England, and he very quickly found willing buyers of shares, hopes,
and dreams. Like Professor Harold Hill in _The Music Man_, "When he
dances, the piper pays him." But when he makes his speech to his
directors, it is one that would not do for BBC. In its production,
David Suchet is Melmotte larger than life, full of vitality,
projecting himself with a powerful personality. Trollope's text
would not have been such good theater; in it we see a man who is not
eloquent, mostly looking at his plate. His eager audience, however,
cheers him "to the echo."
The way we live now is portrayed not as a society that is sold a bill
of goods by a huckster, but as one that carried the huckster out over
his head even further than he might have ventured on his own. "It can
hardly be said of him that he had intended to play so high a game,
but the game that he had intended to play had become thus high of its
own accord. A man cannot always restrain his own doings and keep them
within the limits which he had himself planned for them."
Fisker is the little tugboat that nudges the mighty Melmotte out into
the deep. "He had sprung out of some Californian gully, was perhaps
ignorant of his own father and mother, and had tumbled up in the
world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he
had sufficed to give the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus
Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness."
What Melmotte does understand is "credit." In attempting to browbeat
Paul Montague, Melmotte rages, "Gentlemen who don't know the nature
of credit, how strong it is--as the air--to buoy you up; how slight
it is--as a mere vapour--when roughly touched, can do an amount of
mischief of which they themselves don't in the least understand the
extent!"
Melmotte does of course come to grief, from having forged the
signature of Dolly Longstaffe, feckless son of Adolphus Longstaffe,
authorizing transfer of the title deed for the house to Melmotte.
He also forged his daughter's signature and his secretary Croll's
signature to a document giving him access to his daughter Marie's
money. Elected to Parliament at about this time, the rumors of
the forgery cause his stock prices to collapse. Melmotte's final
performance is to go drunk to the House, attempt a speech, fall to
the floor, go home and commit suicide with prussic acid.
Set against these affairs of such great pith and moment, the story
of Winifred Hurtle is a welcome relief. She was the American woman
(another foreigner in England) who pursued Paul Montague to England,
where she asserts her rights as an engaged woman, threatening legal
action if Paul should break their engagement, and presumably spending
several nights with him, according to a narrative a bit skimpy in
such details.
The memorable climax of the story is the suicide of Melmotte; but
Trollope lets the dark side die with the great financier. There are a
few marriages. And the share prices of the South Central Pacific and
Mexican Railway begin to rise again as Fisker gets back to work on
selling shares in America. What went up came down; and it came back
up a little.
We follow the fates of a large cast of characters. Perhaps we don't
see that much into the soul of Melmotte. His actions and words
speak for him. For once, Trollope doesn't take us into the head
of a character who plays such a pivotal role. But we follow the
meditations of Paul Montague, Hetta Carbury, and others in the usual
detail. Not such a likeable lot, but their stories hang together and
justify claims that this is among Trollope's greatest novels, if
not the greatest. It was Trollope's longest novel, and perhaps its
greatest accomplishment is that the reader is entertained by the
light touch that keeps such a dreary story of human stupidity from
being abandoned after a few chapters.
WHAT'S A POOR GIRL TO DO?
THE AMERICAN SENATOR
Elias Gotobed is the American senator in Trollope's novel of the
same name. And in the last chapter the author reveals that Larry
Twentyman, a rising young yeoman farmer, "has in truth been our
hero." But more memorable than either of these is Arabella Trefoil,
the husband hunter. Life was not easy for ambitious Victorian women.
Success might have been achieved, with great difficulty, in several
different endeavors, but the only path that really led a woman to a
high place in society was through birth or marriage. And to this end
Arabella aspired.
She herself did not care much for pleasure. But she did care to
be a great lady--one who would be allowed to swim out of rooms
before others, one who could snub others, one who could show real
diamonds when others wore paste, one who might be sure to be asked
everywhere, even by the people who hated her. She rather liked
being hated by women and did not want any man to be in love with
her--except as far as might be sufficient for the purpose of
marriage.
Her great sin is that she pursues Lord Rufford, a more eligible
catch, while still engaged to John Morton, squire of Bragton. And in
introducing her, the author does tell us, "She had had many lovers,
and had been engaged to not a few." No one pretends that Trollope was
an advocate of feminism. And she hardly emerges as a heroine. And yet
a sympathetic reader of the present day can see her as a victim of
her times. What, indeed, was a poor girl to do?
