I Want to be a Librarian in Heaven, or, Heaven in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire
[Editor's note: Melody wrote this while on sabbatical. She was editing this until weeks before her death. I am still adding in citations and footnotes (8 Feb 2022). Any errors should be assumed to be the fault of the editor converting footnotes to in-text citations, and not Melody's.]
Introduction
Angela Thirkell was a prolific writer of middlebrow British novels from the pre-World War II era through post-World War II. Her novels, best-sellers during the mid-twentieth century, were seen as being comic, but having serious social and cultural commentary as well. She takes her setting from Trollope’s Barchester and creates village life surrounding it—villages that are peopled with the usual suspects of village life, the vicar or rector, the gentry (and possibly nobility), the lower classes who act as servants and tradespeople, and as an aspect of life during the war, the refugees.
Her father was an Oxford professor of poetry and her mother was the daughter of Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. She had two rather disastrous marriages resulting in three sons, and after she left her second husband, she needed money to raise her sons. Though she lived in reduced circumstances, she ran in the circles of the well-educated upper class, largely through the association with her cousins Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin (related through her grandmother, Georgina Macdonald) and her godfather, J. M. Barrie.
The twenty-first century literary critic Kate Macdonald has written that it is important for Thirkell’s novels to be studied “for literary reasons, responding to the prevailing critical tendency to overlook middlebrow literature, and to engage with the resurgence of conservative and ultra-conservative ideas in twenty-first century western culture” (Macdonald, 2015, p2). She goes on to point out that for thirty years, Thirkell deployed her fiction “to engage consistently, and … relentlessly, with the evocation of the old order against the onslaught of the new” (Macdonald, 2015, p7). But she also points out that angry, ultra-conservative middle-brow writers of the period have not received the study that other middle-brow writers have had directed to their work. Middle-brow readers cannot be easily categorized—middle class has nothing to do with it, and middle-brow readers read up and down the scale, from lower-brow to sophisticated literary fiction.
Thirkell’s devoted readers, both those who read her in the mid-twentieth century waiting avidly as another new best-seller was introduced each year, and now as members of societies or those who have found her through the blogs of other devoted readers, generally find her work to be witty, full of allusions to fine British writing—Dickens, Austen—and somewhat nostalgic for English county life. They generally agree that as the years go on, she becomes more bitter and acerbic about the changes taking place around her. Yet, they often feel that they read her “laughing,” and wanting to do their “best to protect her characters from any reality but their own” (Klinkenborg, 2008) .
Her detractors, notably the twenty-first century critic Hermione Lee, say, for example,
Where reserve does not figure in Thirkell is in her airing of prejudices, bigotry, and class feeling. The point of reading Thirkell now in anything other than a spirit of besotted gratification is for her minute exposé of middle-class conservative attitudes in the years leading up to the Second World War (Lee, 1996, p93).
Lee brings to light the worst of Thirkell’s transgressions regarding those of other ethnicities and racism, calling them “human sparks of hatred—or rather, sparks of anti-human hatred” (Lee, 1996, p93), though most of these are simply the same things one would read in most writers of the day. She continues with criticism from Marghanita Laski, another novelist of the period (reviewing Thirkell in 1951), who says that after WW2, Thirkell resorts to “high class grumbling—a sense of grievance that is rapidly overwhelming her sense of fun” (Lee, 2005, p194). Lee heightens her critique by saying, “So these light, witty, easygoing books turn out to be horrifying studies in English repression” (Lee, 1996, p93). Disparaging Thirkell’s readers, she comments, “There are still plenty of readers happy to lose themselves in her world. She provides a ludicrously gratifying dose of escapist nostalgia” (Lee, 2005, p186). <FOOTNOTE 1>
However, Thirkell’s readers, whether in London or small-town USA, are astute enough to realize that Thirkell became discouraged by the end of life as she knew and appreciated it after WW2. By the end of Thirkell’s series, she was extremely ill and lonely. Her readers recognize that she displayed the most egregious kind of bigotry often found in those of her own class, and the classes of her subjects, and can disagree with Thirkell’s point of view, but still enjoy her writing.
She had numerous contemporary admirers, including among the critics. A notable reader of Angela Thirkell, the highly-regarded novelist Elizabeth Bowen, respected Thirkell’s recording of social history; she wrote, in a review of Private Enterprise in 1947, “if the social historian of the future does not refer to this writer’s novels, he will not know his business” (Bowen, 1947, p119) <FOOTNOTE 2>. In the same review she noted, “Grace, wit, equanimity and engaging narrative power are by now, have been for a long time, to be expected of her: to continue to comment on these becomes monotonous” (Bowen, 1947, p119). The critic and middle-browism advocate Clifton Fadiman said in a review of The Brandons, “Writers whose aim is temporary diversion as against permanent conversions are rare these days, and rarer still are those who, like Mrs. Thirkell, attain their aim” (Fadiman, 1939, p66). In the books that were “Briefly Noted” in The New Yorker’s Books section, comments such as Before Lunch was another of Mrs. Thirkell’s “warm-hearted, humorous novels of well-bred English country people” were “sprinkled liberally throughout the notices” (New Yorker, 1940, p78). Of Summer Half, Clifton Fadiman says, the book is “Written with such good humor and sly wit that it seems more important than it really is” (New Yorker, 1938, p75).
A popular writer of today, Alexander McCall Smith, writes in a preface to two of Thirkell’s books published as a Virago Modern Classics, that Thirkell’s books remind us that “another attraction is the coruscating wit of the dialogue” (McCall Smith, 2018, p168) and that “the good comic novel can easily, and with grace, transcend the years that stand between us and the time of its creation” (McCall Smith, 2018, p169). Another attractive quality is Thirkell’s “authorial observations,” (McCall Smith, 2018, p168) who he characterizes as second only to Barbara Pym.
Thirkell often writes of theology and religion in her novels. A particular subject of interest to Thirkell was the idea of heaven, and to some lesser extent, the other of the “last things” of Christian eschatology: death, judgment, and hell. Some sources that probably informed both her own thoughts and those that she writes for her characters are the shifting approach to eschatology in the Anglican Church in the nineteenth century; her own reading of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and other theological reading; the sermons and hymns of the village parish church; and her grandfather, Edward Burne-Jones’s eschatological art (McFarlan, 2008). Each of these sources will be considered, followed by quotes from the novels of Angela Thirkell with some commentary.
