Taking 'Bout His Generation

Just over a year ago, I began my latest reread of Anthony Trollope's Palliser Series, speeding through Can You Forgive Her? in about four days.  While I've read most of the books fairly quickly though, I've spaced them out so much that it's taken me until now to get to the last of the stories, The Duke's Children.  One quick note to delicate readers: this review will contain information which you may not want to know if you're just starting out on your own Palliser reading...

*****
The Duke's Children opens with a bombshell (albeit one indicated on the back cover): the Duke's wife, Lady Glencora as was, has passed away suddenly, leaving the grieving Duke alone with his three (grown-up) children.  For a man like our old friend Plantagenet Palliser, dedicated as he is to his public, political life, the responsibility of taking care of his children is bound to bring him his fair share of troubles at any point in time.  As it happens though, this was a singularly unfortunate time for him to be left alone...

The Duke's youngest child, Lady Mary Palliser, has become engaged to Frank Treager, a man who, while an educated gentleman, in no way measures up to the type of husband Mary's father expects for her.  When Treager formally asks for Mary's hand in marriage, the Duke rejects him out of hand and forbids all communication between the two.  Far from accepting her father's command to end the relationship, Lady Mary digs her heels in, preparing to wait things out.

The former Prime Minister has more family problems on the horizon though.  His elder son Lord Silverbridge, the heir to the Palliser title and millions, has been thrown out of Oxford for an immature prank, lost large amounts of money through gambling and - something far worse - has decided to go against his father's politics and stand for parliament as a Conservative candidate.  In one way, at least, he is in his father's good books, as he is courting the beautiful, and highly respectable, Lady Mabel Grex.  That is, until one day at a garden party he crosses paths with Isabel Boncassen - an alluring American...

The Duke's Children is the culmination of almost twenty years work for Trollope in his development of the character of Plantagenet Palliser.  First introduced as a boring, hard-working, young politician in The Small House at Allington, Palliser becomes the main character of a new series of books, in which the reader is able to follow the ups and downs of his personal and political lives.  After an extremely shaky start, his forcibly-arranged marriage to Glencora gradually becomes a success, and The Prime Minister, the predecessor to The Duke's Children, marks the high point of his career, with the Duke taking charge of the government and his wife entertaining the high and mighty of the Empire.

Lady Glencora is a great character, and when you first learn of her passing, it comes as a blow - she is someone the reader has lived with (and loved) for years.  However, her death is necessary for the plot of The Duke's Children to develop in the way Trollope intended.  During their marriage, the Duke has not had to concern himself overly with domestic affairs, leaving all this to his wife; now he is forced to arrange matters himself, and he finds himself totally unable to deal with the strong-willed semi-strangers that have been raised under his roof.

In his struggles with his daughter, he initially has no doubts about his behaviour.  Despite his liberal politics and his utter disregard for status in the abstract, he is completely unable to live up to his politics in matters affecting his family.  As the head of one of the most blue-blooded families in the kingdom, he feels it is his duty to ensure that his children make appropriate matches - and his daughter's happiness comes a long way behind this sense of duty.

Of course, the Duke, as anyone who has read the series will know, is an utterly honest man (too honest at times for his own good), and the longer matters drag on, the more they eat away at him.  While still unwilling to compromise his views, he begins to realise what exactly it is he is doing:

"Now the misery must go on from day to day beneath his eyes, with the knowledge on his part that he was crushing all joy out of her young life, and the conviction on her part that she was being treated with continued cruelty by her father!  It was a terrible prospect!  But if it was manifestly his duty to act after this fashion, must he not do his duty?" p.398 (OUP, 1999)

Unable to reconcile his roles as loving father and aristocrat, Palliser has a very difficult decision to make...

Lord Silverbridge's romance is slightly less dramatic (mainly because the reader always feels that the father is much more likely to give in to the son than the daughter), but it is, in many ways, more interesting.  Quite apart from the novelty of the trans-Atlantic courtship, Silverbridge's love affairs carry distant but strong echoes of previous Trollope romances.  Lady Mabel is a very similar woman to Lady Laura Standish, a character who was very close to the titular hero of Phineas Finn, and Silverbridge and Treager (Lady Mabel's current and former admirers) seem to embody different aspects of Finn in themselves: Treager is the penniless man who is able to transfer his love easily enough when told to, and Silverbridge is the young, immature man who is slightly cowed by a woman no older than himself.

