Trollope

Trollope’s Narrator on Bad Preaching

“There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a preaching clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented. No one but a preaching clergyman can revel in platitudes, truisms, and untruisms, and yet receive, as his undisputed privilege, the same respectful demeanour as though words of impassioned eloquence, or persuasive logic, fell from his lips. Let a professor of law or physic find his place in a lecture-room, and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases, and he will pour them forth to empty benches. Let a barrister attempt to talk without talking well, and he will talk but seldom. A judge’s charge need be listened to per force by none but the jury, prisoner, and gaoler. A member of Parliament can be coughed down or counted out. Town-councillors can be tabooed. But no one can rid himself of the preaching clergyman. He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sindbads cannot shake off, the nightmare that disturbs our Sunday’s rest, the incubus that overloads our religion and make God’s service distasteful. We desire not to be forced to stay away. We desire, nay, we are resolute, to enjoy the comfort of public worship; but we desire also that we may do so without an amount of tedium which ordinary human nature cannot endure with patience; that we may be able to leave the house of God, without that anxious longing for escape, which is the common consequence of common sermons.

With what complacency will a young parson deduce false conclusions from misunderstood texts, and then threaten us with all the penalties of Hades if we neglect to comply with the injunctions he has given us!”

Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 43.

P.S. I note here that I have never attended a church where the “common sermons” Trollope decries were actually common. An occasional clanger? Yes, of course, but not common.

Trollopian Biographical Hijinks

From John Sutherland’s review article in the LRB 30+ years ago:

“One of the clinching confirmations of Anthony’s account of his wretched schooldays came from Sir William Gregory, who was at Harrow with him. On reading An Autobiography, Gregory recalled that Trollope was

‘a big boy, older than the rest of the form, and without exception the most slovenly and dirty boy I ever met. He was not only slovenly in person and in dress, but his work was equally dirty. His exercises were a mass of blots and smudges. These peculiarities created a great prejudice against him, and the poor fellow was generally avoided … I had plenty of opportunities of judging Anthony, and I am bound to say, though my heart smites me sorely for my unkindness, that I did not like him. I avoided him, for he was rude and uncouth, but I thought him an honest brave fellow. He was no sneak. His faults were external; all the rest of him was right enough. But the faults were of that character for which school boys would never make allowances, and so poor Trollope was tabooed, and had not … a single friend … He gave no sign of promise whatsoever, was always in the lowest part of the form, and was regarded by masters and by boys as an incorrigible dunce.’

Mullen and Hall quote this in full as clear corroboration that Trollope’s time at Harrow was ‘torture’. Super quotes Gregory selectively, so as to give a quite different impression:

‘Living as he did with only one parent and that a negligent one, Anthony was ‘the most slovenly and dirty boy I ever met’, not only in person and dress, but also in his work: ‘His exercises were a mass of blots and smudges,’ as William Gregory of Coole Park, near Gort in Galway, recalled; yet Gregory rather liked him. Though rude and uncouth, ‘I thought him an honest, brave fellow. His faults were external; all the rest of him was right enough.’ (Many years later, Gregory’s widow was to befriend William Butler Yeats at Coole Park.)’

In the section that Super suppresses, Gregory declares quite unequivocally: ‘I did not like him.’ There is no doubt as to what this means. Yet, by judicious quotation, Super can turn this upside down and assert, ‘Gregory rather liked him,’ sketch a Richmal Cromptonish picture of schoolboy Anthony, and then change the subject by dragging the Yeats red herring across the reader’s path.”

In Which Trollope Skewers Dickens

“Of all such reformers Mr Sentiment is the most powerful. It is incredible the number of evil practices he has put down. It is to be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he has made the working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-sized pint bottles, there will be nothing left for him to do. Mr Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not the less so that his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest. Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper quarters.”

Anthony Trollope, The Warden, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 124.

The Warden, Anthony Trollope

‘Indeed, I like Mr Bold much, personally,’ continued the disinterested victim; ‘and to tell you the “truth,”‘–he hesitated as he brought out the dreadful tidings, –‘I have sometimes thought it not improbable that he would be my second son-in-law.’ The bishop did not whistle. We believe they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop; but he looked as though he would have done so, but for his apron.’