The Warden - Anthony Trollope

In 2004, when I first joined the online book group which became dovegreybooks, and which I still love, everyone was talking about Anthony Trollope.  Over the course of the year, I managed to acquire all of the Barchester Chronicles & Palliser novels.  Fast forward eight years, and... I finally read something by Trollope!  And it wasn't even one of the actual books I bought in 2004, although it was a duplicate of one of them - Penguin sent me their new edition of The Warden (1855) a few months ago, and I decided that was a good excuse to give Anthony T a go.

Verdict: Success.

Several people have told me over the years to skip over The Warden and start with Barchester Towers, because The Warden was dull or pedestrian.  My friend Will expostulated with some warmth about how much he'd hated it at school - but by then I was already halfway through the novel and LOVING it.

On the face of it, the subject matter isn't of huge excitement and relevance to 2012.  A complicated combination of vague wills and inflation means that clergymen are benefiting from legacies intended for the charitable assistance of later generations.  Mr. Septimus Harding is one such clergyman - the warden of some almshouses, collecting £800 a year, and thus far more than the one shilling and sixpence given daily to the twelve old and infirm men who live there.

Now, I love the Church of England, but even I couldn't call myself gripped by their financial workings 150 years ago.  At least, not in the hands of any other author.  In The Warden, it scarcely matters what the issue is - what matters is the way Trollope uses it.  While some people value Dickens as a social reformer rather than a comic writer (I am the reverse), I find Trollope's touch much more palatable.  If this scenario had appeared in a Dickens novel, the warden would be called Mr. Grabsomecash, a cackling, acquisitive, unholy man.  And that would be fine, because he'd offset it with brilliant dialogue and hilarious grotesques, but it wouldn't have shone any very realistic light upon the issue.  Trollope, ingeniously, combines his evident belief that reform is needed with a character who is the opposite of conniving, money-grabbing, or selfish.  At the start of the novel, after Mr. Harding has been accepting £800 a year for quite a long period, the idea that he is doing the wrong thing 'has never sullied his quiet, or disturbed his conscience.'  Things soon change...

Heading the charge is John Bold, social reformer, who (despite his Dickensian name) is a subtle combination of forthright and bashful.  He isn't directly affected by the almshouse dispute, but is the sort of left-wing gent who views all disputes as his personal business.  He is idealistic, but also (you would have seen this coming, had I mentioned that Mr. Harding has an eligible young daughter, Eleanor) in love.  Which gives excuses for wonderful honourable-young-lady speeches like this:

"Mr. Bold," said she, "you may be sure of one thing; I shall always judge my father to be right, and those who oppose him I shall judge to be wrong.  If those who do not know him oppose him, I shall have charity enough to believe that they are wrong, through error of judgement; but should I see him attacked by those who ought to know him, and to love him, and revere him, of such I shall be constrained to form a different opinion."  And then curtseying low she sailed on, leaving her lover in anything but a happy state of mind.

You can't imagine Kim Kardashian or the cast of The Only Way Is Essex handling the situation in quite the same way, can you?

Septimus Harding has another daughter, Susan, but one not quite so close to his heart - largely because she is married to the ferociously logical and unpleasant archdeacon (she cannot bring herself to call him by any name other than 'archdeacon'.)  There can be no character so frustratingly awful as one who uses 'common-sense' instead of compassion, logic in place of love - and the archdeacon, Dr. Grantly, is one of those.  He is Mr. Bold's equal and opposite, forthright in defending Mr. Harding's right to receive his £800 a year, brooking no compromise on the topic.  When Mr. Harding wishes to find out whether he is morally and legally entitled to the money he receives (which nobody really seems to know) Dr. Grantly blinds him with syllogisms and declares that Mr. Harding will be abandoning the church if he does not continue to accept the money.  Yet even with Dr. Grantly, Trollope is charitable, noting towards the end of The Warden that:

We fear that he is represented in these pages as being worse than he is; but we have had to do with his foibles, and not with his virtues.  We have seen only the weak side of the man, and have lacked the opportunity of bringing him forward on his strong ground.

