Reading Those Classics #8

19^th Century Classic. Somebody said the 19^th century English novel is always about money and marriage. Here we go again. Lucky for us, as Ceridwen Dovey wrote in 2015, "I suspect that reading fiction is one of the few remaining paths to transcendence, that elusive state in which the distance between the self and the universe shrinks."

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite – Anthony Trollope

Sir Harry Hotspur’s dream was to pass his wealth, property and baronet title to his only son, in the long and best traditions of a great commoner family. But his son died, forcing him to plan passing the family estates to his daughter Emily and the title to the male George Hotspur, a cousin.

Sir Harry and Lady Elizabeth introduce intelligent, beautiful and vibrant Emily to likely suitors but she remains unmoved, seeing herself as an heiress with no reason to settle. Her parents make the mistake of inviting Cousin George to the house. Emily gives her heart to handsome, charming, suave man.

Sir Harry is less than thrilled to discover that Cousin George is a gambler deeply in debt to money-lenders and is rumored to live off the earnings of the actress Mrs. Lucy Morton. Every traditional bone in Sir Harry’s body wishes to keep the family estates and titles together. Sir Harry is thus torn by two choices, like Alice Vavasor and Lady Glencora in Can You Forgive Her?

In the end, “He knew that Cousin George was no fitting husband for his girl, that he was a man to whom he would not have thought of giving her, had her happiness been his only object.” He forbids Emily to have contact with Cousin George.

Obstinate Emily will obey her father as dutiful children must but she refuses to get Cousin George out of her heart. She points out one, society is such that it expects and even tolerates the recklessness of its fast young men and two, our Savior says to forgive and forget, that no black sheep is so defiled with pitch that he can’t be washed clean.

“I am afraid George has been worse than others, Emily.” 

“So much the more reason for trying to save him. If a man be in the water, you do not refuse to throw him a rope because the water is deep.” 

“But, dearest, your papa is thinking of you.” Lady Elizabeth was not quick enough of thought to explain to her daughter that if the rope be of more value than the man, and if the chance of losing the rope be much greater than that of saving the man, then the rope is not thrown.

Hey, I’m all for Tony’s authorial interjections when they are as wise as that. Emily’s stance calls to mind that of Lady Mary Palliser in The Duke's Children: “She had told the man that she loved him, and after that there could be no retreat.” The author bears Emily’s pig-headed silliness (my word) with as much genial sympathy as he expressed for Mary Thorne in Dr. Thorne, Lucy Robarts in Framley Parsonage, Lucy Morris in The Eustace Diamonds, Lily Dale in The Small House at Allington and numerous other Trollopian heroines that provoke eye-rolls, sighs, groans, and foot-stamping among us post-modern readers.

Emily, I admit, is not totally silly since she “…suffered under a terrible feeling of ill-usage. Why was she, because she was a girl and an heiress, to be debarred from her own happiness?” It’s a pointed question, one asked by thinking females married off for the sake of consolidation of property and military alliances. Still, given Cousin George is as weak, sordid, and clueless as the family de Courcys in Barchester Towers, he’s not worth it. People assent to irrational ideas and unfortunate things happen. It’s the world.

As in the relatively short The Claverings (1867) and the really short Cousin Henry (1879), this novel from 1871 finds Trollope focusing on the psychology of the characters, sparing us, for example, romcom subplots or hunting scenes that don’t advance  the story. I’d recommend it for readers really into Trollope or looking for tightly-constructed Victorian novel with as sad as ending as An Eye for an Eye.

Click on the title to go to the review.

Prize Winning Classic: The Moviegoer – Walker Percy

Classic Novella: Old Man – William Faulkner

Classic Epistolary Novel: Augustus – John Williams

Classic Comic Novel: Thank you, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

Classic Short Stories: New York Stories – John O’Hara

Classic Air Pilot Memoir: Wind, Sand, and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Classic Set in the Big Apple: Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos

Back to the Classics #12

Classic with a Name in the Title. Starting with The Tale of Genji, novel writers have dearly loved naming novels with the name of the hero of the novel. For Trollope, see also Rachel Ray, Miss Mackenzie, Doctor Thorne, and Cousin Henry.

Phineas Finn: The Irish Member – Anthony Trollope

This engaging novel from 1869 tells the story of a young Irishman, the only son of a successful doctor in County Clare, who begins his adult life in London studying law in the odd way they study law in that part of the world. Young Phineas is blessed with luck, being born handsome and pleasant by disposition. Charming as he is, however, he’s no scholar.

So he is lucky again when he builds a useful friendship with Whig politician Barrington Erle who recommends that he run for an Irish seat for parliament. A child of fortune again, he wins in “just one of those flukes that occur once in a dozen elections,” causing his law mentor Mr. Low to warn darkly:

… Even if you are successful, what are you to become? You will be the creature of some minister, not his colleague. You are to make your way up the ladder by pretending to agree whenever agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation,—even if you are lucky enough to achieve the slavery.

