Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope

Source of book: I own this.

Regular readers of my blog know that my favorite Victorian author is Anthony Trollope. I try to read one of his books every year. Past reads since I started writing about them are:

Barsetshire Chronicles:

The Barchester Chronicles (BBC miniseries based on the first two books, The Warden and Barchester Towers)

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Other books:

He Knew He Was Right

Cousin Henry

The Claverings

Orley Farm

These are not, of course, the only Trollope novels I have read. These are the ones I have read since I started blogging in 2010. I should mention Castle Richmond and The Bertrams as particularly excellent books.

***

Having finished the Barsetshire books, I am now starting the Palliser novels. I didn’t know entirely what to expect. After all, most Trollope novels are about some combination of marriage and property, usually both together. Politics can enter into the book, but it is rarely the focus. So far, at least, this series follows the same pattern, even though there is definitely a political component to the plot. 

After my disappointment in Orley Farm, it was good to find that Can You Forgive Her? was a thoroughly enjoyable read, with the nuanced and human characters I was used to. As in the best of Trollope’s works, the heroes are flawed and villains are sympathetic, and people are deeply human, and thus universal despite the specifics of their circumstances. 

Trollope was a conservative, in the traditional sense. (Not in the reactionary and racist sense that today’s Right Wing represents - think Edmund Burke, not Steve Bannon.) He supported maintaining tradition, including the institutions and cultural preferences of his time and place, even as change enveloped him along with the rest of England. 

Because of this, he wasn’t a feminist by any stretch. That much should be said at the outset. I believe this understanding is crucial, because this book centers on some sticky questions of female autonomy, and love versus duty. So, Trollope clearly believes women should forgo following their flighty hearts, and instead choose safe and socially acceptable men. And he seems rather skeptical of the idea that young women can be trusted to make their own decisions without “guidance” from their men and elderly female relatives.

That said, the problem for Trollope is that he is far too good and perceptive a writer to avoid undermining his own personal beliefs by his sympathetic exploration of the minds of his characters. For this reason, the female characters are the most fascinating in this book - and they are the ones that are easy to identify with. Not that the men are uninteresting, but the women are central to the book, and to the questions Trollope grapples with over the course of the book. 

As might be expected in an era when authors were paid by the word, this book is long - 850+ pages in my Oxford edition. This format suits Trollope, as he likes to explore the thoughts of his characters at a leisurely pace, and examine things from multiple points of view. The length also allows Trollope to create three main parallel relationships, each of which is in some way a love triangle, to examine the questions of love and money and respectability. 

The central character is Alice Vavasor, a young woman torn between two men. She has a small income, so she doesn’t have to marry, but she is under a lot of pressure to do so. It is questionable whether she actually loves either of the two men, which is why she ends up doing the socially unforgivable. Her first crush, so to speak, is on her cousin George, who is a bit disreputable and seemingly unable to make good financial decisions. They were once engaged, but George threw her over to pursue an heiress. This didn’t work, so he is now back to pursuing Alice. She, in the meantime, has become engaged to John Grey, who is wealthy and very respectable, but also bland and unambitious. But she has cold feet and breaks up with Grey. Most of the book explores her feelings and determination to marry (if at all) because she wants to, not because of social pressures. 

Not helping matters at all is George’s sister Kate, who seems to have an unhealthy crush on her brother, even though he is rather abusive to her. She would squander her own fortune if she could, to give him what he wants. 

George, in turn, isn’t a truly evil man, although he gives in to his dark side more and more as the book progresses, until he does things he swore he would never do, and follows a dark path from which there is no easy escape. 

The second woman involved in complicated relationships is Alice’s more distant cousin Glencora. Originally, Glencora wanted to marry the dashing (and rakish) Burgo Fitzgerald, and almost did. But her family prevented the match, and practically forced her to marry Plantagenet Palliser, the rising politician and likely heir of the Duke of Omnium. 

Plantagenet, despite his unfortunate name, is not a bad man. But he is unaffectionate, a workaholic, and absolutely hapless when it comes to Glencora. Clearly, he needed more training in interpersonal relationships outside of politics, because he is laughable. Glencora finds him beyond disappointing, naturally, and she resents that she was forced to marry him. She comes close to running off with Fitzgerald, but realizes at the last that she can’t do it. 

These two complicated relationships intertwine, because Alice becomes Glencora’s confidant, and sees her own (potential) future with Grey in light of Glencora’s unhappy marriage. 

The third plot is largely comic relief - but because this is Trollope, it is more than that. Alice and Kate’s aunt married a wealthy old man, and was left a young wealthy widow. She puts on a good show of missing him, but is ready to marry for love (or something like it) this time. She is courted by the hilarious Mr. Cheeseacre, a wealthy farmer hoping to bring even more wealth into the fold. But also interested is Captain Bellfield, who has the social graces Cheeseacre lacks, even if he hasn’t a dime to his name. Aunt Greenow naturally prefers the captain, but plays the two of them off each other to great comic effect. Meanwhile, she hopes to get Cheesacre to marry either Kate (neither of them is interested) or the impoverished yet genteel Charlie Fairstairs. 

