Part 7

Here we see Trollope discovering his comic gift. The tone of the story is that of a cartoon comedy, Looney Tunes perhaps, with rascally villains and seemingly inept heroes who seem destined to be taken in by dastardly schemers. Lord Cashel, for instance, is shown in the role of the wicked lord of the manor who only dimly suspects how unlikely it is that any of his plots and plans will succeed. He seizes an opportunity to refuse to allow one of the heroes of the story, Lord Ballindine (Frank O'Kelly), to see Fanny Wyndham, the object of his affection, who happens to be Lord Cashel's ward. Lord Cashel has other plans for Fanny, who has come into an inheritance that would wipe out the debts incurred by Lord Cashel's prodigal son Lord Kilcullen. Fanny must marry his son! He is only slightly bothered by Fanny's spirited vow to see her lover Frank O'Kelly anyway, but despite his concern about her determination, he remains confident in his own powers. As his plot unravels, one expects the standard melodramatic line, "Curses! Foiled again!"

The most evil villain, though, is Barry Lynch, limited by his sister's existence to only half of his late father's estate. He daydreams about how his worries would all be washed away if his sister should only be in some way detached from her worldly cares. The English reader might view with detached amusement the schemes of a profligate drunken young Irish lord who is staggered to learn that his sister's acute illness might not be fatal, after all, and that she might rise again to displace him.

There can be no sympathy for the dehumanized arch villain of this dark comedy, described as having no residual feelings of human kindness. Surely he can bribe the doctor to see to it that she succumbs. And the reader can only smile as he calculates further what payment he must offer, and then how he can get out of paying it.

On the other side of the moral ledger, the two heroes of the story--Martin Kelly and Frank O'Kelly--are shown as young men with good hearts. Martin is a young farmer who rents from several landlords, including Lord Ballindine (Frank O'Kelly). At one point in the story Lord Ballindine, a recovering prodigal in his own right, is in need of three hundred pounds and thinks that his renter Martin Kelly would be able to lend it to him. Martin hesitates, saying that he has the money but had been thinking of using it in another way, which would clear the way for him to marry Anty Lynch, sister of the infamous Barry. Frank backs off, saying that he had forgotten about Martin's "matrimonial speculation," and he advises him that though he needs the cash, Martin had better keep it. But Martin says that his mother could let him have the money on the security of the house, in order that his Lordship should not be short of cash.

Thank goodness these two young Irishmen have good hearts; they need them for redemption. Both of them make no bones about their plans to marry for money. Though each maintains that he really loves the lady of his choice, they both freely admit that it was the money that first attracted them. Would Trollope have granted such a blot on the escutcheon of one of his young English heroes?

Trollope's previous work, which was also his debut novel, told of the fall of an old Irish family, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, with little levity to relieve it. _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_, on the other hand, is a comic novel. One may wonder whether Trollope is laughing with the Irish or at them. The general impression is one of affection, with a sharp eye for entertaining foibles. We must follow a knotty skein of debts and obligations in a discussion of how Jerry Blake got a pair of breeches to wear for Lord Ballindine's hunt. The leather had to be purchased in Tuam, and an assistant tailor had to leave his mother's wake and stay up all night sewing. The tailor, however, had a long-standing debt for his garden, and the landlord was a distant relation of Jerry Blake. So the long and tangled circle is closed, and Jerry gets his breeches.

Lord Cashel appears as an earl whose cardinal virtues were negative ones. He had learned that silence is sometimes mistaken for wisdom; he had avoided intemperance, and he had not done too many stupid things. He had avoided adultery, and since his marriage, he had not seduced any of his neighbors' daughters. He was therefore "considered a moral man."

Lady Selina is the first of Trollope's high-born old maids, too proud to marry--unless someone asks her. Other examples were to include Miss Sarah Marrable in _The Vicar of Bullhampton_ and Lady Amelia De Courcy in _Dr. Thorne_. The rest of the family at Grey Abbey was "dull, solemn, slow, and respectable," but Lady Selina, daughter of the earl, exceeded them all. The "specific gravity of Lady Selina could not be calculated. It was beyond the power of figures, even in algebraic denominations, to describe her moral weight."

