The already-mentioned Sir Peregrine Orme belongs to the class of county preux chevaliers, of which one situation in a later novel—Phineas Finn—displays for a moment the Duke of Omnium as another specimen.
The trial had been fixed, but not begun, when Lady Mason finds herself at the house of the baronet whom she had first known years ago as a county neighbour, and one of her husband’s colleagues at the Quarter Sessions. More recently, the widow of Orley Farm and the daughter-in-law of the baronet who resides at The Cleeve have become close friends. Still fair, tall, graceful, and comely, Lady Mason retains enough of her original beauty to have won this fine old gentleman’s heart. To his daughter-in-law he confides his intention of offering the widow his hand. For that purpose the call at The Cleeve has been arranged. To stand by her throughout the approaching ordeal, to defend her against the tongues of wicked men and against her own weakness, is the duty that the widow’s mature and knightly lover would now perform. All this is said while he gently strokes the silken hair of the lady who, having sunk to the ground, is kneeling at his feet. The agonised recipient of the old man’s chivalrous proposal mingles, with her murmured reply, some words deprecating the shame and trouble she might bring upon him and his. The offer, however, is not rejected, and the conversation ends by Lady Mason becoming Sir Peregrine Orme’s bride-elect. The next meeting between the pair is of a very different kind. Not that even this opens with any approach to self-incrimination on the lady’s part. Greetings, however, had been scarcely exchanged when she shows her desire to break off the engagement. “If,” pleads Sir Peregrine, “we were to be separated now, the world would say I had thought you guilty of this crime.” After this, no more of the sweet smiles, which have been so much admired, play over Lady Mason’s face. “Sir Peregrine,” she says, “I am guilty, guilty of all this with which they charge me.” That admission seals, of course, Lady Mason’s social fate, and withdraws her from any active part in the rest of the narrative. What remains, however, is saved from the reproach of mere supplementary padding by the really surprising skill and resourcefulness in which the rest of the story abounds. All that concerns Lady Mason herself has been, and remains to the end, of a uniformly depressing hue. But among the junior counsel for the defence is a young barrister, Felix Graham, enamoured of a judge’s daughter, Madeline Staveley. This young lady is much after the pattern of Trollope’s earlier heroines; while her lover prefigures a youthful variety of the sort to be met with in one, at least, of his later stories, but with more originality of character and view than had so far been shown by most of his young men. The clearness and freshness of Felix Graham’s portrait stand out the more boldly by reason of the complete contrast to him forthcoming in Madeline Staveley’s other lover, old Sir Peregrine Orme’s grandson. In all moral and social qualities, he worthily reproduces the old baronet’s character, but reflects too truly the conventional young country squire to present the union between intellectual gifts and high principles forthcoming in his rival, the young barrister.
This is only one among several passages that by expedience, which might be described as Trollope’s speciality, sustain the novel’s interest to the end. “None but himself can be his parallel.” And really the dexterity with which Trollope winds up the characters and incidents of Can You Forgive Her? suggests a comparison with his equestrian perseverance in the hunting field. That quality records itself in Phineas Finn’s management of Lord Chiltern’s Bonebreaker. For a minute or two the horse has got manifestly out of control; the spectators think it is infallibly heading and leading its rider to irrecoverable grief, when the Irish Nimrod suddenly, not less than surely, recovering himself, regains authority over the beast, and sends him and his rider straight as a die over the brook with those impracticable sides. When riding among the first flight, side by side with Sir Evelyn Wood or Mr. E. N. Buxton, after the Essex, or with Mr. H. Petre’s staghounds, Trollope, we have seen, like others, sometimes found himself at the bottom of a Roothing ditch, only in a twinkling to pull himself together, reappear in the open, regain his saddle, and finish in the field that saw the end of the chase. The adroitness of the horseman, Phineas Finn, displayed by the novelist of Orley Farm, prevented what in less skilful hands would have been the evaporation of the story’s interest after the tragic dénoûment of Peregrine Orme’s courtship. But, by this time, the bluff, artless sportsman, which was all that many of his country neighbours and some of his London acquaintances saw in Trollope, had mastered every portion of the novelist’s technique as thoroughly as he had long since done all departments of Post Office business. To the spectators, Trollope’s Irish Nimrod on Lord Chiltern’s Bonebreaker may have seemed doomed to mishap, but without, thanks to his skill and coolness, having been in actual peril. So with Trollope in Orley Farm. The apparently inevitable dullness of reaction from painfully exciting incidents threatened, as many a reader thought, to spoil a first-rate novel’s close. These had not estimated at its true value the author’s rare resourcefulness in his art.
