The Vicar of Bullhampton
Encyclopedia
The Vicar of Bullhampton is an 1870 novel by Anthony Trollope
. It is made up of three intertwining subplots: the courtship of a young woman by two suitors; a feud between the titular Broad Church
vicar and a Low Church
nobleman, abetted by a Methodist
minister; and the vicar's attempt to rehabilitate a young woman who has gone astray.
Trollope expected his depiction of a fallen woman to be controversial, and unusually for him wrote a preface defending it. But the anticipated controversy never materialized, and contemporary reviewers tended to ignore that subplot, focussing instead on the courtship in the novel. Reviews were generally less than positive; many reviewers and readers were unhappy about the darker tone of Trollope's post-Barchester
novels.
Trollope's fortunes suffered because of the mode of the novel's publication. Owing to mismanagement by the publishers it was not serialized in a popular magazine, as originally intended. Instead it was issued as monthly numbers, a form of serialization that had become unpopular with the reading public, and Trollope lost readers as a result.
. It develops three subplots, all connected with Frank Fenwick, the eponymous vicar
.
Mary finds the love she seeks in her second cousin, Captain Walter Marrable. He falls in love with her, and she joyously accepts his offer of marriage. However, misfortune strikes in the form of Colonel Marrable, the Captain's father, who swindles his son out of the fortune left him by his late mother. The impoverished Captain fears that he will have to return to India with his regiment; he and Mary, each unwilling to inflict poverty on the other, end their engagement by mutual consent and with mutual regret.
Mary, disspirited, yields to Gilmore's importunements, warning him that theirs must be a long engagement and that she will end it if Captain Marrable finds himself able to marry a woman without a fortune. This comes to pass: the death of the Captain's cousin, the heir to the family's baronet
cy, makes him the likely eventual heir. The current Baronet accepts the Captain as his heir, buying out the Colonel's interest to prevent his squandering the family fortune. The two lovers are reunited, leaving Gilmore bitter and despondent.
When a Bullhampton farmer is murdered in the course of a burglary, suspicion falls on Sam Brattle and his associates. Fenwick believes in Sam's innocence, and acts as one of his bondsmen
. Through Sam he discovers Carry's whereabouts, and resolves to rescue her if he can. He finds her a temporary home, but it becomes clear to him that the only permanent solution must involve bringing her back into the Brattle family, which means winning her father's forgiveness.
Carry leaves the home that Fenwick has found her and wanders distraught. Eventually, she returns to the mill, half resolved to see her old home and then drown herself in the millstream. There she is greeted lovingly by her mother and sister. Her father reluctantly allows her to remain in the family home; eventually he too forgives her, although he can never forget the shame she has brought on the family. Carry remains with her family for the rest of her life, but although she has returned to decency, her past ensures that she will never find an honest husband.
Sam is never charged with the murder, although one of his former associates is hanged for it. He continues to work at the mill, and eventually marries a Bullhampton girl.
minister, and the Marquis of Trowbridge, Bullhampton's principal landowner. The marquis believes that Sam Brattle is guilty of the murder, and is angered by Fenwick's support for him. He spreads rumours about Fenwick's relations with Carry Brattle, and grants Puddleham permission to build a chapel on a piece of land neighbouring Fenwick's residence, where he hopes that the sight of it and the sound of its bell will annoy the vicar. Fenwick tries to reconcile himself to the existence of the chapel, but it subsequently comes to light that the land does not belong to the marquis, and is instead part of the parish's glebe
. The embarrassed marquis pays to move the chapel to a new location, and through the intervention of his son, a suave Member of Parliament, he and Fenwick are reconciled.
On 5 August 1869, shortly after The Vicar had begun to appear in the form of monthly numbers, Dion Boucicault's
Formosa; or, The Railroad to Ruin opened at Drury Lane
. The title character of Boucicault's play was a harlot, and her representation on stage provoked an exchange in the pages of The Times
. Critics argued that the depiction of a prostitute in the theatre would tarnish the innocence of unmarried girls attending the performance. Supporters, including Boucicault himself, responded that worse women were regularly portrayed in Italian operas such as La Traviata
and Lucrezia Borgia
, which were considered eminently suitable for young women, and in the police and court news of The Times itself.
