Anthony Trollope in the Oxford World's Classics series

Reading Graham Handley's brief biography of Anthony Trollope stimulated me to look again at my collection of the latter in the pocket Oxford World's Classics Series. As much for my benefit as anyone else's, I have scanned the covers and now reproduce them below. Those who know me will not be surprised to read that I have only collected the first published editions and with their dust wrappers. Grant Richards started the series in 1901, with a batch of ten (W.E. Gladstone would have loved them - being so perfect for his well-known habit of carrying books around in his pockets - but he departed this mortal coil three years too early.) Richards went bankrupt and handed the project over to the Oxford University Press in 1905/6, but I don't think they had dust wrappers for some while. I have two or three books in those first thick dark green covers. Few seem to have survived. Then, around the time of the Great War, came the thinner, white wrappers with blue text and illustrations on the front - the earlier Trollopes have these. They were followed, around 1930, by the charming maps of the world; then single colour, more restrained wrappers from about 1938; and, finally, more individualistic and colourful illustrations.

The volumes below are all first publication editions, although some have Lists at the back with later dates. I have placed them in The World's Classics order of printing, with the original publication date in book form in brackets.

No.251 - 1923 (1866)              No.252 - 1924 (1867)

  

No.268 - 1925 (1857)              No.279 - 1924 (1863)

No.298 - 1926 (1858)                 No.305 - 1926 (1860) 

No.317 - 1928 (1881)                No.341 - 1929 (1848) 

No.342 - 1929 (1881)              No.357 - 1930 (1876)

No.391 - 1931 (1877)              No.397 - 1931 (1861) 

Nos.398-399 - 1924 (1867)

Nos.423-424 - 1935 (1862)

No.444 - 1936 (1884)

Nos.447-448 - 1937 (1869)

Nos.450-451 - 1937 (1873)

Nos.454-455 - 1938 (1876)

Nos.462-463 - 1938 (1880)

Nos. 468-469 - 1938 (1864-5)

Nos.472-473 - 1939 (1864)

Nos. 475-476 - 1939 (1871)

Nos.492-493 - 1944 (1878)

No.502 - 1946 (1879)              No.503 - 1946 (1883)

No.504 - 1946 (1872)             No.505 - 1946 (1866 & 1867)

No.507 - 1948 (1869)

I therefore have 30 of the 38 published in the Oxford World's Classics series. Naturally, I would like to get the other eight (and a dust wrapper for Volume II of Ralph the Heir).

Those novels still needed are:

No.140   1907 The Three Clerks

No.217   1918 The Warden

No.272   1924 The Vicar of Bullhampton

No.278   1924 Miss Mackenzie

No.336   1928 Sir Harry Hotspur

No.343   1929 Cousin Henry

No.443   1936 Lady Anna

Nos.484-485   1941 The Way We Live Now

+ No.239  Trollope's Autobiography

Graham Handley's 'Anthony Trollope' 1999

 

Alan Sutton first edition (paperback) - 1999

I read this 'pocket' biography at one sitting, on a sunny mid-May afternoon relaxing on a recliner on the front lawn. The author, Graham Handley, has pedigree - as the editor of Trollope the Traveller and seven of the novels, as well as contributing to the Oxford Readers' Companion to Anthony Trollope and publishing a critical study of Barchester Towers. Here he has provided a stimulating aperitif for fuller fare on the great man. As I have remarked in a previous Blog, I am very partial to a Trollope; The Warden and Barchester Towers still figure highly in my 40 Best Books. I hope it won't be too long before I re-read them, along with Dr. Thorne, Framley Parsonage, The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset.

Hadley packs a tremendous amount of information and comment into his 103 pages. I start with his excellent Conclusion:

Trollope's characteristics were many, various, warm and at times overpowering. Perhaps his outstanding quality was his critical zest for experience which embraced practical life experience and the life of the imagination, both being charged with his abundant and remarkable energy. He worked hard, he wrote hard, he played hard. A conservative who loved the good things in life, he was also a radical who queried their abuse...he loved engaging with people and he created people; he hated corruption, and attacked it uncompromisingly in an age which witnessed gigantic swindles...he loved tradition and an ordered and moral way of life, but he was receptive to change.

A few points Hadley reminded me of: the fact that Trollope regarded Thackeray very highly; his friendship with George Eliot; the importance of the American Kate Field in his life; the effect of his year in Ireland; his political incorrect (for readers of today) views on race in his writing on the West Indies, which he visited in 1858-9; his failed attempt to get elected as an M.P. for Beverley and its effect on him; his increasing concern about his weight. I also hadn't fully realised the failings of his son Frederick in Australia, which Trollope visited on two occasions. 

Reading the biography has not only made me determined to read the Barchester series again, but to try for the first time the two Irish novels, Orley Farm and the Palliser series. So, so much to imbibe!

Hester W. Chapman's 'Eugénie' 1961

 

Jonathan Cape first edition - 1961

Many, many years ago, I bought a paperback by this author. I still have it (the hinges aided by discreet sellotape) with my name and date of purchase on the flyleaf - Christmas 1961. I had just completed my first term in the Lower Sixth and the History course was The Tudors and Stuarts. The book? The Last Tudor King: A Study of Edward VI (Grey Arrow). I assume I read it, but I have no real recollection of that. I quote the mini biography on the back cover of the paperback as it suggests Chapman had quite a varied life, hardly an 'academic' one! The daughter of the headmaster of Durnford Prep School *, she had a private education and subsequently became a mannequin in Paris; later in London she had several jobs, as a secretary, telephone operator, typist, companion, daily governess and schoolmistress. During the Second World War she worked for the Free French and the American Red Cross and as a waitress in a canteen at Combined Operations. Her interests include historical research, foreign travel, cinema and theatre, dress, and interior decoration. How did she find time to write all her novels and non-fiction books?! Chapman, who was born on 1st January 1899 in Dorset and died on her birthday in 1976, had an unusual middle name - Wolferstan.

Every so often, whilst reading Hester Chapman's historical romance, I had to remind myself that it was fiction rather than factual. Her gift for character drawing and dialogue came across as entirely natural, backed up with realistic narrative. The reader (at least this one) felt as if they really were at the places and events described. As it was a novel, the author had no need to produce her sources; however, four pages from the end, she refers to those interviews with Paléologue. Fortuitously, I have just purchased, through EBay, that very source: The Tragic Empress. Intimate Conversations with the Empress Eugénie 1901-1911. I have already dipped into the book and am looking forward to reading it in due course.

Eugénie, naturally, dominates the story; but it is mainly through the first hand reminiscences of her close, and long-suffering companion, the Bombay born (in 1809) but of English stock, Miss Cordelia Flowers - known to the Empress and others as Flora. She is based on a real governess, # and Chapman weaves her naturally into the various ups and downs of the Empress' life. The Prologue focuses on 1879. Napoleon III and family have been in exile in England since the tragedy of 1870. The Emperor has now been dead six years, the Empress is waiting for news of her son, the Prince Imperial, apparently safely kept away from any fighting in the Zulu War in South Africa. The dreaded news arrives - the Prince has been slain.  The Empress sits in a room: the hands were clasped, the eyes open under a coronet of white hair sculpturally, perfectly arranged: not a lock was displaced...then he saw the clear line of the face, the black slope of the eyebrows, the curved mouth. Only the eyes had colour; they were blue, deeply shadowed, and set in the look that he was ever after to associate with a gorgon's stony glare. 

The story then retraces Eugénie's life from her youth in Spain as the daughter of the widowed Countess de Montijo and sister of the prettier Paca. Again Chapman draws attention to the future Empress' most marked feature (apart from her golden-red hair; she was teased and called carrots at her English boarding school) - her eyes were as hard and glittering as jewels - the eyes of an idol; they commanded the attention accorded a work of art rather than that roused by a living creature. Napoleon is but one of the scores of men who fall, occasionally unwillingly, under her spell; at least one of whom commits suicide and another goes to his death in Mexico. She felt compassion but not love for Napoleon III; a deep possessiveness for her son; a pleasure but rarely more for the adulation of others; and retained a life-long love, almost passion, for the Marquis de Alcanizes - for whom she had attempted suicide, and to whom she had offered herself before marrying Napoleon. 

