Pallisers 12:25: The duchess, our heroine’s dying begins; why her daughter and Silverbridge’s fates mean so much to her

The Duke helping a very sick Duchess (Susan Hampshire) away from the Ruined Priory

Dear Friends and readers,

After a six month-hiatus, I return to the 1974 BBC Palliser series once again to conclude my study of this magnificent film cycle, 1:1-8:17 on the old blog, and 9:18-2:24 thus far on this.

Three films cover Trollope’s The Duke’s Children. 12:24 is deeply elegiac, bringing to a poignant conclusion the Prime Minister’s career as head of government, and his wife’s as a political saloniere or hostess, and after a slow adumbration of the stories of Silverbridge, the son, and Mary, the daughter (Kate Nicholls), developing in powerful earnest these characters and their involvements with other characters (Frank Tregear [Jeremy Irons], as Silverbridge’s friend and Mary’s lover) and Lady Mabel Grex ([Anna Carteret] Silverbridge’s natural mate and ex-lover of Frank).

12:25 is intensely about the relationship of the Duke and Duchess to one another as parents and to both their children (though only she interacts with Mary until the series’s final part); and it begins the duchess’s long-time slow decline (which we saw signs of in 12:24), now into death.

As 12:25 is also given over to concentration on Silverbridge’s slow maturation and his clashes with father so 12:26 concentrates on Mary as the female presence whose happy fate (she decides her own destiny) is presented as compensation for thwarting and infliction of grief and loss on her mother for many of the early parts as she is forcibly separated from a man she loved and who loved her and made to live with her role as obedient (if tenderly loved, and safe) wife to heir of the Omnium estate; Kate Nicholls is the plangent muse of all three of these last films

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From 12:26, Lady Mary (Kate Nicholls) looking past the ruins to her mother’s grave

Simon Raven told his biographer Michael Barber (The Captain) that Lady Glencora was to him the chief protagonist of the series, and in these two parts hers is the overarching story within which Silverbridge and the Duke’s interactions take place.

I begin with a commentary on this 12:25 and then provide a summary with transcripts of two central scenes and bits from a third. The penultimate episode of the Pallisers centers squarely on the rocky relationship of the Duke of Omnium (by this point brilliantly played by Philip Latham) and his eldest son and heir, Silverbridge (played effectively partly because he so looks the part, Anthony Andrews). Two long scenes between the Duke and the son are the centerpieces of this episode. I transcribe the central long full one in my next blog. Here we shall have the full scene of Duchess’s suddenly visible weakening (the second still above), and a bit her scene with Mary where she shows the intensity of her vicarious longing for her daughter to live the fate she wants to (from which I take this still):

The Duchess turning away to look inwardly as she realizes Mary is seriously attached to Tregear, engaged, and wants to marry him

The differences between these two parts and Trollope’s Duke’s Children must be remembered here. The Raven team have mostly eliminated and reversed Trollope’s The Duke’s Children’s important secondary theme. Trollope’s novel centers on the father’s conflict with his daughter as well as his son: Trollope’s Duke is locked in strong conflict with his daughter, Lady Mary Palliser over her desire to marry Frank Tregear (we get brief but significant glimpses of him in this episode, where he gives Silverbridge good advice and tries to look out for Gerald). This second conflict links up to the second theme of the novel: the Duke’s intense nostalgia melancholy and partial regret and at the same time refusal to acknowledge the maiming of a life done to his wife, the Duchess, by marrying her to a man she (in Trollope’s novels) could never really love truly as she could not understand or sympathize with him and couldn’t resist needling him when he evidenced in little ways the nature that was at deep odds with her own.

In both films the Duchess remains a strong and dominant presence (after her death emphatically), and we are to believe has learned to love the Duke, appreciate his ethical stance and deep kindness, though she still remembers with bitterness and hurt the despair she felt at first (it’s made clear several times this was just “at first” though “at first” seems to have taken an ambiguously longish amount of time). Her real absence in Trollope’s own novel (and lack of reach after death) is part of the problem Trollope’s Duke has, for without her interference (much more ambiguously aimed and motivated in Trollope as it would be in real life), the Duke actually seems unable even to talk to his son or daughter.

