Well, Anthony Trollope has failed me. He’s diverged from his route, taking me quite unwillingly from delicious clerical and county satire that the previous four novels of the Barchester Chronicles deployed (see previous Notes), into Victorian romantic melodrama a la Dickens at his most tedious, drawn out far too long due to the requirements of serialisation. So, The Small House at Allington (1864) I Did Not Finish.

I have read this very long novel once before, but it was before 2008 when I began to keep a reading diary, and so I have no idea what I thought of the plot, characters etc then. I do have a residual and quite confusing memory that I enjoyed reading it hugely, and ranked it almost as my favourite of the Barchester Chronicles. Heaven knows what happened to that version of me: this time I could not get past the appalling caricature goodtime girl Amelia in Johnny Eames’ London lodgings, and the threat of an obvious turgid sub-plot signposted (far too soon) by Johnny’s rash pencilled note saying that he will love only her, when actually he is in love with the ineffable Lily Dale at home in Barsetshire.

Lily’s engagement (again, far too soon) is to the colourless (in the sense that we don’t really know yet what colour of character he is) Adolphus ‘Apollo’ Crosbie, who asks his friend Bernard Dale, Lily’s cousin, if he will ask Bernard and Lily’s uncle Mr Christopher Dale what he will give Lily on her marriage, Lily’s father being dead and her mother not well off, and Uncle Christopher being the lord of the manor and very affectionate towards his nieces. This is before Crosbie offered for Lily, and the fact that we do not even get to witness the proposal is a good indication that this is not a love match but a match to be unravelled and to make people miserable. I’m not interested in dwelling on such guilt and misery: give me the clerical scandal!

So, even though I am pretty sure (I have not read the Wikipedia plot summary but you can) that this is the novel in which Johnny Eames proves his heroism and goodness by saving Lily from a bull (an event beautifully repeated in Angela Thirkell’s August Folly from 1936), I simply don’t care enough to wade through the 698 pages of my 2006 Nonsuch Classics edition (whatever happened to Nonsuch Classics?). 698 pages is far too many. I have other books I need (and want) to read this month. Fie upon The Small House at Allington.

Instead, I will pursue my interest in watching nineteenth-century British clerical gentlemen wander about their parishes uncovering small-scale scandal, and return to one of my favourite Regency novelists, John Galt. Over the next few months I will reread his masterpiece Annals of the Parish (1821), and possibly his The Provost (1822) and The Entail (1823) as well. I may also reread George Eliot’s Scenes from Clerical Life (1857), for a closing dose of mid Victorian clerical lifestyles, as contrast.

Do follow me if you want to sit on the sidelines and watch.