Customer Reviews

Warden, The

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first read Anthony Trollope's book "The Warden" in 1995 at the age of 54; three years later I had finished all forty-seven Trollope novels, his autobiography, and most of his short stories. "The Warden" provides a necessary introduction to the Barsetshire Novels, which, in turn, provide a marvelous introduction to rural Victorian society, and its religious, political, and social underpinnings. However, "The Warden" is a small literary masterpiece of its own, even though the more popular "Barchester Towers" tends to obscure it. "The Warden" moves slowly, of course, but so did Victorian England; soon the reader is enveloped in a rich world of brilliantly created characters: in the moral dilemma of a charming and innocent man, Reverend Septimus Harding, who is probably the most beloved of all Trollope's characters; in the connivings of Archdeacon Grantly, who will become a significant force in the later Barsetshire novels; in Eleanor, an example of the perfect Victorian woman, a type that appears in many of Trollope's subsequent novels; and in the sanctimonious meddling of John Bold, whose crusade for fairness throws the town into turmoil. In modern terminology, "The Warden" is a "good read" for those readers with patience, a love of 19th century England, and an appreciation of literary style. Trollope's sentences have a truly musical cadence. "The Warden" was Trollope's fourth novel and his first truly successful one. It provides a strong introduction to the other five novels of the Barsetshire series, where the reader will meet a group of fascinating characters, including the Mrs. Proudie (one of Trollope's finest creations), the Reverend Obadiah Slope, and the Grantly family. The reader will soon find that Trollope's well-developed characters soon become "friends," and that the small cathedral town of Barchester becomes a very familiar and fascinating world in itself. It is a wonderful trip through these six novels. (I read all six in about three weeks.) But one must begin with "The Warden." Brew a cup of tea, toast a scone on a quiet evening, and begin the wonderful voyage through Trollope's charming Barchester. When you have finished the six novels, you may, like me, want to commence reading the Palliser series (another six novels) and follow Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser through their triumphs and travails! However, that remains another story.

This is the first of Anthony Trollope's "Chronicles of Barsetshire" novels, and his first popularly successful novel. The basic plot is that the Warden, Mr. Harding, has 1) a sinecure church position that pays him 800 pounds a year; 2) a reform-minded friend who's trying to abolish church sinecures; 3) a daughter who wants to marry the reform-minded friend; and 4) an existing son-in-law of an Archdeacon who takes defending the Rights of the Church very, very seriously.

If you like Jane Austen novels there's a good chance you'll like this, as the basic plots -- church livings, the marriage prospects of 19th-centry british gentry -- are fairly similar. Trollope's prose here is fairly light and clear, and if not quite as sharply witty as Austen's, no one else's prose is either. Trollope does spill a great deal of ink on lengthy asides to the reader, some of which paint interesting pictures of contemporary British culture and some of which modern readers may find *amazingly* skippable.

Overall, this one's a lightly pleasant example of precisely the sort of intelligent, Victorian parlor romance it's trying to be. If you like this, the next volume in sequence is Barchester Towers; it's a bit more comically satirical, somewhere in between this and P.G. Wodehouse, but almost certainly something you'll enjoy if you liked this one.

In the 15th century, Hiram's Hospital was established as a perpetual charitable home for 12 poor old men, each being replaced at his death. Over the years the income from the property of the estate has increased to the point where the warden of the hospital enjoys a substantial salary.

The Rev. Septimus Harding (the Warden), kind, gentle, and conscientious, loves his comfortable position and is loved by the old men under his care - until his life is disrupted by a REFORMER, in the person of young John Bold, who questions the ample income of the warden, while the old men still receive only pennies a day. Bold brings in a solicitor and interests the newspaper The Jupiter (obviously the London Times), which makes the issue a national debate.

Although the church stands behind the warden with all its influence, the gentle Mr. Harding himself begins to doubt the propriety of his position. The matter becomes further complicated when Bold and Harding's daughter Eleanor fall in love.

This first of the six Barsetshire novels is by far the shortest and concentrates almost exclusively on the main plot. (In fact, Trollope inserts a criticism of the long serial novels of the day, although he later adopted that same mode.) "The Warden" is not so rich in detail or in the extensive cultural ambience of the later novels, but it is an excellent introduction to this deservedly acclaimed series. It introduces many vivid characters who grow and develop delightfully in the later novels.