In 12:25 the Duke talks to and reaches Silverbridge. On one level, the father-and-son story is yet another sub-story in the roman fleuve structure of the films — which imitates the roman fleuve structure of the novels (and those of Oliphant, Proust, Powell). We have another young gentleman’s entrance into the world, one with a cornucopia of advantages, which are basically responsible for his apparent successes (we may wonder what the future will hold for him): just one of its array of male types. On another the story is one which reinforces submission on behalf of the group (which Silverbridge does), conformity to one’s family as best for everyone including those who fall in.

And now the individual episodes with transcripts. First a brief description of each and then commentary and its source in Trollope’s novel.

12:25, Episode 36: Election Results.

Scene 1) The film opens on the Duchess dressed beautifully (oh what an outfit), walking older and looking old in her face, but setting up an exquisitely pretty tea. Duke comes in to be told that the Boncassens are coming and despite his attempt to retreat to the library he is gotten to stay and meet.

Carlton Terrace, London, Duchess and Collingwood, then Duke. Wholly invented scene of meeting and tea with Mr and Mrs Boncassen and Isabel Jerry Stovin, Eileen Erskine, Lynn Frederick); Silverbridge leaves to go to campaign and be elected; Duke’s Children, Ch 14, pp. 84-85 Silverbridge told he will be elected and to go down (narrated) is source for going off for election; some of feel of early dialogue between Silverbridge and Isabel from DC, Garden party, Ch 28, p 176; bright and sparkling for Trollope.

Scene about how privileged and unaware of their privilege, made uncomfortable, these people are; want to be respected extra and yet don’t want this to be acknowledged; Silverbridge says election not a done deal and yet no opponents, at which he is gleeful and then repeats hypocrisy about why no one is running against him (favored candidate) — Isabel about how he can’t test himself if he has no worthy opponents (and we will find he has none for Isabel’s hand — quite this kind of nuance not in Trollope).

Preparing tea with the faithful aging Collingwood (Maurice Quick)

It’s a scene where differences between American and UK outlooks on class and politics are made clear. Mr Boncassen a scholar like the Duke; although at first she seems dim, Mrs Boncassen acute in the way of the Duchess (about social things, sceptical). Mrs B: “Well, what about people who have “fancy titles and no money, how do they make out?” Duchess; “poorly, Mrs Boncassen, poorly.” The Duchess gets the best lines in the scene. It should be said not all women have this astute social perceptiveness and no information and not all men escape to libraries.

Silverbridge leaves to work at election.

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Scenes at Matching:

Scene 2) Matching front room, duke reading and duchess sewing, to them Silverbridge with news of his election, all pride, Duke cannot congratulate because his assumption of Tory party is not based on serious thought and is a betrayal of his life; young man openly irritated and goes to be congratulated by sister; becomes clear the lineage of the family, use of good seat, family loyalty at stake Duchess tells Duke he must pretend to accept it; so much of this and previous scene taking us back to 1:1 where the two were married to set up a dynasty.

When the Duke does not congratulate Silverbridge for the first time he is openly irritated. He leaves abruptly, maybe Mary will congratulate him. Duke was angered at his winning nomination as a conservative. Then Duchess attempts to persuade Duke he must pretend not to care for Silverbridge’s choice is really his attempt to assert his independence and rightly manipulated he will return to the fold.

Scene 3) Matching the room that has served as Duchess’s boudoir, Mary congratulating Silverbridge, the boyish nature of the speech is from DC, Ch 14, pp. 91-92; mother beams and says father recovering from shock, put yourself in his way and he’ll have something kinder to say, boy heads out.

