The Warden

by Anthony Trollope

  Overton, Bill, The Unofficial Trollope (Sussex, 1982). Overton provides an unusually full account of possible real-life models for the controversy described in The Warden. (He cites successively ‘the Whiston matter’ in Rochester, the scandal of St Cross in Winchester, the reform of Dulwich College, the mismanagement of a Charterhouse hospital – also covered by Dickens’s Household Words – Sidney Goldolphin Osborne’s letters on Irish relief, the work-in-process of the Ecclesiastical Commission and the Census of 1851.) Overton also emphasizes the unusual literariness of The Warden among Trollope’s novels, while arguing for the book’s largely covert ambition.

  Pickering, Samuel, ‘Trollope’s Poetics and Authorial Intrusion in The Warden and Barchester Towers’, Journal of Narrative Technique 3 (1973), pp. 131–40. Pickering argues that Trollope’s poetics has its roots in Anglican latitudinarianism, particularly the tradition of sermonizing while telling a fictional tale established by Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts of the 1790s. The authorial intrusions of The Warden illustrate how to combine a sermon and an invented narrative – the synthesis that More’s Tracts helped to establish.

  Sadleir, Michael, Trollope: A Commentary (New York, 1947). This is a basic work for readers of Trollope. With respect to The Warden, Sadleir provides the original publishing report from Longmans, by J. Cauvin (of which he provides a percipient analysis); he also quotes at length E. A. Freeman’s 1882 account of a conversation with Trollope about the models for Barchester and Hiram’s Hospital.

  Saldívar, Ramón, ‘Trollope’s The Warden and the Fiction of Realism’, Studies in the Novel 3 (1981), pp. 166–83. Saldívar responds to Henry James’s contention that Trollope was a naive realist, mirroring in his novels what he saw around him. On the contrary, Trollope is said to emphasize rhetorical over referential aspects of narrative.

  Smalley, Donald, Trollope: The Critical Heritage (New York, 1969). Smalley reprints five contemporary notices of The Warden, all anonymous. (The Atheneum notice is now known to be by Geraldine Jewsbury.) E. S. Dallas’s unsigned notice in The Times of Barchester Towers is also reprinted by Smalley. Dallas criticizes The Warden for its satire of The Times; indeed, somewhat bizarrely, he compares Trollope to G. W. M. Reynolds, author of The Mysteries of London and other lurid serials.

  Stevenson, Lionel, ‘Dickens and the Origin of The Warden’, The Trollopian 2 (September 1947), pp. 83–9. Stevenson links Trollope’s satire on Dickens in The Warden to an essay in Household Words (probably by Henry Morley, rather than by Dickens himself).

  Sutherland, John, ‘Trollope, The Times, and The Warden’ in Barbar Garlick and Margaret Harris, eds., Victorian Journalism: Exotic and Domestic (Queensland, Australia, 1998), pp. 62–74. This is a suggestive essay on the genesis of The Warden, quarrelling with Trollope’s own comments in his Autobiography (said to offer the civil servant’s ‘classic Whitehall sidestep’) and following through on the implications of his alternate account, given to T. H. S. Escott, which emphasizes the shaping influence of a reform campaign in The Times.

  —, Victorian Novelists and Publishers (London, 1976). Chapter 6 is an account of how Trollope ‘made the first rank’ among Victorian novelists. Focusing on the years 1858–60, Sutherland provides crucial data about the publishing history of The Warden while placing that novel in the larger context of the novelist’s early literary career. He confirms Henry James’s observation that Trollope’s career was distinguished by ‘plain persistence’.

  Trollope, Anthony, Autobiography (Oxford, 1953, first published 1883). In chapter 5 of his autobiography, Trollope gives his own account of how he conceived and wrote The Warden. He remarks that he had been ‘struck by two opposite evils’ – abuses by the Church of charitable funds and the ‘undeserved severity’ of newspaper attacks on the same abuses. He then concludes that he should not have attempted to critique both these faults simultaneously. Explicitly or not, most subsequent commentary on the novel begins from or circles back towards this self-analysis.

