Victorian readers enjoyed reunions with familiar characters in Anthony Trollope’s final entry into his Barsetshire series, The Last Chronicle of Barset, claimed by Trollope to be his favorite of all his novels. He approaches his topic of everyday people living everyday lives not with the melodrama of contemporary Charles Dickens, nor with the judgmental tone of another contemporary, William Makepeace Thackeray. Instead, he simply tells their stories, capturing his readers’ intellectual curiosity at first as casual observers, and later as an involved and invested audience.
As the title suggests, the novel aimed to bring to a literal close the stories of families and couples by then well-known to Trollope fans, particularly that of the poverty-stricken but always pious Josiah Crawley, curate of Hogglestock. He is accused of theft when he cashes a £20 check left in a wallet lost in his house by Lord Lufton’s agent, Mr. Soames. He claims the money was a gift from another familiar character, Dean Arabin, but he is arraigned for trial.
Mrs. Proudie, appropriately named and long familiar to readers as the egotistical power behind her husband’s bishopric, leads the attack against Crawley in her normal tenacious manner. While other wives in the novel, including Archdeacon Grantly’s spouse, take their husbands to task, they do it privately. Mrs. Proudie does not care who witnesses her regular attacks on her husband, and he seems to have at last had enough of her inappropriate remarks. In one notable scene, he actually wonders what life might be like should she die, assuming that because she is younger, he will never know. When she dies soon after of a heart attack, readers sympathize with his feelings of guilt but also feel some relief for him. Trollope’s third-person narrator does not judge Proudie but rather allows readers to observe him in a prayer that God might forgive him for being glad that his wife is gone.
As the action both inside and outside the courtroom rises, romantic subplots unfold. Readers once again hope that Lily Dale, the spinster heroine of The Small House at Allington (1864), fifth in the series, will at last return the attentions of the ever-faithful Johnny Eames. However, Trollope disappoints them but pleases critics by allowing Lily to remain true to her character. Having previously chosen over Johnny’s attentions those of a lover who abandons her for a titled woman, Lily cannot envision herself as anything other than independent and single. For Trollope, her maintaining this self-perception remains a heroic act, falling into the category of heroism “painted from nature” that he referenced in The Claverings (1867) as difficult for readers to accept.
She explains it beautifully when Eames begs her to marry him, and she replies with an emphatic “No!” Eames asks why she will not marry when she no longer loves the jilter, and she replies, “I cannot tell, dear. It is so. If you take a young tree and split it, it still lives, perhaps. But it isn’t a tree. It is only a fragment.” He asks her to be his fragment, to which she agrees, as long as he relegates her to “some corner of your garden. But I will not have myself planted out in the middle, for people to look at.”
While this couple does not unite in marriage, and the Proudies’ unhappy marriage is undone, Trollope continues to characterize the Crawley marriage as a strong one, mainly due to Mrs. Crawley’s unquestioning love of her husband. At one point he feels he must give up his appointment, despite the threat of loss of income to his family. Filled with self-pity, he thinks only of his own suffering, romanticizing it through comparisons to biblical characters. Where Mrs. Proudie might have castigated such presumption, Mrs. Crawley only heaps more love and respect on her husband.
Other relationships include that of the nouveaux riches Dobbs Broughtons and the pretentious Mrs. Van Siever, whose false front hair and curls symbolize her shallow existence. Their marriage remains a purely commercial venture. However, the uplifting romance by Archdeacon Grantly’s son, Major Henry Grantly, with Crawley’s daughter, Grace, proves satisfying to the romantic reader. Although Grantly protests the union, Henry perseveres and Grace eventually wins the day with the archbishop, allowing one healthy marriage to proceed.
During the disagreement of Grantly with his son, Crawley naturally feels alienated from his mentor, and conflict escalates. However, Mrs. Arabin, formerly known to readers as Eleanor Harding, steps in, claiming she had included the check in a letter to Crawley sent by her husband. Once proven innocent, Crawley moves from poverty to comfort, proving the rewards of virtue, through an appointment to the parish of Eleanor’s late father, Mr. Septimus Harding.
Trollope includes a touching funeral scene, a celebration of the life of the most beloved of all Barset characters. Harding had influenced every individual’s life as the former warden of Hiram’s Hospital in the city of Barchester. He reminds readers of the series’ beginnings when he had followed in the footsteps of his mentor Bishop Grantly, as unworldly and devoutly just a man as his son, the present archdeacon, is worldly and moved by convenience. Trollope’s reminder that virtues from the past can help shape the future proves a vital theme of the novel.
The Last Chronicle of Barset remains one of Trollope’s most widely read and enjoyed works. Many readers would agree with his closing comments that include the pronouncement, “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 are known to my ears, and the pavements of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps.”
Bibliography
Gill, Stephen. Introduction to The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, ix–xxii.
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
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