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.

Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz by Barbara Babcock

Source of book: I own this.

This book was my official selection for Women’s History Month (March). Here are my past selections:

Are Women Human? By Dorothy Sayers (2014)

A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft (2015)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (2016)

Woman Lawyer tells the story of Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first female lawyer in California. She wasn’t the first female lawyer in the United States, but she was one of the first, a true pioneer. Furthermore, she was instrumental in eventually bringing women’s suffrage to California - and eventually the entire nation. But perhaps her greatest accomplishment was founding the movement to establish Public Defenders.

Barbara Babcock is herself a lawyer as well as a writer. She came and spoke to our local bar association several years back, when the book came out. Unfortunately, I had a schedule conflict and was unable to attend - I really wish I had. Babcock admits outright that she cannot be an unbiased biographer. As a female lawyer and a feminist, she naturally sympathizes with Foltz. That said, she scrupulously tells the bad with the good, Clara’s faults and failures along with her virtues and triumphs. As Babcock puts it, she aimed to “mix the hag with the hagiography.” What results is a compellingly human portrayal of Foltz. She comes alive on the page because she has depth. She is a heroine but not a superhero. 

One interesting bit in this regard is that Foltz lacked a certain amount of business sense. On the other hand, she was a genius at crafting her image. She got fantastic press coverage in large part because she sold herself really well. 

Clara Foltz had an interesting start to her life. Her father was originally a lawyer himself, but then turned to preaching. Her brothers would go on to a mild degree of renown themselves, as newspaper editors, congressmen, lawyers, and writers. However, her father recognized that Clara showed potential from a young age. “Ah, if only you had been a boy, then I would have trained you for the law.” Clara was not amused at this. Her mother didn’t think it was funny either. “One of these days she will take it into her head to study law, and if she does, nobody on earth can stop her.”

Clara was academically inclined, and mastered subjects easily. However, her education was interrupted at age 15, when she eloped with Jeremiah Foltz, a soldier a decade her senior. She would bear five children, and move first to Oregon, then to California with him.

Jeremiah wasn’t a particularly good husband by any standard. He was continually in debt, was away from home for weeks at a time, and eventually deserted her for a woman in Oregon.

And thus, Clara was left to fend for herself in her mid-20s, with five kids, and only the help of her parents, who didn’t have much themselves.

Clara Foltz then decided to study law, and become a lawyer. And, as her mother predicted, nobody could stop her. Back then, law schools were unusual - and for people already admitted to practice. She found a lawyer who would apprentice her (although he was far from prestigious), and challenged the rule forbidding women to practice law. It took some tries, including eventually lobbying for passage of a law. Then, for several decades, the law in California (and quite a few other states) allowed women to practice law...but not vote or serve on juries.

This is obviously making a long story very short indeed. The book tells the tale in thrilling detail, including all the dirty politics and open misogyny that Foltz had to overcome.

But the admission to the bar was only the first part of the story. Even with the right to practice, Foltz struggled to make a living. The more lucrative areas of practice were dominated by men, who had no intention of sharing. She ended up doing a lot of indigent defense, and smaller cases that didn’t pay that well.

Thus, she turned to public speaking to supplement her income - and this was quite successful. Apparently, she was a brilliant speaker, and in demand by both political parties for her skills. (She switched a couple of times, depending mostly on who was more sympathetic to Women’s Rights at the time.)

This book of necessity also tells of many other feminist icons who collaborated with Foltz or who were active at the same time. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (one of whose great-something grand-nieces is a friend of mine) figures in the story as a major luminary in the movement for suffrage, and her lifetime overlapped Foltz’s for several decades. The one who gets the most words in this book, though, is Laura Gordon, who was California’s second lawyer, and was a close friend and collaborator with Foltz. The two of them worked together on many projects throughout their lives, and without their mutual support, neither would have been admitted to the practice of law. One of the fascinating stories in the book is the case where they went up against each other.

Like Foltz, Gordon was also divorced - the grounds were her husband’s adultery, which was interesting because California was one of the few states that allowed the wife to get a divorce on those grounds. Most other places - and throughout most of history - a woman had no recourse if her husband slept around. Both Foltz and Gordon, however, claimed to have been widowed. It was considered to be a sign of the woman’s poor character to be divorced, and both knew that under the sloppy ethical standards of the day, opposing counsel would be sure to drag their divorces into their closing arguments. (Seriously, the most shocking thing about this book is the obvious flagrant misconduct lawyers - particularly prosecutors - got away with in the late 1800s. Good grief!)

