Test Bank for Essentials of Corporate Finance

(Mcgraw-hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance,

and Real Estate) 9th Edition download

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
corporate-finance-mcgraw-hill-irwin-series-in-finance-insurance-
and-real-estate-9th-edition/

Find test banks or solution manuals at testbankmall.com today!

 We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit testbankmall.com
to discover even more!

Test Bank for International Financial Management (The

Mcgraw-hill/Irwin Series in Finance, Insurance, and Real
Estate) 8th Edition
https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-international-
financial-management-the-mcgraw-hill-irwin-series-in-finance-
insurance-and-real-estate-8th-edition/

Real Estate Finance and Investments 15th Edition

Brueggeman Test Bank

https://testbankmall.com/product/real-estate-finance-and-
investments-15th-edition-brueggeman-test-bank/

Real Estate Finance and Investments 15th Edition

Brueggeman Solutions Manual

https://testbankmall.com/product/real-estate-finance-and-
investments-15th-edition-brueggeman-solutions-manual/

Surgical Technology for the Surgical Technologist A

Positive Care Approach 5th Edition Association of Surgical
Technologists Solutions Manual
https://testbankmall.com/product/surgical-technology-for-the-surgical-
technologist-a-positive-care-approach-5th-edition-association-of-
surgical-technologists-solutions-manual/
Solution Manual for E&M TIPERs: Electricity & Magnetism
Tasks C. J. Hieggelke, D. P. Maloney, T. L. O’Kuma, Steve
Kanim
https://testbankmall.com/product/solution-manual-for-em-tipers-
electricity-magnetism-tasks-c-j-hieggelke-d-p-maloney-t-l-okuma-steve-
kanim/

Test Bank for Contemporary Nursing 7th Edition by Cherry

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-contemporary-
nursing-7th-edition-by-cherry/

Test Bank for Organic Chemistry, 8th Edition Paula

Yurkanis Bruice

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-organic-chemistry-8th-
edition-paula-yurkanis-bruice/

Solution Manual for Accounting for Governmental and

Nonprofit Entities 18th Edition Reck

https://testbankmall.com/product/solution-manual-for-accounting-for-
governmental-and-nonprofit-entities-18th-edition-reck/

Test Bank for Community Oral Health Practice for the

Dental Hygienist 4th Edition Christine French Beatty

https://testbankmall.com/product/test-bank-for-community-oral-health-
practice-for-the-dental-hygienist-4th-edition-christine-french-beatty/
Solution manual for Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism
6th edition by Philip R Kotler, John T Bowen, James Makens

https://testbankmall.com/product/solution-manual-for-marketing-for-
hospitality-and-tourism-6th-edition-by-philip-r-kotler-john-t-bowen-
james-makens/
A. Average tax rate
B. Variable tax rate
C. Marginal tax rate
D. Absolute tax rate
E. Contingent tax rate

6. The tax rate that determines the amount of tax that will be due on the next dollar of taxable income
earned is called the:

A. average tax rate.

B. variable tax rate.
C. marginal tax rate.
D. fixed tax rate.
E. ordinary tax rate.

7. Cash flow from assets is defined as:

A. the cash flow to shareholders minus the cash flow to creditors.

B. operating cash flow plus the cash flow to creditors plus the cash flow to shareholders.
C. operating cash flow minus the change in net working capital minus net capital spending.
D. operating cash flow plus net capital spending plus the change in net working capital.
E. cash flow to shareholders minus net capital spending plus the change in net working capital.

8. Operating cash flow is defined as:

A. a firm's net profit over a specified period of time.

B. the cash that a firm generates from its normal business activities.
C. a firm's operating margin.
D. the change in the net working capital over a stated period of time.
E. the cash that is generated and added to retained earnings.

9. Which one of the following has nearly the same meaning as free cash flow?

A. Net income
B. Cash flow from assets
C. Operating cash flow
D. Cash flow to shareholders
E. Addition to retained earnings

10. Cash flow to creditors is defined as:

A. interest paid minus net new borrowing.

B. interest paid plus net new borrowing.
C. operating cash flow minus net capital spending minus the change in net working capital.
D. dividends paid plus net new borrowing.
E. cash flow from assets plus net new equity.

11. Cash flow to stockholders is defined as:

A. cash flow from assets plus cash flow to creditors.

B. operating cash flow minus cash flow to creditors.
C. dividends paid plus the change in retained earnings.
D. dividends paid minus net new equity raised.
E. net income minus the addition to retained earnings.

12. Which one of the following is an intangible fixed asset?

A. Inventory
B. Machinery
C. Copyright
D. Account receivable
E. Building

13. Production equipment is classified as:

A. a net working capital item.

B. a current liability.
C. a current asset.
D. a tangible fixed asset.
E. an intangible fixed asset.

14. Net working capital includes:

A. a land purchase.
B. an invoice from a supplier.
C. non-cash expenses.
D. fixed asset depreciation.
E. the balance due on a 15-year mortgage.

15. Over the past year, a firm decreased its current assets and increased its current liabilities. As a result,
the firm's net working capital:

A. had to increase.
B. had to decrease.
C. remained constant.
D. could have either increased, decreased, or remained constant.
E. was unaffected as the changes occurred in the firm's current accounts.

16. Net working capital increases when:

A. fixed assets are purchased for cash.

B. inventory is purchased on credit.
C. inventory is sold at cost.
D. a credit customer pays for his or her purchase.
E. inventory is sold at a profit.

17. Shareholders' equity is equal to:

A. total assets plus total liabilities.
B. net fixed assets minus total liabilities.
C. net fixed assets minus long-term debt plus net working capital.
D. net working capital plus total assets.
E. total assets minus net working capital.

18. Paid-in surplus is classified as:

A. owners’ equity.
B. net working capital.
C. a current asset.
D. a cash expense.
E. long-term debt.

19. Shareholders’ equity is best defined as:

A. the residual value of a firm.

B. positive net working capital.
C. the net liquidity of a firm.
D. cash inflows minus cash outflows.
E. the cumulative profits of a firm over time.

20. All else held constant, the book value of owners’ equity will decrease when:

A. the market value of inventory increases.

B. dividends exceed net income for a period.
C. cash is used to pay an accounts payable.
D. a long-term debt is repaid.
E. taxable income increases.

21. Net working capital decreases when:

A. a new 3-year loan is obtained with the proceeds used to purchase inventory.
B. a credit customer pays his or her bill in full.
C. depreciation increases.
D. a long-term debt is used to finance a fixed asset purchase.
E. a dividend is paid to current shareholders.

22. A firm’s liquidity level decreases when:

A. inventory is purchased with cash.

B. inventory is sold on credit.
C. inventory is sold for cash.
D. an account receivable is collected.
E. proceeds from a long-term loan are received.
23. Highly liquid assets:

A. increase the probability a firm will face financial distress.

B. appear on the right side of a balance sheet.
C. generally produce a high rate of return.
D. can be sold quickly at close to full value.
E. include all intangible assets.

24. Financial leverage:

A. increases as the net working capital increases.

B. is equal to the market value of a firm divided by the firm's book value.
C. is inversely related to the level of debt.
D. is the ratio of a firm's revenues to its fixed expenses.
E. increases the potential return to the stockholders.

25. The market value:

A. of accounts receivable is generally higher than the book value of those receivables.
B. of an asset tends to provide a better guide to the actual worth of that asset than does the book
value.
C. of fixed assets will always exceed the book value of those assets.
D. of an asset is reflected in the balance sheet.
E. of an asset is lowered each year by the amount of depreciation expensed for that asset.

26. Which one of the following is included in the market value of a firm but not in the book value?

A. Raw materials
B. Partially built inventory
C. Long-term debt
D. Reputation of the firm
E. Value of a partially depreciated machine

27. The market value of a firm's fixed assets:

A. will always exceed the book value of those assets.

B. is more predictable than the book value of those assets.
C. in addition to the firm's net working capital reflects the true value of a firm.
D. is decreased annually by the depreciation expense.
E. is equal to the estimated current cash value of those assets.

28. Market values:

A. reflect expected selling prices given the current economic situation.

B. are affected by the accounting methods selected.
C. are equal to the initial cost minus the depreciation to date.
D. either remain constant or increase over time.
E. are equal to the greater of the initial cost or the current expected sales value.

29. Which one of the following statements concerning the balance sheet is correct?

A. Total assets equal total liabilities minus total equity.

B. Net working capital is equal total assets minus total liabilities.
C. Assets are listed in descending order of liquidity.
D. Current assets are equal to total assets minus net working capital.
E. Shareholders' equity is equal to net working capital minus net fixed assets plus long-term debt.

30. An income statement prepared according to GAAP:

A. reflects the net cash flows of a firm over a stated period of time.
B. reflects the financial position of a firm as of a particular date.
C. distinguishes variable costs from fixed costs.
D. records revenue when payment for a sale is received.
E. records expenses based on the matching principle.

31. Net income increases when:

A. fixed costs increase.

B. depreciation increases.
C. the average tax rate increases.
D. revenue increases.
E. dividends cease.

32. Based on the recognition principle, revenue is recorded on the financial statements when the:

I. payment is collected for the sale of a good or service.

II. earnings process is virtually complete.

III. value of a sale can be reliably determined.

IV. product is physically delivered to the buyer.

A. I and II only
B. I and IV only
C. II and III only
D. II and IV only
E. I and III only

33. Given a profitable firm, depreciation:

A. increases net income.

B. increases net fixed assets.
C. decreases net working capital.
D. lowers taxes.
E. has no effect on net income.

34. The recognition principle states that:

A. costs should be recorded on the income statement whenever those costs can be reliably
determined.
B. costs should be recorded when paid.
C. the costs of producing an item should be recorded when the sale of that item is recorded as
revenue.
D. sales should be recorded when the payment for that sale is received.
E. sales should be recorded when the earnings process is virtually completed and the value of the
sale can be determined.

35. The matching principle states that:

A. costs should be recorded on the income statement whenever those costs can be reliably
determined.
B. costs should be recorded when paid.
C. the costs of producing an item should be recorded when the sale of that item is recorded as
revenue.
D. sales should be recorded when the payment for that sale is received.
E. sales should be recorded when the earnings process is virtually completed and the value of the
sale can be determined.

36. Which one of these is correct?

A. Depreciation has no effect on taxes.

B. Interest paid is a noncash item.
C. Taxable income must be a positive value.
D. Net income is distributed either to dividends or retained earnings.
E. Taxable income equals net income × (1 + Average tax rate).

37. Firms that compile financial statements according to GAAP:

A. record income and expenses at the time they affect the firm's cash flows.
B. have no discretion over the timing of recording either revenue or expense items.
C. must record all expenses when incurred.
D. can still manipulate their earnings to some degree.
E. record both income and expenses as soon as the amount for each can be ascertained.

38. The concept of marginal taxation is best exemplified by which one of the following?

A. Kirby's paid $120,000 in taxes while its primary competitor paid only $80,000 in taxes.
B. Johnson's Retreat paid only $45,000 on total revenue of $570,000 last year.
C. Mitchell's Grocer increased its sales by $52,000 last year and had to pay an additional $16,000 in
taxes.
D. Burlington Centre paid no taxes last year due to carryforward losses.
E. The Blue Moon paid $2.20 in taxes for every $10 of revenue last year.

39. The corporate tax structure in the U.S. is based on a:

A. maximum tax rate of 38 percent.

B. minimum tax rate of 10 percent.
C. flat rate of 34 percent for the highest income earners.
D. flat-rate tax.
E. modified flat-rate tax.

40. Which one of the following will increase the cash flow from assets for a tax-paying firm, all else
constant?

A. An increase in net capital spending

B. A decrease in the cash flow to creditors
C. An increase in depreciation
D. An increase in the change in net working capital
E. A decrease in dividends paid

41. A negative cash flow to stockholders indicates a firm:

A. had a net loss for the year.

B. had a positive cash flow to creditors.
C. paid dividends that exceeded the amount of the net new equity.
D. repurchased more shares than it sold.
E. received more from selling stock than it paid out to shareholders.

