Four years ago I started to read my first Trollope – ‘Cousin Henry’ – for a Classics Circuit tour. I didn’t get on with the book, I didn’t finish it, but I at least had the sense to write:

“I suspect that I may still come to love Trollope. I just need another time and another book.”

When I saw the same book in the library again last month I thought it was time to try again, time to see if another time and the other books I’ve read would make all the difference.

I think they did; because this time I liked ‘Cousin Henry’, and this time I had to keep turning the pages until I reached the end of the book. It’s a short book,  and it moves along more quickly than any other Trollope I have read, but it is still distinctively and recognisably him.

The story opens on a country estate in Carmarthenshire. Indefer Jones, the owner of that estate was elderly, his health was failing, and he was contemplating his will.

He wanted to make his niece, Isabel Brodrick, his heir. She was his sister’s daughter, and she Isabel had lived with her uncle for many years, since her mother had died and her father had remarried. There was a strong between uncle and niece; and Isabel loved the estate and was well liked by her uncle’s staff and tenants. She was the perfect heir in all respects but one: she was a woman whose claim came from the female line.

Custom and convention said that Henry Jones, the son of Indefer Jones’ younger brother should be his uncle’s heir. Henry had run up debts, he had been sent down from Oxford, and he had found a job, of sorts in London. He didn’t come near, and he didn’t have the best of reputations.

The choice was intriguing, questioning the importance of primogeniture, and asking what roles a woman might play.

A marriage between Isabel and Henry was suggested, and it could have resolved their uncle’s dilemma; Henry was willing, but Isabel was proud, she knew what was said of her cousin, and she dismissed the possibility out of hand.

Indefer Jones died and the will that was found in his desk showed that tradition had won the day. Henry Jones was the heir.

Isabel returned to the home of her father and step-mother, and  Henry Jones took up residence in the manor house.

Friends and neighbours, staff and tenants, were all disappointed with the will. And rumours started to spread The story was that shortly before his death, Indefer Jones had asked two visiting tenant farmers to witness a new will. It hadn’t been drawn up by his solicitor, but he told them that all would be well. He had copied the wording of an earlier will; all he had changed was the name ….

Cousin Henry knew that the story was true, because he had, purely by chance, found that will, in the library, tucked into a book of sermons his estate to Isabel. That was a great blow to a young man hoping for a new life. He couldn’t quite bring himself to bring to destroy the will, and so he tucked it back into the book and said nothing.

He found that easy, but he found living with the guilt and the fear of discovery very, very difficult. And Cousin Henry found it very hard to dissemble, and, though none of them could prove it, Henry’s manner, his actions, his responses to certain questions, convinced many people he was guilty.

Meanwhile, Isabel’s pride lead her to reject the overtures that Cousin Henry made as a sop to his conscience, turn down the proposal of the young clergyman she loved because she was poor, and offer to go out and earn her own living rather than be a burden to her father.

The story worked so well because the characters of Isabel and Henry were so well drawn. They were both fallible; he was weak while she was strong; that was interested and it meant my sympathies were shared between the two, albeit unequally.

I couldn’t say that that I liked either, but, as always with Trollope, I understood, I was involved, and I had to know how the story would play out.

The story is simple, it feels a little contrived in places, but as a psychological study – particularly of the effects of guilt – it’s brilliant!

The story comes to a head when Carmarthen Herald publishes a series of articles accusing Henry of destroying the will, or at the very least having knowledge of its existence. The family solicitor tells Henry that he had no choice but to sue for libel, and he sets the wheels in motion.

But, as he observes Henry, his certainty that there is no libel grows.

I guessed the ending long before it happened, but it didn’t matter. I enjoyed seeing the story play out.

Now I know that this was the wrong book four years ago, and it shouldn’t be anyone’s first Trollope, but when you have come to know and love him it is definitely worth reading.

Even though I knew what had happened between the end of the last Palliser novel and that start of this next – and final – novel in said series, and yet the opening sentence of ‘The Duke’s Children’ was heart-breaking.

“No one, probably, ever felt himself to be more alone in the world than our old friend the Duke of Omnium, when the Duchess died.”

The brightest star of the Palliser family had been extinguished, and I was so sorry that I would never meet Lady Glencora again, and that I would never see her with her children, upon whom the spotlight falls in this story.

I must give Trollope credit though, for the way he reported the death and its consequences. Their was no sentiment, only real emotion, and he explained exactly as a concerned friend should; showing concern speaking with restraint, and with understanding the greatest loss was to her family.

And while I wish that he hadn’t done it, I think I can understand why he did;  The Duke’s Children speaks about how the world changes, and about how one generation may have such different ideas, and  may or may not learn, from their parents or from their children..

Not long retired and weighed down by grief, the Duke found himself having to play a greater part in family life than he had before. He struggled, because there were things that Glencora had never told him, and because his three children …..

