Part 4

One can hardly quarrel with Trollope's assertion that he considered Plantagenet and Lady Glencora Palliser and Josiah Crawley to be his best creations. Although _The Last Chronicle_ serves as a grand summation of the Barsetshire series and reprise for its characters, it is around Mr. Crawley and the mystery of how he got the twenty pound check that everything revolves. The stubborn Perpetual Curate whom we met in _Framley Parsonage_ continues to cling to his principles in spite of every adversity. He doubts himself to the extent that he concedes he may have absent-mindedly taken the check in question, but when roused to defend whatever position he stakes out, he does so with boldness and authority that none can withstand. And this list includes such formidable opponents as Archdeacon Grantly of the thundering "Good Heavens!", Mr. Crawley's loving wife and daughters, and the heretofore undefeated Mrs. Proudie, ruler of the episcopal palace.

Is Mr. Crawley mad? Well we may wonder: his wife thinks he sometimes is; his daughter thinks so. And he even suspects it himself. Mr. Crawley is an articulate victim of the inequalities within the Church. He knows many of the Odes of Pindar and Horace by heart, in Greek, and teaches them to his daughters. His friend from school days, Dean Arabin, dean of the Close, had not done so well in class as he had. But Mr. Arabin is Dean, wealthy enough to be traveling to Jerusalem at the time of the story, and Mr. Crawley's family can barely find enough food for the table with his meager stipend in Hogglestock. We have previously seen Mr. Crawley descending as the Voice of God on the worldly Mr. Robarts, vicar of Framley, in _Framley Parsonage_. And now we see him as the long-suffering servant of the brick makers of Hogglestock. He resigns his curacy (and his minuscule income) after being accused of theft, as a matter of principle. Several of his esteemed colleagues attempt to reason with him, but none can contend with him in his determination.

Trollope claimed to have avoided theological issues and to have limited himself to the personal lives of the people of the church in the Barsetshire series. Perhaps so. Few sermons are quoted. But political issues of the church rear their head at every turn: Archdeacon Grantly is twice denied the bishopric. Mr. Arabin becomes a dean. The bishop's authority is challenged. High Church contends with Low Church. Bishop Proudie and his wife come into Barsetshire opposed to its high church tendencies, and Mrs. Proudie preaches the importance of keeping the Sabbath Day holy according to her standards. No railway trips on Sunday. No games. Services twice on Sunday. The old ways of the Church are battered. Even the saintly Mr. Harding had been known to chant in Evensong, but no more.

Yet Mr. Crawley cares not for either faction. He resents the bishop's wife's interference in his right and obligation to his parish, but he cites the importance of obedience to the bishop within the limits of legality. He stands down the bishop when challenged, but he is also an uncomfortable member of the family of the bishop's chief antagonist, Archdeacon Grantly. Mr. Crawley is not comfortable with the riches of the world and conducts himself as if convinced of the literal truth of the difficulty of a rich man's entering the kingdom of heaven.

Archdeacon Grantly is not the protagonist in any of the Barsetshire novels, but he makes his appearance in the first of the series, _The Warden_, and appears so prominently in the others as to become one of the most memorable of Trollope's men of the cloth. Rector of Plumstead Episcopi, Archdeacon of Barsetshire, son of the Bishop, and son-in-law of Mr. Harding (the Warden), the Archdeacon is a wealthy and worldly churchman who defends the church energetically throughout the series. A wealthy clergyman? Surely a contraindication in terms. After all, this was only a little over a hundred years ago. But so it was. He inherited his wealth from his saintly father the Bishop, who possessed his wealth in connection with his position in the church. Those blessed by the material riches of the church alluded to their position with the same euphemisms employed by the nobility--those whom God has endowed, and so forth.

But not all clergymen were so endowed, as we are continually reminded by Mr. Crawley. We are not accustomed to thinking of Trollope as a social crusader, and he probably was not, certainly not in the tradition that Charles Dickens established. Trollope had his psychological baggage resulting from his impoverished childhood and a certain amount of rough treatment as a town boy among the more privileged classmates in school. But although he had no connection and little experience with the church, there is no reason to think that he didn't tell it like it was.

