I return from Barsetshire

The Barsetshire novels ***1/2
by Anthony Trollope

I suspect that reading all six Barsetshire novels in one sitting (January 11-April 5, thank you, Kindle, for tracking that kind of info) probably robs them of some of their charm. The formulaic nature of the serialized novel is thrown into higher relief when you read one after another with nothing in between, and so are some of Trollope's weaknesses as a novelist. To wit:

1. Most of Trollope's plots have an obligatory romance in which Trollope seems not much interested. A virtuous maiden, small and brown complexioned, but with a kind of subtle beauty, falls for a rather silly gentleman who is nonetheless rich and can make her life comfortable. The fact that Lily and Bell Dale in two later novels are blondes breaks the monotony only slightly. Trollope's more interesting women are generally not involved in romance plots. Miss Dunstable, the heiress of a fortune built on a quack nostrum, is one of the liveliest and sensible women you'll ever want to meet. She does fall in love and get married, but without any attendant fuss.

2. Trollope has a million-dollar vocabulary--yeah, all the Victorian novelists do--which is kind of fun, but about the sixth time you read "eleemosonary," you feel he's beating it to death.

3. Whatever Trollope has to say about high-church rural Anglican clergy could really be said in about half the number of novels. There are some very fine things in the series, but at something approaching 2,000 pages, they begin to lose their luster, much as eating too many desserts would eventually make you yearn for just a little weak tea and toast. Then, again, Trollope was a working man who was paid by installments (as was Dickens), and that's not much of an inducement to prune one's prose.

So much for the griping. Reading all these novels at a sitting was an interesting experiment, and hasn't destroyed my admiration for my favorite Trollope, "The Eustace Diamonds," or my willingness to read his magnum opus, "The Way We Live Now." Only just not this year.

A chief pleasure of the Barsetshire books is the varied portrait gallery of the diocesan clergy and their troubles. There's Mr. Harding, a not-so-bright warden who plays an invisible cello when he's nervous, but who has a finely tuned moral sense. Archdeacon Grantly, Mr. Harding's son-in-law, is worldly, spoiled, and he might die for his faith, but he would certainly never give up his comforts for it.  Dean Arabin is Mr. Harding's other son-in-law, who nearly swam the Tiber when he was caught in the current of the Oxford Movement. Arabin's friend, Mr. Crawley, is a harsh and dour man, often unhinged, who seems cast in the mold of Calvinism rather than the mild and conventional Media Via of Anglicanism. And there is Bishop Proudie and his bishop-de-facto wife, whose aim it is to impose low-church practices in the diocese.

The novels are full of topical references to the aforementioned Oxford Movement as well as Parliamentary reform of clerical living stipends. Trollope, who prefers to write about legal tangles, does pretty well with mid-nineteenth century church politics (perhaps because he finds plenty of legal wrangles there, such as the disposition of Hiram's Hospital, a medieval establishment the income of which is in dispute as the first novel opens), and the reader can't help noting that Anglicanism then was as full of difficult wrangles and factions as it is now.

More than any novelist I can think of, Trollope is a wonderful guide to Victorian life. He seems to be writing less for an audience of his contemporaries, steeped in their particular social conventions, than those who might run across him decades or centuries later. Some of this comes from his consideration of the long view, as in his portrait of Archdeacon Grantly in the first novel:

The tone of our archdeacon's mind must not astonish us; it has been the growth of centuries of church ascendancy; and though some fungi now disfigure the tree, though there be much dead wood, for how much good fruit have not we to be thankful?

Another stylistic feature that keeps Trollope fresh for modern readers are his observations about human nature: "If we look to our clergymen to be more than men, we shall probably teach ourselves to think that they are less." He is also adept at capturing the kind of petty issues that people latch on to to irritate their neighbors and to aggrandize themselves. In Barchester, the pious low-church faction demands that Sunday be called "the Sabbath" and agitates for trains and post to stop running in honor of the Lord's Day.

I would be remiss if I did not devote a paragraph to Trollope's chapter about Mr. Harding's descent into frail old age, which is among the most beautiful things I have ever read. This is not a turn-on-the-waterworks deathbed chapter; Mr. Harding is still alive at the end of it, but he has come to accept that death is near. Trollope makes him weak in the way we all become weak, through falling and forgetfulness and the irritating fussing of our friends and relations. But there is great dignity in Mr. Harding's infirmity, and this is perceived most clearly by his granddaughter, 5-year-old Posy, who is more sensitive to the old man's frailties than the adults who insist on telling the lies we often tell children, that things aren't so bad. No, Posy tells them, Grandpa won't get out of bed again. He will not play his cello. He will not play cat's cradle. He has left only his steadfast love for his family and for humankind, and Posy is the one quiet and still enough to catch the greatest measure of it.

Finally, I grew very fond of Trollope's tendency to intrude with spoilers in his own work: "But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope." While such leading lights as Henry James abhorred this narrative device, I find it useful and refreshing. OK, whew, I don't need to worry about Eleanor's love life, so I can focus more on Trollope's observations about society and politics. Trollope also occasionally tells the reader how he is going to present information, e.g., through a letter or an eavesdropped conversation, all the while acknowledging that there are other novelistic conventions he might have employed, but he trusts we'll suffer him to tell the story in his own way. These little glimpses of Trollope at his writing desk, making writerly decision in the early morning hours before he went to his day job as a civil servant make a rare intimacy between writer and reader.

Trollope's presence seems to recede in the later novels--perhaps he was running out of steam or anxious to get on with Phineas Finn and the Pallisers--and I missed him.