Part 14

Arson was a capital offense in Australia at this time, and Harry Heathcote pushes himself to exhaustion in the summer heat, riding out at night to look for mischief. His brusque manners have not won him many friends, and some disgruntled ranch workers are indeed setting fires. In the heat of the struggle he does finally learn that it helps to have a friend or two. Mr. Medlicot provides assistance, incurring a broken collar bone in the ensuing melee, and the alliance of English aristocrats is cemented by the betrothal of Mr. Medlicot to Harry Heathcote's sister-in-law.

The bad guys are sent packing, Harry learns a lesson, and the lovers join hands. "'That's what I call a happy Christmas,' said Harry, as the party finally parted for the night." Zane Grey could hardly have scripted it better.

Trollope appeared to relish his versatility as a story teller, and though he is often identified with the English settings of the Barsetshire and Palliser series, his travels and his novels ranged all over the world. He used his first hand knowledge of Australia to good advantage in _Harry Heathcote_, his only novel to be set entirely in this English colony. It's a short, well-constructed story, and after working through the introductory chapters, the reader is rewarded with a quickly told romance, a rousing bush fight, and a happy ending, all wrapped up as a Christmas story.

THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

It seemed that there was but one virtue in the world, commercial enterprise--and that Melmotte was its prophet.

Sometimes a fictional character can take on a life of his own during the writing of a story, and even after publication, capturing the imagination of the author and thereafter of the public. Sherlock Holmes, Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Hamlet, and Uncle Tom have all become iconic in our popular culture. [2] I doubt that any of Trollope's characters make any of the "Top 100" lists; that's part of the Trollope problem: he's just not that well known. But if he were, who would make the list? Mrs. Proudie, Obadiah Slope, Lady Glencora, Mr. Crawley, Plantagenet Palliser perhaps--all these are from the Palliser and Barsetshire collections. And from the other novels--the "singletons"--Augustus Melmotte would certainly take his place. In this century he would be assisted by the strong portrayal by David Suchet in the 2003 BBC production, in which he is described as "this huge monster, Melmotte, sitting like a fat spider, drawing all the other characters into his great scheme."

[Footnote 2: Lucy Pollard-Gott, who has launched a website fictional100.com, lists her top ten: Hamlet, Odysseus, Don Quixote, Eve, Genji, Oedipus, Don Juan, Chia Pia-Yu, Sherlock Holmes, and Arjuna.]

_The Way We Live Now_ has been described as a work of bitterness and disillusionment, but the tone of the book is not one of bitterness. It is certainly satirical; but one could believe that the character of Melmotte stepped in and ran away with the story, just as he swept through London society in 1873 (the year it was written--remember "_Now_" in the title). One would be hard pressed to say that _The Way We Live Now_ heralded a precipitous darkening of Trollope's view of the world. He did continue to explore the folly of mankind in the novels that followed--_The Prime Minister_, with the appearance of Ferdinand Lopez, an ambitious, unscrupulous foreigner like Melmotte; _Is He Popenjoy?_ featuring the arch villain the Marquis of Brotherton; _The American Senator_; _The Duke's Children_; and _John Caldigate_. The more Trollope experienced the world, the more targets for his satirical pen appeared.

_The Way We Live Now_ is replete with such targets. Likeable characters are lacking. Two exceptions are Mr. Brehgert, the Jew who tolerates the frank anti-Semitism of Victorian England with saintly perseverance; and John Crumb, "the dealer in meal and pollard at Bungay," who loves Ruby Ruggles and thrashes the useless young Sir Felix Carbury when he assaults her. (Pollard is a fine protein-rich feed supplement for farm animals; it is a byproduct from the milling of wheat for flour.)