So much for the love. How about the politics? 

Mr. Palliser is a member of Parliament, but aspires to climb. He appears to be next in line to become the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Meanwhile, George wishes to enter Parliament, but lacking a safe borough, a wealthy sponsor, or a fortune of his own, must buy his way in as best he can - with whatever money he can talk people out of. While Glencora has zero interest in politics, Alice is fairly knowledgeable and would prefer her husband (whoever he be) to be a part of that world. In fact, that is part of her issue with Mr. Grey. He would be happy to live on his isolated rural estate, and read his books. She would prefer to be in London, and be part of city life and society. But, he is the man, and her job is to support his ambitions - or lack thereof, right?

As with most Trollope novels, the ending isn’t much of a surprise. The plot isn’t really the point, after all. The fun comes with the psychology, with the human drama and personalities reacting to circumstance in line with their characters. 

There are some particularly good lines in this book, a few of which caught my eye. 

The first comes early in the book, when Alice breaks it off with John Grey. Again, Trollope personally supports this match, but his honesty sees the problems with it.

She could not bring herself to hint to him that his views of life were so unlike her own, that there could be no chance of happiness between them, unless each could strive to lean somewhat towards the other. No man could be more gracious in word and manner than John Grey; no man more chivalrous in his carriage towards a woman; but he always spoke and acted as though there could be no question that his manner of life was to be adopted, without a word or thought of doubting, by his wife. When two came together, why should not each yield something, and each claim something? This she had meant to say to him on this day; but now that he was with her she could not say it.

This is just a fantastic passage. One of the reasons my wife did not expect to marry was this very issue. If she was expected to give up her wishes to suit a man’s preferences, she wasn’t interested. Alice is fully justified in her wish to have each spouse compromise, and find common ground. That’s how good marriages work, and why people who have differences (meaning any two people, really) are able to have good relationships. To use a personal example, my wife doesn’t camp with me, but we have a cat. We both have compromised. And we both have gained. 

Another passage illuminated to me why I disliked George. (There were many reasons, even though he was understandable in many ways as well. Another of Trollope’s nuanced villains.) In dissing mountain climbers, George says:

“They rob the mountains of their poetry, which is or should be their greatest charm. Mont Blanc can have no mystery for a man who has been up it a half a dozen times. It’s like getting behind the scenes at a ballet, or making a conjuror explain his tricks.”

Boooo! I love walking up mountains, and they never lose the mystery to me. George probably dislikes poetry and kittens too. 

A minor character is Lady Macleod, Alice’s aunt. Trollope spends a page discussing her essential character traits. Possessed of a bit of her own money, but no spouse or children, Lady Macleod is notorious for pinching pennies - particularly when it comes to paying the working classes. She is stingy with tips, hassles cabmen, and makes her servants miserable. And for what? So she can pass as much of her fortune on as possible. To whom? An even richer relative who won’t possibly notice. 

She was a hospitable, good old woman, painfully struggling to do the best she could in the world. It was a pity that she was such a bore, a pity that she was so hard to cabmen and others, a pity that she suspected all tradesmen, servants, and people generally of a rank of life inferior to her own, a pity that she was disposd to condemn for ever and ever so many of her own rank because they played cards on week days, and did not go to church on Sundays, -- and a pity, as I think above all, that while she was so suspicious of the poor she was so lenient to the vices of earls, earls’ sons, and such like.

That’s world class satire right there. Honestly, this is how I feel about most Evangelicals these days. So quick to be lenient to the nastiness of the rich, and so eager to punish the poor. 

I noted an interesting turn of phrase, used in passing by Lady Glencora. “There’s nothing to see, and the wind is as cold as charity.” There is a whole interesting world in that short line. 

One theme in the book is the utter cluelessness of most of the men when it comes to women. Trollope is pretty merciless in his portrayal of these moments, allowing the hapless males to twist in the wind. They deserve it. I mean, these are pretty elementary human relationship things, not advanced psychology. John Grey fails to read Alice’s need for equality, of course, but his is the most forgivable. It does, however, cost him an engagement and considerable time to repair the damage. George misreads Alice, and tries to impose affection on a relationship that no longer has a base of love and respect. And Mr. Cheeseacre tries to court Aunt Greenow with tales of his wealth. Her sharp tongue lays him out. 

“And look here, Mr. Cheesacre, if it should ever come to pass that you are making love to a lady in earnest--”

“I couldn’t be more in earnest,” said he.

“That you are making love to a lady in earnest, talk to her a little more about your passion and a little less about your purse.”

There are different levels of cluelessness, of course. John Grey is a typical Victorian gentleman, uninterested in questioning the status quo - which benefits him. But his love for a woman eventually motivates him to positive change. In what has to be one of the pivotal lines in the book, Grey discusses Alice with her father. Grey acknowledges that he has been partly to blame for the breakup, and insists that Alice’s “unforgivable” actions do not cast any negative light on her character. 