Trollope leapt into the fray somewhat belatedly, in the pages of Saint Paul's in October 1869, with an article on the Formosa controversy that can be read as a defense of and an advertisement for The Vicar. He took exception to several of the arguments in The Times: young women of the 1860s, he wrote, were not unaware of the existence of prostitution; and attempting to keep them in ignorance would not conduce to virtue. Rather than promoting vice, an accurate depiction of the squalid and miserable life of a woman of the streets would arm young people to resist temptation.
When the book edition of The Vicar of Bullhampton appeared in April 1870, it bore a preface; Trollope, who ordinarily scorned prefaces and dedications, felt compelled to justify the presentation of a character like Carry Brattle. He reiterated the points he had made regarding Formosa: that while depicting a fallen woman as glamourous or noble might lead impressionable readers to vice, a true depiction of such a woman's misery might deter readers from yielding to temptation; and might soften the hearts of parents whose daughters have fallen, and thus afford an opportunity of returning to decency.
expressed it,
To illustrate this point, James cited The Vicar, with Mary Lowther's vacillation between Gilmore and Col. Marrable.
Unlike the majority of Trollope's triangles, Mary is not called upon to judge between a good suitor and a bad one, but between two good men. Gilmore is presented as a sympathetic and admirable character; the reader learns far less about Captain Marrable's character, and is given no reason why Mary should prefer him to his rival. To Trollope, a woman does not necessarily fall in love because of a man's merits; and it is very wrong for a woman to marry where she does not love, regardless of her suitor's worthy qualities.
"The Girl of the Period". In her 1868 essay, Linton accused contemporary English girls of imitating prostitutes in their dress, speech, and manner, and declared that "the Girl of the Period has done away with such moral muffishness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke". Trollope was well aware of Linton's views, and made two references to them in the novel. According to Skilton, the highly unromantic portrayal of Carry Brattle's condition was a denial of Linton's claim that demimondaines were "gorgeously attired and sumptuously appointed ... flattered, fêted, and courted"; and the trouble that Mary Lowther brought upon herself and others came about not because of her disregard for counsel and rebuke, but because she attempted to follow the advice of her friends and elders. Near the end of the novel, Trollope writes:
In Skilton's opinion, since the stories of the two women are both essential to Trollope's refutation of Linton, neither can be given "titular pre-eminence"; thus the book had to take its name from the vicar. (The title was changed at some point in the novel's development; in the early planning stages, it was tentatively named I Count Her Wrong.)
, he wrote of their social rather than their spiritual lives. In The Vicar, however, Fenwick's object is "to apply Christian doctrine to life in the world."
A variety of religious beliefs are represented among the novel's characters. Jacob Brattle is an unbeliever. Puddleham is a Primitive Methodist. The Stowte family, to which the marquis belongs, are Low Church Anglicans
, and Fenwick is High Church
and latitudinarian
. Their charity is tested by their response to Carry Brattle, and it is Fenwick who passes the test. As William Cadbury expresses it, Puddleham has been hardened by too much doctrine, Jacob Brattle by too little.
Fenwick's beliefs are similar to Trollope's own. In his early life, the novelist was a supporter of the Tractarians
. However, beginning in about the mid-1860s, his sympathies tended increasingly toward the Broad Church
. He defended Bishop Colenso
, expressed doubt about the literal truth of the Old Testament, and questioned the doctrine of eternal punishment contained in the Athanasian Creed
.
Indeed, Fenwick resembled his creator in more than belief. To T. H. S. Escott, who was personally acquainted with Trollope, Fenwick—generous, outspoken, broad-minded, and a bit pugnacious—was very much like a portrait of the author in clerical dress. Puddleham's discomfiture "proves, to Trollope's naively undisguised satisfaction, that Providence is on the side of the State Church".
, a fellow member of the Garrick Club
. Dallas had just been appointed editor of Once A Week
, a magazine published by the firm of Bradbury and Evans
. Trollope agreed to provide a novel of the length of The Claverings
, to be serialized beginning in May 1869, for a fee of £2800. In the course of his correspondence with Dallas, Trollope wrote, "Of course it is understood that it is intended for your periodical, Once A Week."
Trollope wrote The Vicar of Bullhamtpon between 15 June and 1 November 1868. The novel was begun in Washington, D.C., where the author was on a mission to negotiate a postal treaty and international copyright arrangements with the United States. It was concluded after his return to England, in the early stages of his unsuccessful campaign for a Parliamentary seat in the borough
of Beverley
.