Melmotte is introduced as a foreign element that intrudes on English society in the fourth chapter, in which we learn that he is the giver of a great ball. Having just arrived in London from Paris about two years earlier, he admitted that his wife was a foreigner--"an admission that was necessary as she spoke very little English." Though Augustus Melmotte, Esq., spoke his "native" language fluently, he had "an accent which betrayed at least a long expatriation." His daughter Marie "spoke English well, but as a foreigner," and had been born "out of England"--perhaps in New York or Paris.

Only a foreigner could have done what Melmotte did. It is likely that Trollope, who amused himself and us with his observations of the English "as they lived then," did not think that a native-born Englishman could have disrupted society in such a way. This foreigner came in with an ambivalent attitude toward the English. He thought they were gullible enough to buy his schemes, but an essential part of his ambition was his desire to obtain a position of great prominence in English society. He would buy a country place, Pickering, from Adolphus Longstaffe, the squire of Caversham in Suffolk, and he would remodel it so that he could be a country gentleman. He would get himself elected to the House of Commons. He would obtain a noble title--perhaps a baronetcy. His daughter would marry Lord Nidderdale. His wealth and his connections would bring all these things.

The traditional English life that Trollope so revered was crumbling. Adolphus Longstaffe cannot afford to maintain the social schedule that his wife and children enjoy, and the sale of family property offers an expedient solution. Sir Roger Carbury strives to maintain his country place, but he finds himself powerless to marry and carry on his family line. He has set his heart on marrying his cousin Hetta Carbury when she comes of age, but the young girl has little interest in marrying an older man. Hetta's mother, Lady Carbury, attempts to charm editors and other writers into praising and publishing her books so that she can save herself and her worthless son, Sir Felix Carbury, from financial ruin.

Which of these can the reader like? None of the above. And there are more. Paul Montague is a young man who has had to leave Oxford because of some unfortunate rows, and he has spent three years in California, losing his fortune in unsuccessful business ventures and becoming engaged to a woman who may or may not have shot her husband in Oregon. He thinks he can escape her by returning to England, but she pursues him. Like Pinocchio, he falls into bad company (the Beargarden Club in London). Hetta Carbury (to whom Sir Roger has unsuccessfully proposed marriage) falls in love with the young man, little more than a hobbledehoy who consistently gets in over his head, whatever the venture. Yet it is Paul who is the only one to attempt to ask questions at the board meetings of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway, and he is the first to discover that Melmotte had been diverting its funds to such personal uses as rebuilding the Longstaffe house in the country.

Such is The Way We Live Now. The country is going to the dogs, led by a foreign Pied Piper with a strange accent. Here is his introductory description:

Mr. Melmotte was a big man with large whiskers, rough hair, and with an expression of mental power on a harsh vulgar face. He was certainly a man to repel you by his presence unless attracted to him expenditure, powerful in his doings, successful in his business, and the world around him therefore was not repelled.

It appears that had not Melmotte appeared, someone in London would have invented him. As it happened, his great project was actually invented by Hamilton K. Fisker, the young American who had met Paul Montague in California and made a partnership with him. It was Fisker who concocted the idea of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway and sold the idea to Melmotte. The presentation was brief. Melmotte and Fisker understood each other. The documents referred not at all to future profits to the railway or to its benefit to society; they emphasized rather the appeal of such stock to the "speculating world."

Melmotte undertook the chairmanship of the Board of Directors in England, and he very quickly found willing buyers of shares, hopes, and dreams. Like Professor Harold Hill in _The Music Man_, "When he dances, the piper pays him." But when he makes his speech to his directors, it is one that would not do for BBC. In its production, David Suchet is Melmotte larger than life, full of vitality, projecting himself with a powerful personality. Trollope's text would not have been such good theater; in it we see a man who is not eloquent, mostly looking at his plate. His eager audience, however, cheers him "to the echo."

The way we live now is portrayed not as a society that is sold a bill of goods by a huckster, but as one that carried the huckster out over his head even further than he might have ventured on his own. "It can hardly be said of him that he had intended to play so high a game, but the game that he had intended to play had become thus high of its own accord. A man cannot always restrain his own doings and keep them within the limits which he had himself planned for them."

