Barchester Towers

by Anthony Trollope

  2 (p. 205). futile attempts to preach God’s gospel: In Chapter 2 of Scott’s Guy Mannering (1815).

  3 (p. 206). ‘…neither bid him God speed’: See 2 John, 9–10. The choice of John’s second Epistle has perhaps a hidden significance for Mr Arabin in view of his future relations with Eleanor and coming battle with Mr Slope, for its subject is ‘John’s regard for a certain pious matron’ and it warns her against the ‘many deceivers’ who ‘are entered into the world’ (verse 7).

  4 (p. 207). Daffy’s Elixir: A soothing syrup for children, popular since the seventeenth century.

  5 (p. 208). succedaneum: A substitute, in particular one medicine taken in place of another.

  6 (p. 209). guano: A fertilizer composed of the dried excrement of sea birds, found on the coast of South America.

  7 (p. 209). a naiad and a dryad: A water-nymph and a wood-nymph, respectively.

  8 (p. 210). Epistle to Philemon: Verse 10.

  CHAPTER 5

  1 (p. 212). state of the Hindoo…jointure of the English dowager. A minor textual crux. R. W. Chapman plausibly suggested (TLS, 30 August 1947, p. 439) that Trollope may have written ‘suttee’ rather than ‘state’, which would certainly make clearer the difference between the fortunes of the Hindu widow, immolated on her husband’s funeral pyre (suttee), and those of the English dowager, left comfortably off as a result of the financial provisions in her marriage contract (jointure).

  2 (p. 216). him that bringeth good tidings: Isaiah lii, 7.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 (p. 221). Medea and her children... the grief of Constance: The ‘familiar legend of Medea, derived from plays by Euripides and Seneca, portrays her as a passionate woman, a martyr more to love than motherhood, who killed her two children by Jason when he deserted her for the daughter of Creon. This example sits rather oddly here with the figure of Constance, whose grief for her captured son Arthur is movingly portrayed in Act 111, scene 4 of Shakespeare’s King John.

  2 (p. 221). Theseus loved an Amazon: Legendary king of Athens who defeated the Amazons, a tribe of female warriors, and married their queen, Hippolyte.

  3 (p. 221). ‘an excellent thing in woman’: Lear’s description of Cordelia: see King Lear, V, iii, 273.

  4 (p. 221). trumpet-tongued to the ears of men: See Macbeth’s invocation of Duncan’s virtues which ‘Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against/The deep damnation of his taking-off’ (Macbeth, 1, vii, 19–20).

  5 (p. 222). E’en such a man…dead of night: See Henry IV, Part Two, I, 1, 70–72.

  6 (p. 222). Mrs Siddons: Sarah Siddons (1755–1831). famous English tragedienne.

  7 (p. 225). under the rose: Secretly, in private; from the Latin sub rosa.

  8 (p. 226). tax-cart: A two-wheeled open cart, used mainly by farmers and traders, and subject to a reduced duty.

  9 (p. 226). metropolitan sesquipedalian serving-man: ‘Sesquipedalian’ means a foot-and-a-half long in Latin, and after Horace’s use of it in Ars Poetica, line 97, came to mean the tendency to employ long words. The sense in which it is used here is not clear: Trollope may mean that the servant is long-winded and pompous, or (more likely) be using ‘sesquipedalian’ loosely for ‘six foot tall’. The whole phrase is sesquipedalian: a ‘metropolitan sesquipedalian serving-man’ is, simply, a cockney footman, and this may be the effect intended - a joke at the expense of Mrs Proudie’s pompous servants and the social pretensions they reveal.

  10 (p. 227). James Fitzplush: By this time a stock name for a footman, from Thackeray’s many versions of James Plush: see Volume I, Chapter I, note 7.

  CHAPTER 7

  1 (p. 234). flesh of her flesh and hone of her bone: An appropriately ironic reversal of Adam’s words on seeing Eve: This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’ (Genesis ii, 23).

  2 (p. 235). fait accompli: Literally, an accomplished fact; something already done.

  3 (p. 238). nolo episcopari: See Volume I, Chapter 1, note 6.

