From the paratexts of Plater’s Barchester Chronicles (1983)
Donald Pleasence as Mr Harding wandering in Westminster (from Barchester Chronicles, scripted Alan Plater, the first two episodes being a dramatization of The Warden)
Dear friends and readers,
I’ve decided to share my lecture and class discussion notes on Barchester Towers at the OLLI at Mason because we had such a good time over the book. I have already put onto the Net the postings a group of us on Trollope-l [Trollope and His Contemporaries] in 1999 posted to wherever our group was at that point (it’s been on four different sites), and am aware of how much has been said about this famous series of novels.
I am not sure I am adding anything new: my lectures are centrally indebted to William Cadbury (“Character and the Mock Heroic in Barchester Towers, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 5:4 [1964]509-519), James Kincaid’s blessedly old-fashioned close reading of Trollope in his Novels of AT, to say little of Tony Bareham’s Casebook on the Barsetshire novels. I did fast forward to the often unreadable D. A. Miller’s work (it was he who asked the question, “Why are there no police in Barsetshire?”), in this case readable repetitive few amusing points, some of which my 50 to 70+ year old students brought out without having worked their way through his prose (see way below). I came up with a few ideas — and screened some of Alan Plater’s Barchester Chronicles where Geralding McEwan, Alan Rickham and Donald Pleasence appeared to mesmerize them all.
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The interview: of Mr Harding (Donald Pleasence) by Mr. Slope (Alan Rickman)
Cadbury (among others) tells us that Barchester Towers is both supremely like most of Trollope and supremely unlike. Many people who have read many of his novels plump for the unlike, but there’s no denying any particular passage, the themes, attitudes, use of narrators, characters could have been done by no one else. You read it and if you’d read Trollope before, you know it’s him.
First the like, obviously the book comes out of The Warden; the central ethical dilemma is repeated in the sense that we have a caste group who protect their positions; they are fighting over the spoils, th funds for charity are not being given to them in the way intended; and there runs through Barchester Towers a similar vein of feeling and thought dramatizing what is integrity. This clash can be seen as captured by one of the various oppositions; Mr Arabin (opening of Volume II) v Mr Slope (Chapter 4, “The Bishop’s Chaplain”). Arabin justifies his fight in the world as for understanding accurately what is the nature of our lives, what choices should we make of how to decide something, even what to decide,all to be rooted in a depth of true feeling (bonds, loyalty, what is due other people), not to be manipulated or twisted; Mr Slope is all manipulation, all performance; it’s suggested somewhere in him there once was some evangelical or low church fervor where the believer and his relationship with God is the center of religious belief, but all we see once he comes to Barchester is his manipulation of the outward manifestations of power relationships.
Skilton’s introduction in Penguin says how the novel fits into a Trollopian mode: the predicament of the church at this point in history: the book shows a deep reverence for the past (in the Thornes of Ullathorne), all the while an intense awareness of the present as ceaseless change – and the necessity of removing the obsolete and that includes people – us – -by rubbish cart. Someone’s conscience versus worldliness. As the book opens, what is happening?, an old man is dying? The bishop. Is this how it’s presented? Look at the heading: it’s presented as who will replace him. What is tearing Dr Grantly up in this chapter? The old man keeps lingering on. The doctors say he’s about to pop off any minute now, but he doesn’t. Why is it important that he pop off? A change of ministry and then Dr Grantly will not get the position. Those in are Tories (Gods) and those out are Whigs (Giants): he dared to ask himself whether he really longed for his father’s death? (p. 3) Obvious why that rivets us – or can. Whether we have been in Grantly’s situation or have seen someone looking at us wondering when we are going to die and hoping for it. Or have seen someone else. It’s sort of surprising when you contemplate this line and the passages about Grantly by the bedside of his father that this is the core opener of a comic book — only that’s what meant by supremely Trollopian (or so I think).