  Wall, Stephen, Trollope and Character (London, 1988). ‘Being in a dilemma is perhaps the most important recurring situation in Trollope’s fiction, and The Warden is the first of his novels in which its possibilities begin to appear.’ A highlight of Wall’s concise discussion is his account of the chapter ‘A Long Day in London’, ‘by far the most absorbing in the novel’.

  West, Rebecca, The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recent Theme (New Haven, 1957). In the course of an appreciative treatment of Trollope’s fiction, West maintains that the Barchester novels ‘are really novels about the Civil Service, furnished with an ecclesiastical background and trappings.’ The Warden’s weakness is its effort to combine realism and satire; however, West is sympathetic to Trollope’s condemnation of overly ruthless reforms.

  Chronology

  1815 Battle of Waterloo

  Lord George Gordon Byron, Hebrew Melodies

  Anthony Trollope born 24 April at 16 Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, the fourth son of Thomas and Frances Trollope. Family moves shortly after to Harrow-on-the-Hill

  1823 Attends Harrow as a day-boy (–1825)

  1825 First public steam railway opened

  Sir Walter Scott, The Betrothed and The Talisman

  Sent as a boarder to a private school in Sunbury, Middlesex

  1827 Greek War of Independence won in the battle of Navarino

  Sent to school at Winchester College. His mother sets sail for the USA on 4 November with three of her children

  1830 George IV dies; his brother ascends the throne as William IV

  William Cobbett, Rural Rides

  Removed from Winchester. Sent again to Harrow until 1834

  1832 Controversial First Reform Act extends the right to vote to approximately one man in five

  Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans

  1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Poor Law Act introduces workhouses to England

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii

  Trollope family migrates to Bruges to escape creditors. Anthony returns to London to take up a junior clerkship in the General Post Office

  1835 Halley’s Comet appears. ‘Railway mania’ in Britain

  Robert Browning, Paracelsus

  His father dies in Bruges

  1840 Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Penny Post introduced

  Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (–1841)

  Dangerously ill in May and June

  1841 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

  Appointed Postal Surveyor’s Clerk for Central District of Ireland. Moves to Banagher, King’s County (now Co. Offaly)

  1843 John Ruskin, Modern Painters (vol. I)

  Begins to write his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran

  1844 Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation, imprisoned for conspiracy; later released

  William Thackeray, The Luck of Barry Lyndon

  Marries Rose Heseltine in June. Transferred to Clonmel, Co. Tipperary

  1846 Famine rages in Ireland. Repeal of the Corn Laws

  Dickens, Dombey and Son (–1848)

  First son, Henry Merivale, born in March

  1847 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights A second son, Frederic James Anthony, born in September The Macdermots of Ballycloran

  1848 Revolution in France; re-establishment of the Republic. The ‘Cabbage Patch Rebellion’ in Tipperary fails

  Trollopes move to Mallow, Co. Cork

  The Kellys and the O’Kellys

  1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

  La Vendée. Writes The Noble Jilt, a play and the source of his later novel Can You Forgive Her?

  1851 The Great Exhibition

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Sent to survey and reorganize postal system in southwest England and Wales (–1852)

  1852 First pillar box in the British Isles introduced in St Helie
r, Jersey, on Trollope’s recommendation

  1853 Thackeray, The Newcombes (–1855)

  Moves to Belfast to take post as Acting Surveyor for the Post Office

  1854 Britain becomes involved in the Crimean War (–1856)

  Appointed Surveyor of the Northern District of Ireland

  1855 David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls, Zambia (Zimbabwe)

  Dickens, Little Dorrit (–1857)

  Moves to Donnybrook, Co. Dublin

  The Warden. Writes The New Zealander (published 1972)

  1857 Indian Mutiny (–1858)

  Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays

  Barchester Towers

  1858 Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in Dublin

  George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life

  Travels to Egypt, England and the West Indies on postal business

  Doctor Throne

  1859 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

  Leaves Ireland to settle in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, after being appointed Surveyor of the Eastern District of England

