The Captive Reader

After reading The American Senator by Anthony Trollope, I am now certain that Trollope will become one of my favourite authors.  I had suspected as much before but, now that I have finally read him, I know.  So chatty, so funny, so detailed, so entertaining – this book was everything that a book should be!

The plot of The American Senator has very little to do with that gentleman, a Mr Elias Gotobed, who takes great delight in insulting his hosts in the name of education (for surely they must be made to see how flawed their ways are), and much to do with those who reside in or pass through the country town of Dillsborough one winter.  When have I ever been able to resist a novel about English country life?  The novel is comprised of three main, interconnected stories: the Senator’s fumblings about society, the romantic life of the unassuming Mary Masters, and the attempts by the dazzling Arabella Trefoil to catch the wealthy Lord Rufford (though she is already engaged to the diplomat, and local squire, John Morton). 

I have to admit, the novel does begin slowly with several chapters devoted to the histories of Dillsborough’s local families, explaining long-standing feuds and giving character descriptions of the neighbourhood’s eligible males.  It’s important information but presented in a very tedious way.  However, as soon as the narrator’s explanations are concluded and the characters appear and begin to speak for themselves, the fun begins.

John Morton has just returned home from a diplomat posting in America, where he came across and became engaged to Arabella Trefoil, an Englishwoman travelling abroad with her mother, and made the acquaintance of Mr Gotobed.  These characters quickly join him in the country; Arabella and her mother with the purpose of surveying Morton’s home and evaluating his worth as a prospective spouse and Mr Gotobed with a view to educating himself about the English people and their customs.  At a local hunt, Mr Gotobed has much to critique and Arabella much to consider, as she meets the wealthy, eligible and possibly attainable Lord Rufford.     

Arabella is a magnificently unsentimental anti-heroine.  She is not a keen sportswoman but, in pursuit of the huntsman Rufford, is quite the huntress, plotting out and adapting her strategy over the course of several months in an attempt to snare her prey.  There is no sentiment about Arabella, just level-headed practicality supported by a dash of ruthlessness:

She herself did not care much for pleasure.  But she did care to be a great lady, – one who would be allowed to swim out of rooms before others, one who could snub others, one who could show real diamonds when others wore paste, one who might be sure to be asked everywhere, even by the people who hated her.  She rather liked being hated by women, and did not want any man to be in love with her, – except as far as might be sufficient for the purpose of marriage.  (p. 81)

With effort, she is beautiful but she is getting older and there is little money.  She accepts Morton when they meet in America but, when she meets Rufford and recognizes him as the greater prize, quickly shifts her focus without ever quite sacrificing the security offered by Morton.  And she handles it marvelously, it must be said, though she’s not quite so clever as to actually pull it off. 

The level of work that Arabella puts into running Rufford to ground is immense and though I was struck with admiration of her for her strategic brilliance and perseverance (because, really, she leaves nothing on the table in her bid to win Rufford), Trollope’s purpose here is not to glorify the huntress but to win sympathy for the hunted.  Rufford is almost powerless against Arabella’s machinations and blatant lies, the publicity campaign she wages in effort to coerce him into marriage after blackening his reputation and making herself appear as the wronged party, a man more sinned against than sinning:

He was being hunted and run down, and, with the instinct of all animals that are hunted, he prepared himself for escape.  It might be said, no doubt would be said, that he behaved badly.  That would be said because it would not be open to him to tell the truth.  The lady in such a case can always tell her story with what exaggeration she may choose to give, and can complain.  The man can never do so.  When inquired into, he cannot say that he has been pursued.  He cannot tell her friends that she began it, and, in point of fact, did it all.  ‘She would fall into my arms; she would embrace me; she persisted in asking me whether I loved her!’  Though a man have to be shot for it, or kicked for it, or even though he have to endure perpetual scorn for it, he cannot say that let it be ever so true.  And yet is a man to be forced into a marriage which he despises?  (p. 307)

And yet Rufford’s fate, having slipped Arabella’s grasp, is perhaps less pleasant than it would have been had he yielded and married her.  There is no love match waiting for him, just a more subtle huntress, favoured by his family, who bides her time until he is exhausted by the hunt and too weak to give flight.  Arabella, having lost both Rufford and John Morton, makes a surprisingly suitable match to a young man as clever, hard-working, and calculating as she, an intriguing end to an eventful career.  She is certainly not good but then neither does Trollope cast her as entirely bad, musing that “there was something even in her hard callous heart softer than the love of money, and more human than the dream of an advantageous settlement in life.”  She is an endlessly intriguing character and certainly the most memorable one in the novel. 

