Anthony Trollope - The Warden

I remember reading in Trollope’s autobiography that his aim in writing fiction was to take a section of the earth and lift it up, as if under a glass case, and show it to the reader complete with all its buildings, occupants and the workings of its society. He’s successful in this endeavour in The Warden and creates a highly complex and delicate world for the reader’s delectation; full of rich, multifaceted characters. More than this though, he also seems to tilt the clod of earth he has elevated from the ground this way and that so it catches the light at different angles and makes us see the same situation in very different ways. Trollope always seems to write his arguments eloquently and positively, regardless of which character they favour, and sometimes it is hard to tell if he is mocking them via sarcasm or genuinely enthral to them. The general tone struck me as distinctly Wykehamical; by which I mean witty and intelligent but tending towards criticism and mockery. My conclusion is that most of it is probably pretty snarky in tone and some of it very obviously so. A prime example being the fantastically sarcastic Chapter 14 about Tom Towers and the powers of the press. It reminded me of “Eminent Victorians” by Strachey as it is saccharin and fawning in its praise but very obviously directed to the opposite end. Other subjects are treated more ambiguously as I’ll try to show later on when I write about the book’s main characters. Another interesting aspect of the narrator’s comments on the press are their prescience regarding current (c.2017) political developments. The following comments are remarkably applicable to the rise of Donald Trump and the blurring of lines between entertainment and politics given they were published in 1855:

Away with majorities in the House of Commons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after much delay, with doubtful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity! Does not the Jupiter, coming forth daily with fifty thousand impressions full of unerring decision on every mortal subject, set all matters sufficiently at rest? Is not Tom Towers here, able to guide us and willing? p164

I suspect the book was originally a serialisation as most of the chapters are the same length and, in the cases where they aren’t, they are almost exactly half the length of the majority so two of them could be put together to form one installment. Key facts and details of the narrative are also reported with frequency but I couldn’t find any evidence to support my theory during my, admittedly brief, google searches!

The role of narrator is interesting but a little troublesome for me. He often speaks in the first person and talks of his hopes and fears for the characters as if they exist independently of him, which is probably Trollope’s aim. But who is he if he is not the omniscient author? He knows far too much that he couldn’t possibly as an external third party and offers no indication that’s what he is. Nonetheless, he claims there are things beyond his ken. Such as the private interview between Eleanor and Bold where he happily relates everything that passes between them, which no one but those two could possibly know, but goes on to say, “WHETHER OR NO the ill-natured prediction made by certain ladies in the beginning of the last chapter, was or was not carried out to the letter, I am not in a position to state”! It is a slightly uneasy and unsatisfactory mixture. Perhaps Trollope never intended the reader to assess the narrator in such detail but I feel this underestimates his intelligence and attention to detail, which is abundantly clear in other parts.

Another disagreeable aspect of the narrative started to grate around the fourth or fifth chapter. The entire debate about the hospital, and the attendant Warden’s stipend, turns on the contents of the founder’s will. I began to feel that the reader could make up their own mind about the rights and wrongs of the situation if only that document could be provided in the original or, at the very least, accurately summarised! Alas, this never comes to pass and we are limited to Haphazard’s interpretation. This ambiguity has obvious benefits for the plot and development of the characters but is a bit frustrating and feels somewhat obfuscatory. Against this, in the hands of lawyers all documents become open to interpretation and endless unnatural mental contortions. Equally, the book does relate how the founder’s will made provision for wool carders, who no longer exist, so there is a definite sense in which his original will cannot be followed to the letter!

Trollope uses dialogue quite sparingly and the effect is pleasing. When people speak it is usually short or, if it is more lengthy, enjoyable and well said. Long exchanges of short phrases, which are rarely accomplished successfully in my view, are often avoided by dispensing with direct quotations for one of the participants, for example “he assented” or “he could not agree with this and told him as much”. It’s a good device and I feel like, in general, I agree with the view of Vladimir Nabokov I read in his interview with Playboy that novels with an excess of dialogue rarely benefit from it.