Many of Angela Thirkell’s “Barchesterites” clearly indicate being or having been church-goers. Thirkell’s thorough knowledge of the Anglican service and the attitudes her characters have toward churchgoing is overt. Lady Emily Leslie was always “behaving altogether as if church was a friend’s house” (Wild Strawberries, p4). Furthermore, Thirkell’s ever-present collection of rectors and vicars (and their very efficient wives) indicates a hearty respect for the clergy of the Anglican Church and for the myriad services they performed for their congregations. Rachel R. Mather points out that the clergy “traditionally has enjoyed a role in the comedy of manners.” She goes on to point out that each of Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels has a clergyman “as an integral part of the community” (Mather, 1997, p93). <FOOTNOTE 3>
Thirkell herself was a sometime church-goer. Thirkell’s son Lance wrote,
Her attitude towards religion and the Anglican Church were, as it were, inborn, and not acquired from her school or any particular person. Like my great-grandparents and grandparents, she was not much of a church-goer or outward observer. But both she and they knew the 1662 Prayer Book and the Bible almost by heart, and loved them, as I, for the beauty, succinctness, clarity, directness and honesty of their language (Thirkell, 1988, p8).
In High Rising, her supposed alter-ego, Laura Morland, says to her son Tony, “‘we must go to church once in the holidays, or the vicar would be disappointed,’ feeling that to have the Church Service as part of one’s background on account of the beauty of the language” (High Rising, p107). Writing to Margaret Bird, Thirkell said that “I quite agree about going to church in a small place, and it is good for the children to get the habit (whether they like it or not) and when and if they WANT it when they are older, they will come back to something familiar” (Bird & Aldred, 2002, p21). According to biographer Margot Strickland, Thirkell attended church when she was in the country and “upbraided her hosts if they did not accompany her” (Strickland, 1977, p154).
Yet, even if her attendance at church might have been sporadic, Thirkell was knowledgeable about the church, its teaching, and affairs. For a short time, she reviewed books of theology for a column, “Books at Random,” for the Books of the Month<FOOTNOTE 4>. For the most part, though, even though she did read some theology herself, she did not involve her characters in theological debate—not even the clergymen. Her character Lydia Merton announces that she has read The Thirty-nine Articles of Faith and calls for a discussion, but no one else seems interested [Editor's note: seeking citation. Also Melody wrote unfinished comments on LAR 197 "religious hostilities"].
Influences
Books
One influential book that surely impacted Thirkell’s writing about heaven and those of her characters would have been Pilgrim’s Progress. Most British families owned a copy and it was thought to be the most often-read book through the Victorian period. Furthermore, we know that Thirkell was familiar with Bunyan since she mentions Bunyan’s work in at least nine of her Barsetshire novels (see Bell's index). The pilgrimage in Bunyan’s allegorical tale is the way to the Kingdom of God (although some pilgrims do not arrive there) or heaven as a city, but with gardens where the pilgrims will eat of the tree of life (Pippin, 2007, p718).
Most Anglican families, no matter how poor, would also own at least one copy of the Book of Common Prayer. This liturgical book was called for by The Act of Uniformity of 1549 and is primarily a translation from the old Latin rites into English. Prayers in the home were often adapted from the Book of Common Prayer. However, it was in its spoken form that it was best known. Thomas Cranmer used imagery that called up a visual scene of impact, such as recalling the parable of the lost sheep in the prayer of repentance, the general confession. Or this following the Gloria, “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table...” (Cummings, 402) “Human life in the English imagination is mediated through its idiom…In the breadth of this practical influence, Prayer Book prose has seeped into the collective consciousness more profoundly than that of any other book written in English, even the Bible” (Cummings, ix). In the Revised Book of Common Prayer, Elizabeth I required compulsory attendance at church. “Cranmer’s somberly magnified prose, read week by week, entered and possessed their minds, and became the fabric of their prayers, the utterance of their most solemn and vulnerable moments” (Gray, 1992, p593).
Further, the Book of Common Prayer included the Thirty-Nine Articles that Anglicans were supposed to ascribe to; Thirkell’s characters mention them at times. However, they were often found too broad, especially by the Puritans who wanted more reliance on the scriptures.
The Puritans brought their case to James I, in 1603, and he agreed to commission a new version of the Bible, The Authorized Version or the King James Bible. This was the third book found in most Anglican households. It is possibly the book Thirkell employs most of the many literary works from which she draws quotes and allusions (see Bell's index). The King James Bible dominated all other English translations during the seventeenth through nineteenth century. Passages from it were read at all services; a life-long Anglican would be familiar with all these texts. “As the Bible provided subject matter, a source of reference and analogy, and a model for narrative and poetic language, its influence on literature was naturally strong” (Long, p54). However, by Angela Thirkell’s time, the Bible was entrenched in the wars of Biblical scholarship based on the Historical Jesus Quest, so that even believers were struggling with the Bible’s interpretation. However, the rank and file Anglicans were still weekly imbibing the words of the Authorized Version and would have recognized the quotes and allusions she makes use of.
Hymns
Already in her early novel High Rising, Thirkell writes of the importance of hymns in the church service. She takes Tony to church where he is an “exhaustion to the spirit,” one of his disappointments being that the “wrong tune” was being sung to a hymn he knew from school (High Rising, p108-9). Two “hymns” that have a prominent place in Barsetshire are “Jerusalem the Golden” and Blake’s “Jerusalem.” Thirkell’s or Barsetshire’s clear preference for the hymn “Jerusalem the Golden” seems odd—on first reading it presents an entirely different vision of heaven than most of her characters espouse over and over. That it was a favorite is clear in an incident with David Leslie and his young niece, Edith Graham.
Jerusalem the Golden is emphatically a Good Hymn. There is no need to argue the question. The united voice of church-going England says it is, the united intellect of that body knows that it is. David remembered how he used to cry whenever it was sung at Rushwater because of its exquisite nostalgic beauty, and how he felt free from all sin, and even made resolutions never to tease his sister Agnes again, for at least five minutes after its conclusion. He was touched, more than he would have like to admit, to find that his niece Edith shared his feelings and was singing with a fervor hardly recognized outside the Salvation Army, her charming fat face irradiated by the light of another world (Peace Breaks Out, p83).
The medieval sixteen stanza hymn <FOOTNOTE 5>, a paean to the beauty and restfulness of heaven, is the favorite hymn of several characters in her novel. In the hymn, the seeker of heaven, the golden Jerusalem, sings,
“But yet with faith I venture and hope upon the way,
For those perennial guerdons I labor night and day.”
However, it may have just been the tune Thirkell was so attached to; in Before Lunch, Denis Stonor says that he will consider going to church if there is any possibility that “Jerusalem the Golden” “which he liked better than any tune in the world” will be sung (Before Lunch, p75; <FOOTNOTE 6>).
