The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Way They Lived Then, by Taylor Prewitt This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: The Way They Lived Then Serious Interviews, Strong Women, and Lessons for Life in the Novels of Anthony Trollope Author: Taylor Prewitt Release Date: August 28, 2018 [eBook #57792] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN*** E-text prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. Copyright (C) 2013 by Taylor Prewitt book cover THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN Serious Interviews, Strong Women, and Lessons for Life in the Novels of Anthony Trollope by Taylor Prewitt Westfield Press Copyright 2013 by Taylor Prewitt All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition ISBN 978-0615866420 Westfield Press Fort Smith, Arkansas For Mary and Kendrick, Ellen, and Sally CONTENTS Introduction Required Reading for the Seminary The Warden The Church in Peace and War Barchester Towers Trollope's Alter Ego Doctor Thorne An All-Star Cast Framley Parsonage The Swell, the Hobbledehoy, and the Small House The Small House at Allington The Victory of the Righteous The Last Chronicle of Barset Can You Forgive a few Additions to the Text? Can You Forgive Her? English Politics 101 Phineas Finn A Cunning Woman The Eustace Diamonds How the Women Took Care of Phineas Phineas Redux "Are Not Politics Odd?" The Prime Minister The Old Order Passeth The Duke's Children Ruins, Ruin, and Ruined The Macdermots of Ballycloran The Irish as Others See Them The Kellys and the O'Kellys A Tale of No City La Vendée The Office The Three Clerks The Proud Young Lovers The Bertrams Coping with Starvation Castle Richmond The Lady Faces Them Down Orley Farm Lear Revisited The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson: By One of the Firm Bringing Good Beer to Devon Rachel Ray "He Cometh Not; I Am Aweary" Miss Mackenzie The School of Self-Assertiveness The Belton Estate Love Conquers All, In the Ninth Inning Nina Balatka: The Story of a Maiden of Prague More than Soap Opera, More than Fairy Tale The Claverings Several Degrees of Stubborn Linda Tressel The Downside of Chivalry He Knew He Was Right The Prodigal Daughter The Vicar of Bullhampton A Terminal Affection Sir Harry Hotspur The Heir and the Bastard Ralph the Heir A Hard Case The Golden Lion of Granpere How to Become a Lady Lady Anna Territory Folks Should Stick Together Harry Heathcote of Gangoil The Way They Lived Then The Way We Live Now What's a Poor Girl to Do? The American Senator Lesser Barchester Is He Popenjoy? Too Near the Precipice An Eye for An Eye What Happens in Australia … John Caldigate A Gifted Child Ayala's Angel Keeping the Old Acreage Together Cousin Henry What to Do About Muddy Boots Dr. Wortle's School The Curse of Consumption Marion Fay The Dog That Wouldn't Stay Under the Bed Kept in the Dark The Advance Directive The Fixed Period Details about Entails Mr. Scarborough's Family Promises, Promises An Old Man's Love Running in Full Stride at the End The Landleaguers INTRODUCTION Several pleasant hosts wearing the blue and orange scarves or bow ties of the Trollope Society were circulating through the crowd on a May evening at the Knickerbocker Club in New York, making conversation and bringing the outliers among us into small groupings to join in. These board members were faithfully performing their task of "pushing the ball along," as Trollope sometimes put it, at the society's annual dinner. Comparing notes as to what Trollope novel we had last read was the default gambit. One of the books mentioned was Kept in the Dark; another was He Knew He was Right—a bit beyond the entry-level Barsetshire and Palliser series. These reviews of all forty-seven of Trollope's novels were written somewhat in the spirit of such dinner-table chatter as one might hear at a meeting of the Trollope Society—appreciative, mostly, but not without a word of criticism here and there. The guests I met were stockbrokers, booksellers, doctors, retirees; and these reviews were written by and for such a reader as one might encounter at a cocktail party—whose interests are a bit more informal than those of grad students searching for original information and insights for their dissertations. It so happens that my wife and I were introduced to Anthony Trollope through Simon Raven's BBC production of The Pallisers in 1974; a few subsequent television series have brought in other novels. This may qualify as a response to the public media. But if there is any common thread among the faithful readers of Trollope, it is a willingness to pick up something to read that is not on the current best seller list, hardly on a book club list, not something that everyone is talking about. The better-known and more frequently read of his novels are pretty long. A few have told me that they have read all six of the Barsetshire series, or all six of the Palliser series. A few have stepped out beyond these familiar confines to the relatively uncharted void of his other thirty-five novels. A couple of these, the acclaimed The Way We Live Now and He Knew He Was Right, are available as video copies of television productions. Several others are sitting there on the shelf, waiting for some genius to bring them