Olivia de Haviland as Catherine driven wild by the implacable Ralph Richardson as Dr Sloper (Wm Wyler’s The Heiress, 1949)
As Dr Sloper, Albert Finney grim, determined to put a stop to Townsend’s courtship of his daughter, with Jennifer Leigh as a seeming sullen puzzled Catherine (Agnieska Holland’s Washington Square, 1997)
Dear friends and readers,
Over the past 10 weeks or so, a few of us on Trollope19thCStudies read and discussed Henry James’s Washington Square (1881) and then Anthony Trollope’s Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblewaite (1871) as remarkably parallel texts. While what proof there exists for a source for James’s chilling novella suggests he drew upon an anecdote he heard over dinner, people who have read both texts (and know how James faithfully followed Trollope’s career, reading novel after novel as they came out) have repeatedly drawn such useful insights from the comparison, it’s hard to give up the intuition that James remembered and rewrote Trollope. At least three of us also watched one or both of the admired film adaptations of James’s novella, and suggested readings of one or both of the novels out of these films. I can in the space available for a readable blog only suggest some of what we wrote.
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As Catherine Morland, Olivia de Havilland climbs the stairs to her room (a hard equivalent of Catherine “picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again — for life, as it were” — ending of book & film)
We began with Washington Square. James’s story may be read as a parody and exposure of the way heterosexual romance and marriage are conducted in upper class society of his era, but the power of the paradigm emerges from his breaking all taboos by giving us a father who hates his daughter for not being wittily clever when she’d replaced her mother (we are not sure she was these things) because her mother died in giving birth to her. She makes him cringe that she’s his. In the way of families at the time Sloper has taken his penniless widowed sister, Mrs Pennimman in, but sees her simply as an idiot, not someone who can do Catherine harm because of her own selfish exploitation of everyone around her. Both women are naive but Catherine’s comes from her goodness of character and innocence. Morris Townsend is capable of appreciating Catherine’s sensitivity and intelligence, but he also wants her money. Among the many disquieting elements in the book is how James mocks Catherine too; she is an intensely poignant figure, cowed by her father’s long derision of her, unable to actively fight him.
The metaphor of drowning kittens is what the doctor is doing to Catherine at the same time as we are given enough ironies and flat statements in the rough scene between Dr Sloper and Morris Townsend to get the point that Townsend does want to marry Catherine for her money. For the reader who persists in believing in companionate marriage and that Townsend who appears to recognize how vulnerable and soft Catherine is will be kind to her, Mrs Almond’s comment, which embedded in these ironies, is to be taken straight (it takes a great deal of tact to read James even at this early stage) that she feels sorry for Catherine pings back to Townsend’s, don’t you care that she will be miserable for life. At the close of Chapter 11 he says he likes to inspire “a salutary terror” in her.
We have the problem of separating the narrator from Dr Sloper: the free indirect discourse does not make clear all the time whether it’s Dr Sloper’s thoughts that show such contempt of women or the narrator’s. When I go over it, I find again and again the nasty reflections are Dr Sloper’s. The narrator will say “poor Catherine” at least. The narrator says that Mrs Penniman is “perfectly unprepared to play” the part of explaining what’s happening. We might say Dr Slope is doing the right thing to check out Townsend by interviewing his sister, Mrs Montgomery, but the whole feel of the chapter is insinuating: he wants bad news; he does not want to hear anything good, and anything he hears he turns it to the worst. Why is Mrs Montgomery so reluctant to speak. She could have defended her brother at the assaulting words and does not. Why not? The words “salutary terror” the Dr uses of his relationship with his daughter lingered in my mind. He sees Catherine from the worst side. Whatever she does, he turns it to her discredit. She is patient and seems obedient, so he reflects “his daughter was not a woman of great spirit.” “Paternity is not an exciting vocation.” One feels he wanted scenes, wanted her to flee – -and thus be hurt. He’s an expert at rejection. He makes her feel terrible. Ironically in Morris’s dialogue with Mrs Penniman he resembles the doctor – curt, skeptical, and (for the reader caring for Catherine) singularly unsentimental. He is as grated upon by her as Dr Slope.
Maggie Smith as Mrs Penniman interfering destructively in Catherine’s thoughts, and relationship with Townsend (Holland’s film)
While in Europe, the Doctor lets his rage come out. Catherine is justly frightened of him. She cannot quite believe he would kill her, but he could and lie about it. He does admit just a little that he is prepared to hurt her badly; “I am not a good man.” He is warning her. When they get home, we see her reaction was to move another step. When he derided her desire to be honest and not stay under his roof while seeing Townsend, she grew angry and knew he was abusing her and that gave her strength to distance herself from him. She tells her aunt this year has changed her “feelings about her father.” She feels she owes him nothing now because of how he has treated her.