What is unlike many of the novels: several consistently-used distancing techniques. Trollope continually distances us; he approaches his material externally first: set pieces, portraits, epic similes, talking to us about the characters as characters, and only then does he go inward, sometimes for a moment deeply, but more often to show us the character thinking socially, about social life and situations. They can reveal a lot in their conversations: for Trollope social life is not an enigmatic closed mask: through the mask the person is exposing his or her private vulnerable self and motives if only you know how to read them.Trollope’s novels by and large ask us to view the action and themes in terms of the aims and goals of the characters (The Warden). Characters deeply seen and felt inwardly. We will have this in Dr Thorne. Trollope begins with two chapters from an impinging past from the point of view of a person, consciousness, character. He also there has a single narrator who forms a personality, often characterized as congenial and accepting of what he presents even if it’s when thought about a great evil. We are no allowed deep sustaining entry into the consciousness of the characters or narrator. This novel is often called Fieldingesque, after Fielding. What Trolliope wants us to see is this larger modern world, expose it for our delectation. Finally the bishop dies (apparently with little overt pain), and first thing for the son to do is send a telegram (Penguin, pp 5-6). But not by him but his father-in-law (Mr Harding), telling him, don’t put my name on it. The book is panoramic in the way of Fielding, but the narator is more modelled after the Thackerayan sceptical disillustioned narrator in Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond. We are not given a personality in this novel so much as a comic epic bard with a group of techniques which he uses to distance us from his characters. He does provide enough of the characters to make us feel and at times think a little deeply about them.
For example, the Signora Neroni. On the surface she’s a thoroughly shady woman with a very disreputable past who enjoys needling people. Hungry for male attention as there she can experience some power, however limited. A scene between her and Slope in Volume II shows her playing mercilessly with his libidinal helplessness before her. Mother of the last emperor. But as the portrait goes on, what do we feel about her more deeply? Her pathos (Volume 1, Ch 9, p 65-69): when she talks of her father’s demise with her brother and sister, Charlotte and Bertie, she acquieses in the idea they don’t want him to die, because then they lose all his income and are burdened with debt. Very bad news for Bertie. She expresses more than real apprehension. From later in the book where they bring up this all important topic again (who will inherit and what when the man dies or will we be broke?),the three are talking of Eleanor Bold and should Bertie court and marry her, and her thick mourning comes up: Madeline speaks:
Susan Hampshire, Susan Edmonston and Peter Blythe as Madeline Neroni, and Bertie and Charlotte Stanhope
‘I hate such shallow pretenses. I’d let the world say what it pleased and show no grief [for a dead husband] if I felt none – perhaps not show it if I did,’ and (when they in effect say nothing) ‘you both know in what way husbands and wive generally live together. You know what freedom a man claims for himself and what slavery he would exact from a wife and you know how wives generally obey. Marriage means tyranny on one side, and deceit on the other, and a man is a fool to sacrifice his interests to such a bargain. The tragedy is a woman generally has no other way of living.’ This reminds me she is crippled, a cripple. Bertie and Charlotte laughingly anticipate their father’s death as a way of “getting something.” In this opening chapter Trollope says the one central characteristic of the family is heartlessness (Penguin, p 62); they’d give you the shirt off their backs today, so courteous, disarming, sympathetic, and yet heartless he says. Madeline replies sharply to the idea they’ll get something when Rev Stanhope dies: “I think we’ll inherit his debts as well.” Bertie then chuckles and Neroni says she “I likes him … should be sorry to lose him.’
She’s not just intelligent but is in front of herself candid. She will do some noble things at the end of the novel – noble for human beings. Yet look at the chapter. We have these still portraits. Set-pieces. They remind me of Scott’s way of presenting characters in Ivanhoe. One after the other, put in front of us, rather like a stage presence and puppet who has not been set in movement. Each except Charlotte and the mother anathema morally to Victorians supposedly. Before you reject, Bertie Stanhope, you must recall that the Rev Stanhope is not big on the work ethic himself. He collects large sums (from the church and thus the tax-payer) and does nothing
What keeps the text high-spirited and amusing is how Trollope presenst them as characters as well as people and not let us forget they are characters in a novel, and he’s not emphasizing internal realities here, nor that of his narrator. It’s a dance – with all the complexity suggested by the details and each encounter where we can understand a problem as a problem, we do not approach them from the inside but rather the outside. Chapter 2: particulars of what happened to the hospital (Penguin, pp 10-11). Old men certainly did not get anything. They have no vote, no representation in Parliament. Then chapters called subjects like “War.” Balanced, symmetries everywhere. The detachment, the urbanity achieved is said by some to be him typically comes from not reading much more of Trollope than the Barsetshire and Palliser series, where the narrator opts for balance (leading to complacency), and this is liked. The achievement of this novel is the mastery in all the comic techniques repeatedly brought in to make us look at the world of Barsetshire as a world. In Dr Thorne Trollope demands a different level of sympathy, one where we bond intimately. We are not left alone to form a conception of the characters that could be painful – that darker level is by the way only glimpsed in the mini-series. It is there; myself I think that’s why people keep reading it. What do we care about church personages and church politics literally and a lot of people are literal readers.
