"HE COMETH NOT; I AM AWEARY"
MISS MACKENZIE
Garish images are the ones that stick. Miss Mackenzie is a beautiful story of a deserving young woman who finally achieves love and fortune after years of service to the poor and the sick and the dying, but the image that sticks in the mind is that of Rev. Jeremiah Maguire, who was possessed "of the most terrible squint in his right eye which ever disfigured a face that in all other respects was fitted for an Apollo." In this case, as was usually the case in Trollope's novels, the physical deformity was a ready clue to the individual's character. Rev. Maguire ranks as one of the more iniquitous of the sinners in the ranks of Trollope's clergymen. It may not have been so bad that he tried to marry Margaret Mackenzie for her money, but he did so with a devious scheme to establish his own church and use the pew rents as security for the money that he would say he was giving but would then take back as payment of a loan. And when he learned that he had no chance of winning her for himself, he embarrassed her by writing several "Lion and Lamb" articles for a religious newspaper, saying that she was being cheated of her inheritance by the man whom she wished to marry. He doesn't match the villainy of Joseph Emilius, the preacher who only had a "slight defect in his left eye" and a "hooky nose," and who murdered Lizzie Eustace's protector Mr. Bonteen in The Eustace Diamonds; it is apparent, however, that not all Trollope's clergymen went to heaven.
But back to Miss Mackenzie: if one of the great pleasures in life is watching someone start out with a pleasant set of gifts and then develop a few more to become a joyous credit to the human race, then the literary proxy is reading about such a one. We are introduced to Miss Mackenzie as a Cinderella-type woman (Trollope had a weakness for Cinderellas) who devotes herself to the care of her brother for fifteen years until he dies. She is a generous but self-abasing humble woman, but we see that she can stand up for herself. Finally she appears to gain some conception of her own worth.
There has been some money in the family, but we see it slipping away due to unfortunate business decisions, and none of it appears to be destined for poor Margaret, who has little to show for the years of her young womanhood. But then she is named the beneficiary of her late brother's will! Suddenly she is a woman of independent means, if not indeed wealthy.
And now we see her deal with the friends, relatives, and suitors who flock to her. Her sense of self worth is hardly enhanced as she fends them off, comprehending pretty quickly that they are interested in her money, not so much in her. She longs to have a life. She's only thirty-six. Her "time for withering" has not yet arrived. But she feels that she should not live for herself alone, and there are numerous opportunities for doing good deeds. The death of her brother has left her sister-in-law with a house full of children, and Margaret selects one of them, a fourteen year old girl, to live with her. She will leave London, where the neighborhood just down the streets to the Thames from the Strand is pretty dull, and she will go to Littlebath and take lodgings in the Paragon. (Bath and the Crescent, as in The Bertrams).
A gloomy story to this point, but it is told with the distant ironic tone that tells the reader that this is a comedy. Margaret visits The Cedars, home of her cousins the Balls, but finding them "very dull," she determines to proceed with the Littlebath plan.
Margaret enters Littlebath society slowly and timidly. We are shown that Littlebath is home to saints and sinners. The sinners go the assembly rooms; the saints go to church—not the high Church of England, but the Low Church. Margaret finds herself too timid to attempt to be a sinner at the assembly rooms; it is easier to go along with the women to tea at the home of a preacher to whom she has been given a letter of introduction. Here she finds a company of benighted souls in thrall to Mrs. Stumfold, wife of the great preacher. Like Mrs. Proudie of the Barsetshire series, Mrs. Stumfold brooks no disorder in the ranks, and we see Margaret stand up for herself when Mrs. Stumfold calls on her to inquire as to her intentions in regard to Mr. Maguire, of the squinting eye, who has been seen paying conspicuous attention to Miss Mackenzie. Short on self-esteem at this point, Margaret is shown to rank high in self-assertiveness. When Mrs. Stumfold tells her that another lady has a prior claim on Mr. Maguire (Mrs. Stumfold has been indulging in a bit of match-making), she insults Miss Mackenzie, informing her that another lady has been before her. "What would you think if you were interfered with, though, perhaps, as you had not your fortune in early life, you may never have known what that was?"
At this, Margaret terminates the interview, sending her to any friend of hers who is behaving badly for the purpose of telling him so, and then telling Mrs. Stumfold that she will hear nothing more about it.
Margaret shakes off three suitors, unworthy souls who merit rejection, though she is so lacking in self-confidence that she gives serious consideration to two of them. Mr. Maguire—the clergyman with the wandering squinting eye—catches her by surprise with his proposal, and she asks for two weeks to think it over. A big mistake—it raises false hopes in Mr. Maguire. She is called away because of her brother's illness before giving the ambitious curate an answer, and she enters the orbit of her cousin John Ball, a widower who had bored her by talking about nothing but money.