Group read: Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope

Miss Mackenzie by Anthony Trollope (1865)

Her whole life, hitherto, had been sad, sombre, and, we may almost say, silent. Things had so gone with her that she had had no power of action on her own behalf. Neither with her father, nor with her brother, though both had been invalids, had anything of the management of affairs fallen into her hands. Not even in the hiring or discharging of a cookmaid had she possessed any influence. No power of the purse had been with her---none of that power which belongs legitimately to a wife because a wife is a partner in the business. The two sick men whom she had nursed had liked to retain in their own hands the little privileges which their position had given them. Margaret, therefore, had been a nurse in their houses, and nothing more than a nurse. Had this gone on for another ten years she would have lived down the ambition of any more exciting career, and would have been satisfied, had she then come into the possession of the money which was now hers, to have ended her days nursing herself---or more probably, as she was by nature unselfish, she would have lived down her pride as well as her ambition, and would have gone to the house of her brother and have expended herself in nursing her nephews and nieces. But luckily for her---or unluckily, as it may be---this money had come to her before her time for withering had arrived...

Welcome to the group read of Anthony Trollope's Miss Mackenzie.

Unlike a number of Trollope's novels around this time, the publishing history of Miss Mackenzie is straightforward (no trouble here with alternate versions!). It was written in 1864, but not serialised, appearing first in book form in 1865. It was thus the follow-up to one of Trollope's greatest successes, The Small House At Allington, and as such, most critics at the time found it a disappointment.

As for Trollope himself, he undertook the novel as something of an experiment, later commenting that, "It was written with the desire that a novel may be produced without any love; but even in this attempt it breaks down before the conclusion."

Personally I would agree that there are certain issues with this novel and the way it plays out; but that those issues speak more to Trollope himself than anything else. We will discuss this going forward.

On the other hand, I think that today the novel has points of interest that people at the time may not have appreciated, including its "elderly" (by the standards of her day) heroine, how she reacts to her troubles, and above all perhaps the fact that she occupies the social knife-edge between gentility and the trade-class---with, unusually, both settings offering competing attractions for her.

Despite its only moderate contemporary success (and some of Trollope's more recent critics have likewise dismissed it), Miss Mackenzie has always been in print, and is readily available through the usual sources, including a "World's Classics" edition from the Oxford University Press, and in ebook form via Kindle or Project Gutenberg.

As far as I am aware there are no variants to the text or the chapter numbering, with the novel being presented as 30 straight chapters in all formats.

(Please let us know at once if you do find a variant!)

This is not one of Trollope's longer novels, and we can take our time with it (and in some ways, it repays close reading). I suggest two chapters a day, which will leave plenty of time for discussion.

For this group read, please follow the usual guidelines:

1. Whenever commenting, always start by listing the chapter to which you are referring in bold.

2. Be mindful of others: use spoiler tags if you have read the book before, or get ahead of other readers.

3. If your edition has an introduction, or end- or footnotes, please don't read them before you read the book!

4. If you have a question, a comment or just a thought, please post it! The more contributions we get, the better and more rewarding this group read will be.

Cast of characters:

Margaret Mackenzie

Thomas Mackenzie - her oldest brother
Sarah Mackenzie - his wife
Tom Mackenzie - their eldest son
Mary Jane Mackenzie - their eldest daughter
Susanna Mackenzie - their second daughter

Walter Mackenzie - Margaret's second brother; deceased

Mr Samuel Rubb, Jr - the son of Thomas Mackenzie's business partner

Sir John Ball - the Mackenzies' uncle
Lady Ball - his wife
John Ball - their son
Jack Ball - his eldest son

Jonathan Ball - Sir John's brother; deceased

Sir Walter Mackenzie - a Scottish baronet
Walter Mackenzie - his son
Clara Mackenzie - his daughter-in-law

Mr Stumfold - an evangelical minister in Littlebath
Mrs Stumfold - his wife
Miss Baker - her acolyte
Mr Jeremiah Maguire - Mr Stumfold's curate

Miss Todd - a friend of Miss Baker; a neighbour of Margaret

Harry Handcock - former clerk to Walter Mackenzie; Margaret's executor and suitor

Miss Colza - Sarah Mackenzie's friend and lodger

Mr Slow - Margaret's lawyer

Please check in and let us know if you will be participating or lurking, and whether you have read the book before.

I will give us 24 hours to get settled in and begin properly over the weekend, but there is no hurry for anyone about making a start.

i'm in! I'm looking forward to it!

I'm in and I read it last year. Also, would it be OK for me to copy your announcement message in the Club Read Victorian Tavern thread?

>6 cbl_tn:

Welcome, Carrie!

>7 kac522:

Hi, Kathy - please do!

Hello everyone, I'm in! I have an ebook downloaded from Openlibrary and plan to start reading this weekend, as we have a holiday on Monday.

I've got a copy and will read along.

I'm not reading this novel, but I am just stopping to say hi to the wonderful tutor lyzard and her faithful "students". Have fun with this tutored read.

I'll read along.

I will be lurking....I need to finish 2 books before I can begin this one......will try to catch up and be current soon!

>9 MissWatson:, >10 CDVicarage:, >11 SqueakyChu:

Hi, Birgit, Kerry and Jean---great to have you here! :)

>12 majkia:

Aww, thank you, Madeline! :)

(Ooh, I need to DM you...)

>13 Tess_W:

Welcome, Tess! I hope you enjoy the read. Don't feel you need to rush, we have plenty of time for this one. Just join in when you can. :)

>16 lyzard: TY! I requested the book from the library yesterday and got it today! I may be able to follow along as it's a shorter work of Trollope.

Well, I started and this book seems eerily familiar. Hmmm, I've read a lot of Trollope, but have no record of reading this one.

Chapter 1

If you want an audio version or want to follow the book/audio here is a free version: https://librivox.bookdesign.biz/book/6620

Chapter 1 is very action packed! We learn of several generations of Mackenzie's, the successes and the failures.
We learn how Miss Mackenzie obtains her wealth. The old saying, "money makes the man" (and woman) is surely front and center in chapter 1. Miss Mackenzie is 30 years of age, certainly spinster age in the Victorian times. Miss Mackenzie has certainly dedicated her life thus far to caring for others.

