John Caldigate by Anthony Trollope

“Most of us would have to blush if the worst of our actions were brought out before us in a court of law.”

Time for another Trollope, and I selected one of the author’s Overseas Novels. John Caldigate is noteworthy for two reasons: part of the novel takes place in Australia and another large section concerns a criminal case involving postal stamps. Indeed the unsung hero of the story is Bagwax, a humble yet obsessive and conscientious postal office clerk. There’s a lot of Trollope in this novel–after all, he was a post office clerk who rose, eventually, within the post office ranks, and Trollope and his wife traveled to Australia, the first time in 1871 to visit their son Frederic who had become a sheep farmer in New South Wales.

The novel concerns a young man, John Caldigate, the only son and heir of a country squire who is set to inherit his father’s Cambridgeshire estate, Folking and an income of 3,000 pounds a year.  Unfortunately, while at Cambridge, John developed some bad habits and fell foul of money lenders. When the novel begins, John ‘cashes’ out his inheritance, pays off his debts and intends to sail to Australia to make his fortune in the gold mines. John’s father, so disappointed in his son, has mortgaged the estate and given his son his inheritance in advance. With a breach between them, John’s father contemplates making his nephew his heir instead.

Very early on, the novel establishes that when it comes to women, John has a problem. Before he sails to Australia with his best friend, Dick Shand, the son of the local doctor, John has managed to somehow become engaged to one girl and left another with the impression that some sort of ‘understanding’ exists between them. But these two girls have no idea that John has also set eyes on Hester Bolton, the daughter of the local banker, and carries her image in his head when he sails for New South Wales. Ok, that makes three women, but then on board the ship, aptly named The Goldfinder, both Dick and John are attracted to a somewhat mysterious young woman who calls herself, Mrs. Euphemia Smith. Mr. Smith is conspicuously absent and it’s rumoured that he was “a ne’er-do well” who “drank himself to death within a year of the marriage.” Mrs. Smith dresses very poorly, and yet would seem to be a lady:

The woman was so constantly alone! And then, though she was ill-dressed, untidy, almost unkempt on occasions, still, through it all, there was something attractive about her. There was a brightness in her eye, and a courage about her mouth, which had made him think that, in spite of her appearance, she would be worth his attention–just for the voyage.

Dick and John, eager to begin their lives as Australian miners, are second class passengers on the ship, and yet when they mingle with the others, they fail to blend. They’ve outfitted themselves in what they think are the clothes that miners wear, and consequently they look more as though they are in costume  than anything else. With many months spent on board ship sailing to Australia, John’s relationship with Euphemia grows–in spite of the fact that passengers, Dick Shand and even the captain warn him that he is making a fool of himself.

They were about a week from their port when the captain,–Captain Munday,–was induced to take the matters into his own hands. It is hardly too much to say that he was pressed to do so by the united efforts of the first-class passengers. It was dreadful to think that this unfortunate young man should go on shore merely to become the prey of such a woman as that.

John sees the general disapproval of his relationship with Euphemia Smith as snobbery, and that is certainly part of it, but there are depths to Mrs. Smith that are unfathomable, and young John Caldigate, an innocent with a number of scrapes to his credit, cannot see the warning signs. Part of Euphemia’s attraction is that she is worldly and therefore much more interesting when compared to the other young women John has known. At one point Euphemia Smith makes the following speech:

If you had made a false step, got into debt and ran away, or mistaken another man’s wife for your own, or disappeared altogether under a cloud for a while, you could retrieve your honour, and, sinking at twenty-five or thirty, could come up from out of the waters at thirty-five as capable of enjoyment and almost as fresh as ever. But a woman does not bear submersion. She is draggled ever afterwards. She must hide everything by a life of lies, or she will get no admittance anywhere. The man is rather the better liked because he has sown his wild oats broadly.

As in Can You Forgive Her? and The Claverings, Trollope examines the issue of choosing a marital partner–a crucial matter in Victorian England. What’s so interesting in this novel is that John is a young man whose prospects change. At first he’s the only son set to inherit a respectable estate and income. Then he abandons his home, sells out his inheritance, and sets out for Australia to make his fortune. When he returns, he returns as a success. His past is his past. But is that entirely true?

Trollope relishes enriching the plot with scenes of rigid religious intolerance seen mainly through the single-minded Mrs. Bolton, a very taxing woman, and the self-satisfied, slimy clergyman of Plum-cum-Pippin, Mr. Smirkie–a man who lives up to his name. As the novel develops, Trollope also gets on his soap box and delivers a couple of lectures about the efficiency of the much-under-valued civil servant which is accompanied by the general benevolence of government seen through a subset of characters at the London post-office: Mr. Curlydown and the indefatigable Mr. Bagwax.  It’s through these characters that Trollope slips in a criticism of Dickens: a “popular novelist” who “endeavored to impress” the ‘”public” “that the normal government clerk is quite indifferent to his work.” John Caldigate doesn’t rank as one of my favourite Trollope novels. It waxes on too long at the end, but it was enjoyable and a change of pace for this author. The novel’s deeply intriguing undercurrent, and one that isn’t addressed directly in the novel is the question: Does what occurs in the wilds of distant Australia have any bearing on English law? After all: “it was a wild kind of life up there.”

