Why has Barchester Towers outpaced the other novels in popularity? First, I think, because the characters are strong, memorable, in conflict with one another, and elicit just enough sympathy for their positions that the reader smiles and even laughs. There is no sugarcoating; this is no tract intended to bring its readers to commit their lives to the service of the Church of England. The reader sees the deficiencies of even the most virtuous, such as Mr. Harding, but there is also just a touch of sympathy for the worst of the villains, such as Mr. Slope and (perhaps, on a sunny day) Mrs. Proudie.
Trollope depicts the life of the church better than anyone else has done, before or since. He shows the affairs of the clergymen of Barchester much as he also shows us those of politicians, lawyers, merchants, and idle country gentlemen. Perhaps more than any other occupational group, the clergy of the close are bound together as an inner group, almost a fraternity. And this may be why clergy and politicians, the subjects of the Barsetshire series and the Palliser series, were such ready subjects for novel after novel: their professional association involved just enough interaction and jockeying for position to entertain the reader.
Several of the characters come to us from The Warden, chiefly Mr. Septimus Harding, the Warden himself, bruised from his attack in The Jupiter, the newspaper of the day. Mr. Harding has surrendered his position as Warden of Hiram's Hospital, feeling that he could not justify the high salary attached to the position, and not caring to attempt to do so. In this matter he was in direct opposition to the advice of his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly, aggressive warrior of the Church Militant, and one who benefits even more from the riches of the church. The author must have gloated to himself as he set up the situation with which the story begins: the saintly Bishop Grantly, dear friend of Mr. Harding and father of Archdeacon Grantly, is about to die. His successor is to be named by the prime minister, who is sufficiently friendly to the Grantlys that he would be expected to name the archdeacon to succeed his father. But the government is about to fall, and the next prime minister would be expected to look elsewhere for a successor. If the bishop dies quickly, there would be time for the present prime minister to act. The poor bishop apologizes on his deathbed for taking so long.
And he does take too long. Though the conflicted archdeacon attempts to convey the news of his father's death to the prime minister before he leaves office, he does not succeed. A new prime minister makes the appointment, and the new bishop is to be a low churchman, one Dr. Proudie.
The supreme irony in this situation is not left to implication and inference, as we read of the disappointed Archdeacon Grantly's reaction:
Many will think that he was wicked to grieve for the loss of Episcopal power, wicked to have coveted it, nay, wicked even to have thought about it, in the way and at the moments he had done so.
With such censures I cannot profess that I completely agree. The nolo episcopari, though still in use, is so directly at variance with the tendency of all human wishes, that it cannot be thought to express the true aspirations of rising priests in the Church of England.
Nolo episcopari is explained on the internet in Trollope's Apollo: A Guide to the Uses of Classics in the Novels of Anthony Trollope (www.trollope-apollo.com), a project undertaken by students at Hendrix College under Professor Rebecca Resinski:
A Latin phrase meaning "I do not wish to be bishop." This is the appropriate response with which an individual should reply if he is offered the position of bishop in the church, even if he wishes to accept it. Trollope implies here that any other person, besides Bishop Proudie, would probably not want to be the bishop if he had to deal with Mrs. Proudie and her constant meddling; and thus, this person would actually mean nolo episcopari when saying the phrase. [MD]
(It is worth noting that nolo episcopari has survived in the Methodist Church to the extent that when Dean William Cannon was elected to the episcopacy in 1968, he protested, "Why, you can't elect me bishop. I didn't even bring my robes," in gentle mockery of the aggressive campaigns conducted by candidates for the episcopacy.)
Enter Mrs. Proudie, Barchester's answer to Lady Macbeth. A 1982 BBC production of The Barchester Chronicles followed the text of The Warden and Barchester Towers quite closely, and the direction and acting were superb. Mrs. Proudie, though, gave me pause. On screen she is shown as a slender, scheming woman who narrows her eyes as she schemes. I think of her as a more straightforward champion of her own views, more given to the direct approach than to subtlety. She speaks early on the evils of Sabbath-traveling, and on the necessity for Sabbath Day schools. We can assume that she prompted the Bishop's chaplain, the sly Obadiah Slope, to preach the sermon against Mr. Harding's beloved high church music, leading the author to the following meditation on the sermon as an art form: