The Claverings by Anthony Trollope

 

If you were to lay down the bare outline of this novel it might seem to have some of the lineaments of the romance novel, a Mills & Boone confection, but it really isn’t though as I read I felt, ‘should I be enjoying this so much’?.  Of all the Trollopes that I have read there was not the slightest sense of the suspense of hiatus or drag at any point.  It just moved along beautifully and the shill I, shall I, of Harry Clavering’s dual engagement, his divided soul, his velleities that required careful marshalling and man’oeuvering by the ladies of the Clavering and the Burton clans is fascinating.  They are the heroines of the flagrantly feminist novel.  The other two ladies Julia Lady Ongar and Florence Burton, bad girl V good girl are in love with vacillating Harry. 

To be clear Julia nee Brabazon has jilted Harry Clavering a fellow of Cambridge whom she traduces by referring to him as an usher i.e. a schoolmaster’s assistant.  She owes too much money, he has not enough.  There seems to be a suggestion that this Harry chap the rector’s son has more than his share of manly beauty, an Apollo no less, but he’s broke, that’s no joke what with the cost of frocks, maids etc, etc.  Lord Ongar, libertine, debauchee, and sot who affects a crow black wig will win fair lady with 60 or 70,000 sterling pounds p.a., a castle a beautiful dower house and 7,000 pa should he predecease her.  Which of course he does attended by a less than desolate Julia, creepy Sophie Gardeloup, and her charmingly sinister brother the Count Paterhoff.

Now she is free and back in London from Florence; alone and shunned by society, trailing vague rumours of infidelity initiated by Sophie and the Count that allow them to control her to some extent.  Her sister Hermione  is married to Lord Clavering, Harry’s first cousin.  Down the park of the great house is the rector whose living and personal money plus his wife’s 800 l p.a. allows him to subcontract the tiresome parts of his cure of souls to a Mr.Saul for 70 l p.a.  He hunts until Bishop Proudie (Barchester) asks him to desist.

This novel is about Famille Clavering so all of them have speaking parts.  One charming sub-plot is the wooing of Fanny Clavering by Mr.Saul who is a gentleman, of course, but not of our kind, country family squire-ish sort.   The cold cruel Lord Hugh is a well drawn portrait of complete authoritarian selfishness, tightfisted, controlling, brutal. Archie his brother is an ex-navy idler fond of a bet willing to take on Lady Ongar also.  His attempt to use Sophie to advance his cause is comedic.

Where’s the energy, the plot dynamo? It’s Harry who somehow manages to promise himself to two women.  The other women who want to rectify the situation come to doubt him as a fine thing and a wonderful capture.  Nevertheless he is the prey of one of theirs and not to be let go lightly.  In another case:

Mrs. Clavering, who knew well how to do such work, was gradually bringing her husband round to endure the name of Mr. Saul. Twenty times had he asserted that he could not understand it; but, whether or no such understanding might ever be possible, he was beginning to recognize it as true that the thing not understood was a fact.

This is one of the stand alone Trollope novels.  It has been described as perfect and really its interweaving of the strands of Victorian life is masterly.  Before I commit any more cliches can I urge you to read it.

Introducing Mr.Arabin - Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

 I’m re-reading ‘Barchester Towers’ by Anthony Trollope  and checking back through my posts I see that I dropped a short note on it about 10 years ago.  He finished it in 1856 and it follows ‘The Warden’ the first in the series about the clerical life around the cathedral city of Barchester.   The spry playfulness that infuses this early novel has the spring of his genius in it.  His addressing of the reader does not interpose the breaching of the pact of disbelief but is just an invitation  to refresh our imagination or to begin again with a cleansed eye to look on the  capers of Barchester clerics and their innocent lapses into worldliness.

Mr. Arabin was tempted by the Scarlet Woman of Rome having been led astray by the charismatic John Henry Newman.  In the end he did not succumb to her gaudy blandishments but for a time he wobbled on the tightrope that spanned the Tiber.  As a fellow of Lazarus a college of Oxford he would have lost his place as no longer subscribing to the 39 Articles and therefore a dubious influence on the young minds in his charge.  A tight spot indeed.  Here Trollope plays the part of the unreliable narrator moving between addressing the reader to make a plea and simultaneously leaving it quite open for us to doubt the proffered interpretation.  Arabin  is promoted as an  unworldly, mystical, poetical sort of man of a high church type. 