Looking outside the immediate family, it is Lady Mabel who is one of the most intriguing characters.  Like many Trollopian women, she is trapped by her sex, doomed from birth to be subservient and to depend on the whims of male relatives who, in terms of character, are not fit to polish her shoes.  Her need to find a husband before it is too late has made her (like Lady Laura Standish...) old before her time in terms of character.  As she thinks about Silverbridge, she muses:

"How was it that she was so old a woman, while he was so little more than a child?" p.128

While liking the young Lord, she feels no real love for him, but her situation means that she is compelled to play the game and angle herself an eligible husband.  However, to succeed in this game, one needs nerves of steel and a conscience of cast-iron, and her scruples may just get in the way...

Once again, Trollope uses The Duke's Children to sympathise with the plight of women in his own way, even though real feminism was something he found slightly distasteful.  He elegantly portrays the way society treats (upper-class) women, pointing out the inequalities in his own, wry manner.  When introducing the idea of a grand garden party, the one at which Silverbridge will meet Isabel Boncassen, Trollope explains:

"Everybody who was asked would go, and everybody had been asked, - who was anybody.  Lord Silverbridge had been asked, and Lord Silverbridge intended to be there.  Lady Mary, his sister, could not even be asked, because her mother was hardly more than three months dead; but it is understood in the world that women mourn longer than men." p.217

While Trollope points out these double standards, he doesn't really propose to do much about them.  In the end, he relies on our (i.e. men's) conscience to take lessons from his fictional examples of good and bad behaviour...

*****

At which point it is time to stop rambling and bid farewell to the Pallisers for another few years.  Like The Last Chronicle of Barchester, The Duke's Children is a book which brings the curtain down on an era, leaving the reader full of regret.  However, where the earlier series seemed to finish leaving us desperate for more, to me The Duke's Children is the right time to bring an end to the series.  The Palliser books are primarily about Plantagenet Palliser, Trollope's epitome of the English gentleman, and having safely navigated the treacherous waters of Westminster (and married off two of his children), our old friend Planty Pall thoroughly deserves to slip gently into the background and enjoy the rest of his life in peace and quiet.  It's time to say goodbye to the Pallisers...

...and move on to the rest of Trollope's gargantuan back catalogue :)

Tough at the Top

While I've had fun with a lot of translated fiction recently, it's always a pleasure to slip into something comfortable and while away a few hours with some Victoriana.  With me, of course, that usually means Anthony Trollope, and today's offering is another of big, bad Tony's political offerings.  Pipe and slippers ready?

*****
The Prime Minister is the fifth in Trollope's Palliser Series and sees the return of our old friend Plantagenet Palliser.  The country is in crisis, parliament at a standstill - none of the usual suspects believes they can muster enough support to build a cabinet and bring the House through the session.  What they need is a respected, uncontroversial gentleman to pull the various factions together in a coalition government - and when it comes to reliable, if slightly dull, gentlemen, there are none so respectable (or dull) as the newly-honoured Duke of Omnium himself.

While one half of the novel recounts the traumatic experience of the thin-skinned Duke's term as PM, the other half, as is common in Trollope's fiction, introduces a new character, albeit one who will brush shoulders with the sizeable cast of players the series has already created.  This new man is Ferdinand Lopez, a young, attractive, well-mannered man about town, an habitué of certain clubs and guaranteed to be seen at the best parties and dinners.  Despite uncertainty as to his background, and suspicions as to the exact nature of his wealth, when he asks for the hand of the wealthy heiress Emily Wharton, her father can find no real reason to reject the match other than his own xenophobic and anti-Semitic tendencies.

These are gradually overcome, and Lopez and Emily (as the reader knows full well they will from the first mention of them) eventually tie the knot.  Once married, however, Lopez drops his act.  He has married both for love and for money, and finding the latter not forthcoming, he does his best to destroy any feelings of the former his wife ever had for him, demanding that she use her influence on her father to suck him dry.  This is one couple that will not live happily ever after...

