I can see Barbara Stanwyck playing Lady Mason in a film noir version ofOrley Farm. Oh, there was no murder—only a bit of forgery. But remember, forgery could be punished with hanging in England only a few years beforeOrley Farmwas written. The story is a bit complicated: Lady Mason forged a codicil to her late husband's will, leaving a small portion of his land holdings to their only child, taking this small home place away from his older son by a previous marriage.
Now we know that in England at that time all inheritance was to go to the eldest son as a matter of course, unless other provision was made. And we in this age are accustomed to the "pre-nup," the prenuptial agreement designed to deal with the anxieties of prospective heirs when an aged parent takes a wife—especially if the wife be of childbearing age.
In our world, therefore, few would have much difficulty in accepting the propriety of a small portion of a large estate being left to a younger son, when the elder son is well provided for. Nor, we learn, did a jury of her peers find any problem with this arrangement. Lady Mason, who had been a loyal, faithful, and attractive wife to old Sir Joseph, was acquitted of the crime of forgery, and she continued to live in the home place and raise their son to the age of majority when he might assume control of it.
We only learn the truth about the forgery about halfway through the book, some twenty years after the crime and acquittal. And then we find ourselves sympathizing with the guilty woman as she fights through a second trial.
The older son, who was now the young Sir Joseph, lived on the extensive Yorkshire holdings, under the rule of a wife too stingy to put adequate food on the table, either for her lord or for their guests when they should have any. And he nursed his grudge against the widow, whom he considered to have cheated him of his rightful inheritance.
Some of Trollope's most effective humor is sometimes inserted into an unlikely place. The first chapters, the ones that set the scene, are often so long, detailed, and tedious that they have almost disappeared in today's writing. One has to read opening chapters carefully, however, and sometimes reread them, in order to understand the setting. This is made easier in the case of the Masons of Groby Park, the large holding in Yorkshire, as Trollope continues with his introduction of the characters:
He was severe to his children, and was not loved by them; but nevertheless they were dear to him, and he endeavored to do his duty by them. The wife of his bosom was not a pleasant woman, but nevertheless he did his duty by her; that is, he neither deserted her, nor beat her, nor locked her up. I am not sure that he would not have been justified in doing one of these three things, or even all the three; for Mrs. Mason of Groby Park was not a pleasant woman.
He was severe to his children, and was not loved by them; but nevertheless they were dear to him, and he endeavored to do his duty by them. The wife of his bosom was not a pleasant woman, but nevertheless he did his duty by her; that is, he neither deserted her, nor beat her, nor locked her up. I am not sure that he would not have been justified in doing one of these three things, or even all the three; for Mrs. Mason of Groby Park was not a pleasant woman.
The old quarrel resurfaces when an old tenant is dispossessed by Lady Mason's son, now old enough to begin managing the home place and aspiring to farm it in a scientific, though expensive, fashion.
With energy and perseverance the tenant discovers another paper signed by old Sir Joseph on the same day as the codicil was dated, and he finds a witness to the signature, Bridget Bolster, who will testify that she only witnessed the signing of one document.
How can Lady Mason defend herself against this attack? We see that her primary motive is to shield her proud young son from disgrace, and in this effort she deploys all the resources available to her. A small but not unattractive woman (think of Barbara Stanwyck in this role), she consults the barrister, Mr. Furnival, who defended her in the first trial, and she wraps him around her finger so effectively that Mrs. Furnival is driven by jealousy to leave home in one of the great comic episodes of the book.
Mr. Furnival sees that unusual skill will be required to defend Lady Mason successfully, and she consents to his employment of that famous defense attorney, Mr. Chaffanbrass, and another clever defense attorney, Mr. Solomon Aram. Lucius, convinced of his mother's innocence, is offended by the retaining of these sharp attorneys, and he objects that a simple portrayal of the truth of the matter will be more than sufficient. But his mother, whom we often see sitting alone in her room brooding over these matters (we can only conclude from this and other novels of the period that people spent more time sitting and brooding than is done now) quietly declines her son's advice and, much to his frustration, excludes him from the decision-making process. Here the reader begins to suspect that since she knows what she really did, she realizes she had better have some sharp legal assistance.
She also cultivates the friendship of a noble neighbor, Sir Peregrine Orme, father of her son Lucius's friend young Peregrine Orme. Sir Peregrine is an old man, but he responds to her presence in his house by falling in love with her. He rashly makes her an offer of marriage, which is opposed by his son, her son, and a brother nobleman, all of whom attempt to dissuade him.
Lady Mason had hoped to obtain maximum support from Mr. Furnival and Sir Peregrine without being forced to choose between these two champions. She accepts Sir Peregrine's proposal, but it becomes apparent that she is sacrificing the sympathy of Mr. Furnival and everyone else. So here we have the crisis of the whole story, just at the start of Book Two, in which she confesses her guilt to Sir Peregrine and subsequently to his daughter-in-law, who has also become her great friend. So the reader learns that she did indeed forge the signature to the will twenty years earlier. Sir Peregrine cancels the engagement, but both he and his daughter-in-law maintain their friendship, support, and the secret.
John Everett Millais drew the forty illustrations for the book, and the cover of the Dover Publications edition shows Lady Mason in court. Her companion Mrs. Orme sits with head down and veil in place. But Lady Mason has lifted her veil and raised her eyes. She will face them down. "She was perfect mistress of herself, and as she looked round the court, not with defiant gaze, but with eyes half raised, and a look of modest but yet conscious intelligence, those around her hardly dared to think that she could be guilty."
Trollope shows us the infatuation of two older men with Lady Mason in great detail. Mr. Furnival, who has a wife (dowdy) and a daughter (clever, like he is) and a position in the London legal establishment, cannot consider a compromising liaison, but he enjoys the company of Lady Mason and schemes to meet her. He begins to perceive rather early the strong probability that she is actually guilty, but he has a strong desire to defend her successfully. Sir Peregrine Orme is an older man and a widower, and as she remains in his house as a guest, he begins to ask, "Why should I not?"
We are not denied the drama of the courtroom, and here we see the renowned Mr. Chaffanbrass taking a witness apart. Mr. Chaffanbrass is a recurrent player in several Trollope novels—most notably inPhineas Redux, when he undertakes the defense of Phineas Finn, who is accused of murder. Again we see this wily attorney as a role player in the adversarial system of justice: "To him it was a matter of course that Lady Mason should be guilty. Had she not been guilty, he, Mr. Chaffanbrass would not have been required. Mr. Chaffanbrass well understood that the defense of injured innocence was no part of his mission."
The subplots and ancillary characters fill out the space requirements of a proper Victorian novel and are generally done well. Sophia Furnival is a more interesting character than her friend Madeline Stavely, who is practically perfect in every way. In Mr. Furnival's closing speech to the court we finally see the brilliance of his work, and we see that Sophia comes by her wit naturally, since it's apparent that she doesn't inherit it from her mother. Sophia doesn't do much better than Lady Mason does in attempting to handle two admirers.
Felix Graham, a young lawyer who falls in love with Madeline Stavely, finally begins to come through as understandable, but only partially. The story of his earlier attachment to Mary Snow as a protégé whom he had intended to train to become his bride seems a bit far-fetched; perhaps it was not so far-fetched at the time. In any event, this little story is never wrapped up. We see Felix being pressed for more money by Mary's drunken father, by her keeper Mrs. Thomas, and by the apothecary who increases the price of a partnership for Mary's new lover, Albert Fitzallen. Felix has attempted to transfer Mary to Mr. Fitzallen, which appears to be agreeable to all parties, but the negotiations are left in limbo.
