Pallisers 11:23: The end of Lopez: mockery of marital sex, despair, suicide yet keeping faith as he understood it

“”There is no mercy, nor friendship anywhere” — Ferdinand Lopez (an abbreviated version of a line from Trollope’s The Prime Minister

Duchess (Susan Hampshire) rushes into Marie Finn’s (Barbara Murray) arms

On their last evening Lopez (Stuart Wilson) kneels before Emily (Sheila Rusking), puts his head on her lap, seeking comfort

Dear Friends,

Perhaps because this part has so many hard and cynical moments and ends on a suicide, in an effort to prevent it from being perceived as too somber, the director has more opening scenes for each part begin with one character reaching out to hug or be hugged by another or touch one another (Duke to Bungay, Duchess to Silverbridge, above Duchess to Marie, even more discreetly Lopez to Sextus Parker) than I remember in any other part. We also have a man humble himself before a woman physically: an effort is made to make Lopez a more sympathetic character at the same time as he is more wildly jeeringly desperate.

I continue with my blog reviews of the 1974 BBC Pallisers mini-series. We are up to 11:23, a dramatization of the climax of The Prime Minister (Volume III): Phineas’s speech exposing Ferdinand Lopez, Lopez’s suicide; we see the last in this series of Emily Lopez, Mr Wharton (Brewster Mason) and Sextus Parker (David Ryall), and the story of Silverbridge (Anthony Andrews) is minimally threaded in yet again.

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First the summary of the whole and then transcripts and commentaries on the scenes and threads:

Summary of episodes and sources in Trollope’s Prime Minister:

11:23: End of Prime Minister, mostly from Volume III of novel, with a little invention to thread in Silverbridge, Lady Mabel and Lady Mary

Episode 26: Muckraking: Scene 1) Matching, front room, at night: Dukes Bungay and Omnium, from PM, III, Ch 50, pp. 429-30 (letter material) 432-35 and narration elsewhere. Again over same material, how this came about, People’s Banner exploiting (opens with Omnium reading paper), places (for Phineas at admiralty), scandal, voice-over of Slide as Bungay reads letter, something must be said publicly; scene 2) Matching, Duchess’s boudoir, fixing her hair, Marie to one side and maid at attention, Mrs Finn says she must go with husband, Duchess how secretaries run from her husband, Bungay to them, to tell of Duke’s gravity; scene 3) Duke’s study, Duke and Duchess, long moving transcribed scene in blog above, some from PM, III, Ch 42, pp. 366-67, Ch 51, pp. 436-441 (includes Adam trope), Ch 56, pp. 482-84.

Episode 27: Lopez’s schemes: scene 4) Sexty Parker’s office, Lopez and Sexty, here Sexty presented as urging Lopez to get money from Wharton by threatening to take Emily to Guatemala; scene 5) Wharton’s chambers, Lopez and Wharton, from PM, Ch 53, pp. 456-59, here Lopez demands 2000 and insinuates he will not take Emily if 20000 immediately forthcoming, the Mills Happerton job described, from PM, Ch 49, pp. 421-22, Ch 52, pp. 450-53,Ch 53, p. 455; Scene 5) Lopez and Emily’s London flat; from PM, Ch 49,. pp. 421-24, this is the transcribed scene in the blog above, where Lopez insists Emily must go with him, child a weapon, demand for 20000 pounds, he insists she go to father, that’s his good girl, she sickened; scene 6) Emily and Lopez’s flat, Emily and father talking, PM, Chs 48-49,, p. 416-419, Ch 53, pp. 452-56; Emily cries to father: “help me, papa! what am I to do!”; scene 7) Again Wharton’s chambers, Lopez and Wharton, now Wharton has a document for Lopez to sign to promise to leave Emily and all Wharton relatives alone before he offers money; this is a memory of how Wharton consults a lawyer in the book to see if they can by law rid themselves of Lopez (a permanent separation PM, III, Ch 53, p. 462), Lopez swaggering nasty (“wives as you can imagine are very expensive things, Wharton”)