The Claverings by Anthony Trollope

It was time for another Anthony Trollope, and while I can’t explain why I decided to read The Claverings, this selection, as it turns out, is a good companion novel for the recently read Can You Forgive Her? While Can You Forgive Her? concerns a woman who vacillates back and forth between two suitors, The Claverings is the tale of a young man who can’t choose between two women.

The novel begins by landing us into the action as the very beautiful Julia Brabazon drops, finally, forever and rather cruelly, the love of her youth, Harry Clavering in favour of an advantageous match with the very wealthy and much older, “debauched” Lord Ongar, a repulsive man who wears an “elaborately dressed jet black wig.” Harry accuses Julia of being a “jilt,” and while she doesn’t deny that, she attempts to mollify Harry’s accusations with arguments of practicality. Trollope gives us some wonderful numbers to play with here (I’ve been obsessed with the cost of living in the 19th century since reading George Gissing’s novel, New Grub Street). We learn that Julia has 200 pounds a year to live on but owes 600. Lord Ongar lives on “perhaps” 60,000 a year. Harry Clavering’s father, Reverend Clavering earns 800 pounds a year, but that income is “nearly doubled” by his wife’s fortune.  On that income and with a curate to do most of his work, Reverend Clavering hinges on Country Gentleman status. In fact, he used to be a “hunting parson” until Bishop Proudie “lectured” him about the appropriateness of the activity. Now Reverend Clavering reads poetry and novels to the exclusion of everything else. 

Harry doesn’t want a career in the church despite his father’s encouragement and obvious easy lifestyle. Instead he plans to make his own way in the world and after Julia dumps him, Harry goes to Stratton to become an apprentice civil engineer living at the home of the Burtons. There he falls in love with the last daughter of the house (all the other daughters have also married previous apprentices), Miss Florence Burton. Now Florence isn’t as majestically beautiful as Julia, but she is the better person. Harry has the niggling feeling that somehow he’s been hooked by the Burton family into falling in love with their daughter. Of course, part of this feeling can be explained by the fact that Harry has simply followed in the footsteps of all the previous apprentices who lived at the Burton home. This repeated pattern of behaviour suggests that Harry isn’t particularly unique, and then again, the Burtons are a step down in the social stratosphere.

Harry, eager to wed, presses for an early marriage, and Florence opposes him on this issue. She argues that they should wait until Harry’s career is well established as she thinks that Harry would not cope well with poverty. The issue of money again rears its head–Florence will have a 100 pounds a year from her father, and Harry will earn 150 pounds annually in his new profession. He thinks this is plenty to live on, but Florence disagrees. The subject of sex also lurks under the surface of this pressure, and the disagreement over the issue of whether they should wait to marry quickly or delay the wedding day leads to the first rift between the engaged couple. Also around this time, the now widowed Julia Ongar returns to England under a cloud of scandal….

Harry Clavering, engaged to Florence Burton, finds himself championing Lady Julia Ongar, and he becomes a frequent visitor to her London home. Confused and bewitched, he no longer understands his own heart. Harry isn’t much of a hero as he’s young, plastic and weak.

Since the title of the novel is The Claverings, naturally the plot concerns other family members apart from Harry. Harry has two sisters, Mary and Fanny. While Mary marries Reverend Fielding, an appropriate match, in a minor aside Fanny is courted with persistence by the very serious and impoverished curate Mr. Saul–a man who earns a mere 70 pounds a year. Of course all these doings focus on the parsonage, but there’s another branch of the family at the ‘great house’ – Now to look at the family tree: Reverend Henry Clavering is the uncle of  Sir Hugh Clavering of Clavering Park. Baronet Sir Hugh is married to Hermione née Brabazon, the older sister of Julia Brabazon, and we learn that they live on 7,000-8,000 a year. In spite of the close relationship between the families at the parsonage and at Clavering Park, there’s no love lost between the two sets of relations. Henry Clavering considers it his duty to remain on good terms with those who live at Clavering Park but he really can’t stand Sir Hugh. One scene in the novel includes an uncomfortable evening at Clavering with a very unpleasant Sir Hugh who acts rudely and does not bother to hide his boredom.

In this novel, Trollope addresses the restrictions placed on the decisions women face. Underneath all the talk of love and marriage lurks the idea of the lack of choices for women. Early in the novel, Julia tells Harry:

If you could only know how infinitely I should prefer your lot to mine! Oh, Harry, I envy you! I do envy you! You have got the ball at your feet, and the world before you, and can win everything for yourself.

and

You can choose, as I say; but I have had no choice,- no choice but to be married well, or to go out like a snuff of a candle. I don’t like the snuff of a candle, and therefore, I am going to be married well.  