Poor, yes, but not without some family connections--enough to put her
on the bubble of society--enough, perhaps, to make her feel obliged
to reach for success. Her father was the younger brother of a duke.
Her other assets were strength and determination, beauty, wit, and
enough freedom from scruples to lead her into trouble. "As for caring
about him, Mamma," she had once said of a suitor, "of course I don't.
He is nasty and odious in every way. But I have got to do the best I
can, and what is the use of talking about such trash as that?"
If Arabella is the memorable character, her memorable scene is the
one in the postchaise after a hunt when she succeeds in drawing from
Lord Rufford a positive response that he loves her--but nothing more.
At this point she knows that he will go no further, but she resolves
to use what she has gained to try to bring him to the altar, fainting
helplessly upon his shoulder. As it happens, Lord Ruffton calls her
bluff and escapes. Can you blame a girl for trying?
What of the American senator? In Elias Gotobed we find the prototype
of the Ugly American, described in the novel that gave the
phrase to our political vocabulary, as pretentious, loud, and
ostentatious--changed, in some way, when they leave their native
land. Senator Gotobed's sins in England are a bit different. Loud,
yes. Lacking in tact, yes. Convinced of the superiority of American
ways, yes. But unlike the Ugly American in Vietnam, Mr. Gotobed was
not required to expose his bad manners to a third world country; his
opportunity was to go to the mother country and demonstrate how a
rebellious child behaved toward the parent.
We are introduced to Mr. Gotobed as he meets his host John Morton,
the absentee squire, and views Bragton Hall--"quite a pile," he
declares.
Mr. Gotobed is diligent in his research and amasses enough data to
prepare a lecture for the edification of the English public. He
accurately identifies some English ways, such as primogeniture,
voting restrictions, and inappropriate clerical wealth, which would
not much longer survive the scrutiny of the masses. One suspects that
Trollope was using this as another means of exposing these little
ways for the entertainment of his readers, and he was able to use a
broader brush for this purpose than he used in his own depictions of
these same institutions. As an American, I find Mr. Gotobed a rather
tiresome caricature of the nineteenth century American. But his
likeness resembles a number of others so closely that I fear I might
have found some of the real Americans of the time rather tiresome.
The virtues of the English way of life are not lost on Mr. Gotobed.
He concedes in his letters to his friend in the USA that the English
gentleman is indeed charming, even though idle; pleasant and able to
discuss almost any subject, even though he may know very little about
it; and hospitable. In addition to these gratuitous observations,
he does insert himself into the activities of the community by
supporting the cause of Mr. Dan Goarly, accused of poisoning Lord
Rufford's foxes.
And here we have the mystery of the red herrings. In an earlier
incarnation of the battle between fox hunters and those who
considered it a barbaric sport, the animal rights advocates sometimes
left red herrings in a fox's path, obscuring the scent so that the
hounds were unable to stay on the right trail. Hence our term that
applies to a diversion that takes one off the correct pathway to
solving a problem. And in this case it was worse. It was suspected
that the herrings were laced with strychnine to poison the hounds.
Mr. Gotobed, ardent in his opposition to the absurd sport of hunting
and killing foxes, defies the conventional wisdom of the village that
knows Goarly to be a scoundrel, because he thinks any sabotage of a
fox hunt is worthy of support. In this effort he fails.
An ardent devotee of fox hunting, Trollope often used the hunt as a
piece of the plot in his stories, and his descriptions of the sport
convey the authenticity of the literate sportsman. Each of my two
paperback editions of _The American Senator_ show hunt scenes on the
cover. And in this novel the hunt shows us Senator Gotobed in his
quixotic defense of sabotaging the sport, and Arabella Trefoil on the
hunt for Lord Rufford.
The world of the English gentry of which Trollope wrote was not such
a large one that prominent characters from other stories might not
sometimes make their appearance; and the faithful Trollope reader
will smile to get a glimpse of Lady Chiltern and the Duchess of
Omnium, old friends from the world of the Palliser series, as they
visit the home of the Duke of Mistletoe, Arabella Trefoil's uncle.
And one last bit of trivia: When Senator Gotobed presents his lecture
enumerating the follies of the English, he is shouted down and some
cry, "_Buncombe!_" Also spelled bunkum and sometimes shortened to
bunk, this term for nonsense traveled across the Atlantic as the
legacy of a congressman from North Carolina, whose district included
Buncombe County, after he felt obliged to "make a speech for
Buncombe" in Congress.
The main plot is complicated and a bit commonplace, introduced in the
first chapters that require the reader to go through with a marking
pencil to identify the players, their generations, and their family
relationships. The requisite dues having been paid, the reader may
then go on with the story, but one is still obliged to return to
these chapters for reference. Less patient generations of readers
have limited tolerance of such introductions, even though some of
the author's capsule comments can be quite quotable, as in this
observation in describing Lawrence Twentyman: "And his farming was
well done; for though he was, out-and-out, a gentleman-farmer,
he knew how to get the full worth in work done for the fourteen
shillings a week that he paid to his labourers--a deficiency in which
knowledge is the cause why gentlemen in general find farming so very
expensive an amusement."
If Lawrence Twentyman is the real hero of the story, he is a
frustrated hero, unsuccessful from start to end in his courtship
of Mary Masters, threatening to sell his farm and emigrate to New
Zealand when he fails to win her. He loses Mary, daughter of the
lawyer whose family has handled the Morton family business for
generations, to Reginald Morton, some fifteen years their senior and
heir to the property. Reginald's cousin, John Morton, is the squire
of Bragton until his untimely death of "gastric fever." (What was
"gastric fever?" Did he have typhoid fever? Or just a convenient
diagnosis in the "chapter of accidents" that a novelist must resort
to?) John is a victim of Arabella's scheming, introduced as her
fiancé in a match with no outward signs of affection. He is employed
in the foreign office, is assigned to the United States, is known by
his colleagues as "The Paragon," and is later assigned to Patagonia,
a remote outpost of the foreign service. John's grandmother dreams up
schemes that require closer attention to family feuds than the casual
reader will be willing to undertake; Reginald's great-aunt Lady
Ushant is the good gentlewoman who is Reginald's champion, and she
also befriends Mary Masters. Mary is constantly harassed by her
wicked stepmother who urges her to accept Larry Twentyman and avoid
the temptation to associate with the gentry. In particular, Mary is
urged not to go "Ushanting" by visiting kind Lady Ushant.
This is all well and good, and it's enough to keep the story going;
but it's pretty predictable Trollope fare. Arabella, the American
Senator, and the poisoned red herrings are the spice to the story.
LESSER BARCHESTER
IS HE POPENJOY?
_Is He Popenjoy?_ puts us in familiar Trollope territory: the
cathedral and close, and the manor house. We have a lord of the
manor, the Marquis of Brotherton, who exercises his rights with
such persistent rudeness that one is hard pressed to think of any
redeeming virtues; and from there the cast of characters is a
familiar one: his younger brother, Lord George, a lesser Plantagenet
Palliser, a dull fellow who marries a true heroine, Mary Lovelace,
and proves that he hardly deserves her when he allows himself to get
his fingers burned by his first lover, Adelaide Houghton, because
he can't figure out how to avoid it. Mary's father, the Dean of
Brotherton, is a lesser Archdeacon Grantly, rich enough to provide
money for his impoverished son-in-law, and too ambitious and proud
to keep from offending Lord George with his largesse. Lord George
has four ugly sisters, close to a straight copy from Cinderella's
stepsisters, who intimidate poor Mary with their family position and
their good works for the poor. One of them, Lady Susanna, is worse
than the others and at one time visits Mary as an unwelcome duenna.
The eldest, Lady Sarah, is better than the others and sometimes sees
the light.
Essentially a comic novel, it is almost a farce. The curious
interrogatory title (a bit clumsy, like _Can You Forgive Her?_) is
finally elucidated after about a hundred pages when it is learned
that the hated Marquis, who has left England to live in Italy,
has (perhaps) married an Italian countess and has had a son, Lord
Popenjoy. But no Englishman can trust the Italian institutions. Is he
really married? Is the child legitimate? "Lord Popenjoy" is the title
of the heir to the Marquis. Is he really Popenjoy?