All the characters except even Arabin (when he is confronted by the Signora) are made to feel or are ridiculous. Take baby worship. Eleanor is overreacting. We are told she grieved at her husband’s death, we are told the pregnancy was compensation, she keeps her mourning on, but there is a gap between the reality and the perfect ordinariness of the child. “The baby was really delightful; he took his food with a will, stuck out his toes merrily whenever his legs were uncovered, and did not have fits These are supposed to be the strongest points of baby perfection and in all these our baby excelled.” Our baby.
The two characters seen most inwardly consistently are Harding and Mr Arabin – only with them does Trollope move into the close analysis of interior views. So let’s look at Chapter 12: Slope versus Harding: the quintessential modern hazing moment: the interview. The scene before us is performative and the point is to make us see an interview scene in this new world – this novel has been called the first academic satire, about jobs in the marketplace. In this interview scene he goes back and forth at length. He does go back and forth more in the later chapters: the Quiverfuls especially but their agon is treated comically. Trollope keeps ringing changes on the number 14. The name is allegorical.
Chapter 12: The ringing insult: It is “new men carrying out new measures:” “carting away the useless rubbish of centuries.” How did they feel reading that? This is a highly unusual comedy also in that most comedies side with the young. We rejoice when the young escape the clutches of the old and mean. We are with the younger generation fighting the older one; it might be said to be deeply conservative as it builds up immense sympathy for older vulnerable people. We are with the older people, or those who have withdrawn for a while – Mr Arabin, Bertie Stanhope who is treated with a kindly irony (he copes with each day as it comes – and makes wonderful mockery of the church’s pretensions about its offices and work. If you look at Bertie and Mr Harding, I think not – because of the subversive ironies which are continually urging us to vote against those who seek power at any cost, against competition, on behalf of retreat. To win in Trollope’s first two novel is to lose – it’s done indirectly of course. In this scene it is Mr Harding who keeps his dignity – the only positive moral act in this situation with drawal. The novel sees people as decent individually but once they get into social organizations they are dangerous, often silly and contemptible. Social groups are not as bad because as in Mrs Thorne’s fete champetre (a central normative place) the groups form and reform like clouds on a windy day
This is an upside down comedy which hides a bleak view of power
And it includes us – – we do this and we know we do it. Or some of us do. What Trollope does is blame a character for having too much of one quality or too little of it, and then turn around and imply we too lack that quality. Say charity. Mr Harding has too much; we have too little. Look at how Mr Harding reacts to the proposals of Eleanor marrying Slope (pp 15-51: charitable, egalitarian.
Distancing techniques. The allegorical names. Trollope uses semi-allegorical for his characters throughout his career. Campaign manages in Dr Thorne: NeartheWind, Closer Still. Lawyers in He Knew He Was Right: Slow and Bideawhile. He likes salacious ones. If you see a dity joke (so to speak) in a name, you’re right. In Miss Mackenzie: three men, Ball and Rub. Mr Glasscock. Doctors: Rerechild and Fillgrave. Trollope loved these and there’s a long tradition of them in literature going back to medieval times. The name stands for the central quality of the figure. They are semi- because they also realistic and sometimes ordinary English names: Proudies, very proud, Grantley, been granted great luck through life. Real places are in the map.
But it does distance us. What Trollope does is contrast the characters we have met with their places in the novels. He stops to discuss how he has presented them. Mrs Proudie presented as dislikable, a devil, but says he when she feels for Mrs Quiverufl: “there was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice.” She sits down, commiserates with Mrs Quiverful and her pity as well as desire to dominate and be the Bishop leads her to fight on against Slope’s wanting to put Harding in again. There’s a problem when you want to create real empathy for the Quiverfuls. Stating the name gets in the way.