Fisker is the little tugboat that nudges the mighty Melmotte out into the deep. "He had sprung out of some Californian gully, was perhaps ignorant of his own father and mother, and had tumbled up in the world on the strength of his own audacity. But, such as he was, he had sufficed to give the necessary impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness."

What Melmotte does understand is "credit." In attempting to browbeat Paul Montague, Melmotte rages, "Gentlemen who don't know the nature of credit, how strong it is--as the air--to buoy you up; how slight it is--as a mere vapour--when roughly touched, can do an amount of mischief of which they themselves don't in the least understand the extent!"

Melmotte does of course come to grief, from having forged the signature of Dolly Longstaffe, feckless son of Adolphus Longstaffe, authorizing transfer of the title deed for the house to Melmotte. He also forged his daughter's signature and his secretary Croll's signature to a document giving him access to his daughter Marie's money. Elected to Parliament at about this time, the rumors of the forgery cause his stock prices to collapse. Melmotte's final performance is to go drunk to the House, attempt a speech, fall to the floor, go home and commit suicide with prussic acid.

Set against these affairs of such great pith and moment, the story of Winifred Hurtle is a welcome relief. She was the American woman (another foreigner in England) who pursued Paul Montague to England, where she asserts her rights as an engaged woman, threatening legal action if Paul should break their engagement, and presumably spending several nights with him, according to a narrative a bit skimpy in such details.

The memorable climax of the story is the suicide of Melmotte; but Trollope lets the dark side die with the great financier. There are a few marriages. And the share prices of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway begin to rise again as Fisker gets back to work on selling shares in America. What went up came down; and it came back up a little.

We follow the fates of a large cast of characters. Perhaps we don't see that much into the soul of Melmotte. His actions and words speak for him. For once, Trollope doesn't take us into the head of a character who plays such a pivotal role. But we follow the meditations of Paul Montague, Hetta Carbury, and others in the usual detail. Not such a likeable lot, but their stories hang together and justify claims that this is among Trollope's greatest novels, if not the greatest. It was Trollope's longest novel, and perhaps its greatest accomplishment is that the reader is entertained by the light touch that keeps such a dreary story of human stupidity from being abandoned after a few chapters.

WHAT'S A POOR GIRL TO DO?

THE AMERICAN SENATOR

Elias Gotobed is the American senator in Trollope's novel of the same name. And in the last chapter the author reveals that Larry Twentyman, a rising young yeoman farmer, "has in truth been our hero." But more memorable than either of these is Arabella Trefoil, the husband hunter. Life was not easy for ambitious Victorian women. Success might have been achieved, with great difficulty, in several different endeavors, but the only path that really led a woman to a high place in society was through birth or marriage. And to this end Arabella aspired.

She herself did not care much for pleasure. But she did care to be a great lady--one who would be allowed to swim out of rooms before others, one who could snub others, one who could show real diamonds when others wore paste, one who might be sure to be asked everywhere, even by the people who hated her. She rather liked being hated by women and did not want any man to be in love with her--except as far as might be sufficient for the purpose of marriage.

Her great sin is that she pursues Lord Rufford, a more eligible catch, while still engaged to John Morton, squire of Bragton. And in introducing her, the author does tell us, "She had had many lovers, and had been engaged to not a few." No one pretends that Trollope was an advocate of feminism. And she hardly emerges as a heroine. And yet a sympathetic reader of the present day can see her as a victim of her times. What, indeed, was a poor girl to do?

Poor, yes, but not without some family connections--enough to put her on the bubble of society--enough, perhaps, to make her feel obliged to reach for success. Her father was the younger brother of a duke. Her other assets were strength and determination, beauty, wit, and enough freedom from scruples to lead her into trouble. "As for caring about him, Mamma," she had once said of a suitor, "of course I don't. He is nasty and odious in every way. But I have got to do the best I can, and what is the use of talking about such trash as that?"