Well, children who had inherited the very different strengths of their mother and father might have changed the world, but these children seemed to have inherited quite a few of their weaknesses.

It was clear that Trollope’s sympathies lay mainly with their beleaguered father; and I have to say that, on the whole, mine did too.

• Lord Silverbridge was his eldest child and the heir to his dukedom, and he was a constant worry to his father. He was sent down from Oxford for painting the Dean’s house red. He entangled himself with some dubious characters in the horsey set, and it took a great deal of money to disentangle him. He was elected to parliament, but, though the Pallisers had always been Whigs, he became a Tory. And then he fell in love with the grand-daughter of a dock-worker whose family had made money and risen up to the very top of American society.

• Lady Mary was his only daughter. The Duke would learn that she was secretly to a friend of her elder brother;  a penniless aspiring MP who he considered most unsuitable. He struggled with the knowledge that the Duchess had sanctioned the match shortly before her death, and that the Duchess had been prohibited from marrying the man she loved and steered towards a more advantageous match with him.That was heartbreaking, and as Lady Mary proved herself to be as wilful as her mother and as intransigent as her father, it was hard to see how both could be happy.

• Gerald, the youngest, was at university. He narrowly avoided being sent down, like his brother; and his penchant for cards and horses cost him rather more than his generous allowance.

They were all engaging, they all had such potential, and it was clear that they loved and respected their father, that they wanted him to be proud of them, but my goodness they had lessons to learn. That they couldn’t have everything as they wanted, that life would demand choices and compromises. That when they chose a course of action there would be consequences and they had to accept them.

In time the Duke realised that, for the sake of his children, he had to make some compromises. It was so lovely, after seeing Plantagenet Palliser as a husband and as a politician, to see him as a parent who loved his children and who tried to do his best for them, even though he couldn’t quite understand or like their new their new modern ways.

He couldn’t help admiring their spirit and determination,  and he saw much of his beloved Glencora in them.

There was little room for new characters outside the family circle to make an impression in this story, except for one. Lady Mabel Grex came from an old family, but it was a family in decline: her father and brother gambled away the family fortune, and so  all she had was her good name.  She needed to make a good marriage, and she could have made a good marriage, but her pride and her hauteur meant that both Frank Tregear, Lady Mary’s great love, and Lord Silverbridge slipped through her fingers. Of course she became embittered ……

It would seem that Trollope too accepted that the world was changing.

He brought the  Palliser saga to a fine conclusion, with two weddings and the Duke returning to public life.

I am so sorry that the story doesn’t continue, and that I have to part company with so many wonderful characters; but I am so glad that I now know why so many readers love Trollope, and that I still have a great many of his books ahead of me to read.

I didn’t mean to read ‘The Prime Minister’ quite so soon, or to rush through it quite so quickly, but I had to step back into Trollope’s world because there seemed to be so many old friends I wanted to see again, so many interesting new people to meet, so many intriguing things happening.

Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, was Prime Minister!

He headed a coalition government, and he had risen not so much as the result of his own charisma and ambition, more because there was no other candidate acceptable to all of the parties and willing to do the job. Now to rise to such a position is a great thing, but I feared for the new Prime Minister. He was too honest, too sensitive, and too unwilling to compromise his principles. Wonderful qualities in so many ways, but qualities you would want in a right-hand man, that would make you want to pick him for your team or hold him up as a role model; but not qualities that would make him a great leader of men.

The Duchess of Omnium – the erstwhile Lady Glencora Palliser – on the other hand was in her element. She would entertain, she would socialise, she would intrigue. She would play her part to the full, and she was in so many ways a far better politician that her husband. Never was it clearer that they loved each other but they would never quite understand each other.

It was lovely to watch them and to listen to them. And, maybe even better, were the conversations between the Duchess and her dearest friend Mrs Finn – the erstwhile Madame Max. That friendship is so well balanced and so well drawn.

The stories of the Duke and Duchess are set against – and entangled with – the stories of Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton.

Ferdinand Lopez was a handsome adventurer of Portuguese-Jewish descent. It was clear from the start that he was to be the villain of the piece, and he plotted and schemed to acquire wealth and rise up through society. He was determined to secure the hand of Emily Wharton, the daughter of a wealthy and successful barrister. Mr Wharton was firmly set against the match, and determined that his daughter would only marry the son of an English gentleman. He favoured Emily’s childhood friend Arthur Fletcher, but Lopez had her heart.

The deadlock was broken when Lopez, apparently, saved the life of Emily’s brother, and her father reluctantly consented to the marriage.