Dr Sloper’s sister, Mrs Almond, sees Sloper’s continued enjoyment of Catherine’s misery. He’s a very intelligent subtle Mrs Norris (from Austen’s MP), subtly abusive. He gets a kick out of saying things like; “We must try and polish up Catherine.” He thinks her a dense dullard not capable of polishing — he’s sneering. The savage irony of the book is Townsend resembles Sloper in his scorn of people. Catherine is a tragic heroine. There is no one around worth her, no one around who could reciprocate on his level of love or strength — for we shall see she is strong. Not to act, but to hold out. Holding out counts. Anger becomes a healthy emotion here, and it carries Catherine through.
Then the doctor pulls it out to the nth degree: he accuses her of waiting for his death. She is going to wait and ask Townsend to wait in the hope her father will change his views. This makes him accuse her of wanting his death. She goes sick and faint with this. There is nothing in Catherine or Townsend’s behavior for that matter to substantiate this accusation. It’s not done to stop her marrying Townsend; it’s done to hurt her – to accuse her of the foul feelings he has. And he keeps this accusation up. What is a girl like her who we’ve seen is so moral to say in reply? she finally sees he despises her.
When she finally leaves the room – after he mocks her for saying that she ought not to have a farthing of his money by echoing that with “you won’t,” we are told “he was sorry for her … but he was so sure he was right.” He does not admit to himself he hates her. Of course not: he is amused; “By jove. .. I believe she will stick … I believe she will stick.” Is this a way to talk about her intense and complete abject anguish? He is looking at her as if she was some horse he was betting on and enjoying its suffering.
After Catherine spends a “dreadful night” (and it is dreadful even if she can get up and control herself in front of her father), Mrs Penniman meets with the doctor and he tells her not to do as she had been doing, which is not to practically help but and not to give any emotional support. If she does either, he reminds her of “the penalty” for “high treason.” I don’t think she is the quite the fool the doctor thinks: she says that her brother is “killing” Catherine. Sloper though is into control and possession.
How will Catherine fare if she does marry Townsend. We worry for her — he does not inspire enough confidence. Both her aunts say she is strong, but what if he is a total liar, and once married would betray and hurt her
Ben Chaplin as Townsend irritated by Mrs Penniman’s hypocritical sentimental pretenses — to him she is a jackass (Holland film)
We begin to see Townsend is not worthy Catherine. The chapters at this point leave me shaking. When Catherine tells her father she should not live under his roof (very pious and James as narrator finds her absurd (I see this in my edition in Chapter 22, p 118, the paragraph beginning “These reflexions,” especially the line: “this was close reasoning — James finds her hilarious …); when Catherine tells her father this, he accuses her of bad taste. He disbelieves she really thinks that.
Catherine does not end in an invisible prison; she ends seeing what’s in front of her for real. And then (my view) she does like Millie at the close of the Wings of the Dove — for those who’ve read it. I don’t mean she dies — she does not die (her father has told her she won’t die of this …. ). ? It’s like watching a specimen in a fish bowl writhing. It’s as dark as Daisy Miller (written around the same time, also a novella) whose actual death is caused by the careless sinister minds of those around her.
I see the ending as Catherine ending up in a unlived life, turning her face to the wall because she cannot bear what she has been made to see. This is Milly in The Wings of the Dove, the hero in The Ambassadors, in The American, in “The Beast in the Jungle.” She will do a little good with the money she has. Death has at least freed of the corrosive father and she may live without someone near her who despises her. I had hoped for that for her and she got it without having to leave her home and cope with Townsend for the rest of her life instead.
The two film adaptations
The Heiress
Rare moment of pleasure in one another (Montgomery Cliff as Townsend)
There are great actors here in this film. Wyler directed both Ralph Richardson and Olivia de Havilland to act or become as half-mad people. Richardson’s eyes are half-wild once he is told that Catherine has engaged herself to Townsend. The only way Wyler could understand such a flash of anger and years of hatred and punishment is that the man was not right — and like the other movie, much is made of the death of the wife in childbed and his bitter disappointment at the difference. Miriam Hopkins is Mrs Penniman (and as with Holland with Maggie Smith playing the part), Mrs Penniman has intelligence (James’s character doesn’t). Maybe it’s unreal to make her so gratingly fatuous — except that Bogdanovich pulled that for for similar character in Daisy Miller and Chloris Leachman did that black comedy to a “T.” Catherine begins in such innocence and vulnerabilty I felt intense pain as I waited for her father to come down hard. Haviland plays the part as an adoring sweet girl. It’s was heart-breaking. And then she seems to crack, also goes mad, more obviously.