The Dean doubts it, for if the Marquis has no legitimate son, the
title will pass to his brother Lord George at his death; and then
the Dean's grandson, should he have one, will be next in line. The
Marquis's sibs are all skeptical, but they are hesitant to offend
their brother. The Dean does not hesitate.
The story proceeds as the Marquis advances from villainy to villainy;
he writes to announce the birth of his son and that he will return
home. His mother, four sisters, and brother are all to be turned out
and obliged to move far away from the family estate. He finally makes
his appearance, one third of the way into the book, and insults them
all, saving his most cutting sarcasm for the dean, whom he refers to
as "that stable boy."
Mary is a credible heroine. She likes to have fun, and she is a
bit indiscreet with her friend Jack de Baron, whom she unwittingly
encourages to the point that he falls in love with her after she has
become Lady George. And the author, who tells us a lot, never tells
us so in so many words, but she surely loves him. But the author does
tell us that she succeeds in her effort to come to love her husband.
Halfway through the book, "She was ever trying to be in love with
him, but had never yet succeeded in telling even herself that she
had succeeded." But in the process of fighting off a rival--Adelaide
Houghton, whom she never forgives--she becomes pregnant, and
enduring a separation related to her husband's resentment of his
father-in-law's interference in family affairs, she finally convinces
herself that she has succeeded in learning to love her husband.
Among the Victorian customs that jar the current reader, that of the
wife's duty to obedience is a note that clangs: "The husband would
of course be indignant at his wife's disobedience in not having left
London when ordered by him to do so."
The author indulges in some sideswipes at the movement for the rights
of women. The German advocate is shown to be a money-grubber, and the
American expert with the nasal twang, Dr. Olivia Q. Fleabody, "made
a rapid fortune out of the proceeds of the hall." Women came twice
a week to hear her preach that "a glorious era was at hand in which
women would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in
courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances
at their bankers."
A woman's duty was to find a husband, and the man's duty was to make
it difficult for her. All this sounds as though P. G. Wodehouse had
read Trollope and had taken it a bit farther.
He did not mean to marry Guss Mildmay. He did not suppose that she
thought he meant to marry her. He did not love her, and he did
not believe very much in her love for him. But . . . [he] had run
his bark on to the rock, which it had been the whole study of his
navigation to avoid. He had committed the one sin which he had
always declared to himself that he never would commit. This made
him unhappy.
Mr. Groschut, the dean's secretary, plays Mr. Slope to the bishop.
His letter to the rude Marquis is the only flattering or kind letter
the Marquis receives. (The family tries to be nice to the Marquis,
but they don't flatter like Mr. Groschut does.) And in the end Mr.
Groschut is banished, honored only by being the subject of the book's
last paragraph: "Of Mr. Groschut it is only necessary to say that
he is still at Pugsty, vexing the souls of his parishioners by
sabbatical denunciations."
This book could be legitimately recommended in a paraphrase of the
familiar line: "If you loved _Barchester Towers_, you'll like _Is He
Popenjoy?_" No, that's not strong enough. If you loved _Barchester
Towers_, you'll really like _Is He Popenjoy?_.
TOO NEAR THE PRECIPICE
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
The Cliffs of Moher, now among the sites being considered for an
upcoming list of the Seven Wonders of the World, have become the most
visited tourist attraction in Ireland. However, there were only a few
other visitors when our own little family of five, mist swirling in
our faces, paid our respects in 1974. These sheer precipices, facing
the Atlantic from the western coast of Ireland, had shed their cloud
cover; and our primary concern was to keep the children away from the
edge.
Young Frederick Neville, the new Earl of Scroope after his uncle's
death, gave no thought to how close he was to the brink as he stood
there with Mrs. O'Hara while her daughter Kate, pregnant with the
young Earl's child, waited in the cottage. That was the problem, of
course: the young Earl paid little heed as to how near he might come
to any precipice--hence the liaison with Kate O'Hara, a beautiful
Irish lass whose cottage was not so far from his regimental quarters
as to prevent his frequent visits. This connection, so offensive to
his family at Scroope Manor in Dorsetshire, is the story of _An Eye
for an Eye_, written by Anthony Trollope in 1870.