  CHAPTER 8

  1 (p. 241). It’s gude to be…wi’ the new. A favourite quotation of Trollope’s in its full form, as quoted by the signora on p. 448. It comes from the Scots folk song ‘Here’s a health to them that’s awa’ ’, published in James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, Volume V (1796), no. 412.

  2 (p. 244). as Dido was of old: Dido, Queen of Carthage, is deserted by Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid Book IV. She made a pyre of his clothes and armour, ascended it, then committed suicide by falling on his sword: hence the signora’s reference to the ‘steel pen’ in the next sentence.

  3 (p. 244). as Cleopatra did: In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Cleopatra insists on accompanying Antony to the sea-battle at Actium, only to desert with her fleet at the height of the battle.

  4 (p. 245). Nemesis: Personification of retribution in Greek mythology.

  5 (p. 245). Juliet loved, Haidee Loved: In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Byron’s Don Juan, Cantos II-IV.

  6 (p. 245). Cressids: The unfaithful lover of the Trojan Troilus in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.

  7 (p. 245). Imogen…Desdemona…Ophelia: Shakespearean heroines who are true to their lovers but suffer at their hands, in Cymbeline, Othello and Hamlet respectively.

  8 (p. 246). St Paul…war against his creed: See for example 1 Corinthians ix, 27: ‘But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’

  9 (p. 251). Philidor. François Philidor (1726–95), French composer and chess player, author of a treatise on chess.

  10 (p. 252). premiÈre jeunesse: First youth.

  11 (p. 252). boody: To sulk, from the French bouder, to sulk or pout.

  CHAPTER 9

  1 (p. 252). billet-doux: Love letter.

  2 (p. 253). particeps criminis: A participant in a crime; an accomplice.

  3 (p. 257). the clerical Tarquín at the palace: Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last king of Rome, is reputed by legend to have raped his cousin’s wife, Lucretia, who committed suicide after confessing her shame to her husband.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 (p. 275). Mercury: The Roman equivalent of Hermes, messenger of the gods.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 (p. 276). Van Artevelde: Flemish hero of Henry Taylor’s ‘Dramatic Romance’, Philip Van Artevelde (1834), who speaks the ensuing lines in Part 2, Act III, scene ii.

  2 (p. 286). Lothario: Seducer, after the character in Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy, The Fair Penitent (1703).

  CHAPTER 12

  1 (p. 291). cut down to £1,200: As a result of the 1840 Dean and Chapter Act

  CHAPTER 13

  1 (p. 293). ‘Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coûte’: Mr Slope is recalling the celebrated remark of the Marquise du Deffand (1697–1780) on the legend that St Denis had walked six miles, carrying his head in his hand: ‘La distance n’y fait rien; il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte’: The distance doesn’t matter; it is only the first step that is difficult.

  2 (p. 304). currente calamo: With a running pen, casually.

  3 (p. 304). dating a letter from Windsor Castle: In 1839 T. B. Macaulay (1800–59) wrote a letter with a Windsor Castle address to his constituents, telling them of his appointment to Lord Melbourne’s cabinet The prers and his political opponents did not let him forget it easily. [Chapman]

  CHAPTER 14

  1 (p. 306). Victrix: Feminine of victor.

  2 (p. 309). horse-collars to be grinned through: A reference to the grinning-match, a rural sport which had almost died out by the nineteenth century. ‘Grinning, sometimes called gerning, in the context of this activity means the pulling of an ugly face, the winner being the person Judged to have caused the most laughs’ (Brian Jewell, Sports and Games, 1977, p. 132).

  3 (p. 309). Quintains: Targets for horsemen to tilt at The point of the ‘swivels and bags of flour’ is explained on p. 345.


  4 (p. 309). that had been tried:. In August 1839, when the Earl of Eglinton staged a medieval tournament for his aristocratic friends at his castle in Ayrshire, complete with knights in real armour and ladies in medieval costume, jousting, banquets, and a Queen of Love and Beauty. The spectacle cost £40,000 to stage and was all but ruined by the Scottish weather.

  5 (p. 312). ‘albeit, unused to the melting mood’: See Othello, V, ii, 352.

  6 (p. 313). Her bairn respectit like the lave: See Robert Burns, The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, stanza 8.

