NO ONE WHO HAS LIVED FOR ANY length of time in a cathedral town can
fail to appreciate the perfection of Anthony Trollope's Barchester
series of novels. In my opinion no more artistic achievement than the
creation of Barchester and its people exists on the same scale in the
English language. I do not think that there is a false note in any
scene--a crude tone in any character. Certainly no writer ever dealt
with the members of any profession with such completeness and without
ceasing to interest a reader from page to page, from chapter to chapter,
from volume to volume. Fancy any writer venturing upon five long novels
with all the chief characters solicitors or solicitors' wives and
daughters! Fancy a dozen medical men stethoscoping their way through
a thousand closely printed pages! We know what military novels we have
been treated to from time to time--stuff to send guffaws round every
mess-room--as crude as the red of the tunics that gave the marksmen of
other armies every chance in the old days.
The personages in _Barchester Towers, The Warden, and The Last Chronicle
of Barset_ are such finished pieces of characterisation that they strike
one as being photographs from life. One feels that the author must have
had intimate acquaintance with the originals of his portraits, as well
as with their entourage, before he could produce such transcripts from
nature.
I suppose there was a good deal of speculation when the Barchester
novels were appearing as to the identity of the various cathedral
dignitaries. It seems to me that such a “placing” of the people was
inevitable. But an example was given me of the artistic way in which
Trollope went to work in the case of one of his best remembered
characters that let me see what a master of his art he was. I was some
years under twenty when _The Last Chronicle_ fell into my hands: it
was the first novel of Trollope's that I read, so that was the first
acquaintance I had with Mrs. Proudie. Before I had got through many
chapters I knew that I was listening to the voice of the wife of an
Irish Prelate--a lady whose character and temperament had been a twenty
years' tradition in the household of which I was a member, and whose
reputation had followed her from one city to another. The more I read of
the book the more impressed I was that this lady had been the model for
Mrs. Proudie in spite of the fact that the two had practically nothing
in common--nothing except the essentials that go to make up a character.
Mrs. Proudie was a plain, rather stout little woman, but my Mrs.
Proudie was a tall, slight, and undoubtedly beautiful woman, even when
middle-aged--the most perfect type of the traditional aristocrat. It
would have been impossible for her to do any of the pettifogging of
Trollope's vulgar person, in the way that Mrs. Proudie did it, but
it was quite clearly understood--by no one better than the Bishop
himself--that she was the ruler of the diocese. She was the mother of a
family every member of which was remarkably good-looking; but Trollope
laid emphasis upon the commonplace daughters of the Proudies.
Only an artist of the highest rank could create a character such as Mrs.
Proudie from the suggestions he had derived from the rumours respecting
our Bishop's wife, and only an artist of the highest rank could create a
personage which compelled all readers who knew the original to recognise
the source of his inspiration and feel certain of its identity in spite
of the absence of all outward marks of identification.
For several years after reading the Barchester series I was accustomed
to hear people in the neighbourhood in which I lived refer to the
Bishop's wife as Mrs. Proudie--several clergymen certainly did so; but
quite fifteen years had passed before I heard that, previous to his
writing _Barchester Towers_, the author had been stationed in the same
neighbourhood as an Inspector in the Post Office Department.
“In those days,” said my informant, who had served under Trollope, “the
Bishop's wife was at the height of her fame. Every one was talking about
her and the way she kept the poor Bishop under her thumb. We expected
that Mr. Trollope would make something out of her.”
When I asked him how he could reconcile the difference between Mrs.
Proudie and the other lady--how he could reconcile Mrs. Proudie's death
in _The Last Chronicle_ with the other's still active life, he told me
that he had never read any of Trollope's books: the only writings of
Trollope that had come under his cognizance were the official reports
which he made to the head of the Department!
Beautiful to the last, and ruling to the last, _our_ Mrs. Proudie
survived the published record of the other Mrs. Proudie by nearly thirty
years. I write this chapter sitting on a sofa which I bought out of the
Palace. The fact that the receipt of my cheque was signed by the Bishop
and not by the lady, suggests that in financial matters his lordship was
permitted to discharge the humblest of clerical duties.
In Broadminster there has never been a rumour of a Mrs. Proudie; but
occasionally there comes a discordant note from the belfry of the
Cathedral. Only a quick ear can detect it, but having detected it, one
is conscious of an impression of uneasiness, and asks oneself or anybody
else if it is possible that all is not well in the Close.
What sounds like the merest tinkle of discord outside Broadminster
reverberates throughout the Close, causing uneasiness and even
perturbation at times.
During the past three years there have been two threatenings of huge
upheavals in Minster circles. The rumblings of an earthquake were heard
by some people of acute hearing, and the local seismometer--her name
is Lady Birnam--foretold a cataclysm. But happily the centre of the
disturbance passed away in another direction, and the foundations of the
Cathedral remained intact.