Finn’s first speech in that august body is a fiasco and any reader that has blown an interview or presentation sky-high will connect with his experience. Finn also feels what we now call imposter syndrome, Trollope showing that feeling an outsider and a fraud and full of self-doubt has been around for a long time though we post-moderns love to think our new names name new things.

Trollope presents so many examples of Finn’s luck that such good fortune borders on the improbable. As he attempts to woo young heiresses, another character tells him “Upon my word, Phineas, my boy, you're the luckiest fellow I know. This is your first year, and you're asked to the two most difficult houses in England.”

Finn is also lucky enough to find himself in a position to rescue not one but two men. In the obligatory sporting scene for readers that like fox hunting (a bigger demographic in the Victorian era than in our staying-at-home times), he provides aid and comfort to injured Lord Childtern, the brother of his most earnest supporter, Lady Laura. Later he saves Robert Kennedy, the husband of the same lady, from being garroted by beating off the muggers. Kennedy’s feeling of obligation to Finn works itself out in both fortunate and unfortunate ways.

The Palliser novels are often called the political novels. Lots of us idealistic readers see politics as a set of beliefs about how the wealth of nations ought to be divided up, but a character in this novel sums up an attitude still with us today:

"Convictions! There is nothing on earth that I'm so much afraid of in a young member of Parliament as convictions. There are ever so many rocks against which men get broken. One man can't keep his temper. Another can't hold his tongue. A third can't say a word unless he has been priming himself half a session. A fourth is always thinking of himself, and wanting more than he can get. A fifth is idle, and won't be there when he's wanted. A sixth is always in the way. A seventh lies so that you never can trust him. I've had to do with them all, but a fellow with convictions is the worst of all."

It appears I have written 500 words about this novel without telling anything about the plot. I don’t think that Trollope especially cared about the story. Instead, he puts his energy and creativity into memorable characters.

Two men and three women especially stand out. Lord Chiltern aka Oswald Standish brings to mind the tumult and selfishness of George Vavasor but without the ambition that drove the latter to use people as mere objects. Chiltern is out of the place in the modern world because he is wild, impetuous, surly, brawling in the violent 18^th century manner. Nobody better to share a foxhole with, nobody worse to work or travel with. No wonder heiress Violet Effingham, as fun as Lady Glencora Palliser, is rather afraid that Chiltern will be a drinking, gaming, out of control husband.

Robert Kennedy is a control freak because, like most control freaks, he is weak and fears uncertainty. He thinks that religious zeal, inflexible schedules and rigid adherence to social duty will stave off change that he dreads he won’t be able to handle. His controlling ways drive his wife Lady Laura to distraction, as if she does not feel guilty enough marrying him out of ambition to make a difference in the world (see Alice Vavasor) after throwing over our hero Finn.

Another vibrant character is the widow of a Viennese banker, Madame Max Goesler. She’s another outsider who works hard to find a place in London society, so beautiful and charming that she becomes sought-after by the Duke of Omnium. This, naturally enough, alarms Lady Glencora who fears for the future of her son, the future duke if all goes as it should.

Like the characters in the Barchester novels, the characters in this novel struggle to reconcile their own preferences with the expectations of the world. The world hectors Chiltern to settle down. It chides Finn that entering Parliament is a misstep. All the women are told love is most important and that they should live only for others. Reading Trollope reminds us that we readers still struggle to resolve our own heart’s desire for freedom with what a silly fickle world tells us to want - money, a soul mate, property, reputation, position, awards, making a difference, good health – all desires that enslave us because they are out of our control, not up to us.

Back to the Classics #1

I read this book for the 2019 Back to the Classics Reading Challenge

Very Long Classic. You would think that the door-stop novels The Last Chronicle of Barset or He Knew He Was Right were Trollope’s longest but in fact the novel discussed here, at 1300 manuscript pages and about 420,000 words, was his longest. Critics have said it would have better had about 100 pages ended up on the cutting room floor, but I found it a page-turner because winter is the season to settle into a long novel and Trollope tries hard to be easily understood, despite occasional balled-up sentences (he wrote too fast and didn’t revise for later editions).

The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope

It is 1873. Augustus Melmotte moves to London from the badlands of Middle Europe with the odor of financial impropriety wafting about him. He buys a large house on Grosvenor Square and ensconces his wife and grown daughter there. Building the reputation as great financial wizard and big spender, he throws daughter Marie a grand ball.