While men may choose their careers, for women, their careers are marriage, and Trollope boldly addresses this reality. He tells us that Julia, who chooses to become a Countess was “mercenary” but adds, with generosity:

Were not all men and women mercenary upon whom devolved the necessity of earning their bread?

Of course we see where these ambitious marriages lead. Julia’s sister Hermione loves her husband, mean-spirited Hugh Clavering rather as an abused dog loves its human. Hermione is so desperate for love and attention that she opens herself up to scorn and derision from her heartless, mean-spirited spouse. Julia lives to regret her marriage and realises that she sold herself for worldly gain and made a very bad bargain in the process.

Bad characters always seem to be a great deal more fun to read about than good characters, and that is certainly true in The Claverings. Sir Hugh is a curious character–not a monster by any means, but there are important emotional components missing. He treats his wife appallingly, but then he’s not much better with anyone else in his circle. He barely tolerates his brother, Archie, loathes his uncle, and seems to dislike society on principle.

The Claverings is called One of the “three faultless” Trollope novels, but I’m not sure why that is. While I enjoyed the novel immensely (it is, after all, Trollope), I was never entirely convinced of Julia’s feelings for Harry Clavering. However, that niggling argument aside, some of the novel’s second tier characters are unforgettable. When Julia returns from Florence, she brings along the sneaky, opportunistic ”Franco-Pole” Sophie Gordeloup, who may or may not be a Russian spy. Madame Gordeloup’s brother, Count Pateroff, one of Lord Ongar’s friends, is in hot pursuit of Julia as he regards her as his prize. Count Pateroff and his peculiar sister seem to be beings from another planet, and they are treated as such by the other characters in the novel who are at a loss to know quite how to deal with this pair. At one point Julia tells Harry to seek out the Count, and in spite of knowing the Count’s address, Harry can’t track his quarry down for weeks. When they finally meet for dinner, the topic of conversation (the digestion and the refusal to discuss the consumption of horsemeat in a “besieged city,“) is steered firmly by the worldly, savvy Count much to Harry’s frustration.

While the Count sees the widowed Julia as his rightful property, that sort of fortune floating around gets attention, and Sir Hugh Clavering, who has no time for his sister-in-law Julia since scandal attached to her name, decides that she’s the perfect match for his brother, Archie. Archie consults his friend Captain Boodle on the matter of exactly how to lay siege to the beautiful wealthy widow, and the scenes between Archie and Boodle are hilarious. Boodle, incidentally is mentioned in a minor aside in the Vicar of Bullhampton. While Boodle’s extremely funny strategy for laying siege to the wealthy widow includes the advice to treat her like a horse, this section of the novel really takes off when Sophie Gordeloup becomes involved in the intrigue. Throughout the novel, Sophie behaves appallingly, and yet no one seems to know quite how to stop her. She’s rude, pushy, grasping, and duplicitous–in essence, she’s in a class of her own. Archie thinks she’s insane while Captain Boodle can’t help but admire her.

Sophie certainly makes short work of all the men who sniff around the widow. Here she is in a scene at Julia Ongar’s home after getting rid of Captain Archie Clavering:

“He was come for one admirer,” said Sophie, as soon as the door was closed.

“An admirer of whom?”

“Not of me; oh no; I was not in danger at all.”

“Of me? Captain Clavering! Sophie, you get your head full of the strangest nonsense.”

“Ah; very well. You see. What will you give me if I am right? Will you bet? Why had he got on his new gloves, and had his head all smelling with stuff from de hairdresser? Does he come always perfumed like that? Does he wear shiny little boots to walk about in de morning, and make an eye always? Perhaps yes.”

“I never saw his boots or his eyes.”

“But I see them. I see many things. He come to have Ongere Park for his own. I tell you, yes. Ten thousand will come to have Ongere Park. Why not? To have Ongere Park and all de money a man will make himself smell a great deal.”

“You think much more about all that than is necessary.”

“Do I , my dear? Very well. There are three already. There is Edouard [Count Pateroff], and there is this Clavering who goes with his nose in the air, and who thinks himself a clever fellow because he learned his lesson at school and did not get himself whipped. He will be whipped yet some day,-perhaps.”

It’s through this scene that we see that the secret to the limited success of the Count and his sister Sophie Gordeloup, two people who expect to make their fortunes in England is to be found in the fact that they bend the boundaries of polite behaviour. Julia is clearly sending a message to Sophie that she considers it impolite to discuss the subject, but Sophie simply doesn’t care.

Anyway, another wonderful Trollope novel. A word on my copy. I read the Dover issue with original illustrations and a foreword by Normal Donaldson. The Claverings was originally published in serial form in 16 parts in The Cornhill Magazine 1866-1867.

