Part 8

A twenty-first century editor might cringe at Trollope's assertion that "as a rule, a Mahomedan hates a Christian. . . . But in Egypt we have caused ourselves to be better respected: we thrash the Arabs and pay them, and therefore they are very glad to see us anywhere."

And yet in the next four pages Trollope gives us as vivid a picture of the performance of whirling dervishes as we are likely to find.

But the lowly place of women in society was an obvious part of the landscape, and the travelers' observations were only window dressing; the business of the novel has to do primarily with the relationship between George Herbert and Caroline Waddington, and secondarily, between Arthur Wilkinson and Adela Gauntlet. George Herbert is a proud young man, and Miss Waddington is a proud young woman. David Skilton's pen-and-ink drawing opposite page 110 in the Folio Society edition of 1993 tells it all: With the walled city of Jerusalem represented in the background, George sits on the barren ground looking away, unhappily, to his right. Miss Waddington, parasol over her head to protect her from the sun, stands looking away in the opposite direction. He has just told her of his newly formed resolution to become a clergyman, and she has poured cold water on his enthusiasm, reminding him that he is eligible for a noble position that would be preferable to a country parsonage.

When he protests that a vicar's career can be noble, she replies, "I judge by what I see. They are generally fond of eating, very cautious about their money, untidy in their own houses, and apt to go to sleep after dinner."

These two young people, both with strong personalities, are clearly in love with each other. He gives up his idea of being a clergyman; he decides to study law. He proposes, and she accepts. He presses for an early wedding date; she demurs, saying that they must wait until he has been called to the bar, which will take two or three years. She is afraid that a small income would fray their love for each other. Neither will compromise. The engagement is broken, and she marries his friend, a rising star in the legal and political world.

Behind all this is the possible legacy of his rich uncle. George, however, refuses to humor his uncle for the sake of becoming his heir.

Such lovers' stories occur all the time. Family relationships still matter, and they still require cultivation. But as the inner thinking of each of the lovers was revealed in great detail throughout the story, I found myself protesting that these weren't real people like any the author had known. They were characters set up in a plot, and the turns of the story were just that: turns for the sake of the story, not turns that a real person would make.

Trollope summarizes the story of the progressively colder nature of their engagement with this retrospective view: "Each was too proud to make the first concession to the other, and therefore no concession was made by either."

No one can read this sentence and wonder what the book is about. But the reader may feel that it's all a fable. This is where the story starts, and the details are just filled in.

Perhaps the author's style accounted for my reaction: Raymond Carver or Ernest Hemingway might have presented the same story in a more convincing fashion, leaving out all the details of the thinking and giving us only a few scraps of dialogue to explain the action. In this instance, I failed to overcome being accustomed to the fast pace of "the way we live now," and I could not immerse myself in the more leisurely pace of the nineteenth century world. As I followed their thoughts through each turn of the story, I became so impatient with the stubbornness of George Herbert and Caroline Waddington that I lost my sympathy for them. It's hard to be a good fan when your team is losing.

Little bright spots appear throughout the book. The dialogue between Caroline, as Lady Harcourt, and her husband strikes a note of detachment reminiscent of the dialogue in Noel Coward's _Private Lives_. One can almost hear Carol Lawrence saying Lady Harcourt's lines in response to her husband's question:

"I hope you are happy, Caroline?" said Sir Henry, as he gently squeezed the hand that was so gently laid upon his arm.

"Happy! Oh yes--I am happy. I don't believe, you know, in a great deal of very ecstatic happiness. I never did."

Trollope shamelessly introduces some welcome comic relief in the form of a deaf lady and her ear trumpet when Miss Todd, an outspoken woman who travels in society, takes her young charge Adela Gauntlet on a social call to one of the grand dames of Littlebath (obviously a pseudonym for Bath). Miss Todd proposes that they take turns of five minutes each in talking to her and then leave after three turns.

