It is different with another lady, first introduced into this book, but in later volumes destined to be among the author’s most finished socio-political figures. Alice Vavasor is only removed at a safe distance from the abyss into which a morbid impulse, which she herself knew not to be love, periodically prompts her to throw herself, when she becomes Mrs. John Grey. Alice’s cousin-lover skirts much more closely than was ever done by Alice herself the slippery verge of the rocks looking down upon ruin, and, though saved from actual destruction, so far falls over as to disappear from the story.
The gradually progressive stages of Lady Glencora’s transformation from a drawing-room doll into an ambitious and masterful stateswoman will be traced in a subsequent chapter; without anticipating details, they may be said to exemplify and confirm the remarks already made about Trollope’s progress from the idyllic to the epic. Thus, during the decade that followed The Cornhill novels, Trollope showed himself scarcely less happy and effective in his sketches of mature and prosaic womanhood than in the innocence or sweet tormenting play[22] of the maidens peopling the British Arcadia in which he first displayed the powers afterwards to be exercised in the bolder and stronger flights now mentioned.
The gallery of fashionable culprits in Can You Forgive Her? contains none in greater need of pardon than Lady Glencora, here, together with her future husband, “Planty Pal,” first met with. Perhaps, however, the worst sinner of all is the unscrupulous match-maker, Lady Monk, who gives her nephew, Burgo Fitzgerald, enough ready cash for his meditated elopement with Lady Glencora, now for some time the present “Planty Pal’s,” and so the future Duke of Omnium’s, wife. Burgo Fitzgerald, in his relation to Lady Glencora, forms a counterpart to George Vavasor in his doings with Alice. In each case the pair are connected by cousinship; while, at some former time, Burgo Fitzgerald has been Lady Glencora’s declared and favoured lover, just as Alice Vavasor had once, before the novel’s opening, not rejected the addresses of George. Mr. Palliser, too, finds an exact parallel in John Grey. Both men are of sterling worth, of unspotted honour, but neither likely to inspire a woman with a warmer sentiment than respect or tolerance. Both these admirable men have their most dangerous rivals in two different kinds of scamp: Grey in the unscrupulous, and, on the whole, ill-looking George; Palliser in the handsomest, but also the most worthless, of God’s creatures, Burgo Fitzgerald, whose faultless face, dark hair, and blue eyes no woman could see without being fascinated.
Again, both Alice and her noble kinswoman, Glencora, are similarly conjured by a chorus of family dowagers to let no sentimental infatuation betray them into the calamity of giving themselves to the wrong man. As a fact, the by no means highly emotional, or now even juvenile, but clear-headed and strong-willed Alice seems throughout more likely to fall into the snare than the drawing-room butterfly, still little more than a girl, Glencora. But the rich “daughter of a hundred earls”[23] in the peerage of Scotland, under an external charm of face of the apparently innocent and babyish kind known as la beauté de diable, together with an apparent warm impulsiveness of temperament, conceals a severely practical and business-like shrewdness, such as to ensure a wisely restraining prudence from being in the end overborne by any sudden temptation of the heart. She threw over Burgo Fitzgerald for Plantagenet Palliser without compunction or sigh. There is no reason to suppose her literary creator dreamed of making her do anything else than fool the lover of her youth by not refusing point blank to leave her husband, or even that in his heart the soi-disant seducer believed he could prevail on her to do so. One need not, therefore, feel surprised at reading that Burgo Fitzgerald bore it like a man—never groaning openly or quivering once at any subsequent mention of Lady Glencora’s name. On the marriage morning he had hung about his club door in Pall Mall, listening to the bells, occasionally saying a word or two with admirable courage about the wedding. Then he went about again as usual, living the old reckless life in London, in country houses, and especially in the hunting field, where he always seems riding for something worse than a fall. He did, as a fact, in his maladroit tempting of Providence, occasionally kill a horse, much nobler and far more deserving of life than himself.