As the publication date neared, difficulties arose. In January 1869, Dallas asked Trollope for permission to defer serial publication by three months. As Trollope had agreed not to allow another of his novels to run serially during the first six months of The Vicars career, the editor's request would have diminished the author's income. Trollope initially refused, but subsequently agreed to a delay of two months, with publication to begin in early July.
Matters did not improve. In March 1869, Dallas made a new request of Trollope. Once A Week had bought the rights to Victor Hugo's
forthcoming novel, L'homme qui rit
, expecting to begin serialization in January 1869. However, Hugo was behind schedule, and the novel would not be available until April. The magazine did not have enough space to run Hugo's and Trollope's novels side by side. Would Trollope, therefore, be willing to see The Vicar serialized in The Gentleman's Magazine
instead?
Trollope would not. The Gentleman's Magazine was, in Michael Sadleir's
words, "a very inferior paper with a lower class of reader and a poor general reputation". Moreover, personal feelings were involved: Trollope resented the fact that he, a punctual Englishman, was being asked to yield to a dilatory Frenchman.
Trollope refused. Hugo's novel was published in The Gentleman's Magazine, beginning in May 1869. However, by the end of June, the sale of Once A Week to a new publisher was in progress. Rather than serializing The Vicar in the magazine, Bradbury and Evans issued it in eleven monthly shilling numbers, running from July 1869 to May 1870. Trollope could not object to this mode of independent publication; but it was one that had fallen out of favor with the public, and Trollope suffered a loss of reputation and readership as a result. He also suffered a pecuniary loss of £300, agreeing for reasons unspecified to accept only £2500 for the novel.
of Philadelphia in 1869–70. At the same time, an American book edition was issued by J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Bradbury and Evans released the novel in book form in 1870, as a single volume with thirty illustrations by Henry Woods. In the same year, English-language books were published by Harper
in New York and by Tauchnitz
in Leipzig; a Russian translation, Bullhamptonsky Vikaryi, was published in Moscow. In 1872, a Dutch translation, De Predikant van Bullhampton, was published by Roelants of Schiedam; in 1873, a Russian Bullhamptonsky Vikaryi was released in St. Petersburg.
More recently, editions have been published by Dover Publications
in 1979; by Alan Sutton
in 1983; by Oxford University Press
in 1924, re-issued with an introduction by David Skilton in 1988; and by the Trollope Society, with an introduction by John Halperin, in 1998.
, by The Times, and by Mrs. Oliphant. The Saturday Review complained that "[a] sort of savageness pervades the book", and that "[n]obody is pleasant", and described the novel as "third-rate" and as a "not very satisfactory book"; this is in keeping with a certain amount of general dissatisfaction among readers and reviewers with the darker tone of Trollope's post-Barchester
books.
Later critics varied in their opinion of the novel. Henry James
, who had loudly derided several of Trollope's novels of the mid-1860s, described it in an 1883 article as a "slow but excellent story, which is a capital example of interest produced by the quietest conceivable means". In 1927, Michael Sadleir
wrote that it "has a sure title to enduring reputation"; of Mary Lowther, whom earlier critics had found irritating, he wrote, "to-day she seems sensible enough and, as a young woman, wholly natural.". By 1971, however, James Pope-Hennessy
labelled the novel "a lifeless, dull production".
More recently still, Trollope scholars have looked upon it with increasing favor, describing it as a powerful work that has suffered undeserved neglect. Present-day critics have focussed increasingly on the Carry Brattle subplot; it has been suggested, supported in part by the similarity of passages from The Vicar, from the Autobiography, and from The Small House at Allington
referring to Johnny Eames, that some aspects of her portrayal are based on the novelist's own early adulthood in London.
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
. It is made up of three intertwining subplots: the courtship of a young woman by two suitors; a feud between the titular Broad Church
Broad church
Broad church is a term referring to latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England, in particular, and Anglicanism, in general. From this, the term is often used to refer to secular political organisations, meaning that they encompass a broad range of opinion.-Usage:After the terms high...
vicar and a Low Church
Low church
Low church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
nobleman, abetted by a Methodist
Primitive Methodism
Primitive Methodism was a major movement in English Methodism from about 1810 until the Methodist Union in 1932. The Primitive Methodist Church still exists in the United States.-Origins:...
minister; and the vicar's attempt to rehabilitate a young woman who has gone astray.
