Burrowing into Books, Anthony Trollope "The Small House at Allington"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                    January 29, 2017

“The Small House at Allington”

Anthony Trollope

“The squires of Allington had been squires of Allington since squires,

such as squires are now, were first known in England.”

                                                                                                Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

                                                                                                The Small House at Allington, 1864

If one wants facts, read non-fiction. If one wants to understand character, read fiction. Novels allow authors to explore emotions and responses, unencumbered by historical events or bothersome statistics. This was especially true before the advent of movies or television. Mythology, stories from the Bible and Shakespeare provide examples of fictional character traits we recognize in everyday relationships, as do 19^th Century novelists like Trollope, Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Hardy and the Bronte sisters.

Male-female relations have been fodder for novels since books were first written. “None but the most heartless of women know the extent of their power over men,” wrote Trollope in The Small House at Allington,” – as none but the most heartless of men know the extent of their power over women.” This story is one of triangulated and unrequited love – that of Lily Dale, one of Trollope’s most enduring (and endearing) creations, for Adolphus Crosbie, and of Johnny Eames for Lily Dale. Lily, who is the heroine of the story, lives with her widowed mother and elder sister Bell in the “Small House” as guests of her brother-in-law, the Squire of Allington, who owns the Big House. The late critic Stephen Wall said of Lily, that while she is “instantly recognizable, she remains a mystery.” Trollope thrived on the complexities of people and relationships. Among the best-known episodes in the book is the walk in the moonlight, where Lily first realizes her love for Crosbie. The reader, however, gets a harbinger of things to come: To Lily, moonlight and poetry represented romance; to Crosbie, they were nonsense.

Having been jilted, Lily Dale might today be considered a victim of false promises, thus a candidate for #MeToo. Maybe she would have marched, but I suspect she was too independent. Romances do not always have story-book endings, which Trollope understood. Crosbie, though older, is weak and immature – “a swell,” as Lily described him. She is young, pretty, smart, and headstrong. She knows her mind, but loses her heart. The reader understands, even though Lily does not, that she is better off without him.

At 600-plus pages, with multiple characters and plots, the story is too complex to summarize. In part, the reader is left unsettled: why, for example, did Lily not reciprocate Johnny Eames’ love? After all, in the story he stops being a “hobbledehoy and enters manhood.”  Regardless, the mark of a good book is when the reader is sorry to turn the last page, and when we miss those we cheered and jeered. However, Trollope’s characters often return in future books. This is the penultimate in the Barsetshire series. So, I look forward to The Last Chronicle of Barset, in which Lily, Johnny and Ambrose reappear. After all, to paraphrase Robert Frost on birches, one could do worse than be a reader of Trollope.

Burrowing into Books - "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Essays on Selective Readings

                                                                                                                                     October 5, 2017

“Bleak House”

Charles Dickens

“Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog,

sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”

                                                                                                Charles Dicken (1812-1870)

                                                                                                Bleak House, 1853

We live in a litigious age. Bleak House is a reminder that many in the legal profession have long put personal interests first. “The one great principal of the English law is, to make business for itself,” Dickens wrote. Things haven’t changed. Last July, The New York Times reported about the artist Paul Klee’s painting “Swamp Legend.” It took twenty-six years for the courts to resolve an ownership law suit, and to reimburse the family from whom the painting had been stolen by the Nazis seventy-five years ago. The lawyers, we can assume, did not work pro bono. In the U.S. – again, exposed by the Times – was the story of a two-year odyssey in in the guardianship system. Susan Garland wrote of a daughter who sought permission to take her father to dinner. Before granting permission, the court-appointed guardian and lawyers racked up an “estimated $2,500 in fees.” Ms. Garland added: “The Government Accountability Office has found that state guardianship systems across the country are rife with exploitation.”

In England, it was the Court of Chancery that had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, trusts, wills and guardianships. In Bleak House, Dickens uses the fictional case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce to make his point, to expose the corruption of the courts and the lawyers who feed off them. In his introduction, he wrote of a case: “…there is a suit before the Court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago; in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time; in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds.”  (That would be roughly equal to $10 million today.) His view of lawyers is caustic: “…in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts.”

There are plots within plots, and even subplots within subplots. In the first chapter, Dickens sets the wintery scene: “As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth…” “Smoke lowering down from chimneypots, making a soft black drizzle…” “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits[1] and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping…”.

