Trollope’s fiction contains a number of characters who are described as “queer.” In Barchester Towers, the Archdeacon talks to his wife about the new vicar, the Reverend Francis Arabin, who is coming to stay with them. “‘He’s very queer, isn’t he?’ asked the wife. ‘Well – he is a little odd in some of his fancies; but there’s nothing about him you won’t like . . .’” (BT ch. 14). Attending a dinner at Gatherum Castle in Doctor Thorne, Frank asks his clergyman friend Mr. Athill about the other guests: “Who is that funny little man sitting there. . .? I never saw such a queer fellow in my life” – the object of scrutiny is the former apothecary, Mr. Bolus (DT ch. 19). In the same novel, Frank remarks of his sister’s fiance´, the ambitious and unreliable Mr. Moffat, that “for an engaged lover he seems to me to have a very queer way with him.” To a modern reader, the nature of this queerness seems plain enough: “he was a nice, dapper man,” we are told, with “very nicely brushed” dark hair, carefully trimmed whiskers, “very white” hands; he has a limp handshake, he simpers, he speaks in “a pretty, mincing voice.” He seems remarkably reticent for a supposedly enthusiastic suitor: “Frank, poor fellow! who was of a coarser mould, would, under such circumstances, have been all for kissing” (DT ch. 15).