who amasses more gambling debts than he can pay while a student at
Cambridge and subsequently forsakes his inheritance of the family
estate and strikes out for Australia. He falls in love with a local
girl, Hester Bolton, after only seeing her once before he leaves, but
on the ship he has an encounter with "Mrs. Smith," also in the second
class section, and they talk about marriage. We then follow John
Caldigate to the goldfields, where his experiences are basically
those described above. And then we fast forward some four or five
years and see him returning home a wealthy man. But what about the
woman from the ship--who became known in Australia as Mademoiselle
Cettini, singer and dancer? The text is silent.
Armed with maturity and money, John patches up his relationship with
his strict father and becomes reinstated as the heir of the family
estate in the fens near Cambridge. Despite misgivings by her family,
Hester, the young girl of his dreams, agrees to marry him, and the
young hero appears to be triumphant in all. But the reader is less
than halfway through the book, and it's too early for a happy ending.
And now we begin to learn more about the woman from the ship. After
John and Hester are married and have a child, he receives a telegram
from his mining partner in Australia, asking for a large sum of
money. He then receives a letter from the woman, signed, "Euphemia
Caldigate," in which she says she will return their marriage
certificate to him if he pays the money to Tom Crinkett, his former
partner; and then she will marry Crinkett and make no further claim
on him. Otherwise "the law must take its course."
So what did happen in Australia? Caldigate immediately goes to
Hester's brother, a lawyer in Cambridge, and shows him the letter. In
response to hostile questioning from Robert Bolton, he states that it
is all true except that he was never married to her. He concedes that
he was "very intimate with her," and that she lived with him as his
wife. When a Wesleyan minister called on her to upbraid her, she said
that John had promised to marry her, and John did not deny it. When
Bolton asks him if she used his name there, he replies, "It was a
wild kind of life up there, Robert, and this was apparent in nothing
more than in the names people used. I daresay some of the people did
call her Mrs. Caldigate. But they knew she was not my wife."
Oh, these Victorians! "It was a wild kind of life up there." How does
this play in England? Answer: Not well. Caldigate is believed by
his father, his priest, and, most importantly, by his wife. It soon
becomes apparent that Hester has developed from a quiet maiden lass
sitting in the corner, into an assertive wife and mother, willing
to defy her mother, father, and brothers in defense of her husband
and herself. And here we meet one of the blackest villains Trollope
has given us: Mrs. Bolton, mother of Hester and second wife of her
husband. Mrs. Bolton was a zealot of the low church (which provided
Trollope with several of his villains), and her daughter's suitor
never convinced her by his attendance at Sunday services that he
was anything other than a "lost sinner." His father did not attend
church, and despite John's efforts to keep up appearances, he did not
have a history of perfect attendance at divine services. And there
were even rumors of a relationship with a Mademoiselle Cettini in
Australia. John made an explanation to Hester, which she accepted.
But Mrs. Bolton never gave her blessing to the match, and although
her daughter finally persuaded her to attend the wedding, she only
did so as a heavily veiled spectator from a back pew.
And then it becomes known that he has been accused of having had a
wife in Australia! With the consent of her stepsons and the grudging
consent of her husband, Mrs. Bolton lures her daughter to Puritan
Grange, the Bolton home. In a great scene of conflict, she makes her
a prisoner there. We have come to learn by this time that Hester is
endowed with all her mother's determination and stubbornness. When
Hester finds the doors locked against her, she seats herself in
the hall with her baby in her arms, opposite her mother, seated in
another chair. Hester spends the night stretched out on the floor.
Although Mr. Bolton pleads with his wife to let her go, she is more
concerned with the salvation of her daughter's soul than with such
earthly consequences as murder. "Oh, He knows! He knows! And if He
knows, what matters what men say that I have done to her." (Mrs.
Bolton shares this concern for the welfare of the soul, at the
expense of the body, with another of Trollope's zealous villains,
Aunt Charlotte in _Linda Tressel_.)
In the end Hester's half brothers decide that she must be allowed to
leave, and after a three-day standoff the gates are unlocked, and she
bids goodbye to her parents and leaves.
