Unity in Barsetshire 9783111344430, 9783110992182

Table of contents :
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION: THEORY
II. THE WARDEN: NOVEL OF VOCATION
III. TROLLOPE ON REFORM AND CHANGE: BARCHESTER TOWERS
IV. DOCTOR THORNE: FAIRY TALE AND SATIRE
V. TEMPTATION AND PRIDE IN FRAMLEY PARSONAGE
VI. THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON: NOVEL OF LOVE
VII. DISGRACE AND OBEDIENCE IN THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET
VIII. THE SERIES: ESSENTIALLY CLERICAL
IX. CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY: WORKS CITED
INDEX

Citation preview

DE PROPRIETATIBUS L I T T E R A R U M edenda curat

C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD Indiana University

Series Practica, 28

UNITY IN BARSETSHIRE

by

H U G H L. H E N N E D Y St. Francis College, Biddeford, Maine

1971

MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in amy form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 79-144012

Printed in Hungary

for Doris

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It gives me pleasure to thank those who have helped me with this book. In general, I am indebted to both my students and my colleagues at St. Francis College, Biddeford, Maine, who gave me opportunities to talk about Trollope and the work I was doing on him. More particular debts I owe to Rev. Donald Nicknair and Dr. Richard Spath, St. Francis administrators who saw to it that I had the time and money necessary to do my work and have it published, and to Professors Gerald Warner Brace and John F. Leisher of Boston University, who advised me on my research and read the early versions of this book. Finally, although I do not know what Professor Frank O'Malley of the University of Notre Dame thinks of the novels of Trollope, I do remember well what he thought twenty years ago about the novels of Joyce and the poems of Milton, and, like it or not, he bears some responsibility for this book. For his influence I, like so many others, am grateful. My indebtedness to other critics of Trollope is, I hope, made reasonably clear in my footnotes. I regret that Robert M. Polhemus' The Changing World of Anthony Trollope (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Univ. of California Press, 1968) appeared too late for me to make use of it. It may be of some interest to readers, however, to observe that two critics, working at about the same time but independently of each other, have arrived at similar conclusions about some of Trollope's novels.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments I. Introduction: Theory II. The Warden: Novel of Vocation

7 11 21

III. Trollope on Reform and Change: Barchester Towers ..

37

IV. Doctor Thome: Fairy Tale and Satire

56

V. Temptation and Pride in Franley Personage

71

VI. The Small House at Allington: Novel of Love

90

VII. Disgrace and Obedience in The Last Chronicle of Barset 105 VIII. The Series: Essentially Clerical IX. Conclusion Bibliography

125 136 139

I INTRODUCTION: THEORY

The great novelist is dead, at peace, and in honor with all men, leaving nothing behind him that is bitter or painful, but an honorable name, a reputation which there is every reason to believe will increase rather than diminish, and the example of a life full of useful exertion. 1

Although shortly after Anthony Trollope's death Mrs. Oliphant, another mid-Victorian novelist whose life was "full of useful exertion", wrote these just words of tribute to Trollope the man, if she intended them to apply equally to the writer, she was no prophet, at least not of the immediate future. For even if no one has ever seriously attempted to impugn Trollope's personal reputation,2 his literary reputation had already declined considerably at his death in 1882, and had, in fact, as Michael Sadleir points out,3 been waning since 1869. The publication of the Autobiography in 1883, though it did not initiate the decline, accelerated it so that only fifteen years after Trollope's death a responsible critic could pronounce Trollope's novels "dead".4 Margaret Oliphant, "Anthony Trollope", LitteU's Living Age, CLVI (1883), 510. 2 One could regard Lucy Poate and Richard Poate Stebbins' The Trollopes: The Chronicle of a Writing Family (New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1945) as such an attempt, but it seems more likely that this book is primarily a commercial venture which attempts (with little success and without real animus) to reinterpret Trollope in Freudian terms. What value the book has probably resides in the fact that it pays more attention to Trollope's visits to America than other studies do. 3 Trollope: A Commentary, revised American ed. (New York, Farrar, Straus, 1947), p. 298. 4 Herbert Paul, "The Apotheosis of the Novel under Queen Victoria", Nineteenth Century, XLI (1897), 783. 1

12

INTRODUCTION

If ever dead, the novels certainly did not stay that way, and everyone who knows about the decline of Trollope's literary reputation at the end of the nineteenth century also knows about its revival in the twentieth. Not the least remarkable feature of that revival, as Gorham Munson has pointed out, is that, "occurring with no stir about him in the press or on the radio, [it] looks like a pure reader preference manifesting itself without adventitious stimulants".5 Though "pure" may be too strong here, it seems clear that the Trollope revival was not primarily a product of the critical mills, which is neither to suggest silence on the part of critics, nor, certainly, to deny the influence of Michael Sadleir's Commentary, first published in 1927. Henry James, one of the early critics of Trollope and the author of a classic essay on his fellow novelist, predicted that some of Trollope's novels would continue to be read by the common reader: "So much of the life of his time is reflected in his novels that we must believe a part of the record will be saved; and the best parts of them are so sound and true and genial, that readers with an eye to that sort of entertainment will always be sure, in a certain proportion, to turn to them. Trollope will remain one of the most trustworthy . . . of the writers who have helped the heart of man to know itself."6 Though the prediction ends in a really noble tribute, James did have his reservations about Trollope. For one thing, "He published too much; the writing of novels had ended by becoming, with him, a perceptibly mechanical process" (p. 97), James thought. For another, "He took a suicidal satisfaction in reminding the reader that the story he was telling was only, after all, a makebelieve" (p. 116). Finally, James did not hesitate to assert that "Trollope, from the first, went in, as they say, for having as little form as possible; it is probably safe to affirm that he had no 'views' whatever on the subject of novel-writing" (p. 100). As perceptive and as generous as James's essay is, it is apparent that his commitment to his own artistic principles led him to make a fundamental error about Trollope's art and his principles of art. For James it was "impossible to imagine what a novelist takes him3 "Who Are Our Favorite Nineteenth-Century Authors?" GE, V (1944), 294. * "Anthony Trollope", Partial Portraits (London, Macmillan, 1888), pp. 132—133.

INTRODUCTION

13

self to be unless he regard himself as an historian and his narrative as a history" (p. 116). But for Trollope the novelist was a novelist. 7 Trollope had "views" all right, but some of them, at least, were different from James's own. Though James published the first version of his essay in 18838 and thus probably had not yet seen Trollope's Autobiography, by 1888, the date of Partial Portraits, he had had time to read it. The finished essay, however, gives no evidence of an acquaintance with the Autobiography, which contains, after all, the fullest statement by Trollope of his artistic principles. If James had read the Autobiography, he would not have had to speculate about Trollope's view of "the droll, bemuddled opposition between novels of character and novels of plot" (p. 105).9 Nor would he have made the mistake of hesitating to talk of the Trollopian novel in terms of composition. 10 Indeed, in one of the key, though strangely neglected, paragraphs of the Autobiography, Trollope speaks precisely in terms of painting and the artistic. He begins by stating unequivocally that "There should be no episodes in a novel. Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should tend to the telling of the story" (p. 237). As he continues, he makes it clear that he does not understand unity in the neoclassic sense, that is, as simplicity: 7 J a m e s states as m u c h - " H e habitually referred t o t h e work in h a n d (in t h e course of t h a t work) as a novel, and t o himself as a novelist" (p. 116) - b u t he failed t o recognize this position as a legitimate alternative t o t h a t of t h e novelist as historian. This insistence upon t h e novel as history as t h e only legitimate kind of novel makes as m u c h sense as, in t h e t h e a t e r , a n insistence upon naturalistic staging t o t h e exclusion of all forms of theatricalism. 8 " A n t h o n y Trollope", Century, X X V I (1883), 3 8 5 - 3 9 6 . 9 As a m a t t e r of fact, J a m e s ' s speculation t h a t Trollope, if he h a d t a k e n " a n idle controversy seriously", would have preferred t h e novel of character, though a plausible speculation, was n o t altogether sound.Trollope approached t h e question in terms of realistic and sensational novels. " T h e readers who prefer t h e one are supposed to take delight in t h e elucidation of character. They who hold by t h e other are charmed by t h e construction and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake, - which mistake arises f r o m t h e inability of t h e imperfect artist t o be a t t h e same time realistic a n d sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in t h e highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in A r t " (An Autobiography, p. 227). 10 "As a general thing he has no great story to tell. The thing is n o t so m u c h a story as a picture; if we hesitate to call it a picture it is because t h e idea of composition is not the controlling one and we feel t h a t t h e a u t h o r would regard t h e artistic, in general, as a kind of affectation" (p. 106).

14

INTRODUCTION

Though his story should be all one, yet it may have many parts. Though the plot itself may require but few characters, it may be so enlarged as to find its full development in many. There may be subsidiary plots, which shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story, and which will take their places as part of one and the same work, — as there may be many figures on a canvas which shall not to the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures, (pp. 238—239) And elsewhere in the paragraph Trollope works with the analogy between painting and novel-writing: "But", the young novelist will say, "with so many pages before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine myself; — how am I to know beforehand what space this story of mine will require ? There must be the three volumes, or the certain number of magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. If I may not be discursive should occasion require, how shall I complete my task ? The painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject, and must I in my art stretch my subject to my canvas?" This undoubtedly must be done by the novelist; and if he will learn his business, may be done without injury to his effect. He may not paint different pictures on the same canvas, which he will do if he allow himself to wander away to matters outside his own story; but by studying proportion in his work, he may teach himself so to tell his story that it shall naturally fall into the required length, (p. 238) Though James's apparent lack of acquaintance with the Autobiography is an obvious reason for his failure to note Trollope the critic's insistence upon artistic unity, the reason why later critics have ignored his very clear pronouncements in the paragraph just quoted is not so obvious. The author of the Autobiography certainly projects himself in that work as a manly man, one who means what he says, a man who, though he knows how to use understatement, seems to be entirely free of personal pretence. Indeed, this projection of character is one of the reasons why the Autobiography is such a great work of its kind. If, nevertheless, Trollope's insistence upon artistic unity has been ignored, one may guess that the critics have allowed the Autobiography's emphasis upon characterization to obscure the insistence upon unity. Trollope does, after all, say that he thinks "that the highest merit which a novel can have consists in perfect delineation of character, rather than in plot, or humour, or pathos" (p. 166). And he admits that "When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not very much care, how it is to end" (pp. 257-258), and that "I never could arrange a set of events before me" (p. 320), and that "I am not sure that the construction of a perfected plot has been at any period within my

INTRODUCTION

15

power. But the novelist has other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creations of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living, human creatures" (p. 232). There can be no doubt that the Autobiography does again and again stress the importance of character. And Trollope was consistent in stressing it elsewhere as well. For instance, in a revealing essay called "A Walk in a Wood", he again admits his inability to complete his plots before the beginning of the writing: "to construct a plot so as to know, before the story is begun, how it is to end, has always been to me a labor of Hercules beyond my reach. I have to confess that my incidents are fabricated to fit my story as it goes on, and not my story to fit my incidents." 11 Instead of spending his time working out complete plots, he worked, he says, on "plotlings": "The work goes into imagining scenes in detail, goes into constructing 'plotlings.' Every little scene must be arranged so that — if it may be possible - the proper words may be spoken and the fitting effect produced."12 The emphasis on character to the apparent detriment of plot is certainly an important element in Trollope's literary theory, and most critics have assumed that this theoretical emphasis upon character must have resulted in poorly constructed novels. Relatively inexperienced critics have made this assumption, 13 and even such an important Trollopian as Bradford A. Booth has made it: "It is clear, then, that the appeal which Trollope's novels continue to make arises from his mastery of other elements of the art of fiction than plot. Never much concerned about the story as narrative, he allowed himself to fall into errors of structure and proportion. . . . This is only to say again, as Trollope readily acknowledged, that plot was not his forte." 14 Aside from the possibility that Trollope's practice might deviate from his theory, the assumption may be invalid on other grounds. 11

Appleton's Journal, N . S. V I I (1879), 452. Page 457. 13 William Coyle, for instance, in "The Reputation of A n t h o n y Trollope in the United States, 1858—1920" (Cleveland, Western Reserve Univ. Diss., 1948), p. 383, concludes that "It would appear t h a t he has appealed t o Americans over the years in spite of his plots." 14 Anthony Trollope: Aspects of His Life and Art (Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press, 1958), p. 178. 12

16

INTRODUCTION

To place primary emphasis on character, for instance, is not necessarily to neglect plot. Furthermore, there are various ways to construct plots, and Trollope's way may have been quite adequate for his purposes. The admission that he could not construct complete plots before the actual writing is, after all, no more than that; it is by no means an admission that his novels are poorly constructed. The work which Trollope says he expended upon the proper construction of scenes, of "plotlings", would, in fact, seem to argue that the novels are very carefully constructed, for when an author labors to ensure that during the course of a scene "the proper words may be spoken and the fitting effect produced", he must pay close attention not simply to the characters but to the characters at a particular time and in a particular place, and the characters are what they are at the beginning of a scene as a result, in part, of what they have done previouthy and of what has been done to them. It would not be difficult to argue that Trollope's method of construction is more likely to result in an organically unified novel (that is, one containing an action having a beginning, middle, and end) than is the method of completing the plot before the writing. 15 It would appear, therefore, that Trollope's emphasis on character in the Autobiography and elsewhere and his admissions that he did not begin his writing with a fully-constructed plot in mind do not justify the assumption that his novels are carelessly constructed 15

Since the greek tragedians worked with ready-made plots, they did not have to choose between the two methods under discussion. It may be worth suggesting, however, that Trollope's reliance upon conventional plot material was for him a kind of equivalent of the Greek practice. If they began with a familiar story, he usually began with familiar situations. Henry James has described one of them: "His story is always primarily a love story, and a love story constructed on an inveterate system. There is a young lady who has two lovers, or a young man who has two sweethearts; we are treated to the innumerable forms in which this predicament may present itself and the consequences, sometimes pathetic, sometimes grotesque, which spring from such false situations" (Partial Portraits, p. 109). One critic (William Cadbury, "Shape and Theme: Determinants of Trollope's Forms", PMLA, L X X V I I I [1963], 330) has made the claim that "Trollope is one of the greatest users of conventional plot materials for a seriouB purpose before James." If he is, his wide knowledge of English and Irish life must have helped, for this knowledge freed him from "working up" material, enabling him to spend his time working out the scenes within his conventional situations. These speculations suggest, perhaps, one reason why Trollope could write so much so fast and still write well.

INTRODUCTION

17

any more than they allow one to dismiss the insistence upon unity in the Autobiography, the injunction that "Every sentence, every word, through all those pages, should tend to the telling of the story" (p. 237). If Trollope insists that the good novel is "at the same time realistic and sensational" (p. 227), it is equally true that he insists upon both good characterization and good construction. Such critical insistence does not, of course, automatically result in well-constructed novels, but if the critics have largely overlooked the theoretical insistence upon artistic unity, several of them have argued recently that the novels are, in fact, well constructed. One of these, Maude Houston, seems to argue that the novels are well constructed despite the fact that Trollope did not know what he was talking about in the Autobiography. "Anthony Trollope and his critics alike have combined to create and perpetuate the myth that plot was unimportant to him. They are mistaken. Plot is one of the main factors that makes his novels readable, and any aspiring novelist will profit from a study of his techniques of construction."16 Another critic, Jerome Thale, does not confront the Autobiography directly, though he seems almost to echo it: "the Trollope novel is the very opposite of the long comic strip, purely episodic; it is like a vast mural, one of those comprehensive images that cover walls crammed with figures and united spatially."17 Arthur Mizener, finally, seems to be replying forty-five years later to a charge made by T. H. S. Escott, the author of the first full-length study of Trollope and his works. Escott charged: "The legitimate or the most serviceable purpose of an underplot is to illustrate from another part of the stage, or on a stage entirely different, those evolutions of character or course of action belonging to the maiden narrative. This was almost as entirely ignored by Trollope as it was thoroughly understood by Dickens."18 "But", Mizener replies, "it is a fact that Trollope does link his plots and, in his quiet and unsymbolic way, play their meanings off against one another. . . . It would 18

"Structure and Plot in The Warden", UTSE, X X X I V (1955), 107. " "The Problem of Structure in Trollope", NCF, X V (1960—61), 149. 18 Anthony Trollope, His Work, Associates & Literary Originals (London, Lane, 1913), p. 304. Trollope was "Unique among nineteenth-century novelists for his knowledge of the old drama . . . " and he "was one of England's keenest amateur students of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater. He had a first-rate collection of the period's best plays, 257 of which he annoted with critical remarks, still unfortunately unpublished" (Bradford A. Booth,

18

IXTBODUCTION

not be easy to exhaust the parallels of this kind [of the kind he has been pointing out in The Prime Minister] in any good Trollope novel; they are an important part of what the multiple plot structure exists for."19 Mizener, though he presents his argument convincingly, in the course of a relatively short essay by no means exhausts the "parallels" of the political or Palliser series. John Hagan, in an essay published in the same year as Mizener's, has pointed out some of the parallels in the last novel of the series, The Duke's Children.20 Some structural attention has also been paid recently to the Barsetshire novels, though most of it seems to be confined to The Warden. Easily the most impressive recent essay on The Warden is that by Sherman Hawkins, who, applying teclmiques usually reserved for Melville and Faulkner, Donne and Marvell, treats the novel with which Trollope began to make his reputation as "a novel of dialectic, whose overall pattern is the synthesis or reconciliation of opposites".21 But though some convincing work has been done on the structure of a few novels, the structure of the bulk of Trollope's work remains unexamined, and it probably will be many years before all the novels will be properly treated. No single critic, certainly, could hope to examine, in the necessary detail and within the confinesof one study, all forty-seven novels. What can be done, and what needs to be done now, is a detailed structural examination of one of Trollope's novel series. If such an examination reveals Trollope throughout to be structuring his novels as Thale and Mizener contend, if it reveals that Trollope was, in a whole series of novels, in the habit of making "Every sentence, every word . . . tend to the telling of the story", then the ghost of Trollopian characterization at the expense of unified structure should be well on its way to being finally laid to rest. "Trollope's Orley Farm: Artistry Manqué", in From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad: Essays Collected in Memory of James T. Hillhouse, ed. Robert C. Rathburn and Martin Steinmann, Jr. [Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1968], p. 153). In view of these facts, it would be more than odd if Trollope were not at least well aware of the function of "underplots". 19 "Anthony Trollope: The Palliser Novels", in From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad, p. 163. 20 "The Duke's Children: Trollope's Psychological Masterpiece", NCF, X I I I (1958), 1-21. 21 "Mr. Harding's Church Music", ELH, X X I X (1962), 204.

INTRODUCTION

19

Since the Barsetshire series of novels was the first series, and since the six novels have retained their popularity despite the current interest in the Palliser series and despite the renewal of interest (in part typified and in part inspired by Professor Cockshut's study 22 ) in some of the later, "darker" novels, it is the logical series for the proposed examination. The six Barsetshire novels, then, will receive primary attention in the rest of this study. 23 Before launching into The Warden, it seems advisable to recognize that a novel may be unified in various ways. The plots of a multiplot novel may, for instance, work with the same theme or themes, in which casé the novel would be thematically unified. If, on the other hand, the various plots interact on each other to the point of causality, the novel will probably have unity of action. It is also possible that a novel will be so structured that the attentive reader will see similarities or parallels between the scenes, characters, and situations of the various plots. For the sake of convenience, one may say that such a novel has situational unity. Though novels may probably have other kinds of unity - a novel which tells the story of a character's life from birth to death might be said to have unity of character or hero, if no other form of unity - from the point of view of artistic form, of careful structure, the three kinds of unity already mentioned - thematic unity, unity of action, unity of situation seem the most important. It goes almost without saying that any given novel may have none of these forms of unity, or all three, or any two, or only one. The attempt will be made in this study to determine which form or forms of unity, if any, inhere in each of the six Barsetshire novels and in the series as a series. 22

A. O. J. Cockshut, Anthony Trollope: A Critical Study (London, Collins, 1955). 23 T h e Barsetshire series was constructed over a period of twelve years (1855-1867), during which time Trollope wrote nine other novels. Study of the six Barsetshire novels, then, amounts to a sampling of a little more than a third of the productivity of a twelve-year period, which period represents about a third of the total thirty-five-year period (1847-1882) of Trollope's productivity. If the sampling were spread out over the whole period of productivity, it might just for that reason be more representative, but such a spreading out would involve breaking out of the series, and the series as a principle of limitation has certain advantages, chief of which is its being a natural grouping, something already assembled b y the novelist, something "given". The series, in other words, is not something conveniently put together by a critic so that he can prove his point.

20

INTRODUCTION

A few more clarifications may be useful at this point. The term " p l o t " has been used a number of times already in this study, and though its meaning as used has probably been sufficiently clear, it is usually advisable to define key terms; Trollope himself has given us an adequate definition. " P l o t " , then, should be understood as denoting a "contrived arrangement of incidents by which interest is excited". 24 As such, " p l o t " should be distinguished from "action" or "story", which terms denote a fundamental movement within (and made manifest, in part, by) the incidents from a beginning, through a middle, toward an end. Trollope seems to imply this distinction between plot and action or story in a statement already quoted, when he says, " I have to confess that my incidents are fabricated to fit my story as it goes on, and not my story to fit my incidents." 25 "Theme", finally, may be understood simply as the meaning of the action or story as made manifest by plot, characteriza tion, and other novelistic devices.

A NOTE ON T E X T S

No complets edition of Trollope exists. If it had been completed, the Oxford Crown Edition, edited by Michael Sadleir and Frederick Page (1948 — 1954), would have been authoritative. It contains, h o w e v e r , o n l y An Autobiography,

The Warden,

Barchester

Towers,

and the Palliser or Political Novels. Even so, the Crown Autobiography, edited by Page (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1950), being the first edition "to agree with Trollope's own manuscript", is the only reliable edition of the Autobiography in existence, and page references to the Autobiography throughout the present study, except where otherwise noted, are to this edition. The Barsetshire Novels are complete in the Shakespeare Head Edition, edited by Michael Sadleir (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). This edition, having "been made from firsteditions and checked by the edition of 1879, which represents the latest text published during Trollope's lifetime", is the one used for the Barsetshire Novels throughout this study, and page references are to it, except where otherwise noted. 24 The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. Bradford A. Booth (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), p. 217. 26 " A Walk in a Wood", p. 452.

II THE

WARDEN:

NOVEL OF VOCATION

Although Henry James imagined Trollope as saying " Judge me in the lump . . .; I have only undertaken to entertain the British public. I don't pretend that each of my novels is an organic whole" (p. I l l ) , he did think that The Warden had "a certain classic roundness, though . . . there is a blemish on its fair face" (p. 115). The "blemish", James thought, was Chapter 15, which satirizes Carlyle and Dickens through the figures of Dr. Pessimist Anticant and Mr. Popular Sentiment. James regarded that chapter as "a mistake almost inconceivable", and the parodies of Carlyle and Dickens "as infelicitous as they are misplaced" (p. 115). James also thought that " I t was no less luckless an inspiration to convert Archdeacon Grantley's [sic] three sons, denominated respectively Charles James, Henry and Samuel, into little effigies of three distinguished English bishops of that period, whose, well-known peculiarities are reproduced in the description of these unnatural urchins. The whole passage, as we meet it, is a sudden disillusionment; we are transported from the mellow atmosphere of an assimilated Barchester to the air of ponderous allegory" (p. 115). Until recently most critics have agreed with James about Chapter 15, and even Michael Sadleir did not care to defend the novel against James's charge. Indeed, his own criticism of the offending chapter is at least as strong as James's, for he finds the parody and satire of the chapter "extraneous to the story's theme", "in direct conflict with the story's spirit", and "foreign to the story's very purpose" (p. 167). Although in 1947 one critic1 chose to defend the parody of Dickens on biographical-historical grounds, it was not until 1962 that any1 Lionel Stevenson, who argues that since "the central situation" of The Warden "may have been suggested to Trollope's imagination by one specific article which Dickens sponsored" in Household Words, "Trollope's inclusion

22

"THE

WARDEN"

one arose to defend the chapter on structural grounds. Sherman Hawkins, seeing the subject of The Warden as "the Church, and the paradoxes and problems which arise when an impulse of the spirit must be translated into a corporation with a bank account" (p. 203), argues that Chapter 15 is structurally important, for " T h e parodies of Anticant arid Sentiment suggest problems of continuity and human fallibility central, in any Protestant view, to institutional religion" (p. 203). Hawkins' essay is so persuasive that one finishes it with a feeling that Chapter 15 is an important chapter of an unusually well-constructed novel. Not only that, but the essay inclines one to agree with Hawkins' assertions that The Warden is not only "perhaps the most perfectly integrated of the Barchester novels" (p. 202), but also the "novel which, among the English novels of its day, approaches most nearly the condition of music" (p. 223). If one now persists in writing about The Warden, he does so not so much with the intention of refuting Hawkins as with that of supplementing him. The Church is indeed one of the central subjects of The Warden, and Archdeacon Grantly is, as Hawkins says he is, "clearly the palpable and visible personage of the Church in the diocese of Barchest e r " (p. 204). B u t if Dr. Grantly, "the archdeacon militant" (p. 48), represents the Church as an institution, if Trollope portrays him as looking "like an ecclesiastical statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church militant here on earth" (p. 47), Trollope also pictures him as a professional man: "his shovel hat, large, new, and well-pronounced, a churchman's hat in every inch, declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker's broad brim" (p. 47). Trollope also sees the archdeacon as representing a "political" position, one abstracted from the Church or not necessarily connected with it: if Trollope sees Mr. Harding's "possible son-in-law, B o l d " , as "the reformer", he also sees the warden's "positive son-in-law, the archdeacon", as "the conservative" (p. 51). Furthermore, if Dr. Grantly is one of the novel's most important characters, he is of Dickens recognizably as a crusader against the 'malversation' ceases to be an unprovoked affront to a distinguished author and becomes a natural association of ideas already linked in the public m i n d " ("Dickens and the Origin of 'The Warden'", Trollopian, I I [1947], 83-89).

"THE W A R D E N "

23

no more important than John Bold, who does not represent the Church. It appears, then, that though it is true to say that the archdeacon represents the visible Church, such a statement presents only part of the truth about the archdeacon. Similarly, to take the Church as the subject of The Warden is to narrow down the scope of the work, for as catholic as the Church may be, the subject of The Warden is broader. The Warden is not so much "about" an institution as institutions: it is concerned with the press, for instance, as well as the Church. Moreover, the book is less concerned with institutions than it is with those who run them. The Warden, in other words, is about vocations, and it is best seen as a prose "Lycidas". Hawkins has noted that The Warden not only "imitates . . . many devices of Augustan satire" but also "freely plagiarizes The Rape of the Lock" (pp. 214-215). The card game of Chapter 6, "The Warden's Tea Party", is probably the most obvious example of such "plagiarism". Hawkins also points out a number of parallels between The Warden and Paradise Lost: "Seen through the gateway that divides it from the dust and traffic of the London road, the Hospital with its river, its well-mown lawn and noble trees looks very like a paradise. . . . At the end of the book Mr. Harding and Eleanor pass arm and arm into the world" (p. 214). As real as these literary presences are in The Warden, that of Milton's earlier poem, "Lycidas", a poem to which Trollope was passionately attached in his young manhood,2 is more significant , and the objections of those critics who, like James and Sadleir, have disliked the parodies of Carlyle and Dickens in The Warden, make as much sense as objections to the "digressions" in "Lycidas", for in both works the problem of vocation is uppermost, and The Warden's Chapter 15 concerns itself with the vocations of priest, journalist, prophet, and novelist, as the "digressions" of the poem attack the problems of the vocations of poet and priest.

2 "In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and Latin I made myself very familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms, and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street, where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives o f the Poets, because he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas'' (An Autobiography, p. 53).

24

"THE W A R D E N "

Of the two evils which Trollope, in the Autobiography, says he intended to attack in The Warden, the first, "the possession by the Church of certain funds and endowments which had been intended for charitable purposes, but which had been allowed to become income for idle Church dignitaries" (p. 93), might, simply as a subject, remind readers of Milton's attack on the idle shepherds. But as the novel develops and one hears a denunciation of "the grasping priests of the Church of England [who] are gorged with the wealth which the charity of former times has left for the solace of the aged, or the education of the young" (p. 8), one begins to hear the Miltonic tone. And later on when Gregory Moody, one of the more aggressive of Hiram's bedesmen, growls, one hears the very language of "Lycidas": " 'Sink them all for parsons, say I,' growled Moody; 'hungry beggars, as never thinks their bellies full till they have robbed all and everything !' " (p. 35). But if the novel echoes "Lycidas", the similarities do not end there, for it has its pastoral, if not elegiac, elements, and they are important. John Hiram, the fifteenth-century endower of Hiram's Hospital, made his money as a woolstapler, and he willed that the Hospital be established "for the support of twelve superannuated wool-carders" (p. 2). These vocations of woolstapling and woolcarding are the first mentioned in the novel, except for that of clergyman, Mr. Harding's calling. At the time of the action of the novel, however, there are no more wool-carders left in Barchester, "so the bishop, dean, and warden, who took it in turn to put in the old men, generally appointed some hangers-on of their own; wornout gardeners, decrepit gravediggers, or octogenarian sextons" (p. 3). Here is the first instance in the novel of a deviation from the letter of Hiram's will, a document which, by the way, is not reproduced in the novel, so that its terms remain for the reader somewhat vague, a condition which Trollope probably intended as one means of emphasizing the complexity and difficulty of the moral issues raised in the novel. In any event, it is clear from the start that John Hiram made his money from sheep and that he intended his endowment to take care of men who had worked with sheep or sheep products. Trollope may even this early in the novel be foreshadowing its outcome, since if the men whom the will intended to benefit no longer exist, why is a warden needed for them ? If one does not at the beginning of the novel clearly see Mr. Harding, the warden, as a pastor, as a shepherd appointed to care for the

"THE W A B D B N "

25

carers of the sheep, the demise of wool-carding is an obvious reason for such vagueness of vision. It is worth noting, however, that at at least one point in the novel Trollope does image one of Mr. Harding's charges as a sheep. When Handy, Moody, and Spriggs try to pressure the three undecided bedesmen into signing the petition to the bishop, Billy Gazy, one of the undecided, is asked to think about their arguments. "But Billy Gazy couldn't think: he made a noise like the bleating of an old sheep, which was intended to express the agony of his doubt, and again muttered that 'he didn't know' " (p. 36). At the end of the novel, Billy Gazy, along with five other bedesmen, is dead. Mr. Harding having resigned and the bishop having refused to appoint a successor to him, the old men have had to face death without a warden to care for them. Mr. Harding, it is true, "did not desert them; from him they had such consolation as a dying man may receive from his Christian pastor; but it was the occasional kindness of a stranger which ministered to them, and not the constant presence of a master, a neighbour, and a friend" (pp. 200 — 201). Though it is clear that the bedesmen have suffered without their warden, it is also apparent that Mr. Harding, without his wardenship, functions more distinctly as a Christian pastor, for the demise of wool-carding in Barchester is but one cause for Mr. Harding's not appearing clearly as a pastor at the beginning of the novel. For one thing, Mr. Harding had come to Barchester originally not to fill the position of warden but, because of "a fine voice and a taste for sacred music", he had come to perform "the easy but not highly paid duties of a minor canon" (p. 1). When he was forty, Mr. Harding had been given the living of Crabtree Parva, and for ten years he had functioned actively as pastor of that small parish while still performing his canonical duties; but when, at fifty, he had been made precentor of the cathedral and warden of the hospital, he had handed over to a curate the duties and small income of Crabtree Parva. At the beginning of the novel, then, Mr. Harding is not functioning as the pastor of a parish, and though his position as warden has its pastoral elements, changing times and the demise of woolcarding have made that position highly ambiguous. Since the shepherd of the pastoral tradition is a singer or poet as well as, sometimes, a priest, it is certainly worth noting that Mr. Harding's chief duty, both as canon and as precentor, is to sing.