To some extent, the song “Jerusalem,” with which Thirkell was also clearly acquainted, expresses the desire of her characters better than “Jerusalem the Golden.” The poem of William Blake, set by Hubert Parry and revised by Walford Davies, had been taken up by the Women’s Institute, with which Angela Thirkell and her characters are well-acquainted (see Guardian, 2000). In this hymn, the singer has an ongoing fight (“I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land”); one is not given the idea that there will necessarily be perpetual rest once this Jerusalem is built. This song had had associations with suffrage and with patriotism in wartime and was suggested as the official song of the WI as early as 1923. The WI published pamphlets explaining its significance for the WI in 1934 and 1950, although neither mentioned suffrage. In 1934, the Women’s Institute clearly saw Jerusalem as “the ‘ideal City of God,’ a heavenly place of love and compassion associated with rurality” (Gibson, 2008, p26). Thirkell likely would have been familiar with both positions as she mentioned the WI in books both pre- and post-1934, with a hiatus from 1940 until 1948, then again for a number of years post-1950. By the end of Thirkell’s life, humanistic ideals had taken over and Jerusalem was no longer an “ideal City of God,” but a “state of mind which is attained by practicing the virtues of love and the healing power of constructive imagination” (Gibson, 2008, p26). It was about finding “a solution to the world’s problems,” rather than working to bring the new Jerusalem to the actual world of Britain at the time (Gibson, 2008, p177).
Anglican Thought of the Time
Lydia Keith, counseling Tommy Needham: Look here, Tommy, have you read the Thirty-Nine Articles?"
"Do you mean the Thirty-Nine Steps?" said Mr. Needham, who could not believe his ears.
A year or two earlier Lydia would have said: "Of course not, you great fool," but that arrogant Lydia was far away, and Miss Lydia Keith said to Mr. Needham that she meant Articles and supposed he was a Christian.
Thus challenged, Mr. Needham said rather huffily that he saw no point in such a question.
“I’m only trying to help you," said Lydia patiently. "I've been reading it myself and I must say I think it's a frightfully good bit of work; I mean, there’s room for everyone in it. And it says that it is lawful for Christian men to wear weapons and serve in the wars so there you are. And if you want a Magistrate to command you, I know Sir Edmund would, or Mr. Keith. They're both J.P.'s" (Cheerfulness Breaks In, p290).
One of the concerns which did often show up in discussion among Barchesterites was the question of High vs. Low. John Leslie described the new rector of the parish, Fr. Fewling, to another parishioner who asked,
“Oh, but isn’t he frightfully high?” said Mrs. Green, looking alarmed.
“High but moderate,” said John Leslie. “And an ex-naval man with a fine record in the ’fourteen war.’”
“If you say so,” said Mrs. Green, looking at him with trusting eyes. “But not incense, I hope” (Jutland Cottage, p17).
This attitude appears to be the most often encountered in the life of Barsetshire. When the Parkinson’s (he who shamefully mispronounced Onesiphorus) are given the parish of Pomfret Madrigal, Mrs. Brandon observes that “Mr. Parkinson is very low. Not that Mr. Miller is very high, but he has what I call just the right kind of highness… (County Chronicle, p229)”.
[Editor's note: Melody had an unfinished note here reading "Tractarians, Newman, trying to find the via media between Ang and RC"]
Edward Burne-Jones
In addition to the influences of hymns and books, it seems likely that Thirkell was influenced by her grandfather, the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones, and his work. Burne-Jones had studied theology—he read Newman when he was in his teens, he studied at Oxford for Holy Orders (there he met William Morris who was also studying for Orders) until dropping out to become a painter. At the time that Burne-Jones studied for Orders, the whole thought around heaven and hell was shifting, so it is likely a topic he gave much thought to. His wife Georgina was the daughter of a Wesleyan minister, so the household would have been steeped in Christian values, even if turning to what appeared to be uncertain agnosticism in later years.
Burne-Jones traveled to Italy and found the depictions of heaven to be of great inspiration, notably paintings of Botticelli and Angelico that were in the Uffizi. He wrote to friends who were travelling to Florence,
…the Dancing Choir that goes hand in hand up to heaven over the heads of four old men. …At the back of the Virgin the rays of gold rain on a most dear face that looks up, and I want to see it. Will you take a spy-glass and look at every heavenly face in that glory of pictures?…there’s an Angelico Paradise there by the side of which the brightest I can do is like fog (Burne-Jones, Georgina, 1904, p64-65).
The friends of Burne-Jones (William Morris, John Ruskin, Gabriel Rossetti) were known for their love for beauty and their ideals to bring beauty into the world, particularly the home. Of his philosophy, in a letter to his son, Thirkell’s uncle, Byrne-Jones said, “God isn’t angry with the funny little things he has made—he gives us hard exercises because it makes us stronger. He could easily have made us without faults, but what would have been the fun of that—and now it is something to save a bit out of the day for him, and he knows how hard it is” (Burne-Jones, 1904, p63; see Poulson, 1998, p45-54 for discussion of Burne-Jones's lifelong, though uncertain, faith). This circle to which Burne-Jones belonged influenced the Anglican lay theology of the day. The image of Jesus as “Light of the World” by fellow Pre-Raphaelite Holman Hunt was found in most houses of England. The painting represented “a new closeness between Christ and the believer, and a readiness of the saviour’s part to enter the human realm as a guest rather than as a judge” (Knight, 1995, p47). Burne-Jones’s few eschatological works are clearly aligned with this theology.
It seems certain that Thirkell would have picked up ideas about heaven and hell from Burne-Jones and his work. It was a well-known fact that he adored and spoiled her as a child. He made hundreds of drawings for her (Fitzgerald, 1975, p226), as well as many paintings on the walls at his home (especially in the corner where she stood when punished (MacCarthy, 2011, p481); <FOOTNOTE 7>) and was in competition with several contemporaries, including William Gladstone, as to who was the most doting grandfather. Of these drawings, one is boldly titled (written in the upper left corner of the drawing), The Doors of Hell, rather a strange choice of a drawing for a young girl (Wood, 1998, p122). It came from a twenty-eight-page volume of Humorous and Fantastic Drawings <FOOTNOTE 8> in pencil. At its exhibition at the City Museum and Art Gallery in Birmingham in 1976, the catalog described it:
They begin with whimsical sketches of babies and animals and continue with a series of ‘Wonders of the World’. These are often wildly fantastic and even horrific, so much so that according to Graham Robertson, Burne-Jones was made to discontinue the series by his daughter Margaret, Angela’s mother (Arts Council of Britain, 1975, p97).
In Three Houses, a book about the places of importance to her, Thirkell wrote, “Above them hung pictures of the archangels, Gabriel with the lily, Raphael who cares for children, Uriel, Azrael, Chemuel. But when it came to Lucifer there was only a black opening to the walls of heaven near where Michael stood, with tongues of flame licking up the pit. It made one stand rather quiet for a moment and then one turned and climbed up on the window seat” (Three Houses, p117). This referred to a gouache study for the Burne-Jones work, The Heavenly Jerusalem, another eschatological work, a moasic for St. Paul's Within-the-Walls in Rome, an American Episcopal Church (MacCarthy, 2011, p354). Burne-Jones created this and other works around eschatological themes, including two different stained glass scenes of The Last Judgment, most notably one of his last and finest major works, one of a set of four, the west window for St. Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham, completed in 1897 (Wood, 1998, p135). To my mind, this work depicts souls who are not terrified of the judgment—they look wary, but it is more of a look of “what is happening?” rather than one of unreadiness or fear. Another critic says that all the elements of the window “create a mood of relative calm. The aspect of destruction is deliberately played down” (Harrison and Walters, 1989, p168).