>17 Tess_W:

It happens! :D

Alrighty then---

In pursuit of his aim of "a novel without love", Trollope gives us at the outset a heroine who is - gasp! - thirty-five; though she will be - GASP!! - thirty-six by the time the action proper gets under way:

Chapter 1:

Now, at length, we will come to Margaret Mackenzie, the sister, our heroine, who was eight years younger than her brother Walter, and twelve years younger than Mr Rubb's partner. She had been little more than a child when her father died; or I might more correctly say, that though she had then reached an age which makes some girls young women, it had not as yet had that effect upon her. She was then nineteen; but her life in her father's house had been dull and monotonous; she had gone very little into company, and knew very little of the ways of the world...

****

When she was nearly sixteen, her father, who was then almost an old man, became ill, and the next three years she spent in nursing him. When he died, she was transferred to her younger brother's house,---to a house which he had taken in one of the quiet streets leading down from the Strand to the river, in order that he might be near his office. And here for fifteen years she had lived, eating his bread and nursing him, till he also died, and so she was alone in the world...

That's as brutally a matter-of-fact introduction to a heroine as I know of in Victorian literature. Trollope will soften the portrait going forward - as her circumstances change, so too does Margaret - but there is an uncompromising tone about this bald declaration of the narrowness and dreariness of her life to date. We need to keep this starting point in mind as we go forward.

It is also important at the outset that we understand the family structure and relationships (not least because names recur), and their financial relationships too.

The Mackenzies, our Mackenzies, if you like - Thomas, Walter and Margaret - lie between two sets of cousins.

There are Scottish Mackenzie cousins headed by an elderly baronet, Sir Walter Mackenzie. From this connection stems Margaret's conviction of her "good blood".

On the other side is the Ball family. The two families are connected by the marriage of our Mackenzies' father to the sister of Sir John Ball.

Sir John Ball had a younger brother - confusingly enough called Jonathan - who somehow came into a fortune separate from family money. A feud with Sir John provoked Jonathan into leaving that money to the Mackenzie boys, Thomas and Walter, half each (nothing to Margaret).

Thomas subsequently lost his money via investment in an unprofitable business; while Walter, having increased his portion, and offended by Thomas "going into trade", left his money upon his death to Margaret.

We understand that there was a law-suit over Jonathan Ball's will, which the Balls lost. There has since been rancour between the two groups of relatives, or rather on the part of the Balls towards the Mackenzies, with a feeling that money belonging to the Balls had wrongfully ended up in Mackenzie hands.

Note, however, that we never know where Jonathan Ball's separate fortune came from, or whether Sir John had anything of a legitimate family claim to it.

Note also that for all the subsequent angst and feuding, the matter is a fairly simple one: as Margaret puts it in Chapter 7:

"Uncle Jonathan left his money to his sister's children instead of to his brother's children."

The other thing we need to take away from this unhappy family portrait is this passing remark:

Chapter 1:

The Mackenzie baronet people had not noticed her. They had failed to make much of Walter with his twelve thousand pounds, and did not trouble themselves with Margaret, who had no fortune of her own...

>22 lyzard: When I read this last year, I was so confused that I made myself a little genealogy chart to keep everybody straight. What I did with it, I have no idea--I'll probably have to make a new one this time round.

In Chapter 1 and elsewhere, we get reference to Margaret as "a Mariana".

This is an allusion to Tennyson's poem, Mariana, which was itself alluding to the character of Mariana in Measure For Measure, who gets jilted when she loses her fortune:

From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

Trollope's point is that many women were as isolated and "aweary" like Mariana, and could be so as thoroughly in the heart of London as in a castle with a moat.

Of course the other point about this allusion is that the original Mariana is waiting for a man to come and rescue her...

Appropriately, Trollope first makes this allusion in reference to Margaret's abortive courtship by Harry Handcock, a clerk under Walter Mackenzie:

Chapter 1:

    Harry Handcock had spoken a word or two, Margaret being then five-and-twenty, and Harry ten years her senior. Harry had spoken, and Margaret had listened only too willingly. But the sick brother upstairs had become cross and peevish. Such a thing should never take place with his consent, and Harry Handcock had ceased to speak tenderly.
    He had ceased to speak tenderly, though he didn't cease to visit the quiet house in Arundel Street. As far as Margaret was concerned he might as well have ceased to come; and in her heart she sang that song of Mariana's, complaining bitterly of her weariness...

>23 kac522:

I don't blame you! - that's why I thought it was worth getting into at the outset.

I am trying also to make things clear in the 'cast of characters', in >4 lyzard:

>25 lyzard: Great! It's always useful, and even more so for this novel.

Chapter 1:

She had looked at her glass and had perceived that years had improved her, whereas years had not improved Harry Handcock. She had gone back over her old aspirations, aspirations of which no whisper had ever been uttered, but which had not the less been strong within her, and had told herself that she could not gratify them by a union with Mr Handcock. She thought, or rather hoped, that society might still open to her its portals,---not simply the society of the Handcocks from Somerset House, but that society of which she had read in novels during the day, and of which she had dreamed at night. Might it not yet be given to her to know clever people, nice people, bright people, people who were not heavy and fat like Mr Handcock, or sick and wearisome like her poor brother Walter, or vulgar and quarrelsome like her relatives in Gower Street? She reminded herself that she was the niece of one baronet, and the first-cousin once removed of another, that she had eight hundred a year, and liberty to do with it whatsoever she pleased...

We recall that Trollope set out to write "a novel without love", and we shall see how far he succeeded or failed; I do wonder, from this passage, how different the completed novel was from the one he had in his head when he started it?

(A point we should discuss at the end.)

Chapter 2 finds Margaret leaving London for Littlebath (not very imaginative of Trollope, as this is certainly a sketch of Bath itself).

Prior to this, we see the reaction of the two sets of cousins to Margaret's new circumstances.

The Mackenzies do not much alter their behaviour towards her; but the Balls immediately reach out a hand---for reasons which quickly become obvious:

The Balls, indeed, had not done well with their baronetcy, and their cousin found them living with a degree of strictness, as to small expenses, which she herself had never been called upon to exercise. Lady Ball indeed had a carriage---for what would a baronet's wife do without one?---but it did not very often go out. And the Cedars was an old place, with grounds and paddocks appertaining; but the ancient solitary gardener could not make much of the grounds, and the grass of the paddocks was always sold. Margaret, when she was first asked to go to the Cedars, felt that it would be better for her to give up her migration to Littlebath. It would be much, she thought, to have her relations near to her. But she had found Sir John and Lady Ball to be very dull, and her cousin, the father of the large family, had spoken to her about little except money. She was not much in love with the Balls when she returned to London, and the Littlebath plan was allowed to go on...