Miss Todd is a slightly older Miss Dunstable from _Dr. Thorne_. Having enough money to speak her mind, she does so with relish, as in her defense of playing cards in a conversation with a clergyman of Littlebath:

"What are old women like us to do? We haven't eyes to read at night, even if we had minds fit for it. We can't always be saying our prayers. We have nothing to talk about except scandal. It's better than drinking; and we should come to that if we hadn't cards."

A carriage ride is one of Trollope's favorite settings for intimate conversation, with the horse sometimes getting the worst of it, as in Chapter XXI of _Framley Parsonage_, "Why Puck, the Pony, Was Beaten." In this story, it is Dumpling who catches a few impatient words as Arthur Wilkinson, the timid and browbeaten parson, speaks his mind (partially) to Adela Gauntlet, almost but not quite proposing. She patiently waits for him to grow up a bit. Dumpling bears the brunt of Wilkinson's timidity.

George's father, Sir Lionel Bertram, squanders his paternal capital by sponging on his son for money. He fails to insert himself into his brother's will, and he fails in two successive attempts to marry money: "That utterance of the verbiage of love is a disagreeable task for a gentleman of his years. He had tried it, and found it very disagreeable. He would save himself a repetition of the nuisance and write to her."

But back to the central story of Caroline Waddington: Chapter XXXVI, "A Matrimonial Dialogue," closes the marriage between her and Lord Harcourt. It is a classic Trollopian serious interview, in which Lady Harcourt routs her proud husband. She tells him that she did not invite Mr. Herbert to their house because she loved him so much that she was afraid to meet him. "As she said this she still looked into his face fearlessly--we may almost say boldly; so much so that Sir Henry's eyes almost quailed before hers. On this she had at any rate resolved, that she would never quail before him."

When Bertram writes an angry letter to Caroline, Trollope inserts instruction about writing such letters which could be included among the little lessons of life to be gleaned from reading his novels: "Sit down and write your letter; write it with all the venom in your power . . . and, as a matter of course, burn it before breakfast the next morning." He goes on to extol pleasant letters, concluding his advice for letter writing: "But, above all things, see that it be good-humored."

A modern novel would omit Trollope's last chapter, and he himself issues an apology for it: "Methinks it is almost unnecessary to write this last chapter. The story, as I have had to tell it, is all told. The object has been made plain--or, if not, can certainly not be made plainer in these last six or seven pages. . . . But, nevertheless, custom, and the desire of making an end of the undertaken work, and in some sort completing it, compel me to this concluding chapter." Things work themselves out within the conventions of the day. A guiltless ending such as might be implied today could not be allowed, and the lovers whose course we have followed with a bit of impatience must accept the scraps of happiness that their world could accept.

I love Trollope's good-humored novels; the grim ones, like _He Knew He was Right_ and parts of this one, are a bit like unpleasant letters. _The Bertrams_ has enough good humor to carry us through. The proud young lovers, however, are hard to love.

COPING WITH STARVATION

CASTLE RICHMOND

People of Irish descent, I recently learned, comprise thirteen percent of the population of the county where I live, matched only by those of German descent, also thirteen percent. (Other leading ancestry groups are English, ten percent; black, six percent; and Mexican, five percent.) Irish are also the most numerous ancestry group in the counties where my Arkansas children live; and in the county where I grew up, they are the most numerous white ancestry group. (Irish are six percent, blacks forty-six percent.)

That I was surprised to learn this probably indicates that I haven't been paying attention. My wife's grandfather came directly from County Cavan, in Ireland; and the family of one of my sons-in-law came from Ireland. Perhaps Irish names aren't as obvious as some of the German names. And of course the English got a head start in Virginia and New England. The big reason for the Irish numbers is the Irish potato famine, which began in 1845, when an estimated one and a half million people died and one million emigrated.

