The Ides of Ann Harding: Condemned

Note: Ann Harding was to the play the gallant lady many times in the first half of the Thirties. By 1935, soured by the Depression that had no end in sight, stoked by a press that didn’t like her not talking to reporters, a cynical America was sick of the self-sacrificing roles of brave Ann Harding. A movie-goer also wonders if what happened to Harding was what happened to Anne Hathaway: one gloomy day America decided they disliked Ann/Anne because she was too smart, too beautiful, too famous, too rich, too talented, over-staying her welcome among us homely fickle mortals. Perhaps due to feeling over-exposed by a nasty press corps and coupled with a rancorous custody battle, Harding went on a break in 1936 and didn’t return to movies until 1942 with Eyes in the Night, in which she was scolded by cruel Donna Reed for being so noble.

Condemned
1929 / 1:26
Tagline: “Ronald COLMAN As A Rough, Tough Convict Who'd Kill For A Kiss”
[internet archive]

Devil's island was a French penal colony in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana, demonstrating the diabolical talent of The Man to turn a tropical paradise into a hellhole. Set in the late 1920s, the warden Vidal (Dudley Digges) scolds his wife Mme. Vidal (Ann Harding) for having no sense of her high position as the wife of an important man in the colony.

Disrespecting her feelings and opinions as usual, he brings in the incarcerated individual Michel Oman (Ronald Colman) as a houseman. Michel is Parisian thief who took the fall for a bank robbery gone bad. But like Charles Boyer trapped in the Casbah in Algiers, Michel is debonaire and a dandy given the chance.  How Vidal justifies to himself having such a good-looking man spend days with his comely wife is left unexplained. Maybe he figures his peasant wife is so cowed by his blustering, that marriage vows are so sacred to her, and the power of gossip so over-powering among the expatriate women that the obvious and cynical predictions will never come to be.

Mme. Vidal warns her husband he’ll be sorry for bringing an incarcerated individual into the house. But in the end, as we would expect of a country woman who grew up with 13 brothers and sisters in a village in Alsace in the early 20^th century – now there are some onerous intersectionalities -  she is submissive to her sadistic buffoon of a husband with the caterpillar mustache and revolting soul patches. As Michel points out when they talk while shopping in the outside market, they are both prisoners.

Movie-goer, Mme. Vidal and Michel fall in love. Michel buys her a capuchin monkey on which she needs to lavish her love  and concern. This gesture pisses off the warden who is a pet-hater on top of being conceited. His tossing the simian out a window precipitates a crisis with a climactic chase after two escapees through a jungle swamp at night.

A movie-goer has to be patient when watching an early talkie. They tend to be stagey, with the actors motionless and intoning theatrical lines in front of a camera. But the experimentation with camera movement in this picture is cinematic and interesting. Many scenes are outdoors. The tossing ship at the opening, with water water everywhere, was totally unexpected  A fast tracking shot pictures the warden as he snarls his welcome address to a new batch of unlucky wretches, “Prison is a poor place to be proud.” The camera pans as we movie-goers take in silhouettes of the prisoners, some of whom we can guess are cognitively disabled, others acting out anger and hatred. Within and without solitary confinement is filmed like a nightmare of a French existentialist.

The light and camera make 27-year-old Ann Harding look about five years younger. She wears strange Romany makeup in the heart-to-heart conversation scene but this is balanced in another scene in which she lets down her ash blonde hair. Be still, O beating heart. This sight is almost as affecting as her looking into space with a worried look in which you can see her anxious thoughts racing each other. In the scene where she finally shucks the upbringing to keep your (female) opinions to yourself and tells the warden where to get off, she’s dynamite. I believed her when she said she would die for Michel. At the end, Harding stands on the ship as it pulls out and the light on the water does that bobbing thing light on water does and Harding gradually leaves the frame, holding back her tears. It’s emblematic of her intensity and her restraint in the entire picture.

