Barchester Towers

After The Warden, another excellent visit to Barsetshire, and another book I had a difficult time putting down. Trollope improves here on his gentle wittiness, absolutely delightful small-scale ecclesiastical Machiavellian scheming, and complicated human dynamics.

I'm quite enjoying the way Trollope interacts with the reader in these books, too: it almost always made me smile. And he continues to create some extremely memorable characters, from the delightfully odd Miss Thorne to the sneaky creature Mr. Slope and the not-to-be-messed-with Mrs. Proudie.

Looking forward to heading back to Barsetshire before too long ...

Having read The Warden last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, I had determined to read the next book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire this year. I did not know what to expect, but was delighted to find Mr. Harding and his daughter, Eleanor, waiting for the next phase of their story, along with some new characters and story lines.

The book is worth reading if for nothing more than the names of it’s characters, which leave no doubt in the mind as to occupation or moral qualities. Dr. Fillgrave must surely make the most somber smile, and who would have difficulty determining the greatest failing of Mrs. Proudie? In fact, his humor is scattered throughout the novel in equal portions with his wisdom.

Oh, husbands, oh, my marital friends, show more what great comfort is there to be derived from a wife well obeyed.

Can’t find any fault with the humor or the wisdom there, can you? But, beyond the playfulness, there are some serious issues at work, including the struggle for power that takes place between the two factions in the church. Trollope understood the political nature of the Church in his time, and the shenanigans were as bad as some we see in the political arena of our own. I certainly felt that neither side was as interested in serving the higher good or the people of the parish so much as their own interests and advancements.

There are representatives of the high church in the Grantly faction, Tory by political leaning, and the newly established Proudie faction, Whigs, unfortunately, represented by not only the spineless Bishop Proudie and his oppressive wife, but also by our most obvious villain, Obadiah Slope (his name makes you cringe, does it not?). Trollope is a master of description and I had no difficulty in reading Mr. Slope’s character in his demeanor.

His hair is lank and of a dull pale reddish hue. It is always formed into three straight, lumpy masses, each brushed with admirable precision and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them. His face is nearly of the same color as his hair, though perhaps a little redder; it is not unlike beef--beef, however, one would say, of a bad quality. His forehead is capacious and high, but square and heavy and unpleasantly shiny.

He goes on to describe his mouth and his nose (which is “spongy and porous”). I dare say, we walk away with a complete picture of Slope and we cannot mistake him, even on this first meeting, for a man we would ever wish to invite to preach us a sermon or take tea with us. That Eleanor attempts to give Slope the benefit of the doubt is a testament to the fairness of her character.

To my delight, Trollope has also created Mr. Harding, a truly good man who attempts to always take the high road, and while perhaps a little naive, garners all our admiration and hope. On the female side, we have the independent thinking Eleanor Bold and the lascivious Signora Neroni.

I can promise that Trollope has taken what might have been a very dry subject in the politics of the church, and woven a complete and never boring tale of the people affected by it. This is only my second Trollope, but I found it both interesting and easy to read. It has a bit more character development and length than The Warden and would stand alone as a story, but I find that having read The Warden added a depth to the novel that I believe would have been missing otherwise. I am planning to continue the series next year with Dr. Thorne, and I am happy to have come to Trollope. Late to the table, but the feast is still fine. show less

Where I got the book: audiobook on Audible. I swear Audible is keeping me going these days!

I bought this book because it’s reputed to be Trollope at his finest. Not having read that cynical old Victorian for some twenty-five years and having only read some of his purely political London-based novels, it felt a little different to be suddenly immersed in the far more restrained politics of clergymen in a small cathedral town. So it was a little while before I found my feet—and then suddenly I remembered why I’d liked Trollope in the first place.