Anyone who has ever read any of Trollope's work will no doubt be able to guess the ending of this particular tale (and could probably fill in certain details I've endeavoured to spare you too).  Lopez, a speculator in the newly invented futures market, has his day in the sun, but he is always destined to fly too close to it and have the wax melt from his wings.  The problem, you see, is that while educated and cultured, Lopez is not a 'gentleman'; he has never mastered the million tiny necessities which form the education of a true British man, and the moment times become difficult, the thin veneer of culture peels off all too easily.

And it is this predictability which mars the novel.  Lopez is a fascinating character, an outsider attempting to carve a way into the lives of the upper classes, and, unfortunately, for that he must be punished.  Trollope is hamstrung by the conventions and expectations of the Victorian novel and is unable, or unwilling, to make Lopez likeable (or even ambiguous).  He feels compelled to make his creation into a villain, one who becomes more black-hearted the longer the novel goes on, when a more balanced approach would have made for better reading.

There is also the question of the above-mentioned xenophobia and anti-Semitism to consider.  It is clear that the writer is attempting to reflect existing attitudes and suspicions towards foreigners in general and Jews in particular.  However, at times, it is tempting to wonder how much of this is really necessary.  Does Lopez have to be a Jew?  Does he have to take on the part of a Shylock desperate to bleed the Christians dry?  While the melodrama may have entertained at the time, it seems like a wasted opportunity to create something more nuanced and worthy...

You'll notice that I have spent a lot of the review talking about Lopez, and that is no accident.  The character dominates the novel, entering the lives of the Pallisers at one point in a sub-plot involving an inevitable by-election.  Once his story has run its course though (and it does so at a relatively early stage, allowing for a protracted and tediously conventional ending for Miss Emily...), the story loses its sparkle, and if you're not particularly interested in the political side, you may as well just close the book then and there.

Luckily however, for those (like me) who have followed Palliser's career throughout the series, the portrayal of the three years of his Prime Ministerhood is excellent.  Trollope has elevated his favourite character, his perfect gentleman, to a position which he is patently unfit to hold.  While he may possess the wealth and breeding necessary for the task of holding the coalition together (and lack the ambition and genius which would only get in his way), he does not have the one thing which is vital for the success of a Prime Minister - a thick skin.

As he suffers the slings and arrows of treacherous colleagues and slanderous journalists, the Duke is simply unable to ignore ridiculous slights which other politicians would laugh off.  Making things worse, his wife, the wonderfully mischievous Duchess (Lady Glencora as was), insists on doing her part to keep the coalition ticking - with predictably disastrous consequences for her husband's peace of mind...

The Prime Minister is a very entertaining novel at times, especially so if you've gone the whole journey with the Duke and his friends.  However, it's not a complete success, largely owing to the struggle of integrating the misfiring Lopez-Wharton side of the story into both the Prime Minister side and the larger, overarching narrative of the series.  In a period of his career where Trollope was writing his best work (He Knew He Was Right and The Way We Live Now were both written around this time), The Prime Minister doesn't quite hit the mark.

But I'd still advise you to find that out for yourself ;)

The Return of the Man with the Magnificent Whiskers

While I quite enjoyed my month of women writers, it's nice to get back to a less-restrictive reading pattern - especially nice when that entails a return from an old friend.  And when I say 'old friend', I'm not talking about Trollope himself (although he has kept me company for many a year now), but one of his many fictional creations, a certain Mr. Phineas Finn.  We first met the charming Irish politician in  Phineas Finn, the second of Trollope's Palliser Novels, and Phineas Redux, the fourth of the set, returns our friend to London from his Dublin sabbatical.

After a couple of years away from Westminster, Finn's misguided, but principled, betrayal of his party has long been forgotten, and a letter from an old colleague (along with a feeling of emptiness after his wife's death) soon persuades Phineas to cross the sea and don his parliamentary armour once more.  In no time at all, the reader is back in the midst of Trollope's usual scenes: crooked elections, breath-taking hunts and bitter, spiteful debates in the House of Commons.  It's almost as if we were never away...