forward in similar fashion. I have entertained myself at times with generating my own candidates: among these are Orley Farm, The Claverings, and The American Senator. Trollope sabotaged his own reputation with his disclosure of his writing habits, and it may never recover. The very idea that anyone could approach writing without appealing to the muse, just getting up every morning and doing it—two hours every morning, with a self-imposed quota of words to write! The muse was not amused, and her devotees have been unforgiving. If this confession had been well known during his years in service, I suspect that his advancement would have been significantly curtailed. The public requires its geniuses to be seized by the spirit. It's not as if just anybody could do it. An inspired author must rise from a dinner table full of guests when gripped by his muse, as did Charles Dickens, and, as if in a trance, transcribe the words dictated by the spirit. Any respectable agent, if Trollope had had one, would surely have warned him about the risks of overexposure. Even the great and prolific Dickens wrote only about a dozen novels. Jane Austen wrote six. George Eliot and the Brontes only wrote a few. A prodigious writer must necessarily have a little tool box, deploying and mixing different plot devices, assumptions about society, views on current issues, and references to the way they lived then—which was different in many ways from our own world, and similar in others. One of his favorite tools was the Serious Interview, and few writers have used it to such advantage as did Trollope. He introduces this device in a chapter entitled "The Serious Interview" in Barchester Towers, one of his early novels, in which Archdeacon Grantly makes the strategic error of engaging his sister-in-law Eleanor Bold about his suspicion that she is about to accept a marriage proposal from the sly and scheming Rev. Slope. The components of the Serious Interview are present in this prototype: The prologue, in which Trollope explains to the reader that there are some who delight in offering advice or administering rebuke, and that the archdeacon is among these. The entry of the combatants. In this instance Eleanor's usually mild demeanor was absent, and the archdeacon "almost wished he had taken his wife's advice," i.e., not to speak to her. The opening statements. Here he assures her that she has no sincerer friend than he. The initial sparring. He accuses her of having received a letter from Mr. Slope, and she admits it. The counterattack. She tells him he may read the letter, and she hands it over to him. She over-reacts, however, in claiming that Mr. Slope is an "industrious, well- meaning clergyman." The author's commentary. In a paragraph beginning, "Here undoubtedly Eleanor put herself in the wrong," Trollope indulges in a review of the defender's tactics—her assumption of the "prejudice and conceit of the archdeacon" leading to her error of going too far. "She would neither give nor take quarter." The attacker's final thrust, in which the archdeacon says that Mr. Arabin (who is destined to marry Eleanor in one of the last chapters) agrees with him and his wife "that it is quite impossible you should be received at Plumstead as Mrs. Slope." The defender's final reaction. Her look was one Dr. Grantly "did not soon forget," and saying, "How dare you be so impertinent?" she hurriedly leaves the room—with the standard reaction in private: "and then, locking the door, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed as though her heart would break." The postmortem. "By some maneuver of her brain, she attributed the origin of the accusation to Mr. Arabin," and she lay awake all night thinking of what had been said. "Nor was the archdeacon a bit better satisfied with the result of the serious interview than was Eleanor." He understood that she was angry, but it never occurred to him that Eleanor viewed the supposed union with Mr. Slope with as much disgust as did he. "He returned to his wife vexed and somewhat disconsolate." The morning after. Eleanor sent word that she was not well enough to attend prayers. "Everyone walked about with subdued feet." The sisters (Eleanor and the Archdeacon's wife) were peeved with each other, but after a bit of diplomacy by their father Mr. Harding, they "sat down each to her crochet work as though nothing was amiss in all the world." As noted, the author often serves as a guide to the reader, offering his own critical observations on how each of the participants played their hand. Indeed, most of his novels include at least one of these confrontations that serve primarily to entertain the reader, but also to unveil hitherto unappreciated character traits and to advance the story. Trollope enjoyed using his stories as little Clinics in the Lessons of Life, injecting himself as an observer, critic and instructor in other everyday matters. In Ralph the Heir he explains how the beauty of Mary Bonner afforded her the Priority of Service that is the due primarily of beauty, but also of money, political position, and noble birth. A diligent worker himself, he extolled the virtues of hard work in Castle Richmond: "It is my opinion that nothing seasons the mind for endurance like hard work. Port wine should