There is a new Bishop of Barchester, and he is what Trollope calls Petticoated—but he’s not one hundred percent under the thumb of his wife. There’s an important matter of preferment show more to be decided—a job bringing with it a nice house and the then enormous sum of £1,200 a year—and the other prize in play is the lovely, widowed Eleanor Bond who also, oddly enough, brings £1,200 a year with her. The circling vultures with their beady eyes on these rich pickings are the odious chaplain Mr. Slope and the good-natured, heartless, scheming Stanhope siblings. There’s also a whole subtext about evangelical versus traditional Anglican church practices which will, alas, be lost on most modern readers, but since the main thrust of the novel lies in the scheming and the wooing of Eleanor, it’s easy enough to concentrate on that and not worry about the clerical details, which are not heavily emphasized.

I found Eleanor as wet as most Victorian heroines—quite literally since she bursts into tears a lot—and, alas, Mr. Arabin is way too noble and reserved to be really fascinating. My absolute favorites, by a long chalk, were Bertie Stanhope and Madeline Vesey-Neroni who were ADORABLE in their cynical worldliness and really, at the end of the day, quite likeable as human beings. Mr. Slope is the perfect slimy Victorian Pharisee whom everyone sees through in about three seconds flat, and the power struggle between Bishop and Mrs. Proudie is as entertaining as such things usually are.

I actually found myself wishing in the end that the novel was twice as long. We seemed to get to the resolution of the story much too quickly - that’s the beauty of taking your Victorians in the form of audiobooks! There were whole chapters where I grinned and/or laughed out loud throughout. Narrator David Timson was so utterly perfect that I’m very disappointed to find I can’t get the whole series with him as narrator on Audible. Nonetheless, I’m diving in and stepping backward to listen to the first book in the Barsetshire Chronicles, and then the rest. I’ve been away from Trollope for far too long.

UPDATE: I was horrified, on going back and checking, to discover that I'd listened to an abridged version. No wonder it seemed too short! That won't do at all. I'll be listening to the unabridged version as soon as I can get my hands on it. Still, for those who want to cut out the Victorian waffle and get to the interesting bits, I'd heartily recommend this version. show less

Trollope is a giant among writers. This is one of his best efforts - although the story progresses without strain or apparent effort. The novel is often funny. The characters are thoroughly drawn. We sense their motivations and prejudices, mainly through the wonderful language with which Victorians were so adept and precise, and which Trollope magically captured.
The awful are painfully rendered such as Obadiah Slope; the humane and the good shine like Mrs. Eleanor Bold and Mr. Harding. The star of the show is the great support role of Madeleine Stanhope (aka the lame and beautiful Madame Neroni).
We should never forget that Trollope got up before sunrise every morning to write his fabulous novels, and after the allotted time set aside show more for this work, began his other job of running the British Post Office. In today's authoritarian and overbearing world of work, one imagines that he would be reprimanded for exercising his great talents beyond the scope of the civil service. show less

A delightful and funny novel which made me wonder how much one can put Trollope's social observations into a current state of affairs if it comes to schemes to gain power and influence. I love his insight into the human psyche, both of men and women. Parts reminded me of Woody Allen and how he depicts speechlessness and confusion in otherwise very articulate persons and how one’s own perception so much differs from that of others.

Reading in an illustrated, carefully edited small full cloth book with gilded edges and ribbon page marker was an extra delight.

How I have enjoyed living in the world of Barchester for the last few days. Trollope has a genius for names: Sir Omicron Pie, the famous physician with his name made up of Greek letters; Dr. Fillgrave, another physician (whose skills one just might not trust); Farmer Greenacre; and my favourite, Reverend and Mrs. Quiverful with their 14 hungry mouths to feed. His quiver was full indeed!

The political jostlings and jugglings of a group of clergymen is as nothing to the power of one Bishop's wife. Mrs. Proudie is a force to be reckoned with as she goes toe to toe with Obadiah Slope, her Bishop's chaplain. And there's another name: Slope is indeed on a slippery slope with his sloping around Barchester, trying to make preemptive strikes in show more his power struggle with Mrs. Proudie.

In the midst of it all is the beautiful widow, Eleanor Bold, with her very comfortable income, a prize sought after by those seeking power or a way out of their financial impecuniousness. She gets buffeted between the thunderous blustering of her brother in law, the Archdeacon Grantly, and the strangely seductive and odd Stanhope family, who hope to fob off Bertie Stanhope on her. Will she find true love? Will her reputation and virtue remain intact? But she's no milquetoast or shrinking violet. Eleanor Bold can haul off and hit an offending swain a good one as well as defending herself verbally when pushed too far. Beautiful, sweet, and gentle she may be but she's no pushover.