So it’s a novel on two planes. One highly conventional and subversive in that conventionality, the other not so. Chapter 10, p 73 brings together another kind of language we have seen in The Warden. The epic simile. What happens in the reception? How does Madeline arrive?
Susan Hampshire as the Signora Neroni carried into Mrs Proudie’s Converzatione, POV Bertie Stanhope
She makes herself a spectacle and at first is not recognized as Stanhope’s daughter. Bertie utterly irreverent – -this is a novel which satirizes religion too – which is disillusioned and sceptical about people’s self-delusions. It’s telling that Bertie who is never permitted to talk to Arabin. Mrs Proudie is Juno in the scene, her wrath beyond describing when her dress torn away. As Juno looked on Paris; she is Medea over her children left by Jason, she is Achilles thinking about her husband’s pillow (p 85) … Mock-heroic romance or epic. The tone of the apostrophes is not that of narrator as character but an implied impersonal presence from literature.
Dr and Mrs Proudie? Is the book misogynous? You can prove anything if you get to make up the evidence? In reality women never could have such power, the laws gave the men property, all decent paying jobs, all education, right to beat your wife within limits, divorce was only if you could prove your life in danger if you were a woman. A man need only prove adultery. She uses sex and will make his life a misery continually if he doesn’t accede; there are people like this in marriages. Dr Proudie is a trimmer; he shows himself flexible – he will be on the group’s side to which he belongs. Such people are promoted and get ahead (p 18), even if mortifyingly hen-pecked. Proudie may be flattered into things, and is an ambitious man.
The Bishop’s Chaplain? Very class bound – Trollope is as egregiously anti-lower class people as the chapters about the old men in The Warden. Loves power, loves to exercise power above all, p 25 – not very wise of bishop to let him preach the first Sunday – we are to dislike him, mutual bond of hatred. Of those who watched the film what did you think of Rickman’s performance. He’s a handsome man, not red haired, greasy, sweaty. I thought he conveyed a tragic feel to the character coming out of his presence – he gives it gravitas – it was deliberate casting against the grain. People even in 1983 would not want an exoriation of an lower class manifestation.
The morning visit brilliantly. Of course it’s war after that — and the sermon against all Mr Harding stands for – which is outward beauty, even ritual for its own sake, but he is egalitarian – “all porters and stokers and guards and brakesman ought to be able to go to church” (p 33, i.e., have the day off.) The stopping of fun and travel on the one day a week Victorians had off a bete noire of most novelists.
At the party all of these characters are looked upon as presenting wonderful opportunities for revelling in laughter at them. Take the bishop feeling sorry for Madame Neroni, p 87: “he put on a look of ineffable distress and said he was aware of how God had afflicted her ….” Other writers of novels who are much respected have complained about this and it’s part of what makes Trollope’s reputation so dicey. He is not serious – -how can we take his vision of life seriously. Is he meaning to show us what life is like? I think so: the phony hypocrisies and cant – pretending to feel moral norms and spouting moral talk we don’t really believe or think at all. People at funerals.
Romance not ignored. There is no novel without love. Who are the widow’s suitors? (Chapter 15, Pp 117-118). Does Eleanor survive this treatment? How? Each time we see her she does act with a certain integrity and sense of her identity, and pride. She will not bend the wrong way – she does not want to hate Mr Slope. Partly the novels cohere – they build on one another. You begin to see this especially in Framley Parsonage. She carries on being loyal to Mr Harding (Chapter 16, pp 137-38). So Mr Slope wants to give the hospital back to Mr Harding to please the widow — in the hope of money. But he will not lose one influential friend before he gains another (p 119). Human politics a tricky business. But of course we know Eleanor is not a pendulum and has no intention of marrying Mr Slope. The widow’s persecution: Eleanor gets caught up in a web of conflicting people as is her father. So we have all sorts of plot threads: who is beat out who? Mrs Proudie or Slope? Grantly or the Proudies? A far gone conclusion. Will Harding get the hospital job back? Who will if anyone Eleanor marry with a champion (Mr Arabin) waiting in the wings.