Now the important scene with Mary: Now a scene with Mary, presented as mother worry (house keeps boy out of mischief), Gerald okay at Cambridge, and what about Mary. An invented scene. Mary tells of the Priory ruins scene from 12:24, Episode 33 (Scene 11); Duchess’s deep identification, does Silverbridge know and Mary says he says father won’t hear of it (12:24, episode 34); Invented scene but Mary’s assertion he’s a gentleman brought in here too, DC, Ch 8, p 54, mother brings in her special reasons for wanting Mary to make her own choice; it seems Mary knows nothing of mother’s past and will carry on knowing nothing; she will do her best if Mary really loves this man.

It’s here the Duchess’s story comes out: she and Mary discuss Mary’s love for Tregear; we saw the Duchess’s favoring of Frank in in a gondola in Venice). Duchess points out to Mary Tregear has no money and her father will not like his lack of noble connections, to which Mary says:

Mary: “You’re not going to be difficult.”
Duchess: “No no not now that I have come to know Mr Tregear, but then I have reasons for wanting you to be allowed to make your own choice.
Mary: [All innocence, the mother has never told her daughter of her past; a false erasure of mother’s past which apparently does go on among families]: “What reasons, mama?”
Duchess: “Well, I want you to be spared any unnecesssary sufferings, to be parted from the man you love makes the heart empty at least for a time. Now if you really love each other, you must be together and I shall do my very very best to bring round your father.”

Episode 37: Who to Wed?

Scene 4) Duke in some antechambre in Matching, looks grim, Silverbridge to him, they apologize to one another, from letter Duke preaches to Silverbridge after the election to guard fellow countrymen that they might be safe, free … From DC, Ch 15, letter on p. 99.

The first of several long and/or important effective scenes between Duke and son. Son comes in and apologizes and Duke replies he was ungenerous. Long talk about values, Duke too didactic but it’s moving as son’s face lights up at moments as Silverbridge so admires his father. Here we learn that the Duke still looks forward to Silverbridge marrying Lady Mabel and son is unable to tell father but clearly “off Lady Mabel”.

Now the great scene in the Priory Ruins:

The duke and duchess glimpsed as they enter — long shot

Summary: Duke and Duchess walking slowly together, she is black, important moment for series, contrast to them all aglow in sunlit landscape of Matching in previous Part, now in black, and she puts a deep red rose in his lapel. She remembers back to her walk with Alice (CYFH? and 2:3, Episode 14.

This gothic memory shows how gothic deepens; it was more than about harm; she was bucking his authority; she claims to be talking about Silverbridge, but her aim to get him to accept and help Tregear supposedly as Silverbridge’s friend; (that he’s a conservative not to count); his old ploy that he doesn’t interfere; she says Silverbridge got his seat that way, but Duke persists he must make his own passage, what’s wrong with him? not a man of means; he agrees to think carefully about Mr Tregear but will not find him a seat; what is he to me but dubious friend of Silverbridge, and she bursts; “and your daughter”, and he doesn’t hear for her illness and coughing, and asks him to take her inside. First serious scene towards death (opening of 12:24 Dolly says he couldn’t do without her, and we saw her take medicine mid-part).

A transcript:

Establishment shot: We glimpse the Duchess coming into the ruins through the masonry of the ornate columns. She is dressed in black. Then we see just the half-columns and then gradually the Duke and Duchess walking slowly and both in black come into view; they are clearly an aging pair, smiling companionably he with a cane, taking the night air

Duchess: “Ah, these ruins! [We hear birds; we see him in evening dress emerge alongside her]

They walk forward as aging couple.

Duchess: “I do so love it here [bird now very loud]. You remember how angry you were years ago when I walked here with my cousin, Alice under the moon.” [She laughs, he looks grave and serious]
Duke: “I couldn’t bear that any harm could come to you.”
Duchess: “It was only a cold, you old silly.” [So what she has is only a cold she thinks]
Duke: “It is getting chilly now. Shall we go in?
Duchess: “Oh no, I want to talk to you . . . about Silverbridge . . . now then if you’re to reclaim him for the liberal party, you must do all that you can to work yourself into his good graces.”
Duke: “My dear, I am trying to do as you suggested . . . work myself into his good graces. What do you want me to do? fawn on [they are framed by plinths now) the boy?”
Duchess: “No, no you must be more subtle than that.”
Duke: “Hmmmm.”
Duchess: “You could start by being kind to his friend, Francis Tregear.” [From her enigmatic intense face we see she is intriguing again, this is not for Silverbridge, but ostensibly for Mary, ultimately compensation for herself in those opening parts we saw]
Duke: “Mmm. He has been a very bad influence. It was from him that Silverbridge first learned his conservative affectations.”
Duchess: [very irritated frustrated look on her face] “Planty, we have already agreed there is to be a truce about that.” [She also looks as if she’s about to quaver and old, ill, cold] and that truce must extend to Mr Tregear.”