In this scene Mrs. Bolton had outdone even the wife of Bishop Proudie
in the Barsetshire novels. Mrs. Proudie stands as a comic figure in
comic novels, but there is little comedy about Mrs. Bolton. Her sin
is the same as Mrs. Proudie's--an excess of zeal in the cause of
religion--but here there is little to laugh at.
After this climax, the story plays itself out, but it is clear that
Hester will not be defeated. John Caldigate is tried and convicted
of bigamy. Prior to the trial he even finds himself conscience-bound
to pay twenty thousand pounds (he had received from his Australia
ventures some sixty thousand pounds) to Tom Clinkett, Mrs.
Smith-Cettini, and their two conspirators, who had not been so
fortunate as he with their market timing. (Trollope's visit to the
gold mines had convinced him that the gold seeking was all a gamble.)
At this point this reader lost patience with John Caldigate, and it
is said that his editor did, too, but Trollope refused to change the
story, saying that it was essential to the plot.
While John Caldigate is languishing in prison, further evidence in
the case is uncovered. Ever the postal service man, Trollope gives
us a detailed look at how close inspection of postmarks and stamps
helps determine whether an important envelope addressed to "Mrs. John
Caldigate" in John's hand was stamped before or after it was alleged
to have been sent.
The attitudes toward John Caldigate's wild oats are interesting. His
wife's family is horrified, as are some others who feel personally
involved. But the consensus of (male) public opinion in Cambridge was
that what happens in Australia stays in Australia. "It was a wild
kind of life up there." From what we know of the double standards in
Victorian morality, it's of interest that a popular novel dared to
present a hero with a history of such indiscretion.
This is a good Trollope novel. The plot is an ingenious one. The
long paragraphs in which the details of the characters' thoughts are
teased out and dissected can be scanned or simply skipped by the
modern reader. Some people really are as earnest and naive as John
Caldigate. I doubt that very many readers have swallowed the twenty
thousand pound gift as a plausible one, but given Caldigate's
character it's at least possible--though, in my estimation, unlikely.
I had to set the book aside a couple of times when I thought the
author was sailing into rougher seas than I cared to navigate.
(Trollope could not be relied upon to avoid maudlin unhappy endings
at times.) But in the end the reader has had a visit to the
Australian gold fields, has gone through a trial for bigamy, and has
been well entertained.
A GIFTED CHILD
AYALA'S ANGEL
Gifted children are a blessing to society, but they can pose their
little challenges along the way. Such a gifted child is Ayala Dormer.
Quick and witty, and pretty when she smiles, Ayala receives offers of
marriage in rather quick succession from a number of men, eligible
and ineligible, and she refuses them all, more than once, for a
reason she cannot disclose: she is waiting for the appearance of the
Angel of Light, the perfect knight: "How could she make her aunt
understand that there could be no place in her heart for Tom Tringle
seeing that it was to be kept in reserve for some angel of light who
would surely make his appearance in due season,--but who must still
be there, present to her as her angel of light, even should he never
show himself in the flesh."
In her adherence to this belief she shows herself to be one of
Trollope's Constant Heroines, though surely an outlier among the
lot. Others remained constant to better men, some being rewarded in
this life, some not. But Ayala's adherence is to her own ideal, thus
causing a great deal of trouble to those around her, and, I fear, to
a number of readers.
This sometimes tedious story is made palatable by Ayala herself, who
is as capable of charming the reader as she is of winning the love
and loyalty of many of those around her. Her sister's lover Isadore
Hamel captures with a vivid simile her bursts of energy, recalling
to the reader of Tolstoy the similar sudden rays of sunshine that
charmed those who knew Natasha, the heroine of _War and Peace_:
"I remember her almost as a child, when she would remain perfectly
still for a quarter of an hour, and then would be up and about the
house everywhere, glancing about like a ray of the sun reflected
from a mirror as you move it in your hand."
Ayala and her sister Lucy have been left as senior orphans (a young
Victorian woman could not live alone or move about in society
unaccompanied) who are taken in by their late mother's brother and
sister: one sister to each. Although this becomes a bit complicated
when Ayala becomes unsuitable to the aunt who has chosen her and the
girls change places, Ayala wins the love of the uncle in each of
the two households. In doing so she presents a bit of a problem to
each of the aunts--to one because she is a bit poky in assuming the
household duties required of a woman in an impecunious household,
and to the other because she outshines her aunt's own two daughters.