And he goes on to list his virtues, alongside his vices.  For Trollope is scrupulously fair in The Warden.  Right and wrong are not clearly demarcated, and even the right things are done for wrong reasons, and vice versa.

The Warden is largely the exploration of Mr. Harding's conscience, his craving for privacy, his sense of duty, and his love for Eleanor and the men of the almshouse.  It is all subtle and generous, and in a beautifully lilting prose.  I can see the threads of Jane Austen more clearly than I have in any other Victorian writer; Trollope values the balance and measure of sentences as much as Austen did.  The issue is no longer relevant, and perhaps never was to the majority of the country, but people have not changed.  Anybody familiar with disputes local or national will recognise the various characters here, or at least some of their traits.  At the centre of it is the wonderfully complex figure of Mr. Harding, thrust into a limelight he loathes and forced to defend a position he is beginning to consider indefensible.  If the rest of the Barchester Chronicles just gets better, then I'm excited to read on!

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A Review Round-up

It's one of those posts where I post teeny tiny reviews of some titles for A Century of Books which (for whatever reason) don't warrant full reviews.  It's really just so I have somewhere to link from the main list, but do jump in with your thoughts nonetheless!

The Westminster Alice (1902) by Saki
It's Lewis Carroll's Alice, but re-imagined with various political figures from the turn of the century!  A fun idea, and some bits I found amusing, but mostly it went right over my head.  I'd heard of most of the people - Chamberlain, Balfour, Cecil etc. - but I don't know the ins and outs of their activities in 1902.  But it was diverting enough, and under 50 pages...

What It Means To Marry (1914) by Margaret Scharlieb
For my next chapter, I'm reading a few different people discoursing on marriage from the 1910s and '20s.  They mostly divide into the 'marriage is holy' and the 'free love ahoy' camps - this one falls in the former, but Scharlieb is always a bit of a doom-monger as well...

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) by Margaret Murray
This was a rather credulous account of medieval witchcraft, which I read for my chapter on Lolly Willowes.  It was a speedy read because I skipped all the untranslated Latin and Medieval French...

The Corner That Held Them (1948) by Sylvia Townsend Warner
I love Warner sometimes, but this novel covering decades in the life of a medieval nunnery really, really bored me.  And yet it was her favourite of her books, and I know some people who adore it.  Odd.

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Song for a Sunday

Have I ever pointed you in the direction of Lindsey Butler's beautiful take on 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' before?   No?  Well, it's on Soundcloud here (no video available, as far as I'm aware, of the whole song.)

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Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy Weekend!  I'm off home for a week and a bit - next Saturday is a party for Mum and Dad's anniversary, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to enjoy a week at home with Sherpa.  Mum promises me that Sherpa is looking forward to me coming... I'm going to fool myself into believing it.

I'll try to keep posting while I'm at home, but it might be a bit more sporadic.

1.) The blog post - is Alice's lovely post about the prospect of reading Ivy Compton-Burnett - including a quotation from Virginia Woolf on ICB which somehow I had never read before.

2.) The link - I know some people don't have the high tolerance for cute pictures of cats that I have (it's why the internet was invented!) but I doubt even the hardest heart could resist ALL of the 50 cute pictures found here.  My favourite is actually the one above, entirely cat-less.  (You might have to click to enlarge it.)

3.) The book - John Murray/Hodder & Stoughton recently sent me George Bernard Shaw's Love Among the Artists.  You know how I love a reprint series, especially if the reprints in question are slightly unusual choices.  I hadn't heard of this, but I'm definitely keen to read more GBS, particularly one which will cross 1900 of my Century of Books list (although written in 1881).  It's about 'three wayward geniuses', according to the blurb - two pianists and an actress, contrasted with socialites at whom Shaw pokes fun.  Sounds great!  More info on Love Among the Artists here, although I've had a hunt without being able to find the other reprints that they're doing in this series (and have lost the sheet they sent me.)

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Happy 30th Anniversary, Our Vicar & Our Vicar's Wife

I've posted this photo before, but I loved it - and it seems appropriate, because today is the 30th anniversary for my Dad and Mum, a.k.a Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife.  Join with me in wishing them a hearty congratulations!