26

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And although Dr. Anticant supposes that the modern counterpart of John Hiram, '"the godly man of four centuries since'" (p. 142), pings '' 'indifferently through his nose once in the week some psalm more or less long - the shorter the better, we should be inclined to say'" (p. 143), the truth is that the fine voice and the interest in sacred music which brought Mr. Harding to Barchester in the first place have never deserted him. Indeed, in this part of his vocation Mr. Harding is unexcelled. At the end of the novel, "Mr. Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very rarely the case that those who attend the Sunday morning service miss the gratification of hearing him chant the Litany as no other man in England can do i t " (p. 202). And under Mr. Harding's guidance, the Barchester choir has been so improved that it "now rivals that of any cathedral in England" (p. 7). Mr. Harding's chief avocations, playing the cello and publishing and writing about ancient church music also, of course, help to locate him within the pastoral convention of the shepherd-musician. Mr. Harding's doubts about his right to the income from the wardenship begin fairly early in the novel — they begin almost immediately after John Bold's announcement in Chapter 3 that he intends to look into the carrying-out of John Hiram's will - and they continue "for many a long, long day" (p. 25) until, in Chapter 13, the warden decides to give up the wardenship. Mr. Harding is unsure of some of the consequences attendant upon his resignation and, while he is waiting to see Sir Abraham Haphazard, he spends some of his long day in London in Westminster Abbey trying to figure out how he can adjust the duties of Crabtree Parva with those of his precentorship. As it turns out, he does not have to turn his curate out of Crabtree Parva, but the point is that as many doubts as Mr. Harding may have during the course of the novel, of one thing he is sure: he wants to retain the precentorship. That position, he is sure, remains a central part of his calling as a clergyman. Trollope's original title for his novel was The Precentor, but he was persuaded by his publishers to let it be published as The Warden (Sadleir, p. 165). The original title emphasizes the certain, whereas the final title calls attention to the ambiguous, part of Mr. Harding's vocation. The first is the more positive title, while the second emphasizes the central problem of the novel. On the basis of these considerations alone, it is difficult to say which is the better title.

"THE

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27

But if his publishers would not allow Trollope to emphasize through his novel's title the steady part of Mr. Harding's vocation, he found other means to make that emphasis. It is interesting to note, for instance, that Trollope, up until Bold's interruption of Mr. Harding's concert in Chapter 3, generally gives Mr. Harding the title of precentor, not warden. As soon as Mr. Harding begins to doubt his position, however, Trollope starts calling him "the warden". And the story ends with a reference to the two names: " I t was long before the people of Barchester forgot to call Mr. Harding by his long well-known name of Warden. It had become so customary to say Mr. Warden, that it was not easily dropped. 'No, no,' he always says when so addressed, 'not warden now, only precentor' " (p. 203). But if by the end of the novel Mr. Harding has divested himself of the wardenship — rid himself of an ambiguous part of his vocation - his action in so doing has not been entirely negative, for Mr. Harding is at the novel's end once again an active pastor of a parish. It is true that St. Cuthbert's is anything but an imposing living, being "the smallest possible parish, containing a part of the Cathedral Close and a few old houses adjoining" (p. 201). And the church itself "is no bigger than an ordinary room - perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen wide - but", Trollope adds significantly, "still it is a perfect church" (p. 201). And in that perfect church, Mr. Harding, his vocation having been purified and perfected, "performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the Sacrament once in every three months" (p. 202). The Good Shepherd of the New Testament lays down his life for his sheep. If Mr. Harding does not literally lay down his life, he certainly lays down his way of life, or a good part of it. And though he gives up the wardenship for the sake of his conscience rather than, directly, for the sake of his sheep, there can be no doubt that Mr. Harding is a better shepherd at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning. And if Hiram's bedesmen do not profit from the reform movement but rather suffer from it (though Trollope was in favor of reform, he was aware of the price that must be paid for it; thus he styled himself not simply a liberal but a conservativeliberal3), the parishioners of St. Cuthbert's are certainly fortunate in having gained such a pastor. ® An Autobiography,

p . 294.

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"THE W A R D E N "

The action oiThe Warden can be looked at in several ways. It is possible to say, for instance, that the novel's central action is the giving-up of the wardenship. Looked at more positively, however, the action is the perfecting of Mr. Harding's vocation. That process proceeds steadily and inevitably through the course of the novel. It begins in Chapter 3 with John Bold's interruption of the precentor's concert with the announcement of his plan to look into the carrying-out of John Hiram's will; it continues in the same chapter with Mr. Harding's first real doubts about his position as warden; it proceeds in Chapter 5 when Mr. Harding, after the archdeacon's talk to the bedesmen, becomes "all but fixed in his resolve that some great step must be taken" (p. 52); it proceeds further in Chapter 9 when, after he receives news of Sir Abraham Haphazard's opinion, Mr. Harding "resolved in his misery and enthusiasm that he could with pleasure, if he were allowed, give up his place, abandon his pleasant home, leave the hospital, and live poorly, happily, and With an unsullied name, on the small remainder of his means" (p. 85); it receives but a temporary setback when Mr. Harding, after listening to the archdeacon's irrefutable logic, "went home, resolved to bear it all - ignominy, suspense, disgrace, self-doubt, and heart-burning - and to do as those would have him, who he still believed were most fit and most able to counsel him aright" (p. 90); it proceeds again with his suffering in the garden in Chapter 10 and speeds up when Eleanor advises her father to '"Give it up, papa'" (p. 97); it continues through Mr. Harding's decision in Chapter 13 that '"I have no right to be here"' (p. 123), through the suffering of his long day in London (Chapter 16), through the interview with Sir Abraham Haphazard (Chapter 17), and through the archdeacon's objections in Chapter 18; it culminates in the formal resignation of Chapter 19 and concludes in the final two chapters with Mr. Harding's leaving the hospital, the bedesmen, and his old home in order to begin his new life, with lodgings in Barchester, as pastor of St. Cuthbert's. There can be little doubt that the central action of the novel is coherent and unified. The Warden has but two plots. The first and major plot bears the central action, the giving-up of the wardenship. The second plot bears the love story, the John Bold-Eleanor Harding romance and eventual marriage. Since Bold is obviously a major character in both plots, he makes an obvious connection between them. The two plots, however, have more important connections than this obvious one.

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Because the resolution of the major plot depends entirely on the warden's decision, a decision which he makes "in a court of conscience" (p. 178) and independently of all considerations and influences except the question of the justice, not the legality, of his retaining the wardenship, it appears that there can be no causal connection between the two plots, and the appearance is partially correct. Both Eleanor and John try to resolve the warden's problem for him, Eleanor using John's love for her as a club to compel him to give up his law-suit, and he actually giving it up. But since the dropping of the suit does not get at the real problem, Mr. Harding ignores it. But though Eleanor is wrong in supposing that the dropping of the suit will solve her father's problem and therefore she might have spared her using her influence on Bold, before she does use that influence, she tells her father not to hesitate to give up the wardenship on her account: '"Do you think that I cannot be happy without a pony-carriage and a fine drawing-room? Papa, I never can be happy here, as long as there is a question as to your honour in staying here'" (p. 97). Such a declaration would make Mr. Harding's decision somewhat easier, and if he might have hesitated to resign for fear that he would put his daughter in conditions less favorable for marriage, Eleanor's declaration would have removed that cause for hesitation. One may say, then, that there is a causal, if negative, connection between the two plots at least to the extent that Eleanor does not let her love affair affect the advice she gives to her father. If the strict causal connection between the two plots seems somewhat tenuous, the relationship between them in terms of foreshadowing and preparation, in terms of making the resignation seem even more necessary and inevitable than it really is, is clearer and firmer. In Chapter 11, "Iphigenia", Eleanor forces Bold to promise to give up his proceedings against her father. She supposes that the price of such an unusual action will be her romance with Bold. As things turn out, the emotion she expends in forcing the reformer away from his project only intensifies their love for each other and precipitates the declaration of his passion. Though Trollope admits that "unmarried ladies of thirty-five" would have foreseen the outcome of Eleanor's interview with Bold, since they know "that young women on their knees before their lovers are sure to get kissed" (p. 100), he by no means questions the purity of Eleanor's motivation. The important thing is that though at the end of the

30

"THE W A R D E N "

chapter "the altar on the shore of the modern Aulis reeked with no sacrifice" (p. I l l ) , Eleanor fully intended the sacrifice, fully intended to give up her lover for the sake of her father. Eleanor does not have to give up her lover, but her lover does give up his proceedings against the warden. Bold's sacrifice, though ultimately futile because the warden pays no attention to it, is real enough and painful enough. Bold suffers most fully when he enters the lairs (those studies which, as Sherman Hawkins has correctly pointed out [pp. 208-209], are so much alike) of Dr. Grantly and Tom Towers to announce that he has given up his legal proceedings against the warden. Instead of praise, he receives from the archdeacon salt and vinegar and from Tom Towers pretence and a lecture on the responsibilities of the press. Bold ultimately receives some consolation for his suffering when he marries Eleanor, but before he is connected to the warden through marriage, he is united with him in suffering. Though the sacrifices of Eleanor and John differ inasmuch as the first is only attempted whereas the second is completed, they are alike insofar as neither is effective in relieving Mr. Harding of the burden of his decision and sacrifice. More important, however, both are alike in preparing the way for the warden's resignation, the third and climactic sacrifice of the novel. As Mr. Harding's givingup of the wardenship is the means by which he perfects his vocation, that resignation is the most nearly perfect self-sacrifice of a series of such sacrifices in the novel. Although the first two sacrifices, both originating in the secondary plot, cannot be said to affect the primary plot by means of causality, they beautifully foreshadow the climatic event of the primary plot and, by so doing, unite the two plots in a significant fashion. If the sub-plot is united with the main plot in a significant fashion and if the main plot bears the central action, which action is unified and coherent, one may still wonder about the function of certain characters, scenes, and situations which belong to the main plot. From one point of view, the function of such characters as Tom Towers, Dr. Anticant, Mr. Sentiment, and Sir Abraham Haphazard is quite apparent. These characters exist to put pressure on the warden and to increase that pressure so that Mr. Harding can see clearly that the problem will not go away by itself and that he will have to make a decision about his position. And from another point of view,

"THE W A R D E N "

31

another function of Towers, Anticant, and Sentiment appears. They exist so that Trollope can attack the second evil which he set out to deal with in the novel. He says in the Autobiography that though he had been much struck by the first evil, the misuse of charitable funds by churchmen, "I had also often been angered by the undeserved severity of the newspapers towards the recipients of such incomes, who could hardly be considered to be the chief sinners in the matter" (p. 94). But though this second function of some of the minor characters is readily seen in the light of the Autobiography, the important question is: Was Trollope successful in pursuing this second function within the artistic framework of the whole novel? By the time he came to write the Autobiography, Trollope had come to feel that he was not successful (p. 94). A study of the novel, however, shows differently. If the central action of the novel is the perfecting of Mr. Harding's vocation, the subject or theme of vocation is important everywhere in the work. If Mr. Harding figures in the novel as a man who comes to live up fully to his vocation, most of the other characters illuminate him by contrast. It is true that a few of the minor figures Chadwick, the bishop's steward, for instance, and Bunce, the good bedesman, Mr. Harding's unofficial sub-warden - are what they should be, but most of the other characters deviate in some fashion from their calling. Without attempting an exhaustive survey of such deviations, one may, in a reasonable amount of space, note the more significant failures of vocation. John Bold, the Barchester Reformer, is by profession a surgeon. Sherman Hawkins has pointed out the appropriateness of this profession for the kind of reformer Bold is: "Since the reformer undertakes to cure abuses . . . he becomes a doctor. But not a general practitioner like Dr. Thorne, who, in a later novel, acts as a healer of a sick society: Bold's vocation of surgeon implies a more drastic, painful, and destructive therapy" (pp. 207-208). Equally important as the fact that Bold is by profession a surgeon, however, is the fact that Bold, though he has put up in Barchester "a large brass plate with 'John Bold, Surgeon,' on it" (p. 11), does not really practice his profession; for though "John Bold is a clever man, and would, with practice, be a clever surgeon . . . he has got quite into another line of life" (p. 11). John Bold is a reformer, then, at the price of his profession. He is by no means a model surgeon.

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But as a reformer Bold, as his name suggests, is not model either. Trollope does hesitate to call him a demagogue, "for I hardly know how extreme must be a man's opinions before he can be justly so called" (p. 12), but he makes it clear that Bold as a reformer leaves something to be desired: I fear that he is too much imbued with the idea that he has a special mission for reforming. It would be well if one so young had a little more diffidence himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of others — if he could be brought to believe that old customs need not necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous; but no, Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton, and hurls his anathemas against time-honoured practices with the violence of a French Jacobin. (p. 12) But Bold's lack of moderation is probably not an unmixed evil, for in some situations a crudely carried-out reform might be preferable to no reform at all, and Trollope does admit that "there is something to be admired in the energy with which he devotes himself to remedying evil and stopping injustice" (p. 12). In any event, Bold's major failing in what may be called his second vocation, reforming, comes about not through his zeal for reform but through his passion for Eleanor Harding. Though Bold's giving up his law suit at Eleanor's request does not solve Mr. Harding's problem for him, it does put an end to Bold's activity as a reformer. Perhaps if he had lived Bold might have returned to reforming, but since Trollope killed him off in the novelistic time between The Warden and Barchester Towers, one must conclude that his career as a reformer was little more distinguished than his career as a surgeon. Perhaps, while he lived, he was a model husband. Dr. Grantly, who almost became friendly with Bold, his brotherin-law, before that young man died, has every appearance of being more successful in his vocation than Bold in either of his. Trollope's description of the archdeacon certainly portrays him as a successful man: "his heavy eyebrows, large open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine cloth, told how well to do was its estate; one hand ensconced within his pocket, evinced the practical hold which our mother church keeps on her temporal possessions" (p. 47). The only trouble is that this embodiment of the church establishment is more notable for his worldly than spiritual success, for though he is by no means, as a French critic put it, "le pharisien clérical au complet, le

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Machiavel de sacristie",4 he falls considerably short of the ideal of the Good Shepherd. Mr. Harding, who does come close to that ideal, having almost instinctively taken refuge in Westminster Abbey, reflects that here he can be safe from the archdeacon, for "the archdeacon would certainly not come to morning service at Westminster Abbey, even though he were in London" (p. 156). Trollope could hardly have pointed up more sharply than this the essential difference between the two clergymen. At the end of the novel he does try hard to give the archdeacon his due but the best he can do for the archdeacon is to conclude that "On the whole, the Archdeacon of Bar Chester is a man doing more good than harm, a man to be furthered and supported, though perhaps also to be controlled" (pp. 191-192). The Archdeacon of Barchester could be worse - he could be a Pharisee and a Machiavelli - but he should be better. Despite his outward appearance of success, the archdeacon finally cannot be adjudged a man who comes close to fulfilling the ideals of his profession. The archdeacon's sons cannot (at least in this novel) be taken very seriously as sons, but as, in James's words, "little effigies of three distinguished English bishops of that period" (p. 115), they play proper roles in a novel of vocation. If the Church itself, as symbolized by the archdeacon, is too worldlywise, then it is appropriate to bring to light with specific detail examples of that wisdom as manifested in three of her distinguished sons, three real bishops, all clever boys who "gave good promise of being well able to meet the cares and trials of the world" (p. 71). It is possible that the carrying-out of the satire on Bishops Blomfield, Phillpotts, and Wilberforce5 may strike some readers as being rather heavy-handed (as some of the echoes of "The Rape of the Lock" may seem rather clumsily contrived), but from the point of view of theme and structure there can be little question about the legitimacy and appropriateness of the three portraits. The portraits of Dr. Anticant and Mr. Sentiment are also attacks upon real men, but instead of being gratuitous assaults, these portraits allow Trollope to extend his range and to emphasize the fact 4

Émile Montégut, "Le Roman religieux en Angleterre", Revue des deux mondes, Nouvelle Période, 2e Série X I (1855), 703. 5 So identified by Richard F. Littledale in Academy, X X I V (1883), 273-274 upon the occasion of the publication of the Autobiography.

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"THE W A R D E N "

t h a t in mid-Victorian England churchmen were by no means alone in misusing or failing t o live up to their vocations. Of the two men, Trollope portrays Mr. Sentiment (Dickens) as being the far more effective writer. From one point of view, he knows his business very well and acts accordingly: "The artist who paints for the million must use glaring colours, as no one knew better than Mr. Sentiment when he described the inhabitants of his almshouse; and the radical reform which has now swept over such establishments has owed more to the twenty numbers of Mr. Sentiment's novel, t h a n to all the true complaints which have escaped from the public for the last half century" (p. 150). In contrast to the twenty numbers of Mr. Sentiment's novel, "Dr. Anticant's monthly pamphlet on the decay of the world did not receive so much attention as his earlier works" (p. 141). Differing in effectiveness, the writing of the two men is alike in this respect, however: inasmuch as it pretends to represent the real world, it is irresponsible. Coming as they do two-thirds of the way through the novel, the pictures which Modern Charity and The Almshouse present of Mr. Harding must strike the reader as simply false. And since neither Dr. Anticant nor Mr. Sentiment has bothered to become acquainted with Mr. Harding in order to ascertain what kind of man he really is, it is no wonder t h a t the pictures are false and the writing irresponsible. One might argue, of course, t h a t the essayist-prophet and the novelist are quite right in not allowing matters of fact to impinge upon the purity of their visions, but Trollope would apparently not agree with such an argument. In any event, there can be no question at all about the third target of Trollope's satire in Chapter 15, for Tom Towers is not a seer but a practicing journalist. If anyone should get his facts straight, he should. B u t the fact is t h a t Towers is pictured as no more interested in reality, in the real Mr. Harding, than are Anticant and Sentiment. Instead of paying attention to Bold's testimony on behalf of Mr. Harding's character, Towers first pleads ignorance, suggesting t h a t he does not know who has been writing the articles in The Jupiter attacking Mr. Harding. When pressed by Bold, Towers turns upon him and lectures him upon the freedom and responsibility of the press. " 'The public is defrauded,' said he, 'whenever private considerations are allowed to have weight' " (p. 146). But the public is also defrauded when the press has little regard for the truth, "when", as Trollope says in his own voice, the public "is purposely misled" (p. 146).

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"Poor public!" Trollope continues; "how often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to contend !" (p 146). Trollope by no means intends that this world of fraud should be seen as confined to the world of journalism, for politicians too can and do misuse their powers for their own ends. Here is how Sir Abraham Haphazard's Convent Custody Bill, the one hundred and seventh clause of which "ordered the bodily searching of nuns for Jesuitical symbols by aged clergymen" (p. 153), functions in the novel: it is an instance of political fraud - a successful such instance, for "The innocent Irish fell into the trap as they always do, and whiskey and poplins became a drug in the market" (p. 153). As Hawkins notes, the Church comes off rather well in comparison with thé powers of this world: "Its misuse of worldy goods is far less vicious than the World's misuse of religion: witness Sir Abraham and the 'Convent Custody Bill' " (p. 222). Sir Abraham, besides affording Trollope the occasion to extend his satire to the world of politics, stands in the novel as a horrible example of the successful man of the world. He is both self-made and self-occupied. "He knew every one whom to know was an honour, but he was without a friend. . . . He never quarrelled with his wife, but he never talked to her - he never had time to talk, he was so taken up with speaking" (p. 165). Between such a man and Mr. Harding there is a world of difference. It is no wonder that the successful man of the world cannot understand the decision by which the clergyman perfects his vocation; it is no wonder that Sir Abraham labels Mr. Harding's decision to resign the wardenship as "sheer Quixotism"6 (p. 168). It is no wonder, and it is quite fitting that Trollope should bring together these two men at a climactic moment of the novel, for the man who has lost his life through his vocation serves as a climactic contrast to the man who gives up his old life in order to find new life in his vocation. Jerome Thale has observed that "the Trollope novel depends upon parallels, contrasts, repetitions with slight variations. These things, which are present to some extent in any novel, become in Trollope the method of organization."7 The Warden certainly contains the 6 It is safe to assume that Trollope admires any person or action branded as Quixotic in his novels. The need for a certain lack of worldly prudence in human acts is one of his constant themes. 7 "The Problem of Structure in Trollope", p. 149.

36

"the

warden"

kind of parallels, contrasts, and repetitions which Thale has in mind. The contrast between Sir Abraham and Mr. Harding is not a solitary instance of the use of such a device in the novel. The unity in suffering which binds together Bold and Mr. Harding has already been noted, as have the two sacrifices which lead up to Mr. Harding's resignation. Further parallels could be pointed out - for instance, the bishop's holding firm against the archdeacon's pressure after Mr. Harding has done the same - but it should already be sufficiently clear that The Warden, besides being a novel with a unified central action, is a work containing a high degree of unity both of theme and situation. I t does have James's "classic roundness", though the "blemish on its fair face" which he saw is no blemish. The Warden may have its faults but if it does, they are not structural. Rebecca West believes that The Warden's "very slight degree of failure is surely due to its attempt to be at one and the same time a realistic novel and a satire",8 and there may be something to her statement. Certainly the realism with which Mr. Harding's struggle of conscience is depicted should not obscure the satirical intent of the novel and its general concern with vocation. One wonders, however, whether "Lycidas" would be a worse poem if Milton had projected the grief at King's death as more heartfelt. I t seems unlikely, as it seems unlikely that the moral center of a satirical novel need be drawn in the same way as the objects of the satire. I t is just possible that the novel which is able to attack, with success and at the same time, two opposite abuses may also succeed in combining realism with satire in the right amounts. The Warden, in any event, remains rounded and structurally unblemished.

8 The Gourt and the Oastle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 140.

Ill TROLLOPE ON REFORM AND CHANGE: BARCHEST ER TOWERS

Michael Sadleir, who tended to dislike, when he recognized them, the didactic elements in Trollope's novels, regarded The Warden as "very elementary Trollope". Barchester Towers, he thought, "shows a wonderful advance, alike in literary technique and in forcible use of selected material solely in the interests of the novel's plot. There is virtually no beating of the propagandist air in Barchester Towers; hardly an incident or a character but goes to strengthen the book's legitimate fictional aim - the portrayal of society in a southern cathedral city" (p. 374). If "elementary" is to be understood as meaning "didactic", then The Warden probably is more elementary than Barchester Towers, since it is more obviously concerned with attacking abuses than is the latter work. However understood, "elementary" is nevertheless a term which one hesitates to apply to such a skilfully constructed work as The Warden. For that matter, it is not a term which can be appropriately applied even to the earliest of Trollope's novels, for, as Chauncey Tinker has correctly asserted, "Trollope has no juvenilia. 'The Macdermots of Ballycloran', his earliest novel, contains little of the charm which was later to be associated with his name; but there is no trace in it of a "prentice hand. It is profoundly depressing but well written and cleverly constructed." 1 Instead of calling The Warden "elementary", it probably makes more sense to regard Barchester Towers, as Robert Donovan regards Trollope's second novel, The Kellys and the O'Kellys, as "more typically Trollopian than The Warden"?

1 2

"Trollope", YR, X X X V I (1947), 425. "Trollope's Prentice Work", MP, L U I (1956), 179.

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For one thing, Barchester Towers, like The Kellys, is quite a bit longer than The Warden, and the typical Trollope novel is a long novel, a three-volume affair. The posthumously published An Old Man'8 Love may be quintessential Trollope thematically, working as it does throughout with the theme of self-sacrifice, but in its length it is less typically Trollopian than, say, Orley Farm, or The Way We Live Now. For another thing, the Trollopian tone of selfassurance is probably more easily heard in Barchester Towers than in The Warden. Trollope was a man of wide experience, one who knew the ways of the world thoroughly, and the tone of his novels suggests that a wealth of experience and knowledge lies behind any particular remark he may happen to make. As Sadleir puts it, "There is nothing that he does not know. . . . Socially speaking he is the wisest of English novelists" (p. 371). As he extends his vision in Barchester Towers to take in the squirearchy, as represented by the Thornes of Ullathorne, and the noble De Courcys, as well as the clerical set of The Warden, Trollope's social wisdom becomes more and more evident, and that more evident wisdom may help to make Barchester Tbwers seem more typically Trollopian than The Warden. Trollope says in the Autobiography that he "took great delight" in the writing of Barchester Towers (p. 103). Despite the author's open contempt for Mr. Slope and for much of what he stands for, Barchester Towers is a genial book, a book full of the delight of creation. Perhaps it is in part the geniality and the ease of the book which moves Sadleir to call it "a wonderful advance" over its more slowly wrought predecessor. (Part of what moves him, of course, is his failure to see the real structural beauty of The Warden.) In any event, inasmuch as Barchester Towers continues to develop not only some of the same characters as The Warden but some of the same themes and situations as well, it can be seen as a real, if not wonderful, advance over the shorter work. The Warden deals with one reform, that of the administration of Hiram's Hospital. In Barchester Towers that reform is brought to completion and a new warden is finally appointed, but the reform of the hospital is now but one reform among many, for now reform is, at least potentially, raised to its highest power: everything now is in danger of reform and change. Sadleir is partially right in seeing the aim of Barchester Towers as "the portrayal of society in a southern cathedral city". What he fails to see is that the novel is

"BARCHESTER TOWERS"

39

concerned with portraying a threatened, not a static, society. The exact nature of the threat and how it is met can be seen only in a detailed examination of some of the structural elements of the novel. I t is possible to look at the plotting of Barchester Towers in various ways. Seymour Betsky, for instance, seems to see only one plot in the novel, a plot to which some characters and incidents are connected only tangentially, if at all: "In Barchester Towers . . . the heart of Trollope's concern has to do with a struggle among higher clergy for political power within a cathedral town. The love story of Eleanor Bold and the Rev. Francis Arabin, the caricatured triangle of Slope, Madame Neroni.and Eleanor Bold, and the comic efforts of Bertie's proposal to Eleanor Bold - all are tangents. The sports at Ullathorne are quite extraneous, disproportionately so." 3 I t makes at least as much sense, however, to regard the novel as having four plots, two major and two minor, the power struggle and the Eleanor Bold love affairs being the former, the fate of the Stanhopes and the position of the Thornes of Ullathorne the latter. The most sensible approach, though, lies in recognizing t h a t Barchester Towers, like The Warden, has but two plots, b u t t h a t those plots are much more complex than those of The Warden, for if Mr. Harding is at the center of the major plot of The Warden, no one person is at the center of Barchester Towers' power struggle: Bishop Proudie, Mrs. Proudie, Mr. Slope, and Archdeacon Grantly are all centrally engaged in the struggle; and if Eleanor has but one suitor in The Warden, she has three - Arabin, Slope, and Bertie Stanhope - in Barchester Towers. Having recognized the novel's plots, one can begin to grapple with the real critical problems: How, if a t all, do the parts of the plots relate to the wholes ? How, if at all, do the two plots affect each other? Even before the narrative proper begins, the title of the first chapter, "Who Will Be the New Bishop ?" announces the first phase of the struggle for power in Barchester. If the old bishop dies before the old ministry goes out, then there will be no struggle, for the episcopal power will remain where it has been during the reign of old Dr. Grantly, a man who occupied the episcopal chair "with 3

"Society in Thackeray and Trollope", in From Dickens to Hardy, Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1968), p. 160.

ed.

40

"BARCHESTER TOWERS"

meek a u t h o r i t y " (I, 1): it will remain in the hands of the archdeacon, the bishop's son. If the ministry should fall before the bishop's death, however, then there will be a struggle, for "No probable British prime minister b u t he who was now in, he who was soon to be out, would think of making a bishop of Dr. G r a n t l y " (I, 4). The ministry does, of course, fall before the bishop's death, and t h e struggle is on. Before looking a t t h a t struggle in detail, it should first be noted t h a t it is made possible b y a shift in political power. At the very beginning of the novel, then, there is an interaction of powers: political power affects ecclesiastical power. I n case anyone should suppose t h a t something other t h a n power is of primary importance a t the old bishop's death, Trollope takes pains a t the end of Chapter 1 to clarify the archdeacon's motives: " H e was avaricious, my readers will say. No - it was for no love of lucre t h a t he wished to be bishop of Barchester. . . . H e would be a richer man as archdeacon t h a n he could be as bishop. B u t he certainly did desire to play first fiddle" (I, 10). Similarly, Trollope makes it clear t h a t the other principal stragglers for power are motivated precisely by t h a t desire. Mr. Slope, for instance, " w a n t e d a wife, a n d he wanted money, b u t he wanted power more t h a n eit h e r " (I, 239). A n d as if f u r t h e r t o underline the importance of power in the novel, Trollope uses t h e word itself, or some form of it, time and time again: he uses it in at least forty of the fifty-three chapters of the novel, and in those chapters in which " p o w e r " does n o t appear, some substitute, such as " m a s t e r y " , " a u t h o r i t y " , "jurisdiction", "rule", does. " P o w e r " , indeed, is the key word of Barchester Towers. B u t if circumstances rather arbitrarily initiate the power strugle in Barchester, once the new bishop is named, the struggle is carried on deliberately. Bishop Proudie is to be t h e bishop in name, b u t now the question is, Who will be bishop in fact ? Who will wield the episcopal power? Though t h e archdeacon wielded t h a t power while his father was alive a n d hoped to possess it in his own right a f t e r his father's death, he cannot really be said to be a contestant for the episcopal power once Bishop Proudie has been installed. The archdeacon moves from a position of hoping to wield the episcopal power in his own right to t h a t of striving to limit t h a t power. Once Mr. Slope declares war with his sermon in Barchester Cathedral, the archdeacon and his friends are p u t on the defensive. Theirs is a holding

"BARCHESTER TOWERS"

41

action; they fight to preserve as much as possible of the old order against the encroachments of the new episcopal regime. Though the bishop is the titular head of the attacking forces,4 and although insofar as he is by conviction a liberal, a whig, and a low churchman, he is the natural enemy of the archdeacon's high church forces, the real aggressors are Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie. The bishop is dominated by his wife, of course, but having archiépiscopal ambitions, he "by no means intended to bury himself at Barchester as his predecessor had done. No ! London should still be his ground" (I, 21). Bishop Proudie's ambition to shine in London, then, leaves a power vacuum in Barchester. Mr. Slope, even on his first trip to Barchester, taking note of the bishop's ambition, determines to fill the Barchester power vacuum. "He understood correctly enough to what attempts the new bishop's high spirit would soar, and he rightly guessed that public life would better suit the great man's taste, than the small details of diocesan duty. He, therefore, he, Mr. Slope, would in effect be bishop of Barchester. Such was his resolve" (I, 26). And Mr. Slope's method of carrying out his resolution is just as deliberate as the resolution itself. His sermon in Barchester Cathedral is intended to be exactly what it turns out to be: an open declaration of war. Having decided that the archdeacon cannot be cajoled or flattered into accepting encroachments upon the status quo, Mr. Slope "saw that open battle against Dr. Grantly and all Dr. Grantly's adherents was a necessity of his position, and he deliberately planned the most expedient methods of giving offence" (I, 47). The sermon is one very powerful such method. But Mr. Slope is well aware that the archdeacon and his forces are not his only enemies. "He knew that he should have a hard battle to fight, for the power and patronage of the see would be equally coveted by another great mind - Mrs. Proudie would also choose to be bishop of Barchester" (I, 27). It is this battle, the struggle for power between Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie, which is the central struggle of the novel. Had the liberal forces been united, they might very well have beaten the conservatives. As it is, the attacks on the conservatives are not so much launched for their

4

The military imagery is Trollope's. I t pervades the novel in a manner similar and parallel to the word "power".