If Arabella is the memorable character, her memorable scene is the one in the postchaise after a hunt when she succeeds in drawing from Lord Rufford a positive response that he loves her--but nothing more. At this point she knows that he will go no further, but she resolves to use what she has gained to try to bring him to the altar, fainting helplessly upon his shoulder. As it happens, Lord Ruffton calls her bluff and escapes. Can you blame a girl for trying?

What of the American senator? In Elias Gotobed we find the prototype of the Ugly American, described in the novel that gave the phrase to our political vocabulary, as pretentious, loud, and ostentatious--changed, in some way, when they leave their native land. Senator Gotobed's sins in England are a bit different. Loud, yes. Lacking in tact, yes. Convinced of the superiority of American ways, yes. But unlike the Ugly American in Vietnam, Mr. Gotobed was not required to expose his bad manners to a third world country; his opportunity was to go to the mother country and demonstrate how a rebellious child behaved toward the parent.

We are introduced to Mr. Gotobed as he meets his host John Morton, the absentee squire, and views Bragton Hall--"quite a pile," he declares.

Mr. Gotobed is diligent in his research and amasses enough data to prepare a lecture for the edification of the English public. He accurately identifies some English ways, such as primogeniture, voting restrictions, and inappropriate clerical wealth, which would not much longer survive the scrutiny of the masses. One suspects that Trollope was using this as another means of exposing these little ways for the entertainment of his readers, and he was able to use a broader brush for this purpose than he used in his own depictions of these same institutions. As an American, I find Mr. Gotobed a rather tiresome caricature of the nineteenth century American. But his likeness resembles a number of others so closely that I fear I might have found some of the real Americans of the time rather tiresome.

The virtues of the English way of life are not lost on Mr. Gotobed. He concedes in his letters to his friend in the USA that the English gentleman is indeed charming, even though idle; pleasant and able to discuss almost any subject, even though he may know very little about it; and hospitable. In addition to these gratuitous observations, he does insert himself into the activities of the community by supporting the cause of Mr. Dan Goarly, accused of poisoning Lord Rufford's foxes.

And here we have the mystery of the red herrings. In an earlier incarnation of the battle between fox hunters and those who considered it a barbaric sport, the animal rights advocates sometimes left red herrings in a fox's path, obscuring the scent so that the hounds were unable to stay on the right trail. Hence our term that applies to a diversion that takes one off the correct pathway to solving a problem. And in this case it was worse. It was suspected that the herrings were laced with strychnine to poison the hounds. Mr. Gotobed, ardent in his opposition to the absurd sport of hunting and killing foxes, defies the conventional wisdom of the village that knows Goarly to be a scoundrel, because he thinks any sabotage of a fox hunt is worthy of support. In this effort he fails.

An ardent devotee of fox hunting, Trollope often used the hunt as a piece of the plot in his stories, and his descriptions of the sport convey the authenticity of the literate sportsman. Each of my two paperback editions of _The American Senator_ show hunt scenes on the cover. And in this novel the hunt shows us Senator Gotobed in his quixotic defense of sabotaging the sport, and Arabella Trefoil on the hunt for Lord Rufford.

The world of the English gentry of which Trollope wrote was not such a large one that prominent characters from other stories might not sometimes make their appearance; and the faithful Trollope reader will smile to get a glimpse of Lady Chiltern and the Duchess of Omnium, old friends from the world of the Palliser series, as they visit the home of the Duke of Mistletoe, Arabella Trefoil's uncle.

And one last bit of trivia: When Senator Gotobed presents his lecture enumerating the follies of the English, he is shouted down and some cry, "_Buncombe!_" Also spelled bunkum and sometimes shortened to bunk, this term for nonsense traveled across the Atlantic as the legacy of a congressman from North Carolina, whose district included Buncombe County, after he felt obliged to "make a speech for Buncombe" in Congress.