It was then that Lopez’s campaign escalated. He used his wife to extract significant sums of money from his father-in-law to fund speculations, he exploited – and cheated his lower class business partner. He has some successes but he had more failures, and put more and more pressure on his wife to extract more funds from her father. His attempt to enter the House of Commons, to established him as an English gentleman, fails and Arthur Fletcher takes the seat. he blames everyone but himself.

That had consequence for the Duchess of Omnium – who had been charmed by Lopez and so gave him her support – and in turn for the Prime Minister, who could not, would not, allow his wife’s name – or his principles – to be compromised.

Mr Wharton realised that when he dismissed Lopez’s suit he had neglected to consider other things that would make him an unsuitable husband for his daughter. He did what he could, Emily knew that she had to accept the consequences of her decision; the arc of the relationship between father and daughter was one of my favourite things about this novel.

As Lopez made his determined rise and when he came tumbling down he did a great deal of damage. When both his business and his marriage collapsed around him he made the most dramatic of exits. The repercussions of his actions though would be felt for a long, long time.

His end was inevitable, but the gap that he left was huge, he was such a fascinating, charismatic character. It took the story a while to re-establish itself without him.

But there is a whole world in this story, and the world continues to turn. I loved watching so much going on, at Westminster, in the town, in the country. The scope of the story is vast, and the author’s command of it is magnificent.

There are themes that are horribly relevant today – the consequences of coalition government, and the role the fourth estate – represented here by Mr Quintus Slide …..

There are many things that can be said about this book. I have come to see that Trollope accepted society’s norms and believed that they would continue to hold sway; that he could draw a good villain but he clearly gave much more time to the great and the good; that he gave consideration to how a gentleman should live and behave, and of the consequences of their social position and above all of marriage for women ……

Above all this is a wonderfully rich human drama.

The world that Trollope has created in the Palliser novels and the people that live in it are so very, very real.

I find it easy to simply accept it for what it is, and I love spending time there.

I really didn’t mean to read Phineas Redux quite yet, I intended to give some other classic authors some time, after spending so much time with Trollope this year, but my fondness for Phineas and my curiosity to know what was happening in an a world full of so many characters I have come to love …..

I just had to know!

The story begins a few years after ‘Phineas Finn’ and a few months after ‘The Eustace Diamonds’. I’ve seen suggestions that you could read the two Phineas novels back to back, but if you did that there are things that you might not appreciate in this book, because it picks up a few threads and a few characters from ‘The Eustace Diamonds’.

 Phineas Finn is living in Dublin, alone, since his wife has died, and though he has a good job and a healthy income he is bored. He misses parliament, he misses his London life, and so, when he sees a chance to return, he decides to risk everything , hoping that he will be able to pick up the threads of his old life.

He’s still the same Phineas, as charming, as straightforward as ever, but time and experience has made his just a little jaded.

He finds that some things have changed and some things are still the same.

Madam Max had turned down a proposal from the Duke of Omnium; she had hoped to win Phineas, not knowing that he had already decided that his future lay with Mary Flood-Jones. She remained a good friend to the  Duke, whose health was failing, and whose death would bring her a bequest that she was not prepared to accept. And she proved to be the best of friends to Phineas.

That death meant that Plantagenet Palliser was the new Duke of Omnium. Lady Glencora was in her element; I love that was so passionate about her causes, and her friendship with Madame Max is a delight. Her husband, on the other hand, was concerned that he would be ineligible to be chancellor of the exchequer again, and that he may not be able to see his work to reform the currency through to the end.

Lord Chilton and Violet Effingham had married and were happily settled.  They had house-guests, and that set off a subplot – a love triangle that had echoes of one from an earlier book and yet was quite different. Trollope does see to have lots of variants on the love triangle, and I have to say that he does them very well. It was a little strange, moving from characters I knew so well to brand new characters, but I understood why they were there. One of the reasons was to keep the Chilterns in the story – as he still refused to have anything to do with politics – I loved that Lord Chiltern had grown from an angry young man into a comfortable curmudgeon,  that Violet had found her niche as a wife and mother, and that the two of the understood each other so well.

Lady Laura Kennedy had  fled to the continent, to escape her cold, unsympathetic husband. Her situation was dreadful, because,  if she returned to England her husband could compel her return to him, as she had no grounds for divorce. The shift in her relationship with Phineas was interesting – in the first book he wanted more of her than she would give, and in this book that reversed. The arc of her story was inevitable and it was heart-breaking;

Of course Phineas became part of all of their lives again, and he regained his seat in parliament.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Robert Kennedy objected to Phineas visititing his wife, and it became horrible clear that he was beginning to lose his reason. And Mr Bonteen, his greatest political foe, and maybe the next chancellor of the exchequer, is determined that Phineas will be kept from high office.

The consequence of all of this is that Phineas must fight, first against a terrible slander, and then against a charge of murder.

