Part 16

Another variant of the relation between the sexes appears in the on-again, off-again romance between Frank Houston and Imogene Docimer. Lacking the means to support themselves in the manner to which Frank has become accustomed, they have already broken off an engagement when the reader meets them. Frank, who declares frankly that he has no intention of working for a living, becomes the first of two suitors for the hand of Gertrude Tringle and the handsome dowry she is expected to bring with her. In this suit he finds Gertrude more than willing to accept him and assume the same elevated status of a married lady that her sister has already attained.

Already vexed by the reluctance of his newly acquired son-in-law Septimus Traffick to vacate the premises and establish a home of his own, Sir Thomas refuses to promise any dowry at all to Gertrude if she marries another potential parasite upon his resources. Frank wavers between one young woman (Imogene) who would accept him in spite of his poverty because she loves him, and another young woman (Gertrude) who would accompany him, or almost any Tom, Dick, or Harry, to Ostend, the favored destination of eloping English couples.

Sir Thomas follows the foolishness of the Tringle family with despair. His trenchant observations provide the voice of reason in assessing the motives and machinations of the members of his household who concern themselves with how best to capitalize on the wealth his business affairs have brought them.

The problems of the poor are less farcical. Imogene waits to see what the fates will have in store for her as her true and less than worthy lover pursues the Tringle prize. Ayala's sister Lucy and her poor but proud lover Isadore Hamel push themselves along by fits and starts to their goal of matrimony.

And in the midst of this beehive of activity sits Ayala, stuck on high center in her reluctance to commit herself to any suitor who does not meet her impossible standards. Time after time she refuses a perfectly suitable lover, Colonel Jonathan Stubbs. Here the author repeats for the long-suffering reader her reason:

He was not the Angel of Light,--could never be the Angel of Light. There was nothing there of the azure wing upon which should soar the all but celestial being to whom she could condescend to give herself and her love. He was pleasant, good, friendly, kind-hearted,--all that a friend or a brother should be; but he was not the Angel of Light. She was sure of that.

Friends and family make certain allowances for gifted children, and Ayala's friends and family entertain the reader with scheme after scheme for leading her to the light, if not to her own preconception of her Angel of Light. Angels are in Heaven; men of flesh and blood walk the earth, and it takes Ayala a long time to figure this out. And as she does so, the patient reader is diverted by the folly of those on this earth who are far less than angels.

And finally, another compensation for the reader is the author's indulgence in presenting old favorites from a previous novel, _The American Senator_, written three years before _Ayala's Angel_. (Both were products of his later years--_The American Senator_ in 1875 and _Ayala's Angel_ in 1878. Trollope's stroke and his death were in late 1882.) He named Larry Twentyman as the hero of _The American Senator_ in its last pages, but Larry did not win the hand of Mary Masters, who married Reginald Morton. Hopes for a match between Larry and Mary's younger sister Kate are mentioned in the conclusion of that novel, but "Kate is still too young and childish to justify any prediction in that quarter." Larry's modest reward at the end of _The American Senator_ is that Mary gets him to swear that he will be her friend.

But in one of the fox hunting scenes in _Ayala's Angel_, who should appear as one of the popular habitués of the hunt but Larry Twentyman, married less than a year to Mary's sister Kate. Lord Rufford, "now the happy father of half-a-dozen babies," can no longer jump a fence. Her ladyship is always telling him not to jump over anything he can avoid, and he acknowledges that he does "pretty much what her ladyship tells me." And we are told further, "No doubt she generally was right in any assertion she made as to her husband's affairs."

Trollope took care of his heroes. Had he lived long enough, surely Tom Tringle would have reappeared at a later stage in his life with some of the success that the author predicted for him.