“I’ve no doubt of her being what you call a good girl,--none in the least. What she has done to me does not impair her goodness. I don’t think you have ever understood how much all this has been a matter of conscience with her.”

Palliser is a bit dense, to say the least, and even a near-catastrophe isn’t able to turn him into a truly sensitive man. But he does start listening a bit - high time, but not quite too late. 

Cheeseacre is a buffoon, of course, and gets a comeuppance, rather than an epiphany. 

And then there is George, who seems to be genuinely misogynistic - increasingly so as time goes on. Psychologically, this is necessary because he has to justify to himself his increasingly abusive behavior toward Kate, Alice, and his secret mistress. Trollope, in a typical passage, lays out “a certain kind of person,” then says that he doesn’t think that George is quite like that, but…

There are men who rarely think well of women,--who hardly think well of any woman. They put their mothers and sisters into the background,--as though they belonged to some sex or race apart,--and then declare to themselves and to their friends that all women are false,--that no woman can be trusted unless her ugliness protect her; and that every woman may be attacked as fairly as may game in a cover, or deer on a mountain. What man does not know men who have so thought?

I certainly have known men like that. I try to avoid them. On a related note, Trollope brings prostitutes into the story (although they aren’t as central as in The Vicar of Bullhampton) while hinting at the question which was debated in his day: if the pre-marital virtue of upper-class females was to be preserved, weren’t prostitutes necessary? One might note that prostitution has dramatically declined since then, rather in lock-step with the loosening of the obsession with upper and middle-class female “purity.” And one might also surmise that a return to Victorian mores might also require a disposable class of “soiled” females to preserve that “purity.” 

There is so much more worth discussing about this book. The way we are unsatisfied when we get what we want. The morality of conventionality versus the morality of compassion. The way that money changes how identical actions are viewed by society. And more.

Can You Forgive Her? is a fascinating book. I was reminded again why I keep returning to Trollope each year. 

***

Interesting pop-culture/music connection. Neil Tennant, lead singer for The Pet Shop Boys, read Can You Forgive Her?, and wrote a song about it. It kind of modernizes and updates the quandary of John Grey. 

Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope

Source of book: I own this.

Regular readers of my blog know that my favorite Victorian author is Anthony Trollope. I try to read one of his books every year. Past reads since I started writing about them are:

Barsetshire Chronicles:

The Barchester Chronicles (BBC miniseries based on the first two books, The Warden and Barchester Towers)

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Other books:

He Knew He Was Right

Cousin Henry

The Claverings

These are not, of course, the only Trollope novels I have read. These are the ones I have read since I started blogging in 2010. I should mention Castle Richmond and The Bertrams as particularly excellent books.

***

Orley Farm is one of Trollope’s stand-alone novels, and the last of the set of Dover paperbacks I was given in my teens by the husband of my violin teacher. Along with some Wodehouse and a few hardback Dickens, he gave me five Trollopes - I had never heard of him, but fell in love.

While Orley Farm had its moments, it was not my favorite of Trollope’s books. In large part, this stems from two factors. First, while Trollope is usually fairly gentle with his characters, writing few true villains, and making everyone human; in this case, he seemed more to dislike his characters than like them. For the most part, they are rather unlikeable, and it is difficult to really be in sympathy with them, the way one is in most of Trollope’s novels. It isn’t the presence of unpleasant characters so much as it is the lack of humanizing traits which are the problem. I found it uncharacteristically difficult to understand the motivations, and thus found many of the characters to be caricatures rather than the truly three dimensional inhabitants of the typical Trollopean world.

The second factor is somewhat related to the first. I feel that Trollope wrote this book more to complain about lawyers and the British legal system than to explore the psychology of his characters. Whatever Trollope is as an author, he isn’t Charles Dickens, and he isn’t particularly adept at the use of caricature in satire. Rather, Trollope’s strength as a satirical and social writer is his ability to humanize the victims of injustice - and especially injustice inflicted with good, reforming motivations. Thus, we can sympathize with Mr. Harding even as we may agree that he is the recipient of a sinecure that probably should be reformed. We can feel for Carrie Brattle, whose status as a “fallen woman” gives her no real chance at a decent life. We can even understand the loathsome Mrs. Proudie and her attempts to further her religious beliefs, even as we hate her methods - and even perhaps the substance of those beliefs. She is all the more real for being humanly understandable.

This was my biggest problem with Orley Farm. I had a hard time finding a character who was really fleshed out, particularly for the first half of the book.

A bit of background might help here. Trollope was the son of a failed barrister. His father never really made a good go of it in law, and was forever in debt. His mother, however, was a skilled writer. Her books aren’t much read today, and she wasn’t a world class author, but she was financially successful, and her books were indeed influential. Domestic Manners of the Americans was her most successful, and many of her observations about American arrogance and hypocrisy still ring true. She also wrote an anti-slavery novel which inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe, and an “industrial novel,” about class injustice in the age of the Industrial Revolution - another book which inspired more famous later authors. So, with her husband failing to make a living, it fell to Frances Trollope to support the family with writing.

