Throughout this year, a few books have been my comfort food for my soul, assuming that I have one. These are books for which I do not have any objectives in mind prior to reading. It is an indulgence. Anthony Trollope’s the Chronicles of Barsetshire is among them. Whether it is pure pleasure or purposeful reading, the six novels from the Chronicles of Barsetshire are certainly not just enjoyable to read, but also very telling of the human values and the social fabric that are no less important now than in the late 19th century when they were first published.
There are six novels in this series: The Warden (1855), Barchester Towers (1857), Doctor Thorne (1858), Framley Parsonage (1861), The Small House at Allington (1864), and The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). A few characters are my favorites, Mrs. Eleanor Bold, Mr. Septimus Harding and Dr Thomas Thorne; equally a few other I loathe miserably: Mrs. Proudie, Mr. Obadiah Slope, Mr. Adolphus Crosbie, Lady Arabella, Lady de Courcy and so on. Some others, I have very mixed views, for example, both sympathetic and angry: Miss Lily Dale for her obsolete and backward view of human relations, although forgivable in the 19th century; Johnny Eames for his devotion and playfulness of equal strength. Nevertheless, they are all very entertaining characters.
The novels set at the fictitious English county Barsetshire and its town Barchester. All stories evolve around the clergymen and the upper class people linked to Barsetshire. Numerous passages from the novels fascinate me. Here are just a few short ones to whet your appetite. Enjoy! Try these books out if you are in the mood for seeking sheer pleasure of reading.
Don’t let love interfere with your appetite. It never does with mine.
There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.
We English gentlemen hate the name of a lie, but how often do we find public men who believe each other’s words?
She had no startling brilliancy of beauty, no pearly whiteness, no radiant carnation. She had not the majestic contour that rivets attention, demands instant wonder, and then disappoints by the coldness of its charms. You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.
There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilised and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.
No one ever on seeing Mr Crawley took him to be a happy man, or a weak man, or an ignorant man, or a wise man.
Buying and selling is good and necessary; it is very necessary, and may, possibly, be very good; but it cannot be the noblest work of man; and let us hope that it may not in our time be esteemed the noblest work of an Englishman.
He took such high ground that there was no getting on to it.
The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.
Considering how much we are all given to discuss the characters of others, and discuss them often not in the strictest spirit of charity, it is singular how little we are inclined to think that others can speak ill-naturedly of us, and how angry and hurt we are when proof reaches us that they have done so. It is hardly too much to say that we all of us occasionally speak of our dearest friends in a manner in which those dearest friends would very little like to hear themselves mentioned, and that we nevertheless expect that our dearest friends shall invariably speak of us as though they were blind to all our faults, but keenly alive to every shade of our virtues.
He felt horror at the thought of being made the subject of common gossip and public criticism.
If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men.
Sell yourself for money! why, if I were a man I would not sell one jot of liberty for mountains of gold. What! tie myself in the heyday of my youth to a person I could never love, for a price! perjure myself, destroy myself—and not only myself, but her also, in order that I might live idly! Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham! can it be that the words of such a woman as your aunt have sunk so deeply in your heart; have blackened you so foully as to make you think of such vile folly as this? Have you forgotten your soul, your spirit, your man’s energy, the treasure of your heart? And you, so young! For shame, Mr Gresham! for shame—for shame.
A man is sufficiently condemned if it can only be shown that either in politics or religion he does not belong to some new school established within the last score of years. He may then regard himself as rubbish and expect to be carted away. A man is nothing now unless he has within him a full appreciation of the new era, an era in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at everything that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart.
When last days are coming, they should be allowed to come and to glide away without special notice or mention. And as for last moments, there should be none such. Let them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged.
It would be wrong to say that love produces quarrels; but love does produce those intimate relations of which quarrelling is too often one of the consequences, – one of the consequences which frequently seem to be so natural, and sometimes seem to be unavoidable. One brother rebukes the other, – and what brothers ever lived together between whom there was no such rebuking? – then some warm word is misunderstood and hotter words follow and there is a quarrel. The husband tyrannizes, knowing that it is his duty to direct, and the wife disobeys, or “only partially obeys, thinking that a little independence will become her,” – and so there is a quarrel. The father, anxious only for his son’s good, looks into that son’s future with other eyes than those of his son himself, – and so there is a quarrel. They come very easily, these quarrels, but the quittance from them is sometimes terribly difficult. Much of thought is necessary before the angry man can remember that he too in part may have been wrong; and any attempt at such thinking is almost beyond the power of him who is carefully nursing his wrath, lest it cool! But the nursing of such quarrelling kills all happiness. The very man who is nursing his wrath lest it cool, – his wrath against one whom he loves perhaps the best of all whom it has been given him to love, – is himself wretched as long as it lasts. His anger poisons every pleasure of his life. He is sullen at his meals, and cannot understand his book as he turns its pages. His work, let it be what it may, is ill done. He is full of his quarrel, – nursing it. He is telling himself how much he has loved that wicked one, how many have been his sacrifices for that wicked one, and that now that wicked one is repaying him simply with wickedness! And yet the wicked one is at that very moment dearer to him than ever. If that wicked one could only be forgiven how sweet would the world be again! And yet he nurses his wrath.
One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.