(l-r) Colin, Anne, Peter, me (playing outside: Sherpa)

And perhaps we can cheer them on their day by recommending our favourite married couples in fiction?  Mine are either Ian and Felicity from Denis Mackail's Greenery Street or Dahlia and the narrator in A.A. Milne's early sketches, collected in Those Were The Days.

(Incidentally, this is my 1502nd post - I was intending to do a little celebration for my 1500th, but obviously it just passed me by...)

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Five From the Archive (no.7)

I was thinking about doing a FFTA about unmarried women, because I've read a lot of those in the past year or so, and I imagine that one day I will - but I thought it might be more interesting, and more unusual, to select books about pairs of women.  Because there turned out to be a few in my reviews archive.  None of these are about romantic pairings (well... one could be, but it's not overtly) but instead female friendships (and, er, unfriendships.)  It's a surprisingly rich and varied vein of the books I've read - well, five of them at least! - and I'd be interested to hear your suggestions.  As always, the books don't have to be novels - one of mine is not, for starters.  On with the show!

Five... Books About Pairs of Women

1.) Two Serious Ladies (1943) by Jane Bowles

In short: A dry, barbed, wonderfully strange account of Miss Goering and Mrs. Copperfield, whose eccentric lives only overlap for a few moments.

From my review: "In many ways the novel doesn't follow any progression at all - the ladies merely experience a great deal, whether grasping at it enthusiastically or raising an ambivalent eyebrow at life.  Bowles' astonishing talent is creating a dynamic that, if not unique, is highly unusual - strange, surreal, and yet grounded to the mundane.  Her ear for dialogue is astonishing - dialogue which is almost never realistic, but always striking."

2.) Fair Play (1989) by Tove Jansson

In short: Two artists live on an island together, in this set of calm vignettes.

From my review: "Each chapter has a small incident occur, and Jansson wraps her delicious prose around it. By the end she has provided a beautiful portrait of an unconventional couple, co-dependent and close rather than affectionate."

3.) Keeping Up Appearances (1928) by Rose Macaulay

In short: Half-sisters Daisy (30, shy, secretly a popular novelist under a pseudonym) and Daphne (25, self-assured intellectual) try to mingle in the same social circles, with mixed success.

From my review: "Though Keeping Up Appearances isn't as funny as Crewe Train, nor quite as memorable, it does present a clever idea. Because, dear reader, I haven't told you the central concept which surprises the reader and twists the interpretation completely, which comes about halfway through the novel."

4.) Sex Education (2002) by Janni Visman

In short: Two women grow up together, but their friendship turns to rivalry...

From my review: "It's a presentation of the rivalry between friends, and the damaging effects of jealousy - but a quirkier edge would have catapaulted the novel into a higher league. I've no idea how the quirkiness could have been added - but obviously Visman did, because she delivered it in Yellow."

5.) Joyce & Ginnie: the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham (1997)

In short: well, it's the letters of Joyce Grenfell and Virginia Graham!

From my review: "The exchange of letters between the two women spans many, many years, and offers a unique perspective upon the lives of each - life as they wished to convey it to their closest friend. Without the modesty (assumed or otherwise) requisite for autobiography, or the idolatry of biography, reading letters may feel a little like encroaching upon a friendship, but also allows closer and more genuine understanding of the women than available elsewhere."


And.... over to you!

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'A Household Book' - A.A. Milne

As promised yesterday, here is the essay 'A Household Book' from A.A. Milne's Not That It Matters.  It might come with some surprises - unless you happened to read Peter's comments yesterday...

Once on a time I discovered Samuel Butler; not the other two, but the one who wrote The Way of All Flesh, the second-best novel in the English language.  I say the second-best, so that, if you remind me of Tom Jones or The Mayor of Casterbridge or any other that you fancy, I can say that, of course, that one is the best.  Well, I discovered him, just as Voltaire discovered Habakkuk, or your little boy discovered Shakespeare the other day, and I committed my discovery to the world in two glowing articles.  Not unnaturally the world remained unmoved.  It knew all about Samuel Butler.