Bleak House is one of Dickens main novels, a sweeping evocation of England in the 1830s, told through the eyes of the estimable and empathetic Esther Summerson, Dickens only (I believe) female narrator. Ms. Summerson does not know her parents’ identity, only that her birth is “no cause for celebration.” As a young woman, she becomes a guardian of the decent and kind John Jarndyce, along with two other principal characters, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, both of whom are beneficiaries under the will in question. Through her, the reader is witness to birth and death, apathy and elation, misery and joy. Esther Summerson’s origins are hinted at, but kept from the reader until the novel nears its conclusion, when they are gradually unwrapped, providing answers to questions that had pestered but eluded the reader.

All is not bleak in Bleak House, though. Tragedy and drama are tempered with comic relief. Two such characters: Mrs. Jellyby, “A lady of very remarkable strength of character…devoted to the subject of Africa…the cultivation of the coffee berry…and the happy settlement, on the banks of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population.” Mr. Skimpole: “I turn my silver lining outward, like Milton’s cloud, and it’s more agreeable to both of us. That’s my view of such things, speaking as a child!”

Dickens is read for his characters, his stories, and his fictional depiction of inhumane conditions of the poor and the mean-spirited, demeaning individuals who take advantage of the unfortunate. His novels convey messages of wrongs that need righting. His success could be seen not only in the number of books he sold, but in the passage of reform measures.

Bleak House is one of Dickens’ longer books, but well worth the time.

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[1] Small islands found in the Thames.

"Burrowing into Books - 'Framley Parsonage'"

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

Reviews of Selective Readings

“Framley Parsonage”

Anthony Trollope

                                                                                                                                        May 31, 2017

“No one need put up with wrong that he can remedy.”

                                                                                                Anthony Trollope

                                                                                                Framley Parsonage

Sadly, Trollope is neglected among modern readers. He is considered not the equal of those 19^th Century British literary lions: Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Eliot, etc. (Classics don’t get the respect they should. Senator Al Franken was recently quoted: “I’m a senator. I don’t have time to read classics.” But he did admit to reading books by Amy Schumer, Tina Fey and Lena Dunham!) Trollope did not depict dark pictures of inequality suffered by Britain’s class system, as did Dickens and Bronte. While he was humorous, he did not have the light touch that memorialized Austen’s characters. It was not his purpose to relate an allegorical moral tale of great moment, as did George Eliot.

What he did have was unswerving eye for the strengths and weaknesses of Britain’s prelates, aristocracy and the politicians who represented them. And he had a moral compass that he used to guide his readers through his characters’ flaws. A recent book on the Harvard Business School, The Golden Passport, condemns the graduate school for failing to adhere to its founding doctrine: to impart “…a heightened sense of responsibility among businessmen.” Classes in ethics at business schools would be redundant if students in high schools and colleges read the classics, including Trollope. The world he inhabited was not one of relative values. His principal character in Framley Parsonage, Reverend Mark Robarts, was imperfect. “He had large capabilities for good – and aptitudes also for evil.” Robarts had a leg in two camps – the son of a man of modest means, he had come to know the wealthy aristocracy through school (Eton) and university (Oxford). Marriage and profession gave him a sense of duty and right. The former provided the devil on his left shoulder; the latter, the angel on his right.

Like many of us, Roberts was challenged – pulled in opposing directions. Nathaniel Sowerby, an MP, asked for his (Roberts) signature on a loan he could not afford. In return, Sowerby promised to introduce him to the highest levels in Parliament, so Roberts complied. Trollope wrote of Mark’s inner conflicts: “One is almost inclined to believe that there is something pleasurable in the excitement of such embarrassments, as there is also in the excitement of drink. But then, at last, the time does come when the excitement is over, and when nothing but the misery is left.” Like Adam, he was tempted and fell. Later, as he admitted his wrongs and began the process of redemption, he found it would not be easy: “But wounds cannot be cured as easily as they ae inflicted.”

Framley Parsonage, the fourth of the six Barsetshire novels, where Trollope follows the lives and fortunes of the Shire’s inhabitants, was written in 1861. Trollope is noted for the accuracy of his reporter’s eye, and for making fun of, England’s most powerful 19^th Century institutions – the Church of England and Parliament.

In Who Killed Homer?, Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Professors of Classics at California State University at Fresno and Santa Clara University respectively, rue the absence of classics being taught: “The Greeks gave us the tools to improve our material world, but also the courage and insight to monitor and critique that scary dynamism; we have embraced the former, but ignored the latter.”

Reading Trollope is not the same as reading Pericles in Greek or Tacitus in Latin, but his characters speak to us of human foibles and strengths from across the decades. They provide insights into minds of modern men and women, and bring a smile at the same time.