Heavenly Paradise, one of Burne-Jones’s later eschatological works, finished in 1892, shows his vision of heaven: battlemented walls allowing young women to enter to greet their guardian angels. This was for the Kelmscott Press’s edition of The Golden Legend (MacCarthy, 2011, p430). An earlier version of a battlemented heaven appears as a cover of the Book of Common Prayer he decorated for Frances Graham. In this illustration, angels are playing instruments within the walls of heaven (Crawford and Des Cars, 1998, p242).
Along with all the knowledge and illumination from church-going, theology, reading, and art that Thirkell would have been familiar with, no doubt she also used her own imagination as a writer as well. According to Alister McGrath, the “concept of heaven is an excellent example of a Christian idea that is fundamentally imaginative in provenance, and that demands an imaginative mode of encounter with the reality that it mediates” (McGrath, 2003, p2; <FOOTNOTE 9>). One wonders if she might have known the quote from Evelyn Waugh, who wrote sardonically, though with a ring of truth, “The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish” (Waugh, 1948, p71; <FOOTNOTE 10>). Seldom are any kinds of the stereotypical concepts of heaven accommodated in Thirkell’s work. For example, the idea of being with the angels appears only once and even then is given a twist of having angels as assistants for one’s work. In Never Too Late, Agnes Graham says to Miss Merriman (of Lady Emily Leslie), "She is asking cherubs and seraphs for their feathers to make pens so that she can write in red ink and blue ink" (Never Too Much, p156). Occasionally, Thirkell writes of guardian angels, but these angels are thought of more as aides to our temporal life, and not the afterlife, though they apparently live "upstairs" (see The Brandons, p357). Further, in County Chronicle, the guardian angels of the Colonel Bishop Joram and Mrs. Brandon watch over their charges, then "rose on strong wings towards their infinite eternal dwelling" (County Chronicle, p344).
The work of Thirkell implies the general belief of her time—“all who believed in Jesus… a friendly big brother, waiting to welcome the faithful to his family in heaven” (Knight, 1995, p60). Soon the whole aspect of “last things” became less and less important, though the contemplation of heaven never, of course, was totally relinquished in the thought of most Christians. It is no wonder that this kind of thought would have made an impression on Thirkell and certainly have sustained a more thorough observation of heaven into her novel.
A more anthropocentric view of heaven was taking over from the former ideas of the “Blessed Vision,” a theocentric view of heaven. According to Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, this meant that “in general, the world is looked upon more optimistically. Social life, marriage, sexuality, and work are divinely instituted and eternal. God permits them to be enjoyed by men and women in both worlds… Since the natural world, personal relationships, and work itself are sacred, they must continue in some form in the next life” (McDannell and Lang, 1988, p356-57) This theology is proclaimed by Lavinia Brandon speaking of Amelia Brandon,
Looking absent-mindedly at her own hands according to custom, Mrs. Brandon saw the diamond ring and wondered if Miss Brandon was even now meeting Captain Frederick Brandon and if so in what possible kind of heaven. Probably an Indian station, she thought, where Miss Amelia Brandon, keeping house for her gallant brother, would forever look on his escapades with an indulgent eye and listen to his stories of pretty ladies. But realising that these were irreligious thoughts, she pulled herself together (Brandons, p201).
Themes
Other Last Things
Death
Thirkell does not deal much in death (see Thirkell, The Home, 1929, p58), the first of the “last things” before arrival in heaven. Taking a closer look, few in number, deaths are not usually center-stage, and are sometimes completely off-stage: World War I deaths, World War II deaths, and elderly deaths—these are the only deaths mentioned with the exception of only one that comes to mind. This is the death of Gay Leslie, who is already dead when we learn that she is greatly mourned by her husband John Leslie and his mother Lady Emily Leslie.
When Thirkell does confront the death of her characters, she finds herself in a quandary about what death is like but considers that it might be a journey. The narrator’s reverie at the death of King George VI believed it was a “journey which the King had taken alone, though not, they felt, even if they could not put the feeling into words, unfriended or unguided—rather supported and accompanied by the Master who does not leave His good and faithful servants strangers in a strange land” (Jutland Cottage, p13). It’s likely that Thirkell knew John Henry Newman’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” a hugely popular poem published in 1865, which inspired a choral work by Edward Elgar premiered in 1900. In contrast to the image of a horrific hell is a scene in which Gerontius (an old man) is supported by the whole company of angels at his death <FOOTNOTE 11>.
The population had experienced the death of many young men (over a million deaths for the British Imperial Forces) during the “War to End All Wars.” This must have had an enormous impact on the ideas about death for most British people, especially their visions of what happened to these brave young men after their deaths. However, the overall populace of Thirkell’s villages was not troubled much by deaths of young men during the wars, with only a few exceptions and for the most part, even these are dealt with gently. For example, of Harry, Lord Mellings, the only child of the 7th Earl of Pomfret and his wife, we know that both were mourning, not only for their son but that the family home will go to a side-relative whom they dislike. Lady Pomfret takes to living in Europe most of the time to assuage her grief (Pomfret Towers, 1986) . Of the World War I deaths, parents were still grieving, and the experience of World War II brought their remembrances close to the fore. In Wild Strawberries, Emily Leslie reminisces, “The vision to which she had so often, so steadfastly barred the way rose before her: her first-born, wandering somewhere beyond life, wanting her, thinking she had forsaken him, not knowing that it was he who had left her to grow old without him” (Wild Strawberries, p205). Lady Waring, near the end of her own life, says,
‘And I have always wondered if we should see George again,’ to which Leslie Winter had no answer, for George Waring had been killed in 1918, just before the Armistice, and one can only guess about a future life, hoping and trying to believe that those responsible for it will make it possible to meet people one has loved, and that the lads who will never be old will be able to recognize the parents and friends whom the years between have aged and changed. ‘I think George will be pleased to see us.’ Lady Waring had said to Leslie, the day before she died. ‘And if on thinking it over he doesn’t want to see too much of us, we shall quite understand, bless him’ (The Duke's Daughter, p54-55).
Clearly, both of these mothers see their once young sons in heaven, maybe not waiting to see their mothers, but clearly there. The “Flowers of the Forest” cannot have been thought to have journeyed to hell after sacrificing their lives for their country <FOOTNOTE 12>.