Probably based on the real-life bunco artist James Fisk (shot dead in 1872 by a business partner), a San Franciscan wheeler-dealer named Hamilton K. Fisker and his naïve English partner Paul Montague bring Melmotte into the puffing of a Ponzi Scheme called the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway. Rich jackasses and titled muttonheads are induced to speculate and sit on the board, whose meetings last about 15 minutes every Friday. Trollope satirizes what he called in his autobiography "a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places… so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable."

Melmotte makes lavish gifts to charity and becomes so glamorous that HM government requests that he host – and pay for - a dinner for the Celestial Emperor of China. So drawn by his money, the Conservative Party recruits him to run for a seat in in Parliament. Rumor runs rampant however that Melmotte’s financial future is stormy, thus spooking would-be guests. Still, Melmotte manages to win the seat. But his future is not rosy.

This is a Trollope novel so there must be romantic trouble. Marie is pursued by two worthless guys for her money. Paul Montague’s previous affair with an American woman, Winifred Hurtle, complicates his subsequent romance with Henrietta Carbury. Georgiana Longestaffe, in her late twenties, is feeling behind in the matrimonial race and contemplates marriages with a Jewish banker, to the unreasoning anguish of her snobbish family who are quite okay with falsehood and chiseling but not okay with Jewish people. For a little comic relief, the romance of John Crumb and Ruby Ruggles (country names for country people) has rough going. There’s even a middle-aged romance between a newspaper editor and Henrietta’s mother, a writer who needs him to insure good reviews for her terrible books. A problem is that the triangle of Paul-Hetta-Roger fails to hold interest because Hetta isn’t interesting, Roger is a bit of a prig, and we Trollope veterans already know who is going to marry whom in the end.

Apparently, this is not a popular novel with readers that gush over the likes of Bertie Stanhope perhaps because the realistic observation of business and personal corruption is raw, especially for generally genial Tony, and the satire may seem strained in places. It’s hard for any writer to sustain humor and satire over the length of a novel, much less one about 700 pages long. Even more to the point, satire in 1873 seems mild to us in 2019. We have read Brave New World and Catch-22. Also, nowadays when we read Melmotte is a "horrid, big, rich scoundrel… a bloated swindler… a vile city ruffian,” how can we not  be reminded of somebody and conclude that given our nutty reality, satirists are hard put to ruffle us.

Readers may also be dismayed that with only few exceptions characters don't deal with each other with the least scintilla of honesty. Girls like the Longestaffe sisters scheme incessantly to land unwary rich guys as husbands. Parents like Lady Carbury and the elder Longestaffe disfavor their daughters as burdens while they cosset their sons who are genuine financial burdens. People even lie to themselves, persuading themselves to accept the most absurd things.  For example Father Barham convinces himself, despite evidence a child would judge rightly, that Melmotte is God's instrument and vows to help deliver the Roman Catholic vote to the crooked financier.

We have seen the weak male often portrayed in Trollope: Charlie Tudor, Harry Clavering, and Johnny Ames. But the dude-bros of the Beargarden Club are weak in ways different from the awkward hobbledehoy. Though idle and indolent, they are addicted to the excitement of gambling at cards, gorging and guzzling, and, Trollope implies, the vice of seduction and whoring. Their goal is to marry an heiress and get their paws on her money. Sir Felix Carbury is one of the most malignant, heartless characters I've read in a Trollope novel. I do believe Tony, along with us readers, smiles when Felix winces under the authorial taser.

Another point that may rattle readers that think they are used to Trollope is the author’s examination of domestic violence. Country girl Ruby Ruggles is doubly victimized. She is dragged about the house by her hair by her drunken grandfather. She is sexually assaulted in a London alley by the entitled shit Felix. We rather expect, our prejudices kicking in, victims vulnerable to assault to be young, female, rural, and poor, but Trollope does not turn a blind eye from the sensitive point that middle and upper class men coerce consent and obedience from women with violence. Lady Carbury was “at last driven out of her house by the violence of [her husband's] ill-usage.” The American Mrs. Hurtle has had to defend herself from a drunken husband and has shot a would-be rapist dead. And when Marie refuses to sign papers for her father:

That cutting her up into pieces was commenced after a most savage fashion. Marie crouching down hardly uttered a sound. But Madam Melmotte frightened beyond endurance screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Ah, Melmotte tu la tueras!’ And then she tried to drag him from his prey … Croll, frightened by the screams, burst into the room. It was perhaps not the first time that he had interfered to save Melmotte from the effects of his own wrath … Melmotte was out of  breath … Marie gradually recovered herself, and crouched,  cowering, in the corner of a sofa, by no means vanquished in spirit, but with a feeling that the very life had been crushed out of her body. …  [She] lay on the sofa, all in a heap, with her hair disheveled and her dress disordered, breathing hard, but uttering no sobs and shedding no tears.

Indeed, we are long way from Lily Dale eating her heart our over Crosbie in the sewing room.

