Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  When we have finished the Barsetshire novels we are vastly wiser about Barsetshire, but only a little wiser about ourselves.

  The question about the universality of his ideas joins naturally to the question of his lack of poetic mysticism, because in both of these the whole business of Trollope’s temperament is concerned.

  It has beer? said that Barchester, as Trollope has shown it to us, is like Hamlet without the Prince — we are given Barchester without its cathedral.

  This is not in actual fact true. There is Mr. Slope’s famous sermon, and we are constantly aware of Mr. Harding’s leading of the services, but of the cathedral as a spiritual entity affecting the life of the world around it we are given no vision, and it is an ironical circumstance that we should be asked to enter the cathedral as a place of spiritual feeling and beauty for the first time on the last page of The Last Chronicle when we are told of “that modest black stone in the north transept of the cathedral on which is inscribed the name of Septimus Harding”.

  Here one must return to Trollope’s own defence:

  Though I as a novelist may feel myself entitled to write of clergymen out of their pulpits as I may also write of lawyers and doctors, I have no such liberty to write of them in their pulpits. When I have done so, if I have done so, I have so far transgressed.

  We must be aware, then, that this is a very deliberate avoidance on Trollope’s part.

  He has — and let us face this limitation if it be a limitation — once and for all no perception of the cathedral as being, in itself, because of its past history, its great beauty, its own spiritual significance, a separate and dramatic personality. He cannot begin to conceive of it as the mediaeval demon of Hugo’s Notre Dame, as the mystical presence of Huysman’s Cathedral, of even a creature with the dramatic malevolence of Meade Falkner’s Nebuly Coat. And not only can he himself not thus conceive it — his characters also are unable to do so. We may allow Septimus Harding, Dean Arabin, Mr. Crawley their true religious feeling, but of vision the cathedral is no more, for any of them, than the bare bones of their official creed; or, if it should be more to them, we are given no hint of it.

  Hawthorne, who, possibly beyond all other novelists of the English tongue, is the opposite from this, has said that the creator of Barsetshire is a creature of “beef and ale”. The consciousness of dark spiritual sin in The Scarlet Letter, the strange twilight colour of The House of Seven Gables, these atmospheres do not belong to the world of the Proudies, the Grantleys and Greshams, the De Courcys.

  There were no poets in Barsetshire. About these solid stone-walled country houses, these firm and guarded rectories, these sun-lit country roads, there hang no sunset skies of mysterious colours, the moons when they rise are available for croquet-parties but cast no shadows, the cathedral windows fling no varied lights, there are no bats in Trollope’s belfries.

  And if this be admitted, the question follows as to whether, if we had been given some sense of these things, all the reality of Trollope’s Barsetshire might not have vanished.

  Are we not asking here for the impossible mingling of two opposed worlds?

  It is the virtue of Trollope’s clerical families that their truth is incontestable. For the man to whom a cathedral is a poem and for the man to whom it is merely a stone building, to each equally Bishop Proudie and Archdeacon Grantley are beyond argument real men.

  Every man has his own poetry and to every man some other p6et is unreal. But for every man born into this world the ambitions of Archdeacon Grantley, the disordered misery of Hogglestock, the anxieties of the Quiverful family must be truth itself. These things may be dull, unimportant, without drama, but they belong to actual life undisturbed by false colours and half-realised ideals.

  Those things in the religious life that Trollope did not understand he let alone. In his modest conception of his own powers he felt that he must avoid ground that was dangerous for him.

  The soul of the cathedral might be guessed by him. He knew enough of it perhaps to have ventured its interpretation had he had the universal self-confidence of some of his contemporaries, or of his successors. But he was never in all his long hard-working career drunk with his own talents. There were countries beyond whose boundaries his modesty forbade him to pass.

  That a man should be a martyr for what he believed to be the justice of his cause he understood; the dangers to a man’s spiritual history through greed, ambition, cowardice, arrogance, these things he knew that he could emphasize and illustrate. Of the mysterious inner workings of the spirit, the dreams, the desires, the ecstasies that come from these, he may have been far more conscious than we know, but a deep shyness springing from noble reticences here held his hand.

  It is a sufficient proof of the failure of much of this especial criticism of the Barsetshire novels that, when we look back on the whole extensive landscape, it is Mr. Crawley, his personality and his history, who stands out most vividly before us. Indeed, if Trollope has failed with Mr. Crawley he has failed in his whole adventure. But he has not failed.

  Looking closely, one discovers that every important incident in the Barchester series omitting The Small House at Ailing ton, 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. Hardy’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. In the first we are concerned with something very local (although the “Jupiter” for larger reasons of its own lets loose its thunder), nor are the consequences to Mr. Harding of a desperate seriousness (he is perhaps more personally comfortable out of Hiram’s than in it), nor is the good name of the district greatly endangered.

  With Mr. Robarts and his sad failings the whole county is concerned. Lord Lufton is his friend, Lady Lufton his benefactress, and even the great Duke of Omnium himself plays his part. We feel here that it is of importance to the whole county that Mark Robarts should show a fine example, which is exactly what Trollope wants us to feel. Nevertheless, here too the tragedy is averted by a cheque out of Lufton’s pocket; Mark has had a fright, promises to improve, and, so far as we can gather from the later chronicles, keeps his word.

