The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Much ado about little of interest

The Warden, published in 1855, is the third novel published by prolific British author Anthony Trollope. It is also the first novel in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series, a string of a half dozen novels that are among his most beloved works..

Centuries ago, in the fictional English county of Barsetshire, a wealthy man named Mr. Hiram left his estate to the church, with the proscription that a portion of his land would be used to establish an old folk’s home for a dozen retired laborers. A small allowance would be granted to each resident, while the rest of the income from Hiram’s lands would go to an appointed warden of the institution. In the 19th century, a minister named Mr. Harding is made warden of Hiram’s Hospital, where he enjoys a cushy job with lucrative pay. The value of Hiram’s lands has greatly increased since medieval times, and the income resulting from rents and such amounts to a salary of about 800 pounds a year for the lucky warden. Over the centuries, however, there has been no cost-of-living increase for the poor inmates, who still receive the allowance mandated in Hiram’s will, now amounting to a mere pittance. A young doctor sees this as an injustice, and files a lawsuit to get more money for the retired laborers. A prideful deacon fights the lawsuit, refusing to let Mr. Harding acquiesce in the least bit to this affront to church authority. Complicating matters is the fact that the doctor and the deacon are involved with Mr. Harding’s two daughters.

This is an ugly story, no matter how much Trollope tries to inject it with quaintness. The whole premise of the plot makes a mountain out of a molehill. At the same time, Trollope makes fun of his own characters, as if to say, “Look at these silly country people, making mountains out of molehills!” If the parties involved would have just sat down together at a table for an hour, I’m sure they could have reached a compromise. Everyone in this book is guilty of some form of stubbornness or idiocy in the matter. About halfway through, the warden’s daughter comes up with some scheme of how she’s going to solve the problem through a martyr-like self-sacrifice. Her friends don’t understand the logic behind her reasoning, and neither did I. The wealthier characters in the story quibble over their morals and their reputations and make self-righteous decisions with no regard for the poor men who are in their charge. Everyone talks as if 800 pounds is a lot of money, but then we’re supposed to believe the warden is poor. He has no savings, despite his free lodgings. How will he ever survive on a fixed income? Who really cares? There’s satire here, but it’s satire that comes across as rather tone-deaf. We’re supposed to sympathize with Harding and his moral quandary, but neither he nor Trollope seem to care at all about the poor. The latter simply sees poverty as a plot device, not as a real social issue.

Based on a handful of Trollope books I’ve read, his writing is similar to that of Balzac. Both authors created vast bodies of work consisting largely of novels of manners that capture and satirize the society of their time and nation. Both are obsessed with financial transactions, legal proceedings, and clerical bureaucracy. Of the two, Balzac is just a lot more fun. For one thing, he has a better sense of humor. Mainly, however, I think I just prefer the Frenchness of Balzac’s fiction to the Britishness of Trollope’s. Victorian British literature, much like the era in which it was written, tends to be priggish, frumpy, and stuffy. Plots must conform to a strict code of moral conventions. French literature was not hampered by such prudish restrictions, and the characters act more like real people, making it more likely that the reader will care about them. I had a hard time caring about any of the characters in The Warden, and reading about their petty squabbles felt like a waste of my time.
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An Editor’s Tales by Anthony Trollope

Overlong tales of publishers dealing with difficult authors

An Editor’s Tales, published in 1870, is a collection of short stories by English author Anthony Trollope. The half dozen stories included here are all narrated by editors of books or literary journals. The stories deal with the publishing business and often center around the editor in question having to deal with a difficult author. For example, there’s the young author who needs nurturing (“Mary Gresley”), the pushy and arrogant author (“Josephine de Montmorenci”), the very nice but unfortunately talentless author (“The Turkish Bath”), the talented scholar with personal problems (“The Spotted Dog”), and the aggressively entitled and litigious author (“Mrs. Brumby”). Having only read a few of Trollope’s novels, I hesitate to generalize about his writing, but he has always seemed to me to be a writer of lighthearted dramedies punctuated by moments of poignancy and pathos. The stories in An Editor’s Tales are of that vein, but in this case most of the attempts at humor fall flat.

I’m guessing the stories assembled in this collection were previously published in magazines, because they don’t read as if they were intended to go together. It’s not necessarily the same editor who narrates each and every story. In all cases, the editor is unnamed, but you can tell they are different people by the publishing companies and literary journals for which they work. For a reason that’s never satisfactorily explained, Trollope has chosen to narrate these stories in the first person plural—what he calls “the editorial we”—which proves to be an annoying convention that wears on the reader’s patience before the first story is even over.