In _The Last Chronicle_ Trollope was careful to conclude several of the lives. Even Mrs. Proudie meets a somewhat untimely death. If we are to believe Trollope's own account in his autobiography, he overheard some men in his club saying how tired of her they had become, and he announced to them that he was going home right away to kill her off. Her demise of a sudden cardiac death is epidemiologically correct, in that 250,000 Americans die in this way every year now. Few, however, have such a dramatic end as does Mrs. Proudie, found standing up, leaning against her bedpost. Mrs. Proudie was a great comic creation, personifying the conflict between low church and high church--yet another of the women in Victorian society who were forced to achieve their goals through the agency of their lord and master. Several others come to mind--Alice Vavasor, Glencora Palliser, Lady Laura Standish.

Mr. Septimus Harding meets a more orthodox end, dying quietly in his old age. Mr. Harding was a gentler saint than Mr. Crawley; he had also faced the humiliation of displacement from his post of service, in _The Warden_, accepting his fate with quietness and resignation. There are few more sympathetic portraits of the loneliness of the aged than that of Mr. Harding finishing his days wandering about the rooms of his daughter's house, "ashamed when the servants found him ever on the move."

While Mr. Crawley is facing the judgment of his community for a crime he suspects he may have actually committed, his daughter Grace finds herself in love with Major Henry Grantly, son of the Archdeacon, who violently opposes a proposed union of his son with an impoverished woman, however worthy she may be. We follow every opportunity the father and son miss in their stubborn refusal to concede any of their pride and independence in their relationship with each other. Here Trollope's persistence in showing every nuance of each character's thoughts is effective in presenting each of the men as understandable and even likeable, even though we follow each mistaken turn that each of them takes. Thank goodness they had a little help. Conflict resolution occurs only when the women in their lives lead the two men into agreement without suffering the embarrassment of losing face.

The subplot in which John Eames becomes involved in a flirtation with Madalina Desmolines through his friendship with the painter Conway Dalrymple tries the reader's patience at times; here, however, the author spins out the story of how Dalrymple mocks the impassive Clara Van Siever by offering to paint her portrait as Jael driving a peg through the head of Sisera, a story from Judges often portrayed by painters who devoutly chose Biblical themes but selected the bloodiest. This subplot concludes with a farcical scene that could be played on the stage with few alterations, in which John is entrapped by Madalina's mother. Threatened with a shotgun wedding, he only manages his escape after opening the window and calling to a policeman on the street.

And although one may have supposed that the story of Lily Dale and Johnny Eames was concluded in _The Small House at Allington_, both reappear to provide yet another identical conclusion to his courtship. And as another part of the epilogue to _The Small House_, we see Adolphus Crosbie suffering still more punishment in consequence of courting and jilting Lily. Dr. Thorne briefly appears as a magistrate considering the case of Mr. Crawley, and his wife the former Miss Dunstable also reappears to give counsel to Lily Dale. Mark Robarts of _Framley Parsonage_ also sits with the magistrates.

Few bases remain untouched. Mr. Toogood, a London attorney and a relation of Mrs. Crawley, appears as a sleuth to dig out a few details of Mr. Crawley's mystery. Johnny Eames makes a heroic trip to Europe to help solve it. But when Mrs. Arabin (Mr. Harding's daughter) is finally notified of the problem, she sorts it out, as she would have done without any assistance.

And so the Barsetshire series is concluded. _The Last Chronicle_ rewards the faithful reader of the previous five novels in the series with reunions with familiar friends. But it stands on its own as an outstanding novel of the nineteenth century, following the dogged Mr. Crawley as he gives his own witness to the less rigid world around him.

CAN YOU FORGIVE A FEW ADDITIONS TO THE TEXT?

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?