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own sakes as they are deliberately made occasions for the SlopeMrs. Proudie struggle. The first such occasion is the appointment of the warden for the newly reconstituted Hiram's Hospital. Though it is true that Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie begin in agreement that Mr. Harding shall not have the wardenship, as soon as Mr. Slope decides that because Eleanor Bold's fortune is worth having, it would be a good idea to stay on the right side of her father, then he and Mrs. Proudie are destined to come into open conflict. If Who will be the new bishop ? is the first question posed by the power-struggle plot, and Who will exercise the episcopal power? the second, then the third is, Who will be the warden ? If the first makes the power struggle inevitable and the second defines the essence of it, the third sets it in motion in earnest and gives Trollope another chapter title: "Who Shall Be Cock of the Walk?" By the end of this chapter, Chapter 17, Mr. Slope has not openly declared war on Mrs. Proudie, as he has already declared it on the archdeacon, but Mrs. Proudie has reacted so vigorously to his attempts to persuade the bishop to reofFer the wardenship to Mr. Harding, that Mr. Slope is quite sure that there is "not room in the diocese for the energies of both himself and Mrs. Proudie" (I, 164-165). Despite a temporary victory or two by Slope, Mrs. Proudie finally succeeds in putting her candidate, Mr. Quiverful, into the wardenship. To do so, however, she has to put down a rebellion at home, for Mr. Slope succeeds for a while in inspiring the bishop to attempt to assert his authority over his wife. But although the bishop succeeds in the daytime in driving his wife from one battlefield, his study, and even begins "to hope that he was now about to enter into a free land, a land delicious with milk which he himself might quaff, and honey which would not tantalise him by being only honey to the eye" (II, 47), his wife proves too powerful for him at night on another battle-field, their bed, and by the time morning arrives, the bishop has surrendered for good. If at the beginning of the novel a shift in political power makes the ecclesiastical struggle for power possible, in the middle of the work Mrs. Proudie's reassertion of domestic power assures her of her first victory over Mr. Slope, who is incapable of putting his man into the wardenship against the opposition of both the Proudies. Mrs. Proudie's second victory over Mr. Slope does not come about through her own prowess, for although she certainly does not en-

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43

dorse or approve of Mr. Slope's candidacy for the deanship, it is Dr. Gwynne's influence, not Mrs. Proudie's, which secures the position for Mr. Arabin. By this time, of course, Mr. Slope has just about given up all his pretensions to episcopal power, having recognized t h a t Mrs. Proudie possesses certain insuperable tactical advantages in t h e struggle to control the bishop. The deanship would make a nice consolation prize for him, though, and he still might be able to snipe away at Mrs. Proudie from the sanctuary of the cathedral. Mrs. Proudie, however, has no intention of allowing Mr. Slope any consolation. She, "the Medea of Barchester . . . had no idea of not eating Mr. Slope. Pardon him I merely get rid of h i m ! make a dean of h i m ! I t was not so they did with their captives in her country, among people of her s o r t ! Mr. Slope had no such mercy to expect; she would pick him to the very last bone" (II, 73). Dr. Gwynne, the Master of Lazarus, has little in common with the Medea of Barchester, and soon after he encounters her in the bishop's study, he begins "to understand and to share the intense disgust which the archdeacon always expressed when Mrs. Proudie's name was mentioned" (II, 184). Dr. Gwynne, nevertheless, helps Mrs. Proudie complete her victory over Mr. Slope, for when, through his influence, the fourth and last question of the powerstruggle plot - the question, t h a t is, of Who is to be Dean of Barchester Cathedral ? - is answered with Mr. Arabin's name, then Mr. Slope has no choice but to leave Barchester, and Mrs. Proudie's victory over him is complete. Dr. Gwynne is not the only unintentional supporter of Mrs. Proudie's cause, however, for it is certain t h a t Mr. Slope himself contributes to his own defeat. He does so first of all, of course, by challenging and antagonizing Mrs. Proudie in the matter of the wardenship, but some challenge was necessary in order for the fight to begin, and given the nature of the two antagonists, a fight for power between them, on some grounds or other, would seem almost inevitable. The avoidable involvement, however, the real mistake of Mr. Slope's campaign, is his entanglement with la Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni, nata Stanhope. I t is one thing for him to exercise his power by summoning the Stanhopes back from Italy; it is quite another thing to pay daily visits to Signora Neroni, a woman who can give him nothing but trouble. Mr. Slope, who is not unintelligent, is aware of the dangers of his dalliance with Madeline. He knows t h a t scandal may reach the

44

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palace, as it does, and give Mrs. Proudie the excuse she wants to dismiss him from the bishop's service, as it does. "He knew that ho was acting against the recognised principles of his life, against those laws of conduct by which he hoped to achieve much higher success. But . . . he could not help himself. Passion, for the first time in his life, passion was too strong for him" (I, 270). Mr. Slope, who lives to gain and exercise power, exposes himself to Mrs. Proudie's power because he is too weak to withstand the power of passion. His passion does not grow unaided, of course, for its object deliberately seeks to strengthen it. Mrs. Proudie is not the only woman in Barchester who likes to exercise power. Indeed, Signora Neroni, physically incapacitated though she may be, is as power-hungry as anyone in the novel. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that because she is physically incapacitated, she lusts for power over men. Trollope puts it this way: "It was necessary to her to have some man at her feet. It was the one customary excitement of her life. She delighted in the exercise of power which this gave her; it was now nearly the only food for her ambition" (I, 271). Once again the novel's primary plot unfolds through an interaction of powers. If the ecclesiastical power struggle begins as the result of a shift in political power, if it continues as the result of a reassertion of domestic power and moves along further through the influence of a powerful ally, Dr. Gwynne, it concludes as Signora Neroni's sexual power makes Mr. Slope especially vulnerable to Mrs. Proudie's wrath. It is worth noting that Mr. Slope's final expulsion from Barchester, an expulsion which may remind some readers of Malvolio's final exit in Twelfth Night inasmuch as both he and Mr. Slope threaten revenge as they leave, is anticipated by his inglorious expulsion from the signora's presence. Signora Neroni, like Mrs. Proudie, lives to exercise power, and, again like the Medea of Barchester, she "had no pity; she knew nothing of mercy. Her present object was to put Mr. Slope down, and she was determined to do it thoroughly, now that she had him in her power" (II, 219). She does it thoroughly, so thoroughly that "How Mr. Slope got out of that room he never himself knew" (II, 220). Mr. Slope's putting-down by the signora makes a cruel scene, but it is altogether appropriate that the woman who renders Mr. Slope so helpless should play a leading role in the foreshadowing of his final exit.

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45

As much as Trollope detests Mr. Slope, he has a certain admiration for the man's courage, and towards the end of the novel he tries to do him justice. When the appointment of Mr. Arabin to the deanship is announced, the archdeacon exults, feeling that now he has succeeded in trampling on Mr. Slope. Trollope comments at this point, however, that not the archdeacon, "but circumstances, had trampled on Mr. Slope" (II, 266). It is certainly true that the archdeacon has little right to claim credit for Mr. Slope's downfall. The most he has done to help his own cause is to bring Mr. Arabin to St. Ewold's and to suggest Arabin as a candidate for the deanship to Dr. Gwynne. It is also true inasmuch as Dr. Gwynne's influence in the appointment of the new dean is a matter entirely beyond Mr. Slope's control, that circumstances, not the archdeacon, thwart Mr. Slope's candidacy for the deanship. "Circumstances", however, is hardly an adequante term to cover Signora Neroni and Mrs. Proudie, and since these powerful, merciless women play a large part in the defeat of Mr. Slope, it seems more accurate to say that not the archdeacon, but circumstances and two women combine to trample on Mr. Slope. It should be evident by this time that the various parts of the power-struggle plot cohere, that the four questions which arise during the course of the primary plot are logically tied together and that they relate to each other in a significant and causal manner. Who is to wield the episcopal power? is the central question, a question which is largely answered by means of the answers to the questions, Who is to be the new bishop? Who is to be warden? and Who is to be the new dean ? It is now time to turn to the second plot, the love story, to see how its parts relate to each other and to see further how the whole of it relates to the primary plot. If Signora Neroni's dismissal of Mr. Slope is a humiliating experience for him, his leave-taking of Eleanor Bold is also humiliating and, since she slaps him, it is physically painful as well. Though she becomes very angry with her second unsuccessful suitor, Bertie Stanhope, Eleanor does not slap him, and Mr. Arabin, of course, finally succeeds in marrying Eleanor. Eleanor receives the proposals of her three suitors in various ways, but the fact that Trollope devotes a fully-developed scene to each proposal (there are probably almost as many proposals in the forty-seven Trollope novels as there are letters) is an indication that each should be seen in the light of

46

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TOWERS"

the others. Trollope almost says as much a t the beginning of his account of Mr. Arabin's proposal: " I t has been told, with perhaps tedious accuracy, how Eleanor disposed of two of her lovers a t Ullathorne; and it must also be told with equal accuracy, and if possible with less tedium, how she encountered Mr. Arabin" (II, 233). And if Eleanor reacts angrily to the money-motivated proposals of her first two suitors, Trollope underscores the difference in her reaction to Mr. Arabin's suit when he notes t h a t Eleanor, when Arabin is temporarily at a loss for words, "looked slowly, gently, almost piteously up into his face. There was at any rate no anger there to deter him" (II, 240). I t cannot be said that the three proposals have any direct or substantial effect upon each other, except insofar as the first two help to accustom the widow Bold to think of herself as one eligible for marriage again, but by handling the three in parallel seenes so as to emphasize their similarities and differences, Trollope manages at once to impart the proper climactic effect to the successful proposal and to bind the three together with situational unity. The kind of unity which binds together the parts of the love plot may strike some readers as somewhat tenuous or, what may amount to the same thing, as a bit too obvious. The ways in which the love story is related to the power struggle are, perhaps, more impressive. If, for instance, one takes Bertie as a representative of his family, then it is clear t h a t Eleanor's three suitors not only play important parts in the struggle for power but t h a t each is introduced into the novel in connection with the primary plot: none has his being in the novel solely to make love to Eleanor. Slope and Arabin are, of course, opposing champions of the liberal and conservative forces, and they come to Barchester as such. Similarly, the Stanhopes are summoned back from Italy not so t h a t Bertie can make love to Eleanor Bold but so t h a t Mr. Slope can exercise his power. Furthermore, it is very difficult for Eleanor and her lovers to keep their love separate from their politics. Eleanor is throughout almost the whole novel suspected by her friends - somewhat tediously so, perhaps - of loving Mr. Slope. Eleanor's friends would probably not approve of Mr. Slope under any circumstances, b u t since he threatens their rights and privileges as members of the clerical establishment, he is just about the last man on earth they want Eleanor to fall in love with. And though Mr. Slope never has a chance with Eleanor as her lover, she does at least tolerate him

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socially just because her friends seem to be unduly harsh on him in clerical-political matters. He, for his part, would like to keep his love affairs and his drive for ecclesiastical power separate, but even when he takes a walk in the moonlight with Eleanor and the Stanhopes, he cannot get away from the problem of the vacant wardenship. The strollers begin by walking around the cathedral close; "then they went under the old arched gateway below St. Cuthbert's little church, and then they turned behind the grounds of the bishop's palace, and so on till they came to the bridge at the edge of town, from which passers-by can look down into the gardens of Hiram's Hospital. . . . Mr. Slope knew that the gable-ends and old brick chimneys which stood up so prettily in the moonlight, were those of Mr. Harding's late abode, and would not have stopped on such a spot, in such company, if he could have avoided it; but Miss Stanhope would not take the hint which he tried to give" (I, 182). By thus moving the lovers over the territory which is at stake in the power struggle Trollope effectively ties his plots together. But though Mr. Slope tries to separate love from politics, it is he, after all, who first combines them, for it is he who decides that in order to secure Eleanor and her fortune it will be advisable for him to back her father for the wardenship. He makes this decision, by the way, while on his way home from a discussion with Mr. Quiverful about the vacant wardenship. This decision, as has been shown, leads to the first major battle between Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie. It should be clear, then, that the love plot is not only tied closely to the power-struggle plot, but that the one works upon the other by means of causality. Since, furthermore, Mr. Slope pursues Eleanor for her money, looking upon it as he does "as a duty which he owed his religion to make himself the master of the wife and the money" (I, 137), it appears likely that Mr. Slope lusts for power through Eleanor, money being a form of power, just as he seeks to wield the power of the episcopal office. Eleanor's slapping of Mr. Slope ends the first of the three proposal scenes of the novel, those scenes which Trollope arranged in ascending order. But her violent rejection of the chaplain is also the first of three rejections for Mr. Slope, for it, like Signora Neroni's expulsion of Mr. Slope from her presence, anticipates and foreshadows Mr. Slope's final dismissal from the bishop's service and from Barchester. Here too the novel's plots are beautifully woven

48

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TOWERS"

together. One can only conclude that, from the point of view of structure, the plotting of Barchester Towers is admirably handled. Power is so important in Barchester Towers that it is not confined to plot but assumes the status of a major theme as well, a theme so pervasive that even when the characters are engaged in apparently idle chatter about the composition of the moon, the subject of power enters the conversation. Eleanor, in replying to Bertie's question about the possibility of the moon's being composed of "pulpy gelatinous matter", says, "'I really think it's almost wicked to talk in such a manner. How can we argue about God's power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one?"' (I, 180-181). But as important and pervasive as the theme of power is in the novel, it is not the primary theme, for that theme arises out of what can be done with power. Power can be used to preserve things as they are, but it can also be used in the service of change. Change is the central theme of Barchester Towers. After the installation of the new bishop, Trollope wastes little time before sounding his theme. He does so at first by means of description. When the archdeacon and Mr. Harding pay their courtesy visit to their new prelate, they feel, even before Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie move into action, that things have changed considerably in the palace: His lordship was at home, and the two visitors were shown through the accustomed hall into the well-known room, where the good old bishop used to sit. The furniture had been bought at a valuation, and every chair and table, every bookshelf against the wall, and every square in the carpet, was as well known to each of them as their own bedrooms. Nevertheless they at once felt that they were strangers there. The furniture was for the most part the same, yet the place had been metamorphosed. A new sofa had been introduced, a horrid chintz affair, most unprelatical and almost irreligious, such a sofa as never yet stood in the study of any decent high church clergyman of the Church of England. The old curtains had also given way. They had, to be sure, become dingy, and that which had been originally a rich and goodly ruby had degenerated into a reddish brown. Mr. Harding, however, thought the old reddish brown much preferable to the gaudy buff-coloured trumpery moreen which Mrs. Proudie had deemed good enough for her husband's own room in the provincial city of Barchester. (I, 33-34). Not the least significant part of this description, perhaps, is the recognition that the room had been subject to change even while

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the old bishop lived. But a gradual change, a slow degeneration, is one thing; a metamorphosis, something else. After the visit, Trollope balances his description of the metamorphosed room with a quick view of the cathedral towers. It is some time before the archdeacon is able to speak. When he and Mr. Harding reach the cathedral close, he finally manages an exclamation or two: " 'Good heavenss!' exclaimed the archdeacon, as he placed his foot on the gravel walk of the close, and raising his hat with one hand, passed the other somewhat violently over his now grizzled locks. . . . 'Good heavens!' - and the archdeacon looked up to the gray pinnacles of the cathedral tower, making a mute appeal to that still living witness which had looked down on the doings of so many bishops of Barchester" (I, 41). The appeal may be mute but it is certainly appropriate that the archdeacon, after such a visit, should look up for consolation to a visible sign of the fact that change in Barchester is not all powerful. Everyone seems to recognize "Barchester Towers" as a fine title for a novel. Seen simply from the point of view of grace, conciseness, and interest, it must rank among Trollope's best titles. It is also, however, an extraordinarily significant title, for in the balancing descriptions of the bishop's metamorphosed study and of the apparently unchanging pinnacles of the cathedral tower Trollope presents the central action of the novel, which has been described by one critic as a "movement. . . from one set of stable relationships to another, passing through a series of unstable relationships",5 in visible and nuclear form. The pinnacles are not absolutely unchanging, of course, but they have outlived previous bishops just as they will outlive the present one. So too Barchester is not immune from all change - bishops and deans die here as elsewhere, and wardens resign and are replaced - but it manages to retain its identity, it successfully resists metamorphosis. Mr. Slope, though he does not finally succeed in making radical changes in Barchester, does manage once to preach a sermon in Barchester Cathedral. The setting could not be more pertinent to Trollope's theme or to Mr. Slope's purpose, and that clergyman, within the confines of the ancient structure and surrounded by the old clergy - the dean, the archdeacon, "the chancellor, the treas5

William E. Cadbury, "Varieties of Form in the Novels of Anthony Trollope" (Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Diss., 1961), p. 104.

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urer, the precentor, sundry canons and minor canons" (I, 48) seizes the occasion to launch an attack upon the status quo. After some preliminary maneuvering, he settles to his task by criticizing the service which preceded his sermon. He does not attack the quality of the music as such; what bothers him is "the undue preponderance, which . . . music had over meaning in the beautiful service which they had just heard" (I, 51). He goes on to justify his criticism on the grounds of changing times: he argues "that a mode of service which was effective when outward ceremonies were of more moment than inward feelings, had become all but barbarous at a time when inward conviction was everything, when each word of the minister's lip should fall intelligibly into the listener's heart. Formerly the religion of the multitude had been an affair of the imagination: now, in these latter days, it had become necessary that a Christian should have a reason for his faith - should not only believe but digest - not only hear, but understand" (I, 51). Mr. Slope, apparently, is a believer in the doctrine of progress. It is interesting to see that Trollope, eight years after the publication of Barchester Towers, pointed in earnest to a movement from feeling to reason within Englishmen, which movement seems quite a bit similar to the progress from imagination to reason alluded to by Mr. Slope. Trollope noted this movement while making some preliminary remarks in an article in which he advocated reform of the English public school. " I t is the same with us Englishmen in all matters", he says. " A t last, after long internal debate and painful struggle, reason within us gets the better of feeling. In almost every bosom there sits a parliament in which a conservative party is ever combating to maintain things old, while the liberal side of the house is striving to build things new. In this parliament, as in the other, the liberal side is always conquering, but its adversary is never conquered. Bit by bit, very slowly, after tedious fighting, the old wood is dragged away, and the new plantations are set in order."6 Trollope was never sympathetic to violent, precipitate change, to the kind of metamorphosis that Mr. Slope tries to effect in Barchester. He probably stated his position on the subject most clearly in an essay in which he argued for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. He begins by talking about the removal of ruins and then 6

"Public Schools", Fortnightly

Review, I I (1865), 476.

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51

switches to the metaphor of dead wood, the metaphor he uses in the public school essay: We venerate things that are old because they are old; and gently remove our ruins, fragment by fragment, with hands which love while they destroy. . . . We cannot ruthlessly cut down the half-dead tree of the grove, and tear asunder the roots, and plough and sow the soil, where the spot has been hallowed by ancient piety. The work of removal has, indeed, to be done; but it must be done tenderly, not ruthlessly. With loving hands must the old timber be dragged away, and the ground cleared for purpose of new utility.7 Mr. Slope, who does not venerate things that are old, has no intention of gently removing ruins. He talks, rather, of "casting away the useless rubbish of past centuries" (I, 112). Trollope probably agrees with Mr. Slope when he tells Mr. Harding that " 'Work is now required from every man who receives wages; and they who have to superintend the doing of work, and the paying of wages, are bound to see that this rule is carried out. New men . . . are now needed, and are now forthcoming in the church, as well as in other professions' " (I, 112), but though he recognizes the need for new men, he cannot approve of their doing their work ruthlessly. One critic has asserted that "for Trollope, change is necessary that men might be actually what in their very being they obscurely but definitely already are".8 Such a view of change makes sense, certainly, and it might even remind some readers of Spenser's solution to the problem of change as it is expressed in the Mutability Cantos of The Faerie Queene, but it is difficult to see how it applies to Barchester Towers, though it does seem relevant to Mr. Harding's perfecting his vocation in The Warden by means of his giving up the wardenship. In any event, it is certain that Trollope's attitude toward change in Barchester Towers is, like his position on reform in The Warden, not simple. It is probably best described as balanced. Since Trollope heartily detests Mr. Slope and since at the end of the novel things appear to be very little changed in Barchester (though in fact the diocese has a new bishop, the hospital a new warden, the cathedral a new dean, and the dean a wife), a casual reader might miss Trollope's recognition of the necessity and desira7

"The Irish Church", Fortnightly Review, I I (1865), 82-83. Roger Slakey, "Anthony Trollope: A Study in the Foundations of Choice" (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ. Diss., 1957), p. 214. 8

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bility of change when it is carried out with the necessary care. Such a reader might fail to perceive the balance of Trollope's position, but he really should not, for Trollope has taken pains in the novel to satirize the unhealthy clinging to the past of those who fail to reconcile themselves to the fact of change in human affairs. It is true that the satire directed against the Thornes of Ullathorne is gentle, affectionate, and pleasant, but it is satire nevertheless. Trollope undoubtedly likes the Thornes better than he likes Mr. Slope, as he no doubt enjoys their foibles whereas the pretensions of the evangelical clergyman disgust him,9 but the point is that he does see the foibles of the Thornes as foibles, and he means it when he says that Mr. Thorne "was a man possessed of quite a sufficient number of foibles to lay him open to much ridicule" (I, 211). And what is true of Mr. Thorne is even more true of his sister, who, after all, regards her brother, whose favorite authors are Montaigne and Burton and who has never fully recovered from his shock at the repeal of the corn laws, as having been in his youth "a fast young man, hurried away by a too ardent temperament into democratic tendencies" (I, 217). Miss Thorne, for her part, "had not yet reconciled herself to the Reform Bill, and still groaned in spirit over the defalcations of the Duke as touching the Catholic Emancipation" (I, 217). Miss Thorne, interestingly enough, regards herself no enemy of necessary or sensible reform: In religion, Miss Thorne was a pure Druidess. We would not have it understood by that, that she did actually in these latter days assist at any human sacrifices, or that she was in fact hostile to the Church of Christ. She had adopted the Christian religion as a milder form of the worship of her ancestors, and always appealed to her doing so as evidence that she had no prejudices against reform, when it could be shown that reform was salutary. This reform was the most modern of any to which 9 Though Trollope was no Tory himself and though (perhaps because) he was a firm Christian, he invariably in his novels treats the testy, idiosyncratic Tory squire with sympathy and lashes out against evangelical piety. Indeed, Trollope rarely loses his artistic poise and balance, but when he does so, as in such novels as Rachel Ray, Miss Mackenzie, and Linda Tressel, he is carried away by indignation against evangelical belief and fervor. This* detestation of enthusiasm he came by honestly, being in this respect, among others, very much his mother's son. See, for instance, Michael Sadleir's account of Frances Trollope's feud with the Reverend J. W . "Velvet" Cunningham, Vicar of Harrow, in Trollope: A Commentary, pp.

56-58.

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she had as yet acceded, it being presumed that British ladies had given up their paint and taken to some sort of petticoats before the days of St. Augustine. (I, 217-218) It should be obvious that such characters as Mr. and Miss Thorne have every right to prominent roles in a novel primarily concerned with the subject of change. Trollope certainly seems to emphasize their thematic importance by devoting a block of eight chapters (35 through 42) to Miss Thome's "fête champêtre", that party during the course of which Eleanor Bold receives two distasteful proposals of marriage. Though one critic probably had the party at Ullathorne uppermost in his mind when he characterized Barchester Towers as "the old loose type of novel", 10 another has recognized it for what it is, one of the novel's two greatest scenes, the other being Mrs. Proudie's reception (chapters 10 and ll). 1 1 Another critic has complained that "the description of the sports at Ullathorne and the desires of the Lookalofts to take precedence of the Greenacres are amusing enough, but they irritate because they needlessly stop the progress of the tale".12 Such an impatient reaction may be understandable, but it holds up only if one regards theme as an unimportant adjunct of tale. But even if one looks at the party strictly from the point of view of plot, it can be seen that there is a certain appropriateness in presenting the first of Mr. Slope's three rejections and the first two of Eleanor's proposals within the confines of a big scene. The further appropriateness of balancing a party given by the newly-arrived Proudies with one given by the ancient Thornes should also be obvious. The complete party could bear much detailed analysis, but even a brief examination discloses the thematic pertinence of its parts. Miss Thome's steward, Mr. Plomacy, for instance, is the kind of steward such a lady should have. If she still cherishes "low down in the bottom of her heart of hearts, a dear unmentioned wish for the restoration of some exiled Stuart" (I, 218), he had gained some distinction as a messenger for the royalist cause during the French Revolution. What Mr. Plomacy is is important, but what he does. 10

Bruce McCullough, Representative English Novelists: Defoe to Oonrad (New York, Harper, 1946), p. 200. 11 Cadbury, "Varieties of Form", p. 105. 12 Lewis Melville (Lewis S. Benjamin), Victorian Novelists (London, Constable, 1906), p. 179.

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or fails to do, at the party is equally important. One of Mr. Plomacy's duties is to keep out gate-crashers, but as experienced as he is at his business, and as well as he knows "who were welcome and who were not" (II, 93), and as earnestly as he tries to do his job, "Nevertheless, before the day was half over, all this was found to be useless. Almost anybody who chose to come made his way into the park" (II, 94). Mr. Plomacy can no more preserve the integrity of the estate by excluding the city apprentions from the party than Miss Thorne can bring back the golden age for which she sighs (I, 218) or revive successfully riding at the quintain. Indeed, Harry Greenacre in the dust after his attempt to ride at the quintain presents an image of the futility of extreme conservatism. There are some changes which even Miss Thorne and Mr. Plomacy are powerless to resist. The footman who allows the Lookalofts into the Ullathorne drawing-room to mix with "the quality" had the knowledge and the power to exclude them, "But he had not the courage to tell a stout lady with a low dress, short sleeves, and satin at eight shillings a yard, that she had come to the wrong tent; he had not dared to hint to the young ladies with white dancing shoes and long gloves, that there was a place ready for them in the paddock" (II, 97). Mrs. Lookaloft's impudence thus gives her "the power of boasting that she had consorted on the lawn with the squire and Miss Thorne, with a countess, a bishop, and the county grandees. . . . It was a great point gained by Mrs. Lookaloft, and it might be fairly expected that from this time forward the tradesmen of Barchester would, with undoubting pens, address her husband as T. Lookaloft, Esquire" (II, 98). If class barriers can be thus broken down at Ullathorne, how must they be falling in the rest of the world! So it is that while the major characters of the novel carry on their struggle for power and their love affairs at the party at Ullathorne, Mr. Plomacy, the Barchester apprentices, the Lookalofts, and the Greenacres struggle also, and if the conservatives among the major characters seem to be largely successful in retaining power and resisting drastic change, the apprentices and the Lookalofts, new men and women among the minor characters, make significant gains. Without the Thornes and their party one might have been misled by Mr. Slope's character and fate to suppose that Barchester Towers is simply a celebration of the successful resistance to change; with them, one must see that Trollope's attitude toward

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change and reform in general is as balanced as the attitude toward the malversation of charitable purposes which formed the nucleus for The Warden. When all is said and done, Barchester, though not metamorphosed, is not the same at the end of the novel as it is at the beginning. And that, Trollope says throughout the novel in various ways, is the way it has to be and the way it should be. Michael Sadleir is perhaps a bit too enthusiastic in praising Barchester Towers for showing "a wonderful advance . . . in forcible use of selected material solely in the interests of the novel's plot" (p. 374), for the judgment both underrates the structure of The Warden and overlooks the fact that some of the parts of the party at Ullathorne are not, strictly speaking, needed by the novel's plots. Though a larger and more complex work than The Warden, Barchester Towers is, on the other hand, anything but a typical example of a loosely-constructed novel, for those few parts which are not needed by the plots are thematically pertinent and useful, and the plots are both coherent in themselves and very closely woven together, and the author's balanced attitude towards his subject is reflected and projected by the balancing in the novel of image against image, incident against incident, character against character, and scene against scene. Trollope in the Autobiography says that Barchester Towers, although " I t achieved no great reputation, . . . was one of the novels which novel readers were called upon to read" (p. 104). If it is still a novel which serious novel readers are called upon to read, its high degree of structural unity must be one cause of its continuing vitality. The fact that the theme of the inevitability and painfulness of change is a theme which touches us all, no matter how much worldly power we may wield, helps also to account for its endurance. But themes do not usually express themselves by accident in works of art. As the theme of Barchester Towers is deliberately and effectively expressed, so the novel endures because it is, among other things, a well-constructed work of art.

IV DOCTOR THORNE-. FAIRY TALE AND SATIRE

Although Michael Sadleir praised "the sensational perfection of Doctor Thome, one of the five (in a technical sense) faultless books" (p. 375) which Trollope wrote, and although the novel sold better than any other Trollope novel during the author's lifetime,1 Trollope himself regarded it as being on an artistic plane with The Bertrams, a novel relatively unpopular with Trollope's contemporaries. Trollope judged "that they are of about equal merit, but that neither of them is good. They fall away very much from The Three Clerks, both in pathos and humour."2 Though one may wonder about the popular failure of The Bertrams, a work which, after all, contains some picturesque and evocative settings and, in the person of the Juno-like Caroline Waddington, one of Trollope's most forceful and memorable female creations, one can understand Trollope's fondness for the highly autobiographical Three Clerks, which, whatever its failures, does succeed in conveying to the reader a strong sense of what it was like to be a young and poor minor civil servant in London in the first half of the nineteenth century. What is more difficult to understand, perhaps, is a twentieth-century judgment which holds that Doctor Thome "troubles us because we can never be quite sure what, in his picture of the Greshams and De Courcys, Trollope is really getting at".3 The trouble with the novel, one is tempted to answer, is that we are too sure what, in his picture of the Greshams and De Courcys, Trollope is really getting at. A French critic, writing in the year in which Doctor Thome was first published (1858), had no trouble isolating the chief values 1

An Autobiography, p. 126. An Autobiography, p. 125. 3 John Hagan, "The Divided Mind of Anthony Trollope", NCF, (1959), 5. 8

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brought into conflict in the novel. "Le roman", Emile Montegut said, " . . . met donc en presence les deux plus grandes puissances de l'Angleterre: la naissance et l'argent. De ces deux puissances, quelle est la preferable?"4 Montégut did not hesitate to assert that the novel answers that money is preferable to birth: "S'il est une conclusion qui ressorte du récit de M. Trollope intitulé le Docteur Thorne, c'est celle-ci: l'aristocratie anglaise est celle qui a la mieux connu et pratiqué l'art des mésalliances, grand art en effet, qui explique et le role historique de l'aristocratie anglaise, et son importance politique, et sa stabilité sociale!" (p. 778). Since all serious objections against Mary Thome's marriage to Frank Gresham fade away once it becomes known that Mary has inherited the Scatcherd fortune, M. Montégut's reading of the novel seems justified. Whether Michael Sadleir's attribution of sensational perfection to the novel is justified is, of course, another matter, as is the question of whether or not Trollope does more with his tale than celebrate misalliance. In neither of the first two novels of the Barsetshire series is Trollope's attitude toward his subject - the malversation of charitable purposes of The Warden and the omnipresence of change in BarChester Towers - simple. It is at least likely that Trollope's attitude toward his subject in Doctor Thome exemplifies, as do the attitudes of the first two novels, what Lionel Trilling has pointed out as "the satirical ambivalence . . . which marks the good novel [of manners] even when it has a social parti pris."5 That likelihood, among others, at any rate, will be explored in the remainder of this chapter. Trollope does occasionally, as in The Claverings, plunge into his story in médias res. His usual procedure, however, a procedure which he defends in the first few pages of Is He Popenjoy?, is to devote a chapter or two to exposition and then move ahead with the story. However personally congenial and useful Trollope may have found this method, it sometimes resulted in opening chapters which many readers must find dull. The first two chapters of Doc4

"Le Roman de moeurs en Angleterre", Revue des deux mondes, 2e Période, XVII (1858), 767. 5 "Art and Fortune", The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York, Viking, 1950), p. 261.

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tor Thome may be taken as two such chapters. But as dull as they may be, these two chapters are extremely important, for, besides presenting the necessary expository material, the first states the central action of the novel and the second sounds one of the major themes. Trollope himself was aware of the dullness of the opening of Doctor Thome, but instead of presenting a serious defence of his method, a defence like that at the beginning of Is He Popenjoy?, he simply apologizes and throws himself on the reader's mercy, for "twist it as I will I cannot do otherwise. . . . This is unartistic on my part, and shows want of imagination as well as want of skill. Whether or not I can atone for these faults by straightforward, simple, plain story-telling — that, indeed, is very doubtful" (I, 19). Trollope may simply be trying to disarm criticism here, but it is also possible that he is speaking at this point with tongue in cheek in order to call more than usual attention to his expository chapters. In any event, there is little room for doubt that Trollope is speaking with tongue in cheek when he pretends ignorance of the import of the Gresham motto, "Gardez Oresham", which he describes as appearing a number of times® as part of the gates leading to Greshamsbury House and Park. If he really did not know the significance of the motto, it is not likely that he would have introduced it in the first place. As it is, though he does not impose a meaning upon the reader, Trollope does underline the motto's importance by devoting two paragraphs to it. He suggests two possible meanings for the motto, the second of which, he says, he is inclined to agree with. One interpretation holds that the motto "was an address to the savages, calling on them to take care of their patron", while the second avers "that it was an advice to the people at large,

6 Exactly how many times is difficult to determine since Trollope's description is not entirely clear. He says that there are two entrances to the House, each with a large gate, and that there are gates opposite to each of these, one leading to "the stables, kennels, and farm yard, and the other to the deer park". That makes four gates. Over each gate, apparently, is a scroll bearing the Gresham motto, and "the words were repeated in smaller letters under each of the savages" (I, 11). Since each gate seems to be composed of four savages, the motto apparently appears five times on each gate or twenty times in all. In any event, it is much in evidence.