Wyler couldn’t face that Catherine just caves in — the audience might think her weak (I suggest above I don’t and I hope explained why). Wyler knew we should not have a semi-happy ending, so he has Catherine become deeply angry after Townsend does not show up to take her away to marry him. She goes into a cold rage of hatred for her father herself. And the ending is her refusing to show the father any affection after the scene where she says he despises and dislikes me.” She stays outside the house when he dies — the scene of his demanding her promise again is there, and fuels this hatred. When Townsend returns she plays a trick on him: says she will be ready at midnight; he comes and she won’t let him in. She goes upstairs in grim triumph of cold hatred and anger. The mood is grim for the last ten minutes, dreadfully grim. Haviland pulls it off — she was in Snake Pit around that time where she played a woman put in asylum and gone mad because of this.
Wyler does not get the humor or mockery of the text (neither does Holland)– Bogdanovich did make Daisy Miller as a pathetic heroine also ditzy and we laugh at her at least in the first half of the movie.
This is a remarkable and bold movie for the time — the black-and-white is used to make a nightmare of the house in the second half, not gothic, realistic. One of these Victorian mansions that is a prison — rather like Cukor managed in Gaslight. The angles are remarkable. At the first half of the movie we see Catherine full face, soft focus; in the second half Haviland hard nose is caught again and again; she looks bigger and stronger in the cased-in dresses she wears. She is on guard the way I saw it — but to say she is angry and getting back is to lose the tragedy. A beautiful soul is still there is the poignancy of the piece.
Holland’s Washington Square
An interlude of quiet understanding between Townsend and Catherine
A disappointment. It’s more than that both the father and Townsend were softened, and Mrs Penniman made smarter and more decent (so the portrait softened too), and that the essential attacks and mockery of the original were lost. It might be asserted, How can movies do this? It’s very much against the grain to present characters from an ironic point of view in the film media: it somehow invites intense identifications, strong emotionalism, and is realistic, but it can be done. I’ve seen in the 1972 Emma and in a 1972 Golden Bowl where it was achieved through the use of a brilliantly ironic narrator (Cyril Cusak as also the husband of Fanny Assingham). Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller shows how the characters contrive to destroy Daisy — but then the ending is tragic and as long as you keep to it the point is made; Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady is not ironic, but she exposes James’s fallacies (like it’s good to have all these suitors persecuting you), and is truer to the instincts of James’s story — with Isabel ending with a sadist she is subject to, and Touchett a closet gay or someone unwilling to risk sex but wanting to himself control Isabel, vicariously live thorugh her which is a form of preying. I’ve seen two Turn of the Screws, one by Nick Dear which seemed to me absolutely true to James’s text, and he other by Sandy Welch showed up James’s text as lending itself to misogyny at least.
Dr Sloper (Albert Finney) is still a bully and cruel egoist, but he does not hate Catherine nor is he scornful or derisive; rather he’s possessive; his idea is for her years from now to mary an older man (like himself you see), and sit by him and knit or read — because she is too ugly and stupid to attract an attractive one. What’s wrong is Holland could not get herself to realize the ugly emotions involved. In both movies (as in the book) Townsend is sexually attracted enough and at first finds Catharine’s goodness sweet. We do see Townsend’s frustration at being caught between the father-daughter struggle in this movie, but the emphasis in the movie is on her obstinacy which is not made central to her strength. Holland is no sympathetic to Catharine and in an opening scene makes fun of Leigh as awkward. Holland does make the scene between father and daughter on the mountain scary and you really do feel and she does too Dr Sloper tempted to throw Catharine off.
Townsend simply both wants Catherine and her money. He says, Is that so bad? He does have a business; he is not preying on his sister (in James it’s not clear he’s doing that), and like the James story, basically he grows tired of waiting, feels he can’t take this relationship between the father and daughter and wants out. Maggie Smith is Mrs Penniman and while she does spoil the relationship of Townsend and Catherine while the two are away for a year, she has a lot of Mrs Almond in her.
Catherine (Jennifer Leigh) does have the devastating moment where she realizes her father despises her. When he suggests she will do best to marry years from now an older man, she pushes back and describes how she sees the years of his coming home to her all eager and love — that he was destroying her bit by bit by the way he’d greet her and live with her sarcastically. They do have the dialogue where she says she should not stay with him as she is disobedient and he lashes out with strong sarcasm that this is the final bad taste. She as a creature seems to him altogether in bad taste at that moment — here the movie does edge towards the text.
Courtship and marriage are validated. Catherine has a cousin who marries and is ever so happy, endlessly pregnant and towards the end of the movie Catherine is gaining satisfactin from caring for them too. Courtship and marriage as such are fine – as Townsend shouts, what is so wrong with wanting sex and money? is not that what all want? The framing of the movie is Sloper’s loss of his wife at the birth of Catherine so obviously he has been made so mean (this is implied) because he didn’t have this happy marriage. In the text we really are not told what the marriage was like, only that it grated on Sloper to have his abilities as a doctor shown up.
