ones. He had learned that silence is sometimes mistaken for wisdom;
he had avoided intemperance, and he had not done too many stupid
things. He had avoided adultery, and since his marriage, he had not
seduced any of his neighbors' daughters. He was therefore "considered
a moral man."
Lady Selina is the first of Trollope's high-born old maids, too proud
to marry--unless someone asks her. Other examples were to include
Miss Sarah Marrable in _The Vicar of Bullhampton_ and Lady Amelia
De Courcy in _Dr. Thorne_. The rest of the family at Grey Abbey was
"dull, solemn, slow, and respectable," but Lady Selina, daughter of
the earl, exceeded them all. The "specific gravity of Lady Selina
could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in
algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight."
Cares can be put aside when one comes upon one of Trollope's
fox-hunting episodes. All is given up to the pleasure of the chase,
and of its anticipation, and of its recollection. Indeed one of the
markers of the successful huntsman is that his experience and his
horsemanship allow him to be a witness to the end of the fox so that
he can recount the details afterward. Character is revealed in the
field. In this case, the Protestant clergyman Reverend Armstrong
(whose only parishioner is Mrs. O'Kelly) is one of those who knows
every road and which way the wind is blowing, and how unlikely it is
that the fox would run against it. He shows himself to be a master
huntsman. Like experienced golfers who "putt for dough" while
the young men "drive for show," Mr. Armstrong spares his horse,
takes short-cuts, and is always at the scene of the kill before the
hard-riding gallants come galloping up a minute or two late.
Barry Lynch, on the other hand, cuts his horse in front of the hounds
as they approach a small stone wall, fatally injuring one of them.
Frank O'Kelly is obliged to send him home in disgrace.
(The bloody end to the fox hunt is no longer to be seen within the
restriction of English laws. The sport was banned in England in 2004.
Hunting enthusiasts, however, claim that the number of foxes killed
each year has actually increased since the ban.)
Lessons in the conduct of human affairs are to be found in Trollope's
work, another feature that _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_ shares with
some of his later and better-known works. For instance, doctors,
lawyers, and others who are paid to give advice learn sooner or later
that one can only advise; one cannot coerce. Professionals will
sometimes tell the recipient that they have given their best advice;
and it is up to them to decide whether to take it. We find the young
lawyer Mr. Daly resorting to this ploy as he finds that Barry Lynch
is disappointed not to have prospects for a more lucrative settlement
in a deal with Martin Kelly: "I've now given you my best advice; if
your mind's not yet made up, perhaps you'll have the goodness to let
me hear from you when it is?"
The story is a symmetrical one in which each of the two young heroes
finds his reward, virtue emerges triumphant, and the wicked are
vanquished. It's a warm-hearted romp in which young Anthony Trollope
showed that he had the tools to keep readers entertained for years.
My guess is that an Irishman can enjoy it as much as an Englishman.
A TALE OF NO CITY
LA VENDÉE
False starts are usually forgotten in the early phases of an
athlete's development. Young boys and girls may try their hand
at several different sports and then gravitate toward the best
opportunities for "showcasing their talents." Writers presumably
conduct their own trials and errors, too, with the misbegotten
products left buried in desk drawers, if not destroyed. Anthony
Trollope's false start, _La Vendée_, a historical romance, was
published, but it's fair to say that it has not been remembered. It
was his third novel, following two Irish novels, _The Macdermots of
Ballycloran_ and _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_, and it was followed
four years later by the first of his Barsetshire novels, _The
Warden_, which was a great success. By then Trollope knew where his
strength lay; he followed with _Barchester Towers_ and thereafter
he stuck to the world (mostly England) of his own day. He did not
attempt any more historical novels.
The worst thing about _La Vendée_ is the dialogue. Here's a
conversation between husband and wife as he prepares to leave for
war:
"I know, Victorine," said he, when they were alone together in the
evening, when not even his own dear sister Marie was there to mar
the sacred sweetness of their conference, "I know that I am doing
right, and that gives me strength to leave you, and our darling
child."
He goes on for another paragraph or two.
Except for the stilted, wordy dialogue, the story is not so bad.
