Sydney M.
Williams
Burrowing into Books
Reviews of Selected Readings
May 24, 2018
“The Last Chronicles of Barset”
Anthony Trollope
“But to me
Barset has been a real county, and its city a real city,
and the spires and towers have been before my
eyes,
and the voices of the people known to my ears,
and the pavement of the city ways are familiar
to my footsteps.”
Anthony
Trollope
The
Last Chronicles of Barset
A good friend once suggested
that story-tellers, such as Trollope, have an immortality that transcends time
and place. The narrative, the creation of the author, replays in the reader’s
consciousness, and can be done so long as the tale can be retrieved. Trollope’s
characters and venues, figments of a 19th Century imagination, can
be visited and discussed, as they play in the consciousness of 21st
Century readers. “Last Chronicles” was written 151 years ago and Anthony
Trollope is buried in London’s Kensal Green Cemetery, yet time and distance do
not hinder its immersion into our minds.
As the title makes clear, this is the last of the six books that comprise
the Barsetshire novels; the quote above comes from the final paragraph. This is
the story of Josiah Crawley, the impoverished perpetual curate of Hogglestock
parish. He is accused of a crime he did not commit. Crawley’s memory fails him
– he cannot recall the circumstances as to how he came into possession of the
questioned twenty pounds. He is also a man of his time, a gentleman who
believes in honesty, fortitude and the need to be accountable for one’s
actions. Mr. Crawley is indicted, and a trial is set for about four months hence.
Loving her husband but in despair, Mrs. Crawley feels he derives a
schadenfreude-like pleasure in his own misfortune. “A consciousness of undeserved woe produces a grandeur of its own,” she
says to her friend Lucy Roberts. This is a story that pokes fun at the Church
of England and displays the contrasts of wealth and poverty that reside perversely
(but naturally) within it.
The plot is compounded when the Archdeacon of Barchester Theophilus
Grantly’s son, Major Henry Grantly, falls in love with Grace Crawley, oldest
daughter of the Crawley’s. Given Victorian standards, she feels she cannot
accept him as long as her father is under suspicion. The plot thickens when we
learn that the obnoxious Mrs. Proudie, wife of the milquetoast-like Bishop of
Barchester, is determined to destroy the implacable Mr. Crawley. “Peace, woman,” Mr. Crawley counters her
accusations. Trollope writes, surely with a smile on his face: “The bishop jumped out of his chair at
hearing the wife of his bosom called a woman. But he jumped rather in
admiration than in anger.”
There are plots within plots and subplots within sublots, as in all
Trollope novels, like the unfortunate circumstances of Mr. Crawley’s good
friend Reverend Francis Arabin, Dean of the Cathedral at Barchester and his
wife traveling abroad, when their witness would ease the travails of the
accused. We meet again characters we have known from earlier books, like the
whimsical and frustrating Lily Dale, the eminent Dr. Thorne and the gentle Septimus
Harding, former Warden of Hiram’s Hospital, whose death scene is among the most
evocative I have read. “He has no
suffering, no pain, no disturbing cause. Nature simply retires to rest.”
We live in a frenetic world, where style is more substantive than
substance, where celebrity is celebrated more than character We live at a polarized
time when identity politics divide our society and where violence, meanness and
foul language permeate our culture. In this environment, a reader could do
worse than escape into a Trollope novel, and the “spires and towers” of Barsetshire. Readers can become acquainted
(or reacquainted) with “the voices of the
people known to my ears.” Reading Trollope provides relief in a troubled
and tempestuous time. He offers perspective when moral clarity is clouded by
the exhalations of sanctimonious hypocrites, braggarts and nay-sayers.
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