The Vicar of Bullhampton by Anthony Trollope

At just over 500 pages Anthony Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton is a vast, multi-plot Victorian novel in which a lot of things happen. While there’s a brutal murder, and a subsequent hunt for the murderers takes place, for the most part the action revolves around the flawed decisions–some petty and others of a much larger scale–that are made by various characters. As the title suggests, the main character is the vicar of Bullhampton, Frank Fenwick. His role in the novel isn’t at first immediately apparent, for when the novel begins, the story appears to centre on the courtship of Mrs. Fenwick’s friend and house guest, Mary Lowther, by another very close and dear friend of the Fenwicks, Harry Gilmore. Mr Gilmore is in hot pursuit of Mary, but in return, she’s not that keen to marry Mr. Gilmore. She doesn’t love Gilmore, and she has this notion that she wants to marry a man she loves. Unfortunately, there’s no small amount of pressure from the Fenwicks–particularly Mrs. Fenwick who argues that if Mary marries Gilmore, love will follow. Since Mary is practically penniless and Mr Gilmore is the affluent owner of the handsome nearby estate, Hampton Privets, Mary’s refusal to accept Gilmore is rather interestingly interpreted as an act of perversity rather than evidence of integrity.

Another sub-plot concerns the Miller Brattle and his large family originally of “some twelve or fourteen children,” and now with “six still living.” Two of Brattle’s children have gone astray–Carry Brattle, the family beauty has fallen into prostitution while Sam Brattle hangs out with a disreputable crowd and comes and goes at the mill. Miller Brattle, a man who tends to brood over and nurse his grievances, blames the vicar for Sam’s lack of discipline. Miller Brattle isn’t a bad man, but he judges everyone by his own standards of morality and behaviour: 

He was a man with an unlimited love of justice; but the justice which he loved best was justice to himself. He brooded over injuries done to him, -injuries real or fancied,–till he taught himself to wish that all who hurt him might be crucified for the hurt they did him. If any prayer came from him, it was a prayer that his own heart might be hardened that when vengeance came in his way he might take it without stint against the trespasser of the moment. And yet he was not a cruel man. He would almost despise himself, because when the moment for vengeance did come, he would abstain from vengeance. He would dismiss a disobedient servant with curses which would make one’s hair stand on end, and would hope within his heart of hearts that before the end of the next week the man with his wife and children might be in the poorhouse. When the end of the next week came, he would send the wife meat, and would give the children bread, and would despise himself for doing so. In matters of religion, he was an old Pagan, going to no place of worship, saying no prayer, believing in no creed,–with some vague idea that a superior power would bring him right at last, if he worked hard, robbed no one, fed his wife and children, and paid his way. To pay his way was the pride of his heart; to be paid on his way was its joy.

When the novel begins, Harry Gilmore’s proposal to Mary is a month old, and she still cannot give her answer. The Fenwicks are of one mind on the matter

Both she and her husband were painfully anxious that Harry might succeed. Fenwick had loved the man dearly for many years, and Janet Fenwick had loved him since she had known him as her husband’s friend. They both felt that he was showing more of manhood than they had expected of him in the persistency of his love, and that he deserved his reward. And they both believed also that for Mary herself it would be a prosperous and a happy marriage. And then where is the married woman who does not wish that the maiden friend who comes to stay with her should find a husband in her house? The parson and his wife were altogether of one mind in this matter, and thought that Mary Lowther ought to be made to give herself to Harry Gilmore.

A large part of the novel concerns Mary’s dilemma: should she or shouldn’t she marry a man she doesn’t love?

Another major sub-plot concerns a feud that erupts between the Marquis of Trowbridge and the Vicar over the matter of Sam’s involvement in the murder that takes place in Bullhampton. The Vicar, a man of staunch principles, but possessing scant diplomacy at times, offends the Marquis by speaking to him as an equal. As a result, the horribly offended Marquis, nearly apoplectic over the vicar’s insolence, uses the local dissenters led by Mr. Puddleham to exact his petty revenge against his arch-enemy, the well-meaning vicar of Bullhampton. Meanwhile the poor vicar is kept busy trying to ‘save’ both Carry and Sam Brattle and getting very little help from the rest of the Brattle family.

In some ways The Vicar of Bullhampton is a great companion novel to Can You Forgive Her? In that novel, the first of the Palliser series, Alice Vavasour is engaged to the eminently respectable Mr Grey, but she breaks the engagement only to become re-engaged to her disreputable cousin, George Vavasour.  Alice is unaware that she’s rather smoothly manipulated into this position by her best friend, George’s sister, Kate. And in The Vicar of Bullhampton, we see pressure delicately applied with steely determination by Janet Fenwick, Mr Gilmore and by Mary’s aunt. Indeed by the end of the novel, Mr Gilmore’s determination to wed Mary borders on the unhealthy. Is this obsession or simply a man who wants something that, for once, he can’t get? That’s for the reader to decide.