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especially to those inclined to rebel against the aristocracy of the county, that they should 'beware the Gresham' " (I, 11-12). Something can, of course, be said for each of these interpretations. Since the Greshams and Greshamsbury are saved by means of a misalliance, by means of the money of a bastard inherited by her from two drunkards, it could be said that not only do the old figures of savages still uphold the gates of the Greshams but that new flesh and blood savages do take care of the family. Similarly, since all the Greshams except Frank are united throughout the course of the novel in the opinion that the family fortunes must be restored by Frank's marrying money, one can say that the people - Miss Dunstable, especially - would be well advised to beware the Gresham. But although these interpretations of the motto can be seen to be related to the action of the novel, neither really states it, as the most obvious and natural translation - Preserve Gresham - does. And that is what Frank Gresham does: by marrying money, he preserves Greshamsbury. Actually, Frank does more than preserve Greshamsbury, for by the time he celebrates his majority, his father has already lost a substantial portion of his property. " 'Greshamsbury is not what it was' " , his De Courcy aunt, the countess, tells Frank. " 'It is your duty to restore to it its former importance' " (I, 120), she continues, acquainting Frank for the first time with the task which he fulfills by the novel's end. Though Frank "opened his eyes wide and stared at his aunt, as though doubting much whether or no she were in her right mind" (I, 120), the countess, as it turns out, does not suppose that Frank can do as much as he ends up doing. Presuming that Boxall Hill cannot be repurchased, she tells Frank that " 'it will be your duty . . . to pay all the debts that there are on the property, and to purchase what, at any rate, will be equal to Boxall Hill' " (I, 120). But Frank, thanks to Mary, does succeed in restoring all of the Greshamsbury property, including Boxall Hill, to the Gresham family. Indeed, in her marriage settlement Mary makes quite a point of such restoration: "there was one point on which Mary would have her own way. The lawyers might tie up as they would on her behalf all the money, and shares, and mortgages which had belonged to the late Sir Roger, with this exception, all that had ever appertained to Greshamsbury should belong to Greshamsbury again; not in perspective, not to her children, or to her children's children, but at once" (II, 312). To be precise, then,

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Frank, by marrying money, restores and preserves Greshamsbury; the central action of Doctor Thome is the restoring and preserving of Greshamsbury. I t is altogether fitting that Frank accomplishes his task by means of marriage, for his father's marriage into the De Courcy family, alienating as it did most of the elder Gresham's Tory support, was one of the initial causes of the decline of Greshamsbury. Since the De Courcys helped to drag Greshamsbury down, it is also fitting that a De Courcy instruct Frank how to pick and patch it up again. Everything seems to work out neatly. The only trouble is that Frank does not really intend to follow his aunt's advice. She tells him to marry money but he is determined to marry Mary. He does flirt with Miss Dunstable for a while, of course, but, like Bertie Stanhope of BarChester Towers in a similar situation, he does little more than go through the motions. I f Lady de Courcy's showing Frank his duty on his twenty-first birthday may be taken as marking the beginning of the novel's central action and if Mary's marriage settlement may be seen as its end, Frank's dalliance with Miss Dunstable appears to be a false or abortive middle. Indeed, by strict Aristotelian standards, the novel's action might be judged to have no middle, for it is anything but a probable or necessary consequence of what has gone before that by the novel's end to marry Mary is to marry money. Trollope does, of course, try to give the merging of Mary and money the appearance of probability. He continually stresses the ill health of Sir Roger and Louis Scatcherd, for instance, and has Dr. Thorne repeatedly predict to each of them that they will kill themselves with their immoderate drinking. That they finally do kill themselves does not make the doctor, whom Trollope goes out of his way to portray as an immoderate drinker of tea, any less of a bore to the reader or the Scatcherds, nor does it really make Mary's becoming an heiress probable. Similarly, Sir Roger's capacity for work and drink, separately or together, inclines some observers "to make a miracle of him — and there was a school of worshippers ready to adore him as their idea of a divine, superhuman, miraclemoving, inspired prophet" (I, 125). Such a Dionysian character seems especially fitted to be a deus to emerge ex machina. Even so, there'is no getting away from the machine. And finally, though the fact that Mrs. Scatcherd had, as wet-nurse, nurtured Frank in his infancy may be seen as a foreshadowing of the later nourishing of

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Greshamsbury with Scatcherd money, such foreshadowing gives the appearance only of probability or causality. Too many chances and coincidences remain between Frank's being shown his duty and his carrying it out. To put it another way, the ending of the novel, though prepared for in many ways, is simply too good to be true; it remains contrived; it remains a fairy-tale ending. But perhaps the action of Doctor Thome should not be judged by strict Aristotelian standards, for the novel can be seen as throughout a kind of fairy-tale, and what is appropriate for tragedy is not necessarily so for romance. Barsetshire, that "favoured land of Goshen", that "purely agricultural" county, never appears more idyllic than it does in the opening pages of this novel. In such a setting, the young lovers - Mary, "the angel who gave to . . . [Dr. Thome's] home in Greshamsbury so many of the joys of Paradise" (I, 177), she who "was regarded by her uncle as an inestimable treasure, almost too precious to be rendered up to the arms of any man; and infinitely beyond any price in silver and gold" (II, 69), and Frank, who was to Mary "like some god come from the heavens to make her blessed" (II, 86) - are fully at home; in such a setting, it is right that the young lovers, after having suffered temporary banishments (Frank's having lasted for a year and a day), should live happily ever afterward; in such a setting, the munificence of fairy god-father uncles like Roger Scatcherd can always "cure all one's difficulties, disperse all one's troubles, give a balm to all the wounds of misfortune" (II, 307), even though medical doctors cannot cure alcoholics; in such a setting a Cinderella like Mary will always win out over the machinations of a wicked stepmother mother-in-law like Lady Arabella. In such a story, honesty is the best policy and virtue is rewarded here and now with the goods of this world. Mary Thorne, however, is not a Pamela, nor is Frank a Mr. B. Far from it. Both are far too upright and true and undevious for those roles. Still, a major theme of the novel is the importance of telling the truth, and those who tell the truth are usually rewarded for it. Dr. Thorne tells Sir Roger Scatcherd who Sir Roger's sister's eldest child is and he tells him and his son, Louis, what will happen to them if they do not stop drinking. He, unlike Mr. Rerechild, tells Lady Scatcherd the truth about her husband's chances for survival. " 'He is going on finely, Lady Scatcherd, quite finely', were the last words Mr. Rerechild said as he left the room". But "then Dr. Thorne, taking Lady Scat-

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cherd's hand and leading her out into another chamber, told her the t r u t h " (II, 6). And when, for fear of disappointing her should she not receive her uncle's legacy, he cannot tell Mary the t r u t h about Sir Roger Scatcherd's will, he simply remains silent and acts true to his trust as the executor of the will. Divided loyalties and prudence may silence Dr. Thorne but neither they nor anything else can make him speak falsely. Though Frank comes close to lying in his half-hearted pursuit of Miss Dunstable at Courcy Castle, he does not during t h a t episode seriously consider being false to Mary, and it is he later on who punishes Mr. Moffat, a lover who is false to his troth. Mary, for her part, admires Frank's faithfulness to her and sees it in terms of t r u t h : "And then, when she heard how true he was, how he persisted against father, mother, and sisters, how could it be t h a t t h a t should not be a merit in her eyes which was so great a fault in theirs ?" (II, 79) Indeed, Frank's being true to her is a key element in leading her "by degrees . . . to own to herself the t r u t h " . And the t r u t h is t h a t "Mary did love him; love him with all the strength of her heart; and the strength of her heart was very great" (II, 80).

Once having admitted the truth to herself, Mary cannot bring herself to deny it to Frank, even though reason tells her t h a t marriage to him would be very imprudent. When Frank comes to her at Boxall Hill to renew his suit, all she has to do to send him away from her for good is "to say t h a t he was indifferent to her; - t h a t was all". But, Trollope declares, "If 'all the blood of all the Howards' had depended upon it, she could not have brought herself to utter such a falsehood" (II, 86). Though she cannot at this point manage to say anything, her silence, like t h a t of Dr. Thome's during much of the novel, is a way of being true. When, after his year and a day banishment, Frank comes to her again, Mary manages to say more. She acknowledges her love for him in direct language - " 'Yes, Frank, I do love you' " - and pledges herself to remain true to him: " 'Yes,' said she - said in a very low voice, and with a manner perfectly quiet - ' I will be firm. Nothing t h a t they can say shall shake me' " (II, 169, 170). When Frank leaves, Mary is left alone to reflect upon her position: "She had pledged herself not to be shaken from her troth by anything, by any person; and it would behove her to be true to this pledge. True to it, though all the Greshams but one should oppose her with

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all their power; true to it, even though her own uncle should oppose her" (II, 171). Trollope at this point leaves the reader in no doubt about his approval of Mary's plain speaking: "They would talk to her of maiden delicacy, and tell her that she had put a stain upon that snow-white coat of proof, in confessing her love for one whose friends were unwilling to receive her. Let them so talk. Honour, honesty, and truth, outspoken truth, self-denying truth, and fealty from man to man, are worth more than maiden delicacy; more, at any rate, than the talk of it" (II, 171). In this novel, honor, honesty, and truth are not only worth more than maiden delicacy; for Frank and Mary they are worth the title deeds to Greshamsbury and many thousands of pounds besides, for, however from a realistic viewpoint the action of the novel may be lacking in probability or necessity, it is clear that as bright creatures in a fairy-tale Frank and Mary earn then- good fortune by means of their honesty and fidelity. Because they are true to each other, Trollope makes clear, they deserve each other and they deserve Sir Roger Scatcherd's fortune too. If the first chapter of the novel introduces its central action, the preserving and restoring of Greshamsbury, an action which is carried out by means of truth-telling and being true, a key theme, the second chapter introduces another key theme, pride of family, or, as the novel usually refers to it, "blood". In his second chapter, Trollope introduces to the reader Dr. Thorne, "our hero - or I should rather say my hero, a privilege of selecting for themselves in this respect being left to all my readers" (I, 19). As Trollope takes pains to let the reader know that Dr. Thorne, not Frank Gresham, is his hero, so he insists that his hero is by no means perfect: "No man plumed himself on good blood more than Dr. Thorne; no man had greater pride in his genealogical tree, and his hundred and thirty clearly proved descents from MacAdam; no man had a stronger theory as to the advantage held by men who have grandfathers over those who have none, or have none worth talking about. Let it not be thought that our doctor was a perfect character. No, indeed; most far from perfect" (I, 28). If Dr. Thorne were fully consistent, let alone perfect, he probably would have opposed Mary's marriage to Frank on the grounds of her illegitimacy. He, being imperfect and inconsistent, does not oppose the union; neither, once Mary is discovered to be an heiress,

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does anyone else. I t is true that Mary's base birth is often, before Mary comes into her inheritance, urged as a reason why Mary cannot marry Frank. Even Beatrice Gresham, Mary's closest friend, makes this point: "As for a marriage between them, that was impossible; Beatrice was well sure of that: it was Frank's unfortunate destiny that he must marry money - money, and, as Beatrice sometimes thoughtlessly added, cutting Mary to the quick, - money and family also. Under such circumstances a marriage between them was quite impossible" (II, 34). But in the world of this novel money, unlike ordinary doctors, can cure anything, even base birth. As a passage already quoted puts it, Mary's new wealth could "cure all one's difficulties, disperse all one's troubles, give a balm to all the wounds of misfortune" (II, 307). I f one detects in these rather extravagant words a note of irony, he is right, for if Doctor Thome is on one level a nice little fairy-tale in which virtue is rewarded and everyone lives happily ever after, it is on another level a rather consistent and sharp satire upon the power of money in Victorian England. I f plain speaking is preferable to maiden delicacy, so talk about good blood is meaningless if it remains only talk. As Frank Gresham puts it, "if there be an empty, lying humbug in the world, it is the theory of high birth and pure blood which some of us endeavour to maintain" ( I I , 212). Actually, only one person in the novel seriously endeavors to maintain the theory in practice. Frank's oldest sister, Augusta, takes the De Courcy precepts about pure blood seriously enough to turn down Mr. Gazebee, a man whom, if she had married him, Trollope makes clear, she would have been happy with. The Lady Amelia de Courcy, Augusta's advisor, shows how seriously she takes her own precepts when she marries Mr. Gazebee herself. Augusta is probably the most pathetic figure in the novel, but at the same time she has a dignity which most of the other characters lack. She also has logic, a poor substitute for a husband. " 'After all, Beatrice, this does not alter her birth' " (II, 304), she quite correctly says of Mary's inheritance. "Poor Augusta!" Trollope exclaims; she was "the last in the family who practised with unflinching courage" what they all professed (II, 304). But Augusta is not simply the last in her family to act upon the theory of pure blood; she is the last in all of Barsetshire society. Trollope underlines this fact in the novel's last chapter ( " H o w the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked to the Wedding"),

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which is not at all devoted to a perfunctory winding up of things, but is a chapter essential to the satire, a chapter which brings the satire to a climax, though from the strict point of view of plot it may seem to be an anti-climatic chapter. Though the penniless Mary was not good enough to be included as a member of Beatrice Gresham's wedding party, Mary the heiress does function as one of Beatrice's bridesmaids, and when Mary herself gets married, the whole De Courcy family turns out, "count and countess, lords and ladies, Honourable Georges and Honourable Johns. What honour, indeed, could be too great to show to a bride who had fourteen thousand a year in her own right, or to a cousin who had done his duty by securing such a bride to himself!" (II, 310.) What honor, indeed? None, obviously, for even "the Duke of Omnium was there. This was, in fact, the one circumstance that made this wedding so superior to any other that had ever taken place in that neighbourhood. The Duke of Omnium never went anywhere; and yet he went to Mary's wedding ! " (II, 315) The Duke of Omnium is a great, shadowy figure in a number of Trollope's novels and in the first part of this one, but Mary's money makes him materialize at the end of Doctor Thorne. I f Mary's money does not change the circumstances of her birth, neither does Frank's marriage to Mary change the blood flowing in his veins. The good Gresham blood has always been there, but before his marriage the duke had ignored Frank when he had gone to dinner at Gatherum Castle as a member of a large group. Now the duke talks about having Frank over to Gatherum Castle in the autumn as a member of a small party. Frank, however, is rather bitter about the duke's change in attitude toward him, for he knows that it is the money that has made the difference: " H e had not quite reconciled himself to the difference of his position. When he was treated as one of the 'collection' at Gatherum Castle, he had not married money" (II, 315). The person in Barsetshire who comes closest to Augusta in adhering to the theory of pure blood is Miss Monica Thorne of Ullathorne, the character who in Barchester Towers tries so hard to reintroduce old-time games to Barsetshire at her fête champêtre. Miss Thorne, like Augusta, realizes that Mary's money does not change her blood, and "could Miss Thorne have spoken her inward thoughts out loud, she would have declared, that Frank would

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have done better to have borne his poverty than marry wealth without blood. But then", Trollope adds, "there are but few so stanch as Miss Thorne" (II, 317). Stanch as she is, however, Miss Thorne does go to the wedding and does kiss the bride. Trapped in part by her kind heart, she can no more uphold successfully the theory of pure blood than she can reinstitute tilting in Barsetshire. It is an unusual work of art that can say at one and the same time that honesty pays and that worship of money, despite contrary oaths of allegiance, is an almost universal idolatry, but Doctor Thome, at once fairy-tale and satire, does say both of these things, and it says them well, that is, other things aside, economically, for without the fairy-tale ending, the satire would lose much of its point. Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Anthony's brother, the Autobiography reveals, gave Anthony the plot for Doctor Thorne, and "it was the only occasion", Trollope asserts, "in which I have had recourse to other source than my own brains for the thread of a story" (p. 115). The ready-made plot may help to explain the air of contrivance which the story wears when examined by realistic standards, and if the contrivance and the wish-fulfillment ending were all, Doctor Thome would be a pretty, conventional novel borne along by a pretty, conventional plot. As it is, Doctor Thorne is a thematically unified work of art, one which uses its conventional plot to set up the underlying satire, a satire just as real and definite, though not so obvious, as that of The Way We Live Now. If the later novel seems much more somber than the earlier one, part of the difference lies in the ready-made, happy-ending plot of Doctor Thorne, but part also lies in the kind of money with which Trollope is concerned in each novel. The Scatcherd fortune was amassed constructively, was built up as the reward for the hard work and skill which Sir Roger put into the building of canals, bridges, and railroads, and, when it passes into Mary's hands, it is used constructively for the restoring and preserving of Greshamsbury. The money of The Way We Live Now, on the other hand, is largely paper money, speculative money, money as honorably and constructively made and lost as the money involved in the card play at the Beargarden. Still, if the "better money" of Doctor Thorne helps to make that novel a brighter book than The Way We Live Now, a close reading of Doctor Thorne (and, one should add, of The Three Clerks) shows that

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the later and longer novel represents by no means a radically new thematic departure for its author. Though there is little gambling in Doctor Thome, money is everywhere. A cure-all for ailing estates and bad blood in this novel which has a doctor for its author's hero, 7 it is also a pervasive theme, one t h a t gives thematic unity to some of the apparent episodes of the novel. Doctor Thome has but one action, the preserving of Greshamsbury, and b u t one plot to carry the action along, the plot having two major strands, the love affair and the inheritance. There is some apparently extraneous matter along the way, b u t when one looks closely, he can see money as a chief concern there just as it is, say, in Frank's halfhearted pursuit of the Dunstable fortune. Doctor Thome, like Ralph the Heir and the Palliser novels, contains some electioneering scenes. Even though these were written some ten years before Trollope's own attempt at election to Parliament, they are done vividly and give one a sense, as Trollope almost always does, t h a t the writer thoroughly knows what he is talking about. The electioneering also gave Trollope an occasion to express the sentiment upon which he later acted when he did himself run for election: "when a man lays himself out to be a member of Parliament, he plays the highest game and for the highest stakes which the country affords" (I, 222-223). This game's prize, he says, is "worth any price t h a t can be paid for it short of wading through dirt and dishonour" (I, 222). 7

One does not know for sure why Trollope insists that Dr. Thorne, not Frank, is his hero, but one can speculate that an author in his mid-forties might find it easier to sympathize with the middle-aged doctor rather than with the young lover. Then, too, it might be argued that the doctor, caught between his love for Mary and his duty to Sir Roger Scatcherd and carrying daily the burden of his knowledge of Sir Roger's will, does in fact act more heroically than Frank, who simply follows the dictates of his heart. The doctor when he lectures Sir Louis about the dangers of drink, may strike the reader as well as Sir Louis as something of a bore and a prig, but when one reflects that a healthy or, at least, live Sir Louis stands between Mary and her happiness with Frank, then the doctor's preaching of temperance may be seen as little less than heroic, though perhaps still boring. The doctor is human enough; at times he cannot help but wish Sir Louis out of Mary's way. "His wishes, his hopes, his thoughts, he could not control", Trollope points out, "but his conduct was at his own disposal" (II, 177). So he goes on, day after day, trying his best to keep Sir Louis alive.

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Mr. Moffat, Sir Roger Scatcherd's opponent for the Barchester seat, "loved his money. . . . He was therefore a great stickler for purity of election" (I, 224). Nevertheless, he and his men and Sir Roger Scatcherd and his do wade through dirt and dishonor during the course of the election, and the two sides together manage to keep half the Barchester population drunk in the days immediately preceding the election. Sir Roger's superior resources eventually prevail, however, when his man, Mr. Romer, gets to Mr. Reddypalm and succeeds in bribing him, which bribery swings the election for Sir Roger and also, a few months after Sir Roger is seated, furnishes the grounds for the unseating of Sir Roger. One cannot help but think that Sir Roger would have made a much better legislator than Mr. Moffat. In any event, the power (or the limits of the power) of money is undoubtedly an important theme running through the election scenes of Doctor Thome. Money is also seen as having limited power when Lady Scatcherd has the unpleasant duty of telling Dr. Fillgrave that Sir Roger, after summoning Fillgrave from Barchester, has changed his mind about wanting that doctor's professional services. Although Lady Scatcherd and her woman, Hannah, decide "that the only cure for the present evil was to be found in a good fee" (I, 163), they find that a five-pound note is not capable of healing the wound to Fillgrave's professional vanity. "He felt that he had been badly treated; but if he took the money he would throw away his right to indulge any such feeling. At that moment his outraged dignity and his cherished anger were worth more to him than a five-pound note. He looked at it with wishful but still averted eyes, and then sternly refused the tender" (I, 165). Once again, it is worth noting, Scatcherd money is ineffective while it is in the hands of the Scatcherds. Though Trollope uses the professional rivalry between the doctors Thorne and Fillgrave as another occasion to sound his theme of the power of money, he also uses that rivalry, a rivalry which recurs often and persistently enough in the novel as almost to become a sub-plot, to suggest an alternative to pride of family. Trollope, to be sure, does exploit Fillgrave's professional vanity for comic purposes. Still, when he informs the reader of Dr. Thome's blood pride, he concludes by suggesting that the doctor had better grounds for pride than pure blood: "Other doctors round the county had ditch-water in their veins; he could boast of a pure

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ichor, to which that of the great Omnium family was but a muddy puddle. I t was thus that he loved to excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy !" (I, 28.) The recurrent professional squabbling in Doctor Thome, then, is more than an occasion for comic relief, for Trollope ties it in together thematically in several ways with the rest of the novel. Doctor Thorne

contains no fête champêtre at Ullathorne as Bar-

chester Towers does. I t does, however, aside from weddings, contain one rather festive occasion, one on which "all the notables of the county" (I, 257) assemble at Gatherum Castle around the table of the Duke of Omnium. Trollope devotes a whole chapter to this dinner. Though this chapter may at first seem to be digressive, it, like the chapters of Barchester Towers devoted to Miss Thome's party, is very much to the point and even can be seen as presenting a central image of the novel's satire. The Duke of Omnium is one of the richest men in England and he presents an appropriately rich table to his guests, the salmon sauce, champagne, and claret being especially outstanding features of the feast. The only thing the duke withholds from his guests is his attention and courtesy. Frank Gresham, however, is the only guest disturbed by the duke's lack of manners. He is so disturbed that he leaves before the end of the feast and begins to walk back to Courcy Castle. But if the duke's money does not succeed in making Frank overlook the duke's bad manners, it does buy the good will of everyone else at the feast, and no one else is silly enough to get up from the table and leave unfinished the best that money can buy. The image of the best men in Barsetshire feeding "one may almost say, rabidly" (I, 264) at the table of a man who cannot be bothered to talk to them is a powerful image and it is an image which embodies a good deal of what Doctor Thorne is about. Sir Louis Scatcherd's table talk at Greshamsbury in a later chapter, talk almost exclusively concerned with money, is as vulgar and disgraceful as the spectacle at Gatherum. Those who suffer through the meal at Greshamsbury, however, recognize Sir Louis' conduct for what it is. If the glitter of money blinds most of Barsetshire to bad manners, it does not hide them from the view of those at Greshamsbury. I t is fortunate for those at Greshamsbury that they are eventually enabled to enjoy Sir Louis' money without his presence.

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The meals at Gatherum and Greshamsbury present obvious parallel situations, situations which Trollope exploits thematically. This set of parallels is only one of many which the novel contains. Characters, for instance, are often deliberately contrasted. Mary's two suitors, one sick and the other healthy, one the son of Lady Scatsherd and the other her foster-son, are two obvious examples of such characters, as are Augusta Gresham, who acts upon the theory of pure blood, and Lady Amelia de Courcy, who preaches the theory of pure blood but acts otherwise. Other characters, though very much unlike each other in most respects, may have one or two particular points of contact, as Dr. Thorne is in most ways not at all like Sir Roger and Sir Louis Scatcherd, yet his thirst for tea is almost as immoderate as theirs for liquor. These parallels and many more exist in the novel and they help to give it what may be called unity of situation. Still, this kind of unity is not so important in this novel as the presence almost everywhere of the closely interwoven themes of the importance of truth-telling, the importance of good blood, and the power of money. One hesitates to go all the way with Michael Sadleir's estimation of the novel as faultless — it is hard, for instance, to see Trollope's occasional apostrophes to his characters as anything but heavyhanded and embarrassing — but it should be clear that Doctor Thorne is an economically structured novel, a coherent work which effectively uses its rather contrived plot for the purpose of sustained satire. The great popularity of Doctor Thome during Trollope's lifetime may partly be explained by reference to its fairy-tale appeal and its wish-fulfillment ending. Its vitality today and its claim to serious attention rest in good measure upon the well-ordered depths beneath the well-ordered fairy-tale surface.

V TEMPTATION A N D P R I D E I N FRAMLEY

PARSONAGE

In Doctor Thome a great estate, Greshamsbury, is preserved, restored, and retained by its owners; in Framley Parsonage a great estate, Chaldicotes, passes out of the hands of the Sowerby family and into those of the Ointment of Lebanon heiress, Miss Dunstable, who at about the same time acquires a husband, Dr. Thorne. The central action of Doctor Thorne is the preserving of Greshamsbury, but the central action of Framley Parsonage is not the losing of Chaldicotes, even though Trollope, at the beginning of his third chapter, takes time to foreshadow that loss through his mentioning of the impending disforestation of the Chace of Chaldicotes. And though Mark Robarts comes close to losing his movables at the parsonage, the abortive descent of the bailiffs upon the Robarts household is not sufficient, either by itself or combined with Sowerby's losing of Chaldicotes, to make Framley Parsonage a novel of dispossession as, say, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard are plays of dispossession.1 Indeed, it is difficult to see any one central action moving through Framley Parsonage. Perhaps the lack, or apparent lack, of such an action helps to explain why Trollope in the Autobiography calls the novel "a hodgepodge. . . . Nothing", he adds, "could be less efficient or artistic" (p. 142). This harsh retrospective judgment might, on the other hand, have been occasioned by Trollope's feeling that his interest had shifted as he got into the novel. He began, he tells us, with Mark Robarts' story: " I had got into my head an idea of what I meant to write, — a morsel of the biography of an English clergyman who 1 For an excellent reading of Chekhov's plays as dramas of dispossession, see Robert Brustein's chapter on Chekhov in his The Theatre of Revolt (Boston, Little, Brown, 1964).

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should not be a bad man; but one led into temptation by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of those around him." At this point Lucy's story was only "an adjunct necessary, because there must be love in a novel" (p. 142). But having begun with such an intention, Trollope ultimately fashioned a work "in which the real plot consisted at last simply of a girl's refusing to marry the man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly" (p. 142). What Trollope seems to be saying is that as he progressed in the writing of Framley Parsonage, his interest shifted from Mark Robarts to his sister, Lucy, from the problem of the man who could not say no to the problem of the woman who could not say yes. At least one critic agrees that Trollope came to be more interested in Lucy than in Mark. William Coyle, in an essay on Trollope's reading of Shakespeare, infers from the rather frequent quotations and echoes from Twelfth Night in Framley Parsonage "that Trollope considered his central situation in terms of the pathos of unconfessed love as described by Viola".2 The quotations and echoes are there in the novel all right, but if Lucy had refused longer to confess her love and if Trollope in the Autobiography had focused attention upon Lucy's concealment of her love rather than upon her conditional acceptance of Lord Lufton, Mr. Coyle's conclusion would be more convincing. Still, he does see the emphasis as being placed upon Lucy rather than Mark. A strictly quantitative approach, on the other hand, seems to contradict Coyle and the apparent drift of the Autobiography, for almost twice as many chapters of the novel (twenty) are devoted to Mark's money problems to the exclusion of Lucy's love affair as are devoted either to Lucy's problems to the exclusion of Mark's (twelve) or to the problems of both of them (thirteen). A study of the placement of chapters devoted to the money rather than the love plot also reveals that Mark's plight was never far from Trollope's consciousness, for if after the first nine chapters Trollope never again stays with the money plot for such a sustained period, only twice (chapters 34 through 36 and 38 and 39) does he let it drop out of sight for more than one chapter at a time. One hesitates, however, to push quantitative evidence very hard, and since the evidence pointing to Trollope's center of interest " T r o l l o p e a n d t h e Bi- col l i m n e d S h a k e s p e a r e " , NGF,

V I (1951), 45.

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in the novel seems to be conflicting, it may be wise not to pursue the question further. What is clear is that if Lucy's story began in Trollope's mind as a conventional adjunct to the main story, Lucy became more real to Trollope as he continued writing, so that eventually she became in her creator's estimation "perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever drew, — the most natural, at any rate, of those who have been good girls" (An Autobiography, p. 143). What is also clear is that Framley Parsonage has two main plots, and if one cannot with certainty say which is more important, he can study in detail the relationship of one to the other and try to see how the two together function in the complete novel. That is what will be attempted now. As Mark's sister living in the household, the stability and wellbeing of which has been placed in danger by Mark's financial entanglement with Mr. Sowerbv, Lucy has from the first some connection with the money plot and some stake in its outcome. Through most of the novel, however, she is unaware of her brother's money problems and thus she is not conscious - as, say, in Doctor Thome Frank Gresham is acutely aware that his family expects him to save Gresham by marrying money - of her role, potential or actual, in the money plot. She does unwittingly, however, play a role in that plot, since when Lufton lends Mark the money to meet the two notes he has signed, he acts in part as Mark's future brother-inlaw. When Mark finds it difficult to accept his friend's help, Lord Lufton tries to ease the burden of humiliation for Mark by informing him that '"in helping you over this stile, which will be really a matter of no inconvenience to me, I have a better right than that even of an old friend; I look upon you now as my brother-in-law'" (II, 258). But if the love plot acts upon the money plot through the money of one of the lovers, it is nevertheless true that Lord Lufton is connected with the money plot from the first, from some time before he first meets Lucy. He had financial dealings with Sowerby before Mark did, and it was as a friend and agent of Lufton that Mark first became acquainted with Sowerby. If Mark is right in judging that finally "'I have no one to blame but myself"' (II, 258), still Lufton, as the friend who first involved Mark with Sowerby, rightly feels some measure of responsibility for Mark's plight, and even if he had not been Lucy's lover, he undoubtedly would have acted

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PARSONAGE"

to help his friend out of his money troubles. But as the act of Lucy's future husband, his coming to Mark's aid is even more credible than it would have been otherwise. LordLufton, then, the hero of the love plot, is crucially involved in the money plot at its beginning and at its end. When he arrives at the parsonage to send the bailiffs away, he is no god descending from a machine but a man come to help his old friend and future brother. Though one cannot say that the resolution of the money plot is entirely dependent upon the love plot, it does seem clear that the love plot does contribute significantly to the workingout of the money plot. It is probably worth mentioning that the love story contributes in at least one other way to the effectiveness of the money plot. Mark's financial difficulties, stemming as they do from notes bearing expiration dates, take time to develop and focus. Mark and the reader know that finally a day of judgment will come but in the meantime it may be possible to push that eventuality away from the front of one's consciousness. In the meantime, one can distract oneself and find occasional relief from the burden of one's knowledge. The love story, by pushing aside from time to time, as it does, Mark's money problems, gives the money plot a chance to mature, gives the reader a sense of the passing of time, gives the money plot added credibility and contributes to what Arthur Mizener might call "the sense of life" 3 of the novel. Each major plot has its own sub-plots, and if it can be argued that these also contribute to the sense of life which the novel conveys, it cannot be easily demonstrated how they contribute causally to the unfolding of the action of the novel, as Lord Lufton's love for Lucy can be shown to be a cause of his helping Mark. The money plot has three sub-plots, one of which it shares with the love plot. The love plot has, besides the common sub-plot, one other. The first of the money sub-plots is political. Though Framley Parsonage is not usually regarded as one of Trollope's Political Novels, and though its electioneering scenes are not nearly so fully developed as are those of Doctor Thome, the novel contains a number of politicians - Mr. Sowerby is one - and Trollope takes pains throughout the work to remind the reader of the battles taking 3

The Sense of Life in the Modern

Novel ( B o s t o n , H o u g h t o n Mifflin, 1964).

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place in London between the Tories and the Whigs, the Giants and the Gods. One can see easily enough the bearing of politics upon the money plot early in the novel, because Mark makes it clear to Lady Lufton and others that he hopes for ecclesiastical advancement through political influence of his Whig friends at Chaldicotes and Gatherum Castle. And before the Tories manage to bring down the Whigs, the combined efforts of Mr. Sowerby, Harold Smith, and the Duke of Omnium do secure for Mark the vacant prebend in Barchester Cathedral. But once Mark gets his sinecure, the direct connection of politics with the money plot is not quite so evident. The fall of the Gods can, however, be seen as a limitation upon Mark's chances of advancement through patronage and as a foreshadowing of his own downfall. The detachment involved in the mock-heroic treatment of the political action may also be a means of reminding the reader of the vanity of worldly aspirations, and though Mark is a clergyman, those ambitions of his which are exposed to the light of the novel are all worldly. Sowerby's party, the party of the Gods, falls out of power shortly after Mark receives his prebend. Shortly before the generally happy ending of the novel, Sowerby himself, despite the backing of Miss Dunstable, loses his seat in Parliament, the seat he had held for twenty-five years. And though Miss Dunstable, when she pays Sowerby's debts and comes into possession of his estate, arranges things so that Sowerby may have the use of Chaldicotes for the rest of his life, he finds life as a tenant in his old house unbearable, so that soon he "relinquished Chaldicotes of his own accord, and. . . vanished away, as such men do vanish" (II, 295). But before Sowerby vanishes away, he plays an important role in the money plot, the plot which unfolds the story of the clergyman "who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of those around him". In that plot Sowerby functions as the chief of the tempters, as the Devil himself. Early in the novel Trollope sees Mark as a kind of Faust: "The German student when he first made his bargain with the devil felt an indescribable attraction to his new friend; and such was the case now with Robarts. He shook Sowerby's hand very warmly" (I, 103) ;4 and later on he points to 4

Since Lady Lufton regards the Duke of Omnium as "an impersonation of Lucifer upon earth" (I, 16), it might not be stretching things too much to

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Sowerby as "the devil, quoting Scripture" (I, 234). As the Tempter, Sowerby, as Lord Lufton asserts, " 'is a man that must be absolutely avoided' " (11,257). One of Mark's fundamental mistakes is his seeking temptation instead of trying to avoid it. Trollope in his own voice summarizes Mark's mistake in terms of a saying which is present in one form or another in novel after Trollopian novel: "Mark Robarts's mistake had been mainly this, - he had thought to touch pitch and not be defiled" (II, 230). But if in the money plot Mr. Sowerby plays the Devil to Mark's Faust, Trollope, the novelist who prided himself in portraying lifelike characters instead of out-and-out heroes and villains, knew that there was something to be said for Sowerby, as there was something to be said for Mrs. Proudie, and the fate of Nathaniel Sowerby and his Chaldicotes is interesting enough to form a subplot to the money plot. Until Lord Lufton comes to the rescue, some of Sowerby's money difficulties are passed on to Mark, and that way the sub-plot acts on the main plot. Still, the usually genial Sowerby, the brother who has his sister's love and devotion though her husband has neither, is, unlike the melodramatic George Vavasor of Can You Forgive Her?, a believable enough character to merit some attention for his own sake, even after Mark's financial affaire have been straightened out. He is the kind of character who can haunt a reader's imagination. He is also the character whose fate represents, in the total economy of the book, what would have happened to Mark if he had not repented in time. Trollope does suggest (II, 258) that Sowerby may repent in time for eternity, but as far as this world is concerned, it is clear that the time for repentance for Sowerby has long since passed. One who plays a role in Mark's repentance is a fellow clergyman, Mr. Crawley of Hogglestock, who, at Lady Lufton's request, descends upon Mark at the parsonage and quickly makes him face up to the worldly life he has been leading. As an effective convincer of sin and preacher of repentance Mr. Crawley first enters the novel. In the money plot he is an effective antithesis to Mr. Sowerby, an active and eloquent opponent of all that worldly and attractive man stands for. But if he is diametrically opposed to Sowerby in see Sowerby, who gets Mark to sign the first note at Gatherum, as playing Mephistopheles to the duke's Lucifer. Both men, at any rate, Trollope makes clear, are dangerous for Mark, and he should stay away from them.