Chapman has the famous author Prosper Mérimée say, whoever marries Eugénie will have his hands full... and the novel bears this out. The early romantic vision the young Spanish girl has for Bonapartism suffers a rude shock when she actually meets the great Napoleon's nephew, a most unprepossessing figure. She marries him, but is not in love with him. He continues to have his many affairs, particularly after she is told she can never have any more children due to the extreme danger of another childbirth. Chapman exhaustively (almost exhaustingly occasionally) follows the Imperial couple through the heady days of the 1850s and 1860s, developing a fascinating picture of those febrile times. Orsini tries to assassinate them; the disastrous Mexican adventure leads to increasing public hostility at home; and all the while the odious, jealous Plon-Plon, Napoleon's cousin, does his best to destroy the public's liking for the Empress. The latter's birth, on 5 May 1826, coincided with an earthquake, an ill omen by all accounts, though she came to believe it might have meant that she was destined to "convulse the world". Perhaps, both were accurate!

This is a meaty novel - far too detailed to expect a satisfactory appraisal of it in a short Blog. I feel I understand the main characters in the real-life story better, whilst always remembering that the vast majority of dialogue is fiction, superimposed on an historical background.

Hester Chapman's other novels included: To Be A King (1934), King's Rhapsody (1950), Limmerston Hall (1972) and Four Fine Gentlemen (1977).

Non-fiction: Great Villiers (1949), Mary II, Queen of England (1953), The Last Tudor King (1958), Lady Jane Grey (1962), The Tragedy of Charles II (1964), The Sisters of Henry VIII (1969) and Anne Boleyn (1974).

* One of the few respites for Ian Fleming when he boarded at Durnford prep school was on Sunday evenings, when the whole school would assemble in the hall to hear the headmaster’s wife read tales of exploration and derring-do. Her favourite for a long time was John Meade Falkner’s ‘Moonfleet’, a story of diamonds, smuggling, phantoms and shipwreck. Also enjoyed by the boys were ‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ and the Bulldog Drummond stories. Best of all for Fleming were Sax Rohmer’s novels with fast-paced plots featuring the ‘Yellow Peril’ archetype of the Chinese criminal genius. Fleming later told Raymond Chandler that he ‘was bought up on Dr Fu Manchu’. Other influences included John Buchan and indeed his first novel ‘Casino Royale’ (1953) was described by one reviewer as ‘super-sonic John Buchan’. 

# Miss Flowers belonged to that select band of export nannies and governesses who devoted their lives to reigning over foreign nurseries and schoolrooms and she was to remain in the service of the Montijos until the 1880s. To her Eugenie, even when Empress, was always 'Miss Eugenie'. David Duff, Eugenie & Napoleon III (Collins, 1978)

Mike Leigh's film 'Peterloo' 2018

 

DVD - 2019

Mike Leigh's movie - written and directed by him - was based on the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. It was screened at the 75th Venice International Film Festival and received its UK premiere on 17th October 2018 as part of the BFI London Film Festival, but in Manchester - the first time that the festival had held a premiere outside London. 

Economic grievances had brought into disrepute a political system which allowed and discouraged them. By the early 19th century, previous attempts at Reform having come to nothing, demands grew more radical. Moreover, during 1815 and 1816 the character of the movement for parliamentary reform changed. Through a lack of moderate leaders, extremists emerged - above all, the two great agitators, Henry (or 'Orator') Hunt and William Cobbett, made successful appeals to the masses. Hunt was the principal speaker at the first great mass meeting for parliamentary reform, held at Spa Fields in London in 1816. A huge crowd attended, and Hunt appeared preceded by two men, one carrying on a pike the red cap of the French Revolution, the other a tricolour, the flag of the future British republic. As a result, early in 1817, the government suspended Habeas Corpus, the Act which ensured arrested persons a trial.

