The Fixed Period - the last Anthony Trollope novel

This novel, the last Anthony Trollope wrote, was published first serially and then in novel form in 1882 - ironically, given its subject matter, the year that he died. I don't think I will be a Trollope completist, because I don't plan to read his historical fiction set in France, or all of his travel writing. But as weird as this last novel was, I'm glad to have read it.

The Fixed Period is set in the late 20th century. Narrated by John Neverbend, it is the story of Britannulia, whose citizens seceded from New Zealand to settle an island in the Pacific, as an independent republic. Neverbend, the founding president, has a dream the implementation of which he believes will make him a great benefactor of humanity: state-run euthanasia. On their 67th birthday, a citizen of Britannulia reaches their Fixed Period. He or she is then to be escorted to the government-run College - named to Mr. Neverbend's dismay the Necropolis. The newly-deposited resident spends the next year preparing herself or himself for their 68th birthday, at which point they are given laudanum, put into a warm bath, and killed, after which the remains are cremated.

This is the law of Britannulia. However, in this June of 1980, the first resident about to celebrate the milestone birthday does not want to be deposited. Neither do the four people in line behind him. The population is divided over the question, while the President keeps insisting that the law must be upheld, and that Gabriel Crasweller's example will bring glory to the country and their plan. As the reader learns in the first chapter, Great Britain has sent out a steam launch stuffed with troops to prevent this from taking place, and an ambassador to turn the republic into a Crown Colony - and to take John Neverbend back to England.

This story was first serialized in Blackwood's Magazine, with no author listed. I wonder if I would have known it was Anthony Trollope if I'd read an uncredited version rather than the Penguin edition I found years ago. There is a weird parallel between this and his first novel, The Warden, with its ancient residents of Hiram's Hospital, who are at least allowed to live out their unfixed period of years in peace. There is also a chilling parallel that Trollope could not have seen. The grounds of the college include a crematorium, where the bodies of those killed will be cremated. One of the objections to living at the Necropolis is the ash and smell from the bodies (though the only test was done with pig carcasses). Even Neverbend realizes this was a mistake. It was hard not to think of Nazi death camps reading that.

There are typical Trollope tropes, such as a beautiful young woman who must choose among suitors. The fact that she is Crasweller's daughter, and her husband will inherit her father's property after the older man is disposed of, adds more than one complication to the story. There is conflict between father and son, husband and wife, as Neverbend's family oppose the Fixed Period (Mrs. Neverbend does not even accompany her husband in exile, though she does send him off with flannel drawers). There is an extended sports scene - cricket rather than fox-hunting, and with steam-powered bats. That's another weird thing about this book, Trollope doesn't seem to have spent much time on developing his future world. It's pretty much 19th century Britain. Women of course don't vote in Britannulia, even in 1980.

I did learn from the brief introduction that Trollope was a strong supporter of cremation, and there is a conversation cited where he supposedly spoke in favor of euthansia. It is ironic then that he died, at age 67, having reached the Fixed Period of the story.

Ayala's Angel, by Anthony Trollope

I have more books by Anthony Trollope on my shelves than any other author (though Patricia Wentworth is coming close). It has been a good while though since I picked up one of his books - looking at my reading diary, almost a year. The last one I tried to read shook my faith in one of my favorite authors. I had a bad feeling when the young heroine met the charming cad. I knew their marriage was a mistake, but I didn't expect a Trollope heroine to die of disappointed love  - and then to have her father die of grief in his turn was just a step too far. I am prepared for that with Charlotte M. Yonge, but not Mr. Trollope.

My negative reaction didn't stop me from adding a couple of Trollope books to the TBR shelves when I came across them (The Fixed Period and The Landleaguers). There are also far more Trollope books on the TBR shelves than any other author's. Finally deciding it was time to try another, I looked carefully over my stash, unwilling to risk another dreary tragedy. The back cover of my Oxford World's Classics edition of Ayala's Angel promised "A romantic comedy of implacable exuberance . . . the brightest and freshest of Trollope's novels." It more than lived up to that blurb, though I'm not sure I agree it's the brightest and freshest.

Ayala is one of two sisters left without a penny after their parents' death. Her rich aunt and uncle, the Tringles, take her into their home. The older sister Lucy makes her home with the poorer aunt and uncle, the Dossetts. But when the son and heir Tom Tringle falls madly in love with Ayala, she is banished to the Dossetts, while Lucy is welcomed to the Tringles' magnificence. I thought there was something of Sense and Sensibility about the two sisters.  Ayala certainly has all the romantic notions of Marianne, while Lucy has more of Elinor's sense and stability. But Trollope makes it clear that Ayala is the heroine of his story.

Much of the comedy in the story comes from the suffering of their rich uncle, the baronet and millionaire financier Sir Thomas Tringle. He has two daughters, as well as his son Tom. The elder daughter Augusta has just married the Hon. Septimus Traffic, a baron's son and Member of Parliament. Sir Thomas settled £120,000 on Augusta, which will give the couple a comfortable income. Mr. Traffic however has decided to save as much as possible by moving in with his new in-laws. I enjoyed Sir Thomas's increasingly irate efforts to turf the young man out, and his own daughter as well, while his son-in-law ignores his hints and even outright insults. Then there is the second daughter, Gertrude, who is determined to marry and expects her £120,000 in turn. However, her father is equally determined not to end up with another sponging son-in-law. At one point she is driven to elope to Ostend, under the mistaken idea that it's a continental Gretna Green where weddings are quickly and easily arranged. Poor Sir Thomas has to cope with the fallout of that escapade, after which he starts referring to Gertrude and her intended as "those two idiots." I sometimes thought he might have been happy to trade his daughters for his wards, who despite their own romantic tangles behave so much better.

This being a Trollope novel, there are of course several hunting scenes. The editor of this edition, Julian Thompson, notes that "The hunting-scenes in Ayala's Angel are as fresh as any, and, as R.C. Terry has pointed out, are remarkably free from nostalgia, despite the fact that Trollope had himself hunted for the last time." The notes also point out several connections in the hunts to The American Senator. It's been so long since I read that book that I didn't remember any of the cross-over characters.

I enjoyed this book very much. It reminded me of why Anthony Trollope is one of my favorite authors, even if every book of his isn't exactly to my taste. I am late for the Palliser Party that Jo Ann and Audrey have been hosting, but I am still in time for the next book, Phineas Redux. Though I'm thinking it's been too long since I last read The Eustace Diamonds.

Bibliotherapy at the end of a tough week

This was a full-moon week, for sure. Too many things to do, too many deadlines and appointments. I felt off-balance all week, like the Red Queen running as fast as I could just to stay in place. And to cap the week off, I had a meeting with my tax adviser this afternoon. (At least it looks like I'll owe less money this year.) Heading home afterwards, I felt I deserved a treat - or a prize for getting through the week. I started with a chai latte at Starbucks and then plotted a course for Kaboom Books. Though I had Willa Cather and Margery Sharp in mind, I wasn't looking for anything in particular. As usual, I found some irresistible books there.

I had not come across this 1935 novel before. The back cover has a quote from the Times Literary Supplement that sold me on it: "In Lucy Gayheart, Willa Cather seems to be writing the lightest and slightest of records of a short life: the obscure life of a young girl in an American village who goes to Chicago to study music . . . but the impression left on the reader is not slight . . . The unity of Miss Cather's design, the clarity and distinction of this book should put it beside her first great success, My Antonia."

Another book I knew nothing of, despite my years of collecting P.G. Wodehouse's books. The back-cover blurb says that this is "the nearest Wodehouse ever came to a serious story," but it also mentions "a series of of comic mishaps in a book which features a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters." I see it was published in the U.S. as Their Mutual Child. I just mentioned in a post on Indiscretions of Archie that I've never read a Wodehouse book with a pregnant character - and here apparently is another. Though if the woman on the cover is pregnant, she is carrying that child in a very odd place.

This book sold itself on the title and cover alone. I see that Isabella Bird and Amelia Edwards are included, and I'm looking forward to meeting more of their intrepid sisterhood. I also see many lovely illustrations  - and maps! Lots of maps, for the geographically-challenged!

I instantly thought of Jane of Beyond Eden Rock when I saw this book. I enjoyed reading the three volumes of Rev. Francis Kilvert's diaries from the 1870s, but I was frustrated by the editing, which (as often happens) cut out things that I wanted to read about in favor of things the editor wanted to talk about. (See also: the diaries of George Templeton Strong.) This small volume covers a holiday that Kilvert spent in Cornwall in 1870. "This is the first complete edition of Kilvert's Journal No. 4..." I love the words "complete edition," as well as "Copiously illustrated with contemporary photographs and engravings - some of which are published here for the first time..."

Some time ago, I came across Vol. II of Anthony Trollope's 1862 travelogue North America, in the edition above. Having already read an extremely condensed one-volume edition, I bought it, even though Vol. I was not on the shelf, because complete editions of these books are hard to find (in print). I felt sure that someday I would come across the first volume, and today I did. But it was on sale with the second volume, as a set. I can understand that the proprietor didn't want to be left with an odd Vol. II that was unlikely to sell (except to a hopeful reader like me). So I bought the set, which at least wasn't expensive. If anyone would like the orphaned Vol. II, I'd be happy to send it along. I think it may be the more interesting of the two anyway, since it covers Trollope's visit to Washington and to the western theatre of the Civil War and its armies.