42. If a firm has a negative cash flow from assets every year for several years, the firm:

A. may be continually increasing in size.

B. must also have a negative cash flow from operations each year.
C. is operating at a high level of efficiency.
D. is repaying debt every year.
E. has annual net losses.

43. An increase in which one of the following will increase operating cash flow for a profitable, tax-paying
firm?

A. Fixed expenses
B. Marginal tax rate
C. Net capital spending
D. Inventory
E. Depreciation
44. Tressler Industries opted to repurchase 5,000 shares of stock last year in lieu of paying a dividend. The
cash flow statement for last year must have which one of the following assuming that no new shares were
issued?

A. Positive operating cash flow

B. Negative cash flow from assets
C. Positive net income
D. Negative operating cash flow
E. Positive cash flow to stockholders

45. Net capital spending is equal to:

A. ending net fixed assets minus beginning net fixed assets plus depreciation.
B. beginning net fixed assets minus ending net fixed assets plus depreciation.
C. ending net fixed assets minus beginning net fixed assets minus depreciation.
D. ending total assets minus beginning total assets plus depreciation.
E. ending total assets minus beginning total assets minus depreciation.

46. What is the maximum average tax rate for corporations?

A. 38 percent
B. 25 percent
C. 33 percent
D. 39 percent
E. 35 percent

47. Which one of the following changes during a year will increase cash flow from assets but not affect the
operating cash flow?

A. Increase in depreciation
B. Increase in accounts receivable
C. Increase in accounts payable
D. Decrease in cost of goods sold
E. Increase in sales

48. Cash flow to creditors increases when:

A. interest rates on debt decline.

B. accounts payables decrease.
C. long-term debt is repaid.
D. current liabilities are repaid.
E. new long-term loans are acquired.

49. Which one of the following indicates that a firm has generated sufficient internal cash flow to finance its
entire operations for the period?

A. Positive operating cash flow

B. Negative cash flow to creditors
C. Positive cash flow to stockholders
D. Negative net capital spending
E. Positive cash flow from assets

50. Wes Motors has total assets of $98,300, net working capital of $11,300, owners' equity of $41,600, and
long-term debt of $38,600. What is the value of the current assets?

A. $21,600
B. $18,100
C. $28,900
D. $29,400
E. $6,800

51. ANC Plastics has net working capital of $15,400, current assets of $39,200, equity of $46,600, and
long-term debt of $22,100. What is the amount of the net fixed assets?

A. $50,800
B. $56,900
C. $45,500
D. $48,100
E. $53,300

52. Rooster’s currently has $5,200 in cash. The company owes $31,700 to suppliers for merchandise and
$41,500 to the bank for a long-term loan. Customers owe the company $26,400 for their purchases. The
inventory has a book value of $53,300 and an estimated market value of $56,500. If the store compiled a
balance sheet as of today, what would be the book value of the current assets?

A. $46,800
B. $55,600
C. $64,700
D. $84,900
E. $96,500

53. Donut Delite has total assets of $31,300, long-term debt of $8,600, net fixed assets of $19,300, and
owners' equity of $21,100. What is the value of the net working capital?

A. $9,800
B. $10,400
C. $18,900
D. $21,300
E. $23,200

54. W. S. Movers had $138,600 in net fixed assets at the beginning of the year. During the year, the
company purchased $27,400 in new equipment. It also sold, at a price of $5,300, some old equipment that
had a book value of $2,100. The depreciation expense for the year was $6,700. What is the net fixed asset
balance at the end of the year?

A. $146,900
B. $159,300
C. $163,900
D. $157,200
E. $148,400

55. Plenti-Good Foods has ending net fixed assets of $98,700 and beginning net fixed assets of $84,900.
During the year, the firm sold assets with a total book value of $13,200 and also recorded $9,800 in
depreciation expense. How much did the company spend to buy new fixed assets?
A. -$23,900
B. $9,200
C. $36,800
D. $40,700
E. $37,400

56. The Green Carpet has current liabilities of $72,100 and accounts receivable of $107,800. The firm has
total assets of $443,500 and net fixed assets of $323,700. The owners' equity has a book value of
$191,400. What is the amount of the net working capital?

A. $50,100
B. $47,700
C. $6,500
D. -$18,800
E. -$29,700

57. Dockside Warehouse has net working capital of $42,400, total assets of $519,300, and net fixed assets
of $380,200. What is the value of the current liabilities?

A. $61,700
B. $88,40000
C. $102,900
D. $96,700
E. $111,500

58. Blythe Industries reports the following account balances: inventory of $417,600, equipment of
$2,028,300, accounts payable of $224,700, cash of $51,900, and accounts receivable of $313,900. What is
the amount of the current assets?

A. $46,700
B. $56,000
C. $783,400
D. $975,000
E. $699,700

59. Donner United has total owners' equity of $18,800. The firm has current assets of $23,100, current
liabilities of $12,200, and total assets of $36,400. What is the value of the long-term debt?

A. $5,400
B. $12,500
C. $13,700
D. $29,800
E. $43,000

60. Cornerstone Markets has beginning long-term debt of $64,500, which is the principal balance of a loan
payable to Centre Bank. During the year, the company paid a total of $16,300 to the bank, including $4,100
of interest. The company also borrowed $11,000. What is the value of the ending long-term debt?

A. $45,100
B. $53,300
C. $58,200
D. $63,300
E. $85,900

61. The Toy Store has beginning retained earnings of $318,423. For the year, the company earned net
income of $11,318 and paid dividends of $7,500. The company also issued $25,000 worth of new stock.
What is the value of the retained earnings account at the end of the year?

A. $320,445
B. $322,695
C. $327,375
D. $322,241
E. $335,255

62. Leslie Printing has net income of $26,310 for the year. At the beginning of the year, the firm had
common stock of $55,000, paid-in surplus of $11,200, and retained earnings of $48,420. At the end of the
year, the firm had total equity of $142,430. The firm paid dividends of $32,500. What is the amount of the
net new equity raised during the year?

A. $34,000
B. $42,500
C. $25,000
D. $21,500
E. $0

63. The Embroidery Shoppe had beginning retained earnings of $18,670. During the year, the company
reported sales of $83,490, costs of $68,407, depreciation of $8,200, dividends of $950, and interest paid of
$478. The tax rate is 34 percent. What is the retained earnings balance at the end of the year?

A. $21,947.30
B. $22,193.95
C. $22,233.24
D. $23,783.24
E. $21,883.25

64. Bleu Berri Farms had equity of $58,900 at the beginning of the year. During the year, the company
earned net income of $8,200 and paid $2,500 in dividends. Also during the year, the company repurchased
$3,500 of stock from one of its shareholders. What is the value of the owners' equity at year end?

A. $61,100
B. $67,600
C. $64,900
D. $64,400
E. $68,100

65. Gino's Winery has net working capital of $29,800, net fixed assets of $64,800, current liabilities of
$34,700, and long-term debt of $23,000. What is the value of the owners' equity?

A. $36,900
B. $66,700
C. $71,600
D. $89,400
E. $106,300

66. Pier Imports has cash of $41,100 and accounts receivable of $54,200, all of which is expected to be
collected. The inventory cost $82,300 and can be sold today for $116,500. The fixed assets were
purchased at a total cost of $234,500 of which $118,900 has been depreciated. The fixed assets can be
sold today for $138,000. What is the total book value of the firm's assets?

A. $327,800
B. $293,200
C. $346,800
D. $412,100
E. $415,600

67. Lester's Fried Chick'n purchased its building 11 years ago at a cost of $189,000. The building is
currently valued at $209,000. The firm has other fixed assets that cost $56,000 and are currently valued at
$32,000. To date, the firm has recorded a total of $49,000 in depreciation on the various assets it currently
owns. Current liabilities are $36,600 and net working capital is $18,400. What is the total book value of the
firm's assets?

A. $251,000
B. $241,000
C. $232,600
D. $214,400
E. $379,000

68. Lew’s Auto Repair has cash of $18,600, accounts receivable of $34,500, accounts payable of $28,900,
inventory of $97,800, long-term debt of $142,000, and net fixed assets of $363,800. The firm estimates that
if it wanted to cease operations today it could sell the inventory for $85,000 and the fixed assets for
$349,000. The firm could collect 100 percent of its receivables as they are secured. What is the market
value of the firm’s assets?

A. $332,800
B. $458,200
C. $374,200
D. $495,500
E. $487,100

69. Marcie’s has sales of $179,600,depreciation of $14,900, costs of goods sold of $138,200, and other
costs of $28,400. The tax rate is 35 percent. What is the net income?

A. -$1,235
B. $382
C. $1,204
D. $14,660
E. $13,665

70. AV Sales has net revenue of $513,000 and costs of $406,800. The depreciation expense is
$43,800,interest paid is $11,200, and dividends for the year are $4,500. The tax rate is 33 percent. What is
the addition to retained earnings?

A. $38,804
B. $34,304
C. $28,120
D. $29,804
E. $30,450

71. Last year, The Pizza Joint added $6,230 to retained earnings from sales of $104,650. The company
had costs of $87,300, dividends of $2,500, and interest paid of $1,620. Given a tax rate of 34 percent, what
was the amount of the depreciation expense?

A. $2,407
B. $1,908
C. $2,503
D. $3,102
E. $3,414

72. Holly Farms has sales of $509,600, costs of $448,150, depreciation expense of $36,100, and interest
paid of $12,400. The tax rate is 28 percent. How much net income did the firm earn for the period?

A. $7,778
B. $9,324
C. $10,380
D. $8,671
E. $5,886
73. For the year, Movers United has net income of $31,800, net new equity of $7,500, and an addition to
retained earnings of $24,200. What is the amount of the dividends paid?

A. $100
B. $7,500
C. $7,600
D. $15,100
E. $16,700

74. MNM & Co incurred depreciation expenses of $36,810 last year. The sales were $903,480 and the
addition to retained earnings was $11,530. The firm paid interest of $7,711 and dividends of $7,500. The
tax rate was 33 percent. What was the amount of the costs incurred by the company?

A. $822,845
B. $689,407
C. $742,306
D. $830,556
E. $780,400

75. For the year, Uptowne Furniture had sales of $818,790, costs of $748,330, and interest paid of
$24,450. The depreciation expense was $56,100 and the tax rate was 34 percent. At the beginning of the
year, the firm had retained earnings of $172,270 and common stock of $260,000. At the end of the year,
retained earnings was $158,713 and common stock was $280,000. Any tax losses can be used. What is
the amount of the dividends paid for the year?

A. $5,266
B. $6,466
C. $7,566
D. $7,066
E. $6,898

76. Neiger Flours owes $16,929 in taxes on taxable income of $61,509. If the firm earns $100 more in
income, it will owe an additional $48 in taxes. What is the average tax rate on income of $61,609?

A. 28.00 percent
B. 30.33 percent
C. 33.33 percent
D. 35.00 percent
E. 27.56 percent

77. Rusty Antiques has a marginal tax rate of 39percent and an average tax rate of 26.9 percent. If the firm
owes $37,265 in taxes, how much taxable income did it earn?

A. $137,098
B. $136,800
C. $138,532
D. $139,957
E. $137,750

78. Red’s Tractors owes $52,311 in taxes on a taxable income of $608,606. The company has determined
that it will owe $56,211 in tax if its taxable income rises to $620,424. What is the marginal tax rate at this
level of income?

A. 39 percent
B. 38 percent
C. 35 percent
D. 34 percent
E. 33 percent
79. Use the following tax table to answer this question:

BT Trucking has taxable income of $617,429. How much does it owe in taxes?

A. $96,025.86
B. $240,797.31
C. $118,542.79
D. $209,925.86
E. $201,354.82

80. Use the following tax table to answer this question:

Comfy Inn earned $218,310 in taxable income for the year. How much tax does the company owe?