Another point about early talkies, the veteran movie-goer expects the sound to be so-so unless it is a monster movie where they really get into tolling bells, creaking doors, and screams in the night. However, in the movie the soundtrack is excellent. In the opening there is a swirl of sound as the wind blows, water splashes, the ship creaks and the inmates jeer at each other and the guards. The inmates sing a mournful song as they march back from hard labor. The maniac boy screams when solitary drives him around the bend. The motor on the boat pursuing our heroes sounds like technology gone ape.

Anyway, this movie should also be seen for Ronald Colman. Besides that great voice, he puts in a fine reserved performance, one that got him a Best Actor nomination that year. Harding and Colman make an attractive couple. Dudley Digges’ warden was sometimes over the top, but he was pretty effective as the character that richly deserves his ultimate fate at the hands of Louis Wolheim as Colman's convict friend – he’s got a dotted line tattooed on this neck “cut here.”

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

Back to the Classics #20

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

Classic Novella. Anthony Trollope is known for big Victorian novels, bulked up with fox-hunting scenes and sub-plots of worthy girls staving off worthy guys for reasons the worthy girls think are, well, worthy. His shorter novels offer tempting attractions too. The gateway Trollope novel for many readers is The Warden. Then unwary readers find themselves slamming with the light as air Rachel Ray. Before they know it they are taking a cruise with The Claverings. Saddest are readers that end up mainlining hardcore like The Belton Estate and, stop me before I read more, The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson.

Cousin Henry – Anthony Trollope

Some Japanese like to think their puppet dramas and kabuki plays deal with uniquely Japanese moral dilemmas. But in Cousin Henry, Trollope examines the conflict between ninjo (human feelings) and giri (social obligation). In the early chapters, the more time an uncle spends with the title character, the more bitter and confused the uncle feels that he must will the family lands and chattels to his nephew, not to his niece upon whom he dotes. But he feels he can’t subordinate duty to love:

It was a religion to him that a landed estate in Britain should go from father to eldest son, and in default of a son to the first male heir. Britain would not be ruined because Llanfeare should be allowed to go out of the proper order. But Britain would be ruined if Britons did not do their duty in that sphere of life to which it had pleased God to call them; and in this case his duty was to maintain the old order of things.

The uncle writes a pro-nephew last will and testament, then one pro-niece, which he fears undermines the natural order of things. He writes and re-writes, but never destroys superceded versions because he has a superstitious dread against destroying a will, any will. A lawyer observes, "There are men who think that a will once made should never be destroyed." Not merely ink on papers held together by string like deeds and stocks, last wills exert an uncanny fascination on beholders, like precious gems.

Later in the novel another character tortures himself about whether to burn a will:

… He could not take the will from its hiding-place and with his own hand thrust it into the flames. He had never as yet even suggested to himself that he would do so. His hair stood on end as he thought of the horrors attendant on such a deed as that. To be made to stand in the dock and be gazed at by the angry eyes of all the court, to be written of as the noted criminal of the day, to hear the verdict of guilty, and then the sentence, and to be aware that he was to be shut up and secluded from all comforts throughout his life! And then, and then, the dread hereafter! For such a deed as that would there not be assured damnation? Although he told himself that justice demanded the destruction of the will, justice could not be achieved by his own hand after such fashion as that.

Trollope has no shortage of perverse characters who will act against their own best interests. See The Small House at Allington. In this novel, both the uncle and the nephew are world-class procrastinators when it comes to destroying wills. Their vacillation causes the nephew, among others, a world of trouble. The inevitable romance features two stubborn lovers that drive the people around them crazy:

The father no doubt felt that the two young people were self-willed, obstinate, and contradictory. His daughter wouldn't marry the clergyman because she had been deprived of her property. The clergyman now refused to marry his daughter because it was presumed that her property might be restored to her.

It’s funny but the reader is grateful the lofty posturing doesn’t go on for too many pages. Trollope’s nice characters – Isobel in this one - have so much pride; and pride leads the parade of the seven deadly sins in my book.