Later, however, Foltz defended the right to a divorce. As she put it,

“When love is slain, the civil contract is but the husk and shell of marriage. Long before a divorce is sought love has ceased. All that is sacred is dead, and a civil court in a judgment of divorce only gives legal sanction to a decree that nature has already entered in their hearts.”

I have said something to the same effect (although not as poetically) when asked how I can practice family law, and end marriages.

One of the cases that Foltz tried was one involving such a marriage. Actually, the facts are shocking and horrifying. It started when the husband sued his wife to reverse the gift of some real estate he had made to her. He had become paranoid that she was (allegedly) seeing another man. In the course of the trial, it came out that he treated her like a slave. In 23 years, she had been pregnant an incredible 21 times. Only three children survived. Eight had been miscarriages, and there was strong evidence that they were caused by his insisting she overwork herself - and his refusal to get her prenatal care. He apparently didn’t even bother to attend the funerals of his infants.

The most horrifying bit, though, was that the court refused to grant her a divorce! I’m not kidding. Abuse and neglect were not enough to get a woman a divorce. Since she couldn’t prove he cheated on her - and he couldn’t prove she had either - no divorce. She was stuck with a man who treated her like a slave, and was slowly killing her with overwork and pregnancy. I am so glad I live in the 21st Century.

Foltz never did remarry. Perhaps her vision of marriage as egalitarian was a bit of a turnoff. And, there is no doubt that she would never have consented to give up her career for a man. In her speeches, she would quote a Tennyson poem to the effect that man and woman must become more alike in order to form a perfect union.

“[If] husband and wife would blend in the harmony of a complete union they must pursue some common theme. In marriage, as in mathematics, only parallel lines keep close together.”

Foltz therefore encouraged women to study - particularly law, of course - so that they would be the intellectual equals of men, and therefore form better relationships. I could not agree more. Marrying my intellectual equal (or better…) has been the best decision I could make. I am grateful that I have a partner, not a subordinate.

Gordon and Foltz, though, did not merely struggle against gender roles in marriage. They faced shockingly obvious misogyny. There are far, far too many infuriating quotes - many from legislative sessions and closing arguments in cases - these are public record - than I have room to quote. Let me just mention the one when Foltz was still seeking admission to the bar. A man compared women to dogs and horses, which can be trained to perform certain acts, but who could obviously not do them of their own talent. Gah!

Even at the turn of the century, when the Suffragist movement was gaining steam, opponents of feminism claimed - as they do now - that feminist men were “weak and effeminate” while suffragist women were “aggressive and unsexed.” Here we are, in 2017, and we are still having this same freaking argument. Here, in 2017, I still hear people saying that feminist women are all ugly and are feminist because they couldn’t catch a man. (Hey, I have, like, several million women I could list as proof to the contrary - including my wife - but, hey, never let the facts get in the way of prejudice, right?

It is not surprising, then, that Belva Lockwood, who would run for president on a third party ticket in 1884 and 1888 - 35 years before women would get the national vote - had the following to say about women’s rights:

“We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor respect until we command it.”

The Civil Rights Movement decades later would echo the same sentiment.

Alas, the road would be long and hard. As Boss Buckley is quoted in this book as saying about why his party lost an election, “I don’t know, but I think they didn’t get enough votes.” Of course, kind of hard when half the population can’t vote - the very same people whose rights are at stake…

Speaking of delightful political quotes, how about this one by Robert Ingersoll, which seems fitting for our recent election as well:

“Each side would have been glad to defeat the other if it could do so without electing its own candidate.”

Moving on to the next section, this book spends a good bit of time on the legal accomplishments of Foltz. While she never got rich, she was well respected as a trial lawyer, competent and persuasive. Between her cases and her advocacy, she actually ended up accomplishing a great deal of good in the world - she just didn’t manage to profit from it much. Here are some examples.

We now assume the existence of an orderly system of parole. But it was not always so. Sentences for minor crimes could be decades, and the only way to get out early was a pardon, and these were given out erratically, and often to the politically connected, denying the poor and obscure equal justice.

