Trollope handles the boy-girl scenes very well. But his forte is politics. He had run for a seat in Parliament once himself, and he had become sufficiently disillusioned to paint the political scene in some raw ways. Here we find Sir Thomas Underwood, who has retired from professional and public life to write the definitive biography of Sir Francis Bacon (but never actually takes pen to paper), deciding to try to re-enter Parliament via the rotten borough of Percycross, on the Conservative ticket. It so happens that one of the other contestants for one of the two Percycross seats is Ontario Moggs, a young radical rebel who preaches the virtues of labor unions and strikes, and who is also an ardent suitor for the hand of Polly Neefit. We follow Ontario to the Cheshire Cheese, the public house where he delivers impassioned orations; and we follow Sir Thomas in his reluctant efforts to canvass the electorate. Sir Thomas and his running mate, the incumbent Conservative candidate, win the election, but there is a petition—a demand for a recount and an investigation into possible improprieties in the election.
In the definitive moment of this story, Sir Thomas learns that his reluctant expenditures for campaign costs were only the first of the demands to be made on his purse. After apparently winning the election, he is persuaded by Mr. Pabsby, the Wesleyan preacher, to make a contribution for a new Wesleyan chapel. (Mr. Pabsby has been shown to us as having a "soft, greasy voice,—a voice made of pretence, politeness, and saliva.") But then Sir Thomas learns from his "supporters" that the election will probably be contested, and that he will need the loyalty of his supporters if he is to prevail. The list of requirements—personal donations for all the schools and all the churches, as well as fifty pounds for the old women of the borough at Christmas—goes on and on. Poor Sir Thomas. To make a long story short, he refuses any further favors, the petition overturns his election, and the investigation discloses that Percycross is such a corrupt borough that it has lost all its representation in Parliament.
Trollope occasionally indulged in dispensing little lessons in the facts of life. Early in the story Sir Thomas goes to Portsmouth to meet his newly orphaned nineteen-year-old niece, whom he has never seen. He has declared that he will serve as her guardian, and as he waits to meet her, he is apprehensive. And now as he observes all the men taking turns to offer her favors, he learns about "priority of service":
There are certain favours in life which are very charming,—but very unjust to others, and which we may perhaps lump under the name of priority of service. Money will hardly buy it. When money does buy it, there is no injustice. When priority of service is had, like a coach-and-four, by the man who can afford to pay for it, industry, which is the source of wealth, receives its fitting reward. … But priority of service is perhaps more readily accorded to feminine beauty, and especially to unprotected feminine beauty, than to any other form of claim. Whether or no this is ever felt as a grievance, ladies who are not beautiful may perhaps be able to say.
Walt Disney's film makers understood this in producing Mary Poppins, for whom "boxes and trunks seemed to extricate themselves." But even today one can hardly disagree with Trollope that "priority of service is perhaps more readily accorded to feminine beauty" than to any other claim.
It is difficult to dislike a genial friend. And Trollope rewards his readers with his genial approach to his fictional world. In this story Ralph "not the heir" suffers a major reversal of fortune when his father dies before completing the schemes that would have enabled Ralph, the illegitimate son, to inherit the estate and his father's additional fortune. Ralph "not the heir" had resisted ambitions to inherit the family estate. But he had requested permission to propose to the beautiful Mary Bonner when he anticipated some validation of his status. And now it seemed that he would be a "nameless" man without property or hopes of marriage to the woman he loved. At home, his butler continues to be solicitous for his employer's feelings. And the reader feels that the author of his distress has some compassion for the victim. So he does. But the realistic author also adds the butler's observation after finally leaving his young master: "I don't suppose it do come to much mostly when folks go wrong."
But the geniality of the story is shown as the author cruises confidently to his conclusion of the complicated affair, pulling the strings to the satisfaction of as many as possible. Ralph the heir finally receives a reward through the agency of Lady Eardham, mother of three eligible and more or less young daughters. Lady Eardham receives a letter from Polly Neefit's father telling her that Ralph is engaged to marry his daughter Polly. Of course she knows that Mr. Neefit is bluffing, but she shows the letter to Ralph so that he will know she has it. She invites Ralph to call on her the following morning, and when he does, he is toast:
Of course there was nothing done. During the whole interview Lady Eardham continued to press Neefit's letter under her hand upon the table, as though it was of all documents the most precious. … And, though she spoke no such word, she certainly gave Ralph to understand that by this letter he, Ralph Newton, was in some mysterious manner so connected with the secrets, and the interests, and the sanctity of the Eardham family, that, whether such connection might be for weal or woe, the Newtons and the Eardhams could never altogether free themselves from the link.
Her husband approves her work. The daughters certainly do not object. "The girls, who knew that they had no fortunes, expected that everything should be done for them, at least during the period of their natural harvest." And Augusta Eardham, the first fruit of this harvest, accepted her lot in life with equanimity. And it worked out all right.
Bickerings there might be, but they would be bickerings without effect; and Ralph Newton, of Newton, would probably so live with this wife of his bosom, that they, too, might lie at last pleasantly together in the family vault, with the record of their homely virtues visible to the survivors of the parish on the same tombstone.