Chapter 2:

Margaret starts well enough, taking lodgings in the "pleasant and fashionable" Paragon boarding-house; but then - in Trollope's view, and he means it to be ours - makes a fatal error:

Now Mr Stumfold was a shining light at Littlebath, the man of men, if he was not something more than mere man, in the eyes of the devout inhabitants of that town. Miss Mackenzie had never heard of Mr Stumfold till her clergyman in London had mentioned his name, and even now had no idea that he was remarkable for any special views in Church matters. Such special views of her own she had none. But Mr Stumfold at Littlebath had very special views, and was very specially known for them. His friends said that he was evangelical, and his enemies said that he was Low Church. He himself was wont to laugh at these names---for he was a man who could laugh---and to declare that his only ambition was to fight the devil under whatever name he might be allowed to carry on that battle. And he was always fighting the devil by opposing those pursuits which are the life and mainstay of such places as Littlebath. His chief enemies were card-playing and dancing as regarded the weaker sex, and hunting and horse-racing---to which, indeed, might be added everything under the name of sport---as regarded the stronger. Sunday comforts were also enemies which he hated with a vigorous hatred, unless three full services a day, with sundry intermediate religious readings and exercitations of the spirit, may be called Sunday comforts....

That's an interesting passage. We know by now where Trollope stood in religious matters (and that distinction between "evangelical" and "Low Church" is a killer), and Mr Stumfold is accordingly guilty of all the things that Trollope objected to in the Proudie faction in the Barchester books; but we see that Trollope could be fair, as Mr Stumfold goes about things in a very different manner, though his motives are the same.

But still he is what he is: and by unknowingly allying herself with the Stumfold faction, Margaret will force her future life into a path she didn't mean to take, and one with wholly unforeseen consequences.

I do have one objection to Trollope's sketch of Margaret's arrival in Littlebath:

Chapter 2:

    "The assembly rooms were quite close to the Paragon," he said.
    "Oh, indeed!" said Miss Mackenzie, not quite knowing the purport of assembly rooms.

Of course this is meant to underscore Margaret's social ignorance and the restrictions of her previous life; but we know she's been living on novels: are we supposed to believe she hasn't read Jane Austen?

As with the passage quoted in >27 lyzard:, there is a lot of material in Chapter 2 to ponder, regarding Margaret's life and aspirations; but perhaps that is best left until final discussions.

Miss Mackenzie's first efforts at social life in Littlebath don't go very well, chiefly because of the overwhelming nature of the leaders of each "party":

Chapter 3:

Then came Mrs Stumfold, according to promise, bringing with her one Miss Baker, a maiden lady. From Mrs Stumfold our friend got very little assistance. Mrs Stumfold was hard, severe, and perhaps a little grand. She let fall a word or two which intimated her conviction that Miss Mackenzie was to become at all points a Stumfoldian, since she had herself invoked the countenance and assistance of the great man on her first arrival; but beyond this, Mrs Stumfold afforded no comfort...

****

    "Mrs Stumfold thinks that Aunt Sally is the old gentleman himself," said the elder of the girls.
    "Ha, ha, ha," laughed the aunt. "You see, Miss Mackenzie, we run very much into parties here, as they do in most places of this kind, and if you mean to go thoroughly in with the Stumfold party you must tell me so, candidly, and there won't be any bones broken between us. I shan't like you the less for saying so: only in that case it won't be any use our trying to see much of each other."
    Miss Mackenzie was somewhat frightened, and hardly knew what answer to make. She was very anxious to have it understood that she was not, as yet, in bond under Mrs Stumfold---that it was still a matter of choice to herself whether she would be a saint or a sinner; and she would have been so glad to hint to her neighbour that she would like to try the sinner's line, if it were only for a month or two; only Miss Todd frightened her! And when the girl told her that Miss Todd was regarded, ex parte Stumfold, as being the old gentleman himself, Miss Mackenzie again thought for an instant that there would be safety in giving way to the evangelico-ecclesiastical influence...

Of course, what we take away from all this these days is the sheer difficulty of doing anything just because you want to (and not doing what you don't want to).

Part of Trollope's point is the difficulty that comes with being a single woman; though it never seems to occur to him to question why it should be so---or to admit he knows why.

We might be inclined ourselves to see it as one more social construct for forcing women into an exceedingly narrow set of gates.

Margaret is also attacked on another front:

Chapter 3:

The letter of business was from her brother Tom, and contained an application for the loan of some money,---for the loan, indeed, of a good deal of money. But the loan was to be made not to him but to the firm of Rubb and Mackenzie, and was not to be a simple lending of money on the faith of that firm, for purposes of speculation or ordinary business. It was to be expended in the purchase of the premises in the New Road, and Miss Mackenzie was to have a mortgage on them, and was to receive five per cent for the money which she should advance. The letter was long, and though it was manifest even to Miss Mackenzie that he had written the first page with much hesitation, he had waxed strong as he had gone on, and had really made out a good case...

Trollope shows his own blind spots in his handling of Margaret socially, but there is an amusing pragmatism in his depiction of her attitude towards her money and her pleasure in having it---and her desire to hang onto it.

Thomas is working on her feelings here - assuming that, unlike Walter (he would never have tried this on with Walter), she still has feelings towards him - and he succeeds to an extent; but only to an extent: she's too aware of the danger to herself:

She was very nervous about her money. She was quite alive to the beauty of a high rate of interest, but did not quite understand that high interest and impaired security should go hand in hand together. She wished to oblige her brother, and was aware that she had money as to which her lawyers were looking out for an investment. Even this had made her unhappy, as she was not quite sure whether her lawyers would not spend the money. She knew that lone women were terribly robbed sometimes, and had almost resolved upon insisting that the money should be put into the Three per Cents. But she had gone to work with figures, and having ascertained that by doing so twenty-five pounds a year would be docked off from her computed income, she had given no such order. She now again went to work with her figures, and found that if the loan were accomplished it would add twenty-five pounds a year to her computed income. Mortgages, she knew, were good things, strong and firm, based upon landed security, and very respectable. So she wrote to her lawyers, saying that she would be glad to oblige her brother if there were nothing amiss...