I work in book publishing (I’m not an editor, but I work with editors). The absurd situations in which the editors find themselves in these stories are unfortunately all too true. That ring of truth, however, did not enhance my enjoyment of these stories. Rather, I found the emphasis on unreasonable authors and the nuisances of the publishing industry just depressing rather than funny. “Mrs. Brumby” is a particularly ugly story in which an aggressive harpy of an author with no talent whatsoever demands that her work be published and threatens a lawsuit when her article is rejected. Trollope tries to put a funny spin on that scenario, but it just reads like an arduous ordeal. In “The Panjandrum,” a half dozen pretentious but untalented men and women of letters decide to start a literary journal, but can’t decide what sort of material they want that journal to contain. The story is entirely comprised of their tedious arguments. The fact that all of the stories in this volume are inordinately long does not help matters. More than one of these stories is as lengthy as a novella, and they all feel sluggishly padded with unnecessary filler.

The depiction of women in these stories is iffy. In Victorian England of the 1870s, opportunities for women were very limited in most endeavors. Trollope does admit, however, that literature was one discipline were women could compete with men. These stories, therefore, frequently feature women writers in an era when working female protagonists were almost nonexistent in literature. On the other hand, women are also often singled out as “the problem” in these stories. A woman’s irrational behavior is the cause of an author’s trouble or the obstacle that the editor must overcome. Any crediting of Trollope with feminist leanings for his depiction of women authors would therefore be premature. In fact, one finds little to praise or recommend in An Editor’s Tales. Trollope may be one of England’s most renowned novelists, but in this volume he demonstrates little skill in the art of the

Stories in this collection

Mary Gresley

The Turkish Bath

Josephine de Montmorenci

The Panjandrum

The Spotted Dog

Mrs. Brumby

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The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope

Lackluster dystopian tale of mandatory euthanasia

Anthony Trollope

British author Anthony Trollope is usually known for writing English social dramas along the lines of Charles Dickens. His 1882 novel The Fixed Period, however, is an anomaly amongst Trollope’s prolific output. In this book, Trollope depicts a dystopian future in a fictional land. While its sheer oddity is intriguing, the result, unfortunately, is far from his best work. The Fixed Period is not dark enough to make for good science fiction, not relevant enough to succeed as social criticism, and not funny enough to qualify as satire.

The story takes place in the year 1980. Britannula, a former British colony, is an independent republic in the South Pacific populated by settlers from New Zealand. The narrator, John Neverbend, is the nation’s first president. Entrenched within the Constitution of this burgeoning nation is a law known as the “Fixed Period,” which mandates the euthanization of the elderly, under the reasoning that the prolongation of their lives constitutes a wasteful financial burden upon the state. Upon attaining the age of 67.5 years, each citizen of Britannula will be “deposited” with honors into a “college” (i.e. confined to a sort of country club) where they will live out the final year of their lives, after which they will be gently exsanguinated and their remains cremated. President Neverbend is an unwavering proponent of the Fixed Period. He finds difficulty in implementing the policy, however, when the first honoree shows a reluctance to be executed. This proposed first victim happens to be Neverbend’s best friend and a former legislator who helped him draft the Fixed Period law in the first place, only to have a change of heart later in life. As President Neverbend staunchly insists that the law be carried out, he meets with adamant resistance even within his own family.

In an attempt to liven things up, Trollope works a big cricket match into the plot. I am unfamiliar with the rules of the game, but this seems to be a futuristic version of cricket in which the players employ steam-powered machinery. Other than the occasional steam engine, Trollope isn’t much of a futurist; horses and ships are still the primary means of transportation in 1980.

Even in fictional Britannula, the narrator seems to be the only person in favor of the Fixed Period, so how did it ever become law in the first place? Neverbend’s solitary and unilateral advocacy for this death sentence makes him appear tyrannical, which undermines the sympathy the reader is obviously supposed to feel for him. Dystopian novels like Brave New World, 1984, or Fahrenheit 451 succeed because they examine multiple issues and aspects of society. Trollope’s Fixed Period, on the other hand, is strictly a one-issue dystopia, and is there really any need to discuss this particular issue? The narrative has a few mildly humorous moments, but if this is satire, what exactly would it be satirizing? It’s not like there’s a nation out there that’s actually arguing for this policy. There is some stuff in the plot about Britain messing in the affairs of its former colonies, but in this case the affair in question is so ridiculous it could hardly be applicable to Australia, New Zealand, or Canada.