Kate Vavasor, George Vavasor’s sister, puts forth dauntless pertinacity and some cleverness in the attempt to oust John Grey from her cousin Alice’s heart and replace him by her brother. Unlike, however, that brother, she would stoop to no dishonourable devices. When George, in desperate straits for money to cover his election expenses and other calls, suggests requisitioning Alice, she plainly tells him it is an ungentlemanlike way of raising the wind, with which she will have nothing to do. Meanwhile, the strands of the central plot have been interwoven with personages and incidents that are preparatory to the political novels afterwards to appear, beginning with The Prime Minister, 1876, and ending with The Duke’s Children, 1880. The scandals that once seemed likely to grow out of Lady Monk’s ball have been nipped in the bud or altogether averted. Immediately afterwards, wisely considering change of scene to be best for all persons concerned, Mr. Palliser refuses the Chancellorship of the Exchequer that he may place his wife beyond reach of temptation by taking her abroad. The party includes Alice as her cousin Glencora’s companion, and it does its travels in the grand manner.
In its general results and special incidents, the journey succeeds beyond its organiser’s fondest hopes. At Baden-Baden the good fortunes of the tour reach their terminating point. Mr. Palliser receives from his wife the smilingly whispered announcement that he may soon expect the long waited, earnestly desired heir to his estates, and to the ducal title that in the course of nature must soon be his. With such a prospect before him he can afford to be generous. He gratifies his lady by getting her old and worthless sweetheart, who has staked and lost his last sovereign on the roulette board at the Kursaal, out of some trouble with his hotel bill as well as in other ways standing between him and ruin. At Baden, too, he meets John Grey, who has now developed parliamentary ambitions, and who soon becomes intimate with Mr. and Lady Glencora Palliser; he also finds George Vavasor’s disappearance to have removed his last difficulty with Alice. Before the return to England had been accomplished, Palliser, now Chancellor of the Exchequer-elect, has settled to exchange his representation of Silverbridge for that of the county, and to get Grey, already his warm supporter, into the vacant seat. The son and heir fulfils the promise declared at Baden, of his expected coming. The birth is followed by John Grey’s marriage with Alice, by his entrance to the House of Commons, and by Mr. Palliser’s introduction of his first budget. The parliamentary maxims with which this story is sprinkled have from the present narrative’s point of view a certain biographical interest, because they suggest the attention already by Trollope to the career at St. Stephen’s, unsuccessfully essayed by him four years after Can You Forgive Her? had appeared. Amongst the pieces of advice to aspirants at Westminster is the sound, practical counsel not to be inaccurate, not to be long winded, and above all not to be eloquent, since of all faults eloquence is the most damnable.
Trollope’s original interest in The Fortnightly Review, about which enough has been said in an earlier chapter, was quickened by the opportunity thus possibly opened to him for the appearance of his own work in its pages. His few occasional articles for it have been already mentioned. The first novel written by him for the periodical, The Belton Estate, ran its course in the Review soon after the last instalment of Can You Forgive Her? had appeared, and was followed some time later by The Eustace Diamonds. Not one of his longer novels, it recalls in its main theme the principal idea underlying the book which has just been analysed here. In The Belton Estate the heroine, Clara Amedroz, has, like more than one of the ladies in Can You Forgive Her?, two lovers, neither absolutely ineligible but greatly differing in their value, and one of them, as in Can You Forgive Her?, the lady’s cousin. The less desirable of the two comes upon the stage first, Captain Aylmer, a member of Parliament. His suit succeeds. After the usual Trollopian fashion the engagement is broken off; and there appears the cousin, Will Belton, who in due course yields to Clara’s charms, proposes, and is rejected. Then comes Aylmer’s temporary reinstatement and at last dismissal. Cousin Will proves eventually the lucky man; and upon him, as the heir to Clara’s father, and as Clara’s husband, the curtain falls. The display of minute feminine analysis, such as began with Orley Farm and was continued in Can You Forgive Her? characterises also The Belton Estate. The feminine idiosyncrasies examined with much precision and often great skill belonged to the same class as those of Can You Forgive Her? The action, however, is much quicker, and the swift succession of events is far less painful. The forsaken Captain Aylmer takes to no evil courses, is never in danger of coming to a bad end, but judiciously improves his worldly possessions by making up to and wedding a rich baronet’s daughter, who, according to the positive assertion of Miss Amedroz, might be pretty but for her very decided and remarkable squint.
