Fiction

I must confess to a degree of scepticism on receipt of a proposal to publish The Angel of the Revolution, George Chetwynd Griffith’s 1893 tale of air warfare. Sci-fi generally resides in my Room 101 and has no place on the papal bookshelves. Imagine my surprise at finding myself completely gripped by a fantastical story in which an intrepid group of Socialists, Anarchists, and Nihilists defeat Capitalism with their superior knowledge of dirigibles (my new favourite word). Led by a crippled, brilliant Russian Jew and his daughter, Natasha, The Brotherhood of Freedom establishes a ‘pax aeronautica’ over the world, thanks to the expertise of scientist Richard Arnold. Arnold falls in love with Natasha (the eponymous Angel), and Griffith builds a utopian vision of Socialism and romance. ...

Stephen King once rudely referred to the first Palliser novel as Can You Finish It? It’s certainly true that Trollope wasn’t known for his brevity, and this handsome new OUP edition of Can You Forgive Her? is 700 pages long. However, Trollope grapples with an ambitious range of political and social themes and, in so doing, presents a compelling and provocative narrative. The central question raised is ‘What should a woman do with her life?’ and it is examined through expertly drawn characters who all make very different choices. Alice Vavasor is a young woman with an independent fortune who has ended up engaged to a stuffed shirt by the name of John Grey. Although eminently respectable, Grey (as his name suggests) is interested mainly in propriety and is ill-suited to a wife who seems likely to prove a handful. Alice’s cousin and quondam lover George predicts: “He’d make an upper servant of her; very respectable, no doubt, but still only an upper servant.” ...

A comment from a fellow Trollope enthusiast has prompted me to post an update on the Trollope Challenge. I finished my 47th and final novel in November last year, although was too frantically busy to write any reviews. Anyway, the experience was a Mixed Bag, although immensely enjoyable. Trollope was an extremely varied writer, both in terms of subject matter and quality. With the emphasis invariably on the Palliser novels and Barsetshire Chronicles, it’s easy to forget that he was a great experimenter in style and setting. ...

Having recently drawn attention to Trollope’s less successful works, it seems only fair to trumpet one of his finer novels. The Golden Lion of Granpère (1872) is a short but perfectly-formed tale of love and unreasonable patriarchs, set against a richly-drawn backdrop of provincial France. The Lion d’Or is a small town hotel, owned by the ambitious Michel Voss. He lives there with his son George, his second wife and her niece, Marie Bromar. Perhaps inevitably, Marie and George fall in love, thereby incurring the Jehovah-like wrath of Michel. He believes that each of them could make a more advantageous marriage, conferring greater wealth and influence upon the family. After consent to the couple’s engagement is refused unequivocally, George stomps off in a fit of pique to another town, remaining on non-speakers with his family for a whole year. ...

Following last week’s paean to Trollope’s moments of brilliance, I must now turn the papal eye on his less successful efforts. It’s not to say that the novels listed below are without merit, rather that they left me either unmoved or very cross. So, here are the stinkers, in no particular order: The Belton Estate Trollope is at his most reprehensible in this novel, carefully delineating the wrongs of women, but then desperately clinging to the status quo of primogeniture and wifely submission. ...

The opening of Ralph the Heir (1871) is marred slightly by a preponderance of Ralph Newtons. One is heir to the estate of Newton Priory and thoroughly unworthy of the honour; the other is his cousin, an affectionate and scholarly type who everyone would prefer to inherit the family wealth. In anticipation of his fortune, Bad Ralph has racked up a considerable debt to his breechesmaker, the ambitious Mr Neefit. Eyeing the prospect of social advantage, Neefit pledges to write off the debt and provide a £20,000 dowry if Ralph agrees to marry his daughter, Polly. He waxes lyrical as to her advantages and youthful charms: “There ain’t no mistake there, Mr. Newton; no paint; no Madame Rachel; no made beautiful for ever! It’s human nature what you see there, Mr. Newton.” Poor Polly has no interest in her impecunious suitor, protesting: “I’m not going to be given away, you know, like a birthday present, out of a shop. There’s nobody can give me away, father,–only myself.” She knows her place, and her own mind. ...

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite (1871) is Trollope’s most comfortless novel, and also the one with the most alliterative title (almost impossible to pronounce reliably after half a glass of sherry). Following the tragic death of his son and heir, Sir Harry Hotspur is forced to rewrite his will. The glorious title must go to his cousin, a useless article called George Hotspur, but Sir Henry is determined that he shouldn’t also get his wealth. He bequeaths all his property to daughter Emily, hoping that she will marry a decent chap prepared to take his wife’s name. Alas, Emily is a feisty minx who refuses to marry the chinless wonder her parents have chosen, instead falling in love with the feckless George. ...

Sheep-farming in the Australian outback might seem like an odd topic for Trollope, an author known best for his forensic analysis of English society. In fact, he spent some time there after his son Fred became a “squatter”. Squatters were settlers who appropriated huge swathes of uncultivated bushland, initially illegally, and later under license from the Crown. Those who possessed the necessary tenacity and acumen could amass immense wealth, enabling them to build flashy houses and emulate the landowning classes of the motherland. Unfortunately, Fred Trollope seems to have suffered a want of pluck and application, and ended up losing thousands of his father’s hard-earned pounds. ...

Imagine an intoxicating narrative with more twists and turns than Downton Abbey (without the red flags), and flashes of M R James, Sarah Waters, and Wilkie Collins. That is what Essie Fox has achieved with her debut novel, The Somnambulist, a story that continues to haunt the reader long after the final page has been reached. Phoebe Turner is a 17-year-old girl living in the East End of London with Maud, her Evangelical Christian mother. Maud has declared implacable war on sin, campaigning for theatres and bars to be closed and an end to all fun. She disapproves of her glamorous sister Cissy who sings on the stage at Wilton’s Music Hall, although Phoebe adores her. When Cissy dies of an overdose, Phoebe is distraught and finds herself trapped in a circumscribed and impoverished world. There is a welcome turn of events when the wealthy and mysterious Nathaniel Samuels offers her a position as companion to his wife. Leaving her old life behind, Phoebe travels to Dinwood Court, the Samuels’ labyrinthine Herefordshire mansion, described disarmingly as an “idyll of peace and perfection, an oasis, an Eden, a heaven on earth.” Lydia, her laudanum-addicted mistress, is a complete recluse with a tendency to sleepwalk and mutter about her troubled past. Phoebe is inexorably drawn into the family’s dark web of lies, gradually uncovering the truth about both them and herself. ...

Trollope intended The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson (1870) as “a hit at the present system of advertising”. Unfortunately, his unappreciative audience thought it a flop, with one critic dismissing it as “Thackeray-and-water”. As is often the case, I find myself almost alone in thinking it one of the author’s triumphs. The story charts the rise and fall of a haberdashery business run by the eponymous characters. Brown is pathologically cautious, a situation that repeatedly brings him into conflict with his extravagant and acquisitive partners. To complicate matters further, Robinson determines to win the hand of Brown’s youngest daughter, thereby pitching himself into competition with Brisket the butcher, who is as beefy as his name suggests. Meanwhile, the ambitious Jones seeks to corner the market in stockings and quash Robinson’s more exotic plan to stock monkey muffs (I shall resist the temptation to speculate on that item). ...