Anthony Trollope said that before he decided on "Castle Richmond" as the title for the book, he considered a title which would mention the famine. Such a title would have been more descriptive, though it might perhaps have discouraged a number of readers, including me. This would have been unfortunate, because in stumbling into the unknown territory of one of his lesser known novels, I found myself immersed in the most powerful chapter I have found in Trollope. One would have to survey Holocaust and other war stories for chapters of similar impact. Young Herbert Fitzgerald sets out to ride across the countryside to Desmond Court, the home of his fiancée, to determine whether their marriage is to take place, and in so doing he encounters a rainstorm, forcing him to seek shelter. He enters a cabin without knocking; he even rides his horse inside, which, the author assures us, was customary there. The interior is so dark he at first cannot tell whether anyone is at home. The floor is sod, the walls are bare, and there is only a very little furniture, very plain. As his eyes become accustomed to the dark, he sees a woman sitting cross-legged on the floor with a baby in her arms. He later discovers the body of a four-year-old daughter in the corner.

In those days there was a form of face which came upon the sufferers when their state of misery was far advanced, and which was a sure sign that their last stage of misery was nearly run. The mouth would fall and seem to hang, the lips at the two ends of the mouth would be dragged down, and the lower parts of the cheeks would fall as though they had been dragged and pulled. There were no signs of acute agony when this phasis of countenance was to be seen, none of the horrid symptoms of gnawing hunger by which one generally supposes that famine is accompanied. The look is one of apathy, desolation, and death. When custom had made these signs easily legible, the poor doomed wretch was known with certainty.

Sir William Osler could hardly have written a more informative description of the clinical signs of starvation in _The Principles and Practice of Medicine_. Trollope knew the signs; he had gone to Ireland in 1841 as a clerk to a postal surveyor, traveling about the country under orders from the surveyors. He was promoted to surveyor fifteen years later, and he did not return to England until 1859, the year he began _Castle Richmond_.

Mike, the starving woman's husband, had become a cripple through rheumatism and could not do the public work on the roads. This would have qualified him and his family for the poorhouse, but he may not have known this. He had found someone who would hire him to do a little work in return for a little food, and he had stolen from his employer a small amount of "Indian corn-flour"--the yellow meal made from corn sent from America--but it had failed to sustain her and the children.

Although Herbert tried to send help, no one was in a hurry to answer the call. "But had they flown to the spot on the wings of love, it would not have sufficed to prolong her life one day. Her doom had been spoken before Herbert had entered the cabin."

Trollope indulges in a little Victorian eloquence to conclude his story, which otherwise could be a case history. What would Dickens have done with such a story? The poor woman would have been borne to Heaven in the arms of angels. And if this had been a chapter in a book by Dickens, we might all know this story from the Irish Potato Famine.

The book isn't really about the potato famine. It just took place at the time of the famine. The story is one of those stories of a question of birth, which are so common in the novels from the period. In this case, we find Sir Thomas Fitzgerald of Castle Richmond being blackmailed by Mr. Matthew Mollett, who tells him that he was Lady Fitzgerald's first husband, and that he was not dead, as he had been assumed to be, when she married Sir Thomas. This would mean that her marriage to Sir Thomas is null and void, and that Sir Thomas's children are illegitimate–-and that his son Herbert will not inherit the estate, which would then fall to a cousin, Owen Fitzgerald. All this leaves Sir Thomas in a state of nervous collapse, from which he does not recover.

We also have the story of a young woman, Lady Clara Desmond, who proceeds, in the fullness of time, from one engagement to another. As a young girl she pledged herself to Owen Fitzgerald, but her mother, the Countess of Desmond, reminded her that she must marry money, and she later accepted the proposal of Herbert Fitzgerald. And then, when the news of Lady Fitzgerald's first husband becomes known, young Lady Clara is seen by her mother to be left holding the bag with a second affianced lover, now become poor. Owen is presented as the mercurial Irishman whom women love: romantic and generous, fun-loving and extravagant--qualities we also see in Trollope's most well-known Irish figure, Phineas Finn. Herbert, on the other hand, is slow and methodical, serious and conscientious, reminiscent of Plantagenet Palliser. Owen makes the extravagant and rather naive offer to let Herbert have Castle Richmond and all its property if he will surrender the love of Clara. Herbert, of course, cannot understand this and refuses.