That passage quoted above is very unusual: women are very rarely shown in this practical and even acquisitive light in Victorian fiction, in spite of the social realities that certainly would have made them quite as alert to threats as Margaret is here. Too often they are shown as simply "not understanding" and passing control to someone else. I find Margaret's response, in spite of her ignorance, much more convincing.

Passing thought: compare how Trollope depicts Margaret's attitude to her money here, with how Frances Burney depicted Cecilia's attitude to her inheritance, in Cecilia: how often she was guilted or manipulated into signing chunks of it away. Nearly everyone she meets preys on her.

I've mentioned a particular 18th century quote before, though I can't remember the source: something to the effect that "women are merely a conduit for the passage of money and property between men".

That was exactly society's prevailing attitude, even if it tended to be more dressed up than that. Women in possession of money and/or property were not supposed to suit themselves, but to "oblige" a man by bestowing it upon him.

We will certainly see that thought in Margaret's head going forwards; and conversely, we will absolutely see it in the Balls' attitude towards her.

To this end, during the 18th century women were progressively stripped of their legal rights to own anything outright: fathers, husbands, guardians kept control. Over the 19th century some of these laws were abolished but the assumption that money and property should be in male hands was slow in dying. It was not until 1882 that the Married Women's Property Act allowed wives to keep possession of their inheritances and earnings, separately from their husbands.

A single woman could hold her property; so could a widow: but marriage meant surrender in more ways than one.

Chapter 3 also introduces Margaret's somewhat confusing ideas about class.

We have touched on the connection of our Mackenzies to two baronets. We also have Thomas "disgracing" his family by going into trade---and there is some amusing persiflage along the way regarding the social differences between "trade" and "business".

Margaret is a product of her background and has been taught to agree with Walter's attitude towards Thomas; though like him, she blames the Rubbs for "corrupting" Thomas, and has retained her affection and concern for her brother and his children (if not for her sister-in-law):

Miss Mackenzie had been brought up with contempt and almost with hatred for the Rubb family. It had, in the first instance, been the work of old Samuel Rubb to tempt her brother Tom into trade; and he had tempted Tom into a trade that had not been fat and prosperous, and therefore pardonable, but into a trade that had been troublesome and poor. Walter Mackenzie had always spoken of these Rubbs with thorough disgust, and had persistently refused to hold any intercourse with them. When, therefore, Mr Samuel Rubb was announced, our heroine was somewhat inclined to seat herself upon a high horse.

However, her thoughts on this point will wander interestingly over the course of the narrative, which is another unusual touch in this novel:

    Then he sat for another hour, making himself very agreeable, and at the end of that time she offered him a glass of wine and a biscuit, which he accepted... Miss Mackenzie actually found herself laughing with him as they stood on the floor together, and though she knew that it was improper, she liked it. When he was gone she could not remember what it was that had made her laugh, but she remembered that she had laughed. For a long time past very little laughter had come to her share.
    When he was gone she prepared herself to think about him at length. Why had he talked to her in that way? Why was he going to call again? Why was Rubb, junior, from Rubb and Mackenzie's, such a pleasant fellow? After all, he retailed oilcloth at so much a yard; and little as she knew of the world, she knew that she, with ever so much good blood in her veins, and with ever so many hundreds a year of her own, was entitled to look for acquaintances of a higher order than that. She, if she were entitled to make any boast about herself---and she was by no means inclined to such boastings---might at any rate boast that she was a lady. Now, Mr Rubb was not a gentleman. He was not a gentleman by position. She knew that well enough, and she thought that she had also discovered that he was not quite a gentleman in his manners and mode of speech. Nevertheless she had liked him, and had laughed with him, and the remembrance of this made her sad...

There's an unemphasised point here, though, that we should keep in mind: Margaret might look for acquaintances of a higher order, but her circumstances are such that she might not find them.

>28 lyzard: My Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope suggests that Littlebath may have been modeled on Cheltenham. Cheltenham is also a spa town, and had a Pump Room, although not to the extent of Bath--hence "little Bath."

And I think we've been in Littlebath before, in The Bertrams, and we met Miss Todd there, and maybe Miss Baker, too?

>32 lyzard: "Stumfoldian"--I just love that term!

>34 lyzard: Margaret calculating her Three Per Cents, etc....that's a very shrewd observation of Margaret that I'm not sure I paid much attention to the first time through. Thanks for pointing out how unusual it is to have a woman with a practical sense about money.

>35 lyzard: the social differences between "trade" and "business"
I'm currently re-reading Gaskell's North and South and the some of the same class distinctions are front and center. A man who manufactures carriages for wealthy customers is considered "in business", but Mr Thornton, a mill-owner, is considered "in trade" because he deals in cotton.

I’m a bit behind, but I found the book easily on Gutenberg, and will be following along. I like Trollope’s style. Earlier this year I read Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Same theme, a woman who has been the lonely nurse of all her family. I am quite interested in how Trollope will handle it.

I am off to a slow start since I'm down with COVID and I didn't feel like reading while I had a headache and congestion.

I am wondering if we are to infer that the London clergyman who provided Miss Mackenzie's introduction to Mr. Stumfold shared his views. If so, why was that not a problem for Miss Mackenzie in London? Chapter 2 says that "she knew very little in private life of the doctor or of the clergyman in London, but not the less, on that account, might their introductions be of service to her in forming a circle of acquaintance at Littlebath." Surely evangelical/low church leanings would be evident from the London clergyman's professional conduct, but perhaps Miss Mackenzie had been so sheltered that she was entirely unaware of the church controversy and didn't recognize any of the clues that would have been publicly evident?

>36 kac522:

Yes, that may well be so. There was rivalry between the two towns. Cheltenham was/is the smaller but it was closer to London (as we see from some of the back-and-forth in this novel) and more suitable for brief visits, and also less expensive.

>36 kac522:

Well spotted re: Miss Todd and Miss Baker! The two of them appeared previously in The Bertrams, published in 1859; the thread for our group read of that is here. We see the two of them first in the Middle East, then later on in Littlebath.

Has everyone here read The Bertrams? - I don't want to be spoilery if not. It is worth noting, though, how the friendship between Miss Todd and Miss Baker has deteriorated (in contact, if not in feeling) since Miss Baker fell under the sway of Mrs Stumfold.

The other important point, though it is not raised here and remains a sort of thematic background, is that in The Bertrams we see Miss Todd being courted for her money (unsuccessfully, obviously).

