Readings

Muddling Through

by Rick Dietrich

By the time you read this, I shall have finished the last of Anthony Trollope’s six long Barsetshire novels, which began with The Warden (1855) and concluded with The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). At least, I hope I shall. I’m about 400 pages into Last Chronicle, which means I’ve only about 300 pages left to go—but 300 pleasant pages.

The Barsetshire novels form a remarkably pleasant series. Trollope loves his characters, and he loves both the stuff and the nonsense of London and country society and the established church. So, he is a most agreeable guide on the leisurely journey. Still, he does guide. The novels are full not only of people, places, and things; they are also full of Trollope himself in numerous lively authorial asides, explaining to the reader how this is to be understood, reflecting with him how “we” got to this point, warning her of what may come next.

Trollope may love his characters best by acknowledging their distracted need for order yet allowing us to recognize just how distracted they are. They are distracted — and they are so easily distracted — because they are human. Each is subject to a hundred different forces—advancing messiness, promoting indecision, and encouraging the wrong turn. Trollope’s characters almost always wish to do right, but not at too great expense; the people of the Barsetshire books desire to be good, but they are also self-interested. Indeed, almost every character has the propensity to preach one lesson and act according to another, because principles are abstract, darn it, and life is real. Trollope puts it this way: “People are so much more worldly in practice than they are in theory, so much keener after their own gratification in detail than they are in the abstract,” so that “the narrative of many an adventure would shock us, though the same adventure would not shock us in the action.” He gives as an example a young woman who breaks a solemn promise. Her friend sympathizes — the circumstances were such that … well, it really was for the best. But, “had the story been told in print, the friend who had listened with equanimity would have read of such vacillation with indignation. She who vacillated herself would have hated her own performance when brought before her judgment as a matter in which she had no personal interest.” But we do have personal interests, so we are always more likely to do what is best for ourselves than what is right.

“Very fine things are written every day about honesty and truth,” Trollope goes on, “and men read them with a sort of external conviction that a man, if he be anything of a man at all, is, of course, honest and true. But when the internal convictions are brought out between two or three who are personally interested together,” then men are far more likely to do what is best than what is right. “Best” meaning best for those involved. We tend to act in our own best interests by our own best lights.

Unfortunately, our own best lights are really quite dim, Trollope thinks. What we call “enlightened self-interest” is, at best, very poorly lit. We think we see clearly, but Paul’s phrase, “through a glass dimly,” exaggerates our capacities. And so, in Trollope’s world-and in our own-we do well just to muddle through. We are helped, however, by a proper sense of ourselves. Here, Trollope is writing about the poor curate, Josiah Crawley, who has fallen into circumstances much to be pitied. Trollope intends the reader to pity poor Crawley; he even forgives Crawley for pitying himself. But, Crawley pities “with a commiseration that was sickly in spite of its truth. It was the fault of the man that he was imbued too strongly with self-consciousness. He could do a great thing or two. He could keep up his courage in positions which would wash all courage out of most men. He could tell the truth though the truth should ruin him. … He could do justice though the heaven should fall. But he could not forget to pay a tribute to himself for the greatness of his own actions; nor, when accepting with an effort of meekness the small payment made by the world to him, in return for his great works, could he forget the great payments made to others for small work. It was not sufficient for him to remember that he knew Hebrew, but he must remember also that [others] did not.”

Crawley is met during one particular downpour of self-consciousness by a workingman of his parish who suggests he thinks too much. He needs instead to be “dogged,” the workingman says. Crawley interprets the brickmaker’s “doggedness” to mean self-abnegation, however. So, he decides that he’ll act without consideration to himself altogether, even if it destroys those close to him. Duty first, everything and everyone else be damned!

Crawley has swung from one pole to another. But to muddle through we have to find some way in between. We must forget ourselves without being foolish, especially about that part of ourselves invested in others. We must be considerate always of those others. We must also be considerate of ourselves without being selfish. We must think of ourselves as we are, muddlers in the midst of muddlers in a world that often offers much to those who deserve little and little to those who deserve much.

There are no grand lessons to be drawn here, except, perhaps, about muddling through. It doesn’t mean “triumphing”; it may even mean less than “enduring,” if we think of that as something quite grand (as Faulkner does, for example). It does mean, almost always, taking our time. The muddle only gets thicker, when we act in haste. And it occasionally lifts like a fog, when we don’t act at all.

Life will come to us, if we don’t rush out looking for it. It’s not so bad, then, muddling through.