  7 (p. 314). Petruchio: The wife-tamer in Shakespeare’ Taming of the Shrew.

  8 (p. 316). Robson’s edition: A Joking reference to the performance of Thomas F. Robson (1822–64) in the title-role of Robert Brough’s burlesque version of Medea (1856).

  9 (p. 316–17). Griselda herself: A proverbially patient and long-suffering wife in medieval literature; see especially Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale.

  CHAPTER 15

  1 (p. 318). Wertherian grief: A reference to the melancholy hero of Goethe’s novel. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), who kills himself for the love of a married woman.

  2 (p. 320). malgré lui: In spite of himself.

  3 (p. 321). coup de main: A sudden attack.

  4 (p. 321). Deus ex machina: A god brought in at the end of a classical play to resolve difficulties (literally ‘the god from the machine’); hence any improbable, providential or miraculous intervention.

  VOLUME III

  CHAPTER 1

  1 (p. 329). Fête Champêtre: Garden-party.

  2 ((p. 330). when the Directory held dominion in France: From 1795 to 1799. The Directory was an interregnum between the initial revolutionary period and the later Napoleonic age.

  3 (p. 331)- ha-ha: Sunken fence allowing uninterrupted views across a landscape.

  4 (p. 331). sub dio. Under the sky, in the open air.

  5 (p. 333). déshabilles: The state of being partly or casually dressed.

  CHAPTER 2

  1 (p. 338). quid pro quo: Something given or taken as exchange for something else.

  2 (p. 341). roquelaure: A knee-length cloak with a hood.

  3 (p. 342). 7. Lookaloft, Esquire: In Trollope’s time the use of ‘Esquire’ as a form of address signified that a man was accepted as a gentleman. Mrs Lookaloft’s attitude is the opposite of Mr Holbrook’s in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853), who ‘would not allow himself to be called Thomas Holbrook, Esq.; he even sent back letters with this address, telling the postmistress at Cranford that his name was Mr Thomas Holbrook, yeoman’ (Chapter 3).

  CHAPTER 3

  1 (p. 350). Leohunter blood: After Mrs Leo Hunter, a seeker-out of ‘lions’ or celebrities, who entertains the Pickwickians at a fête champêtre in Chapter 15 of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.

  2 (pp. 358–9). love that ‘will gaze an eagle blind…Hesperides’: See Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, IV, iii. 330–7.

  3 (p. 360). Charybdis of Slope…Scylla being Bertie Stanhope: Respectively a whirlpool and a sea-monster in the straits of Messina, between which Odysseus had to steer his ship in The Odyssey.

  CHAPTER 4

  1 (p. 360). ‘ ‘Twos merry…beards wagged all’: From Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry by Thomas Tusser (1524?-80), ‘August’s Abstract’.

  2 (p. 369). ‘His bishoprick let another take’: See Acts i, 20.

  CHAPTER 5

  1 (p. 375). ‘Friend, thou hast come up…find thy mates’: A rather garbled reminiscence of Christ’s words in Luke xiv, 8–10: ‘When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher…’

  2 (p. 377). pandemonium…nectar and ambrosia…fields of asphodel: Pandemonium is the hall of devils in Paradise Lost; nectar and ambrosia are the drink and food of the Greek gods; asphodel is the flower growing on the Elysian Fields.

  3 (p.377). that false Cerberus Barrett: Cerberus is the three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the Underworld in classical mythology.

  4 (p. 379)- unjust steward…mammon of unrighteousness: For the parable of the unjust steward see Luke xvi, 1–10.

  CHAPTER 6

  1 (p. 380). ‘That which has made them drunk, has made me bold’: See Macbeth, II, ii, 1.

  2 (p. 383). From such a sharp…pluck the sting: Adriana Van Merestyn speaks these words in Act I, scene 2 of Henry Taylor’s Philip Van Artevelde (1834), Part 1. [Skilton]

  3 (p. 385). Belgravia: Fashionable district of London.

  4 (p. 386). low-heeled buskin of modern fiction: A buskin was the high thick-soied boot worn by the actors in Greek tragedy.