In usual Trollope novels central character vacillate from within, and it is Mr Slope who does (p 120). Mr Slope trying to figure out what to do. Here is where Alan Rickman was able to make something human (not reptile) from character (bottom of p. 120: remember Mr Slope not a bad man.)
What kind of person is our fourth or fifth male, Bertie Stanhope, her other suitor? No ambition, no desire for place, frivolous. He is not respected in the novel (pp. 123-4): Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. That’s him. He is liked for his unworldliness and kindness of disposition. Charlotte wants to know if he will go through with this project? Marry Eleanor for money. It’s here the moving speeches of Madeline occur (pp 126-12)7 Bertie summed up as a “tame cat” – he would have been an amiable but useless husband.
Cock of walk is Mrs Proudie or Slope. Like an animal fable Trollope reduces and mocks. Aesop’s fables are quintessential satire: they turn us into animals and then reduce the animal to a few less than admirable human characteristics (Ch 17, p 139). There are all the allusions to contemporary history, familiar classics, the ancient classics.
Close to end of Volume, a dialogue between Grantly and Mr Harding. The two talking, a quiet invitation to come to Plumstead. Sudden realistic feel. Last chapter one of great beauty, “Barchester by Moonlight.” First a debt must be hidden in the Stanhope residence – never far away from realities. 700 pounds owed — it will be brought back at the close of the novel. Charlotte the manageress keeping the Stanhopes afloat manipulates so she is with Slope and places Bertie with Eleanor outside.
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The pathos of Mrs Quiverful Maggie Jones) coming away from reassurance by Mrs Prouide the position is her husband’s
Volumes 2 into 3:
So to return, we were at a crux of the novel. Unerringly Alan Plater the screenplay writers of the BBC Barchester Chronicles dramatizes the central scenes of the novel which engage deeply and complexly with its central themes. One such is the interview in Book One between Mr Arabin and Mr Harding we’ve looked at. Central figures who Trollope does delve inwardly and allows their thoughts to spread over pages.
The chapters following our most exemplary figure (Bk 2 , Chs 1) Mr Arabin and Ch 2, St Ewold’s Parsonage (where they talk of how to fix it), we get a longest pictorial chapter in the book: the Thornes of Ullathorne. It is an Elizabethan mansion, unspoiled. Trollope’s celebration of it makes it difficult to call this a subversive fiction. What is Trollope’s attitude towards them? Symbolic heart of the book. At first they are presented as hilarious, absurd, introduced with usual detachment, even contempt: but we find they stand for old hospitality, bonds, loyalty, and they do open their party to the whole countryside despite Mr Plomacy; they do allow Mrs Lookaloft and her daughters to sit where they want.
Had this been a book written during the height of Trollope’s career, I’ve no doubt we’d have at least one full illustration. The Folio Society has a comic one of the quintaine but many of them are picturesque and touching. I had mentioned I spent a couple of months studying the illustrations through looking at magazine copies of installments at Library of congress and counted 445. The illustrations which accompanied the early publications of Trollope’s novels add to, interpret, and point to meanings in Trollope’s texts that he was unable to bring out forthrightly, or which can only be conveyed pictorially.
So compare what seems like a more minor character, Book 2, when Slope makes his second visit to Mr Quiverful and tells him after all he is not to have the position of warden and salary for the hospital. What is Mr Slope’s motive for wanting after all to see Mr Harding in the hospital? Book 2, Chapter 5 (“Mr Slope at Puddingdale”), pp 214 in my edition. “But Mr Harding had another friend fighting his battle for him … .” Mr Quiverful is waiting for Mr Slope to come in the house (pp 215-16. Trollope asks us to be ourselves as we enter into Mr Quiverful’s self-jusification? A little later: is not everyone in this world “so griping” of whatever they have? (Pp. 218-219). A powerful word there: gripin.
Plater simply transposes a lot of the words from Trollope’s text to make his dramatic scene here. We get a full empathetic view of Mr Quiverful. Why does Mr Quiverful give in? He thinks he can’t hold on to it, and he’ll end up worse if he fights – should take a note from the old men who at least fought but then ended up worse off. My husband used to say if you were powerless stand not too close to the powerful. You will become a substitute target.
