Trollope's The Warden

I’ve been reading aloud to Sarah again, and today we finished a novel, my first Trollope novel (that’s Anthony), called The Warden; his first successful novel, and the first in the Barchester series. It’s a very tightly controlled novel, which treats of a number of themes and one central moral dilemma. The central character, Septimus Harding, Warden of Barchester hospital, finds his living under a cloud when it’s revealed that what was originally a small bequest from the will of John Hiram in the fifteenth century, which covered both the pay of the Warden and the expenses of a dozen retired wool-carders, has since become a tidy sum for the Wardenship, but not for the dozen retirees (no longer wool-carders in the nineteenth century). In other words, through either the carelessness or the manipulation of the Church of England, which has overseen the bequest through the centuries, the Wardenship has become a pleasant sinecure, and the working class carders and their successors have had their portion kept to the barest minimum.

Around this dilemma, Trollope invents and has great fun with some archetypal characters: the kindly, doddering bishop; the zealous reformer; the conservative and self-important archdeacon; the man of the press as judge, jury and executioner; and in the middle of it, the kindly and scrupulous Warden himself. In general, quite satisfying fare, but both Sarah and I had qualms about the way it ended, especially for the dozen indigents on whose behalf the zealous reformer (John Bold) and the man of the press (Tom Towers) took up the cudgels. Clearly these were worn-out, illiterate working-class worthies, but Trollope treats them more as grotesques than as fully human characters, and seems rather to mock their ‘illusions’ regarding the bequest out of which they seem to have been genuinely cheated. In the end the Warden resigns his tainted position, and the Church, avoiding controversy, appoints no successor. The twelve good men and true gradually die off and are no longer replaced as they had been in the past, and the whole place falls into desuetude. The kindly bishop is thus shown, though not explicitly by Trollope, to be kindly only to his friend the warden, but not at all to the deserving poor of the hospital. Their abandonment is a disgrace undealt with, though no doubt this sort of thing really happened. Trollope is really much more concerned with his middle-class protagonists; doctors, lawyers, ecclesiasts, newspapermen and the like. There are only two prominent women in the novel, both daughters of the Warden. Eleanor, the more or less simpering maiden and dutiful daughter, and Mrs Grantley the haughtily respectable wife of the archdeacon. And to be fair, even Eleanor is rendered bearable by Trollope’s mild but unrelenting satire.

Still, there’s always this silly hope that the writer’s critique will bite deeper, biting right to the heart of his age and class. In the end, it’s what Trollope presents but doesn’t himself fully notice that attracts our utmost attention, I feel. Most notably, the nineteenth century class system, and the failure to recognise even the potential for equality for all. The undemocratic nature of the age, if you will.

trees and the fruit thereof

Today I planted an almond tree (Prunus amygdalus?), after weeding and preparing the ground, at Sarah’s, not far from my fence. Later, watching Gardening Australia, we were bemused and amused at the experts exchanging botanical names. I’m often looking up Latin names for my garden species and promptly forgetting them.

The prunus amygdalus is commonly called the bitter almond, in English. I think. Actually there’s some confusion, in me at least, but a clarification, as well as a lot of useful almond tree info, is offered at this Californian site, It seems that the almond is now known botanically as Prunus dulcis.

We’ll be doing some more planting tomorrow – our co-op has bought a swag of fruit trees for its members, including a ruby grapefruit and a quince for me. Today though I also put two trees in my front garden. Two Albizia julibrissin, also known as Mimosa, or Silktree. Sarah has one growing in her courtyard, a beautiful specimen. She saw them growing in a courtyard café in the city and wanted to have one. It grew so well and quickly in her little courtyard that she became concerned that the neighbour would complain about leaves in the gutter, so last winter I pruned it back heavily with the intention of uprooting it and replanting it out the back. When it came to the point, though, it was too boxed in to be removed. So now it has sprung back up to its former glory, and from the prunings, which I tossed into the back yard, four or five little mimosas have been born. We could end up with a forest of them. From China originally, they’re very popular street trees around the world.