KEEPING THE OLD ACREAGE TOGETHER

COUSIN HENRY

"_Cousin Henry_ is an original novel," Anthony Trollope wrote his publisher, "but it is not for me to say so." I think Trollope's pride in his accomplishment is justified. It's a short novel (280 pages), and it follows with few distractions the thought processes of a weak and indecisive young man who is summoned to his uncle's large estate in Wales and told that since he is the only male descendent, he will inherit it, "unless you show yourself to be unworthy." Henry's cousin Isabel Brodrick has been living with her uncle, and he would prefer to leave it to her, since it is not entailed and he has the right to do so. The uncle soon deems Henry to be unworthy, but the uncle soon dies, and the will leaves the property to Henry. But Henry knows there was a later will changed to leave it all to Isabel. Only he knows where it is. What is he to do? This is what Trollope considered to be his original contribution: he follows the nephew's vacillating attempts to resolve his dilemma so that not only does the author consider his portrayal of these mental agonies to be plausible, he arranges for the family lawyer, Mr. Apjohn, to guess exactly what the young man has thought and what he plans to do.

Does he convince the reader? Yes, I'll accept it. The author holds all the cards, of course, but I find it believable that a young man could be this indecisive. He wants the farm, but he doesn't want to commit a crime to get it and keep it. Everyone knows that Henry is concealing something, and this is perceived through nonverbal communication. The housekeeper and Isabel notice how pale, wan, and spiritless he has become.

Isabel has a suitor, the Reverend William Owen, and they both show themselves to be proud and stubborn lovers similar to such other Trollope couples as Caroline Waddington and George Bertram in _The Bertrams_. Mr. Owen withdraws his suit when he learns that Isabel is to be an heiress (by an even earlier will) because he considers himself too poor to press his suit on a wealthy woman. Then when Isabel appears to be disinherited, he makes his proposal, but Isabel refuses him because she considers herself so poor that she would drag him into poverty. However, the author has mercy on them. After Henry is found out by the wily Mr. Apjohn, Isabel boldly goes to her lover's house, steps close to him and urges him to kiss her. (Here the reticent Victorian novelist indulges in a bit of sensuality.) Then she tells him that he could never hold his head up again if he should refuse to marry her after "that."

"And I beg, Mr. Owen, that for the future you will come to me, and not make me come to you." This she said as she was taking her leave. "It was very disagreeable, and very wrong, and will be talked about ever so much. Nothing but my determination to have my own way could have made me do it."

Perhaps it would be going too far to say that all Trollope's women outclassed the men, but the women's victories far outnumbered those of the men.

Mr. Apjohn, the Jones family lawyer, believes that Cousin Henry has cheated Isabel out of her inheritance by concealing or destroying the final will, and he bullies Henry into an effort to clear his name in public by bringing suit for libel against the local newspaper, which has taken great interest in the suspicion of tampering with a will. Mr. Apjohn then deprives us of a courtroom drama when he correctly interprets Henry's body language and solves the mystery. But we do encounter the dreaded Mr. Cheekey of the Old Bailey, perhaps a slightly less unscrupulous and unsavory barrister than the infamous Mr. Chaffanbrass of several earlier novels, but one who still "would make his teeth felt worse than any terrier."

Only a glimpse of a vast English country estate is sufficient to make quite clear the importance of inheritance in the English scheme of things. The oldest male heir gets it all. The other sibs get nothing, unless the father or the firstborn son is gracious enough to make some provision for them. Trollope explored variations on this theme in _Is He Popenjoy?_ and _Orley Farm_, among others. In _Cousin Henry_, the entire community plays the role of the Greek chorus and condemns the suspected crime. But the tenants of the estate and the servants are all convinced that Cousin Henry is not the true heir. They don‘t like him, and the servants all give notice of resigning their posts. Trollope allows the victorious Mr. Apjohn to summarize his thoughts about primogeniture. Here is the unabridged sermon:

"A man, if an estate belong to himself personally, can do what he likes with it, as he can with half-crowns in his pocket; but where land is concerned, feelings grow up which should not be treated rudely. In one sense Llanfeare belonged to your uncle to do what he liked with it, but in another sense he shared it only with those around him; and when he was induced by a theory which he did not himself quite understand to bring your cousin down among these people, he outraged their best convictions."