  5 (p. 386). the early doom of his devoted daughter: Iphigenia, who was sacrificed to Artemis at Aulis in order to dispel the opposing winds which were preventing the Greeks, under Agamemnon, sailing to Troy.

  6 (p. 386). The god: Neptune, in Aeneid Book I, when he tames the winds mischievously set loose by Juno to wreck the Trojan fleet. [Chapman]

  7 (p. 387). Baal: False god in the Old Testament; properly the sun god worshipped by the Phoenicians.

  8 (p. 387). A very great example…everything to everybody: St Paul, see 1 Corinthians ix, 22: ‘I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some’.

  CHAPTER 7

  1 (p. 390). ‘gloomy gnomes, who live in cold dark mines’: Unidentified.

  2 (p. 394). Pegasus: Winged horse associated with the Muses in Greek mythology.

  3 (p. 395). no cause to hate the offspring of Venus: Because the signora rather than Venus would have won the golden apple at the judgement of Paris (see Volume I, Chapter 5, note 1). The reference to ‘the offspring of Venus’ is to Aeneas, the son of Venus and Anchises, who suffers Juno’s hostility in The Aeneid.

  4 (p. 396). Damon and Phillis: Conventional names for young lovers in pastoral poetry.

  CHAPTER 8

  1 (p. 397). désoeuvré: Unoccupied, idle.

  2 (p. 399). preux chevalier. A gallant knight.

  3 (p.399). Mormonism: The practice of polygamy by this American sect (The Church of Jesus Christ of tatter-Day Saints’) made them notorious in the nineteenth century, but was renounced in 1890.

  4 (p. 403). Dannecker. Johann Heinrich von Dannecker (1758–1841), German sculptor.

  5 (p. 406). ‘tuum’ Into ‘meum’: Yours into mine.

  CHAPTER 9

  1 (p. 411). the ‘Little Dorrit ’ of the day: Dickens’s little Dorrit appeared in monthly numbers from December 1855 to June 1857, and is here used by Trollope as an example of a popular contemporary novel.

  2 (p. 412). all our examination tests: Trollope’s dislike of the system of competitive examination, which had been recommended for entry to the Civil Service by the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report, is well known: see, for example, Chapter 3 of An Autobiography.

  3 (p. 412). detur digniori: ‘let there be given to the worthier’, a Latin formula used in academic prizegiving.

  4 (p. 415). Mr Longman: The publisher of Barchester Towers.

  5 (p. 417). generation of unregenerated vipers: See the words of John the Baptist in Matthew iii, 7: ‘But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’

  6 (p. 417). ‘Suffer little children and forbid them not’: See Matthew xix, H.

  7 (p. 417). ‘Take heed…one of these litile ones’: See Luke xvii, 2–3: It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves…’

  8 (p. 418). Greek play bishops: See Chapter 2 of Trollope’s Clergymen of the Church of England (1866): ‘It used to be said that there w
ere three classes of aspirants to bishoprics, and three ladders by which successful clergymen might place themselves on the bench. There was the editor of the Greek play, whose ladder was generally an acquaintance with Greek punctuation…’ (p. 21). I am grateful to Mr L. R. Burrows for bringing this reference to my attention.

  9 (p. 420). redivivus: Revived.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 (p. 425). Mentor. A trusted advisor, after Odysseus’s old counsellor in The Odyssey.

  2 (p. 427). Bildad the Shuhite: One of Job’s more unsparing comforters, whose response to Job’s sufferings is to rub salt in his wounds.

  3 (p. 429). ‘pied à terre’ in the High Street: Place to stay, usually of a secondary or temporary nature.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 (p. 433). Pouls: Prom the paolo, an obsolete Italian coin worth about fivepence sterling in the pre-decimal currency of Trollope’s time.

  2 (p. 437). ‘décolleté’ dresses: Low-cut dresses.

  3 (p. 440). yea will stand for yea, and nay for nay: See James v, 12: ‘but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay’.

  CHAPTER 12

  1 (p. 442). hang up their harps on the willows. Ichabod! Ichabod!: A reference to Psalm 137: ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof (1–2), and to 1 Samuel iv, 21: ‘And she named the child Ichabod, saying. The glory is departed from Israel…’