perhaps be added." Victorians wrote letters, and they mailed them by post, and Trollope as a veteran of the postal service used letters and the service of mail delivery to advantage, again often with editorial asides as to how something may have been better phrased. In another little lesson of life in The Bertrams, he offered another too-frequently-neglected lesson: "Sit down and write your letter; write it with all the venom in your power … and, as a matter of course, burn it before breakfast the next morning." He goes on to extol pleasant letters, concluding his advice for letter writing: "But, above all things, see that it be good-humored." The development of character is generally one of Trollope's strengths. His observations were probing and acute; these are transformed into portrayals of certain characters who are so life-like that the reader comes to know them and their foibles as well as he knows his own friends and neighbors. Certain character traits must have particularly fascinated Trollope because they recur in several of his novels. Among these is the trait that might be referred to as terminal stubbornness, most obviously shown in Louis Trevelyan and Emily Rowley, who becomes Trevelyan's wife in He Knew He Was Right. Emily receives frequent visits from an older family friend, Colonel Osborne. Her husband Louis considers these to be inappropriate and an affront to his honor, whether they represent any misbehavior by his wife or not. She has been raised to be an independent spirit and refuses to follow his command. This difference is pursued to the end, literally, with Trevelyan finally succumbing to his madness. Other couples demonstrating a reluctance or refusal to come to terms with each other appear in The Bertrams (Caroline Waddington and Arthur Wilkinson), Kept in the Dark (Cecilia Holt and George Western), and Cousin Henry (Isabel Brodrick and Reverend William Owen). Several plots rely on a woman's determination to remain true, no matter what, to a man whom she once agreed to marry—most notoriously in the case of Lily Dale, in The Small House at Allington. Forsaken by a handsome rake who subsequently makes a more advantageous marriage, Lily considers herself consigned to spinsterhood, refusing to consider any other suitor, particularly the devoted Johnny Eames. Occasionally these self-sacrificing women can be persuaded to get a life for themselves, but it's never easy and often impossible. Some of these steadfast heroines are Florence Mountjoy in Mr. Scarborough's Family and Lady Anna, Linda Tressel, Rachel Ray, and Nina Balatka in the novels bearing their names. Of these, Linda fails to survive. Emily Hotspur also succumbs after being forbidden to marry her worthless cousin George Hotspur, a somewhat ordinary rake, in Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite. The Victorian woman suffered a number of disadvantages that no longer apply to today's woman, and Trollope explored these features of the world of his day, illustrating them so that today's reader cries out at such injustices. Trollope himself never acknowledged any sympathy for the feminist movement, and indeed he sometimes parodied some of its more ardent advocates, but a number of his works can be read as feminist texts for exposing the problems that women faced. Lady Laura Standish, in Phineas Finn, refuses Phineas's gallant offer of marriage, even though she loves him, because neither of them has enough money to support his political ambitions. However, she devotes herself to furthering his political career, hoping to use him as a mouthpiece for her own political interests. Caroline Waddington in The Bertrams suffers the powerless state of a married woman before the appearance in England of rather modest reforms. Trollope's insight and skill in presenting women was such that the faithful reader is tempted to sort them into bins—not an unfair analysis of a writer who was so workmanlike in his approach to his craft that he wrote regularly and prolifically. Some of his women appear as rather one-dimensional role players, even though they may be designated as "heroines"; others are developed in such depth that the reader feels that he knows them as long-time friends. Individuals, even fictional creations, defy classification, but the all-too-conscientious reader cannot resist creating a few tentative file folders: The Faithful Woman, exemplified by Lily Dale, has already been mentioned. There are a few Women Who Can't Make Up Their Mind, among whom Alice Vavasor of Can You Forgive Her? is the prototype. Others include Lady Clara Desmond in Castle Richmond and Clara Amedroz of The Belton Estate. The Husband Hunter (one is tempted to refer to her as the Gold Digger) is the woman who sets out to marry well; Arabella Trefoil of The American Senator stands out among these. Another is Lizzie Greystock of The Eustace Diamonds, who does not become Lady Eustace for love of the sickly Florian Eustace. The Senior Dowager is well represented by Lady Lufton, who stands down the elderly Duke of Omnium in Framley Parsonage. These are some of the most entertaining of the women, who also include Lady Aylmer in The Belton Estate. A somewhat younger variant is the Woman of Independent Means. Miss Martha Dunstable is undaunted