So how will all this be resolved? Very conveniently, as it turns out. A family secret is discovered. What about this and so many other stories of birth secrets, with the resolution of the plot in the revelation of some unknown bit of family history--as when Buttercup announces in the final act of _HMS Pinafore_ that, as a nursemaid, she switched babies years ago? Was this just a convenient plot device, or was it a reflection of reality?

Trollope used variations of this theme in several of his novels. George Roden, in _Marion Fay_, is found to be the eldest son of an Italian duke. _Is He Popenjoy?_ is all about whether an unprincipled English Marquis, living in Italy, was legitimately married to an Italian duchessa and whether their son was Lord Popenjoy.

Esther Summerson, in Charles Dickens's _Bleak House_, does not know who her real mother is until late in the story. Oscar Wilde's _The Importance of Being Earnest_ revolves about two babies in large handbags who were unwittingly swapped at a railway station. When this is announced in the last act, Jack throws himself on Miss Prism with a cry of "Mother!"

One actual case involved the "Tichbourne claimant," who in 1875 returned from Australia and claimed to be the rightful heir to a family fortune; the courts ruled against him. Surely this story itself could provide material for a doctoral dissertation; lacking such research, however, one would suppose that such events occurred infrequently and stirred imaginations each time, prompting fictional and comic variations on the theme.

Among the insights into Irish life are the sketches of Protestant and Catholics, preachers and priests. We find Father Bernard being petted by his sister-in-law and niece at Mick O'Dwyer's public house, where the women offer him another cup of tea, a hot muffin, or "a morsel of buttered toast" if he will only say the word.

Protestants and Catholics are obliged to work together in public assistance efforts to aid famine victims, but when it is suggested to the Protestant parson that Father Barney may be right in a certain matter, he categorically denies it. "He's altogether wrong. I never knew one of them right in my life yet in anything. How can they be right?"

On the other hand, the Catholic bias appears when Father Columb is told that men will work anywhere to keep from starving. He only replies, "Some men will," implying that Protestants would work anywhere because of their devotion to the flesh, but that Roman Catholics are under the dominion of the Spirit and would perish first.

The story moves toward its conclusion in London, where Herbert has gone to study law after leaving Castle Richmond. Here we see two lawyers at work. The first is Mr. Prendergast, the family attorney, who receives a letter revealing the family secret. Mr. Prendergast anticipates Sherlock Holmes in his powers of observation as he enters the house and searches for his quarry: "But the armchair was placed idly away from any accommodation for work, and had, as Mr. Prendergast thought, been recently filled by some idle person."

We also encounter the barrister, Mr. Die, still working hard at age seventy. Men who retire at age sixty, the author tells us, are those who have always been idle. "It is my opinion that nothing seasons the mind for endurance like hard work. Port wine should perhaps be added."

But back to the Irish famine: When one learns that during its four worst years, the English landlords in Ireland exported more food, in the form of beef, wheat, and other grains, than the country imported, one begins to understand the reasons for deep and strong feelings about the English in Ireland. From his travels in southwest Ireland from 1841 to 1859, Trollope surely knew and understood the Irish from the ground up. His fictional account bears as much authority as a journalistic one would have, and it is reinforced in the Folio Society edition with a pen-and-ink drawing opposite page 185 showing a woman dressed in rags, on her knees, surrounded by four small children, pulling at someone's cloak as she begs. She is more attractive in the drawing than in the description--"squat, uncouth, and in no way attractive to the eye."

