Trollope And The Pious Slippers Of Cheltenham

Even worse was 'a Stumfoldian edict ... ordaining that no Stumfoldian in Littlebath should be allowed to receive a letter on Sundays'; Margaret Mackenzie nearly misses her brother's death-bed because a letter is not delivered until the Monday. Trollope himself was an old fashioned High Churchman and clergymen who held views similar to his own, such as Barchester's Archdeacon Grantly, denounce attempts to stop Sabbath deliveries as the work of 'numskulls'.

Trollope saw the narrow religion of the 'Stumfoldians' as essentially spiteful and hypocritical. It is no accident that in Framley Parsonage when the Evangelical Proudies arrange for an anonymous letter to be sent to the Grantlys claiming that their daughter was being jilted, it bears a 'Littlebath' postmark. Mrs Grantly referred to the act as 'a part of the new Christianity'.

Trollope's last real attack comes in The American Senator (1877) where his target is not the town but Cheltenham College which he blames for a character's faulty grammar. After its publication he confided to a friend: 'Larry's early schooldays at Cheltenham with his subsequent somewhat illiterate language' came from the author's 'long-ago-entertained dislike of Dean Close But that is quite for yourself'. I do not know why Trollope was annoyed with Cheltenbam College, but I suspect it could have something to do with the fact that he was looking for a school for his two sons and he may have tried Cheltenham before settling for the High Church Bradfield.

Cheltenham also appears in several Trollope novels under its own name and then he does not normally fire insults at it. This is the case in Mr. Scarborough's Family or Can You Forgive Her. In both he modelled various characters' lodgings on his own at No. 5, the Paragon Buildings.

There was another inherited reason why Trollope disliked Cheltenham. His youth had been darkened by his father's attempt to become a gentleman-farmer. The elder Trollope blamed his failure on his landlord, Lord Northwick, who was also well known for his property developments in Cheltenham. Anthony regarded Northwick as a 'cormorant who was eating us up'. In 1834 the nineteen year old Anthony drove his father in the family gig to the London docks so he could flee to Belgium to escape arrest for his debts to Lord Northwick. To confuse the peer's agent the Trollopes pretended they were leaving Harrow on a shorter journey -- to Cheltenham.

Dr Richard Mullen is the author of the biography, Anthony Trollope: A Victorian in His World and, with Dr James Munson, of The Penguin Companion to Trollope as well as the editor of numerous works by Trollope and his mother, Fanny.

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