Two years later, partly due to a falling off in trade, meetings were held in towns and on the moors in the North to demand reform. Among other demonstrations, a mass meeting was called in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester. Hunt was to be the main speaker. Some 6,000 assembled, bearing revolutionary slogans such as Reform - or Death. There was no disorder, but magistrates watching ordered troops in to arrest Hunt. These were impeded by the crowd. A detachment of the local mounted yeomanry rode in to support the soldiers. Eleven people were killed and over 400 injured. There was an outcry in the press, local and national. This did not stop the government from introducing the Six Acts later that year. Two of these restricted the freedom of the Press, and one the right of public meeting.

Did Leigh's film give an accurate account and did it get across the strong opinions shown in 1819? Yes, I think it did. The story focuses on both sides of the emerging conflict. Perhaps the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo skimped rather on 'extras' (there were very few!) but it highlighted the PTSD of the young Joseph, who returns home in a zombie-like state. The problem for the viewer is that a traumatised state becomes rather boring. I knew what was going to happen to him, almost from the first. Death at Peterloo; so, the final graveside scene was somehow underwhelming. Joseph's home is a meagre dwelling, but with a caring and close-kit family, headed by Joshua and Nellie (Maxine Peake). The other son, Robert, the daughter Mary, and daughter-in-law Esther, all work in a cotton mill. The economic depression turns them against the Corn Laws and in favour of increasing radicalism. The men attend political meetings where local agitators, including John Knight (Philip Jackson - I thought I recognised the actor; he was Chief Inspector Japp in the long-running Poirot series!) rage against the system of government. The local authorities - a rum lot, possibly teetering on caricatures but I didn't need to be convinced (thank you William Cobbett!) - wait for an excuse to arrest the leaders. In London, the Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth ( Karl Johnson - again, memories of another TV series, Lark Rise to Candleford, kept jogging my mind) is determined to stamp out radical politics. When a potato is flung at the Prince Regent's coach (Tim McInnery - oh dear, a far cry from Black Adder's sylph-like figure as Lord Percy Percy and Captain Darling!), Sidmouth has the excuse to suspend habeus corpus.

Two of the local agitators travel to London to hear the famous Henry 'Orator' Hunt, who excels at the meeting but his vanity shows through afterwards (I thought Rory Kinnear was excellent as Hunt). Hunt agrees to travel to Manchester, but has to 'hide' in business Joseph Johnson's home until the Peter's Field meeting.  The film alternates between the gatherings of the marchers and the local magistrates' meetings. I thought this juxtaposition worked, as did the various speeches by local radicals. I read on the Amazon reviews that many thought these were too long and boring and there were two many characters! If you are used to watching the 20 second to one minute efforts on present Soaps, then you are not up to the intellectual effort or concentration needed. The irony is that we live in the age of the masses, for whom these early Radicals fought so bravely - many would turn in their graves.

Another criticism of the film was the paucity of the local militia and the regular army detachment sent in to disperse the mob and grab Hunt. Again, I thought Leigh used very effective camera angles to show the brutality against men, women and children - rather than worry about numbers of actors. The reporters present furiously return to their papers to expose the atrocity, coining a mocking name for it, The Massacre of Peterloo. Meanwhile, the Prince Regent sends his congratulations to the magistrates for suppressing radicalism and restoring 'tranquility'.

I 'bought' the film, and having read Cobbett, in both senses. I can see why it did not do particularly well at the 'box office'; but that's a reflection of the present day public rather than Leigh. I do agree, though, that it ended rather abruptly with too many questions left unanswered. Okay - we know Joseph died with others; but what happened to Hunt? how did the mill owner (shown apoplectic in one brief scene) deal with his returning workforce? were the local radical leaders punished? Mention of the Six Acts would have helped to ram home the fact that, in the short term, the radical movement had failed.