Sometimes gentle, and sometimes not, does Thirkell present grief for the newly dead soldiers of World War II. During this war, Angela Thirkell even included grief for a woman who served and was killed in an air-raid, a W.R.E.N. who was loved by Freddy Belton, though her lightly touched-on death is really only there to provide a sort of heroic background for his dealings with others (The Headmistress, p186 and 279). Isabel Dale was also gently mourning the loss of her fiance in County Chronicle. Lettice Watson (nee Marling) regrets losing her husband who was drowned in the battle of Dunkirk but says that time is dulling the sense of loss (Marling Hall, p7). The death that feels the least gentle is known from the emphatic demonstration of emotion shown by a sibling, a contemporary, rather than an elderly parent, and that is from Lady Cora, who responds to friend’s questioning about her brother Gerry Palliser, “‘And where is Gerry?’ ’I don’t know,’ said Lady Cora. ‘But he was always happy wherever he was, so I expect he is happy now’” (Duke's Daughter, p148). However, Lady Cora had also lost all the young men in her life that she had loved, so it is no wonder that her feelings were more demonstrative. Yet, however gently these war-deaths were dealt with, there can be no doubt that this experience of the heavy loss through the deaths of soldiers would have played a part in Thirkell’s thoughts about the end of life and what came next.
In Barsetshire, elderly people occasionally die a peaceful death after a long and fruitful life. It appears from Thirkell’s writing that she had a better grasp of what happened to the older ones after a useful life <FOOTNOTE 13>, more so than the young who died without having really found their callings and destiny in life. If one looks closely, the personality of the person as he or she was when alive and how well the narrator knows the person who has died bring much to bear in Thirkell’s writing of experience of the death.
One of the most interesting deaths is that of Miss Bunting, an elderly governess. Of her death, Thirkell writes,
But Miss Bunting was also living another life of which Sister Chiffinch knew nothing, of which even Miss Bunting’s nearest friends were ignorant. For five or six years the old governess, so many of whose pupils had fallen in the last war, so many of whose older pupils’ were falling and would yet fall in this war, had had from time to time a dream that she flew—not in an airplane but with invisible wings—to Germany, and alighting in Hitler’s dining-room just as he was beginning his lunch, stood in front of him and said, “Kill me, but don’t kill my pupils, because I can’t bear it…Miss Bunting had a sneaking feeling, which she condemned firmly as superstitious and even prayed against it on Sundays, though with no real fervor, that if only she could keep asleep till Hitler answered, the war would somehow come to an end. But so far she had always woken too soon (Miss Bunting, p308-09).
Watched over by the night nurse,
Miss Bunting for the last time rose on invisible wings and flew over to Germany... With an immense effort she remained asleep just long enough to be certain she had won. Then Hitler swelled and swelled till the whole room and whole world was full of him and burst, and all Miss Bunting's old pupils came running up to her. Her heard was so full of joy that it stopped beating... (Miss Bunting, p308-09).
In Love at All Ages, Thirkell makes a couple of points about death, saying that it is like sleep in remarking of the baptism of Miss Harcourt, “after which she sank again into that deep peaceful sleep (Love at All Ages, p120), past the plunge of plummet, which never again shall we know till we come to our final sleeping” and alternatively, the musing of the Dowager Duchess of Towers that it was “quite extraordinary how many things one did not know and the older one got the more one knew one didn’t know. Perhaps, she said, death was simply knowing that one knew nothing” (Love at All Ages, p143). Only a few other hints of Thirkell’s thoughts of what death itself is like occur and these are found in her later works when perhaps the thought that death would come for her soon was weighing on her mind.
The few deaths of others are those we do not know—Gay Leslie, who is mourned by Lady Emily as she sits in her pew also mourning her son killed in the War (Wild Strawberries, p9), and by John Leslie who says that Gay is becoming a “gentle shade, melting away from him month by month, day by day” (Wild Strawberries, p212). Later in the book, she becomes a “gentle ghost;” she had “slipped from his grasp, leaving him alone and free. His thoughts which had lingered for so many years among shadows of love had now all winged their way back to his heart, free for fresh adventure” (Wild Strawberries, p222). In Love Among the Ruins, a much later book, Lady Agnes Graham and Miss Merriman are reminiscing before they have a family remembrance service for Lady Emily’s birthday. “Lady Graham had wondered whether her brothers John’s first wife should also be remembered, but that gentle ghost was so far away and John’s life was so calmly happy that she decided to say nothing.” The narrator goes on, “some of our beloved dead feel near us for ever. Some have wandered far, so far that their voices are lost and we cannot try to reach them, though the love is always there” (Love Among the Ruins, p258). Even the Reverend Mr. Bostock feels this loss; he “brought the short service to end, blessing the little assembly and those whose spirits were, be reverently hoped and believed, somewhere about at the moment, though he was unequal to deciding where” (Love Among the Ruins, p304).
Judgment and Hell
Neither judgment nor hell enters much into Thirkell’s theologizing about the last things. This is entirely typical of the times in which she was writing. Prior to this time, the idea of hell as a literal place had been predominant and as a believer, avoidance of being sent there was all-important. However, hell had now come in for hard times in the minds of the people. There was generally the belief (at least in the major branch of Anglicanism) that good people would go to heaven and in contrast to the medieval image of the burning fire of hell and souls in eternal torture now was a belief that hell was eternal separation, from God and from one’s family.
In the Barsetshire books, the only persons who seem to be consigned to hell are the bishop and his wife. This disdain was known through the recurrent poetry of Edith Graham, one of whose poems was plagiarized from her uncle, “Ding, dong, bell, the bishop goes to hell” (Never Too Late, p44). Even the clergyman Dean Crawley, “said there was an iron staircase outside the Palace at the back and appeared to be lost in a delightful dream of the Bishop with his wife and gaiters being grilled like St. Lawrence while trying to escape from a doom which in any case was waiting for them in the next world” (Close Quarters, p270).
Occasionally other jests are made about hell, for example when Noel Merton says to his wife Lydia, “it certainly would not be warm enough and as far as he could see it never would be warm enough again anywhere till they went to the eternal fires, which he felt would, on the whole, be preferable to a glassy sea; because if people were to cast down their golden crowns upon it, it would have to be frozen, or the crowns would sink at once…” (Love at All Ages, p172). But even this fire could not be considered gruesome, because “not to be warm enough is a state which leads us to hope for hell unless we can be authoritatively assured that heaven has a good reserve of whatever fuel it uses” (Jutland Cottage, p4).
The sermons Angela Thirkell and her characters would have heard at Sunday services would generally have preached the point of view that very few people would be finding themselves in hell with the bishop and his wife. And if they are doomed to hell, the aspects other than fire perhaps were not so unpleasant:
‘I wonder why one always thinks other people will like things?’ said Mrs. Morland. ‘I am sure if some of my friends heard I was going to hell they would say “I am sure Laura will like it immensely and think of all the interesting people she will meet.” But really,’ said Mrs. Morland, who appeared by now to be taking this imaginary trip to hell as a matter of course, ‘I daresay one would find friends. I have found people very nice on the whole, wherever I have been, except of course the really horrible ones’ (Enter Sir Robert, p241).
Heaven
However, heaven was clearly the eschatological theme Thirkell warmed to (see McFarlan, 2008, p139). This appeal is not surprising as it was the only major aspect of eschatology to continue to have much play in the imagination of the Anglican church-goer. Elizabeth Bowen describes Barchester as a world of “undulant Christianity” (Bowen, 1996, p viii). This description could cover the changes in the church of Thirkell’s time and her books indeed describe how the world of the church was changing.