To recommend or not? I think this novella is worth reading for the deep, probing character study of the title character. When he arrives in the Welsh village of his uncle, prior to the uncle’s death, everyone hates him despite the fact that Cousin Henry does nothing to deserve blatant disrespect. He inspires contempt and suspicion from his uncle and his cousin because of his manners and lack of poise, which he can’t help because he simply doesn’t know any better. He’s just a London insurance clerk. Totally cowed by the cruel treatment and lack of charity, Cousin Henry the city fish in country water acts like cowardice personified, and what little confidence he has evaporates.  His only wisdom consists of slogans like “Honesty is the best policy,” hardly enough philosophy to support him in the situation he finds himself in after his uncle’s death. Without self-control, he is caught between anxiety and anger, whining bitterly at his fate, his own indecision.

I’ve kept the plot obscure (even confusing, I hope) for fear of spoilers. Don’t let my obscurity put you off an opportunity to see Trollope deploy his talent for psychological analysis. A sensible and sympathetic observer of flawed human nature, he shows us the devastating effects of irrational dislike and procrastination.

Back to the Classics #21

I read this book for my second round of the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2020.

 19^th Century Classic. “One wants some sort of excuse for reading Trollope - a long convalescence, or an ocean trip.  Without it, it is hard not to suspect the motive for immersing oneself in this reassuring ambience of decency, money, and ease,” wrote critic Clara Claiborne Park in 1962. What a glorious era, that time from the end of WWII to the assassination of President Kennedy. When it was unimaginable that the tidal waves of pandemic, bungled federal response, economic devastation, closed schools, and social unrest would simultaneously break on our shores. And provide the motive for immersing myself in the reassuring ambience of Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, and The Prime Minister consecutively since April. So, suspect my motive. I dare ya.

 The Prime Minister – Anthony Trollope

This 1876 novel, the fifth of the Palliser series of six, focuses on two characters. Ferdinand Lopez, though the son of a Portuguese immigrant, talks, walks, and dresses like an English gentleman. His tidy appearance helps him in his business practices, i.e., incessant unstable rounds of buying, selling, speculating, using puffery and other people’s money to nail down the big deal that will put him on Easy Street.

His fatal flaw is that he literally does not know the difference between right and wrong. Ethical, schmethical – he’s clueless. This ignorance disables his discernment, i.e., the wise judgement that would enable him to overpower his love of money and his overweening ambition. This ambition turns men into ravening beasts, complains Mrs. Parker, the working class wife of his put-upon accomplice, Sextus Parker. Out of her own bitter experience, she observes:

But them men, when they get on at money-making,—or money-losing, which makes 'em worse,—are like tigers clawing one another. They don't care how many they kills, so that they has the least bit for themselves. There ain't no fear of God in it, nor yet no mercy, nor ere a morsel of heart. It ain't what I call manly,—not that longing after other folks' money.

If Ferdinand Lopez is badly in need of wisdom, so is the other main character, Plantagenet Palliser, the Prime Minister and Duke of Omnium. Trollope identifies the ingredients of unhappiness for a politician as zeal, a thin skin, unjustifiable expectations, biting despair, contempt of others, a vehement ambition, a scrupulous conscience, and a sanguine desire for rapid improvement.

Planty Pal, as our not chirpy hero is ironically called, is wonderfully free of the above qualities but for two. His conscience is over-scrupulous because he fears he will be a loafer of a PM, merely presiding over a do-nothing coalition government. He is a genuine Trollopian hero in that he is ridden with self-doubt; see Mr. Harding in The Warden and Josiah Crawley in The Last Chronicle of Barset.

But a more fearsome enemy to his state of mind nags him. His skin is so thin that he frets about the scurrilous attacks of the gutter press. Such is his anxiety that his wife Glencora Palliser remonstrates, “I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own [sake]. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as this is.”

The Duchess of Omnium – a.k.a. Lady Glen – freely admits that she is made of coarser stuff than her husband. In her role as wife of the PM, she is the happy worldling planning ostentatious parties, balls, and fetes. Her goal is to provide networking venues for her husband’s liberal friends to feel they are mixing with the right people, to coax unpleasant Tory adversaries into collegiality, and thereby extend the tenure of her husband in office.

Plantagenet needs all the assistance he can get on the social side since he is not genial and clueless as to fundamental people skills. Socializing drains him of energy he’d rather use doing useful work and fending off brazen seekers of office and favor.