Nicholas Orme's 'Going to Church in Medieval England' 2022 Part I

Yale University Press first edition - 2022

This is a big book, almost hernia-inducing; but it is well worth persevering to the end. After the 406 pages of text, a further 77 follow with a List of Technical terms (a few of which I didn't know: e.g. commination - a service cursing evildoers; and hosel - communion in the form of holy bread); Endnotes - 47 pages of these; Bibliography; and Index.

A useful Foreword sets out Orme's canvas. The focus of the book is on people in church. It examines who organised the worship and religious affairs of a parish: the officiating clergy and the laity who assisted them. It describes the buildings to which people went, and the significance of their shapes and furnishings. It asks how far a parish church helped to mould its worshippers into a community, and how far other factors caused the community to divide into smaller groups. It tries to explore the extent to which parishioners went to church or did not go, what they experienced when they came, and how they behaved in church...

By about 1200 England possessed some 9,500 churches - either in the form of minsters, staffed by groups of clergy, or local parish churches, run by single clergy.  There was a significant increase in the latter after about 900, which came to be known as 'field churches'. Later these were outnumbered by chapels (after capella, borrowed from the church in France that took its name from its famous relic: the capella or cloak of St. Martin.) Being usually small in size, these chapels could be built on town gateways, on bridges and by ferries.

Bridge chapel at St. Ives

Chapter 2 deals with the Staff of the Church: parish clergy, whose basic word 'rector' meant one who had the absolute 'rule' of his parish, over both the cure of souls and benefice rights. His benefice and home were known as a rectory. An alternative word for him was persona, 'parson'. Deputy clerics were known as vicars. Below them were the chaplains (known in modern times as curates). An interesting section deals with the issue of celibacy, by no means universal in the Middle Ages, whether up front or clandestine. Then there were the deacons, parish clerks and other assistants - often young boys.

Chapter 3, on Church Building, details the point of, and use of, the chancel, nave, transept, vestry, porch and tower. I knew the background to most of this, if not the specific details. Why did churches face East? Whatever the original reason, it came to be rationalised as representing the place where the sun rises and where the earthly paradise lies. Jesus apparently ascended into heaven to the east of the disciples and would return to judge the world from that direction. For that reason Christians were buried facing east so as to rise before him when he arrived. Chancel is derived from cancellus, which means a screened off area. The author rather punctures the idea that most of the mini chapels in the nave and elsewhere were 'chantry chapels'. I didn't know that placing metal cockerel on the spire or roof symbolised watchfulness since such birds crowed in the night. Another interesting section deals with seating (or not) in churches. They seems to be allotted often to keep men and women in separate areas; seating was the invention of the laity, most likely for reasons of comfort and status.  A seat gave a distinct and reserved place in church which, if boarded in, might be warmer. As the popularity of seating grew, it was adaptable to the current understanding of social distinctions. Seating tended to make people's behaviour more uniform, and it eventually made possible the static services with their emphasis on teaching (preaching) that characterised the Reformation. One might summarise a church site as consisting of three zones. The churchyard was the frontier, which anyone might enter at any time. The next zone inwards, the nave, was holier than the churchyard...locked at night but open during the day. Further inside were the chapels and altars, still more restricted in access, and finally the chancel, the most sacred section. 

Chapter 4 concentrates on the Congregation.

The question of how many people attended church is almost impossible to answer. Not until the mid-19th century were anything like accurate figures recorded. It is clear from various accounts that many people refused to attend, quite apart from those who were unable to - such as those with ill-health, or those on the sea etc. Naturally, historians know more about the attendance of the better off. Orme has a fascinating section on (usually ill) behaviour. One's posture in church was one of standing, sitting, kneeling/bending the knee and, less often, lying prostrate. Praying with one's hands together may well have imitated the etiquette of feudalism. There were three main prayers by the early 13th century: the Paternoster (Lord's Prayer), the Apostles' Creed; and the Ave Maria. These three basic prayers formed one of the great continuities in Christian life from about the 1240s until the 1540s. The 'pair of beads' (later the 'rosary') came to consist of 55 beads on a string, made up of five groups of ten beads, each of which was a prompt to say the Ave Maria. Every ten of these was followed by a larger bead at which one said the Paternoster, and the Creed was pronounced when all the beads had been counted. Not being a Roman Catholic, I did not know this.