The more the novel unfolds, however, the more obvious the differences with the first book (what Trollope actually thought of as the first half of a single book) become.  In Phineas Finn, our friend is a young, innocent, indestructible character.  While he has his troubles, we never have any doubt that he will fall, cat-like, on his feet, usually with a thousand pounds a year and a new love interest to keep him going.

Phineas Redux though introduces a rather more mature Finn, a darker, more pessimistic man.  Where his first attempts to climb the political ladder were almost playful, now that he is keener than ever to make politics his profession, he sees that it is far from the noble pursuit he once thought it.   While the landed gentry, unburdened by the need to actually live off their parliamentary earnings, may be able to command respect, men like Finn, without fortunes of their own, are required to scramble for every crumb which may fall from the party leader's table, sacrificing their dignity in the process

Another difference between the two books is that where Phineas was able to glide through this parliamentary life fairly comfortably during his first terms of office, his second attempt at politics runs a lot less smoothly.  Mr. Bonteen, a minor character in Phineas Finn who is foregrounded in this novel, becomes a major obstacle in our hero's path, one whose spite causes Finn to be left out in the cold by his Liberal Party superiors.  Finn and Bonteen quickly become sworn enemies - until, that is, Bonteen is mysteriously removed from the picture...

The 'redux' of the title is Latin for 'restored' or 'brought back', and it is apt for many reasons.  Not only is our friend (and his moustache!) brought back for the reader's delight, so too are many characters we have met in the first three of the Palliser novels.  This is one of the many joys of reading Trollope's work - though he, like many Victorian writers, uses a number of minor plot strands, he is able to make these sub-plots more interesting by using old friends to paint in the minor details of the bigger picture.

Who needs to invent scores of new characters when you can bring back the likes of the Duke of Omnium, Madame Max Goesler and Lord Chiltern?  When the pivotal murder strand needs an alternative murderer, who better than to fulfil that role than a shady character we met in the previous novel?  Even where there's a need for a new character, let's just pluck a relative of the wonderfully sanguine Plantagenet Palliser from the aether to suit our purposes.  Comfort reading indeed :)

As is always the case with my reviews of the Palliser novels, there are several other ideas which would justify a post in their own right.  Just as Phineas Finn did, Phineas Redux once more examines the frustrations of middle-class women in Victorian England, bored to tears and prey for idle gentlemen when single, mere chattels of their husbands when married (especially if the marriage was more for the sake of convenience than love).  The character of Lady Laura Kennedy is an exceptional one, and a thorough retracing of her character over the course of the two books would show a complexity that many readers may think beyond Trollope.

There's also the small matter of the double-edged sword of publicity and the fashionable world.  Phineas benefits greatly from his high-class connections and his position in parliament, but the flip side of this is the extra attention paid to him in his most difficult hours.  The crusade against him in the pages of The People's Banner is eerily reminiscent of the way certain British tabloids consider it their duty to interfere with the lives of the rich and famous today...

Despite all these fascinating ideas though, the reader will always return to the man himself, our young Irish friend, a character whose early innocence and joy for life has been seriously tempered by the ordeals he has gone through.  By the time we reach the end of this chapter of his story, we fully understand why he makes the decision he does.  No longer is he as happy a man as he was when he first set foot in London; in return though, he has acquired a much greater maturity and depth of character, traits which will stand him in good stead in later years when he eventually returns to the parliamentary fray - which he will, as a minor character, in the final two novels in the series.

Don't worry - next time I'm in the Palliser world (in the not-too-distant future...), I'll be sure to give him your regards...

Diamonds Are A Girl's Worst Enemy

After a hard month reading and reviewing German literature, it's time to kick off my shoes and slip into something a little more comfortable, and those of you who have been around my blog for a while will know that there's little I find as comforting as a reread of some of my favourite Victorian literature.  So today, for the third time this year, we're heading back into Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels for a little R & R - slippers please...

*****
The Eustace Diamonds is the third of Trollope's 'political' Palliser novels, but it is perhaps the least political of them all.  The story centres around Lady Elizabeth Eustace (known to her friends as Lizzie), a young, beautiful widow, who has made her fortune by capturing the hand of a Lord, shortly before his death through dissipation.  Not content with being left money, property and a regular income in her husband's will, Lizzie decides to appropriate a diamond necklace which is in her possession at the time of her husband's death - an ornament which the family lawyers are not prepared to let her have.