Though great things were expected of him by his tutor when an undergraduate somehow in his last years in Balliol that furnace of Scholarment he became something of a controversialist the downfall of many a promising student. 

“He had occupied himself too much with High Church matters and the polemics, politics, and outward demonstrations usually concurrent with High Churchmanship to devote himself with sufficient vigour to the acquisition of a double first.”

As related by Trollope with a wink what bothered Arabin more than anything was the idea that he balked at Rome because he was afraid of losing his fellowship and all that it implied in status, emolument and learned society.  However in a stroke of rationalization he turns this remaining within the Church Established by law into the harder, steeper path.

“He paused and stood silent for awhile, thinking of the time when he had so nearly sacrificed all he had, his powers of mind, his free agency, the fresh running waters of his mind's fountain, his very inner self, for an easy path in which no fighting would be needed;”

This inner recollection takes place during his first conversation with Mrs.Bold the beautiful widow with £1000 a year.  We have also been told about Arabin’s wistful incipient longing for a more gracious, genteel, domestic, life.  He is after all forty years old.  We feel that Trollope may fix him up.

Trollope's Truth

 

One of the things said of Anthony Trollope by an enthusiastic reader of his work which struck me was ‘I trust Trollope’. Should we? Is there mischief in Anthony, a sly misdirection between the deictic events, what he shows and what he tells us in his direct interpolations.  Henry James did not like this breaking of the fabulous spell preferring to lay his mazing anfractuosities there on the page.  None of your, please note I have nothing up my sleeve and my fingers never leave my hand.

Is Trollope telling the truth?  Looking the Palliser series I find his insistence that Frank Tregear was not after the money that Lady Mary would undoubtedly bring his way a little strained.  After all Lady Mabel and he had broken off their attachment due to the fact that neither of them had any money.  She loves him but knows that a life of penury would be impossible for them owing to their aristocratic taste for the finer things in life.  I also recall that Frank has a brother that is due to inherit the modest estate in Cornwall but that he will probably not ever marry and is generally abroad travelling.  Might he be eaten by a lion or destroyed by Corsican bandits or succumb to yellow fever?  This could be a way of resolving the funds impasse.  Frank however does not live in that suspended state and in a few months, takes his permission to seek another to Rome.  He doesn’t go in for languish as does Lady Mabel who is secretly put out by his speed in moving on.  As the Scots steward said in ‘The Eustace Diamonds’ don’t go after money but go where the money is. Which he does.  Lady Mary, with her beauty and ‘sterling’ qualities falls and as we know Daddy Pally demurs.  A penniless adventurer and my girl; that can never be.  By the way have you noticed how fickle men are in the novels.  Phineas Finn skips like a stone over the lake of love but sheers off when the wealthy Madam Marie puts it to him.  In the end those two outsiders are married which brings me to what I think might have lurked in the back of Trollope’s mind.  Can the beautiful but alien Isabel Boncassen be a suitable spouse for the future Duke of Omnium?  I really think that from an aristocratic point of view the union with Lady Mabel who is beautiful, witty and wise would be more fitting and durable given the duties of that elevated sphere.  Can the republican and the monarchist be friends over the long stretch of mutual  accommodations that is marriage?  Isabel must be an eternal outsider and she will feel it.  Such an ending would make a subtle reprise of Plantagenet’s marriage which was to begin with against Lady Glen’s true feelings.  In this case Silverbridge would simply have to revert to his initial love for Mabel. There could be Trollopian prosing about duty over several pages.

Think of that.

For me this novel was the weakest link in the series which probably took too long to die.  The comedy element was more about social embarrassment, again the oil and water of different classes.  The pathos of a man who neglected his family for quints (the decimal farthing) is there but is it enough.

