Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

  Mr Arabin’s discovery about himself points to what is most individual in Trollope’s vision. In an age of reform, the first two Barsetshire novels question the moral absolutism of the reforming temper; they speak up for the comic truth that accepting the human fallibility involved in our need for the ‘usual amount of comfort’ may save us from destructive illusions about ourselves and others. Topical as Barchester Towers is, this emphasis is at odds with the strenuous, angular morality of mid-Victorian culture. In The Mill on the Floss (1860) George Eliot speaks of ‘renunciation’ as ‘that sad patient loving strength which holds the clue of life’, with ‘the thorns…for ever pressing on its brow’ (Book VI, Chapter 14). That is the high Victorian note, but it is not Trollope’s. His is rather to be heard in Archdeacon Grantly’s outburst: ‘“And where on earth can a man have peace and rest if not in a deanery?”’ (p. 456). It is that unique blend of comedy, worldly wisdom and nostalgia for a less hurried past which constitutes the lasting charm of Barsetshire.

  R.G.

  A Note on the Text

  The manuscript of Barchester Towers has not survived, and I have found no evidence that Trollope took an interest in the text of any edition after the first. The copy-text for this edition is therefore taken from the first edition in three volumes, published in 1857 by Longman. Subsequent reprints during Trollope’s lifetime were in single volume form.

  In preparing the text, obvious errors have been corrected, capitalization regularized, and archaic spellings (trowsers’, ‘melodrame’, ‘travestie’) modernized. In keeping with Penguin house-style, the point has been omitted after Mr, Mrs, Dr and St, and ‘some one’ and ‘any one’ have been closed up as single words, except where the sense requires their separation. The punctuation of the first edition is careless and has been corrected, and in a limited number of cases redundant commas have been removed. Trollope’s practice of using a comma with the dash, which is consistent in his later novels, is inconsistent in Barchester Towers, and in regularizing punctuation I have opted for the modern form and removed the comma.

  Trollope’s correspondence about the novel with Longman, whose reader found certain passages in the manuscript ‘too warm’, is an interesting example of the prudish publishing standards of the 1850s, and can be found in Michael Sadleir’s Trollope: A Commentary (Constable, 1927), pp. 160–66.

  A Note on the Church in ‘Barchester Towers’

  Barsetshire is both an imaginary county in the south of England and a diocese, or administrative district, of the Church of England. The head of the diocese is the bishop, whose see (from Latin sedes, a seat) Barchester is, and where his throne (cathedra) stands in the cathedral. Since the Church of England is an established or state church, bishops are nominated by the Crown, which in effect means the government of the day, and are entitled – subject to a limitation as to number (see Volume I, Chapter 3, note 7) – to a seat in the House of Lords. The bishop in turn has power of patronage or preferment to appoint a clergyman to a cure (from cura, care) of souls in a parish, which is that clergyman’s living or benefice; he also has the power, in Barchester, to appoint a clergyman to be warden of the charitable home for old men, Hiram’s Hospital. Mr Slope is a ‘man without a cure’ (p. 45) because as the bishop’s chaplain, or private secretary, he is attached to no parish. The humblest of the parish clergy is the curate, who is the assistant to a parson and in Trollope’s day was often wretchedly paid. The parson has full charge of a parish and may be a vicar, traditionally the deputy of a clerical or lay proprietor and entitled to only a portion of the tithes, or a rector, enjoying full tithes and therefore wealthier and more prestigious. The archdeacon, who is nominated by the bishop, is a senior clergyman with a living of his own – in Dr Grantly’s case a wealthy rector with another living in his gift – who has jurisdiction over a part of the diocese, the archdeaconry, in which he is supposed to supervise the clergy and ecclesiastical property.

  Next in power to the bishop is the dean, who is also a political nominee. As head of the cathedral chapter, resident in the close, the dean is responsible for the conduct of services in the cathedral and, with the chapter, for the maintenance of its fabric. This gives them considerable independence of the bishop, including the right (see Volume I, Chapter 7) to decide who shall and shall not preach in the cathedral. The Chapter is a semi-collegiate body of clergymen, most of them attached to the cathedral rather than to parishes, and originally devoted to ecclesiastical learning and to maintaining the standard of worship in the cathedral. It consists of canons and prebendaries; minor canons assist at the services but are not members of the chapter. A prebendary is a clergyman who enjoys a prebend, or stipend, historically attached to a particular stall or seat in the cathedral, in return for officiating at stated times, although these duties could be deputed to a vicar-choral; he could therefore be non-resident and combine his prebend with other livings, as does the notorious Dr Stanhope. The system was open to many abuses which were the subject of reforming legislation before the time Barchester Towers opens: the Pluralities Act of 1838 limited to two the number of livings a single clergyman could hold, and strengthened the bishop’s power to enforce residence; the Dean and Chapter Act of 1840 confiscated the revenue of all non-resident prebends and limited the number of resident canons in each cathedral. Life-interests were maintained, however, so Dr Stanhope is not an anachronism, although increasingly an anomaly in this age of ecclesiastical reform.

