Social turmoil in Barchester

The doings of Anglican clergymen and their families in the city of Barchester in the 1850s---Yawn!---Who could possibly be interested in such a tedious subject for a novel? The machinations of the upper-class, but declining Tory high churchmen, against the middle-class but rising Whig low churchmen---Nod, nod, I'm asleep already---are worked out in this...wonderful novel.

The Bishop of Barchester has just died. For a long time everybody had expected Archdeacon Grantly, his energetic son, to succeed to the cathedra; but almost simultaneously with the bishop's death the government fell, and the opposition took over, but the government fell just before the bishop died. In the Church of England episcopacies are ultimately in the gift of the Prime Minister, inspired, no doubt, by the Holy Spirit, who, it seems, inspires Whigs and Tories differently, so Archdeacon Grantly's expectation was denied him, and the new bishop, the new Low Church bishop, Bishop Proudie was enthroned in Barchester. Bad enough that the deserving archdeacon should be disappointed, the new Bishop was accompanied by, no, he was the spaniel on the leash of his formidable wife, who had encumbered him with her creature, the Rev. Mr Obadiah Slope, as his chaplain.

Mrs Proudie was rightly determined to stamp out the clerical abuses that had flourished under the benign, but negligent eye of the old bishop, and to replace the tolerant latitudinarianism of the clergy of Barchester with a narrower and more austere perception of their duties.

Could anything be more stupefyingly tedious? Added to that, the author's name is Trollope. Well, there we are: no need to bother with this but...before we abandon the book to well deserved obscurity let us meet Dr Proudie, Mrs Proudie, and Mr Slope.

'Dr. Proudie may well be said to have been a fortunate man, for he was not born to wealth, and he is now bishop of Barchester; but nevertheless he has his cares. He has a large family, of whom the three eldest are daughters, now all grown up and fit for fashionable life; and he has a wife. It is not my intention to breathe a word against the character of Mrs Proudie, but still I cannot think that with all her virtues she adds to her husband's happiness. The truth is that in matters domestic she rules supreme over her titular lord, and rules with a rod of iron. Nor is this all. Things domestic Dr. Proudie might have abandoned to her, if not voluntarily, yet willingly. But Mrs. Proudie is not satisfied with such home dominion, and stretches her power over all his movements, and will not even abstain from things spiritual. In fact, the bishop is henpecked.'

This passage captures the urbane plain rhythms of Trollope's prose. The author is not unobtrusive in the story. Of Mr Slope, he writes:

'Mr Slope is tall, and not ill made. His feet and hands are large, as has ever been the case in his family, but he has a broad chest and wide shoulders to carry off these excrescences, and on the whole his figure is good. His countenance, however, is not specially prepossessing. His hair is lank, and of a pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them...His nose, however is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced, straight, and well-formed; though I myself would have liked it better if it did not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a red coloured cork.'

Mr Slope, without an income of his own, is on the make socially as well as professionally, and there is a beautiful, recently bereaved, rich, young widow, Eleanor Bold, to be wooed and won.

The bishop, Mrs Proudie, attempts to reduce some of the abuses that the complaisant old bishop had tolerated. He had summoned the Hon. the Rev. Dr Vesey Stanhope, an absentee prebendary, home from leave in Italy, and the whole Stanhope family had had to return to Barchester. Dr Stanhope had lived in Italy for twelve years.

'His first going there had been attributed to a sore throat; and that sore throat, though never repeated in any violent manner, had stood him in such good stead, that it had enabled him to live in easy idleness ever since.'

Stanhope is idle, his wife, vain, interested only in dress; his elder daughter Charlotte manages the household; his son, Ethelbert, Bertie, is a charming wastrel without profession, a dilettante whose major talent is for wasting money; and his very beautiful younger daughter, Madeline, after an ill-judged marriage, has returned home to the family, dreadfully injured, permanently lamed, and who consequently confines herself to a recumbent life on a sofa.

'The beauty of her face was uninjured, and that beauty was of a peculiar kind. Her copious rich brown hair was in Grecian bandeaux round her head, displaying as much as possible of her forehead and cheeks. Her forehead, though rather low, was very beautiful from its perfect contour and pearly whiteness. Her eyes were long and large, and marvellously bright; might I venture to say, bright as Lucifer's, I should best express the depth of their brilliancy. They were dreadful eyes to look at, such as would absolutely deter any man of quiet mind and easy spirit from attempting a passage of arms with such foes... She was a basilisk from whom an ardent lover of beauty could make no escape. Her nose and teeth and chin and neck and bust were perfect...'

Bertie is also a young man on the make, and he soon discovers that there is a beautiful, recently bereaved, rich young widow, to be wooed and won. Madeline amuses herself flirting with every young man that fate throws before her sofa, and who should be thrown before her but Mr Slope.

The arrival of the Proudies, followed by the return of the Stanhopes causes turmoil in Barchester with hilarious social consequences. Against the comic surface there is an undertow of social criticism. The high church Tory clergymen are rewarded with very sumptuous livings in return for very little work; and there is a sub-plot in which two good clergymen, Mr Harding and Mr Quiverful, each deserving in his own way, are manipulated as counters in the jostling of the characters for ascendancy and power.

All the time you are aware of Trollope telling you the tale. Early in the book he sets your mind at rest: Eleanor Bold is going to marry neither Bertie Stanhope nor Obadiah Slope, and he tells you this even before they begin to pursue her in earnest, so that you can enjoy the process of the story, rather than galloping to the last page to satisfy your curiosity about the matter.

The story progresses, first one faction is in the ascendancy, then another, until, at the end, there is happiness for some, and resignation, and disappointment for others. And so it is that excitement, suspense, romance, and comedy all have their part in this fascinating chronicle of the doings of Anglican clergymen and their families in the city of Barchester in the 1850s.