by the Archbishop's wife in Barchester Towers, gently declines the proposal of Frank Gresham in Dr. Thorne, and eventually marries Dr. Thorne in Framley Parsonage. Others are Miss Todd of The Bertrams and the eponymous Miss Mackenzie. Trollope seemed to have had a particular fondness for The Little Woman Who Could, exemplified by Lucy Robarts, who rose to the occasion to assert herself when challenged by Lady Lufton in Framley Parsonage. Mary Thorne in Doctor Thorne and Florence Burton of The Claverings were a few other of these courageous young women. And then there is the American Woman, described as "exigeant" by Charles Glascock in He Knew He Was Right. (Would "high maintenance" be the current equivalent of "exigeant"?) Trollope had personal experience with the American woman in his close friendship with Kate Field and aspects of her personality must have surely appeared in some of his American women: Caroline Spalding, the woman who was tarred with the "exigeant" brush in He Knew He Was Right; Isabel Boncassen (The Duke's Children); Rachel O'Mahoney (The Landleaguers); and Lucinda Roanoke (The Eustace Diamonds). Is there a classification for Lady Glencora Palliser, who dominates the society of the Palliser novels, even after her death, and for Mrs. Proudie, who also exerts the power of her personality throughout the Barsetshire series? I prefer to think of these women as Unclassified. And a list of memorable Trollope women must include a few who appeared in only one novel—Dorothy ("Dolly") Grey, daughter of the attorney Mr. Grey in Mr. Scarborough's Family, Lizzie Eustace of The Eustace Diamonds, and Lady Mary Mason of Orley Farm. Trollope's own interest in politics evidenced itself in the glorification of an ambition to serve in Parliament—as in Mr. Grey and also Plantagenet Palliser in the Palliser series. However, he was disgusted by rotten boroughs and the corrupt practices of buying votes. We see these practices as a potential path to ruin for several of his characters, including George Vavasor in Can You Forgive Her?, Sir Thomas Underwood in Ralph the Heir, and Butler Cornbury in Rachel Ray. Much depended on birth in the Victorian world. The eldest son, by right of birth, got it all. This was of such importance that there was sometimes a question as to who was the oldest son—that is, who was the oldest legitimate son. Alleged weddings on foreign soil were particularly suspect, as in Marion Fay, Lady Anna, and Is He Popenjoy? The questions of birthright could be complex in the extreme and could foster blackmail and fraud. Castle Richmond and Mr. Scarborough's Family show us how family secrets could be exploited. The beginnings and endings of novels have been considerably streamlined since Trollope's day. Just as movies no longer show the credits before the action starts, today's writer knows to start the story as late into the action as possible, picking up background information along the way—or never at all. Trollope sometimes apologized to his readers for his lengthy introductory chapters, and today's readers do have to pay their dues by slogging through family trees and historical details before being allowed to read the story. However, this obligation is often mitigated by capsule summaries that are concise, ironic, and satirical. Concluding chapters have also gone out of style. No one ever gets married at the end of a love story any more. The lovers may be seen gazing at a tropical sunset, or they may be the only ones left standing, but the reader has to supply the details. Trollope did his duty, though, devoting one or two chapters to wrapping up all the loose ends, sometimes apologizing for having to do so. And these do indeed provide a bit of closure for the reader who has faithfully followed the trials of the principals through eight hundred or so pages. I doubt that many of even the most modern of readers will close the book with a shrug and skip the author's conclusion. Trollope was an ardent sportsman, and many of his stories include fox hunting episodes, given with such enthusiasm and authority that the reader welcomes these outings as much as the author obviously did. Sometimes an injury or a bit of stupidity will be an important part of the ongoing story, but the reader understands that the hunt is more for fun and sport than for business. But if the New Criticism, which was the prevailing approach during my undergraduate years, taught us anything, it is that the work stands on its own merits. We know very little about how the great cathedrals were built—we know few names of architects or engineers. But there they are. How would our assessment of these great accomplishments be modified by greater knowledge of the details of their conception and construction? Would we rearrange our pecking order of their superiority? Sometimes we can know too much. But in the case of Anthony Trollope, we do know that he produced forty-seven novels, and other assorted writings—another of those examples of the great energy of the Victorians. Certainly there are clunkers in the lot, particularly among his earlier works, such as The Macdermots of Ballycloran and La Vendée. And the results were mixed when he attempted to get away from the English countryside, as in The Fixed Period. But I began going