More for the TBR stacks, but at least I think I can resist them for the remainder of the TBR Dare (I've resisted Vol. II of North America for quite a while now).

A final post from Orley Farm

I have already written more about this 1862 novel than any other book I have read, but now that I've finally finished it, all 800 pages, I have a few last points.

The first is that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At its heart is a lawsuit over the estate of the title. Sir Joseph Mason's will left it to his son by a second marriage, through a codicil. His elder son challenged the will at the time of his death, and lost. Now he is going to try again, on different grounds. As in many of Trollope's books, there are several subplots winding around the main story, with a large cast of characters. I found the secondary stories just as interesting as the main one. The second half of the book focuses more on the legal case, and I became more and more curious about how it was going to end - though I resisted peeking ahead. As usual, Trollope brings his many stories together into a neat ending, though this time without all of the detail that he sometimes gives us about his characters' futures. (I am still surprised at the imprudence of one parent in regard to a child's marriage.)

Both the introduction to my Oxford World's Classics edition and the invaluable Oxford Reader's Companion point out that Trollope uses his fictional trial to indict the British legal system and call for reforms. (Apparently he got many of the legal details wrong, and offended some lawyers.)  He particularly objected to the idea that it is the maneuverings of lawyers that make a case, not justice itself, and so the courts favor those with the best lawyers. Some of the strongest words come from Mr Moulder, a commercial traveler whose brother-in-law John Kenneby is to be one of the chief witnesses at the trial.

     "Look here, John; if you're paid to bring a man off not guilty, won't you bring him off if you can? I've been at trials times upon times, and listened till I've wished from the bottom of my heart that I'd been brought up a barrister. Not that I think much of myself, and I mean of course with education and all that accordingly. It's beautiful to hear them. You'll see a little fellow in a wig, and he'll get up; and there'll be a man in the box before him, - some swell dressed up to his eyes, who thinks no end of strong beer of himself; and in about ten minutes he'll be as flabby as wet paper, and he'll say - on his oath, mind you, - just anything that that little fellow wants him to say. That's power, mind you, and I call it beautiful."
     "But it ain't justice," said Mrs. Smiley.
     "Why not? I say it is justice. You can have it if you choose to pay for it, and so can I. If I buy a greatcoat against the winter, and you go out at night without having one, is it injustice because you're perished by the cold while I'm as warm as toast. I say it's a grand thing to live in a country where one can buy a greatcoat."

On the whole, I think Mr Trollope agreed with Mrs. Smiley.

Which brings me to my last point: this story is full of strong female characters. Trollope draws interesting parallels between some of them. Lady Mason and her neighbor Mrs. Orme are both widows with only sons. But while Lady Mason has been on her own, holding the property for her son, Mrs. Orme has been wrapped in cotton-wool by her loving father-in-law. He wants to shield her from everything that might defile her pure goodness, but she eventually insists on stepping outside the narrow role he has defined for her. There are two neglected wives, Mrs. Furnival, whose husband is Lady Mason's attorney; and Mrs. Moulder, wife to the commercial traveler. Both are married to hard-working and successful men, who leave them alone at home most of the time. Mr. Furnival is moving in higher social circles now, and the invitations no longer include his wife. They do include his daughter Sophia, a young woman with a sizable dowry and a mind to marriage. She is contrasted with Madeline Stavely, a young neighbor of the Ormes, who follows her heart. There are other secondary characters like Mrs. Smiley, quoted above, who is considering a second marriage but wants to protect the property from her first; Mary Snow, a young woman being brought up to be the perfect wife; and Bridget Bolster, the second major witness in the case, and a much stronger one than poor John Kenneby. And I can't forget Mrs. Mason, the miserly wife of the claimant to Orley Farm, the nastiest woman I have met yet in Trollope's books: a miser starving her family and her servants while stuffing herself in private. The scenes where she siphons off parts of the Christmas dinner for her own use - almost in the face of her invited guests - made my jaw drop.

A young lady gets her way - a short episode from Orley Farm

I really thought that yesterday's post would be my last from 2015, but today I read the most delightful chapter in Orley Farm, and I just had to share it with someone. (I'm on p.188 of the second volume, with just over 200 pages to go.)

I will redact the names, so that this won't be a complete spoiler.

Trollope has not identified a heroine in this book, but he tells his readers early in the first volume that one character will "be the most interesting personage in this story." She has all the hallmarks of a Trollopian heroine. She has fallen in love with a young man but of course has not shown him any signs of her partiality. Her family has noticed, however, and she has been given to understand that she cannot marry this young man. Her mother in particular objects to him, because he is not well-off, not settled in life, and not handsome.

Our young woman accepts this. "She acknowledged from the very first that he was not the sort of man whom she ought to have loved, and therefore she was prepared to submit." But like Lily Dale, her heart has been given, and she will be no other man's wife. "As regarded herself, she must be content to rest by her mother's side as a flower ungathered." She isn't going to rest, literally, though. "Then she went away, and began to read a paper about sick people written by Florence Nightingale."  This is where it gets fun, and funny.

But it was by no means [her mother's] desire that her daughter should take to the Florence Nightingale line of life...it was by no means matter of joy to her when she found that [her daughter] was laying out for herself little ways of life, tending in some slight degree to the monastic. Nothing was said about it, but she fancied that [daughter] had doffed a ribbon of two in her usual evening attire. That she read during certain fixed hours of the morning was very manifest. As to that daily afternoon service at four o'clock - she had very often attended that, and it was hardly worthy of remark that she now went to it every day. But there seemed at this time to be a monotonous regularity about her visits to the poor. . .All this made [her mother] uneasy; and then, by way of counterpoise, she talked of balls, and offered [daughter] carte blanche as to a new dress for the special one that would grace the assizes. 'I don't think I shall go, said [daughter]; and thus [her mother] became really unhappy. Would not [the unsuitable young man] be better than no son-in-law?

The final straw comes at dinner on Friday evening, when the young woman refuses the minced veal, eating "nothing but potatoes and sea-kale" [observing the Friday abstinence from meat]. "Then [the mother] resolved that she would tell [her husband] that [the unsuitable young man], bad as he might be, might come there if he pleased. Even [he] would be better than no son-in-law at all."

The daughter breaks her mother down in a mere two weeks. I can't decide how deliberate this is, though. As Trollope writes it, the young woman is genuinely good and truly means to be obedient. But like many of his heroines, she is stronger than her elders - or just too much for them.

However, neither the mother nor the daughter knows what we the readers know about the unsuitable young man, and a secret that he has been keeping.

One final point: this is the second reference to sea-kale in this book. Previously, it was fed to an invalid. I had to look it up, to see if it was the same as the super-food kale that turns up everywhere now. It's a different variety, from what I read once very popular and now making a bit of a come-back.

This will definitely be my last post for 2015, so once again I will say Happy New Year!

Sunday miscellany: Bookish connections, reading & baking, and a Christmas present

Good morning from a stormy Houston! Our ridiculous winter heat wave has finally broken, but the cold front is bringing us some treacherous weather. We're under a tornado watch, and with the terrible storms in the Dallas area, I'm keeping an ear out for the weather alerts. My sister in El Paso just sent a picture of her backyard deep in snow - not quite a white Christmas, but close.

I was amused by a couple of bookish connections in the last couple of days. First, in the Christmas chapters of Orley Farm, Anthony Trollope wrote about children "who could not hurry fast enough into the vortex of its dissipations." That made me laugh, not just with the eager children, but because it reminded me of Jane Austen. In gently critiquing the novel her niece Anna was writing, Austen wrote,

Devereaux Forester's being ruined by his Vanity is extremely good; but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of Dissipation". I do not object to the Thing, but I cannot bear the expression; - it is such thorough novel slang - and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened... (Letter, Sept. 28, 1814)

Trollope uses a similar phrase later in the book, "a vortex of ruin and misery."  He was a big fan of Austen's novels, but he died two years before the first edition of her letters was published, so he could not have seen this. I wonder what he would have thought of her advice to a fellow author.

Second, have you ever had a quotation from a book niggling away in the back of your mind?  It drives me crazy, until I can pin it down. From the massive biography of William Lloyd Garrison, I learned that Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson was a supporter of Garrison's work, and that her maternal uncle Samuel May was one of his closest friends and allies. I knew that there was at least one reference to Garrison in Alcott's novels, but I could not for the life of me track it down in the nine I own. I came across one completely by accident in Rose in Bloom, while trying to find a different quote about obligatory Christmas presents.

[Rose's] heroes ceased to be the world's favorites; and became such as Garrison fighting for his chosen people; Howe, restoring lost senses to the deaf, the dumb, the blind; Sumner, unbribable, when other men were bought and sold; and many a large-hearted woman working as quietly as Abby Gibbons, who for thirty years has made Christmas merry for two hundred little paupers in a city almshouse, beside saving Magdalens and teaching convicts.

Oh, the satisfaction of tracking down an elusive quote!  (Being more of a print reader, it never occurred to me until just now that I could easily search the digital editions of her books.)