There’s a great deal going on, and inevitably there are highs and lows. There’s quite a bit of politics to wade through at the beginning of the book, there are quiet spells between that great dramas, and it has to be said that Trollope is not a great crime writer.

But the two great dramas, and the human dramas that spin around them, are wonderful.

It works so well because – I think – Trollope was what my mother would call a people person.

He understood his characters, how their relationships worked, how life and events would change them.

He understood how their world worked; he may or may not of liked that, but he presented it, clear-sightedly, as it was.

He cared and he made me care; it’s as simple as that.

Oh, what a maddening book!

As I read there were moments when I thought this might be my favourite Trollope (to date) and there were moments when I thought it would be at the bottom of the list.

In the end I did like it. But ….

The story spins around Lizzie Greystock, who will quickly rise to become Lady Eustace.

Lizzie was the only child of the disreputable Admiral Greystock,  who died leaving her nothing but debts. Fortunately his daughter had learned to live by her wits, and she realised that to marry money to make her way in the world. And so she chose to live with a rather difficult elderly relation, because that put her in the right location and the right strata of society to catch a wealthy husband.

She caught Sir Florian Eustace. He was exceedingly rich, but he was in poor health, and Lizzie was a widow before her first wedding anniversary. She was wealthy, she would soon be the other of the Eustace heir, and she was in possession of the Eustace Diamonds; a fabulous diamond necklace, valued at ten thousand pounds then, which equates to around half a million now

 Lizzie said that they were hers; the Eustace family insisted that they were part of the estate and must be returned to the trustees. Though Lizzie knew her claim was shaky she held her ground, she spun a very good story, and she began to look for a husband who she hoped would protect her and look after her interests.

Lord Fawn proposed, but he tried to back out when he realised that dispute over the diamonds might have consequences for his own reputation for her. Lizzie didn’t want to marry a an like that, but she wasn’t going to let herself be jilted. She had to be the victor, she had to have the final word. Always.

She was fond of her cousin Frank, the only one of her relations who had stood by her, and Lizzie knew that, as a barrister and a member of parliament with very limited resources, he needed a wealthy bride. She didn’t understand why he didn’t propose. She didn’t know – he didn’t tell her – that he was engaged already.

Lucy Morris had been left alone in the world, just like Lizzie, but she had dealt with the situation rather differently. She accepted that she had to earn her own living, she became a governess, and she had the qualities she needed to make her a very good governess. She loved Frank, she knew that he loved her, but because she worked for the Fawn family she found herself in a rather awkward position.

One night, when she was travelling between her Scottish home and her London home Lizzie’s room was broken into, and the metal chest that kept her diamonds secure was stolen.

Who was responsible? Who had the diamonds?

The answer was surprising, and it seemed inevitable that Lizzie’s lies would be revealed and that she, and anyone close to her, would be ruined.</.

How ever could Lizzie rise above that.

The way the story played out was wonderful.

But I couldn’t help thinking that it didn’t suit its author, that there were other authors who might have handled this particular story rather better.

most of all, I was disappointed that Trollope, who usually had understanding for all of his characters, had none for Lizzie. He said at the start that he didn’t like her and he took every chance he could to point out that she was manipulative, dishonest, a compulsive liar, a thief …..

Yes, she was all of those things, but I understood why. I couldn’t warm to her, but I appreciated that she was taking charge of her own life, that she strove to be successful and to find her ‘corsair’ – the dashing romantic hero who would sweep her off her feet.

She was all those things, but she was so much more than that.

Others are judged less harshly.

Consider Frank, who proposes when he knows his financial situation makes marriage impossible, and who neglects his fiancée because he must look after his cousin’s interests.

Consider Lizzie’s friend Mrs Carbuncle who is determined that her niece Lucy must marry, who pushed her towards an engagement with a horrible man, and who fails to understand that her niece feels only revulsion, so that in the end her mind snaps.

Both of those stories were neglected; they felt secondary, and they are fatally compromised; Lucy would have been much more at home in a Dickens novel; I’d love to see what Wilkie Collins could do with Lucinda’s story.

A lot of this book just didn’t feel like Trollope; it feels like an attempt to do something a little different. There’s an early reference to ‘Vanity Fair’ and though this is a very different story I think that’s telling.

I still have to say that there was much that I loved.

I loved Lady Fawn, who was both warm and gracious, and who did her very best for Lucy.

I loved watching first Lizzie and then Lucy deal with the rather difficult Lady Linlithgow, in very different ways and with very different consequences.

I loved the sojourns – and the incidents – in the Scottish countryside.

I loved watching Lizzie outmanoeuvre Lord Fawn, who was ever bit as wishy-washy and self-serving as I remembered from ‘Phinneas Finn’

Most of all I loved watching Lizzie and following her progress.

Yes, I found much to enjoy, but I’m afraid that the book as a whole didn’t quite work.