to his niece if he had been consulted beforehand. As it was, when
he hears of it, he immediately determines that it is improper.
Considering it his duty to make arrangements for his niece's
welfare, he arranges what he thinks to be a suitable match with a
prospering--though a bit effeminate--young man who calls at the inn
while trading in textiles. M. Urmand suffers in comparison to George
in Marie's eyes; to her he is simply a "rich trader," while George is
a "real man."
Marie's relation to Michel, the master of the inn, is an interesting
one. She supervises all that takes place at the supper table in
the inn, "standing now close behind her uncle with both her hands
upon his head; and she would often stand so after the supper was
commenced, only moving to attend upon him, or to supplement the
services of Peter and the maidservant when she perceived that they
were becoming for a time inadequate to their duties." When urged by
her uncle to sit at table next to Urmand, the anointed suitor, her
only response is to gently pull his ears.
This is one of the short novels Trollope set in Europe in an effort
to break away from the template of his portrayals of English life.
_The Golden Lion_ is in Alsace-Lorraine, and in this memorable image
of Marie, Trollope has epitomized the Continental culture, so foreign
to the English. Can one imagine a young English woman standing behind
her uncle with her hands on his head while supervising his table?
Michel is the character of interest. The others play their parts,
with events propelled in large part because of lack of communication.
When Marie learns that George is still serious about his love for
her, she brings herself to vow that she will never marry M. Urmand;
but it apparently does not occur to her that she can marry George
without his father's permission. As for Michel himself, he appears
to have painted himself into a corner. The Church will certainly be
of no assistance to him. The Catholic priest is summoned to consult.
"This was very distasteful to Michel Voss, because he was himself
a Protestant, and, having lived all his life with a Protestant son
and two Roman Catholic women in the house, he had come to feel that
Father Gondin's religion was a religion for the weaker sex." He was
not troubled by doctrinal differences, nor was he too particular
about what betrothal meant. "He hardly knew himself how far that
betrothal was a binding ceremony. But he felt strongly that he had
committed himself to the marriage; that it did not become him to
allow that his son had been right; and also that if Marie would
only marry the man, she would find herself quite happy in her new
home." Indeed, all Marie's senior advisors--her aunt, her uncle, the
priest--fail to give her credit for having a mind, or rights, of her
own. After a short time of marriage to her betrothed, she would be
perfectly happy with her new domestic arrangements and forget all
about the love of her youth.
Trollope does allow the postal service to play its role. When Marie
decides to break it off with Urmand, she does so by writing him a
letter, and not telling her uncle about it until the letter is safely
on its way.
In the end, it's all worked out by the men. The matter is finally
settled when M. Urmand comes to the Golden Lion to settle things, is
avoided by Marie, and spends his time playing billiards alone. George
is also on hand, and he manages to have some long tramps in the
fields with his father, mostly discussing business affairs. Michel
enjoys the walks with his son, and a satisfactory resolution ensues.
The story is paced with a light and masterful touch. A climactic
scene between Marie and Urmand is followed by stepping away from
Marie's little room to a long range view in the first line of the
next chapter: "The people of Colmar think Colmar to be a considerable
place, and far be it from us to hint that it is not so. It is--or was
in the days when Alsace was French--the chief town of the department
of the Haut Rhine." It is in this perspective that Michel rests from
his decision-making labors to return to his genius for making plans,
announcing his plan for a picnic the next day. It's too cold for a
picnic, but all go. Urmand is shown to be a friend of the family,
speeches are made, and toasts are drunk. All is well.
_The Golden Lion of Granpere_ is a short, straightforward little love
story. It gets deeply enough into the details of running a rural inn
in Alsace Lorraine to be entertaining. As is usual with Trollope,
a number of lengthy paragraphs give the reader no excuse for not
knowing exactly what each character is, or is not, thinking. Trollope
the traveler learned enough about Europe for a few little short
novels. Perhaps they afforded him the breaks he needed between the
three-volume English blockbusters.