Young Anthony eschewed the law, and went to work for the Postal Service, where he invented the pillar letter box, and found time to write. While he never studied law, he absorbed a large amount of knowledge about it, and his books generally get the legal details right. Although the British legal system of the Victorian Era is much different from the 21st Century American legal system. (I could write a whole post about all of the differences…)

What Anthony never seems to have understood about the law was the idea that the criminal law system is supposed to be biased in favor of the accused - in large part to counteract the power of the State. In theory (although not as often in practice), this should result in a very small number of false convictions - but should, by design, allow a number of guilty persons to go free. That this isn’t necessarily the case in practice is beside the point. Yes, money still tends to get one off, and impoverished people of color tend to be falsely convinced more often than wealthy whites. But the problem isn’t that we make it too easy for those horrid criminal defense lawyers to get people off.

But that is precisely the point Trollope wants to make. He honestly seems to believe that guilty people shouldn’t be defended, and that neutral witnesses shouldn’t ever have their credibility attacked. As a lawyer, this is an offensive idea. And in general, Trollope is so much more subtle than this, which is why I was disappointed.

The plot is basically this. (Spoiler alert!)

 

 My Dover paperback edition has the original J. E. Millais illustrations.

Sir Joseph Mason the elder was a wealthy man, with two major estates. After his first wife died, leaving a grown son, Sir Joseph remarried a young woman barely out of her teens - a woman who was beautiful but under challenging financial circumstances. She marries him out of need and pressure from her family, not love. They have a child together, and soon thereafter, Sir Joseph dies.

A last minute codicil to his will leaves Orley Farm - the lesser estate - to the infant. The previous will would have left everything, except for the small allowance to the widow required by law, to the older son. The question was, did young Lady Mason forge the codicil?

The first trial - the probate - takes place after the death, and is alluded to in the book. The real action occurs twenty-one years later, when the infant, Lucious, comes of age. He angers the son-in-law of the lawyer who worked for Sir Joseph. Said son-in-law, himself a lawyer, goes through the old documents and discovers evidence which may be in favor of a finding of forgery. He contacts Joseph Jr., the older son, and incites him to seek a prosecution of Lady Mason for perjury and forgery. That trial is the centerpiece of the story.

This being Trollope, the book is roughly 650 pages long, and pretty dense. It also has a number of subplots involving the periphery players. Lady Mason’s lawyer has domestic troubles because his neglected wife assumes he is having an affair with Lady Mason. Lady Mason’s neighbor and old friend, Sir Peregrine Orme, falls in love with her, while his son unsuccessfully pursues the daughter of a judge - she instead falls in love with an idealistic young barrister who ends up working on Lady Orme’s case. Even the witnesses have their own little dramas going. Everyone connected with the case is somehow involved in the story.

As usual with Trollope, the question isn’t really if Lady Mason is guilty. Rather, it is how each of the characters response to the situation. Including her. There is the legal question, of course: will a jury find her guilty? There is the moral case: what would real justice look like? And there is the social question: guilty or not, will she and her son lose their reputations?

So much about this is good. The book had some great moments in it. If only Trollope had allowed himself to actually understand how a lawyer could - and should - defend a guilty client. I think he was a bit blinded by his own upbringing. I wasn’t able to find out much of the circumstances of his father’s failure, but it is entirely possible that the idealistic Felix Graham is meant to be a stand-in for the elder Mr. Trollope. He is hopeless at the task of doing his best even when he doesn’t believe in his case. And he is advised that maybe he should pursue his writing instead. (Of course, in this particular world, he also is able to marry a wealthy woman.)

I think another factor here is that Trollope was by nature and inclination, a conservative. He preferred the High Church to the Low Church, was suspicious of reforms of all kinds, and staunchly supported the existing class system, even though he wasn’t a winner in that system. Thus, I think that he couldn’t - despite really making an effort - see the moral injustice inherent in giving property to one child while leaving the other destitute. Hey, Primogeniture has a long and storied history, even if it was brutal to younger children, and undoubtedly fed the unending wars of the last, well, millennia. After all, a bunch of younger sons without money, whose class meant they couldn’t make a living by working, with few prospects...hey, might as well go to war and try to win an award from the king, right? Trollope really does try. But he can’t quite go there. Rules is rules.