The Tractarian wars had just ended and there was a shift in emphasis on hellfire to a gentle friend Jesus. The “fever pitch of eschatological excitement was reached in the 1840s and 1850s” when the fear of the eternal torture of fire began to ebb (Knight, 1995, p50-53). During the height of the excitement, death-bed literature had been in high demand. This literature had made certain that people knew how to assure their salvation and be saved from the hellfire. However, now an emphasis on heaven and having a desire to go there was coming to the fore. At this point, a new literature to be parodied became popular, the attempts to visualize what exactly heaven would be like. By the end of the Victorian period, the over-emphasis on dying had ceded, and how to live the Christian life more fully was more often the topic of Anglican preaching and didactic and spiritual literature (see Gooder, 2011 for an accessible book of biblical scholarship on heaven). The Pre-Raphaelites (Burne-Jones was a member of the group) were among those leading the way in bringing this new spirituality to England.
Two images of “possible” heavens were ones that had come down through history from both Hebrew scripture and the New Testament, medieval works of piety, Renaissance art imagery, and other literary and art sources—heaven as a garden and heaven as a city.
The garden image used by writers as an analogy for heaven was generally found in the quest to find the lost garden, the place of the innocence of Adam and Eve. McGrath describes this as “a place of fertility and harmony, where humanity dwelt in peace with nature and ‘walked with God’” (McGrath, 2003, p43). This idea was nurtured by several of the prophets whose imaginations of the future life include a garden paradise of rivers flowing with milk, mountains dripping wine, man living in peace with each other and the animals. The Song of Solomon with its theme of “love within a garden” was important for the imagery it employed and how this imagery was developed in the Middle Ages (McGrath, 2003, p46). This idea of a fertile garden was used by the early Christians, in works such as The Apocalypse of Paul. Here we read echoes of the Biblical “land of milk and honey,” and many trees and vines with thousands of clusters of dates, grapes, and other fruits <FOOTNOTE 14>.
The garden theme does not seem to play out so much in Thirkell, other than her evocations of the Cathedral and its close, but there are two arresting scenes relating to heaven that may call to mind heaven as a garden, both negatively and positively. The image of the “land of milk and honey” is used in Thirkell’s novels, in much the same way of the early Christians who were often deprived of food, during the long days of food rationing:
Anne said she wondered if people talked about food in heaven. Sir Robert, returning to his original grievance, said he hoped that in heaven he would have the chance of telling everyone he didn’t like exactly what he thought of him; or her, he added.
‘Yes, one would have to include the Bishop’s wife,’ said Lady Fielding. ‘But perhaps she wants the same heaven, and it would be annoying if she got in first. Still, she has so often told me what she thought of me, or at any rate implied it, that it wouldn’t make much difference. But it will be lovely to get milk and honey without ration books’ (Peace Breaks Out, p50).
Negatively, the reader hears Lady Graham saying to the Reverend Mr. Choyce, “in what for her was almost an unkind voice: ‘But if Victoria Norton or that odious Mr. Holt are there, I shall have to go somewhere else’” (Never Too Late, p141-42). Victoria Norton and Mr. Holt were known primarily for their outrageous behavior regarding gardens and gardeners!
The city of Jerusalem was a frequent image of heaven in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, especially in Revelation. It goes back as far as Ezekiel in the sixth century BCE (Russell, 1997, p14). The city is linked to the kingdom and its ruler. This theme has been carried down in Christianity through Augustine’s work, The City of God. In the Middle Ages, the City became enlarged to enclose the fortresses and churches, with all their architectural glory and the garden became part of the “context” of the city, not the primary image itself. It became the standard metaphor for Christianity in the West and was the “Christian community in all its realized potential. It is interesting to think of Barchester itself and the way Thirkell lovingly described the aesthetics of the Cathedral and its close—the whole environs might be seen as a representation of heaven <FOOTNOTE 15>. In heaven we are all equal in that we are all fulfilled as to our own potential” (Russell, 1997, p86). However, the city is usually, contrary to Thirkell’s new Jerusalem, a place of rest, “a perpetual Sabbath, in which the saints will dwell in the peace of God. Their earthly labors in the vineyard having ceased at sundown…” (McGrath, 2003, p16). The beloved hymn of many in Barsetshire, “Jerusalem the Golden,” written by Bernard of Cluny in the 1100s depicts this particular image. Later, John Bunyan’s pilgrims would travel from the “city of destruction” to the “heavenly city” (McGrath, 2003, p29-33).
The idea that God is a social being, the “friend” in Holman Hunt’s art, in relationship with humans, who are themselves in relationship with each other and will remain so in heaven, is an idea that finds expression in Thirkell’s imagination. One way to remain social is lending assistance, a vision of the human in heaven that Thirkell often expressed. “A favoured image was that of the person who was about to depart for life in a foreign land; such a person would surely wish to know about the new country and its customs” (Knight, 1995, p58).
While we do not know whether the loved ones meet each other and continue to love each other in heaven, it has been a tradition of the church to believe it will be so. “And they keep in Heaven the love they had on earth those they loved; their love is transfigured, not abolished” (Saward, 2005, p47).
The continuance of love or care in heaven about those left on earth was a concern of Jane Gresham.
And even if he were dead, which be the best fate for him, how could one truly believe that he was happy if he knew how unhappy she was. If going to heaven meant not minding if people we loved were happy or not, she did not look forward to heaven and knew Francis would be most indignant at finding himself there (Miss Bunting, p221).
And,
“Well if you, or Dr. Dale, or the Bishop—not that he’s any good—can make me think that just being dead would make Francis not miss me—" said Jane, speaking with such arrogant confidence that her sentence did not need finishing (Miss Bunting, p223).
In one case, Thirkell provides a death-scene meeting of two loves as one joins the other in heaven.
They sat in silence for a while and then Martin said he must go. ‘Wait one moment,’ said Lady Emily, holding his hand in her own. ‘I am coming’” [thinking he was her long-dead son].
A pang went through Martin’s heart as he felt the slight, frail bones in his grandmother’s hand, and he waited quietly.
‘You have walked so far and so fast,’ said Lady Emily with a ghost of her old mischievous smile, ‘but here I am at last, my darling.’
Martin remained perfectly still. There was no sound but the soft warm rain outside the window. Then he laid his grandmother’s hand very gently upon her shawl and got up, painfully, and taking his stick went to find Miss Merriman. Later Lady Emily’s son David and his sister Agnes are reminiscing about their mother whose epitaph (said David) was “Darling mamma loved everybody…I know she is watching us laugh and thinking what mischief she can do next…” (Old Bank House, p321).
We hear a conversation between Roddy Wicklow and Alice Barton in Pomfret Towers considering Lord Pomfret,
‘I must say it must be jolly hard to see your place go to someone you don’t like.’