Trollope expected his depiction of a fallen woman to be controversial, and unusually for him wrote a preface defending it. But the anticipated controversy never materialized, and contemporary reviewers tended to ignore that subplot, focussing instead on the courtship in the novel. Reviews were generally less than positive; many reviewers and readers were unhappy about the darker tone of Trollope's post-Barchester
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
novels.
Trollope's fortunes suffered because of the mode of the novel's publication. Owing to mismanagement by the publishers it was not serialized in a popular magazine, as originally intended. Instead it was issued as monthly numbers, a form of serialization that had become unpopular with the reading public, and Trollope lost readers as a result.
Plot summary
The Vicar of Bullhampton is set in a small town in WiltshireWiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
. It develops three subplots, all connected with Frank Fenwick, the eponymous vicar
Vicar (Anglicanism)
Vicar is the title given to certain parish priests in the Church of England. It has played a significant role in Anglican Church organisation in ways that are different from other Christian denominations. The title is very old and arises from the medieval situation where priests were appointed...
.
Mary Lowther
The first subplot involves the courtship of Mary Lowther, a childhood friend of the vicar's wife. Harry Gilmore, a Bullhampton squire and a friend of the Fenwicks, falls deeply in love with her. Mary recognizes that Gilmore is a good man, but she fears that she does not adore him as a woman should adore the man she marries. The Fenwicks and her guardian aunt all urge her to accept his proposal, telling her that the affection she does not now feel will come after marriage. In the face of this advice, she does not reject Gilmore outright, but asks for time to consider.Mary finds the love she seeks in her second cousin, Captain Walter Marrable. He falls in love with her, and she joyously accepts his offer of marriage. However, misfortune strikes in the form of Colonel Marrable, the Captain's father, who swindles his son out of the fortune left him by his late mother. The impoverished Captain fears that he will have to return to India with his regiment; he and Mary, each unwilling to inflict poverty on the other, end their engagement by mutual consent and with mutual regret.
Mary, disspirited, yields to Gilmore's importunements, warning him that theirs must be a long engagement and that she will end it if Captain Marrable finds himself able to marry a woman without a fortune. This comes to pass: the death of the Captain's cousin, the heir to the family's baronet
Baronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
cy, makes him the likely eventual heir. The current Baronet accepts the Captain as his heir, buying out the Colonel's interest to prevent his squandering the family fortune. The two lovers are reunited, leaving Gilmore bitter and despondent.
Brattle family
The second subplot involves the family of Bullhampton's miller, Jacob Brattle. His youngest son, Sam, is a hard worker at the mill; but has fallen in with bad companions, and is often absent from home. Sam's sister Carry is worse off yet: having yielded to a seducer, she has been disowned by her father, and is living a life of sin in an unknown location.When a Bullhampton farmer is murdered in the course of a burglary, suspicion falls on Sam Brattle and his associates. Fenwick believes in Sam's innocence, and acts as one of his bondsmen
Bail bondsman
A bail bond agent, or bondsman, is any person or corporation that will act as a surety and pledge money or property as bail for the appearance of persons accused in court...
. Through Sam he discovers Carry's whereabouts, and resolves to rescue her if he can. He finds her a temporary home, but it becomes clear to him that the only permanent solution must involve bringing her back into the Brattle family, which means winning her father's forgiveness.
Carry leaves the home that Fenwick has found her and wanders distraught. Eventually, she returns to the mill, half resolved to see her old home and then drown herself in the millstream. There she is greeted lovingly by her mother and sister. Her father reluctantly allows her to remain in the family home; eventually he too forgives her, although he can never forget the shame she has brought on the family. Carry remains with her family for the rest of her life, but although she has returned to decency, her past ensures that she will never find an honest husband.
Sam is never charged with the murder, although one of his former associates is hanged for it. He continues to work at the mill, and eventually marries a Bullhampton girl.
Marquis and Methodist
A third subplot centers on the relationship between Fenwick, Mr. Puddleham, the village's MethodistPrimitive Methodism
Primitive Methodism was a major movement in English Methodism from about 1810 until the Methodist Union in 1932. The Primitive Methodist Church still exists in the United States.-Origins:...
minister, and the Marquis of Trowbridge, Bullhampton's principal landowner. The marquis believes that Sam Brattle is guilty of the murder, and is angered by Fenwick's support for him. He spreads rumours about Fenwick's relations with Carry Brattle, and grants Puddleham permission to build a chapel on a piece of land neighbouring Fenwick's residence, where he hopes that the sight of it and the sound of its bell will annoy the vicar. Fenwick tries to reconcile himself to the existence of the chapel, but it subsequently comes to light that the land does not belong to the marquis, and is instead part of the parish's glebe
Glebe
Glebe Glebe Glebe (also known as Church furlong or parson's closes is an area of land within a manor and parish used to support a parish priest.-Medieval origins:...