I think this is ultimately why I had a hard time feeling the characters. Lady Mason is a great character, for the most part. But Trollope’s conservatism can’t allow her to truly stick to her guns. In a later (or earlier) era, she could have been the hero of the book. Likewise, Lucious is a real prick, and it is impossible to like him. I suspect Trollope didn’t want him to be a sympathetic victim - he somehow had to deserve tragedy. Thus, of the main players in the central drama, the most believable are those I would call the true villains. Mr. Dockwrath, the lawyer who stirs everything up in retaliation for losing his lease, ignores the advice of his much wiser wife, grubs for as much as he can get, and ultimately loses everything. He thoroughly deserves it. But he is also believable: I know people like that, and they often end the same way. Likewise, I know people like Joseph Mason the younger, consumed with a thirst for revenge because he feels cheated out of what he “deserves,” namely everything. But again, he is believable. He is still, 25 years later, pissed off at his father for refusing to “act his age” and remain a widower. Instead, he fell for the charming young lady (who he blames entirely for his father’s actions), with the result being an unwanted younger brother who might get some of the inheritance.

Some of the minor characters are really good. I liked Judge Stavely and his family - of all the people, I would most like to meet them in person. Faced with the fact that his daughter has fallen in love with a poor, unattractive, but intelligent man, he supports her, remembering his own courtship. I also liked the lawyer, Mr. Furnival. He is very imperfect, clearly, but very human - and a rather conscientious lawyer. I’d want to hire someone like him: aware of his limitations, devoted to seeing his clients’ cases through, quietly competent, and in no need of self-aggrandizement.

As in any Trollope novel, there is much good writing, and a number of memorable lines. Here are a few that stood out to me.

From the first chapter, where Trollope introduces the book:

It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story ‘The Great Orley Farm Case.’ But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, - Orley Farm.

I say so much at commencing in order that I may have an opportunity of explaining that this book of mine will not be devoted in any special way to rural delights. The name might lead to the idea that new precepts were to be given, in the pleasant guise of a novel, as to cream-cheeses, pigs with small bones, wheat sown in drills, or artificial manure. No such aspirations are mine.

Or, Mr. Furnival, giving the common - and true - lament of us lawyers:

‘We lawyers are very much abused now-a-days,’ said Mr. Furnival… ‘but I hardly know how the world would get on without us.’

There is a great scene involving Sir Joseph the younger and his wife. While he is extravagantly rich, she is a penny-pinching shrew. Their food is almost inedible, and they really can’t entertain, because she refuses to have proper and sufficient provender for the spread. Trollope describes their attempt at a Christmas dinner, and what followed.

And then they all went to church. Mrs. Mason would not on any account have missed church on Christmas-day or a Sunday. It was a cheap duty, and therefore rigidly performed.

There is another extended musing which is quite fun. I am reading a book on the intentional “moulding” of a wife - I wonder if Trollope was familiar with the facts or not - so this quote seems apropos. It also is percipient on a few timeless questions: is trying to turn a spouse into what you wish they were ever a good idea? And what is the real reason creeps like Roy Moore want to find much younger girls? Anyway, here is the quote, which comes after we are introduced to Felix Graham, and the “engagement” he is in with his ward - at the insistence of her father, when she was a mere child. She was not, in any meaningful sense, consulted.

In speaking of the character and antecedents of Felix Graham I have said that he was moulding a wife for himself. The idea of a wife thus moulded to fit a man’s own grooves, and educated to suit matrimonial purposes according to the exact views of the future husband was by no means original with him. Other men have moulded their wives, but I do not know that as a rule the practice has been found to answer. It is open, in the first place, to this objection, - that the moulder does not generally conceive such idea very early in life, and the idea when conceived must necessarily be carried out on a young girl. Such a plan is the result of much deliberate thought, and has generally arisen from long observation, on the part of the thinker, of the unhappiness arising from marriages in which there has been no moulding. Such a frame of mind comes upon a bachelor, perhaps about his thirty-fifth year, and then he goes to work with a girl of fourteen. The operation takes some ten years, at the end of which the moulded bride regards her lord as an old man. On the whole I think that the ordinary plan is the better, and even the safer. Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music - about affairs masculine and feminine - then take the leap in the dark. There is danger, no doubt; but the moulded wife is, I think, more dangerous.

Don’t get hung up on the Victorian nonsense - Trollope was a product of his time. Just enjoy the gentle snark.

My final quote is about Judge Stavely, after he has essentially opened the door to the possibility of Felix Graham marrying his daughter Madeleine.

But the judge was an odd man in many of the theories of his life. One of them, with reference to his children, was very odd, and altogether opposed to the usual practice of the world. It was this, - that they should be allowed, as far as was practicable, to do what they liked. Now the general opinion of the world is certainly quite the reverse - namely this, that children, as long as they are under the control of their parents, should be hindered and prevented in those things to which they are most inclined. Of course the world in general, in carrying out this practice, excuses it by an assertion, - made to themselves or others - that children customarily like those things which they ought not to like. But the judge had an idea quite opposed to this. Children, he said, if properly trained, would like those things which were good for them. Now it may be that he thought his daughter had been properly trained.

I am somewhat of this mindset. Coming from a religious tradition which is fundamentally authoritarian - and increasingly so - I have had my own bit of pressure (as an adult, by the way) to order my life, not according to what I want and believe is best for my family, but according to the preferences of others. Or, to be more accurate, I have been pressured to pressure my wife to conform to the expectations of others. Because in a patriarchal religious tradition, women face most of the expectations. I think Judge Staveley was ahead of his time in this idea that children are, when it comes to decisions about their future, entitled to choose their own lives.