“Two gentlemen have been here this morning,” he said one day to the Duke of St. Bungay, “one on the heels of the other, each assuring me not only that the whole stability of the enterprise depends on my giving a certain office to him,—but actually telling me to my face that I had promised it to him!” The old statesman laughed. “To be told within the same half-hour by two men that I had made promises to each of them inconsistent with each other!”

The Duchess capriciously takes people in hand, however, and this whimsical tendency to play favorites precipitates a political crisis. Their marriage, one of incompatibles from day one, is complicated since their feelings for each other are too complex to be subsumed under the catch-all term “love.” As they discuss moving on to the next stage of their lives, she wonders how he will occupy himself:

“I am thinking of you rather than myself. I can make myself generally disagreeable, and get excitement in that way. But what will you do? It's all very well to talk of me and the children, but you can't bring in a Bill for reforming us. You can't make us go by decimals. You can't increase our consumption by lowering our taxation. I wish you had gone back to some Board.” This she said looking up into his face with an anxiety which was half real and half burlesque.

Suffice to say, the long-time married among us hardcore readers will connect with the Pallisers' intricate relationship because we too express to our spouses“anxiety which was half real and half burlesque.” Trollope’s indirect  suggestions for a serene marriage are sensible:  don’t ever lie, respect each other, do no harm, and make each other comfortable, and, if possible, happy. Moderation in all things, thus echoing the ingredients of happiness for a politician: have reasonable expectations and timelines; don’t be zealous or over-scrupulous or too conscientious; develop a thick skin and you’ll get along just fine.

The loyal reader is spared the usual fox-hunting interlude and romcom subplot. Still, Trollope will use tried and true expedients. For example, though I can readily believe muggings were all too common in the dark parks of Victorian London, the outcome of a mugging is once again largely positive as when Phineas saved Robert Kennedy from being garroted. And a single female eats her heart out over her unworthiness a la Lily Dale, which made me groan and stamp my foot getting through the barefaced padding of the last 100 pages or so.

Overall, these two stories provide entertaining reading. To my mind, the best part of the politics of this book are the short digressions on the importance of resilience and other soft social skills politicians and their minions must have. Technocrat readers that toil in large bureaucratic organizations may get useful HR lessons out of this installment of the Palliser series. Also, because I’m a brute, I enjoyed Trollope’s parodies of the monstrously unfair editorials of the “energetic yet not thoughtful” Quintus Slide, the editor of the scandal sheet, People’s Banner.

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.

Evelyn Venable 5/5

Note: After a promising start in Death Takes a Holiday, Double Door, and two Will Rogers movies, philistine producers decided modest, unassuming Evelyn Venable was not star material and assigned her to low-quality B-movies. While many B-movies (like the one below) are fun watching, nothing could induce me to watch a 1935 biopic of Stephen Foster, produced by Mascot Pictures, with cheap production values, cheap directing and cheap writing.  “I never regretted leaving films,” Venable later said. “If I have any regrets at all it is in leaving the stage. I might have been a really good actress. There simply was no chance in most of my pictures nor was I getting the proper training.”

He Hired the Boss
1943 / 1:12
Tagline: “IT'S AN OUT-AND-OUT RIOT! He's all-out for National Defense....and she's all-out for him!”
[internet archive]

Set in a sleepy California town during WWII, this quirky comedy kicks off with a blackout drill led by a hyper-dedicated air raid warden. While he’s laser-focused on keeping the lights out, a gang of silk thieves is busy looting supplies meant for the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Classic case of missing the forest for the trees.

That warden is Hubert (played by Stu Ervin), a man so punctual people set their watches by his walk to work. He’s a meticulous bookkeeper, a compulsive saver, and a volunteer who collects tinfoil for the war effort (a nod to the real-life use of aluminum “chaff” to jam German radar). But all this civic virtue masks a deeper flaw: Hubert is a world-class procrastinator.

He’s been stuck in the same dead-end job for 15 years, too timid to ask for a raise. He’s in love with his coworker Emily (Evelyn Venable), but insists he can’t afford marriage. Emily, who’s had enough of his dithering, calls him out: life isn’t for the timid, and happiness doesn’t require a zero balance. She’s especially fed up that Hubert keeps loaning money to a guy who never pays him back. Her advice? Be brave, be broke, but be happy.

