| Mr. Harding's income | |||
| As Precenter | £80/yr | £6,112 | |
| As Warden | £800/yr | £61,120 | |
| As Crabtree vicar | £80/yr | £6,112 | |
| Paid to Rev. Smith At St. Cuthbert's | £75/yr | £5,730 | |
| Archdeacon Grantley's income | |||
| As rector of Plumstead Episcopi | £3,000/yr | £229,200 | |
| Bishop's income | £9,000/yr | £687,600 | (pretax) |
As of September, 2013, the conversion rate was $1.60 per pound. This shows that the Bishop's income was more than a million dollars a year before taxes. In the absence of concern about the income and bonuses of corporate CEO's in Victorian England, it's understandable that this issue led to efforts at reform.
The test case in the story is not the Bishop, at the equivalent of over a million dollars a year, or even his son the Archdeacon at a third that amount—but Mr. Septimus Harding, precentor (music and choir director in the cathedral) and also warden of Hiram's Hospital. A gentle and kindly soul, beloved of the twelve old men in his charge in the hospital, Mr. Harding frequently plays his violoncello for them. As a more concrete gesture, he has voluntarily increased their daily pittance by two shillings, which amounted to some sixty-four pounds a year out of his own income.
Mr. Harding is father-in-law to the Archdeacon, and the Bishop appointed him to this coveted sinecure shortly after the marriage between Mr. Harding's daughter and the Bishop's son. All is harmonious until some of the citizens of Barchester begin to wonder whether John Hiram, founder of Hiram's Hospital by his will, intended the warden to live in such luxury as the estate now provided. (John Hiram died in 1434, more than a hundred years before the will of Sir William Cordbell of Melford Hall established the Hospital of the Holy and Blessed Trinity in Long Melford in 1573.) This campaign of reform is led by an idealistic young surgeon of the town, Dr. John Bold, who also happens to be a suitor for the hand of Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor.
Caught up in such controversy, Mr. Harding emerges as one of Trollope's most memorable, and certainly most lovable, characters. The question of his excessive income is publicized in The Jupiter, a London newspaper somewhat reminiscent of The Times, by Tom Towers, a young muckraking investigative journalist. Mr. Harding begins to wonder whether he can continue to hold the position under these circumstances, but he must also deal with his son-in-law Archdeacon Grantly, an outspoken and intimidating champion of the Church, who obtains the opinion of Sir Abraham Haphazard, the Attorney-General. Sir Abraham declares that the point is "so nice" that the plaintiffs would run up fifteen thousand pounds in legal costs before having a chance to prevail.
Not only are the costs of pursuing the campaign prohibitive, but John Bold himself comes to think that his respect for the Warden and his love for the Warden's daughter Eleanor are such that he must drop the case. He finds, however, that the issue, fanned by The Jupiter, has already been decided in the court of public opinion.
So we see that the problem of Mr. Harding's generous income has few parallels in today's church. Should seminarians still be required to read it? Yes. I don't know of any other series of novels that shows the many facets of clerical personalities as they interact with one another and with the world. The Warden introduces us to this community and is thus a prerequisite to an appreciation of Barchester Towers, The Last Chronicle of Barset, and the others in the series. In The Warden we meet the old Bishop of Barchester, benign and gentle, never questioning- the right of the Church to enjoy the blessings given to it by God; Archdeacon Grantly, a formidable defender of the faith who is not to be trifled with; and of course Mr. Harding, a quiet and somewhat timid man who comes to understand that his conscience commands him to assert himself.
I grew up listening to my father and grandfather discuss the preachers of the Little Rock Conference of the Methodist Church—their gifts and their shortcomings, their ambitions, their foibles. "Preachers are the most jealous profession there is," Dad explained to me. Several I knew only by name; several I came to know when they came to town and had dinner at our house. Not knowing about Anthony Trollope's novels, I couldn't look up anything they talked about in any book. It was apparent that church politics and the variety of clerical personalities would be a fertile field for the novelist.
No one has done it like Anthony Trollope. Individual preachers turn up here and there—Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry; John Ames in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead; Father Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather; and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. But these books deal with individual clergy; none get into the church and its politics as does Trollope's series.
Peter Raible writes in "Images of Protestant Clergy in American Novels" (Berry Street Essay, 1978) that the sexual activities of the clergy are represented disproportionately in fictional portrayals, at the expense of those whose achievements and shortcomings are in another realm. Surely he did not include Trollope in this generalization.