HOW TO BECOME A LADY
LADY ANNA
One doesn't discuss titles and honors much these days. We may even
pretend that they don't matter much, and that in these days of
democracy and equality we have no ambition for such frills. My wife
and I recently spent half a day with a friend of two of our friends,
and we were told before the meeting that he was the "Right Honorable"
and had recently been made a Knight Companion in the New Zealand
Order of Merit after a distinguished political career. Of course this
was nothing that I would have mentioned to him; he dismissed very
quickly even a comment of recognition I made on seeing his portrait
over his staircase. But the title is out there, and I will be hard
pressed to report our visit to any of our friends without making some
offhand reference to the "Right Honorable."
We tend to smile at the emphasis placed on hereditary and acquired
titles in Victorian England. They still exist, however, and the
reader can hardly dismiss as completely dated the central role that
the issue of a hereditary title plays in Anthony Trollope's _Lady
Anna_. As the title of the novel indicates, the heroine is not just
"Anna Murray"; she is "Lady Anna," and the story moves about the
efforts of her mother to establish the legitimacy of the title. The
plot is an ingenious, if improbable, one:
The unscrupulous Earl Lovel has married a commoner, but shortly after
the marriage he informs her that he has previously married a woman
in Italy, and that their marriage is not valid. This means that she
is not his Countess, and their unborn child will not be legitimate.
Needless to say, she does not take this well, and she spends the
rest of her life fighting for her title and for that of her daughter.
In almost fairy tale fashion, an humble tailor helps her in her
struggle, providing encouragement and significant loans of money. In
the fullness of time the tailor's young son and the Countess's young
daughter move from being childhood friends to sweethearts, and they
vow to marry each other. The tailor's son, Daniel Thwaite, becomes a
radical advocate of equality for all and abolition of nobility.
The countess becomes obsessed with the defense of her title, and so
vehemently does she oppose her daughter's preference for a commoner
that she threatens violence and forcibly keeps her daughter
sequestered from the young radical.
The late cunning Earl had so arranged his affairs that though his
land and title would devolve upon his nephew, his immense wealth was
in personal property--stocks and other investments that would go to
the Countess and Lady Anna if his previous marriage to an Italian
wife were not verified.
A young Earl Lovel appears, heir to the title and perhaps to the late
Earl's wealth; whatever had happened in Italy is a great mystery, and
the lawyers for the Countess and for the Lovel family fail to find
any evidence that they consider strong enough to convince an English
jury that an Italian woman should hold an English title. Facing a
lengthy dispute, the lawyers for both sides of the family decide
among themselves (!) that a compromise should be reached, and that it
could best be accomplished by a marriage between the two sides of the
family: the young Earl and Lady Anna.
The young Earl is agreeable to this, and he woos and proposes to
Anna. All involved parties, most notably Lady Anna's mother, urge the
match; but Anna and Daniel the tailor resist all these efforts.
In the presence of such fairy tale elements, the American reader
might expect that the author's sympathies would lie with the young
lovers, and their fate would constitute either a pathetic failure,
or a true fairy tale ending with justice emerging triumphant, with
a rousing authorial chorus. But the warring parties are a bit more
complex. Daniel Thwaite is initially presented as "a thoughtful man
who had read many books." But we are also told that Daniel Thwaite
was a man of a certain power. "Men are persuasive, and imperious
withal, who are unconscious that they use burning words to others,
whose words to them are never even warm. So it was with this man."
And though Trollope had a predilection for the woman who has but one
heart to give and never looks back, and though Lady Anna is stated to
be one of this sorority--"She had given her heart to Daniel Thwaite,
and she had but one heart to give"--it is at least granted to Lady
Anna to have some daydreams: "She already began to have feelings
about the family to which she had been a stranger before she had
come among the Lovels. And if it really would make him happy, this
Phoebus, how glorious would that be!"
Trollope was never one to use the blue pencil over passages that
spelled out how his characters felt. Not for him the implications and
brevity of a later day. We see Daniel Thwaite not as a pure young
idealist, but as one with a flip side:
Sir William Patterson had given him credit for some honesty, but
even he had not perceived,--had no opportunity of perceiving,--the
staunch uprightness which was, as it were, a backbone to the man
in all his doings. He was ambitious, discontented, sullen, and
tyrannical. . . . Gentlemen, so called, were to him as savages,
which had to be cleared away in order that that perfection
might come at last which the course of nature was to produce in
obedience to the ordinances of the Creator.
