Dr. Harding’s forebodings prove true. When he leaves his lovely home it falls into neglect, and the old men who inhabit the hospital fight among themselves. Again, nature mirrors their inner decline:
“The warden’s garden is a wretched wilderness, the drive and paths are covered with weeds, the flowerbeds are bare, and the unshorn lawn is now a mass of long damp grass and unwholesome moss. The beauty of the place is gone; its attractions have withered. Alas! A very few years since it was the prettiest spot in Barchester, and now it is a disgrace to the city.” (183)
Great books often present us with a paradox—placing two realities in front of us that contradict each other—and challenge us to choose between two goods. There is no evil villain in The Warden. Archdeacon Grantly is annoying and John Bold is misguided in his enthusiasms, but for the most part they are just people with certain predispositions, whose conflicts cause pain and sorrow to others. It is in the attempt to achieve justice that John Bold inadvertently causes the financial ruin of his future father-in-law. It is in the adherence to his strict conscience that Dr. Harding inadvertently causes suffering to come upon his warders at the charity hospital, and it is through their greed that they lose the one person who has given them loving care through many decades. As much damage is caused in the novel by those trying to do good as by those behaving badly. Trollope simply opens this to us and asks us, as thinking people, to consider the consequences of any attempts at social justice. There is nearly always a downside to every act of reform.
One Good Man
Trollope’s Dr. Septimus Harding is a curious soul. He loves his family, his faith, and his cello, which he plays for comfort and solace until his troubles cause his music to dry up within him. Though seemingly humble, he has a deeply stubborn side; he simply refuses to “go along” with the crowd, with his children’s wishes, even with the directives of his church superiors. At each turn of events, it is easy to see how Dr. Harding could enjoy the benefits of his position without compromising his integrity too much, but he will not compromise at all. Thus, most people who know him deem him a failure.
The Warden is the first of a wonderful series, commonly referred to as the Barchester novels. Dr. Harding appears in several of them, and toward the end of Barchester Towers, Trollope (who has a delightful habit of dropping the “fourth wall” and directly addressing his readers) sums up his protagonist in terms as simple as they are eloquent:
“The Author now leaves [Dr. Harding] in the hands of his readers; not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts which he has striven to learn.” (271)
Quotations taken from The Warden. Penguin Classics Edition, London. 1986.
Talk About It
Septimus Harding refuses to benefit from his position as Warden only after it is publicized in the papers. Do you think his motives are pure?
About the Author: Anthony Trollope
Born in 1815 in London to a genteel family fallen on hard times, Anthony Trollope lived an unhappy childhood in poverty. His upbringing (a series of catastrophes induced by his father’s many financial failures) encouraged him to develop a plan to advance his own fortune. When his family fled to Belgium to escape their debts, his mother supported the family by her writing. Her son vowed to do the same. Raised as a gentleman yet mired in poverty, Trollope was bullied at school and always felt like an outsider.
Before becoming a writer, Trollope worked for many years as a postal clerk where he designed the pillar box—red mailboxes that are still in use in England. He also lived for a time in Ireland. Trollope set a goal to write a certain amount every day, and he became one of the most prolific writers of all time. By the end of his life, he wrote forty-seven novels, several plays, and an autobiography, wherein he admitted he wrote mainly for money.
Trollope became one of the most successful and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Like Dickens, he developed the capacity to see society both from above and below. Critic Terry Eagleton explains: “The novelist who has a populist ear for the voice of the people, yet at the same time commands the resources of high culture, is likely . . . to outflank all competitors.” His first major success came with The Warden (1855)—the first of six novels set in fictional “Barsetshire.” The best known of these is Barchester Towers (1857), a comic masterpiece. George Eliot noted that she could not have embarked on so ambitious a project as Middlemarch without the precedent set by Trollope in his own novels. In 1882, Trollope died in London.
Sources:
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. Knopf, 1993.
Super, R. H. Trollope in the Post Office. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981.
The People’s Priest:
The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin
We can find counterparts to the Protestant Dr. Harding in other faiths and other novels. Rabbi Saunders in Potok’s The Chosen possesses the same integrity. The Tibetan lama in Kim shares his single-minded devotion to truth. His courage in the face of criticism, even from his own church, is exemplified by a Catholic priest in A.J. Cronin’s excellent novel, The Keys of the Kingdom.
Though he is not well known today, Cronin was a great favorite with my parents’ generation, and one of the keys to the popularity of his work was its timing. The Keys of the Kingdom was published in 1941, and Cronin’s story of a faithful priest who models his life after the Savior reached number one on the bestseller list the week it was published. In a day when the modern novel was full of cynicism and despair, Cronin told old-fashioned stories of love and loss, stories that reaffirmed belief in the triumph of the individual in an evil world. With the world at war and Hitler’s atrocities in the daily papers, readers welcomed his reassuring tone and its underlying religious faith, so rare in more “modern” works of fiction.
