Thursday 6 April 2017

He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope


Here is a man who is about to be denounced as a beast:
As he thought of it, and as that visit up-stairs prolonged itself, he almost thought it would be best for him to be round with her! We all know what a husband means when he resolves to be round with his wife.

Louis Trevalyan is Mr.Right in this case and Mrs. Right nee Emily Rowley daughter of the Governor of the Mandarin Islands, Sir Marmaduke. She is a proud creature, unwilling to be corrected and as a colonial perhaps unaware of the nuances of proper stiffness with any males. Colonel Osborne an old friend of her father and the same age as him is regarded by Trevalyan as being overly familiar with his wife. He is a jealous man and conscious of the great benefits he has conferred through his generous taking up of a dowryless wife and her sister. There is no doubt that the Colonel likes to hover about pretty married women and has been the cause of rifts.

Trollope can be acute and the analysis of polite marriage requires his anguished ironies. Will he forbear to talk to the reader, well hardly, for my citation shows that he already has. Will there be fox-hunting? I like it when there's fox-hunting. Someone will come a cropper, I feel it in my water. The edition I've just begun is in the Oxford Classics series, a beautiful format 6x3.75 inches, virtually the golden section with a dust cover for 1Euro.

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