By the way, Sarah insisted they were from cuttings, and from the look of a neatly sawed root she showed me, she’s probably right, but they self-seed muchly too apparently. Just been reading a Californian gardening forum, in which most of the forumees, middle-class yank wankers, have nothing good to say about the messy prolific Mimosa, obsessed as they are with order and control, which unfortunately seems to be a principal reason folks get into gardening.

buck off

Apparently Amanda Vanstone has a new sign on her desk - the buck passes here.

one day in winter

A cold and wet wintriness has returned. Yesterday was a busy day, spent at the community centre, taking bookings and sorting out ongoing computer problems. Also attended the centre’s first staff meeting, and even contributed in a relaxed sort of way. Years of housing co-op meetings have stood me in good stead. It’s a pleasant work space, a pity I’m just a volunteer. I’ve been admonished, though, for using such language. Volunteers are much respected here in the council.

After work, I attended a twenty-fifth birthday dinner for Fiona, at Catherine’s house. Sarah, her three daughters, her five grandchildren, Rachel’s husband Dave, Fiona’s boyfriend Peter and myself made up the company. Even with all the kids running around it seemed a subdued occasion.

I was subdued sure enough, except when Dave brought up the court case. People want to see this kid brought to justice, brought to heel. Dave’s glad to hear I have a lawyer for free, they can cost $200 an hour he points out. Imagine if some kid tells an outrageous lie that threatens to destroy not only your earning capacity but your reputation and your very life, and you have no option but to hire someone at such cost, just to try and maintain a normal, struggling life.

I have fantasies of a letter to the lad’s mum, the most responsible party, delivering her a serve about her lying son, and especially about his reason for lying, his desperation for a mother’s love, but it doesn’t take long to realise that she too is likely a victim, that her troubled relationship with her son goes back darkly to her past and so forth. No winners, but I’m losing badly, the boy’s not winning and will eventually lose his mum surely, the police have lost least and that’s most infuriating. I suppose I should contact lawyer George.

I’ve written occasionally of Courtney, but I must again register my amazement at her speedy incorporation of new language, the expansion of concepts, the way she builds narrative, with less and less repetition as vocabulary and understanding burgeon. She speaks often now of her best friend Michael, a fantastical being with whom she shares lip gloss and her pretty pink car rattling through the city full of people dangerous and monstrous. She builds on the story to keep receiving the reward of glitter-eyed fascination, the beginning of the poetry of invention. And the face puckers and pouts, nods and tilts, the hands flap and fly, the eyes bulge and blink, and you try not to look too entranced, and sometimes you’re wearied, for after all she flags, she’s human, oh she’s very human, she wants to dominate your every second, and you’re glad to escape, the extraordinary scary force of a three-year-old. Exceptional? Aren’t they all?

Mostly I just watched. Fiona seemed straighter than usual, and all lovey-dovey with her beau. She’s a sad dependent type. And I suppose I’m a sad independent type. Sarah suspects she’s pregnant again. Just as long as poor Sarah doesn’t get further lumbered.

that damn report again

I’ve returned to the Police Apprehension Report, with a renewed outrage. It wells up from time to time, unexpectedly. I note that the date of the alleged offence is given, in the first paragraph, entitled ‘BREIF (sic) OVERVIEW’ as September 24, whereas in the following section, ‘VICTIM’S VERSION’, and on the front page, where the ‘offence details’ are stated, the date is September 23. A schoolboy howler, as George Galloway would put it, that will doubtless be punished by my lawyer.

Something else about this report has niggled at me, though, and I’ve just become clear about it.

On the front page, in a box headed ‘Offence details’, two offences are presented. In the first, the relevant words are ‘... had sexual intercourse with [name of alleged victim] a person of the age of 15 years’. This is the ‘unlawful sexual intercourse’ charge. In the second, the relevant words are ‘…had sexual intercourse with [name again] without his consent. This, clearly, is the rape charge. At the end of each charge comes the words ‘This is a major indictable offence’.

The sentence which ends the section in the report entitled ‘POLICE VERSION’ is this: ‘Accused arrested to ensure appearance and due to the serious nature of the offence.’

