Smith, Elder and Co. first edition - 1867
I have broken from my Crime-Book Society paperbacks for another Trollope. It's not that long ago that I read The Last Chronicle of Barset, but a recent purchase of the two-volume first edition (the only one I have of the author), meant I simply had to return to one of my favourite authors - that is, for his Barsetshire series. Trollope himself was never quite satisfied with the development of the plot, which consisted of the loss of a cheque, of a charge made against a clergyman for stealing it, and of absolute uncertainty on his part as to the manner in which the cheque had found its way into his hands. I cannot quite make myself believe that even such a man as Mr Crawley could have forgotten how he got it, nor would the generous friend who was anxious to supply his wants have supplied him by tendering the cheque of a third person. Be that as it may, I think the Last Chronicle is one of the most satisfying of all his novels; Trollope wrote, in his Autobiography, 'taking it as a whole I regard this as the best novel I have written'.
The Athenaeum concluded its review of The Small House at Allington by saying, we demand of Mr Trollope that he tells us the further fortunes of its characters. Three years' later, the author commenced The Last Chronicle. It came out in weekly parts between December 1866 and July 1867 - Trollope did not give the plot away, which added to the suspense. One prominent clergyman, so affected, included 'Josiah Crawley' in the prayer for 'all those who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body or estate'! A major reason for its success, and my enjoyment of it, was that The Last Chronicle brought back many of the main characters from the five earlier Barset novels: Bishop and Mrs Proudie; Archdeacon Grantly and his second son Henry; Dean Francis Arabin; Septimus Harding and his two daughters, Susan Grantly and Eleanor Arabin; Mark Robarts and his wife; old and young Lady Lufton (née Lucy Robarts); Adolphus Crosbie; Dr Thorne and his wife, the former Miss Dunstable; John Eames and his never-to-be wife, Lily Dale. And, of course, the whole Crawley family, including the delightful Grace.
Apart from the main story of the disputed origins of the infamous cheque, there are two main themes running though the novel. One, of course, is love, in all its forms. Not carnal but 'romantic'; pure and steadfast. There is the love of Mrs Crawley, Grace and Jane, for their near 'impossible' father. It may be a debilitating love, but it survives throughout the story. One might refer to it as 'dogged' love - the word that sustains Rev Crawley through all his travails. There is the wondrous love of Major Henry Grantly for Grace; the constant devotion of Johnny Eames for Lily Dale; the deep familial love between old Mr Harding and his two daughters; the almost spiritual, as well as practical, love of Rev Crawley for the bricklayers and other labourers at Hoggle End; even Miss Prettyman, Grace Crawley's school employer says, I love you as though you were my own.
Secondly, there is stubbornness (doggedness not pig-headedness). Above all, there is Rev. Crawley, who is stubborn from beginning to the end. It is difficult to admire this when the effects on his family are so severe. As Mark Robarts thought, behind Mr Crawley's humility was a crushing pride...there was something radically wrong within him, which had put him in antagonism with all the world, and which produced these never-dying grievances. On the other hand, Archdeacon Grantly's stubbornness (with regard to his son's potential marriage to a 'poor' girl with a probable thief as a father) conceals a kind, paternal heart. His son, Henry, is equally, if not more inflexible. One could argue that Lily Dale's stubbornness (writing in her private book, 'Lilian Dale, - Old Maid') comes across too often as mere priggishness - her creator certainly levelled that charge against her. Even Grace Crawley stubbornly refuses to take money from Lily to buy a present for her mother. Dr Tempest, also refuses to do what Mrs Proudie wishes as regards Mr Crawley. "A most stubborn and ungentlemanlike man...he is worse than the archdeacon", she says. As Mrs Susan Grantley says of her husband and her son, they are both guilty of cross-grainedness. "It's dogged as does it" could well be the catch-phrase for the whole tale.
Trollope peoples his story with realistic, and often delightful, minor characters - the school mistresses, the Prettymans, where Grace works; Mr George Walker, the attorney of Silverbridge; Dr Tempest, the Rector of Silverbridge; the oh-so-weak Bishop Proudie; Mr John Toogood, of Gray's Inn, who lived in Tavistock Square, where once I boarded at the university Hall of Residence; Sir Raffle Buffle, who rarely gets the upper hand with his subordinate John Eames. Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful, both under Mrs Proudie's massive thumb.
As for the two main young ladies in the story - they are so different.
Grace Crawley - 19-year's-old, in spite of her poverty, her shabby outward apparel, and a certain thin, unfledged, unrounded form of person, a want of fulness in the lines of her figure, she was the prettiest girl in that part of the world. Grace never gave up, even during the sorest of trials, and thoroughly deserves her happy ending. Lily Dale, for all her 'priggishness', may have been a favourite with readers, but she is a little bit more difficult to like. Her attachment to the memory of the one real 'bounder' in the tale simply feels perverse. No wonder, the Chapter describing her final meeting with John Eames in the book is entitled The Shattered Tree.
Mrs. Proudie in full flow
The two deaths (there are, in fact, three, but the suicide of Dobbs Broughton is of no real account), that of Mrs Proudie and Mr Harding ensure the reader feels it is very much Last Chronicle.
In his Autobiography, Trollope says it was with many misgivings that I killed my old friend Mrs Proudie... so great was my delight in writing about [her], so thorough was my knowledge of all the little shades of her character. It was not only that she was a tyrant, a bully, a would-be priestess, a very vulgar woman, and one who would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed with her; but that at the same time she was conscientious, by no means a hypocrite, really believing in the brimstone which she threatened and anxious to save the souls around her from its horrors. To her enemy, Archdeacon Grantly, Mrs Proudie was a she-Beelzebub...a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago. Mind you, Mrs P. thought he was an actual emanation from Satan. Just before he kills her off, the author writes: it cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time done an indescribable amount of evil. In some ways it is an heroic death, as she expires standing up.
As for Septimus Harding - he was a poor old man who, in spite of good friends had never risen high in his profession, and had fallen even from the moderate altitude which he had attained. But he was a man whom all loved who knew him... and so they buried Mr. Septimus Harding, formerly Warden of Hiram's Hospital in the city of Barchester, of whom the chronicler may say that the city never knew a sweeter gentleman or a better Christian.
I am afraid I must agree with those critics who found the whole Dobbs Broughton, Conway Dalrymple, Mr. Musselboro, Lady and Miss Madalina Demolines, Mrs and Miss Clara Van Siever story rather a bore. It all takes place in London - South Kensington, far away from our beloved Barchester and it feels like an 'add-on', almost to pad out the story. All these characters simply irritated me. Some critics have considered these sequences a grave flaw. The novel is one of the longest of Trollope's novels - only The Prime Minister is longer. If the author had cut out the chapters involving the above characters, I think it would have been improved.
And Aldolphus Crosbie? The less said the better. Now, somewhat bald, somewhat fat and financially impoverished, he deserves his fate.
Nos. 398-399 - 1924
Trollope ends his story: 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 pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps. And so they are to this reader.
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Why does The Daily Telegraph keep publishing Lists, the greatest or the best something or other? Just as I finished this Blog, I looked at yet another of the silly pieces. This time it is The 50 greatest books of all time. What nonsense. Jake Kerridge - the newspaper's Chief Obituary Writer since 2025, has compiled the list. Ten of the 50 are from this quarter-century - enough said. DEI rules.