Duke looks thoughtful because puzzled. Her assertions makes no sense. Shots go back and forth between their faces as they talk [we see they do not live in the same realms of values].

Duchess [breathes a little then] “Now then, Francis Tregear wishes for a career in public service.”
Duke: “Then he’d better set about finding himself one.”
Duchess: “But he has no influence and little money.”
Duke: “My dear, I can’t mend his lack of either.”
Duchess: “But you might help him [looks and stance in her eyes and face remind me of her body language when she spoke with Lopez] by finding him a seat in the house.” [Confiding]
Duke: “He’s a conservative.”
Duchess; “Planty, we have already agreed that that is not to count just now.”
Duke: “My dear, it’s is gettin’ cold. Now shall we go in?” [now he indicates they are to walk off and the shot is medium range]
Duchess: “No, no just a moment. A seat in the house for Mr Tregear?”
Duke: “I don’t interfere with parliamentary seats. I . . . you should know that after . . . after all this time.”
Duchess: “And yet Silverbridge was for Silverbridge.”
Duke: “It fell vacant in the natural course. Silverbridge made his own appeal to the electors.”
Duchess: “And so will [now breathless, might have said “should”] Mr Tregear. Planty, I’m only asking that you should persuade some friend to find him somewhere to make [she paces about stone square, we are watching through cloistered columns again].
Duke: “No . . . Young men of Mr Tregear’s class and condition must work their own passage.”
Duchess: “What’s wrong with his class and condition?”
Duke: “Nothing. I mean that although he is a gentleman, he’s yet as you admit a man of little means. He must look to a profession before he looks to Parliament.” [This is Mr Low’s argument about Phineas in Phineas Finn.]

Duke has now taken off his warm elegant black cloak and has it ready to wrap around her.
Duchess picks off a red rose from a bush.

Duchess: “Planty I should wish you to think [puts it in his lapel] very carefully about Mr Tregear [he looks lovingly at her], mmmm? [we hear the birds].

Cloak is now on her and wrapped tight and she holds it.

Duke: “But I am not going to find him a seat in parliament. After all, what is he to me, nothing but a somewhat dubious friend to my son.”
Duchess [bursts out}: “and your daughter!”

He looks up suddenly as it might begin to come to him what this is all about, but he has not heard after all, they are interrupted because she suddenly looks very ill indeed, and sick and turns and looks at him with a ghastly nauseous look.

Duke: “My dear, did you say something . . . ” [after all it seems he had not quite heard . . . ]
Duchess coughs hard, short of breath and he looks at her alerted as she suddenly confronts her state.

Duke: “My dear, you’re ill.”

She breathes hard, sways, tries to deny it, looks grim.

Duchess [weak voice]. “It is chilly [“very chilly?” — hard to make out]. Would you take me inside please?”
Duke [arm around her] “My dear, we should have gone in when I said.”
They look into one another’s eyes.
Duchess mouths: “Yes” and then turns.

No music. they walk back in the silence, she leaning against him. I think of crows. Camera follows from distance as she coughs. We hear their steps on the stone pavement.
A long shot takes in bushes with red and purple flowers to the side.

I love this scene. The Duke and Duchess late at night in elegant black walking among the Priory ruins. She remembers his anger (so we return where we began, very satisfying esthetically and thematically, binding this story) and says she only had a cold. How mad he was at Alice. He insists he was worried about her health (forgets he wanted to control her too). Neither brings up Burgo or the forced marriage but we remember it and they do too. Sometimes intelligence is asked of movie-goers.