Lizzie, attempting to brazen out the situation, decides that her case will be better served by finding a new partner to fight her battles for her; the only problem is that the men she considers as potential partners all want her to give the diamonds back.  As the cunning Lady regards her potential beaus (the dull but steady Lord Fawn, her manly barrister cousin Frank Greystock, and the slightly dangerous Lord George de Bruce Carruthers), she continues to fight off the best attempts of the lawyers to seize the jewels.  Until, that is, someone else takes an interest in the precious stones...

I'll get it out in the open at once - The Eustace Diamonds is one of my least favourite Trollope books.  I had that feeling before starting it this time, and my opinion certainly hadn't changed by the time I got to the last page.  Although the Pallisers are mentioned several times over the course of the two volumes, the reality is that this is a stand-alone novel, and one which (in my opinion) overstays its welcome.

The key to the novel is the character of Lizzie Eustace, a no-good, cunning, treacherous gold-digger, who would remind any well-read Victorian of Thackeray's own villainess, Becky Sharpe.  To succeed in her intrigues though, Lizzie needs the men surrounding her to be almost as bad as she is, and this is where Trollope falls down a little in this book.  The world seems incapable of doing anything about Lizzie's antics, and despite Trollope's constant explanations as to why people are content to have the wool pulled over their eyes, it feels like a bit of a hollow argument.

Of course, it's not all bad (I wouldn't be reading it if it was...).  Lizzie is gradually worn down over the course of time by the pressure of having to fight for 'her' diamonds, and the writer describes Lizzie's psychological ordeal perfectly.  In fact, the diamonds almost become a character in their own right, one whose whereabouts are of pivotal importance to the story.  The idea of an item of great value becoming a burden not worth keeping, but equally something which you cannot part from, is not exactly unique in literature (my precious...), and Trollope almost makes you pity poor Lizzie - but not quite ;)

As always, Trollope also has a keen eye for the problems of Victorian women in their quest to be well married and less of a burden for those who must support them.  Quite apart from Lizzie's own need for a husband, there are several other marriage sub-plots, not all of which end well.  In particular, the frightening engagement of Lucinda Roanoake, a beautiful young American, and Sir Griffin Tewett, a brutal aristocrat, a 'romance' which ends with suspected mental illness, is one to put you off marriage for life...

At the end of the day though, I was very glad to get to the end of the novel, anticipating happier times when the series moves on to the next stop, Phineas Redux, featuring the return of our Irish friend Phineas Finn.  And, coincidentally, it was a character from Phineas Finn, Lord Chiltern, who best summed up my feelings about The Eustace Diamonds on the very last page:

"I never was so sick of anything in my life as I am of Lady Eustace.  People have talked about her now for the last six months... And all that I can hear of her is, that she has told a lot of lies and lost a necklace."

I couldn't have put it better myself  :)

An Irishman Abroad

Although I was definitely tempted, I decided earlier this year to put off rereading Anthony Trollope's Palliser Novels until next year, hoping to delay the pleasure for a little longer.  However, after my Rereading July project turned into a V-Lit comfort-reading fest, I ended up racing through Can You Forgive Her?, and it was only a matter of time before I slipped off the wagon again...

*****
If you are going to break promises you make to yourself though, there's no better book to do it with than Phineas Finn, the second of Trollope's 'political novels', and arguably the most interesting.  In this book, the reader follows the eponymous hero of the novel as he emerges from obscurity in the Irish backwaters to follow his ambition - to enter the 'mother of all parliaments', the centre of power of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Young Phineas, armed only with his native wit, a pleasing appearance and a set of the finest whiskers a man could ever hope for, sets out to make his fortune in the great British metropolis, managing to succeed both politically and romantically, despite his humble origins and empty pockets.  However, parliament can be a cruel mistress, and there are no guarantees in politics, particularly for those without family and fortune to support them...