>36 kac522:

The gradations between trade and business are almost impossible to get your head around, not least because there was no real dividing line but (as is inferred here) often depended on how much money was being made, who the clientele was, or whether it was retail or wholesale. It was also something that shifted over the 19th century as more forms of trade / business came into being, and as the class lines blurred.

The background of the people involved could come into it too, as is the case in North And South where Mr Thornton is self-made and therefore considered "trade" though he owns a factory. (Views were often different between manufacturing towns and cities.)

>36 kac522:

Perhaps we should say, unusual to have it admitted that a woman could be practical about money. :D

It's interesting that she has that capacity when she's been so powerless in her brother's house, though. The school she went to - which tacitly did not prepare her for "young-lady-dom", as most girls' schools did - Chapter 1: I doubt whether the education which Margaret received at Miss Green's establishment for young ladies in that suburb was of a kind to make up by art for that which nature had not given her - seems to given her some life-skills instead (so hurrah for Miss Green!).

>37 EllaTim:

No hurry, Ella, don't worry about being behind. :)

Lolly Willowes is one I still haven't got to, but that's an interesting allusion.

>38 cbl_tn:

I'm so sorry to hear that, Carrie! Take care and go at your own pace.

There is a reference to Mr Stumfold being of "his cloth" so yes, the London clergyman would be Low Church if not evangelical. How much Margaret understands or cares about the gradations of religious practice isn't clear. Likely she just went to the nearest church; and we know the clergyman there doesn't make any particular contact with her until after she inherits.

The position of a clergyman in London was very different from that of one in a provincial town. There would be no comparable social aspect (Margaret has never taken tea with her London clergyman; she knows nothing of his "private life"), and far less general influence.

But in Littlebath Mr Stumfold has, as it were, a captive audience. Margaret is caught off guard by the reach and social power of the Stumfolds and finds it hard to get out when she's in.

Regarding the Stumfolds, we get this devastating bit at the end of Chapter 3:

After that she dressed herself with great care, and went out to tea at Mrs Stumfold's. This was the first occasion in her life in which she had gone to a party, the invitation to which had come to her on a card, and of course she felt herself to be a little nervous...

One of the things for which Trollope was criticised at the time, and why he was considered by some a "lesser" novelist by some, was his recording of day-to-day details: some critics sniffed that he was a journalist, not a novelist. (Would that today's journalists would confine themselves to reporting facts!)

But of course - without getting into the larger debate - this is one of the things that makes his novels so valuable as documents.

And we see that again here, with Margaret's terrors over how much she should be paying for a hired carriage, whether in fact she should be hiring a carriage at all, and the "correct" time for her to arrive at the Stumfolds'.

Chapter 4:

    But now, at nine o'clock on this appointed evening, she was of a certainty and in very truth going into society. The card said half-past eight; but the Sun had not yoked his horses so far away from her Tyre, remote as that Tyre had been, as to have left her in ignorance that half-past eight meant nine. When her watch showed her that half-past eight had really come, she was fidgety, and rang the bell to inquire whether the man might have probably forgotten to send the fly; and yet she had been very careful to tell the man that she did not wish to be at Mrs Stumfold's before nine.
    "He understands, Miss," said the servant; "don't you be afeard; he's a-doing of it every night."
    Then she became painfully conscious that even the maid-servant knew more of the social ways of the place than did she...

Chapter 4 also introduces Mr Maguire.

Trollope allows himself to poke fun at the evangelicals here, which is one thing; but he also displays, and not for the first time, a tendency to link Low Church-ism to a physical defect. He did that with Mr Slope in Barchester Towers, insisting upon his physical unattractiveness, and he does it again here by giving Mr Maguire what he calls a squint, but seems rather to be a bad case of extropia, or "wall eye".

It's a cheap shot, and one that should have been beneath him.

Besides, I think given the role Mr Maguire ends up playing, an absence of any such surface issue would have made him more dangerous.

On the other hand, the Stumfolds' tea-party allows Miss Mackenzie to reach out to Miss Baker, as she has been longing to do.

We get some feeling here for just how mindbogglingly delicate the social conventions were, and what a minefield they could be to navigate---even in a relatively minor situation, not anything that could actually hurt you socially:

Chapter 4:

    "I hope you like Littlebath," said Miss Baker.
    Miss Mackenzie, who began to be conscious that she had done wrong, hesitated as she replied that she liked it pretty well.
    "I think you'll find it pleasant," said Miss Baker; and then there was a pause. There could not be two women more fitted for friendship than were these, and it was much to be hoped, for the sake of our poor, solitary heroine especially, that this outside crust of manner might be broken up and dispersed.
    "I dare say I shall find it pleasant, after a time," said Miss Mackenzie. Then they applied themselves each to her own bread and butter.
    "You have not seen Miss Todd, I suppose, since I saw you?" Miss Baker asked this question when she perceived that Mrs Stumfold was deep in some secret conference with Mr Startup. It must, however, be told to Miss Baker's credit, that she had persistently maintained her friendship with Miss Todd, in spite of all the Stumfoldian influences. Miss Mackenzie, at the moment less brave, looked round aghast, but seeing that her hostess was in deep conference with her prime minister, she took heart of grace. "I called, and I did not see her."
    "She promised me she would call," said Miss Baker.
    "And I returned her visit, but she wasn't at home," said Miss Mackenzie.
    "Indeed," said Miss Baker; and then there was silence between them again.
    But, after a pause, Miss Mackenzie again took heart of grace. I do not think that there was, of nature, much of the coward about her. Indeed, the very fact that she was there alone at Littlebath, fighting her own battle with the world, instead of having allowed herself to be swallowed up by the Harry Handcocks, and Tom Mackenzies, proved her to be anything but a coward. "Perhaps, Miss Baker, I ought to have returned your visit," said she.
    "That was just as you like," said Miss Baker with her sweetest smile.
    "Of course, I should have liked it, as I thought it so good of you to come. But as you came with Mrs Stumfold, I was not quite sure whether it might be intended; and then I didn't know,---did not exactly know,---where you lived."
    After this the two ladies got on very comfortably..

I was a bit delayed (by watching too many Platinum Jubilee documentaries about Elizabeth II), but have now reached Chapter 5. I find Margaret's situation eminently relatable, if a bit extreme. Not even a tea party? No wonder she is so insecure about the way of doing things. But her school must have imparted some practical knowledge if she knows how to to hire a maid and where to find lodgings advertised?