Although its principal character, Mr Harding, the Warden of Barchester, suffers abject misery and extreme anxiety during most of this novel, the reader of "The Warden" will enjoy one of the happiest, richest and warmest experiences to be gained from the whole of English Literature.

Untypically short, yet three years in the making, "The Warden" has a simple structure that Trollope utlized again and again. Take a moral dilemma of some sort, one that provides endless pros and cons to be argued, one that possibly takes many hundreds of pages to resolve, explore its social, political and financial implications, and show how it touches the lives of characters not too unlike ourselves.

The dilemma here concerns the income of Septimus Harding, the Warden of Barchester. Under the terms of a will, dated 1434, twelve superannuated woolcarders were to be accommodated in an almshouse, receiving one shilling and fourpence per day. A residence was to be provided for a warden who was to receive the income from the remainder of the testator's property. Now, more than 400 years later, there seems to be an imbalance in these depositions. The almshouse inmates continue to receive only one shilling and fourpence, while the warden, living on the proceeds of some valuable properties, receives eight hundred pounds annually and the use of the warden's house.

The dilemma faces a young Barchester surgeon, John Bold. If he allows the imbalance to continue, the wishes of the original benefactor, he believes, are being nullified. If he succeeds in having the warden's comfortable living discontinued, he will lose forever the possibility of making the warden's daughter his wife. And so the issue is taken up, argued and publicized.

As Anthony Trollope reveals in his autobiography, this tiny novel was successful enough (it earned him twenty pounds) to lead him to consider writing more of the same, and he soon began "Barchester Towers".

English actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne, brilliant as Archdeacon Grantly in a memorable TV adaptation of this novel, revisits Trollope's Barchester to provide a robust, opulent, complete and unabridged reading that no Trollope enthusiast should miss hearing.

There is a very good reason to read this book, and that is to get to the rest of the Barsetshire series. Although not much on its own, THE WARDEN is the prelude to BARCHESTER TOWERS, which is immensely entertaining.

So, while I cannot recommend THE WARDEN on its own, I heartily recommend the entire series. Except for this first volume, all the novels are superb, culminating in what is easily one of Trollope's two or three best novels THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET, which is one of the undeservedly neglected masterpieces in the English language. Why is it neglected? Because it is the final novel of a massive series, and few manage to make it all the way to the end. Read THE WARDEN, but only so you can go on to the other novels in the series.

This is the first in Trollope's Barchester series, and it is a must read. It's a nineteenth century Bonfire of the Vanities, in which almost any course of action other than that which the leading characters select would lead to an amicable solution. Chapter by chapter, Reverend Harding's guilt over his lucrative clerical sinecure builds, like a tightly wound spring. And ironically, Rev. Harding and Mr. Bold, his adversary, and future son-in-law, are not actually opposed on the merits of the case, yet events sweep them toward confrontation. The misunderstandings and missed opportunities are of epic proportions, and the tension builds throughout the story to its bitter and hopeless conclusion. In the end, hardly anyone escapes unscathed, and the reader is thoroughly exhausted.

This short and unassuming novel by Anthony Trollope may be one of the greatest books of all time. In it, English Clergyman Septimus Harding is challenged with the unethical appropriation of funds for his own use. The remainder of the story details the struggle within his soul regarding how to deal with these accusations. An amazingly clear portrait emerges of the few combatants who line up on opposite sides of the conflict. It makes no matter that these are largely members of the Church of England, and ostensible representatives of Christ: they are very human. Unlike the sometimes exaggerated, one-dimensional characters from a Dickens novel, Trollope's characters are complex, multi-faceted mortals. They are so believable, so vividly drawn, that it's nearly impossible to believe they are fictions. The elegance and economy of the story, along with the author's narrative skills make this a true masterpiece.

I think this fine little novel stands very well on its own. As a portrayal of class and character in England, it succeeds mightily well; I really identified with the daily worries and hullabaloos with which this poor Warden is afflicted.