I love this book.  I absolutely love it (well, I don't love my Everyman version and its multitude of typos, but the novel itself, yes).  It is such a dazzling entry into the world of Victorian politics and society, a book which can be read on so many levels and for so many reasons.  I doubt there is a sub-genre of Literary Theory which wouldn't be interested in deconstructing Phineas Finn, from Post-Colonialism and Feminism to Marxism (Queer Theory might be a stretch, but there was definitely one 'gay' Irish bachelor with no conspicuous female attachment...).

Our loveable Irishman, all six feet of him, is not the deepest of characters, but that is not especially important as he is more the reader's ticket of entry to Westminster and Mayfair than a fully-functioning protagonist.  It is through Finn's eyes that we are privileged to enter The House of Commons and experience for ourselves the nerve centre of the largest Empire the world has ever seen; when he rises to make his maiden speech, we share his sense of terror and vertigo, and when he is unable to bring himself to make the effort, we feel the shame of his failure.  It is through his visits to the city homes of the landed gentry that we, 21st-century citizens of the world, are able to gain access to the lifestyle of the very rich and the very famous of mid-1860s Britain.  It's an exhilarating ride.

Another reason why Finn's relatively shallow, if pleasing, character is not an issue is that the novel is crammed full with more interesting ones, most of them women.  Apart from a childhood sweetheart back in Ireland, our dapper young politician has many female friends and lovers, and these young women are far from being one-dimensional love interests.  An area where Trollope is perhaps underrated is the length he goes to in creating believable female characters, women desperate to do something with their lives, but prevented from doing so by a traditional, patriarchal society which wanted nothing more than to pass its female citizens from the protection of their fathers straight into the arms of their (usually much older) husbands.

The three women Phineas becomes involved with in London, Lady Laura Standish, Violet Effingham and Madame (Marie) Max Goesler, are all independent women - with independent means -, and you would think that this would enable them to enjoy their place in life.  Sadly, this is far from being the case: each is forced to recognise that despite their wealth, they are nothing more than birds in a cage, albeit a large and roomy cage.  Without an appropriate partner by their sides, they are unable to make the most of their undoubted advantages, and the apparent freedom their money gives them is offset by the weight of the social pressure they must eventually bow to.  It is striking though that the one who comes to struggle financially is the one who will suffer most in her future affairs...

If you like Victorian literature (and especially if you have any interest in the machinations of politics), you will enjoy this book immensely.  This is one of those books where, if I had unlimited time and typing hours in my pain-riddled arms, I would come back again and again to look at the novel from a slightly different angle (I didn't even touch on the perils of independent thought in a party political system, or the parallels between the robotic, and slightly disturbed, Robert Kennedy and the later creation of Louis Trevelyan of He Knew He Was Right...).  Unfortunately (or perhaps for the best), this is all you're getting for today.

Still, there are four more Palliser novels to come, including a sequel featuring our loveable Irish friend.  Now that's definitely something to look forward to ;)

The Last Chronicle of V-Lit

July is over, and so is my Rereading July project.  Over the past month, I managed to reread seven wonderful books, all plucked from my V-Lit collection, and to finish off my reviews, I have one last little post to entertain you with - one last trip through time and space, if you please :)

*****

Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope, is the first of the six books known as The Palliser Novels, and it's a good book in its own right.  It tells the tale of Alice Vavasor, a young woman who breaks off her engagement to the worthy John Grey because she feels that she is unsuited to the kind of life he is planning to lead, a secluded, leisurely life on his country estate (which sounds wonderful to me).  After making this decision, she begins to gravitate back towards a former love, her cousin George, whom she decided not to marry earlier in her life because of his terrible behaviour towards her.  As Alice moves closer towards throwing her lot in with her impulsive (and possibly psychopathic) cousin, Trollope ask the reader a couple of questions: will Alice regret her decision, and, more importantly, can you, the reader, forgive her?

Funnily enough though, as well designed as this side of the story is, I really couldn't care about Alice (or John Grey) at all because the main order of the day is our first lengthy introduction to one of Trollope's favourite characters, Plantagenet Palliser, and his bubbly wife, Lady Glencora.  Palliser previously appeared in a bit role in The Small House at Allington, but here he takes centre stage as the character who will occupy the writer's mind for the next decade or two.  In fact, Palliser is the character who best represents Trollope's own opinions and beliefs - the epitome of the English gentleman -, and his relationship with his wife is a masterful, realistic depiction of love and companionship.

