a Tail
XLVII. How the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked
to the Wedding

CHAPTER I

The Greshams of Greshamsbury

Before the reader is introduced to the modest country medical
practitioner who is to be the chief personage of the following
tale, it will be well that he should be made acquainted with some
particulars as to the locality in which, and the neighbours among
whom, our doctor followed his profession.

There is a county in the west of England not so full of life, indeed,
nor so widely spoken of as some of its manufacturing leviathan
brethren in the north, but which is, nevertheless, very dear to those
who know it well. Its green pastures, its waving wheat, its deep
and shady and--let us add--dirty lanes, its paths and stiles, its
tawny-coloured, well-built rural churches, its avenues of beeches,
and frequent Tudor mansions, its constant county hunt, its social
graces, and the general air of clanship which pervades it, has made
it to its own inhabitants a favoured land of Goshen. It is purely
agricultural; agricultural in its produce, agricultural in its poor,
and agricultural in its pleasures. There are towns in it, of course;
depots from whence are brought seeds and groceries, ribbons and
fire-shovels; in which markets are held and county balls are carried
on; which return members to Parliament, generally--in spite of Reform
Bills, past, present, and coming--in accordance with the dictates
of some neighbouring land magnate: from whence emanate the country
postmen, and where is located the supply of post-horses necessary
for county visitings. But these towns add nothing to the importance
of the county; they consist, with the exception of the assize town,
of dull, all but death-like single streets. Each possesses two
pumps, three hotels, ten shops, fifteen beer-houses, a beadle, and a
market-place.

Indeed, the town population of the county reckons for nothing when
the importance of the county is discussed, with the exception, as
before said, of the assize town, which is also a cathedral city.
Herein is a clerical aristocracy, which is certainly not without its
due weight. A resident bishop, a resident dean, an archdeacon, three
or four resident prebendaries, and all their numerous chaplains,
vicars, and ecclesiastical satellites, do make up a society
sufficiently powerful to be counted as something by the county
squirearchy. In other respects the greatness of Barsetshire de