Money is a central theme in this book; as Trollope indicates it was in his own life in his autobiography, even including a list of the profits he made from each book at the end. The Warden, Harding, is in receipt of £800 a year for the position that requires him to do nothing. He also receives £80 for precentorship in the Cathedral and lives rent free in a handsome house attached to the hospital with a beautiful garden. Using the date of publication as a start date and a simple inflation calculator £800 is reckoned to be £100k in 2017 money. The house is reckoned to be worth £80 a year, or £10k today, which would be ludicrously low for a big house in Winchester, where it’s supposed the story is set. This could indicate the systemic understatement of inflation or be a result of understatement of its value by the church in order to reduce the apparent lavishness of the Warden’s benefits. Regardless of the detail, it seems that the prospect of a reduction in Harding’s income to £150-160 (£20k) isn’t quite as dramatic as some of the other characters make out. Especially given the wealth of his friend the Bishop and the fact his daughter is married to the Bishop’s son, Grantly, the Archdeacon. What is more striking is the fact that governesses and tutors are said to live on £30-50 (£4-6k), which seems very low even if it does probably include room and board. I also had the impression that Harding is something of a spendthrift because he states he has been in the position for 12 years but also says he has no savings; meaning he’s seemingly spent his way through £1.2m in just over a decade excluding accommodation! The expensive publication of his book of church music gives further supporting evidence to this thesis.

As I have started to talk about Harding in relation to money, I’ll turn to his character first. The early chapters portray him as a kindly soul living a cushy life in harmony with the old bedesmen under his care and his unmarried daughter Eleanor. However, around Chapter 5 I began to see that he pursues a quiet and easy life to the point of being unprincipled. Against this, Trollope may be encouraging us to see him as broadly “innocently accepting what was innocently offered” as the situation is described in Chapter 7. However, when the debate about his right to the stipend develops this interpretation becomes less and less defensible.

First, if he is so kindly, and a man of the cloth nay less, shouldn’t he be looking into the equity of his huge ‘salary’ that requires no actual work from him? Secondly, if Bold is able to work out that there is a huge excess of income being produced by the estate shouldn’t Harding be able to work this out too? Again, as a member of the clergy I feel like Harding should be more aware of these potentially sensitive moral issues than a layman like Bold. Indeed, Harding’s decision to increase the bedesmen’s allowance could be taken to indicate that he knows the arrangements are grossly unfair so I wondered why he didn’t go further to redress this as it would have placed him above criticism. There could be arguments against this, like the fact that the church was a much larger and more active institution in society in the 19th century and consequently performed functions and contained individuals who were more interested in a salary than following the vocation to live as Jesus did. Certainly none of the ecclesiastical characters in this book live a life remotely like that of Jesus’! I think this is a weak argument and don’t place much stock in it. Far more persuasive to me are the arguments of self-interest, love for his daughter and desire to give her the best he can. The power of inertia also ordinarily persuades most people that the status quo is best. While these factors by no means excuse the behaviour of Harding, they are probably decisive for the weak and conservative character he’s portrayed as being.

In Chapters 10 and 11, Harding is show in a rather different light and I found myself won over by some of the arguments and presentations of his character. For example, he is shown to be a doting father and also accepts that what he has done is wrong. He isn’t proud, doesn’t try to blame anyone else for his mistakes and accepts his sinfulness and humanity. Of course, he is only human; I began to think. This more favourable disposition was increased and developed in Chapter 11 where his role is promoted as concerned with looking after the bedesmen, which I suppose he does do to an extent; albeit at great cost. As for the management of the estate and the hospital, this is presented as the job of the Church represented by the Bishop. My inclination towards him reaches its zenith when he decides to resign from the position he feels has become untenable but then declines quite sharply after that. Once he has taken his decision to resign he resolves to go to London and speak to Haphazard, which seems inexplicable to me. Why does he need to tell the lawyer he wants to resign? Why not tell the Bishop directly? He gives his own reason as hoping to persuade Haphazard to stop representing him, which seems fallacious and improbable given that he’s not paying the bill! He also asks Haphazard in Chapter 17 if he feels Hiram’s will entitles him to the salary but this also seems duplicitous as he has already said that he feels he is not. As such, we can only see his trip to London as a pusillanimous clutching at straws. Furthermore, the manner of his departure to London and his conduct there depict him as cowardly and spineless. He essentially runs away from the archdeacon and implicitly instructs his daughter to deliver news of this tardily, which is duplicitous and gutless. When in London, he dare not stay in his hotel until he has had his, in my view, entirely pointless interview with Haphazard and takes to hiding in St Paul’s. The whole episode is highly undignified and gives me the impression that he is not only craven but also stupid. The idea that he is stupid is powerfully reinforced by the note he writes to the Bishop in Chapter 19 when he resigns, which I will concede does at least offer some evidence that his body contains a spine! Here he attempts to argue that while he cannot continue in the job because he feels it unjust that he would not think anything less of his successor; which is, at best, contradictory! If the position is unfairly remunerated and untenable for him; surely the same must apply to any other person occupying it. In sum, his performance is a study in weakness and cowardice distinguished only by the fact that he does in fact resign. He goes on to partially negate this via his failure to extend his own moral awakening to a general principle or an attempt to correct the injustice he has eventually recognised. Just as I was thoroughly at my wits ends with his dismal behaviour, Trollope contrives to restore him to some form of respectability. It is clear that he has resigned more from a hatred of negative attention and conflict than from any higher minded principle like the love of truth or justice but he is, at least, prepared to admit this and doesn’t try to dress it up saying:

I cannot boast of my conscience, when it required the violence of a public newspaper to awaken it; but, now that it is awake, I must obey it. p213

He also bears his change in circumstances well and, as is the case throughout the book, is hard not to like in his treatment and interaction with his daughter, which is tender and warm. As to Trollope’s own view of Harding, it is somewhat elusive although I am inclined to see it as positive. Yes, he is weak and cowardly and this causes him to do dishonest and stupid things. Yet he is also a doting father, a good friend and seeks to do the right thing by the people he interacts with; even if they attack him like Bold. This is well demonstrated when he rebukes Eleanor for hating Bold after the revelation that he intends to try and take her father’s stipend away from him. Most people would not be able to see past their own self-interest in this way. The synopsis of society’s reaction to Harding’s difficulties may give us some insight into Trollope’s views:

“Opinion was much divided as to the propriety of Mr Harding’s conduct. The mercantile part of the community, the mayor and corporation, and council, also most of the ladies, were loud in his praise. Nothing could be more noble, nothing more generous, nothing more upright. But the gentry were of a different way of thinking – especially the lawyers and the clergymen. They said such conduct was very weak and undignified; that Mr Harding evinced a lamentable want of esprit de corps, as well as courage; and that such an abdication must do much harm, and could do but little good.” p242

I can hardly agree with those who think, “nothing could be more noble” and see more merit in the argument of those members of the clergy who criticise his want of “esprit de corps” although I could hardly condone this from a moral perspective. Nonetheless, I do think Harding did right to recognise and take responsibility for his errors and, furthermore, to criticise himself for needing the goading of a newspaper article to do so. I feel if he both resigned and also worked with the Bishop and the Archdeacon to find a more appropriate application for the excess funds then this would have represented an improvement on how he behaved. Against this, Harding is only human and, coming towards the end of his life, his desire for peace and quiet is understandable.

All told, I found him a believable and multifaceted character complete with some admirable features and some regrettable fobiles. Trollope adds some wonderful touches to his character too, like his constant fiddling on an imaginary cello. This is both funny and believable and did a lot to animate his character for me. His fevered playing, and Haphazard’s consequent confusion, during the late night interview with the lawyer in London is an unforgettable and hilarious scene.

The presentation of the character of Bold starts out positively. He seems to be in the right regarding the distribution of the excess income from Hiram’s will and I was positively disposed to his active, reforming character. He seems to want to do good both in his work as a physician and through the projects of social reform he undertakes in the absence of a busy work practice. My first inkling that his actions don’t produce an unalloyed good in terms of outcomes came during the discussions of the bedesmen regarding their decision to sign the petition claiming their right to the income or not. Here it seems that the bedesmen’s hopes of receiving the excess have been unfairly raised. As Bunce eloquently puts it, “a hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it’s the likes of you that will get it?”. While this could be laid at the door of Finney, the lawyer who’s hired to represent them in the suit against the Warden, I don’t think Bold can possibly be fully exculpated as he’s paying for the project. I also questioned Bold’s motives, wondering whether he really cares about the bedesmen or simply wants the fame and praise that will come to him from an act of reform successfully undertaken. In the end, I couldn’t find much evidence to support this except to note that everyone acts out of self interest at some level; which is hardly a novel or insightful observation.

