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He had been to Winchester and to Oxford , and his conversation impressed the fact upon one with frequency . Hayward talked of _ Richard Feverel _ and _ Madame Bovary _ , of Verlaine , Dante , and Matthew Arnold . Then Mr. Goodworthy came in to say that Mr. Carter had arrived . There was the Vicar of Whitestone , a parish a little way from Blackstable : he was a bachelor and to give himself something to do had lately taken up farming : the local paper constantly reported the cases he had in the county court against this one and that , labourers he would not pay their wages to or tradesmen whom he accused of cheating him ; scandal said he starved his cows , and there was much talk about some general action which should be taken against him . He moved in the most intellectual circles : he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped nose at Tennyson ; he knew all the details of Shelley 's treatment of Harriet ; he dabbled in the history of art ( on the walls of his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts , Burne-Jones , and Botticelli ) ; and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character .