The other major female character in The Vicar of Bullhampton is Carry Brattle–the former family favourite who once turned to prostitution becomes the family pariah. She’s not as fully developed as Mary Lowther, and she remains more of a “type,” and that “type” is the fallen woman–or as Trollope calls her in the preface “a castaway.” While Trollope makes it clear that Carry has made bad choices which had a cumulative result, he shows that Carry’s hard-hearted, self-righteous relatives are largely a smug, unpleasant lot, and through this theme posits the argument that heartlessness and a lack of forgiveness are greater sins than a sexual indiscretion that led to abandonment and a life of prostitution. In The Vicar of Bullhampton Trollope exposes the folly of human behaviour, and through the Marquis of Trowbridge’s feud with the vicar we see class snobbery, while through the extended Brattle family, we see moral snobbery. Both forms of snobbery lead to the notion of superiority and a lack of accountability, and through his characters Trollope argues that we are not perfect and that none of us are above accountability to our fellow-man.

The Vicar of Bullhampton is simply a delightful novel. Yes, there are a couple of true villains here, but for the most part Trollope has created flawed human beings who act as they think best, and sometimes they learn to revise those decisions whether they want to or not. The vicar of Bullhampton must learn to forgive his enemy in spite of the fact that his deepest and most insulting grievances are not addressed, and the inflexible Miller Brattle battles an internal struggle over conflicting moral beliefs. Trollope’s impeccable presentation of these events ensures a lasting fondness for his all-too human characters.

Jury selection in Anthony Trollope’s The Vicar of Bullhampton

I’ll post a review of Anthony Trollope’s novel The Vicar of Bullhampton this month, but ever since I finished this marvellous novel, I’ve found myself thinking about a passage that concerns jury selection. A murder takes place early in the novel, and here towards the end of our story, jury selection begins. I was rather surprised by this passage:

At that moment the court was occupied in deciding whether a certain tradesman, living at Devizes, should or should not be on the jury. The man himself objected that, being a butcher, he was, by reason of the second nature acquired in his business, too cruel, and too bloody-minded to be entrusted with an affair of life and death. To a proposition in itself so reasonable no direct answer was made; but it was argued with great power on behalf of the crown, which seemed to think at the time that the whole case depended on getting this one particular man into the jury box, that the recalcitrant juryman was not in truth a butcher, that he was only a dealer in meat, and that though the stain of blood descended the cruelty did not.

I found this small aside, set within a 500 page plus novel, fascinating. The man’s objections were not dismissed out of hand–rather his livelihood was defined as ‘not to be cruel’ since he just sold the meat and was not a butcher after all.

In Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book The Jungle, the workers in an abattoir are desensitized to violence, and as a consequence rapes, murders and brawls occur. Strange to connect Trollope and Sinclair together, but the connection is there–even in just a small aside.

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

“He talked non-stop about my beauty, as all men do. If a woman were hump-backed, and had only one eye, they wouldn’t be ashamed to tell her she was a Venus.”

I have a backlog of reviews–something I’m never that happy about–but this does grant room for choice, and I decided to make a Trollope review my first post of the year. Can You Forgive Her?, the first of six Palliser novels, stands at 830 pages in my Penguin Classics edition (a different edition from the one pictured below). I read just a few pages at night, and what a delightful read this is. It’s not often you go to sleep chuckling at the foibles of human nature, and this is one of those novels I was sad to see end.

Can You Forgive Her? was originally published in monthly parts, so in typical Victorian multi-plot fashion, this is a huge rambling tale with a vast cast of characters and various sub-plots set against a glittering society of 19th century England. This is a complex world and Trollope hints that the world of marriage and the world of politics have a great deal in common.  To some readers, that description alone is enough to reject the book, but for this reader, Can You Forgive Her? was a leisurely excursion into the trials and tribulations of three women–specifically on the issue of marriage. These are the days in which wealthy women, when married, were stuck with the behaviour of their husbands. Marriage was a serious, permanent choice, and women were under tremendous pressure to make ‘suitable’ alliances. This issue is at the core of Trollope’s novel, and through the labyrinth plot, we see the struggles of three women as they make–or live with–the choices they make. These women live in an age of not exactly ‘arranged’ marriages, but let us say it’s the age of ‘organised’ marriage–and this is, as Trollope shows us, rather a fine line.

The novel’s main heroine is 24-year-old Alice Vavasour, and she’s the one–as the title suggests–is in need of forgiveness. It’s true that Alice makes some horrible mistakes in the course of the story, and the underlying explanation of her actions isn’t entirely successful, but more of that later.  When the story begins, Alice, the only child of a London bureaucrat is engaged to be married to John Grey–a handsome, good-natured gentleman of substance. Grey adores Alice, but for her part Alice has reservations. She keeps delaying the wedding day and while her relatives approve of Mr. Grey–who’s literally a paragon, there’s an edge of discontent nagging away inside Alice. She knows that she loves Mr. Grey but can’t quite see herself  living as Mrs. Grey bundled off to his country estate near Cambridge. Trollope tells us that part of Alice’s problem is that she would like to be married to a ‘great man,’–perhaps someone in politics, and this isn’t Mr. Grey’s bag.