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many ways, Mr. Crawley is like him inasmuch as he is a character who takes on a life of his own to the extent that his welfare and that of his family assume sub-plot status. What is especially interesting about the Crawley sub-plot is the fact that it adheres to both main plots, for if Mr. Crawley enters the novel as Lady Lufton's ambassador to Mark, he continues in it as the husband of the sick woman Lucy nurses back to health. And it is Lucy the selfless nurse whom Lady Lufton, despite herself, has to admire, as it is Lucy the nurse to whom Lady Lufton capitulates when she gives her consent to the match between her son and Lucy. An account of the marriage between Lufton and Lucy is given in the last chapter of the novel, but the whole chapter is not devoted to this marriage, for before getting to the Lufton-Robarts marriage, Trollope gives accounts of three other weddings. One of these, the union of Lord Dumbello with Griselda Grantly, is obviously pertinent to the novel's love plot, for Griselda was for a time Lucy's rival for Lufton's hand (if one may be allowed to put it that way), a rival sponsored by Lady Lufton herself. Once Lufton has passed over Griselda for Lucy, the fate on the marriage market of Griselda, that absolutely self-possessed creature, has no direct influence on the love plot but it is a matter of some natural interest. The bearing of the other two marriages - the Tickler-Proudie and ThorneDunstable unions - upon the love plot is certainly not obvious. In fact, one must conclude that in terms of cause and effect the Tickler-Proudie marriage simply has no connection with Lucy's story. Miss Dunstable, who appears first in the novel in the money plot as an object of Sowerby's ambitions, turns down Sowerby's proposal as she has previously turned down many other moneyinspired offers. Dr. Thome's offer later in the novel is not inspired by money, and that offer she accepts. When she does so, she pretty well cuts herself off from the money plot. Aside from the obvious convenience for the author of handling all the marriages at once, one can see that Miss Dunstable's acceptance of the love-motivated proposal makes it appropriate that her wedding be recounted in the chapter in which the main love story is concluded. Still, her love for Dr. Thorne has no more direct bearing on the working out of the main love plot than has the Tickler-Proudie wedding. Both these sub-plots, then, hardly seem causally necessary to the main love plot.

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If one were to stop one's analysis here, one would have to conclude that Framley Parsonage is not an especially well-constructed novel, for it seems to be a work without a central action, and though its two main plots do interact on each other, their sub-plots do not at all times seem to be causally justified. One does not have to stop one's analysis here, however, and one should not, for much in the novel which may not seem justified in terms of strict plot causality makes sense when approached from the point of view of theme. Theme is an important unifying principle in this novel, as it is in the earlier Barsetshire novels, and it is now time to turn to it. One of the novel's important themes has already been mentioned. It is the one which, according to the Autobiography, Trollope started out with: temptation. That Trollope was consistent in seeing much of Mark's story in terms of temptation can be appreciated if one compares the Autobiography's statement of authorial intention in the novel (to present "a morsel of the biography of an English clergyman who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of those around him") with Trollope's comments on his hero early in the novel itself: Mark Robarts "was no born heaven's cherub, neither was he a born devil's spirit. . . . He had large capabilities for good and aptitudes also for evil, quite enough: quite enough to make it needful that he should repel temptation as temptation only can be repelled" (I, 5). As the story develops and Mark does not seek to repel temptation by avoiding it, its power of attraction is certainly made palpable by the unforced geniality of Sowerby, the Tempter, but the reader can feel the pull of temptation even before Mr. Sowerby appears in the novel. When Lady Lufton's ambassador, Mr. Crawley, resorting to imagery during the course of his reproval of Mark's worldliness, characterizes his brother clergyman as " 'one who in walking has stumbled in the dark and bruisd his feet among the stones' " (I, 183), some readers may remember Trollope's description of Mark's arrival at Chaldicotes: It was nearly dark as Mark Robarts drove up through the avenue of lime-trees to the hall-door; but it was easy to see that the house, which was dead and silent as the grave through nine months of the year, was now alive in all its parts. There were lights in many of the windows, and a noise of voices came from the stables, and servants were moving about,

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and dogs barked, and the dark gravel before the front steps was cut up with many a coach-wheel. "Oh, be that you, sir, Mr. Robarts ?" said a groom, taking the parson's horse by the head, and touching his own hat. "I hope I see your reverence well?" "Quite well, Bob, thank you. All well at Chaldicotes?" "Pretty bobbish, Mr. Robarts. Deal of life going on here now, sir. The bishop and his lady came this morning." "Oh — ah — yes 11 understood they were to be here. Any of the young ladies?" "One young lady. Miss Olivia, I think they call her, your reverence." "And how's Mr. Sowerby?" "Very well, your reverence. He, and Mr. Harold Smith, and Mr. Fothergill - that's the duke's man of business, you know — is getting off their horses now in the stable-yard there." "Home from hunting - eh, Bob?" "Yes, sir, just home, this minute." And then Mr. Robarts walked into the house, his portmanteau following on a foot-boy's shoulder. (I, 24-25)

W h a t young man arriving at a great house in the gathering darkness and being immediately recognized by the servants and treated by them as a man of importance would not feel flattered, would not feel the pull of the lights shining in the windows of the house ? Mark is flattered and he enters Chaldicotes and becomes one of Mr. Sowerby's guests. When Mark next succumbs to temptation by accepting the Duke of Omnium's invitation to Gatherum Castle, Trollope may seem to p u t Mark's assent in rather harsh terms - " W h a t could a young flattered fool of a parson do, but say t h a t he would go?" (I, 44) - but the author is not being unjust to his character here, for a man of Mark's age, profession, and obligations is indeed being foolish in accepting the flattery of the rich and the great. Still, one can understand Mark's succumbing to this temptation. One can understand also his refusal to say no to Sowerby's request for his signature. His earlier failures to say no to temptation have prepared the way for this one. Then, too, a refusal would be so churlish, would reveal Mark as being unworthy of the company he has been allowed to keep! Mark succumbs to other temptations during the course of the novel - his fox-hunting, his signing of Sowerby's second note, and his acceptance of the prebendal stall and of Sowerby's horse are notable examples - before he finally and irrevocably does say no to Sowerby in what may very well be the shortest of all letters in

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all of Trollope. Aside from heading, salutation, and complimentary closing, the letter consists of one sentence: " 'I will signs no more bills on any consideration' " (II, 227). Many of Mark's actions during the course of the novel, then, fall into the pattern of his exposing himself to temptation followed by his succumbing to it, the pattern being broken when finally he clearly and simply rejects temptation, come what will. If Trollope uses the theme of temptation to tie together many of Mark's actions, it is a theme which extends to many other actions of the novel, from the postman's accepting bribes of tea and beer, to Lady Lufton's yielding to the impulse to stretch the truth, to Mrs. Proudie's succumbing to the urge to try to rub salt into what she thinks are wounds inflicted on the Grantlys by Lord Dumbello. And if Mr. Sowerby plays the role of the Tempter in the money plot, Lady Lufton sees Lucy as a dangerous enough temptress to warrant her ladyship's taking steps to see that Lucy and Lord Lufton are pretty well kept apart. In the money plot, it is Mr. Crawley whom Lady Lufton chooses as her ambassador; in the love plot, it is Fanny Robarts. In both cases Lady Lufton's suspicions are well founded, for just as Mark does succumb to the lures of worldliness, so Lucy and Lord Lufton yield to the attractions of each other. " 'Intimate friendships between young gentlemen and young ladies are dangerous things' " (I, 158), Fanny tells Lucy. If being in love is bad, then Fanny is right, because by the time she warns Lucy, that young lady and Lord Lufton have already yielded to the temptation of falling in love, though they have not at this point openly confessed their love to each other. What is the use, Lucy wonders, of labeling the bottle "after the poison had been swallowed" (I, 160)? So many of the actions of the novel are treated as confrontations with temptation in one form or another that one might wonder whether the novel may have a central action after all, that action being the confronting of temptation. The possibility is attractive at first, but when one considers that a number of little actions do not necessarily add up to one big action, one has to conclude that facing temptation, though an important unifying theme in the novel, is not an underlying, unifying action. Mark, after all, is punished for his yielding to temptation, but Lucy is eventually rewarded for her yielding. One action could produce opposing results, one knows, but here Mark's action and Lucy's action are separate and

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distinct, though similar in at least one important respect, and they produce two different and, from one point of view, opposing results. Another important theme in the novel is ambition. One critic, in fact, has contended that ambition is the novel's central theme.5 There can be no doubt that there is plenty of ambition in the novel: Mark, for instance, succumbs to the lure of Chaldicotes and Gatherum Castle because he would like to be a bishop some day and he thinks he may make influential friends at the great houses who may help him to realize that ambition; Mr. Sowerby's ambition is to clear up all his financial troubles by marrying Miss Dunstable's money; and the parents in the novel are ambitious to arrange distinguished marriages for their children. There is plenty of ambition in the novel but it is not the novel's central theme, not the theme that interested Trollope as he wrote. The ambitions of his characters, instead of being of interest in themselves, are among the means which Trollope uses to express his central theme. That theme is pride. Pride is not a new theme for Trollope. Pride of family, for instance, is one of the central themes of Doctor Thorne, and Archdeacon Grantly's pride of position is one of his distinguishing characteristics in The Warden and Barchester Towers. Mary Thome's fierce pride when she is confronted with De Courcy snobbishness is, furthermore, one of the more obvious characteristics which she shares with Lucy Robarts, the girl who insists on humbling her potential mother-in-law before she will accept her lover's proposal of marriage. Still, Trollope's concern with pride is both more extensive and intensive in Framley Parsonage than it is in any of the preceding Barsetshire novels. Although the word "pride", in one form or another, does not occur in Framley Parsonage so often as "power" appears in Barchester Towers, it does appear in more than half of the novel's chapters,6 and in those chapters in which it is not present, antonyms and synonyms of "pride" usually are. More important, even 5

John Hagan, "The Major Novels of Anthony Trollope: An Interpretation and Critique" (Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Diss., 1967), p. 242. 6 "Pride" or some variant form appears in at least twenty-six of the forty-eight chapters of the novel, though if one were to count the family name "Proudie" as a variant of "pride", the count would be considerably higher. "Power" occurs in at least forty of Barchester Towers' fifty-three chapters. "Power", incidentally, is also an important word in Framley Parsonage.

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when the word itself is not present at a particular moment in the action of the novel, the theme usually is, at least implicitly. The theme is first sounded in the first chapter when Trollope informs the reader that Mark Robarts' "family was proud of him, and [that his father] the doctor was always ready to talk of him to his patients" (I, 2). In the same paragraph, Mark's fate in the novel is foreshadowed when Trollope refers to him as "this young Hyperion". Hyperion, the last of the Titans, fell. Mark Robarts, his father's eldest son, seeks clerical advancement through political influence and succumbs to various temptations. When the bailiffs descend upon the parsonage, Mark, in his humiliation, realizes that he has fallen far: It was a terrible morning to him, and one of which every incident will dwell on his memory to the last day of his life. He had been so proud in his position — had assumed to himself so prominent a standing — had contrived, by some trick which he had acquired, to carry his head so high above the heads of neighbouring parsons. It was this that had taken him among great people, had introduced him to the Duke of Omnium, had procured for him the stall at Barchester. But how was he to carry his head now ? What would the Arabins and Grantlys say ? How would the bishop sneer at him, and Mrs. Proudie and her daughters tell of him in all their quarters ? How would Crawley look at him — Crawley, who had already once had him on the hip ? The stern severity of Crawley's face loomed upon him now. Crawley, with his children half naked, and his wife a drudge, and himself half starved, had never had a bailiff in his house at Hogglestock. And then his own curate, Evans, whom he had patronized, and treated almost as a dependant — how was he to look his curate in the face and arrange with him for the sacred duties of the next Sunday? (II, 251). Mark does not fall alone, of course. He drags his family with him, and this fact increases his misery. Fanny, his wife, who bears up so well while the bailiffs are at the parsonage, is crushed by an attack upon Mark's conduct written by Tom Towers, "the great representative man of the age" (II, 80), whose influence readers of The Warden know well, and published in The Jwpiter: "This was very dreadful to them all at Framley, and, when first read, seemed to crush them to atoms. Poor Mrs. Robarts, when she heard it, seemed to think that for them the world was over" (II, 290). But Fanny eventually recovers from the shock of the attack and so does Mark, and if he never afterwards is able to hold his head so high in Barsetshire as he was used to, and if all hopes of a bishopric

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for him have been blasted for good, he goes about his daily rounds performing his clerical duties as a wiser and better person than the young man his father took such pride in at the novel's beginning. One wonders whether the Giants and the Gods learn anything from their political triumphs and failures, which ups and downs occur throughout the novel, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background. Whether or not the politicians learn from their experiences, it is clear t h a t their rising and falling, treated as it is by Trollope with an air of inevitability, throws over Mark's course of action an air of necessity and doom, forces which Trollope finally personifies as Nemesis in the novel's next-to-the-last chapter. The mock-heroic handling of the politics also fits in nicely, of course, with the portrayal of Mark as an Hyperion headed for a fall. But if Mark's sins necessarily lead to his humiliation, he can exercise free will to extricate himself from the chain of events before he gets involved in another series of actions which will lead to a further humiliation. He does exercise t h a t free will when he absolutely refuses to sign his name to another note. Some of the other characters do not involve themselves like Mark in a chain of necessity, but like Mark they are proud, they encounter humiliation, and they exercise free will. Mr. Crawley, for instance, suffers the humiliation of poverty through no fault of his own, unless cleaving to one's vocation be regarded as a fault. A Job-like figure, he sometimes would "complain with bitter voice, crying out t h a t the world was too hard for him, t h a t his back was broken with his burden, t h a t his God had deserted him" (I, 171). If Mr. Crawley is sometimes inclined to blame God for his poverty, Trollope clearly blames the maldistribution of clerical income. One critic has even gone so far as to suggest t h a t Trollope originally intended Framley Parsonage "to be a tract about a subject which always haunted Trollope's mind, the unequal distribution of clerical incomes". 7 Whatever the validity of this speculation, Trollope makes it clear t h a t Mr. Crawley is a conscientious worker who is not responsible for his poverty. Trollope also makes it clear, however, t h a t Mr. Crawley, if he cannot by his labor rid himself of poverty, could by his more ready acceptance of charity somewhat ease the burden of t h a t poverty. 7 Ronald A. Knox, "The Barsetshire Novels", Literary (London & New York, Sheed & Ward, 1958), p. 140.

Distraction

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Mr. Crawley, despite his poverty, or, rather, because of it, is an extraordinarily proud man. " 'A prouder-hearted man I never met, or one less willing to share his sorrows with his friends' " (II, 150), says Mr. Arabin of Mr. Crawley, and he, being one of Mr. Crawley's oldest friends and the person who has tried longest to help the Crawleys, is a man who knows what he is talking about. Though Mr. Crawley boasts that "he would ask aid from no m a n " (I, 172), circumstances force him to accept aid from Framley when his wife comes down with typhoid fever. Not only does he accept Lucy's services as a nurse for his wife, but the situation also forces him to accept food from Framley. " H e could not cause the jars and the pots to be replaced in the pony-carriage, as he would have done had the position of his wife been different. In her state it would have been barbarous to refuse them, and barbarous also to have created the fracas of a refusal; but each parcel that was introduced was an additional weight laid on the sore withers of his pride, till the total burden became almost intolerable" (II, 136). Circumstances may force Mr. Crawley to accept charity, but they certainly do not force him to like it or to praise it. When Mrs. Crawley has recovered and Lucy finally leaves Hogglestock, Mr. Crawley undoubtedly does not like to accept charity any more than he did when his wife first became ill, but he does bring himself to praise charity. Though his praise is not entirely original, coming from him it is very moving praise: "May God Almighty bless you, Miss Robarts", said Mr. Crawley, as he stood in his dingy sitting-room ready to lead her out to the pony-carriage. "You have brought sunshine into this house, even in the time of sickness, when there was no sunshine; and He will bless you. You have been the Good Samaritan, binding up the wounds of the afflicted, pouring in oil and balm. To the mother of my children you have given life, and to me you have brought light, and comfort, and good words, - making my spirit glad within me as it had not been gladdened before. All this hath come of charity, which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up. Faith and hope are great and beautiful, but charity exceedeth them all." And having so spoken, instead of leading her out, he went away and hid himself. (II, 285-286) Mr. Crawley does not easily bring himself to make the act of humiliation which is his speech in praise of charity. Being an intelligent man, he knows that his pride is a serious flaw in his character, and in his conversations with Lucy he says that he knows how he

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should act: " 'I have renounced the devil and all his works; but it is by word of mouth only - by word of mouth only. How shall a man cruciby the old Adam that is within him, unless he throw himself prostrate in the dust and acknowledge that all his strength is weaker than water?' " (II, 237.) But knowledge is one thing and acting upon it is another. Though Lucy gives Mr. Crawley an occasion to talk about throwing himself in the dust, he undoubtedly was aware of his excessive pride long before he met her. What enables Mr. Crawley to translate his theoretical knowledge of the need for self-humiliation into action is the example of self-sacrifice that Lucy has given him while she has been nursing his wife. When Mr. Crawley does throw himself into the dust when he praises charity, he has not only his theoretical knowledge of the need for humiliation to guide him but he has also the day-by-day example of Lucy's selflessness. Through the beauty of her actions he has been at last enabled to see, at least temporarily, the beauty of charity. Such seeing does not annihilate pride once and for all, nor does it make throwing oneself into the dust easy, but for Mr. Crawley it makes it possible. Though Lucy is a model of selflessness at Hogglestock, she is by no means a perfect human being. She has her pride too, and in a way it is even stronger than Mr. Crawley's, for she refuses to relinquish it. She does, of course, temporarily give up the amenities of Framley for the hardships of Hogglestock, and in nursing Mrs. Crawley she exposes herself to the considerable risk of infection. She is willing to sacrifice her health, perhaps her life, in order to help others. What she will not expose herself to, however, is condescension; what she will not sacrifice is pride in her own worth. If the example of her charity overcomes Mr. Crawley's pride, her love for Lord Lufton is not capable of overcoming her pride. Thus when Lufton asks her to marry him, in her pride she attaches what she regards as an impossible condition to her acceptance. She will marry him only if his mother, who she knows opposes the match, will herself ask her, Lucy, to be her son's bride. "Her love was powerful", Trollope says, "but so also was her pride; and she could not bring herself to bear the scorn which would lay in Lady Lufton's eyes" if they married without her active consent (II, 102). Lucy, like Mr. Crawley, is aware of her weakness but, unlike him, she is unable to overcome it, so that Lady Lufton's coming to her

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is an absolute necessity if her love for Lord Lufton is to be fulfilled. Lady Lufton is herself, however, a strong person, "a woman not prone to give up anything" (I, 161), least of all her will in an important matter like her son's future. But Lady Lufton does, in the novel's climactic scene of self-abasement, come to Lucy and ask her to be her son's wife, for as strong as Lady Lufton's pride may be, her love for her son is stronger, and her love for him impells her to do his will instead of her own. By the time Lady Lufton comes to Lucy, her knowledge of Lucy's behaviour at Hogglestock has caused her to revise her opinion of the girl whom once she had regarded as insignificant, and her growing conviction of Lucy's worth undoubtedly makes her act of self-humiliation easier for her. Still, though increased knowledge helps, it is primarily love which enables her to subdue her will and her pride. Maternal love is the strongest motivating force in Lady Lufton, but her love is not confined to her son, and being "a woman who could cause no sorrow to those she loved without deep sorrow to herself" (II, 222), when, early in the novel, she wounds F a n n y Robarts by attacking Mark's behavior, she is very unhappy about the resulting bitter quarrel. F a n n y too is unhappy, but it is significant t h a t it is the older woman who comes to the younger to apologize and make up. That early trip of reconciliation to the parsonage is characteristic of Lady Lufton, an infinitely better woman than Lady Arabella Gresham of Doctor Thome, another mother who opposes her son's choice of a bride. I t is also a preparation for and foreshadowing of Lady Lufton's trip to Hogglestock to humble herself before Lucy. Many other acts of humiliation occur in Framley Parsonage, and because they are acts of humiliation, they contribute to the unity of the novel. B u t because they are not voluntary acts of humiliation, they do not have the power or the beauty of Lady Lufton's and Mr. Crawley's actions. Indeed, many of them, just because they are involuntary, operate on a comic level. Mrs. Proudie's interruption of Harold Smith's lecture on the South Sea islands, for instance, is not funny to Mr. Smith, who is unable to recapture his audience after the interruption, but some of his auditors find it amusing and the reader is certainly entertained by it. Similarly, Mrs. Proudie and Mrs. Grantly flail away at each other in all seriousness in their attempts to deflate each other's pride in the matches their daughters have made or have had made for them,

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and neither mother leaves the scene of the battle unscarred. The whole scene for the reader, however, is richly comic. B u t if Griselda Grantly's match with Lord Dumbello gives Mrs. Proudie an occasion to attack what she regards as Grantly pretentiousness, Griselda herself, unlike her mother and Mrs. Proudie, is no laughing matter. She is much too cold and self-possessed for that. She has her pride, however, even though she seems to have no heart. One can see t h a t pride in her general bearing and demeanor throughout the novel, but it is most evident probably in the hardly disguised scorn with which she regards her grandfather, who "had, she thought, almost disgraced his family in being, at his age, one of the working menial clergy of the cathedral" (II, 205). For those who know The Warden, the scene in which Griselda barely tolerates Mr. Harding's gentle attempt to wish her well and to give her some good advice is full of painful implications. I t is also highly instructive, for in t h a t scene two opposing types of human beings face each other. I t is not primarily Griselda's youth or her sex which unfits her to understand and appreciate her grandfather. I t is, rather, her heartlessness, her inability to love. How could she, the embodiment of selfishness, properly value the selfless old man who is holding her hand and trying to communicate with her ? Mr. Harding does not play a prominent role in Framley Parsonage, but his few appearances in the novel are significant, for before the action of the novel begins, he has already learned how to throw himself in the dust, already acquired the power of self-sacrifice, "the chief of all powers in this world" (II, 246). As the novel unfolds, a few of its characters learn what Mr. Harding already knows and they acquire the kind of power which he has. Griselda will never acquire t h a t power, though she possesses others, for pride and self can be conquered only through love, through charity, and Griselda, unlike Lucy, Lady Lufton, and Mr. Crawley, is incapable of loving. After quoting with approval Nathaniel Hawthorne's praise of his realism, Trollope in the Autobiography observes that This was dated early in I860, and could have had no reference to Framley Parsonage; but it was as true of that work as of any that I have written. And the criticism, whether just or unjust, describes with wonderful accuracy the purport that I have ever had in view in my writing. I have always desired to "hew out some lump of the earth", and to make

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men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us, — with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated baseness, — so that my readers might recognise human beings like to themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. If I could do this, then I thought I might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novelreader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure, and sweet, and unselfish; that a man will be honoured as he is true, and honest, and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious, and things nobly done beautiful and gracious, (p. 145) This is the kind of passage that must have made the aesthetes in the nineties shudder. And even today most readers will probably be repelled by the bold statement of moralistic intent. Fortunately, Trollope's artistry usually saves the novels from crude moralism. Trollope means what he says, however, and his novels certainly do contain morals. "Honesty is the best policy" is one of the morals of Doctor Thome, and "One cannot touch pitch and not be defiled" is one of the more obvious morals of Framley Parsonage. Another of the morals in Framley Parsonage is "Pride goeth before a fall", and a third, paradoxically enough, is "He who humbles himself shall be exalted." No one can expect to triumph indefinitely, for it is in the nature of things that what goes up must come down and that failure should follow triumph. The round of necessity can be broken, however,by those who love strongly enough to be able to sacrifice and humiliate themselves. Humiliation, like scandal, must come, but when it comes voluntarily, it becomes a source of strength and a means of triumph. This moral has as its source the ignominious triumph of the cross, and despite all the criticism of clerical conduct implied in the career of Mark Robarts, Framley Parsonage remains a thoroughly Christian novel, that is, a novel pervaded and held together by a profoundly Christian theme. A number of critics have compared Trollope with Chaucer,8 and in temperament and fertility of invention the two are indeed very much alike. Their Christianity is another bond between them, as it is a common basis for their satire of those who do not live up to their Christian ideals. Superficial readers, mistaking Trollope's reluctance to deal directly with the realm of the sacred for a lack 8

See, for instance, Gerald Warner Brace, "The World of Anthony Trollope", TQ, IV (1961), 189; A. O. J. Cockshut, Anthony Trollope, p. 103; Wilbur L. Cross, The Development of the English Novel (New York, Macmillan, 1899), p. 222; and Frederick Page's preface to his edition of the Autobiography *

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of awareness of that realm, "might easily say", as Harold Anson has pointed out, "that Trollope was not interested in religion, however obsessed he may have been with the careers of clergymen. But the true religious values which he cared for are continually showing themselves in his novels."9 Those values do show themselves in Framley Parsonage, the work which Professor Booth assesses as "the most characteristic, the mostTrollopian of all" Trollope's stories.10 Judging on the basis of a knowledge of the earlier Barsetshire novels, one concludes that Framley Parsonage is a characteristic work not simply because of the values it works with, but also because of the way it uses its values to impose a large measure of unity upon a large body of material. For if Framley Parsonage lacks a central, unifying action and if some plot elements are only tenuously related from the point of view of causality, it is nevertheless a patterned work, one composed throughout of rising and falling actions, triumphing and failing, proud and humiliated characters. Such a work is in no serious sense a hodge-podge, though perhaps it would be an even better work of art if it did have a central action.

9 "The Church in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: I I I - Anthony Trollope", Listener, X X I (1939), 998. 10 Anthony Trollope, p. 48.

VI THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON:

NOVEL OF LOVE

Allington is not in Barsetshire. Presumably for that reason, Trollope, when he wrote his Autobiography, decided against including The Small House at Allington in his list of the Barsetshire novels.1 But Allington is situated in a county adjacent to Barsetshire, 2 and a number of Barsetshire characters - the De Courcys, the Greshams, the Grantlys, the Duke of Omnium, and Mr. Harding, amongothers play roles in The Small House, and Allington and Guest wick, in size, social organization, and pastoral nature, are places very much like Greshamsbury and Framley. For these reasons - at least for these - it seems appropriate that The Small House was included as one of the Barsetshire novels when, in 1879, Chapman & Hall issued the first collected edition of The Chronicles of Barsetshire. In some aspects of its structure, however, The Small House is a considerably different work from the earlier Barsethire novels, most of which contain two plots, one of which is the vehicle for the love story. (One says "most of which" instead of "all" because the two major plot elements of Doctor Thome are so closely integrated that 1

"I have sometimes wished to see during m y lifetime a combined republication of those tales which are occupied with the fictitious county of Barsetshire. These would be The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thome, Framley Parsonage, and The Last Chronicle." An Autobiography, p. 277. 2 The Geroulds, in their indispensable and usually reliable Guide to Trollope (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1948), are only partially correct in their description of Allington as "The parish in Barchester in which the Dales had lived for generations" (p. 4). The Dales had lived there for generations, but Allington is not a part of Barchester or Barsetshire. When Trollope describes Allington in the first chapter of The Small House, he fails to locate it. Later on, however, when Crosbie, having left Allington, is in Guestwick on his way to Courcy, Barchester is described as "the cathedral city lying in the next county" (I, 181). Allington is, of course, located in the same county as Guestwick.

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they have to be seen as the two major strands of one plot.) One cannot talk about the love plot of The Small House, however, since that novel is composed of many plots, all of which are centrally concerned with love. If up until this point in the series love has furnished only a part of the interest of each novel, that topic now subsumes everything else and becomes the center of attention throughout the novel. The central importance of love is conveyed by the copious imagery in this novel - the imagery especially of light and of vegetation, which rich imagery helps to create and sustain a romantic atmosphere - but it is also conveyed by the plotting. I t is difficult to say just how many plots The Small House has; there are so many that some of them may be easily overlooked and counts of them may differ. Any listing of the plots, however, would probably include the following: Crosbie's jilting of Lily and Johnny Eames's subsequent and unsuccessful attempt to win her; Crosbie's marriage; the pursuit of Bell by Bernard Dale and Dr. Crofts; the pursuit of Johnny by Amelia Roper; Cradell's affairs with Mrs. Lupex and Amelia; the break-up of the De Courcys; Plantagenet Palliser's unsuccessful attempt at an affair with Lady Dumbello; the relationship between Squire Dale and Mrs. Dale. Though one could spend time analyzing the relationships between and among these various plots, even a glance at them reveals that some have very little, if any, causal connection with others. If, for instance, Johnny's proposal to Lily depends upon his freeing himself from Amelia, Cradell's involvement with Mrs. Lupex has very little direct bearing upon Johnny's relationship with Lily. And Plantagenet Palliser's flirtation with Lady Dumbello is even more clearly causally unconnected with Johnny and Lily. Johnny and Lily, in fact, are not even aware of Mr. Palliser's behavior, though all the fashionable world seems to be very much aware of it. One could also spend time analyzing the parts of particular plots to see how, if at all, climactic actions are prepared for, but analysis is hardly necessary, for the most important events in the novel are clearly and obviously prepared for. For instance, the reader is made well aware of Crosbie's misgivings about his engagement to Lily even before he leaves Allington, and Lily's turning down of Johnny's proposal late in the novel is made almost inevitable by Trollope's many references, early and late, to the notorious stubbornness of the Dales.

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But if conventional plot analysis of this novel would be practically superfluous, another kind of analysis is necessary, for Trollope in The Small House at Allington uses a unifying device which he has employed in all the previous Barsetshire novels, but now he uses it much more extensively than before, so extensively that one must examine it rather closely if one is to see how the novel is structured. That device is parallelism, a parallelism used in The Small House to achieve a large measure of what may be called unity of situation. One critic has noted that though the De Courcys and the Ropers move in the novel on widely separated social planes, their worlds are nevertheless much alike.3 He is right, and an analysis of this kind of similarity would seem to be one of the best ways of getting at the structure of The Small House and the view of reality which that structure is intended to represent. That is the kind of analysis which will be attempted now. "Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should there have been a Small House?" (I, 1.) If these opening sentences did not in miniature reflect or project the novel's parallel structure, they would still be very fine opening sentences, but since they do project the structure, they are especially rich. They project that structure by suggesting that although the novel's center of interest will be the Small House, that house cannot be properly understood without reference to the Great House. Trollope makes this implication explicit in his third sentence: "Our story will, as its name imports, have its closest relations with those who lived in the less dignified domicile of the two; but it will have close relations also with the more dignified" (I, 1). Those who live in the Small House are very much dependent upon Squire Dale, who lives in the Great House, owns both houses, and allows Mrs. Dale and her daughters to live rent-free in the Small House. There is in this dependency of one establishment upon the other an obvious causal connection, but if causality were all, the relationship between the houses would be far less meaningful than it actually is. Because those at the Small House, and especially Mrs. Dale, find the burden of gratitude difficult to bear, and because they feel that the squire in urging Bernard's suit for Bell's hand is

3

John Hagan, "The Major Novels of Anthony Trollope", p. 301.