So, while Trollope doesn’t seem to offer any outright criticism of Bold during the early chapters of the book we do see him as increasingly human as the story continues. He is initially resolute in his stance concerning his love for Eleanor. He recognises that she will not appreciate an unprovoked attack on her father and will probably take against him but resolves not to alter his course. He reasons that if Eleanor is the kind of woman that he thinks she is then she won’t be so partisan in her interpretation of the situation. However, Eleanor does react very badly and, while she has reservations privately, she rejects him when they meet. By Chapter 11, we see Bold agree to abandon the suit at Eleanor’s urging, which makes me see him as considerably less worthy and principled than I had done initially. As the narrator rightly observes, “how weakly he had managed his business! He had already done the harm, and then stayed his hand when the good which he had in view was to be commenced.” (p182). To be sure, Bold is in love with Eleanor and this represents a strong, perhaps irresistible, counter-incentive. Against this, Bold was also in love with Eleanor when he undertook the project so should have foreseen this or never commenced it. Life, especially emotional life, is rarely so straightforward as this type of theorising makes it out to be. Often I think I can do something only to find myself incapable in the face of strong emotions to the contrary. Nevertheless, as a reader, it made me think less of Bold to see him vacillate on an issue he’d seemed so unswervingly dedicated to. Chapter 12 continues this decline in my opinion of Bold when he goes to Grantly’s house to tell him of his decision to abandon the suit. Grantly wrongly presumes that this is because Bold has heard about Haphazard’s opinion and realises there is only a slim chance of winning. Grantly then goes on to tell Bold he must pay the cost of procuring Haphazard’s opinion and Bold is apoplectic with rage. I couldn’t understand why is he so angry if he loves Eleanor and is firm in his intentions? Yes, Grantly is rude and this constitutes considerable provocation but I had thought that Bold had resolved to relegate the hospital affair below his love of Eleanor? Bold’s mindset is confused and a bit hot headed. I found Grantly’s criticism contains some truth even though he’s wrong about Bold’s motivations:

‘Having exposed a gentleman who was one of your father’s warmest friends, to all the ignominy and insolence which the press could heap upon his name; having somewhat ostentatiously declared that it was your duty as a man of high public virtue to protect those poor old fools whom you have hum-bugged there at the hospital, you now find that the game costs more than it’s worth, and so you make up your mind to have done with it.’ p147

Here I feel I hear Trollope, or the narrator’s, criticism of Bold’s action. Bold is indeed a little bold in his presumption to know what’s best and to think it his duty to precipitate it. Furthermore, I saw him as weak, indecisive and selfish when he disregards his father’s close relationship with Harding in the name of justice; only to renounce this principle when he wants Eleanor to love him. He wants to portray himself as virtuous but, when his resolve is tested, he acts out of self-interest in exactly the same way as Grantly. However, unlike Grantly, he cannot claim to be steadfast in adherence to his moral code. For the first few chapters, I thought that Bold would be the hero of the story and Eleanor the heroine. In the end he looks more like a sanctimonious busybody; intoxicated by the thought of his own virtue but unable to follow it through in the face of personal heartache.

The character of Dr. Grantly is the starkest example of what I take to be Trollope’s unusual conclusions in this book. Initially, he’s painted as a repugnant, pugnacious ecclesiastical rottweiler far too concerned with worldly matters for a member of the clergy. I imagined he would be the butt of much criticism. He is indeed cast as highly unlikeable almost all the way through the book. Chapter 8 sees him gamble at the Warden’s party, live a lavish home life, pretend to work in his study and duplicitously couch self-interest and partisanship as defence of the church. This last accusation could be challenged as it is possible to see the church’s interest as synonymous with that of its membership. Personally, I reject this argument as I find it irreconcilable with scripture but I concede the Bible is subject to many interpretations! Even much later on, in Chapter 18, I still see him in an unattractive light as he tries to bully Harding into adopting his point of view by adducing Eleanor’s prospective ruin if he resigns. This especially grated with me given that Grantly is filthy rich and married to Eleanor’s sister; so could easily avert the anticipated ruin himself. In the end, it is revealed that these are empty threats and that Grantly and his father have no intention of making Harding pay lawyer’s fees or letting him and his daughter go to ruin. At this point, Trollope entirely reverses the judgement of Grantly I had been expecting for the whole book:

"We fear that he is represented in these pages as being worse than he is; but we have had to do with his foibles, and not with his virtues. We have seen only the weak side of the man, and have lacked the opportunity of bringing him forward on his strong ground. That he is a man somewhat too fond of his own way, and not sufficiently scrupulous in his manner of achieving it, his best friends cannot deny. That he is bigoted in favour, not so much of his doctrines as of his cloth, is also true: and it is true that the possession of a large income is a desire that sits near his heart. Nevertheless, the archdeacon is a gentleman and a man of conscience; he spends his money liberally, and does the work he has to do with the best of his ability; he improves the tone of society of those among whom he lives. His aspirations are of a healthy, if not of the highest, kind. Though never an austere man, he upholds propriety of conduct both by example and precept. He is generous to the poor, and hospitable to the rich; in matters of religion he is sincere, and yet no Pharisee; he is in earnest, and yet no fanatic. On the whole, the Archdeacon of Barchester is a man doing more good than harm – a man to be furthered and supported, though perhaps also to be controlled; and it is a matter of regret to us that the course of our narrative has required that we should see more of his weakness than his strength." p240