Episode 28: Homecoming: scene 8) first Silverbridge’s, Matching, Duchess’s boudoir, we see him and Duchess hugging, talk of Tregear in France, father wishes son would spend time preparing himself for house, and the dialogue about how a “fella” has to follow his views; he wants to be conservative, Duchess doesn’t mind the politics, only the father’s dismay, keep it from him (“that’s my good boy”) and she says she’s invited Lady Mabel Grex, muffin eating; scene 9) return to Wharton office and scene 7: Lopez signing for 6000 pounds, Wharton says he’ll check to see if job going through before giving money; Scene 10, Emily and Lopez’s apartment, the nadir of their relationship where he taunts her with sexually desiring him, transcribed onto blog above, much invented, feeling is that of PM, Ch 47, pp. 408, 410-11; Scene 10 — misnumbered in my notes): Happerton’s chambers, to him Wharton, a scene transposed with modern resonances about South America, from MP, Vol III, Ch 53, pp. 460-62, effective satire; sum here is 5000 pounds; scene 11) Sexty’s office, Sexty drunk and desperate, half-crying, Lopez come to tell him Wharton will visit him to check and he must convince him to give them 6000 pounds to cover their losses. (Actually the series here seems to be contradictory, with different sums thrown about.) Sexty ends calling Lopez a “beautiful brute” for scheming to get 4000 more than they need to cover their losses; scene 12) Matching, familiar windows, now gone green and pastoral and idyllic and so they will be for this and the last three parts, Lady Mary and Lady Mabel who looks away, again slightly melancholy figure, Mary claims to be doing German so Silverbridge who comes in can go walking with Mabel who is “strong as a horse,” Duchess comes in, they exit, would have liked to see others walking with them, Mary claims studying but is not, Duchess asserts she wants better for Silverbridge; Erle to them with grave political news that Duke must return to London immediately (he is often messenger of grave political news) Completely invented.

Episode 29: Grave Debate: Scene 13) Duchess boudoir at Matching, she in darkness, all alone, to her Marie Finn; telegram at Gibraltor sent Phineas to London and she to Matching, duke did not want Duchess there,Ch 56-57, pp. 482-88, clearly Duchess to be seen as obeying her husband’s behests not to be there, but here presented in such a way that clearly she could not have been,; scene 14) Parliament, Phineas’s great moment defending the Duke, a high point of climax in his career in the series, from PM, III, Ch 57, pp. 494-495, some quoted in blog below, much taken straight); 15) The Club, Lopez made an outcast by bringing out “Cumberland’s sword.” That last detail invented, but not outcast state which includes scene with Everett, PM, III, Ch 58, pp 497-99 (we are told he’s “not thrown out of club yet”), lines about being thrown out of club are two, p. 501 irony of having Dolly who is however a mouthpiece of this ironic series; 16) Happerton’s office: Wharton and Lopez to Happerton, deal off, PM, Vol 3, Ch 58, pp. 502-3, even running guns requires a level of trust, and ends on “no mercy, no friendship among you …”

Episode 30: scene 17) Sexty’s office, Lopez comes to say goodbye, the sweetest truest scene for him, tells his friend Wharton not coming, apologizes, says it could have gone the other way, from PM, Vol 58, pp. 503-4 (“Quite settled”); 18) Lopez and Emily’s flat, last scene, this is much softened from book, Emily sewing (in book she gave birth to baby who died quickly, Ch 49, pp 424-25, Ferdinand’s cruelty), Vol 3, Ch 60, p. 510 (against Fletcher) and 511-12 (he is hard to the last to her), but then decent after brooding and deciding to die, Ch 60, p. 516; here sudden tenderness, tells her to go to bed after she half-invites him to come to her; he sits up at desk, watching rain; 19) train station, Platform 3, buying one-way ticket to place where there’s no connection, darkened face, flashing light of train, PM, Ch 60, pp. 516-20; 20) Lopez and Emily’s apartment, father there, they are talking, Inspector Staples about a man run over at Tenway Junction, unrecognizable but for documents; she faints; 20) Matching front room, Duchess, Duke and Bungay: a what-they-thought-about-it-at-Matching scene: Duke blaming himself, PM, III, Ch 56, pp. 482-83; IV, Ch 63, p. 540; 66, pp. 565-68, again People’s Banner, Duke showing genuine decent feeling, some of what she said earlier in book about not tormenting himself brought in here, and narrator’s irony about how when someone is dead, his faults forgotten; Duchess’s “we did rather run over him” (a train image) not here; 21): Lopez and Emily’s apartment: she is no longer pregnant, she should come to live with father again, how can she forget, the beginnings of martyr behavior (father insists “he was a bad man”), lame defense on her part, taken from PM, IV, ch ch 61, p 526, (others are bad — the line Trollope gave Duchess much better, all that’s left are his debts says the father; Sexty turns up, Emily retreats with replaced father-lover bidding her to bed; after father has told her that legally and morally they are not bound to do anything, we have ironic use of flattery to extract (possibly) the whole of the 6000 pounds the next day in Sexty’s office, perhaps Lopez not as cunning and strong as Sexty after all. Life goes on.