Anthony Trollope's novel _The Warden_, though one-hundred and fifty years old this year, is just as readable and just a politically relevent today as it was in Victorian England. Mr. Trolllope offers a wonderful perspective on the fallout that occurs in highly polarized political settings - in this case Victorian England.

Septimus Harding is a middle-aged Anglican cleric who earns 800 pounds a year looking after and caring for the residents of an almshouse. His patients are elderly and disabled peasants; the almshouse the result of the will of one John Hiram, four-hundred years dead, who declared that his land in Barsetshire, the couny where the novel is set, should be rented out and the revenue used to fund a hospital for ailing tradesmen, and that each tradesman should receive a small allowance. Four hundred years later, the value, and the rents on the land have increased four fold, and along with the increase in revenue, the salaries of the warden, who looks after the patients, and the steward, who cares for the buildings, have increased, but the allowances for the patients have not.

Mr. Harding has a young friend, Mr. Bold, a man so bent on reform that he would reform his own household, given the chance, even if nothing were wrong with it. Mr. Bold gets his hands on old Hiram's will,a dn here the action begins. Mr. Bold and his attorney come to the conclusion that the Barchester cathedral, the executer of Hiram's will, has not been following the will properly, by not increasing the allowances of the patients of the hospital, and over-inflating the salaries of the warden and the steward. He brings a law-suit against the warden and the steward.

But there are other problems brewing in Barchester. Dr. Grantly, the archdeacon of the church and Mr. HArdings son in law, is a staunch defender of the rights of sthe Church of England to conduct business as it sees fit, and therefore stands in direct opposition to the reforms of Mr. Bold. Mr. Bold is in love with Mr.Harding's unmarried daughter, Eleanor, and this brings him trouble when he files a lawsuit against her father. And Mr. Harding is beginning to doubt whether or not he deserves his salary, which is worrying to both Mr. Bold, because with out Mr. Harding he has no case against the church, and Dr. Grantly, who sees Mr. Harding's questioning of the validiity of his salary as threatening to the church.

Spetimus Harding is a truly honest, valiant man in the middle of a war of ideology. Add that to Trollope's scathing reviews of the press (and a writer he calls Mr. Popular Sentiment, a satirization of Charles Dickens) and you have a tale that is just as relevent in America in 2005 as it was in England in 1855.

Anthony Trollope's The Warden (1855) raises interesting ethical questions concerning questions of right and wrong, and ideas of fairness. The novel is grounded in conflicting interpretations of how funds earmarked for the poor from a wealthy man's four hundred year old will should be spent. The novel focuses on Reverend Septimus Harding, the good natured Warden of Hiram Hospital, who is at the center of the controversy.

The plot of Trollope's novel chronicles Mr. Harding's internal struggles with public accusations of malfeasance. As Warden of Hiram's Hospital, Mr. Harding has been charged with overseeing the welfare and spiritual well-being of twelve aged bedesmen-poor elderly men supported by John Hiram's trust. In performing his duties towards the bedesmen, Mr. Harding's efforts are universally regarded as beyond reproach; nevertheless, questions arise as to whether the amount of money Mr. Harding receives as Warden, eight hundred pounds annually, contradicts the original intention of John Hiram's 1434 will to help the poor.

John Hiram, a wealthy magnate of the Barchester wool industry, had stipulated in his 1434 will that an almshouse be created to take care of twelve aged men who had worked as cardsmen in the wool trade. The will directed that funding for the almshouse come from rent from Hiram's lands to be overseen by the Anglican Church. From 1434 to the mid-nineteenth-century-the present of the novel-the amount of money raised for the rent of these lands has increased considerably. When the novel begins, most of this extra money has been given to the Warden himself.

Trollope's The Warden raises this basic question: how should the extra proceeds from the rent be distributed? Throughout the novel various interests-the popular press, the church, and legal authorities-weigh in on this question, each with its own unique point of view and stake in the matter.

This novel offers no easy answers and instead dwells on the ambiguity of moral issues. In chapter 15, the narrator (and by extension Trollope) hints at this perspective: "in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly."

The Warden is definitely worthwhile read. It is not as funny as Barchester Towers, which made me laugh out loud, but it is as sophisticated and subtle. This would be an interesting novel to complement a college course on ethical issues.