This verdict, coming on the side of conservatism and tradition even if they seem grossly unjust was, to me, highly unanticipated and surprising! For this reason, while I can’t really agree with the general sentiment against reform, I do think that the book is much more interesting than if things had proceeded as I initially expected.

This endorsement of conservatism and criticism of reform is continued throughout the book’s conclusion. I suppose I would like to feel like just reform would always work out for the best but have to admit this isn’t always true in life. George Orwell says the book opines that, “a time-honoured abuse...is frequently less bad than its remedy”. This is unpleasant and out-of-keeping with the romantic, moralising tone of many novels; but that doesn’t make it untrue. I thought Bold would be the hero of the piece and Grantly the villain but Trollope unequivocally prefers Grantly. After Harding is forced into resignation by the baying press the hospital falls into disrepair and no new bedesmen are choose to replace those that die. In this way, Trollope rams home the fact that more harm has come from idealistic notions of reform than from maintenance of a seemingly inequitable status quo. The bedesmen who sign the petition are portrayed as greedy; grasping for cash even as they lie dying in better conditions than they ever could have imagined. Bunce and Harding are praised as goodly. Trollope mocks the conception of reform as something good in and of itself as naive and ignorant. This section, where the narrator talks about the wonderfully named Scottish pamphlet writer Dr Pessimist Anticant, is a good example:

’Tis a pity that he should not have recognised the fact, that in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is but little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly. p175

This reminded me of two short passages from War and Peace by Tolstoy, both in Chapter 11 of Part 2 and both spoken by Prince Andrei. They’re on different pages but are part of the same discussion so I have put them together:

“It is not given to man to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong...But what’s right and what’s good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by us.” p410-411

I find this sentiment to contain profound truth; even though this truth is more theoretical than practical. We’re all so enthrall to our own supposed understanding of the world and intoxicated by the idea of our free will it’s hard, if not impossible, to really live like this. In this sense, I liked the end of The Warden even though it’s hard not to feel like there would be better applications for the money from Hiram’s will than a massive salary for the Warden! Things are not always as they seem to human understanding and anyone who has made any hard or complex decisions must acknowledge this. I also felt the book was very strong on the power of self interest and love. Harding and Bunce are given high praise for overcoming these inclinations in their own ways; albeit not in a facile, unalloyed way. Bold and Grantly both succumb to self-interest but I think Trollope prefers Grantly because he sticks to his principles while Bold cannot maintain his in the face of self-interest. Indeed, Bold can be accused of not knowing what he wants and acting in a confused and weak manner as I hope I’ve demonstrated earlier. I also liked this book as, in keeping with Trollope’s criticism of facile models of good and bad, there don’t really seem to be any heroes or heroines; the characters are human. The closest is, to my mind, Bunce and he probably only seems so because he is a minor character. I loved his speech to his fellow bedesmen as they sign the petition and, even though I have quoted it briefly already, I’ll reproduce it in its entirety here:

“‘I tell him now that he’s done a foolish and a wrong thing: he’s turned his back upon one who is his best friend; and is playing the game of others, who care nothing for him, whether he be poor or rich, well or ill, alive or dead. A hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it’s the likes of you that will get it?’ – and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. ‘Did any of us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned against us, and we couldn’t longer earn our daily bread? A’n’t you all as rich in your ways as he in his?’ – and the orator pointed to the side on which the warden lived. ‘A’n’t you getting all you hoped for, ay, and more than you hoped for? Wouldn’t each of you have given the dearest limb of his body to secure that which now makes you so unthankful?’” p48

In the books final passages, Bold and Eleanor are married, Bold and Grantly become tentative friends and the Bishop and Harding while away the twilight of their lives in contended companionship. What had seemed so all important and irreconcilable becomes irrelevant and forgotten. Life makes its inexorable march onwards leaving everything to eventually disintegrate into inevitable irrelevance. I liked a lot of the sentiments expressed in this book and thought it was, in the main, well written. The excellent plot, the characters and their unusual, realistic portrayal made it all the more enjoyable for me and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.