Rather than taking us up to the wedding day and then leaving the loving couple to live happily ever after, Trollope has married off a young heiress, against her wishes, to a good, but unloving, politician - and then stirred in a little unresolved tension with an old flame.  Over the next five books, we will see how, from an unpromising beginning, the relationship will blossom and grow into a true love match, despite the many bumps along the way (especially in this book...).

I've read this story several times, but I still wolfed it down, devouring the 800 pages (of admittedly large type) in just four days.  I simply love this kind of Victorian novel, where multiple plot strands are teased out over hundreds of pages (and, in the original format, over years - Can You Forgive Her? was originally published in twenty monthly parts...).  You know what is likely to happen - that is if Trollope doesn't actually tell you himself -, but the destination is relatively unimportant; it's the journey that matters.  And when that journey involves the wonderful Pallisers, the terrible George Vavasor and a cameo appearance from the writer himself (in the guise of a heavyweight literary fellow gamely following the hunt over the English countryside), it's a very good journey indeed.

And, as I suspected on starting this wonderful book, I think I have just committed myself to reading the rest of the series over the rest of 2011.  Life's hard sometimes :)

*****

My final book for the month, Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, is a slightly different novel to my usual Victorian reads.  It's a mystery, set in the Victorian era, and one of many 'sensational' novels of the time.  However, despite being lumped in with a multitude of other crowd-pleasing novels, Collins' work is a quality piece of writing with a groundbreaking style.

The Woman in White is told in a series of narratives by the person most closely involved with the events of the time, almost as if the course of a crime was being described in a court of law.  Our first narrator, young drawing teacher Walter Hartright, is walking home one night after paying a visit to his family.  He is walking along a deserted road in the darkness, thinking about the work he is shortly to do in the north of England...  when suddenly, from nowhere, a woman dressed all in white appears in the street.  Although his first meeting with the woman is fleeting, this chance encounter is to alter the course of his life, setting him on a journey where he will meet the love of his life - and some rather dastardly villains...

The style adopted by the writer allows him to build up the story from several different angles, and also permits him to poke a little fun at his characters' expense.  While the parts played by the major characters are played with a straight bat, some of the minor roles are definitely described tongue in cheek.  The part told by the housekeeper is full of "I'm not racist, but..." jibes at the foreign occupants of the house, while the section narrated by the self-absorbed, self-declared invalid Frederick Fairlie begins:

"It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone." Wordsworth Editions, p.266

a statement immediately indicating that this is a character who will struggle to gain our full sympathy ;)

Anyone who has read the book will know though that the most impressive character is that of the inimitable Count Fosco, a villain of the highest order, but with the most impeccable manners.  Belonging less in a Victorian novel than in a James Bond film, the mysterious Italian emigré, a magnificently intelligent, courteous (and corpulent) mountain of a man, plays with his pet mice and birds, bursts out into impromptu arias and effortlessly plots a monstrous crime without breaking into a sweat - all assisted by his sinister, devoted wife.

What sounds like overexaggerated melodrama is raised above this by the book's format; Fosco is described by several of the narrators, each fleshing the Count out in a slightly different way, all (willingly or unwillingly) admitting the power of his persona.  In this way, Fosco becomes larger than life, a seemingly unstoppable genius, which makes the danger Hartright and his friends find themselves in seem palpable to the reader.

I'm not really one for crime novels, but The Woman in White is far more than just a detective story - it is a fascinating account of the lengths people will go to to get money, and a superb character sketch of a criminal mastermind.  Whether you are a fan of this genre or not, it's well worth the effort.

*****
So alas, Rereading July has come to an end.  Over the past month, dear reader, I have travelled far and wide through Victorian England: over hill and dale; through the bucolic Wessex landscape and up to the pleasant farm lands of the Midlands; up to a wild and wintry Yorkshire and across the Pennines to industrial Manchester; down to the great capital, the centre (at the time) of the civilised world and back up to the far-flung desolate north-west.  This is my country; at least, this is the country I visit in my imagination.  The more Victorian literature I read, the fuller my image of the England of the past becomes, and the more I want to know.  I'll be back very soon.