While Foltz’s bill she presented to the legislature failed, it formed the basis of a bill that passed a couple of years later. So here in California, she can be considered one of the founders of the parole system.

Foltz and Gordon did win on the issue of allowing women to be executors of estates - a major victory in an era when a male executor could bleed an estate to the detriment of the widow.

Although she lost the court case, her advocacy in a case where an elderly person was evicted from a home for the aged resulted in major changes to the law. In fact, when I, early in my career, defended several residents of nursing homes from eviction, I was following in her footsteps - and benefiting from her legacy.

Foltz also wrote several influential law review articles. The idea of the Public Defender was the topic of a few, but she also wrote on some other interesting topics. One was entitled “Should Women Be Executed.” In this article, she took issue with some other feminist thinkers who claimed that since women couldn’t serve on juries, they shouldn’t be executed. Mind you, Foltz opposed the death penalty entirely. However, she didn’t think that women should be treated any differently. As she put it:

“The law should acknowledge no difference between the sexes as to moral perceptions, reason, passions, volition, or self control.”

This is in line with Mary Wollstonecraft’s argument that women had equal moral volition, and thus should be educated and treated equally. I agree. Perhaps one of the most frustrating experiences in my childhood was seeing females get away with atrocious behavior and yet get off with lighter punishment than a male would in the same circumstances. With equal power comes equal responsibility - and most feminists these days would agree with that.

Foltz also noted that this idea that women should get off easily (particularly in a famous case at the time) because of the discovery of adultery was actually rooted in a belief of male ownership of female bodies. In the old days, so to speak, a man was essentially entitled to kill his wife’s lover - and her too - if he caught them in adultery. Foltz objected to the idea that either sex should have the right of vigilante justice of this kind.

The book has an interesting summary and discussion of the high profile murder cases of the time that Foltz obliquely references in her article. It is interesting to see some of the dated arguments that were made. One is straight out of Rape Culture. The prosecutor made the claim in his argument that no woman could be forced into sexual intimacy she didn’t desire. (Oh wait, we still have people like that around…)

The other article which really fascinated me was one on the role of the legislature. Then as now, there was a tension between those who pushed for legislative solutions, and those who sought court relief. More or less the same way we now debate whether progress should come through court decisions or through statutory law. While reducing this to a liberal versus conservative issue is oversimplification, there is a degree to which the sides have switched in the last 100 years. The conservatives at one point wanted the law to progress through Common Law style decisions, while progressives (in the Theodore Roosevelt mold) preferred legislation. Foltz herself made a few interesting observations and suggestions in her article. First, she noted that the courts tend to take a stronger role when the legislature fails to do the right thing. Hey, in our own day, Congress has abysmal ratings. I wonder why? Might possibly have something to do with the fact that they only rarely are able to work together to write legislation that actually helps people. (It’s another discussion, but there seems to be a fundamental disagreement between the parties right now as to goals, not just means. Not how to make life better for the poor, etc., but whether we should at all.)

Foltz also had an interesting - and influential - suggestion. Since legislators often lack expertise, they need help. She suggested that legislators needed to work with experts regarding their legislation - people who actually knew the fields - scientific and so on - so that silly mistakes could be avoided. (She cited a coyote control measure which backfired - because it sounded good only to those who had no knowledge of the science involved in coyote reproduction.) To a large degree, Foltz’s vision did come to pass for a time. Much of the progress of the 20th Century owed a lot to the assistance of experts in designing legislation. And to the fact that the parties worked together enough to come up with solutions, not just ways of stopping the other. Of course, now, there is a backlash against the “elites,” and - at least in certain circles - “alternative facts” and militant ignorance is celebrated as superior to science and knowledge.

As a final note, I want to return to what is probably Foltz’s keystone accomplishment: the Public Defender.

When she started practice, it was acknowledged - to a point - that the indigent needed counsel. But rather than pay attorneys, judges would order one to represent - free of charge. It was rarely the prominent, connected ones that got the call. Rather, it was the bottom feeders - and women like Foltz, who then had to either make a poor defense (and on short notice) or devote weeks at a time to free labor. (Foltz fell into the latter category.)

Foltz’s vision was that instead, the defense would be paid and equipped the same way as the prosecution. Both sides should be equal, and a defendant - presumed innocent - should not fail to get justice simply because of his poverty.