  We have been prepared, however, by the growing importance of the clergy and their social influence for the grand culminating instance of Mr. Crawley. Mr. Crawley’s history raises every question around which Trollope has been writing these novels. There is the question of social snobbery that the Hogglestock poverty challenges, the question of ecclesiastical tyranny challenged by Mr. Crawley’s answer to Mrs. Proudie’s officialdom. There is the question of religious duty made prominent in Mr. Crawley’s rebuke to Mark Robarts, the question of religious scandal presented in Grace Crawley’s refusal of Major Grantley, the question of religious arrogance and pride shown in Mr. Crawley’s obstinacy, the question of legal preferment concerned in the officious thrusting forward of Mr. Thrumble.

  These are the questions with whose statement and answers Trollope is occupied in the Barsetshire novels. You may call them unimportant, uninteresting, or worldly (although surely no one, after reading Mr. Crawley’s story, can suggest honestly that they are so), but you cannot deny Trollope his right of his choice of them nor pretend that he has not been thorough and complete in his presentation of them.

  But in emphasizing Mr. Crawley’s figure as the climax of this work and trying to show that, almost in spite of its author, there is here an ordered scheme and plan, one must not forget all the other worlds, beside the clerical, that are represented here.

  From the Duke of Omnium to Mr. Toogood, from Lady Lufton to Amelia Roper, from Augustus Crosbie to the farmer who assured Mr. Crawley that “it is dogged that does it”, every conceivable figure of the Victorian social scen
e has his or her place here. We have even, when we are in the company of the Tom Tozers and some of the addenda of Johnny Eames’s boarding-house, a hint as to the underworld atmosphere that Trollope could have produced for us had his temperament and the conventions of his period (to which he was certainly a little too subservient) permitted him.

  What shall one choose among these scenes and characters for especial praise? Were I asked to choose my half-dozen favourite men and women out of all the Barsetshire figures, whom should I name? After Mr. Crawley, Mr. Harding, Mrs. Proudie? Certainly Archdeacon Grantley for one, Miss Dunstable for a second, Mr. Sowerby for a third. Lucy Robarts, of course, and Lady Lufton (how admirable and delicate a portrait this!) to keep her company. Then Griselda Dumbello née Grantley, Mr. Slope, Lady Julia De Guest, Johnny Eames (although I wish that he didn’t figure in The Last Chronicle), Lily Dale (for popularity’s sake), Frank Gresham and his father, Dr. Thorne and Mary, Mark Robarts and Crosbie...

  There is no end. They press in, the one upon the other. If Trollope held, as in the Autobiography he states that he did, that the novelist’s chief business is the creation of human men and women in whose existence one is forced to believe, then here in the six Barsetshire novels he is justified for ever.

  And the scenes, what crowds of them there are and of what a varied humour and liveliness — the first little conversation between Mr. Harding and his dear friend the old Bishop, the interviews with Hiram’s old men, John Bold’s unpleasant encounter with the Archdeacon, Mr. Slope’s first sermon in the cathedral, the Bishop’s one short-lived victory, Mrs. Proudie and the Signora, the slapping of Mr. Slope’s face at Ullathorne, Harold Smith’s lecture, Frank Gresham’s coming of age, Mark Robarts’s confession to his wife, Lucy’s stealing of the Crawley children, Mr. Sowerby and the Tozers, Scratchard’s election, Miss Dunstable’s refusal of her suitors, old Lord De Guest and the bull, Eames’s fight with Crosbie, Crosbie’s unhappy relations with his in-laws, Mr. Crawley’s walk to Barchester, and his interview at the Palace (this is possibly the supreme moment of all the Barchester chronicle), Archdeacon Grantley and the Plumstead foxes, Mr. Palliser’s silent flirtation with Lady Dumbello, Mr. Crawley’s last sermon, Dr. Tempest’s victory over Mrs. Proudie, Mr. Harding’s death, Mr. Crawley’s happy home-coming.... I had not intended to make a catalogue of these, but now that they are here consider their variety, their liveliness, their truth to human nature, their sense of fun and pathos, their deftness and delicacy, the realistic truth of their presentation!

  I have already said that in these books Trollope has created a world, but he has not created a world so much as preserved a world already existing — preserved it as Fielding’s world, Jane Austen’s world, Dickens’s world, Hardy’s world has been preserved. This world of Trollope’s is mellower than any other. An English sun shines down upon it, English hedges bound it in, the little streets of little English towns have their place in it. It is a country where it is always afternoon; the sturdiness and courage of his own honest spirit pervade its atmosphere. It is perhaps because our own post-war world knows so many elements of change and unrest that it has remained for our own day to make the real discovery of Barchester — Barchester, a place of escape for us.