Clearly, this story has strong passages and thus not to everybody’s taste. Some will cringe at the seeming anti-Americanism and anti-semitism. But I think Trollope’s view of Americans and Jewish people is nuanced. It seems to me that he is sympathetic to Winifred Hurtle and Ezekiel Brehgert, perhaps because they were outsiders like Trollope himself. If nothing else Mrs. Hurtle compels our attention because she’s the tough American woman who’s seen too much of life and says things like,

Yes; come. You shall come. And now you know the welcome you shall find. I will buy the whip while this is reaching you, and you shall find that I know how to choose such a weapon. I call upon you so come. But should you be afraid and break your promise, I will come to you. I will make London too hot to hold you; — and if I do not find you I will go with my story to every friend you have.

Whoa, daddy. Though a sad single girl threatened to stab another sad single girl in  scene played for laughs in He Knew He Was Right, I can't think of any other incident in Trollope where a woman threatened to horsewhip some dude.

I was badly burned by the latest one of his I read, The Belton Estate, so I was nervous this novel letting me down. I was concerned about the usual Trollope issues like his facetiousness, his less lucid grammar, and his tendency to mishandle surprises (I think unlike Austen he didn’t like pulling surprises on readers). I also fretted that it would have a slow, oh so deliberate, start like Dr. Thorne. Mercifully, the set-up was brisk and incidents started right away. This was first published as a serial so at the ¾ mark, the recapitulation of Marie’s story and Roger’s struggles of conscience makes the pace temporarily sluggish.

This book was so compelling that long as it is I read it in only about two weeks. I highly recommend it to Trollope fans and to readers who balefully wonder if the Chronicles of Barsetshire were the height of Trollope’s powers. I’d say this was as enjoyable as The Last Chronicle of Barset or He Knew He Was Right.

Mount TBR #35

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Rachel Ray – Anthony Trollope

A light fairy tale like this novel is the choice to take on summer vacation, laze on a deck, in the shade, and delight in.

Our titular heroine lives with her widowed mother and older sister. Mrs. Ray is timid but good-natured. Sis, a.k.a. the widow Mrs. Prime, is a dour bible-thumper put out when others seem to be enjoying life. The trio lives in a humble cottage in Bragg’s End, where reasons for boasting peter out. Mrs. Ray is tyrannized by Mrs. Prime, but Rachel holds off Sis’ efforts to get to toe the evangelical line.

Comely - of course - Rachel attracts the attention of Luke Rowan. He has inherited a share in a local brewery that makes a little profit though its product “isn’t worth swallowing” and thus can’t compete with the local hard cider (strange how things come back, considering the growing popularity of cider in our day). Mrs. Prime mistrusts Luke’s character, and does not hesitate to share her concerns with her easily-alarmed mother. Mrs. Ray talks to her pastor, the misnamed Mr. Comfort. He vouches for Rowan’s motives at first but unfounded rumors undermine Luke’s reputation. Mr. Comfort then advises Mrs. Ray to squelch the engagement between Rachel and Rowan. O, trouble, indeed.

Trollope also includes a serio-comic courtship between Mrs. Prime and her pastor, Samuel Prong. Prong is as fanatical as narrow-minded as she. But conflict ensues because his ideas on wifely submission to husbandly authority include his control over her income from her first husband's estate. Stand-out pieces include the planning and execution of Mrs. Tappitt’s ball and the conversations between Mr. and Mrs. Tappitt. Luke is not nearly the fatuous overly confident young person as the clerks in The Three Clerks, Harry Clavering in The Claverings, or the naïve lame suitors (Arabin, Eames, etc.) in the Barsetshire chronicles.

This was written in 1863 between Framley Parsonage (1861) and The Small House at Allington (1864).  This novel is an example of what George Eliot was talking about when she wrote Trollope of his novels, “They are like pleasant public gardens, where people go for amusement and, whether they think of it or not, get health as well.” If you in the mood for English-style "nice" this is the ticket

Click on the title below to go to my review of other Trollope novels.

The Warden  (1855)

Barchester Towers (1857)

The Three Clerks (1858)

Dr. Thorne (1858)

Framley Parsonage (1861)

The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson  (1862)

Orley Farm (1862)

The Small House at Allington (1864)

Miss Mackenzie (1865)

The Claverings (1867)

The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867)

He Knew He Was Right (1869)

Classics #12

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2017.

The Tale of Genji – Murasaki Shikibu (tr. Edward Seidensticker)

Lady Murasaki Shikibu composed this long novel in 11th century Japan. The novel chronicles the story of Genji, an aristocrat connoisseur and government minister, whose good looks, refinement, aesthetic taste, and accomplishments in all the arts and crafts attract the admiration of everyone he meets, except of course mediocrities who envy his talents and feel jealousy with his success with the ladies.