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bringing improper pressure upon them, pressure which is both improper and available because of their position of dependency, Mrs. Dale and her daughters decide to break their dependence upon the squire by moving from the Small House. By the end of the novel, however, the women change their minds and Lily and her mother remain at the Small House, though Bell leaves it to enter her husband's house. From the point of view of causality, that is almost all there is. The women, after planning to break their dependency upon the squire, decide not to break it. The relationship between the houses is, however, a good deal more involved than the one-sentence summation suggests. For one thing, at the head of each household is an adult for whom the possibility of romantic love no longer exists. The squire, for his part, had loved once, and having been rejected, he never loved again. "In his hard, dry, unpleasant way he had loved the woman; and when at last he learned to know that she would not have his love, he had been unable to transfer his heart to another" (I, 5). Mrs. Dale, for her part, having loved once and having been widowed, now devotes herself to her children. Though she is still a pretty woman who might, perhaps, find romance again if she were to look for it, she has deliberately suppressed her prettiness and her remaining youthfulness in order better, as she conceives it, to serve her children. "The theory of her life one may say was this - that she should bury herself in order that her daughters might live well above ground" (I, 25). If the possibility of romantic love no longer exists for Mrs. Dale and the squire, other forms of love are open to them. Though at the beginning of the novel no love is lost between them ("though the brother-in-law and sister-in-law had been close neighbours for years, living as one may say almost in the same family, they had never become friends" [I, 24]), they do share in a common love for Bell and Lily. They do not share in this love openly, however, for a certain amount of jealousy, suspicion, and misunderstanding colors their understanding of the motives and actions of each other, and if the squire loves his nieces more deeply than his tone of voice when he speaks to them indicates, Mrs. Dale appreciates his benevolence to them more than she can manage to say. If at the beginning of the novel the Small House is fully comprehensible only when seen in the light of its relationship to the Great House, so the character and actions of Mrs. Dale become more understandable

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when seen in the light of the squire's character and actions. Occupying similar positions in their respective households, the squire and Mrs. Dale are much alike in other important respects: having left romantic love behind them, each retains beneath his rather hard exterior a great capacity for love. The story of how each comes to understand and appreciate the other more until the two do become friends is not a romantic story, but it is one of the love stories of The Small House, a story which illustrates how occasionally, at least in fiction, parallel lines may intersect. I t is also the story the course of which enables Trollope at the end of his novel "to think t h a t life at Allington, both at the Great House and at the Small, would soon become pleasanter than it used to be in former days" (II, 359). The relationship between the two houses at Allington is both causal and illuminative, but once Crosbie, at Courcy Castle, commits himself to the jilting of Lily, the tenuous influence exerted by the power of place evaporates and no direct causal connection remains to link the Small House a t Allington with Courcy Castle in Barsetshire. Still, at the end of the novel Trollope turns his attention from the prospects for pleasantness at Allington to Lord De Courcy's sufferings at Courcy. Some measure of fraternal love has been achieved at Allington, thus enabling the squire and Mrs. Dale to overcome much of their loneliness and to establish a warmer relationship between their two houses. Lord De Courcy, on the other hand, has managed to destroy whatever vestiges of love his wife and children may have felt for him at the beginning of the novel. Now, at the end, his family has fled from him and he is left with his "gout and ill temper at Courcy Castle" (II, 359). The contrast between Courcy Castle and the two houses at Allington is, of course, intentional. The three dwellings differ in pretensions of name and architecture, but they are alike in their need for the indwelling of love if existence within them is to be tolerable and human, and at Courcy there is no love and scarcely any humanity. Trollope does not in his last chapter mention Crosbie's house in Princess Royal Crescent, t h a t dwelling which costs Crosbie so much to furnish, but he does close his novel by reminding the reader of Crosbie's disastrous marriage with the Lady Alexandrina de Courcy. Perhaps Crosbie has already given up the new, damp house in which he and Lady Alexandrina tried to make a go of it for a little more than a month. In any event, t h a t loveless house, like Courcy

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Castle, has already served its purpose of illuminating by contrast the love which warms the two houses at Allington. Crosbie's establishment at Princess Royal Crescent can be seen as a kind of logical extension of Courcy Castle. Escaping from the bonds of love at Allington, Crosbie goes to Courcy and is trapped by his social-climbing ambitions and Lady Alexandrina; in the new house in London, until Lady Alexandrina removes herself to BadenBaden, he serves out the worst part of his sentence of captivity. If young men like Crosbie, Johnny Eames, and Dr. Crofts succumb to the lures of love at Allington, Courcy Castle has other lures, as does Mrs. Roper's boarding house at Burton Crescent in London. The lures of Courcy and the boarding house are disguised as forms of love, but Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina are no more in love with each other than is Johnny Eames in love with Amelia Roper or Cradell with Mrs. Lupex; for Crosbie seeks social prestige, Lady Alexandrina seeks to escape from the dreariness of spinsterhood and Courcy, and Johnny and his friend Cradell seek diversion, flattery, attention, and some measure of sexual stimulation and gratification. Though Courcy Castle is unaware of the existence of Burton Crescent, both places are places of danger for young men, who are just as likely to make fools of themselves at one place as at the other. Crosbie is a swell and Eames is a hobbledehoy, but the risks they run at Courcy and at Mrs. Roper's are remarkably similar. The risks they run at Allington are also similar. The difference between the two men resides in the fact that whereas Crosbie succeeds in breaking the bonds of love, Johnny succeeds finally in evading snares of Amelia, a female social climber, a kind of female Crosbie. Man may be universally a prey, but what he allows himself to be trapped by makes all the difference. That it is man, and not some men, who is constantly in danger of making a fool of himself through love or the appearance of love is emphasized by the presence in the novel of Plantagenet Palliser, a character in no way causally connected with the Small or Great House at Allington. His attempted flirtation with Lady Dumbello, whom readers of Framley Parsonage became acquainted with as Griselda Grantly, makes clear that for even such a devoted public servant as Mr. Palliser, who is too busy to sit all the way through a speech by one of his supporters at Silverbridge ("Constituents must be treated with respect; but time has become so scarce nowadays that that respect has to be meted out by the quarter of an

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hour with parsimonious care" [I, 280-281]), "politics were not enough . . . and . . . Love was necessary to make up the full complement of his happiness" (II, 289). Though Lady Dumbello at first shows some interest in Mr. Palliser's advances, as soon as she realizes that the flirtation may be dangerous to her reputation and may jeopardize her security as Lord Dumbello's wife, she acts coolly and decisively to put an end to it. B y showing her mother's letter of warning to her husband, she completely overcomes his growing suspicions, and her reply to her mother calms that lady's worries about the possibility of her daughter's indulging in an affair, but because it is such a cool, self-possessed reply, Mrs. Grantly is not altogether pleased by it: Mrs. Grantly was aware, from the moment in which she received the letter, that she had wronged her daughter by her suspicions. It did not occur to her to disbelieve a word that was said in the letter, or an inference that was implied. She had been wrong, and rejoiced that it was so. But nevertheless there was that in the letter which annoyed and irritated her, though she could not explain to herself the cause of her annoyance. She had thrown all her heart into that which she had written, but in the words which her child had written not a vestige of heart was to be found. (II, 298) Griselda Grantly Dumbello, who has no heart and who in no way affects the actions of Lily Dale or Johnny Eames, is, from one point of view at least, at the heart of this novel. In the world of this novel only the heartless do not run the risk of acting foolishly. Even Crosbie, as bad as he is, has some measure of heart. That is why he was able to fall in love with Lily in the first place; that is why he knows his fondness for Lady Alexandrina is not really love: Perhaps in some sort of way he had a weak fondness for her; — but it was a fondness that had never touched his heart. He could measure the whole thing at its worth, - Courcy Castle with its privileges, Lady Dumbello, Lady Qandidlem, and the whole of it. He knew that he had been happier on that lawn at Allington, and more contented with himself, than ever he had been even under Lady Hartletop's splendid roof in Shropshire. Lady Dumbello was satisfied with these things, even in the inmost recesses of her soul; but he was not a male Lady Dumbello. He knew that there was something better, and that that something was within his reach. (I, 205) He who loves runs the risk of acting foolishly. It is in good measure Lily's sense of shame, her feeling that, because she has so freely

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given of herself to Crosbie during their brief engagement that now, unless she is to abandon her sense of shame, she must remain true to him even though he has jilted her, that compels her to reject Johnny Eames's proposal. When her mother urges her to accept Johnny, Lily makes her motivation for rejection quite clear: "Mamma, I cannot make you happy in that way. If you really understood my feelings, my doing as you propose would make you very unhappy. I should commit a great sin, - the sin against which women should be more guarded than against any other. In my heart I am married to that other man. I gave myself to him, and loved him, and rejoiced in his love. When he kissed me I kissed him again, and I longed for his kisses. I seemed to live only that he might caress me. All that time I never felt myself to be wrong, — because he was all in all to me. I was his own. That has been changed, — to my great misfortune; but it cannot be undone or forgotten. I cannot be the girl I was before he came here. There are things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as though they had never been. I am as you are, mamma, — widowed" (II, 321-322). Both Lily's love-inspired generosity of self and her sense of shame are, no doubt, foolish, imprudent. The sense of shame, indeed, may be even a bit priggish, as Trollope suggests in the Autobiography.* Still, when all is said and done, Lily is better off than Lady Dumbello, for Lady Julia's words of consolation to Johnny apply equally to Lily and to all other true lovers: " 'To have loved truly, even though you shall have loved in vain, will be a consolation when you are as old as I am. It is something to have had a heart' " (II, 288).

Lily's real mistake is not her loving too much but her loving Crosbie. Such love is hardly a mistake, however, at least inasmuch as that word implies free choice, for, as Mrs. Dale realizes, "Love does not follow worth, and is not given to excellence; - nor is it destroyed by ill-usage, nor killed by blows and multilation" (II, 2). Crosbie, on the other hand, makes the mistake of not loving well and truly enough. Lily, as he often reflects during his month with Lady Alexandrina, would have succeeded in making that damp house at Princess Royal Crescent warm. Indeed, Crosbie and his wife suffer from the cold even on their wedding night: 4 Referring to Lily, Trollope says that "In the love with which she has been greeted I have hardly joined with much enthusiasm, feeling that she is somewhat of a female prig" (p. 178).

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It was very cold when they got to Folkestone, and Lady Alexandrina shivered as she stepped into the private-looking carriage which had been sent to the station for her use. "We shall find a good fire in the parlour at the hotel", said Crosbie. "Oh, I hope so", said Alexandrina, "and in the bedroom too" (II, 178).

Lady Dumbello would not suffer from the cold, but Lady Alexandrina, like Crosbie, has heart enough to enable her to suffer from the lack of love. There is a good deal of suffering in The Small House at Allington. Those who, like Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina, do not love well enough suffer, as do those who, like Lily and Johnny, love too well. The suffering of those who love well, however, can be creative, meaningful. It is in large part Lily's suffering, after all, that establishes the bond of sympathy and understanding between Mrs. Dale and the squire. Similarly, it is Johnny's suffering which helps him to emerge from hobbledehoyhood into manhood, for if at the novel's end he does not have Lily, he does have the maturity which he lacks at the beginning of the story. One is tempted to Buggest that Johnny's emergence from hobbledehoyhood into manhood - his ripening, to use the imagery often employed by Trollope and justified by the presence and activity of Hopkins, the gardener, in the novel - is the central action which underlies the particular actions of the novel and gives the whole work coherence. But though this emergence is no doubt a very important effect of the novel's main plot, it seems clear that there is no more central action in the Aristotelian sense in The Small House than there is in Framley Parsonage. What one has to come back to is thematic unity and unity of situation. If the basic parallel situations of The Small House, those situations with their centers in the Small House and the Great House at Allington, Courcy Castle, Princes Royal Crescent, and Burton Crescent, have been emphasized until now, it may now be useful to turn to some of the more limited and particular parallels in the novel in order to gain a fuller sense of the extent and intensity of parallelism as a structuring and unifying device in The Small House at Allington. If the basic parallel situations of the novel are centered in the two houses at Allington, Courcy Castle, and the houses in London in Princess Royal Crescent and Burton Crescent, these five dwellings

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are by no means the only ones which figure in the novel. The Gazebee's house in St. John's Wood, for instance, plays its part in depressing Crosbie and deflating his pride in his connection with the De Courcys. Crosbie, however, is not much impressed one way or the other with the appearance of the warden's house at Hiram's Hospital in Barchester. When Mr. Harding, who is acting as guide for Crosbie, points out the warden's house as " 'the prettiest built house I ever saw' ", Crosbie tries not to hurt the old man's feelings, but he does feel compelled to reply, " 'I won't go quite so far as that' " (I, 184). When Mr. Harding then turns from the house to the lawn around it and asks, " 'Did you ever see such turf as that ?' " Crosbie answers, " 'Very nice indeed' ", but to himself he "began to make a comparison with Mrs. Dale's turf at the Small House, and to determine that the Allington turf was better than that of the hospital" (I, 184). Crosbie makes a comparison here, and it is obvious that Trollope wants the reader to stop and make comparisons also. It was on the turf of the Small House while they played croquet that Crosbie and Lily carried on much of their preliminary flirting and some of their courtship. Now Crosbie has left the Small House lawn behind and he is on his way to Courcy, where he will repudiate his engagement to Lily. If he were to remain true to Lily, he feels, he would have to sacrifice a good many of his bachelor creature comforts and some of his social pretensions. The man who shows Crosbie the turf that reminds him of Allington is one who has voluntarily given up many material advantages, not the least of which is the very house that he so lovingly points out to Crosbie, in order that he might remain true to his conscience and his vocation. Crosbie listens politely to Mr. Harding's story, passes on, arrives at Courcy, and, acting in just the opposite way from Mr. Harding, violates both his conscience and his troth. The encounter between Crosbie and Mr. Harding does not make a really big scene, though Trollope doeB devote almost a whole chapter to it, and it certainly does not affect Crosbie's course of action. That it does not is, of course, much of its point. But in its quiet way it helps to place and illuminate Crosbie's cowardice and faithlessness. He is not the first man, after all, who has been called upon to make sacrifices for the sake of something precious. And if he is not going to be man enough to be true to Lily, the reader is reminded that there are men in the world who have been strong enough to

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resist all rationalizations and Bocial pressures in order to do what they know is right.

Much of the meaning of Crosbie's encounter with Mr. Harding depends upon the reader's knowledge of The Warden. Here Trollope goes outside of The Small House for part of his parallel. When, however, the reader comes across one of Amelia Roper's questions in her letter to Johnny, he does not have to go outside The Small House for the completion of the parallel. When Amelia asks her "dearest John", " 'Is it not sweet to be loved?' " (I, 113), she is echoing, though she does not know it, one of Lily's sentiments, a sentiment expressed by her to Crosbie in the previous chapter and in declarative form: " 'To be loved by you is sweeter even than any of my dreams, - is better than all the poetry I have read'" (1,103). Johnny, who in his irritation now and then crumples up the note paper as he reads, does not react so enthusiastically to Amelia's sentiments as does Crosbie, whose "unchecked arm stole round" Lily's waist, to Lily's. That is a good part of the point. Though the echo first of all establishes a connection between Lily and Amelia, Crosbie and Johnny, it establishes that connection for the sake of contrast. Lily and Amelia may use the same words but they are hardly sisters under the skin, for the words which the reader may find moving when they come spontaneously from the lips of the uncalculating Lily sound grotesque when they come from the pen of the artful Amelia. The words and the situations may be fundamentally the same, but the details make all the difference. Though Apollo Crosbie and Johnny, the hobbledehoy, differ in some obvious ways, Trollope consistently underlines the similarity of the love entanglements in which each is involved. I f each is told by his sweetheart how sweet it is to be loved, each finds himself faced with the unpleasant task of telling that sweetheart that he does not care to marry her. Each uses the expedient of a letter, a letter which each finds exceedingly difficult to compose. Johnny's letter, indeed, being hardly more than a note, may remind the reader more of Crosbie's first, temporizing note to Lily than of the four-page formal announcement and apology which Crosbie later sends to Lily's mother. In any event, Crosbie and Johnny, finding themselves placed in similar situations, act in similar ways. Indeed, the similarities are so striking that one may wonder what makes Johnny morally superior to Crosbie, what gives him the right to give Crosbie the thrashing which Trollope so obviously approves of.

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It should be noted in the first place that Trollope does not entirely approve of Johnny's course of action with Amelia. If he regards Crosbie's jilting of Lily as a cowardly action, healso regards Johnny's letter to Amelia as cowardly: "It was a bald letter, and somewhat cowardly withal" (I, 164). In the second place, though Johnny is partially responsible for his entanglement with Amelia, Amelia is, after all, a schemer who deliberately sets out to trap Johnny. Eventually realizing that he has been ensnared, Johnny is within his rights in trying to escape Amelia's clutches; Crosbie, on the other hand, has, in an effective scene (I, 170 — 174), been offered his freedom by Lily, who is no Amelia. That he does not accept her offer makes his rejection of her now that much more nasty. Johnny, furthermore, rejects Amelia for the sake of what is really better than Amelia: Lily. Crosbie, on the other hand, in throwing over Lily for the sake of Lady Alexandrina, abandons what is good for the sake of what is less good. The nature of this exchange he himself recognizes, interestingly enough, even before his marriage: He made comparison between Lily and Alexandrina, and owned to himself, over and over again, that Lily would make the best wife that a man could take to his bosom. As to Alexandrina, he knew the thinness of her character. She would stick by him, no doubt; and in a circuitous, discontented, unhappy way, would probably be true to her duties as a wife and mother. She would be nearly such another as Lady Amelia Gazebee. But was that a prize sufficiently rich to make him contented with his own prowess and skill in winning it ? And was that a prize sufficiently rich to justify him to himself for his terrible villainy ? Lily Dale he had loved; and he now declared to himself that he could have continued to love her through his whole life. But what was there for any man to love in Alexandrina De Courcy? (I, 288) Once again it appears that Trollope uses parallelism not only as a unifying device - a way of emphasizing the universality of the material he is working with - but also as a means of making distinctions, a way of illuminating and making more understandable the actions, characters, and situations of his novel; for if Crosbie and Johnny are more like each other than Lily and Amelia or Lily and Alexandrina are, there is still a significant and crucial difference between the characters and actions of these two men. Trollope no doubt punishes Crosbie too vigorously and relentlessly for his rejection of Lily, but if most of the time The Small House escapes awkward didacticism and heavy-handed moralizing, much of the

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reason may lie in the novel's extensive employment of parallelism, a device which allows the author to make his points subtly and by implication. There can be no doubt, incidentally, about the deliberateness of Trollope's use of parallelism in The Small House. Aside from the fact that a close examination of the text shows that the parallels are really there in the novel, one can see Trollope occasionally prodding the reader and directing his attention to parallel situations. When, after all, a character sees a parallel, the author must have seen it first, and the character's recognition of the parallel should, of course, direct the reader's attention to it. Crosbie's comparisons of Barchester turf to Allington turf and Lily to Alexandrina are examples, already encountered, of the employment of this directing device. Crosbie is not the only character in the novel to make comparisons. If Cradell and Johnny, for instance, do not seem to be able to profit from the example of the romantic plight of the other, Amelia knows how to employ a comparison for her own purposes. When it appears that Mrs. Lupex has run off with Cradell, a flight that no more takes place than Mr. Palliser's running off with Lady Dumbello, Amelia tries to use the occasion to tie Johnny more tightly to her. " 'Oh, John, what will become of me if ever you serve me in that way? What should I do if you were to go off with another lady?' " she asks. Johnny, who accepts his place in the comparison as the counterpart of the husband, objects rather weakly that " 'Lupex hasn't gone off' ", which bit of logic simply gives Amelia the opportunity to make clear the principle involved: " 'But it's the same thing,' said Amelia. 'Hearts is divided. Hearts that have been joined together ought never to be divided; ought they?' And then she hung upon his arm just as they got to the drawing-room door" (II, 126). However valid Amelia's principle may be in itself, the statement of it here does not much impress Johnny, who no doubt feels that his heart has never really been joined together with Amelia's: " 'Hearts and darts are all my eye,' said Johnny. 'My belief is that a man had better never marry at all' " (II, 126). When later Lily rejects Johnny's proposal, he probably does not remember Amelia's statement of principle, but Amelia's principle is the principle upon which Lily acts, as she implies when she tells him that "I should be disgraced in my own eyes if I admitted the love of another man,

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after - after It is to me almost as though I had married him" (II, 284). Johnny probably does not remember Amelia's statement, but the reader should. If he does not, he will be impressed by the scene, one of the novel's big scenes, anyway, but he will miss some of its preparation and justification and some of the irony which underlies and supports the sentiment. It would be possible to go on for some time pointing out and inspecting particular instances of Trollope's use of parallels in The Small House. One could go on to examine, for instance, Crosbie's use of his friend Fowler Pratt as a kind of second or intermediary with Squire Dale and Cradell's use of Fisher in his scrape with Mr. Lupex; or one could compare how Crosbie, Johnny, and Dr. Crofts use money, or the lack of it, as a reason for postponing or avoiding marriage; or one could look at the uncles - Squire Dale and the Duke of Omnium — who try to direct the romances and arrange the marriages of their nephews and nieces. One could examine these parallels and others, for the novel is full of parallel situations and actions, but such further examination should not be needed, since both the existence and the uses of parallelism in The Small House should be evident by this time. Most of the uses, at least, have been pointed out already. One final one, however, may be worth mentioning now. For a novel which contains so much sentiment, The Small House manages remarkably well to avoid sentimentality. Perhaps it was the handling of the sentiment which led Virginia Woolf to praise The Small House, along with Pride and Prejudice, as a perfect novel.5 In any event, the sentiment is well done. One method which Trollope uses to keep the novel from getting too sweet is interruption. He simply does not allow Lily's story to stay in the forefront of the reader's consciousness for long stretches at a time. Every once in a while the scene shifts from Allington to London and the reader's attention shifts from Lily to Amelia Roper, Mrs. Lupex, and Sir Baffle Buffle. The method, of course, is that of comic relief. But if the sight of Cradell and Mrs. Lupex, say, eases temporarily the burden offeeling.it can also, because of Trollope's employment of parallelism and situational unity, clarify and put in perspective what one 5

' 'The Novels of George Meredith'', The Second Common Reader (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1932), p. 254.

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has already seen or will see in Allington. The comic relief of this novel, then, is as thematically and structurally relevant as, say, the tavern scenes of 1 Henry IV. Such relevance does not by itself make a novel perfect, and The Small House at Allington is not perfect anyway, but it certainly contributes to the total effectiveness of the work, and The Small House is a work which most readers, from Trollope's time to the present, have found to be effective. If the novel's effective opening sentences display in miniature one of its fundamental structural principles, its closing bit of action, the apparently self-contained story of the altercation between Squire Dale and Hopkins, his gardener, is not only another and final example of parallelism but it serves also as a nuclear example of Trollope's handling of sentiment throughout the novel. Though there can be no doubt that the feelings of both old men are strongly aroused and involved in their dispute - Hopkins even weeps at one point (II, 352) - the whole affair is nevertheless more than slightly comic. There is a real principle involved - the principle of obedience to legitimate authority - but the particular source of the dispute is a dung pile, the manure from which Hopkins has been using without asking the bailiff's permission. When the squire finally gives in and goes to Hopkins to put an end to the dispute by forgiving him, the reader should be moved by this last instance of the gruff squire's sacrificing his own will for the sake of others. Still, the earthy origin of the dispute keeps some rein on emotion and saves the situation from becoming maudlin. The same vision that sees, and enables the reader to see, one scene in the light of other scenes also sees one scene as being both pathetic and comic at the same time. Such vision is the vision of an artist . It is a vision which has been present in the earlier Barsetshire novels, but it is especially in evidence in The Small House at Allington.

VII DISGRACE AND OBEDIENCE IN THE CHRONICLE OF BARSET

LAST

A reading of the criticism of The Last Chronicle of Barset would lead one to believe that the virtues of this last of the Barsetshire novels must be very great indeed, since the book is almost universally praised as one of Trollope's best novels, despite the fact that its structure is almost universally condemned. Bradford A. Booth, for instance, agrees with Trollope "that The Last Chronicle of Barset is the greatest of Trollope's novels",1 although he thinks that the work "is badly, almost fatally, vitiated by organizational weakness", and that it contains "much irrelevant plot-material, the excision of which would tighten and unify the whole novel".2 Similarly, Frank O'Connor regards The Last Chronicle as "a masterpiece as great as The Red and the Black or Anna Karenina", although "it is disgracefully and inconsequentially padded".3 That the book's virtues are considerable few readers would deny, and almost all would agree with the author that prominent among the virtues are the portrayal of Mr. Crawley and the handling of the deaths of Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Harding.4 But if author, critics, and general readers agree on the more obvious of the book's virtues, 1

"Taking it ae a whole, I regard this as the best novel I have written", Trollope says of The Last Chronicle (An Autobiography, p. 274). Professor Booth agrees in his introduction to the World's Classics edition of The Last Chronicle of Barset (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), p. ix. 2 Page xiii. Professor Booth is not the first to suggest that TheLastChronicle would be improved by abridgement. J. Herbert Stack, writing in 1869, two years after the first publication of the novel, suggested that "If we had Mr. Trollope's leave, it seems that, with nothing but a knife, we could make his "Last Chronicle" one-half shorter and fifty-fold better worth preservation." ("Mr. Anthony Trollope's Novels", Fortnightly Review, X I , 192.) 3 The Mirror in the Roadway: A Study of the Modern Novel (London, Hamish Hamilton, 1957), p. 167. 4 An Autobiography, p. 274.

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it is not so clear that Trollope would agree with his critics in their complaints about the novel's structure. In the Autobiography he does, to be sure, express some reservations about the novel's plot, admitting that its basic premises are shaky: "I cannot quite make myself believe that even such a man as Mr. Crawley could have forgotten how he got [the check he is accused of stealing] . . .; nor would the generous friend who was anxious to supply his wants have supplied them by tendering the cheque of a third person" (p. 274). These reservations about the premises of the main plot do not, however, take into account the novel's other plots, and nowhere in his discussion of The Last Chronicle does Trollope give any hint of his being aware of or embarrassed by the presence in the novel of padding or irrelevant plot material. An author's opinion of his work is not necessarily the definitive opinion, and the fact that Trollope seems to have been unaware of irrelevant plot material in The Lctet Chronicle certainly does not prove that irrelevant material is not present. It is, however, a fact worth noting, a fact that can help justify the kind of examination of the structure of The Last Chronicle which follows. It was undoubtedly the four plots of The Last Chronicle which led Professor Booth to image the novel as "a four-ring circus which nobody could have managed dexterously".5 That, when one stops to think about it, is a pretty sweeping judgment. Perhaps it was not intended to be taken with full seriousness. In what probably was a more serious moment, Professor Booth has suggested that of the novel's "three separate sub-plots, only one . . . has any relevancy or interest".6 The question of interest is difficult to assess, but relevancy can be more easily and objectively determined.lt is relevancy, then, the relationship of the various plots to each other, which will be considered now. Quantitative evidence certainly seems to substantiate the position that only one of the sub-plots is closely related to the main plot, the plot that carries the story of Mr. Crawley and the check. Of the novel's eighty-four chapters, sixty-eight are devoted in whole or in part to the main plot, forty-one to the Henry Grantly-Grace 5 An Autobiography, ed. Bradford A. Booth (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1947), p. xiii. 6 "Trollope's Orley Farm: Artistry Manque", p. 147.

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Crawley love story, twenty-eight to the continuation of the Johnny Eames-Lily Dale story, and seventeen to the Mrs. Dobbs Broughton circle. Whereas all forty-one of the second plot's chapters are also concerned in one way or another with the primary plot, only nineteen of the third plot's chapters are so concerned, and only two of the fourth plot's. Only one chapter, the last, is concerned with all four plots. Quantitatively, then, the second plot is much more relevant to the primary plot than are the third and fourth plots. Before leaving the quantitative evidence, it may be worth noting that the third and fourth plots share eleven chapters, which fact seems to indicate that the fourth plot functions more as a sub-plot of the third plot than as a sub-plot of the primary plot. In other words, the fourth plot appears from a quantitative point of view to operate largely as a sub-plot of a sub-plot. A consideration of plot relationships in terms of character and action does not appear to contradict the quantitative evidence. Though from the first it is made clear that Archdeacon Grantly, that very human embodiment of the church militant, would have opposed a marriage between a member of his prosperous family and a member of the poverty-stricken Crawley family, it is also made clear that the archdeacon regards the accusation against Mr. Crawley as a further reason for opposing his son's interest in Grace Crawley. And throughout the novel the romance between Henry and Grace is in danger of being wrecked by the charge hanging over Mr. Crawley's head. Even when it becomes evident that Henry has made up his mind to marry Grace even if her father should be convicted of theft, it is not so certain that Grace would consent to the marriage under these conditions. Indeed, when Grace, in an important scene, is confronted by the archdeacon himself, she pledges herself not to marry Henry '"As long as people say that papa stole the money'" (111,177). The archdeacon, much impressed and softened by Grace's character, responds to Grace's pledge with one of his own, but it is, like hers, a conditional promise: " 'My dear,' he said, 'if this cloud passes away from you, you shall come to us and be my daughter' " (III, 177). At this point in the novel, then, the charge against Mr. Crawley stands as the only bar against a marriage between Henry and Grace. But it is a substantial bar, and even if one suspects that had Mr. Crawley been found guilty, the archdeacon might eventually have accepted Grace as his daughter anyway, there are no grounds for

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supposing that Grace would ever have broken her pledge. The second plot, then, is most intimately connected with the primary plot, its resolution depending as it does upon the resolution of the primary plot. Indeed, it would be hard to conceive of a closer plot relationship than that which exists between the primary and secondary plots of The Last Chronicle of Barset. The relationship between the novel's third plot and its first two (these two being regarded as a unit) is, however, another matter. Grace spends some time at Allington, and that visit is the occasion for introducing Lily Dale and her problems into The Last Chronicle. Johnny Eames is conveniently related to the Crawleys and to Mr. Toogood, and that relationship, plus his connection with Lily, furnishes his excuse for being in the novel. It is Johnny, to be sure, who goes to Italy to fetch Mrs. Arabin, who gives the simple solution to the mystery of the check, and this Italian journey would be a vital link of causality between the third plot and the first two if there were any reason why Johnny had to be the messenger. There is no reason, however. Almost anyone might have made Johnny's trip, and even if no one made it, Mrs. Arabin would have cleared Mr. Crawley anyway as soon as she returned to England in the natural course of events. It is certain, then, that no real causal links connects the third plot with the first two. The plot connection between them is simply one of overlap: some characters from the first two plots also function in the third plot. What is true of the relationship between the third and the first two plots is even more true of the relationship between the fourth plot and the first two. Here there is not even the pretense of causality - no equivalent of Johnny's Italian journey. Indeed, even the character overlap is small, Johnny and Crosbie being about the only characters from the other plots who also figure in the fourth plot. If one measures relevancy in terms of strict causality, one must conclude that although the first two plots of The Last Chronicle are closely and relevantly connected with each other, the last two are largely irrelevant to the first two. The last two are, however, relevant to each other, since Lily's knowledge of Johnny's trifling with Madalina Demolines plays some part in confirming Lily's resolution to remain single. The investigation so far bears out the charge of padding, for at this point The Last Chronicle appears to be composed of material for two separate novels, the first two plots fur-

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nishing the matter for one novel and the last two plots the matter for another. Jerome Thale, in one of the most important single essays on Trollope yet written, suggests that although "it is not plot that structures The Last Chronicle", the work is nevertheless unified, structurally coherent. He suggests that it is the theme of honesty which structures and unifies the novel: "If we examine the situations in The Last Chronicle of Barset, we discover that they are . . . variations on the basic motif of honesty."7 If one has reservations about the particular theme which Thale sees as central, the suggestion that the last Barsetshire novel is thematically unified seems quite plausible, since examination of the earlier novels in the series has shown that they all contain this kind of unity. Some of the situations of The Last Chronicle are obviously concerned with honesty - one thinks immediately of the charge against Mr. Crawley and, in the third and fourth plots, of the pretenses of Sir Raffle Buffle and the members of the Broughton circle. Honesty is undoubtedly an important theme. When, however, one considers the confrontations between Bishop and Mrs. Proudie and first Mr. Crawley and then Dr. Tempest, he may find it difficult to see honesty as anything more than the occasion for the meetings. And what honesty has to do with the deaths of Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Harding is even more difficult to see. "Honesty", furthermore, is not an especially prominent word in the novel, and, if the earlier Barsetshire novels maybe taken as reliable guides, Trollope usually points out his most important themes through the repetition of key words. Grace Crawley is one of the novel's most important characters, and her first name, like Mr. Toogood's last, is significant. Trollope conceives of her as having a figure, for instance, which "was light, perfect in symmetry, full of grace at all points" (II, 68), and Mrs. Grantly tells Mr. Harding, her father, that her husband, the archdeacon, now that he has met Grace '"declearesthat she is all the graces rolled into one'" (IV, 175). Though Mrs. Grantly is, no doubt, to use Trollope's word, "quizzing" her husband somewhat at this point, her statement is significant insofar as it reveals the author's lively awareness of the significance of his heroine's name. But though Grace is herself a graceful person, her problem throughout ' "The Problem of Structure in Trollope", pp. 148-149.

