Summary
Summary of The Warden
Key ideas
Key idea 1
A fair question disturbs a gentle man
Septimus Harding is a gentle clergyman who lives comfortably on the income of an old charity. His peace is disturbed when a young reformer asks whether that money really belongs to him. The question is fair, but its human cost is not simple.
Nobody here is a plain villain. Trollope makes that uncertainty the heart of the story, while finding comedy in newspapers, campaigners and people certain of their own goodness. A dispute about church money becomes a test of one man's conscience.
Key idea 2
Kindness rests on an unquestioned income
Start free to read
Key idea 3
Reform divides friends and family
Start free to read
Key idea 4
Legal safety cannot settle a conscience
Start free to read
Key idea 5
Public judgment ignores the private man
Start free to read
Key idea 6
Love and justice pull against peace
Start free to read
Key idea 7
Doubt can be a decent response
Start free to read
Key idea 8
Being right has more than one meaning
Start free to read
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love character, gentle humor and moral puzzles, and anyone who enjoys Victorian life seen from inside a cathedral close.
What this book is
The Warden is a short novel by Anthony Trollope, published in 1855. It is the first of six books set in and around Barchester, an imagined English cathedral town in the west of England. Trollope worked for the Post Office, and he later said the idea came to him while he wandered near the cathedral at Salisbury, thinking about church money and who ought to receive it.
The book gives you a quiet, comic and surprisingly tense story about one gentle clergyman, Septimus Harding. He lives well on the income of an old charity. Then a young reformer asks whether that income is rightly his. Nobody in the story is a plain villain, and that is why the question hurts. Along the way Trollope pokes fun at newspapers, crusading novelists and men who are sure they are right. To see how a mild man ends up at the center of a national quarrel, start with the hospital and the old men who live in it.
In this summary
- 1A kind man holds a comfortable postFree
- 2A young reformer asks an awkward question
- 3The Archdeacon pushes and Harding wavers
- 4The press turns a private man into a public target
- 5Eleanor, Bold and the bedesmen pull at one man
- 6What the book says and how it says it
Key point 1 of 6
A kind man holds a comfortable post
The story opens in Barchester, where Septimus Harding is precentor of the cathedral and also warden of Hiram's Hospital. The hospital is an almshouse, founded under the will of a wool merchant named John Hiram. It houses twelve old men, called bedesmen, who are poor and past work. The warden looks after them, and in return he receives a good house, a garden and an income of about eight hundred pounds a year.
Harding is in his sixties and a widower. He is mild, shy and generous, and he loves music. His great pleasure is the cello, and when he is troubled he plays an imaginary one in the air, moving his fingers and bow without a sound. He knows the bedesmen by name and looks after them kindly. He has never thought of the post as anything but an honest gift from his friend the Bishop.
His family is bound up with the Church in every direction. His elder daughter, Susan, is married to Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly, the son of the old Bishop of Barchester. The Archdeacon is a vigorous, worldly man who guards the rights of the Church as if they were his own. Harding's younger daughter, Eleanor, still lives at home with him and brightens the house with her good sense.
Trollope wants you to like Harding first and to see how peaceful his life is. Only then does he let the trouble begin. When it comes, you feel what the trouble costs him, because you already know what he stands to lose.
The set up also plants the question the whole book turns on. The income of the warden has grown enormously over the centuries, while the bedesmen get only a small daily sum. Nobody in Barchester had thought this strange until someone looked closely at the will.
Harding is not greedy. He simply never asked. That is the first quiet crack in his comfort.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Check yourself
Why does John Bold challenge the running of the charity?
Right. “He decides that the money has been wrongly divided.”Not quite. “He decides that the money has been wrongly divided.”
Why does legal reassurance fail to comfort Harding?
Right. “The book shows that being legally right and feeling right are not always the same thing.”Not quite. “The book shows that being legally right and feeling right are not always the same thing.”
What makes Tom Towers's judgment of Harding troubling?
Right. “He has never seen Hiram's Hospital and knows nothing of the warden himself.”Not quite. “He has never seen Hiram's Hospital and knows nothing of the warden himself.”
Questions about The Warden
What is The Warden by Anthony Trollope about?
It is about Septimus Harding, a kind clergyman who runs an almshouse in Barchester and lives well from its income. When a reformer challenges the arrangement, Harding must decide what his conscience requires.
Is The Warden a true story?
No. Barchester and its people are invented, and Trollope published the novel in 1855. It does draw on real debates of the time about church charities and their funds, and on real newspapers and writers.
Who is Mr Sentiment in The Warden?
Mr Sentiment, also called Popular Sentiment in some passages, is Trollope's gentle parody of Charles Dickens. He writes a sentimental novel about almshouses that paints clergymen as greedy and the poor as saints.
Do I need to read The Warden before Barchester Towers?
It helps. The Warden introduces Harding, his family and the town, and Barchester Towers continues with them. The second book can still be read alone, but the first gives its background.
Is The Warden hard to read?
It has a friendly narrator and clear sentences. The story explains what you need as it goes.