This short novel is set both in Ireland and in England. After setting
his first two novels in Ireland, Trollope later returned to the Irish
countryside for _Castle Richmond_ and, some ten years later, _An Eye
for an Eye_, which he wrote shortly after a return visit to Ireland.
The towering physical feature of the story is the collection of
cliffs. The towering social institution is the order of the nobility
of England. Like other institutions, practices, and ideas that appear
to be threatened by common sense, this one required vigilant defense
and faithful observance of its demands. In this story we find young
Frederick Neville called, somewhat to his surprise, by his uncle
the Earl of Scroope to be his heir. It would be inconvenient for
Frederick to become the Earl. A handsome young man in the process of
sowing his wild oats, he had a few more to sow.
And so he does. Frederick returns to his regiment in Ireland and
pursues his infatuation with Kate O'Hara of the lonely Ardkill
cottage, knowing as he does so that whatever her personal attractions
and gifts, he lacks the courage to present her in Dorsetshire as
Countess of Scroope. The Earl, before his unexpected death, insists
that Fred abandon his Irish conquest and marry the fair and well-born
Sophie Mellerby.
The women weigh in pretty heavily on the issue. Kate's mother, we
learn, has been married to a Captain O'Hara, presumed to have died
after misadventures. We see her walking beneath the cliffs, where
she would remain for hours, "with her hat in her hand and her hair
drenched."
In this she anticipated the memorable Sarah Woodruff, played by Meryl
Streep in the film adaptation of John Fowles's novel _The French
Lieutenant's Woman_, hooded and patient, looking out at the storm
from the end of the Cobb in Lyme Regis. In each case, the impression
is the same: don't trifle with this woman.
But the drumbeat of the story has begun. Mrs. O'Hara reflects as
she observes the development of love between Frederick Neville and
her daughter: "Men are wolves to women, and utterly merciless when
feeding high on their lust."
After the Earl dies, Frederick must decide. Although his brother Jack
advises him to marry the Irish lass and bring her home and be done
with it, Frederick is swayed by the advice of his aunt, the late
Earl's widow. Lady Scroope, in turn, relies on information from her
friend Lady Mary Quin, who sends her regular letters with the gossip
from Ireland. Lady Mary entertained no qualms as to the young Earl's
duty: he must marry Sophie Wellerby. "There are women, who in regard
to such troubles as now existed at Ardkill cottage, always think that
the woman should be punished as the sinner and that the man should be
assisted to escape."
The die is cast. Although Frederick, as the new Earl, attempts to
have it both ways and pull a Duke of Windsor (in a century before
Wally Simpson's disruption of the monarchy), his proposal to leave
the property to his brother and take Kate to Europe and marry her
there is scorned by his brother and by the priest who advises Kate
and her mother.
And so the young Earl finds himself on the cliffs of Moher, near the
edge and confronted by the mother of the woman he has deflowered and
deceived.
Trollope framed his story by introducing us to a madwoman in a
private asylum in western England, who cornered everyone she met
with her mantra, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The
narrator then reassures the reader that there will be no more of the
asylum story, but there will be the story of how the woman happened
to come there; and the reader thus knows in advance that this will be
a story with a violent ending.
It's a relatively short (160 pages) novel with a single thread
that leads the players to their fate. They are not presented as
bad people. The reader can have some sympathy for each of them as
they make their way along, overmatched and overshadowed by the
overwhelming Cliffs of Moher and the binding institutions of the
time.
WHAT HAPPENS IN AUSTRALIA . . .
JOHN CALDIGATE
Anthony Trollope sailed to Australia in 1871 to visit his son Fred.
(He wrote one novel, _Lady Anna_, during eight weeks of the voyage
out.) While visiting a goldfield in Currajong, New South Wales, he
met one of his son's school mates who had visited in the Trollope
home. As he described it in _Australia and New Zealand_ (1876):
I saw him in front of his little tent, which he occupied in
partnership with an experienced working miner, eating a beefsteak
out of his frying-pan with his claspknife. . . . He had no
friend near him but his mining friend,--or mate, as he called
him. . . . He had been softly nurtured, well educated, and was a
handsome fellow to boot; and there he was eating a nauseous lump
of beef out of a greasy frying-pan with his pocketknife, just in
front of the contiguous blankets stretched on the ground, which
constituted the beds of himself and his companion. It may be that
he will strike gold, and make a fortune.