As with Part 11:22, the dramatization of the marriage of Lopez and Emily is the overwhelming dominate thread, only here the marriage is now in a state of utter disrepair, and (fascinatingly) Raven has made Emily turn, and it’s just about erotically, to her father, and (as Sedgwick suggested is common to most of our male hegemonic literature, but even more so in male homosexual books), it comes down to a struggle between the father and Lopez for Emily.

This is presented stark in a way it’s not in Trollope as Raven weaves scenes back and forth between Lopez and the father-in-law, Lopez and Emily, Emily and the father-in-law, punctuated by two to Happerton Mills (the man made to have the job at Guatemala on offer) and at the opening of the part between Lopez and Sexty, in the middle (where it’s Sexty who is made to concoct the plan to blackmail the father-in-law — in the book Lopez needs no counseling or urging on this) and at the close (touchingly, Lopez comes to say goodbye to Sexty).

Nearly our last sight of Emily; she has chosen the safe older man

The other thread, much diminished is that between the Duke and Duchess over Lopez’s making public the Duchess’s shennigans, the Duke’s refusal to let his wife be openly humiliated in public, her pleadings he do so, Bungay’s advice (to no avail), all culminating in Donal McCann’s magnificent performance of Phineas’s speech in Parliament. This is one of the high points of the 26 part series, for here is a culmination of Phineas’s career and why in the series he is seen to succeed (as a useful orator).

Phineas in command of hecklers, admired by his colleagues, uses some of Trollope’s powerful language:

he . . . is only anxious to inflict an unmanly wound in order that he may be gratified by seeing the pain which he inflicts (PM, Vol 3, Ch 57, ’94 Oxford, p 495)

He has just finished saying “It is not part of my script to gratify the emorbid and indecent curiosity” of the opposing members; he asks one of them to come forward. Not one man rises. Then he changes his terms to “cruel and perverse.” Again there is heckling and he wonders about this desire to “gratify an appetite for inflicting cowardly wounds” and “a spectacle of pain.” I think the filmmakers mean us to recognize ourselves and world here, for when Phineas (a split second after our still) goes on to say “I need not pause to stigmatize the meanness of Mr Lopez’s application (great ploy, pausing while you deny pausing), the braying erupts on the other side of the room as they enjoy their scapegoating and sense that this is not them, oh never them, they would make no such applications, would they?

The other high — or low – point is a frantic powerful quarrel between Lopez and Emily over sex where he mocks her sexual appetite for him.

The best moments are include Glencora’s powerful request to the Duke to let her take the blame (as after all he will not and she is protected and glad to be so), and many little ones like the closing scene Sexty Parker comes to Abel Wharton and shows himself capable of fleecing Abel Wharton for far more than Lopez ever did. Lopez (in a series of brief scenes) had told Sexy first that Wharton was coming to pay the bill and he had lied and said it was 6,000 pounds when it was 2,000 and they would split the extra four, and then that the deal was off as his job had been cancelled, and then that he was “going away.” Parker flatters Wharton with talk of how Lopez respected him and Wharton falls for it, a scene which has the effect of suggesting Lopez’s fall was not because he was a “bad man” but not a sufficiently “able” or astute liar. After all he did believe the Duchess would support him, was shocked when she left the morning the election began.

However, since the scene between the Duchess and Duke carries the main thread across the series of their developing relationship and is subtle and powerful too, and comes early in the Part, I transcribe it here first.