The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope

 If you reverse engineer the Palliser novels you will reveal the narrative clockwork that drives the novels but it won’t help you to predict what is going to happen in the one you are reading.  I’m in the middle of ‘The Duke’s Children’ and I can see the author running the combinations of the recurring themes.  Marry for money and status - that probably won’t be lucky. Two men caught between two women, oscillating emotion of the male compared to the more steady female attachment.  We’ve seen similar situations before however I feel Trollope will ring the changes this time and there may be jetsam and someone left to languish.  

The busyness of the Victorian upper class who had a fondness for laborious idleness, fox hunting, shooting, up in the morning out on the moor blasting away at the fowl of the month or stalking deer over miles of Scottish mountains.  Behind this sport the army of support staff fettling horses, whipping in dogs, Masters of Fox Hounds blowing the horn, horse coping.  The fixing of the Leger is a theme in this book and a gilded youth losing £70,000.  In 187- serious money but Papa pays up.  Will daughter Lady Mary get the man she loves, will Papa come round?  Can the American beauty be accepted by the Duke of Omnium or will marrying out of the aristocracy be impossible to accept for his son. At a certain point you may feel that you know quite enough about the marriage arrangements of the idle wealthy.  There are no less than two MPs in the romance stakes, both Conservative.  Rebellious youth forsooth.

Like all Trollope novels he keeps you reading and wondering how the romantic tangles might be resolved. The other amazing thing is the amount of visiting each others houses they do.    Mansions  were required to keep up that level of hospitality.  And cousin marriage; chinless wonders did not come from nowhere.

‘The Duke’s Children’ is not the best novel in the series. Does Trollope succeed in humanising the Duke? So far there are touching episodes and those of us that have given their parents trouble will mist up a little recognising the forbearance we have received.  I’m only half way there and this note is dashed off waiting for bread to bake.

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

Lizzie is a liar, no three ways about it, confabulating like a good‘un from morning till night and coming to see in the end there might be some truth in her story. Money, rank, and beauty give her licence to paint a poetry over the prose of this world. She is a widow whose sickly husband died within a short time and being a baronet left her a lady with a £4000 pa. income for her life and a son who is the heir to the title. Lady Eustace had a diamond necklace valued at £10000 put on her neck by her husband and she intends to make her own of it and not let it sink back into the estate as her bete noir the family solicitor Camperdown insists. It is an heirloom and therefore cannot be taken as personal property. Was it in London that she first received it or in Scotland at the home castle of Portray? If at home then it might be counted amongst the paraphernalia of the home and therefore property of her own. The law is uncertain on these fine points. Best let it be in Scotland. Yes it was in Scotland. 

 

 Lively as a goat amongst the crags she leaps from fable to fib to buttress her stratagems getting increasingly confused as stern truth advances towards her. I read the Palliser series out of turn so I have foreknowledge of certain events and as I read I wondered how was this wrought. Simple when you know Lady Eustace and her mutability and invention all centred around the pole star of her own aims. Is it wrong to attempt to draw her first cousin Frank away from his true love Lucy. Not at all, in her computation it would suit them both,with her money his career as an M.P. and rising barrister would be enhanced. At that time MPs were not paid a salary and besides Frank Greystock is not a very good manager of his money. He’s in debt but still lives the life of a wealthy young man about town. His £2000 p.a. and her £4000 would be a fine basis for easy living. All his relations think so, a ‘poor’ man marrying the very plain governess for love, what is the sense of doing that. As ever the marriage mart is a theme of Trollope’s.

 

 It’s a very long novel but the narrative tension never slackens. As I wrote having read the books out of turn I wondered about certain outcomes but the author makes it all character centred and credible. The meddling Lady Glencora and Palliser’s quint farthing is a continuing theme from earlier books. An insinuating satire on the mores and manners of Victorian society twenty years before the Queen’s jubilee (1860‘s). George Gissing wrote ‘In the Time of Jubilee’ from the perspective of the lower middle classes if you want a more astringent version of of high Empire when the map was pink. Absolutely superb controlled writing but do read the Palliser novels in sequence.

'Phineas Finn' and 'Phineas Redux' by Anthony Trollope

 

So without working deliberately at it over the years I’ve read a fair bit of Trollope but this is my disordered venture into the Palliser series. First I read ‘Phineas Finn’ and directly afterwards ‘Phineas Redux’.  They are big novels, serialized and therefore with dramatic nodes, shifts in the pace, side bars and disquisitions.  Trollope is a master of maintaining narrative tension and moving the story around so that the illusion of the absent for the moment characters are always there in the wings being busy and about at any moment to inflict themselves.

