Review - The Warden

A masterpiece and, fittingly for a novel about money, a plot that revolves around accountability. It’s a compelling story of a good man who tries above all to do good in an imperfect world where others, through ignorance or because they are misguided or, in the case of members of the press, because they are vile, cause harm either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is a stunning novel, but with every turn of the page the reader mutters ‘this will not end well’. The question here is not so much can a good man triumph? but rather what would his triumph look like, and what, coming back to accountability, would be the cost?
It is, however, an absolute joy to read.
I grew up in a cathedral town and, reading the description of Barchester in the opening pages of ‘The Warden’, where Trollope describes the town in loving detail, I was convinced that he had based his fictional Barchester on my home town. Trollope’s description of everything from the cathedral close to the alms houses that the plot of the novel turns on being, if not exact, then an entirely faithful depiction of the essence of the places in the town I grew up in.
Then again, anyone who has grown up in a cathedral town will probably claim the same. There is a pattern to those places. More probably, it is Trollope’s genius that makes the place familiar.
As there is a pattern to the cathedral closes of Barchester, there is a pattern to the story here too, although that is by no means a weakness. Rather, the reader progresses with a gathering sense of foreboding as the tale simultaneously unfolds and tangles.
An honourable man is confronted with a criticism of his character by a family friend when the accusation is levelled at him that he, the titular Warden of the alms houses, profits personally from an arrangements that sees the residents of the alms houses disadvantaged.
Essentially, everyone is content until an individual acts out of a misguided sense of public spiritness, with the situation further complicated when others with their own agenda intervene to their own ends.
This is, in short, an astonishing book, and a compelling read.
In it Trollope takes aim at some obvious targets, but justly so. Given that the principal characters in the book are clergymen, and the story features eminent lawyers, it really does say something that it is the press, and the popular press in particular, that is singled out for vilification. Trollope’s demolition of the principles of the press is absolute, his demonisation of those who sit in unaccountable judgement of others they do not even know, utter.
The Warden contains the best depiction of the unaccountability of the press, and the lack of care journalists have for individuals fed to the press that I have ever read. Trollope so neatly captures the self important arrogance of the popular press and those that write it that one is almost compelled to hire a muckspreader and head for Fleet Street to make a not very subtle point about what newspapers are full of.
Barely as the reader stopped muttering ‘fucking right Tony!’ when Trollope takes aim at the even less accountable, anonymous, ‘author’, the pamphleteer hiding behind an alias, sharing their ill informed opinions in a desperate bid to be as popular as they are smug (which would take some doing).
Having essentially destroyed the tabloids and bloggers, the reader might expect lawyers to come in for some criticism also. The reader is not disappointed.
The church itself is spared harsh criticism. True, it’s the Anglican faith being described here, so the only thing the choirboys need to be worried about is being late for evensong, but generally the priests of Bartchester are a jolly pleasant bunch who are genuinely committed to serving the spiritual needs of their flock.
‘The Warden’ is a compelling tale of the unintended consequences of the actions of those who meddle to do well, how events once set in motion can move beyond the control of those that set them in motion, and how those without morality or honour seek to exploit discord for personal gain.