The novel’s 1100 or so pages can be divided into three large sections. Chapters 1-33 cover Genji’s youth through middle age. Genji suffers the ordeal of exile to faraway Satsuma because he is caught with the daughter of a high minister of state. However, after that unhappy sojourn, his court success and eventful personal life are described in witty, readable incidents.

Chapters 34-41 feels as if the author were ready to move on to other characters in the next generation. There is also a discernible shift in tone. Genji begins to feel what our ancestors in the 1950s called “that old mortality,” the melancholy we feel as we contemplate being subject to death. The Japanese have called this feeling mono no aware (物の哀れ), “the sadness of things.” Everything is subject to flux in both the short and the long term. We need to savor the sad beauty that people, places, and things express because of their transient nature.

Finally, Chapters 42-54 cover Genji’s grandson Niou and supposed son Kaoru. There’s no point to applying morals or ethics as we understand them to many characters in this book. In fact, their callousness to each other, destructive jealousy, breaking up of families, harsh treatment of women, casual treatment of illegitimate offspring and lack of anything we’d call privacy rather prevent us from being sympathetic toward many of the characters. The men are weak when faced with temptation and strong when justifying their own selfishness.And women can't relax for a minute because a mistake in a unguarded moment will bring down gossip, derision, and economic insecurity.

I suppose some readers will condemn this book for the same reasons the Victorians turned their noses up at it. That is, the lack of sexual restraint stands out. People in the court of Heian Japan acted promiscuously, however, according to a strict code of conduct not only social but aesthetic. For example, it was obligatory that lovers could compose and appreciate poetry in its various forms and be able to write poems that drew on famous poems and stories. Such poetical allusions had to be made in exquisite calligraphy. People judged each other on the basis of their penmanship.

This novel is truly for people who love to read novels packed with episodes and people with curious characters. In other words, if you like Trollope, you might want to try this one. It’s the same kind of comfy reading experience as, say, Doctor Thorne or The Last Chronicle of Barset in that once it gets going - and for pete’s sake it takes a while to get going - it’s un-put-down-able.

Finally a caution and advice. This is not like Anna Karenina, which can pick up and enjoy without knowing too much about Russian society and culture in the 19th century. But, in the interest of full disclosure so people know that they are getting into, I think a reader that knows little or nothing of Heian Japan will probably become lost and disgruntled without first reading Ivan Morris' The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan. No sheepish apology here for advising background reading and prep to the unknowing. This is a masterpiece of world literature about people who are different from us post-moderns. So it had better be approached with knowledge and respect.

Mount TBR #35

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Miss Mackenzie – Anthony Trollope

The titular heroine of the novel at first seems a paragon of unworldly altruism. Margaret Mackenzie selflessly nurses her aged parents and consumptive brother till they check out of this vale of tears. In her dealings with the world in her secluded life, she evinces a disarming naivety. But after she inherits her brother’s well-heeled estate, the mercenary suitors - the subtly named Handcock, Rubb, and Ball - come calling thick and fast. In her dealings with guys and their mixture of romance and self-interest, Trollope reveals her as less simple and less malleable than she appears. Really vexing things happen to her, but she is adept at accepting whatever happens with good grace.

This novel has the usual dings we find in Trollope. Like Dr. Thorne, this novel starts oh so deliberately. Then more than a couple of patches feel quite sluggish and leisurely, to the point where the post-modern reader starts stamping a foot and thinking about 70 pages should have found themselves on the cutting room floor. I think Trollope rather teases us by spinning things out, especially with proposal scenes and over-delicate feelings  that stop people from doing what they naturally want to do. A novel, like the law, is slow, says a joshing Tony. This, about our old friend from The Three Clerks and Orley Farm, a long-time lawyer:

Mr. Slow was a grey-haired old man. ... He was a stout, thickset man, very leisurely in all his motions, who walked slowly, talked slowly, read slowly, wrote slowly, and thought slowly; but who, nevertheless, had the reputation of doing a great deal of business, and doing it very well. He had a partner in the business, almost as old as himself, named Bideawhile; and they who knew them both used to speculate which of the two was the most leisurely. It was, however, generally felt, that, though Mr. Slow was the slowest in his speech, Mr. Bideawhile was the longest in getting anything said.

Generally speaking, Trollope’s sentences are extremely easy to read but his grammar gets convoluted on occasion. In his novels, there’s always at least one sentence that is so twisted up as to be incomprehensible.

The paper in question was not a wicked paper, nor were the gentlemen concerned in its publication intentionally scurrilous or malignant; but it was subject to those great temptations which beset all class newspapers of the kind, and to avoid which seems to be almost more difficult, in handling religious subjects, than in handling any other.

Something gets garbled starting with “class newspapers of the kind.” My mildly lazy brain struggles to take in the meaning of everything after that garble. Oh, well, as the Japanese say, even monkeys fall out of trees.

