The Small House at Allington – Anthony Trollope

It feels like an age since the New Year (certainly more than 3 weeks) and my trip up north. I took a pile of books confidant through the haze of ill being that constituted ‘The Cold’ that I would work my way through them. Alas my eyes were bigger than my desire to concentrate and I didn’t do very well. It also seems that packing with a bad cold is very like packing when blind drunk, so for a winter stay in Scotland with a New Year’s party I forgot gloves, the top half of my pyjamas (which I thought I remembered packing and eventually found under a cushion on the sofa when I got home – no idea what happened there). I neglected to take any sort of semi formal party wear of the sort approved of by my father (though I did remember pearls which I feel went a long way towards making things proper), didn’t manage to wrap my sisters Christmas present but found sachets of instant yeast at the bottom of my weekend bag - although the shampoo I was looking for would have been a better item to take and finally and surely even more inexplicable than the pyjama episode I took the wrong Trollope.

It should have been ‘Framley Parsonage’ but turned out to be ‘The Small House at Allington’. I was a hundred pages in before I realised my mistake which left me with a dilemma of sorts – put the book down and wait until I could read them in order or carry on regardless? After plenty of dithering and a bit of advice which suggested that reading the books the wrong way round wouldn’t matter too much I carried on and finished ‘The Small House’ (it has meant spoilers for ‘Framley Parsonage’ but hopefully nothing to central to the main plot).

After ‘Dr Thorne’ ‘The Small House’ feels like a very different beast – in short it’s a much better book; the plot is tighter, there’s much more action, less repetition, perhaps more human interest, and a scene with a bull. The heroine of the piece is Lily Dale (good family, no money, attractive) who meets and falls in love with Adolphus Crosbie (limited but comfortable means, ambitious, able) a friend of her cousins. Within a few weeks they are engaged and Lily has given herself heart and soul to Crosbie. Crosbie who isn’t exactly a bad man proves to be entirely unworthy of Lily’s love when within a week of leaving her side he engages himself to a woman of better birth.

Lily is publically humiliated and privately broken hearted as befits a young woman who’s been dumped and effectively lost her job in one fell swoop, but she carries on loving Crosbie all the same feeling herself to be almost his widow and won’t hear a word against him. I found myself with a degree of sympathy for Crosbie; carried away on a holiday romance he clearly proposes before he’s really ready to commit himself and when he finds Lily will bring nothing but herself to the marriage he gets cold feet, but this is part and parcel of his ambitious nature and then Lily throws herself so entirely into the affair it would be hard to resist the momentum she creates. Even after she’s jilted Lily persists in forgiving Crosbie for his crimes against her and in loving him as wholeheartedly as ever regarding herself in the light of a widow, nor will she allow anyone else to speak against him in her presence. I couldn’t help but feel that Miss Dale was treated with altogether too much forbearance by her family and friends; if ever a girl required a good talking to Lily does.

And now for the rest of the book – there is the fate of Lily’s sister Bell to be decided (Bell is a far more interesting heroine to my way of thinking; she has self control and a radical turn of mind), there are a host of characters to be introduced or disposed of including Plantagenet Palliser which has thoroughly whetted my appetite for the Palliser series, and the De Courcys who I’m always happy to be outraged by. There is also the hero; a young man who loves Lily but has somehow entangled himself in a sort of engagement to his landlady’s daughter, and who acquits himself well in the adventure with the bull.

For me Trollope’s strength as a writer lies in his exploration of the everyday, I really believe in the protagonists in ‘The Small House’, I can love them for their flaws and share in their dilemmas. There might not be many surprises but the world he creates is as absorbing as it is comfortable and ‘The Small House at Allington’ has certainly fed my enthusiasm for the man.