Apparently the studio was still unhappy about the ending which shows Catharine making do with having a school and bringing love to other children’s lives and finding fulfillment in her cousin’s children. They wanted Catherine and Townsend to marry and be seen as happy. Holland does not do that; it would be to make no sense of the story at all. Not that the ending of James’s story does not imply that social life is what a person must have and enter into to be happy, but James’s story shows it to be hell because of typical human nature’s selfishness, stupidity, predatory aspects — and Catherine needed something better to cope and survive for real. She’s not a saint but she far finer than all around her.
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The wealthy father and daughter walking in a park (Holland film)
We then went on to read Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite and discovered it has the same paradigm and some of the same themes and outcomes. Sir Harry himself is imagined as a chivalric ideal male: there is irony as Trollope as narrator tells us Sir Harry spent his life as a grand seigneur in his great house spending money in order to be a central linchpin for the good of his community and by extension England. A respectable moral man, and married an obedient (conventional) wife 20 years younger than him. As the novel begins, a great tragedy: his only son, the heir dies, and the next heir is this — right away we are told — ne’er do well, Sir George Hotspur. Sir Harry has a daughter now 20.
Sir Harry then discovers “too late” what a bad prospect for heir, for the community, for his daughter, Sir George is: gambler, wastrel, idler, but even worse things …. When I read it first I did imagine a mistress, maybe illegitimate children (which is what Gwendolen discovers Grandcourt has). Why too late? he invited him to stay and he is immensely likeable as company, witty, handsome, plausible and it seems perhaps Emily has fallen for this. Not clear — she denies this to her mother and a new candidate, 10 years older than her is to come for Christmas. It’s made clear Sir Harry loves Emily: “he respected his daughter …” He is really concerned over the property as he has made her complete heiress of the property but Sir George will be legitimate head of the family. Her mother is in the position of Aunt Penniman, but very well meaning, not vain jackass
Chapter 3 ended Part 2 in the original instalment publication and it’s a deeply picturesque description of Humblethwaite. It reminds me of Ullathorne only much more so and not at all mocked. It’s Trollope’s adherence to this dream of an ancient seigneurial contented hierarchical world, rooted in Tudor times. Lord Alfred comes to court Emily and there’s nothing wrong with him — he fits in perfectly; he would have made a good husband. The point is made he wants her money and estate, but he would have taken her to London, given her a good life. We are told he did not somehow set her on fire — no erotic enthrallment
(Cont’d in comments). Chapters 7-11; Chapters 16-20; Chapters 22-finis.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
This is the entry from James’s notebooks that aligns with _Washington Square_
February 21St. Mrs. Kemble 1 told me last evening the history of her brother H.’s engagement to Miss T. H.K was a young ensign in a marching regiment, very handsome (‘beautiful’) said Mrs. K, but very luxurious and selfish, and without a penny to his name. Miss T. was a dull, plain, common-place girl, only daughter of the Master of King’s Coll., Cambridge, who had a handsome private fortune (£4000 a year). She was very much in love with H.K, and was of that slow, sober, dutiful nature that an impression once made upon her, was made for ever. Her father disapproved strongly (and justly) of the engagement and informed her that if she married young K he would not leave her a penny of his money. It was only in her money that H. was interested; he wanted a rich wife who would enable him to live at his ease and pursue his pleasures. Miss T. was in much tribulation and she asked. Mrs. K what she would advise her to do-Henry K having taken the ground that if she would hold on and marry him the old Doctor would after a while relent and they should get the money. (It was in this belief that he was holding on to her.) Mrs. K advised the young girl by
no means to marry her brother. ‘If your father does relent and you are well off, he will make you a kindly enough husband, so long as all goes well. But if he should not, and you were to be poor, your lot would be miserable. Then my brother would be a very uncomfortable companion-then he would visit upon you his disappointment and discontent.’ Miss T. reflected a while; and then, as she was much in love with him, she determined to disobey her father and take the consequences. Meanwhile H.K, however, had come to the conclusion that the father’s forgiveness was not to be counted upon-that his attitude was very firm and that if they should marry, he would never see the money. Then all his effort was to disentangle himself. He went off, shook himself free of the engagement, let the girl go. She was deeply wounded-they separated. Some few years elapsed-her father died and she came into his fortune. She never received the addresses of another man-she always cared in secret for Henry K-but she was determined to remain unmarried. K lived about the world in different military stations, and at last, at the end of 10 years (or more), came
back to England-still a handsome, selfish, impecunious soldier. One of his other sisters (Mrs. S.) then attempted to bring on the engagement again-knowing that Miss T. still cared for him. She tried to make Mrs. K join her in this undertaking, but the latter refused, saying that it was an ignoble speculation and that her brother had forfeited every claim to being thought well of by Miss T. But K again, on his own responsibility, paid his addresses to Miss T. She refused him- it was too late. And yet, said Mrs. K, she cared for him-and she would have married no other man. But H.K.’s selfishness had over-reached
itself and this was the retribution of time.
