Anthony Trollope — ‘Framley Parsonage’

The Crawley Family

Amongst my excuses-to-self for sometimes not blogging about books are ‘it’s an ebook,’ and ‘it’s part of a serial’. Dr Thorne, the third of Trollope’s Barchester novels, fell foul of both, which is a shame, as it is probably my favourite so far. Its plot, involving murder, hidden provenance and uncertain expectations, was unusually dark and mysterious. Though the tone righted itself eventually, early on it could almost have been a Thomas Hardy novel, actuated by schaudenfrade and the playing out of old, hidden crimes (I’m thinking particularly of The Mayor of Casterbridge). The intricate plot was more characteristic: usually it’s the space between his characters which interests Trollope. The way things work together. It didn’t seem much connected with The Warden or Barchester Towers, its predecessors. Bishop and Mrs Proudie got walk-on parts, and the Thornes of Ullathorne were mentioned, but only to distinguish Dr Thorne from them. Framley Parsonage reverses the trend, and brings back the Proudies, the Grantlys, Miss Dunstable and Dr Thorne himself as major characters; we also discover something of the fate of the Greshams of Greshamsbury, the Arabins, Lady Scatchard and Mr Harding into the bargain. Dr Thorne could stand alone, but this book depends upon its place in the series.

Politics is back, too, and not just local or church politics. Framley Parsonage features a cabinet minister, Harold Smith, who after only a few weeks in the job finds himself a victim of Tom Towers, the most powerful man in the book. As editor of newspaper The Jupiter, Towers is more interested in causing events than reporting them. In The Warden he plagued Mr Harding into resigning the wardenship of Hiram’s Hospital, and in Framley Parsonage he causes even more of a stir when he appears, briefly, at Miss Dunstable’s party. Miss Dunstable, heiress of the Oil of Lebanon fortune and the richest woman in the country, is an interesting mix of worldliness and innocence. She genuinely frets about whether the two big stars she has invited will attend (one of them would add thirty percent to the value of the party, we are told), but she also mocks this deference in herself:

Angels and ministers of grace assist me! […] How on earth am I to behave myself? Mr Sowerby, do you think that I ought to kneel down? My dear, will he have a reporter at his back in the royal livery? (p. 303)

This is Towers’ only appearance, in person, but he makes good use of it:

‘By-the-by, Sowerby, what do you think of this threatened dissolution?’ said Tom Towers. (p. 304)

And so, by way of the rumour thus started, parliament is dissolved, and Harold Smith loses his cabinet post. But not before he has been buttonholed by Mr Sowerby (MP and rogue) and enjoined to recommend a preferment in favour of Mark Robarts, the incumbent of Framley Parsonage. The preferment in question is a prebend connected to Barchester Cathedral, previously held in absence by Dr Stanhope (now deceased), worth £600 a year. Sowerby is anxious to do this favour for Mark, as he has embroiled him in his money matters by getting him to sign a bill for £400, which, through renewals, increases to £900 and threatens to ruin Mark and his family. Sowerby is not wholly corrupt, and wants to do well by Mark; but the greater consideration is that any favour he accepts will bind him to Sowerby. Like payday lenders today, he wants to create a dependence: the last thing he wants is for the bill to be settled.

Lady Lufton and the Duke of Omnium

The other great star invited to Miss Dunstable’s party is the Duke of Omnium. Like Tom Towers, he is a background character, whose absence from the narrative is a characteristic of his great power. He has the misfortune, when greeting Miss Dunstable, to press against Lady Lufton:

The duke, as he begged her pardon, wore in his countenance that expression of modified sorrow which is common to any gentleman who is supposed by himself to have incommoded a lady. But over and above this, — or rather under it, — there was a slight smile of derision, as though it were impossible for him to look upon the bearing of Lady Lufton without some amount of ridicule. All this was legible to eyes so keen as those of Miss Dunstable and Mrs Harold Smith, and the duke was known to be a master of this silent inward sarcasm; but even by them […] it was admitted that Lady Lufton had conquered. (p. 294)

This meeting of factions is another important moment. The Duke of Omnium represents the new, racy, monied world (which includes the Proudies), who are busy gobbling up the old, staid, monied one (the Luftons, the Grantlys) across three spheres: land, church and state. Gatherum Castle is his home, viewed by Lady Lufton as a den of iniquity; and it pains her that her son, Lord Lufton, and her clergyman, Mark Robarts (a friend from childhood of Lord Lufton’s: the Framley living was his mother’s gift), have both visited. The trouble Robarts gets in as a result of this visit, and the obligations foisted upon him there by Sowerby, justify her view. Her son, too, is drawn in to the same situation, on a larger scale, and she has to sell some of the family estate to free him from the clutches of Tom Tozer, the debt collector (Tom Towers / Tom Tozer — there seems to be a deliberate echo in these names). Robarts’ smaller debt is the more important in terms of the story, and is the main fact about him: he is a good man, but a weak one. The same is true of Sowerby, and here Trollope shows the difference that circumstances can make, over and above character. Ever even handed, he also shows the opposite, via Miss Dunstable and Lady Scatchard, both ‘new money’ women, one who takes like a duck to water to her new milieu (though she is a long time finding a husband); the other who finds it profoundly awkward and lives a life of isolation.

Right at the other end of the social spectrum from Tom Towers and the Duke of Omnium, are the Crawleys. Mr Crawley is minister at the impoverished parish of Hogglestock, and he is fiercely, foolishly independent. An old friend of Mr Arabin, he feels unable to keep up the friendship since Arabin’s rise to dean of Barchester. He feels ashamed of his clothes, and of the fact that he has no horse. They are so poor, in fact, that it is even a struggle to feed the family. When his wife gets cholera, he refuses Arabin’s help, and it is only the strength of character shown by Mark Robarts’ sister Lucy, who essentially kidnaps his children to get them out of harm’s way, that is able to save the situation. She stays to nurse Mrs Crawley, and so is conveniently absent from Framley doing unquestionably virtuous things, at the period when Lord Lufton is trying to convince his mother that Lucy should be his wife. Lady Lufton had her heart set on his marrying the grand but vacuous Griselda Grantly, and takes some adjusting to the idea of his taking up with someone so ‘insignificant’ (p. 349). But she has misunderstood significance: it is not to be found in playing a pre-defined role (as Griselda is eventually able to do with Lord Dumbello), it comes through defining one’s own role, and hence through character. Always assuming the lubrication of money.

____________________

Illustrations are by John Everett Millais, from this site.