It follows a lost cause, that of the citizens of La Vendée, an
agricultural region in the west of France that my wife and I drove
through on our way from Normandy to Bordeaux several years ago. These
faithful servants of the king opposed the republican forces of the
French Revolution, and they were annihilated. We follow the men
and women of the doomed faction: Jacques Cathelineau, the humble
postilion who is elected first military leader of the royalists,
and who is loved by the noble and lovely Agatha Larochejaquelin;
Agatha's brother Henri, who succeeds Cathelineau as general of the
royalist forces, and who loves Marie de Lescure; and Marie's brother
Charles and his wife Victorine. That makes three couples. There is
also a little comic relief of sorts with Jacques Chapeau, Henri
Larochejacquelin's servant, who woos Annot Stein, daughter of the
blacksmith Michael Stein. A saucy wench, Annot teases Jacques by
praising Cathelineau the general.
There is also Adolphe Denot, Henri's proud friend who loves Adolphe's
sister Agatha and is rejected in a dramatic proposal scene, so
prolonged that "Agatha began to fear that at this rate the interview
would have no end. If Adolphe remained with his arm on the marble
slab, and his head on one side, making sentimental speeches till
she should give him encouragement to fall at her feet, it certainly
would not be ended by bedtime." Adolphe is a strange case. Stung by
Agatha's refusal, he goes forth to battle determined to die, but he
disgraces himself by failing to support M. de Lescure in storming a
breach in the wall. He then disappears, switches sides, and leads
the republican forces into battle. Finally he reappears as the "Mad
Captain," leading the royalist forces in suicidal charges.
The battle scenes are well described, detained only by a few lengthy
speeches by the heroes as they swing their swords.
Fictional characters mingle with the historical ones, and even
Robespierre appears in two consecutive chapters unto himself. The
upper classes of England were horrified by the French Revolution, and
the author's judgment of Robespierre is an example:
Honesty, moral conduct, industry, constancy of purpose, temperance
in power, courage, and love of country: these virtues all belonged
to Robespierre; . . . Why, instead of the Messiah of freedom,
which he believed himself to be, has his name become a byword, a
reproach, and an enormity? Because he wanted faith! He believed in
nothing but himself, and the reasoning faculty with which he felt
himself to be endowed. He thought himself perfect in his own human
nature, and wishing to make others perfect as he was, he fell
into the lowest abyss of crime and misery in which a poor human
creature ever wallowed. He seems almost to have been sent into
the world to prove the inefficacy of human reason to effect human
happiness.
We see Robespierre directly only in these two chapters toward the
end of the book. Trollope was not above passing judgment on his
characters, but I don't recall another exclamation like, "Because
he wanted faith!" These two didactic chapters are not necessary to
the story line, but the horrors of the French Revolution are hardly
amenable to understatement. Though they would be the first to go in
any abridgement, they do help put the whole story into historical
perspective.
Trollope never visited La Vendée. His story is based primarily on
the memoirs of Madame de la Rochejacquelin, who appears in the book
with the name of her first husband, M. de Lescure. She subsequently
married the younger brother of Henri de Larochejacquelin and bore him
eight children before he was killed in a second Vendean revolt in
1815. Among the fictional characters were Marie Larochejacquelin and
Adolphe Denot. How would Trollope end his story of this disaster? He
created a happy interlude, and he made the best of it.
Dickens was more comfortable with the French Revolution in _A Tale
of Two Cities_, written ten years later when he was at the peak of
his powers. Its dialogue was almost as stilted, and Dickens was no
stranger to a bit of purple prose. But his energy and passion allowed
him to carry it off. (And it is reported to be the all-time best
seller of books written originally in English.) Such a story was not
Anthony Trollope's cup of tea, particularly when he was a novice
still searching for his métier. Perhaps this clumsy attempt at
historical fiction helps us appreciate the facility with which he
later portrayed contemporary English folk. If there is a rule that
allows us to discard one of an author's efforts before passing
judgment on his work, let this be it for Trollope. Let us pass on to
Barsetshire.