Cares can be put aside when one comes upon one of Trollope's fox-hunting episodes. All is given up to the pleasure of the chase, and of its anticipation, and of its recollection. Indeed one of the markers of the successful huntsman is that his experience and his horsemanship allow him to be a witness to the end of the fox so that he can recount the details afterward. Character is revealed in the field. In this case, the Protestant clergyman Reverend Armstrong (whose only parishioner is Mrs. O'Kelly) is one of those who knows every road and which way the wind is blowing, and how unlikely it is that the fox would run against it. He shows himself to be a master huntsman. Like experienced golfers who "putt for dough" while the young men "drive for show," Mr. Armstrong spares his horse, takes short-cuts, and is always at the scene of the kill before the hard-riding gallants come galloping up a minute or two late.

Barry Lynch, on the other hand, cuts his horse in front of the hounds as they approach a small stone wall, fatally injuring one of them. Frank O'Kelly is obliged to send him home in disgrace.

(The bloody end to the fox hunt is no longer to be seen within the restriction of English laws. The sport was banned in England in 2004. Hunting enthusiasts, however, claim that the number of foxes killed each year has actually increased since the ban.)

Lessons in the conduct of human affairs are to be found in Trollope's work, another feature that _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_ shares with some of his later and better-known works. For instance, doctors, lawyers, and others who are paid to give advice learn sooner or later that one can only advise; one cannot coerce. Professionals will sometimes tell the recipient that they have given their best advice; and it is up to them to decide whether to take it. We find the young lawyer Mr. Daly resorting to this ploy as he finds that Barry Lynch is disappointed not to have prospects for a more lucrative settlement in a deal with Martin Kelly: "I've now given you my best advice; if your mind's not yet made up, perhaps you'll have the goodness to let me hear from you when it is?"

The story is a symmetrical one in which each of the two young heroes finds his reward, virtue emerges triumphant, and the wicked are vanquished. It's a warm-hearted romp in which young Anthony Trollope showed that he had the tools to keep readers entertained for years. My guess is that an Irishman can enjoy it as much as an Englishman.

A TALE OF NO CITY

LA VENDÉE

False starts are usually forgotten in the early phases of an athlete's development. Young boys and girls may try their hand at several different sports and then gravitate toward the best opportunities for "showcasing their talents." Writers presumably conduct their own trials and errors, too, with the misbegotten products left buried in desk drawers, if not destroyed. Anthony Trollope's false start, _La Vendée_, a historical romance, was published, but it's fair to say that it has not been remembered. It was his third novel, following two Irish novels, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_ and _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_, and it was followed four years later by the first of his Barsetshire novels, _The Warden_, which was a great success. By then Trollope knew where his strength lay; he followed with _Barchester Towers_ and thereafter he stuck to the world (mostly England) of his own day. He did not attempt any more historical novels.

The worst thing about _La Vendée_ is the dialogue. Here's a conversation between husband and wife as he prepares to leave for war:

"I know, Victorine," said he, when they were alone together in the evening, when not even his own dear sister Marie was there to mar the sacred sweetness of their conference, "I know that I am doing right, and that gives me strength to leave you, and our darling child."

He goes on for another paragraph or two.

Except for the stilted, wordy dialogue, the story is not so bad. It follows a lost cause, that of the citizens of La Vendée, an agricultural region in the west of France that my wife and I drove through on our way from Normandy to Bordeaux several years ago. These faithful servants of the king opposed the republican forces of the French Revolution, and they were annihilated. We follow the men and women of the doomed faction: Jacques Cathelineau, the humble postilion who is elected first military leader of the royalists, and who is loved by the noble and lovely Agatha Larochejaquelin; Agatha's brother Henri, who succeeds Cathelineau as general of the royalist forces, and who loves Marie de Lescure; and Marie's brother Charles and his wife Victorine. That makes three couples. There is also a little comic relief of sorts with Jacques Chapeau, Henri Larochejacquelin's servant, who woos Annot Stein, daughter of the blacksmith Michael Stein. A saucy wench, Annot teases Jacques by praising Cathelineau the general.