The Part opens with Bungay come to comfort the Duke about the failing coalition and having to listen to the Duke read aloud the latest excoriating epistle from The People’s Banner, the Duchess cutting her hair (with a maid standing right by her ready to obey her every commant) urging Mrs Finn not to follow her husband to sea, when Bungay comes in to tell the Duchess her husband is in emotional straits.

Episode 26, Muckraking, Scene 2: Duke’s study at Matching

1 Establishment shot: Duke writing at desk, with man standing near by (parallels Duchess cutting her hair with maid standing nearby). We hear door open, we see Duchess hurrying through the door (an episode about coming through doors)

Duchess: “Oh!”
Duke signals man to go.
Duchess: “I’ve just heard. I have just heard for the first time that there was a row about the money that you paid to Mr Lopez”
Duke: (putting down writing implement) “Who told you?”
Duchess: “The other Duke. Of course he was quite right. I had to know. I . . . I . . . knew something was troubling you, but why had you not told me?” (comes over to desk, leans towards him, tones of real affection and appeal)

Unusually earnest moment

Duke: “My dear I didn’t want you to be troubled.”
Duchess: “Why not? I should not be troubled and no more should you be. Tuh! What can such a man as Slide do to you? You’re too big to feel the sting of a reptile such as that.”
Duke: “I don’t care to have my character impugned, not by such men as Slide and Lopez.”
Duchess: (assenting noise). “What matter if you are in the right . . . I read somewhere the other day that great ships always have little worms attached to them, but that the great ships swim on and know nothing of the little worms.”
Duke “And the worms conquer at the last.”
Duchess: “Oh they should not conquer me. Now. What is this that they say about the money. That you should not have paid it.”
Duke (nods): “I begin to think they’re right.
Duchess: “In any case it was my fault. You paid the money because of what I had done and I assure you, Plantagenet, I promised Mr Lopez nothing. All we need to do is make that fact public.”
We see him contemplating her.
Duchess: “When this is done, you will be cleared and Mr Lopez will be shown up for what he is.”
Duke: “My dear, you too will be shown up.”
Duchess (calm upon her face): “Yes, yes as a interfering hussy and I shall not mind one bit.”
Duke (shaking voice): “I shall mind for ya.”
Duchess (alarm in her face now): “You must throw me to the whale, Plantagenet, if not I shall write to the newspaper myself. Please just please please let somebody say that the duchess did so and so, and must be blamed for the whole affair. Well, it was very wicked, no doubt, but they can’t kill me nor yet dismiss me and I certainly shan’t resign” (she smiles).
Duke (smiles back, eye contact): “I should resign, m’dear.”
Duchess: “Ah, Plantagenet, if all the ministers in England resigned as soon as their wives did foolish things, the government would stop tomorrow (comes forward). You must let the blame lie where the blame belongs: squarely on yours stupid wife.”
Duke: “No, my dear. You’d be talked about and a man’s wife should be talked about by no one.”
Duchess: “Oh that is just highfalutin, Plantagenet.”
Duke: “Yes, well m’dear you must allow me to judge for myself in these matters, and I will judge . . . ah I will never say I did not do it, it was my wife who did.”
Duchess: “Why not? Adams said so because Adam chose to tell the truth.”
Duke: “Humm. He’s been despised ever since. Oh not for eating the apple but for blaming the woman. Glencora (rueful shaking of head), I will not do it.”
Duchess stands silent. She looks right at him “Hmmn” (She nods her head quickly. She turns and walks past him on her way and gets to door.)
Duke (softer voice): “Cora! (She is walking out of the door) Will you kiss me?”
She turns round puzzled. She smiles, alert now, walks over and kisses him.
Duke (low tone, holding her hand, his head down) “Oh no, dear. You must not think that I am angry with you because this thing vexes me. I dream always that we may live as other people live.”

Glad she will not resign

Duchess: “Whoo (sharp smile wry on her face) “we’d be very silly to resort to that.”

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When you go over a part in this series slowly, you discover how important it is what scene preceded what; and how keeping in mind the juxtaposition gives them much more meaning.

So, for example, this next transcribed scene comes immediately after Lopez has been pressuring her father to give him 20,000 pounds (!) as a bribe for leaving her behind. Lest we think well of Wharton, there now follows his visit to Happerton where they discuss how selling guns is a wonderful thing to do abroad (in countries like South America say) for the two sides want endlessly to fight and you get to supply everyone:

Episode 27: Lopez schemes.