THE OFFICE
THE THREE CLERKS
_The Three Clerks_ is an inside book, written about the Civil Service
by one who had himself begun his Postal Service career as a clerk. It
holds up to gentle fun its little ways, its principles of management,
and the ingrained habits of thought held by its faithful servants.
(The present day reader may conclude that bureaucracies don't change
much.) Office politics, infighting, and intrigues provide grist for
the author's mill, and he makes good use of it. The story deals with
three young Postal Service clerks and the family of a widow with
three fair young daughters. Here, too, the author has something to
work on: Will they pair off? If so, how? And how will the pairings
turn out? And what of the young men and their careers in the Service?
Who will advance, who will waste his talents? How will they deal with
Temptation?
Henry Norman appears first, the second son of a gentleman of small
property, one who plods through his duties and his courtship. Alaric
Tudor was raised in Brussels, became an orphan, and finds himself at
a desk adjacent to Henry Norman, with whom he subsequently shares
lodgings. Alaric is street smart, knows how to advance himself, and
opts for expediency over principle. Charley Tudor, son of a clergyman
and a young cousin of Alaric, proves himself susceptible to the
temptations offered by street life in London.
And the widow in the cottage near Hampton Court? Her late husband was
a cousin of Harry Norman's father, so naturally Mrs. Woodward invites
young Harry and his friends to visit on weekends.
Although the reader is entertained by the portrayal of the
Departments of Internal Navigation and Weights and Measures, the book
hangs mainly on the plot, and the story is basically that of the six
young people. Harry falls in love with the eldest sister Gertrude,
but Alaric wins her away from him and earns his sustained hatred.
Harry subsequently settles for the second sister Linda, who initially
thought she was in love with Alaric, who was false with her as well
as with Harry. In the course of the story the youngest sister Katie
grows up from thirteen to seventeen and falls in love with Charley,
who saves her life by pulling her from the water.
Three brides for three friends: perhaps this wasn't so unusual in
Victorian times when meetings, much less friendships, among eligible
young people weren't always so easy to obtain. But then the results:
the first two couplings are plausible enough, but Katie, the
youngest, becomes chronically ill with unrequited love, and although
the reader is reassured that the doctors who listen to her chest
through wooden tubes find no evidence of consumption, the anxious
reader fears that the author will let her die. Trollope became known
as a skeptic of Shakespeare's dictum: "Men will die and worms will
eat them, but not of love."
We are reminded how Australia was populated as Alaric takes his
family there for a fresh start after serving six months in jail for
betraying the trust of a young woman for whom he was named trustee.
And we see how Victorians did their insider trading, as Alaric is
persuaded by the villain of the story, Undy Scott, to buy shares
in mines that he is evaluating for the Department of Weights and
Measures.
And Trollope indulges in certain liberties. He satirizes the
publishing world with Charley Tudor's writing serial novels, and here
we find Mrs. Woodward reading _Crinoline and Macassar_ aloud to the
young people: "The lovely Crinoline was sitting alone at a lattice
window on a summer morning, and as she sat she sang with melancholy
cadence the first part of the now celebrated song which had then
lately appeared. . . ."
Thirteen pages of Chapter XXVIII are devoted entirely to an
impassioned defense of the Civil Service, particularly of the
young men who work there. This chapter is absent from my small
leather-bound edition published in 1878 but is restored in the
Trollope Society edition of 1992, which follows the text of the first
edition, published in 1858. The chapter is irrelevant to the story;
it does, however, reveal where the author is coming from. He is
coming from the Civil Service, which was his ticket to self-respect
and financial independence.
Finally, the first three pages of Chapter XLV, "The Criminal
Population is Disposed of," are given to a comparison of this novel's
villain, Undecimus Scott, with Bill Sikes. Was Charles Dickens
flattered that his villain of _Oliver Twist_ was so honored by his
colleague Anthony Trollope, who apologized in the text that he could
not give Undy Scott so "decent an end" as that given to Bill Sikes?
It must be added that Trollope considered _The Three Clerks_ to be
his best work yet, better than _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_.
