Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  Trollope, too, shows his genius in putting up against her a far more odious figure. Mr. Slope we are permitted to hate; we are physically encouraged to do so. Although even here Trollope’s tenderness keeps breaking out, and we know a moment of sympathy for the poor creature as he bends beneath the Signora’s whip.

  Concerning the Stanhope family opinion will always be divided, but it is to be regretted that they do not appear again in the succeeding books. It would have been pleasant for Mrs. Grantley to pass, without pain, away, and that then the Archdeacon, stirred on the Rabelaisian side of him, should have married the Signora, the Italian husband sufficiently deceased. One feels that Madeline has scarcely, so far as we have been allowed to observe her, encountered foemen worthy of her steel.

  For the rest, there are some great and by now classical scenes in this book — the scene of the Bishop’s only victory, the encounter between the Signora and Mrs. Proudie at the evening reception, the moment when Eleanor Bold slaps Mr. Slope’s face (her single praiseworthy action), Mr. Slope at Puddingdale, Archdeacon Grantley at Plumstead, and, best of all, Mrs. Proudie and Mrs. Quiverful.

  But it is here in this book that one realises for the first time with a kind of shock of excitement all the various things that Trollope can do, all the types of human beings that he is able to create and understand. We are moving forward. We have advanced from the gates of Hiram’s Hospital into the very heart of the town, into some of the lanes and villages of adjacent country. Trollope himself is now beginning to realise the size and variety of the landscape that he is destined to cover.

  In Doctor Thorne he embraces most of Barsetshire, although Barchester itself figures rather as an address or a railway station than as the living, moving background of the two earlier novels.

  Doctor Thorne marks with great sharpness Trollope’s departure into the wider, larger world that he is henceforth to occupy. Instead of the simple, almost nursery question as to the proper governor of Hiram’s Hospital, there is a quite elaborate plot, the one plot ever deliberately borrowed by him from somebody else. It was given to him by his brother, with whom he was staying in Florence, and a good respectable little plot it is — only we are no longer on quite the old cosy terms with the creator of Mr. Harding and Mrs. Proudie. It is a little as though we were exchanging Jane Austen’s space of territory for Thackeray’s. There is a kind of dewy freshness about the early work of every first-rate novelist, a rather flattering intimacy as though they were appealing in their simplicity to our private friendship. Crossing from Barchester Towers to Doctor Thorne — jumping the square in Alice’s sense — is like moving from Pride and Prejudice to Mansfield Park, from Guy Mannering to Ivanhoe, from Joseph Andrews to Tom Jones, from Richard Feverel to Diana of the Crossways.

  There are, let it at once be added, fire-and-thunder Trollopians who will die for Doctor Thorne. By not a few it is considered the best Trollope of them all. It is certainly admirable entertainment.

  A great deal of the feeling for the book must depend on your liking for its hero and heroine, Frank Gresham and Mary Thorne. Of the five heroines of the Barsetshire novels — Eleanor Harding, Mary Thorne, Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, and Grace Crawley — Mary Thorne, Lily Dale, and Lucy Robarts divide fairly evenly, I should imagine, the votes. Lily Dale is certainly the most famous, as Eleanor Harding is the most tiresome, of all Trollope’s heroines, but Lily Dale is for some (and by his own confession for the author himself) a little too strongly the feminine prig divine. Of Lucy Robarts — surely one of the most adorable girls in all English fiction — there will be something to say in a moment. Mary Thorne comes comfortably into the middle place of these comparisons. She is charming, of course, but she suffers from that malady to which most of the Trollope heroines fall victims — the disease of maidenly caution.

  Here, indeed, Trollope betrays his sturdy British indifference to the charge of monotonous repetition, because in four of the succeeding Barsetshire novels his heroines hesitate, each for three stout volumes, in an almost identical fashion. In Doctor Thorne Mary refuses to marry Frank Gresham because he hasn’t money enough; in Framley Parsonage Lucy Robarts refuses Lord Lufton because his mother doesn’t think her socially fashionable enough; in The Small House at Allington Lily Dale refuses Johnny Eames because she doesn’t love him enough (and refuses again and again to do so in The Last Chronicle); and in The Last Chronicle Grace Crawley refuses to marry Major Grantley because (so long as he is under suspicion) her father isn’t good enough.