. The embarrassed marquis pays to move the chapel to a new location, and through the intervention of his son, a suave Member of Parliament, he and Fenwick are reconciled.
Plight of the fallen woman
According to Trollope, the plight of Carry Brattle was at the center of the story. "The Vicar of Bullhampton was written chiefly with the object of exciting not only pity but sympathy for fallen woman, and of raising a feeling of forgiveness for such in the minds of other women." In the Autobiography, he argued that the punishment for fornication is far heavier for women than for men, although in most cases the latter are more to blame than the former; and that women are given no opportunity of returning to decent lives, however repentant they might be.On 5 August 1869, shortly after The Vicar had begun to appear in the form of monthly numbers, Dion Boucicault's
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
Formosa; or, The Railroad to Ruin opened at Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
. The title character of Boucicault's play was a harlot, and her representation on stage provoked an exchange in the pages of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. Critics argued that the depiction of a prostitute in the theatre would tarnish the innocence of unmarried girls attending the performance. Supporters, including Boucicault himself, responded that worse women were regularly portrayed in Italian operas such as La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
and Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia (opera)
Lucrezia Borgia is a melodramma, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after the play by Victor Hugo, in its turn after the legend of Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia was first performed on 26 December 1833 at La Scala, Milan with...
, which were considered eminently suitable for young women, and in the police and court news of The Times itself.
Trollope leapt into the fray somewhat belatedly, in the pages of Saint Paul's in October 1869, with an article on the Formosa controversy that can be read as a defense of and an advertisement for The Vicar. He took exception to several of the arguments in The Times: young women of the 1860s, he wrote, were not unaware of the existence of prostitution; and attempting to keep them in ignorance would not conduce to virtue. Rather than promoting vice, an accurate depiction of the squalid and miserable life of a woman of the streets would arm young people to resist temptation.
The harm done by Formosa lies in this,— that the character is utterly false, false to human nature and false to London life. She is a wretch, abominable almost beyond conception, so as to be odious, if known, to the most odious. She is sharper as well as prostitute,—and is false to all with whom she comes in contact, to those whom she is supposed to love and to those who love her. Her peculiar profession is represented as causing her no personal remorse. And yet she is exhibited to us as a fine creature, a noble woman, one whom a man might be honoured by loving;—and at last she ends with a success! ... That which is vile and dirty, squalid and miserable,—that, of which we may say that were its horrors known such knowledge would deter more thoroughly than any ignorance,—is exhibited as a bright existence, full of danger indeed, but still open to all that is noble, and capable of final success.
When the book edition of The Vicar of Bullhampton appeared in April 1870, it bore a preface; Trollope, who ordinarily scorned prefaces and dedications, felt compelled to justify the presentation of a character like Carry Brattle. He reiterated the points he had made regarding Formosa: that while depicting a fallen woman as glamourous or noble might lead impressionable readers to vice, a true depiction of such a woman's misery might deter readers from yielding to temptation; and might soften the hearts of parents whose daughters have fallen, and thus afford an opportunity of returning to decency.
Love and courtship
A recurring theme in Trollope's work is the difficulty of choosing between two suitors. As Henry JamesHenry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
expressed it,
Trollope has described again and again the ravages of love ... His story is always primarily a love-story, and a love-story constructed on an inveterate system. There is a young lady who has two lovers, or a young man who has two sweethearts; we are treated to the innumerable forms in which this predicament may present itself and the consequences, sometimes pathetic, sometimes grotesque, which spring from such false situations.
To illustrate this point, James cited The Vicar, with Mary Lowther's vacillation between Gilmore and Col. Marrable.
Unlike the majority of Trollope's triangles, Mary is not called upon to judge between a good suitor and a bad one, but between two good men. Gilmore is presented as a sympathetic and admirable character; the reader learns far less about Captain Marrable's character, and is given no reason why Mary should prefer him to his rival. To Trollope, a woman does not necessarily fall in love because of a man's merits; and it is very wrong for a woman to marry where she does not love, regardless of her suitor's worthy qualities.