through them for the sleepers—the underappreciated novels that deserve more recognition. And sure enough, there are a significant number of these. It's been fun to look—as though I were rummaging around in a trunk full of books in a dusty attic to see what's in there. This is a report of what I found. Taylor Prewitt Fort Smith, Arkansas REQUIRED READING FOR THE SEMINARY THE WARDEN While touring Sussex in 2007, Mary and I came across a building near the Long Melford church with the following plaque: HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY AND BLESSED TRINITY ESTABLISHED IN 1573 BY SIR WILLIAM CORDBELL OF MELFORD HALL AS AN ALMSHOUSE FOR 12 AGED MEN AND A WARDEN AND STILL SERVES ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE. TODAY IT ALSO PROVIDES ACCOMMODATION FOR WOMEN AND MARRIED COUPLES. IT IS AN ENDOWED CHARITY We knew all about an almshouse for twelve aged men and a warden. We had read The Warden. This is the first in the Barsetshire series, six novels dealing with the clergy in and around Barchester Cathedral. Although I have often thought the Barsetshire series should be required reading for all seminary students, The Warden is perhaps less pertinent to today's church, because it exposes the disproportionately high incomes earned by some of the clergy in the Church of England, and the disproportionately small amount of work done by some. Since this is an infrequent issue in today's churches, some appreciation of the concerns in Victorian England is gained from a tabulation of clerical incomes in the novel, converted into an approximation of 2013 currency values: Mr. Harding's income As Precenter £80/yr £6,112 As Warden £800/yr £61,120 As Crabtree vicar £80/yr £6,112 Paid to Rev. Smith At St. Cuthbert's £75/yr £5,730 Archdeacon Grantley's income As rector of Plumstead Episcopi £3,000/yr £229,200 Bishop's income £9,000/yr £687,600 (pretax) As of September, 2013, the conversion rate was $1.60 per pound. This shows that the Bishop's income was more than a million dollars a year before taxes. In the absence of concern about the income and bonuses of corporate CEO's in Victorian England, it's understandable that this issue led to efforts at reform. The test case in the story is not the Bishop, at the equivalent of over a million dollars a year, or even his son the Archdeacon at a third that amount—but Mr. Septimus Harding, precentor (music and choir director in the cathedral) and also warden of Hiram's Hospital. A gentle and kindly soul, beloved of the twelve old men in his charge in the hospital, Mr. Harding frequently plays his violoncello for them. As a more concrete gesture, he has voluntarily increased their daily pittance by two shillings, which amounted to some sixty-four pounds a year out of his own income. Mr. Harding is father-in-law to the Archdeacon, and the Bishop appointed him to this coveted sinecure shortly after the marriage between Mr. Harding's daughter and the Bishop's son. All is harmonious until some of the citizens of Barchester begin to wonder whether John Hiram, founder of Hiram's Hospital by his will, intended the warden to live in such luxury as the estate now provided. (John Hiram died in 1434, more than a hundred years before the will of Sir William Cordbell of Melford Hall established the Hospital of the Holy and Blessed Trinity in Long Melford in 1573.) This campaign of reform is led by an idealistic young surgeon of the town, Dr. John Bold, who also happens to be a suitor for the hand of Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. Caught up in such controversy, Mr. Harding emerges as one of Trollope's most memorable, and certainly most lovable, characters. The question of his excessive income is publicized in The Jupiter, a London newspaper somewhat reminiscent of The Times, by Tom Towers, a young muckraking investigative journalist. Mr. Harding begins to wonder whether he can continue to hold the position under these circumstances, but he must also deal with his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly, an outspoken and intimidating champion of the Church, who obtains the opinion of Sir Abraham Haphazard, the Attorney-General. Sir Abraham declares that the point is "so nice" that the plaintiffs would run up fifteen thousand pounds in legal costs before having a chance to prevail. Not only are the costs of pursuing the campaign prohibitive, but John Bold himself comes to think that his respect for the Warden and his love for the Warden's daughter Eleanor are such that he must drop the case. He finds, however, that the issue, fanned by The Jupiter, has already been decided in the court of public opinion. So we see that the problem of Mr. Harding's generous income has few parallels in today's church. Should seminarians still be required to read it? Yes. I don't know of any other series of novels that shows the many facets of clerical personalities as they interact with one another and with the world. The Warden introduces us to this community and is thus a prerequisite to an appreciation of Barchester Towers, The Last Chronicle of Barset, and the others in the series. In The Warden we meet the old Bishop of Barchester, benign and gentle, never questioning- the right of the Church to enjoy the blessings given to it by