"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.