Trollope does allow the postal service to play its role. When Marie decides to break it off with Urmand, she does so by writing him a letter, and not telling her uncle about it until the letter is safely on its way.
In the end, it's all worked out by the men. The matter is finally settled when M. Urmand comes to the Golden Lion to settle things, is avoided by Marie, and spends his time playing billiards alone. George is also on hand, and he manages to have some long tramps in the fields with his father, mostly discussing business affairs. Michel enjoys the walks with his son, and a satisfactory resolution ensues.
The story is paced with a light and masterful touch. A climactic scene between Marie and Urmand is followed by stepping away from Marie's little room to a long range view in the first line of the next chapter: "The people of Colmar think Colmar to be a considerable place, and far be it from us to hint that it is not so. It is—or was in the days when Alsace was French—the chief town of the department of the Haut Rhine." It is in this perspective that Michel rests from his decision-making labors to return to his genius for making plans, announcing his plan for a picnic the next day. It's too cold for a picnic, but all go. Urmand is shown to be a friend of the family, speeches are made, and toasts are drunk. All is well.
The Golden Lion of Granpere is a short, straightforward little love story. It gets deeply enough into the details of running a rural inn in Alsace Lorraine to be entertaining. As is usual with Trollope, a number of lengthy paragraphs give the reader no excuse for not knowing exactly what each character is, or is not, thinking. Trollope the traveler learned enough about Europe for a few little short novels. Perhaps they afforded him the breaks he needed between the three-volume English blockbusters.
HOW TO BECOME A LADY
LADY ANNA
One doesn't discuss titles and honors much these days. We may even pretend that they don't matter much, and that in these days of democracy and equality we have no ambition for such frills. My wife and I recently spent half a day with a friend of two of our friends, and we were told before the meeting that he was the "Right Honorable" and had recently been made a Knight Companion in the New Zealand Order of Merit after a distinguished political career. Of course this was nothing that I would have mentioned to him; he dismissed very quickly even a comment of recognition I made on seeing his portrait over his staircase. But the title is out there, and I will be hard pressed to report our visit to any of our friends without making some offhand reference to the "Right Honorable."
We tend to smile at the emphasis placed on hereditary and acquired titles in Victorian England. They still exist, however, and the reader can hardly dismiss as completely dated the central role that the issue of a hereditary title plays in Anthony Trollope's Lady Anna. As the title of the novel indicates, the heroine is not just "Anna Murray"; she is "Lady Anna," and the story moves about the efforts of her mother to establish the legitimacy of the title. The plot is an ingenious, if improbable, one:
The unscrupulous Earl Lovel has married a commoner, but shortly after the marriage he informs her that he has previously married a woman in Italy, and that their marriage is not valid. This means that she is not his Countess, and their unborn child will not be legitimate. Needless to say, she does not take this well, and she spends the rest of her life fighting for her title and for that of her daughter. In almost fairy tale fashion, an humble tailor helps her in her struggle, providing encouragement and significant loans of money. In the fullness of time the tailor's young son and the Countess's young daughter move from being childhood friends to sweethearts, and they vow to marry each other. The tailor's son, Daniel Thwaite, becomes a radical advocate of equality for all and abolition of nobility.