[Editor’s note: the characters sketched here bear considerable resemblance to Catherine Sloper and Morris Townsend in Washington Square, wJ1ich was
serialized in the Cornhill Magazine trom June through November 1880, with illustrations by George Du Maurier, and in Harper’s trom July through December. The outlined situation is also tairly similar to the centralone in the novel, but James took the theme and fitted it to an entirely differentbackground and milieu out of his own experience.
This is from F. O. Matthiesesen and Kenneth R. Murdock’s 194 Oxford edition
of The Notebooks of Henry James. I assume they shared the burden of note research and writing.
First love: Townsend shown as aggressive and Catherine responds nervously (Wyler’s film)
Chapters 3-6
Part 2 begins with “vacillation,” Ch 4: given Emily rejected Lord Alfred and Sir Harry cannot think of not leaving his title to a male heir, not having a husband at the end of the property, he vacillates. He learns yet worse things of Sir George Hotspur: himself a scoundrel, borrowing from money-lenders based on lies — no security at all. Yet rituals are coming and they invite him.
We know much worse things about Sir George that we did for sure about Townsend. Townsend was not a crook though he spent his patrimony (such as it was), did not live with a woman outside marriage …
Chapter 5, Sir George Hotspur,” exposes Sir George to us; he makes Townsend look good; the point of Trollope’s chapter is to expose how nonetheless Sir George is acceptable in good and even “the best society.” I remembered the mistress who his friends say to dump, and the one possibly decent impulse of the man is his unwillingness though it’s presented as “difficult” because of the woman not Sir George. His great friends, the Altringham’s could be slotted into a Henry James novel, say The Golden Bowl, with no trouble, only James would not make it explicit how these people are okay with viciousness, the man holding only that he will not give Sir George money nor do any money dealings or play of any kind with him. What are Sir George’s great qualities that seal his acceptance: he knows how to socialize so as to flatter and amuse all, none of which takes any great brains, good reading, understanding of politics. I take this to be a sharp exposure of the nature of society and what passes for social intercourse Alrtingham advises George to tell all to Sir Harry (that might obtain money, forgiveness, look good and put it all in the past) and get rid of Mrs Morton, but Sir George does neither and this seen as being “deficient in a certain kind of pluck.” The great irony Trollope sees is that this will be Sir George’s undoing.
Chapter 6, “the Ball.” What’s interesting here is for the first time I asked myself, Why did Catherine like Townsend? Yes he seemed to appreciate her shyness, tenderness and didn’t mind her bad dressing which she knew intuitively her father despised, but she loves him so whole-heartedly. We see that Emily is bored by Lord Alfred, but like Sir George? on what grounds? he’s handsome and dances well, is the heir and she has been made the heiress. Again I see grounds for the paper I heard arguing this is a book which condemns primogeniture, male heremony. Emily is really an ass — our narrator says how strong she looked, how attractive, but he also says others took her that way because she was heiress
Where we are moving towards WS is Sir Harry is beginning to detest Sir George. It’s the way Sir George has no shame at all for crooked dealings so casually. That’s the give away. Sir Harry really believes in living an ethical gentleman’s like (like Sir Roger Carbury).
A hard clash is coming.
Holland’s film depicts the love as equally sexually riveting for both man and woman
(Leigh and Chaplin)
Chapters 7-11, more or less
In Chapters 7 and 8 we have Sir George breaking his volunteered promise to Emily not to go to the races (Goodwood) despite his mentor-lady-friend, Lady Atringham’s warning him it would be so little to give up for such a prize, and if he lied and went, Emily’d find out. The purpose of the chapter is to display this relationship and to me it anticipates a duo that Henry James likes to present without quite the insinuations of sexual license between them (however light); there is a woman Burgo Fitzgerald had a similar relationship with in Can You Forgive Her? where in the film adaptation Simon Raven brings this out.
This chapter is another which makes me pause over the paper I rejected a few years ago that this novel is meant as an attack on the whole primogeniture system. Kincaid says Trollope exposes the false codes of our lives by which we profess to live and their behavior rituals, so if you just substitute expose for attack, I can see that now. Lady Altringham wants Emily for George because she wants the property and title that come with Emily — now that the brother is dead.
Chapter 8 brings us squarely into the problem of this and Washington Square: why does a girl go for a shallow scoundrel. Trollope gives us far more of the ordinary conversation, flirtation, whole feel of Emily and George’s relationship. James does not give this kind of detail: Tyler says young women go for “alpha males, or simply as dangerous, exciting, and living life on the edge.” In “Parsons’s Daughter of Oxney Colne” and Belton Estate again Trollope exposes the danger of this preference which he presents as endorsed by the society. It’s not just or so much innate as what everyone admires — And in this chapter Emily loves herself to feel powerful as heiress, to be admired and she is deeply allured by George’s easy savoir faire, so much so that she says yes when he plays physical games with cornering her, dancing with her – all the while knowing from her mother that her father disapproves.