Third, Melanie posted something from Little House on the Prairie in her Christmas greetings. It mentions little heart-shaped cakes that Mary and Laura find in their Christmas stockings, along with a tin cup and a stick of striped candy each. Every time I read about the Ingalls' family Christmases, I am struck by how grateful they were, for so little. Anyway, the mention of the cakes sent me off to find my copy of The Little House Cookbook, which includes a recipe for the cakes.

My copy has the same style cover as the books themselves - the familiar yellow.

Leafing through this, with all the familiar Garth Williams illustrations, has made me want to pull the books off the shelf again - and also bake some little cakes. They're made with lard, though, and I'm wondering if I can substitute shortening.

Finally, I only received one book for Christmas (not counting the one I bought myself, which hasn't arrived yet). It's one I've been wanting to read for a while:

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday weekend. Going back to work tomorrow will be a bit of shock, I have to say.

200 pages into Orley Farm: "Christmas at Noningsby" (Chapter XXII)

It was a surprise, reading this morning, to come across several chapters set at Christmas. "Christmas at Noningsby" is the second. I've read that Anthony Trollope found the holiday stressful and that he could be a bit of a grinch about it.  His "Christmas stories" that I have read are no match for Charles Dickens or Louisa May Alcott's. ("Catherine Carmichael" is downright grim.) This chapter is the closet thing I've read to a happy Christmas story.

Noningsby is a country estate near Orley Farm. It is the home of Judge and Lady Staveley, their son Augustus and daughter Madeline. Joining them for Christmas is their elder married daughter with her children, as well the London attorney Mr. Furnival and his daughter (the non-heroine) Sophia, Lucius Mason from Orley Farm and Peregrine Orme. Rounding out the party is a friend of Augustus, Felix Graham, an attorney who prefers to support himself by writing for the papers, and who has some rather unorthodox opinions.

I wonder if Felix is speaking for the author when he tells Madeline Staveley, on the way to church Christmas morning, "I cannot help thinking that this Christmas-day of ours is a great mistake." Of course she protests, and he goes on to say, "That part...which is made to be in any degree sacred is by no means a mistake." But, he continues, "I believe that the ceremony, as kept by us, is perpetuated by the butchers and beersellers, with a helping hand from the grocers. It is essentially a material festival; and I would not object to it even on that account if it were not so grievously overdone." He doesn't mention other kinds of shopping, the emphasis on presents (which play no part in the chapter).

The conversation between them ends with their arrival at the church, and here Trollope surprised me with his warmth:

I do not know of anything more pleasant to the eye than a pretty country church, decorated for Christmas-day. The effect in a city is altogether different. I will not say that churches there should not be decorated, but comparatively it is a matter of indifference. No one knows who does it. The peculiar munificence of the squire who has sacrificed his holly bushes is not appreciated. The work of the fingers that have been employed is not recognized. The efforts made for hanging the pendant wreaths to each capital have been of no special interest to any large number of the worshippers. It has been done by contract, probably, and even if well done has none of the grace of association. But here at Noningsby church, the winter flowers had been cut by Madeline and the gardener, and the red berries had been grouped by her own hands. She and the vicar's wife had stood together with perilous audacity on top of the clerk's desk while they fixed the branches beneath the cushion of the old-fashioned turret, from which the sermons were preached. And all of this had of course been talked about at the house; and some of the party had gone over to see, including Sophia Furnival, who had declared that nothing could be so delightful, though she had omitted to endanger her fingers by any participation in the work. And the children had regarded the operation as a triumph of all that was wonderful in decoration; and thus many of them had been made happy.

Later it is Madeline who leads off the first round of blindman's bluff, the final round of which draws in the staid Judge Staveley. Snap-dragon comes next. "To the game of snap-dragon, as played at Noningsby, a ghost was always necessary, and aunt Madeline had played the ghost ever since she had been an aunt..." This year her brother suggests that Sophia would make a lovely ghost, and for the first time, there are two carrying "two large dishes of raisins, and two blue fires blazing up from burnt brandy." Some members of the party think "Aunt Mad." makes the prettiest ghost, while others have eyes only for Sophia.

This makes for lovely reading on Christmas Eve. However, the chapter before is a troubling one, set at the Furnival home in London. Mrs. Furnival, who has not been invited to Noningsby, spends Christmas alone. And the chapter that follows is set at Groby Park, where I am sure that the only feasting will be done in private by the miserly Mrs. Mason.

Merry Christmas from Houston!

100 pages into Orley Farm, by Anthony Trollope

I have had Orley Farm set aside to read this year, to round out Anthony Trollope's bicentennial, and because it is now the oldest book on my TBR shelves (there since 2002). After joining the end of the #Barsets read with The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset, it feels a bit strange to be reading Trollope on my own - particularly with several people reading his Christmas stories.

I also thought of Trollope when I was considering comfort reading. His stories can draw me in so easily, with that familiar narrative voice. To me, the first pages of this book are vintage Trollope.

    It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story 'The Great Orley Farm Case.' But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, - Orley Farm.
     I say so much at commencing in order that I may have an opportunity of explaining that this book of mine will not be devoted in any special way to rural delights. The name might lead to the idea that new precepts were to be given, in the pleasant guise of a novel, as to cream-cheeses, pigs with small bones, wheat sown in drills, or artificial manure. No such aspirations are mine. I make no attempts in that line, and declare at once that agriculturalists will gain nothing from my present performance. Orley Farm, my readers, will be our scene during a portion of our present sojourn together, but the name has been chosen has having been intimately connected with certain legal questions which made a considerable stir in our courts of law.

A few pages later, he tells us, "as all the world knows, Hamworth church stands high, and is a landmark to the world for miles and miles around." That's one of Trollope's catch phrases, "all the world knows," and I smile now every time I see it.

That said, however, I am 100 pages into this 800-page book, and there are so many unTrollopian things going on. I don't think I've ever written a book-in-progress post before, but I am just so surprised at these atypical elements. I don't know where the story is going, and I don't think any of these qualify as spoilers.

Just to set the scene: Orley Farm is an estate, one of two owned by Sir Joseph Mason. At his death, he left the larger estate, Groby Park in Yorkshire, to his oldest son Joseph. By a codicil to his will, he left Orley Farm to his son from a late second marriage, Lucien. Joseph Mason had always understood that the two properties were to come to him, and after his father's death he took the widowed Lady Mason to court over the will (Lucien being an infant at the time). Mr. Mason lost the case, and Lady Mason has remained in possession of Orley Farm for the last 20 years, collecting its £800 a year in rents and income.

As the story opens, Lucien Mason has just turned 21 and taken over the farm. He and his mother are on friendly terms with the local squire, Sir Peregrine Orme. His grandson and heir Peregrine is a little younger than Lucien. Now normally, Trollope would tell us who the hero of his story is going to be. Not here. It may be Lucien, who is obsessed with scientific agriculture and is risking his capital on uncertain improvements, deaf to advice or caution. Perhaps Perry will be the hero - but he is obsessed with rat-catching, and he is a spendthrift in the bargain. Both of them are hobledehoys, and I have no idea what is to become of them.

Usually by the time we're well into the story, Trollope has also introduced his heroine, and told us she will be the heroine. There's no sign of one yet. I did think that it might be Sophia Furnival, the daughter of a London barrister involved in the Orley case. She is described as

a clever, attractive girl, handsome, well-read, able to hold her own with the old as well as with the young, capable of hiding her vanity if she had any, mild and gentle with girls less gifted, animated in conversation, and yet possessing an eye that could fall softly to the ground, as a woman's eyes always should fall upon occasion.

But Trollope immediately makes it clear that she isn't his heroine: "Nevertheless she was not altogether charming. 'I don't feel quite sure that she is real,' Mrs. Orme [Perry's mother] had said of her, when on a certain occasion Miss Furnival had spent a day and a night at The Cleeve."

If we don't have a heroine, though, we certainly have a female villain, in Mrs. Mason of Groby Park. I think she is the most evil woman I have come across in Trollope's books. She starves her family in the dining room, while devouring food served her own dressing room. Her three daughters live on short rations of bread and butter, while she is privately served roast fowl and bread sauce. Her husband had to insist that the servants receive board wages (food and lodging), because she was not giving them enough food to live and work on. Mrs. Mason spends the money that she saves on food (from everyone else) on luxurious clothes (for herself), while her daughters wear old thread-bare clothes. This is a serious matter, since all three are of marriageable age, and I'm sure they're hoping to escape their mother's abuse as quickly as possible. Trollope has surprisingly strong words for her: "Such a woman one can thoroughly despise, and even hate..."  I am already hoping that Mrs. Mason will get her come-upppance, and wondering if it will be as drastic as Mrs. Proudie's.

I also have to mention the oddest chapters, where Samuel Dockwrath, a lawyer in the Orley Farm neighborhood, travels up to Groby Park in connection with the disputed will. He spends one night at a hotel in Leeds, in the company of some commercial travelers. Trollope goes into great detail about these men and their interactions. This seems so far outside his usual milieu, but he lays out their community with its rules and hierarchy as he does Barsetshire society. One of the salesmen, Mr. Kantwise, represents the Patent Steel Furniture Company. with a line of folding iron furniture. It isn't selling all that well in Yorkshire. Unwilling to let any opportunity for a sale pass, he insists on unpacking and assembling for Mr. Dockwrath "three tables, eight chairs, easy rocking-chair, music stand, stool to match, and pair of stand-up screens, all gilt in real Louey catorse; and it goes in three boxes [when taken apart]." That "Louey catorse" cracked me up every time I read it.