The main plot is complicated and a bit commonplace, introduced in the first chapters that require the reader to go through with a marking pencil to identify the players, their generations, and their family relationships. The requisite dues having been paid, the reader may then go on with the story, but one is still obliged to return to these chapters for reference. Less patient generations of readers have limited tolerance of such introductions, even though some of the author's capsule comments can be quite quotable, as in this observation in describing Lawrence Twentyman: "And his farming was well done; for though he was, out-and-out, a gentleman-farmer, he knew how to get the full worth in work done for the fourteen shillings a week that he paid to his labourers--a deficiency in which knowledge is the cause why gentlemen in general find farming so very expensive an amusement."

If Lawrence Twentyman is the real hero of the story, he is a frustrated hero, unsuccessful from start to end in his courtship of Mary Masters, threatening to sell his farm and emigrate to New Zealand when he fails to win her. He loses Mary, daughter of the lawyer whose family has handled the Morton family business for generations, to Reginald Morton, some fifteen years their senior and heir to the property. Reginald's cousin, John Morton, is the squire of Bragton until his untimely death of "gastric fever." (What was "gastric fever?" Did he have typhoid fever? Or just a convenient diagnosis in the "chapter of accidents" that a novelist must resort to?) John is a victim of Arabella's scheming, introduced as her fiancé in a match with no outward signs of affection. He is employed in the foreign office, is assigned to the United States, is known by his colleagues as "The Paragon," and is later assigned to Patagonia, a remote outpost of the foreign service. John's grandmother dreams up schemes that require closer attention to family feuds than the casual reader will be willing to undertake; Reginald's great-aunt Lady Ushant is the good gentlewoman who is Reginald's champion, and she also befriends Mary Masters. Mary is constantly harassed by her wicked stepmother who urges her to accept Larry Twentyman and avoid the temptation to associate with the gentry. In particular, Mary is urged not to go "Ushanting" by visiting kind Lady Ushant.

This is all well and good, and it's enough to keep the story going; but it's pretty predictable Trollope fare. Arabella, the American Senator, and the poisoned red herrings are the spice to the story.

LESSER BARCHESTER

IS HE POPENJOY?

_Is He Popenjoy?_ puts us in familiar Trollope territory: the cathedral and close, and the manor house. We have a lord of the manor, the Marquis of Brotherton, who exercises his rights with such persistent rudeness that one is hard pressed to think of any redeeming virtues; and from there the cast of characters is a familiar one: his younger brother, Lord George, a lesser Plantagenet Palliser, a dull fellow who marries a true heroine, Mary Lovelace, and proves that he hardly deserves her when he allows himself to get his fingers burned by his first lover, Adelaide Houghton, because he can't figure out how to avoid it. Mary's father, the Dean of Brotherton, is a lesser Archdeacon Grantly, rich enough to provide money for his impoverished son-in-law, and too ambitious and proud to keep from offending Lord George with his largesse. Lord George has four ugly sisters, close to a straight copy from Cinderella's stepsisters, who intimidate poor Mary with their family position and their good works for the poor. One of them, Lady Susanna, is worse than the others and at one time visits Mary as an unwelcome duenna. The eldest, Lady Sarah, is better than the others and sometimes sees the light.

Essentially a comic novel, it is almost a farce. The curious interrogatory title (a bit clumsy, like _Can You Forgive Her?_) is finally elucidated after about a hundred pages when it is learned that the hated Marquis, who has left England to live in Italy, has (perhaps) married an Italian countess and has had a son, Lord Popenjoy. But no Englishman can trust the Italian institutions. Is he really married? Is the child legitimate? "Lord Popenjoy" is the title of the heir to the Marquis. Is he really Popenjoy?

The Dean doubts it, for if the Marquis has no legitimate son, the title will pass to his brother Lord George at his death; and then the Dean's grandson, should he have one, will be next in line. The Marquis's sibs are all skeptical, but they are hesitant to offend their brother. The Dean does not hesitate.