Providing some relief from Ayala's quest for her angel are the
subplots that constitute the comedy of manners in which Trollope
excels. These little subplots are so entertaining, why bother with a
serious major plot? It takes an uncommonly skillful genius to satisfy
the reader with nothing but pies and cakes. _Barchester Towers_, one
of the earlier Trollope novels, came close; it contains only enough
serious plot to serve as a scaffolding for the satire of the clerical
community of Barchester. And Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ comes to mind
as a long novel of the same period designed to demonstrate what fools
mortals be. In Ayala's case, fools disport themselves around her
while she is waiting patiently for her knight.
First among these is Tom Tringle, even though the author's sympathy
for him tells us that his foolishness is temporary, and he is
destined to grow up, though not necessarily within the confines of
the present novel. Tom is a hobbledehoy, and one suspects that the
author may be recalling his own youth when he reminds us that though
a young man and woman may be about the same age, the young woman is
often more advanced in her knowledge and understanding of the world
and of how to comport herself. Tom suffers from this truth, showing
himself to be one who may yet prove himself to be a late bloomer, but
too late to be a successful suitor for such a prize as Ayala.
But though women often outshine and outperform the men in their
lives, they suffer the restrictions of Victorian society. Living in a
later age in which women have won the right to assert themselves more
successfully, the differences between men and women still provide
the basis for novels, short stories, and drama. Today a woman may
knock on the door of a man who does not return her text messages, but
men may still be boys while the girls in their lives are women. No
Victorian woman novelist knew this better than Anthony Trollope, who
described the world as he found it; and the circumstances spoke for
themselves.
And here lies the comedy of manners, presented on the stage of the
household of Sir Thomas Tringle, a wealthy man of business. Sir
Thomas is vexed by his son-in-law Septimus Traffick, a man of birth
and a Member of Parliament, but also devoid of fortune or income and
sufficiently thick of skin to ignore all Sir Thomas's efforts to
dislodge him and his wife Augusta from the Tringle home, whether in
town or country.
Augusta, the elder of the two Tringle daughters, is sufficiently
haughty to provoke Ayala, in one of the pivotal moments in the story,
to ask Augusta to run upstairs and fetch a scrapbook for her. Such
effrontery cannot be forgiven. Now more than ever, Augusta often
finds it necessary to remind both her family and the poor Ayala that
she is married to one of the most important men in the country.
The younger sister pushes herself into the comedy by asserting that
she too must be blessed with dowry and husband, and in her sequential
pursuit of two ineligible young men, she invites each in his turn to
elope with her to Ostend.
The unfortunate Tom Tringle, son and heir to Sir Thomas Tringle, may
be the biggest fool of all, betraying himself by his dress as he
adorns himself with gaudy jewels and ornate finery when he comes to
see Ayala. His offer to fight a duel with his rival Colonel Jonathan
Stubbs provides the same mockery of the code of honor as does a
similar offer in _The Macdermotts of Ballycloran_. However, the
author finally confesses to the reader that Tom Tringle is the real
hero of the novel. His folly is that of youth, and his devotion
to his ideal is his redeeming quality. Tom and Ayala share a
determination to adhere to the highest standard in pursuit of a mate,
and it may be that this youthful idealism and perseverance cause them
to be the author's declared hero and heroine.
Another variant of the relation between the sexes appears in the
on-again, off-again romance between Frank Houston and Imogene
Docimer. Lacking the means to support themselves in the manner to
which Frank has become accustomed, they have already broken off an
engagement when the reader meets them. Frank, who declares frankly
that he has no intention of working for a living, becomes the first
of two suitors for the hand of Gertrude Tringle and the handsome
dowry she is expected to bring with her. In this suit he finds
Gertrude more than willing to accept him and assume the same elevated
status of a married lady that her sister has already attained.