Synopsis
The boy Francis Chisolm grows up in the midst of Protestant-Catholic hostility in turn-of-the-century Scotland. His parents are killed by an anti-Catholic mob, and the woman he loves commits suicide, yet Francis resists bitterness. He becomes a priest and departs for China, where he becomes an exemplary missionary. Francis’s many adventures in China make up the bulk of the novel’s plot, but the book’s center of gravity is Francis himself. He is a dedicated, creative, unfailingly humble, and self-effacing priest. He often chides himself for his pride and rebelliousness, but the reader feels that even his mistakes are on the side of right. Francis is not loved by his superiors; they are threatened by his humility and lack of ambition. In the end, he finishes his days as a humble missionary, loved by all he serves and unappreciated by those in power.
What Makes it Great?
Cronin, though not on the level of Hugo or Trollope, was an author who understood his audience. The terrible revelations of cruelty in the Nazi regime, the horrors of World War II and the nagging uncertainty about the future weighed on the hearts and minds of that generation. Cronin was able to take his readers to a simpler, gentler reality through the life of his humble priest. In addition, he satisfied their need to believe in a higher purpose for life, in a heavenly plan that superseded the machinations of men. Though novelists often portray a faithless, cynical view of life, most people believe in something higher and better, and Cronin spoke directly to this faith.
With a knack for characterization, Cronin gives us a complete person in Father Chilsholm. This is no saint. His sincerity is balanced by his stubbornness, and his devotion is balanced by his doubt. We can relate to him as well as admire him. By contrast, the other priests in Francis’s life are portrayed much as the Pharisees in Jesus’ time: rigid, self-centered and concerned with organizational politics rather than the cause of Christ. In fact, Francis’s fellow Catholic priests cause him as much trouble in the Chinese missions as hostile pagans and violent warlord
s do. Here Cronin shows us the aged Chisolm as seen through the eyes of his Monsignor:
“Dear God,” thought Sleeth, “What a pitiable presentation of the priesthood—this shabby old man, with the stained soutane, soiled collar and sallow, desiccated skin! On one cheek was an ugly weal, a kind of cicatrix, which averted the lower eyelid, seemed to tug the head down and sideways. The impression was that of a permanent wry neck, counterpoising the lame and shortened leg. His eyes, usually lowered, took thus—on the rare occasions that he raised them—a penetrating obliqueness which was strangely disconcerting.” (7)
One is reminded of Isaiah’s poetic description of the Messiah: “ . . . He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:2-3, Holy Bible, King James Version)
Did You Know?
Cronin drifted away from his religious faith during his medical training and career, but reacquainted himself with it in his thirties. At medical school, as he recounts in his essay “Why I Believe in God,” he had become an agnostic: “When I thought of God it was with a superior smile, indicative of biological scorn for such an outworn myth.” During his practice in Wales, however, the deep religious faith of the people he worked among made him start to wonder whether “the compass of existence held more than my text-books had revealed, more than I had ever dreamed of. In short I lost my superiority, and this, though I was not then aware of it, is the first step towards finding God.”
Religion vs. Faith
Father Chisolm’s approach to religious behavior is in stark contrast to the tradition-bound clergy. When he happens upon a Chinese village that has been practicing a unique brand of Christianity (based on the journal of a visiting priest decades before) he takes time to listen and try to understand the needs of this unusual flock. Over time belief in the “Three Precious Ones” (the holy trinity) has melded with their Confucius and Buddhist beliefs, and with pride they describe to him a faith unrecognizable as Catholicism, yet simple and profound in its own way. Father Chisolm is deeply moved:
“He remained at the Liu village for a week. Persuasively, in a manner to hurt no one, he suggested a ratification of all baptisms and marriages. He said mass . . . He spoke to them of many things. In the evenings a fire would be lit outside Liu-Chi’s house, and when they had all seated themselves about it, he would rest himself on the doorstep and talk to the silent, flame-like circle . . . he drew no captious differences. It enthralled them when he spoke of the churches of Europe, the great cathedrals, the thousands of worshippers . . . all prostrating themselves before that same Lord of Heaven whom they worshipped . . . This sense of unity, hitherto only dimly surmised, gave them a joyful pride.” (167)
In many scenes like this one (obviously modeled on the Sermon on the Mount) Cronin draws a parallel between his priest and Jesus, taking to task the stifling orthodoxy that he felt choked the power of faith. Though Cronin lacks the subtle artistry of Forster or the linguistic mastery of Dickens, he has the instinctive ability to tell a good story in a way that pulls the reader along. He’s a realist as well, treating with candor such subjects as incest, abuse, and religious bigotry without sacrificing his hopeful tone. His deep ambivalence about organized religion is balanced by his faith in the gospel of Christ and his interest in the individual. Father Chisholm expresses the feelings of his author when he says:
“If we have the fundamentals—love for God and for our neighbor—surely we’re all right? And isn’t it time for the religions of the world to cease hating one another, and unite? The world is one living, breathing body, dependent for its health on the billions of cells which comprise it . . . and each tiny cell is the heart of a man.” (294)
Note: If you love Keys of the Kingdom you will also love Death Comes for the Archbishop, by Willa Cather. Same dear, saintly Priest. Different country.