  Now it is not in these maidenly and exceedingly proper refusals that the repetition lies, but rather in the constant and exceedingly drawn-out reiteration of them. These young ladies do nothing else for hundreds and hundreds of pages but refuse their patient and persistent lovers, who ride on horseback up and down the country lanes, post desperately up to London, sometimes strike their rivals to the ground, quarrel with all their elders and betters that they may relieve their feelings. It is of no avail. Until the end of the third volume is reached, or the serial necessities concluded, refused they are going to be.

  Under these extended necessities Mary Thorne, Lily Dale, and Grace Crawley lose a little of their charm. One does long that they should set about things and find some obsessing occupation other than writing to their lovers letters of rejection, playing croquet (in moonlight or otherwise), sewing and embroidering, and pouring out cups of tea. Lucy Robarts alone rises superior to all her creator’s procrastinations.

  Frank Gresham is a nice young fellow with a pleasant sense of humour, the De Courcy family are admirably drawn, Doctor Thorne is one of Trollope’s quietest but most reassuring English gentlemen, and the Scatcherd family (save possibly for the horrible Louis who never quite comes to life) have a violent vitality all their own.

  But the glory of Doctor Thorne is Miss Dunstable. How splendidly she is alive, and how difficult of achievement for the artist! Trollope has a genius for feminine eccentricities. In the Barsetshire novels alone consider Mrs. Proudie, Signora Neroni, Miss Dunstable, Lady Julia De Guest, Griselda Grantley. Behind them all one seems to see moving the heroine of the Cincinnati Bazaar, that brilliant eccentric who was Trollope’s mother. Her laughter, her sense of fun and mockery, her courage and independence, a certain strain of masculinity in her, all these qualities lie behind these creations of her son.

  These women move like fish of a larger size through the quiet tea-party world of the Mary Thornes and Patience Oriels and Grace Crawleys. Completely different though they are, and standing with superb independence on their own feet, they have yet a kind of general family resemblance. They may hate one another, as sometimes indeed they do, but they acknowledge one another’s powers. Miss Dunstable is the queen of all the friendly, lovable nouveaux riches in fiction. Her little talk with Frank Gresham when he proposes so reluctantly for her hand is a little miracle of tact, wisdom, and kindliness Her loneliness, her sense of fun, her hatred of sham, her masculine independence, her pluck, her isolation — in the just mingling of all these Trollope proves again and again the greatest of all his many qualities, the understanding that comes to him through his tenderness for the lonely, the misunderstood, the shy exceptions. But always without a shadow of sentimentality. We can imagine, indeed, how Miss Dunstable, if she read Doctor Thorne, would shake her head over the protracted love affairs of Mary Thorne and Frank Gresham, and insist on cutting at least the half of them. It is Miss Dunstable who makes Doctor Thorne and gives it three-quarters of its power.

  It is in the novel that follows, Framley Parsonage, that we realise how widely by now Trollope has extended his country. In Doctor Thorne he had increased his territory, but had not linked it very markedly with Barchester. Now Barchester is with us again in all its Proudie glory; the Grantleys are reigning in Plumstead; the great houses of Chaldicotes and Gatherum Castle are first opened for our inspection; then we are led gently by the hand and introduced to the Crawley family at Hogglestock.

  A wide country! And yet there is no confusion, no e
lement foreign to the book’s theme. Framley Parsonage has seemed to some critics artistically Trollope’s best and finest work, because the colours are so marvellously blended into a general uniform shade, always without untruth, never with monotony.

  There is nothing finer about the great novels of the world than their creators’ ability to weld into one final form the opposing forces of stubborn material. This is something that Dickens never quite achieved, although in Great Expectations he approached success, and Thackeray only once in Esmond. Hardy breaks his colour in Tess by its incongruous end; Meredith his Richard Fever el by the same fault; Stevenson’s Master of Ballantrae, George Moore’s Esther Waters, and, even though it be heresy to state it, Mansfield Park and Emma are other great examples of this sudden tearing of the pattern.

