Elias Gotobed is the American senator in Trollope's novel of the same name. And in the last chapter the author reveals that Larry Twentyman, a rising young yeoman farmer, "has in truth been our hero." But more memorable than either of these is Arabella Trefoil, the husband hunter. Life was not easy for ambitious Victorian women. Success might have been achieved, with great difficulty, in several different endeavors, but the only path that really led a woman to a high place in society was through birth or marriage. And to this end Arabella aspired.
She herself did not care much for pleasure. But she did care to be a great lady—one who would be allowed to swim out of rooms before others, one who could snub others, one who could show real diamonds when others wore paste, one who might be sure to be asked everywhere, even by the people who hated her. She rather liked being hated by women and did not want any man to be in love with her—except as far as might be sufficient for the purpose of marriage.
Her great sin is that she pursues Lord Rufford, a more eligible catch, while still engaged to John Morton, squire of Bragton. And in introducing her, the author does tell us, "She had had many lovers, and had been engaged to not a few." No one pretends that Trollope was an advocate of feminism. And she hardly emerges as a heroine. And yet a sympathetic reader of the present day can see her as a victim of her times. What, indeed, was a poor girl to do?
Poor, yes, but not without some family connections—enough to put her on the bubble of society—enough, perhaps, to make her feel obliged to reach for success. Her father was the younger brother of a duke. Her other assets were strength and determination, beauty, wit, and enough freedom from scruples to lead her into trouble. "As for caring about him, Mamma," she had once said of a suitor, "of course I don't. He is nasty and odious in every way. But I have got to do the best I can, and what is the use of talking about such trash as that?"
If Arabella is the memorable character, her memorable scene is the one in the postchaise after a hunt when she succeeds in drawing from Lord Rufford a positive response that he loves her—but nothing more. At this point she knows that he will go no further, but she resolves to use what she has gained to try to bring him to the altar, fainting helplessly upon his shoulder. As it happens, Lord Ruffton calls her bluff and escapes. Can you blame a girl for trying?
What of the American senator? In Elias Gotobed we find the prototype of the Ugly American, described in the novel that gave the phrase to our political vocabulary, as pretentious, loud, and ostentatious—changed, in some way, when they leave their native land. Senator Gotobed's sins in England are a bit different. Loud, yes. Lacking in tact, yes. Convinced of the superiority of American ways, yes. But unlike the Ugly American in Vietnam, Mr. Gotobed was not required to expose his bad manners to a third world country; his opportunity was to go to the mother country and demonstrate how a rebellious child behaved toward the parent.
We are introduced to Mr. Gotobed as he meets his host John Morton, the absentee squire, and views Bragton Hall—"quite a pile," he declares.
Mr. Gotobed is diligent in his research and amasses enough data to prepare a lecture for the edification of the English public. He accurately identifies some English ways, such as primogeniture, voting restrictions, and inappropriate clerical wealth, which would not much longer survive the scrutiny of the masses. One suspects that Trollope was using this as another means of exposing these little ways for the entertainment of his readers, and he was able to use a broader brush for this purpose than he used in his own depictions of these same institutions. As an American, I find Mr. Gotobed a rather tiresome caricature of the nineteenth century American. But his likeness resembles a number of others so closely that I fear I might have found some of the real Americans of the time rather tiresome.
The virtues of the English way of life are not lost on Mr. Gotobed. He concedes in his letters to his friend in the USA that the English gentleman is indeed charming, even though idle; pleasant and able to discuss almost any subject, even though he may know very little about it; and hospitable. In addition to these gratuitous observations, he does insert himself into the activities of the community by supporting the cause of Mr. Dan Goarly, accused of poisoning Lord Rufford's foxes.
And here we have the mystery of the red herrings. In an earlier incarnation of the battle between fox hunters and those who considered it a barbaric sport, the animal rights advocates sometimes left red herrings in a fox's path, obscuring the scent so that the hounds were unable to stay on the right trail. Hence our term that applies to a diversion that takes one off the correct pathway to solving a problem. And in this case it was worse. It was suspected that the herrings were laced with strychnine to poison the hounds. Mr. Gotobed, ardent in his opposition to the absurd sport of hunting and killing foxes, defies the conventional wisdom of the village that knows Goarly to be a scoundrel, because he thinks any sabotage of a fox hunt is worthy of support. In this effort he fails.