It would be silly of me to tell someone who reads a bit that Trollope is mandatory.  If you are about to find that out then I will restrain myself from urging him on you like a big friendly dog. Here I will just offer some points about Phineas Finn which may escape the British or American reader.  He is an Irishman and a Catholic and therefore an outsider.  In the circles in which he moves in he is also a commoner and that counts for a lot.  Unlike the other Irishman in the novel, Fitzgibbon, he is not of the landed gentry class even if his family is regarded as sound stock by that Anglo-Irish class.  He is an exotic bird, very handsome, affable, witty, charming and with a touch of gallantry which appeals to the members of that element in English society, the Barbarian; huntin’, shootin’, fishin’; and if you get involved in a duel with them they will try to kill you. The other Arnoldian categories of the Hebraic and the Populace are supplied by Robert Kennedy and Bunce his landlord.

I found him at first a bit of a cipher.  Where’s the politics, will there be sticking points, will he turn balky over the Irish Land question or disestablishmentarianism? There is envy at his rising to minor office but he shows his capacity for work.  However he is unlucky in love or unrealistic about his chances as a poor man and a commoner with aristocratic women.   The portrait is limned in over the two novels and life’s tragedies and injustice hew the block closer to the finished man.

Another outsider and exotic is Madame Max, the rich young widow, a Jew by marriage, from somewhere out there where abroad is bloody, Vienna.  Excellently drawn as are all the women.  Lady Laura and Lady Glencora are political kitchen cabinet types promoting, through the blandishment of dinner parties, their policies.

That’s all I have to say about that.  I have no key to the characters of the political drama in the House of Commons.  It is a time of great change and reform.  Votes for all, the position of the Church established by law, the scurrility of the popular press, libels and injunctions.    Good speeches and some comedy to temper the stateliness.

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (II)

Feeling the need of a bracing moral universe rather than one in which politicians earn moral miles on their personal journeys I took to reading novels. If I were to characterise Victory by Conrad in pop terms it would be World of Moral Warcraft. Framley Parsonage by Trollope would be Can’t Pay, We’ll take it Away. Compare and Contrast. Just writing that creates a sinking feeling; tourbillons of chalk dust rise and afar off the snicker snack of the bar mower in the far field lays down stripes of grass.

From a craft point of view ‘Framley’ is the better novel, the story moves along smoothly with just enough of incident to show and of analysis to tell. That balance is hard to achieve. Of all the Trollope that I have read this is the one in which his mastery of clerical intrigue, snobbery, genteel poverty, and political duplicity is displayed at its finest. Of course I haven’t read all of Trollope, I’d have had to start from a boy for that, yet there does seem to me troughs and peaks in the oeuvre. Recently I started on The Duke’s Children and that cutting didn’t strike. In this novel though the variety of scenes as we move from squirearchy to hierarchy never sinks into longueurs. The blank beauty Griselda Grantly and aptly named Lord Dumbello: will they marry? Certainly, if barbarian eugenics, pace Arnold, are to flourish. Will the delightful, sparky Lucy Robarts find true love with Lord Lufton. He is beyond her station and mother Lufton does not approve. Mark Robarts has been silly and gone guarantor for Sowerby M.P.. £900 is a serious sum and there’s the riding to hunt which Parson Crawley upbraids him for. Even then bailiffs were apologetic but firm.

Parson Crawley is a proud ascetic who would starve his family rather that succumb to worldly manoeuvres. The parish of Hogglestock is not a rich one. £130 a year is all he gets which leaves him and his family worse off than their brickmaker parishoners.

And sometimes he was prostrate—prostrate in soul and spirit. Then would he complain with bitter voice, crying out that the world was too hard for him, that his back was broken with his burden, that his God had deserted him. For days and days, in such moods, he would stay within his cottage, never darkening the door or seeing other face than those of his own inmates. Those days were terrible both to him and her. He would sit there unwashed, with his unshorn face resting on his hand, with an old dressing-gown hanging loose about him, hardly tasting food, seldom speaking, striving to pray, but striving so frequently in vain. And then he would rise from his chair, and, with a burst of frenzy, call upon his Creator to remove him from this misery.