Another problem Alice must deal with is that she’s been engaged before to her cousin, the wastrel George Vavasour, the brother of her best friend, Kate. We don’t know quite what went wrong but we can speculate that it was something scandalous enough for her to brook family criticism when she broke this first engagement. According to the elderly Lady Macleod, “the fact was, Alice, that George Vavasour’s mode of life was such that an engagement with him would have been absolute madness.”

When the book begins, we can believe that George’s largest fault lies in the fact he has no money, but as the plot plays out, George’s more unsavoury characteristics are revealed, and in any other continent or class we’d call him an adventurer, but in the upper echelons of British society, George’s true nature is largely concealed, and this is due in so small part to the fact that he actively compartmentalises his true nature.

But back to the plot. The book begins with Alice engaged to Mr. Grey and beginning various delaying tactics to postpone the wedding. One of those tactics is to take a European holiday with Kate and George, and several of Alice’s relatives are alarmed by this action due to Alice’s prior history with George. Alice’s travels seal her decision to jilt Mr. Grey, and Alice calls off her engagement to Mr. Grey claiming that she finds him too perfect, and then she becomes re-engaged to George. A mess ensues with Alice not really being able to make her mind up while her relatives, with the exception of Kate, becoming extremely frustrated with her ever-changing choice of fiancés.

Ok so that’s more-or-less the plot, but obviously there’s a lot more to the book than that. Two other plots run parallel to Alice’s dilemma, and the characters involved serve to enervate her argument against marrying Mr. Grey. While Alice shies away from marriage to Mr. Grey (even though she says she loves him), she argues that she wants a public life. At one point in the novel, she goes to stay with Lady Glencora Palliser at Matching Priory, and while this should be an opportunity for Alice to enjoy politically important company, instead she is intimidated by the heavily-nuanced society in which she feels uncomfortable.

Lady Glencora, one of the greatest heiresses in the country, once loved her cousin, the impoverished Burgo Fitzgerald, and she was steered away from Burgo and into the arms of the eminently respectable, but overly staid Plantagenet Palliser–a promising young politician and the heir of the Duke of Omnium. Alice goes to visit Lady Glencora, and there’s some history here as Alice refused to participate in secret assignations between Glencora and Burgo before her marriage to Palliser. Lady Glencora invites Alice to visit her, and while the primary idea is that Lady Glencora will set Alice straight by example, instead Glencora confesses that she is still madly in love with Burgo and bored and unhappy with Palliser. Alice becomes a bystander to Glencora’s unhappiness:

If he [Palliser] was dull as a statesman he was more dull in private life, and it may be imagined that such a woman as his wife would find some difficulty in making his society the source of her happiness. Their marriage, in a point of view regarding business, had been a complete success, –and a success, too, when on the other side, that of Lady Glencora, there had been terrible dangers of shipwreck, and when on his side also there had been some little fears of a mishap. As regards her it has been told how near she went to throwing herself, with all her vast wealth, into the arms of a young man, whom no father, no guardian could have regarded as a well-chosen husband for any girl; –one who as yet had shown no good qualities, who had been a spendthrift, unprincipled, and debauched. Alas, she had loved him! It is possible that her love and her wealth might have turned him from evil to good. But who would have ventured to risk her, –and I will not say her and her vast inheritance, –on such a chance? That evil, however, had been prevented, and those about her had managed to marry her to a young man, very steady by nature, with worldly prospects as brilliant as her own, and with a station than which the world offers nothing higher.

But while disaster seems to have been averted by Glencora’s marriage to Palliser, this is not a formula for Glencora’s happiness. She’s bored and extremely unhappy. Her situation isn’t helped by the fact that she’s monitored by two of Palliser’s toadies, and she’s under constant surveillance by the sanctimonious Mrs Marsham, and the loathsome Mr. Bott. Trollope shows us that the upper echelons of British society protects its assets but with little provision for personal happiness.

The third subplot concerns Alice and Kate’s widowed Aunt Greenow (Arabella Vavasour)– a woman whose state of wealthy widowhood allows her more freedom than any other female in the novel. As an old maid, she was a burden to her relatives who dismissed her as an “old flirt,” when suddenly and unexpectedly she landed a wealthy, elderly husband in ill health. After Arabella became Mrs. Greenow, her currency increased measurably within the family. Now she’s a widow, and unfettered by matrimony and fueled with money, Aunt Greenow is out to enjoy life, and she does so with gusto–taking Kate along for the ride. It’s through this character that Trollope’s humour shines. At Yarmouth, Aunt Greenow is pursued by no less than two suitors–the impecunious Captain Bellfield and Mr Cheesacre–a gentleman farmer of Oileymead who’s known as Cheesy. Both Bellfield and Cheesy desperately court Aunt Greenow while she plays fast and loose, claiming mourning (and an ever-shifting time period since the death of her dear Mr. Greenow) as an excuse against making a commitment. Bellfield and Cheesacre–rivals in adversity–are driven to extreme lengths in their amorous siege of the stubborn widow. They are rather like dogs fighting for possession of a bone, and at one point, Cheesacre decides to invite Bellfield to the country thinking this will allow unfettered access to the widow Greenow:

Driven to despair, he at last resolved to ask Bellfield to come to Oileymead for a month. That drilling at Norwich, or the part of it which was supposed to be profitable, was wearing itself out. Funds were low with the Captain, –as he did not scruple to tell his friend Cheesacre, and he accepted the invitation. “I’ll mount you with the harriers, old fellow,” Cheesacre had said, “and give you a little shooting. Only I won’t have you go out when I’m not with you.” Bellfield agreed. Each of them understood the nature of the bargain; though Bellfield, I think, had somewhat the clearer understanding in the matter. He would not be so near the widow as he had been at Norwich, but he would not be less near than his kind host. And his host would no doubt watch him closely;– but then he also could watch his host. There was a railway station not two miles from Oileymead and the journey thence into Norwich was one of half an hour. Mr Cheesacre would doubtless be very jealous of such journeys, but with all his jealousy he could not prevent them. And then, in regard to this arrangement, Mr Cheesacre paid the piper, whereas Captain Bellfield paid nothing. Would it not be sweet to him if he could carry off his friend’s prize from under the very eaves of his friend’s house?

So Trollope shows us penniless men: Burgo Fitzgerald, George Vavasour, and Captain Bellfield and unleashes them on the women who have the means to provide for the lifestyles they crave. But even while I put these three men in the same bag, they are different and perhaps they don’t deserve to be lumped together. Burgo and Bellfield are good-natured men; Burgo has been brought up into life of privilege without the means to sustain this abundance, and poor Captain Bellfield lives off the meagre pocket money given to him by his sister. Of course there’s a great irony here as the women with money (with the exception of Arabella Greenow) are subjected to tremendous social pressure to conform–look at the tremendous wealth of Glencora, for example, who still couldn’t do as she pleased. Lest I give the wrong impression, I should add that some of the women in the tale come off as badly as the men–Lady Monk leaps to mind. She’s a woman who “had succeeded in marrying her daughter to the greatest fool in the peerage.” And what of Alice–I’d argue that Alice’s root problem is fear of sex and not all those other excuses she dreams up.

The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope

“I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the time they are thirty.”

Years ago, a very dear friend recommended periodic reading of Trollope as a tonic against modern life, so recently I picked up The Belton Estate, one of Anthony Trollope’s comic novels.  It isn’t his best, and it’s not his funniest by any means, but it is a lesser-known Trollope that I hadn’t read before. The Trollope Society categorises Trollope’s novels into the following divisions: The Barset Novels, The Palliser Novels, The Irish Novels, The Overseas Novels, The Dramatic Novels, The Comic Novels, The Short Stories, and The Non-Fiction Books. Whether you are a Trollope devotee or you’re thinking of reading (more) Trollope, the Trollope Society site is extremely informative.

In 1865, The Belton Estate appeared in serialised form in the new magazine, Fortnightly Review. Trollope, who was one of the magazine’s founders, eventually featured three novels in this publication: The Belton Estate, Lady Anna, and The Eustace Diamonds. The Belton Estate was published in book form in December 1865.

The novel–a comedy of manners–examines the question of entailment and the disastrous consequences to women through Trollope’s lively cast of characters. Other  examples of literary examinations of entailment  can be found in Austen’s novel: Pride and Prejudice and to a lesser degree Persuasion. In one part of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is pressured by her mother to agree to marry her cousin, Mr Collins. With 5 daughters and no male heir, the Bennets know that the entailed family estate of Longbourn will pass to Mr Collins upon the death of their father, and this unpleasant fact makes Mr Collins both an eligible and a convenient match. And while Mr Collins wants a wife, he feels free to pick from his five cousins–feeling at once an assurance that he will be accepted and at the same time a moral obligation to solve, so very sensibly, a situation that may become embarrassingly difficult in the future. The same issues of entailment–a female left with no means of support, and a marriage that would appear to solve the more unpleasant aspects of entailment–appear in The Belton Estate. In this novel, Trollope clearly shows his sensitivity towards women through the issue of inheritance, scandal and divorce.

In Trollope’s The Belton Estate there is, or rather was a male heir to the property, but his untimely death has thrown the fortunes of the family–and in particular his unmarried sister, Clara–into total disarray. The Belton estate is owned by the Amedroz family, and when son and heir Charles, runs up a substantial amount  of debt he is bailed out by his father, Bernard Amedroz, at the expense of whatever dowry sister Clara might have expected. But Charles continues to gamble, gets into even more debt and then commits suicide. It’s at this point that the novel opens, with the recent death of Charles leaving a pall of grief and depression over the Belton household.