But Trollope skillfully portrays Victorian codes of conduct with rigid social rules, the constant hunt and fighting for money, and the persistent female concern at the time, looking for a husband. The plot includes the machinations of contenders for her hand, lawyer and financial intriguing, and much quiet comedy from Trollope. Though Trollope signals what ultimately is going to happen, he tosses in unexpected developments  (I won’t say “surprises” – I think Trollope saw surprises as unworthy and tricky) keeps us readers in agreeable suspense. The other appeal of Trollope is that his stories offer soothing escape from the reality of sweltering weather and bloodthirsty talk in an election year.

Click on the title below to go to my review.

The Three Clerks

The Warden

The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson

Orley Farm

Barchester Towers

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Mount TBR #33

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2016. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - Anthony Trollope

This novel is very unlike Orley Farm, the novel he was writing at more or less the same time, the early 1860s. SBJR comes in at about 150 pages, OF about 600. SBJR tickles the funny bone compared to somber OF. The boisterous and quarrelsome characters in SBJR live and work in the lower middle class while OF features mainly well-off  temperate people. Instead of a social comedy of life in the country, we get a satire on the rough and tumble of a retail shop in London. The best scenes in OF are intense conversations in pretty rooms while in SBJR they feature slapstick shenanigans in a magenta shop.

At the time, used to quiet novels such as The Warden, the critics and reading public hated this novel. Reviewers called it “coarse,” “odiously vulgar,” and “unmitigated rubbish;” in our time, scholars have called it “ghastly” and “the least funny of Trollope’s novels.” I wonder if these  sensibilities were made squeamish by Trollope’s home truths and dark realism. I mean, members of the middle class resent it when it is implied middle class people are no more or less honest than the upper or lower classes. Imagine their umbrage when Trollope has the boldness to have Mr. Jones, a villain in this novel, describe a job satisfaction thus: 'And though I looked so sweet on them,' said he, 'I always had my eye on them. It's a grand thing to be down on a well-dressed woman as she's hiding a roll of ribbon under her cloak.’

Matrons shoplifting – the very idea! Sons-in-laws and daughters stealing from her father! An owner using the firm’s till as his personal piggy bank! Lead me to the fainting couch, Beulah. And like Balzac in Père Goriot, Trollope presents two daughters that are after their father’s money, even to the point of tossing him out on the street without remorse. For all the shenanigans, messages dark haunt the heart of this novel, messages that we post-moderns affirm as a matter of course.

But it’s pretty funny. In chapter fourteen, Trollope writes slapstick romp in which imperious Irishwoman Mrs. Morony and her henchwoman Miss Biles insist on the sticker price for an item displayed in the shop window as the villain Jones tries to deflect them with bait and switch. Trollope also tips his hat toward Dickens. Miss Polly Twizzle (now there’s a Dickensy name) calls upon our hero Mr. Robinson with a message from the evil-tempered Maryanne Brown, daughter of his partner in the store. "The long and short of it is this: is Barkis willing? If Barkis is willing, then a certain gentle- man as we know in the meat trade may suit himself elsewhere. Come; answer that, Is Barkis willing?" And Mr. Robinson answers, "Barkis is willing" much to his pain later on.

I mean, I like comic novels though I know that often comedy is so hard to sustain that it inevitably poops out near the end. But interest was sustained to the end because the main character, Robinson, is quite likable, clueless and vulgar as he is. Robinson, by the way, is also the narrator, which is another departure from OF, where Trollope was his usual genial and nearly omniscient narrator.

I think that readers who know they are devoted to Tony and his works will like this novel, like I know I did. But I’m pretty sure readers new to Trollope should start with one of them below.

The Three Clerks

The Warden

Orley Farm

Barchester Towers

Dr. Thorne

Framley Parsonage

The Small House at Allington

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Classic #3

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2016.

The Three Clerks – Anthony Trollope

This is lesser-known Trollope, compared to stand-alone novels such as The Way We Live Now and the Barchester and Palliser novels. The Three Clerks may even be considered “obscure” since some profs have dismissed it as “apprentice work” and recreational readers like us don’t review it often for reading challenges.

I don’t know why The Three Clerks hasn’t survived like The Warden or Barchester Towers. It has many strong points. It’s extremely easy to read. The plot starts off briskly (unlike Dr. Thorne). With only two exceptions, the characters and relationships are lifelike. The lawyer Chaffanbrass  is particularly fun, but so are Sir Gregory Hardlines, Norah the barmaid and her mentor Mrs. Davis. Wonderful dialogues make strong scenes memorable. The plot maintained my interest.