And then, don’t laugh, typhus strikes.

An excellent novel. Humour, tragedy, pathos, ordinary everyday evil and bungling and a cast of well drawn and credible characters. You could do worse this summer.

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope has that one thing necessary to be a good novelist - a sense of everyday evil. What could be wrong with networking? Everybody’s at it. There are people to be cultivated and there are people to be shunned, usually described as losers. Sometimes those that ought to be avoided, in Victorian terms scoundrels, cads and bounders; may be well placed to give a judicious push up the ladder of preferment. Mark Robarts’s friendship with young Lord Lufton through a crammer to Harrow to Oxford and a gentleman’s third has gained the living at Framley the gift of Lady Lufton the widowed mother of said Lord. Not only has he gained the good living from her but Robarts was fixed up with an excellent wife who has borne him two fine children. Yes of course Lady Lufton is a managing sort of woman and one chafes under a sense of obligation albeit soothed by a growing sense of entitlement. Enter the sulphurous gentleman in the form of dangerous new associates. Lord Lufton is I fear being prepared for a chaste and elegant rooking and Robarts may be drawn into it.

That’s where I am at the moment. Trollope as well as having a refined sense of ‘he who contemneth small things falleth by little and little’ can bolt from his Tory covert from time to time:

The Chaldicotes set, as Lady Lufton called them, were in every way opposed to what a set should be according to her ideas. She liked cheerful, quiet, well-to-do people, who loved their Church, their country, and their Queen, and who were not too anxious to make a noise in the world. She desired that all the farmers round her should be able to pay their rents without trouble, that all the old women should have warm flannel petticoats, that the working men should be saved from rheumatism by healthy food and dry houses, that they should all be obedient to their pastors and masters—temporal as well as spiritual. That was her idea of loving her country. She desired also that the copses should be full of pheasants, the stubble-field of partridges, and the gorse covers of foxes;—in that way, also, she loved her country. She had ardently longed, during that Crimean war, that the Russians might be beaten—but not by the French, to the exclusion of the English, as had seemed to her to be too much the case; and hardly by the English under the dictatorship of Lord Palmerston. Indeed, she had had but little faith in that war after Lord Aberdeen had been expelled. If, indeed, Lord Derby could have come in!

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And then, when he had duly marked the path of the line through Borneo, Celebes, and Gilolo, through the Macassar strait and the Molucca passage, Mr. Harold Smith rose to a higher flight. "But what," said he, "avails all that God can give to man, unless man will open his hand to receive the gift? And what is this opening of the hand but the process of civilization—yes, my friends, the process of civilization? These South Sea islanders have all that a kind Providence can bestow on them; but that all is as nothing without education. That education and that civilization it is for you to bestow upon them—yes, my friends, for you; for you, citizens of Barchester as you are." And then he paused again, in order that the feet and hands might go to work. The feet and hands did go to work, during which Mr. Smith took a slight drink of water.
He was now quite in his element and had got into the proper way of punching the table with his fists. A few words dropping from Mr. Sowerby did now and again find their way to his ears, but the sound of his own voice had brought with it the accustomed charm, and he ran on from platitude to truism, and from truism back to platitude, with an eloquence that was charming to himself.

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.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

This should have been said before. Barchester Towers is like the curate’s egg, ‘good in parts’. It underlines the supreme wisdom of the Catholic Church’s holding to the rule of celibacy. Mrs. Proudie the Bishop’s wife is monstrously real in her Sabbatarian zeal and allied with the extreme unction of Mr. Slope seems about to explode the comfortable easy life of the high Church Anglicans in the Cathedral town. It is a time of change in the Church established by law when the middle ground was being eroded from two sides the one trying to draw it down to the vulgar Dissenter rabble, and on the meretricious other side the Scarlet Lady of Rome. The Bishop is a charlie and the charlie’s chaplin is Mr. Slope. Mrs. Proudie wears the gaiters in the Palace and the war is on for the control of the diocese between her and Slope who runs the show on the admin side during the Bishop’s absences which are frequent. To balance the Low of Slope you have the High of Arabin who was almost rapt to Rome by the Newman cult. To emphasise the liberal rapprochement with Rome the appointment of Dr.Whately to an Archbishopric is mentioned. Parlous times.

