I read Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope long ago—probably in my late teens—but remembered it positively enough that, a few months ago, I decided to read my way through the whole series of novels that Trollope set in the same imaginary rural English shire. I have come away with happy memories and enormous respect for Trollope as a writer.
The series begins with The Warden, whose protagonist, an Anglican priest named Septimus Harding, reappears in less central roles in the succeeding novels. He serves, less by any formal teaching than by his generosity of spirit, as a kind of moral and spiritual center of gravity for the people whose lives touch on his. He is not any sort of rigid moralist, in contrast to Mrs. Bishop Proudie, the other pervasive figure in these tales. His clergy associates sometimes think of him as week and lacking in ambition, but his character not infrequently makes them conscious of their own short-comings.
Barchester Towers sets up much of the basic conflict that underlies the remaining novels. On the one hand, there are ecclesiastical tensions occasioned by the arrival of a new bishop (Proudie) who is an Evangelical (in contrast to the old “high and dry” tradition that had hitherto characterized the diocese). What is more, Mrs. Proudie, who dominates her husband, is decidedly aggressive in her advocacy of Evangelical ways, which has the unintended consequence of driving her opponents further than they might otherwise have gone toward the newer high churchmanship of the Oxford Movement.
The books also explore the problems of the country gentry, whose wealth is in land and who sometimes find themselves in financial diistress. The consequences fall particularly on the younger generation, as they come tof marriageable age and become the focus of their families’ need for infusions of new money.
None of the novels, however, is simply an exploration of social change. They are studies of how various, quite individual characters navigate unexpected challenges in their lives: some well, some clumsily, some in ways that the reader will have difficulty sympathizing with.
The third novel, Doctor Thorne, focuses particularly on issues of marriage. Thorne himself emerges as a person of great practical intelligence and integrity. One gets the sense that he is one of Trollope’s own favorite creations. But he has to confront and overcome some of his own prejudices when he takes his deceased brother’s illegitimate daughter under his wing—as does the family of gentry into which she will eventually marry.
Framley Parsonage highlights the interaction of the two worlds of clergy and country gentry (plus a few noble families that are still firmly grounded in their estates and have not yielded to the temptations of metropolitan high society). The interest focuses partly on ways in which a more sophisticated and unscrupulous segment of the urban culture threatens the welfare of these rural folk. Yet, it also introduces Martha Dunstable, the generous and unconventional heiress of an ointment manufacturer, who confutes any notion that “new money” from the mercantile world is necessarily an evil. Indeed, she is recognized as bringing new life to her surroundings.
The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset together explore at greater length the ways in which a handful of characters, new and old, adapt or fail to adapt to the challenges in their worlds. The Last Chronicle, in particular, is a masterly juggling act of several different story strands. Perhaps the key word is one that Trollope introduces here: “cross-grainedness.” Some of the characters set themselves at cross purposes with one another or with their own situations and find it difficult to negotiate peaceful and fruitful solutions to their difficulties. The word is first used in reference is to a particular duo of father and son; but it describes some of the female characters of the books equally well.
And what does it all come down to? Certainly there is an element of historical fascination for the modern reader trying to comprehend the rural England of the 1860s. But the characters engage with their lives in ways that we can still recognize in ourselves and our world, even if our challenges are different in detail. Trollope gives us exactly the kind of intelligent rumination on humanity that one can get only from a wise and very observant friend.