‘But Lord Pomfret won’t actually see it go, will he?’ asked Alice. ‘I mean he’ll be dead when it does.’
‘You never know what they’ll see,’ said Roddy, to propitiate any Unseen Powers that might be about.
‘Perhaps he wouldn’t care by then,’ said Alice hopefully.
‘I bet he’d care, wherever he was,’ said Roddy (Pomfret Towers, p25-26).
However, in Barsetshire’s heaven, these social aspects might have the effect of making heaven appear not quite so heavenly. The humorous exchange between Mrs. Brandon, Noel Merton, and Mr. Needham explores the needfulness of having disliked neighbors reside with one in heaven.
‘In fact she will not be happy in heaven unless she can find a horse with ribs sticking out or a pig having its ears punched. Do you think, Mr. Merton, that heaven can really please everybody? Their tastes are all so different. And though we are told we shall see our friends again, there are several that I would so much rather not see, if it weren’t too difficult to manage.’
Noel said the law didn’t make provision for that particular case, but the Dean’s secretary was coming and they might ask him. Upon which Mr. Needham very conveniently arrived, and finding himself in the same room with the most saint-like woman and the most delightful and touching girl he had lately met, became a prey to silence.
‘I know you can tell us, Mr. Needham,’ said Mrs. Brandon, looking devoutly at the Dean’s secretary. ‘Does one have to know people in heaven or not?’
‘Mrs. Brandon is a little exercised,’ Noel kindly explained, seeing Mr. Needham’s embarrassment, ‘because she is so kind to such of her friends as are a little dull and boring, and wonders if she is likely to see much of them in heaven. The Inner Temple is not a good preparation for that kind of special knowledge, so we appeal to you.’
Mr. Needham, after some embarrassing stutters, said he was sure no one could ever be dull with Mrs. Brandon (Cheerfulness Breaks In, p205).
Of course, if one is to be social and still connected to the ones they love, perhaps that means they will still have to deal with the ones they don’t (although, that seems harsh in a perfect heaven)!
‘We can always hope to see them, even if one doesn’t expect to,’ said Lady Graham, in a religious voice.
Mrs. Morland said it was not so much the fear of not seeing the people she did want to see that worried her, as the probability of seeing people she didn’t want to see, like those dreadful Mixo-Lydians during the war and the Bishop’s wife.
‘And what is so dreadful,’ said Lady Graham, ‘is the people who will want to see you. I know that dreadful little Mr. Holt will want me to arrange for him to see the Garden of Eden on the day when visitors aren’t allowed and ask if he can have a cutting from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Enter Sir Robert, p242).
Besides what other people will be like and how they will interact, what oneself will be like is confounding. We hear Mrs. Villars say, “Of course, it is rather depressing to think that one will still be oneself when one is dead, but I dare say one won’t be so critical then” (Northbridge Rectory, p235).
Everard Carter wanted to continue to learn in heaven and
had gone so far as to try his hand at an imaginary conversation between Dr. Johnson and Lydia (his formidable sister-in-law), himself writing as Boswell, and came to the conclusion that short of absolute rudeness, for Lydia would not have knocked an opponent down with the butt end of her pistol, they would have been pretty evenly matched, adding that when he went to heaven, the first treat he would demand would be a philosophical discussion between those two great minds (Private Enterprise, p157).
Lady Emily’s musings broach another of the debates about heaven throughout the ages, especially during the Middle Ages. What age will people be in heaven? In the Middle Ages, thirty was decided as rather a perfect age and thus settled on for both those who died as babies and for the elderly (McGrath, 2003, p38). This debate was apparently known by most of Barsetshire’s population. Thirkell’s narrator, speaking about Lord Lufton and Lady Lufton, states, “So that it appears possible that in another world we may all be the same age and meet as equals, for our elders will perhaps not forget their youth in which we can hardly believe and we will no longer feel that even if we were ninety we could not be so old as our parents used to be. One does not know” (Happy Return, p277). Agnes Graham considers this conundrum thinking of her mother, Lady Emily Leslie, “But on this day there was only one thought in her mind, not of her loss, but of her mother still alive somewhere, her youth and her age all as one; something so impossible to explain, so possible to feel” (Enter Sir Robert, p45). And we hear Mr. Welk, “What Mother [his wife] will say when she sees me coming in at the Golden Gates an old man and she’s only twenty-seven. I really don’t know, but there’s a scar on my arm I got trying to kiss her before we were engaged, when she was ironing. She’ll remember that” (Close Quarters, p30).
Even at the end of Thirkell’s life, she was still writing about death and what age one would be.
‘Long time since my dear mother died,’ his lordship went on. ‘I sometimes wonder if she would know me now. I’ve changed a lot since then. Daresay she has too, but I expect they look after all that. Keep young. Nothing else to do.’
Mrs. Knox said in her usual calm, competent way that one did not know.
‘But I hope people don’t stay young for ever in heaven,’ said Mrs. Morland. ‘I mean if I went to heaven and met my mother whom I was very fond of and she was about twenty-five in a muslin dress and a large floppy hat which was what I remember when I was very small, I expect I wouldn’t know her. And probably she wouldn’t know me as I am now, especially since I had my false teeth’ (Three Score and Ten, p18).
Some Christian theologians conjecture that a heaven of rest does not mean that there will be eternal Sabbath where one does nothing but a round of constant church-going, nor sitting on clouds, playing harps! Rest can also mean, not inactivity, but a release from stress and anxiety. For some, it is the idea that we are released from a “restlessness” to return to our natural home. Thirkell hints at this idea with the statement that “happiness is never complete in this world,” with the rider, “which makes one wonder about the next” (Old Bank House, p119).
This idea that heaven is a place of blessed activity is by far the pervasive view in Thirkell’s work and indeed, one can make a case that she never argues for any other kind of heaven <FOOTNOTE 16>. Perhaps only two times throughout the entire Barsetshire chronicles could she possibly be seen to argue for an inactive kind of heaven and those are not really extended enough to know for sure. For example, Gay Leslie, who we never meet, is said to have found "eternal rest" (Wild Strawberries, p42). And Mr. Macpherson who had reached "peace that passes mortal understanding," however even he needed to find Lady Emily Leslie to also find happiness (Duke's Daughter, p302). Otherwise, all references to what citizens of Barsetshire who are now citizens of heaven are doing show them involved in work.
One could argue that Barsetshire’s beloved hymn, “Jerusalem the Golden,” did not support this working heaven. Thirkell was probably familiar with “Jerusalem the Golden” from Hymns Ancient and Modern <FOOTNOTE 17> in which it is reduced to a sing-able four verses. In the hymn, the blessed are “from care released” in “that dear land of rest.” While these four verses have images of a stereotypical heaven with angels, eternal singing of God’s praises, robes of white, and so forth, on careful reading it declares that one is from “care released,” not necessarily from work released, a reading more congruent with what appears to be Thirkell’s view of heaven.
The hymn, “Jerusalem,” however, does strongly support what seems to be Thirkell’s view of rest versus activity in heaven.
