Anthony Trollope at 200

The bicentenary of the birth of Anthony Trollope invites some reflection on what he might have to say about the Scottish Episcopal Church today. Trollope was not noted for his knowledge of Scotland: the perceptive reader of the Barchester Chronicles would almost certainly surmise that Barsetshire was located somewhere in the south-west of England. Trollope’s travels for the Post Office took him to Ireland and Cornwall, but did not bring him across the Tweed, or the Solway Firth, nor indeed did this intrepid agent of the Royal Mail penetrate Kielder Forest or cross Carter Bar. But as astute and sympathetic an observer of the Church as Trollope undoubtedly was, whose enduring value rests not so much on literary merit as on insight into human nature and institutions, would certainly have something to teach us today.

As well as creating a fictional diocese and county, Trollope was the inventor of the pillar box. He would surely recognise in personages of a similar shape, complexion, and epidermal density to his cast iron legacy the spiritual descendents of Mrs Proudie, whose mission, vocation, and God-given right it is to dominate our Vestries, Synods, Boards, and Committees. In this more democratic age, they are no longer bishops’ wives, but reign from the pews, enthroned upon purple cushions which complement their ample internal upholstery. In fidelity to Trollope, the modern-day Mrs Proudie does much to keep the Royal Mail solvent with her frequent and incandescent epistles to bishops, complaining of all deviations on the part of obstinate and defiantly independent Tempests and Crawleys from the paths she has prescribed. And she ensures that children, if they have to be seen in church, at least are not heard over her indignant muttering, earnest and unfailingly prayerful collection and dissemination of gossip, and urgent and forthright instructions to her sycophantic acolytes.

In this proletarian age, the freakish mutation of Mrs Proudie from de facto to de jure bishop has evolved out of the urban underworld more familiar to Dickens than to Trollope, in the form of obese and toilet-brush headed products of criminal gangs and northern grammar schools, whose affectations of artistic knowledge and high culture do little to conceal the squalid thug with the deportment of a hippopotamus on heals, whose amethyst-encrusted knuckleduster remains nonetheless a knuckleduster, and whose pastoral staff might more easily be used to break bones and windows as to tend the ever-diminishing flock of God.

If Mrs Proudie has mutated successfully in response to ecclesiastical climate change, has the species of Slope proved more durable than that of Scatcherd? The patronage of Mrs Proudie no longer suffices to bring to fulfilment the aspirations of her protégés, whether she is aware of this or not. There are Slopes whose ambitions are undiminished by lack both of such patronage and of wealthy and eligible widows, but not all results of evolutionary bifurcation have been equally successful. The Toyboy Slope (Slops amoris geriatriciarum) has in fact proved singularly unadaptable, distracted as it is from its purpose by its fetish for old ladies and the contents of their handbags. Despite its Buddhist tendencies, this sub-species has accordingly never proved able to levitate beyond drafting orders of procession, even if able to rise to the demands of the blue rinse brigade. The most adaptable sub-species has proved to be the Orange or Worshipful Brother Slope (Slops ulsteriensis), its origins in the construction industry all but lost in the metamorphosis. Its networking strategies have cemented its dominance in the sordid world of application forms and Electoral Synods, its apron, rolled-up trouser leg, dexterity on one leg across a chequer-board carpet, and skill with the greasy handshake ensuring victory in all contests. An inferior variety, no less crafty but rather less successful, has been the Pink Slope (Slops repulsivus). This has expediently shed evangelical fervour and hostility to choral music, but secretes from all orifices the primordial slime out of which the species evolved, and so has retained if not enhanced the most obnoxious characteristics of its ancestor. The Pink Slope relies on a cause with which to be associated and a profile in cyberspace, that realm alien to Barsetshire into which only an unscrupulous Sowerby or Crosbie would venture. The greatest risk is that the cause might be won before the career has risen to its climax, and a rival emerge who embodies another cause, so rendering the slope distinctly precarious, if not prone to evolutionary obsolescence and extinction. The aristocratic Queen Wasp Slope (Slops autistica) has a genius for appearing important while doing nothing, displaying such consequences of in-breeding as large teeth and extreme narcissism, bestowing upon it almost unlimited destructive power. Something of an evolutionary throwback is the Aspirant Purple Slope (Slops catastroficus), very much less capable but endowed with vanity and persistence in applying for bishoprics, and incompetence which guarantees serial disasters on a scale which would surely have merited preferment in the age of Barchester. In this more fickle age of Electoral Synods, the evidence of catastrophic building projects and congregations declining to extinction may unduly sway a perverse and capricious Preparatory Committee, as well as not pleasing Mrs Proudie.

It is much to be regretted that Trollope did not, through the patronage of the Marquis of Auldreekie, pursue the interests of the Royal Mail in Scotland, and that he did not live to see such ecclesiastical innovations as Synods and non-stipendiary clergy, or indeed to see Mrs Proudie ascend her own Orcadian episcopal throne. As astute an observer of Parliament and the expanding Civil [sic] Service [sic] would surely have produced the definitive guide for synodical freshers. Trollope deplored the creation of theological colleges, the ecclesiastical equivalent of the 1832 Reform Act which enabled "literates" who were not "gentlemen" to prepare for ordination. This was before commercially marketable skills and trades had superseded the trivuum and quadrivium in the university curriculum, and indeed before the Theology tripos had been invented. The creation of a lower class of cleric was not about "formation", but about cheap labour in curacies and unendowed benefices. Not even the learned Dean Arabin underwent formation, and Archdeacon Grantly would surely have known how to avoid any such novelty. Notwithstanding the survival of this hierarchy within the hierarchy in the Church of today, one looks in vain around the bishops and senior clergy for any whom Trollope would have considered a "gentleman". The power of bishops, not mention of Mrs Proudie, to dispense patronage upon their own and each other's illegitimate offspring, sons in law and nephews, worshipful brothers and catamites is much diminished, not least because sons in law, nephews, and worshipful brothers tend to follow more lucrative professions. The inadequate, grasping and mercenary Mr Thumble may embody the same mediocrity, narcissism and presumption as the half-witted and semi-literate librarian scarcely capable of stamping the return date in a book, for whom non-stipendiary ministry provides glamour and status. But Trollope knows no equivalent of the retired professors of french letters and other most scientific of academic disciplines, or the world-weathered men and women, whether "gentlemen" or not, who have brought to the ministry a breadth of experience which Lady Lufton, or even Dr Thorne, could scarcely have imagined. Formation and mission action planning would be more Slope than Harding, more Mrs Proudie than Bishop Grantly, but the challenges posed to vested interests by Dr Bold would surely be as valid today as they were then.