Development of this story provides no reassurance that Anna will
escape from her troubles; after all, a significant mortality risk
does accompany certain Victorian novels. As it turns out, her rescue
does require a bit of stage business with the desperate countess
attempting to use a pistol properly. But the story does evolve with
credible development of character: Anna is indeed tempted to throw
over her original lover and opt for the life of ease among the
nobility. And the author does tell us, in one of his authorial
asides, that if the countess and the lawyers had played their cards
more skillfully, they might have persuaded Anna to give up Daniel
Thwaite if they had given him his due for integrity and virtue
instead of trying to persuade Anna of his greed for her money.
However, their efforts to blacken him in her eyes only increased her
determination to stick by the humble tailor no matter what.
Thwaite is shown to be corrupted to the extent that he will listen
to Sir William Patterson, the Solicitor General, the lawyer for the
Lovel family, when he explains things to him at the end. Sir William
is shown to be the _deus ex machina_ who had also persuaded the Lovel
family that there should be some accommodation with the Countess and
her daughter Lady Anna. It is true that he had advocated a marriage
of convenience, but as this became less likely, he still arranged a
compromise between the Lovels and the Countess in court, conceding
that the widowed countess's marriage was a legal and binding one. And
he did this over the objections of members of the family--chiefly
"Uncle Charles," the rector of Yoxham.
And so the "great decider of all things" comes to Daniel in the end
and congratulates him on his success, and we find that Daniel likes
and respects Sir William, though he attempts to maintain his total
opposition to nobility in general and the Lovels in particular.
This conversation is presented with skill and humor as the author
takes the reader into his confidence, revealing what the story is
all about. Here are Sir William's comments on the great theory of
equality: "The energetic, the talented, the honest, and the unselfish
will always be moving towards an aristocratic side of society,
because their virtues will beget esteem, and esteem will beget
wealth,--and wealth gives power for good offices."
The eloquence of the urbane lawyer is not lost on Daniel Thwaite.
The reader comes to believe that Anna and Daniel have responded to
circumstances and modified their views of the world somewhat. Not
so the Countess. Determined to do anything to make a wealthy and
respectable Lady of her daughter, the Countess disgraces herself and
disappears.
One of the byproducts of the story is another of Trollope's portraits
of the warts and all of the clergy, in the person of the rector of
Yoxham, who never wavers in his opposition to the legitimacy of Lady
Anna. This results in an entertaining example of how certain words
could and could not be used in Victorian print:
"---- Sir William!" muttered the rector between his teeth, as he
turned away in his disgust. What had been the first word of that
minatory speech Lord Lovel did not clearly hear. He had been
brought up as a boy by his uncle, and had never known his uncle
to offend by swearing. No one in Yoxham would have believed
it possible that the parson of the parish should have done
so. . . . But his nephew in his heart of hearts believed that the
rector of Yoxham had damned the Solicitor-General.
_Lady Anna_ is a fairy tale, as are many of the best stories. One can
hardly do much better than to use a good fairy tale as a framework
for entertainment, if the elements of originality are grafted onto
the framework. In this case genial humor in the face of looming
tragedy, and credible character development, allow the appreciative
reader to go along for the ride, and the moments of pleasure justify
the occasional tedium along the way.
TERRITORY FOLKS SHOULD STICK TOGETHER
HARRY HEATHCOTE OF GANGOIL
It was sheer coincidence that I happened to be reading Trollope's
only Christmas novel--_Harry Heathcote of Gangoil_--on Christmas
day. A Christmas story had been requested for the _Graphic_, and the
resulting novel, which was Trollope's shortest, appeared in the 1873
Christmas issue of the magazine. To mark it as a Christmas story, it
duly began, "Just a fortnight before Christmas, 1871, a young man,
twenty-four years of age, returned home to his dinner about eight
o'clock in the evening."
The author had just returned from a year's visit to his son, who was
a sheep herder in Australia, and the character of Harry Heathcote
was acknowledged to be based on his son. Australia was England's Wild
West, and this story is a Western, with its issues resolved by a
no-holds-barred fight between the good guys and the bad guys.
