The Warden was published in 1855 and is the first of the six Barsetshire novels. It is also the shortest and, in some ways, the most perfectly constructed. The Reverend Septimus Harding is the warden of Hiram’s Hospital, a medieval almshouse in the cathedral city of Barchester. The wardenship provides him with a comfortable income of £800 a year — a generous sum for supervising twelve elderly men. When John Bold, a young reformer (and the suitor of Harding’s daughter Eleanor), raises the question of whether the warden’s income is excessive given the hospital’s original endowment, Harding finds himself at the center of a controversy that will test everything he values.
The beauty of the novel lies in Trollope’s refusal to take sides. Bold is right that the income is disproportionate to the duties. Harding is right that he has done nothing wrong and that the money was legally his. The press (represented by the Jupiter, Trollope’s satirical version of The Times) is right that the Church of England’s finances are often indefensible — and wrong to pursue the case with a cruelty that ignores Harding’s decency. Archdeacon Grantly, Harding’s son-in-law, is right that surrendering the income would set a dangerous precedent — and wrong to fight the case with an aggression that traumatizes the man he is supposedly defending.
Harding’s solution — to resign the wardenship and surrender the income — is an act of conscience that satisfies no one, least of all Harding himself. It is also an act of extraordinary moral courage, though it looks nothing like courage because it involves surrendering rather than fighting. Trollope’s point is that genuine goodness is quiet, undramatic, and easily overlooked by a world that values combat.
Collecting The Warden
First edition (Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, London, 1855): Single volume, cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $5,000–$15,000
- Very good: $2,000–$5,000
- Later editions (1860s): $100–$400