The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope

 

As the title of the novel proclaims, Anthony Trollope's sixth novel in the series is, in fact,The Last Chronicle of Barset. While ostensibly telling the story of Rev. Josiah Crawley and his being accused of stealing a cheque for £ 20, there are several stories interwoven into the plot. Trollope wanted to end the series by tidying things up. He begins the final chapter -
"It now only remains for me to gather together a few loose strings,and tie them together in a knot, so that my work may not become untwisted."

I don't normally give spoilers, but in the case of this final novel, I'll make an exception. Those folks just beginning the first novel, The Warden will have forgotten my spoilers by the time they get to the sixth novel. It's unlikely that anyone reading this post now has read the first five and will be disappointed in knowing how it all ends.

Like most novels from that time period, the six novels were originally published in serial installments. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, in the beginning of Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death, she writes that Hercule Poirot overhears a bit of conversation which reminds him of a story he once heard concerning Anthony Trollope. According to this story, Trollope was crossing the Atlantic at the time, and overheard two passengers discussing the last published installment of one of his novels. "Very good", one man said, "but he ought to kill off that tiresome old woman". Trollope was said to have told the men,"Gentlemen, I am much obliged to you! I will go and kill her immediately!"

At the time I wrote that post I suspected the "tiresome old woman" might have been the wife of Bishop Proudie. As it turns out, Trollope does kill off the Bishop's wife.

In my review of Book Five, The Small House at Allington, I wrote that -
"In his autobiography, Trollope is amazed by the number of letters he'd received from readers of the installments of The Small House at Allington who loved Lily Dale (who he considered a prig) and wished that Trollope would have Lily and John Eames marry. Trollope did not unite the two. Several of the characters from The Small House at Allington return in The Last Chronicle of Barset. Judging by Trollope's comments, I would be very surprised to see the couple marry in the final book."

Like Trollope, I too found Lily Dale a prig and hoped that she and Eames would never marry. I was beginning to worry in the final novel that Trollope would have the two wed, but I'm happy to say that Trollope had Lily Dale remain forever an "old maid".

Rev. Josiah Crawley is exonerated and all ends happily.

In the 1930s, fifty years after Trollope's death, English/Australian novelist Angela Thirkell began a series of 23 novels taking up the story of Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles. The first of her "sequels" is High Rising published in 1933. I'll put Thirkell's novel in the queue, although I have no idea how many of those I'll read.