God; Archdeacon Grantly, a formidable defender of the faith who is not to be trifled with; and of course Mr. Harding, a quiet and somewhat timid man who comes to understand that his conscience commands him to assert himself. I grew up listening to my father and grandfather discuss the preachers of the Little Rock Conference of the Methodist Church—their gifts and their shortcomings, their ambitions, their foibles. "Preachers are the most jealous profession there is," Dad explained to me. Several I knew only by name; several I came to know when they came to town and had dinner at our house. Not knowing about Anthony Trollope's novels, I couldn't look up anything they talked about in any book. It was apparent that church politics and the variety of clerical personalities would be a fertile field for the novelist. No one has done it like Anthony Trollope. Individual preachers turn up here and there—Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry; John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead; Father Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather; and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. But these books deal with individual clergy; none get into the church and its politics as does Trollope's series. Peter Raible writes in "Images of Protestant Clergy in American Novels" (Berry Street Essay, 1978) that the sexual activities of the clergy are represented disproportionately in fictional portrayals, at the expense of those whose achievements and shortcomings are in another realm. Surely he did not include Trollope in this generalization. And for the sake of having a list, Kim Fabricius offers on the internet the following list of "Twenty great clergymen in novels:" 1. William Collins in Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) 2. Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) 3. Father Mapple in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) 4. Obadiah Slope in Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857) 5. Charles François-Bienvenu Myriel in Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862) 6. Edward Casaubon in George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871) 7. Father Zossima in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880) 8. Jean Marie Latour in Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) 9. The young curate in Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest (1936) 10. The unnamed priest in Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940) 11. Father Paneloux in Albert Camus, The Plague (1947) 12. Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood (1952) 13. Stephen Kumalo in Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) 14. Dean Jocelin in William Golding, The Spire (1964) 15. Sebastião Rodrigues in Endo Shusaku, Silence (1966) 16. William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (1983) 17. Oscar Hopkins in Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988) 18. Clarence Wilmot in John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) 19. Nathan Price in Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998) 20. John Ames in Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004) That this is by no means an authoritative or final list is shown by the absence of the illustrious Mr. Chadband of Charles Dickens's Bleak House, not to mention several more of the Barsetshire clergy, especially the Rev. Josiah Crawley of The Last Chronicle of Barset. But Trollope is the only writer who deals with a diocese full of preachers, and who presents so many of them as three-dimensional characters in their own right—not as caricatures. Yes, seminarians should be required to read the Barsetshire novels—one a semester, perhaps. THE CHURCH IN PEACE AND WAR BARCHESTER TOWERS Two passages come to mind from my first reading of Barchester Towers over thirty years ago. The first is the Archdeacon's "Good Heavens!" upon leaving his first interview with Bishop and Mrs. Proudie; this steamy outburst occurs relatively early in the story, initiating Chapter 6, "War": as "smoke issued forth from the uplifted beaver as if it were a cloud of wrath," we find ourselves immersed in the pitched battle between the new bishop and traditional Barchester. The second is the description of Ullathorne Hall, about midway through a fifteen- page chapter describing first Wilfred Thorne, Esq., and his sister, and then the features of the ancient house they lived in. The most tedious of these passages describes "three quadrangular windows with stone mullions, each window divided into a larger portion at the bottom, and a smaller portion at the top and each portion again divided into five by perpendicular stone supporters." I remember thinking when I stumbled onto it: Why was I made for the long and the painful passage I was subjecting myself to? Since Barchester Towers, Trollope's best-known novel, may be the first, or even the last, of Trollope that some readers may encounter, these two passages need to be acknowledged—the first to illustrate his ability to stand far enough aside from the human drama to appreciate its occasional absurdity; and the second to recognize his tendency to indulge in sentimental reflections shared, no doubt, by a number of his countrymen, but