The death of Charles is mourned, but as the loss of the heir sinks in, it’s clear that the “remnants of the Amedroz family” –father Bernard and daughter twenty-five-year-old Clara face a signficant problem. With the death of the male heir, the entailed Belton estate–the house (rather grandiosely called Belton Castle) and its surrounding lands will pass out of the Amedroz family and revert back to the next living male heir–Will Belton, a cousin and a gentleman farmer who owns Plaistow Manor in Norfolk. This will leave Clara homeless and without a penny to her name. Mr. Amedroz, however, hopes that Clara will become the recipient of another will; this time it’s the will of a Mrs Winterfield. Mrs Winterfield is known to Clara as an ‘aunt,’ but in truth, she is a relative by marriage only and is “the sister of a gentleman who had married Clara’s aunt.” Since Mrs Winterfield will die without issue, and since she’s hinted at leaving Clara a substantial amount of money, it’s hoped that Clara will inherit from Mrs Winterfield. At the same time, it seems likely that the wealthy widow will leave her house, Perivale to her nephew, Frederick Alymer.

With these prospects facing the Amedroz family, cousin Will Belton arrives at Belton Castle to visit his estranged uncle. The visit begins awkwardly with Mr. Amedroz feeling that Will is a buzzard eyeing his inheritance and impatiently wishing he could move in and take over. But Will isn’t at all what is expected. He’s kind, thoughtful, and more importantly, a good manager. Clara’s only friend, Mrs. Askerton, teases Clara that Will is there to “make matters right” through a proposal of marriage that would effectively smooth over any future difficulties. So when Will does indeed propose, Clara is not flattered or pleased. She sees the offer of marriage as a just a matter of convenience and herself as little more than a piece of furniture that comes with the estate. Will’s proposal is doomed to failure as Clara nurses secret feelings for Captain Frederick Alymer.

When Mrs Winterfield dies, she leaves her house and all her money to Frederick, but on her deathbed, she extracts a promise from her nephew that he will marry Clara. Frederick, the second son of the Alymer family, and a consummate politician does exactly what is expected of him and precipitously proposes to Clara. Both the proposal and Frederick’s courtship, however, leave a great deal to be desired.

Clara finds herself in the difficult–albeit interesting situation of being courted by both Will Belton and Frederick Alymer. In matters of love, Will is impetuous and passionate while Frederick is studied and cold. Both situations have their drawbacks–although Clara loves Frederick, his formidable, bombastic mother tests the limits of her future daughter-in-law’s patience. On the other hand, Clara suspects that Will proposed not out of love but out of a sense of obligation. After all if Will marries Clara, he won’t be forced to turf her out of the house when he inherits.  But when it’s exposed that Frederick’s proposal is founded in a death-bed promise, it appears that he too is pressured to wed Clara. Chafing against the lot of an impoverished single female, Clara find herself in an impossible situation in which she is supposed to agree to marriage as there are no other alternatives:

“Was she therefore bound to sacrifice herself? Could it be the duty of any woman t0 give herself to a man simply because a man wanted her?”

Trollope sensitively follows the courtship of Clara by these two very different men. Over time, Clara’s feeling shift, and this shift is due partly to social situations in which the characters are cast. Clara, for example, goes to Aylmer Park and is exposed to Frederick’s impossible family, and she also meets Will’s devoted, invalid sister. Relationships with these individuals cause Clara to reexamine her suitors, but it’s perhaps Clara’s relationship with a certain Mrs. Askerton that influences her final choice. Mrs Askerton is a woman with a secret past; condemned by society, she has spent a lifetime paying for the sins and neglect of a male.

As always, the delight to be discovered in a Trollope novel is in its characterisations. The very best scenes in the book occur at Aylmer Park where we see Frederick Alymer in the family nest, and it’s here Clara is introduced to her fiance’s insufferable and suffocating family. The obnoxious Lady Alymer puts Clara to the test in a struggle for independence, will and domination while her hen-pecked husband hides out elsewhere in the house. Insincere, shallow Frederick Alymer is a man who has a promising political career ahead of him. Every decision Alymer makes is coloured by his mother and his desire to succeed in politics. Consequently, there is little that is actually Frederick, and he runs his life rather like politicians run their lives today–through opinion polls. Alymer is so very hollow, he no doubt has a stellar career in front of him and is destined to rise to–let’s say the dizzying heights of Prime Minister:

“It must be understood that Captain Alymer was member for Perivale on the low church interest, and that, therefore, when at Perivale he was decidedly a Low Churchman. I am not aware that the peculiarity stuck to him very closely at Aylmer castle, In Yorkshire, or among his friends in London; but there was no hypocrisy in this, as the world goes. Women in such matters are absolutely false if they be not sincere; but men, with political views, and with much of their future prospects in jeopardy also, are allowed to dress themselves differently for different scenes. Whatever be the peculiar interest on which a man goes into Parliament of course, he has to live up to that in his own borough. Whether malt, the franchise, or teetotalism be his rallying point, of course he is full of it when among his constituents. But it is not desirable that he should be full of it also at his club.”  

When I first read novels in Trollope’s comic category, I expected something as funny as Barchester Towers. Now I approach the majority of the comic novels as studies in the folly of human behaviour. And Trollope, such a marvelous, forgiving observer of human nature, is a wonderful writer, and one of the greatest recorders of our deepest foibles and vanities.