Now, I’m in a particularly strong position to know that no offence of any kind took place on September 23 or 24 or any other day between myself and the plaintiff. So I take particular offence at this emphasis on the word ‘offence’, put forward as fact. Shouldn’t it be ‘alleged offence’ or ‘allegation’? The use of the words “Offence details” on the front page suggests that this is standard practice, and who knows how long it has been so. Decades perhaps. Centuries. No excuse, however. If it is standard practice, it is wrong standard practice. It must be objected to. Leaving the wording as it is is prejudicial, in the strictest sense of the word. It has more than a whiff of quod erat demonstrandum.

Oh and one more thing: that last line which read that the accused was ‘apprehended… due to the serious nature of the offence’ makes it seem that the police were perfectly justified in their action. However, if ‘offence’ here is changed to ‘allegation’, as it should be, then we see clearly the problem, for it’s plainly absurd to arrest people just because the allegation is a serious one, regardless of evidence. If the police seriously followed such a procedure, rewarding every false allegation, the justice system would quickly collapse under the weight of police incompetence.

a terrorist haven?

The other day I accidentally clicked on instapundit, which somehow has wormed its way onto one of my toolbars. There I was directed to a Daniel Pipes piece arguing that weak, wishy-washy liberal Britain is, according to 'counter-terrorism specialists', a hub of Islamic extremist jihadists, encouraged by Britain's pro-multicultural laws, whereas France is a European centre for counter-terrorist activities, where fewer rights are accorded to terrorism suspects than just about anywhere else in the world. He argues, naturally, that these differences have much to do with France's defence of its heritage, by comparison with the Brits' disinterest in theirs. All a bit tendentious, but where you stand on these matters depends on whether you've ever been, or know someone who's been, subjected to the heavy-handed treatment of security agencies let loose on the community. I just think it's more about getting smarter about the people who perpetrate these atrocities, not nastier. But then, as a wishy washy liberal, I would think that, wouldn't I?

my day taken care of

Today was one of those rare days, almost a nine-to-five workday, driving into the city, trouble with parking, greeting colleagues, professionally smiling for much of the day, managing to be of real use from time to time, rushing out to the Central Market for a lunch on the run, demonstrating computer expertise to the boss, making suggestions, learning about systems, becoming more integrated into the team. Warmed at the end of this working day (the coldest Adelaide day in near twenty years) by thoughts of a job well done, even if unfortunately all unpaid.

I’m volunteering one day a week at the new Adelaide South West Community Centre, staffing the reception desk mainly. Today was a special day though, the day of its official launch. The official launcher, our Lord Mayor, Micky Harbison, actually spoke to me at one point, having mistaken me for a mover and shaker. ‘You’re on the committee, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘Committee…? No I’m just a ring-in, just volunteering…’ I began, but that was enough for him, he quickly disappeared back into the crowd. At least Janie Lomax-Smith looked comfortable when confronted with a volunteer. She asked if I lived locally, and when I said I used to, but no longer, she urged me to come back to live in the city. Presumably these people think it’s just a matter of putting your hand up for a bit of plum city real estate. She seemed nice enough though.

So, after all this heady stuff, I finally arrived home to more bills and a call from JS telling me that he’d changed his mind about hiring me for stock-taking. Quel désastre, that’s a thousand dollars not coming my way, because of his whim, and I’m looking financial ruin in the face, mainly because of that little liar, but really it’s myself to blame for not having a more secure income stream set up, at my age. But hey I’m meeting a few interesting people, I have a roof over my head and sometimes I’m in reasonable health. I’m sure something good will turn up soon.

the age of the patriarchs

Chapter 2 of Testament deals with some troubling events in Genesis, most of them involving Jacob and his family. First, and throughout the narrative, there’s Jacob’s unsatisfactory relationship with his elder twin, Esau. Then there’s the story of his polygamy, first marrying Laban’s eldest daughter Leah (though he seems to have been tricked into it), and finally marrying his love, the younger daughter Rachel, while still retaining Leah. Another mysterious one is his trickery with Laban’s sheep – hard to work out what, physically, is going on there. Finally there’s the awful story of the rape of Dinah, and the retribution it engenders (which reads like one of those horror stories about honour and killing we still hear about out of Afghanistan or certain African countries).