Scene 5: Emily and Lopez’s flat. He has just come from threatening Mr Wharton with taking Emily to Guatemala (“They do say that sea air is good for expectant mothers …”)

Establishment shot: Emily and he in the middle of talking, the dialogue takes off from what we have heard in the previous and Lopez intense, so super elegant in dress (like a vampire). She stands to the back looking weary.

Emily: “You mean that I must whether I wish to or not.”
Lopez: “Certainly, you must. I mean good God where is a woman’s place, do you not wish to come?”
Emily: “I wish to be wherever you are. You are the father of my child. It is my duty to be with you.”
Lopez. “Right. Very well.”
Emily (she turns round, and looks at him with appeal in her eyes and sits): “But I do not wish to leave my father.”
Lopez (exhales smoke and looks at her through it): “He’s done little enough for us.”
Emily “He is my father and I love him. If I go to this place that you speak of, I might never see him again.”
Lopez (his hand on his forehead): “Emily, my dearest, the alternatives are very clear. Either we must leave England for Guatemala or we must have 20,000 pounds. Now perhaps you can make your father understand this. You see, Emily, at the moment we have one invaluable weapon with which to fight for our survival (points to her stomach) your unborn child.”
Emily; “My child. A weapon.”
Lopez: “You see, it would be intolerable to your father that you in your present condition should be taken away from him to a foreign country, from which you might never return. Now it is your task to make your father understand that this indeed will happen, that you and your child will indeed be taken from him, unless we get the money that we need (urgent strident voice). Now once you have dinned that into him, he is bound to surrender.”
Emily (her eyebrows go up) “So not only is my child a weapon, but my father is an enemy, who must be made to surrender.”
Lopez (shakes his head, all earnestness): “Once you have done so then we may all be friends again.”‘

How appalled she is by this man

Emily: “Friends!? how can I look him in the face, my father who has always loved me, as I love him.”
Lopez: “I hope you’re not forgetting the love that is due to me. You owe more to your husband than you do to your father.’
Emily: “So I would have thought once. But a husband who can ask such a thing of his wife.”
Lopez (raising his voice): “I have no choice, and if you love me, you will do as I say!” (He sits very close to her) “I mean, do you love me, Emily?”
She turns her head slightly.
Lopez: “By God, you will say that you do, answer me!”
Emily: “Ferdinand, let me get this straight.” (He puts hands on her shoulder): “You as my husband are asking me to go to my father and ask for 20,000 pounds as absolute condition for our remaining in this country.”
Lopez; “Yes, 20,000 pounds, remember.”
Emily (she shakes a little, and then moves to get up): “Very well. I will go to him and see what can be done.” She winces.
Loepz (coming closer again): “That’s my girl. that’s my good girl.”
She turns her head. She moves away, genuinely sickened, then looks at him with quiet alienation. He looks down at her.

Emily and father then have a loving scene which ends with her on knees held in his embrace. He will help her rid herself of this incubus.

Then Episode 28: Homecoming, a Silverbridge and mother scene where he tells her he cannot be a liberal; it includes one of the hugging and kissing moments in this part:

The title and contrast casts irony on Lopez and Emily’s homecomings nowadays. Then back to Lopez and father-in-law, and Lopez signs a promise to leave Emily for good, and it’s after that he gets really ugly. He despises himself for selling her and takes his revenge on her as the only target in sight.