A. $86,311.20
B. $85,140.90
C. $68,390.90
D. $69,998.20
E. $65,240.10

81. The Plaza Cafe has an operating cash flow of $83,770, depreciation expense of $43,514, and taxes
paid of $21,590. A partial listing of its balance sheet accounts is as follows:

What is the amount of the cash flow from assets?

A. $26,359
B. $47,949
C. $61,487
D. $43,909
E. $35,953

82. National Importers paid $38,600 in dividends and $24,615 in interest over the past year while net
working capital increased from $15,506 to $17,411. The company purchased $38,700 in net new fixed
assets and had depreciation expenses of $14,784. During the year, the firm issued $20,000 in net new
equity and paid off $23,800 in long-term debt. What is the amount of the cash flow from assets?

A. $21,811
B. $41,194
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
Dockwrath’s shrewdness tells him that his cue is only to begin with piquing
Mason’s curiosity and emphasising by a significant reserve the imputations
against his stepmother. At last, he sees reason to fear he may be irritating
and offending rather than interesting the squire of Groby by his prolix
exordium. He therefore concentrates all his damning suggestions into the
one word, forgery. Even this only elicits from Joseph Mason the remark: “I
always felt sure my father never intended to sign such a codicil as that.”
The question about the line of action to be now taken is the more difficult
because the children of Sir Joseph Mason’s first marriage have already
disputed the will with the result that a Court of Justice has given its award
in Lady Mason’s favour. Before deciding on further litigation, Joseph
Mason must consult his men of business in London. Meanwhile, what is
likely to be said by the undoubted witnesses to the will and the alleged
witnesses to the codicil—did they or did they not upon the same day attest
the signatures to separate documents?
When the conference arranged between Mason and Dockwrath takes
place, Bridget Bolster, who is known to have been a witness to the Will, and
alleged to have witnessed also a codicil, in an interview with Messrs.
Round and Crook has most positively declared her certainty that she never
attested more than one document on the same day. Still, Messrs. Round and
Crook are against prosecuting Lady Mason. Joseph Mason’s emphatic
rejoinder, “I will never drop the prosecution,” encourages for a moment
Dockwrath’s hope of getting the business. On that point Mason is as
obstinate as on the other. The case, therefore, goes forward under the
London attorney’s management. Trollope justly prided himself on the
accuracy with which, thanks to the experts he consulted, are presented the
legal details in the trial and in all the business connected with it. The entire
episode is, like the characters that figure in it, a piece of skilfully contrived
realism. The Old Bailey barrister, Chaffanbrass, who rises to his work so
meekly, smiling gently while he fidgets about with his papers as though he
were not at first quite master of the situation; Sir Richard Leatherham, the
Solicitor-General and the leading counsel for the prosecution, are none of
them full-length sketches from life. Each is a composite of many originals.
Nor is there a single member of the group who does not recall, by some
trick of manner, of voice, or by some other distinctive peculiarity, the
qualities of advocates well known in the era during which Cairns,
Coleridge, and Ballantine were in the full flush of their forensic fame.
 Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, notoriously found his model for
Darnay’s counsel, Stryver, in Edwin James. Of James I can recall Trollope’s
remark: “I had scarcely ever seen him, out of court or in it, but I have been
told he had Chaffanbrass’s habit of constantly arranging and re-arranging
his wig, and of sometimes, for effect, dropping his voice so low that it could
scarcely be heard.” The other court scenes form a little series of artistically
disposed photographs. More skilful even than these clever descriptions is
the manner in which a few simple and well-chosen words, remarkable for
their power, less of expression than suggestion, bring Lady Mason’s
anguish and agony home to the reader as vividly as could be done by any
minute and harrowing details of her countenance and carriage. Even so, the
suspense caused by these Acts in the drama called for mitigation by
Trollope’s favourite device of entertaining interlude. The by-play of the
under-plot now introduced shows throughout the true mastery of his art here
reached by Trollope.
Lady Mason’s good looks, noble bearing, and painful position, have
deeply interested her leading counsel, Furnival, her acquaintance in society
long before he became her advocate in Court. Hence, the one deviation
from exact verisimilitude in this part of the book. The commencement of
the proceedings finds Lady Mason without a solicitor of her own, and
anxious above all things to dispense with one. After the service of the writ
upon her, she consults her admiring neighbour, the chivalrous Sir Peregrine
Orme, who naturally pronounces the solicitor a necessary evil. To that, her
objection still remains. Assured that she has a warm friend in Furnival, a
barrister of high repute, she visits him at his chambers, Old Square,
Lincoln’s Inn. On his advice she places her affairs in the hands of a solicitor
he recommends, Solomon Aram, as the cleverest criminal solicitor known
to Furnival. Meanwhile, the presence at her husband’s business rooms of so
attractive a client excites Mrs. Furnival’s suspicions in such a degree that a
series of domestic scenes is only closed by the lady leaving the family roof
in Harley Street. The immediate sequel is given with Trollope’s happiest
humour. The housekeeper predicts misery for the barrister if his wife
remains inexorable, but is at once told by the butler that their master would
live twice as jolly without her, and that it would only be “the first rumpus of
the thing.” Is it not, reflectively asks the novelist, the fear of the “first
rumpus” which keeps together many a couple. Even the special and
manifest pains taken with them do not, as Trollope himself felt, entirely
redeem the trial chapter from the charge of anti-climax.
The already-mentioned Sir Peregrine Orme belongs to the class of
county preux chevaliers, of which one situation in a later novel—Phineas
Finn—displays for a moment the Duke of Omnium as another specimen.
The trial had been fixed, but not begun, when Lady Mason finds herself
at the house of the baronet whom she had first known years ago as a county
neighbour, and one of her husband’s colleagues at the Quarter Sessions.
More recently, the widow of Orley Farm and the daughter-in-law of the
baronet who resides at The Cleeve have become close friends. Still fair, tall,
graceful, and comely, Lady Mason retains enough of her original beauty to
have won this fine old gentleman’s heart. To his daughter-in-law he
confides his intention of offering the widow his hand. For that purpose the
call at The Cleeve has been arranged. To stand by her throughout the
approaching ordeal, to defend her against the tongues of wicked men and
against her own weakness, is the duty that the widow’s mature and knightly
lover would now perform. All this is said while he gently strokes the silken
hair of the lady who, having sunk to the ground, is kneeling at his feet. The
agonised recipient of the old man’s chivalrous proposal mingles, with her
murmured reply, some words deprecating the shame and trouble she might
bring upon him and his. The offer, however, is not rejected, and the
conversation ends by Lady Mason becoming Sir Peregrine Orme’s bride-
elect. The next meeting between the pair is of a very different kind. Not that
even this opens with any approach to self-incrimination on the lady’s part.
Greetings, however, had been scarcely exchanged when she shows her
desire to break off the engagement. “If,” pleads Sir Peregrine, “we were to
be separated now, the world would say I had thought you guilty of this
crime.” After this, no more of the sweet smiles, which have been so much
admired, play over Lady Mason’s face. “Sir Peregrine,” she says, “I am
guilty, guilty of all this with which they charge me.” That admission seals,
of course, Lady Mason’s social fate, and withdraws her from any active part
in the rest of the narrative. What remains, however, is saved from the
reproach of mere supplementary padding by the really surprising skill and
resourcefulness in which the rest of the story abounds. All that concerns
Lady Mason herself has been, and remains to the end, of a uniformly
depressing hue. But among the junior counsel for the defence is a young
barrister, Felix Graham, enamoured of a judge’s daughter, Madeline
Staveley. This young lady is much after the pattern of Trollope’s earlier
heroines; while her lover prefigures a youthful variety of the sort to be met
with in one, at least, of his later stories, but with more originality of
character and view than had so far been shown by most of his young men.
The clearness and freshness of Felix Graham’s portrait stand out the more
boldly by reason of the complete contrast to him forthcoming in Madeline
Staveley’s other lover, old Sir Peregrine Orme’s grandson. In all moral and
social qualities, he worthily reproduces the old baronet’s character, but
reflects too truly the conventional young country squire to present the union
between intellectual gifts and high principles forthcoming in his rival, the
young barrister.
This is only one among several passages that by expedience, which
might be described as Trollope’s speciality, sustain the novel’s interest to
the end. “None but himself can be his parallel.” And really the dexterity
with which Trollope winds up the characters and incidents of Can You
Forgive Her? suggests a comparison with his equestrian perseverance in the
hunting field. That quality records itself in Phineas Finn’s management of
Lord Chiltern’s Bonebreaker. For a minute or two the horse has got
manifestly out of control; the spectators think it is infallibly heading and
leading its rider to irrecoverable grief, when the Irish Nimrod suddenly, not
less than surely, recovering himself, regains authority over the beast, and
sends him and his rider straight as a die over the brook with those
impracticable sides. When riding among the first flight, side by side with
Sir Evelyn Wood or Mr. E. N. Buxton, after the Essex, or with Mr. H.
Petre’s staghounds, Trollope, we have seen, like others, sometimes found
himself at the bottom of a Roothing ditch, only in a twinkling to pull
himself together, reappear in the open, regain his saddle, and finish in the
field that saw the end of the chase. The adroitness of the horseman, Phineas
Finn, displayed by the novelist of Orley Farm, prevented what in less
skilful hands would have been the evaporation of the story’s interest after
the tragic dénoûment of Peregrine Orme’s courtship. But, by this time, the
bluff, artless sportsman, which was all that many of his country neighbours
and some of his London acquaintances saw in Trollope, had mastered every
portion of the novelist’s technique as thoroughly as he had long since done
all departments of Post Office business. To the spectators, Trollope’s Irish
Nimrod on Lord Chiltern’s Bonebreaker may have seemed doomed to
mishap, but without, thanks to his skill and coolness, having been in actual
peril. So with Trollope in Orley Farm. The apparently inevitable dullness of
reaction from painfully exciting incidents threatened, as many a reader
thought, to spoil a first-rate novel’s close. These had not estimated at its true
value the author’s rare resourcefulness in his art.
Other fortunes than those of Madeline Staveley and her two lovers have
to be advanced a stage. The finishing touches have not, so far, been given to
Lady Mason’s loyal friend of her own sex, Sir Peregrine’s daughter-in-law.
In person, if not altogether in experience, Mrs. Orme presents a picturesque
contrast to her unhappy friend. Lady Mason, tall and stately, makes the
journey every day to the Court in one of The Cleeve carriages. Seated by
her side is Mrs. Orme, small in size, delicate in limb, with soft, blue
wondering eyes and a dimpled cheek. Apart from the present calamity, a
past sorrow has forged a sympathetic link between the two. The châtelaine
of The Cleeve has suffered a blow only less terrible than that which has
crushed her companion. After a year of happy wedlock, her husband, Sir
Peregrine’s only child, the pride of all who knew him, the hope of his
political party in the county, had fallen one day from his horse, and was
brought home to The Cleeve a corpse. The delicacy and strength of genuine
pathos make themselves felt throughout every page describing the
intercourse between these two ladies, after Mrs. Orme knows her friend’s
guilt, before or during the trial itself. Nor, even here, is it all untempered
melancholy. The character sketches thrown off in a few sentences people
the scene with figures all entertainingly appropriate to the judicial drama
like that now begun. The witness, Bridget Bolster, we see preparing for
action, with the perfect understanding of her claim to be well fed when
brought out for work in her country’s service, to have everything she
wanted to eat and drink at places of public entertainment, and then to have
the bills paid behind her back. “Something to your tea” is the promise she
has received from Dockwrath, interpreted by Moulder as a steak, by
Dockwrath himself as ham and eggs, and by Bridget, as an amendment, as
kidneys. Close upon the bold witness, Bridget, comes the timid witness,
Kenneby, whose utmost hope and prayer are that he may leave the box
without swearing to a lie, who replies to Dockwrath’s suggestion of
refreshment: “It is nothing to me; I have no appetite; I think I’ll take a little
brandy and water.” By way of moral sustenance to the nervous Kenneby,
Moulder relates a legal reminiscence of his youth: It was at Nottingham;
there had been some sugars delivered, and the rats had got at it. “I’m
blessed if they didn’t ask me backwards and forwards so often that I forgot
whether they was seconds or thirds, though I had sold the goods myself.
And then the lawyer said he’d have me prosecuted for perjury.” Mr.
Moulder himself fancies something hot, toasted and buttered, to his tea,
openly asserting, while refreshing himself, that Lady Mason has no better
chance of escape than—“than that bit of muffin has,” with which words the
savoury morsel in question disappeared from the fingers of the commercial
traveller into his throat.
To turn from the doings of Trollope’s personæ to those of Trollope,
himself. Before finishing Orley Farm he had arranged a trip across the
Atlantic, which, as usual, was to combine industry with amusement. The
first thing, therefore, had been to obtain a commission from his publishers,
Chapman and Hall, for a book about his journey and experiences. The
settlement of that business, on his own terms, was effected without a hitch.
The other preliminary, involving a reference to his Post Office superiors,
threatened recrudescence of the immemorial and inveterate feud with
Rowland Hill, now the Post Office Secretary. Nine months leave of absence
formed the application made by the surveyor of the eastern counties to the
Postmaster-General, then Lord Stanley of Alderley, direct instead of
through the active head of the department, his enemy Hill. “Is it,” rejoined
the Minister, with a look of bland cynicism as he eyed Trollope’s
particularly vigorous form and country squire’s face, “on the plea of ill-
health?” “No,” came the answer, “I want a holiday, and to write a book
about it, and I think, my lord, my many years labour in the public service
have earned it for me.” The forms on which the leave was granted were, at
Hill’s instance, that it should be considered a full equivalent for any special
services rendered by the surveyor to the department. To that condition,
suggested, as he knew it had been, by the Post Office Secretary, Trollope
demurred. It was therefore withdrawn at the Postmaster-General’s order.
Anthony Trollope’s first sojourn on the other side of the Atlantic began
in the August of 1861, and lasted to the May of the following year. The
occurrences between these dates included the earlier battles of the American
Civil War, and to some extent decided his route. Travelling for recreation
and rest as well as profit, he purposely avoided the dangers and discomforts
of the seceding states, but, even thus, frequently found himself in the direct
line of fire. For the time he allowed himself, he went too far and too fast.
An atmosphere loaded with the din and smoke of conflicting armies did not
promote the calm and close study of the nation’s social or political life and
institutions. These, however, were surprisingly little interrupted by the
conflict. The comparative regularity with which the routine of peace in the
forum, in the Law Courts, in the State Assemblage, and beneath the private
roof, preserved their continuity practically undisturbed by the shocks and
convulsions of war, may have struck other English travellers at the time. By
Trollope they were brought to bear with a force and freshness that imparted
special interest and value to the book on North America, begun by him after
his accustomed fashion, in the midst of his transatlantic travels, and carried
some way towards completion before he had returned to England.
The work suffers from its author’s laborious attempts to impress the
reader with a sense of its variety and fullness. It is neither a record of travel
nor history; Trollope, had he taken more time about it, would have seen the
mistake of trying to make it both. His impressions of the country are
wanting less in animation and accuracy than in literary methods and logical
arrangement of ideas. Before landing from his outward voyage he had
persuaded himself that the final victory would rest with the North. This
belief had not been shaken by the news of the Confederate success at Bull
Run (July 21, 1861); which had created among all sections of English
society, and elicited from the English Press, much of the exultant
enthusiasm for the Secessionists, of whom Gladstone himself said that
Jefferson Davis had called into existence a new nation. “Nothing,” were
Trollope’s words to the present writer, “impressed me more during this
troublous time than the immensity of the strength in reserve at the Union’s
command. Moreover,” he added, “I was kept well abreast with the latest
political news from Europe.” The Southerners’ only chance, as none knew
better than themselves, or rather, than their leading spirits, had always been
European intervention on their behalf. Napoleon III might have moved in
that direction, had Palmerston given the signal, but no one really doubted
either that France had resolved to follow the English lead or that England,
whatever her irresponsible personal sympathies here and there, would take
no real part in the quarrel. One international incident belonging to the
struggle first became known to Trollope when dining at the White House,
November 1861. The Federal seizure of the Southern agents, Mason and
Slidell, on board the British West Indian mail steamer, had caused the
diplomatic crisis that made their Washington post first acquaint Trollope
and his other guests with the possible necessity of all English subjects at
short notice leaving the States.
Exactly a generation before her third son’s visit to the New World,
Trollope’s mother was thought, by her son, to have wounded the national
susceptibilities in her Domestic Manners of the Americans. As a fact, except
in Ohio, that book did not attract as much attention, even at the time of its
publication (1832), as Anthony Trollope himself believed. It had been quite
forgotten by, or rather had never been known to the generation that had
welcomed her son as its guest. Indeed, by 1861-2 Dickens had long since
received plenary forgiveness for offences in Martin Chuzzlewit and the
American Notes much more serious than those of Mrs. Trollope. Nor did
Anthony Trollope’s on the whole complimentary estimate of his American
hosts, in his own forthcoming book, however pleasantly received at the
moment, live much longer in the popular remembrance than his mother’s
rather thin satire. Already the novels which had won him popularity in
England were favourites in the United States. Then, as to-day, what the
American public valued from him was the qualities which had endeared to
the whole of the Anglo-Saxon race his Barchester books.
Trollope’s subsequent visits to the States may have left some mark on his
writings, and have given him an occasional suggestion for stories like The
American Senator, but had no influence upon the place filled by him in the
New World as in the Old. On both sides of the Atlantic, the amiable motive
of his North America was recognised, but its warmest welcome was not
found in the land that it described. A subsequent chapter will contain
specific facts and figures enabling the reader to form an accurate idea of
Trollope’s progress to popularity with the United States Republic.
Meanwhile we return to the novelist’s new departure in fiction, opened to
some extent in Orley Farm, but beginning more decidedly with Can You
Forgive Her?
 CHAPTER XI