  Trollope was never from the beginning to the end of his career a self-conscious artist, and he seldom achieves this perfect symmetry. The Warden and Barchester Towers, conceived before he yielded to the temptation of writing for serialisation, are nearly successes in this kind, but in one the caricature, in the other the Stanhopes (splendid though they are) trouble the uniform tone.

  But in spite of its changing scene and multitude of persons nothing is out of place in Framley Parsonage. Harold Smith’s politics, Sowerby’s rascalities, the social pleasures of the Chaldicotes set, the dinnerparty of the Duke of Omnium, belong to the central themes as truly as the diseases and penury of the Crawleys or the ointment of Lebanon of Miss Dunstable. Moreover, Trollope’s ever-constant peril, the failure to unite naturally the different main impulses of his fable, was never less present than here.

  The book is built around Lord Lufton’s love for Lucy Robarts and her refusal to accept him, although she loves him dearly, until Lady Lufton accepts her, and the troubles of Mark Robarts, Lucy’s brother. The troubles of Lucy and the troubles of Mark become one trouble because of the love of the brother and sister for each other. Everything that happens to the one concerns the other; the reader shares a common interest.

  The only flaw in the story is one of which Trollope is plainly conscious — namely, would Lady Lufton have resisted Lucy so sternly, would she indeed have resisted her at all? Trollope tries to account for this hardness of heart by the fascination that Griselda Grantley throws over Lady Lufton. But would Lady Lufton have been fascinated by Griselda? She was surely not snob enough. Trollope has made her too charming. It is my private opinion that Lady Lufton would have taken Lucy to her arms in the first five minutes.

  Grant this, however, and you can discover no further flaw. For once a Trollope heroine has reason for her maidenly caution. Whether Lord Lufton has reason for his is a little to be questioned, and Trollope has to send him fishing in Norway to cover some of his delay.

  But for Lucy Robarts what can there be but praise? Every edition of Framley Parsonage ought to reprint as frontispiece Millais’ picture of her. She is the most adorable Cinderella in fiction since the first one. She is independent, brave, filled with wisdom but never a prig, energetic, and ready for any crisis but modest withal, and gentle without too much Victorian prudery. Could Lady Lufton resist her? Could anyone resist her? Not even Mr. Crawley.

  And then there is Mr. Sowerby. He is the finest possible example of Trollope’s understanding of and feeling for scoundrels. Trollope has a true, almost Balzacian genius for all the shabby gentlemen in the City. And Mr. Sowerby is the best of all the shabby gentlemen. His letters to Mark Robarts are masterpieces, his little interview with Tom Tozer a gem, his final decline and ruin a proper and never cruel climax.

  How excellent, again, are Lucy’s dealings with the Crawleys, the elopement with the children, the comforting of Mrs. Crawley, the management so obstinately against his will of Mr. Crawley; but Mr. Crawley himself is not yet the great figure that he is to become; he is at present a fanatic without reason and his complaints are too many.

  And then there are the scenes — among many the superb interruption with which Mrs. Proudie broke up Harold Smith’s lecture; the historic meeting of Lady Lufton and the Duke of Omnium, of which Millais drew so splendid a picture. In short, if you want a novel that gives you Victorian life in all its proper phases (Trollope deliberately avoids the improper ones, although he could have presented them magnificently), Framley Parsonage is the book to come to. It is not quite so independent as Barchester Towers. You enjoy it the more if you have met the Proudies, the Grantleys, and Mr. Harding before, but there is the whole genius and unself-consciousness of Trollope at its best in these pages.

  Perhaps, after closing the third volume of Framley Parsonage, one moves forward rather reluctantly to Allington.

  Trollope himself says at the beginning of the book: “Lilian Dale, dear Lily Dale — for my reader must know that she is to me very dear, and that my story will be nothing to him if he does not love Lily Dale” — but in his Autobiography: —

  In it appeared Lily Dale, one of the characters which readers of my novels have liked the best. In the love with which she has been greeted I have hardly joined with much enthusiasm, feeling that she is somewhat of a French prig. She became first engaged to a snob who jilted her, and then, though in truth she loved another man who was hardly good enough, she could not extricate herself sufficiently from the collapse of her first great misfortune to be able to make up her mind to be the wife of one whom, though she loved him, she did not altogether reverence.

