Victorian

Bigamy, bisexuality, and betrayal form the sensational plot of Demos (1886), the third published novel from super-grump George Gissing. Although the novel’s sub-title – ‘A Story of English Socialism’ – doesn’t make it sound terribly exciting, politics and social unrest form the backdrop, and the foreground narrative is both tight and compelling. George Orwell, perhaps anticipating Twitter, pithily described Demos as “a story of the moral and intellectual corruption of a working-class Socialist who inherits a fortune.” The Socialist in question is Dick Mutimer, a serious-minded mechanic who leaves behind his old life and in a slum district of London without the least compunction. Meanwhile, the presumed heir to the fortune, aesthete Hubert Eldon, returns from the Continent with a mysterious bullet wound and discovers that his comfortable position has been usurped by a rough young parvenu. Mutimer uses his new-found wealth to establish an ironworks and model village in the fictional Midlands town of Wanley, and is able to realise his long-held dream of improving the lot of Demos – the working man. ...

A paradoxical disadvantage of the Kindle’s long battery life is that I often forget to charge it before train journeys and find myself facing a blank screen. The last such episode proved felicitous, as it prompted me to buy Madame Tussaud and the History of Waxworks from the wonderful £2 bookshop opposite the British Library. Although I visited Madame Tussaud’s several times as a tiny geek, I hadn’t given it much thought since, but Pamela Pilbeam’s superb study has awakened my interest. The book is part biography of Tussaud herself, and part cultural history of waxworks. ...

WARNING: this review is positively teeming with plot spoilers. Drat my impatience. I was trying to save The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867) for a forthcoming holiday, but the temptation was too great. As the title suggests, the novel is the final chronicle in Trollope’s tales of Barsetshire, so there is a certain poignancy that such memorable characters have now been put to rest. For many devotees, this novel is their favourite in the Trollopian Canon, and it’s easy to see why. The formidable cast from the previous chronicles is assembled and it’s like meeting old friends and finding out what they’ve been doing since you last saw them. As the reader is already familiar with the trials and tribulations of Barsetshire folk, there aren’t endless new names to remember and opinions to be formed (opinion-forming it deceptively fatiguing). Although there are sensational elements, Trollope delivers them in a languid fashion, relying on gradual enlightenment, rather than narrative shocks. Nathaniel Hawthorne, I think, encapsulated the essence of Trollope when he wrote that his writing is “as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were being made a show of.” ...

The Small House at Allington (1864) is the penultimate Chronicle of Barsetshire, although, as I shall discuss, it blends in with the others like an orange in a coal heap. The eponymous house is home to lively widow Mrs Dale and her two daughters, Lily and Bell. With only a tiny income to their name, they essentially live on the charity of Squire Dale, uncle to the girls, and occupier of the significantly larger house at Allington. The childless Squire is keen that his wealth should remain within the family and strongly urges Bell to marry her plodding and unexciting cousin Bernard. After declaring herself incapable of feeling anything beyond sisterly affection for him, the Squire asserts that young women ought to marry in accordance with familial interest, rather than their own foolish fancy. Given her financially dependent status, Bell is forced to mount a spirited defence in the face of her uncle’s grim determination. ...

Framley Parsonage (1860) is the fourth of the Barsetshire Chronicles, and was the breakthrough novel that sealed Trollope’s success. The story was commissioned by George Smith for his new Cornhill Magazine, and he requested “an English life, with a clerical flavour.” The serialisation, with illustrations by Millais, was an immediate success, attracting 120,000 subscribers. The story centres on Mark Robarts, a young man who is presented with the comfortable living of Framley by a friend’s mother. Although he enjoys the stability of being a clergyman, Robarts also craves the excitement of being a gentleman about town, acquiring several horses and a liveried footman for his family. After exposure to the Bohemian lifestyle at Gatherum Castle, Robarts is persuaded to sign a promissory note for Nathaniel Sowerby, a local MP with a gambling addiction and a complete lack of personal responsibility. As the debt escalates, Robarts descends further into the mire until his respectable existence is invaded by bailiffs and money lenders. ...

I must confess to never having been a big fan of Kipling – tales of empire and derring-do aren’t quite my cup of tea. However, his first novel, The Light that Failed (1891), has proved to be a revelation, and quite unlike any of Kipling’s subsequent work. The novel is partly autobiographical and tells the story of war artist Dick Heldar, his doomed relationship with childhood sweetheart Maisie, and his descent into blindness. Through Dick, Kipling considers the relationship between art and life, espousing his belief that the artist has a duty to paint only what he knows to be true. In this respect, the author offers a counterpoint to the conspicuous aestheticism of Oscar Wilde’s contemporaneous The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dick’s trouble begins when he refuses to accept reality, pursuing instead a romantic ideal. ...

An Eye for an Eye (1879) is classed among Trollope’s Irish novels, and the dramatic beauty of Co. Clare forms a suitable background to the wild passion that drives the plot. English cavalry office Fred Neville seduces a local Catholic girl, Kate O’Hara, leaving her pregnant. Although madly in love with her, the sudden unexpected inheritance of an earldom prompts Fred to rethink his plan to marry her: “She was a plaything for an idle hour, not a woman to be taken out into the world with the high name of Countess of Scroope.” Kate’s mother suspects that he is poised to abandon her and threatens: “if you injure my child I will have the very blood from your heart.” As the title suggests, this is no idle threat. ...

Doctor Thorne (1858) is the third in the Barsetshire Chronicles and became Trollope’s most successful novel. It must surely have been a source of annoyance to him, therefore, that the sensational plot was the brainchild of his brother, Tom. Whereas the two previous chronicles (The Warden and Barchester Towers) focus on characterisation and are mainly episodic, Dr Thorne features a strong narrative arc, employing many of the techniques of the sensation novel, which was poised to become the dominant literary genre of the following decade. ...

Feeling bereft after finishing Barchester Towers, I was saved from despair by the timely arrival of the postman clutching a copy of Judith Flanders’ The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime. Although squeamish by nature, I am intrigued by the Victorian fascination with murder and how it was represented through newsprint and popular culture, particularly sensation fiction. Flanders achieves a panoramic sweep through journalism, novels, broadsides, ballads, and theatre, engaging with both well-known and relatively obscure sources, and in the process unearthing a few hitherto unknown facts or connections. ...

I spoke too soon when agreeing that The Fallen Leaves was Wilkie Collins’ worst novel – Blind Love (1890) is an absolute stinker. To be fair to Collins, he died while writing the novel and therefore had no opportunity to revise it. On his deathbed, Collins asked that his friend Walter Besant finish the novel, providing him with detailed notes and a plot outline. Without the benefit of the preface, it would be quite hard to detect where Collins ends and Besant begins, although the latter’s misogyny and elitism does creep in on occasion. ...