Lush, Mr. Thomas Cranmer

Mr. Grandcourt's general factotum and toady, a man educated for the Church, who preferred the lazy luxury of the life of a rich man's companion to the activity of a clerical career. "A middle aged man, with dark, full face and fat hands… prominent eyes, fat though not clumsy figure, and strong black grey-besprinkled hair of frizzy thickness." "Mr. Lush had passed for a scholar once, and had still a sense of scholarship when he was not trying to remember much of it; but the bachelor's and other arts which softened manners are a time-honoured preparation for sinecures, and Lush's present comfortable provision was as good as a sinecure in not requiring more than the odour of departed learning . . . Lush's love of ease was well satisfied at present, and if his puddings were rolled towards him in the dust, he took the inside bits and found them relishing." He schemes to have Grandcourt many the rich Miss Arrowpoint, and disapproves of his attentions to Gwendolen Harleth. Failing to influence Grandcourt, he arranges to have Mrs. Glasher see Gwendolen, hoping that the story of Mrs. Glasher's relations with Grandcourt may drive Gwendolen to refuse him. From the beginning Gwendolen feels a marked antipathy for Mr. Lush, and when she marries Grandcourt her influence banishes him for awhile, but he is eventually recalled, and is the one deputed to tell Gwendolen of the disagreeable provisions in her husband's will.

<em>Daniel Deronda</em>

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