"Territory folks should stick together,/Territory folks should
all be pals," is the teaching of the square dancers in Rodgers and
Hammerstein's _Oklahoma_, but Harry Heathcote has not learned this
bit of wisdom when he becomes suspicious that his neighbor Mr.
Medlicot might even be involved in starting the fires that threaten
his sheep, their pastures, and the fences that enclose the paddocks
where they graze. Mr. Medlicot is a free-selector, one who purchases
a relatively small piece of land and farms it, in this case raising
sugar cane on 200 acres. Harry Heathcote, on the other hand, runs
his sheep over a vast area, some 120,000 acres--"almost an English
county"--but he doesn't own the land. He rents it from the English
Crown, at so much per sheep, and he fears the encroachment on his
acreage by the free-selectors.
Arson was a capital offense in Australia at this time, and Harry
Heathcote pushes himself to exhaustion in the summer heat, riding out
at night to look for mischief. His brusque manners have not won him
many friends, and some disgruntled ranch workers are indeed setting
fires. In the heat of the struggle he does finally learn that it
helps to have a friend or two. Mr. Medlicot provides assistance,
incurring a broken collar bone in the ensuing melee, and the alliance
of English aristocrats is cemented by the betrothal of Mr. Medlicot
to Harry Heathcote's sister-in-law.
The bad guys are sent packing, Harry learns a lesson, and the lovers
join hands. "'That's what I call a happy Christmas,' said Harry, as
the party finally parted for the night." Zane Grey could hardly have
scripted it better.
Trollope appeared to relish his versatility as a story teller, and
though he is often identified with the English settings of the
Barsetshire and Palliser series, his travels and his novels ranged
all over the world. He used his first hand knowledge of Australia
to good advantage in _Harry Heathcote_, his only novel to be set
entirely in this English colony. It's a short, well-constructed
story, and after working through the introductory chapters, the
reader is rewarded with a quickly told romance, a rousing bush fight,
and a happy ending, all wrapped up as a Christmas story.
THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
It seemed that there was but one virtue in the world, commercial
enterprise--and that Melmotte was its prophet.
Sometimes a fictional character can take on a life of his own during
the writing of a story, and even after publication, capturing the
imagination of the author and thereafter of the public. Sherlock
Holmes, Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Hamlet, and Uncle Tom have all become
iconic in our popular culture. [2] I doubt that any of Trollope's
characters make any of the "Top 100" lists; that's part of the
Trollope problem: he's just not that well known. But if he were, who
would make the list? Mrs. Proudie, Obadiah Slope, Lady Glencora,
Mr. Crawley, Plantagenet Palliser perhaps--all these are from the
Palliser and Barsetshire collections. And from the other novels--the
"singletons"--Augustus Melmotte would certainly take his place. In
this century he would be assisted by the strong portrayal by David
Suchet in the 2003 BBC production, in which he is described as "this
huge monster, Melmotte, sitting like a fat spider, drawing all the
other characters into his great scheme."
[Footnote 2: Lucy Pollard-Gott, who has launched a website
fictional100.com, lists her top ten: Hamlet, Odysseus, Don
Quixote, Eve, Genji, Oedipus, Don Juan, Chia Pia-Yu, Sherlock
Holmes, and Arjuna.]
_The Way We Live Now_ has been described as a work of bitterness and
disillusionment, but the tone of the book is not one of bitterness.
It is certainly satirical; but one could believe that the character
of Melmotte stepped in and ran away with the story, just as he swept
through London society in 1873 (the year it was written--remember
"_Now_" in the title). One would be hard pressed to say that _The Way
We Live Now_ heralded a precipitous darkening of Trollope's view of
the world. He did continue to explore the folly of mankind in the
novels that followed--_The Prime Minister_, with the appearance of
Ferdinand Lopez, an ambitious, unscrupulous foreigner like Melmotte;
_Is He Popenjoy?_ featuring the arch villain the Marquis of
Brotherton; _The American Senator_; _The Duke's Children_; and _John
Caldigate_. The more Trollope experienced the world, the more targets
for his satirical pen appeared.