This was by no means the last time of Trollope’s introducing this antenuptial situation. Something like half-a-dozen years were yet to pass before its exhibition again in The Golden Lion of Granpere (1872). This is a pretty little story of unsophisticated life in the province of Lorraine; Marie Bromar is the pretty niece and ward of Michel Voss, the popular, prosperous, and somewhat arbitrary proprietor of the well-supported Grandpere hostelry known as the Lion d’Or. His son George, the inheritor of his father’s masterful disposition, falls in love with Marie, but, being driven from home by misunderstanding, leaves the ground clear for rivals. During his absence the girl is courted by a rich linen-buyer of a neighbouring town, whose addresses are favoured by Marie’s guardian uncle. Everything prospers the wooing of Adrian Urmand, the trader. The wedding eve has come: the pair are to meet in church to-morrow. At this juncture George Voss returns. All the confusion and doubts arising out of his long absence are cleared up. With the light heart, that, in the case of Trollope’s young ladies, no amatory perplexities or cares seem to depress, Marie throws over the new love for the old, and the slight series of episodes ends in happiness, not only for a family, but the entire neighbourhood, marred, however, by something more than misgivings that the niece and ward of my host of the Lion d’Or may yet have to pay the penalty for having played so fast and loose with two such blameless and desirable competitors for her hand. The short and slight story now noticed contains not a little to recall the third product of its author’s pen, more than twenty years earlier, La Vendée (1850). The later, like the earlier novel, exactly catches the simple old-world spirit and atmosphere of its subject and its scene. As a boy, by repeated if shortening sojourns abroad, Trollope had familiarised himself with the details and personages of the daily round in France and Germany. These experiences, instead of being dimmed by time, remained with him fresh and vivid throughout his life. In The Golden Lion of Granpere the absolute authority of Michael Voss as the family head, the primitive existence throughout controlled by him, the domestic economy of the entire district, the absence of class distinction, the universal horror at Marie’s violated troth, the appeal to the curé to remonstrate with her—all this is depicted with pleasant art. It is perhaps rendered the more effective by its contrast with the pictures of English fashionable society in Trollope’s other books belonging to the same period.
Before, however, resuming the consideration of those, it would be an inconvenient departure from the chronological arrangement followed, so far as possible, in these pages not to complete our view of the domestic stories, for the most part entirely English as to place and personages, that followed the Barchester books. Of his Cornhill readers, Trollope took farewell, not as photographer of the Allington group, but in The Claverings (1867). Can You Forgive Her?, it has been seen, forms the link between the novels of home life and those of politics. The Claverings connects the novels that introduced us to Barchester Palace and close in its best-known prelate’s time with the great world outside of peers, cabinet ministers, party leaders, society queens, and princesses in which the Marchioness of Hartletop, née Griselda Grantly, was taking her part. The Rev. Henry Clavering of the family which gives its name to the book held a living in Bishop Proudie’s diocese. The grouping of events and characters not only discloses no trace of approach to repetition, but by the freshness and vigour of its effects shows throughout its author at his best. The plot is of the simple straightforward kind of which Trollope made himself a master.
The temptation to indulge in the Thackerayan vein, yielded to some years earlier, was responsible for Trollope’s poorest piece of work, Brown, Jones, and Robinson, already mentioned; it was successfully withstood in The Claverings, with the result that Trollope widened the circle of his believers by a combination of dramatis personæ and scenes scarcely below the mark of Dickens. The clash of rival love-making echoes throughout successive chapters, but with a ring altogether different from that heard in earlier variations on the same theme. The strongest personal force in the book is Julia Brabazon, who jilts a suitable lover of her own age and rank to marry a rich and senile profligate. The forsaken lover, Harry Clavering, clever, handsome, though somewhat weak, has crowned a brilliant college course with a Fellowship. He decides on becoming a civil engineer; and with that view enters the office of Beilby and Burton, the latter of these two being the real head of the firm. In that gentleman’s daughter, Florence Burton, the new pupil finds consolation for his lost love, and even much relief, in the society of a quiet, clean girl, the exact antithesis of the brilliant, beautiful, and dashing Julia, now Lady Ongar. Soon after the conclusion of an engagement between Harry and Florence, there returns to England Lady Ongar, now a rich, still fascinating, and much-sought-after widow, bent on atoning for her former infidelity by giving herself and her fortune to the young man who had been her earlier conquest. About Florence or the Burton family she knows nothing. Harry therefore soon finds himself in the position of Ulysses when that hero had upon his hands at the same time his own true Penelope and the bright Circe. Only after a severe conflict of emotions does he decide on maintaining his fidelity with Florence. That determination had been no sooner acted on than it is splendidly rewarded; for the death at sea of his two uncles leaves him a wealthy baronet.