Other fortunes than those of Madeline Staveley and her two lovers have to be advanced a stage. The finishing touches have not, so far, been given to Lady Mason’s loyal friend of her own sex, Sir Peregrine’s daughter-in-law. In person, if not altogether in experience, Mrs. Orme presents a picturesque contrast to her unhappy friend. Lady Mason, tall and stately, makes the journey every day to the Court in one of The Cleeve carriages. Seated by her side is Mrs. Orme, small in size, delicate in limb, with soft, blue wondering eyes and a dimpled cheek. Apart from the present calamity, a past sorrow has forged a sympathetic link between the two. The châtelaine of The Cleeve has suffered a blow only less terrible than that which has crushed her companion. After a year of happy wedlock, her husband, Sir Peregrine’s only child, the pride of all who knew him, the hope of his political party in the county, had fallen one day from his horse, and was brought home to The Cleeve a corpse. The delicacy and strength of genuine pathos make themselves felt throughout every page describing the intercourse between these two ladies, after Mrs. Orme knows her friend’s guilt, before or during the trial itself. Nor, even here, is it all untempered melancholy. The character sketches thrown off in a few sentences people the scene with figures all entertainingly appropriate to the judicial drama like that now begun. The witness, Bridget Bolster, we see preparing for action, with the perfect understanding of her claim to be well fed when brought out for work in her country’s service, to have everything she wanted to eat and drink at places of public entertainment, and then to have the bills paid behind her back. “Something to your tea” is the promise she has received from Dockwrath, interpreted by Moulder as a steak, by Dockwrath himself as ham and eggs, and by Bridget, as an amendment, as kidneys. Close upon the bold witness, Bridget, comes the timid witness, Kenneby, whose utmost hope and prayer are that he may leave the box without swearing to a lie, who replies to Dockwrath’s suggestion of refreshment: “It is nothing to me; I have no appetite; I think I’ll take a little brandy and water.” By way of moral sustenance to the nervous Kenneby, Moulder relates a legal reminiscence of his youth: It was at Nottingham; there had been some sugars delivered, and the rats had got at it. “I’m blessed if they didn’t ask me backwards and forwards so often that I forgot whether they was seconds or thirds, though I had sold the goods myself. And then the lawyer said he’d have me prosecuted for perjury.” Mr. Moulder himself fancies something hot, toasted and buttered, to his tea, openly asserting, while refreshing himself, that Lady Mason has no better chance of escape than—“than that bit of muffin has,” with which words the savoury morsel in question disappeared from the fingers of the commercial traveller into his throat.
To turn from the doings of Trollope’s personæ to those of Trollope, himself. Before finishing Orley Farm he had arranged a trip across the Atlantic, which, as usual, was to combine industry with amusement. The first thing, therefore, had been to obtain a commission from his publishers, Chapman and Hall, for a book about his journey and experiences. The settlement of that business, on his own terms, was effected without a hitch. The other preliminary, involving a reference to his Post Office superiors, threatened recrudescence of the immemorial and inveterate feud with Rowland Hill, now the Post Office Secretary. Nine months leave of absence formed the application made by the surveyor of the eastern counties to the Postmaster-General, then Lord Stanley of Alderley, direct instead of through the active head of the department, his enemy Hill. “Is it,” rejoined the Minister, with a look of bland cynicism as he eyed Trollope’s particularly vigorous form and country squire’s face, “on the plea of ill-health?” “No,” came the answer, “I want a holiday, and to write a book about it, and I think, my lord, my many years labour in the public service have earned it for me.” The forms on which the leave was granted were, at Hill’s instance, that it should be considered a full equivalent for any special services rendered by the surveyor to the department. To that condition, suggested, as he knew it had been, by the Post Office Secretary, Trollope demurred. It was therefore withdrawn at the Postmaster-General’s order.