Last week I discovered a Frenchman, Claude Tillier, who wrote in the early part of last century a book called Mon Oncle Benjamin, which may be freely translated My Uncle Benjamin.  (I read it in the translation.)  Eager as I am to be lyrical about it, I shall refrain.  I think that I am probably safer with Tillier than with Butler, but I dare not risk it.  The thought of your scorn at my previous ignorance of the world-famous Tillier, your amused contempt because I have only just succeeded in borrowing the classic upon which you were brought up, this is too much for me.  Let us say no more about it.  Claude Tillier - who has not heard of Claude Tillier?  Mon Oncle Benjamin - who has not read it, in French or (as I did) in American?  Let us pass on to another book.

For I am going to speak of another discovery; of a book which should be a classic, but is not; of a book of which nobody has heard unless through me.  It was published some twelve years ago, the last-published book of a well-known writer.  When I tell you his name you will say, "Oh yes!  I love his books!" and you will mention So-and-So, and its equally famous sequel Such-and-Such.  But when I ask you if you have read my book, you will profess surprise, and say that you have never heard of it.  "Is it as good as So-and-So and Such-and-Such?" you will ask, hardly believing that this could be possible.  "Much better," I shall reply - and there, if these things were arranged properly, would be another ten per cent. in my pocke.  But believe me, I shall be quite content with your gratitude.

Well, the writer of the book is Kenneth Grahame.  You have hard of him?  Good, I thought so.  The books you have read are The Golden Age and Dream Days.  Am I not right?  Thank you.  But the book you have not read - my book - is The Wind in the Willows.  Am I not right again?  Ah, I was afraid so.

The reason why I knew you had not read it is the reason why I call it "my" book.  For the last ten or twelve years I have been recommending it.  Usually I speak about it at the my first meeting with a stranger.  It is my opening remark, just as yours is something futile about the weather.  If I don't get it in at the beginning, I squeeze it in at the end.  The stranger has got to have it some time.  Should I ever find myself in the dock, and one never knows, my answer to the question whether I had anything to say would be, "Well, my lord, if I might just recommend a book to the jury before leaving."  Mr. Justice Darling would probably pretend that he had read it, but he wouldn't deceive me.

For one cannot recommend a book to all the hundreds of people whom one has met in ten years without discovering whether it is well known or not.  It is the amazing truth that none of those hundreds had heard of The Wind in the Willows until I told them about it.  Some of them had never of Kenneth Grahame; well, one did not have to meet them again, and it takes all sorts to make a world.  But most of them were in your position - great admirers of the author and his two earlier famous books, but ignorant thereafter.  I had their promise before they left me, and waited confidently for their gratitude.  No doubt they also spread the good news in their turn, and it is just possible that it reached you in this way, but it was to me, none the less, that your thanks were due.  For instance, you may have noticed a couple of casual references to it, as if it were a classic known to all, in a famous novel published last year.  It was I who introduced that novelist to it six months before.  Indeed, I feel sometimes that it was I who wrote The Wind in the Willows, and recommended it to Kenneth Grahame... but perhaps I am wrong here, for I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance.  Nor, as I have already lamented, am I financially interested in its sale, an explanation which suspicious strangers require from me sometimes.

I shall not describe the book, for no description would help it.  But I shall just say this; that it is what I call a Household Book.  By a Household Book I mean a book which everybody in the household loves and quotes continually ever afterwards; a book which is read aloud to every new guest, and is regarded as the touchstone of his worth.  But it is a book which makes you feel that, though everybody in the house loves it, it is only you who really appreciate it as its true value, and that the others are scarcely worthy of it.  It is obvious, you persuade yourself, that the author was thinking of you when he wrote it.  "I hope this will please Jones," were his final words, as he laid down his pen.

Well, of course, you will order the book at once.  But I must give you one word of warning.  When you sit down to it, don't be so ridiculous as to suppose that you are sitting in judgment on my taste, still less on the genius of Kenneth Grahame.  You are merely sitting in judgment on yourself... You may be worthy; I do not know.  But it is you who are on trial.

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