The way for the living to mourn was work. There is the example of Admiral Palliser, “Deeply attached to the wife from whom the sea had separated him so often and so long, he sincerely mourned her and as sincerely believed that the best he could do for her, as she was now probably able to see from wherever she was exactly what he was doing and even know what he was thinking, was to carry on” (Miss Bunting, p3). His daughter, Jane Gresham, wondering whether her naval husband was alive or dead, also realized that her mother in heaven, “being rather unfairly in a position to know all that was being done or thought, would like to see that Admiral Palliser was being properly looked after and the old servants kept up to the mark” (Miss Bunting, p3). Lady Waring, who was a tireless worker on Earth with her husband, Lord Waring, says just a year after Lord Waring’s death,
‘It’s time I was gone,’ she had said to her niece Leslie Winter, whose husband was owner and headmaster of the very successful Priory School. ‘Harry always needed me and I am quite sure he is needing me still…. And I am sure there will be something useful that one can do,’ and Leslie said afterwards to her husband Philip Winter that heaven would be no heaven for Uncle Harry and Aunt Harriet unless they could do unpaid work for other people. And as these were almost Lady Waring’s last words, they may be her epitaph” (Duke's Daughter, p54-55).
When Mr. Adams congratulates Miss Merriman on her upcoming marriage, telling her he is sure Lady Emily Leslie would be happy, she says of Lady Emily’s unceasing energy while on earth, “‘I hope so,’ said Miss Merriman, feeling almost a pricking of tears behind her eyes. ‘Only I think she must be a little disappointed that she can’t arrange the wedding. She did love to arrange things’” (The Double Affair, p26).
A wonderful version of heaven Thirkell limns is that of the “celestial library” (oddly enough, the famous quote of Borges, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library,” from his “Poema de los dones,” in his 1960 book, El Hacedor was published at almost the same time (Borges, 1960)). The narrator, presumably speaking the thought of Thirkell herself, says,
But life and many years spent out of England are not good for books. They melt and disappear mysteriously, or are left behind in various moves, and we think of them—alone now in strange lands—almost as we would think of a deserted child. One has to cut one’s losses in this Piljian’s Projess of a Mortal Wale and we have cut a great many in a long life but it is always the books that we miss more than anything and not all of them can be replaced. Perhaps, in some celestial library—but we are not told; and when we get to that library, if we do, we may have forgotten all about our life here. We know nothing and can only, in the words of old Chives the sexton at Southbridge who was also the Vicar’s gardener, hope for the best and expect the worst. For we old, while we are here at any rate, so cling to the homely, every-day comforts and wherever we are we shall long, as Catullus did centuries ago, for our desideratum lectum—our own comfortable bed at home, among familiar sounds and objects with our books to our hand (Love at All Ages, p234).
Everyone wants what one loves the most—for Canon Fewling, the sea was his love.
‘I should like to tell you something,’ said Canon Fewling, who had taken a quick and trustful liking to the Vicar’s wife.
Mrs. Crofts waited intently but did not speak.
‘It is the last chapter of the Book of Revelation,’ said Canon Fewling, ‘when we read that there shall be no more sea. I don’t want to be selfish about my own feelings and I expect your husband has night fears too, if he thinks of swords being beaten into plowshares. But whoever wrote such things about the sea has missed a great deal in his life.’
Mrs. Crofts, casting about as to how she might comfort her guest, said probably St. John sometimes got tired of living on the island and wished he could get back to the mainland and his words about no more sea were what people now would call wishful thinking. Much to her pleasure, this quite silly remark had a very cheering effect on her guest, who thanked her earnestly and said it was a lesson to him not to lose faith.
‘And it has just occurred to me, Mrs. Crofts,’ said Canon Fewling, his kind round face again itself, ‘that Kipling has a very good poem about that very thing and how the mariners will be allowed to keep their sea for ever. And he was a prophet, you know, though most people haven’t noticed it' (Jutland Cottage, p48-49; also see allusion to Kipling's poem "The Last Chantey" in Close Quarters, p272).
Just what of Barsetshire will be found in heaven is mentioned by a few inhabitants. The dying Lady Emily said to Gillie Pomfret, “‘I don’t think I shall see the Towers again in this life, Gillie,’ she said, ‘and certainly not in the next, except that there is always a hope, because when we don’t know what a place is going to be like it is no good thinking about it beforehand, for it is always quite different. But I would like to see papa again’” (Love Among the Ruins, p305; <FOOTNOTE 18>). Clearly, Lady Emily Leslie is unsure but is hoping that her ancestral home will be the place where she meets her father in heaven.
Probably the reference that fits the idea of heaven as England is one that is somewhat controversial. Written in one of the later books when Thirkell was showing the bitterness about the end of the aristocracy that earned her a number of enemies, these words certainly show an ideal of a certain kind of English life that was either admired or abhorred depending on one’s philosophy <FOOTNOTE 19>.
It is, we think, a sign of good blood and deep roots in our aristocracy that a certain number of them are still extremely stupid, obstinate and believers in the Good Old Days. They will kill themselves in doing their duty in the station of life to which it has pleased God to call them, and will be rewarded, we hope, in a better land where there are plenty of servants and they can afford to take over the Hunt and have enormous house parties and lose (and win) huge sums at cards, and have large families who all marry well, a black sheep or two (but asked to remove their names only from the very best clubs) and in general are all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, besides ten thousand freaks that dy’d in thinking. In fact a delightful wish-fulfilment dream, though whether a celestial fulfilment would really make them happy, we doubt. There are of course a few trifles such as spring mattresses and a good drainage system and electric light and cars and the telephone which one would like to incorporate in that world of all our wish; but it is all a dream. We know—a little—what we are; we know not what we shall be; the readiness is all (Love at All Ages, p194-95).
Perhaps Barchester was the heavenly city for Thirkell. It certainly had many of the attributes one imagines as a paradise and there are times when characters rhapsodized about paradisiacal aspects of Barchester. In her preface to the Heritage Press edition of Trollope’s Barchester Towers, Thirkell said, “I should like to think that it (Barchester) waits for me somewhere, with all the old friends alive and as they were. And perhaps Mr. Trollope among them, fresh from his desk, or the hunting field, so that I may thank him as best I can for what he has given us” (Barchester Towers, p xvi). Mr. Oriel, Vicar of Harefield, remarks on a play he had seen and reminds believers of an important point, “He had seen, he said, the name of some play, or musical play—he couldn’t remember—called Wake Up and Dream and it seemed to him a very good description of our life, which was a slice of eternity” (Love at All Ages, p240). If this life is a slice of eternity, then perhaps that eternity which one will experience as heaven is the place we have loved the most.
Acknowledgments—ATLANTIS folk who did some research on the religious aspects of EB-J, my staff, Gladstone for its collection and space, John. [Editor's note: This section is unfortunately clearly unfinished, and I know Melody was grateful to a huge number of colleagues and friends.]
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