The Curate in Charge by Mrs. Oliphant is a novel set in Brentburn. The story is about a
standalone country curate who is doing an excellent job in his profession but he lacks an
ambitious goal. This is unimportant to him but we soon see how crucial it is to those who rely
on him. He gets married twice and has two teen daughters and then two young twin boys. Because
of the system in place at the time when his parish is transferred to another he is out of
employment and no one can help him. Even a very kind gentleman who has been appointed rector
cannot assist him. Now his teen daughter Cecily has to take the burden of her whole family and
she is all alone to take a rather challenging decision... Excerpt: Mr. Chester was a very good
scholar and a man of very refined tastes. He had lived in his rooms at Oxford and in various
choice regions of the world specially in France and Italy up to the age of forty indulging
all his favourite (and quite virtuous) tastes and living a very pleasant if not a very useful
life. He had a little fortune of his own and he had his fellowship and was able to keep up
congenial society and to indulge himself in almost all the indulgences he liked. Why he should
have accepted the living of Brentburn it would be hard to say I suppose there is always an
attraction even to the most philosophical in a few additional hundreds a year. He took it
keeping out poor Arlington who had the next claim and who wanted to marry and longed for a
country parish. Mr. Chester did not want to marry and hated everything parochial but he took
the living all the same. He came to live at Brentburn in the beginning of summer furnishing
the house substantially with Turkey carpets and huge mountains of mahogany.