Already vexed by the reluctance of his newly acquired son-in-law
Septimus Traffick to vacate the premises and establish a home of his
own, Sir Thomas refuses to promise any dowry at all to Gertrude if
she marries another potential parasite upon his resources. Frank
wavers between one young woman (Imogene) who would accept him in
spite of his poverty because she loves him, and another young woman
(Gertrude) who would accompany him, or almost any Tom, Dick, or
Harry, to Ostend, the favored destination of eloping English couples.
Sir Thomas follows the foolishness of the Tringle family with
despair. His trenchant observations provide the voice of reason
in assessing the motives and machinations of the members of his
household who concern themselves with how best to capitalize on the
wealth his business affairs have brought them.
The problems of the poor are less farcical. Imogene waits to see what
the fates will have in store for her as her true and less than worthy
lover pursues the Tringle prize. Ayala's sister Lucy and her poor but
proud lover Isadore Hamel push themselves along by fits and starts to
their goal of matrimony.
And in the midst of this beehive of activity sits Ayala, stuck on
high center in her reluctance to commit herself to any suitor who
does not meet her impossible standards. Time after time she refuses
a perfectly suitable lover, Colonel Jonathan Stubbs. Here the author
repeats for the long-suffering reader her reason:
He was not the Angel of Light,--could never be the Angel of Light.
There was nothing there of the azure wing upon which should soar
the all but celestial being to whom she could condescend to
give herself and her love. He was pleasant, good, friendly,
kind-hearted,--all that a friend or a brother should be; but he
was not the Angel of Light. She was sure of that.
Friends and family make certain allowances for gifted children, and
Ayala's friends and family entertain the reader with scheme after
scheme for leading her to the light, if not to her own preconception
of her Angel of Light. Angels are in Heaven; men of flesh and blood
walk the earth, and it takes Ayala a long time to figure this out.
And as she does so, the patient reader is diverted by the folly of
those on this earth who are far less than angels.
And finally, another compensation for the reader is the author's
indulgence in presenting old favorites from a previous novel, _The
American Senator_, written three years before _Ayala's Angel_. (Both
were products of his later years--_The American Senator_ in 1875 and
_Ayala's Angel_ in 1878. Trollope's stroke and his death were in late
1882.) He named Larry Twentyman as the hero of _The American Senator_
in its last pages, but Larry did not win the hand of Mary Masters,
who married Reginald Morton. Hopes for a match between Larry and
Mary's younger sister Kate are mentioned in the conclusion of that
novel, but "Kate is still too young and childish to justify any
prediction in that quarter." Larry's modest reward at the end of _The
American Senator_ is that Mary gets him to swear that he will be her
friend.
But in one of the fox hunting scenes in _Ayala's Angel_, who
should appear as one of the popular habitués of the hunt but Larry
Twentyman, married less than a year to Mary's sister Kate. Lord
Rufford, "now the happy father of half-a-dozen babies," can no longer
jump a fence. Her ladyship is always telling him not to jump over
anything he can avoid, and he acknowledges that he does "pretty much
what her ladyship tells me." And we are told further, "No doubt she
generally was right in any assertion she made as to her husband's
affairs."
Trollope took care of his heroes. Had he lived long enough, surely
Tom Tringle would have reappeared at a later stage in his life with
some of the success that the author predicted for him.
KEEPING THE OLD ACREAGE TOGETHER
COUSIN HENRY
"_Cousin Henry_ is an original novel," Anthony Trollope wrote his
publisher, "but it is not for me to say so." I think Trollope's pride
in his accomplishment is justified. It's a short novel (280 pages),
and it follows with few distractions the thought processes of a weak
and indecisive young man who is summoned to his uncle's large estate
in Wales and told that since he is the only male descendent, he will
inherit it, "unless you show yourself to be unworthy." Henry's cousin
Isabel Brodrick has been living with her uncle, and he would prefer
to leave it to her, since it is not entailed and he has the right to
do so. The uncle soon deems Henry to be unworthy, but the uncle soon
dies, and the will leaves the property to Henry. But Henry knows
there was a later will changed to leave it all to Isabel. Only he
knows where it is. What is he to do? This is what Trollope considered
to be his original contribution: he follows the nephew's vacillating
attempts to resolve his dilemma so that not only does the author
consider his portrayal of these mental agonies to be plausible, he
arranges for the family lawyer, Mr. Apjohn, to guess exactly what the
young man has thought and what he plans to do.