There is also Adolphe Denot, Henri's proud friend who loves Adolphe's sister Agatha and is rejected in a dramatic proposal scene, so prolonged that "Agatha began to fear that at this rate the interview would have no end. If Adolphe remained with his arm on the marble slab, and his head on one side, making sentimental speeches till she should give him encouragement to fall at her feet, it certainly would not be ended by bedtime." Adolphe is a strange case. Stung by Agatha's refusal, he goes forth to battle determined to die, but he disgraces himself by failing to support M. de Lescure in storming a breach in the wall. He then disappears, switches sides, and leads the republican forces into battle. Finally he reappears as the "Mad Captain," leading the royalist forces in suicidal charges.

The battle scenes are well described, detained only by a few lengthy speeches by the heroes as they swing their swords.

Fictional characters mingle with the historical ones, and even Robespierre appears in two consecutive chapters unto himself. The upper classes of England were horrified by the French Revolution, and the author's judgment of Robespierre is an example:

Honesty, moral conduct, industry, constancy of purpose, temperance in power, courage, and love of country: these virtues all belonged to Robespierre; . . . Why, instead of the Messiah of freedom, which he believed himself to be, has his name become a byword, a reproach, and an enormity? Because he wanted faith! He believed in nothing but himself, and the reasoning faculty with which he felt himself to be endowed. He thought himself perfect in his own human nature, and wishing to make others perfect as he was, he fell into the lowest abyss of crime and misery in which a poor human creature ever wallowed. He seems almost to have been sent into the world to prove the inefficacy of human reason to effect human happiness.

We see Robespierre directly only in these two chapters toward the end of the book. Trollope was not above passing judgment on his characters, but I don't recall another exclamation like, "Because he wanted faith!" These two didactic chapters are not necessary to the story line, but the horrors of the French Revolution are hardly amenable to understatement. Though they would be the first to go in any abridgement, they do help put the whole story into historical perspective.

Trollope never visited La Vendée. His story is based primarily on the memoirs of Madame de la Rochejacquelin, who appears in the book with the name of her first husband, M. de Lescure. She subsequently married the younger brother of Henri de Larochejacquelin and bore him eight children before he was killed in a second Vendean revolt in 1815. Among the fictional characters were Marie Larochejacquelin and Adolphe Denot. How would Trollope end his story of this disaster? He created a happy interlude, and he made the best of it.

Dickens was more comfortable with the French Revolution in _A Tale of Two Cities_, written ten years later when he was at the peak of his powers. Its dialogue was almost as stilted, and Dickens was no stranger to a bit of purple prose. But his energy and passion allowed him to carry it off. (And it is reported to be the all-time best seller of books written originally in English.) Such a story was not Anthony Trollope's cup of tea, particularly when he was a novice still searching for his métier. Perhaps this clumsy attempt at historical fiction helps us appreciate the facility with which he later portrayed contemporary English folk. If there is a rule that allows us to discard one of an author's efforts before passing judgment on his work, let this be it for Trollope. Let us pass on to Barsetshire.

THE OFFICE

THE THREE CLERKS

_The Three Clerks_ is an inside book, written about the Civil Service by one who had himself begun his Postal Service career as a clerk. It holds up to gentle fun its little ways, its principles of management, and the ingrained habits of thought held by its faithful servants. (The present day reader may conclude that bureaucracies don't change much.) Office politics, infighting, and intrigues provide grist for the author's mill, and he makes good use of it. The story deals with three young Postal Service clerks and the family of a widow with three fair young daughters. Here, too, the author has something to work on: Will they pair off? If so, how? And how will the pairings turn out? And what of the young men and their careers in the Service? Who will advance, who will waste his talents? How will they deal with Temptation?