The background setting of the Civil Service seems authentic to those of us who, like Trollope did for the Post Office, work in large bureaucracies. Trollope, in fact, takes Dickens to task for his criticism of all government clerks being layabouts and time-servers in Little Dorrit. Like most conservatives, Trollope pretends that real abuses don’t exist; if they did, they are few and far between and of course committed by a few bad apples. Heaven forfend that the whole barrel is rotten! But like I implied, his defense of honest toilers in government is a good word for us that gotta make the lists and move the paper. Unlike Dickens, who sweated in the workaday world only a short time, Trollope takes the nuanced view that nobody dislikes red tape as much as us bureaucrats.

Trollope is a realist -- he’s smarter than Dickens about all issues pertaining to money, too. But he’s a moralist too. He examines common ways professional men find doors to hell. Young and green Charlie Tudor moves to London from the country. This big change causes him to lose what little equilibrium he has. He falls in with the bad actors at work and disrespects his supervisor. He drinks and smokes, and gets into debt. He falls in with barmaid below his station. Trollope takes pains to show us Charlie is basically a decent young man. But he can’t say no.

The character Alaric Tudor has an inflated sense of his own self. He sees himself as bound for great things. His ambition and narcissism makes him vulnerable to a Machiavellian manipulator, Undy Scott. A cynical persuader, Scott believes that the ends justify any lying, cheating, stealing, conniving means. Fantastic are the scenes in which Alaric and Undy are hotly discussing their money problems. Trollope is uncharacteristically hyperbolic when he condemns Undy” 'The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah, my fingers itch to be at the rope.'

Trollope detests Undy, but Undy will stay in my memory for one jaunty scene. After a confrontation with Alaric, Undy decides to go eat at his club.

It was part of his philosophy that nothing should disturb the even tenor of his way, or interfere with his animal comforts. He was at the present moment over head and ears in debt; he was playing a game which, in all human probability, would end in his ruin; the ground was sinking beneath his feet on every side; and yet he thoroughly enjoyed his dinner. Alaric could not make such use of his philosophy. Undy Scott might be the worse man of the two, but he was the better philosopher.

Trollope may be thinking of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose famous quotation is “I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.” Hey, there are worse ways to live than taking one day at a time.

This review is getting a little long. Suffice to say, that veteran readers will feel dismayed or comfortable with Trollope’s quirks. He will tease the reader and Dickens with a consciously prolonged treatment of a young girl dying of one of those vague mysterious Victorian wasting illnesses. Tony will use epic language facetiously: “Oh! Alaric, Alaric, that thou, thou who knewest all this, that thou shouldest have done this thing!” And of course there are the funny names, such as the lawyer named Mr. Getimthruit.

My suggestion is to read it, especially if you liked the Barchester novels, like I did this past summer. I still can’t believe I read all six in one season, but it is effortless for me to read Trollope. I’m happy reading them and having read them. I look forward to reading many more.

Chronicles of Barsetshire

When I was a smart-aleck college student, waiting for an English Lit lecture to start, me and another guy had fun teasing a fellow student who had said she had read all six Palliser novels. “You musta had copious free time.” “Were you laid up with something Victorian, like a wasting disease?” “Brain fever, indubitably.” “Poor boyfriend, prolly swore off dating readers.” Making females roll their eyes – a typical male bonding ritual.

Anyway, be happy to know that I have mentally apologized since those bygone days. Especially for the reason that I have read all six novels of the Chronicles of Barsetshire since early May. I didn’t set out to read all of them in a summer. But because Trollope is such a pleasure to read, it just ended up that way.

Click on the title to go to the full review.

The Warden (1855). Very short, writing is about concise as Tony ever gets. Meek and mild-mannered Rev. Harding gets dragged through the wringer, too mindful of the world’s fickle opinions. But what else could he do to salve his own conscience?

Barchester Towers (1857). Rev. Slope and Mrs. Proudie deserve each other, but I started to feel for Obadiah by the end. Critics of Trollope always scold the writer for never letting the reader forget she’s reading a novel. I must confess that self-referential tendency did get in my face in this novel. So did the lame Arabin – Elly falls for him, affection is like lightening: who knows where it will strike? This was balanced by the heartless Stanhopes – Trollope had their number, for sure.

Dr. Thorne (1858). The very slow start takes a lot of toleration, I was wondering if the novel was going to have any kind of story at all. And to complain about Trollopian funny names – the medico named Dr. Fillgrave – seems a quibble in the face of this marvelous novel peopled with believable characters like Sir Roger Scatcherd, one of literature’s best high-functioning alcoholics and nobody’s fool Martha Dunstable, the richest woman in England.

Framley Parsonage (1861). All I gotta say is that anybody in the bondage of debt and its attendant money worries – i.e., all of us – will feel for Mark Robarts’ troubles. The Lucy and romance angle is made bearable by the very plausible Lady Lufton. Griselda Grantley starts getting creepy in this one.