I don’t want this review to sound too negative. While this isn’t my favorite Trollope book, it still is good, just flawed. If you haven’t discovered Trollope, I wouldn’t recommend this as a first book, because it lacks the best traits of his writing: psychological subtlety, sympathetic characters, and a wry distrust of convention even as he defends it. I’d go with the Barchester Chronicles, or perhaps with The Bertrams or Castle Richmond as starters.

The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope

Source of Book: I own this.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that my favorite Victorian author is Anthony Trollope. Indeed, he is one of my favorite authors, period. Since I started this blog, I have been reading one of his novels every year. This is no small task, as his books are generally quite long. The Last Chronicle of Barset is 891 pages long in the Oxford edition I own, for example. Here are the previous posts regarding Trollope novels:

Barsetshire Chronicles

The Barchester Chronicles (BBC miniseries based on the first two books, The Warden and Barchester Towers)

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

Other books:

He Knew He Was Right

Cousin Henry

The Claverings

These are not, of course, the only Trollope novels I have read. These are the ones I have read since I started blogging in 2010. I should mention Castle Richmond and The Bertrams as particularly excellent books.

***

The Last Chronicle of Barset is the final installment in the six book series set in the fictional Barsetshire area. The books are best read in order, as certain characters appear in multiple books, and the happenings in earlier books are referred to in the later books. However, they are not a continuous story. Dr. Thorne in particular seems to be its own tale, and can be read separately. The Last Chronicle, however, should not be read unless one has read all of the previous five books, because it brings together all of the major characters from those books for a final epic story (epic by Trollope standards, anyway) before Trollope informs the reader that he is done with Barsetshire, despite their demands for more.

As I have noted before, Trollope isn’t all that concerned with plot. True, the books do have plots, and those plots are carefully thought out and are internally and externally consistent. However, Trollope’s concern is for character. Thus, in many of his books, it is possible to understand how the book will end fairly soon after the first chapter. In some ways, The Last Chronicle is an outlier, in that a few key outcomes are very much in doubt until near the end. But, like his other books, the point is how each character in turn thinks and feels as the plot unwinds.

In this book, the main plot concerns the Reverend Josiah Crawley, first introduced in Framley Parsonage. Crawley holds a very small position in the poorest part of the parish. On his meager income, he struggles to keep his family fed and clothed. He is also a hard worker, takes his job quite seriously, and is by most measures a model clergyman. (Particularly in contrast to many with far greater wealth.) His main flaw is that he is prickly. He has some reason to be. Compared to many a wealthier man, he is better educated, more intelligent, and more diligent. He just lacks the connections to advance. And he knows it. He is conscious of his own superiority, and unhappy that his family lives in poverty. He is also extremely proud, and refuses assistance from others.

Mr. Crawley finds himself in hot water after he pays a debt using a negotiated check (fellow lawyers, remember negotiable instruments?) that turns out to have belonged to Mr. Soames, agent for Lord Lufton. Crawley is convinced he was given it by someone, but he is too scatterbrained to remember where he got it. Crawley is charged with theft, because he is believed to have accidentally pocketed a check Soames dropped at his house, then passed it. So basically a textbook case of conversion.

Crawley is already unpopular with Bishop Proudie, because he was appointed by the other faction in Barchester. Actually, as anyone who has read the first two books knows, the Bishop doesn’t actually care much. It is the domineering Mrs. Proudie who cares, and who attempts to insist that Crawley be dismissed from his position before the trial, as she believes he is absolutely guilty.

Meanwhile, there are some subplots going on. Archdeacon Grantly’s son, Major Henry Grantly, wants to marry Reverend Crawley’s daughter Grace. His father objects, and Grace won’t have him as long as there is a blot on her father’s name.

There is ongoing drama between the Proudies, as she goes further than ever before to interfere in his affairs and humiliate him in front of his colleagues.

Miss Dunstable (from Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage) has become engaged to Bernard Dale (from The Small House at Allington).

Bernard is cousin to Lily Dale (also from The Small House at Allington), who is cousin to Grace Crawley. Lily is still being sought by Johnny Eames, who she is not in love with, despite his being a mostly decent sort, and recently enriched by inheritance from a wealthy stranger.

Johnny is friends with Conway Dalrymple, a London painter, who is a main character in the major subplot involving financiers in London, a suicide, a few attempts by designing women to capture eligible men, and a painting by Dalrymple of Jael putting a stake through Sisera’s head. In which a certain young lady sits as Jael behind her mother’s back.

And that is why the book is so long.  

As always, the delight is in the details.

I won’t quote it here, but the description of the lawyer, Chadwick (who isn’t even a character, just the partner of a character), is delightful.

Or how about this exchange involving Grace Crawley, Lily Dale, and Lily’s mother?