The best discovery in reading Trollope for the first time was to learn how wonderfully funny he is. He has such a good comedic eye, whether he is having a farmer's son trip his own horse while attempting to stab a sack of flour, or playing with the disparity between the classes with all their attendant snobberies. He plays Hob with the Church of England, poking fun at high church affectations while defrocking plain church piety. Although he wrote in the 1800s, his awareness of human foibles is fresh and pertinent. I greatly look forward to the rest of this series. show less

This will surely rank among my favorite reads of the year. Who knew that the manoeuvrings, machinations, and intricacies of 19th century church politics could be so utterly compelling? But that's really only a small part of the story: Mr. Trollope's true gifts to his readers are the characters so fully realized, and the insights into them and into the human condition that the author shares directly with the reader. And as so many others have written, the story is performed to perfection by the incomparable Simon Vance.

The novel opens as the Bishop of Barchester lays dying. His son, Archdeacon Grantly, hopes to be appointed to the position, but it is awarded instead to Dr. Proudie, who arrives in Barchester with his formidable wife and show more her protege, Mr. Slope. This new contingent's top-down, low church declarations and insinuations rankle the established high church clergy, and lead the outspoken Dr. Grantly to wage a war of sorts with the Bishop's set. Meanwhile, the Bishop himself has been effectively neutered by his wife, who looks forward to reigning as de-facto Bishop, and by his chaplain Mr. Slope, who has the same ambitions. Initially, Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope are of the same mind, however eventually, Barchester Close proves not to be big enough for the both of them, and they wage their own bitter war for the Bishop's obedience. The plot, however, revolves mainly around gentle Mr. Harding (the father-in-law of Archdeacon Grantly), who may or may not be restored to the post of Warden of Hiram's Hospital he relinquished in The Warden, and his daughter Eleanor, recently widowed and in possession of such a fortune as to make her a highly desirable prospective wife. Among Eleanor's suitors are the odious Mr. Slope, and the hapless Ethelbert Stanhope, whose father Dr. Stanhope is recalled to Barchester by the new regime from his 12 year-long convalescence from a sore throat in Italy. The entire Stanhope family returns to Barchester, including Mrs. Stanhope, who rarely appears before dinnertime, daughter Charlotte, who keeps the family running, the idle son Ethelbert, and daughter Madeline, the self-titled La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni, who following a marriage and crippling accident now reclines on a sofa full-time and ensnares men like a funnel spider. Eleanor's connections with Mr. Slope, which in her mind are slight, enrage the Grantly faction, and the perpetuated and perhaps willful misunderstanding provides much of the book's conflict.

The book was just a delight from start to finish, with the author and the reader sharing the great comedy the ridiculous characters provide, and their small and large sufferings, which the author draws with great compassion. Along with the story are pearls of wisdom from which the reader can learn about marital harmony (obedience to and compliance with the wife in all things), and the fate of the characters in the hands of the novelist as anticipated by the reader ("And here, perhaps, it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers, by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favorite personage."). This last is used to assure the reader early on that Eleanor Bold will not make herself a fool by marrying either of her two dubious suitors, though the wooing and its attendant gossip occupy much of the narrative.

I think LTers will appreciate my favorite moment from listening to this book: yesterday I was in the car with my 11 year-old, who was thoroughly engrossed in her own book. She is one of those readers who, when so occupied is completely deaf to the world, so I asked her if it would be okay if I listened to my book. She said it would, but not two minutes later she exclaimed, "Mom, that's Simon Vance!!!" Our very first foray into audiobooks was years and years ago when I bought a couple of the Green Knowe books. I had not remembered that they were narrated by Mr. Vance, but my daughter recognized him instantly, and proceeded to tell me what a wonderful performer he was! That was the cherry on top, as it were, of the delightful treat that was Barchester Towers. show less