Does he convince the reader? Yes, I'll accept it. The author holds
all the cards, of course, but I find it believable that a young man
could be this indecisive. He wants the farm, but he doesn't want
to commit a crime to get it and keep it. Everyone knows that Henry
is concealing something, and this is perceived through nonverbal
communication. The housekeeper and Isabel notice how pale, wan, and
spiritless he has become.
Isabel has a suitor, the Reverend William Owen, and they both show
themselves to be proud and stubborn lovers similar to such other
Trollope couples as Caroline Waddington and George Bertram in _The
Bertrams_. Mr. Owen withdraws his suit when he learns that Isabel
is to be an heiress (by an even earlier will) because he considers
himself too poor to press his suit on a wealthy woman. Then when
Isabel appears to be disinherited, he makes his proposal, but Isabel
refuses him because she considers herself so poor that she would
drag him into poverty. However, the author has mercy on them. After
Henry is found out by the wily Mr. Apjohn, Isabel boldly goes to her
lover's house, steps close to him and urges him to kiss her. (Here
the reticent Victorian novelist indulges in a bit of sensuality.)
Then she tells him that he could never hold his head up again if he
should refuse to marry her after "that."
"And I beg, Mr. Owen, that for the future you will come to me,
and not make me come to you." This she said as she was taking her
leave. "It was very disagreeable, and very wrong, and will be
talked about ever so much. Nothing but my determination to have my
own way could have made me do it."
Perhaps it would be going too far to say that all Trollope's women
outclassed the men, but the women's victories far outnumbered those
of the men.
Mr. Apjohn, the Jones family lawyer, believes that Cousin Henry has
cheated Isabel out of her inheritance by concealing or destroying the
final will, and he bullies Henry into an effort to clear his name in
public by bringing suit for libel against the local newspaper, which
has taken great interest in the suspicion of tampering with a will.
Mr. Apjohn then deprives us of a courtroom drama when he correctly
interprets Henry's body language and solves the mystery. But we
do encounter the dreaded Mr. Cheekey of the Old Bailey, perhaps a
slightly less unscrupulous and unsavory barrister than the infamous
Mr. Chaffanbrass of several earlier novels, but one who still "would
make his teeth felt worse than any terrier."
Only a glimpse of a vast English country estate is sufficient to make
quite clear the importance of inheritance in the English scheme of
things. The oldest male heir gets it all. The other sibs get nothing,
unless the father or the firstborn son is gracious enough to make
some provision for them. Trollope explored variations on this theme
in _Is He Popenjoy?_ and _Orley Farm_, among others. In _Cousin
Henry_, the entire community plays the role of the Greek chorus and
condemns the suspected crime. But the tenants of the estate and the
servants are all convinced that Cousin Henry is not the true heir.
They don‘t like him, and the servants all give notice of resigning
their posts. Trollope allows the victorious Mr. Apjohn to summarize
his thoughts about primogeniture. Here is the unabridged sermon:
"A man, if an estate belong to himself personally, can do what he
likes with it, as he can with half-crowns in his pocket; but where
land is concerned, feelings grow up which should not be treated
rudely. In one sense Llanfeare belonged to your uncle to do what
he liked with it, but in another sense he shared it only with
those around him; and when he was induced by a theory which he did
not himself quite understand to bring your cousin down among these
people, he outraged their best convictions."
"He meant to do his duty, Mr. Apjohn."
"Certainly; but he mistook it. He did not understand the root
of that idea of a male heir. The object has been to keep the
old family, and the old adherences, and the old acres together.
England owes much to the manner in which this has been done, and
the custom as to a male heir has availed much in the doing of
it. But in this case, in sticking to the custom, he would have
lost the spirit, and as far as he was concerned, would have gone
against the practice which he wished to perpetuate. There, my
dear, is a sermon for you, of which, I dare say, you do not
understand a word."
"I understand every syllable of it, Mr. Apjohn," she answered.