Book 2 ends with Slope beginning to lose out – that’s important. At the end of book 2 Trollope has built up a lot of tension. Eleanor left the Grantley; her father upset. Mrs Proudie has asserted her in that bedroom, Slope, knowing this, does not give up by a long shot – he is also contrasted to Mr Harding; he is like Dr Grantley only maybe cleverer, two political letters (pp 303-6), each masterly, but rhetoric will not do unless you have something to exchange – he asks for support without insisting on it – but he has nothing to offer in return is his problem A new man conveniently dies: the dean – everyone waiting about. Poor Dr Trefoil (p 291) Only the unmarried botanist daughter will suffer. Trollope is aware of this – but he mentions her botany as a joke. (The science allowed respectable women at the time was botany.)
Slope has the nerve to put himself forward; the establishment, Gwynne and company want Arabin. We get Tom Staple. Trollope uses Staple in a couple of ways. One is to introduce yet another attack on what Trollope regards as the unfair power of newspapers over people’s minds, people being sheep and apt to believe that what they are told is everyone’s opinion or way of life actually is. Trollope here stands for a value I have seen him stand for before: he suggests it is good for students to be allowed to get into debt. The struggles, agonies and hard lessons learned that way are part of education. This reminds me of many modern Americans’ way of talking about school: they seem to regard it primarily as a social training ground where the strong and tough get ahead, and others are somehow coerced into being stronger and tougher. Academics come secondarily — this is really Deweyism (educating the citizen not the mind). I want to come out on the side of the Jupiter. Not everyone grows stronger and tougher from troubles, and for some the troubles can become so bad they can take a long time to retrieve. (To put this in modern terms, I would not encourage my 21 year old daughter to get herself a credit card and start buying as this might teach her a lesson). In this scene we see Arabin holds firm to principles — that it’s implied however someone might not agree with them shows a deep level of scepticism in Trollope towards any particular religious doctrine too.
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Mr Plomacy (Roger Booth) who has organized the party
The Ullathornes (Richard Leech and Ursula Howells) congratulating him and themselves
Book 3:
So we move on to Act III: book has three acts, the fete champetre has three acts, and at the end we have parallel chapters of “At home.” Act I occurs as everyone arrived, our hostess in some consternation, between Eleanor and Mr Harding (III:2 or Ch 36). While we find a meeting of the minds between our loving father and daughter (at long last), there is also much discomfort and at the close still some misunderstanding as well as a residual disappointment in Eleanor that her father should have misunderstood her. What’s interesting about the scene is how Eleanor overstates the case against Mr Slope and not Mr Harding. To Eleanor’s sudden insistence it would have been disgraceful for her to have even considered Mr Slope for a husband, and that somehow having been suspected of erotic feelings towards him somehow soils her and her relationship with her father, her father replies:
‘”I don’t know what you mean by suspicion, Eleanor. There would be nothing disgraceful, you know; nothing wrong in such a marriage … (Penguin BT, ed RGilmour, p. 348).
But before Mr Harding (generous, can see other points of view), can offer a common sense view of the case, she interrupts him with a fit of crying, an insistence it would have been ‘horrid’ (which sexually speaking to her it would have been), and intense relief for which Trollope uses the word grief. She cannot show these emotions, nor does he give expression to the ‘load off his heart’ all that has happened has occasioned him, but there is quiet ‘melodrama’ (p. 349) here. There is crass class-bias here: throughout the depiction of Slope it’s there; the same techniques used to whip up anti-semitic feeling over Fagin in Dickens, Trollope’s Mr Emilius and Ferdinand Lopez in the Palliser books. He identifies with Slope’s doctrines and even the outcast but only minimally in this book.
Entr’acte: three of our leading females converge, someone has breakfast while someone dies, and Lookalofts, Greenacres and De Courcys play musical chairs, with a little help from Mr Plomacy.