Anthony Trollope’s first sojourn on the other side of the Atlantic began in the August of 1861, and lasted to the May of the following year. The occurrences between these dates included the earlier battles of the American Civil War, and to some extent decided his route. Travelling for recreation and rest as well as profit, he purposely avoided the dangers and discomforts of the seceding states, but, even thus, frequently found himself in the direct line of fire. For the time he allowed himself, he went too far and too fast. An atmosphere loaded with the din and smoke of conflicting armies did not promote the calm and close study of the nation’s social or political life and institutions. These, however, were surprisingly little interrupted by the conflict. The comparative regularity with which the routine of peace in the forum, in the Law Courts, in the State Assemblage, and beneath the private roof, preserved their continuity practically undisturbed by the shocks and convulsions of war, may have struck other English travellers at the time. By Trollope they were brought to bear with a force and freshness that imparted special interest and value to the book on North America, begun by him after his accustomed fashion, in the midst of his transatlantic travels, and carried some way towards completion before he had returned to England.
The work suffers from its author’s laborious attempts to impress the reader with a sense of its variety and fullness. It is neither a record of travel nor history; Trollope, had he taken more time about it, would have seen the mistake of trying to make it both. His impressions of the country are wanting less in animation and accuracy than in literary methods and logical arrangement of ideas. Before landing from his outward voyage he had persuaded himself that the final victory would rest with the North. This belief had not been shaken by the news of the Confederate success at Bull Run (July 21, 1861); which had created among all sections of English society, and elicited from the English Press, much of the exultant enthusiasm for the Secessionists, of whom Gladstone himself said that Jefferson Davis had called into existence a new nation. “Nothing,” were Trollope’s words to the present writer, “impressed me more during this troublous time than the immensity of the strength in reserve at the Union’s command. Moreover,” he added, “I was kept well abreast with the latest political news from Europe.” The Southerners’ only chance, as none knew better than themselves, or rather, than their leading spirits, had always been European intervention on their behalf. Napoleon III might have moved in that direction, had Palmerston given the signal, but no one really doubted either that France had resolved to follow the English lead or that England, whatever her irresponsible personal sympathies here and there, would take no real part in the quarrel. One international incident belonging to the struggle first became known to Trollope when dining at the White House, November 1861. The Federal seizure of the Southern agents, Mason and Slidell, on board the British West Indian mail steamer, had caused the diplomatic crisis that made their Washington post first acquaint Trollope and his other guests with the possible necessity of all English subjects at short notice leaving the States.
Exactly a generation before her third son’s visit to the New World, Trollope’s mother was thought, by her son, to have wounded the national susceptibilities in her Domestic Manners of the Americans. As a fact, except in Ohio, that book did not attract as much attention, even at the time of its publication (1832), as Anthony Trollope himself believed. It had been quite forgotten by, or rather had never been known to the generation that had welcomed her son as its guest. Indeed, by 1861-2 Dickens had long since received plenary forgiveness for offences in Martin Chuzzlewit and the American Notes much more serious than those of Mrs. Trollope. Nor did Anthony Trollope’s on the whole complimentary estimate of his American hosts, in his own forthcoming book, however pleasantly received at the moment, live much longer in the popular remembrance than his mother’s rather thin satire. Already the novels which had won him popularity in England were favourites in the United States. Then, as to-day, what the American public valued from him was the qualities which had endeared to the whole of the Anglo-Saxon race his Barchester books.
Trollope’s subsequent visits to the States may have left some mark on his writings, and have given him an occasional suggestion for stories like The American Senator, but had no influence upon the place filled by him in the New World as in the Old. On both sides of the Atlantic, the amiable motive of his North America was recognised, but its warmest welcome was not found in the land that it described. A subsequent chapter will contain specific facts and figures enabling the reader to form an accurate idea of Trollope’s progress to popularity with the United States Republic. Meanwhile we return to the novelist’s new departure in fiction, opened to some extent in Orley Farm, but beginning more decidedly with Can You Forgive Her?