The Small House at Allington (1864). Fantastic. Crosbie jilts Lily to marry a countess. And, son, does Crosbie ever pay. Another small-minded, tiny-souled guy an over-sympathetic reader will feel sorry for. John Eames also rose in my estimation by the end of the book, though he would act against his own best interests.

TheLast Chronicle of Barset (1867). Written as a weekly serial so it’s repetitious when we reading gluttons break off 70-page chunks and relish them down. But wonderful. Crawley and Lily both fall into ruts in their thinking, giving me to wonder how prone we oursevles are to rigid thinking without even knowing it.

Mount TBR #24

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

The Small House at Allington – Anthony Trollope

In this, the fifth novel of the six Barsetshire Chronicles, a young woman that is packing an heirloom bowl unwittingly comments on us fickle irrational human beings thus:

Whenever I handle anything very precious I always feel inclined to throw it down and smash it.

Lily Dale is only one of many otherwise bright articulate people who are always taking the illogical unreasonable action contrary to their own best interests.

Johnny Eames loves Lily Dale who loves Adolphus Crosbie. Both suspect that Crosbie is a conceited climber that’s not to be trusted but Lily is crushed when Crosbie jilts her. Lily masochistically wallows in her wound, still in love with Crosbie while selfishly leaning on her mother and sister’s incessant petting and mollycoddling. Though witty, Lily, the “wounded fawn” becomes quite tedious.

I have to wonder at the fact that so many readers, from Trollope’s day to ours, find Lily Dale so enchanting. I don’t like it when healthy self-denial turns into sick obsession, especially over love for worthless people. By the end, I was ill-wishing Lily who felt that not loving Crosbie would be a betrayal of her own integrity. Fine, be a spinster. Be celibate. Descend into religious melancholy. Keep 25 cats.

Though Crosbie detests the cold, ratty, snotty de Courcy family, he marries the frigid Lady Alexandrina, the eldest and shopworn daughter. On the train to their honeymoon, Crosbie contemplates his new wife and thinks the bleakest line I’ve ever read in a Trollope novel:

Of what use to him in life would be that thing of a woman that sat opposite to him?

With such a lack of warmth and respect for each other, they end up in a marriage more like a business partnership where the partners don’t speak to each other. The marriage ends up so bad after only 10 weeks of it, we readers almost feel sorry for the husband and wife.

Plantagenet Palliser is their heir of the rich and powerful Duke of Omnium. He starts making eyes at another man’s wife Lady Dambello, born Griselda Grantley, though she has no discernible personality attributes and has established a reputation for having zilch conversation in her. In a rare burst of candor, the Duke of Omnium warns him off and so does the Duke’s hatchet man Mr. Fothergill. But against all reason Palliser persists in his pursuit.

Johnny Eames, too, perversely toys with the affections of older Amelia Roper, though he regards her a pain in the neck. By the end, Amelia observes “I don't know what's the good of feelings. They never did me any good.”

Amelia’s mother runs a London boarding house on the way out of respectability. The tone of the place is brought down by a running flirtation between Mrs. Lupex and Eames’ friend Cradell. Cradell’s fascination is odd considering that Mrs. Lupex is married, malcious and monstrous.

When the unfortunate moth in his semi-blindness whisks himself and his wings within the flame of the candle, and finds himself mutilated and tortured, he even then will not take the lesson, but returns again and again till he is destroyed. Such a moth was poor Cradell. There was no warmth to be got by him from that flame. There was no beauty in the light,—not even the false brilliance of unhallowed love. Injury might come to him,—a pernicious clipping of the wings, which might destroy all power of future flight; injury, and not improbably destruction, if he should persevere. But one may say that no single hour of happiness could accrue to him from his intimacy with Mrs. Lupex. He felt for her no love. He was afraid of her, and, in many respects, disliked her. But to him, in his moth-like weakness, ignorance, and blindness, it seemed to be a great thing that he should be allowed to fly near the candle. Oh! my friends, if you will but think of it, how many of you have been moths, and are now going about ungracefully with wings more or less burnt off, and with bodies sadly scorched!

Some people like Trollope for his coziness but I think he will ask hard questions, like “when have you, dear reader, been a moth and how did it feel and did you go back for more.”

Anyway, there’s no space to go over the actions contrary to themselves of the squire, the earl, the earl’s sister, head gardener Hopkins, Lily’s mother and sister Bell, who like Mary Thorne and Lucy Robarts spend a lot of our time staving off totally worthy suitors. Or Mrs. Roper the put-upon landlady. Trust me that they are perverse too.

This is an excellent novel full of great characters, willful and awkward though they may be. Framley Parsonage and this novel were first written as serials. As such, Trollope tightens up the plotting and characterization. I’ve found FP and this one to be much smoother to read and I’ve developed an appreciation for Trollope’s steady, measured, unassuming prose.