VARIETY
235
to function as a hero: his difficul–
ties are organic, are not going to be
solved by a straightening out of mis–
understandings. He is in his
fix
for
good, and the Victorian pathos of
that
fix
is lingered over. Larry suf–
fers in the limbo ·reserved by the
English for those who are not quite
gentlemen or ladies nor altogether
plebeian either. "There was a little
bit of dash about him-just a
touch of swagger-which better
breeding might have prevented."
Reginald objects through clenched
teeth to Larry's billycock hat, and
the wrong as well as the right peo–
ple call him by his first name. The
real anguish of Larry's hopeless
suit is the suspicion that snobbery
is at the bottom of his rejection.
The author, willing to allow for it
but not to admit it, tries to inval–
idate the suspicion by having
Mary's vulgar stepmother voice it
comically-and by making Regi–
nald's dead mother the daughter
of a Canadian innkeeper, for
which reason Reginald himself is
a victim of snobbery. But the sus–
picion only flowers the more; Trol–
lope pours too much independent
life into his creatures, and the har–
angues of Mary's stepmother are
the liveliest speeches in the novel.
Trollope really assents to the snob–
bery and knows that his readers do
too-not in principle perhaps but
certainly in practice, and he was
the good novelist he was because
he did not allow his principles to
deviate too far from practice. The
readers know also that another two
hundred and fifty pounds a year
would have made Larry a gentle–
man, swagger or no swagger.
The secondary plot, Lady Ara–
bella Trefoil's hunt for a husband
within the lists of English social
form, takes place in Hell and is
the richest vein in the book, as epi–
sodes in Hell usually are. It is writ-
ten with a freer hand, since inter–
class relations are not involved, on–
ly the criticism of an upper class
on its own terms. The depravity of
· European life being for Trollope
nothing so esoteric as to be revealed
by the stripping away of successive
veils, the baseness of the Trefoil
family is presented straightforward–
ly. Trollope was more interested in
the phenomenon itself of evil than
in the principle at its root. He lack–
ed that horror of the specific sin
which functioned for James al–
most as the shaping rule of fiction.
The latter saves the reader from
the local experience of evil by
transforming its revelation into a
cathartic exercise of the aesthetic
faculties; such an exercise delivers
perhaps more of the force of evil
in general. Nothing was remoter
from Trollope. In one sense he
aimed at corrective criticism of a
particular society, in another he
assumed the role of a spokesman
of accepted opinion. But first and
last he was a yea-sayer, a connois–
seur of things as they are. It is be–
cause of his intense sense of the
actual, his avidity for social facts
and acts, and because of his feel–
ing for his art, which to him meant
substance rather than form, that
we can derive a more fundamen–
tal criticism of society from
his
work than he himself seems to have
intended.
Nearing thirty and poor for her
station, Lady Arabella lives on her
social connections. The notions of
comfort and prestige inculcated in
her by her milieu give her little
other alternative than to hunt for
a rich and wellborn husband. Trol–
lope would have held her entitled
to one, perhaps, if her need were
not so desperate. It is hard to tell
whether her bad character comes
from her need or vi<;e versa. Lady