Quotations taken from The Keys of the Kingdom. Little Brown and Co. New York. 1941.
Talk About It
Father Chisholm, though often at odds with the leaders and even the precepts of his church, is unceasingly loyal to his faith in Catholicism. Every organized religion has its scandals and its problems. How does the individual maintain integrity and yet remain loyal to a group that acts contrary to his or her principles?
About the Author: A.J. Cronin
A.J. Cronin lived a long and interesting life, with two brilliant careers, first as a doctor and then as one of the most successful authors of the twentieth century. Cronin was born in a small town in Scotland in 1896. His father’s early death plunged the family into poverty, and the Cronins were forced to rely on the charity of relatives who despised them for their Catholicism. (His Protestant mother had converted against her family’s wishes.) It was in this harsh environment that Archibald formed the two priorities that guided his life, a need for independence and a dream of tolerance between all men.
In that day the only choices available to a poor boy that wanted to rise in the world were the clergy or medicine. Choosing what he termed “the lesser of two evils,” Cronin worked his way through medical school and began his practice in the mining towns of Northern England. After nine years he had a lucrative practice in the west end of London, a wife and two sons, but he was unhappy with his life.
Cronin had always loved to write and felt that if he only had the time he could write a novel based on his unique experiences. He sold his practice and moved his family into a cottage in Scotland, and in three months had completed a novel, Hatter’s Way, which became an immediate best seller. Cronin went on to write more than a dozen novels that sold in the millions of copies. Several of his books were made into films, and he wrote one of the most successful television series ever to air on British television. A.J. Cronin moved to the United States in the 1930s with his wife and three sons. He later settled in Switzerland. He died in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1981.
Source: Wikipedia
A Good Man is Hard to Find:
Take it Personally
As Dr. Harding struggles with his moral dilemma he asks himself, “What would Jesus do?” Beyond its power as a pop-culture slogan, the question of what Jesus would do in any given situation challenges our assumptions about what constitutes a “good” woman or man. This novel gives us an opportunity to think about Jesus, the kind of man he was, and the kind of people we might become if we try to act more like he would act in any given moment.
Recently I posed the question to my family: “If we do as Jesus would do, will we be more or less socially acceptable?” To my surprise, a heated debate ensued. Some felt that Christian principles always benefit us—make us more charitable, easier to talk to, more useful to society in general—and thus would increase our social standing. On the other hand, others pointed out that Jesus was usually on the unpopular side of any given social situation, and that He often caused people to feel very uncomfortable, and even offended many. What do you think?
As each of our children has graduated from high school we have shared a trip together, and as a part of that trip I have taken each one to see “Les Miz” in London, where it has been playing for twenty years or more. To watch each of them experience the closing moments of that musical has been one of the cherished experiences of motherhood for me. The emotional intensity of the musical is perfect for teenagers, and the moral lessons are priceless. It takes Jean Val Jean many years and almost complete destruction before he reaches a level of spiritual understanding that will change his life for the better. As each child has prepared to leave home and face the challenges of adulthood, Les Miserables has offered us an opportunity to talk about what values will take top priority in our lives.
Chapter Eleven
Fantasyland
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the e
ntire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Albert Einstein
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
Douglas Everett
What are the uses of enchantment, fantasy, and imagination? Most of what we identify as “real” has less of an impact on us than our thoughts, dreams and perceptions. If a belief can be defined as a thought that we have decided to continue to think, the world of fantasy and imagination can greatly influence our beliefs and even set the standard by which we judge real events.
Three masters of fantasy present three complete worlds, peopled with seers, talking animals, wizards and magical creatures. As we allow the child within us to enter these worlds we regain the wonder and gullibility that made us young. And we emerge with a more childlike faith in good and the eventual triumph of right over wrong.
The Uses of Enchantment:
The Harry Potter Novels, by J.K. Rowling
In the summer of 1999, on a family vacation, I noticed a small review in the back of Time Magazine for a book about a boy named Harry Potter. I was intrigued, both by the description of the book and the author’s rags-to-riches story, so I picked up the book to read aloud to our youngest child, then an avid reader of seven. Well, by the time we finished the first chapter Blake and I were hooked. Our standard twenty minutes per night of reading aloud were forgotten, and instead each night we read until my voice gave out. As the book grew more frightening we had to give up reading at night or Blake couldn’t sleep, so we read early in the morning until the pressures of the impending day bore down upon us and we were forced to quit. We told everyone about Harry, and soon realized that we were just a tiny part of a huge groundswell that propelled the Harry Potter series into one of the most amazing phenomena in literary history.
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