7.31.97

Anthony Trollope was born in 1815 and died in 1882. _Barchester Towers_ by Anthony Trollope was first published in 1857.

One hundred and forty years later I chuckled and even laughed out loud at the finely detailed descriptions of characters and pungent moments in the clergy power plays in an English cathedral town. Mr. Trollope is droll, and kind to both reader and characters. The War is civilized. The language is delicious with words and phrases beyond the working vocabulary heard in most conversations nowadays. The interior lives of the characters are revealed by a considerate narrator.

When one of the heroines is snagged into defending the scheming villain, and it looks as though she will be snared into a very bad marriage, the narrator assures the reader:

"But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here, perhaps, it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers, by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realised (emphasis added)? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance? And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us, merely a receptacle for old bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight. And then, how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader. 'Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta, of course she accepts Gustavus in the end.' 'How very ill-natured you are, Susan,' says Kitty, with tears in her eyes; 'I don't care a bit about it now.' Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the last chapter if you please--learn from its pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose. Our doctrine is, that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; other wise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a dupe is never dignified (emphasis added). I would not for the value of this chapter have it believed by a single reader that my Eleanor could bring herself to marry Mr. Slope, or that she should be sacrificed to a Bertie Stanhope. But among the good folk of Barchester many believed both the one and the other."

Now here is an author who seems worthy of trust and worthy of the time invested to explore his creations.

Having been through hope and despair in the abandonment of American interests by Congress in the past years, I was moved by the description of Mr. Thorne:

"In politics, Mr. Thorne was an unflinching conservative. He looked on those fifty-three Trojans, who, as Mr. Dod tells us, censured free trade in November, 1852, as the only patriots left among the public men of England. When that terrible crisis of free trade had arrived, when the repeal of the corn laws was carried by those very men whom Mr. Thorne had hitherto regarded as the only possible saviours of his country, he was for a time paralysed. His country was lost; but that was comparatively a small thing. Other countries had flourished and fallen, and the human race still went on improving under God's providence. But now all trust in human faith must ever be at an end. Not only must ruin come, but it must come through the apostasy of those who had been regarded as the truest of true believers. Politics in England, as a pursuit for gentlemen, must be at an end. Had Mr. Thorne been trodden under foot by a Whig, he could have borne it as a Tory and a martyr; but to be so utterly thrown over and deceived by those he had so earnestly supported, so thoroughly trusted, was more than he could endure and live. He therefore ceased to live as a politician, and refused to hold any converse with the world at large on the state of the country"--Chapter XXII, The Thornes of Ullathorne

Ouch. Of course, I/We cannot afford to leave the battleground as Mr. Thorne did.

Barchester Towers is a marvelous refreshment. I also recommend it for reading aloud and finding older, more complex patterns of language. This story is fun and chewy when read aloud. Getting through the first chapter takes concentration. After that, the story improves with each page.

For more information, use a search engine or try:

Anthony Trollope: An Overview
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/trollope/trollopeov.html

Listing of Various Writings by Anthony Trollope
http://www.scry.com/ayer/trollope/title00.htm

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Copyright 1997 Elena Haskins. All Rights Reserved.

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