Saint Paul upbraided the early church in Corinth for quarrelling among themselves. Not much seems to have changed looking at the Church of England nowadays. Often our disputes seem to arise because of differences in theology or churchmanship. A different source of conflict appears in Antony Trollope’s novel, Barchester Towers, a famous account of the goings-on in a fictional cathedral town in England, set in the 1850s. Here, beneath the spires, between Sunday services, and in the drawing rooms, hallways, and clerical offices, the problem is ambition.
At first, one priest appears to be the culprit: Obadiah Slope. Trollope says of him that ‘his motives, like those of most men, were mixed’ although his conduct was generally motivated by ‘a desire to do his duty’. Another character calls him ‘arrogant and false’. But Slope’s defining characteristic is his ambition. In one scene, a woman, guessing at his motivations, asks him, ‘why do you long to be a bishop or a dean?’ Slope answers, ‘I have the natural ambition of a man.’ Already his position as the Bishop’s Chaplain gives him a kind of mysterious place in the hierarchy: he is more than a curate or vicar but less than nearly everyone else. He hopes for more. To improve his career prospects, he adjusts his beliefs. Because the Bishop’s wife campaigns against the operating of businesses, including railways, on Sunday, Slope also takes up this cause.
There is something polarising about Slope. One of the first to take against him is the established Archdeacon, Dr Theophilus Grantly. At first glance, this might appear to be a clash between high and low—that is Anglicans of the more Anglo-Catholic variety, influenced by the Oxford Movement, and those who regard such practices as superstitious, preferring that the Church focus more on social care. Trollope himself, who occasionally addresses the reader directly, says of Grantly that ‘he could luxuriate in no society that was deficient in a certain feeling of faithful staunch high-churchism’. Slope, by contrast, is referred to, somewhat loosely, as an ‘evangelical’.
But there is much more to their dispute than churchmanship. Grantly says of Slope:
‘Those are the sort of men who will ruin the Church of England, and make the profession of a clergyman disreputable. It is not the dissenters or the papists that we should fear, but the set of canting, low-bred hypocrites who are wriggling their way in among us; men who have no fixed principle, no standard ideas of religion or doctrine, but who take up some popular cry, as this fellow has done about “Sabbath travelling”.’
Slope, says Grantly, is caught up in the latest fashion, swept along by sentiment, all in hopes of improving his career.
It is difficult not to think that Trollope’s sympathies are with Grantly. The crusade against ‘Sabbath travelling’ seems to make this point. For all its supposed piety, it does nothing more than inconvenience ordinary men and women, who, after working throughout the week, are prevented from visiting friends or family during their leisure. A similar critique could be made of supposedly popular cries for change in the church nowadays.
But the reason that Grantly is so opposed to Slope, and indeed one reason that Barchester Towers has such a timeless quality, is that Grantly too is a man of ambition. This is apparent in the opening scene of the novel: Grantly’s father, the Bishop of Barchester, is laid out on his deathbed, and Grantly sits beside him, gripped by anticipation more than grief. If his father dies before the government in Westminster dissolves, then Grantly believes he will be elevated to his father’s place. ‘Thus he thought long and sadly, in deep silence, and then gazed at that still living face, and then at last dared to ask himself whether he really longed for his father’s death.’ Obviously, Grantly’s longing is not satisfied soon enough. Another man becomes bishop, who then brings in Slope. But the point is obvious: both Slope and Grantly, though they differ in their churchmanship, habits, personalities, and style, are possessed with a similar ambition.
What transpires in Barchester is vicious. Grantly does not bother arguing with Slope. Instead, he tries to outmanoeuvre him and, ultimately, to replace him. Grantly is a partisan, only trusting those he knows are on his side, and, once thrown into action, an organiser. All of his relationships, both personal and professional, are imbued with the issue at hand. In one case, he misjudges, placing a friend in the enemy camp, a mistake that costs him dearly. Grantly is then labelled ‘arrogant’, much like his opposition. But his partisanship does offer him a strategy. And it is better than simply adopting a siege mentality or a sense of hopelessness. He sets out to recruit clergy and laity to his cause; he sets out to win. In this sense, Grantly’s ‘faithful staunch high-churchism’, acts as a rallying point, a way of identifying, recruiting, and organising his response to Slope’s insurgency.
The lasting impression of Barchester is that both Slope and Grantly are ridiculous, each in their own way. But this does not lessen the gravity of the novel. Instead, it features as a reminder that the Church of England, for all its grandeur, history, and responsibility, is filled with quarrelsome men and women. The battles into which they throw themselves, the battles which at times consume the entire institution and to which are attached lofty ideals, are often, in the first instance, a skirmish started by lower ranking members of its hierarchy in hopes of advancing his or her own career.
Barchester also works as a tonic, reminding us that the precarious state of our Church is nothing new. Certainly, its influence in society has diminished in certain ways but what I mean is that Grantly’s fear about the influence of ‘the sort of men who will ruin the Church’ is an old fear. Yet still the Church persists. In this sense, Trollope reassures us that crisis or conflict does not necessarily mean disaster. As in Corinth, so in Barchester, so in Canterbury.