_The Way We Live Now_ is replete with such targets. Likeable
characters are lacking. Two exceptions are Mr. Brehgert, the Jew who
tolerates the frank anti-Semitism of Victorian England with saintly
perseverance; and John Crumb, "the dealer in meal and pollard at
Bungay," who loves Ruby Ruggles and thrashes the useless young Sir
Felix Carbury when he assaults her. (Pollard is a fine protein-rich
feed supplement for farm animals; it is a byproduct from the milling
of wheat for flour.)
Melmotte is introduced as a foreign element that intrudes on English
society in the fourth chapter, in which we learn that he is the giver
of a great ball. Having just arrived in London from Paris about
two years earlier, he admitted that his wife was a foreigner--"an
admission that was necessary as she spoke very little English."
Though Augustus Melmotte, Esq., spoke his "native" language fluently,
he had "an accent which betrayed at least a long expatriation." His
daughter Marie "spoke English well, but as a foreigner," and had been
born "out of England"--perhaps in New York or Paris.
Only a foreigner could have done what Melmotte did. It is likely
that Trollope, who amused himself and us with his observations of
the English "as they lived then," did not think that a native-born
Englishman could have disrupted society in such a way. This foreigner
came in with an ambivalent attitude toward the English. He thought
they were gullible enough to buy his schemes, but an essential
part of his ambition was his desire to obtain a position of great
prominence in English society. He would buy a country place,
Pickering, from Adolphus Longstaffe, the squire of Caversham in
Suffolk, and he would remodel it so that he could be a country
gentleman. He would get himself elected to the House of Commons. He
would obtain a noble title--perhaps a baronetcy. His daughter would
marry Lord Nidderdale. His wealth and his connections would bring all
these things.
The traditional English life that Trollope so revered was crumbling.
Adolphus Longstaffe cannot afford to maintain the social schedule
that his wife and children enjoy, and the sale of family property
offers an expedient solution. Sir Roger Carbury strives to maintain
his country place, but he finds himself powerless to marry and carry
on his family line. He has set his heart on marrying his cousin Hetta
Carbury when she comes of age, but the young girl has little interest
in marrying an older man. Hetta's mother, Lady Carbury, attempts to
charm editors and other writers into praising and publishing her
books so that she can save herself and her worthless son, Sir Felix
Carbury, from financial ruin.
Which of these can the reader like? None of the above. And there
are more. Paul Montague is a young man who has had to leave Oxford
because of some unfortunate rows, and he has spent three years in
California, losing his fortune in unsuccessful business ventures and
becoming engaged to a woman who may or may not have shot her husband
in Oregon. He thinks he can escape her by returning to England, but
she pursues him. Like Pinocchio, he falls into bad company (the
Beargarden Club in London). Hetta Carbury (to whom Sir Roger has
unsuccessfully proposed marriage) falls in love with the young man,
little more than a hobbledehoy who consistently gets in over his
head, whatever the venture. Yet it is Paul who is the only one to
attempt to ask questions at the board meetings of the South Central
Pacific and Mexican Railway, and he is the first to discover that
Melmotte had been diverting its funds to such personal uses as
rebuilding the Longstaffe house in the country.
Such is The Way We Live Now. The country is going to the dogs, led by
a foreign Pied Piper with a strange accent. Here is his introductory
description:
Mr. Melmotte was a big man with large whiskers, rough hair, and
with an expression of mental power on a harsh vulgar face. He was
certainly a man to repel you by his presence unless attracted
to him expenditure, powerful in his doings, successful in his
business, and the world around him therefore was not repelled.
It appears that had not Melmotte appeared, someone in London would
have invented him. As it happened, his great project was actually
invented by Hamilton K. Fisker, the young American who had met Paul
Montague in California and made a partnership with him. It was Fisker
who concocted the idea of the South Central Pacific and Mexican
Railway and sold the idea to Melmotte. The presentation was brief.
Melmotte and Fisker understood each other. The documents referred not
at all to future profits to the railway or to its benefit to society;
they emphasized rather the appeal of such stock to the "speculating
world."