The chapter takes us to the next inevitable step: Emily tells her mother she has accepted Sir George and attempts to persuade her to be on her and Sir George’s side against her father — at least morally and by implication. Lady Elizabeth says the father will not permit the marriage, but it’s clear she actually still favors the man despite being told he is a scoundrel, wastrel, spendthrift and so on.
Surely one of the things about human nature Trollope is exposing here is how social graces seem to trump everything else in the way people will like and then accept a man. But to a 21st century reader what might change this is if Sir Harry were to have told his wife explicitly what he has learned about these gambling and debt ways, and on top of that really given a portrait of the man as a lying untrustworthy sleaze and told Lady Elizabeth he has been living with another woman. At no point is Emily told that Sir George has Mrs Morton as a mistress.
Similarly Sir George writes his obedient note to Lady Altringham (she is certainly a James type of character only presented much less enigmatically) and then confronts Sir Harry that night. What is slightly astonishing is that Sir Harry while he is adamently opposed to this suit, by the end of the conversation has clearly softened. He is now going to check out once again Sir George. Why? because Sir George has the title and is heir to the family name.
Yes this does seem an attack on the mystic idea of the numinous importance of such rank and names. But in 20th century terms the obvious moral is against reticence and social hypocrisies which 1) favor people as part of society who are moral shits and everyone knows it; and 2) the code which refuses to tell the truth about them as somehow shaming everyone to say it aloud. That code allows the man to come and stay among them, live off and prey on them.
In the case of Townsend, he is a white sheep in comparison to this guy. Yes he wants to have Catherine’s money and yes he has not worked for a living until he takes up the business he does half-way through (whose products or working we never know so we can’t judge it quite), but gamble, live with a mistress, treat people with utter lies continually, not just cheat people but invite others to join in on your cheats (which is what Sir George does when he meets Sir Harry at the assembly in telling of how Altringham is selling a bad horse as if it were a good one).
HHH, Ch 11, Mrs Morton
One of the contemporary reviews said one of the most original parts of this novel was its depiction of vice: well here we have it, and it’s not done in a way that makes George a monster at all. We just see him in all his meanness. Now that he has gotten so far as to make a deal with the money-lenders if he can come up with a partial sum, he goes to Mrs Morton, his mistress, an actress who I find very moving as a presence because she carries on loving this petty liar. Among other things, he lives off her, and she knows he is almost incapable of not lying when asked to talk about anything; she would not believe anything he would write down either. This comes out when George begins to lie about his intentions towards her: it’s just too painful for her when she tells him of her husband’s death and he begins to voice some condolences or concern. Says she: “It mattered nothing to you whether he lived or died.”
The chapter opens with his castles in the air about murdering Captain Stubber. George knows that unfortunately with the present state of cvilization and scruples over human life, he could not do that with impunity. Then he thinks about using the sum he has on hand to pay part of his debt; it won’t cover the all and besides which he would be totally broke.
Trollope’s portrait of Lucy Morton is inimitable and I believe he has much sympathy for her. A hardworking actress, it is she who promises 200 pounds from her manager, not I think a pleasant interview to get an advance, but she gets 500. That speaks to her value, how hard she works. Trollope respects her, and he names her Lucy. All the other Lucys in his novels are women he likes: Lucy Robarts, Lucy Morris, Lucy of Ayala’s Angel. And they are all thin brown eyes women like Lucy Morton.
What’s a fellow to do says this mean sleaze. He lies about Emily at first and then somehow does feel remorse (loss of face) and we are told he loves Emily — what definition of love is this. But we are also told he did once love Mrs Morton as much as he was capable, and it’s clear she still loves him. Trollope registers her “low voice” and deep in the muffled sounds of anguish and anger, clever, well read, superior to him in every respect. I love her controlled sarcasm when he says to her she would not understand family and these values he must obey. “Such a one as I cannot life myslf so high above the earth.”
Father and daughter struggle (Holland’s film)
Chapters 16-20:
It’s here that we finally come to the central terrain the book shares with Washington Square: a struggle between father and daughter. It’s here that we see Sir Harry is to blame insofar as he cannot rid himself of the notion that blood matters and the manners of an aristocrat are admirable: so when George writes it is beneath him to take money to go away, he’s filled with admiration. He cannot endure the lawyer’s hard telling of the truth the man is a shit and is waiting to see, not to give up the great object — that is what we saw was part of George’s thinking. But he cannot endure his daughter’s coldness. She is the “sunshine” of his life. I know what that means.
Here we see the distance: Dr Slope never saw Catherine as the sunshine of his life; he enjoyed watching her squirm and suffer; he mocked the obedience to conventional duty.
Emily is getting back, “undutiful” — she withdraws affection and we see her thinking is, Is she a slave, a dog, has the right to choose her heart’s desire; we also see how she has not one inkling of what the badness of this man can be or is. Sir Harry can’t even tell his wife. Dr Slope had nothing more to tell than he told.