This story keeps surprising me. I'm looking forward seeing what the next 100 pages brings - maybe a hero or heroine. And there may be additional updates, with the long Christmas weekend for reading.

Edited to add: I got the younger Mr. Mason's name wrong, it's Lucius (not Lucien).

The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been reading this fifth book in Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire series with Audrey, JoAnn and Bellezza. Most of our discussion was on Twitter, which was great fun. Comments had to be brief in that format, of course, which curtailed my tendency to quote favorite parts. On the other hand there was an immediacy to the discussion that made it seem an on-going conversation. It definitely enhanced my reading.

When Audrey announced her #6Barsets project, to mark the bicentennial of Anthony Trollope's birth this year, I happily signed on to read the six Barsetshire books with her. Technically, I would be re-reading them, most for the second or third time. However, I had only read The Small House at Allington once, more than ten years ago. Of the six books, this was the one I was most curious to read again. I disliked it at the time, but having read many more of Trollope's books in the years since, I suspected that my opinion would be different this time.

Though this is counted as a "Barsetshire" book, Allington and its Small House are not located in Barsetshire, but just outside its borders, to the west.  At the center of the story are the widowed Mary Dale and her two daughters, Bell and Lily. Their small house is part of the Dale estate, which belongs to Mrs. Dale's brother-in-law Christopher Dale, the Squire. His nephew and heir, Captain Bernard Dale, is a frequent visitor to the great house. One day he brings with him a friend from London, Augustus Crosbie. A rising young man in a government office, and a well-known man about town, Crosbie falls in love with Lily and becomes engaged to her. He does not consider his income sufficient to marry, but he has expectations of Lily's rich Uncle Christopher.

As I expected, I enjoyed this book very much on a second reading. As always with Trollope, there are multiple plots winding through the story, which he balances with his usual skill. The relationship between the Great and Small Houses is complicated. Christopher Dale wants to do the best he can for his nieces and his sister-in-law. He loves them, but he is unable to express that affection. He tends to sulk if he doesn't get his way, feeling that nobody loves him. Bell Dale also has her suitors, one of whom like Augustus Crosbie thinks himself too poor to support a wife. There is Johnny Eames, a young neighbor in love with Lily, who works at the Income Tax office in London. He is, to use one of Trollope's favorite words, a "hobbledehoy."

There is a class of young men who never get petted, though they may not be the less esteemed, or perhaps loved. They do not come forth to the world as Apollos, nor shine at all, keeping what light they may have for inward purposes. Such young men are often awkward, ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are required, among any but their accustomed associates. Social meetings are periods of penance to them, and any appearance in public will unnerve them. They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to them. In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.

(As I tend to do, I started to make a list of hobbledehoys in other books.  I thought immediately of Louisa May Alcott: Jo March in Little Women is a classic female version, while Tom Shaw in An Old-Fashioned Girl fits Trollope's description to the proverbial T.)

Trollope himself had great affection for these young men, I think in large part because he had been one himself, as he would later write in his autobiography. And Johnny is really the hero of this book. He has a widowed mother and younger sister Mary, who looks up to him despite his hobbledehoyhood. (Trollope calls Mary "somewhat of a hobbledehoya herself," which delighted me, since I was very much one myself.)  Down in the country, he is befriended by Earl De Guest, connected by marriage to the Dale family. Up in London, he is (despite his love for Lily) drawn into an uneasy romance with Amelia Roper, whose mother keeps the seedy boarding house where he lives. Alongside these stories, we also meet again the De Courcys, introduced in Doctor Thorne, a very unhappy family with a lot of children to settle on very little money.  I had forgotten that Plantagenet Palliser makes his debut in this book. I learned from the Oxford Companion that Trollope began writing the first of the Palliser novels just months after this was finished, in 1863 - and wrote Rachel Ray in between! Finally, in this book Trollope gives us a very unhappy marriage, one that goes wrong almost from the start, because neither party can meet the other's expectations, nor can they make each other happy. It was fascinating to read all the details, like finding a house, choosing furniture and rugs and household goods, which are usually glossed over in the Victorian novels I've read. Here Trollope uses them to highlight the problems in the relationship, which left unresolved will follow the couple into marriage.

There are so many wonderful characters in this story. I am particularly fond of Miss Spruce, an elderly cousin of the Ropers who boards with them. She watches the bad behavior of her fellow boarders but fends off any attempt to draw her in with the constant refrain, "I am only an old woman..." It's practically her only line, and it just got funnier and funnier as the story went on. I also like Earl De Guest, an old bachelor farmer who develops a real kindness for Johnny Eames. The only character I really didn't care for was the central one: Lily Dale. Trollope wrote in his autobiography that many readers considered Lily their favorite character, but he thought she "is somewhat of a female prig." I don't think she is at all "excessively precise, proper and smug," to quote Webster's dictionary. Did "prig" mean something different to the Victorians?  I just find her rather tiresome, too volatile and emotional. She reminded me of Marianne Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility. Like Marianne, she needs a good dose of sense to balance out all that sensibility.

I am very glad that Audrey inspired me to re-read this, and glad to find that I appreciated it more the second time around. The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire is up next, in November and December - and there is talk of #6Pallisers in 2016, if you are inclined to join us.

The Golden Lion of Granpère, by Anthony Trollope

This short novel, which originally ran as a serial in 1872, is set in Alsace-Lorraine.  Most of the action takes place around the Lion d'Or, an inn in the small town of Granpère.  Michel Voss, the owner, runs it with the help of his wife's niece Marie Bromar.  Strong, capable and intelligent, she is a shrewd businesswoman, which struck me as unusual in a Trollope heroine.  She is much more active in the business than her aunt, who is Michel's second wife.  Michel has a son by his first wife, George, who managed a timber business for his father, as well as helping with the inn.  George and Marie are in love, but George's father told him, "I won't have it." So George left the business and his family - not to mention his love - to go to work for an elderly cousin, running her hotel in a nearby town.  He hasn't been home in a year, nor has he sent any word to Marie.  Meanwhile, Marie's aunt and uncle have picked out a husband for her: Adrian Urmand, a Swiss merchant, rich and handsome (though he rather overdoes the hair pomade).  Marie thinks George has forgotten her, George thinks Marie is a fickle woman, Michel Voss thinks he knows best for both, and Adrian thinks he is getting the perfect wife.  It is probably not really a spoiler to say that they are all wrong, because Trollope lays most of this out in the first chapters.  He winds them all up in these knots of emotion and misunderstanding, and then very cleverly unravels the knots.

This story has some familiar Trollopian plot elements, though they develop in an unfamiliar setting.  According to the introduction in my World's Classics edition, Anthony Trollope intended to publish this anonymously, like his earlier works Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel.  He was outed quickly as the author of Nina Balatka, when a reviewer noted a "characteristic Trollopian turn of phrase, 'to make one's way,' used of occasions when the difficulty is psychological and not physical."  I have never noticed that phrase myself.  I have however noticed how often Trollope's heroines are described as "worshiping" their lovers or husbands. I don't think I've come across that in other Victorian novelists, but I'm keeping an eye out.

Even in this short novel, Trollope still managed to work in some post office business: Marie writes a crucial letter to Adrian and sends it on the way to Basle in Switzerland, calculating how long it will take to get there (tracing its route).  When she tells her uncle of it, he sets off to intercept it, but he finds he cannot interfere with the mail.  Trollope sometimes seems as interested in how how a letter gets to its destination as in what happens once it arrives.

I enjoyed this quiet story.  I've read some of Trollope's short stories, set in France and Germany.  The Oxford companion to Trollope notes that he and his wife Rose visited Alsace-Lorraine shortly before he started writing this in 1867.  As the editor says, this may not be an exact picture of life there, but as always with Trollope it is his characters that make his story come alive.  Marie in particular is an interesting heroine.  She isn't well educated - she has trouble writing that important letter - but she is smart and strong.  One of the reasons her uncle gives for wanting her to marry Adrian is that she shouldn't have to to work at the inn all her days.  She is certainly good at essentially managing it for him, she seems to enjoy it, and I hope she will continue to use her talents.

I have been distracted from my reading goals for the Trollope Bicentennial this year, and I also missed reading Framley Parsonage for Audrey's #6Barsets project.  I am hoping to rejoin for The Small House at Allington.

On a side note, this is my 500th post, which seems a little hard to believe.  As it happens, my very first post was on Anthony Trollope, more than four years ago. I know there will be many more to come.  The Trollope section of the TBR stacks doesn't seem to get any smaller, and then there is the pleasure of re-reading, of meeting old friends again in his stories.