  The Bertrams and The West Indies and the Spanish Main

  1860 Dickens, Great Expectations (–1861)

  Framley Parsonage (–1861, his first serialized fiction) and Castle Richmond

  1861 American Civil War (–1865)

  John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. Mrs Beeton, Book of Household Management

  Travels to USA to research a travel book

  Orley Farm (–1862)

  1862 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Last Poems

  Elected to the Garrick Club

  The Small House at Allington (–1864) and North America

  1863 His mother dies in Florence

  Rachel Ray

  1864 Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters (–1866)

  Elected to the Athenaeum Club

  Can You Forgive Her? (–1865)

  1865 Abraham Lincoln assassinated

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Fortnightly Review founded by Trollope (among others)

  Miss Mackenzie, The Belton Estate (–1866)

  1866 Eliot, Felix Holt the Radical

  The Claverings (–1867), Nina Balatka (–1867) and The Last Chronicle of Barset (–1867)

  1867 Second Reform Act extends the franchise further, enlarging the electorate to almost two million

  Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Song of Italy

  Resigns from the GPO and assumes editorship of St Paul’s Magazine

  Phineas Finn (–1869)

  1868 Last public execution in London

  Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

  Visits the USA on a postal mission; returns to England to stand unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Beverley, Yorkshire

  He Knew He Was Right (–1869)

  1869 Suez Canal opened

  Richard Doddridge Blackmore, Lorna Doone

  The Vicar of Bullhampton (–1870)

  1870 Married Women’s Property Act passed

  Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood

  Resigns editorship of St Paul’s Magazine

  Ralph the Heir (–1871), Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, and a translation of The Commentaries of Caesar

  1871 Eliot, Middlemarch (–1872)

  Gives up house at Waltham Cross and sails to Australia with Rose to visit his son Frederic

  The Eustace Diamonds (–1873)

  1872 Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes (–1873)

  Travels in Australia and New Zealand and returns to England via the USA

  The Golden Lion of Granpere

  1873 Mill, Autobiography

  Settles in Montagu Square, London

  Lady Anna (–1874), Phineas Redux (–1874); Australia and New Zealand and Harry Heathcote of Gangoïl: A Tale of Australian Bush Life

  1874 The first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris

  Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

  The Way We Live Now (–1875)

  1875 Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

  Travels to Australia, via Brindisi, Suez and Ceylon

  Begins writing An Autobiography on his return. The Prime Minister (–1876)

  1876 Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

  Finishes writing An Autobiography. The American Senator (–1877)

  1877 Henry James, The American

  Visits South Africa

  Is He Popenjoy? (–1878)

  1878 Hardy, The Return of the Native

  Sails to Iceland

  John Caldigate (–1879), The Lady of Launay, An Eye for an Eye (–1879) and South Africa

  1879 George Meredith, The Egoist

  Cousin Henry, The Duke’s Children (–1880) and Thackeray

  1880 Greenwich Mean Time made the legal standard in Britain. First Anglo-Boer War (–1881)

  Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion

  Settles in South Harting, W. Sussex

  Dr Wortle’s School and The Life of Cicero

  1881 In Ireland, Parnell is arrested for conspiracy and the Land League is outlawed

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (–1882)

  Ayala’s Angel, The Fixed Period (–1882) and Marion Fay (–1882)

  1882 Phoenix Park murders in Dublin

  Visits Ireland twice to research a new Irish novel, and returns to spend the winter in London. Dies on 6 December

  Kept in the Dark, Mr Scarborough’s Family (–1883) and The Landleaguers (–1883, unfinished)