  CHAPTER IV. MIDDLE YEARS — THE POLITICAL NOVELS

  I NOW felt that I had gained my object. In 1862 I had achieved that which I contemplated when I went to London in 1834, and towards which I made my first attempt when I began the Macdermots in 1843. I had created for myself a position among literary men, and had secured to myself an income on which I might live in ease and comfort — which ease and comfort have been made to include many luxuries. From this time for a period of twelve years my income averaged £4500 a year. Of this I spent about two-thirds, and put by one. I ought perhaps to have done better — to have spent one-third, and put by two: but I have ever been too well inclined to spend freely that which has come easily.

  This, however, has been so exactly the life which my thoughts and aspirations had marked out — thoughts and aspirations which used to cause me to blush with shame because I was so slow in forcing myself to the work which they demanded — that I have felt some pride in having attained it.... But though the money has been sweet, the respect, the friendships, and the mode of life which has been achieved, have been much sweeter.

  In my boyhood, when I would be crawling up to school with dirty boots and trousers through the muddy lanes, I was always telling myself that the misery of the hour was not the worst of it, but that the mud and solitude and poverty of the time would insure me mud and solitude and poverty through my life. Those lads about me would go into Parliament, or become rectors and deans, or squires of parishes, or advocates thundering at the Bar. They would not live with me now — but neither should I be able to live with them in after life. Nevertheless I have lived with them.

  When, at the age in which others go to the Universities, I became a clerk in the Post Office, I felt that my old visions were being realised. I did not think it a high calling. I did not know then how very much good work may be done by a member of the Civil Service who will show himself capable of doing it. The Post Office at last grew upon me and forced itself into my affections. I became intensely anxious that people should have their letters delivered to them punctually But my hope to rise had always been built on the writing of novels, and at last by the writing of novels I had risen.

  This is one of the most revealing passages in all the Autobiography. These lines and the pages that follow them are among the most honest and sincere in English literature. The whole of the man is here.

  He is here in his longing for independence, in his desire of friends and affection, in his refusal to be sentimental about money and business and possession, in his fear of the loneliness and isolation that yet lingered with him from his childhood and his schooldays, in his consciousness of and pride in success, in his active realisation (one of his finest traits) of his immediate happiness.

  These twelve years — from 1859 to 1871 — are his middle years, and no man can ever have found a more exact realisation of his early ambitions and hopes and enjoyed them more completely than Trollope. Three backgrounds mark prominently the quality and material of this happiness, the gardens and walls of

  Waltham House, the offices of the Cornhill Magazine, and the rooms of the Garrick Club.

  In 1857 Barchester Towers was published. By 1859 he felt himself justified in leaving Ireland for England, and got himself appointed to the Eastern District of England — which comprised Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and the greater part of Hertfordshire. In the December of that year he left Ireland finally and settled at Waltham Cross.

  Here is his own description of his life there:

  I afterwards bought the house which I had at first hired, and added rooms to it, and made it for our purposes very comfortable. It was, however, a rickety old place, requiring much repair, and occasionally not as weather-tight as it should be. We had a domain then sufficient for the cows, and for the making of our butter and hay. For strawberries, asparagus, green peas, out-of-door peaches, for roses especially, and such everyday luxuries, no place was ever more excellent. It was only twelve miles from London, and admitted, therefore, of frequent intercourse with the metropolis. It was also near enough to the Roothing country for hunting purposes. No doubt the Shoreditch Station, by which it had to be reached, had its drawbacks. My average distance also to the Essex meets was twenty miles. But the place combined as much or more than I had a right to expect. It was within my own postal district, and had, upon the whole, been well chosen.

  The work I did during the twelve years that I remained there, from 1859 to 1871, was certainly very great. I feel confident that in amount no other writer contributed so much during that time to English Literature. Over and above my novels, I wrote political articles, critical, social, and sporting articles for periodicals without number. I did the work of a surveyor of the General Post Office, and so did it as t
o give the authorities of the department no slightest pretext for fault-finding. I hunted at least twice a week, I was frequent in the whist-room at the Garrick, I lived much in society in London, and was made happy by the presence of many friends at Waltham Cross. In addition to this we always spent six weeks at least out of England.

  Few men, I think, ever lived a fuller life. And I attribute the power of doing this altogether to the virtue of early hours. It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30 A.M.; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy. An old groom, whose business it was to call me, and to whom I paid £5 a year extra for the duty, allowed himself no mercy.

  During all these years at Waltham Cross he was never once late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me. I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to anyone else for the success I have had. By beginning at that hour I could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast.

  Here is a comfortable picture from a reviewer of the Autobiography in Blackwood’s:

  At Waltham House among his cows and rows of strawberries Trollope delighted to welcome at his dinner-table some half-dozen intimate friends. Those who were occasional guests there remember how in the warm summer evenings the party would adjourn after dinner to the lawn, where wines and fruits were laid out under the fine old cedar tree, and good stories were told while the tobacco smoke went curling up into the twilight.

  And a word from Anne Thackeray places it for ever in its frame.

  Early in the year [she writes in her journal of 1865] to Waltham Cross to stay at the Trollopes. It was a sweet old prim chill house wrapped in snow.