When, however, Dr. Whately was made an archbishop, and Dr. Hampden some years afterwards regius professor, many wise divines saw that a change was taking place in men's minds, and that more liberal ideas would henceforward be suitable to the priests as well as to the laity. Clergymen began to be heard of who had ceased to anathematize papists on the one hand, or vilify dissenters on the other. It appeared clear that High Church principles, as they are called, were no longer to be surest claims to promotion with at any rate one section of statesmen, and Dr. Proudie was one among those who early in life adapted himself to the views held by the Whigs on most theological and religious subjects. He bore with the idolatry of Rome, tolerated even the infidelity of Socinianism, and was hand and glove with the Presbyterian Synods of Scotland and Ulster.

The counters of power in the Anglican Church are the benefices and the pivot of this tale is the guardianship of the Hospital where a dozen indigent men are kept as a charity and to be for a witness. It’s a nice little sinecure and its previous Warden, Mr. Harding seems likely to get it. Slope however decides to use this as means of subjugating the Bishop and in league with Mrs.Proudie promotes the candidature of a poor parson, Mr.Quiverfull.

All that plotting is good but where the book goes wrong for me is the character of Mrs.Bold the young widowed daughter of Mr. Harding. I was lately apprised of the fact that there can be 3000 calories in a milk shake. I would have thought that there was less in a bag of sugar. Elanor Bold is an unlikely dose of sweetness and does not go down. Her hanky is never dry.

Poor Eleanor! I cannot say that with me John Bold was ever a favourite. I never thought him worthy of the wife he had won. But in her estimation he was most worthy. Hers was one of those feminine hearts which cling to a husband, not with idolatry, for worship can admit of no defect in its idol, but with the perfect tenacity of ivy. As the parasite plant will follow even the defects of the trunk which it embraces, so did Eleanor cling to and love the very faults of her husband. She had once declared that whatever her father did should in her eyes be right. She then transferred her allegiance, and became ever ready to defend the worst failings of her lord and master.

Unlike Little Nell she hasn’t the grace to die. Fortunately she is matched in wickedness by the Stanhope family and the apotheosis of the Scarlet Lady, daughter Madeline. The allegory is broad. Beautiful, seductive but crippled at the hands of her husband Neroni who is a Papal Count. She is borne on a couch. You can’t get more papal than that. Arabin who dallied with Rome is a suitable victim. Slope slobbers over her hand too. Son Bertie, the aesthete, is well drawn and slightly quartered. From the life perhaps?

The other plot swamp for me was the Thorne family and their garden fete to welcome Mr. Arabin into his benefice. It had its moments as a delineation of snobbery and class but it went on too long. Trollope admits to us in his to the reader utterances that the last 50 pages is a push. I imagine him making a check list. Did I forget anyone?

For the Trollope fan the hymn is ‘O the transport so divine’. I may go on to the Palliser series next.

Trollope as Comfort Food

Reading The Small House after The Way the pattern is clear. Marriage for love and money is the ideal but in a pinch money will do. Keep the money within the family by marrying your first cousin seems to have been a common thing in Victorian times. That may be harsh as respectable girls did not move around much back then and cousins were ‘safe’ and did not require chaperoning. You might say that it solidifies blood ties leading to a congealed social order but then consider that the great disruptor Charles Darwin married his first cousin.

I’m only just a little way into The Small House and the Trollope Two Step is evident. There is a machinating elder, a handsome but weak fiancée, the rejected suitor, a calculating suitor, the mother who is also an attractive widow and the good honourable man who cannot broach his heart’s wish until he achieves an income of several hundred pounds a year.