“For every public prosecutor there should be a public defender chosen in the same way and paid out of the same fund.”

There isn’t space in this post to get into the whole vision - it is impressive and well thought out - and has only partially been realized. (Defendants still end up having to pay if they can afford it, which Foltz thought was unfair.) But it is amazing just how much did come to pass. We tend to take the right to counsel for granted, but Foltz played a key role in making that right more than an illusion, something only the wealthy could truly enjoy.

There is so much more in this book. It isn’t short, but neither is the story. Foltz lived during interesting times. Exciting, fascinating, frustrating, and never boring. We modern Americans tend to forget just how much has changed for the better in the last 200 years, but we should never forget that they didn’t just happen. People made them happen. People like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Laura Gordon. And, we should never forget, Clara Foltz. She never made her fortune, but she did, in many ways, make the fortune of millions of women who came after her, from the many outstanding lawyers and judges I work with in my practice, to my wife, who can put her leadership skills to good use at her workplace, to my daughters, who are growing up in a world where a man who would claim that females are just trained animals would rightly be laughed out of town - even in conservative circles.

I highly recommend this book - particularly for those with an interest in law, politics, or history - but really for everyone. Barbara Babcock tells a great story, the writing is compelling, and the details and research are outstanding. 

***

The Criminal Courts Building - aka the Clara Shortridge Foltz Courthouse. 

If it looks familiar, it should, as this is where the O.J. Simpson trial was held. 

Foltz herself tended to side with the defense, and she probably would have enjoyed the trial antics.

 

Cousin Henry by Anthony Trollope

Source of book: I own this

It has been a pretty big gap since my last post, but I have a good excuse. My kids and I took an extended vacation to Bryce Canyon National Park, which was delightful, but also ended up requiring some heavy days at the office catching up.

We homeschool our kids, and I am responsible for science. This year, we did a unit on astronomy, so we planned to be at Bryce for their annual astronomy festival. Bryce has one of the darkest skies in the United States - perfect for absolutely amazing stargazing. The Salt Lake Astronomy Club brings a few dozen large telescopes out, and there are lectures and model rocket launches during the day. I must say, it was an outstanding week, and one I will never forget. Not only was the Milky Way as clear as I have ever seen it, you could even see stuff like the Lagoon Nebula with the naked eye. I highly recommend Bryce for its hiking and spectacular scenery, and also recommend the astronomy festival as a great experience for young and old alike.

On our last evening of the trip, the older kids and I attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors in Cedar City. Also great fun. So, anyway, that is why I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ll try to get caught up on book reviews and reading and stuff as I can.

Back to our regularly scheduled review.

***

Regular blog readers will know that I am a huge fan of Anthony Trollope, chiefly for his nuanced characters.

Previous reviews:

He Knew He Was Right

Doctor Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Barchester Chronicles (BBC Series)

Cousin Henry is an unusual book in that it is short. That is not characteristic of either Trollope or the Victorian Era in general. For the most part, his books run 500-800 pages, and take some pretty serious hours to read. For this book, the author decided to focus on a very limited time frame, a simple issue, and just a handful of characters.

The setup is pretty simple: the wealthy Indefer Jones is dying, and cannot decide whether to leave his property to his closest male heir, his nephew Henry, or to his beloved niece, Isabel. Jones wants to keep the property in the male line, but also wants to take care of Isabel, who has cared for him for years.

Also heightening the problem is that Henry is unlikeable. His is weak, and indecisive, and, well, by the standards of the time, unmanly. He doesn’t have a particularly pleasant personality either, although he isn’t really bad in any definable sense. He’s just...weak and simpering. As the lawyer puts it to him, he is “whining like a woman.”

My Oxford paperback version of this book has this painting on the cover.

Not a bad choice for Henry, in my opinion.

Self Portrait by Frank Holl (1863)

Jones would consider his problem solved if Isabel would just marry Henry, who would be happy to do so, but she finds him repulsive.

Not too long before he dies, Jones invites Henry to the property and essentially informs him he will inherit. His lawyer (who also dislikes Henry) writes the will in Henry’s favor. However, on his deathbed, Jones has a change of heart, and himself writes a new will disinheriting Henry, and leaving everything to Isabel. He has two of his tenants witness it, but forgetfully leaves the will inside a book, rather than placing it with his documents.