This begging scene is rural, not on a city street. The woman who is begging is not a nameless beggar; she knows Mister Herbert and Clara by face and name. Other accounts in the book--dealing with the deliberations of the ad hoc council to establish policies about distribution of such food as is available to those without food, managing a gang of men given make-work duties leveling a hill for a roadway, and the details of a recipe for making bread from bad flour--all bear witness to a human tragedy that brought thousands of its victims to America.

_Castle Richmond_ is a good story; it starts slowly, but it moves along, and it proceeds with dispatch in the final chapters. Trollope has given us some sobering glimpses of people, ancestors to many Americans, starving in time of famine; otherwise we are diverted by entertaining views and stories. It's unfortunate that a book so well written is doomed to the oblivion of being just one of forty-seven novels by the same author.

THE LADY FACES THEM DOWN

ORLEY FARM

I can see Barbara Stanwyck playing Lady Mason in a film noir version of _Orley Farm_. Oh, there was no murder--only a bit of forgery. But remember, forgery could be punished with hanging in England only a few years before _Orley Farm_ was written. The story is a bit complicated: Lady Mason forged a codicil to her late husband's will, leaving a small portion of his land holdings to their only child, taking this small home place away from his older son by a previous marriage.

Now we know that in England at that time all inheritance was to go to the eldest son as a matter of course, unless other provision was made. And we in this age are accustomed to the "pre-nup," the prenuptial agreement designed to deal with the anxieties of prospective heirs when an aged parent takes a wife--especially if the wife be of childbearing age.

In our world, therefore, few would have much difficulty in accepting the propriety of a small portion of a large estate being left to a younger son, when the elder son is well provided for. Nor, we learn, did a jury of her peers find any problem with this arrangement. Lady Mason, who had been a loyal, faithful, and attractive wife to old Sir Joseph, was acquitted of the crime of forgery, and she continued to live in the home place and raise their son to the age of majority when he might assume control of it.

We only learn the truth about the forgery about halfway through the book, some twenty years after the crime and acquittal. And then we find ourselves sympathizing with the guilty woman as she fights through a second trial.

The older son, who was now the young Sir Joseph, lived on the extensive Yorkshire holdings, under the rule of a wife too stingy to put adequate food on the table, either for her lord or for their guests when they should have any. And he nursed his grudge against the widow, whom he considered to have cheated him of his rightful inheritance.

Some of Trollope's most effective humor is sometimes inserted into an unlikely place. The first chapters, the ones that set the scene, are often so long, detailed, and tedious that they have almost disappeared in today's writing. One has to read opening chapters carefully, however, and sometimes reread them, in order to understand the setting. This is made easier in the case of the Masons of Groby Park, the large holding in Yorkshire, as Trollope continues with his introduction of the characters:

He was severe to his children, and was not loved by them; but nevertheless they were dear to him, and he endeavored to do his duty by them. The wife of his bosom was not a pleasant woman, but nevertheless he did his duty by her; that is, he neither deserted her, nor beat her, nor locked her up. I am not sure that he would not have been justified in doing one of these three things, or even all the three; for Mrs. Mason of Groby Park was not a pleasant woman.

The old quarrel resurfaces when an old tenant is dispossessed by Lady Mason's son, now old enough to begin managing the home place and aspiring to farm it in a scientific, though expensive, fashion.

With energy and perseverance the tenant discovers another paper signed by old Sir Joseph on the same day as the codicil was dated, and he finds a witness to the signature, Bridget Bolster, who will testify that she only witnessed the signing of one document.

How can Lady Mason defend herself against this attack? We see that her primary motive is to shield her proud young son from disgrace, and in this effort she deploys all the resources available to her. A small but not unattractive woman (think of Barbara Stanwyck in this role), she consults the barrister, Mr. Furnival, who defended her in the first trial, and she wraps him around her finger so effectively that Mrs. Furnival is driven by jealousy to leave home in one of the great comic episodes of the book.