Episode 28: Homecoming: Ironic reference to Lopez and Emily at home as well

Scene 10: Lopez and Emily’s apartment

Establishment shot: Lopez in dark vestibule, all shades around him

Emily (not seen, but anxious voice heard): “Ferdinand (we now see her stepping up towards him)
Ferdinand walks in slowly.
Emily: “What happened with my father today?”
Lopez (walks ahead of her): “‘Tis all to be made straight, Emily.”
Emily (closes door): “How made straight?” (she walks over to him from behind carefully) “is he paying you all that money?”
Lopez: “No, not exactly. But all will be well more or less, but it is rather in the melting pot for the moment.”
Emily: “I don’t understand you. Before you went to see my father, you were so clear and positive about your terms. How do you mean in the melting pot?”
Lopez (shouts): “Please do not ask me to explain it!”
Emily: “But I do ask. I must know what will happen. Be plain with me.”
Lopez (high-pitched half-scream): “All right, of one thing I shall be plain: Your father is a mean and vindictive old screw, Emily, who drives a bargain as hard as a flint and with all that he is a sanctimonious as a Quaker and as sly as a gypsy and you know what? I wish that the old brute were dead and at the devil.” (sits down).
Emily (intense feeling of hatred): “How dare you? Wish him dead to you so you could get your greasy hands on his money so as you got them on on me.”
Lopez: “Oh, and how you itched for them.”
Emily (disgusted): “You coward to say it. (she turns round) You coward to insult my father behind his back. You hate him because he was right about you from the start. He said you were a foreigner, an alien, a creature of prey, and he was right. You deceived me. You seduced me and all for money. Yes, you seduced me.”
Lopez (laughs sneeringly): “Oh, never before we were married, my dear.”
She gulps.
Lopez (imitating a whining tone) “And how how you loved it when I did begin. I mean you you whimpered and squealed for more and more . . . ” (he gets up and goes over to her and overbears her with a sense of his body)
Emily (pushes him away): “Coward. Reptile. You spit upon my father and you’ll dance on his grave if you cold, but now that he has in some way saved you, all you do is wiggle and spit your puny venom like some worm trying to imitate a snake.”
He puts his head on her cheek.
Emily: “Don’t you dare touch me.”
Lopez moves back half-supercilious. He takes his hand lightly off.
Lopez: “Time was when you doted on me. Emily. And you would still if things had gone right. How typical.”
She is standing by the door, leaning against it, gasping, crying as if she has been hit.

Snarling sexual taunting

Lopez (continues): “of a woman to blame the troubles of her own heat (she makes an anguished sound) has caused on the poor serpent in the grass.”

So he is Satan who overspent for her (e.g., his own fatuity in buying what he could not afford but her lapping it up, and the father so sceptical behind). She groans and cries and slaps him.

Scene in Happerton’s office where Wharton ascertains job is real. The company sells guns for wars which will never cease. This is completely invented by Raven and speaks home to what happened in Latin and South America due to macho male culture and the counter-revolutionary fascist capitalist spy and military organizations of the US (and UK too).

This is a darkly funny joke. Raven has specified Trollope’s version (just a manager) so that Lopez is to sell metal for guns. Happerton Mills says such jobs cannot go out of style: these South American countries are ever destroying one another and their company grows rich by selling guns to all. This does present the usual condemnation of those who grow rich over colonialist wars by selling guns in another light. Instead of the gun-runners being blamed as making the war possible, those who buy the guns are made the instigators or those who are carrying on because they want to. How Raven loathed war and militarism and all its effects on society and male behavior is seen in one of his reviews.

Episode 28: Homecoming, Scene 10: Happerton’s office

Establishment shot: two men on either side of a desk, one is Mr Wharton.

Happerton: “It is I assure you Mr Wharton a very great opening for Lopez and as his friend I am very pleased that he’s taking it up.”
Wharton: “The concern is genuine, Mr Happerton?”
Happerton: “As genuine as concerns in Guatemala can be.”
Wharton (a close up on his face) nods (sceptical or cynical look)
Happerton: “That is to say, Mr Wharton, there must always be some element of risk.”
Wharton: “What risk?”
Happerton: “Metal Piping Limited, sir, will deal with guns, small cannon for the most part, the guns themselves in their kind are genuine, but there is always a risk that the supply of wars may dry up.”
Wharton (smiles): “Not in South America, I think,”
Happerton: “A shrewd point, Mr Wharton.”
Wharton: “Thank you, Mr Happerton. Here is another: If you are satisfied as to Lopez’s competence, why do you insist that he invest 5000 pounds?”
Happerton: “We can do with the extra capital, and if he has money invested in the thing, he will manage it that much better.”
Wharton: ” A manager, he positively will be, provided the money be invested?”
Happerton: “Manager he will be and leave for Guatemala by the next packet.” (A look in his face shows he knows what Wharton wants; the far-distant absence forever of Lopez.)
Wharton: “Thank you, Mr Happerton.”