Hubert finally gets drafted - only to be rejected for a dust allergy. His boss takes him back, but slashes his pay and demotes him. Then, in a rare moment of rebellion (and a bit of liquid courage from partying with sailors), Hubert calls his boss an “old cabbage puss” and gets fired. Emily gets canned too, for failing to stop her sister from eloping with the boss’s son. Cue generational tension (a common theme in the Twenties and Thirties): the young folks are fighting a war and want to live life on their own terms, not under the thumb of the old guard.

This double firing sets off the film’s climax. Hubert stumbles into success in the extraction business and helps bust the silk-stealing traitors. But the ending? Total letdown. Hubert goes back to work for the same boss who treated him and Emily like garbage. It’s a baffling move that ignores both professional logic and basic human dignity. Why reward a toxic employer who ran the company into the ground?

Still, Stu Ervin delivers genuine laughs. One standout scene has him waking up hungover after partying with sailors, muttering, “I’m afraid to look in the mirror because I might not see anybody.” Ervin specialized in playing small-town guys who finally grow a spine. He was a B-movie regular and starred in one of TV’s earliest sitcoms, Trouble with Father, which still holds up (and features a young Sheila Kuehl - yes, that Sheila Kuehl).

Evelyn Venable, tall and graceful with a voice like velvet, shines as Emily. This was her final film, made after a three-year break to raise her daughters. Hollywood never quite knew what to do with her delicate charm. After a tiny role in a forgettable western and an uncredited voice gig as the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio, she walked away from the industry in 1943.

But Venable didn’t fade away - she pivoted. In the early Fifties, she enrolled at UCLA with her daughters, earned a degree in Latin, and later a master’s in classics. She became a professor, teaching Latin prose and directing Greek plays. Her academic career was a quiet triumph, admirable and inspiring for those of us in education. She came from a long line of teachers and found her true calling in the classroom.

So while the movie may fumble its ending, it’s worth watching for Ervin’s comic timing and Venable’s understated brilliance. And if you’re ever feeling stuck like Hubert, remember Emily’s advice: debt’s not the end of the world - but fear might be.

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 #16

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 Warden – Anthony Trollope

Avid readers of the blogging type have been huzza-ing 2015 as the Trollope Bicentennial so much that I took up this one, which I had not read since I was a university student about 40 years ago. It was Trollope’s breakthrough novel, first published in 1855. It was the initial novel in a series of six novels known as The Barchester Chronicles.

The Reverend Septimus Harding, the earnest if not hard-working warden of a charitable retirement home for a dozen old geezers, has a crisis of conscience. Should he resign his sinecure after being accused by the public prints of profiting at the expense of the poor and vulnerable? Harding sincerely wrestles with his conscience as does the instigator of the scandal, John Bold. This young idealist doctor, who does not have enough to do, also wants to marry Harding’s lovely daughter Eleanor. Archdeacon Grantly, Harding’s truculent son-in-law, wants to use the courts to fight reformers like John Bold.

The character of Harding is pleasingly drawn, with graceful sureness of touch. Equally vibrant are Harding friend but feeble ally, the old Bishop (who is Grantly’s father) and the codgers who live on the mismanaged funds of the charity. Grantly’s wife tartly reminds him that if he had not interfered Eleanor and Bold might now have been married, in which case the reformers never would have known about and almshouse sinecure.

“The fact is, you've brought this young man down upon papa by huffing him as you have done.”

“But, my love—”

“And all because you didn't like John Bold for a brother-in-law. How is she ever to do better? Papa hasn't got a shilling, and I'm sure I don't know how she is ever to do better than marry John Bold, or as well, indeed.”

Trollope assumed that women’s place was at home, but he didn’t ignore their insights into worldly affairs.

