Anthony Trollope’s first installment in his Barsetshire sequence, The Warden, is a quiet novel. Its story of the Reverend Septimus Harding and his struggle with conscience is masterfully presented, without need for grandiose action.

When Harding’s income as warden of Hiram’s Hospital, which cares for 12 elderly men through a medieval charity fund, comes under scrutiny, more is involved than the funds themselves. Trollope convinces readers that Harding had simply never considered the disparity between his own weekly income, furnished by the Bishop of Barchester, and the paltry sum received by the inhabitants of the almshouse hospital. The conflict occurs over who made public that discrepancy.

The reformer is the symbolically named John Bold, a writer for the Jupiter newspaper who denounces the issue as an instance of abuse by the church. Because Bold loves Mr. Harding’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, the tension caused by his investigation and accusation of abuse makes life uncomfortable for all involved. While Eleanor convinces Bold to halt his investigation, other reformers pick up the battle and take on the conservative clerical party and its head, Archdeacon Grantly, who happens to be Mr. Harding’s son-in-law. Harding eventually resigns and moves to Barchester, and Eleanor marries Bold.

In addition to its skillful rendering, The Warden is interesting for several reasons. It represents Trollope’s first entry in a series allowing him to explore his interest in cathedral towns like Winchester, where he lived as a boy. It also reflects his belief system, particularly regarding the type of writing he wanted to do and the themes he hoped to consider.

This is obvious in his characterizations of philosopher Thomas Carlyle as Dr. Pessimist Anticant, and of fellow novelist Charles Dickens as Mr. Popular Sentiment. Trollope saw both as reformers who privileged moral imperialism in the cause of an abstract justice over specific individual honor and conscience, something he could not abide. He also had a rather low opinion of reporters such as Bold, seeking sensationalism at the cost of another’s reputation, and intended the Jupiter to represent The Times, whose investigation of scandals provided source material.

Articles about inflated incomes granted to church officials bothered Trollope, but his autobiography revealed he was just as bothered by the use of innocent men as scapegoats, as they were hardly “the chief sinners in the matter.” One such scandal, that of St. Cross, revealed a misappropriation of church funds leading to the demotion of its master, Francis North, later the earl of Guilford, who had been appointed by his father, the bishop of Winchester.

The nepotism in that case made a defense of the recipient difficult, but no such nepotism existed with Mr. Harding. Trollope obviously admires a man with a conscience, clearly demonstrated in the scene in which Harding testifies before Sir Abraham and states he has joined others in beginning to question the justice of his income and announces he will resign his post, following which Sir Abraham asks him to sleep on that decision. Harding replies, “I have done more than sleep on it . . . I have laid awake upon it, and that night after night. I found I could not sleep upon it; now I hope to do so.”

Bibliography

Gilmour, Robin. Introduction to The Warden by Anthony Trollope. London: Penguin Classics, 1987, vii–xxvi.
Kincaid, James. The Novels of Anthony Trollope. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Smalley, ed. Trollope: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.
Trollope, Anthony. Anthony Trollope: An Autobiography. 1883. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1999.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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