A novel on voluntary euthanasia, rather than mandatory euthanasia, might actually have served a purpose, but this book just seems useless, and even worse, it’s boring. The narrator reveals his fate early on, so the ending is a foregone conclusion. The tone of the novel is lighthearted enough to make it pretty obvious that no one is going to die. The final few chapters are terribly protracted and repetitive as Trollope relentlessly restates the same points, beating the same dead horse. Readers would be better off avoiding this novelty and enjoying the books for which Trollope was famous, like the Chronicles of Barsetshire series.
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La Vendée by Anthony Trollope

Counterrevolutionary romance

Anthony Trollope

The historical novel La Vendée is not one of English author Anthony Trollope’s more highly regarded works. Originally published in 1850, it was Trollope’s third novel out of the dozens of books he produced during his prolific career. While Trollope mostly wrote novels of manners set in English country villages, stylistically similar to the works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, here he directs his pen farther afield to tackle the French Revolution. More specifically, this novel tells the story of a royalist rebellion against the French Republican government in 1793, commonly known by the name of the region in western France where the uprising took place: la Vendée.

After the Republican revolutionaries overthrew and executed Louis XVI, they established a secular Republican government in Paris, headed by Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. Not everyone in France was pleased about this, however, and many citizens in the provinces were unwilling to give up their Catholic faith and their loyalty to the monarchy. When the new French government sent troops to conscript more soldiers to fight its wars, the Vendeans refused to give up their young men to the Republican cause. Instead, they launched an uprising against the Republican forces, or Blues, as they are called after the color of their uniforms. Trollope depicts la Vendée as a holdout of medieval feudalism where the peasants love and faithfully serve the noblemen who preside over their lands. The story focuses on three nobles—Henri de la Rochejacquelein and Louis Marie de Lescure, both actual historical figures, and Adolphe Denot, a brooding fictional antihero reminiscent of Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. In addition, several characters of the working class also figure prominently in the story, including Jacques Cathelineau, a lowly postillion who becomes a commanding general of the Vendean forces.

Though I don’t know for certain, it seems to me that Trollope likely wrote this novel for serialization because each of the book’s 35 chapters feels unnecessarily drawn out to satisfy a length requirement, as if Trollope were being paid by the word. Though the story is interesting, it would have been a lot livelier if it were not bogged down by so much tedious dialogue. Almost every chapter features some protracted discussion in which a simple theme—“I love my country,” “I love my God,” “I love my woman.”—is repetitively rephrased in order to fulfill the word count.

French authors, while acknowledging the brutality of The Terror, usually celebrate the democratic values of liberté, egalité, and fraternité espoused by the Republican cause. (Balzac was a monarchist exception. His novel Les Chouans covers a similar counterrevolution in Brittany, to better effect than this.) British novelists, however, often favor the monarchy to a fanatical extent. (The Scarlet Pimpernel is a fine example.) Here, Trollope paints a relentlessly rosy picture of the feudalistic class structure that reflects his own beloved English class system. Though war can be a great leveler of classes, sometimes elevating servants, merchants, and laborers like Cathelineau to hero status, such heroes must learn that their rise is finite and temporary, and they mustn’t even think of marrying beyond their station. Trollope provides a very romanticized treatment of the Vendean rebellion—a romantic comedy, really—in which the freedom fighters are constantly victorious. In the epilogue he emphasizes that “La Vendée was never conquered,” but in truth, the Vendeans certainly didn’t triumph either. Trollope is not the least bit sympathetic to the Republican cause, yet the one-sidedness of his novel is less offensive than the fact that it is just rather boring. Readers with an avid interest in the French Revolution will find some tidbits of historical knowledge to appreciate, but the typical Trollope fan should probably steer clear of this one.
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Stories by English Authors: Italy by James Payn, et al.

Manages to make Rome, Venice, and Florence seem dull

Laurence Oliphant

This book of short stories is one of ten volumes in the Stories by English Authors series that was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1896. The five stories included here all take place in Italy, hence the subtitle of this particular volume. In Western civilizations, Italy was traditionally viewed as the world’s wellspring of art, literature, and culture, at least until the late 19th century when it may have been supplanted or at least matched by Paris. Anyone with money or artistic talent was expected to make a pilgrimage to Rome, Florence, and Venice at some point in their lives, and the characters of these stories are no exception. These five works of short fiction are all tales of Brits in Italy. If you’re a lover of Italy yourself you’re unlikely to find much satisfaction here. These stories give very little insight into Italy’s ambience or culture, and are for the most part rather annoying in their concentration on rich people’s petty problems. The characters show little affinity for the country in which they happen to be traveling. Through their eyes it is merely a box on their bucket lists that needs to be checked off.