According to the story, the rivalry of Jacob and Esau was fore-ordained (Genesis 25:23), and it prefigures the rivalry between the Israelites (Jacob’s descendants) and the Edomites (from Esau). In reading of the relationship, I tend to forget that and observe only Jacob’s wiliness and dishonesty in his dealings with his well-meaning but apparently dull-witted brother. As one commentator has noted, Jacob’s fore-ordained success – ‘the elder will serve the younger’ – should render his devious tricks unnecessary. I suppose, though, that these tricks might also be fore-ordained to achieve the desired result. It’s also noteworthy that Jacob’s mum, Rebecca, favoured Jacob over Esau (whereas Isaac favoured Esau), abetted him in his trickery, and helped to spirit him off to the land of Laban, her brother, to avoid Esau’ wrath. There seems to be lots of standard family drama and tension here. There’s an amusing sceptical analysis of the family values that crop up in Jacob’s life here.

Jacob’s polygamy is also a highly diverting source of contention among godbotherers, from those who claim god’s total disapproval of arrangements, to those who want to use it to argue polygamy’s okay. There’s also the question of whether he had two wives or four. As to the weird stuff about the poles and the streaked sheep (or goats, or cattle) (Gen 30: 37-39), the SAB comments:

Jacob displays his (and God's) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats.

A believer’s commentary goes like this:

Jacob followed an ancient superstition (Genesis 30:37-39), which by Jacob's own admission, only "worked" because of God's direct intervention (Genesis 31:9).

A much funnier commentary, though, begins with this:

A close analysis of the passage results in scientific accuracy as well as an indication of god's sovereignty in all matters.

It goes on for several pages of pseudo-scientific analysis re Mendelian genetics and tries to argue that Jacob was really onto something with his streaked rods in water troughs:

Exactly what it is that determines the actual characteristics a particular individual [or animal] may have, out of all the potential characteristics that are theoretically available in the gene pool, is not yet known in any significant degree. It may be that Jacob had learned certain things about these animals which modern biologists have not yet even approached.

All of this from half a dozen lines in the Bible. Such is the Will to Believe, and such is the great human gift of rationalisation.

For the sordid events around the rape of Dinah, Genesis 34, you just have to look around you. I’m told that Calabrian brothers ‘look after’ their sisters in much the same way today – they’re only less violent because they can’t get away with it.

touching on consciousness

David Chalmers gave a lively talk today at the Festival of Ideas, on puzzles of consciousness. I was expecting more of a challenge to materialist explanations though. Instead I found that, though Chalmers insisted on the first-person privileged access to consciousness as unique and somehow irreducible to third-person description, he was keen to establish, as part of a ‘science of consciousness’ a formalisation of the experience of conscious states. He tried to present this in a non-reductive way as some kind of generalised formalisation, a kind of field which captures while not capturing the uniqueness of individual conscious experience, but I didn’t myself find that approach too promising, at least as presented. Too hazy and metaphorical at this stage.

biblical matters

Spent all of yesterday at the Festival of Ideas, with a break halfway through to view a beautiful exhibition, Belonging, (can’t recall the name of the artist), in a building within the grounds of the botanical gardens near the tropical house.

In the Festival tent I bought a book, Testament, which had nothing to do with the forums I attended (Ross Adler, Julian Disney, Kathy Laster and Deirdre Macken on philanthropy; John Murray on epidemiology, Africa and fiction writing; John Quiggin, Deirdre Macken, Peter Botsman and Feisel Abdul Rauf on affluenza). It’s a condensed version, apparently, of the Revised English Bible, a highly regarded version first published in 1989.

As a proselytising atheist I’ve always been more at odds with Christianity than with other religions, purely because of the weight of its presence in my culture.

I’ve always felt, though, that I needed to have some understanding of the basic texts of Judeo-Christianity, to argue any case more thoroughly. Of course I’ve also been reluctant – why waste my time reading this text when I might get so much more, say, out of David Chalmers’ The Conscious Mind, or the brain books of Susan Greenfield, or any number of texts, political or scientific or historical or fictional? I can’t answer that except to say that I’m drawn to it at the moment, and who knows if it’s only a whim?

Now I’ve just read the first chapter of Testament, ‘Creation and Fall’, which includes the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, and the tower of Babel, and already I’ve struck trouble aplenty. Some of it is old stuff to me, eg what was the point of putting a mark on Cain, ‘so that anyone happening to meet him should not kill him’, when the only other humans on Earth were his mum and dad? (To which there appears to be an answer – Adam and Eve soon had another son, Seth, to replace Abel, and he in turn, somehow, had a son Enosh. Possibly daughters weren’t worth the mention. Anyway, Adam lived 930 years altogether and had other kids [Genesis 5:4-5]).