Act II: again, Trollope works to keep us at a distance by interjecting himself at intervals as narrator, e.g, ‘And now it is to be feared that every well-bred reader of these pages will lay down the book with disgust…’ (p. 384). I thought his summary of his own fiction very funny: ‘At one moment she is romping with young Stanhope; then she is making eyes at Mr Arabin; anon she comes to fisty-cuffs with a third lover; and all before she is yet a widow of two years’ standing’ (Bk 3, ch 6, pp. 384-85). Yet Eleanor’s response inwardly is not funny: she is dismayed, for she has been ‘entirely wrong’. The man has been after her after all. Her pride is hurt: she thought she was so above him. I like this lesson Trollope gives her.
The absurd behavior of guests who come super-late, of Madeline Neroni inside with the men around her. The social stratification seems to be built into human communities, and certainly it’s visible at Ullathorne, with its four different places for feasting. There’s the indoor dining room and tent for the uppers, and the paddock and park for the lowers. It’s telling t the most generous act among the guests, and the man who voices the richest large sentiment is Farmer Greenacres. I have a feeling Trollope has done this deliberately. Farmer Greenacres is in fact the hero of this chapter, and we are told through the description of Mr Plomacy’s happiest hours that Farmer Greenacres is a lucky, happy man:
‘[Mr Plomacy’s] moments of truest happiness were spent in a huge armchair in the warmest corner of Mrs Greenacre’s beautifully clean front kitchen. ‘Twas there that the inner man dissolved itself, and poured out in streams of pleasant chat; ’twas there that he was respected and yet at his ease; ’twas there, and perhaps there only, that he could unburden himself from those ceremonies of life witout offending the dignity of those above him, or incurring the familiarity of those below’ (Bk 3, Ch 5 RGilmour, p. 378).
The paragraph is so lovely in tone because it testifies warmly to the idea that what counts is the inner soul expanding out to others (very wise words too). It’s also wise: points out why people cannot have this kind of contentment.
Time out for the quintain — it’s illustrated in the recent Folio Society edition, and Plater does it full justice, appropriately bringing in the empathetic Bertie.
Bertie and Miss Ullathorne’s favorite, brought down by the quintaine
Now we move out to the festivities: Slope unwisely attempted to put his arm around her waist and give her a kiss. Eleanor unthinkingly ” … sprang from him as she would have jumped from an adder, but she did not spring far; not indeed, beyond arm’s length; and then, quick as thought, she raised her little hand and dealt him such a box on the ear with such right good will, that it sounded among the trees like a miniature thunder-clap.” (p. 144) That reaction, at any rate, was conclusive. There was no way Mr. Slope could put a positive slant on Eleanor’s reaction. Eleanor ran away, and Mr. Slope furiously nursed his anger. He much wished he had her in a pew, and he was in the pulpit, “fulminat[ing] such denunciations as his spirit delighted in”. His spleen then directed itself at
… such a vanity fair as this now going on at Ullathorne … he began to feel a righteous disgust at the wickedness of the doings around him. He had been justly chastised for lending, by his presence, a sanction to such worldly lures. The gaiety of society, the mirth of banquets, the laughter of the young, and the eating and drinking of the elders were … without excuse in his sight. He had consorted with idolaters around the altars of Baal; and therefore a sore punishment had come upon him.”
He does not like to be hit by a woman Trollope says, feels shame.
No sooner does Eleanor flee Slope than she falls to Charlotte who takes her to Bertie who could teach us some lessons in humility – he is ejected at the close – Anyone feel for him? “They hey were troubled waters which Charlotte had to throw oil upon. The angry father was ready to find fault with his entire family; first Bertie’s incapacity to make his own way, then Madeline’s expensive taste in accoutrements. But Dr. Stanhope had Austen’s Mr. Bennet’s awareness that “if they were all bad, who had made them so? If they were unprincipled, selfish, and disreputable, who was to be blamed for the education which had had so injurious an effect?”
It’s very Trollopian to have this party end in vexation for our principle characters.
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Post-fete champetre.