Trollope treats us to another fox hunt. A great lover of the chase, he was always on firm ground here. Thrown off almost in passing is a little comic masterpiece, the depiction of two fox hunting sisters: "But when the time for riding did come, when the hounds were really running—when other young ladies had begun to go home—then the Miss Tristams were always there;—there or thereabouts, as their admirers would warmly boast."
Julia Tristam plays a pivotal role in the major subplot as she makes a difficult jump; Felix Graham and his friend Augustus Stavely, who have been following her in an effort to participate in the best of the hunt, attempt to follow, and Felix does not make it, falling off his horse and finding that he cannot raise his arm and can hardly breathe—an accurate portrayal of the symptoms of a broken collarbone and fractured ribs. "Both Peregrine and Miss Tristam looked back. 'There's nothing wrong I hope,' said the lady; and then she rode on."
This injury results in Felix's confinement in the Stavely house, where he and Madeline Stavely fall in love.
Barchester Towersand Mrs. Proudie stand as evidence that Trollope's greatest gift was comic, and we find some humor inOrley Farm, even though a courtroom case doesn't allow for much levity. Mrs. Furnival's quarrel with her husband supplies comic relief, and Mr. Kantwise's sale of a metal table and chairs to Mr. Dockwrath and to Squire Mason is appropriately memorialized in Millais's drawing of Mr. Kantwise standing on the metal table: "There is nothing like iron, Sir; nothing."
To attempt to place a value onOrley Farm: it is good enough to be fairly compared toBleak House, generally regarded as one of Dicken's masterpieces, and one that has been successfully presented as a television series. Nothing inOrley Farmmatches the opening paragraphs ofBleak House, in which the description of the rain and mud of London sends us to turn up the heat, even if the room is warm. Dickens manages the pace ofBleak Housevery well, with the tempo galloping toward a conclusion in the last hundred pages or so. But Lady Mason is a more interesting woman than Lady Dedlock. Mr. Tulkinghorn is a lawyer of great power and mystery inBleak House, but Mr. Furnival is shown in greater depth, and in his concluding speech to the court we see him at the peak of his powers. The spontaneous combustion that Dickens invokes to carry off Mr. Krook is so improbable that one doubts if even any of his readers believed it; but the proceedings ofOrley Farm, if not so violent, are so true to life that the events might have been lifted from the newspapers.
The major plot is a carefully constructed story of crime and punishment; the reader is led to follow the uncertainty and the sympathy with which the community views a woman accused of a crime that only a few decades earlier could have sent her to the gallows. In presenting this story Trollope has shown his skill in presenting female characters—primarily Lady Mason, but also Sophia Furnival. Our humanity is shown sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with irony, sometimes with condemnation—but always as it is. Too bad we never got to see Barbara Stanwyck play the title role. Who would have played Sophia Furnival?
Graduate students in business administration routinely bury themselves in case studies, which have become a standard hurdle on the way to attaining an MBA. In doing so, they learn to insist on reliable data. However, should the students in the Stanford Graduate School of Business find themselves analyzing the failure of the London mercantile firm of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, they would surely hope to have more objective information than that found in the account of George Robinson, one of the three partners, as given inThe Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, by One of the Firm. The reader begins to suspect early on that the firm failed at least in part because of expensive and misleading advertising promoted by Robinson, who himself never concedes as much. The dealings of the firm were hardly transparent, even among the three partners; and the senior partner, Mr. Brown, kept the books to himself. Meanwhile the other partner, Mr. Jones, was taking funds from the till without letting Mr. Robinson know.
Among the curious features of genius is its uneven nature. After searching unsuccessfully for his métier with a few novels about Ireland, a historical novel of the French Revolution, and a play, Trollope found his way withThe WardenandBarchester Towers,which may be his best known and most loved works. Still experimenting, however, he used his personal experience in the civil service to writeThe Three Clerks, a critical success at the time but not well known today. And then he continued his portrayal of the world of mundane office work by venturing into a picture of the entrepreneurial spirit as shown byBrown, Jones, and Robinson. He broke off from it after two weeks and came back to it four years later, but the result was an attempt to satirize the business world. It failed, however, to match his success with the Church, the landed gentry, and the political world of the ruling class.
True, one of his most acclaimed works,The Way We Live Now, dealt with the business world; but it did so in a rough rather than a gentle way, in a later period of his life when he had begun to develop somewhat more jaundiced views of society as it had evolved. The satire ofBrown, Jones, and Robinsonis too clever by half. George Robinson is the young pup who defends himself after the bankruptcy of the firm with an unrepentant statement of his faith in advertising, and he presents himself as the unreliable narrator with a self-serving view of his stewardship. Demonstrating the creative imagination that led him to ruin, he compares his senior partner to King Lear. "Think what it must be to be papa to a Goneril and a Regan—without the Cordelia. I have always looked on Mrs. Jones as a regular Goneril; and as for the Regan, why it seems to me that Miss Brown is likely to be Miss Regan to the end of the chapter."
Sarah Jane, the elder sister and the "Goneril," marries Mr. Jones; and Robinson himself aspires to the hand of Maryanne, the "Regan" who joins her sister in turning on their father and attempting to secure his small fortune for themselves. Robinson's dedication to the doctrines of Credit and Advertising, rather than to those of Capital, leads him to run through that part of the four thousand pounds that Brown provided to start their haberdashery business. Brown and Jones stand agog as Robinson hires four men in armour to ride draft horses through the streets announcing the opening of Magenta House. And Mr. Brown cannot understand why Robinson should advertise four hundred dozen white cotton hose. "We haven't got 'em. … I did want to do a genuine trade in stockings."
"And so you shall, sir. But how will you begin unless you attract your customers?" Robinson retorts, and he goes on to advertise "English-sewn Worcester gloves, made of French kid," which actually came from the wholesale houses in St. Paul's churchyard.
The inevitable downfall of the overextended firm can surely provide a number of cautionary tales for future students of the success and failure of businesses, but these lessons are lost on George Robinson, who reacts by transferring his devotion from Maryanne Brown, who abandons him in the end, to the goddess of Commerce. "Oh sweet Commerce, teach me thy lessons! Let me ever buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest."
What is it that made the foibles of the Church so humorous in Trollope's hands, while the schemes of the business world merely led to a ho-hum reaction at its cupidity and stupidity? Is it that the men of the cloth retained a few cloaks of honor and respectability yet to be stripped away, while the businessmen may never have had any such cloaks? In any event, the reading public and the critics helped Trollope to find his way, which was not along the way of Commerce and Advertising.
Bad beer is being brewed in East Devon. This is cider country, where apple trees grow and "men drink cider by the gallon." The bad beer comes from the firm of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt, which is managed by the latter after the death of the former. Thus Anthony Trollope has given us a novel about beer.
But of course it's not primarily about beer.Rachel Rayis mainly a love story with plot lines familiar to readers of Trollope. The heir to the late Mr. Bungall's interest in the brewery, Luke Rowan, comes to town to assert his interests, meets a friend of the Tappitt sisters, Rachel Ray, and falls in love with her. Rachel is a rather typical Trollope heroine—spirited and bright, dwelling in an humble cottage with her timid widowed mother and a domineering older sister, also a widow. Rachel is attracted to Luke when he sits alone with her on a churchyard stile and gazes at the clouds, but she consents only by a silent nod to his proposal of marriage that comes soon after. Once having given her silent nod, however, she vows lifelong faithfulness, even though her mercurial fiancé may desert her.