More interesting for me are these lines:

The Lord God made coverings from skins for the man and his wife and clothed them. But he said, ‘The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out takes fruit from the tree of life also, and eats it and lives forever?’

Leaving aside the small issue of eternal life here, why does God say ‘one of us’? This use of the plural is also to be found in Sarah’s NIV (New International Version, first published in the seventies), which includes copious study notes, but no mention is made of this intriguing hint of polytheism, surprise surprise.

The King James version (Genesis 3:22) also employs this plural. Some scholars neatly suggest that the Trinity is being referred to. Others whip up a host of angels.

There’s another, more powerful hint of polytheism, though, at the beginning of the Noah story, in Testament (and presumably also in the Revised English Bible (REB):

The human race began to increase and to spread over the earth and daughters were born to them. the sons of the gods saw how beautiful these daughters were, so they took for themselves such women as they chose.

Now, this use of the plural, gods, may not be so easily explained away as the trinity etc. And of course there’s also the question of who might be referred to as their sons. The NIV (Genesis 6:2) simply uses ‘sons of God’, as does the KJV. Of course there’s plenty of exegesis of Genesis 6:2-4 to be found, and it gets weirder – in Testament it continues thus:

But the lord said, my spirit will not remain in a human being for ever; because he is mortal flesh, he will live only for a hundred and twenty years.’ In those days as well as later, when the sons of the gods had intercourse with the daughters of mortals and children were born to them, the Nephilim were on the earth; they were the heroes of old, people of renown.

The term ‘Nephilim’ is apparently translated as ‘giants’ in KJV. But note the second plural in Testament. Again the singular is used in KJV and NIV.

The godbotherers clearly find this passage as perplexing as I do. To take a typical comment from one of their sites:

Many have been confused about the identity of these "sons of God". This section of Scripture has puzzled and perplexed a great number of scholars and Bible students for centuries. Some immediately assume the "sons of God" must be fallen angels, but we have already discovered that the Bible teaches that this can't be talking about angels since they don't even have sex with each other, which means that they certainly don't have sexual intercourse with human beings either! It is true that the book of Job uses the phrase "sons of God" in connection with angels, but that is the only book in the whole Bible where this can be found. It's dangerous to build a belief on just one portion of the Bible; You need to compare Scripture with Scripture in order to get the whole meaning and idea of a certain teaching or principle.

I’m more interested though in the use of the plural here. Unfortunately even the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (SAB) doesn’t mention the possibility of a plural here, though of course it makes hay over the contradictions about the one and the many sons. The New American Bible (NAB) writes ‘the sons of heaven, with the footnote – ‘literally the sons of the gods or the sons of God, i.e. the celestial beings of mythology’.

Some light is shed here by a Biblical scholar, Trevor Major, who has this footnote:

The expression “sons of God” is taken from bene-ha’elohim, while “daughters of men” is derived from benoth ha’adham. While few would argue with the common rendering of the latter phrase, some would say that the former should read “sons of the gods” or “lesser gods.” Although a reference to a plurality of gods or god-like characters may be inferred, the word ‘elohim in the Old Testament most often refers to the One God of the Israelites, and hence the former usage cannot be used to affirm the pagan definition as the only option.

Major has in fact written a whole thesis on this passage of genesis, but from the perspective of a confirmed godbotherer out to refute those nasty liberal scholars who’re trying to undermine the Truth of the Good Book by claiming pagan and other influences and intrusions. He charmingly points out that ‘It would not occur to these writers that perhaps the Bible’s rendering is based on the original event and is accurate because of the guidance of the Holy Spirit’. He sure does have a point there! And of course he’s only complaining about liberal believers, not out and out secularists like me.

three little reviews

I’ve read a couple of good books – Love in Idleness by Charlotte Mendelson and Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban, and seen some interesting movies – What the bleep do we know?, My summer of love, and, on TV, The warrior and the princess.