The 'pair of beads' or Rosary

Books/texts used included the Latin Psalter, the Hours of the Virgin (known as the 'matins book' or primer), as well as other liturgical matter. The Lollards were to bring alternative beliefs in an intellectual way to the forefront of debate after the early 1380. The document of 1395, now known as 'The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards', struck at the heart of several Roman Catholic fundamentals - the denial of the Real Presence in the eucharist; no image veneration; priests could marry; the pope was Antichrist, and so on.

I have now reached page 197 out of 406 pages of text; virtually halfway. A break is needed, simply because the sheer mass of information becomes too much to assimilate in any meaningful way. Orme has delivered a tour de force which is invaluable for coming to grips with the material. His intense sympathy - almost empathy - for his subject is clear and the wealth of his research is made understandable due to his ease of description. I will return, but not just yet!

Trois-Etoiles' 'The Member for Paris' 1871

 

Smith, Elder first edition - 1871

The story of this author's life is at least as interesting as his literary output. Trois-Etoiles was the pseudonym for Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (1819 or 1824 - 20th December 1881). Murray was the illegitimate son of Richard Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. He matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford in March 1848 (a tumultuous year across Europe) and joined the Inner Temple as a student in 1850. He was appointed to the diplomatic service by Lord Palmerston. and was sent as an attaché to the British Embassy in Vienna in July 1851. He was recalled from Vienna for doubling as foreign correspondent for the Morning Post on the side. In October 1852, he was appointed fifth paid attaché at Constantinople, However, he failed to get on with the irascible Stratford Canning, and was shipped to Mitylene (Lesbos) as vice-consul. He caricatured Canning in his "Roving Englishman" sketches in Household Words as Sir Hector Stubble. Murray was moved yet again, this time shipped to Odessa as consul-general in 1858. For over ten years he engaged in feuds with English merchants from whom he claimed fees they wouldn't pay. Lord Derby ruled against Murray, who came home to England and subsequently attacked Derby at every turn. 

Stratford Canning

As editor of The Queen's Messenger, a bitterly satirical journal of the day, (referred to as polemical, personal, unfair and disrespectful) he wrote an article, Bob Coachington Lord Jarvey, which was considered by the present Lord Carington to cast aspersions on his deceased father. In 1869, Carington horsewhipped Murray outside the Conservative Club. Court cases followed which ended with Murray fleeing to Paris for good. He became well known in Paris as the Comte de Rethel d'Aragon, using the title of the Spanish lady whom he had married. He wrote innumerable sketches and essays for the American and English papers. He was best at short satirical pieces, incisive in style and caustic in matter. He was Paris correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily News, also writing for the Cornhill and the Illustrated London News. He was adept at circulating private gossip, mainly by the use of hint and innuendo. He died at Passy in 1881 and was buried in Paris.

The Member for Paris commences in 1854, when Hautbourg on the Loire was fallen of a sudden from its snug position of ease into penury...the Hautbourg of 1854 was but the ghost of the Hautbourg of 1851. The reason? The Duke of Hautbourg, being in Paris at the time of monsieur Napoleon's coup-d'état, finding himself face to face with a troop of government horse and trying to escape, was slain. The irony was that he was a conservative Legitimist; worse, he was found lying side by side with a subversive sweep, a costermonger of socialist tendencies, and a small boy, three foot high, holding a red toy-flag emblazoned with the heinous words, Vive la Liberté! Much of the three-decker novel continues in this vein - ironic, often caustic, humour which actually adds to the pleasure of turning its pages. The new Duke, unlike his deceased nephew, is a Radical who foreswears his title and is known to all as Monsieur Manuel Gerold. A dedicated Republican, Gerold had gone into voluntary exile in Brussels, a hive of French republican emigrés. Gerold has two sons, 24 year-old Horace and Emile, a couple of years his junior. He hands over his entire estate to the young men, saying it is up to them what they do with the title, lands and revenues (unfortunately much of it revivified by profits from slavery).