"He meant to do his duty, Mr. Apjohn."

"Certainly; but he mistook it. He did not understand the root of that idea of a male heir. The object has been to keep the old family, and the old adherences, and the old acres together. England owes much to the manner in which this has been done, and the custom as to a male heir has availed much in the doing of it. But in this case, in sticking to the custom, he would have lost the spirit, and as far as he was concerned, would have gone against the practice which he wished to perpetuate. There, my dear, is a sermon for you, of which, I dare say, you do not understand a word."

"I understand every syllable of it, Mr. Apjohn," she answered.

One last detail: The landed estate appeared to confer a personal name with it, which took precedence over a wife's using her husband's surname. The legal maneuvers required by this requirement were quite complicated, but after a detailed explanation by Mr. Apjohn, the result was that when Isabel bore William a son, it is reported that "Llanfeare was entailed upon him and his son, and . . . he was so christened as to have his somewhat grandiloquent name inscribed as William Apjohn Owen Indefer Jones."

There was always some question as to how Mr. Apjohn should be recompensed for his work as Cousin Henry's "advocate." One would guess that he was rewarded in more ways than one. Among other compensations, he is recognized as the genius who solved the mystery in an early example of the psychological crime study, one that manages to hold the reader's interest through speculative passages about how a man's mind may work under certain circumstances.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT MUDDY BOOTS

DR. WORTLE'S SCHOOL

Although Anthony Trollope traveled to North America five times and wrote a two-volume travel book, _North America_, about his second trip, only one of his novels, _Dr. Wortle's School_, includes any scenes on American soil. It's a relatively short book, 199 pages, and only two of its twenty-four chapters are set in the United States. But it's a robust story, emphasizing action over reflection, certainly in the two American chapters.

Dr. Wortle is a clergyman with a parish that occupies relatively little of his time--time mainly devoted to his boarding school that prepares boys for Eton. To this school comes an "usher" (a subordinate or an assistant teacher at a school) who seems for Dr. Wortle's purposes to be too good to be true. And indeed the mystery that surrounds this overqualified teacher, a fellow of Oxford, and his American wife, who seems equally overqualified for cleaning up after unruly school boys, confirms that they bring with them baggage that threatens the continued existence of the school itself. The author unburdens himself of this mystery at the first opportunity, with a lengthy "O kind-hearted reader" paragraph that explains his intention of putting the "horse of my romance before the cart" by revealing the mystery "in the next paragraph--in the next half-dozen words. Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke were not man and wife."

Mr. Peacocke had gone to St. Louis and become Vice-President of the College at Missouri, where he had met Mrs. Ferdinand Lefroy, whose appearance--dark brown complexion, with hair dark and very glossy, "tall for a woman, but without any of that look of length under which female altitude sometimes suffers"--suggests that she must have been a Creole, even though she was the daughter of a Louisiana planter ruined by the Civil War. Colonel Ferdinand Lefroy had gone to Mexico to seek his fortune, was reported to have been killed there, and Mrs. Lefroy had then married Mr. Peacocke. When her supposedly dead husband reappeared and again disappeared, Mr. Peacocke and Mrs. Lefroy went to England as man and wife.

So here is a secret in an unstable state. The Peacockes' behavior is so guarded--they accept no invitations, say nothing of their history--that a secret is suspected, and when Ferdinand Lefroy's brother suddenly appears and attempts to blackmail the Peacockes, the fat is in the fire. Dr. Wortle remains loyal to his faithful usher, but the hounds of gossip are hot on the scent, and a number of students are withdrawn from the school, threatening its viability.

The unkindest cut of all is a paragraph in a London gossip sheet, "Everybody's Business," alluding to Dr. Wortle's visits to Mrs. Peacocke in the absence of her husband, who has gone to America to seek out the truth about the status, living or dead, of Ferdinand Lefroy.