In a later scene Duchess again tells the Duke he must work his way into the good graces of his son. Duke: “what do you want me to do, fawn on the young man?” No just be more tactful and distanced and give him room — she doesn’t say this and we get the irony about how parents often are driven to make up to adult children who they have little control over. This is not a 1870s story but a 1970s one.

Then the Duchess moves to Mr Tregear and we see another of these scenes where she is trying to get the Duke to do what she wants in cases he can’t or won’t and doesn’t know or sympathize with her goal. She wants him to get a position for Mr Treager.

He says he doesn’t do this sort of thing. She mentions Silverbridge; he denies this is that sort of thing. (This harks back to scene 1 where the Boncassens note that the election may be said to be free but Silverbridge has the same name as his district and no opponent. It also refers to the many places in the series where he denies her this way, and maybe he is no good at this kind of networking unless it’s his direct blood relative.)

The Duke clearly does not like Frank mostly because the Duke blames him for Silverbridge’s change of heart, he is someone who made the Duke’s son “a Tory!,” and what’s more his origins are “dubious.” She almost spills the truth to say Tregear is a friend of your daughter, but instinctively fearing his (let’s call it Oedipal) reaction, she halts at an outburst about “your daughter,” partly because she begins to cough violently.

She is cold, looks unwell and all the while he is attempting to put his cloak around her; she coughs, feels chilled, and they go in. It’s that last silent interaction that’s so good.

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London and Parliament scenes.

Scene 5) Parliament seen, speaker talking, up in gallery Duke, clergyman sleeping, Silverbridge joins him, and father asks why he is up there with him; he replies he can hear just as well up here, but we are to feel he prefers to be with father already, again this is not the book but a strong domestic nexus that is 20th century nuclear middle class ideal. Also he is not happy among Tories who are not his family friends.

Orlando’s reference to armor-clad warships comes from his requests to the Duke in PM; they agree Drought is a man they neither of them like; Duke responds, “Well, you chose your own boat sir” (line in DC) gradual realization of Silverbridge that men matter (Trollope’s firm idea is men not measures), remark on Drought’s behalf that he is willing to “do his part of the grind” and “most fellows aren’t, sir” has its origin in a dialogue between Silverbridge and father, DC, Ch 25, p. 158, a chapter in the book where Silverbridge urging Gerald to keep to the liberal side and “I’ve made an ass of myself”); the invitation to dine at the Beargarten which so touches the Duke; the comment about cads there and in Parliament to from DC, dialogue with son, DC, Ch 26, pp. 163-64 (instead of Phineas Finn and Irish matter changed to armaments so as to eliminate Donal McCann’s part).

In Parliament Orlando is going on and on about armaments and ironclad ships as the camera moves up to observe the Duke high up listening and Silverbridge comes in. The jist: Silverbridge finds Orlando as distasteful as the Duke but does not acknowledge Orlando is “his”
leader and defends him on the grounds he’s a grind. Something Silverbridge remarks the Duke is and few are (including him).

A touching scene because Silverbridge invites the Duke to his club and when the Duke understands this (it takes a moment for him to get it), he is so pleased and off they go.

Silverbridge beginning to tease as they go off together: “Of course there may be one or two cads, Sir, but there are plenty here as well.”

Scenes 6 and 7) Important scene: Club (Beargarten), Source is DC, Chs 26, pp. 166-68, and DC, Ch 27, pp. 170-72 (where Tifto [JOhn Ringham] barges in); they’ve finished dining and are coming in for cofffee and drinks afterwards; talk about how club engenders selfish attitude, then the reference to Lady Mabel in the book too and in both film and book Silverbridge’s face registers he’s changed his mind, interrupted first by Tregear who leaves quickly and then Tifto who doesn’t; Tifto commits the gaff of offering a bet to Omnium:

In book Tifto doesn’t offer a bet, but Silverbridge does say “you are making an ass of yourself”; father says you must part with him with “courtesy and kindness”.

