Trollope Comes Through Again

Last year, I wrote here that I couldn’t figure out which was the central plot of Anthony Trollope’s The American Senator, and that the title didn’t point the way since the Senator’s story was at most the C plot. This year, I read Trollope’s Mr Scarborough’s Family, and, although a large number of subplots weave their way through the fabric of the book, the story of the manipulative Mr Scarborough and his will and his two problematic sons is clearly at the center. It isn’t the last story touched upon, though. Trollope knew his main audience consisted of housewives and teenage girls, and he put in a love story, as well. According to his usual plan, he announces in the first few chapters who “is to be our hero” and who “is to be our heroine.” So we know right up front who is going to get married at the end of the book, and yet it’s still a fun ride getting the lovebirds to their nuptial bliss.

Before the age of the psychological novel and stream-of-consciousness narration, Trollope loves to give his readers insight into his characters’ thinking. Augustus Scarborough (son number 2) hardly does anything in the book without two or three secret motives. I have to admit to you, I often find myself saying, with regard to certain people who continue to cause me grief every few months, “Why did they do this? I have know idea what’s going on in their heads! I guess I’m glad I don’t understand how they think.” But somehow Trollope does understand (at least as far as I know) how young girls in love think, how lawyers think, how ashamed gambling addicts think. And he has to use an omniscient narrator to get into their minds, because almost no character in a Trollope book just says straight out what he or she is thinking. It’s even more seldom that a character says what he’s feeling. Even when they don’t have hidden agendas, these characters have to deal with Victorian standards of proper speech. Poor Mr Prosper once actually blurts out exactly what he thinks in a moment of frustration, in front of his vicar no less, and then spends a long time apologizing for the breach. And it’s all fascinating to me, this translation of thought to the language of acceptable intercourse. Of course, some personages of low character show their baseness precisely by expressing their thoughts directly, but in a Trollope novel, these people are usually mere plot devices and not characters with story arcs.

As far as characters with story arcs go, Mr Scarborough’s Family has quite a list of good ones. Mr Scarborough senior, who believes he knows morality better than the established law, goes to great, deceptive lengths to work around the law and do exactly what he sees to be right, even if he has to lie to and about his sons. Mountjoy Scarborough, son number 1, has a gambling problem but tries to kick it and believes he will have the strength to do it if he can only get Florence to marry him. Alas! Mountjoy is not Trollope’s designated hero, and Florence is the designated heroine, so we’re left at the end of the book not knowing if Mountjoy will find any actually available remedy for his problem but hoping that he will. Harry Annesley is the designated hero. He and Florence aren’t very developed even by the usual standards of Trollope’s love-interest characters – until the last chapter, when we find that their married life is full of playful wit and good-natured acceptance of less than perfection. I wish Trollope had shared more if this humorous side of these two characters earlier. The public unjustly vilifies Harry for an action he commits right at the beginning of the book (we learn about his secret motives for not talking to defend himself), and his uncle, Mr Prosper, who has told Harry for years that he will inherit the Buston estate, decides he can’t possibly leave an estate to a man with a bad reputation and determines to disinherit him by finally marrying at 50 and having a son. His impractical plan (what woman of child-bearing age is he going to find?), his thoughts about how to choose a woman, the winner in Mr Prosper’s process (the delightfully named Matilda Thoroughbung), and their marriage negotiations are all amazing and hilarious. Then there’s Mr Prosper’s valet, who runs the house and Mr Prosper. And there’s Mr Grey, the lawyer, and his unmarried daughter, who doesn’t want to get married because she would miss her late-night discussions with her father about the law. I could go on. OK, OK, one more detail! Mr Prosper says he can’t possibly travel from Buston to Cheltanham. The trains don’t connect the two places directly, so he’ll have to go to London and and travel from one station to another, and, he asks, “What will I do in London for an hour and a quarter?” That’s the kind of detail that makes you love a man in a book that you might only get annoyed with in real life. But Trollope and authors like him teach us that we should love the real person and all his annoying foibles with all the forgiveness and even enjoyment that we afford the fictional character. 

I could also go on about the way Trollope compares views of marriage (as he kept in mind those teenage girls reading the book, marriage for love wins out, of course), distinguishes between legality and morality, explores many kinds of reactions by several characters when they find that they can’t force others to think and act the way they want, defends women’s social agency, and sympathizes with young and old, rich and poor, gentry and commoner. But I’ll just end by sharing one fun detail. As a clerk in the Royal Post Office, Trollope invented the public mailbox on the street. Even if you’ve never read one of his books or even heard of him, you’ve used Anthony Trollope’s gift to civilization many times. Many people write back and forth to each other in this book, and Trollope makes sure to mention on one occasion that the epistler deposited her message in the “letter pillar.”

Anthony Trollope wrote a lot of novels, so there’s a lot to get through. But I’m going to put this one on my list of books to reread someday.