  The contending clerical factions in the novel are fully explained in the Introduction and Notes to this edition.

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  BIOGRAPHY AND BACKGROUND

  No fewer than four biographies of Trollope have appeared in recent years, by R. H. Super (1988), Richard Mullen (1990), N. John Hall (1991) and Victoria Glendinning (1992). Each has its virtues, but Richard Mullen’s Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in his World (Duckworth, 1990) has most of interest to offer on Trollope’s early life and career, devoting nearly half its 660 pages to the period up to the publication of Barchester Towers. N. John Hall has prepared The Letters of Anthony Trollope (Stanford, Calif., 1983). Despite this extensive recent scholarly work, Michael Sadleir’s Trollope: A Commentary (Constable, 1927) is still worth consulting, and Trollope’s own Autobiography (1883; Penguin, 1993) remains an indispensable source.

  The non-fictional expression of Trollope’s views on the Church of his day can be found in his Clergymen of the Church of England (1866; reprinted with an introduction by Ruth Roberts, Leicester University Press, 1974) and in The New Zealander, edited by N. John Hall (Clarendon Press, 1972). For the contemporary background of Barchester Towers, Part 1 of Owen Chadwick’s The Victorian Church (A & C Black, 1966) and Elisabeth Jay’s The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Clarendon Press, 1979) are both highly informative.

  CRITICISM

  Criticism of Trollope by his contemporaries is collected in Donald Smalley (ed.), Trollope: The Critical Heritage (Routledge, 1969) and analysed by David Skilton in his valuable book Anthony Trollope and his Contemporaries (Longman, 1972). Guidance to more recent criticism can be found in J. C. Olmsted and J. E. Welch, The Reputation of Trollope: An Annotated Bibliography 1925–75 (Garland, 1978). There is an author survey of Trollope by Arthur Pollard (Routledge, 1978). The most recent introduction to the genre in which Trollope worked is Robin Gilmour’s The Novel in the Victorian Age: A Modern Introduction (Arnold, 1986).

  The following books have differing perspectives to offer on Barchester Towers:

  Henry James, Partial Portraits (Macmillan, 1988)

  Frank O’Connor, The Mirror in the Roadway (Knopf, 1956)

  Robert Polhemus, The Changing World of Anthony Trollope (University of California Press, 1968)

  U. C. Knoepflmacher, Laughter and Despair: Readings in Ten Novels of the Victorian Period (University of California Press, 1968)

  James Kincaid, The Novels of Anthony Trollope (Clarendon Press, 1977)

>   P. D. Edwards, Anthony Trollope: his Art and Scope (Harvester Press, 1978)

  T. Bareham (ed.), The Barsetshire Novels: A Casebook (Macmillan, 1983)

  Andrew Wright, Anthony Trollope: Dream and Art (Macmillan, 1983)

  K. M. Newton, ‘Barchester Towers’ (Macmillan, 1987)

  Stephen Wall, Trollope and Character (Faber, 1988)

  Jane Nardin, He Knew She was Right: The Independent Woman in the Novels of Anthony Trollope (Southern Illinois University Press, 1989)

  CHRONICLES OF BARSETSHIRE

  Trollope’s Barsetshire novels are as follows:

  The Warden (1855)

  Barchester Towers (1857)

  Doctor Thorne (1858)

  Framley Parsonage (1861)

  The Small House at Allington (1864)

  The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)

  All are available in Penguin Classics.

  Chronology

  1815 Battle of Waterloo

  Lord George Gordon Byron, Hebrew Melodies

  Anthony Trollope born 24 April at 16 Keppel Street, Blooms-bury, 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 Helier, Jersey, on Trollope’s recommendation

  1853 Thackeray, The Newcomes (–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 Thorne

  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 Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life
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br />   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)

  Ayah’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

  Contents

  VOLUME I

  1 Who will be the New Bishop?

  2 Hiram’s Hospital According to Act of Parliament