Why doesn’t this matter? There’s comfort reading as well as comfort food and the same qualities are valued. It fills, it tastes good, milky of human kindness and certainly Trollope gets the macaroni cheese novel award. The writing is excellent but nothing jumps out at you as especially insightful. In noticing everything he notices nothing in particular but the plenum is there right down to the fractals. I see the garden of ‘The Big House’ and the sportive garden of ‘The Small House’ and the bridge between the two, young John Eames the hobbledehoy and Lily who has yet to suffer.

There will be pudding, tapioca with I think a spoonful of blackcurrant jam. That is the Trollope surprise. Now read on:

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope

One imagines an account of The Way We Live Now after the fashion of the instruction of Ernest Hemingway by Ford Madox Ford. Hem Lady Carbury, schemer; Sir Felix Carbury, young blackguard; Melmotte, bounder; Hetty Carbury, fair maid; Paul Montague, weak but essentially sound; Winifred Hurtle, American woman, slack moral and physical corsets; Ruby Ruggles, rustic ingenue loved by John Crumb loike she were loike; Roger Carbury, pucca Tory and gentleman. distant relative of Sir Roger de Coverly, Beargarden Company, chinless sprigs of the Aristocracy and usual cad and cardsharp (recommend glass of whisky and a pistol - not likely old chap), Assorted and Interchangable Jews of the merchant bank class; Alf & Broune journalists, lightly treated - don’t shoot yourself in the inkwell, what!

So it goes on and on. That’s the English episodic novel from 1874 to 1875. Good read though and if there are more cliches than you can subdue with a stout blackthorn it grows on you like ivy. Moreover on consideration types do exist and the ponzi scheme and Bernie ‘Madeoff’ continue to flourish on the basis of the motto - you can’t con an honest man. The writing is quite good and the narration pacey. The action seems to happen over a short period of a few months which flouts a classical unity; reading time ought to be less than narrative time. The diction is modern apart from the information that Paul Montague had 'daily intercourse’ with Mrs. Hurtle. He is a regular visitor though.

The Literary Types:

Mr. Alf had, moreover, discovered another fact. Abuse from those who occasionally praise is considered to be personally offensive, and they who give personal offence will sometimes make the world too hot to hold them. But censure from those who are always finding fault is regarded so much as a matter of course that it ceases to be objectionable. The caricaturist, who draws only caricatures, is held to be justifiable, let him take what liberties he may with a man's face and person. It is his trade, and his business calls upon him to vilify all that he touches. But were an artist to publish a series of portraits, in which two out of a dozen were made to be hideous, he would certainly make two enemies, if not more. Mr. Alf never made enemies, for he praised no one, and, as far as the expression of his newspaper went, was satisfied with nothing.

The Religious particularly the convert to Romanism (Newman type?)

A man more antagonistic to the bishop than Father John Barham, the lately appointed Roman Catholic priest at Beccles, it would be impossible to conceive;—and yet they were both eminently good men. Father John was not above five feet nine in height, but so thin, so meagre, so wasted in appearance, that, unless when he stooped, he was taken to be tall. He had thick dark brown hair, which was cut short in accordance with the usage of his Church; but which he so constantly ruffled by the action of his hands, that, though short, it seemed to be wild and uncombed. In his younger days, when long locks straggled over his forehead, he had acquired a habit, while talking energetically, of rubbing them back with his finger, which he had not since dropped. In discussions he would constantly push back his hair, and then sit with his hand fixed on the top of his head. He had a high, broad forehead, enormous blue eyes, a thin, long nose, cheeks very thin and hollow, a handsome large mouth, and a strong square chin. He was utterly without worldly means, except those which came to him from the ministry of his church, and which did not suffice to find him food and raiment; but no man ever lived more indifferent to such matters than Father John Barham. He had been the younger son of an English country gentleman of small fortune, had been sent to Oxford that he might hold a family living, and on the eve of his ordination had declared himself a Roman Catholic.

That English view of enthusiasm as bad form is a trait which has persisted. The characters in the novel wriggle under the burden of expectation just enough to be credible. It is panoptic but not a panopticon full of captive creatures. I found it a lively story.

The only other novel of Trollope’s that I have read is Can you forgive Her. How had she offended? I forget. Perhaps there was a gentleman caller who sat down without being asked. I have now moved to A Small House at Allington. I feel that its restricted compass may be more to my taste.