“Have you ever observed, Grace,” said Miss Dale, “how much amusement gentlemen require, and how imperative it is that some other game should be provided when one game fails?”

“Not particularly,” said Grace.

“Oh, but it is so. Now with women, it is supposed that they can amuse themselves or live without amusement. Once or twice in a year, perhaps something is done for them. There is an arrow-shooting party, or a ball, or a picnic. But the catering for men’s sport is never ending, and is always paramount to everything else.”

I wasn’t much of a fan of Lily Dale in The Small House at Allington, but she comes off much better in this book. She has grown up, and is no longer mooning after the worthless Mr. Crosbie. Here is another line, about how she expects to be an old maid.

“I see it in people’s eyes, and hear it in their voices. And they all talk to me as if I were very steady, and altogether removed from anything like fun and frolic. It seems to be admitted that if a girl does not want to fall in love, she ought not to care for any other fun in the world.”

Sadly, this often is still the case in our modern times. Single women tend to be dismissed.

Another quote shows just how much Lily has grown. She is talking with her mother about Mr. Crosbie, who has been widowed (after having jilted Lily in the last book…) Crosbie wants her back now, and she won’t have him, even though she retains some feelings for him. But she also knows she shouldn’t marry him.

[Mrs. Dale:] “He has nothing, at least, for which to condemn you.”
“But he would have, were I to marry him now. He would condemn me because I had forgiven him. He would condemn me because I had borne what he had done to me, and had still loved him - loved him through it all. He would feel and know the weakness; - and there is weakness. I have been weak in not being able to rid myself of him altogether. He would recognize this after awhile, and would despise me for it.  But he would not see what there is of devotion to him in my being able to bear the taunts of the world in going back to him, and your taunts, and my own taunts. I should have to bear his also, - not spoken aloud, but to be seen in his face and heard in his voice, - and that I could not endure. If he despised me, and he would, that would make us both unhappy.”

This is amazingly perceptive about the dynamics at play here. I have indeed seen similar issues lead to a divorce later. It is never a good thing when one spouse knows he or she owes the other.

The Dalrymple subplot leads to some interesting lines too. (Weird fact: I had a friend with the last name of Dalrymple when I was a kid. His parents were ninja-level birthday party planners…) Dalrymple first meets Clara Van Siever at a party, and is not attracted to her...except that he envisions her as Jael. She, naturally, isn’t particularly flattered at his idea either.

“I think it no compliment, I can assure you,” said Miss Van Siever.

“And none was intended. But you make observe that artists in all ages have sought for higher types of models in painting women who have been violent or criminal, than have sufficed for them in their portraitures of gentleness and virtue. Look at all the Judiths, and the Lucretias, and the Charlotte Cordays; how much finer the women are than the Madonnas and the Saint Cecilias.”

I think I may never look at art quite the same way again…

 One of the original G. H. Thomas illustrations.

In the end, Clara agrees to pose, and Dalrymple falls in love with her. Because of course. But not before a big row occurs with Clara’s mom and Mrs. Dobbs Broughton and Dalrymple tears the unfinished painting in half. Mom offers to pay for the painting at a paltry price, and Dalrymple names an exorbitant one. It is a great example of how an artist might bargain.

A few lines from or regarding minor characters also stood out. Mr. Toogood is Mrs. Crawley’s cousin and a lawyer. He is talked into taking on a bit of the case by Johnny Eames (who is likewise related, if you recall.) Mr. Toogood has a large family and a wife who hates it when he takes on pro bono work. Toogood goes ahead anyways.

“One doesn’t have a cousin in trouble every day,” said Toogood. “And then you see there’s something very pretty in the case. It’s quite a pleasure getting it up.”

I’m sure most of us attorneys have done this before. There is a pleasure in taking a case that won’t pay much if anything, but presents something truly interesting to do. Or at least some sort of justice which needs to be done.

Speaking of the law, there is something sadly pathetic about Mr. Crosbie and his ill fated marriage. In The Small House at Allington, he jilts Lily to marry the daughter of an earl. The marriage is a disaster, before she dies, leaving him with a pile of debts and without the inheritance from her family they both expected. He ends up in debt a few thousand pounds as a result of this disaster.

Another hilarious scene is between Johnny Eames and Sir Raffle Buffle, the pettifogging politician that Johnny works for as private secretary. Since Eames is now independently wealthy, he doesn’t have to work, even though he prefers to. Eames therefore pretty much writes his own work ticket, much to the annoyance of Buffle, who prefers to bully his staff. When Johnny informs Buffle that he will be taking a vacation (to go track down the Arabins, whose testimony is necessary in Crawley’s case), Buffle blusters and threatens, and when Johnny goes anyway, changes his tune by telling everyone that he urged Johnny to go. Everything must be spun, right?