This is a memorable scene for those who know the novel. Tifto invades the son and father after dinner and makes an ass out of himself, shows himself to be vulgar, attempts to get the Duke to put on a bet, finds it amusing when the Duke says he knows nothing of horses but that they have “tails and heads.” We see Silverbridge’s agon and Tifto’s resentment at the end. Prefaced by graceful Tregear’s entranceand his exit when he sees father and son are alone — so a contrast to Tifto. Lady Mabel has come up but Silverbridge never quite tells his father he no longer wants the young woman the Duke thinks he the Duke could understand and love.

We’ve already seen Isabel Boncassen is very different from the duke and would not understand him — she really seems not to understand much. A child-like woman again. Trollope’s Isabel has some aspects of gay witty lady of Restoration comedy.

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Episode 38: Derby Run. Back to Matching and now Duchess is ill. Scene Eight.

Duchess can no longer walk or move with ease; in great physical discomfort

Matching, Duchess in Boudoir, Duchess dressed and sitting up but ill, with Mrs Finn next to her as friend and nurse, DC, Ch 1, p 4, Duchess fretting she cannot go see Derby, stop Silverbridge from “doing anything unwise” about Lady Mabel. Mrs Finn says Mary needs help, mother says she “poor dear” thinks she must stay here when she longs to be in London and with Tregear. This is Mary’s posture during early phase of book vis-a-vis her widower father. Later she’s sent to Lady Cantripp, eventually returns home). Duchess irritated because she cannot give Tregear encouragement or work “on Planty” while laid up (“I am finding it very hard” especially as he’s in London, lays back, sighs.)

Barbara Murray again a nurse — alas this is what superfemales dwindle to in bourgeois dramas. Duchess wretched, wants to go see the race of Prime
Minister, help Mary see Tregear in London (I repeat Mary at Matching because mother ill — we are to feel they close); she has heard something to Lady Mabel’s discredit and wants to find out about that. The point made. She is much more ill than she admits, can’t eat, not eating. Can’t get up.

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London, Carleton Terrace, the familiar breakfast room. Ninth scene. Nighttime. Lady Mabel Grex announced and we get a powerful scene where Silverbridge rejects her aggressive overtures with easy panache.

I’m not keen on Silverbridge here, but Lady Mabel does seem hypocritical here (see comment on how she is very like Kate Croy in Henry James’s Wings of the Dove). She is left stranded and excluded at its end.

He has some good lines. There is nothing nothing like this in Trollope. Instead Lady Mabel remains self-contained, dwelling in anguish (“howling” with a “storm” about her is how Frank Tregear thinks of her towards the end of the book) in her father’s ruined (gothic estate with no life to live, and the one she misses is Frank Tregear who is the rat who changed ships (again see comment on his affinity with Jamesian males). Even Raven’s Tregear is
ambiguous and we rarely see him with Mabel after 12:24’s anguished scene.

Silverbridge is reading Bell’s life in the old breakfast room. To him Lady Mabel, and here she gets her first full rebuff. Sources include DC, Ch 40, pp. 256-58 (Mabel says “I could live alone there and be happy”), 42, pp. 273-74 (self destructive behavior over rig), Ch 52, pp. 327-328 where we have Trollope’s Silverbridge’s awareness and jealousy of Frank (all this long nuanced history is excised or condensed in the film); Ch 59, p. 377 (deepest scene of book). In film as Lady Mabel has been companion of Silverbridge’s pleasures when young so when he casts her off she iss paralleled to Tifto (1) as in 11:22-23 structurally Silverbridge paralleled to Lopez.

She says he’s not been calling; father interrupts so pleased (this is sign of TV drama genius); and Mabel tries to use this. This is a bad weapon for Silverbridge repeatedly tries to show himself separate from father, so now his estrangement from Lady Mabel grows stronger at this wrenching of his father’s presence before him. This scene is all that is left of Duke’s invitation to Lady Mabel and her time at Matching, but the plot-hinge is there even if a vestige.

For more on Trollope’s Frank and Mabel see comments.

12:25, Silverbridge and his Dad next time.

Ellen