An unplanned break

I lost my phone and internet service in the major storm that hit Houston a month ago (thankfully, though, not power and air conditioning).  A phone service box was submerged in the flooding, and it took AT&T three long weeks to repair it.  One of the storm's electrical surges also fried my modem, adding insult to injury.  During the three weeks, I was able to buy a week's worth of WiFi service at a time, from a different provider, but I could only use it on my phone.

With the phone, I had basic communication, including texts and emails.  But I knew from the start that I wouldn't be able to write anything of length.  I'm very clumsy on those tiny keyboards - I think I came too late to cell and smart phones.  So that meant nothing on the blog, which I found very frustrating.  I have gotten too used to writing about what I am reading, to sharing books that excite or entertain me, the ones that bring out the book evangelist. At one point I joked about tweeting reviews, and JoAnn found an example of someone experimenting with that, but I knew it wasn't really feasible.

I've read 18 books over the past month.  I'll never manage posts on all of them, but I did want to mention (briefly) a few that really stood out for me.  The first is Naomi Novik's Uprooted, a tale of magic set in an AU version of medieval Poland. Teresa and Helen both wrote great reviews of this, to which I will refer you.  As I mentioned elsewhere, I was initially disappointed when I found out her new book wasn't a Temeraire novel, but I am now completely reconciled and hoping for more stories from this world.

I admit that I bought my copy of Sir Alastair Dunnett's The Canoe Boys because he was the husband of Dorothy Dunnett, though I am on record as a fan of books about boat travel.  This book, originally published in 1950, chronicles a trip that he and a friend took by canoe in the early 1930s "From the Clyde Past the Cuillins," as the subtitle says - or for those of us less familiar with Scotland, from Glasgow through the Hebrides to Skye.  They set off in late August, though everyone warned them it was much too late in the year for such a trip.  Their attempt to publish a "weekly adventure paper for Scottish boys" called Claymore had just folded.  They saw this trip, and the articles they would write about it, as an opportunity to reach an adult audience with their ideas about the future of Scotland, and their own strong nationalism.  Dorothy Dunnett said that her husband was her inspiration for Francis Crawford of Lymond, and reading this I was reminded why.  It also made me wonder if the Dunnetts knew Patrick Leigh Fermor.  And it made me want to immediately book a holiday in the Hebrides - though not by canoe.

The last of Anthony Trollope's published novels, Mr Scarborough's Family was running as a serial when he died.  From the title I was expecting a family saga along the lines of the Gresham or Palliser families.  I had forgotten that the later Trollope stories are much darker.  On the first page, John Scarborough announces that his son Mountjoy is a bastard and that his second son Augustus is the true heir to the vast estate of Tretton Park.  This neatly outfoxes the moneylenders, to whom Mountjoy owes such vast sums that the estate will be lost the moment his father dies.  And Mr Scarborough has more secrets up his sleeve.  Meanwhile, there is an uncle who contemplates a late marriage, to cut out his own unsatisfactory heir.  The two stories play out against each other, tragedy and comedy, tied together by a young woman who wants to choose her own husband.  I found her story the least interesting, and a bit too drawn-out.  That aside, this is an amazingly powerful story, and Mr Scarborough such a fascinating character, even an heroic one.

It wasn't all reading joy, though.  Patricia Wentworth's The Alington Inheritance from 1960 was dull.  Characters had conversations, which they then repeated to others who hadn't been present, almost word for word. I kept wanting to say yes, you told us that already!  And I found the ending really unpleasant.  This is the first of hers that I really haven't enjoyed.  I'm passing it along to the library sale.  In other mystery news, though, I was glad to finally find the British Library Crime Classics at Murder by the Book.  I enjoyed Murder Underground, by Mavis Doriel Hay, and I have her Death on the Cherwell, as well as the book that started it all, J.Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White.

Finally, Girl in a Green Gown, by Carola Hicks, is an exploration of one of my favorite paintings, the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (now in the National Gallery, which has an amazing on-line catalogue here). Carola Hicks writes about the creation of the work and its transfer to different owners, as well as exploring the various elements in the picture. I learned so much from this book, about a painting that I thought I knew well.  I knew nothing of its provenance, and in fact I have never read anything tracking a particular work from its creation.  How it ended up in the hands of a veteran of Wellington's army is a wonderful story in itself.  And I appreciated Carola Hicks' portrait of Bruges and the Lowlands in the 15th century, also brought so clearly to life by Dorothy Dunnett in her House of Niccolo series (which Hicks mentions).  I was tempted to re-read the first book in the series, Niccolo Rising, which I'd just read back in February.  Instead, I read a book on the 15th century Paston family, briefly mentioned in Hicks, which had been on my shelves for more than ten years.  Then I ordered an edition of the Paston Letters.  I also ordered a copy of The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade, which no one ever told me is set in the Lowlands at the same time (and features Jan van Eyck's sister Margaret).  Thus books beget books.

It's good to be back.

Falling in love with Doctor Thorne, man and book

Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope

I had planned to join in the #6Barsets reading of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire series, which Audrey has organized for this year celebrating the bicentennial of his birth.  And I was looking forward to re-reading The Warden and Barchester Towers, which were my introduction to Trollope over twenty years ago now.  (I first read them in a combined Modern Library paperback, and I still think of them as one book.)  But reading C.P. Snow's biography of Trollope, excellent as it was, threw me off.  When I started The Warden, I found myself thinking about Trollope rather than his creations, and I could never lose myself in the story, so I set it aside.  Then I missed Karen's bicentennial reading event in April, partly because Charlotte M. Yonge's Heartsease gave me a strong aversion to all things Victorian.  Fortunately, it wore off in time for me to join the third of the #6Barsets read-alongs, with Doctor Thorne.

I had only read this book once, several years ago now, so while I remembered the basic plot - or maybe I should say the main plot, this being Trollope, Man of a Hundred Subplots - I had forgotten so much of it.  And I'm not sure I even appreciated it properly the first time I read it.  I remember being disappointed at the shift from Barchester to the surrounding countryside, to Greshambury in West Barsetshire.  I missed Mr. Harding, and Dean Arabin, and even Mrs. Proudie.  I think it wasn't until I read Framley Parsonage that I really appreciated the Barsetshire setting, and by then I had also discovered Angela Thirkell's 20th century Barsetshire.  This time I could give this book its due.

I won't say much about the plot(s), since people are still reading or planning to read (though Trollope enjoys dropping his own spoilers along the way).  I do want to say how much I came to love Doctor Thorne himself.  As I said elsewhere, he is the perfect uncle and the perfect doctor.  His only real rival is Uncle Doctor, Alec Campbell, from Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins and A Rose in Bloom (though Doctor T isn't concerned about dress reform, nor does he make his ward exercise as much as Rose has to.)  My only complaint about this book is how often the title character is absent from the action!

I was amused to come across what I now recognize as some of Trollope's favorite hobbyhorses, which he regularly rides into his stories.  One enduring theme is what exactly makes a gentleman, or a gentlewoman - a particularly important question in this story, concerned as it is with Blood, Family and Money.  He also manages to work a parliamentary election into this book, which may not appeal to certain readers at this particular moment.  But in writing about it, Trollope gets to repeat another favorite theme: the glory of serving as a Member of Parliament, despite the ugliness of campaigning.  It reads a little poignantly, knowing how much Trollope himself longed to win a seat, and how much his loss in his one candidacy hurt (in 1867, almost ten years after this was written).  And at a particularly fraught moment, Trollope the postal surveyor stops his story to trace a very important letter as it moves slowly through the West Barset postal system.  I was surprised to read that Trollope was traveling (on postal business) in Egypt and the Holy Land while he was writing this book.  He must have had England's green and pleasant land so clearly in his mind's eye the whole time.

A final familiar theme: the difficulties of young women, who are not supposed to fall in love first, but wait for their true love and then follow his lead.  Trollope frequently points out the proper pattern, but his characters just as frequently flout it, usually to a happy ending (though not always).  He also takes the proper line about how a woman in love must have "acknowledged him to be the master of her spirit; her bosom's lord; the man whom she had been born to worship..."  He can say that, and does repeatedly, but the characters he creates are so far from clinging vines, are so often stronger than the men around them, that I can never quite see them sinking into a completely passive role.  They are too alive and active for that, and they often see all too clearly the clay feet of those they're supposed to worship, and accept them anyway.  I'm trying to think of one woman character in Trollope who has to be brought down and humbled, like Charlotte Yonge's Theodora in Heartsease, and I can't, off-hand [Edited to add: I haven't of course read all the books].  Maybe they have to curb their behavior, but never break their spirit.

When I finished this, I was strongly tempted to start Framley Parsonage, but I resisted.  I'm really looking forward now to re-discovering The Small House at Allington, another of his books I have only read once.  And The Last Chronicle of Barset may be my favorite Trollope of all.

N.B. This reading project and the Trollope Bicentennial may help me fill up several years of my Century of Books. The 19th century section is looking very Trollopian!

Illustrating Trollope's life

Trollope, C.P. Snow

The subtitle of this book is "An Illustrated Biography," and I am always a sucker for period illustrations.  A couple of years ago, I saw copies of this at every Half Price Books I visited.  I finally succumbed, but I put off reading it, I think in part because it feels like Victoria Glendinning's Anthony Trollope is the only biography I really need.  With that, Trollope's Autobiography, and the Oxford reader's companion, I feel that I have a richness of resources on his life and works.  Unlike Jane Austen, I will never own more books about him than books by him!  And not just because he wrote so many more than she did.  However, I did fall for the illustrations in Trollope, and for the title of R.H. Super's The Chronicler of Barsetshire (still unread).