Henry Norman appears first, the second son of a gentleman of small property, one who plods through his duties and his courtship. Alaric Tudor was raised in Brussels, became an orphan, and finds himself at a desk adjacent to Henry Norman, with whom he subsequently shares lodgings. Alaric is street smart, knows how to advance himself, and opts for expediency over principle. Charley Tudor, son of a clergyman and a young cousin of Alaric, proves himself susceptible to the temptations offered by street life in London.

And the widow in the cottage near Hampton Court? Her late husband was a cousin of Harry Norman's father, so naturally Mrs. Woodward invites young Harry and his friends to visit on weekends.

Although the reader is entertained by the portrayal of the Departments of Internal Navigation and Weights and Measures, the book hangs mainly on the plot, and the story is basically that of the six young people. Harry falls in love with the eldest sister Gertrude, but Alaric wins her away from him and earns his sustained hatred. Harry subsequently settles for the second sister Linda, who initially thought she was in love with Alaric, who was false with her as well as with Harry. In the course of the story the youngest sister Katie grows up from thirteen to seventeen and falls in love with Charley, who saves her life by pulling her from the water.

Three brides for three friends: perhaps this wasn't so unusual in Victorian times when meetings, much less friendships, among eligible young people weren't always so easy to obtain. But then the results: the first two couplings are plausible enough, but Katie, the youngest, becomes chronically ill with unrequited love, and although the reader is reassured that the doctors who listen to her chest through wooden tubes find no evidence of consumption, the anxious reader fears that the author will let her die. Trollope became known as a skeptic of Shakespeare's dictum: "Men will die and worms will eat them, but not of love."

We are reminded how Australia was populated as Alaric takes his family there for a fresh start after serving six months in jail for betraying the trust of a young woman for whom he was named trustee. And we see how Victorians did their insider trading, as Alaric is persuaded by the villain of the story, Undy Scott, to buy shares in mines that he is evaluating for the Department of Weights and Measures.

And Trollope indulges in certain liberties. He satirizes the publishing world with Charley Tudor's writing serial novels, and here we find Mrs. Woodward reading _Crinoline and Macassar_ aloud to the young people: "The lovely Crinoline was sitting alone at a lattice window on a summer morning, and as she sat she sang with melancholy cadence the first part of the now celebrated song which had then lately appeared. . . ."

Thirteen pages of Chapter XXVIII are devoted entirely to an impassioned defense of the Civil Service, particularly of the young men who work there. This chapter is absent from my small leather-bound edition published in 1878 but is restored in the Trollope Society edition of 1992, which follows the text of the first edition, published in 1858. The chapter is irrelevant to the story; it does, however, reveal where the author is coming from. He is coming from the Civil Service, which was his ticket to self-respect and financial independence.

Finally, the first three pages of Chapter XLV, "The Criminal Population is Disposed of," are given to a comparison of this novel's villain, Undecimus Scott, with Bill Sikes. Was Charles Dickens flattered that his villain of _Oliver Twist_ was so honored by his colleague Anthony Trollope, who apologized in the text that he could not give Undy Scott so "decent an end" as that given to Bill Sikes?

It must be added that Trollope considered _The Three Clerks_ to be his best work yet, better than _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_. Contemporary critics agreed with him, including Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. What were they thinking? Perhaps Trollope overestimated his portrayal of Charley Tudor, who may well have been a self-portrait of the hobbledehoy who aspired to write novels but found female companionship in a social class beneath his own--indeed, having to withstand an attack in his office by the mother of a young woman who considered herself to be ill used.

Today's reader may well wonder why _The Three Clerks_ was ever rated higher than _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_. Posterity has certainly not concurred. In the case of Trollope's novels, religion, like politics, has trumped bureaucracy.