lacking in relevance to readers of another background. And although I now consider Squire Thorne's pretensions to Saxon ancestry, and the house's "delicious tawny hue which no stone can give, unless it has on it the vegetable richness of centuries" to add charm to the book, Chapter 22 would surely be the first to go in any abridged edition of the work. Why has Barchester Towers outpaced the other novels in popularity? First, I think, because the characters are strong, memorable, in conflict with one another, and elicit just enough sympathy for their positions that the reader smiles and even laughs. There is no sugarcoating; this is no tract intended to bring its readers to commit their lives to the service of the Church of England. The reader sees the deficiencies of even the most virtuous, such as Mr. Harding, but there is also just a touch of sympathy for the worst of the villains, such as Mr. Slope and (perhaps, on a sunny day) Mrs. Proudie. Trollope depicts the life of the church better than anyone else has done, before or since. He shows the affairs of the clergymen of Barchester much as he also shows us those of politicians, lawyers, merchants, and idle country gentlemen. Perhaps more than any other occupational group, the clergy of the close are bound together as an inner group, almost a fraternity. And this may be why clergy and politicians, the subjects of the Barsetshire series and the Palliser series, were such ready subjects for novel after novel: their professional association involved just enough interaction and jockeying for position to entertain the reader. Several of the characters come to us from The Warden, chiefly Mr. Septimus Harding, the Warden himself, bruised from his attack in The Jupiter, the newspaper of the day. Mr. Harding has surrendered his position as Warden of Hiram's Hospital, feeling that he could not justify the high salary attached to the position, and not caring to attempt to do so. In this matter he was in direct opposition to the advice of his son- in-law Archdeacon Grantly, aggressive warrior of the Church Militant, and one who benefits even more from the riches of the church. The author must have gloated to himself as he set up the situation with which the story begins: the saintly Bishop Grantly, dear friend of Mr. Harding and father of Archdeacon Grantly, is about to die. His successor is to be named by the prime minister, who is sufficiently friendly to the Grantlys that he would be expected to name the archdeacon to succeed his father. But the government is about to fall, and the next prime minister would be expected to look elsewhere for a successor. If the bishop dies quickly, there would be time for the present prime minister to act. The poor bishop apologizes on his deathbed for taking so long. And he does take too long. Though the conflicted archdeacon attempts to convey the news of his father's death to the prime minister before he leaves office, he does not succeed. A new prime minister makes the appointment, and the new bishop is to be a low churchman, one Dr. Proudie. The supreme irony in this situation is not left to implication and inference, as we read of the disappointed Archdeacon Grantly's reaction: Many will think that he was wicked to grieve for the loss of Episcopal power, wicked to have coveted it, nay, wicked even to have thought about it, in the way and at the moments he had done so. With such censures I cannot profess that I completely agree. The nolo episcopari, though still in use, is so directly at variance with the tendency of all human wishes, that it cannot be thought to express the true aspirations of rising priests in the Church of England. Nolo episcopari is explained on the internet in Trollope's Apollo: A Guide to the Uses of Classics in the Novels of Anthony Trollope (www.trollope-apollo.com), a project undertaken by students at Hendrix College under Professor Rebecca Resinski: A Latin phrase meaning "I do not wish to be bishop." This is the appropriate response with which an individual should reply if he is offered the position of bishop in the church, even if he wishes to accept it. Trollope implies here that any other person, besides Bishop Proudie, would probably not want to be the bishop if he had to deal with Mrs. Proudie and her constant meddling; and thus, this person would actually mean nolo episcopari when saying the phrase. [MD] (It is worth noting that nolo episcopari has survived in the Methodist Church to the extent that when Dean William Cannon was elected to the episcopacy in 1968, he protested, "Why, you can't elect me bishop. I didn't even bring my robes," in gentle mockery of the aggressive campaigns conducted by candidates for the episcopacy.) Enter Mrs. Proudie, Barchester's answer to Lady Macbeth. A 1982 BBC production of The Barchester Chronicles followed the text of The Warden and Barchester Towers quite closely, and the direction and acting were superb. Mrs. Proudie, though, gave me pause. On screen she is shown as a slender, scheming woman who narrows her eyes as she schemes. I think of her as a more straightforward champion of her own views, more given to the direct approach than to subtlety. She speaks early on the evils of Sabbath-traveling, and on the necessity for Sabbath Day schools. We can