  1883 An Autobiography is published under the supervision of Trollope’s son Henry

  1884 An Old Man’s Love

  1923 The Noble Jilt

  1927 London Tradesmen (reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, 1880)

  1972 The New Zealander

  THE WARDEN

  Contents

  1 Hiram’s Hospital

  2 The Barchester Reformer

  3 The Bishop of Barchester

  4 Hiram’s Bedesmen

  5 Dr Grantly Visits the Hospital

  6 The Warden’s Tea Party

  7 The Jupiter

  8 Plumstead Episcopi

  9 The Conference

  10 Tribulation

  11 Iphigenia

  12 Mr Bold’s Visit to Plumstead

  13 The Warden’s Decision

  14 Mount Olympus

  15 Tom Towers, Dr Anticant, and Mr Sentiment

  16 A Long Day in London

  17 Sir Abraham Haphazard

  18 The Warden is Very Obstinate

  19 The Warden Resigns

  20 Farewell

  21 Conclusion

  CHAPTER 1

  Hiram’s Hospital

  THE Rev. Septimus Harding was, a few years since, a beneficed clergyman residing in the cathedral town of —; let us call it Barchester. Were we to name Wells or Salisbury, Exeter, Hereford, or Gloucester, it might be presumed that something personal was intended; and as this tale will refer mainly to the cathedral dignitaries of the town in question, we are anxious that no personality may be suspected. Let us presume that Barchester is a quiet town in the west of England, more remarkable for the beauty of its cathedral and the antiquity of its monuments, than for any commercial prosperity; that the west end of Barchester is the cathedral close, and that the aristocracy of Barchester are the bishop, dean, and canons,1 with their respective wives and daughters.

  Early in life Mr Harding found himself located at Barchester. A fine voice and a taste for sacred music had decided the position in which he was to exercise his calling, and for many years he performed the easy but not highly paid duties of a minor canon. At the age of forty a small living in the close vicinity of the town increased both his work and his income, and at the age of fifty he became precentor of the cathedral.2

  Mr Harding had married early in life, and was the father of two daughters. The eldest, Susan, was born soon after his marriage; the other, Eleanor, not till ten years later. At the time at which we introduce him to our readers he was living as precentor at B
archester with his youngest daughter, then twenty-four years of age; having been many years a widower, and having married his eldest daughter to a son of the bishop, a very short time before his installation to the office of precentor.

  Scandal at Barchester affirmed that had it not been for the beauty of his daughter, Mr Harding would have remained a minor canon; but here probably Scandal lied, as she so often does; for even as a minor canon no one had been more popular among his reverend brethren in the close than Mr Harding; and Scandal, before she had reprobated Mr Harding for being made precentor by his friend the bishop, had loudly blamed the bishop for having so long omitted to do something for his friend Mr Harding. Be this as it may, Susan Harding, some twelve years since, had married the Rev. Dr Theophilus Grantly, son of the bishop, Archdeacon of Barchester, and rector of Plumstead Episcopi, and her father became, a few months later, precentor of Barchester Cathedral, that office being, as is not usual, in the bishop’s gift.3

  Now there are peculiar circumstances connected with the pre-centorship which must be explained. In the year 1434 there died at Barchester one John Hiram, who had made money in the town as a wool-stapler, and in his will he left the house in which he died and certain meadows and closes near the town, still called Hiram’s Butts, and Hiram’s Patch, for the support of twelve superannuated wool-carders,4 all of whom should have been born and bred and spent their days in Barchester; he also appointed that an almshouse should be built for their abode, with a fitting residence for a warden, which warden was also to receive a certain sum annually out of the rents of the said butts and patches. He, moreover, willed, having had a soul alive to harmony, that the precentor of the cathedral should have the option of being also warden of the almshouses, if the bishop in each case approved.

  From that day to this the charity had gone on and prospered – at least, the charity had gone on, and the estates had prospered. Wool-carding in Barchester there was no longer any; 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; worn-out gardeners, decrepit grave-diggers, or octogenarian sextons, who thankfully received a comfortable lodging and one shilling and fourpence a day, such being the stipend to which, under the will of John Hiram, they were declared to be entitled. Formerly, indeed – that is, till within some fifty years of the present time – they received but sixpence a day, and their breakfast and dinner was found them at a common table by the warden, such an arrangement being in stricter conformity with the absolute wording of old Hiram’s will: but this was thought to be inconvenient, and to suit the tastes of neither warden nor bedesmen,5 and the daily one shilling and fourpence was substituted with the common consent of all parties, including the Bishop and the Corporation of Barchester.