After Jones dies, a search is made for the new will, but it isn’t found. Henry, however, has accidentally stumbled upon the will, but is too weak minded either to come forward with his knowledge, or destroy (or even hide) the will. It is primarily, then, with Henry’s tormented conscience and ghastly fears that the book is concerned.

I won’t go further with the plot than that. As is usual with Trollope, the plot isn’t much of a surprise, and the ending is telegraphed from the beginning. Trollope is less concerned with what happens, but with how the characters respond to circumstances. Henry is placed in his position through no fault of his own. He would just as soon have inherited nothing, but not had the old man get his hopes up or his cousin insult him as Isabel does. He lacks the moral fiber to disclose the location of the will, but also lacks the perfidy to simply destroy the will and have done with it. He cannot bring himself to do active wrong, but he also cannot bring himself to do the noble thing. This is in particular contrast to Isabel, who undoubtedly shows herself capable of doing right even at her own cost. But I also found myself wondering if she was also capable of doing wrong. I suspect she could and would have destroyed the will had she been in Henry’s position.

This wasn’t my favorite Trollope book, although it had its moments. The chief flaw, in my opinion, was in the handling of the scenes with the lawyer. Trollope was the son of a barrister - a really bad one - who failed to retain clients, making it necessary for Trollope’s mother to support the family with her writing. So, it is puzzling when Trollope gets legal details wrong. There are occasional things to quibble about in other books, but most of them involve archaic British law, so they can be easily ignored. This one is a bigger problem.

I’ll admit I am not particularly knowledgeable about the ethics rules in 19th Century England. However, in 21st Century California, what the lawyer, Mr. Apjohn, does in this book would potentially get him disbarred.

Mr. Apjohn represents Indefer Jones, which is fine. After Jones dies, he more or less represents the estate, which is potentially fine, provided he is clear about who he represents and where his loyalty lies.

The problem comes because his loyalty clearly is with Isabel’s interests, as his overriding goal is to find the missing will so that Isabel can inherit. To this end, he acts as though he were Henry’s lawyer, and persuades him to file a libel suit against the local paper, which has claimed that Henry destroyed the will. The purpose of inciting this suit isn’t that it would be in Henry’s best interest, which is debatable, but that doing so would subject Henry to examination on the witness stand, and Apjohn thinks Henry will confess if he has to testify. (Apjohn thinks Henry destroyed the will.) Then, as soon as Apjohn guesses from Henry’s begrudging answers to his questions that Henry knows where the will is, he bullies Henry into allowing another search, and, once he finds the will, proceeds to take action to make sure that the property goes to Isabel.

This is a glaring breach of conflict of interest rules, the duty of loyalty, and several other ethical rules. At least in my time and place. Pretty breathtakingly bad behavior, regardless of its legality, and it would have been nice for Trollope to have lavished his usual care on the ethical dilemma faced by the lawyer as well as Henry’s quandary.

For Trollope, the writing itself is more experimental than his earlier works. This one came late in life, and I suspect he wanted to stretch himself a bit, and try something new. Sometimes this works better than others. Overall, not a bad book, but not as good as Trollope can be.

Just for fun:

I mentioned the Lagoon Nebula because it was one of the best things I saw through a telescope at Bryce. There are so many more, of course. Special mention to the Ring Nebula, M81 and M82, the Whirlpool Galaxy, Saturn, and several amazing star clusters. If you have never had a chance to be given a tour of the sky by an experienced telescope operator, you must. It will blow your mind.

Here is a great picture of the Lagoon Nebula, compliments of the Paranal Observatory in Chile. All their images are free to use with attribution, and are just plain incredible. You can find the original here. 

For more about the Lagoon Nebula, check out this site.

No Name by Wilkie Collins

Source of book: I own this.

As regular followers of this blog recall, I participate in an online book club, hosted by my friend Carrie at readingtoknow.com. This is our second year, and we are focusing on classics - an even mix of adult and children’s books. This month’s selection was chosen by me. 

What does one do if one is unjustly deprived of fortune, reputation, and indeed, one’s own name?

Well, if one is Thorin Oakenshield, rightful “King Under the Mountain,” one might set off on a quest with eleven close friends, a wizard, and a hired burglar, and die gloriously in battle.