The story unfolds slowly (although it takes place over very few years) as the brothers diverge in their attitudes as to how best to serve republicanism and their father. They install themselves in a third floor rented accommodation in Paris' "Latin Quarter" close to the Panthéon. They both study for the law and become barristers.  Murray (as we shall call the author) creates a marvellous family group out of the Pochemolles: the landlord, M. Pochemolle was a valiant conservative of existing institutions, whatever they were (who found it appalling that the brothers had a picture of the famous Tennis Court gathering against Louis XVI); Mdme. Pochemolle, stout, buxom and like any Jane Austen mother, determined to get the best match for her daughter; the son M. Alcibiade Pochemolle, who allows the author to construct one of the most droll chapters. Inter Pocula, when he gets drunk and spills all the family's beans to Horace. At a breakfast, he fell to on the omelette and remarked perplexedly on the giddying properties of fresh air, which had almost knocked him off his chair just now; the daughter, Mdlle. Georgette, who looked some seventeen springs old, and was as pretty as clear hazel eyes, thick chestnut curls, red lips, and neat dressing could make her... soon falls in love with Horace, who takes far too long to realise this. Only in the latter part of Volume III, does he reciprocate the feelings. Too late, he is now married and in a touching scene near the end of the book, her better conscience overrides his. 

One of the dominant characters throughout the story is M. Macrobe - who at first sight looked like a weasel, upon closer inspection like a badger, and who, after mature examination, left one doubtful as to whether there were not a chimpanzee or two amongst his ancestors... His nefarious dealings, particularly with his highly suspect Crédit Parisien, reminded me a little of Anthony Trollope's Augustus Melmotte in his The Way We Live Now, published in 1875, four years after Murray's novel. It is his Macrobe's daughter, Mdlle Angélique - a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, angel-faced child, who looked at people with a perpetual expression of soft wonder - who Horace marries. She is the tragic character in the play - her father uses her to get in with Horace, the new Duke after his father's death in Brussels, and the latter marries her for his own political reasons. He is not in love with her and the decline in her mental health as she comes to realise this is sensitively written. 

The author clearly has no time for Napoleon III or his Second Empire - the Paris of the Second Empire was there, a throng of senators, ministers, deputies, stock-jobbers, patchouli-novelists, eau-de-rose journalists; not only is the Emperor portrayed as a dictator but  his main henchman, M. Gribaud, an oily, two-faced, bully of a man, is venomously attacked. The policeman, M. Louchard, well-versed in  government corruption and regularly used by Gribaud and Macrobe, is another believable character, with his false beard and fake eyeglasses enabling him to spy on Horace and others. Murray pours scorn on French newspapers - those spicy collections of false news, mad leaders and improper anecdotes - which was a bit rich considering his own involvement in such a trade. The English journalist, Monsieur Drydust, was surely based on the author or is a compendium of those he knew. The Prince of Arcola, with his English valet Bateson (a touch of Jeeves?) and his Anglophile approach to life is perhaps - with Emile Gerold, Georgette and Angélique - one of the four who deserve a berth in Heaven. Horace, on the other hand like most ambitious men, whose range of mind is not extensive, is fatally flawed.

There are many humorous touches throughout.  I liked this comment on  Father Glabre's "Confession Mornings" - it is to be supposed that the male element in the St. Hyacinth congregation were either singularly free from human error or lamentably blind to their own short-comings, or painfully remiss in their religious duties; anyhow no trowsered penitent was ever seen to kneel in Father Glabre's confessional and declare him himself a miserable sinner. But the women made up for this. What a throng, and what devotion! What a rustling of silk dresses, what contrite rows of six-buttoned gloves clasped daintily over velvet missals... And, to cap it, Father Glabre is clearly more worried about his shares in the Crédit Parisien than any heavenly reward.