The first three, briefly:

Love in idleness – quality writing, taut and bright, even if the world described struck me as stiflingly middle-class, and the young narrator as overly desperate to milk every ounce of meaning from stray glances and offhand remarks. She was an appealing character though, finely mixing astuteness and insight with innocence and vulnerability. And lots of good humour.
The book’s theme, if that matters, is family relations, sibling rivalries, desire and morality, all revolving around the narrator’s intrigued and timorous relationship with Stella, her mother’s younger sister, an apparently hard-hearted hedonist. She emerges well, though, and in spite of the sting in the tail, which sends her back into family intrigue, you just know she’s going to survive, and thrive.

Passage to Juneau – a real treasure, and I’ll certainly be looking out for more of Raban’s writings. A fellow loner, Raban uses this trip through the inside passage from Seattle to Juneau to reflect on history (the fat, fuming Captain Vancouver’s earlier voyage of discovery along the same route), romanticism (the Sublime and Beautiful nature of wild nature, as defined by Edmund Burke, and oceanwise as painted by Turner), the transformations of native culture, the shapes and colours of water and weather, the illusions and elusiveness of love, the patterns of family, and the consolations of literature. A book full of heart and spirit and stalwart individualism – a great read and a great companion.

What the bleep do we know? - behind all the talking head blahblah this was a simple feel-good, take-control-of-your-own-life movie. It was a mixture of documentary and narrative, the narrative following the day of a grumpy, harassed photographer, played by Marlee Matlin, whose narrow view of herself and her life is widened by strange ‘cosmic occurrences’ supposedly based on or inspired by the weirdness of quantum mechanics and molecular biology. This could all be easily dismissed as new age religion posing as science, and on some level I’ve done just that, but its religiosity has something of an appeal for me – rather surprisingly. It’s not really a religious sense at all, but a sense of the multi-dimensionality of the self, which you may or may not want to describe as spirituality. Yes I think more an inspirational film than a religious one, and the self-actualising message surely doesn’t deserve to be too harshly criticised.

recovery

I’ve taken my third roxithromycin tablet today, after a visit to the doctor back on Friday. They’re a one-a-day tablet, I think a broad spectrum antibiotic, and boy have they proved effective. There’s only five in the whole course, though I could buy a repeat dose just to make sure.

I’ve only ever paid two visits to my new regular doctor, five minutes’ walk away. She reminded me that my previous, first visit was in July last year, with the same complaint.

In the last day or two, particularly today, my energy has returned almost to normal. I have lots of catching up to do. Mid-week I was languishing on the sofa, drifting in and out of consciousness, exhausted by mid-afternoon after hours of hawking and heavy breathing. Only the other day I’d drifted off, and woke in a sudden fright at a minatory female voice. Sarah was standing in the middle of the living room. ‘You really shouldn’t leave your front door open like that, I could be anybody coming in, bopping you on the head and making off with all your worldlies.’

‘That reminds me, I need to make the point for the court case that we both live in an open house, with you coming in and out at all hours without knocking. Remember, he says I did it here during the day.’

‘Ah yes, that’s a point,’ she responded sympathetically.

I’m trying to avoid talking to her about the case – I’m sure she’s sick of my obsession with it. In fact I probably need to give it a rest myself. I do feel myself calming down as my strength is returning. I may even yet come to the point of addressing my slow slide into poverty since the boy brought my foster-caring career to a crashing halt. Currently I’m in trouble with Centrelink, because a little while after I was arrested and probably after I fell ill too I missed an appointment with my employment agency. Nobody’s been in touch with me since, but no doubt the wheels are grinding inexorably on.

I’m certainly being a very good boy in terms of voluntary work, however. Quite apart from my work for La Luna, which is quite considerable really, and which would itself be enough to satisfy the mutual obligation watchdogs, I’ve joined a team at the Adelaide South West Community Centre, and I’ve promised to do reception work there on Tuesday, all day. Impossibly, though, I’ve booked myself to do an orientation session on the same day at Red Cross House, as a volunteer IT assistant consultant. At my interview there a couple of weeks ago I was surprised to hear that about eighty percent of the people working in that building are volunteers. They all looked pleasantly middle-class and well-to-do (but then again so do I). Can it be that they’re all on the dole, comme moi?