I met Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser when we were in England in 1974. They lived in their own television series, _The Pallisers_, Simon Raven's BBC television serial based on six Anthony Trollope novels. The Times published a supplement describing the Palliser series as "the finest sequence of fiction ever to be based on British Parliamentary life." Susan Hampshire played Glencora, and not only she, but the entire cast now represent those characters in my mind. And so, although I can be appropriately dispassionate and critical about Anthony Trollope and his novels, loyalty makes it difficult in regard to Plantagenet and Glencora. They are old friends.

Episodes 1-6 of The Pallisers are based on the first novel in the series, _Can You Forgive Her?_ First, the reader and the viewer must understand that the woman we are asked to forgive is not Lady Glencora M'Cluskie, the true heroine, but Alice Vavasor, a distant cousin of Glencora's. Alice's story is indeed the main plot of the book, but Simon Raven apparently realized that Glencora's story would be more appealing to the television audience, and he focused the first episodes on her, starting with events that Trollope had described in a novel of the Barsetshire series, _The Small House at Allington_. The spectacular set piece in the television presentation is the first scene, a garden party given by the Duke of Omnium and Gatherum. (Trollope was shameless in the selection of names for his characters and places; other favorites include the Marquis of Auld Reekie in Scotland, the law firm of Slow and Bideawhile, and Dr. Fillgrave, who was the competitor of Dr. Thorne.) At this party Glencora flirts with Burgo Fitzgerald, a handsome rake, little knowing that her fate is being decided from on high. Her guardian, the Marchioness of Auld Reekie, is observing all from her chair beside a little Greek temple above the lake. There she negotiates with the Duke of Omnium for a marital alliance between Glencora and the Duke's heir, Plantagenet Palliser. The Duke replies, "I find the thing will suit me well enough."

The innocent reader goes from the television series to the text and immediately finds himself reading about Alice Vavasor, a young woman engaged to a young country gentleman, "John Grey, The Worthy Man." She had been previously engaged to her first cousin "George Vavasor, The Wild Man." We then stumble into subplot number one, in which George's sister goes to spend three weeks with her Aunt Greenow, a well-to-do widow who must deal with two suitors: Mr. Cheesacre, a "fat Norfolk farmer," and the rather disreputable Captain Bellfield.

Where is Glencora? Not yet to be found. By the time we reach Chapter Seventeen, the standard Trollope fox-hunting chapter, we find Burgo Fitzgerald first among the riders--

Burgo Fitzgerald, whom no man had ever known to crane at a fence, or to hug a road, or to spare his own neck or his horse's. And yet poor Burgo seldom finished well--coming to repeated grief in this matter of his hunting, as he did so constantly in other matters of his life.

In the next chapter we learn that Burgo, eighteen months earlier, had almost won the hand, as he had already won the heart, of the Lady Glencora M'Cluskie. Finally. This is page 162. But what about the garden party? About the garden party, the text is silent. That this memorable scene appears nowhere in Trollope's novel is almost beside the point. The dialogue of the BBC production is as Trollopian as any of the rest, which adheres closely to the text. Raven has the Duke later admonish Plantagenet, who has been rumored to be having an affair with Lady Dumbello (another of Trollope's apt names), that he should not pursue such an affair until after he has become respectably married and produced an heir. "After that, you may suit yourself. Only see to it that there's no open scandal. When I was a boy it didn't matter much, but for some reason it does now."

And the grand wedding that we saw at Westminster Abbey? "She had married Mr. Palliser at St. George's Square." So we, and the author, have missed the most memorable scenes in the whole series. If we go back to a few pages of _The Small House at Allington_, we find the story of Plantaget Palliser's flirtation with Lady Dumbello, and we find the interview between Plantagenet and Mr. Fothergill, the "man of business" for the Duke of Omnium, in which Mr. Fothergill passed the word to the rebellious young buck that he must abandon his friendship with Lady Dumbello, who happened to be the daughter-in-law of an old friend (and former mistress) of the Duke. We find no description of the scene in which the Duke brings Lady Hartletop and Lady Dumbello to Plantagenet's drawing room for Lady Dumbello to declare to Plantagenet, in a choked voice, that their association is at an end.