Luke Rowan is no paragon. His faults are declared to the reader in a rather desultory fashion, showing him to be only slightly more interesting than a stock representation of a young lover, which he really is. It is enough to raise the reader's concern that Rachel may be doomed to a fate similar to that of Lily Dale, the tragic, faithful heroine ofThe Small House at Allington.
The story of Cinderella is retold with a few modifications, as the three Tappitt sisters invite Rachel, not unanimously, to a little party for the Rowans, which soon comes to be regarded as a ball. Rachel is persuaded to attend the ball only after the fairy godmother, in the form of Mrs. Butler Cornbury, invites Rachel to accompany her in her coach. Mrs. Tappitt is scandalized that Luke selects Rachel as his dancing partner of choice, and Cinderella is so overcome by it all that she persuades her fairy godmother to take her home two hours early. But to the amazement of all, the prince makes a visit to the humble cottage to see Rachel the next day.
So here we have the love story. Now back to the beer:
It was a sour and muddy stream that flowed from their vats; a beverage disagreeable to the palate, and very cold and uncomfortable to the stomach. Who drank it I could never learn. It was to be found at no respectable inn. … Nevertheless the brewery of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt was kept going, and the large ugly square brick house in which the Tappitt family lived was warm and comfortable. There is something in the very name of beer that makes money.
It was a sour and muddy stream that flowed from their vats; a beverage disagreeable to the palate, and very cold and uncomfortable to the stomach. Who drank it I could never learn. It was to be found at no respectable inn. … Nevertheless the brewery of Messrs. Bungall and Tappitt was kept going, and the large ugly square brick house in which the Tappitt family lived was warm and comfortable. There is something in the very name of beer that makes money.
Mr. Tappitt's determination to brew bad beer is reinforced by the appearance of Luke Rowan, who aspires to participate in the management of the brewery and brew good beer. But Mr. Tappitt knows that would require capital investment. The brewery has been managing to make money under his direction, and he wants neither to concede any of his power nor to risk the profitability of the business with newfangled ideas. This divergence of views comes to a climax when Rowan offers to join the firm as an active partner, to allow Tappit to retire with an annual pension, or to sell his share of the business to Tappitt and then build his own competing brewery. Mr. Tappitt's response is to brandish a poker, and at the conclusion of this dramatic encounter Rowan departs, declaring that the matter will be turned over to his lawyer.
Having been accepted by Rachel, he now leaves town, and Rachel is left to the pernicious influence of community opinion, which is against the young man in his apparent effort to unseat a longstanding citizen of the community, even though he does brew bad beer. Rachel is influenced by her mother, who is in turn influenced by her spiritual advisor, the vicar Mr. Comfort, who in turn is influenced by community opinion conveyed by a disaffected colleague. And so Rachel's letter in response to her fiancé's first letter is so much less than passionate that she fears she has terminated their engagement.
So how will the matter be resolved? Here we see a second issue: a political contest. Politics fascinated Trollope, and he even entered an election himself. In this instance Tappitt supports a Jew from out of town, Mr. Hart, against young Butler Cornbury, eldest son of the neighboring squire. The author revels in the details of the campaign: slurs against the Jew by his opponents who probably know better, the raising of money, and the buying of votes. Luke Rowan reappears in town after having purchased property from Rachel's mother for the apparent purpose of building his own brewery. And Luke enters the political contest, even though he is not an elector in Baslehurst, supporting Butler Cornbury with fiery speeches. Luke is found to be a radical—that is, "he desires, expects, works for, and believes in, the gradual progress of the people," and he "will own no inferiority to the manhood of another."
The outcome of the election is determined by one vote. Cornbury is the winner, but Tappitt dreams of revenge. He is invited to a dinner of Hart supporters and chairs their meeting. He meets the unscrupulous lawyer Mr. Sharpit there and asks him to take his case against Mr. Rowan because his own lawyer Mr. Honyman has recommended capitulation and retirement.
But Mr. Tappitt has been ill, and his wife, who wants him to retire so she and her daughters can enjoy the delights of Torquay, has threatened to have him committed "under fitting restraint" if he goes to the meeting. This is the red pepper program: "There may be those who think that a wife goes too far in threatening a husband with a commission of lunacy, and frightening him with a prospect of various fatal diseases; but the dose must be adapted to the constitution, and the palate that is accustomed to large quantities of red pepper must have quantities larger than usual whenever some special culinary effect is to be achieved."
Tappitt comes home from the dinner drunk, and his wife finds him vulnerable the next morning. She refuses to let him out of bed until he agrees to invite Honeyman the lawyer back to the brewery, thus achieving a compromise that allows Mr. Tappitt to sell out and retire.
So everything works out. The author has also used our story to indulge his fondness for church affairs. Rachel's widowed sister has been attracted to the less formal side of the Church of England, and in particular to a rather unsavory clerical representative of this school of thought, one Mr. Prong, whose pride in his sermons exceeds the results. But in the end Rachel's sister Dorothea shrugs off Mr. Prong, who denies any interest in Dorothea's money but is unwilling to forgo the husband's legal right to her money.
It's all a good story. We share the author's fun with the radicals, the politics, the churchmen, the fairy godmother, and particularly with Mr. Tappitt. Rachel's romance works itself out, but perhaps more to the point, the men of Baslehurst will get better beer.
Garish images are the ones that stick.Miss Mackenzieis a beautiful story of a deserving young woman who finally achieves love and fortune after years of service to the poor and the sick and the dying, but the image that sticks in the mind is that of Rev. Jeremiah Maguire, who was possessed "of the most terrible squint in his right eye which ever disfigured a face that in all other respects was fitted for an Apollo." In this case, as was usually the case in Trollope's novels, the physical deformity was a ready clue to the individual's character. Rev. Maguire ranks as one of the more iniquitous of the sinners in the ranks of Trollope's clergymen. It may not have been so bad that he tried to marry Margaret Mackenzie for her money, but he did so with a devious scheme to establish his own church and use the pew rents as security for the money that he would say he was giving but would then take back as payment of a loan. And when he learned that he had no chance of winning her for himself, he embarrassed her by writing several "Lion and Lamb" articles for a religious newspaper, saying that she was being cheated of her inheritance by the man whom she wished to marry. He doesn't match the villainy of Joseph Emilius, the preacher who only had a "slight defect in his left eye" and a "hooky nose," and who murdered Lizzie Eustace's protector Mr. Bonteen inThe Eustace Diamonds; it is apparent, however, that not all Trollope's clergymen went to heaven.
But back to Miss Mackenzie: if one of the great pleasures in life is watching someone start out with a pleasant set of gifts and then develop a few more to become a joyous credit to the human race, then the literary proxy is reading about such a one. We are introduced to Miss Mackenzie as a Cinderella-type woman (Trollope had a weakness for Cinderellas) who devotes herself to the care of her brother for fifteen years until he dies. She is a generous but self-abasing humble woman, but we see that she can stand up for herself. Finally she appears to gain some conception of her own worth.
There has been some money in the family, but we see it slipping away due to unfortunate business decisions, and none of it appears to be destined for poor Margaret, who has little to show for the years of her young womanhood. But then she is named the beneficiary of her late brother's will! Suddenly she is a woman of independent means, if not indeed wealthy.