AUTHOR, ARTIST, AND THEIR FEMININE SUBJECTS

 Trollope and Millais succeed in their different spheres of life by
working on similar principles—The ideas which led Trollope to
write Can You Forgive Her?—Lady Macleod’s praises induce the
heroine to dismiss John Grey while Kate Vavasor’s devices draw her
to her cousin George—Alice’s spiritual and social surroundings take
a great part in moulding her character—Mrs. Greenow’s love affairs
relieve the shadow of the main plot—Burgo Fitzgerald tries to
recapture Lady Glencora—Mr. Palliser sacrifices his political
position to ensure her safety—He is rewarded at last—Other novels,
both social and political.

D URING the years in which Trollope’s industry and fame both reached
their height, J. E. Millais and Sir Henry James, afterwards Lord James
of Hereford, were among the friends of whom he saw most, and who
knew him best. About the former’s hospitalities something will be said
presently. As regards his connection with the latter, Millais in my hearing
once attributed his rare success as an illustrator of Trollope’s novels to the
writer and the artist both setting about their different work in the same way.
“As it proceeds,” he added, “each creative or inventive stroke is inspired
and stimulated or corrected as the case may be, by mental reference to the
unseen models of memory.” This was Millais’ way of putting it. Trollope’s
own words on the subject were, “A right judgment in selection of personal
traits or physical features will ensure life likeness in representation. Horace,
as Englished by Conington, talks of ‘searching for wreaths the olive’s rifled
bower.’ The art practised by Millais and myself is the effective combination
of the details, which observation has collected for us from every quarter,
and their fusion into an harmonious unity.”
Politics and sport colour and dominate a large proportion of the novels
belonging to the Can You Forgive Her? period. For the personal studies
those works implied, author and artist alike found all they wanted during
their summer visits to Millais’ Highland home, or in the autumn at the Kent
or Wiltshire shooting-box of Henry James. Here they collected
representatives of the polite world in all its aspects of pleasure or business,
from the heir apparent to the latest Junior Lord of the Admiralty and the
most recent importation in the way of popular sportsmen or reigning
beauties from the other side of the Atlantic.
 Later on, Trollope occasionally induced Millais to witness the hounds
throw off in those East Anglian pastures where he had placed the Roebury
Club’s headquarters, to which the author of Can You Forgive Her? had
wished personally to introduce his illustrator. The similarity of Millais’ and
Trollope’s methods now considered will be best understood from a concrete
instance. Of the artist’s academy paintings in 1887, one was reproduced as a
coloured supplement to The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News by the
name of “Portia.” Without being exactly a portrait, the painting, like the
coloured engraving after it, recalled to every one a well-known man’s pretty
daughter who had then just come out. This young lady, indeed, had never
sat to the artist; but she had given him unconsciously the central idea for his
work, into which, during its progress, he introduced features or touches,
whose suggestion came to him from other faces.
So was it exactly with the creations of Trollope’s pen in their
companionship with those of Millais’ pencil. The literary period which,
actually opening with Orley Farm, produced nothing so significant of
Trollope’s advance in his craft and in his views of feminine character, as
Can You Forgive Her? This was published in 1864. Much of it, however,
had been written some years previously, even so far back as when the
stories that first established him in favour with every class were the great
attraction of The Cornhill. We have already seen how many manor houses
and parsonages disputed with each other in the alleged possession of the
originals from whom the novelist had drawn Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, and
their belongings. Trollope’s creative power reached its height as he
approached early middle age. His Post Office rounds, throughout the whole
country south of the Trent, had acquainted him first-hand with every phase
of womanhood, from sweet seventeen to full-blown and flirting forty. Were
some readers beginning to talk about a satiety of bread and butter misses?
Orley Farm had at least reminded such critics of its author’s capacity to be
something more than the prose laureate of virginal varieties like those to be
met with in every English village during the sixties beneath the manor or
the parsonage roof. Can You Forgive Her? realised the higher expectations
first raised by Orley Farm as to the literary results that might be produced
by the bolder conceptions of the sex, the broader and deeper outlook upon
the tragi-comedy of daily life that Trollope had begun to exhibit.
The Barchester series had been comedy narrative, pure and simple. The
later stories with which we are now concerned belong more or less to
melodrama. This progress of the novelist’s development possesses an
interest biographical not less than literary. Not only were Trollope’s
intellectual gifts largely inherited from his mother; to her also he was
indebted for the circumstances that supplied them with the material on
which they exercised themselves, as well as the experiences that gave them
colour and discipline. Thus Archdeacon Grantly was his maternal
grandfather, the Rev. William Milton, suave in manner, nice in person,
always doing his duty according to his lights, a former Fellow of New
College, vicar of Heckfield. As his youthful guest, the author of Barchester
Towers had been introduced to clerical life on its social side, and had
observed the personal germs that afterwards grew into the Warden, Mr.
Harding, and Dean Arabin. Much also of his earliest interest in feminine
character he owed to his generally affectionate reminiscences of his mother
—her sustained courage in domestic adversity, her cheery helpfulness to all
around her, and the reserve fund of strength and resourcefulness, which
never failed her for each fresh trial, as it came.
Trollope’s time in Ireland was the making of him, not only as a public
servant and writer, but as a social student. His boyhood in Harrow Weald
had familiarised him with the Orley Farm of his story, and with elements of
his characters in it. But, at the same time that his experiences on the other
side of the St. George’s Channel were shaping themselves in Castle
Richmond, they were preparing him to people with suitable figures the
pages not more of Orley Farm than Can You Forgive Her? Before Trollope
was despatched from St. Martin’s-le-Grand on duty to Ireland, he knew,
naturally enough, very little of men, women, and horses. In the second, at
least, of those subjects, he had acquired proficiency at the date of his final
return to England. His estimate of the sex, based on an extensive and
careful generalisation, used to come out in conversational fragments which
may now be pieced together. Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton, here for once in
agreement, and both, perhaps unconsciously, under the Byronic influence,
might have professed a doubt whether women as a class could be
considered reasonable creatures, in the same sense as men. Trollope never
went so far as this. He did, however, admit that their ruling passion, a love
of power, habitually neutralised the tact imputed to them as an instinct, and
might obscure their intellectual perceptions, and impair their common
sense. “Hence,” he would add, “the inquisitorial officiousness which makes
my Mrs. Proudie not in the least a caricature, but, stripped of her Episcopal
surroundings, the commonplace of most English households.”
Throughout the whole period of his literary activity, Trollope was a
diligent reader of history, finding in its revelations of human character the
best supplements to his own studies from life, as well as the most fruitful
hints for the creation of the leading ladies in his own romance. He never
pursued these historical studies more diligently, or with more definite result,
than while engaged on the preparation of Can You Forgive Her? They had
brought him to the conclusion that in love affairs women are generally
without discrimination. “If,” he said, “of royal rank, they almost invariably
choose their favourites ill. Thus Elizabeth of England, Catherine II of
Russia, Queen Christina of Spain, and her daughter Isabella had the pick of
great, brave, wise, and witty men. So far from turning their opportunities to
profit, they all took dunderheads for their rulers.” How wide, therefore, the
mark was that paradoxical pundit who declared it better for a country to
have a king than a queen as its nominal head, because a king always
became the creature of women, while a queen had to put herself in the
hands of men. To make the same true, we must assume that queens always
chose their lovers well, which, being women, as a fact they seldom do.
The origin and cause of women’s troubles in nine cases out of ten are
their constitutional indisposition to compromise, whose necessity they
ought to have learnt, if not in the experience of life generally, yet from the
special example of the politicians to whom they invariably incline. For
nowadays all women are Conservatives, and Conservatism, as we know it
to-day, having political surrender for its essence, is ever a compromise with
Radicalism. In the seventeenth century they used to be Jacobites. And that,
most properly; for the special foibles of the sex are identical with the
traditional perversities of the Stuarts. “Mankind,” said Lord Palmerston,
“are, for the most part, good fellows enough, but rather conceited.” So the
Duc de Sully thought James II not a bad sort of man, but incurably given to
doing the second thing before the first. And that is the invariable feminine
tendency. We can all sing, or say:

“It is good to be merry and wise,

It is good to be happy and true.
It is good to be off with the old love before one is on with the new.”
But when and where did one ever find the woman who willingly acted on
the precept?
This much by way of putting the reader in personal touch with Trollope’s
ideas when he set to work on Can You Forgive Her? That novel was the
product of the same period as The Small House at Allington; its monthly
parts began while The Cornhill was still unfolding the tale of the wrongs
suffered at Crosbie’s hands by one of Trollope’s nicest and most guileless
maidens. Except for the jilting common to both, Can You Forgive Her?
presents a complete contrast to The Small House at Allington. Among the
novels belonging to the earlier sixties, it has more of kinship to Orley Farm
than to any other. Its comedy is quite as often and as suddenly changed for
melodrama, or even tragedy. Indeed, throughout these stories of the period
now under consideration, one of Trollope’s leading ideas is that the thinnest
possible partition divides human contact in the most civilised society from
primitive savagery, and that the withdrawal of certain artificial restraints
may mean a relapse into the reign of crime.
It was of course a mere coincidence, but the interrogative title, Can You
Forgive Her? reminds one that in 1859, five years earlier, there had
appeared a novel by another author also propounding a question on its first
page. This was Bulwer-Lytton’s What Will He do with It? The individuals
about whom that inquiry is made equal in variety and multitude those
whom Trollope’s readers are asked whether they can pardon. Both books,
however, beyond this, resemble each other in the adroit connection of the
central plot with the several underplots and the personal relations borne by
the characters in the one to those in the other. It is an old story told by
Trollope himself long before he put it into his autobiography how the
movement of Can You Forgive Her? was originally designed for stage
representation and put into a play, The Noble Jilt, never acted or accepted.
More closely analytical of feminine motive, conduct, and ethics than
anything he had yet written, Can You Forgive Her? forms a link uniting
Trollope’s purely social stories with those which were political as well.
Now, for the first time, the shadow of the august party chief as well as
social Grand Seignior, the Duke of Omnium, throws itself over the
incidents and personages so far as these belong to politics. One of the
reasons for their unfavourable comparison with the Barchester company is
that they come after it. But of this presently. To-day Can You Forgive Her?
acquires a new interest from the fact of its showing its author as the pioneer
of the problem novel, the point of which generally comes to this—how to
act in the conflict between passion or self-indulgence and the laws of good
behaviour. Semiramis, an Uebermensch of the earlier world, solved it in one
way, Libito felicito in sua legge. A gallant French dragoon officer,
discussing the matter with a decadent, suggested another solution. “Je
trouve ça tout simple, c’était son devoir.” Trollope’s way out of the
difficulty is that, in the long run, fortune and fate show themselves on the
side of good and true hearts. Consequently, these can afford to wait upon
events. From representative English girls of the upper class and grass-
widows, to stateswomen and potential duchesses, every one has more or
less, and generally more, to be forgiven.
The various lady schemers had, according to Trollope the fashion of the
sex, laid their plans with what they congratulated themselves must prove an
infallible ingenuity. Alas! upon all such projects rests some blight of
miscarriage. Time, place, opportunity, and character, all in turn, have been
inaccurately judged. The organising faculty and providential power on
which the leading ladies pique themselves would, but for certain happy
accidents, have resulted in misadventure or downright disaster. Hence
throughout this story, beneath a surface of feminine scheming or social
frivolity, there runs a tragic undercurrent, and the novel, as a whole, formed
a satire, in some passages of a very lurid kind, upon the shallowness of
woman’s overrated wit and the hollowness of her worldly wisdom. The
dramatis personæ of both sexes are perpetually heading for the precipice
that means ruin. Will they, is the question the reader finds himself
constantly asking, by some better influence be brought into the pathway of
redemption?
The she of the opening chapter, whom you are to forgive if you can (only
one, by the way, of the many needing forgiveness), belonged to a family
some of whose various members suggest more than an accidental
resemblance to the ancestral Trollopes. So, at least, it is with Squire
Vavasor, Vavasor Hall, Westmorland. This hot-headed, ignorant, honest old
gentleman shuts himself up in his northern home because it is there alone
that parliamentary reform has had no power to alter the old political
arrangements. His younger son, John Vavasor, like Anthony Trollope’s
father, came up to London as a barrister early in life, only to fail, or at best
to make a bare livelihood. He differs, however, from his obvious prototype,
the unsuccessful agriculturist of Harrow Weald, in finding a wife with a
competence as well as rich in aristocratic connections. The relatives of this
lady, née Alice Macleod, are still debating whether they shall or shall not
condone her indiscretion, when she dies, leaving the widower with a little
girl, her namesake, on whom exclusively her fortune is settled. This
daughter grows into the heroine round whom the interest of the story
centres.
John Vavasor and his daughter Alice have a comfortable house in Queen
Anne Street; though the father, living much at the old university club,
seldom dines at home, except when he entertains. Other stories produced
during the Can You Forgive Her? period, and presently to be noticed,
contained much satire upon the religious school whose manifestation
Trollope disapproved, or whose sincerity he suspected. Even in Can You
Forgive Her? there occur on an early page some words uncomplimentary to
evangelicalism, as well as perhaps intended to suggest that Alice Vavasor
might have less to be forgiven if she had been brought up in a different
spiritual atmosphere, for her aunt, Lady Macleod, widow of Sir Archibald
Macleod, K.C.B., suffered from two of the most serious drawbacks to
goodness that afflict a lady. A Calvinistic Sabbatarian in religion, she was,
in worldly matters a devout believer in the high rank of her noble relatives.
She could worship a youthful marquis, though he lived a life that would
disgrace a heathen among heathens. She could condemn men and women to
eternal torments for listening to profane music in the park on Sunday. Yet,
as Trollope emphasises, she was a good woman, giving a great deal away,
owing no man anything, and striving to love her neighbours. Then she bore
much pain with calm unspeaking endurance, and lived in trust of a better
world. In the case of her so-called niece, but in reality her cousin, she had
been one of the family commission responsible for Alice’s nurture from her
infancy.
Other circumstances were, or had been, equally little favourable, as
Trollope would have one understand, to the formation of Alice Vavasor’s
character. She had not long been out of the nursery before, notwithstanding
Lady Macleod’s remonstrances, she was sent to a foreign boarding school.
After that, she lived for a time with her strait-laced, narrow-minded aunt at
Cheltenham. Her years there were passed in a chronic state of rebellion
against her surroundings. When she could stand them no longer, she
arranged with her father that the two should keep house together in London.
That experiment had been going on so long that in the opening chapter
Alice has passed her twenty-fourth birthday. Father and daughter, beneath
the same roof, lived independently of each other. Alice’s absolute control of
the fortune inherited from her mother makes her the mistress not only of the
house but of herself. She does the honours of her father’s table on the
understanding that when she sits at its head no guests connected with the
peerage, on the one hand, or the Low Church party, on the other, are to be
present. Had she further stipulated for a sprinkling of Anglican bishops and
ambassadors, she would no doubt have had her way. In a word, this young
lady’s will had never been crossed, nor had she any opportunity for
consulting the preferences of others till the particular love affair with the
suitor, pressed on her by the whole family, and indeed at the beginning
favoured by herself, John Grey. He, though her first formally betrothed, was
not her earliest declared lover; for her cousin George Vavasor had won her
temporary affections before John Grey’s turn came. From that
entanglement, however, she was supposed to have freed herself some two
years in advance of her introduction into these pages. Lady Macleod’s
praises of the Cambridgeshire squire, now her husband-elect, set the bride
that was to be on doubting whether he was suited to her. The young lady
even asked herself whether she should not make the amende to George
Vavasor for his dismissal by again taking him into favour.
To that end is working George Vavasor’s sister Kate, who finds it
consistent with her sincere friendship for Alice to promote her unscrupulous
and impecunious brother’s suit with all the unconscionable ingenuity of her
sex. The latest device in that direction is a Swiss tour. On this George is to
escort the two ladies, his sister Kate and his cousin Alice. From this event
grow the chief incidents and complications, serious, or farcical or both
together. Already the young lady, as masterful as she is capricious, has
broken John Grey to harness by ignoring his reasonable feeling that if the
two ladies need a cavalier for the conventional, perfectly safe and easy
Swiss round, they would find one more appropriate in himself than in a
possible rival. The nephew and destined heir of a wealthy Cumbrian squire,
George Vavasor has expectations, but not the command of ready money
necessary for his parliamentary ambitions and his general habits of life.
Alice Vavasor’s inherited income would supply him with the requisite
funds. The varying fortunes of the two lovers, played off by Alice against
each other through most of the chapters, are diversified by sketches of
George Vavasor’s doings in politics, or in the hunting-field. And these are
alternated with various episodes testing or illustrating the unselfish devotion
of John Grey.
While occupied with describing in his novel George Vavasor’s return to
Chelsea, Trollope himself was looking out for a parliamentary seat. How it
fared with him in that quest will presently be related with all due and new
details. Meanwhile, it may be said in passing that the comic business
between George Vavasor and the parliamentary agents, Scruby and Grimes,
is taken literally from all that Trollope went through himself. Equally
autobiographical are the Roebury Club passages, with the entire account of
George Vavasor’s hunting arrangements and runs over the Midland and East
Anglian pastures. A brewer or two, a banker, a would-be fast attorney, a
sporting literary gentleman, and a young unmarried M.P., without any
particular home of his own in the country, formed the Roebury Club, whose
headquarters were at the King’s Head or Roebury Inn. There they had their
own wine-closet, and led a jolly life. George Vavasor himself did not
regularly belong to this society; he could not but see something of its
members out of doors, while they, on their part, criticised him after no
complimentary fashion. “He’s a bad sort of fellow,” said Grindley, “he’s so
uncommonly dark. He was heir to some small property in the north, but he
lost every shilling of that when he was in the wine trade.” “You’re wrong
there,” commented Maxwell, “he made a pot of money in it, and had he
stuck to it, he would have been a rich man.” Such is a fair specimen of
Trollope’s efforts to lighten the dark shadows cast on his pages by George
Vavasor’s forbidding personality and sinister career.
But these portions of the story are provided with a more sustained and
effectively humorous contrast in Mrs. Greenow and her courtship by the
military adventurer Captain Bellfield, and the well-to-do Norfolk farmer,
Cheesacre. The widowed and well-dowered relative of the Vavasors shares
her younger kinswoman’s contempt for the conventional advice about being
off with the old love before being on with the new. Here and there, she
suggests a family likeness to the widow Barnaby in the story of that name,
written by Trollope’s mother. That does not prevent the husbandless lady
and the two competitors for her hand being really original creations. How
the rival pursuers of the widow’s purse and person, with laughter-moving
ingenuity, try to outwit each other and to commend each his own unselfish
devotion to the lady; how she in her turn sees through both, fools them to
her heart’s content, and, womanlike, finally takes the military scamp, is told
by Trollope with a humour for which he owed little to his mother, and in
which he was excelled by none of his contemporaries. Mrs. Greenow
herself, like the others, may need forgiveness, but will be at once
unanimously pardoned for her very innocent flirtations.
It is different with another lady, first introduced into this book, but in
later volumes destined to be among the author’s most finished socio-
political figures. Alice Vavasor is only removed at a safe distance from the
abyss into which a morbid impulse, which she herself knew not to be love,
periodically prompts her to throw herself, when she becomes Mrs. John
Grey. Alice’s cousin-lover skirts much more closely than was ever done by
Alice herself the slippery verge of the rocks looking down upon ruin, and,
though saved from actual destruction, so far falls over as to disappear from
the story.
The gradually progressive stages of Lady Glencora’s transformation
from a drawing-room doll into an ambitious and masterful stateswoman
will be traced in a subsequent chapter; without anticipating details, they
may be said to exemplify and confirm the remarks already made about
Trollope’s progress from the idyllic to the epic. Thus, during the decade that
followed The Cornhill novels, Trollope showed himself scarcely less happy
and effective in his sketches of mature and prosaic womanhood than in the
innocence or sweet tormenting play[22] of the maidens peopling the British
Arcadia in which he first displayed the powers afterwards to be exercised in
the bolder and stronger flights now mentioned.
The gallery of fashionable culprits in Can You Forgive Her? contains
none in greater need of pardon than Lady Glencora, here, together with her
future husband, “Planty Pal,” first met with. Perhaps, however, the worst
sinner of all is the unscrupulous match-maker, Lady Monk, who gives her
nephew, Burgo Fitzgerald, enough ready cash for his meditated elopement
with Lady Glencora, now for some time the present “Planty Pal’s,” and so
the future Duke of Omnium’s, wife. Burgo Fitzgerald, in his relation to
Lady Glencora, forms a counterpart to George Vavasor in his doings with