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most of the novel is the possibility of her bringing disgrace to her lover, Major Grantly, and his daughter, Edith. As Mr. Crawley himself puts it when the major asks for his consent to his marriage with Grace, '"She is fit to grace the house of the best gentleman in England, had I not made her unfit'" (IV, 29). Indeed, Trollope consistently treats the charge of theft brought against Mr. Crawley in terms of disgrace, potential or actual, so much so that disgrace is a more important theme than honesty in the novel. It is a theme which, running through the situations and actions of the novel, reinforces the unity achieved through strict plot causality where it exists, and, where it does not exist, it unifies by itself. The Last Chronicle, unlike Doctor Thome or The Small House at Allington, does not begin with a chapter or two of apparently leisurely authorial exposition. It begins, rather, as The Glaverings begins, that is, with scene and dialogue. But John and Mary Walker, the opening speakers of The Last Chronicle, are not, like Harry Clavering and Julia Brabazon, major characters in their novel. Still, they represent a major force in the novel even if they themselves are not major characters. They, as they discuss the accusation brought against Mr. Crawley, represent the force of public opinion - a force that Trollope presents even before he introduces his major characters, and a force the existence of which the reader is never allowed to forget for long. Since Mr. Crawley is not a thief and since he is eventually proved innocent of the charge brought against him, one might suppose that disgrace is for the Crawleys only a possibility. That is the way Mr. Crawley seems to see things at first; so that when the bishop, goaded on by Mrs. Proudie, who cannot see how Mr. Crawley can be left in his cure at Hogglestock'"as a disgrace to the diocese'" (1,112), writes to Mr. Crawley informing him that he has '' 'appointed the Rev. Caleb Thumble to perform the duties of incumbent of Hogglestock till such time as a jury shall have decided upon your case at Barchester'" (1,119), Mr. Crawley, convinced that the bishop, not to mention Mrs. Proudie, has overstepped the bounds of his authority, refuses to recognize Mr. Thumble as a lawful replacement for him. He tells Mr. Thumble that '"It will be my duty, on the Sunday, to lead the prayers of my people in the church of my parish, and to preach to them from my pulpit; and that duty, with God's assistance, I will perform. Nor will I allow any clergyman to interfere with me in the performance of those sacred offices, - no, not

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though the bishop himself should be present with the object of enforcing his illegal command'" (I, 137-138). That position is stated plainly enough. In his letter of reply to the bishop, Mr. Crawley again touches upon the subject of lawful authority, and then he concludes with another reason why he feels he cannot obey the bishop's inhibition: '"Were I to abandon my pulpit, unless forced to do so by legal means, I should in doing so be putting a plea of guilty against myself upon the record. This, my lord, I will not do'" (I, 142). Mr. Crawley at this point in the novel, then, stands accused of theft, but he refuses to accept the burden of guilt and disgrace. When, therefore, the bishop sends for him, Mr. Crawley, feeling himself on firm ground, has no truble in putting down both the bishop and his wife. Indeed, armed with the righteousness of his position, he rather relishes the combat as he ignores Mrs. Proudie and lectures the bishop on the duty of opposing usurped authority. In this scene, as in the later scene of confrontation between the Proudies and Dr. Tempest, it is the Proudies who are disgraced. Later on, however, Mr. Crawley, acting on his own initiative, resigns his curacy. Though such an act at such a time may at first appear to be a piece of sheer willfulness, Mr. Crawley at this time, as earlier, is intent on doing his duty as he understands it. At one time it was his duty to continus in his duties at Hogglestock, even despite the bishop's personal wishes; but now, as Mr. Crawley explains to Mark Robarts,the situation has changed: '"I have been growing to feel, for some weeks past, that circumstances, - whether through my own fault or not is an outside question as to which I will not further delay you by offering even an opinion, - that unfortunate circumstances have made me unfit to remain here as guardian of the souls of the people of this parish'" (IV, 81). The circumstances that Mr. Crawley refers to are the changes in public opinion which have led now to a general belief in his guilt - either in that or in his madness. He is no more guilty now than when he was first questioned about his possession of Mr. Soames's check, but most people at first thought him innocent. Now that most people think him guilty, the accusation itself has become a disgrace, and, believing that a disgraced clergyman cannot do his duty properly, Mr. Crawley resigns his curacy. Though his course of action may at first glance appear erratic and arbitrary, Mr. Crawley is throughout obedient to his understanding of what his duty as a clergyman requires of him.

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Though Mr. Crawley does not seem to feel that the accusation of theft is in itself a disgrace until he becomes aware that public opinion has shifted against him, he is from the first bitterly aware of another kind of disgrace, the disgrace of poverty. Though in Framley Parsonage Mr. Crawley, on the occasion of Lucy Robarts' departure from his house, brings himself to praise charity, generally, in that novel as in this one, he accepts charity only with bitterness and great reluctance. Inasmuch as the acceptance of charity is an admission of poverty, Mr. Crawley fights off charity. His wife tells him that '"Nothing can degrade but guilt'", but he replies that other things can degrade too: '"Yes,-misfortune can degrade, and poverty. A man is degraded when the cares of the world press so heavily upon him that he cannot rouse himself'" (I, 83). Seeking to avoid falling out of the class of gentry entirely,8 Mr. Crawley resents and tries to fight off charity. Mr. Crawley's attempt to retain self-respect and gentility is by no means a purely personal thing. Here too his sense of duty is strongly operative. Trollope, with his usual restraint when approaching what he regards as sacred, refrains from having Mr. Crawley meditate upon the example of the poverty of Christ; but he does have his clergyman think about the example of St. Paul, and in so doing he makes it clear that what bothers Mr. Crawley most about his poverty is the way it obstructs his vocation: he would recall all the circumstances of his poverty, — how he had been driven to accept alms, to fly from creditors, to hide himself, to see his chairs and tables seized before the eyes of those over whom he had been set as their spiritual pastor. And in it all, I think, there was nothing so bitter to the man as the derogation from the spiritual grandeur of his position as priest among men, which came as one necessary result from his poverty. St. Paul could go forth without money in his purse or shoes to his feet or two suits to his back, and his poverty never stood in the way of his preaching, or hindered the veneration of the faithful. St. Paul, indeed, was called upon to bear stripes, was flung into prison, encountered terrible dangers. But Mr. Crawley, — so he told himself, - could have encountered all that withoutflinching.The stripes and scorn of the unfaithful would have been nothing to him, if only the faithful would 8

The important question of what Trollope understood a gentleman to be is answered beautifully and definitively by James Bryant Shrewsbury, Jr., in "Trollope's Concept of a Gentleman" (Columbus, Ohio State Univ. Diss.,

954).

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have believed in him, poor as he was, as they would have believed in him had he been rich! (I, 126) One might be inclined to look upon Mr. Crawley's reasoning here with some reservations, to wonder even whether Mr. Crawley fully understands what is involved in the imitation of Christ. Perhaps there really is some self-pity coloring his reflections, but his concern with his vocation and his duty is as real here as elsewhere, and the fact that his poverty has lost him the respect of some men has already been demonstrated in the novel. John Walker, for instance, because he knows Mr. Crawley is poor and has been in debt, believes from the first that the accusation of theft against Mr. Crawley is accurate. And though the archdeacon believes that the accusation is a further reason why his son should not contract an alliance with the Crawleys, it is clear from the first that the prospect of contact with the poverty of the Crawleys is what first of all horrifies the archdeacon. When he meets Grace, his attitude changes, but what it is originally shows that there are some grounds for Mr. Crawley's feeling that his poverty is a disgrace which hinders him from the most effective performance of his duty. When the novel nears its close with Archdeacon Grantly and Mr. Crawley standing side by side in the archdeacon's library, one may wonder whether success will spoil Mr. Crawley, whether the comforts of Plumstead and St. Ewold's will smother the fierceness which makes him in the midst of poverty such an impressive, prophetlike figure, one able at certain moments to command the attention of men, though the wordly-wise might usually scorn him. Trollope has, however, made it tolerably clear by this time that he approves of the union of the Crawleys and the Grantlys, that in the last of the Barsetshire novels as in the first of them he is in favor of a more equitable distribution of clerical incomes. If The Last Chronicle does not probe so deeply into the nature of human justice as does Orley Farm, Trollope is now as much aware of the irony of a just man's being generally considered a thief as he was earlier of the irony of a guilty woman's being adjudged innocent. It is disgraceful that such miscarriages of justice occur. When finally, as now, the truth is revealed and the just man is vindicated and the good workman receives his just wage, Trollope approves. The disgracefully low compensation for the Hogglestock cure remains, however, to lay its burden on the next holder of the living,

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but the problems of the next curate of Hogglestock make another story, one which Trollope did not choose to tell. Another story that he did choose to tell, and within the confines of The Last Chronicle of Barset, is that part of the fourth plot which is concerned with the financial status and dealings of Dobbs Broughton, Mr. Mussleboro, and Mrs. Van Siever, that part of the novel which anticipates in a number of ways The Way We Live Now. Since the social pretensions of the Broughtons rest upon the flimsy foundations of the transactions of Hook Court - since, in other words the Broughtons try to give the appearance of having more financial security than they really do possess - this part of the novel presents a situation in which the theme of honesty, that theme which Jerome Thale suggests unifies the novel, is important. And when one confines his attention to Hook Court, to the business itself without regard to what it sustains, he can see that honesty, or the lack of it, is still an important theme; for the business of Hook Court is speculation rather than construction, extortion rather than service. Dobbs Broughton, furthermore, is brought to grief through drink, but his partners dishonestly hasten his course of self-destruction. Still, as important as the theme of honesty is in this part of the novel, the theme of disgrace is even more prominent and pertinent. Dobbs Broughton's suicide is the most obviously disgraceful action in this part of the novel, a part which some critics, apparently confusing subject-matter and execution, imply or state is badly written, 9 but it is by no means the only disgraceful action. Johnny Eames, Madalina Demolines, Conway Dalrymple, and Mrs. Dobbs Broughton act foolishly and perhaps even disgracefully as they play with emotions and trifle with love. Johnny's involvement with Madalina certainly does not raise him in Lily Dale's esteem, and his escape with the aid of a policeman from the clutches of the Demolineses can hardly be regarded as an honorable end of a romantic • Professor Booth, for instance, in his introduction to the World's Classics edition of the novel, states categorically that "There is no excusing the Broughton-Van-Siever-Demolines episode. I t is not only impertinent but excruciatingly bad" (p. xiv); and Ronald Knox calls that section of the novel "frankly unreadable" ("The Barsetshire Novels", p. 141). What may really be at the root of the widespread discontent with this part of the novel is probably not bad writing as such but the sense that readers may have that Trollope is here repeating, though on a somewhat higher social plane, the

Oradell-Lupex-Roper sections of The Small House at AUington.

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affair. The financial transactions of Hook Court, furthermore, are in themselves disgraceful, but when seen in the context of Mr. Crawley's ordeal, they become monstrously so. Public opinion is quickly aroused over the Crawley affair and it stays aroused as gradually throughout Barsetshire belief in Mr. Crawley's guilt spreads and hardens. In Hook Court, on the other hand, dishonest financial dealings take place constantly and the money involved makes Mr. Soames's check for twenty pounds appear infinitesimal, but public opinion is not concerned with Hook Court. Trollope nowhere directly connects Hook Court and Hogglestock Parsonage but the world of The Last Chronicle of Bar set encompasses both places, and because the reader is given an occasional look into Hook Court, he should be better able to understand and evaluate the disgraceful conditions which exist at Hogglestock. One of the more interesting characters belonging to the Broughton circle is Clara Van Siever, a young lady who, though she seems at first to be as self-possessed as Griselda Grantly Hartletop, eventually demonstrates that she is capable of loving someone other than herself when she accepts Conway Dalrymple's proposal. Clara, the Jael of Dalrymple's never-finished painting of the Biblical story of Jael and Sisera, the story of a man disgracefully slaughtered by a woman, has Dairymple pretty much in her power but instead of tormenting him she decides "to throw herself into the absolute power of [Dalrymple,] a man who was nearly a stranger to her" (IV, 48). Though she looks the part of Jael, Clara does not act it. (Madalina Demolines, on the other hand, does not especially look like Jael, or as an artist might conceive of Jael as having looked, but her ambitions are Jael-like, and she and her mother do their best to pin Johnny-Sisera to the earth.) Clara, however, has to act determinedly even when she shows mercy to Dalrymple, for in order for her to accept the painter, she has to disobey her mother, who has her own plans for her daughter's marriage. Though Archdeacon Grantly does not know Mrs. Van Siever and would not like her if he did know her, he and she, to the extent that each is a parent with a disobedient child, a child who insists upon marrying a partner of his choice instead of his parent's choice, play parallel roles in the novel. Both parents also threaten their children with financial reprisals if they insist on disobedience. The threats are ineffectual. There, probably, the similarities between Mrs. Van

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Siever and the archdeacon end, unless one sees them as sharing a high respect for money, but the situations in which obedience is an important element are not limited to parallels involving the archdeacon and Mrs. Van Siever. Obedience, indeed, is a theme as important as disgrace in The Last Chronicle, and generally it appears in company with the other theme. When Johnny Eames, for instance, is about to make his ignominious escape from the Demolineses, he is only too happy to obey Lady Demolines' last words: "'Go away, sir, this moment, and don't contaminate my room an instant longer by your presence'" (IV, 202). Lady Demolines issues this order, however, only after Johnny has ordered a passing policeman to stand by, which order the policeman obeys by standing outside the house ready to come to Johnny's aid. If Johnny escapes from the Demolineses by issuing an order which is obeyed by a civil servant, at work he is a civil servant placed in the position of coping with the orders of the unpleasant and affected Sir Raffle Buffle. Much of the time Trollope spends on showing Johnny at work is devoted to Johnny's successful attempts to retain both his self-respect and his job. He retains his job by doing his work well enough so that Sir Raffle feels a real need of him; often he retains his self-respect by disobeying Sir Raffle's orders. The climactic and most direct confrontation of wills between Johnny and Sir Raffle occurs, however, when Johnny is not so much concerned with his own self-respect as with Mr. Crawley's good name. When Johnny, determined to act as Mr. Toogood's messenger to Mrs. Arabin in Italy, is told by Sir Raffle not only that he cannot have the necessary time off from work to make the trip but also that if he takes the time without permission he will be dismissed from the service, not simply from his position as Sir Raffle's secretary, he realizes that the situation is serious. Johnny through some adroit maneuvering finally persuades Sir Raffle to change his mind and to allow the leave of absence. Johnny in this instance has his way, therefore, but he does not actually have to disobey the order of a superior. When in the course of his persuading Sir Raffle to change his mind Johnny argues that "'I do not think any man was more obedient, perhaps I should say more submissive, than I have been'" (III, 54-55), the reader is no more impressed with the truth of the statement than if Mrs. Proudie, mutatis mutandis, had made it

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herself. If Clara Van Siever regards marriage as a state in which a woman places herself in a man's power, that is certainly not marriage as Mrs. Proudie understands it. Her actions, in fact, seem to indicate that she understands marriage to be a condition in which the male submits totally to the female. Though the bishop has occasionally attempted to assert his rights as husband and prelate readers of Barchester Towers certainly remember the short-lived, Slope-inspired rebellion of that novel - most of the time in the Barchester series he has settled for peace and comfort and the show of authority at the expense of the real exercise of authority. When Mrs. Proudie is exerting pressure upon the bishop to write the letter intended to relieve Mr. Crawley of his duties at Hogglestock, the bishop, knowing that he cannot rightfully by himself remove a clergyman from his duties, feels that he could resist his wife's pressure if only he could rely on her not to shame him in public, for to be scolded publicly was the great evil which he dreaded beyond all evils. He was well aware that the palace would know his misfortune,that it was known, and freely discussed by all, from the examining chaplain down to the palace boot-boy; — nay, that it was known to all the diocese; but yet he could smile upon those around him, and look as though he held his own like other men, — unless when open violence was displayed. But when that voice was heard aloud along the corridors of the palace, and when he was summoned imperiously by the woman, calling for the bishop, so that all Barchester heard it, and when he was compelled to creep forth from his study, at the sound of that summons, with distressed face, and shaking hands, and short hurrying steps, — a being to be pitied even by a deacon, — not venturing to assume an air of masterdom should he chance to meet a housemaid on the stairs, - then, at such moments as that, he would feel that any submission was better than the misery which he suffered. And he well knew that should he now rebel, the whole house would be in a turmoil. He would be bishoped here, and bishoped there, before the eyes of all palatial men and women, till life would be a burden to him. So he got up from his seat over the fire, and went to his desk and wrote the letter. (I, 118—119) But if the bishop excapes public disgrace for a time by writing the letter that his wife desires, there is little he can do to stop his wife from interrupting and contradicting him and trying to take control of the interview at the palace with Mr. Crawley. That she does not succeed in controlling the situation is the result of Mr. Crawley's strength rather than the exercise by Mr. Proudie of conjugal or prelatical authority. As a matter of fact, though the bishop

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suffers through most of the scene, he does experience a moment of near pleasure when Mr. Crawley finally turns to Mrs. Proudie and speaks to her: " 'Peace, woman,' Mr. Crawley said, addressing her at last. The bishop jumped out of his chair at hearing the wife of his bosom called a woman. But he jumped rather in admiration than in anger" (I, 205). There is precious little, however, for the bishop to admire in the later interview at the palace with Dr. Tempest, when Mrs. Proudie again tries to dominate the scene. If Mrs. Proudie had more sense, of course, Dr. Tempest's rebuff of her after breakfast would have convinced her that he was not, like her husband, a man to be dominated by a woman. But since Mrs. Proudie does not have sense enough to know when she is beaten, she insists on being present at what should have been a private meeting between the bishop and Mr. Crawley's rural dean; and even when her husband, driven by Dr. Tempest's refusal to discuss business in the presence of a woman, pleads with her to leave the room, she refuses: " 'My dear!' said the bishop, driven in his perplexity beyond all carefulness of reticence. 'My dear, I do wish you wouldn't, - 1 do indeed. If you would only go away!' " (III, 47) It is Dr. Tempest finally who goes away, but the bishop does not recover from this scene of humiliation as he has from others. '"I do not know how I shall ever speak again. You have disgraced me'" (III, 47), he tells his wife when Dr. Tempest has gone, but though he does bring himself to speak again, his sense of disgrace is so strong that it stays with him to the end of his days. When Mrs. Proudie finally realizes how deeply her husband feels the shame and disgrace of her disobedience, she dies, since there is no other way for her to make it up with her husband, whom she does love to some extent in her own strange way. If the element of disgrace is very prominent in the scenes of Mrs. Proudie's disobedience which finally lead to her death, its presence, though real, is muted in the scenes which lead up to the other beautifully handled death in this novel, Mr. Harding's. It is appropriate that the disgraces of Mr. Harding's old age should be muted, since he was never, like Mrs. Proudie, a loud person, and since, long before, when he resigned the wardenship of Hiram's Hospital, he retired out of the range of public opinion into relative obscurity. "Disgrace" may even seem to be too strong a word to describe the unspectacular events which mark the old clergyman's progress to death, but

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even if "humiliation" or some other word might seem to be more appropriate, there is little room for doubt t h a t Trollope is here working with the same major themes t h a t dominate and unify the rest of the novel. Mr. Harding does not suffer loudly or dramatically but he suffers nevertheless when he is reduced to leaning upon the arms of ladies on his way to and from the cathedral, when he finds himself unable to play the cello any longer, and when he can no longer play his part in the services of the cathedral. He does not suffer loudly or complain, but on the morning after he was advised to p u t away his surplice, "and for nearly a week afterwards, he had been unable to face the minor canon and the vergers, and the old women who knew him so well, in his ordinary black garments" (HI, 74). When he stumbles on his way into the cathedral on what proves to be his last visit to t h a t building where he followed his vocation as precentor for many years, he comes close for once to expressing aloud his suffering from humiliation and disgrace. His daughter Susan, the archdeacon's wife, is with him and she prevents him from falling: "Oh, papa", she said, "indeed, indeed, you should not come here alone". Then he apologized for his little stumble with many words and much shame, assuring her that anybody might trip on an occasion. It was purely an accident; and though it was a comfort to him to have had her arm, he was sure that he should have recovered himself even had he been alone. He always, he said, kept quite close to the wall, so that there might be no mistake, - no possibility of an accident. All this he said volubly, but with confused words, in the covered stone passage leading into the transept. And, as he thus spoke, Mrs. Grantly made up her mind that her father should never again go to the cathedral alone. He never did go again to the cathedral, — alone. (Ill, 76) When they return home and Susan asks him to promise not to go to the cathedral again alone, he is not made happy by her request but he does not protest; he has done t h a t already at the entrance of the cathedral. "When he heard the sentence he looked at her with blank misery in his eyes. He made no attempt at remonstrance. He begged for no respite. The word had gone forth, and he knew t h a t it must be obeyed. Though he would have hidden the signs of his weakness had he been able, he would not condescend to plead t h a t he was strong. 'If you think it wrong, my dear, I will not go alone,' he said" (III, 76). Here Mr. Harding, in the infirmity of his old age,

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obeys his daughter. Other parents in this novel try to command their children, but Mr. Harding obeys. Shortly after he gives his promise to his daughter, Mr. Harding, realizing that now, as always, it is the will of God that he has been called upon to obey, completes an hour's meditation by muttering "to himself a word or two.'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace. Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace'" (III, 78). The man who at the beginning of the Barsetshire series gave up much of his worldly power and comfort now resigns himself to leaving the world altogether. Instead of getting up at his usual hour of rising on the next morning, Mr. Harding remains in bed, where he stays until he dies. When the living of St. Ewold's is left vacant by Mr. Harding's death,10 Archdeacon Grantly is persuaded to confer it upon Mr. Crawley. The Tightness of Mr. Crawley's succeeding Mr. Harding at St. Ewold's can hardly be exaggerated, for, aside from the fact that the vindicated Mr. Crawley needs a living and a cure so that he can support his family and pursue his vocation, the successor has much in common with his predecessor in the position. Physically and temperamentally, of course, the fierce Mr. Crawley is not much like the gentle Mr. Harding, but both clergymen have a highly developed sense of vocation, both have through circumstan10 Though Trollope towards the end of The Last Chronicle refers to the archdeacon's having presented Mr. Harding with the living of St. Ewold's "under certain circumstances, which need not be repeated in this last chronicle of Barsetshire" (IV, 172), a close examination of the preceding Barsetshire novels fails to uncover any previous reference to Mr. Harding's having been given the living of St. Ewold's. A t the end of The Warden he holds, besides his precentorship in the cathedral, the living of St. Cuthbert's. B y the time he was finishing The Last Chronicle, Trollope probably thought he had, at the end of Barchester Towers, given Mr. Harding St. Ewold's when Mr. Arabin received the deanship. That would have been the logical time for Mr. Harding to receive St. Ewold's, especially since he had himself just turned down the deanship and urged that it be given to Mr. Arabin. A t the end of Barchester Towers, however, there is no word about the disposal of St. Ewold's. The reader is left to suppose, if he supposes anything, that Mr. Arabin retains St. Ewold's when he takes over the deanery.

This apparent inconsistency or oversight in no way, however, affects the Tightness of Trollope's clearly linking Mr. Harding and Mr. Crawley at the end of The Last Chronicle. I t no more vitiates the impact and import of that linking than a knowledge of geography should weaken one's appreciation of The Winter's Tale.

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ces not really of their own making suffered disgrace, both have been obedient to the demands of duty and conscience even when such obedience has led them to make resignations which their close friends have opposed as foolish and unnecessary. Though Mr. Harding's death may seem at first glance to be an unnecessary, though well-executed, episode in The Last Chronicle of Barset, in its working with the themes of disgrace and obedience it is thematically relevant to the rest of the novel. Even more important, perhaps, it is a way of linking two characters who must be seen together if the career of either one is to be properly understood and if the course of the whole Barsetshire series is to be accurately followed. Mr. Crawley's devotion to duty has already been noted during the discussion of how his sense of disgrace leads him to resign his cure at Hogglestock. Though he disobeys the bishop's unlawful order, he refuses to remain in the living when it seems to him that public belief in his guilt has reached the point where it has weakened his authority as a preacher of the gospel. Whether or not the accusation of theft has weakened his ministerial authority as much as Mr. Crawley believes, he is definitely wrong in supposing that it has seriously weakened his domestic authority. The exigencies of the situation do spur Mrs. Crawley to circumvent her husband's will in some matters, as when she arranges a ride for him as far as Framley though he is determined to walk all the way into Barchester, but poverty has already frequently forced this kind of circumvention upon her. When, therefore, Mr. Crawley tells Major Grantly that '"I am, as it were, an outlaw here, and entitled neither to obedience nor respect from those who under other circumstances would be bound to give me both"' (IV, 27), he is clearly exaggerating. His wife's comment is certainly closer to the truth: " 'Major Grantly,' said the poor woman, 'no husband or father in the county is more closely obeyed or more thoroughly respected and loved' " (IV, 27). Mr. Crawley's sense of his weakening domestic authority is certainly inaccurate, but it is significant inasmuch as it gives a further insight into his mental torments and demonstrates once again how pervasive and closely connected in the novel are the themes of obedience and disgrace. The part of the novel in which the two major themes are probably least in evidence is the third plot, that one which is concerned with the Lily Dale, Johnny Eames, Adolphus Crosbie triangle, but even here when one looks closely he can see the themes operating as

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unifying elements. Lily, for instance, is continually bothered by well-meaning friends and relatives who would like her to marry Johnny. These people sometimes do their urging and prompting of Lily indirectly, but even so they are not very subtle. When, for instance, Lady Julia De Guest proposes the health of Johnny Eames at the Christmas dinner at the Great House in Allington, Lily maintains her composure and joins in the toast but she is unhappy nevertheless about Lady Julia's action. " 'Here's the health of Johnny Eames,' said Lily; and her voice was the clearest and the boldest of them all. But she made up her mind that if Lady Julia could not be induced to spare her for the future, she and Lady Julia must quarrel. 'No one can understand,' she said to her mother that evening, 'how dreadful it is, - this being constantly told before one's family and friends that one ought to marry a certain young man' " (I, 181). Lily, feeling almost persecuted by her friends and acquaintances, sometimes wonders how it has happened that her emotional affairs have become public property: How had it come to pass that matters which with others are so private, should with her have become the public property of so large a circle ? Any other girl would receive advice on such a subject from her mother alone, and there the secret would rest. But her secret had been published, as it were, by the town-crier in the High Street I Everybody knew that she had been jilted by Adolphus Crosbie, and that it was intended that she should be consoled by John Eames. And people seemed to think that they had a right to rebuke her if she expressed an unwillingness to carry out this intention which the public had so kindly arranged for her. (Ill, 207) What Lily labors under here comes very close to being a sense of disgrace. Lily has had a sense of disgrace, or something very much like it, ever since Crosbie jilted her. Her sense of shame is strong because she gave herself so wholeheartedly to Crosbie during their short engagement. If she feels that her condition now is public knowledge, it is because in part she expressed her love for Crosbie so openly and freely then. Indeed, she tells her mother in The Small House at Allington (II, 322) that if she were to accept Johnny she would be committing the sin of infidelity ("the sin against which women should be more guarded than against any other"), for she regards herself as married to Crosbie even though he has abandoned her.

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The usual reason that Lily gives her friends for her not obeying their wishes and accepting Johnny is that she cannot accept him because she loves another man, Crosbie. But in The Last Chronicle Lily discovers after encountering Crosbie at two embarrassing (embarrassing for her and for him and for the bystanders) chance meetings that she no longer loves him. The stout, seedy reality of the man finally punctures for good the image of the Apollo which her memory has cherished. But even when Lily comes to realize that she no longer loves Crosbie, she still cannot accept Johnny, for she cannot fall in love with him even though she would like to do so. She is convinced that her capacity for romantic love has been destroyed for good. Still poetic to the last and at the last revealing that she has never recovered from the shock and disgrace of her being jilted, she tells John that ' " I f you take a young tree and split it, it still lives, perhaps. But it isn't a tree. I t is only a fragment.'" When Johnny picks up the image and urges her to be his fragment, she continues the conceit by telling him that though she might, as a friend, accept a place in a corner of his garden, ' " I will not have myself planted out in the middle for people to look at. What there is left would die soon"' (IV, 165). Lily took a chance and exposed herself once. She will never take another such chance. One could go on demonstrating how the themes of disgrace and obedience run through the novel's third plot - both Crosbie and Lily, for instance, promise to obey Mrs. Dale's commands when Crosbie writes to Lily's mother after his wife's death - but their presence there and elsewhere in the novel should be well evident by this time. One could also go on to point out the existence of other important themes in The Last Chronicle - power, pride, and change, for instance - but such a pointing-out would not be pertinent to the purposes of this chapter, which has been concerned with the two major themes of the book, the two that unify the whole. The other themes are important, for, as Hugh Walpole correctly puts it, "The Last Chronicle is to the Barsetshire series what the Gotterdamerung is to Wagner's 'Ring'; it gathers up all the motifs", 11 but consideration of them should wait for this study's next chapter, and it will. One could also spend some time pointing out parallels and working with unity of situation in The Last Chronicle, but since 11

Anthony Trollope (London, Macmillan, 1928), p. 65.

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a study of themes in Trollope necessarily uncovers parallels, the parallels which have been pointed out already may stand as a sufficient representation of all of them. Instead of spending more time with details, it is time now to sum up. Though one can see that the uniting of the Crawleysandthe Grantlys is the central action underlying the first two plots of The Last Chronicle of Barset, and though it may be possible to see the final hardening of Lily Dale's resolution to remain an old maid as an action underlying much of the novel's last two plots, it seems certain that there is no one central action - no one movement from a beginning, through a middle, to an end - underlying the whole novel. Though there are points of contact existing between the novel's first two and last two plots, the links of causality are neither numerous nor impressive. The Last Chronicle would probably be a better novel if it had one central action underlying all four of its plots, but the recognition of this probability is not equivalent to an admission that the novel would be improved by abridgement, by eliminating the third and fourth plots, for these plots are thematically relevant to the whole and they help to furnish a context within which one can see more accurately and fully than would otherwise be possible the characters and actions of the first two plots. Barsetshire exists in the same fictional world as London, and burdens of disgrace and problems of obedience are not uniquely Mr. Crawley's burdens and problems, though in this novel they may be most strikingly his. Because the novel has four plots instead of two and because the four are thematically unified, the reader is enabled to see the universality of Mr. Crawley's burdens and problems at the same time as he is helped to understand how different men and women shoulder differently the same burdens and confront in their own way the same problems. The Last Chronicle probably would be a better novel if it had one central action underlying everything, but as it is it remains a coherent work of art, one capable of giving the attentive reader a sense of both the unity and complexity of human experience.

VIII THE SERIES: ESSENTIALLY CLERICAL

Everyone can see that the Barsetshire novels form together in certain ways a unified series. They first of all share in a unity of place. In the last paragraph of the last Barsetshire novel, Trollope makes explicit just how important and real place has been to him while he has been composing the novels of the series: And now, if the reader will allow me to seize him affectionately by the arm, we will together take our last farewell of Barset and of the towers of Barchester. I may not venture to say to him that, in this country, he and I together have wandered often through the country lanes, and have ridden together over the too-well wooded fields, or have stood together in the cathedral nave listening to the peals of the organ, or have together sat at good men's tables, or have confronted together the angry pride of men who were not good. I may not boast that any beside myself have so realized the place, and the people, and the facts, as to make such reminiscences possible as those which I should attempt to evoke by an appeal to perfect fellowship. But to me Barset has been a real county, and its city a real city, and the spires and towers have been before my eyes, and the voices of the people are known to my ears, and the pavements of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps. (Last Chronicle, IV, 238). Trollope also stresses the importance to him of place in the Barsetshire novels when, in the Autobiography, he states that "Throughout these stories there has been no name given to a fictitious site which does not represent to me a spot of which I know all the accessories, as though I had lived and wandered there" (p. 154). Finally, at the time of the writing of the Autobiography, Allington's location outside Barsetshire was apparently a sufficient reason in Trollope's mind for his not considering The Small House at Ailington to be a part of the Barsetshire series. The initial exclusion of this novel from the series seems to be another indication of how seriously Trollope took place as a unifying element in the series.

