Barton, Rev. Amos

Curate of Shepperton; a commonplace man with a large family and insufficient means. In his mediocre way he tries to attend to all parish duties, but with a small stipend can never make both ends meet, and has to be helped by his parishioners and his squire. Dazzled by the Countess Czerlaski's pretended gentility, he receives her into his family when she quarrels with her brother, and thus increases the existing gossip and alienates his parishioners. He regains their regard only when crushed under the grief of Milly's death. The original of Amos Barton was the Rev. John Gwyther, B.A., curate of Chilvers Coton during George Eliot's girlhood and, later, vicar of Fewston, York shire, where he died in 1873.

Text