In the next scene Lopez goes to Sexty’s office, and finds Sexty drunk; Lopez is bringing the news of 6000 pounds; they will split the extra 4000 before he goes to Guatemala. So he is remaining faithful to his partner, no?

The third briefer thread allows for picturesque scenes at Matching; we return to the familiar boudoir the old Duke made for a young Lady Glencora; to the window before which we have watched so many characters sit, read, look out, respond to someone. The scene between Happerton and Wharton is juxtaposed to three of these, very short.

We have already seen Silverbridge come home from Venice, very warm and loving between him and Duchess. Now we have a lovely picturesque melancholy moment of Lady Mary and Lady Mabel Grex, made so alluringly beautiful in that familiar window seat at Matching by idyllic colors (greens and blues) and sunlight.

In mood this fuctions like the opening moments of the different scenes where the characters stretch out hands to one another (Duke to Bungay, Duchess to Duke, Lopez in the end to Sextus, the Duchess to Marie, to her son). It’s a a strong emotional contrast to the ravaging disloyalties and perversity of all else we are seeing.

Mary (Kate Nichols) and Lady Mabel Grex (Anna Carteret)

The Duchess is again not sympathetic here, or is a Philistine who does not want Lady Mabel and her son to go walking (nor Mary to inveigle for this) as she wants him to be able to go after “higher” (richer, more powerfully connected) women.

To briefly sum up what follows: Marie comes home to hug the Duchess (see above) and says Phineas is even now speaking for Duke in Parliament; then great climactic moment of Phineas’s speech, then Lopez ostracized out of club (very ugly and spoken by Dolly Longestaffe [Donald Pickering] who is no angel himself; and then Happerton tells Lopez he’s not wanted in front of his father-in-law.

The last episode (30) shows Lopez visiting Sexty having made up his mind to do away with himself, all gallantry and elegance (though also like a vampire). His last scene with Emily (instead of her love for Arthur, it’s her pregnancy complacency we see and also a resurgence of affection for Lopez which comes from earlier in the book and in the still which opens this blog above). Then we get Lopez’ss face at the ticket window, the hard rain leading into the train station, and the close up of his hard still enigmatic face. Then the Inspector’s visit to tell her and her father, her faint (and offstage miscarriage); then the Duchess and Bungay trying to tell the Duke Lopez’s death not his fault.

This last scene is a glossing over to normalization many viewers would cling to with the Duchess’s words telling the Duke it’s a disease to think on these things. I think of Hamlet. In the book she does acknowledge they all did “rather run over” Lopez (like the literal train that he throws himself under). For the attentive viewer, Lady Glen in her dealings with Lopez is seen to have done wrong. She is all repentance in front of her husband, but it’s more for someone who regrets suffering now. They dressed her extravagantly and sexily (even wearing a push-up bra, the only time in the series) when dealing with Lopez. She used him to feed her vanity. Trollope too criticizes her strongly, a reality not enough emphasized when people discuss the book.

The last scene of father and daughter (father won, the kiss as she goes obediently to bed) and father and Sextus, an ironical ending where Sexty’s flattering lies working more efficiently than Lopez’s aggressive proud drive.

The part at the end does try for some sympathy for Lopez: he looks weaker, weary, and in the film (unlike the book), it is Parker who comes up with the idea of blackmailing Wharton through Emily, Parker who enunciates the principle, and Lopez just obeys (though with great panache and pride); Lopez in close ups looks pained.

The suicide is not done the kind of brilliant justice to it is in the book. As depressions in Trollope are glossed over, so this nadir of the males in the series. Ferdinand has been the most defeated; he started with least. And Raven has Palliser pronounce some sorrowful words for him that to end as tatters and burnt scattered flesh and bones at such a place is a sobering destiny. The last scenes of Lopez appearing mad move so swiftly and in the dark, all I could get was his face in front of the window through the rain the night before:

So I couldn’t get that final still of his darkened eyes, but I remember them and think many viewers would, though only by watching carefully do you realize through much of the series Wilson played Lopez as someone who rarely made eye contact with anyone.

See detailed summary of episodes and scenes in the comments.

Next up: 12:24

Ellen

For previous blogs: 1:1 – 8:17, 9:18-10:20, 10:21 (Companionship and refuge, Duke and Duchess in Conflict), 11:22