Or, if one is Hamlet of Denmark, one might dither until it is too late, and end up as one of many dead in a Shakespearian tragedy.

Or, if one is the Count of Monte Cristo, one might swear eternal revenge, and proceed to carry it out under a false name, punishing one’s enemies in one of the greatest revenge tales ever.

But what does one do if one is a female in the Victorian era? And what happens if said female chooses option number three?

It is always interesting to reread a book many years after a first reading. I thought about this book, and determined that I must have read it around age 18 or so. Or closer to my birth than my current age. Ouch. I’m getting old.

When I read this, I had not yet begun law school, so I missed many of the delightful legal references and quotable lines. I think that this book may have been at least partially responsible for my eventual decision to enter the legal profession - and to eventually make estate planning and probate a key part of my practice.

This book was also an important milestone in my reading. I believe it was my first foray into Victorian literature beyond Charles Dickens; I would become acquainted with my favorite Victorian, Anthony Trollope soon thereafter. This was also my first acquaintance with a strong heroine in a fully adult book. (I love Anne of Green Gables - at least the first four books, but those are geared toward children and teens.)

Of all the Wilkie Collins books I have read, I still have affection for this particular book because of its ambiguous characters, its transgressive heroine, and the complex issues presented.

In my introduction to this month’s book club selection, I gave some basic biographical information about Collins, which I won’t repeat here.

Like many books of the era, it takes awhile to get into the plot itself. The first hundred pages or so set the stage of a typical upper class English family. The father has a significant inherited fortune, and there are two daughters. Norah, the eldest, is practically an old maid at 26, and is less attractive and vibrant than her younger sister, the tall and gorgeous Magdalen. It is Magdalen who chooses the third option and seeks to repossess her fortune at whatever cost necessary.

The basic plot is driven by a legal issue. The parents are not legally married, because the father entered a disastrous young marriage abroad, but was unable to obtain a divorce. The parents lived together as husband and wife, but never made it legal until the first wife died. After the legal marriage, but before they can make a new estate plan, both die under tragic circumstances. This leaves the girls disinherited and without a name. Due to previous family quarrels, the nearest relative, who inherits the fortune, casts away the girls, considering himself morally justified as the “divine retribution” for the sins of the parents. (Mankind has a history of attempting to prevent illegitimate children by brutally punishing the children. As the family lawyer, Mr. Pendril says, “I am far from defending the law of England as it affects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents on the children; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage; and it claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of morality and religion.” Modern laws have remedied this result, at least, but I could go on at length at the way that welfare laws - particularly the Medicaid rules - punish marriage still today.)

Before this tragedy, the family enjoys some typical amusements, which end up being portents of the future. First, the girls accompany their father to a concert. As an orchestral musician myself, I snickered at the description of the scene wherein the audience seemed confused about when a symphony ended. While it was common at one point to clap between movements - and individual movements were often encored immediately - by Collins’ time, it had already become gauche to fail to wait until the very end for applause.

Later, Magdalen is convinced to take part in an amatuer production of Richard Sheridan’s play, The Rivals. (While I have not read The Rivals, I did read Sheridan’s other masterwork, The School for Scandal.) The Rivals is notable for the character of Mrs. Malaprop, who uses the wrong words to comic effect. It is also notable for matrimonial schemes involving impersonations and fraud. Magdalen takes naturally to acting, and steals the show. Both this fact and the subject matter of the play will be important later in the book.

During this time, Magdalen falls in love with Frank Clare, who she has known since childhood. Frank’s father is a scandalous free thinker - and the references to his favorite philosophers escaped me when I first read this, but were amusing on the second reading. Frank is, as his father fears, irresponsible and flighty. Magdalen correctly decides that he would be best served by marrying money.

When I first read the book, I didn’t really understand why Collins bothered writing the character of Frank Clare. He is a motivating factor in Magdalen attempting to regain her fortune, of course, but he abandons her soon into her quest, and appears at the end only when he has married a far older widow for her money.

What I did not realize at the time was that Collins has cleverly turned gender expectations upside down. Frank does exactly what a proper Victorian female was expected to do. He was a gentleman without a fortune, but a handsome face. What should a girl do? Marry an older man with money, of course! But Frank is castigated for his lack of fortitude in seeking an alternate means of making a living. (As he should be: he is an irresponsible and rather ungrateful slacker. Although he also resembles the young Wilkie Collins a bit.)