And now we see her deal with the friends, relatives, and suitors who flock to her. Her sense of self worth is hardly enhanced as she fends them off, comprehending pretty quickly that they are interested in her money, not so much in her. She longs to have a life. She's only thirty-six. Her "time for withering" has not yet arrived. But she feels that she should not live for herself alone, and there are numerous opportunities for doing good deeds. The death of her brother has left her sister-in-law with a house full of children, and Margaret selects one of them, a fourteen year old girl, to live with her. She will leave London, where the neighborhood just down the streets to the Thames from the Strand is pretty dull, and she will go to Littlebath and take lodgings in the Paragon. (Bath and the Crescent, as inThe Bertrams).
A gloomy story to this point, but it is told with the distant ironic tone that tells the reader that this is a comedy. Margaret visits The Cedars, home of her cousins the Balls, but finding them "very dull," she determines to proceed with the Littlebath plan.
Margaret enters Littlebath society slowly and timidly. We are shown that Littlebath is home to saints and sinners. The sinners go the assembly rooms; the saints go to church—not the high Church of England, but the Low Church. Margaret finds herself too timid to attempt to be a sinner at the assembly rooms; it is easier to go along with the women to tea at the home of a preacher to whom she has been given a letter of introduction. Here she finds a company of benighted souls in thrall to Mrs. Stumfold, wife of the great preacher. Like Mrs. Proudie of the Barsetshire series, Mrs. Stumfold brooks no disorder in the ranks, and we see Margaret stand up for herself when Mrs. Stumfold calls on her to inquire as to her intentions in regard to Mr. Maguire, of the squinting eye, who has been seen paying conspicuous attention to Miss Mackenzie. Short on self-esteem at this point, Margaret is shown to rank high in self-assertiveness. When Mrs. Stumfold tells her that another lady has a prior claim on Mr. Maguire (Mrs. Stumfold has been indulging in a bit of match-making), she insults Miss Mackenzie, informing her that another lady has been before her. "What would you think if you were interfered with, though, perhaps, as you had not your fortune in early life, you may never have known what that was?"
At this, Margaret terminates the interview, sending her to any friend of hers who is behaving badly for the purpose of telling him so, and then telling Mrs. Stumfold that she will hear nothing more about it.
Margaret shakes off three suitors, unworthy souls who merit rejection, though she is so lacking in self-confidence that she gives serious consideration to two of them. Mr. Maguire—the clergyman with the wandering squinting eye—catches her by surprise with his proposal, and she asks for two weeks to think it over. A big mistake—it raises false hopes in Mr. Maguire. She is called away because of her brother's illness before giving the ambitious curate an answer, and she enters the orbit of her cousin John Ball, a widower who had bored her by talking about nothing but money.
The author never refers to John Ball as the hero of the story, and indeed he is not unblemished. But he turns out to be Miss Mackenzie's hero, barely making the cut. He has a house full of children of his own, and though a barrister by profession, he hardly practices law. He is the Victorian equivalent of a day trader, going to town every day to follow the market prices and manage his investments, which seem to yield him barely enough to feed his family. He discusses his investments with his mother every night. When he proposes to Margaret, neither she nor the reader is sure whether it is for love or for money, but whatever, she accepts.
And then Trollope pulls a rabbit out of the hat. In doing research on disposition of the will that had seemed to leave Margaret her fortune, the lawyer determines that the bequest had already been deeded to the Ball family and was therefore not available to be left to Margaret. So now John Ball has it all and Margaret has nothing. And when Mr. Maguire appears and claims that Margaret is his fiancée, John fails the test. He says nothing when it is time for him to reassure Margaret that he believes her, and she immediately returns to the miserable lodgings on the Thames in London. And during the long deliberations about confirming whose money it really is, he says nothing to her. She considers herself bound to him even though he may no longer want her, having the money and not having to bother about the girl. She is still pretty low on the self-esteem scale.
All this makes for an entertaining story. The family history and the mystery of the will are complex enough to keep the reader on the hook. A high-born cousin steps in late in the game to help Miss Mackenzie think a bit more of herself. Mrs. Mackenzie, wife to another cousin who lives far away in Scotland, comes to London for a while and tells Margaret how the cow ate the cabbage. She tells her she is sure that Miss Mackenzie will become Lady Margaret by marrying John Ball, morose though he may be. Her instrument is a muslin flecked with black to replace the mourning that Margaret had been wearing in memory of her brother and then her uncle. A "make-belief mourning bonnet" is tossed in, and these are to be worn to the Negro Soldiers' Orphan Bazaar, at which John Ball sees her in something other than all-black mourning, and both of them get the hint that all need not be dark. This is a little set-piece in which two old favorites appear to play cameo roles: Lady Glencora Palliser, who steps out of the Palliser series, and Lady Hartletop, known to readers of the Barsetshire series as Griselda Grantly.
Lady Hartletop is not referred to by her Christian name, because the name Griselda is already in use in reference to Miss Mackenzie. ("'But you must positively bring Grieselda,' said Lady Glencora Palliser.") Readers of Trollope's day were more aware than those of today that Griselda figured in several folk tales, including Boccaccio'sDecameronand Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale" inThe Canterbury Tales, as the personification of patience and obedience. In the former version, a Marquis marries Griselda and tells her that their first two children must be put to death, and then he tells her that he has received papal dispensation to divorce her. She is put away for years, brought back only to witness the wedding of the divorced Marquis. In this ceremony she is told that it is all a joke, and she is restored to her place as wife and mother of the children, who were never killed after all. Some joke; one wonders if her sense of humor is up to it.
Earlier in the book Margaret is referred to as Mariana in the moated grange, who waits vainly for her lover in Tennyson's poem "Mariana":
She only said, 'The night is dreary,He cometh not,' she said;She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,I would that I were dead!'
Another image comes to mind in readingMiss Mackenzie: that of Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp who revolutionized nursing with her service to the English troops in the Crimea. This revolution was probably still a work in progress when Trollope wroteMiss Mackenzie, describing her resolution to be a hospital nurse as a fall-back option if none of her matrimonial plans worked out. She cared for one brother for fifteen years, and when her brother Tom was on his deathbed, she assumed the role again.
There are women who seem to have an absolute pleasure in fixing themselves for business by the bedside of a sick man. They generally commence their operations by laying aside all fictitious feminine charms, and by arraying themselves with a rigid, unconventional unenticing propriety. Though they are still gentle—perhaps more gentle than ever in their movements—there is a decision in all they do very unlike their usual mode of action.
There are women who seem to have an absolute pleasure in fixing themselves for business by the bedside of a sick man. They generally commence their operations by laying aside all fictitious feminine charms, and by arraying themselves with a rigid, unconventional unenticing propriety. Though they are still gentle—perhaps more gentle than ever in their movements—there is a decision in all they do very unlike their usual mode of action.
Miss Mackenzieis an excellent novel. The story moves well in the framework of a Victorian inheritance situation; Miss Mackenzie and John Ball appear as less than perfect but likeable and even admirable figures; those in the supporting cast play their roles well, and through it all the author maintains his deft ironic touch. And for better or worse, the enduring image is that of Rev. Maguire's squint. "[S]he could not help looking into the horrors of his eye, and thinking that innocent was not the word for him."
Young people can't be trusted to sort things out for themselves. Sometimes marriages must be arranged. Sometimes they must be rearranged. InThe Belton Estate, Clara Amedroz finds herself stuck on high center, engaged for the second time to an immature young man, Captain Frederic Aylmer, who is quite willing to marry her, but who doesn't seem to have his heart in it. Although her cousin Will Belton certainly does have his heart in his unrewarded love for Clara, the stubborn child conceives it to be her duty to marry Captain Aylmer, mainly because she has promised to do so for the second time. Enter the Captain's mother, Lady Aylmer, whose view is that her feckless son must marry money—of which Clara has none. And so Clara is dislodged from high center.