assume that she prompted the Bishop's chaplain, the sly Obadiah Slope, to preach the sermon against Mr. Harding's beloved high church music, leading the author to the following meditation on the sermon as an art form: There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. … We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing to escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons. I should think that this paragraph alone should justify my contention that the Barchester novels, but particularly Barchester Towers, should be required study in all seminaries. Mr. Slope goes on to use his position as chaplain to the bishop in a power struggle with Mrs. Proudie. He loses. He learns that Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor Bold, recently widowed in a death between novels, has an income of a thousand pounds a year. (The mortality risk of the period between novels was significant in the Barsetshire and Palliser series, leading to the deaths of John Bold, Eleanor's suitor and husband in The Warden, and Lady Glencora Palliser, who did not survive the period between The Prime Minister and The Duke's Children.) Having promised Mr. Harding's former position as Warden of Hiram's Hospital to Mr. Quiverful, whose twelve children in addition to his wife and himself provided "fourteen arguments in favour of Mr. Quiverful's claims," he then reverses his field and indicates to Mrs. Bold that through his efforts and kind services her father may yet be restored to his former position. But when Eleanor shows his subsequent letter on the subject to her father, Mr. Harding finds a reference to his daughter's "silken tresses," and Mr. Slope's scheme dies aborning. Although Mrs. Proudie reigns triumphant throughout Barchester Towers and goes on undeterred in subsequent Barsetshire novels, the reader derives some consolation from Mr. Slope's downfall. Indeed, he is refused by three women: one of the Bishop's daughters; Eleanor Bold (with a slap on the ear); and the infamous Signora Neroni. Ah, Signora Neroni! Somehow she and her family come across with more charm in the video presentation than in my reading of the book and listening to it on tape a few years ago. As feckless foils to the saintly Mr. Harding, and as legitimate targets for reform of the church, the reader may have limited patience with them. But brought to the screen by buoyant actors, they display the charm that enabled them to get by with so much in Barchester society. Trollope tells us that their heartlessness was accompanied by such good nature as to make itself "but little noticeable to the world." This introductory comment was, of course, absent from the video presentation, leaving the viewer to draw his own conclusions. But the mind of this puritanical reader, I'm afraid, was poisoned by the author's observation. The father, Dr. Vesey Stanhope, is summoned home from Italy by the new bishop. Dr. Stanhope, it turns out, had gone to Italy for his health; he had had a sore throat twelve years earlier and had never returned. He brings with him his wife, two daughters and a son. The card of the younger daughter is decorated with a coronet, and it reads "La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni—Nata Stanhope." She is somewhat indifferent to her situation of having married a captain of no birth and no property, leaving her with a young daughter but no husband, and a knee injury that she attributed to ascending a ruin, leaving her to walk with "the grace of a hunchback." And so she has chosen to be carried everywhere she goes. Her brother Bertie, the son of a man without fortune, feels no obligation to earn his own bread. Madeline and Bertie prove to be rolling cannons on the decks of Barchester. The beautiful Madeline has separate and conspicuous tête-á-têtes with the Bishop, Mr. Slope, Squire Thorne, and a newly arrived clergyman from Oxford, Francis Arabin. Bertie distinguishes himself at Mrs. Proudie's reception by remarking to the bishop that he once had thoughts of being a bishop himself. "That is, a parson— a parson first, you know, and a bishop afterwards. If I had once begun, I'd have stuck to it. But on the whole, I like the Church of Rome the best." But one comes closest to feeling some sympathy for Mr. Slope—whom the author confesses that he himself does not like—when Signora Neroni uses an audience for the purpose of humiliating him. (This is after Mr. Slope has proposed unsuccessfully to Signora Neroni and to Eleanor Bold, and at a time when he has had his friend Tom Towers of The Jupiter write in its pages that Mr. Slope would be the best candidate to replace the lately deceased Dean of the Chapter—a position that is to be offered to Mr. Harding and eventually accepted by Mr. Arabin.) Her morning levée includes Mr. Thorne; Mr. Arabin ("It may seem strange that he should thus come dangling about Madame Neroni because he was in love with Mrs. Bold; but was nevertheless the fact"); Mr. Slope; and a couple of other young men about the city. Bertie and Charlotte are spectators as she follows one thrust at Mr. Slope with another, saying that everybody knows that he is to be the new dean, passing over old men like her father and Archdeacon. She then taunts him with having been refused by Mrs. Bold, singing