There are two marriages that get a close look in this book, and I find the contrast to be telling. The first is between the Proudies. As everyone became fully aware in Barchester Towers, the bishop is weak, and dominated by his wife. Mrs. Proudie is worse than domineering, however. She makes a thorough hash of just about whatever she touches. In the earlier book, her attempts to change the religious observances of the residents of Barchester do not endear her to her people. Her favoring of Obadiah Slope, who is about as close to a true villain as any Trollope character gets, causes much damage and backfires badly.

In this book, Mrs. Proudie again puts her nose in where it does not belong. The bishop’s “wait and see” plan has sense. After the trial, if there is a conviction, he can certainly remove Crawley if he wishes, but before that, he has no legal grounds, and Crawley knows it. When Mrs. Proudie insists on sitting in on what should be official business, she not only fails, but humiliates her husband.

As a feminist, it is interesting to evaluate Mrs. Proudie. Is she frustrated with the role allotted to her? Of course. But it is also true that she has no business in a position of power. She lacks the ability to work with people. She has the supreme conviction that she is always right (and everyone who disagrees is wrong), a pettiness and vindictiveness that makes and keeps enemies, and a pathological need to control everyone around her. I can think of a person or three that I know like this, and it is not a recipe for success in relationships.

Trollope rarely paints any characters as one dimensional, however, and Mrs. Proudie is, in her own way, a complex human. Trollope also makes some astute observations about her - and people like her.

Mr. Crawley belonged to the other party, and Mrs. Proudie was a thorough-going partisan. I know a man, - an excellent fellow, who, being himself a strong politician, constantly expresses a belief that all politicians opposed to him are thieves, child-murderers, parricides, lovers of incest, demons upon the earth. He is a strong partisan, but not, I think, so strong as Mrs. Proudie. He says that he believes all evil of his opponents; but she really believed the evil.

I guess politics hasn’t changed much. Trollope later in the book makes a particularly damning evaluation of her.

She had meant to be a good Christian; but she had so exercised her Christianity that not a soul in the world loved her, or would endure her presence if it could be avoided.

A sober warning to us all, and one that I fear the American church is ignoring right now.

In the end, Trollope says of the bishop, “He might have been a sufficiently good bishop, had it not been that Mrs. Proudie was so much more than a sufficiently good bishop’s wife.”

The contrasting marriage is that between Archdeacon Grantly and his wife Susan. She has been a very minor character in the series, and no particularly well developed until this book. It turns out that she has quite a bit to recommend her. The archdeacon is, in many ways, the perfect counterpart to Mrs. Proudie. He is emotional, volatile, petty, and conceited. But he lacks her fortitude. So he never really manages to harm anyone. One of the reasons for this is his able management by Susan. I have observed before that the women run everything in Trollope’s world. The men fuss and fume and rattle about, but the women make the real decisions for good or evil. Susan Grantly actually has more real power over her husband than Mrs. Proudie, in large part because she is smart and subtle about it. She knows her husband and his moods, and always picks the right time. Mr. Grantly is determined to threaten his son with disinheritance if he marries Grace, but Susan knows that he will never follow through. So she strategically uses delay and gentle persuasion to keep him from taking any action he will later regret. In the end, he calms down, and all is well. This does irritate the archdeacon, because he knows how things stand.

After this, the archdeacon walked away, and would not argue the matter any further with his wife at that moment. He knew very well that he could not get the better of her, and was apt at such moments to think that she took an unfair advantage of him by keeping her temper.

Indeed. Also, I resemble the archdeacon sometimes, I must admit....

Mrs. Grantly also makes a great observation about the father and son, neither of whom is willing to give in.

“They are as like each other as two peas,” she said, “and though each of them wished to be generous, neither of them would condescend to be just.”

That’s just fantastic. And true. It is more fun to be generous than to simply admit the other party’s rights.

There is another great line near the end, when it becomes clear that all the fuss was for nothing, and the archdeacon finds he must kind of sort of eat crow.

It must be acknowledged that Archdeacon Grantly always kept his promises, and especially such promises as these. And indeed it was the nature of the man that when he had been very angry with those he loved, he should be unhappy until he had found some escape from his anger. He could not endure to have to own himself to have been in the wrong, but he could be content with a very incomplete recognition of his having been in the right.

That last sentence is just fantastic. One of Trollope’s best, in my opinion.

One final observation about another proud character. Mr. Crawley finds himself the in-law of the archdeacon, and the two must get along. Mr. Grantly, for all his faults, plays his cards right in the end. He stresses that he considers Crawley to be an equal, despite their difference in wealth - a sore point for Crawley - and then offers him a set of sermons published by old Bishop Grantly, the archdeacon’s late father. “And thus the archdeacon had hit his bird on both wings,” as Trollope puts it.

The Last Chronicle of Barset is a thoroughly enjoyable book. Don’t start with it, however. Go back and read the earlier books first. As usual, Trollope shows his timeless understanding of human nature and frailties. His characters, while in a setting most of us will never know, are three dimensional and true to the psychology that inhabits us all. The complexity of life, relationships, and emotions are all on display throughout the series. If you haven’t experienced Anthony Trollope, I highly recommend you give him a try.