>48 MissWatson:

What's exasperating is how casually a male author can say something like that. "Quiet desperation", indeed.

Hiring servants was fundamental knowledge whether you got to do it yourself or not.

As for the lodgings, I think we can put a couple of readings on that: either she passed the long nights of nursing imagining a plan for her future, OR she spent them worried about what was going to happen to her when Walter died. Either way, that's the kind of knowledge she might have armed herself with in advance (as you note, probably via the servants).

Tricky, isn't it?---

Chapter 5:

Mr Rubb was very good-looking; Mr Maguire was afflicted by a terrible squint. Mr Rubb's mode of speaking was pleasant to her; whereas she was by no means sure that she liked Mr Maguire's speech. But Mr Maguire was by profession a gentleman. As the discreet young man, who is desirous of rising in the world, will eschew skittles, and in preference go out to tea at his aunt's house---much more delectable as skittles are to his own heart---so did Miss Mackenzie resolve that it would become her to select Messrs Stumfold and Maguire as her male friends, and to treat Mr Rubb simply as a man of business. She was denying herself skittles and beer, and putting up with tea and an old aunt, because she preferred the proprieties of life to its pleasures...

We also get our first intimation of trouble for Margaret here:

Chapter 5:

From that time up to Christmas she saw no more of Mr Rubb; but she heard from him twice. His letters, however, had reference solely to business, and were not of a nature to produce either anger or admiration. She had also heard more than once from her lawyer; and a question had arisen as to which she was called upon to trust to her own judgement for a decision. Messrs Rubb and Mackenzie had wanted the money at once, whereas the papers for the mortgage were not ready. Would Miss Mackenzie allow Messrs Rubb and Mackenzie to have the money under these circumstances? To this inquiry from her lawyer she made a rejoinder asking for advice. Her lawyer told her that he could not recommend her, in the ordinary way of business, to make any advance of money without positive security; but, as this was a matter between friends and near relatives, she might perhaps be willing to do it; and he added that, as far as his own opinion went, he did not think that there would be any great risk. But then it all depended on this:---did she want to oblige her friends and near relatives? In answer to this question she told herself that she certainly did wish to do so; and she declared,---also to herself,---that she was willing to advance the money to her brother, even though there might be some risk...

Different kinds of trouble:

She had begun a system of district visiting and Bible reading with Miss Baker, which had at first been very agreeable to her. But Mrs Stumfold had on one occasion called upon her and taken her to task,---as Miss Mackenzie had thought, rather abruptly,---with reference to some lack of energy or indiscreet omission of which she had been judged to be guilty by that highly-gifted lady. Against this Miss Mackenzie had rebelled mildly, and since that things had not gone quite so pleasantly with her...

Margaret's putative money trouble is confirmed for us in Chapter 6, when it becomes clear she has placed her trust in the wrong quarter:

    "I shouldn't care a straw where her money went," said Thomas Mackenzie, "if I could only know that this sum which we have had from her was properly arranged. To tell you the truth, Rubb, I'm ashamed to look my sister in the face."
    "That's nonsense. Her money is as right as the bank; and if in such matters as that brothers and sisters can't take liberties with each other, who the deuce can?"
    "In matters of money nobody should ever take a liberty with anybody," said Mr Mackenzie.
    He knew, however, that a great liberty had been taken with his sister's money, and that his firm had no longer the power of providing her with the security which had been promised to her...

A trouble of a third kind also looms---at least according to Mrs Mackenzie---though perhaps Margaret wouldn't necessarily regard it as "trouble":

"Of course they have asked her; but that's no reason she should go. The Balls have behaved very badly to us, and I should think much better of her if she stayed away... She was there once before she went to Littlebath at all. They want to get their uncle's money back, and she wants to be a baronet's wife."

Be that as it may, we see that Margaret's visit to the Cedars is in the nature of more "tea and an old aunt":

It is hard to say what pleasure she promised herself in going to the Cedars, or why she accepted that invitation. She had, in truth, liked neither the people nor the house, and had felt herself to be uncomfortable while she was there. I think she felt it to be a duty to force herself to go out among people who, though they were personally disagreeable to her, might be socially advantageous. If Sir John Ball had not been a baronet, the call to the Cedars would not have been so imperative on her. And yet she was not a tufthunter, nor a toady. She was doing what we all do,---endeavouring to choose her friends from the best of those who made overtures to her of friendship. If other things be equal, it is probable that a baronet will be more of a gentleman and a pleasanter fellow than a manufacturer of oilcloth. Who is there that doesn't feel that? It is true that she had tried the baronet, and had not found him very pleasant, but that might probably have been her own fault. She had been shy and stiff, and perhaps ill-mannered, or had at least accused herself of these faults; and therefore she resolved to go again...

It is an important point in context, however, that while Sir John Ball may be more of a "gentleman" than Samuel Rubb, he is absolutely not "a pleasanter fellow".

This, though:

Chapter 6:

    "Aunt is so kind," Susanna said. "She's always kind. If you wake her up in the middle of the night, she's kind in a moment. And if there's anything good to eat, it will make her eyes quite shine if she sees that anybody else likes it. I have known her sit for half an hour ever so uncomfortable, because she would not disturb the cat."
    "Then she must be a fool, my dear," said Mrs Mackenzie.

But then, so many of us are fools... :D

>53 lyzard: True for dogs, too. A friend calls it "canine paralysis".

The introduction of the Balls in Chapter 6 is discouraging, to say the least:

Old Lady Ball, though naturally ill-natured, was not ill-mannered, nor did she give herself any special airs; but she knew that she was a baronet's wife, that she kept her carriage, and that it was an obligation upon her to make up for the poverty of her house by some little haughtiness of demeanour... Sir John was a discontented, cross old man, who had succeeded greatly in early life, having been for nearly twenty years in Parliament, but had fallen into adversity in his older days... He had done much for the world, and the world in return had made him a baronet without any money! He was a very tall, thin, gray-haired, old man, stooping much, and worn with age, but still endowed with some strength of will, and great capability of making himself unpleasant. His son was a bald-headed, stout man, somewhat past forty, who was by no means without cleverness, having done great things as a young man at Oxford; but in life he had failed...

I'm not sure how we're supposed to take this, put in light of Margaret's determination to choose "the best" amongst her acquaintances and relatives, and to shun the Mackenzie / Rubb connection in favour of the Ball connection.