"The Girl of the Period"
In David Skilton's view, the Carry Brattle and Mary Lowther subplots together comprise a rejoinder to Eliza Lynn Linton'sEliza Lynn Linton
Eliza Lynn Linton , was a British novelist, essayist, and journalist.-Life:The daughter of a clergyman and granddaughter of a bishop of Carlisle, she arrived in London in 1845 as the protégé of poet Walter Savage Landor. In the following year she produced her first novel, Azeth, the Egyptian;...
"The Girl of the Period". In her 1868 essay, Linton accused contemporary English girls of imitating prostitutes in their dress, speech, and manner, and declared that "the Girl of the Period has done away with such moral muffishness as consideration for others, or regard for counsel and rebuke". Trollope was well aware of Linton's views, and made two references to them in the novel. According to Skilton, the highly unromantic portrayal of Carry Brattle's condition was a denial of Linton's claim that demimondaines were "gorgeously attired and sumptuously appointed ... flattered, fêted, and courted"; and the trouble that Mary Lowther brought upon herself and others came about not because of her disregard for counsel and rebuke, but because she attempted to follow the advice of her friends and elders. Near the end of the novel, Trollope writes:
[The author] has endeavoured to describe a young woman, prompted in all her doings by a conscience wide awake, guided by principle, willing, if need be, to sacrifice herself, struggling always to keep herself from doing wrong, but yet causing infinite grief to others, and nearly bringing herself to utter shipwreck, because, for a while, she allowed herself to believe that it would be right for her to marry a man whom she did not love.
In Skilton's opinion, since the stories of the two women are both essential to Trollope's refutation of Linton, neither can be given "titular pre-eminence"; thus the book had to take its name from the vicar. (The title was changed at some point in the novel's development; in the early planning stages, it was tentatively named I Count Her Wrong.)
Religion
The Vicar of Bullhampton has been described as Trollope's most religious novel, and Frank Fenwick as his "most explicitly religious character". Although the author won renown for his depictions of the lives of the clergy in the Barsetshire novelsChronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
, he wrote of their social rather than their spiritual lives. In The Vicar, however, Fenwick's object is "to apply Christian doctrine to life in the world."
A variety of religious beliefs are represented among the novel's characters. Jacob Brattle is an unbeliever. Puddleham is a Primitive Methodist. The Stowte family, to which the marquis belongs, are Low Church Anglicans
Low church
Low church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
, and Fenwick is High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
and latitudinarian
Latitudinarian
Latitudinarian was initially a pejorative term applied to a group of 17th-century English theologians who believed in conforming to official Church of England practices but who felt that matters of doctrine, liturgical practice, and ecclesiastical organization were of relatively little importance...
. Their charity is tested by their response to Carry Brattle, and it is Fenwick who passes the test. As William Cadbury expresses it, Puddleham has been hardened by too much doctrine, Jacob Brattle by too little.
Fenwick's beliefs are similar to Trollope's own. In his early life, the novelist was a supporter of the Tractarians
Oxford Movement
The Oxford Movement was a movement of High Church Anglicans, eventually developing into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose members were often associated with the University of Oxford, argued for the reinstatement of lost Christian traditions of faith and their inclusion into Anglican liturgy...
. However, beginning in about the mid-1860s, his sympathies tended increasingly toward the Broad Church
Broad church
Broad church is a term referring to latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England, in particular, and Anglicanism, in general. From this, the term is often used to refer to secular political organisations, meaning that they encompass a broad range of opinion.-Usage:After the terms high...
. He defended Bishop Colenso
John William Colenso
John William Colenso , first Anglican bishop of Natal, mathematician, theologian, Biblical scholar and social activist.-Biography:Colenso was born at St Austell, Cornwall, on 24 January 1814...
, expressed doubt about the literal truth of the Old Testament, and questioned the doctrine of eternal punishment contained in the Athanasian Creed
Athanasian Creed
The Athanasian Creed is a Christian statement of belief, focusing on Trinitarian doctrine and Christology. The Latin name of the creed, Quicumque vult, is taken from the opening words, "Whosoever wishes." The Athanasian Creed has been used by Christian churches since the sixth century...
.