However, Magdalen has exactly what Frank lacks, which is determination and fortitude. Frank takes the passive, “female” approach, while Magdalen opts for the “male” approach. Although she has fewer options, she basically opts to imitate the Count of Monte Cristo and win back what is hers by whatever means are available.

If the genders had been reversed, both Frank and Magdalen would have taken socially acceptable attitudes about their fate.

Of course, this is a Collins novel, so Magdalen’s attitude will lead her to go beyond any reasonable course of action, stooping to shocking lows and nearly destroying herself in the process. What makes her unable to embrace the “female” approach? Surely she could, with her good looks and vivacious personality, charm a handsome and wealthy suitor despite her illegitimate birth.

I found the musings of the old governess, Miss Garth, to be interesting on this point.

Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward and visible character which is shaped into form by the social influences surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition, which is part of ourselves, which education may indirectly modify, but can never hope to change?  Is the philosophy which denies this and asserts that we are born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper a philosophy which has failed to remark that we are not born with blank faces—­a philosophy which has never compared together two infants of a few days old, and has never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers for mothers and nurses to fill up at will?

The “nature” versus “nurture” argument is as old as time, and both extremes have been used as justification for evil acts. Racists and eugenicists have always pointed toward nature as an excuse for the superiority of some. In contrast, the Stalinists, as I noted in my post on Iron Curtain, believed in human beings as a completely blank slate - and that by changing the nurture, one could change the nature.

Certainly, Norah and Magdalen are strong arguments for nature as a determining factor. One of the surprising things about being a parent was that I found that I had far less control than I had thought. My children have been pretty well set in personality since birth, really. I have five children with strong wills and characteristics of their own, totally different from each other.

Old Mr. Clare, curmudgeon extraordinaire, has no high opinion of his child, but neither does he think much of women.

"These are the creatures," he thought to himself, "into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?"

Mr. Clare underestimates Magdalen, of course. And Magdalen herself has yet to realize what she can do. Late in the book, as she finds herself falling for Captain Kirke, (did Gene Roddenberry steal the name?), she thinks, “Oh, if I could be a man, how I should like to be such a man as this!” That is, a man who is both strong and decisive, but also gentle and kind. Magdalen is capable of both, but she simply cannot be passive, which is the very thing society demands of her. 

So, does Magdalen have a defective nature? Or does is she just not cut out for the role that society has set for her? The novel ends with a conventional Victorian ideal. Norah’s approach wins in the end. By being the good girl, patiently resigned to her fate, she is eventually rescued by a wealthy man. This is ludicrously unlikely to have really occurred, as Collins is clearly aware. In fact, he sets up the scenario exactly so that it is unrealistic. Norah is the unattractive sister, and she is already age 26 when the story opens. By the time of her marriage, she would be around 28, if I am counting the months correctly. Certainly past the average age of marriage, and unlikely to have caught the eye of a dashing young gentleman.

(Side note: I shouldn’t be unfair to Norah here. While she must play the part of the Good Victorian Girl, she is more human than I remembered from my first reading. She is too good and perfect to be realistic, of course, but she has her moments of humanity. She is jealous of Magdalen’s beauty and charm. When she objects to Magdalen’s infatuation with Frank Clare, she knows that mixed with her good sense is also a certain amount of envy. She isn’t exactly an angelic Dickens female.)

Magdalen herself also succumbs at last to the societal ideal, by falling in love with a man twice her age who will rescue her. (Collins makes a big point of the age difference - at the same time as he notes Frances Clare’s marriage to an older widow. I doubt this was accidental. Although the Victorian reader would probably not find it bothersome, we moderns find this idea a bit icky - at least I do, and Collins portrays Kirke as uncomfortable as well.)

Thus, the ending of this book is ostensibly happy, but tragedy lurks below the surface. In reality, we know that it would be more likely that Norah would live out her life as a governess, and probably end it in the workhouse. Magdalen would die of her fever, and the insufferable Noel Vanstone would live to hoard his wealth for his eventual children. As in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, we escape disaster, but only by unbelievable coincidences and turns of the plot.