It ought to be irony, or a warning about snobbery, but it doesn't read like that in context.

The quote above is what Margaret can see for herself about her "best" acquaintances; behind the scenes, matters are even worse: the disrespect here is shocking:

Chapter 6:

    "You'll find she has taken up with the religious people there," said the father.
    "It's just what she would do," said the son.
    "They're the greatest thieves going. When once they have got their eyes upon money, they never take them off again."
    "She's not been there long enough yet to give any one a hold upon her."
    "I don't know that, John; but, if you'll take my advice, you'll find out the truth at once. She has no children, and if you've made up your mind about it, you'll do no good by delay."
    "She's a very nice woman, in her way."
    "Yes, she's nice enough. She's not a beauty; eh, John? and she won't set the Thames on fire."
    "I don't wish her to do so; but I think she'd look after the girls, and do her duty."
    "I dare say; unless she has taken to run after prayer-meetings every hour of her life."
    "They don't often do that after they're married, sir."
    "Well; I know nothing against her. I never thought much of her brothers, and I never cared to know them. One's dead now, and as for the other, I don't suppose he need trouble you much. If you've made up your mind about it, I think you might as well ask her at once." From all which it may be seen that Miss Mackenzie had been invited to the Cedars with a direct object on the part of Mr Ball...

The Cedars interlude is critical in a number of ways.

Though the Balls' intentions for Margaret's money are made patent (to her as well as to us, finally), what really matters here is the character that Margaret begins to display under pressure.

It is evident that the Balls think either that she will jump at the chance to be a future baronet's wife, or that she may be bullied or hurried into doing what they want of her; but in three consecutive scenes here, Margaret stands her ground against her relatives: the bribery and persistence of Lady Ball; the nastiness of Sir John; and perhaps hardest of all, the niceness (albeit completely self-interested niceness) of John:

Chapter 6 / Chapter 7:

    "Then, why can't you stay? Write and tell Mrs Tom that she must keep Susanna at home for another week or so. It can't matter."
    To this Miss Mackenzie made no immediate answer.
    "It is not only for myself I speak, but John likes having you here with his girls; and Jack is so fond of you; and John himself is quite different while you are here. Do stay!"
    Saying which Lady Ball put out her hand caressingly on Miss Mackenzie's arm.
    "I'm afraid I mustn't," said Miss Mackenzie, very slowly. "Much as I should like it, I'm afraid I mustn't do it. I've pledged myself to go back with Susanna, and I like to be as good as my word."
    Lady Ball drew herself up.
    "I never went so much out of my way to ask any one to stay in my house before," she said.

****

    Sir John, once or twice during the day, took up his little sarcasms against her supposed religious tendencies at Littlebath.
    "You'll be glad to get back to Mr Stumfold," he said.
    "I shall be glad to see him, of course," she answered, "as he is a friend."
    "Mr Stumfold has a great many lady friends at Littlebath," he continued.
    "Yes, a great many," said Miss Mackenzie, understanding well that she was being bullied.
    "What a pity that there can be only one Mrs Stumfold," snarled the baronet; "it's often a wonder to me how women can be so foolish."
    "And it's often a wonder to me," said Miss Mackenzie, "how gentlemen can be so ill-natured."

****

    Then he got up from his chair, and took a turn across the room. "The truth is, Margaret, that there's no use in my beating about the bush. I shan't say what I've got to say a bit the better for delaying it. I want you to be my wife, and to be mother to those children. I like you better than any woman I've seen since I lost Rachel, but I shouldn't dare to make you such an offer if you had not money of your own. I could not marry unless my wife had money, and I would not marry any woman unless I felt I could love her---not if she had ever so much. There! now you know it all. I suppose I have not said it as I ought to do, but if you're the woman I take you for that won't make much difference."
    For my part I think that he said what he had to say very well. I do not know that he could have done it much better. I do not know that any other form of words would have been more persuasive to the woman he was addressing. Had he said much of his love, or nothing of his poverty; or had he omitted altogether any mention of her wealth, her heart would have gone against him at once. As it was he had produced in her mind such a state of doubt, that she was unable to answer him on the moment...

Chapter 7:

    "What I offer you is a life of endless trouble and care. I know all about it myself. It's all very well to talk of a competence and a big house, and if you were to take me, perhaps we might keep the old place on and furnish it again, and my mother thinks a great deal about the title. For my part I think it's only a nuisance when a man has not got a fortune with it, and I don't suppose it will be any pleasure to you to be called Lady Ball. You'd have a life of fret and worry, and would not have half so much money to spend as you have now. I know all that, and have thought a deal about it before I could bring myself to speak to you. But, Margaret, you would have duties which would, I think, in themselves, have a pleasure for you. You would know what to do with your life, and would be of inestimable value to many people who would love you dearly. As for me, I never saw any other woman whom I could bring myself to offer as a mother to my children." All this he said looking down at the floor, in a low, dull, droning voice, as though every sentence spoken were to have been the last. Then he paused, looked into her face for a moment, and after that, allowed his eyes again to fall on the ground.
    Margaret was, of course, aware that she must make him some answer, and she was by no means prepared to give him one that would be favourable. Indeed, she thought she knew that she could not marry him, because she felt that she did not love him with affection of the sort which would be due to a husband. She told herself that she must refuse his offer. But yet she wanted time, and above all things, she wished to find words which would not be painful to him. His dull droning voice, and the honest recital of his troubles, and of her troubles if she were to share his lot, had touched her more nearly than any vows of love would have done. When he told her of the heavy duties which might fall to her lot as his wife, he almost made her think that it might be well for her to marry him, even though she did not love him...

We recall that Trollope set out to write "a novel without love". We shall see how far he succeeds in that. What we can see already, however, is that he pretty much succeeds in writing a novel without romance: this is as unromantic a proposal as you're likely to find in Victorian literature*.

(*With the possible exception of the one in The Perpetual Curate! :D )

But the absolute lack of pretence is important: they both know it's about the money, and it is weirdly to John Ball's credit that he doesn't pretend otherwise. And he goes further: he offers her duties as an inducement.

And Margaret being what she is, it is an inducement.

But she is also a Trollope heroine, and therefore she must say 'no', since "she did not love him with affection of the sort which would be due to a husband".

Without getting too much into spoilers, there are some touches here that take on an ironic quality, going forward, and I'm just going to put them here for reference:

Chapter 7:

She told herself that she must refuse his offer. But yet she wanted time, and above all things, she wished to find words which would not be painful to him...