Indeed, Fenwick resembled his creator in more than belief. To T. H. S. Escott, who was personally acquainted with Trollope, Fenwick—generous, outspoken, broad-minded, and a bit pugnacious—was very much like a portrait of the author in clerical dress. Puddleham's discomfiture "proves, to Trollope's naively undisguised satisfaction, that Providence is on the side of the State Church".
Once A Week
Early in 1868, Trollope was approached by E. S. DallasEneas Sweetland Dallas
Eneas Sweetland Dallas was a Scottish journalist and author.- Biography :E.S. Dallas was the elder son of John Dallas of Jamaica, a planter of Scottish parentage, and his wife Elizabeth , the daughter of the Rev. Angus McIntosh of Tain and sister of Rev. Caldor McIntosh...
, a fellow member of the Garrick Club
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...
. Dallas had just been appointed editor of Once A Week
Once A Week (magazine)
Once A Week was an English weekly illustrated literary magazine published by Bradbury and Evans. According to John Sutherland, "[h]istorically the magazine's main achievement was to provide an outlet for [an] innovative group of illustrators [in] the 1860s."The magazine was founded in consequence...
, a magazine published by the firm of Bradbury and Evans
Bradbury and Evans
Bradbury and Evans was an English printer and publisher founded by William Bradbury and Frederick Mullet Evans. For the first ten years they were printers, then added publishing in 1841 after they purchased Punch magazine. As printers they did work for Edward Moxon and Chapman and Hall...
. Trollope agreed to provide a novel of the length of The Claverings
The Claverings
The Claverings is a novel by Anthony Trollope, written in 1864 and published in 1866–67. It is the story of a young man starting out in life, who must find himself a profession and a wife; and of a young woman who made a marriage of convenience and must abide the consequences.-Plot...
, to be serialized beginning in May 1869, for a fee of £2800. In the course of his correspondence with Dallas, Trollope wrote, "Of course it is understood that it is intended for your periodical, Once A Week."
Trollope wrote The Vicar of Bullhamtpon between 15 June and 1 November 1868. The novel was begun in Washington, D.C., where the author was on a mission to negotiate a postal treaty and international copyright arrangements with the United States. It was concluded after his return to England, in the early stages of his unsuccessful campaign for a Parliamentary seat in the borough
Parliamentary borough
Parliamentary boroughs are a type of administrative division, usually covering urban areas, that are entitled to representation in a Parliament...
of Beverley
Beverley (UK Parliament constituency)
Beverley has been the name of a parliamentary constituency in the East Riding of Yorkshire for three separate periods. From medieval times until 1869, it was a parliamentary borough, consisting solely of the market town of Beverley, which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons...
.
As the publication date neared, difficulties arose. In January 1869, Dallas asked Trollope for permission to defer serial publication by three months. As Trollope had agreed not to allow another of his novels to run serially during the first six months of The Vicars career, the editor's request would have diminished the author's income. Trollope initially refused, but subsequently agreed to a delay of two months, with publication to begin in early July.
Matters did not improve. In March 1869, Dallas made a new request of Trollope. Once A Week had bought the rights to Victor Hugo's
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
forthcoming novel, L'homme qui rit
The Man Who Laughs
The Man Who Laughs is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui rit. Also published under the title By Order of the King...
, expecting to begin serialization in January 1869. However, Hugo was behind schedule, and the novel would not be available until April. The magazine did not have enough space to run Hugo's and Trollope's novels side by side. Would Trollope, therefore, be willing to see The Vicar serialized in The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
instead?
Trollope would not. The Gentleman's Magazine was, in Michael Sadleir's
Michael Sadleir
Michael Sadleir was a British novelist and book collector.-Biography:He was born Michael Sadler, though upon beginning to publish novels he altered the spelling of his name to differentiate himself from his father, Michael Ernest Sadler, a historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds...
words, "a very inferior paper with a lower class of reader and a poor general reputation". Moreover, personal feelings were involved: Trollope resented the fact that he, a punctual Englishman, was being asked to yield to a dilatory Frenchman.
My disgust at this proposition was, I think, chiefly due to Victor Hugo’s latter novels, which I regard as pretentious and untrue to nature. To this perhaps was added some feeling of indignation that I should be asked to give way to a Frenchman. The Frenchman had broken his engagement. He had failed to have his work finished by the stipulated time. From week to week and from month to month he had put off the fulfilment of his duty. And because of these laches on his part,— on the part of this sententious French Radical,— I was to be thrown over!