What we do find in _Can You Forgive Her?_ is a brief reference to Glencora's having attempted unsuccessfully to persuade her distant cousin Alice to allow her to use her house in London for a tryst with Burgo, to arrange an elopement. Alice barely knows Glencora, and she refuses. All things conspire against Glencora, and she finds herself engaged, by arrangement of "sagacious heads," to Mr. Palliser.

And now, finally, Glencora and Alice have a chance to become acquainted with each other. Alice receives an invitation from Glencora to come to Matching Priory for a visit before Christmas.

Important conversations in Trollope sometimes occur on carriage rides, and a chapter entitled "Dandy and Flirt" is ample warning that Dandy and Flirt are the horses pulling the "light stylish-looking cart" driven by Lady Glencora, who conveys Alice from the station to Matching Priory, and demonstrates in her breathless exposition of her situation that she is, in fact, a lonely little rich girl, way out in the country, who needs a friend. (In the television production, she is often shown carrying and holding a doll in her first months of marriage.)

My wife and I saw "Matching Priory," the stately home that was used in the BBC television series, when we visited Sudely Castle one afternoon in the course of a short stay in the Cotswolds. This castle's greatest historical significance was having been the last home, and the burial place, of Katherine Parr, last wife and widow of Henry VIII. Matching Priory, though, had a somewhat different history, as described by Lady Glencora, who shows Alice the "Matching oak, under which Coeur de Lion or Edward the Third, I forget, was met by Sir Guy de Palisere as he came from the war, or from hunting, or something of that kind." Sir Guy offered the king some brandy, the king responded with a generous bequest of real estate, and the rest was history. "As Jeffrey Palliser says, it was a great deal of money for a pull at his flask."

And so we have the history of England according to Lady Glencora. And having finally arrived at subplot two, the story of the Pallisers, we can follow the development of their marriage, which is the real story of _Can You Forgive Her?_ Trollope summarizes the contrasting personalities of Glencora and Plantagenet as he describes Glencora's reaction when she realizes that Mrs. Marsham has actually come to their house to be her duenna. Though Glencora knew little about the British Constitution, she "was much quicker, much more clever, than her husband." Though he had a keen intelligence, he could be easily deceived. "And, to a certain extent, she looked down upon him for this obtusity." This contrast in their personalities is played out in the book's production number, Lady Monk's ball. Lady Glencora begs her husband to be excused from attending because she knows Burgo, Lady Monk's nephew, will be there. But Plantagenet, saying that "it does not signify," insists that she attend. After Glencora arrives (separately), he excuses himself and takes his leave; she dances "recklessly" with Burgo, watched by her "nemesis" Mr. Bott (a political disciple of her husband) and her "duenna" Mrs. Marsham, who leaves to fetch Mr. Palliser. He arrives in the nick of time, Glencora gives him her hand, and they depart. In their carriage she says, "If you did not wish me to see Mr. Fitzgerald you should not have sent me to Lady Monk's. But, Plantagenet, I hope you will forgive me if I say that no consideration shall induce me to receive again as a guest, in my own house, either Mrs. Marsham or Mr. Bott."

There was more to be said. The night before must be followed by the morning after; Plantagenet invited his wife to breakfast with him after he had "slept on it." In these interviews the woman does not always win. But she usually does. In this case, though, it may be said that if Glencora won the battle, Plantagenet won the war. Glencora's wit and spirit posed a challenge to her husband. "'I am very serious,' she replied, as she settled herself in her chair with an air of mockery, while her eyes and mouth were bright and eloquent with a spirit which her husband did not love to see."

Plantagenet turned the tide, after her accusation that he had planted spies, with his admission: "If it were ever to come to that, that I thought spies necessary, it would be all over with me."