The conclusion is unsatisfactory because it seems rushed and a character acts uncharacteristically. Trollope is infamous for his asides to us readers, but those are tolerable enough, as is the satire on Dickens’ reforming ways. Like conservatives then and now, Trollope takes a mocking tone toward social reform and the earnestness of reformers. Trollope is so very amused that anybody would get his knickers in twist reforming child labor, nursing, funerals, debtor’s prisons, workhouses, or the Court of Chancery. Do-gooders – such easy targets.

But perhaps this mocking stance is only irony – Tony will be subtle. After all, it is ironic of Trollope have Harding to through agonies over public and private morality while the other characters assume fretting about ethics and reputation is the least of his worries – especially when he is facing a cut in income of about £600 and move from a pretty house to lodgings above an apothecary.

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)

Victorian #1

I read this book for the A Victorian Celebration 2015 hosted over at A Literary Odyssey in June and July, 2015.

Dr. Thorne – Anthony Trollope

Let us now pass on to property, the greatest cause of human troubles. For if you compare all the other things by which we are troubled, deaths, sicknesses, fears, desires, endurance of pains and labors, with those evils which our money causes, this last part will far outweigh the others.

Says the stoic Seneca, and in this novel Trollope agrees property is a bugbear but adds to the list: politics, class conflict, family discord, alcoholism, illegitimacy, profligacy, hypocrisy, and stupidity.

The plot of Dr. Thorne isn’t as important as the fresh and distinct characters and variety of incidents, but here’s a brief overview, sans spoilers, as always. Young Frank Gresham faces the odious prospect of having to work for a living because his father, the squire, has gone in to debt due to campaign expenses in elections he lost anyway. Frank’s mother and the rest of her objectionable aristocratic family demand that Frank marry money in order to get his father out financial dutch.

But our hero Frank loves our heroine, the portionless Mary Thorne. She lives with her uncle, Dr. Thomas Thorne, the only one besides the squire who knows her unfortunate beginnings. Mary’s mother Mary was ruined and dumped by Dr. Thorne's bad-hat brother, Henry. Mary’s brother Roger, a mason, kills Henry and does time for it. Mom Mary is saved by an old sweetheart, who is willing to marry her but not to bring up another man’s kid. They emigrate to America and Dr. Thorne agrees to raise Baby Mary.

Br’er Roger is released from the joint and though he is raging alky, he makes a ton of money as a government contractor in large construction projects. He bids his lawyers to write the usual funky Victorian will. It stipulates that at his death he will leave his huge fortune and chattels to his dissolute son Louis or to Mary, if Louis dies. Mary of course knows nothing about these terms of the will.

Mary loves Frank, too, but the pressure on Frank is hard to bear. His mother says:

“If you wish to see me ever happy again, if you do not wish to see me sink broken-hearted to my grave, you must give up this mad idea, Frank,"—and now all Lady Arabella's energy came out. "Frank there is but one course left open to you. You MUST marry money." And then Lady Arabella stood up before her son as Lady Macbeth might have stood, had Lady Macbeth lived to have a son of Frank's years.

I was afraid that this romance Love Conquers All, Even Class Differences  a.k.a. Dr. Thorne would be a let-down after reading the first two Barsetshire novels, The Warden and Barchester Towers. But Dr. Thorne was consistently interesting, with many delightful scenes that balance Trollope’s very slow start (persevere, is all I can say); too funny names (the lawyers Messrs. Slow and Bideawhile); obvious padding (Make ‘em wait, as Wilkie Collins would say); and mock epic or Biblical language such as

Come, my friend, and discourse with me. Let us know what are thy ideas of the inestimable benefits which science has conferred on us in these, our latter days. How dost thou, among others, appreciate railways and the power of steam, telegraphs, telegrams, and our new expresses?

Trollope is quite careful to describe how much time has passed, however, which makes up for his lack of interest in describing flora or weather or season.  The passing of time leaves its stamp on his characters. Trollope’s narrator is not omniscient, but he seems to know everything important about the characters. He imparts his knowledge with irony and geniality, giving the sense that he sympathizes with his characters (Poor Mary! Poor Frank!) and so should we readers.

So, any reader who like the first two novels of the series should read Dr. Thorne. It was, says critic Daniel Rutenberg, “the best-selling Trollope novel during the author's lifetime.”