I knew nothing about C.P. Snow when I bought the book, or indeed when I started reading it.  From a quick internet search I've learned that he had quite a life, as a chemist and college professor, a novelist, and a politician and civil servant. He wrote about science, including biographies of fellow scientists, as well as literary criticism. Trollope was published in 1975, five years before his death. The edition I read, a paperback, has a 1991 date.  At first I thought nothing of it, just that this was a reprint.  But there were a couple of references in the text to 1991, which I found jarring.  Obviously someone other than the author revised the text, but there is no mention that I can find of those revisions.  It's impossible to know what was revised or added, and by whom.  That makes this version of the book a little suspect in my mind.  If I ever find a 1975 edition, I will be tempted to replace this one.

That caveat aside, I found much to enjoy in this book.  The illustrations are lovely.  They include photographs and paintings, of Trollope himself, as well as the people and places in his life.  Some of the photos are period, including at least one by Julia Margaret Cameron (not of Trollope unfortunately).  There are also illustrations, some from his books, and caricatures of Trollope.  There are some gorgeous Victorian genre paintings, which Snow refers to in discussing scenes or characters from the novels.  They include a two-page spread of a James Tissot painting Too Early (which you can see here).  I always associate Tissot now with Trollope's novels, since his work has been used on so many of the covers of the Oxford World Classics editions.

The book itself is short, only 177 pages.  Though it covers the essential facts of Trollope's life, it felt less like a traditional biography than an extended essay.  There is a personal tone sometimes.  Snow clearly admired Trollope as a writer, and to me it was clear he liked him as a person, but he avoided sentimentality and over-familiarity with his subject.  In the endnotes, he wrote,

Anthony Trollope, novelist, 1815-82, is referred to as Trollope, tout court, throughout.  His family and friends called him Anthony (a very few, Tony): but we don't know him well enough for that, and it gives the impression of heartiness and simplicity which it is one of the intentions of this book to dispel.

However, C.P. Snow was not a completely detached observer.  Like Victoria Glendinning, he took a dislike to Trollope's older brother Thomas.  Glendinning wrote that she had "conceived a hostility [toward him] which I have made every effort to temper with fairness."  Snow made less of an effort, but he reserved his real bitterness for Trollope's mother Frances.  I had forgotten some of the grim events of Trollope's childhood, including the fact that at age 14, he was left alone in England when his father and older brother sailed to America, to join his mother (in what Snow calls "perhaps the scattiest of all Mrs. Trollope's plans").  I think that must have been the lowest point of a truly miserable childhood - abandoned, with no money, for more than six months.  It was the most extreme example of the neglect that Trollope endured throughout his childhood.  Both Snow and Glendinning point out that as an adult, Trollope had a great capacity for and need of love, and it doesn't take a psychologist to see the roots of that in his neglected, unloved childhood.

Snow was also a great advocate for Trollope's work, making a case for his place among the great writers.  Trollope has been dismissed as a hack, writing to a schedule just for money; and as a photographer, recording what he saw without imagination.  Susan Hill discusses those negative views of Trollope in her book, Howards End is on the Landing, where she also defends his work.  For Snow, one of his greatest strengths was as a great "natural psychologist":

He could see each human being he was attending to from the outside as well as the inside, which is an essential part of the total gift. That is, he could see a person as others saw him: he could also see him as he saw himself.  He had both insight and empathy, working together in exceptional harmony.

Two chapters of the book focus on Trollope's art. The writers Snow compared him to most frequently are Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.  Trollope probably never knew that Tolstoy was a major fan of The Prime Minister.  Snow spent one chapter analyzing Trollope's narrative voice, which he considered another of his strengths as a writer, as well as his characters' very natural speech patterns.  As usual, I found some of the literary criticism difficult to follow, but I enjoyed what I understood of his analyses.  I didn't always agree.  I don't think Trollope fell in love with Lily Dale, but I think he did with Glencora Palliser. I'm not sure if I agree that Johnny Eames in The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire is a "true portrait" of Trollope.  I'll be re-reading those with Audrey's #6Barsets project, and I'll be keeping Snow's point in mind.

In the end, I found this book interesting and enjoyable, with the caveat on the 1991 editing, and not just for the illustrations.  But I think I'd still recommend Victoria Glendinning's book first, in conjunction with the Autobiography.

Two unsuitable matches in a Marquis's family

Marion Fay, Anthony Trollope

I decided to start my year celebrating Anthony Trollope with this book, one of the last published before his death in 1882.  As so often happens with his books, the first few pages captivated me, and I was deep into the story almost before I knew it.

     When Mr. Lionel Trafford went into Parliament for the Borough of Wednesbury as an advanced Radical, it nearly broke the heart of his uncle, the old Marquis of Kingsbury. Among the Tories of his day the Marquis had been hyper-Tory. . . Wednesbury had never been the Marquis's own; but his nephew was so in a peculiar sense. His nephew was necessarily his heir,- the future Marquis,- and the old Marquis never again, politically, held up his head. He was an old man when this occurred, and luckily for him he did not live to see the worse things that came afterwards.
     The Member for Wednesbury became Marquis and owner of the large family property, but still he kept his politics.  He was a Radical Marquis, wedded to all popular measures, not ashamed of his Charter days. . .
     But it came to pass that the shade of his uncle was avenged, if it can be supposed that such feelings will affect the eternal rest of a dead Marquis.  There grew up a young Lord Hampstead, the son and heir of the Radical Marquis, promising in intelligence and satisfactory in externals, but very difficult to deal with as to the use of his thoughts.  They could not keep him at Harrow or at Oxford, because he not only rejected, but would talk openly against, Christian doctrine; a religious boy, but determined not to believe in revealed mysteries. And at twenty-one he declared himself a Republican,- explaining thereby that he disapproved altogether of hereditary honours. He was quite as bad to this Marquis as had been this Marquis to the other. . . Lord Hampstead would not even condescend to sit for the family borough. . .
     But there was worse than this,- infinitely worse.

Two of Anthony Trollope's favorite themes there in the first pages: politics and father-son conflicts.  Then he adds two sets of mis-matched lovers into the mix.  The "infinitely worse" sin that Lord Hampstead commits is to bring his friend George Roden, a clerk in the Post Office service, to Hendon Hall.  There, in the family's house outside London, George meets Hampstead's sister Lady Frances Trafford, and they fall in love.  When her stepmother the Marchioness discovers that he has had proposed and been accepted, she instantly banishes him from the house and vents her wrath on Lady Frances.  Lady Kingsbury is equally angry with her stepson, for introducing such an unsuitable person into the family.  She disapproves of both her stepchildren.  She can't help wishing that her own eldest son, Frederic, was the heir instead.  It becomes a frequent topic of conversation with Mr Greenwood, the Marquis's nominal chaplain, who is eventually tempted to act in the matter.  Meanwhile, Lord Hampstead, visiting George Roden's home, meets a neighbor of his, Marion Fay, and falls in love in his turn.  The daughter of a Quaker, a clerk in a business house, she is no more welcome to the Kingsburys as a future daughter-in-law than the postal clerk is a son-in-law, and more blame is poured on Lord Hampstead.

By making one of his heroes a clerk in the postal services bureau, Trollope introduces another familiar theme, one of course based on his own years of service there.  The scenes set in George's office are some of the funniest in the book.  They feature a wonderful character, Samuel Crocker, who sits just across from George Roden. He is the worst employee, lazy and perpetually late, always on the brink of getting fired.  That's partly because he spends so much of his time and energy in social climbing.  Once he discovers George's friendship with Hampstead, he tries to build on his friendship with George to claim Hampstead as an auxiliary friend.  His maneuvers are hilarious, particularly because he is completely tone-deaf and never realizes how much he annoys pretty much everyone, starting with his "friend' George.  But there's also a little touch of pathos to how desperately he tries to latch on to people.

In Lady Frances and Marion Fay, Trollope wrote two strong female characters, who choose for themselves.  Lady Frances insists from the start that she will marry her postal clerk.  She is twenty-one, and though she has no money of her own, she knows that eventually she will get her way.

Some spoilers will follow:

Lady Frances is prepared to wait, as her furious stepmother carts her off first to Germany, and then to the family's country estate.  Eventually her father allows her to live with her brother at Hendon Hall, which I thought very progressive of him (and his author).  But her story comes to an unexpectedly happy (and somewhat farcial) ending: George's mother, who has a mysterious past, finally reveals that while living in Italy she married into a noble family.  Even though her husband turned out to be a rotter, her son is still the Duca de Crinola (the Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope helpfully points out that this "comic title" means "Duke of Horsehair").  George inherits nothing but the title, yet that makes him acceptable to the Kingsburys and their circle (including the lovely Lord and Lady Persiflage).  However, George, a staunch Englishman, refuses to claim an Italian title, insisting that he will continue to work in the Post Office.  This scandalizes everyone except his future wife.  He is warned, ominously, that the Queen will have to be consulted.  It all dissolves into farce, with a wedding at the end. And poor Samuel Crocker goes slightly crazy when he learns that his office mate is a real live Duke.

