Part 15

The story proceeds as the Marquis advances from villainy to villainy; he writes to announce the birth of his son and that he will return home. His mother, four sisters, and brother are all to be turned out and obliged to move far away from the family estate. He finally makes his appearance, one third of the way into the book, and insults them all, saving his most cutting sarcasm for the dean, whom he refers to as "that stable boy."

Mary is a credible heroine. She likes to have fun, and she is a bit indiscreet with her friend Jack de Baron, whom she unwittingly encourages to the point that he falls in love with her after she has become Lady George. And the author, who tells us a lot, never tells us so in so many words, but she surely loves him. But the author does tell us that she succeeds in her effort to come to love her husband. Halfway through the book, "She was ever trying to be in love with him, but had never yet succeeded in telling even herself that she had succeeded." But in the process of fighting off a rival--Adelaide Houghton, whom she never forgives--she becomes pregnant, and enduring a separation related to her husband's resentment of his father-in-law's interference in family affairs, she finally convinces herself that she has succeeded in learning to love her husband.

Among the Victorian customs that jar the current reader, that of the wife's duty to obedience is a note that clangs: "The husband would of course be indignant at his wife's disobedience in not having left London when ordered by him to do so."

The author indulges in some sideswipes at the movement for the rights of women. The German advocate is shown to be a money-grubber, and the American expert with the nasal twang, Dr. Olivia Q. Fleabody, "made a rapid fortune out of the proceeds of the hall." Women came twice a week to hear her preach that "a glorious era was at hand in which women would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their bankers."

A woman's duty was to find a husband, and the man's duty was to make it difficult for her. All this sounds as though P. G. Wodehouse had read Trollope and had taken it a bit farther.

He did not mean to marry Guss Mildmay. He did not suppose that she thought he meant to marry her. He did not love her, and he did not believe very much in her love for him. But . . . [he] had run his bark on to the rock, which it had been the whole study of his navigation to avoid. He had committed the one sin which he had always declared to himself that he never would commit. This made him unhappy.

Mr. Groschut, the dean's secretary, plays Mr. Slope to the bishop. His letter to the rude Marquis is the only flattering or kind letter the Marquis receives. (The family tries to be nice to the Marquis, but they don't flatter like Mr. Groschut does.) And in the end Mr. Groschut is banished, honored only by being the subject of the book's last paragraph: "Of Mr. Groschut it is only necessary to say that he is still at Pugsty, vexing the souls of his parishioners by sabbatical denunciations."

This book could be legitimately recommended in a paraphrase of the familiar line: "If you loved _Barchester Towers_, you'll like _Is He Popenjoy?_" No, that's not strong enough. If you loved _Barchester Towers_, you'll really like _Is He Popenjoy?_.

TOO NEAR THE PRECIPICE

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

The Cliffs of Moher, now among the sites being considered for an upcoming list of the Seven Wonders of the World, have become the most visited tourist attraction in Ireland. However, there were only a few other visitors when our own little family of five, mist swirling in our faces, paid our respects in 1974. These sheer precipices, facing the Atlantic from the western coast of Ireland, had shed their cloud cover; and our primary concern was to keep the children away from the edge.

Young Frederick Neville, the new Earl of Scroope after his uncle's death, gave no thought to how close he was to the brink as he stood there with Mrs. O'Hara while her daughter Kate, pregnant with the young Earl's child, waited in the cottage. That was the problem, of course: the young Earl paid little heed as to how near he might come to any precipice--hence the liaison with Kate O'Hara, a beautiful Irish lass whose cottage was not so far from his regimental quarters as to prevent his frequent visits. This connection, so offensive to his family at Scroope Manor in Dorsetshire, is the story of _An Eye for an Eye_, written by Anthony Trollope in 1870.

This short novel is set both in Ireland and in England. After setting his first two novels in Ireland, Trollope later returned to the Irish countryside for _Castle Richmond_ and, some ten years later, _An Eye for an Eye_, which he wrote shortly after a return visit to Ireland. The towering physical feature of the story is the collection of cliffs. The towering social institution is the order of the nobility of England. Like other institutions, practices, and ideas that appear to be threatened by common sense, this one required vigilant defense and faithful observance of its demands. In this story we find young Frederick Neville called, somewhat to his surprise, by his uncle the Earl of Scroope to be his heir. It would be inconvenient for Frederick to become the Earl. A handsome young man in the process of sowing his wild oats, he had a few more to sow.

And so he does. Frederick returns to his regiment in Ireland and pursues his infatuation with Kate O'Hara of the lonely Ardkill cottage, knowing as he does so that whatever her personal attractions and gifts, he lacks the courage to present her in Dorsetshire as Countess of Scroope. The Earl, before his unexpected death, insists that Fred abandon his Irish conquest and marry the fair and well-born Sophie Mellerby.

