Can You Forgive Her by Anthony Trollope

Continuing our review of the six Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope. We now turn to the first in the series, “Can You Forgive Her?”

The story concerns a certain Alice Vavasor, and her troubled love life. At the start of the novel Alice has taken a house in London with her father having been brought up by her relative, Lady Macleod, in Cheltenham.

Trollope quickly tells us that Alice is engaged to be married.

Alice and her suitors on the Balcony at Basle
The image on the left is from Book 1 and shows Alice with George
The image on the right is from Book 2 and shows Alice with John
The artwork in  Book 1 is attributed to Phiz and in Book 2 to Miss E Taylor
The images were taken from the Project Gutenberg E-Book   

The lucky man, or the worthy man as Trollope describes him, is John Grey. The fact that he is so worthy seems to trouble Alice. Perhaps she knows he is so worthy because she has previously been engaged to the wild man, her cousin George Vavasor. What we find out is that Alice is planning a trip to Switzerland with her cousin Kate, and, much to Lady Macleod’s consternation, they will be accompanied by Kate’s brother, wild man George.

Alice informs John of the holiday arrangements by letter and, because he is a worthy man, he does not find anything amiss with them. The first sign we have that anything might be not all as it should be is when Alice is reluctant to commit to a day for the wedding with John.

So we move on to Switzerland and the infamous balcony scene at Basel towards the end of the holiday. Making an excuse of needing to pack for the return journey, Kate leaves Alice and George alone taking their coffee overlooking the Rhine in the romantic evening light.

Left alone, the conversation between George and Alice soon turns to her forthcoming marriage, with George turning on the emotional blackmail by saying that they can no longer be friends once she is married; passing acquaintances yes, but friends no. He challenges her suitability for the relationship she has chosen based on the Alice he knew when they were briefly engaged, as he puts it “It was as though one who had lived on brandy should take himself suddenly to a milk diet,—and enjoy the change!”

“A milk diet is no doubt the best. But men who have lived on brandy can't make those changes very suddenly.”

Kate rejoins them and they take their evening stroll across the old bridge at Basel. After returning to the hotel Kate pushes her brother to propose to Alice but, having planted the seed, he says Alice must make her own decision to break her engagement. Kate tells Alice that she would prefer her to marry her brother, and there is a wonderful exchange where they play with words around what is delicate and what is indelicate, but nothing is resolved and they make their way back to London the next day.

Can Alice resolve all these conflicting tensions?

At this point Trollope introduces us to the beautifully observed Mrs Greenow, widow of this parish, and now wealthy aunt of Kate, George and Alice. Mrs Greenow was at one point nearly disowned by the Vavasor family until she married an older man who unfortunately died and left her to wallow in widowhood.

As I said Mrs Greenow is beautifully observed, as Trollope squeezes every ounce of mock pathos, hypocrisy and snobbery out of her situation. Of course the fact that she is a wealthy widow gives her certain rights and protection and she plays these advantages to the full.

Mrs Greenow’s adjournment to Yarmouth with Kate in tow provides a welcome break from the tension that has built in the previous chapters and allows Captain Bellfield and Farmer Cheesacre to be introduced as potential suitors for Kate, or perhaps Mrs Greenow. There’s a lot going on behind those widow’s weeds.

[for my overseas listeners Yarmouth, or more precisely Great Yarmouth, is a popular seaside town on England’s East Coast in Norfolk. It became a popular destination for Victorian holiday makers once the railway opened in 1844.]

Captain Bellfied is clearly destined to play the rogue in the story while Farmer Cheesacre appears to be cast as Bellfield’s unfortunate straight man.

I particularly enjoyed the day out on the sands described in “The Rivals” which provides another wonderful and amusing insight into Victorian life in England. I recommend this as a standalone read.

As an aside, I was also pondering how wonderfully efficient Victorian life was for the wealthy, and how well everything appears to operate and all organised by letter or note and the use of the railway.

But following our brief holiday on the sands at Yarmouth we must return to London and Alice’s troubled love life as a pressing Mr Grey asks her to name the day (all by letter of course).

As Alice considers her reply we are given some of her inner thoughts and her feelings as to why she has started to believe she wants to be more than simply John Grey’s wife, as honourable as he is. Trollope tells us she feels she wants to do something with her life in the field of politics. Clearly she wants some excitement in her life and believes she will find this by aligning her self with the Radical movement of political thinkers sweeping the country at the time. (We are told George is a Radical).

Alice is realistic enough to understand that this doesn’t mean she is going to become an MP, but she wants to be of service to a man who is. The fact that George had failed in his efforts to become MP for Chelsea despite his sister Kate’s sterling efforts may have had some influence on Alice.

Although it is easy to think of the women in Trollope's England as shrinking violets, destined to be defined, as Lizzie Eustace fears, by the man they marry, a reality check tells is that this was far from the case.

While Emmeline Pankhurst would have been in her young teens at the time the Palliser novels were set, change was afoot, led by Radical thinking around workers tights and universal suffrage, such that many of Alice's generation must have gone on to become suffragettes themselves.

Trollope undoubtedly was a conservative at heart, in both senses of the word, but nevertheless gave us an insight into the change that was inevitably coming and which he possibly feared.

Ironically, the first female to take her seat in the House of Commons, Lady Astor in 1919, was both an American and a Tory.

But back to the story. Receiving her reply and literally reading between the lines, John Grey rushes to London to talk to Alice about her reticence to marry him, and, despite his gentle worthy persuasive pressure (much ahead of his day he puts it down to her mental health issues) Alice holds firm and tells him she feels unfit to marry him. When Alice’s father returns home he senses something is amiss but Alice does not reveal what she has done. Instead Alice spills the beans to Kate in a letter.

And what does Kate do? She sends the letter to George. As we get into wild George’s head we understand that he doesn’t so much want to marry Alice, as spite John Grey by taking Alice from him.

What a carry on.

After telling her father what she has done, Alice makes off to Lady Macleod in Cheltenham to face the music there. We have more wonderful examples of arrangements speedily made and confirmed by post, before Alice and her maid are enjoying the best accommodation Lady MacLeod can provide. These arrangements include Alice telling Lady Macleod by post that she has broken off her engagement with John Grey rather than having to tell her face to face.