Upon her father's death, Clara has limited options for a place to reside. She has already defied her mother-in-law-elect by refusing to renounce the friendship of a certain Mrs. Askerton, a woman with a checkered past who is considered to be eminently unfit for polite society. Frederic's plea that Clara be given a "second chance" with an invitation to their home is initially refused.
But after "close debate" through Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, Lady Aylmer recalculates her position, decides not to risk alienating her only son, and assesses her chances: "Not so utterly had victory in such contests deserted her hands, that she need fear to break a lance with Miss Amedroz beneath her own roof, when the occasion was so pressing."
Lady Aylmer's confidence in her own powers is not misplaced. Clara arrives at Aylmer Hall naively expecting to see Lady Aylmer in the hall, not having given sufficient thought to certain "weights and measures":
But Lady Aylmer was too accurately acquainted with the weights and measures of society for any such movement as that. Had her son brought Lady Emily to the house as his future bride, Lady Aylmer would probably have been in the hall when the arrival took place; and had Clara possessed ten thousand pounds of her own, she would probably have been met at the drawing-room door; but as she had neither money nor title—as she in fact brought with her no advantages of any sort—Lady Aylmer was found stitching a bit of worsted, as though she had expected no one to come to her.
But Lady Aylmer was too accurately acquainted with the weights and measures of society for any such movement as that. Had her son brought Lady Emily to the house as his future bride, Lady Aylmer would probably have been in the hall when the arrival took place; and had Clara possessed ten thousand pounds of her own, she would probably have been met at the drawing-room door; but as she had neither money nor title—as she in fact brought with her no advantages of any sort—Lady Aylmer was found stitching a bit of worsted, as though she had expected no one to come to her.
Now it so happened that the faithful Will Belton conceived a rather interesting way to express his love for Clara. The heir to the Belton Estate, he had decided that since Clara was the daughter and only remaining child of the late Squire Belton, and since the estate was entailed to him as the eldest male of the family, though only a cousin, he would relinquish the estate to Clara. He already had a farm of his own and had a strong personal interest in Clara's welfare. Clara had absolutely refused, but Frederic had told his mother something of the offer, and this modified somewhat Lady Aylmer's view of Clara—until Clara assured her that she would have nothing to do with the property and would bring no property to her marriage, at which time her Cinderella treatment resumed.
Two interviews take place between Lady Aylmer and Clara. The first is preceded by some softening of Lady Aylmer's manner toward Clara. Unexpectedly, Lady Aylmer selects for Clara a choice piece of hashed fowl at lunch. And though she does not address Clara by her Christian name, she does call her "my dear." And that afternoon Clara finds herself alone with Lady Aylmer for their carriage ride. Frederic's sister Belinda is unaccountably absent—"a little busy, my dear." Lady Aylmer begins her maneuvers with a description of her son's impecunious position, indicating that during her lifetime Frederic will not have enough money to marry. Clara reiterates that she has nothing of her own, but Lady Aylmer hints that there may be some doubt about this.
Clara assures her that she will not accept the Belton estate. Lady Aylmer advises her to put the matter into the hands of Mr. Green, who was her late father's lawyer, but Clara assures her that no lawyer is necessary. Silence. Finally Lady Aylmer ventures that a marriage between Clara and her son cannot be considered—at least for many years. When told by Clara that she will talk to Captain Aylmer about it, Lady Aylmer concedes that he is his own master, but he is also her son.
No more "tit-bits of hashed chicken specially picked out for her by Lady Aylmer's own fork." No more "my dear." Cinderella again.
Captain Aylmer declines Clara's suggestion that he break the engagement. But when asked to set a date, he is "almost aghast," and he returns to London, thus indicating to the reader that he will be no fit helpmate for plucky Clara.
With the matter in this state, and in Frederic's absence, Lady Aylmer decides to bring out the weapon that she has been holding in reserve for so long: Clara's refusal to accede to her command to renounce Mrs. Askerton of the checkered past. The scene of battle is the drawing-room, in the presence of Belinda, Frederic's sister.
This time the silence lasts for a half hour (How many New York minutes are there in a Victorian half hour?) Finally Lady Aylmer mentions the name of the notorious Mrs. Askerton.
Clara draws herself up for battle. "Belinda gave a little spring in her chair, looked intently at her work, and went on stitching faster than before." Clara parries each thrust, saying that what she knows of Mrs. Askerton's past life is in confidence, so that she cannot speak of it. Lady Aylmer says that they must speak of it. "Belinda was stitching very hard, and would not even raise her eyes."
When pressed, Clara states that she was very foolish to come to a house in which she is subjected to such questioning. And when required to promise that the acquaintance not be renewed, she refers to it as an "affectionate friendship" and vows that it will be maintained with all her heart.
Then Clara gives her opponent an opening by observing that they may differ on many subjects, and Lady Aylmer presses to the decisive point, alluding to Clara's hold upon her "unfortunate son." Hereupon Clara declares herself insulted, rises from her chair, and announces that she will inform Captain Aylmer that their engagement is at an end unless she can be reassured that she will never again be subjected to such "unwarrantable insolence" from his mother. Exit Clara.
And with this the course of events is determined; Captain Aylmer and Will Belton play out their roles in the expected fashion. The rest of the book is rather humdrum compared to the prolonged battle between Lady Aylmer and Clara, which is one of the more entertaining of these Trollope set pieces.
A prototype of such contests is the interview between Elizabeth Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Jane Austen'sPride and Prejudice. In this classic encounter, Elizabeth defends herself with the understated irony of an Austen heroine when Lady Catherine tells her that the alliance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy will be a disgrace and that her name will never even be mentioned by any of the de Bourgh family.
"These are heavy misfortunes," replied Elizabeth. "But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine."
"These are heavy misfortunes," replied Elizabeth. "But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine."
Trollope demonstrates his skill in presenting the female point of view in his variations on the Cophetua theme, in which the king marries a beggar maid whom he spies from the window of his castle. Lady Lufton, inFramley Parsonage, is not the proud and unbending opponent portrayed in Austen's Lady Catherine de Bourgh or in Lady Aylmer ofThe Belton Estate.
Lucy Robarts and Clara Amedroz prove themselves to be worthy heroines in the tradition of Elizabeth Bennett as they stand up for themselves. Clara Amedroz's second move in her match with Lady Aylmer is to parry a question with a question:
"I believe it to be an undoubted fact that Mrs. Askerton is—is—is— not at all what she ought to be.""Which of us is what we ought to be?" said Clara.
"I believe it to be an undoubted fact that Mrs. Askerton is—is—is— not at all what she ought to be."
"Which of us is what we ought to be?" said Clara.
Such scenes cry out for television portrayal.Pride and Prejudiceis, of course, abundantly portrayed, with Lady Catherine de Bourgh sitting in splendor in her carriage. Wait till BBC asks me for a few suggestions for new shows. The screenwriter would have a bit of work to do with streamlining the plot, but the scenes between Clara and Lady Aylmer are there for the taking.
How could this short novel fail to delight? A familiar author; his only book about Prague, a city of complexity and charm; and a short novel of only 186 pages, a fourth or a fifth of the usual Trollope novel. So why did I find myself having to force myself to pick it up? It is well written. The heroine is a well rounded Trollope girl, though she is given overmuch to proclaiming that she will stick to her lover no matter what, as many of Trollope's girls do. Perhaps therein lies the seed of dread with which the reader turns its pages. The situation is all foretold in the first sentence of the book: "Nina Balatka was a maiden of Prague, born of Christian parents, and herself a Christian—but she loved a Jew; and this is her story."
