RALPH THE HEIR
There are two Ralph Newtons in Anthony Trollope's Ralph the Heir. One is nephew to the Squire of Newton Priory and is his heir. The other is his illegitimate son. So: why should the title not be Ralph the Bastard? First: this is a Victorian novel; such a title would have been unacceptable to Victorian society. Second: even though the squire's son shows himself to be more worthy than his cousin, the central figure in the story really is Ralph the heir. Trollope merely says that heroes of pure virtue and villains of unalloyed vice are rare.
This is what it is about: There was a complicated inheritance issue—not contested, just complicated. I had to draw a little diagram to get it straight, and I then had to refer to it time after time:
Gregory Newton the Squire, in his youth and before he became the Squire, traveled in Europe and fathered a child (whom he named Ralph, after his father); the mother died before their planned marriage. Outraged at his son's indiscretion, the old Squire then entailed the family estate to the second generation; that is, his son could inherit the estate and use it for life, but he did not have "power of appointment" (a phrase I learned when tracing my father's many trusts to their intended conclusions). That is, he could not pass it on. Unless the first born (Gregory the squire, who had fathered the illegitimate son) should marry and have a legitimate son, the family estate would go to the first born son of his brother Ralph Newton the parson. (We're talking about three Ralphs and two Gregorys in three generations here.) It so happened that Parson Ralph's first born son, Ralph the heir, was a playboy who acquired more debts than he could pay, and he wound up with two choices: marry for money, taking Polly Neefit, daughter of his tailor, who had loaned money to Ralph and would forgive his debts and give him enough money (twenty thousand pounds) to pay his debts and more; or "go to the Jews," that is, put up his birthright as security for a loan to pay his debts.
When Gregory the father of the illegitimate son heard of this (he had now become squire after the death of his father), he saw an opportunity to take the place of the Jews and basically buy the birthright of Ralph the heir, so that he could then pass it on to his own son, Ralph the bastard.
In considering Trollope's John Caldigate, I wondered at the way in which inheritance issues could yield such complicated plots. Obviously there were contested inheritances; today, even without primogeniture, children of a deceased parent often have bitter disputes over the rights to seemingly minor treasures of much greater sentimental than monetary value—not to mention disputes over significant property and money. But did it ever get this complicated? Who knows?
So much for the inheritance issue. There are complicated boy-girl issues also. Ralph the heir becomes the ward of Sir Thomas Underwood, a distinguished but now idle barrister. Sir Thomas has two daughters—Patience, the elder, plain and intelligent; and Clarissa, a beauty. He also has an orphan niece, nineteen years old and "the most lovely young woman he had ever seen," Mary Bonner. So as it starts out: Gregory the parson, brother of Ralph the heir, is in love with Clarissa; Clarissa is in love with Ralph the heir; Ralph the heir kisses Clarissa and tells her he loves her, but when he realizes he needs money he is persuaded by his tailor Mr. Neefit to propose to his daughter Polly. When Mary arrives on the scene he vows to propose to her; Mary keeps her own counsel, but Ralph "not the heir" falls seriously in love with her. Patience may have had some preference of her own but not the looks to express or pursue it.
This tangle of alliances and preferences is a bit like a murder mystery: can the reader guess who will wind up with whom? And in truth, the novel basically stands on its plot. Trollope is sufficiently realistic to show that Ralph never really reforms. One of the most interesting women is Polly Neefit, who is urged by her father the breeches-maker to accept Ralph the heir, after Ralph is persuaded by him to propose. She refuses him twice, first because she doesn't think he loves her, and then, after being somewhat mollified on that score, because he doesn't respect her father and although she could have any one of twenty young men, she has only one father.
Her first refusal is a classic Trollopian dialogue. He swears he can love her, but after a lengthy recitation of probabilities, she concludes: "I ain't come to breaking my heart for you yet, Mr. Newton."