Not only does the plot turn on a legal issue, there is much in this book about lawyers and clients. Collins studied for the law prior to his writing career, and was actually admitted to the bar, although he never practiced.

Thus, unlike many authors (and even more television shows), he writes accurately. One of the curses of being a lawyer is that we wince whenever we watch courtroom dramas or read about legal cases. The ignorance is usually laughable, but we can’t even do that. Collins gets it right, however, and his portrayals are quite familiar.

First of all, Mr. Pendril is an ideal lawyer. He is scrupulous in his confidentiality and management of potential conflicts of interest. (The other attorney, Mr. Loscombe is likewise admirable for his professionality.)  

Collins also notes a tendency of elderly clients to fail to plan their estates, because doing so would mean contemplating their own death. In Michael Vanstone’s case, “He announced his own positive determination not to die.” Until he did, of course. I see this all the time in my own practice. Clients are afraid that if they go see an attorney, they will die. Well, they will die, but not because they saw an attorney. And then everyone else will be left with the mess.

As a final legal note, additional trouble was caused by a legal document drafted by a non-lawyer. As is common with such documents, it had the opposite effect from what was intended. Again, I see this all the time. As Mr. Loscombe puts it, this “constantly happens when uninstructed persons meddle with law...”

My friend Carrie, in her review of this book, noted that she initially groaned when Captain Wragge was introduced, but later decided he was the best character in the book. I agree. Captain Wragge has to be one the most memorable characters in literature, and it is his duel with the equally formidable Mrs. Lecount that is, in my opinion, the best part of the book. 

Magdalen and Captain Wragge. Illustration by John McLenan (from my edition of the book).

Captain Wragge calls himself a “moral agriculturist,” that is, a swindler. He separates fools from their money, by whatever non-violent means he can find. While usually motivated by pure greed, he eventually becomes fond of Magdalen while he helps her further her own schemes. However, it is once he meets the equally unscrupulous and scheming Mrs. Lecount that he finds he is fighting for pure principle. As the two of them try to gain the upper hand and stay a step ahead of the other, it becomes a “wizard’s duel” of duplicity. 

Magdalen and Mrs. Lecount also have a duel going. Lecount seems motivated both by a desire to get the money she feels she deserves, but also a self-righteous desire to see Magdalen get her just deserts as a bastard. Her low opinion of Magdalen leads her to form an “astonishment...which is akin to admiration” upon learning that Magdalen has sought only to recover her father’s fortune and stopped there. (Lecount is led by this admiration to hate Magdalen even more.)

One more thing that I had completely forgotten since the last time I read the book was that Wragge eventually goes from being a swindler of the usual sort, to a swindler of the medical sort; or, as he puts it, “medical agriculture.” Selling what we would now call “alternative medicine,” in the form of pills, he uses language which is so familiar today. “Down with the Doctors!” Nothing mainstream can be trusted, and so forth. Nothing has changed about the nature of medical swindles - or about swindles in general. Captain Wragge delivers a penetrating line as he leaves the book forever:

“Don’t think me mercenary - I merely understand the age I live in.”

And this is why all swindles have been the same in all places and times in history. No matter what is being sold, it preys on the fears and insecurities and greed of the age. This holds true for financial scams (which I often see in my practice), medical scams (which I discussed in my post on The Flying Inn by G. K. Chesterton), and spiritual scams (which I discussed in my post about Tolkien and witchcraft).

One final thought on a line from this book. There is a scene in which Madalen is intentionally slighted by her fellow servants (she has taken a job as a parlor maid). Despite the fact that she outranks them (which they do not know), she still feels the cut deeply.

Resist it as firmly, despise it as proudly as we may, all studied unkindness—­no matter how contemptible it may be—­has a stinging power in it which reaches to the quick.

And this is to a large degree what fuels Magdalen. Her relatives, first her uncle and then her cousin, and then Mrs. Lecount, cut her and Norah off without feeling, because of an old family grudge. The girls must be punished for a quarrel that occurred long before they were born, and had no way of curing. They all get satisfaction from being unkind to Magdalen and Norah, and that is what stings. Surely all of us have felt at one time or another, the cut of a “studied unkindness.”

Although this book is less well known that Collins’ more famous works, The Woman in White and The Moonstone, it is a gem worth seeking out and reading.