Trollope says the parent always prefers and needs the child more than the parent: this is an idea dramatized in lots of his later books; it’s what he experienced with his sons.
I’m not sure Trollope meant so much to attack centrally doctrines of primogeniture or blood so much as simply to show us these and how they worked — yes often to the harm of the people involved. I do think he meant to expose the dangers of such innocence.
Another chapter, 17, centering on the father-daughter relationship and thus taking us to the focus of Washington Square. By contrast to James’s tale this is about how the loving father feels uttter desperation at Emily’s coldness. She is beginning to win by her coldness (Dr Slope would have not been bothered for an instant, was not and so Catherine realized how much he despised her.) Sir Harry so desperate he tries to tell her something of reality: but he can go no further than George is “attached” to “another person.” First of all George is not attached to anyone but George. Of course Emily brushes this aside and then we get this astounding plea that they should try to reform George. Trollope is attacking this idea girls have: they have no power but can change their man’s nature or habits. The high idealism with which this is couched is meant to take us back. The father is led to think she cannot begin to imagine even what is a swindler.
Moral: girls must be educated for real.
Chapter 18 brings us back to George. Boltby had called him a coward and sneak. George is rigtly worried that he can be sent to prison for what he did to Walters. What he does next depends who is driving him. It seems Lady Altringham is back in London and her husband’s concerns bore her so she takes on George — very much a James’s woman type in his novellas. She hatches the bold scheme that George must present himself, go down there; she sees Emily wants him and the father has done nothing further. So he doesn’t send Mrs Morton’s letter breaking it off; instead he takes down a letter by Lady Altringham and pushed on goes to Humblethwaite. He is let in. Trollope gives the chapter the cyncial title “good advice.” It is if George wants to achieve anything. Townsend did continually show up.
I forgot to mention Mr Hart, one of the creditors. Trollope understood his world and people — Hart does not want to push on to criminal charges because the father then would not have to pay George off, George would be less of a nuisance and he and his people not get as much money. It’s Mr Hart versus Lady Altringham as pressure points with Boltby and Sir Harry in the background.
thought there was a moment of comedy too — in the give-and-take between Mrs Quick and the butler, Cloudesdale. They have allegorical names (though embedded in this intense fiction we don’t feel the comedy fully of their names) and we see how sceptical they are of the young man: he drinks plenty even if he doesn’t eat the sandwiches. So they notice what no one else does: his nervousness, the way he makes it through life by drinking. Sir George is on his way to delirium tremens.
Part of the theme is Sir Harry’s desire to protect and hand over the life of the seigneur and his community to a proper heir so the comedy of how Sir George can get in through the rituals and cermonies of the house are appropriate too.
Trollope would have done all right in labor-employer negotiations — we know he went as a negotiator for the post office for treatises. Our narrator also tells us the mistakes all the characters make: Lady Elizabeth gives up all she is allowed to give and that gives George the “right” to an appointment. But in his elation and anxiety he makes a serious error in reminding Mr Hart of Mr Walker: Hart has held off on telling about Walker only because he fears were that to come out, Sir George would be so blackened, Sir Harry might not feel it necessary to pay because George could be put in prison.
Then the narrator tells us that Sir Harry should have refused all letters, all interviews, and just been all good-nature to his daughter, holding out. Sir Harry is (we know) too seduced by the dream of having an heir with a title and wretched over his daughter’s withdrawal of affection and insane idealism (his and his wife’s and the culture’s doing).
. Indeed I begin to shake as I read it. It is as a piece of prose more eletrifyingly close to my mind’s emotions than James manages to be in _Washington Square_.
What we glimpsed as the result of Sir Harry’s concessions and Emily’s plan begins to emerge. Sir George is welcomed to the house but as he sees that he will be expected to lead a moral sober useful life in a nearby house, managing a property, and living without drink or gambling or women or any of his usual excitements (horse-racing) without his usual drek companions, he sees that this is excruciating. He keeps lying with his tongue but his face gives him away sufficiently that even Emily observes it. She will kiss him only once and there will be no more going to London. All he can think about is the letter he must write to Boltby. He realizes he prefers Mrs Morton much more — indeed he has been real with Mrs Morton; he cannot fathom Emily’s emotions.
We would say the girl is so silly but the novel has built up for us her background which makes her conduct not just plausible but what has been encouraged; belief in George as titled, the heir, and it’s been reinforced by her society accepting him.
When Boltby (the hero of the piece, he found out all the information) tells of this final criminal behavior, Sir Harry sees the uselessness of his endeavours, especially when George attempts to lie and behave as a cur caught about it. And still Sir Harry does nt show her the letter. He cannot get himself to educate his daughter. She gets hysterical on the idea that what if there are more debts.
Sir Harry returns and at last not her but his wife shows Emily the letter. This staggers her at long last. What really is the core that would destroy her is to know about Mrs Morton.