I was not anticipating the tragic end - one of the deaths, sadly yes; but not the other. Perhaps it was fitting, but it would have left much heartache behind.

T.L. Crosby's 'The Two Mr. Gladstones' 1997

 

Yale University Press first edition - 1997

Although I have read Roy Jenkins' magisterial biography of Gladstone, I found this slighter work fascinating. On the dust wrapper flaps of Travis Crosby's work, it reads: this book applies an eclectic and sophisticated psychological framework to Gladstone's life that explains the duality of his character. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as that, Crosby has certainly provided much food for thought. He goes on: the book describes his childhood and adolescence, his marriage, his rise to prominence as a young Conservative member of Parliament, the temporary languishing of his political career at midcentury, his leadership of the Liberal Party, and his accomplishments in domestic and foreign affairs as prime minister. Crosby traces the disparate threads of Gladstone's volatile personality and shows how he developed a range of responses to emotional stress to shore up his need for an unquestioned control over the events of his life. Gladstone emerges as a man who wrestled with powerful internal conflicts as much as he struggled with the formidable political and social issues of his time.

Three points in particular stood out for me: firstly, Crosby's repeated argument that Gladstone needed to feel in control - at home, in Cabinet and Parliament and in governmental policy. Secondly, just how 'up and down' he was in his temper and temperament (it reminded me a little of Gordon Brown!); and thirdly, I didn't realise just how long he was in the relative political wilderness in his middle years.

Gladstone's attitude to the religious apostasy of his friends James Hope and Henry (later Cardinal) Manning was typical. He saw it as an intolerable threat to his perception of himself as the upholder of religious constancy...the Church of England represented order, an ethical system, and a certain and regulated set of rules for behaviour...for Gladstone, religion was the ultimate source of his belief in an orderly system in the midst of a disorderly world. A threat or shift in his religious beliefs was a threat to his psychological well-being and to his coherent view of life. It all contributed to his sense of spiritual malaise during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Another interesting point that Crosby makes is that Gladstone, as a firm Evangelical believer, had a keen sense of personal unworthiness joined to a highly developed self-righteousness. This was a characteristic often seen as arrogance in his later life.

Travis suggests that the two options open to Gladstone, when failing to get his way, was either to go on the attack or to 'retreat' (usually to Hawarden or abroad). One can see this in his long tussle over Ireland - e.g. his change from conciliarism to coercion in the early 1880s. A great cause could subsume all other, less important issues and could promote the coherence he sought both politically and personally. D.A. Hamer (1972) says this explains Gladstone's propensity for finding "missions": his "concentration, the intensity with which it was organised, and the rhetorical power with which he presented it to others" can be seen as a conflict between his "extremely emotional and excitable temperament" and his "ceaseless striving to organise, systematise, and order the diverse materials of his existence". 

Travis ends his book with a look at what other Historians have written and it is worth quoting the passage:

In Gladstone's own time, loyal friends and political foes alike, while acknowledging his intelligence, devotion to duty, and moral concerns, questioned his judgement, character, and mental stability. Historians and other scholars of the twentieth century have followed these cues. John Vincent believes that Gladstone had a "pathological lack of self-control"....Jonathan Parry condemns Gladstone's "manic frustration" and "obsession with power". To Parry, Gladstone "seemed to lack the character, tact and temper necessary to lead a party responsibly"...Michael Winstanley thought especially harmful was Gladstone's "personal", "hopeless", and "destructive obsession" with Ireland.

Crosby suggests that the apparent discords of Gladstone's outward life can best be seen as a consistent effort on his part to maintain within himself a stable and coherent psychological state. His Diaries reveal that struggle between his inward and outward lives - between the two Mr. Gladstones. One must remember that he was four times Prime Minister and at the end of his life was known as the 'People's William' and G O M - the Grand Old Man (or to his political rivals 'God's Only Mistake').