  This is Trollope’s own gloss on the plot of his story, and very amusing and instructive it is, characteristic both of himself and his time. There has never been a novelist who kept his head more clearly about his own work, who could regard more dispassionately although he so dearly loved the people he created.

  But he himself feels that something is wrong with Lily Dale, and what is wrong with her is that she is an English snob as well as a French prig. Why was not Johnny Eames good enough? He was perfectly well born, his manners were charming, he was no fool, as old Lord De Guest discovered, he was courageous (this both Lord De Guest and Adolphus Crosbie learnt in their several ways).

  It is true that he is seen to greater advantage as the changing hobbledehoy in The Small House than as the developing smart man about town in The Last Chronicle. Although there are really less reasons against him in the second book, one can understand Lily Dale’s constant refusal of him there (all her reasons for refusing him are the wrong ones); but in The Small House he is charming, and once she discovered the feet of clay on her Apollo (which she never in reality sufficiently does) she should have turned to Eames.

  She knew him, of course, too well, and this is the very point of Trollope’s fable, but how can readers love a heroine who loses her heart over a cad (he is certainly a handsome cad if Millais’ picture of him is near the truth), bemoans his jilting of her, with a horrid sort of cheerful despair, for the length of two whole novels, and rejects persistently one of the most charming men in the world “because he is not good enough for her”?

  Very delicately indeed has Trollope managed in this book Eames’s many relations with the very different characters, with old Lord De Guest, with Lily and her mother, with old Lady Julia (as I have said already, one of Trollope’s very best eccentrics), with Squire Dale, with the boarding-house people (although his flirtation with Miss Roper is too exasperatingly prolonged), with his government colleagues, with his mother.

  Every one of these sees him differently, and yet it is essentially the same Johnny whom they see. Every side of him leaps to life in his famous encounter with Adolphus Crosbie. Here the masculine reader lays down his book and cheers, so vivid is the scene, so instantly does he imagine himself in Johnny’s place, and some pernicious bore or strutting enemy or devastating prig in Crosbie’s. How excellent is that moment when Johnny, confronting the police, discovers with intense satisfaction that, after all, “Crosbie’s eye was in a state which proved that his morning’s work had not been thrown away”, and how admirable the final comment of the young porter, a happy eye-witness: —

&n
bsp; You gave it him tidy just at that last moment, sir. But laws, sir, you should have let out at him first. What’s the use of clawing a man’s neck-collar?

  Adolphus Crosbie is not, I think, one of Trollope’s first successes. His social position is amorphous, and his conduct insufficiently analysed. He is apparently a “swell” — at any rate, he is thus considered by the world at large.

  Offers of hospitality [we are told] were made to him by the dozen. Lady Hartletop’s doors, in Shropshire, were open to him if he chose to enter them. He had been invited by the Countess De Courcy to join her suite at Courcy Castle. His special friend Montgomerie Dobbs had a place in Scotland, and then there was a yachting party by which he was much wanted.

  Why was he so urgently desired? It is hard to discover. Good-looking, of course, in a rather flashy way (isn’t there something especially unagreeable in Lily Dale’s perpetual allusion to him as Apollo in the opening chapter?). But we never hear him say a witty or amusing thing from first to last. He is not clever in any direction, he has no money, and he is a terrible snob. Trollope is, of course, setting him up against Johnny Eames, but he should have given him some attractions — or what are we to think about the desperate infatuation of the so-particular Lily?

  Then his change from Lily to the De Courcy lady is made too swiftly. After all he goes down to the De Courcys deeply in love with Lily, and yet in a day or two he has thrown her over. Trollope is frightened of his psychology here.

  There are some admirable characters in the book — old Lord De Guest and his sister, Mrs. Dale (a very delicate portrait); Hopkins, one of the best gardeners in fiction; Sir Raffle Buffle (he is still better in The Last Chronicle, but again, as in Doctor Thorne, we miss the Barchester air). Barchester is far from Allington, which is not, in fact, in Barsetshire at all. We are moving now farther and farther afield, and this is a novel almost as much of London as of the country.