When now happens to make me shake is after all George does not come to Boltby’s office — after promising he would. Of course he escapes to Mrs Morton and finally she is permitted to dictate that letter she proposed long ago. In it George treats the case as solely a bargain for him to get money. George senses that something is omitted but he hasn’t got the brain, decency, sense of obligation to another person, and just copies it out and leaves it to Mrs Morton to send.
I want to point out that as yet Mrs Morton herself is not mentioned. If Emily cracks, it is the doing of all these people about her who have sheltered her without taking into consideration she is not a porcelain doll.
Ellen
Catherine waits for Townsend to run away with her and he never shows (3/4s the way through the film)
Chapters 22-finis
What especially interests:
1) That we are never allowed to see this “letter that killeth.” It was first mentioned early in the novella and I, for one, was eager to read it. Trollope uses letters in fascinating ways (I have a paper on this — it’s online in several places now), and there are several forgeries: someone dictates a letter to someone else, in a way it’s a forgery. A couple were remarkable because we see the mindset of the real writer, his or her real attitudes and naturally compared it to what the person who was dictated to would have written. We see only the most formal sentences by Mrs Morton. She has learnt self-control; she has learnt to guard herself from a hard world. But we don’t see the whole.
Why does Trollope withhold it? is it just he thinks we may be inclined to think it stronger? but he is such a brilliant writer of strong letter: Julius Mackenzie’s asking for an interview where he says he does not expect to be granted it; Josiah Crawley’s to Grantley over the possible promotion at the close of The Last Chronicle. Or we won’t credit the obvious thing that’s now in store for Emily? or does he want us to like Mrs Morton more than we might if we saw the dagger.
2) That both James and Trollope are cruel to the traditional romantic heroine. James wants to send up the way heterosexual romance is conducted, expose the real motives for marriage, all of which destroy Catherine, but she is scapegoated Tyler mentioned at the opening of the The Heiress we are made to scorn her for awkwardness. Trollope exposes primogeniture as absurd mystification and dangerous, and how keeping a girl “pure” so the man may possess and control her is pernicious. (At first Sir Harry did not want to take it home and then he hesitated to read it.) Why knock them off? As males did they resent such women?
3) That no one who knows George in the least thinks him capable of writing it.
I thought maybe he wanted to keep Mrs Morton from us, for we would see her character, because he wanted us to like her actually. And what I noticed this time round (this must be the fourth time I’ve read the book) was how much space was given over to Mrs Mortons suddenly. I suggest she is a stealth heroine; the Victorian critics and reviewers complained about having Mary, Lady Mason, as a heroine because she’s a forger and “worse” gets away with it — some readings are just so stupid; the point is that trials do not produce literally true verdicts. What would they have said had he put Mrs Morton forward any further. She is a woman stronger than Lady Altringham who is a third woman in love with George — who Trollope carries on showing us is worthless. Her fate is to work hard for him because he spends more in drink and food and gambling than 500 pounds.
I now like the book better than ever to see that he has left space for the one women in the novel I can identify with, take seriously. I find Lady Elizabeth one of these weak exemplary female characters Trollope uses form time to time — she is conventionally moral and Trollope shows is useless when a crisis occurs or something goes wrong (which in life often happens). I believe in lady Altringham but find her exploitative; she does George no good. Mrs Morton does him a tremendous favor to marry him and she even tries to help him by stopping his drinking. We know he won’t and what she may feel in a couple of years is relief when he finally dies of delirium tremens.
Trollope however unconsciously was indicting the kind of social life that finds such young men not only acceptable but charming — the fool Lady Elizabeth does.
Critics are missing why this was published anonymously. The critics did say that The Vicar of Bullampton was harmless to read (it was published just before) and it has a girl who had been a prositute, but it declared that this crossed a line with its depiction of George and by inference Mrs Morton. I mistook when I said that Sir harry came out right after Nina and Linda: Golden Lion of Granpere did. Four of these novellas: that one is Oedipal, with a father and son struggling over the same young woman: you can see a lurking Oedipal pattern here with Sir George’s intense reluctance to put a stop to Sir George — his vacillation and refusal to tell Emily anything for real is at the heart of the tragedy. He can’t get himself to get rid of a young man with his name to inherit the property. Notice in the last chapter as Emily begins to die he is thinking of the loss of his son. So that’s part of the attack on primogeniture.
Trollope did say of this novel that like Nina and Linda, it was meant to be about a single pathetic incident, savor of romance proper rather than be “the “portrayal of a number of living human beings.” I will use Isobel Armstrong’s idea of looking at how often unrealistic Victorian fiction is to find where there are deep questionings of conventional ideas and morality shows us that the intent of this novel is an attack on a number of central conventions of Trollope’s period. Emily’s death is part of the unreality: see he says, what happens to young women who worship their father and won’t disobey but also have absurd ideas about marriage and men.
E.M.
“Washington Square is one of my all time favorite movies.” Hardy Cook