Contemporary critics agreed with him, including Robert and Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. What were they thinking? Perhaps Trollope
overestimated his portrayal of Charley Tudor, who may well have been
a self-portrait of the hobbledehoy who aspired to write novels but
found female companionship in a social class beneath his own--indeed,
having to withstand an attack in his office by the mother of a young
woman who considered herself to be ill used.
Today's reader may well wonder why _The Three Clerks_ was ever rated
higher than _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_. Posterity has
certainly not concurred. In the case of Trollope's novels, religion,
like politics, has trumped bureaucracy.
The book, however, primarily tells the story of six young people.
I must confess that I found myself tiring of them before the author
did.
THE PROUD YOUNG LOVERS
THE BERTRAMS
"For the first fortnight she did not leave the house." This sentence,
in Chapter XXXVII of _The Bertrams_ by Anthony Trollope, epitomizes
the difficulty for the present day reader in understanding a
Victorian novel. Things have changed a great deal since then, but
surely the place of women is fundamental. Did not leave her house!
Lady Harcourt was in great distress. She had left her husband (she
had virtually fled), and he had the legal right to apprehend her and
force her to return to his home. Divorce was not an option for her.
The action of the book takes place in 1845-1848. Only in 1857 (a year
before the book was written) did the Matrimonial Causes Act give
women limited access to divorce. Under this act the husband only had
to prove his wife's adultery to obtain a divorce, but a woman had
not only to prove her husband's having committed adultery; she also
had to prove incest, bigamy, cruelty, or desertion. And so she was
legally and permanently bound to a husband who owned their home. The
law regarded a married couple as one person; the husband had a legal
obligation to protect his wife; she was bound to obey him. Personal
property brought to the marriage by the wife then belonged to the
husband, even after a divorce if one could be obtained. Her income
belonged completely to her husband. A man's home was his castle, and
the wife was part of the deal.
One has to understand these givens in order to follow the
implications of the story. The wedding of Caroline Waddington to Sir
Henry Harcourt created a significant problem for the central lovers
of the story, Miss Waddington and George Bertram. As the enormity
of her mistake became apparent to her, Caroline (now Lady Harcourt)
realized that there was no good way out. These days, she would do as
a senior friend of mine, a professed atheist, said he would do if,
to his surprise, he should find himself standing at the Pearly Gates
after his death. "I would say, 'Gentlemen, it appears that I have
made a horrible mistake.'" And then she would get a divorce and marry
her true love with no questions asked. But her options were few and
unattractive: She could flee abroad, as Lady Laura Standish did with
her father, to escape her crazed husband, in Trollope's _Phineas
Finn_. She could (if the husband would permit it) live openly with
her lover, as did George Eliot. But just as Hollywood movies follow
an apparently tacit code of audience acceptability, so Trollope was
unwilling to send his central figures to Europe to live together,
as Glencora Palliser had contemplated doing with her lover Burgo
Fitzgerald in _Can You Forgive Her?_ (Glencora couldn't bring herself
to do this, and she learned to love her husband Plantagenet Palliser,
after a certain acceptable fashion.) Lady Harcourt's husband could
die of illness or injury, or someone could murder him, or he could
commit suicide. Trollope was not scrupulous about revealing the
outcome in advance. The reader is warned, and suicide is chosen.
(This was also the means of exit and retribution for Ferdinand Lopez
in _The Prime Minister_ and of Augustus Melmotte in _The Way We Live
Now_.)
Trollope did not consider himself a feminist; he professed a
conservative view of society. But he was a realist who described the
world as he found it. And his findings speak for themselves. The
constraints placed upon women turn up again and again, in almost
every novel he wrote.
Some of the action takes place in the Middle East, and this glimpse
of the experience of touring there a century and a half ago provides
a virtual visit to Jerusalem as it was then: a walled city with
no suburbs, appearing as "a fortress of cards built craftily on a
table," where one enters and suddenly realizes "that you are beyond
the region of passports."
And the description of the environs provides an uncensored and
not necessarily tactful view of "all the absurdity" of the "dark
unfurnished gloomy cave in which the Syrian Christians worship, so
dark that the eye cannot at first discover its only ornament--a small
ill-made figure of the crucified Redeemer."