The women weigh in pretty heavily on the issue. Kate's mother, we learn, has been married to a Captain O'Hara, presumed to have died after misadventures. We see her walking beneath the cliffs, where she would remain for hours, "with her hat in her hand and her hair drenched."

In this she anticipated the memorable Sarah Woodruff, played by Meryl Streep in the film adaptation of John Fowles's novel _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, hooded and patient, looking out at the storm from the end of the Cobb in Lyme Regis. In each case, the impression is the same: don't trifle with this woman.

But the drumbeat of the story has begun. Mrs. O'Hara reflects as she observes the development of love between Frederick Neville and her daughter: "Men are wolves to women, and utterly merciless when feeding high on their lust."

After the Earl dies, Frederick must decide. Although his brother Jack advises him to marry the Irish lass and bring her home and be done with it, Frederick is swayed by the advice of his aunt, the late Earl's widow. Lady Scroope, in turn, relies on information from her friend Lady Mary Quin, who sends her regular letters with the gossip from Ireland. Lady Mary entertained no qualms as to the young Earl's duty: he must marry Sophie Wellerby. "There are women, who in regard to such troubles as now existed at Ardkill cottage, always think that the woman should be punished as the sinner and that the man should be assisted to escape."

The die is cast. Although Frederick, as the new Earl, attempts to have it both ways and pull a Duke of Windsor (in a century before Wally Simpson's disruption of the monarchy), his proposal to leave the property to his brother and take Kate to Europe and marry her there is scorned by his brother and by the priest who advises Kate and her mother.

And so the young Earl finds himself on the cliffs of Moher, near the edge and confronted by the mother of the woman he has deflowered and deceived.

Trollope framed his story by introducing us to a madwoman in a private asylum in western England, who cornered everyone she met with her mantra, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The narrator then reassures the reader that there will be no more of the asylum story, but there will be the story of how the woman happened to come there; and the reader thus knows in advance that this will be a story with a violent ending.

It's a relatively short (160 pages) novel with a single thread that leads the players to their fate. They are not presented as bad people. The reader can have some sympathy for each of them as they make their way along, overmatched and overshadowed by the overwhelming Cliffs of Moher and the binding institutions of the time.

WHAT HAPPENS IN AUSTRALIA . . .

JOHN CALDIGATE

Anthony Trollope sailed to Australia in 1871 to visit his son Fred. (He wrote one novel, _Lady Anna_, during eight weeks of the voyage out.) While visiting a goldfield in Currajong, New South Wales, he met one of his son's school mates who had visited in the Trollope home. As he described it in _Australia and New Zealand_ (1876):

I saw him in front of his little tent, which he occupied in partnership with an experienced working miner, eating a beefsteak out of his frying-pan with his claspknife. . . . He had no friend near him but his mining friend,--or mate, as he called him. . . . He had been softly nurtured, well educated, and was a handsome fellow to boot; and there he was eating a nauseous lump of beef out of a greasy frying-pan with his pocketknife, just in front of the contiguous blankets stretched on the ground, which constituted the beds of himself and his companion. It may be that he will strike gold, and make a fortune.

And so _John Caldigate_ was born. It is the story of a young man who amasses more gambling debts than he can pay while a student at Cambridge and subsequently forsakes his inheritance of the family estate and strikes out for Australia. He falls in love with a local girl, Hester Bolton, after only seeing her once before he leaves, but on the ship he has an encounter with "Mrs. Smith," also in the second class section, and they talk about marriage. We then follow John Caldigate to the goldfields, where his experiences are basically those described above. And then we fast forward some four or five years and see him returning home a wealthy man. But what about the woman from the ship--who became known in Australia as Mademoiselle Cettini, singer and dancer? The text is silent.

Armed with maturity and money, John patches up his relationship with his strict father and becomes reinstated as the heir of the family estate in the fens near Cambridge. Despite misgivings by her family, Hester, the young girl of his dreams, agrees to marry him, and the young hero appears to be triumphant in all. But the reader is less than halfway through the book, and it's too early for a happy ending.

And now we begin to learn more about the woman from the ship. After John and Hester are married and have a child, he receives a telegram from his mining partner in Australia, asking for a large sum of money. He then receives a letter from the woman, signed, "Euphemia Caldigate," in which she says she will return their marriage certificate to him if he pays the money to Tom Crinkett, his former partner; and then she will marry Crinkett and make no further claim on him. Otherwise "the law must take its course."

So what did happen in Australia? Caldigate immediately goes to Hester's brother, a lawyer in Cambridge, and shows him the letter. In response to hostile questioning from Robert Bolton, he states that it is all true except that he was never married to her. He concedes that he was "very intimate with her," and that she lived with him as his wife. When a Wesleyan minister called on her to upbraid her, she said that John had promised to marry her, and John did not deny it. When Bolton asks him if she used his name there, he replies, "It was a wild kind of life up there, Robert, and this was apparent in nothing more than in the names people used. I daresay some of the people did call her Mrs. Caldigate. But they knew she was not my wife."

