WISE SERPENTS AND AN INNOCENT DOVE: MR HARDING IN TROLLOPE’S THE WARDEN
In Anthony Trollope’s slim novel, The Warden, a local activist named John Bold attempts to right what he feels is a grave injustice: the warden of Hiram’s Hospital — a care home for old men in the diocese of Barchester — receives a large salary thanks to the appreciation of the hospital’s endowment, but the daily allowance given to men of the home has stayed flat for centuries. Thus, the position of warden has become transformed from an austere duty to a cozy sinecure. Bold takes his case to the courts and to the press, enraging the diocese’s archdeacon, Dr. Grantly, who in turn engages the best and most expensive legal advice available to defend the honor of his church. The church, as he sees it, has a right to its funds, and the men in the hospital are well-cared for if by no means wealthy. This, such as it is, constitutes the action of the novel: the conflict between Bold’s and Grantly’s factions over the remuneration due to the warden. The conflict is ultimately resolved not by any of these players, but by the action of the warden himself, the open-hearted Mr. Harding, who staunchly refuses to join either side and, though retiring by nature, is ruled by his conscience. By the end of the novel Harding resigns his position, at great cost to himself. This action pleases neither side, and yet by doing so he effects a resolution which restores those willing to accept it.
The first time I read this novel I was charmed by Trollope’s light touch and humor but thought little of the ridiculous Mr. Harding. I was on my way to my first academic job and full of the self-confident zeal especially reserved for newly-minted PhDs. Surely I — so clever, so blessed, so well-intentioned — could never find myself in Harding’s position, nor sympathize with his resignation. Truly, the world could be wicked, but all it required for fixing was people of good hearts, sound minds, and active hands, of which I was, if not the first, at least among the vanguard. Over the past decade, though, Mr. Harding has increasingly grown in my estimation.
The tale of The Warden is told in linear fashion, but its structure is best understood as a set of concentric circles emanating from its title character. At its center is Mr. Harding. In the next ring is Archdeacon Grantly and John Bold. Although enemies, they share an interest. Grantly is married to Harding’s older daughter, Susan; Bold loves Harding’s younger daughter, Elenor. In the next ring are the those outside the town of Barchester who take an interest in the case: on the side of Bold, his lawyers and the press; on the side of Grantly, his lawyers and the attorney general, Sir Abraham Haphazard.
In the beginning both parties move away from Mr. Harding. Bold engages his lawyers and notifies the press. Likewise, Grantly engages his own lawyers and hires Haphazard for legal advice. This move outward rebounds to the center. Bold’s lawyer promises the men of the hospital a fortune if the suit succeeds, and the press writes untrue and unkind things about Mr. Harding that wound him deeply. Convinced by their own greed, most of the men in the hospital turn against their warden. At the advice of the attorney general, Grantly’s lawyers instruct Harding to do and say nothing, as there is a subtle flaw in the plaintiffs’ case which they believe will eventually force Bold to drop his suit due to its expense. Had the warden been a less kind man than Harding, it is easy to see how long the suit could run, and and how ruinous to everyone the argument over Hiram’s Hospital would be. Such a battle, fought in court, the press, the pulpit, and even parliament would have many casualties, including Bold’s love for Elenor, and the reputation of the church.
The Warden is a book about justice. The justness of the warden’s large salary is the topic of nearly every conversation. And yet, it is remarkable how small a role the pursuit of justice plays in motivating most of the characters’ actions. For the press, the question of justice is merely an occasion to pursue notoriety. It therefore has no qualms about unjustly slandering Mr. Harding. For the lawyers, it is merely a question of legal wrangling, a challenge to be overcome by subtlety, logic, and money. When Harding decides the resign, the attorney generally cannot understand. Justice and the law are not, for him, overlapping concerns. Neither Bold nor the archdeacon are quite so callous. But for them too the conflict over the warden’s salary is an occasion to promote what they love the most: for the archdeacon, the prerogatives of the church, and for Bold, his reputation as a reformer. Only for Harding is the question of justice of first importance.
Trollope never answers that question. Mr. Harding never receives a satisfactory interpretation of old John Hiram’s will, but the lack of an answer is enough. Harding’s conscience will not let him continue to draw a large salary, to live in his snug house when the justice of his position is in doubt. He resigns and retreats to a life of relative poverty. Others lose as well. The men of the hospital lose their protector, the lawyers their future fees, the press its cut-out villan. Bold and Grantly lose the money already invested in the suit. Is this a happy ending? Not in the terms of the world. But there are gains also.
Mr. Harding finds contentment. Bold does marry Elenor, and he and Grantly become brothers and friends. In tabulating these gains and losses it is not an accident that the person who loses the most money is Harding, nor that the people who receive the most grace are those closest to him. Had those in farther circles been willing to receive the love of Mr. Harding, they too may have found healing. But the men of the hospital are too shamed and embittered to fully embrace Harding’s attempted reconciliation, and the lawyers outside of Barchester are both too physically and spiritually distant; their interest in the case was never tainted by a concern for the actual rightness or wrongness of the warden’s claim.
What is it that Harding has taught me? He has shown me how act as a Christian in institutions, where good intentions so easily mix with bad, where old rules and new situations create unintended conflicts, where questions of desert are at times unanswerable, and where competing interests make just outcomes impossible without sacrifice. There is much concern today about systemic injustice, and rightly so. Systems and the institutions that sustain them are complex entities producing both good and ill, reformers and conservatives, those who wish to tear down and those who wish to patch up. The Warden does not pretend to offer a strategy for discerning what is just in these situations, or a program for achieving it. But in the person of Mr. Harding what it does present is a way of seeing institutions: as, most fundamentally, groups of people, some with better intentions and judgment than others, but all tempted by the charms of pride and delights of revenge, and so all also in need of grace. And it offers too a reminder that in the Christian pursuit of justice, we are called to follow the example of our Lord: to be willing to pay a price ourselves so that others may be reconciled.