Trollope refused. Hugo's novel was published in The Gentleman's Magazine, beginning in May 1869. However, by the end of June, the sale of Once A Week to a new publisher was in progress. Rather than serializing The Vicar in the magazine, Bradbury and Evans issued it in eleven monthly shilling numbers, running from July 1869 to May 1870. Trollope could not object to this mode of independent publication; but it was one that had fallen out of favor with the public, and Trollope suffered a loss of reputation and readership as a result. He also suffered a pecuniary loss of £300, agreeing for reasons unspecified to accept only £2500 for the novel.
Other publication
The Vicar of Bullhampton was published serially in Lippincott's Monthly MagazineLippincott's Monthly Magazine
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine was a 19th century literary magazine published in Philadelphia from 1868 to 1915, when it relocated to New York to become McBride's Magazine. It merged with Scribner's Magazine in 1916....
of Philadelphia in 1869–70. At the same time, an American book edition was issued by J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Bradbury and Evans released the novel in book form in 1870, as a single volume with thirty illustrations by Henry Woods. In the same year, English-language books were published by Harper
Harper (publisher)
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
in New York and by Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers.Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz , born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798...
in Leipzig; a Russian translation, Bullhamptonsky Vikaryi, was published in Moscow. In 1872, a Dutch translation, De Predikant van Bullhampton, was published by Roelants of Schiedam; in 1873, a Russian Bullhamptonsky Vikaryi was released in St. Petersburg.
More recently, editions have been published by Dover Publications
Dover Publications
Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
in 1979; by Alan Sutton
The History Press
The History Press is one of the UK’s largest local and specialist history publishers, publishing approximately 500 books per year.Created in December 2007, The History Press has integrated core elements of the NPI Media Group within it, including all existing published titles, plus all the future...
in 1983; by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
in 1924, re-issued with an introduction by David Skilton in 1988; and by the Trollope Society, with an introduction by John Halperin, in 1998.
Reception
Trollope's preface suggests that he anticipated controversy from the depiction of Carry Brattle in The Vicar of Bullhampton. This did not happen. The Times declared it "a nice, easy, safe reading book for old ladies and young ladies ... welcome in all well-regulated families". Contemporary reviewers tended to neglect the Carry Brattle subplot and focus on Mary Lowther, whose conduct was criticized by Blackwood's MagazineBlackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
, by The Times, and by Mrs. Oliphant. The Saturday Review complained that "[a] sort of savageness pervades the book", and that "[n]obody is pleasant", and described the novel as "third-rate" and as a "not very satisfactory book"; this is in keeping with a certain amount of general dissatisfaction among readers and reviewers with the darker tone of Trollope's post-Barchester
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
books.
Later critics varied in their opinion of the novel. Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, who had loudly derided several of Trollope's novels of the mid-1860s, described it in an 1883 article as a "slow but excellent story, which is a capital example of interest produced by the quietest conceivable means". In 1927, Michael Sadleir
Michael Sadleir
Michael Sadleir was a British novelist and book collector.-Biography:He was born Michael Sadler, though upon beginning to publish novels he altered the spelling of his name to differentiate himself from his father, Michael Ernest Sadler, a historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds...
wrote that it "has a sure title to enduring reputation"; of Mary Lowther, whom earlier critics had found irritating, he wrote, "to-day she seems sensible enough and, as a young woman, wholly natural.". By 1971, however, James Pope-Hennessy
James Pope-Hennessy
James Pope Hennessy CVO was a British biographer and travel writer.-Life:Richard James Arthur Pope-Hennessy was born in London on 20 November 1916, the younger son of Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy, a soldier from County Cork in Ireland, and his wife, Una Constance Pope-Hennessy who was...
labelled the novel "a lifeless, dull production".
More recently still, Trollope scholars have looked upon it with increasing favor, describing it as a powerful work that has suffered undeserved neglect. Present-day critics have focussed increasingly on the Carry Brattle subplot; it has been suggested, supported in part by the similarity of passages from The Vicar, from the Autobiography, and from The Small House at Allington
The Small House at Allington
The Small House at Allington is the fifth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", first published in 1864...
referring to Johnny Eames, that some aspects of her portrayal are based on the novelist's own early adulthood in London.
External links
- The Vicar of Bullhampton, reproduction of 1870 Bradbury and Evans edition at archive.org
- The Vicar of Bullhampton, reproduction of 1870 Tauchnitz edition at Google Books