispatches to us Miss Slope. I tell you, Dean, this preferment must be prevented, stopped in its tracks. Are we now to be ruled by a prissy miss, a Sunday school fanatic, a Sabbatarian in zealots’ stockings? We must to the bishop straightaway and make him see the error of his ways. We know well, do we not, that the bishop’s mind, such as it is, having shunted up the hill, is quite as likely to roll back down the self-same incline. The only apron that Miss Slope will wear is that of the kitchen.
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