The book, however, primarily tells the story of six young people. I must confess that I found myself tiring of them before the author did.

THE PROUD YOUNG LOVERS

THE BERTRAMS

"For the first fortnight she did not leave the house." This sentence, in Chapter XXXVII of _The Bertrams_ by Anthony Trollope, epitomizes the difficulty for the present day reader in understanding a Victorian novel. Things have changed a great deal since then, but surely the place of women is fundamental. Did not leave her house!

Lady Harcourt was in great distress. She had left her husband (she had virtually fled), and he had the legal right to apprehend her and force her to return to his home. Divorce was not an option for her. The action of the book takes place in 1845-1848. Only in 1857 (a year before the book was written) did the Matrimonial Causes Act give women limited access to divorce. Under this act the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery to obtain a divorce, but a woman had not only to prove her husband's having committed adultery; she also had to prove incest, bigamy, cruelty, or desertion. And so she was legally and permanently bound to a husband who owned their home. The law regarded a married couple as one person; the husband had a legal obligation to protect his wife; she was bound to obey him. Personal property brought to the marriage by the wife then belonged to the husband, even after a divorce if one could be obtained. Her income belonged completely to her husband. A man's home was his castle, and the wife was part of the deal.

One has to understand these givens in order to follow the implications of the story. The wedding of Caroline Waddington to Sir Henry Harcourt created a significant problem for the central lovers of the story, Miss Waddington and George Bertram. As the enormity of her mistake became apparent to her, Caroline (now Lady Harcourt) realized that there was no good way out. These days, she would do as a senior friend of mine, a professed atheist, said he would do if, to his surprise, he should find himself standing at the Pearly Gates after his death. "I would say, 'Gentlemen, it appears that I have made a horrible mistake.'" And then she would get a divorce and marry her true love with no questions asked. But her options were few and unattractive: She could flee abroad, as Lady Laura Standish did with her father, to escape her crazed husband, in Trollope's _Phineas Finn_. She could (if the husband would permit it) live openly with her lover, as did George Eliot. But just as Hollywood movies follow an apparently tacit code of audience acceptability, so Trollope was unwilling to send his central figures to Europe to live together, as Glencora Palliser had contemplated doing with her lover Burgo Fitzgerald in _Can You Forgive Her?_ (Glencora couldn't bring herself to do this, and she learned to love her husband Plantagenet Palliser, after a certain acceptable fashion.) Lady Harcourt's husband could die of illness or injury, or someone could murder him, or he could commit suicide. Trollope was not scrupulous about revealing the outcome in advance. The reader is warned, and suicide is chosen. (This was also the means of exit and retribution for Ferdinand Lopez in _The Prime Minister_ and of Augustus Melmotte in _The Way We Live Now_.)

Trollope did not consider himself a feminist; he professed a conservative view of society. But he was a realist who described the world as he found it. And his findings speak for themselves. The constraints placed upon women turn up again and again, in almost every novel he wrote.

Some of the action takes place in the Middle East, and this glimpse of the experience of touring there a century and a half ago provides a virtual visit to Jerusalem as it was then: a walled city with no suburbs, appearing as "a fortress of cards built craftily on a table," where one enters and suddenly realizes "that you are beyond the region of passports."

And the description of the environs provides an uncensored and not necessarily tactful view of "all the absurdity" of the "dark unfurnished gloomy cave in which the Syrian Christians worship, so dark that the eye cannot at first discover its only ornament--a small ill-made figure of the crucified Redeemer."

The author would probably be the object of a fatwah today for his description of the Moslem washerwomen as "ape-like" and the Jewish washerwomen as "glorious specimens of feminine creation."

Alexandria--"that most detestable of cities"--does not fare well. Nor do the pyramids, though they must be visited. "But let no man, and, above all, no woman, assume that the excursion will be in any way pleasurable. . . . And let this also be remembered, that nothing is to be gained by entering the pyramid except dirt, noise, stench, vermin, abuse, and want of air."