This changes the tone; she abandons her raillery and declares that she cannot make him happy, confesses that she loves Burgo Fitzgerald, and that she and Plantagenet do not love each other. Here Plantagenet does his duty, tells her he does love her, puts his arms around her, and decides on the spur of the moment to abandon politics for a while and take her to Europe. At this very moment the Duke of St. Bungay is announced, and he enters to offer Plantagenet the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, the office that Plantagenet has coveted. But Plantagenet declines, pleading family reasons, and the conversation is over. No English gentleman would inquire or disclose anything further.

This is the turning point, and the rest all works itself out in subplot number two. As for the main plot, Alice Vavasor proves herself to be as contrary a heroine as Glencora is attractive, as she deals with successive engagements to George Vavasor, John Grey, back to George Vavasor, and back to John Grey, whose sainthood is assured by the persistence of his suit.

At this point we find Glencora's and Alice's personalities summarized as Glencora congratulates her friend on her fourth engagement: "I know that it is quite a misery to you that you should be made a happy woman at last. I understand it all, my dear, and my heart bleeds for you."

As for subplot number one: Simon Raven properly omitted it from his television presentation. It is a third variation on the theme of a woman torn between a dashing scoundrel and a boring steady gentleman. In this one, as it turns out, Aunt Greenow selects the impecunious Captain Bellfield, and we leave her beginning to get him housebroken.

Trollope's great achievement in this novel is the creation of Glencora and Plantagenet. They have not become household words in our time, but they had enough in them for elaboration of their stories in another medium, and they carried a series of six political novels in which they played sometimes major and sometimes quite minor roles. Political figures in England have cited these novels as the best fictional presentation of parliamentary process, and wives of great men have cited Lady Glencora as the model of all that a political wife should be and do.

It is Glencora's sense of fun and play that makes her an endearing figure to her friends, and also to the reader. At Baden she takes Alice with her to the casino to play "one little Napoleon," with which she wins a little pile and finally loses it. Plantagenet finds her, scolds her, and takes her away. Alice feels wrongly scowled upon by Mr. Palliser and follows them to their room, where Glencora affects laughter. "Here's a piece of work about a little accident."

Plantagenet fails to see the humor and admonishes her for sitting at a common gambling table amid heaps of gold. "You wrong me," Glencora replies. "There was only one heap, and that did not remain long. Did it, Alice?"

Alice, with her own agenda of being wronged, takes her candle and takes her leave. This was the set of family and friends that Simon Raven brought us on BBC. Glencora, pert and pretty, sometimes strayed, and she sometimes strayed further than to the tables of Baden; but she was a lot more fun than Alice. She was more fun than any of them.

And the inevitable question: Was the television series more fun than the book? And the required qualifying query: What did you do first--see it on television or read the book? In my case, the television series came first, and yes, the portrayal on television was more fun. But it was so much fun that the text is required reading.

ENGLISH POLITICS 101

PHINEAS FINN

_Phineas Finn_ is a political novel. Others in Anthony Trollope's Palliser series stray here and there from the political scene in Victorian England, but this one is rooted in the pursuit of political ambition. A chapter is allocated to a cabinet meeting in which the members of the cabinet are named, described, and seated at the table. The furnishings of the "large dingy room" in Downing Street are enumerated, and rituals are observed. Political strategy is discussed and determined. The author obviously puts politics right up there with fox hunting among his passions.

Phineas Finn is the focal point of the story as he embarks on a career in the service of the nation as a Member of Parliament. Phineas appears as an impressionable young Irishman, whose charm and gift for pleasant conversation bring him opportunities that push his capacity for maintaining focus. He is several grades advanced beyond the stage of the hobbledehoy portrayed by Trollope in Johnny Eames of the Barsetshire series, but he is still learning the ways of the world. And so we learn the ways of Phineas's world as he endures the inconveniences and embarrassments of the learning process.

One could do worse than to use this novel as a textbook on the English Constitution. We follow Phineas through election to Parliament from two different boroughs, we observe the protocols and courtesies in the House of Commons, we see his landlord participate in a riot, we meet with the Cabinet, and we see governments formed, dissolved, and replaced.