All of this plays out against the story of the second couple, Lord Hampstead and Marion Fay.  While Lady Frances stands by her lover from the start, Marion rejects hers.  Though she loves him with all her heart, she argues that the distance between them is too great, that he should choose someone more fitting to be the future Marchioness.  The Republican Hampstead of course rejects this.  But she has an unanswerable argument in her health.  Her mother and all her siblings died of consumption, and she knows she will too.  And sure enough, she begins to decline into that picturesque consumption so beloved of Victorian novelists.  (Trollope himself of course lost a brother and sister to consumption.)  My only quibble with this book is that I found their story increasingly tedious and too maudlin for my tastes.  There are a lot of long noble speeches about love and happiness and Heaven, particularly when Hampstead tries to persuade Marion to marry him anyway. And the sicker she gets, the holier she becomes, until her soul just flits away one day to a better world (Trollope actually says it "flitted.") (It was in these sections that I felt the weight of my Penguin edition's 856 pages.)  All Hampstead's future happiness is buried in her grave, and at the end of the book, he is preparing to sail around the world, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.  Since he is determined never to marry another, the wicked Lady Kingsbury will get her wish, and one of her sons will eventually inherit the title and the family honours.  She is the worst stepmother I have met yet in his books, beating out Mrs Masters in The American Senator.

According to my invaluable Companion, the critical reaction to this book was mixed, and I can see why.  I certainly wouldn't recommend it as an introduction to Trollope.  But I agree with the critic of the Athenaeum, who wrote, "the reader will recognize with pleasure much of the brightness and lightness of touch which characterized his early work."

Anthony Trollope in 2015

I have been so looking forward to the bicentennial of Anthony Trollope's birth this year.  I know that the Trollope Society - which I keep meaning to join - is planning some events.  Closer to home, I am excited about two reading events hosted by fellow bloggers.  One of the great joys for me in blogging has been connecting with other Trollope readers.  Audrey is hosting a year-long read through the Barsetshire series, which I will join in April (after the TBR Dare ends), just in time for Barchester Towers and Mrs. Proudie.  That will tie in with the celebration of his birth on April 24th, for which Karen is planning a month-long party.

Looking at my own shelves, I have 13 books of his, still unread.  (Fourteen if you count Vol. II of North America, which I couldn't leave on the shelf even though there was no Vol I; I have yet to find a copy).  I also have two biographies, The Chronicler of Barsetshire, by R.H. Super, and Trollope, An Illustrated Biography, by C.P. Snow.  Audrey and JoAnn are currently reading Victoria Glendinning's biography, which makes me want to read it again myself.

I think that I will celebrate one of my favorite authors by reading something of his each month this year.  There will be some re-reading, I know, with Audrey's Barsetshire plan.  I've been wanting to read Doctor Thorne and Framley Parsonage again, and I feel I should give Lily and The Small House at Allington another try.  But I would also like to read from the TBR shelves.  To that end, I've started with Marion Fay, one of Trollope's last novels, published just six months before his death in 1882.  It reminds me a little of The Duke's Children (and reading about that book in the Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope has made me want to take it down off the shelf).  The young Lord Hampstead at the center of this story is a delight, at least so far - though his stepmother, the haughty Marchioness of Kingsbury, keeps thinking what a better marquis her own son Frederic would make.

A Christmas story set in Australia

Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, Anthony Trollope

I have been saving this short novel, subtitled "A Tale of Australian Bush Life," for Christmas, since it opens "Just a fortnight before Christmas, 1871. . ."  I learned from the Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope that it was first serialized in the Melbourne Age starting in November of 1873, and then published "as the Christmas number of the Graphic" in London that December.  As I've noted before, Trollope had a bit of a "Bah humbug" attitude toward Christmas, and he wasn't enthusiastic about writing the Christmas stories that were so popular with magazine and journal editors at the time.

This story is based on a lengthy visit that Trollope and his wife Rose made to Australia and New Zealand in 1871-1872.  They stayed several times with their younger son Frederic on his sheep station in New South Wales.  Trollope drew directly on his son's experiences in this book, though he moved the action north to Queensland, to provide some cover.  Like the younger Trollope, Harry Heathcote was determined to emigrate to Australia and become a sheep-farmer.  Unlike Frederic, whose parents financed his venture, Harry was left an orphan with a substantial inheritance and his independence.

As the story opens, Harry has used his money to establish Gangoil, a station of 120,000 acres with 30,000 sheep.  He doesn't own the land but rents it from the government, which makes him a "squatter."  A recent new arrival, Giles Medlicot, has purchased some of the land of Gangoil, to set up a sugar cane plantation and mill. Those like Medlicot who buy their land were called "free selectors."  According to the Companion, in this story Trollope took on "the most vexed political issue in the Australian and New Zealand colonies at the time," the conflict between squatters and free selectors.  Frederic Trollope was a squatter, but again according to the Companion, his father supported the free selectors.  It reminded me of the clashes in the western United States between sheep and cattle ranchers, which led sometimes to violent attacks and ambushes by the cattlemen, who hated sheep and shepherds.

Harry resents Giles Medlicot and blames him for the loss of his land.  His wife Mary, whose unmarried sister Kate lives with them, sees Medlicot in a different light.  Harry faces a much bigger threat in the summer heat, when a carelessly-lit match can set off a fire that will sweep through Gangoil and ruin him.  A former station hand, now working at the mill, has a grudge against him; so does a family of ne'er-do-well squatters in the neighborhood who poach his sheep.  Harry suspects them of plotting arson.  Even with three loyal hands, he will need help protecting Gangoil's vast acres.

This is a fast-moving, exciting story.  It's not at all what I think of as a typical "Christmas" story, though it does end with a Christmas feast, complete with plum-pudding.  I don't know if it's an accurate portrait of life on a sheep station at the time.  I remember that one of Ada Cambridge's characters in The Three Miss Kings complained about "Trollope and those fellows," who "come here as utter strangers, and think they can learn all about us in two or three weeks."  Trollope also wrote a book about his travels, Australia and New Zealand (published in 1873).  I've never come across a copy, but I think it would be very interesting reading.

N.B. This was serialized in 1873-1874 and published in book form in 1874.  I am using that date for my Mid-Century of Books.

A stubbon school-master

Dr Wortle's School, Anthony Trollope

As much as I love Anthony Trollope, reading Castle Richmond earlier this year shook my faith in him a little.  But all the wonderful recent posts from people discovering Trollope - and falling under his spell - have made me want to pull the Palliser and Barchester novels off the shelves again.  Instead, last week I read a book with a child psychopath, a serial killer who tortures animals, a perfect trifecta of ick factors for me.  I abandoned the book, but not before reading enough to feel like I needed a mental palate-cleanser.  Some time in an ordered Victorian world suddenly seemed very appealing.  I decided on Dr Wortle's School not quite at random: it's one of his shorter, later novels.  I wasn't sure I had the stamina for a door-stop (I recently lost interest in The Woman in White about a third of the way through).

Oh, this book was such fun from start to finish.  Let me start with the title character, Dr Jeffrey Wortle.  He may be the Rector of Boswick, a town in the Midlands, but his heart and soul are in his school, an exclusive establishment that prepares boys for Eton (of course I was reminded of the schools that play such a big part in Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire).  His school is a great success, packed with noblemen's sons, despite the stiff fees.  He has carried on his school over the objections of three different bishops, with whom he has waged the kind of clerical war so familiar in Barsetshire.  He also has a running feud with the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, the parent of a former pupil withdrawn in a quarrel over the fees (technically over extra charges incurred).  The editor of my Penguin Classics edition, Mick Imlah, suggests that Dr Wortle is the closest Trollope ever came to creating a literary döppelganger.  Trollope's own son and his first biographer thought so, nothing that they shared a "blustering amiability, an imperious manner, and a good heart."

All three characteristics, along with the stubbornness of so many of Trollope's characters, are soon on display.  Dr Wortle has hired a new curate and usher for his school, a Rev. Henry Peacocke.  Like the Doctor an Oxford man, he has just returned to England after several years working at a university in St. Louis, Missouri.  There he married his wife Ella, a beautiful American woman, who will serve as the school's matron.  The Peacockes do not fit neatly into the parish, however.  They refuse all social invitations, including some very flattering ones from the students' parents, and Mr Peacocke is strangely reluctant to take up his curate's duties.  People begin to talk, especially the Hon Mrs Stantiloup.

At this point, in Chapter III, "The Mystery," Trollope breaks into the story, in that familiar confidential tone:

And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from those principles of story telling to which you have probably become accustomed, and to put the horse of my romance before the cart.  There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognized in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, - so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages.  It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest, - should you choose to go on with my chronicle, - simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others.  You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, - before Mrs Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle.  You are to know it all before the Peacockes became aware that it must necessarily be disclosed.  It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you.  That there are many such readers of novels I know  . . .   Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment.  Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph, - in the next half-dozen words.