Dr Thorne – Anthony Trollope

Despite vague intentions I don’t seem to be much good at joining in with things so I’m more than a bit pleased to have managed to synchronise myself with the classics circuit trip round Trollope. I’ve been waiting to grow into Trollope for the best part of the last two decades, 2010 has been the year that it’s happened and I’m feeling very celebratory about it not least because there are so many books to look forward to... I’m now half way through the Barchester Chronicles and feel that I’m beginning to get the measure of the man, only beginning mind you, but in ‘Dr Thorne’ I think I’m starting to detect patterns and quirks of style.

I will warn you now – there’s a very high chance of plot spoilers in the following post, but one of the things I find I really like about Trollope is that plot isn’t really important; it’s simply a device to explore a moral dilemma with. In ‘Dr Thorne’ that issue is legitimacy and class. Briefly the Dr Thorne of the title stands as guardian to his niece Mary – she is the illegitimate daughter of his dead brother and is in every way an exemplary young woman. In her uncle’s eyes she is not only an angel incarnate but absolutely his niece, but legally she has no real right to the name she bears, no recognised position in society, in short (and crucially) she has no ‘blood’.

Dr Thorne is himself a connection of the Thorne’s of Ullathorne – a family that has made a cult out of blood, he is also near neighbour, friend, and doctor to the Gresham’s of Greshamsbury (the foremost family of commoners in Barsetshire) who have also made a cult out of blood (can you see where this is going?). Almost accidentally Mary has been bought up with the Gresham children on terms of near equality and by the time the action starts the Greshamsbury heir (young Frank Gresham) is coming of age, something he celebrates by proposing to Mary Thorne. To complicate matters further the Gresham’s are bankrupt; Squire Gresham married an earl’s daughter and has spent his marriage paying for her idea of a supportable lifestyle – not something even his once very respectable fortune has been able to keep up with.

Now young Frank is a decent sort, young but true and once he’s plighted his troth he’s determined to keep his word, Mary is a young woman of integrity and principle and equally determined to do the right thing so as she becomes aware of the reality of her situation she tries to release him from his promises. Frank must marry money to do his duty by his family but how can he do this and remain a decent sort? And indeed what if Mary was to acquire money, would that make her lack of position acceptable to the rest of the Gresham’s?

Well it just so happens that Mary is a possible heiress to an unlikely but vast fortune, her uncle is aware of this but is determined that she will be accepted on her own merits and so the scene is set. What’s more important money or birth, and what actually makes someone a lady or for that matter a gentleman? So much for the moral dilemma, now for what makes this such a good read; it’s a book full of Trollope’s gentle humour, there are some exquisite character sketches, and there’s something of a culture shock. I also get the sense that Trollope really cares about his characters; the young man destined to die so that Mary can inherit twists and turns off the page, caught between being a villain in the piece, and a man deserving all our sympathy. I really feel that in a different book he might have been reformed into the hero - of all the characters in the book he’s stuck with me the most as a compellingly real personality up to and including the unfortunate and eventually fatal predilection for liquors.

And evidence that the Victorians really felt differently to us? Mary’s mother is left pregnant and alone after the man who seduced her (Trollope alludes to drugs and rape) is killed. A previous beau offers to marry her despite her fall, but he won’t take on the child. The mother has the stark choice of child or husband – she chooses a husband (though in all fairness she knows that her child will be cared for as well, or better than she could care for it herself), but what shocked me is that the man in the case is presented as a hero for contemplating taking her on at all. Had she been a widow it wouldn’t have been an issue but sex outside of marriage has to be punished, and the sins of the mother will be visited on the child...

I’ve only scratched the surface here, I have a long set of notes and questions attached to ‘Dr Thorne’, and am extremely hopeful that someone out there will not only share my enthusiasm for this book but challenge some of my ideas about it. Trollope so exactly fits my reading needs at the moment that I want to shout about him from the roof tops, but mindful of how long it’s taken me to get to this point I’m trying to be restrained. With other Victorian writers I’m generally looking for something sensational or nostalgic, I find myself turning to Trollope because he makes me question and think, and so far it’s proving to be a very rewarding relationship for me.