Here we go again: the Montagus and the Capulets; star-crossed lovers; nothing good can come of this. This sense of foreboding is built up progressively, with references to the statue of St. John Nepomucene, one of the thirty saints standing watch over the Charles Bridge. As early as the second chapter we are told that this martyr was thrown into the river because he would not betray the secrets of a queen's confession, and that he now keeps the faithful safe from drowning in the river. More and more insistent references to the fear and attraction of the black water appear. Nobody wants Nina to marry Anton; a devious plot is laid to trick Anton into thinking that she has deceived him about a deed that belongs to Anton but is in the possession of Nina's uncle. Even her faithful servant Souchey is part of the plot, bewitched by Lotta Luxa, the uncle's serving girl. Souchey thinks it's his Christian duty to prevent a marriage that would imperil the soul of his mistress.
Up to the last moment the reader is convinced that this is a tragedy working itself out, and that the dose will be short but bitter. In suspense, the reader reads quickly to the conclusion. Without spelling out the last pages, it can be said that reading the book is liking watching a ball game in which the home team is hopelessly behind for the whole game but mounts a last-gasp effort at the end.
It's a dark book. The motif of the dark waters of the Moldau dominates all others. Nina herself is the brightest spot, forthright and assertive in her love for Anton. Like many Trollope heroines, she is not the most beautiful girl in her story; her rival Rebecca Loth is admitted even by Nina's cousin and suitor, Ziska Zamenoy, to be more striking and beautiful. Yet Nina continues to attract Ziska and Anton even in poverty that is almost starvation. Her circumstances allow little opportunity for humor; and the story pursues its course with no comic relief.
Her lover Anton is a serious and humorless sort, successful as a businessman and ultimately faithful in his love for Nina, though his experience in the business world keeps him from believing fully that Nina, a Christian, is not betraying him. And like so many Victorian men, he insists on the obedience of his intended as a litmus test for her worthiness.
Prague, with its segregated Jewish Quarter, affords an opportunity for exploring the relationship between Jews and Christians. Ziska's foray into the Jewish Quarter is the central dramatization of the distance between them, as he unwittingly arrives there on a Jewish holiday, when the women are dressed for a festival and the men are at worship. Seeking Anton, he is conducted into the synagogue:
The door was very low and narrow, and seemed to be choked by men with short white surplices, but nevertheless he found himself inside, jammed among a crowd of Jews; and a sound of many voices, going together in a singsong wail or dirge, met his ears. His first impulse was to take off his hat, but that was immediately replaced upon his head, he knew not by whom; and then he observed that all within the building were covered. His guide did not follow him, but whispered to someone what it was that the stranger required.
The door was very low and narrow, and seemed to be choked by men with short white surplices, but nevertheless he found himself inside, jammed among a crowd of Jews; and a sound of many voices, going together in a singsong wail or dirge, met his ears. His first impulse was to take off his hat, but that was immediately replaced upon his head, he knew not by whom; and then he observed that all within the building were covered. His guide did not follow him, but whispered to someone what it was that the stranger required.
In dreamlike fashion, Ziska is led through the crowd to Anton, who offers to accompany him outside if the business is important. A serious interview ensues, in which Ziska pursues his family's treacherous plot to disrupt the engagement. Here the Jews are presented as a people of dignity and courtesy, long-suffering and patient. Wary of their Christian oppressors, they proceed with caution. In much the same fashion that Shakespeare portrays the Jews inThe Merchant of Venice, they are presented with sympathy, even though the usages of the time permit derogatory allusions as a matter of course.
In circumstances such as these, what chance does love have, coming up as a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth inning? Love does have a good at-bat, but the reader is left with the feeling that there will have to be a lot more weddings and a lot more funerals before these issues are resolved.
This is straight from the noontime soaps. Harry Clavering, the sometimes sheep-like "hero" ofThe Claverings, rises to challenge his cousin Sir Hugh Clavering, standing toe-to-toe in a hostile verbal encounter, and the younger man (Harry) defies his banishment from his cousin's house. There is some talk of horsewhipping, and Harry walks out, with a cautious look over his shoulder. No violence. We're English (which sometimes helps). But it is soap opera.The Claveringsis basically about Harry Clavering and the two women he loves. He proposes to Julia Brabazon and is refused; she marries a wealthy nobleman; Harry falls in love with Florence Burton, the daughter of a hard-working civil engineer; Julia becomes a wealthy widow and reappears. What will Harry do?
It's not so simple. Florence and her family are not to be discounted. Her brother Theodore, committed to building railways and digging tunnels, speaks his piece in Chapter XXVI, "The Man who dusted his Boots with his Handkerchief." (Remember that Mr. Puddicombe, arbiter of proper behavior to his friend Dr. Wortle inDr. Wortle's School, advised his friend, "When I am taking a walk through the fields and get one of my feet deeper than usual into the mud, I always endeavour to bear it as well as I may before the eyes of those who meet me rather than make futile efforts to get rid of the dirt and look as though nothing had happened. The dirt, when it is rubbed and smudged and scraped, is more palpably dirt than the honest mud.") One of the great questions that arose in the Victorian world was how to identify a gentleman, and although Trollope doesn't spell it out in so many words, it may be taken from this description, and from the drawings of this scene in two different editions, that dusting one's boots is a cardinal sign that one is not a gentleman.
But, gentleman or not, Theodore Burton is one of the two in the story who prove themselves to be men of worth. When Harry is dithering about which woman he will marry (both Lady Ongar and Florence Burton appear willing to accept him), Theodore Burton, who has employed Harry in the engineering office, writes him a letter acknowledging Harry's absence from the office and urging him to come for an interview. After the formalities, Burton comes directly to the point: "Come, Harry, let me tell you all at once like an honest man. I hate subterfuges and secrets. A report has reached the old people at home—not Florence, mind—that you are untrue to Florence, and are passing your time with that lady who is the sister of your cousin's wife." He goes on to urge him to return to Florence and to the Burton family fold. "And this from the man who had dusted his boots with his pocket handkerchief, and whom Harry had regarded as being on that account hardly fit to be his friend!"
The other humble man who proves his worth is Mr. Samuel Saul, the curate for Harry's father Mr. Clavering, a clergyman not given to work of any sort. Mr. Saul is introduced as a serious, conscientious young man who basically does all the work. (This is a mark against any claim that Mr. Saul may have to being a gentlemen. Gentlemen don't work.) Mrs. Clavering later reflects that her son Harry "would never excel greatly in any drudgery that would be necessary for the making of money."
But the humble Mr. Saul aspires to the hand of Harry's sister Fanny. No one in Fanny's family—her father the rector, her mother, or her brother Harry—could even consider such a thing; but Fanny, who initially acknowledges the impossibility of his suit, eventually does begin to consider it, and to consider that the only thing keeping them from being married is that his income as a curate is woefully inadequate. And Fanny rejects any suggestion that Mr. Saul is not a gentleman.
His initial proposal introduces us to him. Trollope specialized in proposals; there seem to be at least two or three in every book. And this one, which occurs in the rain, makes the reader thankful for a warm dry spot where he can only read about the rain. He persists with his statement of purpose in spite of the downpour, and she splashes herself as she forbids him to speak further. "She had her own ideas as to what was loveable in men, and the eager curate, splashing through the rain by her side, by no means came up to her standard of excellence."