How cool is that?  A Victorian spoiler warning!  And one that the Penguin editors might take to heart, as it happens.  Also, Trollope is considering how stories are constructed, and why people read them.  Is it just for the sense of discovery, of unraveling secrets?  If so, he says, he is "far from saying  . . .  [that] is not the most natural and the most efficacious" kind of interest, but if so, he is going to deprive his story of it.

Well, like the author, I am going to discuss the mystery and its effects, so here is my spoiler warning!


In the author's words: "Mr and Mrs Peacocke were not man and wife." It isn't their fault.  Mrs Peacocke was previously married to a ne'er-do-well, a former Rebel in the Civil War, Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy.  After making his wife's life a misery for several years, he went off with his brother Robert to the Texas border lands, where he was reportedly killed.  Henry Peacocke traveled all the way down to the border and spoke with Robert, who confirmed his brother's death.  Mr Peacocke then returned to St. Louis and married the widow.  One day Col. Lefroy showed up at their house, very much alive, drunk and demanding money.  The Peacockes could think of nothing to do but flee the country.  Mr Peacocke refused to abandon his wife, and she accepted his decision.  They continued to live together and present themselves as husband and wife.  But knowing how society would see them - particularly Mrs Peacocke - they avoid society.  Now with questions coming up, Henry Peacocke had just decided to tell the Doctor everything, when Robert Lefroy shows up, demanding money in his turn.  When he is refused, he begins telling the story to everyone he meets.

Of course the reaction is instantaneous: the Peacockes are living in sin, and their presence is contaminating the school and corrupting the boys.  Mr Peacocke is of course completely unfit for a curate's place.  The Hon Mrs Stantiloup is loud in expressing these opinions.  As the news spreads, parents begin making excuses to withdraw their sons.  The Doctor, however, takes a different view.  He refuses to condemn the couple, because what else could they do in such a terrible situation?  How could a husband abandon his wife under those circumstances, even if she wasn't technically his wife?  And if he clings to her, naturally she must cling to him (as women do).  With quite progressive and heterodox ideas for a Church of England minister in the 1880s, Dr Wortle prepares to defend the Peacockes.  Here the editor suggests that Trollope had in mind his good friends George Eliot and her partner George Lewes, who could not marry because Lewes was unable to obtain a divorce.  The editor notes that Trollope's wife Rose refused to receive the couple in her home, but Trollope visited them in theirs.

Through Dr Wortle, Trollope points out again and again that in transgressions against sexual morality, it is the woman who pays the higher price and is judged more harshly, especially by other women.  The man in the case can usually walk away with little damage to his reputation.  This double-standard is a frequent theme in Trollope's novels, such as The Vicar of Bullhampton and He Knew He Was Right.  Bigamy is also a common theme in the Victorian literature I have read, and it must have represented a real anxiety in people's minds about having to take strangers at face value.  It plays a major part in two other Trollope novels,  Castle Richmond and John Caldigate.

At the Doctor's suggestion, Peacocke sets off for America again, dragging Robert Lefroy along, to look for definite proof about the fate of Ferdinand.  Meanwhile, Dr Wortle insists on Mrs Peacocke remaining in the school, though in seclusion.  Mrs Wortle is not best pleased about this, especially since the other woman is so beautiful.  Gossip again goes to work, eventually reaching the Bishop's ear, setting off another battle.  Dr Wortle is of course convinced that he is right and everyone else is wrong - one of Trollope's stubborn men, like Plantagenet Palliser and Mr Crawley, and even quiet Dr Harding.  But to his own surprise he finds himself riding over to consult the vicar of the next parish.  Each time he gets Job's comfort and plain words.  Mr Puddicombe actually tells him that he is wrong about several things, including his war with the Bishop.  The Doctor resents this, and disagrees, but can't ignore Mr Puddicombe's words. Meanwhile the story alternates between Boswick and the southwestern United States, where Henry Peacocke is on the hunt.  At one point he even has a photograph made of a crucial piece of evidence!

To lighten the story a little, there is a also a quiet romance between Dr Wortle's only daughter and a former pupil.  Like Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility, he falls in love with his tutor's daughter.  His parents are not thrilled, but at least Mary is no Lucy Steele.  One reason her father is so attached to his school is that he is determined to give his daughter a dowry of £20,000.

N.B.  I am finding that the publication dates of some Victorian novels can be a bit confusing.  This one was published as a serial in 1880 (the publisher originally objecting to the Peacockes' situation), and then as a book in 1881.  I am using the later date for the Mid-Century of Books.

Love in the time of Famine (with apologies to Mr. Marquez)

Castle Richmond, Anthony Trollope

I have been curious about Anthony Trollope's novels set in Ireland since reading in his autobiography, and in Victoria Glendinning's excellent biography, about the years he spent living and working in Ireland for the postal service, in the 1840s and 1850s.  I have read somewhere that the Irish-set novels are "frequently pedestrian," but I wanted to see for myself.  I thought they would be an interesting contrast to the published journals of Elizabeth Grant Smith, the "Highland Lady," which cover the years 1840-1856, almost the same time that Trollope was in Ireland (1841-1859).  From the introduction, I learned that Castle Richmond, set during the Famine in 1845-1846, was begun as Trollope was leaving Ireland for a new appointment in England.  He started the novel in 1859, but he set it aside to write Framley Parsonage, for the first issue of his friend William Thackeray's new Cornhill Magazine, because the editors didn't want an "Irish story." 

While Framley Parsonage was Trollope's biggest success to date, Castle Richmond received little attention and sold poorly when it was published in 1860.  The editor of my Oxford World Classics edition, Mary Hamer, suggests that its setting during the Famine made readers at the time uncomfortable, as did the ambiguous situation of Ireland itself.  But it is also just a strange story.  Really, in some ways it is typical Trollope, with three interweaving stories.  The first concerns Lady Clara Desmond, whose young brother the Earl is heir to a broken-down estate in County Cork, which her mother the Countess is holding together mainly by her will.  Two men love Clara, who is sixteen when the story opens: Owen Fitzgerald, with a small holding at Hap House; and his kinsman Herbert Fitzgerald, heir to a baronetcy and £14,000 a year, from his father's estate at Castle Richmond.  Clara's practical mother forces her daughter to reject Owen on the grounds of poverty, and eventually Clara accepts Herbert.  The Countess's great secret is that she has fallen deeply in love with Owen herself, and she hopes that her daughter's rejected suitor might turn to her instead. 

However, in the second major story line, Herbert's father Sir Thomas is under great stress, his health failing, under frequent visits from a mysterious man.  His wife Lady Fitzgerald suspects that the visitor may have something to do with her first marriage, to a scoundrel who deserted her almost immediately, and was reported to have later died in Paris.  Owen is the next heir in line after Herbert, and if he becomes Sir Owen, the wealth of Castle Richmond would make him an acceptable husband for Clara - in which case the Countess would unselfishly give him up.  Clara's young brother Patrick is rather in love with Owen as well.  An impressionable schoolboy, he spends his holidays from Eton with Owen.  In one emotional scene, he declares his love, at one point throwing himself on Owen's breast and bursting into tears.  Anyone looking for homoerotic subtext in Trollope should consider this book, where Owen and Patrick end up travelling the world together.

I found much of this emotional turmoil exhausting, particularly Owen's obsessive possessive love for Clara, which he keeps proclaiming.  When it seems that he might become the next heir to Castle Richmond, he repeatedly offers to trade it all for Clara herself, if Herbert will just give her back.  I did appreciate that Clara, Herbert and the author all make it clear that she is not up for trade, that she will decide for herself.  Balancing Owen's hopeless love is the Countess's. Trollope does not mock her feelings, but he repeats over and over that she was wrong for marrying for wealth and status.  In his view, she traded her youth and beauty to be a Countess, she made a bad bargain, and it is her own fault that she is now poor and alone.  I found her more sympathetic than I think her author did.

All of this emotional toil and trouble plays out against the true suffering and misery of the Famine, the third strand of the story.  The main characters are not personally affected by it, as members of the gentry and aristocracy.  Their rent revenues may fall, but they will not themselves starve.  Though the Castle Richmond family - Herbert, his mother and sisters - faces the loss of their home and their £14,000, they have other resources.  But outside their gates, all around them, people are suffering and dying.  Herbert and his agent, with the local clergymen, sit on the charitable boards working to save the population from starvation.  Clara Desmond and Herbert's sisters do what they can to help.  Trollope reports on this work in detail, and the scenes set among the Irish people seem more real than the emotionalism of the love stories.  Occasionally he reports some incident that he witnessed himself, which adds to the realism of these sections.  Though Trollope wrote so often about clergymen, he didn't often deal directly with faith.  Here he tries to explain the devastation of the Famine as the will of God, for his own purposes, which human beings cannot always understand, and to insist that God's mercy was still active even in the midst of so much human suffering.  It is a bit chilling to read in his "Conclusion" that in the end, the Famine was a good thing for Ireland, by thinning its population through emigration and death, and reforming its reliance on the potato and single-crop farming.

This was an interesting book, though I can't say I really enjoyed reading it.  Looking at the other "Irish" books, I see The Kellys and the O'Kellys described as a "light-hearted story," while his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran is "set in the violent Ireland of the 1830s."  I think I'll move the Macdermots further down the list, at least for now.