Alice. In each case the pair are connected by cousinship; while, at some
former time, Burgo Fitzgerald has been Lady Glencora’s declared and
favoured lover, just as Alice Vavasor had once, before the novel’s opening,
not rejected the addresses of George. Mr. Palliser, too, finds an exact
parallel in John Grey. Both men are of sterling worth, of unspotted honour,
but neither likely to inspire a woman with a warmer sentiment than respect
or tolerance. Both these admirable men have their most dangerous rivals in
two different kinds of scamp: Grey in the unscrupulous, and, on the whole,
ill-looking George; Palliser in the handsomest, but also the most worthless,
of God’s creatures, Burgo Fitzgerald, whose faultless face, dark hair, and
blue eyes no woman could see without being fascinated.
Again, both Alice and her noble kinswoman, Glencora, are similarly
conjured by a chorus of family dowagers to let no sentimental infatuation
betray them into the calamity of giving themselves to the wrong man. As a
fact, the by no means highly emotional, or now even juvenile, but clear-
headed and strong-willed Alice seems throughout more likely to fall into the
snare than the drawing-room butterfly, still little more than a girl, Glencora.
But the rich “daughter of a hundred earls”[23] in the peerage of Scotland,
under an external charm of face of the apparently innocent and babyish kind
known as la beauté de diable, together with an apparent warm
impulsiveness of temperament, conceals a severely practical and business-
like shrewdness, such as to ensure a wisely restraining prudence from being
in the end overborne by any sudden temptation of the heart. She threw over
Burgo Fitzgerald for Plantagenet Palliser without compunction or sigh.
There is no reason to suppose her literary creator dreamed of making her do
anything else than fool the lover of her youth by not refusing point blank to
leave her husband, or even that in his heart the soi-disant seducer believed
he could prevail on her to do so. One need not, therefore, feel surprised at
reading that Burgo Fitzgerald bore it like a man—never groaning openly or
quivering once at any subsequent mention of Lady Glencora’s name. On the
marriage morning he had hung about his club door in Pall Mall, listening to
the bells, occasionally saying a word or two with admirable courage about
the wedding. Then he went about again as usual, living the old reckless life
in London, in country houses, and especially in the hunting field, where he
always seems riding for something worse than a fall. He did, as a fact, in his
maladroit tempting of Providence, occasionally kill a horse, much nobler
and far more deserving of life than himself.
Kate Vavasor, George Vavasor’s sister, puts forth dauntless pertinacity
and some cleverness in the attempt to oust John Grey from her cousin
Alice’s heart and replace him by her brother. Unlike, however, that brother,
she would stoop to no dishonourable devices. When George, in desperate
straits for money to cover his election expenses and other calls, suggests
requisitioning Alice, she plainly tells him it is an ungentlemanlike way of
raising the wind, with which she will have nothing to do. Meanwhile, the
strands of the central plot have been interwoven with personages and
incidents that are preparatory to the political novels afterwards to appear,
beginning with The Prime Minister, 1876, and ending with The Duke’s
Children, 1880. The scandals that once seemed likely to grow out of Lady
Monk’s ball have been nipped in the bud or altogether averted. Immediately
afterwards, wisely considering change of scene to be best for all persons
concerned, Mr. Palliser refuses the Chancellorship of the Exchequer that he
may place his wife beyond reach of temptation by taking her abroad. The
party includes Alice as her cousin Glencora’s companion, and it does its
travels in the grand manner.
In its general results and special incidents, the journey succeeds beyond
its organiser’s fondest hopes. At Baden-Baden the good fortunes of the tour
reach their terminating point. Mr. Palliser receives from his wife the
smilingly whispered announcement that he may soon expect the long
waited, earnestly desired heir to his estates, and to the ducal title that in the
course of nature must soon be his. With such a prospect before him he can
afford to be generous. He gratifies his lady by getting her old and worthless
sweetheart, who has staked and lost his last sovereign on the roulette board
at the Kursaal, out of some trouble with his hotel bill as well as in other
ways standing between him and ruin. At Baden, too, he meets John Grey,
who has now developed parliamentary ambitions, and who soon becomes
intimate with Mr. and Lady Glencora Palliser; he also finds George
Vavasor’s disappearance to have removed his last difficulty with Alice.
Before the return to England had been accomplished, Palliser, now
Chancellor of the Exchequer-elect, has settled to exchange his
representation of Silverbridge for that of the county, and to get Grey,
already his warm supporter, into the vacant seat. The son and heir fulfils the
promise declared at Baden, of his expected coming. The birth is followed
by John Grey’s marriage with Alice, by his entrance to the House of
Commons, and by Mr. Palliser’s introduction of his first budget. The
parliamentary maxims with which this story is sprinkled have from the
present narrative’s point of view a certain biographical interest, because
they suggest the attention already by Trollope to the career at St. Stephen’s,
unsuccessfully essayed by him four years after Can You Forgive Her? had
appeared. Amongst the pieces of advice to aspirants at Westminster is the
sound, practical counsel not to be inaccurate, not to be long winded, and
above all not to be eloquent, since of all faults eloquence is the most
damnable.
Trollope’s original interest in The Fortnightly Review, about which
enough has been said in an earlier chapter, was quickened by the
opportunity thus possibly opened to him for the appearance of his own
work in its pages. His few occasional articles for it have been already
mentioned. The first novel written by him for the periodical, The Belton
Estate, ran its course in the Review soon after the last instalment of Can
You Forgive Her? had appeared, and was followed some time later by The
Eustace Diamonds. Not one of his longer novels, it recalls in its main theme
the principal idea underlying the book which has just been analysed here. In
The Belton Estate the heroine, Clara Amedroz, has, like more than one of
the ladies in Can You Forgive Her?, two lovers, neither absolutely ineligible
but greatly differing in their value, and one of them, as in Can You Forgive
Her?, the lady’s cousin. The less desirable of the two comes upon the stage
first, Captain Aylmer, a member of Parliament. His suit succeeds. After the
usual Trollopian fashion the engagement is broken off; and there appears
the cousin, Will Belton, who in due course yields to Clara’s charms,
proposes, and is rejected. Then comes Aylmer’s temporary reinstatement
and at last dismissal. Cousin Will proves eventually the lucky man; and
upon him, as the heir to Clara’s father, and as Clara’s husband, the curtain
falls. The display of minute feminine analysis, such as began with Orley
Farm and was continued in Can You Forgive Her? characterises also The
Belton Estate. The feminine idiosyncrasies examined with much precision
and often great skill belonged to the same class as those of Can You Forgive
Her? The action, however, is much quicker, and the swift succession of
events is far less painful. The forsaken Captain Aylmer takes to no evil
courses, is never in danger of coming to a bad end, but judiciously improves
his worldly possessions by making up to and wedding a rich baronet’s
daughter, who, according to the positive assertion of Miss Amedroz, might
be pretty but for her very decided and remarkable squint.
This was by no means the last time of Trollope’s introducing this
antenuptial situation. Something like half-a-dozen years were yet to pass
before its exhibition again in The Golden Lion of Granpere (1872). This is a
pretty little story of unsophisticated life in the province of Lorraine; Marie
Bromar is the pretty niece and ward of Michel Voss, the popular,
prosperous, and somewhat arbitrary proprietor of the well-supported
Grandpere hostelry known as the Lion d’Or. His son George, the inheritor
of his father’s masterful disposition, falls in love with Marie, but, being
driven from home by misunderstanding, leaves the ground clear for rivals.
During his absence the girl is courted by a rich linen-buyer of a
neighbouring town, whose addresses are favoured by Marie’s guardian
uncle. Everything prospers the wooing of Adrian Urmand, the trader. The
wedding eve has come: the pair are to meet in church to-morrow. At this
juncture George Voss returns. All the confusion and doubts arising out of
his long absence are cleared up. With the light heart, that, in the case of
Trollope’s young ladies, no amatory perplexities or cares seem to depress,
Marie throws over the new love for the old, and the slight series of episodes
ends in happiness, not only for a family, but the entire neighbourhood,
marred, however, by something more than misgivings that the niece and
ward of my host of the Lion d’Or may yet have to pay the penalty for
having played so fast and loose with two such blameless and desirable
competitors for her hand. The short and slight story now noticed contains
not a little to recall the third product of its author’s pen, more than twenty
years earlier, La Vendée (1850). The later, like the earlier novel, exactly
catches the simple old-world spirit and atmosphere of its subject and its
scene. As a boy, by repeated if shortening sojourns abroad, Trollope had
familiarised himself with the details and personages of the daily round in
France and Germany. These experiences, instead of being dimmed by time,
remained with him fresh and vivid throughout his life. In The Golden Lion
of Granpere the absolute authority of Michael Voss as the family head, the
primitive existence throughout controlled by him, the domestic economy of
the entire district, the absence of class distinction, the universal horror at
Marie’s violated troth, the appeal to the curé to remonstrate with her—all
this is depicted with pleasant art. It is perhaps rendered the more effective
by its contrast with the pictures of English fashionable society in Trollope’s
other books belonging to the same period.
Before, however, resuming the consideration of those, it would be an
inconvenient departure from the chronological arrangement followed, so far
as possible, in these pages not to complete our view of the domestic stories,
for the most part entirely English as to place and personages, that followed
the Barchester books. Of his Cornhill readers, Trollope took farewell, not as
photographer of the Allington group, but in The Claverings (1867). Can You
Forgive Her?, it has been seen, forms the link between the novels of home
life and those of politics. The Claverings connects the novels that
introduced us to Barchester Palace and close in its best-known prelate’s
time with the great world outside of peers, cabinet ministers, party leaders,
society queens, and princesses in which the Marchioness of Hartletop, née
Griselda Grantly, was taking her part. The Rev. Henry Clavering of the
family which gives its name to the book held a living in Bishop Proudie’s
diocese. The grouping of events and characters not only discloses no trace
of approach to repetition, but by the freshness and vigour of its effects
shows throughout its author at his best. The plot is of the simple
straightforward kind of which Trollope made himself a master.
The temptation to indulge in the Thackerayan vein, yielded to some
years earlier, was responsible for Trollope’s poorest piece of work, Brown,
Jones, and Robinson, already mentioned; it was successfully withstood in
The Claverings, with the result that Trollope widened the circle of his
believers by a combination of dramatis personæ and scenes scarcely below
the mark of Dickens. The clash of rival love-making echoes throughout
successive chapters, but with a ring altogether different from that heard in
earlier variations on the same theme. The strongest personal force in the
book is Julia Brabazon, who jilts a suitable lover of her own age and rank to
marry a rich and senile profligate. The forsaken lover, Harry Clavering,
clever, handsome, though somewhat weak, has crowned a brilliant college
course with a Fellowship. He decides on becoming a civil engineer; and
with that view enters the office of Beilby and Burton, the latter of these two
being the real head of the firm. In that gentleman’s daughter, Florence
Burton, the new pupil finds consolation for his lost love, and even much
relief, in the society of a quiet, clean girl, the exact antithesis of the
brilliant, beautiful, and dashing Julia, now Lady Ongar. Soon after the
conclusion of an engagement between Harry and Florence, there returns to
England Lady Ongar, now a rich, still fascinating, and much-sought-after
widow, bent on atoning for her former infidelity by giving herself and her
fortune to the young man who had been her earlier conquest. About
Florence or the Burton family she knows nothing. Harry therefore soon
finds himself in the position of Ulysses when that hero had upon his hands
at the same time his own true Penelope and the bright Circe. Only after a
severe conflict of emotions does he decide on maintaining his fidelity with
Florence. That determination had been no sooner acted on than it is
splendidly rewarded; for the death at sea of his two uncles leaves him a
wealthy baronet.
In this story, as in so many others of Trollope’s, the best scenes bring
forward characters concerned only in a secondary way with the central
narrative. Madame Gordeloup, the most enjoyable and essentially
Dickensian portrait in the gallery, has made Lady Ongar’s acquaintance
during her widowhood’s earliest days; small of stature, she acts in
everything with quickness and decision, and flavours all her words with
vehemence. Her character may be read in her eyes, whose watchful
brightness makes them seem to emit sparks. At this point of the story Harry
has not come into the title. Captain Archibald Clavering, Sir Hugh
Clavering’s brother and heir presumptive, is in want of just such a wife as
Lady Ongar might make him. Widows are proverbially wooed with more
success through the good offices lent by a friend of their sex than directly.
In Madame Gordeloup, with her clear brains, tactful manner, knowledge of
her own sex generally, and of Lady Ongar in particular, Captain Clavering
sees the exact agent for furthering his matrimonial designs. Before
committing himself to Madame Gordeloup, he takes into his confidence a
seasoned and resourceful club friend, Captain Boodle. There now follows a
delightful succession of scenes between the highly endowed little Polish
lady and Clavering’s representative, the gallant Boodle. Their only practical
upshot is Archibald Clavering’s parting with £70 to the quick-witted
Madame Gordeloup. The one parallel of these passages is that portion of
Dombey and Son that recalls the intervention on Captain Cuttle’s behalf
with Mrs. MacStinger, his landlady.
 CHAPTER XII

RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY AND OPINIONS

Anglican orthodoxy and evangelical antipathies imbibed by Trollope

in childhood—His personal objections to the Low Church Party for
theological as well as social reasons—His characteristic revenge on
Norman Macleod for extorting from him a Good Words novel—
Rachel Ray a case of “vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin”—And
instead of a story for evangelical readers a spun-out satire on
evangelicalism—Its plot, characters, and incidents—Nina Balatka
regarded as a problem Jew story—Linda Tressel to Bavarian
Puritanism much as Rachel Ray to English—Miss Mackenzie
another hit at the Low Church—Its characters and plot—The Last
Chronicle of Barset and The Vicar of Bullhampton—Their serious
elements, as well as social photographs and occasional touches of
satire against women, ever doing second thing before first and then
doing the first wrong—Both novels illustrate Trollope’s views of the
tragic volcano ever ready to break out from under the social crust.

T HE beginnings of Anthony Trollope’s religious sympathies came from

his own home. The social and moral influences that he, as a boy,
unconsciously imbibed here were altogether anti-evangelical. John
Wesley died in 1791, leaving behind him the contemptuously called
“Methodies.” Charles Simeon, whose Cambridge disciples were scornfully
known as “Sims,” lived till 1836. Between those two dates, practically
indeed up to 1850, weekday religion was only in vogue among distinctively
evangelical surroundings, though in 1850 Charlotte Yonge’s writings began
to exercise a sort of spiritual missionary force in High Anglican households.
Into a Low Church environment Anthony Trollope had not been born. His
grandfathers on both sides, clergymen of the orthodox, highly respectable,
and not unamiable kind, were disposed, by ancestral or aristocratic
tradition, towards sacramental Anglicanism. Like the rest of Trollope’s
clerical relatives, they boasted their doctrinal descent from the High Church
divines of the Stuart period, and would have disapproved as much as was
done by the lady who wrote The Heir of Redclyffe any violation of an
habitual reserve on all religious subjects except upon devotional occasions.
With all the children of Thomas Anthony and Frances Trollope the
Church catechism, with the epistles and gospels of the season, was included
in the home lessons. Anything more than that would have been called
evangelical or Low Church. As in other upper middle-class households of
the time, so beneath the Trollope roof it became the rising generation’s
fixed idea that Low-churchism must be a mark of vulgarity, a sort of
spiritually parasitic growth, flourishing, alas, among the small tradesmen,
whose sons were educated at some private venture schools, but happily
unknown in the superior educational or social soil, which grew something
better than English grammar and arithmetic. From the nursery, these notions
had been confirmed in Anthony Trollope, not only by the pervading
sentiments or table-talk of his elders, but by the official authority of his
mother’s old friend and frequent visitor, Dr. Nott, one among the
Winchester canons, whose spare figure, pale, delicate features, black gaiters
reaching to the knee, spotlessly white neckcloth of many folds, and elegant
Italian scholarship, suggested not a few touches for cultured and
cosmopolitan Dr. Stanhope in the Barchester group. Dr. Nott, an exemplary
priest of his period, had been one of the Princess Charlotte’s tutors, and had
initiated the structural repairs that prevented Winchester Cathedral from
falling into ruin. His periodical calls upon Mrs. Trollope became the
occasion for an examining review of the children—were they good,
obedient, truthful, and industrious? When answering, one day, these
questions, Anthony and his elder brother Tom volunteered the statement
that, if they were not quite everything which could be wished, it was
because of their nurse Farmer being an Anabaptist. Such heterodoxy, Dr.
Nott admitted, might be deplorable, but did not, he added, absolve the
children from the duty of subordination. This was resented by the two
brothers as a snub, and intensified their disgust with schismatics, including
Low Church of every degree.
In 1837 Mrs. Trollope’s bitter attack upon evangelicalism in The Vicar of
Wrexhill deepened still further her children’s loathing of “Methodies” and
all whose religious faith did not conform to a gentlemanlike Anglicanism.
How these preferences and prejudices coloured Barchester Towers and the
novels that followed, it has been already pointed out. Not that Trollope
grew up into an irreligious or other than God-fearing man. It was indeed to
some extent the intellectual man’s contempt for the crass, ignorant infidelity
of the time that, as years went on, deepened his respect for genuine piety in
all its manifestations, and made his strictures upon certain of its
unseasonable and mischievous phases so different as to tone and spirit from
the satire of Dickens upon the same phenomena. His turn of mind was not
fervently devotional, but for spiritual as well as social reasons he disliked
Churchmen of Mr. Slope’s variety. His great ground of quarrel with
evangelicalism was its tendency to divorce conduct from religion. The
Mosaic law and ritual were confessedly so exacting as to be suited only for
the earliest stage of the Divine revelation. They were superseded entirely by
Christianity, independent, in its pure and early form, of all externals, but
progressively overloaded with superstitious ceremonies and doctrines, some
of which the Protestant Reformation was said to have abrogated.
Evangelicalism, however, with its ruthless insistence on a series of
psychological experiences and of emotional developments, as the
indispensable tests of genuine conversion and effectual deliverance from
the wrath to come, instituted a kind of subjective ordeal, in comparison of
which the yoke of Hebrew formalism was easy and the burden of Popish
ritual light.
A man could know for certain whether he had or had not performed the
religious acts enjoined on him by his spiritual superiors; but could not, in
the nature of things, be equally sure of having realised all the ghostly
sensations, and of having exactly attained to that frame of mind necessary,
as he was told, for salvation. The first stage in the process prescribed for all
penitents by the evangelical doctors, the being brought under conviction of
sin, might seem simple; but how long was that phase of agony to last, or, if
the painful experience were not followed by a consciousness of peace and
pardon, did it mean that the Divine wrath was not to be appeased? About
this the evangelical teachers shrank from committing themselves, with the
result, as it seemed to Trollope, that the newly wakened soul must be left
indefinitely to torment itself with doubts whether its failure to pass, in the
orthodox order, from distress and disturbance to peace and joy, might not
imply guilt beyond all hope of pardon. At the best these disabling agitations
could not fail, while inflicting torment on those who suffered them, to
disqualify human beings for the performance of their daily duties to each
other, as well as to make religion itself, not an invigorating inspiration, but
a paralysing terror.
 In a word, evangelicalism, as conceived of by Trollope, puzzled,
perplexed, and irritated him. Of the evangelical teachers, with the
shibboleths they parade as well as the stultifying inconsistencies these
imply, he would say, “Your profession does not make you a Christian. For
that, you must act like one. Yet,” he added, “we are told good works, though
the test of religion, are also a snare, and certainly make for perdition if
performed by those not in a state of grace or merely as moral duties.” “You
tell me,” I once heard Trollope say to an evangelical monitor perhaps
almost old enough to have sat under Grimshaw or Romaine, “that, in effect,
virtue becomes vice if its practical pursuit be not sanctified by a mystical
motive not within the understanding of all. Such a theory, I retort, can in its
working have only one of two results—the immorality of antinomianism, or
a condition of perplexity and confusion which must drive men from religion
in disgust and despair.”
Barchester Towers contained Trollope’s earliest embodiment of Low-
churchmanship in Mr. Slope, with his baneful influence on Mrs. Proudie.
Primarily the Barchester bishopess personified the tendency of her sex to
mistake worry for work and fuss for energy. In simple truth, the Established
Church was to Trollope, from his pervadingly official point of view, a
branch of the Civil Service, which could not properly be carried on if
irregular influences and emotions or imperfectly qualified persons were
allowed to have a voice in it. Hence the famous caricature of the she
ecclesiastic in 1857.
In the year now reached by this narrative, 1863, Trollope renewed his
attack upon the religionists he detested, after a fashion and under
circumstances that give to the book Rachel Ray a genuine biographical
significance. The genesis of Rachel Ray is indeed throughout a revelation of
its author’s idiosyncrasies, shown perhaps even more in the facts connected
with its publication than in the unrelieved bitterness of its sectarian
strictures. Trollope, at the time of its publication being arranged for, was in
the full tide of his success and fame. He could make his own terms with
editors or publishers. Good Words, when—from 1862 to 1872—conducted
by a Presbyterian minister, Norman Macleod, though in no sense a
denominational organ, could not afford to fly in the face of evangelical
prejudices. Naturally Trollope understood this so well that when applied to
by its editor for a story, he deprecated the offer on the ground of his not
being a “goody-goody” writer, as well as of his inability or indisposition to
suit his sentiments or his language to Macleod’s public. In reply to those
objections, the novelist received from the editor the promise of a free hand
and the assurance that no attempt to gag him should be made. Trollope
therefore reluctantly accepted the engagement, and proceeded to fulfil it in
a temper deeply resenting the pressure that had been placed upon him.
“Vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin;”[24] caveat emptor: on such principles
Trollope made the bargain and set to work. For, if Good Words would not
have the novel, a forfeit could be squeezed out and another publisher found.
This is what actually happened. The author’s misgivings were fulfilled to
the letter. The magazine manager sent back to the author the manuscript,
accompanied by the fine, and the book found its publishers in Chapman and
Hall.
How, after all these years, will the novel strike the reader to-day?
Trollope affected to see the specific reasons of the rejection by Macleod in
its praise of dancing as a healthy and innocent recreation. Nothing of the
sort. Nor, it is certain, would any controversial passages, however little in
harmony with Presbyterian ideas, have made Macleod pronounce it
impossible. As it was, the story served Trollope as the vehicle, less of his
own notions about spiritual truth and falsehood than of his inveterate and
violent antipathies to certain manifestations of the religious spirit in
individuals and in daily conduct. For the first time since the Slope episodes
in Barchester Towers, he saw and used his opportunity for letting the
evangelicals have it. All that they did or thought, and the most typical
members of their class, were depicted with not less personal bitterness
against their religious faith than was displayed, in his History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, by the historian Gibbon towards the
primitive Christians as the great disturbing and anti-social force of the
second and third centuries. Wherever evangelicals are found or
whithersoever these pietists go, they bring with them discomfort, suspicion,
and ill-will. They may not be chargeable with those sins of the passions that
are the infirmities of manlier natures. They therefore hold themselves
entitled to unlimited indulgence in scandal-mongering, backbiting, and
other social devices for gratifying their sense of power, by making all those
about them uncomfortable.
In the course of his sojourns at or near Bath, Cheltenham, and other West
of England resorts, Trollope had personally experienced and resented the
widespread ascendency, social and political, of the Low Church Party. For
that reason the scene of Rachel Ray is laid in that South Devon district
which, within Trollope’s recollection, had been torn by ecclesiastical feuds
arising from differences about the costume proper to be worn during the
conduct of divine service. This suggested to Thomas Hood his clever lines,
less well-known now perhaps than they deserve to be:

“I see there is a pretty stir, about things down at Exeter;

Whether a clergyman should wear a black dress or a white dress.
For me I neither know nor care whether a clergyman should wear a black dress or a white
dress.
I have a grievance of my own, a wife that preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night dress.”

The local quarrels thus satirised by the humorist, much and widely talked
about at the time, long left the clerical atmosphere of the neighbourhood in
a highly electrical state. While local animosities were at their height,
Trollope had been on Post Office duty in the south-west of England. In the
Baslehurst of the story, and in other Exeter suburbs, he describes the points
at which, for the moment, evangelicalism had triumphed. Here, during the
fifties, he had his veritable originals: the severe, imperious Puritan, Mrs.
Prime, and the younger sister Rachel whom she bullies, living with their
mother Mrs. Ray, a sweet-tempered, gentle, loving woman, endowed with a
still attractive person, having much in common with her second born,
Rachel, and, like her, somewhat tyrannised over by the elder of her two
daughters. The husband survived by Mrs. Ray is a good specimen of
Trollope’s terse character-sketching. He managed the property of dean and
chapter, knew the rights and wrongs of prebendaries, minor canons, vicars
choral, and even choristers. He had, however, passed away long before the
story opens, and is only mentioned to point the contrast of the widow’s
earlier orthodox clerical surroundings with the irregular spiritual influences
that now agitate her home.
When we make this lady’s acquaintance, there is in progress, beneath her
roof, a pitiless attempt on the part of the elder sister, Dorothea, by rigorous
evangelical discipline, to crush worldliness out of the younger, her mother’s
favourite, who gives the title to the novel. A long course of Calvinistic
bullying has almost broken Mrs. Ray’s spirit. To that tyranny of soul Miss
Ray has never quite surrendered herself. Its shadows fall, however, heavily
enough over her young life; the iron of its terrors and threats had begun to
penetrate her inmost being, when Luke Rowan’s appearance flashes a ray of
hope upon her overcast life. The new-comer to Baslehurst is the partner in
the brewery, hitherto entirely in the hands of Mr. Tappitt. The Tappitts, at
whose house Miss Ray first meets Rowan, fervently admire the Low
Church clergyman Mr. Prong. This pastor resembles the Barchester Mr.
Slope, not only in being generally objectionable, but in the same mercenary
attachment whether to Mrs. Ray herself or to her widowed daughter, Mrs.
Prime, as Slope conceived to Mrs. Bold.
The incidents of the story naturally grow out of Rachel Ray’s courtship
by the latest addition to the brewery staff, less welcomed by the Tappitt
circle than tolerated as a worldly intruder whose salvation is rather a matter
of prayer than of belief. Doleful indeed are the prognostications of the
results likely to follow their acquaintance called forth by Rowan’s earliest
tête-à-tête with Miss Ray. This, really the opening scene in the action of the
story, gives Trollope scope for the humour that alone redeems from failure a
story as painful as The Kellys and the O’Kellys, without the pathetic power
and witty relief that have made his second novel worthier of republication
than Rachel Ray.
Before passing to another book with which Rachel Ray tempts
comparison, something must be said about the new experiment of which
Linda Tressel formed the second product. Change of scene, of characters,
and of interest, as well as anonymity of authorship, in the year of his
departure from the Post Office, 1867, marked Trollope’s dual venture. Each
owed something to the stimulating and instructive society in which Trollope
found himself as the guest of the famous editor and publisher to whom he
had been introduced years earlier by John Forster, but whom he scarcely
knew well till the Scotch tours that Post Office duties or holiday recreation
called him to make during the nineteenth century’s second half. In the case
of both stories, also, the skill with which the local colour was laid on struck
all critics, not less than the truth to life with which the essentially German
characters, with their social and moral backgrounds, were depicted.
Nina Balatka came first of the two in 1867. Its scene is laid in Prague,
the old Bohemian capital. Here there exists a large Jewish colony. Among
its members, the distinction between Hebrew and Gentile is marked with
such depth and bitterness that an intermarriage between the two races is
considered degrading to each. The girl who gives her name to the story, a
broken-down tradesman’s daughter, and the niece of a rich merchant
Zamenoy, has given her heart to an Israelite engaged in commerce, Anton
Trendellsohn. This suitor, in his many dealings with old Balatka, Nina’s
father, has shown himself a considerate creditor. The roof beneath which
Nina lives is legally due to him for her father’s debts. Trendellsohn,
however, has not even pressed for the title deeds. These would establish his
right to the property, but are now in other Jewish hands, those of Zamenoy.
The lover’s generosity and self-sacrificing devotion to Nina are
accompanied by all the suspicion of his race and by a characteristic
resentment of the overreaching practised, as he considers, on him. The
Zamenoys, representing the evil genius of the story, are only bent on
breaking off the engagement of the two lovers. As the first step to that end
they contrive to secrete the title deeds, now wanted by Trendellsohn, in his
sweetheart’s desk. Next they tell Trendellsohn that the girl he loves has
appropriated them. A search is made, the documents are found in the place
described by the Zamenoys, and Trendellsohn believes that he has been
fooled. The lovers part. About the same time old Balatka dies. Deserted
alike by the man to whom she has given her heart and by her rich relations,
who have gone over to the Zamenoys, Nina resolves on suicide. With
Trendellsohn at length, love proves a stronger motive than greed. A
messenger from him arrives bidding Nina return to her place in his heart.
Thus, happily, in marriage, ends the story, really remarkable for clever
analysis of motive in the conflict with the essentially Hebraic Trendellsohn
between the passion for a woman and for real estate.
The situation had the undoubted merit of originality as well as of being
artistically presented in a singularly suitable environment immemorially
associated with congenial traditions. The story’s success in magazine shape
was afterwards heightened by its anonymity, and by the extent to which the
studied air of secrecy enveloping the composition and all to do with it
piqued curiosity. In London, at any rate, the first to solve the mystery was
R. H. Hutton of The Spectator, not only the subtlest literary critic of his
time, but an omnivorous reader of novels, with an instinct for discovering in
their most commonplace occurrences and least likely characters a new
revelation of their author’s personality and mental habit. He had already
watched and commented on Trollope’s evolution from the domestic to the
cosmopolitan stage. He knew Trollope’s turns of expression and leading
ideas about the human combat of interest with feeling from his social
conversation as well as his books. Dining at a table near Laurence
Oliphant’s at the Athenæum, with no other companion than the last chapter
of Nina Balatka, he received and soon afterwards uttered, the inspiration:
“The ‘great unknown’ of the Blackwood story is Anthony Trollope.”
Intimate with the Blackwoods though he was, Oliphant was not fully
assured of the facts; “I believe,” he said oracularly, “they are satisfied with
its reception.” Such proved to be the case. Although, as John Blackwood
put it, not selling, it was telling. Blackwood’s London manager, one of
Trollope’s Garrick intimates, received orders from Edinburgh to encourage
Trollope, with “the author of Nina Balatka” for his pen name, to let the
Magazine have another novel from his pen.
This second book, by the title of Linda Tressel, began its course some
five years after the publication of Rachel Ray, and introduced its readers to
an interest, personal or spiritual, of much the same sort. The locality had
changed from Exeter to Nuremberg. Here, at The Red House, lived the
eponymous heroine in charge of her aunt. This relative, Frau Staubach,
however well-meaning or conscientious, lacked the gentleness, the grace,
and the feminine charm generally, of her English prototype, the mother with
whom Rachel Ray passed her time. Yet, though in a less degree than the
Devonshire widow, who sat under Mr. Prong, the petticoated pietist of
Nuremberg is a kindly woman at heart. Only the iron creed, which makes
her whole being so grievous a burden to herself and to those about her,
constrains her to see wickedness in joy; in every form of pleasure a species
of profligacy; in all love for children a pernicious indulgence endangering
their eternal welfare; and, in every woman, Satan’s easy prey, until guarded
by a middle-aged, respectable, unlovable and austere husband. Such a one
she has found for her niece in her lodger, Peter Steinmarc. He has the
recommendation of being small-minded, selfish, ugly, and so just the man
destined to make unhappy for life a bright, handsome, high-spirited girl,
such as her own young ward. In the English story, the destined victim, after
a comparatively short captivity, escapes her doom, though not before her
whole nature has suffered from the ordeal. The spirit of Rachel Ray’s
Bavarian sister of misfortune is not easily worn out; but, eventually, her
spirit is broken, and she is proclaimed the bride-elect of the odious consort
selected by her aunt. At the psychological moment, however, Death, the
deliverer, steps in; poor Linda dies before being called to put on her
wedding dress. Her remorseless aunt watches her slow departure from life
without pity or tears, but in a spirit of half-vindictive satisfaction with the
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

testbankmall.com