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Although Allington is located outside Barsetshire, some of the characters from The Small House do travel into Barsetshire, thus enabling the novel to some extent to share in the unity of place of the other novels of the series. The Small House also shares with the other novels certain characters, and unity of character is another obvious feature which helps to tie together the separate novels of the series. This form of unity is probably most in evidence in The Last Chronicle of Barset, where almost all the most important characters of the previous novels who are still alive reappear. Besides unity of place and character, one other obvious form of unity may be cited, a form so obvious, in fact, that it might easily be overlooked: unity of time. Each novel of the scries follows its predecessor in time, but the action of all takes place during the same general period, the middle of the nineteenth century. Looked at from a somewhat different point of view, the time of the series may be said to extend from Mr. Harding's resignation of the wardenship through his resignation of life. In any event, the novels of the series share in a common period of time. But if it is clear that the Barsetshire novels share a common time and place and cast of characters, whether they share any other unifying features is not so apparent. One critic, for instance, has stated flatly that character and place are all,1 whereas another has suggested that, besides character and place, the novels are unified by a common way of feeling and thinking. 2 Other critics have gone further to claim that the series is unified in theme or action or both, but they do not agree in their specifications of the unifying themes and actions. John Hagan, for instance, contends that the theme of ambition ties together the novels of the series,3 whereas Ronald Knox seems to see the series in political terms, in terms of the working out in Barsetshire of what he calls "the Whig principle".4 There is much that can be said for such a reading of the series, since politics is undoubtedly an important element in the novels, and Trollope does describe Barsetshire as being, "politically speaking, as true 1

William E. Cadbury, "Varieties of Form", p. 258. Lucien Leclaire, Le Roman rigionaliste dans les lies Britarmigues, 1950 (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1954), p. 64. 3 "The Major Novels of Anthony Trollope", p. 375. 4 "The Barsetshire Novels", p. 142. 8

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blue a county as any in England" (Framley Parsonage, I, 14). The attempted incursions of Whiggery into such a county would, of course, be especially notable. Still, politics could be an important element in the novels without necessarily being of central importance. As a matter of fact, Monsigner Knox himself implies earlier in the essay just cited that the principle of unity in the novels is religious rather than political, for while stressing unity of place, he assumes the clerical nature of the novels: "Trollope's 'clerical' novels have a principle of unity to which his political novels make no claim - unity of place" (p. 134). I f the quotation marks around "clerical" are taken to indicate some reservations by Monsignor Knox about seeing the series as essentially clerical in nature, some other critics have been less hesitant about seeing the series in that way. Frank O'Connor, for instance, describes the individual novels, with the exception of The Small House, as forming together "a saga of clerical life, all sections of it dealing in different ways with the same problem, the problem that in Mr. Crawley is presented to us in its most complex and tragic form". 5 O'Connor almost seems to be echoing Hugh Walpole, who earlier had stressed Mr. Crawley's importance in the series: "every important incident in the Barchester series (omitting The Small House at Allington, which Trollope himself never intended to include) leads up to the figure of Mr. Crawley. The sequence divides itself dramatically into three parts, and these parts are arranged round the spiritual crises of three clergymen. There is the question of Mr. Harding's resignation of Hiram's Hospital, the question of Mark Robarts's duty to his ministry, the question of Mr. Crawley's theft. The questions are cumulative both in their moral importance and in their dramatic significance".® And in the last chapter of The Last Chronicle, Trollope himself, just before concluding by emphasizing the importance of place in the series, stresses the clerical nature of the novels. Though he explicitly denies that he has written an epic, which denial should have made Knox and O'Connor avoid using words like "epic" and "saga" in their descriptions of the series, Trollope undoubtedly at this final moment , as he looks back over all the novels of the group, sees them as forming essentially a clerical series: "Had I written an epic about clergy s 6

The Mirror in the Roadway, p. 177. Anthony Trollope, p. 77.

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men, I would have taken St. Paul for my model; but describing, as I have endeavoured to do, such clergymen as I see around me, I could not venture to be transcendental. For myself I can only say that I shall always be happy to sit, when allowed to do so, at the table of Archdeacon Grantly, to walk through the High Street of Barchester arm in arm with Mr. Robarts of Framley, and to stand alone and shed a tear beneath the modest black stone in the north transept of the cathedral on which is inscribed the name of Septimus Harding" (IV, 237-238). Archdeacon Grantly, Mr. Robarts, and Mr. Harding are not the only important characters in the novels and, for that matter, they are not the only important clergymen, but the fact that they are clergymen is a strong indication of what Trollope at the end of the series saw, besides place, as being of central importance. But if it is agreed that the Barsetshire novels form together what is essentially a series of clerical novels, the question naturally arises, How do Doctor Thome and The Small House at Allington, both of which novels are unconcerned with the clergy, fit into the series? Even if one follows the lead of O'Connor and Walpole and eliminates The Small House from consideration on the grounds that Trollope did not originally intend it to be a part of the series, he is still left with the problem presented by the unclerical Doctor Thome. Besides, one wonders about the justice of eliminating The Small House, since when the novels in 1879, during Trollope's lifetime, were first published together, The Small House was one of them. The Last Chronicle, furthermore, loses some of its meaning if it is not seen in the light of The Small House as well as in that of the other novels of the series. It seems advisable, then, to try to confront the original question: How do the unclerical novels Doctor Thome and The Small House at Allington fit into the clerical Barsetshire series? If one follows Hugh Walpole's already-quoted and very sensible suggestion that the series "divides itself dramatically into three parts, and these parts are arranged round the spiritual crises of three clergymen", and if one also regards The Warden and Barchester Towers, the most obviously and immediately connected two novels of the series, as forming together one large unit, then one can see that the series is made up of five units, three clerical and two non-clerical, the clerical units forming the beginning, middle, and end of the series, the non-clerical units serving to separate the

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clerical units from each other. Looked at from this point of view, the series presents the same kind of problem in coherence the individual novels present, for Doctor Thome and The Small House seem to be unconnected sub-plots which interrupt the flow of the main plot and distract the reader's attention away from it. How, if at all, the sub-plots of the series are related to the main plot is another way of asking how the non-clerical novels are related to the clerical ones. However it is asked, the question needs anwering, b u t before it can be answered some understanding of the structure of the main plot must be arrived at. If the Barsetshire novels may be said to extend in time from Mr. Harding's resignation of the wardenship through his resignation of life, these initial and final acts of resignation are not the only such acts of the series. Though Mr. Harding's refusal in Barchester Towers to accept the deanship is not, strictly speaking, an act of resignation, it comes close to being one, and the clerical heroes of Framley Parsonage and The Last Chronicle certainly do resign positions they have held. B u t not only are the acts of Mr. Harding, Mark Robarts, and Mr. Crawley of the same nature, the motivations for them are also similar. In each instance, except for Mr. Harding's resignation of his life, a clergyman gives up a position of importance to him in order to avoid giving scandal and in order to be true to his vocation. The sense of duty is always strong, even fierce, in Mr. Crawley, so t h a t when he comes to believe t h a t his duty requires him to resign his cure at Hogglestock, his resignation of t h a t cure comes as a characteristic act. The sense of duty is not so strong in the gentle Mr. Harding and the ambitious Mark Robarts, b u t when each comes to believe t h a t he is in a false position, his conscience and his sense of duty are strong enough to enable each to make his act of resignation, Mr. Harding of his wardenship and Mark of his prebend, despite all the worldly considerations which weigh against such an act. I t seems safe to say, then, t h a t the main plot of the Barsetshire series is concerned with the efforts of Barsetshire clergymen to fight off the temptations of the world in order to protect their priestly calling from scandal and disgrace and to perfect their individual vocations. Mark Robarts differs from Mr. Harding and Mr. Crawley inasmuch as he puts himself in trouble, whereas they are faced with difficulties which are mostly not of their own making, but all three are alike in ultimately meeting the threats to their calling

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in the same way. Similarly, the novels in which each clergyman functions as hero differ in many ways and each has its own major theme; each, nevertheless, bears the main plot of the series, The Warden and Barchester Towers being the beginning, Framley Parsonage the middle, and The Last Chronicle the end. In the same paragraph of The Last Chronicle in which Trollope protests that his clerical series is not intended to be an epic, he defends his realistic treatment of the social life of clergymen on the grounds that "as no men affect more strongly, by their own character, the society of those around them, than do country clergymen, so, therefore, their social habits have been worth the labour necessary for painting them" (IV, 237). But if the characters of country clergymen affect society, the opposite is also true, and the society in which clergymen live exerts its influence on them. The large world in which clergymen move and pursue their vocations, the world outside their immediate domestic circles, is by no means absent from the clerical novels themselves. It is represented by the public opinion which plays such an important part in The Warden and The Last Chronicle; it is represented by the allurements of Chaldicotes in Framley Parsonage; it is represented by the London in which so much of the action of the third and fourth plots of The Last Chronicle takes place. In the series "the world" is also represented by the two novels of the sub-plot. If the Barsetshire novels form together what is essentially a clerical series, a series the main plot of which is concerned with the efforts of clergymen to reject the lures of worldliness in order to protect and perfect their vocation, then Doctor Thorne and, to a lesser extent, The Small House project the wordly context within which the action of the main plot should be seen. These two novels help to make the reader aware that while clergymen struggle with problems of money and conscience, great land-owning families, obsessed with the need for money, attempt to use their children as means of preserving their estates. The sub-plot novels make it clear that if some clergymen in Barsetshire, like Mr. Harding and Mark Robarts, find it difficult to live up to the high ideals of their calling, and if others, like Archdeacon Grantly and Dr. Vesey Stanhope, seem to be unaware of their excessive worldliness, aristocratic laymen of the county may do plenty of talking about their ideal of good blood, but the principle that really motivates them is respect for money.

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Doctor Thome, since it is more directly and continuously concerned with money than is The Small House, contributes more to the image of "the world" which it is the business of the sub-plot of the series to project than does the second novel of the sub-plot. Still, the De Courcys play a prominent role in The Small House, and Crosbie's jilting of Lily should be seen as occurring as the result of his succumbing to the lures of worldliness as represented by the De Courcys. Mark Robarts finally rejects temptation in time and Adolphus Crosbie does not; having once rejected Lily, he loses her for good. To that extent the actions of the clergyman and the civil servant differ, but in some important respects each is placed in basically the same position, for each, succumbing to ambition and the lures of the world, places what he already possesses of love, honor, and position in jeopardy as he attempts to climb higher in society. Each, incidentally, is warned by a clergyman, Mark directly by Mr. Crawley and Crosbie indirectly by Mr. Harding. Mr. Harding's warning is not heeded and Mr. Crawley's eventually does affect Mark's behavior, but these differences in outcome do not blur the basic similarities. To the extent that Mark and Crosbie are placed in similar situations in their own novels, they play parallel roles, and Framley Parsonage and The Small House are linked together by unity of situation, even though the careers of the clergyman and the civil servant do not affect each other causally. Sometimes, however, characters from the main plot of the series do encounter sub-plot characters and a relationship of direct causality becomes possible. The meeting already alluded to between Crosbie and Mr. Harding is an instance of such an encounter. As it turns out, Crosbie's meeting with the old clergyman does not have the least effect upon the course of his actions, and that failure of causality is a good part of the meaning of the encounter. But negative causality is a tenuous way of linking novels and it is certainly not the only way that Trollope works during the encounter to link The Warden and The Small House, for during the scene enough parallels are set up between Allington and Barchester, the Small House and the warden's house at Hiram's Hospital, to lead the reader to the realization that Crosbie is in a position which Mr. Harding once occupied. Ultimately, of course, Crosbie, in succumbing to the lures of Courcy Castle, acts differently from Mr. Harding, who in The Warden and

132

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Bar Chester Towers decisively rejects much of what the world can, or is supposed to, give, b u t this divergence of action should be all the more meaningful as it is seen as a breaking-away f r o m t h e parallels which tie together Mr. Harding a n d Adolphus Crosbie. Parallelism - situational u n i t y - is a device which Trollope employs throughout t h e individual novels of the Barsetshire series in order to strengthen the unity of each. I t is also a device which he employs t o link the novels together so as t o strengthen t h e u n i t y of t h e series as a series. There would be no point, a f t e r all, in f u r nishing a worldly context for t h e clerical action unless t h e reader is enabled to see t h a t action within t h a t context. Situational u n i t y is a means which helps the reader see the picture within its proper frame. I t is also a universalizing device, a technique which reminds t h e reader t h a t the problems which confront the clergymen of Barsetshire are not unique, t h a t they are neither confined t o B a r setshire nor to clergymen. The parallels within the individual novels are so numerous t h a t it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to isolate all of t h e m belonging to any one novel, a n d what is true of the individual novels is also t r u e of the series as such. No a t t e m p t will be made here, certainly, to exhaust the parallels of the series. The examples of t h e use of the device already given, along with one other, should serve adequately t h e present needs of demonstration. Mr. Harding's death, as the immediately previous chapter of this s t u d y has demonstrated, is a means of linking him in a significant way with Mr. Crawley. Trollope also uses it to forge another significant link, to complete another parallel. When Mr. H a r d i n g nears his death, his son-in-law, t h e archdeacon, is reminded of his own father's death, t h a t death which is described in the opening chapter of Barchester Towers. When his wife points out to him t h a t his father a t the time of his death was older t h a n his father-in-law is now a n d t h a t he was a stronger man physically t h a n Mr. Harding, the archdeacon agrees t h a t the two men in their last days were different in some ways, b u t t h e dying Mr. Harding still reminds him of his dying father, the b i s h o p : " 'the likeness is in their characters. There is the same mild sweetness, becoming milder a n d sweeter as they increased in age; - a sweetness t h a t never could believe much evil, b u t t h a t could believe less, and still less, as t h e weakness of age came on t h e m ' " (Last Chronicle, IV, 170). Aside f r o m t h e ironic appropriateness of having the blustering archdea-

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133

con praise the mildness of the retiring man who in The Warden resigned his position despite the vigorous opposition of his son-inlaw, the appreciation of Mr. Harding's mildness here and the recognition by the archdeacon of the similarity in character of his father and his father-in-law are significant inasmuch as they link Mr. Harding's death at the end of the series with a key death near the beginning of the series. I t was Bishop Grantly's death, after all, t h a t made possible the coming of the Proudies to Barsetshire. Now that Mrs. Proudie is dead and her husband is left behind an ineffective old man, Mr. Harding may die in peace, and peace will return to Barsetshire. Mrs. Arabin's first reaction to the news of Mrs. Proudie's unexpected death is " 'Poor woman!' " Her second reaction, which immediately follows the first, is, significantly enough, " ' T h e n there will be peace at Barchester! ' " (Last Chronicle, IV, 99). One way of looking at the action of the Barsetshire series is to see t h a t between the death of Bishop Grantly and the death of his friend, Mr. Harding, Proudieism enters Barsetshire and works itself out. This way is close to Monsignor Knox's way of seeing the action of the series, although he in the passage already quoted instead of "Proudieism" uses the term "the Whig principle". Such a way of seeing the series is valid and helpful but only within certain bounds. Mr. Harding himself indicates what those bounds are when, in a scene which deserves extensive quotation, he muses after dinner a t the archdeacon's about the changes which have come to Barchester. The immediate occasion for reminiscence is the finishing by the archdeacon, Major Grantly, and Mr. Harding of the archdeacon's last bottle of 1820 port: "Pity it should be all gone; isn't it, sir?" said the archdeacon to his father-in-law. "It has lasted my time", said Mr. Harding, "and I'm very much obliged to it. Dear, dear; how well I remember your father giving the order for it! There were two pipes, and somebody said it was a heady wine. 'If the prebendaries and rectors can't drink it', said your father, 'the curates will.' " "Curates indeed!" said the archdeacon. "It's too good for a bishop, unless one of the right sort." "Your father used to say those things, but with him the poorer the guest the better the cheer. When he had a few clergymen round him, how he loved to make them happy!" "Never talked shop to them, - did he?" said the archdeacon.

134

THE SERIES

"Not after dinner, at any rate. Goodness gracious, when one thinks of it! Do you remember how we used to play cards?" "Every night regularly; — threepenny points, and sixpence on the rubber", said the archdeacon. "Dear, dear! How things are changed! And I remember when the clergymen did more of the dancing in Barchester than all the other young men in the city put together." "And a good set they were; — gentlemen every one of them. It's well that some of them don't dance now; — that is, for the girls' sake." "I sometimes sit and wonder", said Mr. Harding, "whether your father's spirit ever comes back to the old house and sees the changes, — and if so whether he approves them". "Approves them!" said the archdeacon. "Well; — yes. I think he would, upon the whole. I'm sure of this: he would not disapprove, because the new ways are changed from his ways. He never thought himself infallible. And do you know, my dear, I am not sure that it isn't all for the best. I sometimes think that some of us were very idle when we were young. I was, I know." "I worked hard enough", said the archdeacon. "Ah, yes; you. But most of us took it very easily. Dear, dear! When I think of it, and see how hard they work now, and remember what pleasant times we used to have, — I don't feel sometimes quite sure." "I believe the work was done a great deal better than it is now", said the archdeacon. "There wasn't so much fuss, but there was more reality. And men were men, and clergymen were gentlemen." "Yes; — they were gentlemen." "Such a creature as that old woman at the palace couldn't have held his head up among us. That's what has come from Reform. A reformed House of Commons makes Lord Brock Prime Minister, and then your Prime Minister makes Dr. Proudie a bishop ! Well; — it will last my time, I suppose." "It has lasted mine, — like the wine", said Mr. Harding. "There's one glass more, and you shall have it, sir." Then Mr. Harding drank the last glass of the 1820 port, and they went into the drawingroom. (Last Chronicle, I, 239-241) Though there is much that is interesting in this beautifully executed scene, the use of the wine both to introduce the subject of reform and to foreshadow Mr. Harding's death being not among the least interesting, what is especially relevant here is the recognition by both Mr. Harding and the archdeacon that times have changed, so much so that things will never be the same again. Though the archdeaoon cannot, like his father-in-law, bring himself even to consider whether the changes on the whole have been beneficial, the scene makes it clear that he no more than Mr. Harding expects the old days and ways to come back. Mrs. Proudie's death later on,

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135

then, may indeed bring a kind of peace to Barsetshire, a kind of peace which has been absent since Mrs. Proudie first moved into the palace and attempted to wield the episcopal power nominally belonging to her husband, but the supposition that her death will somehow bring back the old days or even stop the process of change in Barsetshire is naive and unfounded. When Bishop Proudie dies, he, after all, will be succeeded in his turn just as he succeeded Bishop Grantly, and the only thing certain about his successor is that he will not be exactly like Bishop Grantly or Bishop Proudie. Similarly, Tom Towers will die some day, but The Jupiter and other newspapers will continue to mold public opinion, that opinion which in the modern world is such a powerful means of effecting change. If, then, it is possible and helpful to see from one point of view the action of the Barsetshire series as the introduction into Barsetshire of Proudieism and the subsequent working out of that principle, it is also possible and helpful and even necessary to see the action as also being the process of change by which a diocese and a county, microcosms of church and country, are brought out of feudalism into the modern world at the same time that clergymen are brought, as the result of various pressures, to perfect their vocations. The particular embodiment of change which is Proudieism must die, as Mr. Harding must die, so that the series may end on a note of finality; but just as Mr. Crawley at the end of The Last Chronicle succeeds Mr. Harding at St. Ewold's, so the process of change will survive the end of Proudieism in Barsetshire, and a note of continuity blends with the note of finality at the end of The Last Chronicle of Barset. Such a blending of notes is characteristic of the man who was fully aware of the need for reform in England at the same time that he was acutely conscious of the painfulness of change. Such a blending is characteristic, to change the metaphor, of the complex vision of the artist who wrote The Warden just as it is characteristic of the creator of the other Barsetshire novels and the Barsetshire series. Such a blending, finally, makes it possible for one to approach and look at the Barsethire series in various ways, but whether one looks at character or action, clergyman or layman, city, county, or diocese, he should see a unified and coherent series of novels.

IX CONCLUSION

A name which might be applied to the complexity of vision which helped to structure the individual Barsetshire novels and the series is "imagination", imagination as Coleridge, say, understood it to be, the prime creative power, the synthesizing and unifying power. Trollope undoubtedly regarded his imagination as being the power by which he was able to realize - make real - in his own mind the people and places and events of Barsetshire. "To me", he says in a passage already quoted at the beginning of the last chapter, "Barset has been a real county, and its city a real city, and the spires and towers have been before my eyes, and the voices of the people are known to my ears, and the pavements of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps." "The work", he put it elsewhere, "goes into imagining scenes in detail", 1 and he was right in using the word "imagining", and one conclusion that this study leads to is that the same power which enabled Trollope to realize consistent and coherent characters and scenes also enabled him to realize consistent and coherent individual novels which in turn form a consistent and coherent novel series. Though Henry James dismissed and overlooked much of Trollope's theory of the novel because that theory was not consistent with much of James's theory, one of the things that makes his essay on Trollope a classic of Trollopian criticism, one of the few indispensable items, is the recognition in it of the ultimate indivisibility of art. Thus James, despite his reservations about Trollope's theory, saw what few crities until fairly recently have seen, that Trollope was a great creator of action as well as character, that, as a matter of fact, the creation of one in Trollope's imagination nec-

1

" A W a l k in a W o o d " , p. 457.

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137

essarily involved and caused the creation of the other, that, better still, the creation of one was the creation of the other: Character, in any sense in which we can get at it, is action, and action is plot, and any plot which hangs together, even if it pretend to interest us only in the fashion of a Chinese puzzle, plays upon our emotion, our suspense, by means of personal references. We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are. Trollope's great apprehension of the real, which was what made him so interesting, came to him through his desire to satisfy us on this point — to tell us what certain people were and what they did in consequence of being so. (Partial Portraits, p. 106) Because Trollope by the time he finished The Warden, if not before, was master of a serviceable prose style and because he worked so hard away from his writing table imagining scenes in detail, when he did sit down to write, he could put words on paper at a very rapid rate. Because his imagination was so strong and active, the device of parallelism which he employs so consistently throughout the Barsetshire series is no simple mechanical technique, no trick; it is, rather, an accurate reflection of the way his mind, his imagination, worked. He could see the streets of Barchester, and he could see the location of the Small House at Allington in relationship to the Great House; as he saw the relationship of Allington to London or Hogglestock to Framley, so he saw in the world of his mind the relationship of one action to another, one character to another, one plot to another, one novel to another; and as he saw, he wrote. One influential critic of the novel maintains "that the nearest similitude for a novel is a 'world' ".2 However appropriate a similitude the word is generally, "world" seems an especially appropriate word to apply to Trollope's Baresthire novels, for however one approaches them - whether one approaches them individually or collectively, from the point of view of time or place or action or theme - one discovers that the various elements of the fictional creation cohere. The world of the Barsetshire novels is not the best of all possible worlds but it is a sound world, sound enough so that in the hundred years since its completion it has withstood time and held together. One can see no reason why it should break up now, 2

Dorothy Van Ghent, The English Novel: Form and Function (New York, Holt, 1953), p. 6.

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CONCLUSION

for Trollope's imagination put things together to stay. The Barsetshire novels may differ in structure in many ways - the first three novels of the series, for instance, possess more unity of action than the last three, and what would in the earlier novels have been a parodic "episode" becomes in the later ones a full-scale sub-plot but what they have in common, though it is differently achieved in different novels, is coherence. Towards the end of his recently published essay on the state of Trollopian criticism, Donald Smalley states that "Although there is no scarcity of general studies of Trollope's work, only a few significant analyses of individual novels have been made. The narrow focus can be a most profitable one, and it is to be hoped that such studies will soon be more plentiful."3 One hopes, certainly, that the present study will be seen as helping to meet the need enunciated by Smalley, but it may be appropriate at this point to raise a final question: Aside from offering insights which may help some readers to penetrate more deeply than they otherwise would have into the Barsetshire novels, what does this study do? If the demonstrations and conclusions of the preceding chapters are accepted as substantially valid, then this study proves that Trollope's Barsetshire novels, individually and collectively, are well, though by no means perfectly, constructed. Though it seems safe to assume that the imaginative power which enabled Trollope to construct the six Barsetshire novels well also enabled him to construct other novels well, this study does not, of course, demonstrate or prove anything about the structure of Trollope's nonBarsetshire novels. Close studies of most of these novels have not yet been done, and they should be done. Since interest in Trollope will undoubtedly remain steady or increase, since, as Donald Smalley puts it, Trollope "is now increasingly viewed as an artist offering profound challenges for the scholar and critic" (p. 213), one can be fairly well sure that the necessary close reading will continue, that as this study continues what was already begun, so other delighted readers of Trollope will pick up the work where this study leaves ofF.

3 "Anthony Trollope", in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research, ed. Lionel Stevenson (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), p. 209.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: WORKS CITED

Anson, Harold, "The Church in Nineteenth-Century Fiction: I I I - Anthony Trollope", Listener, X X I (1939), 998-999. Betsky, Seymour, "Society in Thackeray and Trollope", in From Dickens to Hardy, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, Middlesex; Penguin, 1968). Booth, Bradford A., Anthony Trollope: Aspects of His Life and Art (Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press, 1958). —, ed. Anthony Trollope: An Autobiography (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1947). — , "Introduction", The Last Chronicle of Barset (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1961). —, "Trollope's Orley Farm: Artistry Manqué", in From Jane Austen to Joseph Gonrad: Essays Collected in Memory of James T. HiUhouse, ed. Robert C. Rathburn and Martin Steinmann, J r . (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1958). Brace, Gerald Warner, "The World of Anthony Trollope", TQ, IV (1961), 180-189. Brusteih, Robert, The Theatre of Revolt : An Approach to the Modern Drama (Boston, Little, Brown, 1964). Cadbury, William E., "Shape and Theme: Determinants of Trollope's Forms", PMLA, L X X V I I I (1963), 326-332. — , "Varieties of Form in the Novels of Anthony Trollope" (Madison, Univ. of Wisoonsin Diss., 1961). Cockshut, A. O. J . , Anthony Trollope: A Critical Study (London, Gollins, 1956). Coyle, William, "The Reputation of Anthony Trollope in the United States, 1858-1920" (Cleveland, Western Reserve Univ. Diss., 1948). —, "Trollope and the Bi-oolumned Shakespeare", NCF, VI (1951), 33-46. Cross, Wilbur L., The Development of the English Novel (New York, Macmillan, 1899). Donovan, Robert, "Trollope's Prentice Work", MP, L i n (1966), 179-186. Escott, T. H . S., Anthony Trollope, His Work, Associates & Literary Originals (London, Lane, 1913). Gerould, Winifred G. and James T., A Guide to Trollope (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1948). Hagan, John, "The Divided Mind of Anthony Trollope", NCF, XIV (1959), 1-26.

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—, "The Duke's Children: Trollope's Psychological Masterpiece", NGF, X I I I (1958), 1-21. —, "The Major Novels of A n t h o n y Trollope: A n I n t e r p r e t a t i o n a n d Critiq u e " (Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Diss., 1957). Hawkins, Sherman, "Mr. Harding's Church Music", ELH, X X I X (1962), 202-223. Houston, Maude, " S t r u c t u r e and Plot in The Warden", UTSE, X X I V (1955), 107-113. J a m e s , H e n r y , " A n t h o n y Trollope", Century, X X V I (1883), 385-395. —, " A n t h o n y Trollope", Partial Portraits (London, Macmillan, 1888). K n o x , Ronald A., " T h e Barsetshire Novels", Literary Distractions (London & New York, Sheed & W a r d , 1958). Leclaire, Lucien, Le Roman régionaliste dans les îles Britanniques, 18001950 (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1954). Littledale, Richard F., " L i t e r a t u r e " , Academy, X X I V (1883), 273-274. McCullough, Bruce, Representative English Novelists: De joe to Conrad (New York, H a r p e r , 1946). Melville, Lewis (Lewis S. Benjamin), Victorian Novelists (London, Constable, 1906). Mizener, A r t h u r , " A n t h o n y Trollope: The Palliser Novels", in From, Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad: Essays Collected in Memory of James T. Hillhouse, ed. R o b e r t O. R a t h b u r n a n d Martin Steinmann, J r . (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1958). —, The Sense of Life in the Modern Novel (Boston, H o u g h t o n Mifflin, 1964). Montégut, Émile, " L e R o m a n de moeurs, en Angleterre", Revue des deux mondes, 2 e Période, X V I I (1858), 756-788. —, " L e R o m a n religieux en Angleterre", Revue des deux mondes, Nouvelle Période, 2e Série, X I (1855), 689-728. Munson, Gorham, " W h o Are Our Favorite Nineteenth-Century A u t h o r s ? " CE, V (1944), 291-296. O'Connor, F r a n k , The Mirror in the Roadway : A Study of the Modern Novel (London, H a m i s h Hamilton, 1957). Oliphant, Margaret, " A n t h o n y Trollope", Littell's Living Age, CLVI (1883), 507-510. P a u l , H e r b e r t , " T h e Apotheosis of t h e Novel under Queen Victoria", Nineteenth Century, X L I (1897), 769-792. Sadleir, Michael, Trollope: A Commentary, revised American ed. (New York, F a r r a r , Straus, 1947). Shrewsbury, J a m e s B r y a n t , J r . , "Trollope's Concept of a G e n t l e m a n " (Columbus, Ohio S t a t e Univ. Diss., 1954). Slakey, Roger, " A n t h o n y Trollope: A Study in t h e Foundations of Choice" (Baltimore, J o h n s Hopkins Univ. Diss., 1957). Smalley, Donald, " A n t h o n y Trollope", in Victorian Fiction: A Guide to Research, ed. Lionel Stevenson (Cambridge, H a r v a r d Univ. Press, 1964). Stack, J . H e r b e r t , "Mr. A n t h o n y Trollope's Novels", Fortnightly Review, X I (1869), 188-198. Stebbins, L u c y P o a t e a n d Richard Poate, The TroUopes : The Chronicle of a Writing Family (New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1945).

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Stevenson, Lionel, "Dickens and the Origin of 'The Warden' ", Trollopian, I I (1947), 83-89. Thale, Jerome, "The Problem of Structure in Trollope", NGF, XV (1960-61), 147-157. Tinker, Chauncey, "Trollope", YR, X X X V I (1947), 424-434. Trilling, Lionel, "Art and Fortune", The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York, Viking, 1950). Trollope, Anthony, An Autobiography, ed. Frederick Page (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1950). —, Barchester Towers, ed. Michael Sadleir, 2 vols. (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). — , Doctor Thorne, ed. Michael Sadleir, 2 vols. (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). —, Framley Parsonage, ed. Michael Sadleir, 2 vols. (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). — , "The Irish Church", Fortnightly Review, I I (1865), 82-90. —, The Last Chronicle of Barset, ed. Michael Sadleir, 4 vols. (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). —, The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. Bradford A. Booth (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1951). —, "Public Schools", Fortnightly Review, I I (1865), 476-487. —, The Small House at Allington, ed. Michael Sadleir, 2 vols. (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). - , "A Walk in a Wood", Appleton's Journal, N. S. V I I (1879), 452-457. —, The Warden, ed. Michael Sadleir (Oxford, Blackwell; Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1929). Van Ghent, Dorothy, The English Novel : Form and Function (New York, Holt, 1953). Walpole, Hugh, Anthony Trollope (London, Macmillan, 1928). West, Rebecca, The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1957). Woolf, Virginia, "The Novels of George Meredith", The Second Common Reader (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1932).

INDEX

action 16, 20, 24, 28, 30, 31, 36, 49, 58, 60, 61, 63, 71, 74, 78, 80, 83, 86, 87, 89, 91, 98, 101, 107, 124, 129, 132, 133, 135, 1 3 6 - 7 Alison, Harold, 89, 139 Aristotle, 60, 61, 98 Austen, J a n e , 103 Betaky, Seymour, 39, 139 Booth, Bradford A., 15, 17—18, 20, 89, 105, 106, 114, 139 Brace, Gerald W a r n e r , 88, 139 Brustein, R o b e r t , 71, 139 B u r t o n , R o b e r t , 52 Cadbury, William E., 16, 49, 53, 126, 139 Carlyle, Thomas, 21 23, 34 character, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22, 28, 30, 31,37, 38, 53, 54, 70, 76, 79, 83, 87, 89, 95, 101, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 121, 130, 131, 135, 136 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 88 Cockshut, A.O.J., 19, 88, 139 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 136 composition, 13 construction, 13, 14, 16, 17, 37, 55, 78, 138 Coyle, William, 15, 72, 139 Cross, Wilbur L., 88, 139 Dickens, Charles, 17, 21, 22, 23, 34 didacticism, 37, 88, 101 Donne, J o h n , 18 Donovan, R o b e r t , 37, 139 episodes, 13, 17, 114, 138 Bscott, T.H.S., 17, 139

exposition, 57, 58, 110 fairy-tale, 61, 63, 64, 66, 70 Faulkner, William, 18 foreshadowing, 24, 29, 44, 60—1, 71, 86, 134 form, 12 Gerould, Winifred G. and J a m e s T., 90, 139 H a g a n , J o h n , 18, 56, 81, 92, 126, 139 Hawkins, Sherman, 18, 22, 23, 30, 31, 35, 140 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 87 hero, 63, 67, 74 Horace, 23 Houston, Maude, 17, 140 image a n d imagery, 25, 55, 69, 91, 123, 131 imagination, 76, 136, 137, 138 irony, 64, 103, 113, 132 J a m e s , Henry, 12, 13, 14, 21, 23, 33, 36, 136 — 7, 140, Johnson, Samuel 23 K n o x , Ronald A., 83, 114, 126, 127, 140 Leclaire, Lucien, 126, 140 Littledale, Richard F., 33, 140 Marvell, Andrew, 18 McCullough, Bruce, 53, 140 Melville, H e r m a n , 18

INDEX

Melville, Lewis, 53, 140 Milton, John, 23, 24, 36 Mizener, Arthur, 17, 18, 74, 140 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De, 52 Mont