But Mr. Saul's powers were not to be underestimated. He later makes another attempt, in which the author dissects Mr. Saul's victory. Fanny does not declare that she does not love him. Mr. Saul's gamesmanship requires a bit of leisurely explanation:
At this moment she forgot that in order to put herself on perfectly firm ground, she should have gone back to the first hypothesis, and assured him that she did not feel any such regard for him. Mr. Saul, whose intellect was more acute, took advantage of her here, and chose to believe that that matter of her affection was now conceded to him. He knew what he was doing well, and is open to a charge of some jesuitry. "Mr. Saul," said Fanny, with grave prudence, "it cannot be right for people to marry when they have nothing to live upon." When she had shown him so plainly that she had no other piece left on the board to play than this, the game may be said to have been won on his side.
At this moment she forgot that in order to put herself on perfectly firm ground, she should have gone back to the first hypothesis, and assured him that she did not feel any such regard for him. Mr. Saul, whose intellect was more acute, took advantage of her here, and chose to believe that that matter of her affection was now conceded to him. He knew what he was doing well, and is open to a charge of some jesuitry. "Mr. Saul," said Fanny, with grave prudence, "it cannot be right for people to marry when they have nothing to live upon." When she had shown him so plainly that she had no other piece left on the board to play than this, the game may be said to have been won on his side.
Mr. Saul continued to play his hand bravely in his interview with Mr. Clavering, whose strongest card was that Mr. Saul, though a gentleman, was not in his class. And of course the nuances of class were to be of no avail in England in coming decades. Some would persist, but many of these nuances, which were relied upon by those such as Mr. Clavering, who did not work, would fall to the energy of such men as Mr. Burton and Mr. Saul, who did work. In this case, Mr. Clavering bravely declared that Mr. Saul would have to give up his pretensions for Fanny's hand, or leave the parish—which would have left Mr. Clavering without the services of someone to do his work for him. And Mr. Saul called his bluff, declaring that he would leave the parish rather than renounce his claim for Fanny's hand.
As it turned out, all parties stood their ground, and Fanny assumed the role of "a broken-hearted young lady." But this is fairy tale as well as soap opera, and all tears are wiped away in a series of events that open up the position of rector of the parish to the steadfast Mr. Saul, thus removing the last excuse the family had for opposing the union—somewhat to the sacrifice of "cakes and ale in the parish," to Mr. Clavering's regret.
Other less worthy persons claim the reader's attention, two of whom, Archie Clavering and Captain Boodle, provide a welcome bit of comic relief when Mr. Boodle, habitué of the racecourses and "fast friend" of Captain Archie Clavering, the ne'er do well brother of Sir Hugh Clavering, advises Archie about how to advance his courtship of Lady Ongar. Archie knows deep down that he has no chance. "In some inexplicable manner he put himself into the scales and weighed himself, and discovered his own weight with fair accuracy. And he put her into the scales, and he found that she was much the heavier of the two." But Boodle knows too much about horses to allow his friend to shortchange himself in his suit, comparing courtship to riding a trained mare: "I always choose that she shall know that I'm there." Use the spurs if you have to.
Needless to say, Archie's sense of his own weight is a more accurate predictor than Boodle's advice; but Archie and Captain Boodle also attempt to invoke the assistance of Lady Ongar's friend Sophie Gordeloupe, who routs them both. Madame Gordeloupe was a "Franco-Pole," who "spoke English with great fluency, but every word uttered declared her not to be English." In Trollope's English world, she was the classic devious foreigner. Some said that she was a Russian spy. "How could any decent English man or woman wish for the friendship of such a creature as that?"
Archie makes the first visit to the Russian spy, who quickly strips him of the twenty pounds he had tucked into his glove and ridicules him for offering such a paltry sum, demanding fifty pounds as a starter. "Yes, fifty—for another beginning. What; seven thousands of pounds per annum, and make difficulty for fifty pounds! You have a handy way with your glove. Will you come with fifty pounds tomorrow?"
After Archie's second visit succeeds only in Sophie's relieving him of fifty more pounds, Boodle is pressed into service for a third attempt. When Sophie asks him if Boodle is an English name, he replies, "Altogether English, I believe. Our Boodles come out of Warwickshire; small property near Leamington—doosed small, I'm sorry to say." When he utterly fails in his embassy, he feels "quite entitled to twit her with the payment she had taken," and asks about his friend's seventy pounds that she has taken. More ridicule. Boodle is routed. Madame Gordeloupe finds that longer speeches in a tongue not her own are more effective:
"Suppose you go to your friend and tell him from me that he have chose a very bad Mercury in his affairs of love—the worst Mercury I ever see. Perhaps the Warwickshire Mercuries are not very good. Can you tell me, Captain Booddle, how they make love down in Warwickshire?"
"Suppose you go to your friend and tell him from me that he have chose a very bad Mercury in his affairs of love—the worst Mercury I ever see. Perhaps the Warwickshire Mercuries are not very good. Can you tell me, Captain Booddle, how they make love down in Warwickshire?"
The women are strong. Julia Ongar plays her hand well. After terminating her love affair with young Harry Clavering because neither of them has any money, she goes in search of bigger game. "Julia had now lived past her one short spell of poetry, had written her one sonnet, and was prepared for the business of the world." She goes on to win the prize of her widow's bountiful settlement, but she then finds that she is accepted neither by the gentry nor by the servants at Ongar Park when she goes to occupy her new residence. And on learning that she has a losing hand to play against Florence Burton, she plays it with reasonable dignity. She is not, however, above a bit of revenge at the last, taunting Harry that Florence must be very beautiful. Not so beautiful, he says, but very clever.
"Ah—I understand. She reads a great deal, and that sort of thing. Yes; that is very nice. But I shouldn't have thought that that would have taken you. You used not to care much for talent and learning—not in women I mean."
"Ah—I understand. She reads a great deal, and that sort of thing. Yes; that is very nice. But I shouldn't have thought that that would have taken you. You used not to care much for talent and learning—not in women I mean."
Florence, for her part, is steadfast in her love and prepares to give it up when she senses that she has lost; but the leading lady often has the most stereotyped part to play. Florence's sister-in-law, Cecilia Burton, plays her supporting role well, taking the initiative in confronting Harry when he wavers, and doing it without informing her husband, who might forbid her to do so. The title of Chapter XXVII emphasizes her initiative: "What Cecilia Burton did for her Sister-in-law." And what she did is explained a bit after her effort: "Even Cecilia, with all her partiality for Harry, felt that he was not worth the struggle; but it was for her now to estimate him at the price that Florence might put upon him—not at her own price."
Harry Clavering's reflections on his situation bear the markings of authenticity. Trollope had met his new American friend, Kate Field, about three years earlier, and it is tempting to attribute these comments about how a man can love two women at the same time to his not-entirely-paternal interest in Kate.
Sir Hugh Clavering's death at sea permits the fairy tale ending. Fairy tale, yes; and soap opera plot, yes; but the nuances of Victorian society are exposed with such wit thatThe Claveringsis lifted well above the soap opera mark. It stands as one of my favorites of Trollope's novels, one that could readily be recommended to the reader who is not quite familiar with the author's name.
Be advised and read no further, any to whom it is important that the ending of the book not be known before it is read.Linda Tressel(1867) is one of Trollope's dark books—Sir Harry Hotspuris another—in which the heroine does not fare well after being thwarted in trying to have a life on her own terms.
That a young woman should insist on such conditions in the nineteenth century would mark this as a work that could be used as a feminist text today; and perhaps it would be so used if it were a little less melodramatic—and if anyone knew anything about it.