Unerringly, Madeline Neroni early on had “read the secrets of his heart, and re-uttered to him the unwelcome bodings of his own soul”. She tried to inspirit him: ‘ Is not the blood in your veins as warm as his? does not your heart beat as fast? Has not God made you a man, and intended you to do a man’s work here, ay, and to take a man’s wages also? … The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning. And it is a mistake so opposed to the religion which you preach! Why does God permit his bishops one after another to have their five thousands and ten thousands a year if such wealth be bad and not worth having? Why are beautiful things given to us, and luxuries and pleasant enjoyments, if they be not intended to be used? … You try to despise these good things, but you only try; you don’t succeed.” (pp. 364-67)
Madeline found Mr. Arabin to be just as captivating as he did her. He did not gush flattery as most men did, and the signora was pleased by this. To show her pleasure, she inserted the needle even deeper: ‘ Let us see. There is the widow Bold looking round at you from her chair this minute. What would you say to her as a companion for life? … Come, Mr. Arabin, confide in me, and if it is so, I’ll do all in my power to make up the match.’ ” Eleanor Bold, outside, more really the object of three men, two supposed for her money.
At length Dr. Stanhope was brought around by his skillful daughter to agree that Bertie must have the two hundred pounds, but he must leave the next day. But the entrance of this hopeless Romeo almost upset Charlotte’s careful plans.
Bertie is not unlike current youths who exasperate their long suffering parents with monosyllabic responses to their queries, and placid replies to their threats. “Where have you been this evening?” “Nowhere.” “Who was there?” “I dunno.” “You are really making me angry!” “So?” Dr. Stanhope’s anger too apparently left his son unmoved, and this only made his father more furious. Wouldn’t you be tiffed if, while you are attempting to give a richly deserved lecture to your wayward offspring, he would doodle on a handy memo pad? I could not help smiling at Bertie’s response to his father’s rant:
‘You have disgraced me, sir; you have disgraced yourself, and me, and your sisters.’
‘I am at least glad, sir, that I have not disgraced my mother,’ said Bertie. (pp. 201 – 202)
Dr. Stanhope’s fury escalated with the lack of response from his son, until Bertie narrowly avoided being completely cut off by the quick thinking intervention of his sister. ” ‘ Is he only to blame? Think of that. We have made our own bed, and, such as it is, we must lie on it.’ ” (p. 202) Stopping her brother from drawing also helped.Patient as she usually was with her inept brother, Charlotte was annoyed when she found out that not only had Eleanor refused him, but he had allowed the whole scheme for achieving monetary solvency, slip. It would have been for them all.
As last seen — Slope ejected from his position by Bishop and Mrs Proudie (Clive Swift, Geraldine McEwan); Trollope says he did not do badly in London. Some darker notes here.
Miss Ullathorne helps Arabin and Mrs Bold find some private space; and we have now gone over nearly the fate of everyone.
Barchester Towers a Victorianization of The Warden so it’s fitting near the end we have stills of Arabin and Eleanor looking like illustrations we might see in a Victorian novel
Mr Harding rejects the offer of dean and gives it to Mr Arabin. The hilarious dialogue over Mr Harding having no duties is given depth and feeling by Plater when Donald Pleasence tries to express why he doesn’t want the position: he is old, he has no idea what the (political) duties of a Dean need to be. We end where we begun, Mr Harding and the misuse of charitable funds put aside, with a moving close on Mr Harding
Archdeacon Grantley (Nigel Hawthorne) and Mr Harding facing off — a contrasting pair — this from an earlier part of the book.
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Resolved at last: the hospital to go to Mr and Mrs Quiverful, their 14 children (not to omit new old men, 12 old women and a woman to “supervise” them) (From a closing montage in Episode 7, Barchester Chronicles)
So, what are we to make of the novel? We have watched a man whose business it is to make novels and he has done this in front of us. He has taken us into his confidence, expressed the obstacles to his endeavour, preferred some of the characters to others, excuses many (as which of us would not).
It is a place that does not seem to need a police. One of my students said they are all kept busy closely monitoring each other. Miller thinks there are no police because the system all encompassing; if you do not get you want from one department, you apply to another. Women appear to submit more or less contentedly to the patriarchy – as long as they have their own space or patronage.
Dr Thorne we will see is very different in mood and stance: the first two chapters give us the first full description we have of Barsetshire and it’s filled out as we go until Framley Parsonage when it is set inside the larger England and we get a map. Deeply felt presences in complexities of life then and now.
Mr Harding as we first see him: playing his cello in The Warden
Ellen
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Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 