"It must be admitted," said the writer, "that the Doctor has the best of it. While one gentleman is gouging the other--as cannot but be expected--the Doctor will be at any rate in security, enjoying the smiles of beauty under his own fig-tree at Bowick. After a hot morning with "τυπτω" [3] in the school, there will be "amo" in the cool of the evening."

[Footnote 3: Τυπτω--to "thump", that is, cudgel or pummel by repeated blows; by implication to punish]

How to respond? Here is the crux of the story. There are, to be sure, interviews between Dr. Wortle and his bishop, and Dr. Wortle seriously contemplates a suit for libel against the gossip sheet, which will bring the bishop into court. But perhaps the most pertinent interviews are those between Dr. Wortle and the colleague whom he selects as his confidante and advisor, Mr. Puddicombe, rector of a neighboring parish. Mr. Puddicombe effectively plays the role of Jiminy Cricket, the conscience of Dr. Wortle. In Chapter XIII, "Mr. Puddicombe's Boot," Dr. Wortle first goes to Mr. Puddicombe with his resolution to reply to the "Broughton Gazette," which has written, "Parents, if they feel themselves to be aggrieved, can remedy the evil by withdrawing their sons."

Mr. Puddicombe tells Dr. Wortle that he has fallen into a misfortune and advises restraint:

"It was a misfortune, that this lady whom you had taken into your establishment should have proved not to be the gentleman's wife. When I am taking a walk through the fields and get one of my feet deeper than usual into the mud, I always endeavour to bear it as well as I may before the eyes of those who meet me rather than make futile efforts to get rid of the dirt and look as though nothing had happened. The dirt, when it is rubbed and smudged and scraped, is more palpably dirt than the honest mud."

Would that each of us had a Mr. Puddicombe to keep us out of trouble!

There is an obligatory little romantic subplot, with a romance between Dr. Wortle's seventeen year old daughter Mary and a noble young boarding student, Lord Carstairs, age eighteen years. Are they too young for an engagement before he even enrolls at Oxford? Will the young lord's father Lord Bracy accept the daughter of a clergyman into his family? After a moderate amount of reflection, these issues sort themselves out.

Mr. Peacocke's journey to America to seek the grave or the person of Ferdinand Lefroy occupies the two American chapters. Peacocke goes in the company of Ferdinand's brother Robert, an unscrupulous but ingenious scoundrel whose inventions are matched by the determination and bravery of the intrepid Mr. Peacocke. These adventures provide an opportunity for Trollope to vent some of his observations about American manners:

He found his wife's brother-in-law seated in the bar of the public house--that everlasting resort for American loungers--with a cigar as usual stuck in his mouth, loafing away his time as only American frequenters of such establishments know how to do. In England such a man would probably be found in such a place with a glass of some alcoholic mixture beside him, but such is never the case with an American. If he wants a drink he goes to the bar and takes it standing--will perhaps take two or three, one after another; but when he has settled himself down to loaf, he satisfies himself with chewing a cigar, and covering a circle around him with the results. With this amusement he will remain contented hour after hour--nay, throughout the entire day if no harder work be demanded of him.

This is one of those Fantastic Premise books, in which a credible story is built around the Fantastic Premise--in this case, the Enoch Arden story of the man who goes off to fight, is presumed dead, and returns home to find his wife married to someone else. Not so fantastic, perhaps; considering the time, distance, and inadequate communication techniques of the period, it is only surprising that such occurrences did not take place more often. The story carries itself along with a good pace; but the greatest reason to read the book is to follow the struggles of Dr. Wortle, sucked into challenges to his pride, wrestling with how to dig himself out.

And for readers who like to close a book with a take-home lesson, one could do worse than to remember what to do and what not to do with muddy boots.

THE CURSE OF CONSUMPTION

MARION FAY

I was six years old when I met Tommy Wallace. He spent a good bit of time with his Aunt Rushie, who lived two doors down from us, while his mother spent a year at the Booneville Sanatorium with tuberculosis. We still see an occasional patient with tuberculosis nowadays, but the sanatoriums are all closed or used for other purposes. However, it still causes 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year, trailing only respiratory diseases, AIDS, and diarrheal diseases as the leading infectious killers.