Linda is a young woman who shows spunk and determination, but she falls victim to the stubborn steadfastness of purpose of her Aunt Charlotte, shown to be a religious zealot of the evangelical Protestant variety, and Aunt Charlotte's lodger, Peter Steinmarc, a Nuremberger of the slow-witted stubborn sort. Both are so extreme in their positions that they might be taken for caricatures were they not shown in such convincing detail.
The story is that of a motherless child who is taken under the wing of her Aunt Charlotte, a devout woman who "goes far beyond the ordinary amenities of Lutheran teaching." When Linda attains the age of twenty, she learns that Peter Steinmarc has offered to make her his wife. The reader is told that he has previously proposed many times to Charlotte Staubach, who declined the honor and reminded Peter that he would become owner of the house now in Linda's name, if he should become Linda's husband. On being told of his marital intentions by her Aunt Charlotte, Linda immediately refuses, but she becomes "very wretched." A few details tell why:
She told herself that sooner or later her aunt would conquer her, that sooner or later that mean-faced old man, with his snuffy fingers, and his few straggling hairs brushed over his bald pate, with his big shoes spreading here and there because of his corns, and his ugly, loose, square, snuffy coat, and his old hat which he had worn so long that she never liked to touch it, would become her husband, and that it would be her duty to look after his wine, and his old shoes, and his old hat, and to have her own little possessions doled out to her by his penuriousness.
She told herself that sooner or later her aunt would conquer her, that sooner or later that mean-faced old man, with his snuffy fingers, and his few straggling hairs brushed over his bald pate, with his big shoes spreading here and there because of his corns, and his ugly, loose, square, snuffy coat, and his old hat which he had worn so long that she never liked to touch it, would become her husband, and that it would be her duty to look after his wine, and his old shoes, and his old hat, and to have her own little possessions doled out to her by his penuriousness.
This then is the story, and it plays out with the added complication of Linda's being in love with the young man who lives across the little river behind her house. He is in and out of jail because of his political radicalism, but Linda knows little of this. They attempt an elopement, but it fails when young Ludovic is apprehended by the police at the Augsburg station when their train arrives. Linda had the pluck to run away with Ludovic, and in the end she has the pluck to run away on her own, but though she confronts her aunt several times, she never can bring herself to face her and refute her. When Aunt Charlotte plays the prayer card, Linda never refuses to kneel and listen to the degrading and humiliating prayers offered on her behalf.
The feminist agenda was one that the conservative Trollope never subscribed to, but his stories were too true to life to conceal women's problems. Perhaps his stories got away from him, and the women's stories told themselves. In this one, poor Linda finds herself totally powerless under the domination of her aunt, as no man would be. The world appears to be conspiring to keep her from breaking out of her aunt's smothering sphere. When she leaves the house to go consult an old friend of her late father's, Herr Molk tells her that she should submit herself to her elders and her betters.
Trollope made little secret of his religious tastes—traditional Anglicanism, of the high church sort, but not papist. And he had no patience with any evidence of fanaticism in religion. "But there are women of the class to which Madame Staubach belonged who think that the acerbities of religion are intended altogether for their own sex. That men ought to be grateful to them who will deny?" Poor Linda's final escape is too late to save her; she makes her way to her uncle's house in Cologne, where her Aunt Grüner, a Catholic, tells her that her Aunt Charlotte's mistreatment of her comes of her religion.
"We think differently, my dear. Thank God, we have got somebody to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do." Linda was not strong enough to argue the question, or to remind her aunt that this somebody, too, might possibly be wrong.
"We think differently, my dear. Thank God, we have got somebody to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do." Linda was not strong enough to argue the question, or to remind her aunt that this somebody, too, might possibly be wrong.
Linda's progressive downhill and melodramatic course makes for a rather grim story. Mercifully, it is a short one. The descriptions of Aunt Charlotte and of Peter Steinmarc leave little room for subtlety. However, Aunt Charlotte's breastplate of righteousness was not entirely without a few little chinks, as we see in her last encounter with Linda's wild lover. Trollope's description, I fear, will bring few feminists to his side:
He could get in and out of the roofs of houses, and could carry away with him a young maiden. These are deeds which always excite a certain degree of admiration in the female heart, and Madame Staubach, though she was a Baptist, was still a female. When, therefore, she found herself in the presence of Ludovic, she could not treat him with the indignant scorn with which she would have received him had he intruded upon her premises before her fears of him had been excited.
He could get in and out of the roofs of houses, and could carry away with him a young maiden. These are deeds which always excite a certain degree of admiration in the female heart, and Madame Staubach, though she was a Baptist, was still a female. When, therefore, she found herself in the presence of Ludovic, she could not treat him with the indignant scorn with which she would have received him had he intruded upon her premises before her fears of him had been excited.
LikeNina Balatka,Linda Tresselwas published as an anonymous work; only later did Trollope declare himself as the author. It has been stated that he wanted to prove that he could write a different kind of novel, set in Europe.Linda Tresselwas clearly an effort to take his writing in a different direction. Though it was not a commercial success, it can hardly be dismissed. The story moves inexorably to a tragic ending for the heroine; the author stays on task with the progression of the story, but it is seasoned with bits of irony. The reader begins to suspect that there is heavy weather ahead as the storm clouds gather over the picturesque little red house in Nuremberg; perhaps it is the impact of the inevitable deluge that is so depressing.
Novels rarely have subtitles; Anthony Trollope certainly didn't bother with them. ButHe Knew He Was Rightis a sitting duck for a frivolous little subtitle. How aboutBut He Was Wrong? Or maybeBut She Knew He Was Wrong? Or perhaps,But She Wouldn't Pretend That He Was Right? But of course any subtitle would have been redundant. The five-word title tells it all. Of course he wasn't right. But he was stubborn. And she was stubborn. And in this case, it was a case of terminal stubbornness.
The problem withHe Knew He Was Rightis that the man who knows he is right, Louis Trevelyan, fails to overcome his terminal stubbornness. Or perhaps we should refer to it as a paranoid personality disorder—or maybe as the prevailing diagnosis of the time: madness. Whatever we call it, it isn't pretty, and the story of his progressive delusion is not a pleasant one. Interesting, yes. So isCrime and Punishment. But both stories tell how someone happened to think and do the wrong thing, and these are unpleasant subjects. Both books dilute the dose with little subplots that add humor and diversion. But the main story line is still the main story line. Louis Trevelyan, a young husband, is annoyed by the daily visits to his wife by her godfather, Colonel Osborne, a bachelor with a reputation for pursuing beautiful young married women. He objects, she resents the objection, and both husband and wife shoot past the point of negotiation with their first discussion of the subject. Both are stubborn, things go downhill from there, and in the end Louis Trevelyan goes mad and suffers the consequences.
Trevelyan was set up by circumstances, and to understand some of these circumstances, we must take note of the laws of England at that time. English common law stated that in marriage, two became one, and that one was the husband in the eyes of the law. The husband was indeed the lord and master. In regard to children, John Stuart Mill wrote of the wife's subordination in marriage, "They are by law his children. … No one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him."
This was part of the system of coverture, in which a married woman surrendered her legal existence, which was suspended during her marriage, "or at least incorporated or consolidated into that of her husband, under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything."[1]The efforts of Victorian feminists, who considered this to be "marital slavery," led to the Married Woman's Property Act of 1882, twenty years after this book was written; but even this was only a partial solution. It was not until 1923 that grounds for divorce were made the same for both sexes, and divorce remained expensive until Legal Aid became available in 1949.