Oh, these Victorians! "It was a wild kind of life up there." How does this play in England? Answer: Not well. Caldigate is believed by his father, his priest, and, most importantly, by his wife. It soon becomes apparent that Hester has developed from a quiet maiden lass sitting in the corner, into an assertive wife and mother, willing to defy her mother, father, and brothers in defense of her husband and herself. And here we meet one of the blackest villains Trollope has given us: Mrs. Bolton, mother of Hester and second wife of her husband. Mrs. Bolton was a zealot of the low church (which provided Trollope with several of his villains), and her daughter's suitor never convinced her by his attendance at Sunday services that he was anything other than a "lost sinner." His father did not attend church, and despite John's efforts to keep up appearances, he did not have a history of perfect attendance at divine services. And there were even rumors of a relationship with a Mademoiselle Cettini in Australia. John made an explanation to Hester, which she accepted. But Mrs. Bolton never gave her blessing to the match, and although her daughter finally persuaded her to attend the wedding, she only did so as a heavily veiled spectator from a back pew.

And then it becomes known that he has been accused of having had a wife in Australia! With the consent of her stepsons and the grudging consent of her husband, Mrs. Bolton lures her daughter to Puritan Grange, the Bolton home. In a great scene of conflict, she makes her a prisoner there. We have come to learn by this time that Hester is endowed with all her mother's determination and stubbornness. When Hester finds the doors locked against her, she seats herself in the hall with her baby in her arms, opposite her mother, seated in another chair. Hester spends the night stretched out on the floor. Although Mr. Bolton pleads with his wife to let her go, she is more concerned with the salvation of her daughter's soul than with such earthly consequences as murder. "Oh, He knows! He knows! And if He knows, what matters what men say that I have done to her." (Mrs. Bolton shares this concern for the welfare of the soul, at the expense of the body, with another of Trollope's zealous villains, Aunt Charlotte in _Linda Tressel_.)

In the end Hester's half brothers decide that she must be allowed to leave, and after a three-day standoff the gates are unlocked, and she bids goodbye to her parents and leaves.

In this scene Mrs. Bolton had outdone even the wife of Bishop Proudie in the Barsetshire novels. Mrs. Proudie stands as a comic figure in comic novels, but there is little comedy about Mrs. Bolton. Her sin is the same as Mrs. Proudie's--an excess of zeal in the cause of religion--but here there is little to laugh at.

After this climax, the story plays itself out, but it is clear that Hester will not be defeated. John Caldigate is tried and convicted of bigamy. Prior to the trial he even finds himself conscience-bound to pay twenty thousand pounds (he had received from his Australia ventures some sixty thousand pounds) to Tom Clinkett, Mrs. Smith-Cettini, and their two conspirators, who had not been so fortunate as he with their market timing. (Trollope's visit to the gold mines had convinced him that the gold seeking was all a gamble.) At this point this reader lost patience with John Caldigate, and it is said that his editor did, too, but Trollope refused to change the story, saying that it was essential to the plot.

While John Caldigate is languishing in prison, further evidence in the case is uncovered. Ever the postal service man, Trollope gives us a detailed look at how close inspection of postmarks and stamps helps determine whether an important envelope addressed to "Mrs. John Caldigate" in John's hand was stamped before or after it was alleged to have been sent.

The attitudes toward John Caldigate's wild oats are interesting. His wife's family is horrified, as are some others who feel personally involved. But the consensus of (male) public opinion in Cambridge was that what happens in Australia stays in Australia. "It was a wild kind of life up there." From what we know of the double standards in Victorian morality, it's of interest that a popular novel dared to present a hero with a history of such indiscretion.

This is a good Trollope novel. The plot is an ingenious one. The long paragraphs in which the details of the characters' thoughts are teased out and dissected can be scanned or simply skipped by the modern reader. Some people really are as earnest and naive as John Caldigate. I doubt that very many readers have swallowed the twenty thousand pound gift as a plausible one, but given Caldigate's character it's at least possible--though, in my estimation, unlikely. I had to set the book aside a couple of times when I thought the author was sailing into rougher seas than I cared to navigate. (Trollope could not be relied upon to avoid maudlin unhappy endings at times.) But in the end the reader has had a visit to the Australian gold fields, has gone through a trial for bigamy, and has been well entertained.