Tuberculosis, known back then as consumption, was widespread in the nineteenth century, causing one out of four deaths in England in 1815. It only began to subside between 1850 and 1950, when deaths due to tuberculosis decreased tenfold, from 500 per 100,000 population in 1850 to 50 per 100,000 population in 1950. Improvements in public health reduced the incidence of tuberculosis even before the advent of antibiotics in 1946 with the introduction of streptomycin. Poor living conditions and the development of resistance to antibiotics have contributed to its resurgence and worldwide threat.

Before the discovery of the tubercle bacillus in 1882, the common understanding of consumption was that it was a constitutional disorder with a strong hereditary element, giving a pale, even "haunted" look to the sufferer. As such, it played a prominent role in literature and the other arts. John Keats, Frederic Chopin, and Franz Kafka died of consumption, as did Edgar Allen Poe's wife, Virginia. Among the familiar victims in our collective consciousness are Mimi in Puccini's _La Boheme_, Violetta in Verdi's _La Traviata_, and Camille, played by Greta Garbo in the MGM film of 1936. Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis in 1887, and his bloody cough figured prominently in the 1993 film _Tombstone_. Consumption claimed a number of characters in Dickens's novels: Little Nell in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, Nell's friend Kit, Nicholas Nickleby's faithful companion Smike, and both Richard Carstone and the boy Jo in _Bleak House_. Thomas Mann's _The Magic Mountain_ portrays a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. Other victims include Ralph Touchett in Henry James's _A Portrait of a Lady_; Edmund Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's _Long Day's Journey into Night_; Fantin in Hugo's _Les Miserables_; Dostoevsky's Katerina Ivanovna in _Crime and Punishment_ and Kirillov in _The Possessed_; and Jane Eyre's best friend in Charlotte Bronte's novel.

Anthony Trollope's two sisters and two of his three brothers died at a young age with consumption, an "established sorrow" described in his autobiography as the horrid word, Consumption. With this experience, it is no surprise that Trollope should write a novel, _Marion Fay_, about a young woman with consumption. The wonder is that it took him so long to write it; it was more than thirty years after his first novel that he wrote _Marion Fay_, which was finished in 1879.

Marion Fay's story is a sad one. A Quaker's daughter and the eldest son of a marquis meet and fall in love with each other. She refuses to marry Lord Hampstead, however, pleading first that it would be an unequal match for him, but finally admitting she has a strong family history of early death and does not expect to have a long life. Hampstead's emotional reactions are described in great detail, and much of their story is told from his point of view. She is determined from the first that she will not marry, and there is little more to think or say about it. She gradually becomes more open with him as her illness progresses, writing frequent letters from her seaside location. Most of the agonies belong to him, while she appears relatively tranquil, though she does indulge in a Trollopian flop onto the sofa to bury her tearful face in a cushion.

The reader is shielded from some of the details. For one thing, the descriptions emphasize the mental processes. There are no bloody scenes. The color would sometimes rise to Marion's cheeks, and those in the room would hear only a preparation for a cough, not the cough itself. This preparatory sound, the author tells us, is the one so familiar to those obliged to follow the downward course of someone dear to them. And that's it. Marion's illness is said to be a description of the course of Trollope's sister Emily, and she is said to have had a quiet and peaceful course and death. Apparently, if she had a hacking cough or brought up bright red blood, Anthony missed it. In any event, the reader is spared.

As Marion becomes more ill, a frustrated Hampstead, who has fallen under the Victorian illusion that a woman is obliged to obey the man she loves, fails to understand how he cannot control the situation. He has difficulty accepting the inevitable fate she has predicted. A woman has no right to accept such a fate. Such things must be left to "Providence, or Chance, or Fate, as you may call it."

On the other hand, Marion's friend Mrs. Roden confirms her understanding and acceptance, and she marvels that Marion can soar above weakness and temptation. This angelic portrayal is surely influenced by Trollope's recollection of his sister Emily.