What to say about the Senator?  Comically frank, Mr Gotobed makes many good and valid observations about England and the English – questioning fox hunts, decrying the powers of the landed gentry over the peasants, ridiculing the apathetic members of the House of Lords – for the edification of his less than appreciative English audience.  But who could really respond well to a man who believes “the want of reason among Britishers was so great, that no one ought to treat them as wholly responsible beings”?  The greatest amusement comes from seeing how other characters react to his grandiloquent statements, fighting to stay polite to the foreigner as he insults their country and their ways (rightly or wrongly – the Senator does not always let facts get in the way of that which he and his American values knows to be right).  But for all his comic appeal, he does speak a great deal of truth and it is remarkable how many of the English customs he quibbles over are still issues today.  Watching him struggle with his New World ideals of equality as he is charmed by the gentry and scammed by the lower classes is also rather delightful:    

There is a reality about them [‘those here of the highest rank’], and a desire to live up to their principles, which is very grand.  Their principles are no doubt very bad, utterly antagonistic to all progress, unconscious altogether of the demand for progressive equality which is made by the united voices of suffering mankind.  The man who is born a lord, and who sees a dozen serfs around him who have been born to he half- starved ploughmen, thinks that Good arranged it all, and that he is bound to maintain a state of thing so comfortable to himself, as being God’s vicegerent here on earth.  But they do their work as vicegerents with an easy grace, and with sweet pleasant voices and soft movements, which almost make a man doubt whether the Almighty has not, in truth, intended that such injustice should be permanent.  That one man should be rich and another poor is a necessity in the present imperfect state of civilization; – but that one man should be born to be a legislator, born to have everything, born to be a tyrant, – and should think it all right, is to me miraculous.  But the greatest miracle of all is that they who are not so born, – who have been born to suffer the reverse side, – should also think it to be all right. (p. 195)

And then we have the final thread of the story, the romance thrown in to entertain soft-hearted female readers (that would be me).  Mary Masters is the daughter of a country lawyer who, after her mother’s death, was essentially raised by Lady Ushant until that lady was forced to remove from the area after her great nephew John Morton inherited Bragton, where she had been living (this is one of those messy family relationships explained at the beginning of the novel).  As the novel begins, Mary is in her early twenties and has been living with her father, step-mother, and half sisters for some time. Mary is content with her family but perhaps a little more refined than her sisters.  A well-off local farmer – not quite a gentleman, to his dismay – Larry Twentyman is desperately in love with her.  Larry is everything that a lover should be.  He is earnest, constant, respectful, and passionate.  He cannot conceal his love for Mary, nor his disappointment each time she rejects his advances.  He is handsome, young, in possession of a good house, a good fortune, and a good temper.  He is ideal.  Everyone around Mary certainly seems to think so, from her step-mother to Lady Ushant.  The townsfolk are in universal agreement that the match would be a good thing.  The only ones who disagree are Reginald Morton, a local gentleman now in his late thirties who has been friends with Mary since her childhood, who thinks her too fine, too cultured for the countryman Larry, and Mary herself, who knows even before she realises her love for another, that she cannot return Larry’s affection.

Larry is everything that is good-humoured and generous but, after hearing Reginald describe his quiet daily life to Mary, was there ever really a chance I was going to favour Larry?: ‘I rush in and out of the garden, and spend my time between my books and my flowers and my tobacco pipe.’  Alright, not a terribly heroic schedule but clearly that of a man after my own heart.  Larry suffers greatly when the true lovers get their happy ending, which I did so appreciate (however cruel that may sound).  I hate novels where there is obviously one good lover and one bad one, or where the enthusiastic lover proves comically unfaithful when rejected.  Larry is constant and endures – though not quietly – the pain of unrequited love, lending him a certain air of nobility.  Besides, his future is not so bleak: there is promise of future happiness with Kate Masters, Mary’s younger half-sister, a friend and hunting partner of Larry’s, who possesses a jolly spirit that matches his own.

I purposely started my Trollope reading with a comic, stand alone novel and I am so glad that I did.  It was a wonderful way to test the waters, as it were, and I’m thrilled to know I have his series to look forward to as well as his many other independent novels.  Isn’t it wonderful to discover a favourite author who was also shockingly prolific?