A GIFTED CHILD

AYALA'S ANGEL

Gifted children are a blessing to society, but they can pose their little challenges along the way. Such a gifted child is Ayala Dormer. Quick and witty, and pretty when she smiles, Ayala receives offers of marriage in rather quick succession from a number of men, eligible and ineligible, and she refuses them all, more than once, for a reason she cannot disclose: she is waiting for the appearance of the Angel of Light, the perfect knight: "How could she make her aunt understand that there could be no place in her heart for Tom Tringle seeing that it was to be kept in reserve for some angel of light who would surely make his appearance in due season,--but who must still be there, present to her as her angel of light, even should he never show himself in the flesh."

In her adherence to this belief she shows herself to be one of Trollope's Constant Heroines, though surely an outlier among the lot. Others remained constant to better men, some being rewarded in this life, some not. But Ayala's adherence is to her own ideal, thus causing a great deal of trouble to those around her, and, I fear, to a number of readers.

This sometimes tedious story is made palatable by Ayala herself, who is as capable of charming the reader as she is of winning the love and loyalty of many of those around her. Her sister's lover Isadore Hamel captures with a vivid simile her bursts of energy, recalling to the reader of Tolstoy the similar sudden rays of sunshine that charmed those who knew Natasha, the heroine of _War and Peace_:

"I remember her almost as a child, when she would remain perfectly still for a quarter of an hour, and then would be up and about the house everywhere, glancing about like a ray of the sun reflected from a mirror as you move it in your hand."

Ayala and her sister Lucy have been left as senior orphans (a young Victorian woman could not live alone or move about in society unaccompanied) who are taken in by their late mother's brother and sister: one sister to each. Although this becomes a bit complicated when Ayala becomes unsuitable to the aunt who has chosen her and the girls change places, Ayala wins the love of the uncle in each of the two households. In doing so she presents a bit of a problem to each of the aunts--to one because she is a bit poky in assuming the household duties required of a woman in an impecunious household, and to the other because she outshines her aunt's own two daughters.

Providing some relief from Ayala's quest for her angel are the subplots that constitute the comedy of manners in which Trollope excels. These little subplots are so entertaining, why bother with a serious major plot? It takes an uncommonly skillful genius to satisfy the reader with nothing but pies and cakes. _Barchester Towers_, one of the earlier Trollope novels, came close; it contains only enough serious plot to serve as a scaffolding for the satire of the clerical community of Barchester. And Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ comes to mind as a long novel of the same period designed to demonstrate what fools mortals be. In Ayala's case, fools disport themselves around her while she is waiting patiently for her knight.

First among these is Tom Tringle, even though the author's sympathy for him tells us that his foolishness is temporary, and he is destined to grow up, though not necessarily within the confines of the present novel. Tom is a hobbledehoy, and one suspects that the author may be recalling his own youth when he reminds us that though a young man and woman may be about the same age, the young woman is often more advanced in her knowledge and understanding of the world and of how to comport herself. Tom suffers from this truth, showing himself to be one who may yet prove himself to be a late bloomer, but too late to be a successful suitor for such a prize as Ayala.

But though women often outshine and outperform the men in their lives, they suffer the restrictions of Victorian society. Living in a later age in which women have won the right to assert themselves more successfully, the differences between men and women still provide the basis for novels, short stories, and drama. Today a woman may knock on the door of a man who does not return her text messages, but men may still be boys while the girls in their lives are women. No Victorian woman novelist knew this better than Anthony Trollope, who described the world as he found it; and the circumstances spoke for themselves.

And here lies the comedy of manners, presented on the stage of the household of Sir Thomas Tringle, a wealthy man of business. Sir Thomas is vexed by his son-in-law Septimus Traffick, a man of birth and a Member of Parliament, but also devoid of fortune or income and sufficiently thick of skin to ignore all Sir Thomas's efforts to dislodge him and his wife Augusta from the Tringle home, whether in town or country.

Augusta, the elder of the two Tringle daughters, is sufficiently haughty to provoke Ayala, in one of the pivotal moments in the story, to ask Augusta to run upstairs and fetch a scrapbook for her. Such effrontery cannot be forgiven. Now more than ever, Augusta often finds it necessary to remind both her family and the poor Ayala that she is married to one of the most important men in the country.

The younger sister pushes herself into the comedy by asserting that she too must be blessed with dowry and husband, and in her sequential pursuit of two ineligible young men, she invites each in his turn to elope with her to Ostend.

The unfortunate Tom Tringle, son and heir to Sir Thomas Tringle, may be the biggest fool of all, betraying himself by his dress as he adorns himself with gaudy jewels and ornate finery when he comes to see Ayala. His offer to fight a duel with his rival Colonel Jonathan Stubbs provides the same mockery of the code of honor as does a similar offer in _The Macdermotts of Ballycloran_. However, the author finally confesses to the reader that Tom Tringle is the real hero of the novel. His folly is that of youth, and his devotion to his ideal is his redeeming quality. Tom and Ayala share a determination to adhere to the highest standard in pursuit of a mate, and it may be that this youthful idealism and perseverance cause them to be the author's declared hero and heroine.