Dr. Thorne - Book 9

Apparently Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame write a mini-series of Doctor Thorne.

Dr. Thorne is the third book in the Barcetshire series by Anthony Trollope.  While I had read The Warden and Barchester Towers years ago and recently reread them), I'd never read Dr. Thorne.   The novel chronicles the lives of various people living within the diocese of Barcetshire where the cathedral is at Barchester.  This books centers on the Gershams, cousins to the great de Courcy noble family.  Dr. Thorne (distantly related to the Thornes of Ullathorne) serves as a doctor to the Gersham family.  Alas, Squire Gersham has not had an easy time of it.  He spent too much in his early married years running for office in Parliament, a race he lost.  He was not up to his well-loved father's standards.  After losing his race, he spent money on hounds, I guess to be a center of fox hunting?  I didn't really understand that part, but that too didn't go well financially.  And his wife, who is higher in status demanded she live very high, until finally, their financial woes become very burdensome.  Mr Gersham is forced to sell part of his grand estate, Boxall Hill, to an up and coming railroad magnate, Roger Scatcherd.

Scatcherd's sister had a baby out of wedlock. The baby's father was Dr. Thorne's only brother.  Scatcherd in a drunken rage attacks his sister's lover and kills him.  He is sent to prison for manslaughter but only serves six months.  Dr. Thorne winds up taking in the baby and raising her as his beloved niece.  In fact she is like his daughter and the only family he has.  Dr. Thorne and the squire Gersham are good friends and Mary, the niece grows up with the Gersham children.  Squire Gersham has one son Frank and Frank falls in love with Mary.  But the Gersham estate is so embarrassed by debt, Frank must marry someone rich.

I thought the story had a very slow start and because it wasn't holding my interest at first, I found myself getting confused by the story line.  However, I stuck with it and eventually I did get drawn in.  Mary Thorne is an interesting character.  The whole tension between Frank wanting to please his father and yet falling in love with Mary was very moving.  Both Mary and Frank are very likable and you want things to pull through for them.

There are many characters here, Dr. Fillgrave, Dr. Thorne's great rival, Lady Arabella, the squire's wife and main adversary to Mary, Beatrice Gersham, Mary's best friend, Patience Oriel and her brother the parson, Augusta, another sister of Frank's, Lady Scatcherd, Roger Scatcherd and his son Louis.  Other characters from the previous two novels are mentioned as well, Sir Abraham Haphazard, Bishop Proudie, Dr. Omicron Pie.

Though most of the story is about the love between Frank and Mary, the real hero is Dr. Thorne.  He is put in an impossible position of having to be trustee and doctor to an odious person who actually stands in the way of his beloved Mary's happiness.  He struggles to do the right thing.  He must maintain objectivity and silence on something of vast importance to the happiness of those he loves.

Eventually I came to really enjoy the story.  I do think though it didn't have to be quite as long as it is.  It is slow in starting and drags out the plot a bit too long, I thought.

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