The author would probably be the object of a fatwah today for his
description of the Moslem washerwomen as "ape-like" and the Jewish
washerwomen as "glorious specimens of feminine creation."
Alexandria--"that most detestable of cities"--does not fare well. Nor
do the pyramids, though they must be visited. "But let no man, and,
above all, no woman, assume that the excursion will be in any way
pleasurable. . . . And let this also be remembered, that nothing is
to be gained by entering the pyramid except dirt, noise, stench,
vermin, abuse, and want of air."
A twenty-first century editor might cringe at Trollope's assertion
that "as a rule, a Mahomedan hates a Christian. . . . But in Egypt we
have caused ourselves to be better respected: we thrash the Arabs and
pay them, and therefore they are very glad to see us anywhere."
And yet in the next four pages Trollope gives us as vivid a picture
of the performance of whirling dervishes as we are likely to find.
But the lowly place of women in society was an obvious part of the
landscape, and the travelers' observations were only window dressing;
the business of the novel has to do primarily with the relationship
between George Herbert and Caroline Waddington, and secondarily,
between Arthur Wilkinson and Adela Gauntlet. George Herbert is a
proud young man, and Miss Waddington is a proud young woman. David
Skilton's pen-and-ink drawing opposite page 110 in the Folio Society
edition of 1993 tells it all: With the walled city of Jerusalem
represented in the background, George sits on the barren ground
looking away, unhappily, to his right. Miss Waddington, parasol
over her head to protect her from the sun, stands looking away in
the opposite direction. He has just told her of his newly formed
resolution to become a clergyman, and she has poured cold water
on his enthusiasm, reminding him that he is eligible for a noble
position that would be preferable to a country parsonage.
When he protests that a vicar's career can be noble, she replies, "I
judge by what I see. They are generally fond of eating, very cautious
about their money, untidy in their own houses, and apt to go to sleep
after dinner."
These two young people, both with strong personalities, are clearly
in love with each other. He gives up his idea of being a clergyman;
he decides to study law. He proposes, and she accepts. He presses for
an early wedding date; she demurs, saying that they must wait until
he has been called to the bar, which will take two or three years.
She is afraid that a small income would fray their love for each
other. Neither will compromise. The engagement is broken, and she
marries his friend, a rising star in the legal and political world.
Behind all this is the possible legacy of his rich uncle. George,
however, refuses to humor his uncle for the sake of becoming his
heir.
Such lovers' stories occur all the time. Family relationships still
matter, and they still require cultivation. But as the inner thinking
of each of the lovers was revealed in great detail throughout the
story, I found myself protesting that these weren't real people like
any the author had known. They were characters set up in a plot, and
the turns of the story were just that: turns for the sake of the
story, not turns that a real person would make.
Trollope summarizes the story of the progressively colder nature of
their engagement with this retrospective view: "Each was too proud to
make the first concession to the other, and therefore no concession
was made by either."
No one can read this sentence and wonder what the book is about. But
the reader may feel that it's all a fable. This is where the story
starts, and the details are just filled in.
Perhaps the author's style accounted for my reaction: Raymond Carver
or Ernest Hemingway might have presented the same story in a more
convincing fashion, leaving out all the details of the thinking and
giving us only a few scraps of dialogue to explain the action. In
this instance, I failed to overcome being accustomed to the fast pace
of "the way we live now," and I could not immerse myself in the more
leisurely pace of the nineteenth century world. As I followed their
thoughts through each turn of the story, I became so impatient with
the stubbornness of George Herbert and Caroline Waddington that I
lost my sympathy for them. It's hard to be a good fan when your team
is losing.
Little bright spots appear throughout the book. The dialogue between
Caroline, as Lady Harcourt, and her husband strikes a note of
detachment reminiscent of the dialogue in Noel Coward's _Private
Lives_. One can almost hear Carol Lawrence saying Lady Harcourt's
lines in response to her husband's question:
"I hope you are happy, Caroline?" said Sir Henry, as he gently
squeezed the hand that was so gently laid upon his arm.
"Happy! Oh yes--I am happy. I don't believe, you know, in a great
deal of very ecstatic happiness. I never did."