The book opens with “A Faithful Retainer” by James Payn, in which a rich young Englishman is sent to Italy to get over his gambling vice. This is a boring and predictable piece, with a very thin plot dressed up with weak humor. “Bianca” by W. E. Norris is about a Brit in Venice who’s friendship with an Austrian officer obligates him to assist in the fellow’s elopement with an Italian mistress. In A. Mary F. Robinson’s “Goneril” we find a young woman with the unfortunate name of Gonerilla enjoying an extended sojourn in Florence, where she makes the acquaintance of an older gentleman who takes an interest in her. These first three offerings are all rather formulaic and dull. Italy merely serves as a backdrop for stories that could just as well have been told in England, and in fact have been told many times before by other and better authors.

The best entry in the book, and that’s not saying much, is “The Brigand’s Bride” by Laurence Oliphant. It’s about an English adventurer who goes to Italy seeking excitement and gets involved in the country’s ongoing civil war. He winds up falling in love with the wife of the leader of one of the bandit gangs he’s been commissioned to suppress. This is an amusing romantic tale, but a little slow in pace and longer than it needs to be.

Even Anthony Trollope can’t save this collection. His “Mrs. General Talboys” concerns an Englishwoman who travels to Rome with her daughter, leaving her husband behind. Though she is faithful to her spouse, to others she is vocal in her advocacy of freedom from the conventions of matrimony, an attitude that inadvertently wins her a suitor. The piece is well drawn by Trollope, but he treats his own heroine with such mean-spiritedness you never really care about the characters, and the overall effect is unpleasant.

This is the ninth volume I have read in the Stories by English Authors series, and this book on Italy can rightfully vie with the one on Ireland for worst volume in the series. The only story worth reading is Oliphant’s, and I can only give that one a halfhearted endorsement. In general the series has been a rather lackluster showcase of late 19th-century British fiction, but two volumes, one on Africa and the other on Germany and Northern Europe, are pretty good and worth a look.

Stories in this collection

A Faithful Retainer by James Payn 

Bianca by W. E. Norris 

Goneril by A. Mary F. Robinson 

The Brigand’s Bride: A Tale of Southern Italy by Laurence Oliphant 

Mrs. General Talboys by Anthony Trollope

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Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope

The small-town perils of innocent love
Rachel Ray, a novel by Anthony Trollope, was originally published in 1863. The title character, a young woman of 19, lives with her mother and elder sister, both of whom are widows, in a cottage outside the rural town of Baslehurst, in Devonshire, England. Rachel is beautiful, bright, and well-intentioned, but naive in the ways of love and somewhat defiant or perhaps ignorant of social conventions. A minor scandal erupts when she is seen walking alone with a young man in the town churchyard. The person most upset by this error in judgment is Rachel’s sister, Dorothea Prime, a puritanical Christian who, though having once been married herself, feels it is improper for young ladies to interact with young men when their time would be better spent sewing clothes for the poor. The young man in question is Luke Rowan, who has inherited a share of the local brewery from his departed uncle, and has come from London to learn the ways of hops and malt. Rowan pursues a romance with Rachel, all the while conducting himself in a respectful manner, but when he has a falling out with his bosses at the brewery, rumors are spread which tarnish the reputations of the couple and threaten to stifle their young love in its infancy.

Trollope does a brilliant job of capturing the complex social interactions of everyday small-town life. He details Baslehurst and its environs so vividly the reader soon feels like a resident, and the trials and tribulations of Rachel and Luke assume the importance of the affairs of kings and queens. The supporting cast of characters are as familiar as caricatures and yet as unique and original as the people one might meet in their own hometown. Interesting subplots include a feud between rival ministers, a contentious lawsuit, and a local parliamentary election. It’s all handled in a relatively lighthearted manner. This is not a book to be read with a furrowed brow. Trollope delicately walks a tightrope between acknowledging the magnitude of everyday crises and simultaneously winking at their insignificance. His keen sense of humor is pervasive throughout the book, particularly when he is describing the foul brew produced by the local brewery.

Trollope makes the two young lovers so likeable, the reader can’t help but root for them. At times, however, the opposition to their courtship comes across as more frivolous than formidable, to the point where the incessant quibbling over Rachel’s alleged improprieties or Luke’s rumored debts begins to grow tedious. The circumstances don’t seem to bear enough gravity to merit the book’s 30-chapter length. It runs long in the middle, and could have used a little trimming of the fat. When all is said and done, however, and the covers are closed, the reader will look fondly on the time spent in picturesque Baslehurst, and will miss its quirky inhabitants.

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Trollope, and it certainly won’t be the last. At times I wondered if Balzac had relocated to England and adopted a pseudonym. Like his French contemporary, Trollope combines compelling drama with keen social insight and an intelligent wit. Rachel Ray is a fun and entertaining read that doesn’t take itself too seriously, yet it’s skillfully crafted and substantial enough to transcend the typical Victorian romance.
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