****

    "I hardly know how to answer you, you have taken me so much by surprise," she said.
    "You need not give me an answer at once," he replied; "you can think of it."

****

    "No, John; I cannot do that; and perhaps I ought to say now that I don't think it will ever be possible. It has all so surprised me, that I haven't known how to speak; and I am afraid I shall be letting you go from me with a false idea. Perhaps I ought to say at once that it cannot be."
    "No, Margaret, no. It is much better that you should think of it. No harm can come of that."

>56 lyzard: His son was a bald-headed, stout man, somewhat past forty

squint vs. bald-headed--Trollope has a way of hammering these qualities over and over again, doesn't he. Later one he'll add the yellow gloves. Sheesh, what a trio.

>61 kac522:

She's such a lucky girl, isn't she? :D

It goes with the novel's overall prosaic attitude, of course, but there's something sad in Margaret having no better prospects than these---or rather, these men being offered as acceptable prospects.

>58 lyzard: Oh yes, I was very pleasantly surprised how she stood up to them.

BTW, sorry I've been a bit slow to start with: something unexpected came up that's been eating into my time. I will try to speed things up from here.

Anyway, it's about a week, so a good time for a check: how is everyone going?

>64 lyzard: No worries, Liz. As usual, I can't stop myself with Trollope. I should finish tonight or tomorrow.

>64 lyzard: No worries. I have been slow to start as well since I wasn't expecting to get COVID. I have finished through chapter 10.

I have reached chapter 11.

>46 lyzard: Re: squint. I also would call this "wall-eyed", but tonight I started reading Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End, which is the the 3rd book in Jennifer Worth's memoir about being a midwife in 1950s Poplar. The memoir is dated 2005, and here's her description of Fred, the boiler and odd-job man:

The main problem was his squint, the most spectacular you have ever seen. One eye pointed north-east, the other south-west, so he could see in both directions at once, but not in the middle.

So apparently a common term for the condition, in London, at least. And I must say Worth does not make any cheap shots about it, just that he sometimes had a hard time sweeping ash, as it would fly one way and he'd over compensate and sweep the other way.

>65 kac522:, >66 cbl_tn:, >67 MissWatson:

Thanks!

No worries if you're finished, just - as always - make sure you keep a note of your discussion points. :)

>68 kac522:

So it was/is an understood term; thanks for that! I've never come across that before, or more likely read 'squint' and didn't realise what was being implied.

Following on Birgit's comment in >63 MissWatson:, this at the end of Chapter 7:

Then she put her face to her aunt, and Lady Ball permitted her cheek to be touched. Lady Ball was still not without hope, but she thought that the surest way was to assume a high dignity of demeanour, and to exhibit a certain amount of displeasure. She still believed that Margaret might be frightened into the match.

She's going to frighten her into agreeing to live in the same house with her: yeah, that'll work. :D

Following on from Margaret's awful visit to the Cedars, we get a graphic description of the even more awful dinner-party with the Mackenzies.

Littlebath is looking more and more attractive all the time, whatever its drawbacks:

Chapter 8:

It was à la Russe, because in the centre there was a green arrangement of little boughs with artificial flowers fixed on them, and because there were figs and raisins, and little dishes with dabs of preserve on them, all around the green arrangement; but the soups and fish were on the table, as was also the wine, though it was understood that no one was to be allowed to help himself or his neighbour to the contents of the bottle. When Dr Slumpy once made an attempt at the sherry, Grandairs was down upon him instantly, although laden at the time with both potatoes and sea-kale; after that he went round and frowned at Dr Slumpy, and Dr Slumpy understood the frown...

There's a mention of dinner à la russe in The Last Chronicle Of Barset, but here Trollope gives us the full detail, albeit this is a perfectly dreadful version of what, done properly, was in many ways a better choice than the alternative, which was dinner à la française.

The latter was the old practice of putting all the food on the table at once and letting the diners serve themselves, or be served by others at table. It meant a cluttered table (in addition to the platters of food the condiments and wine all had to be there too), and often you didn't get what you actually wanted; also the food tended to get cold.

The former has the various courses being brought in one at a time, and the diners being served on clean plates for each, from a sideboard. (What we would now think of as restaurant service, basically.) It was a practice that meant the food tended to be properly hot when it was served, and everyone got some of everything or could decline what they didn't want.

The problem, in 19th century households, was that dinner à la russe - done correctly - took a lot more plates and cutlery and glasses, and it only worked with a sufficient number of staff who knew what they were doing.

Therefore it was really only workable in wealthier households---and Sarah Mackenzie is mocked for trying it on in a small house in Gower Street. In particular, "Grandairs" won't let anyone else help with the serving, with the result that the entire point of doing things this way is lost: the food gets cold and no-one gets what they want.

Poor Dr Slumpy!---

After the little dishes there came, of course, a saddle of mutton, and, equally of course, a pair of boiled fowls. There was also a tongue; but the à la Russe construction of the dinner was maintained by keeping the tongue on the sideboard, while the mutton and chickens were put down to be carved in the ordinary way. The ladies all partook of the chickens, and the gentlemen all of the mutton. The arrangement was very tedious, as Dr Slumpy was not as clever with the wings of the fowls as he perhaps would have been had he not been defrauded in the matter of the champagne; and then every separate plate was carried away to the sideboard with reference to the tongue. Currant jelly had been duly provided, and, if Elizabeth had been allowed to dispense it, might have been useful. But Grandairs was too much for the jelly, as he had been for the fish-sauce, and Dr Slumpy in vain looked up, and sighed, and waited...

Chapter 8 also sounds a warning bell regarding Margaret's loan to her brother and Mr Rubb:

    And Mr Rubb got nearer to her on the sofa as he whispered the word money into her ear. It immediately struck her that her own brother Tom had said not a word to her about the money, although they had been together for the best part of an hour before they had gone up to dress.
    "I suppose Mr Slow will settle all that," said Miss Mackenzie.
    "Of course;---that is to say, he has nothing further to settle just as yet. He has our bond for the money, and you may be sure it's all right. The property is purchased, and is ours,---our own at this moment, thanks to you. But landed property is so hard to convey. Perhaps you don't understand much about that! and I'm sure I don't. The fact is, the title deeds at present are in other hands, a mere matter of form; and I want you to understand that the mortgage is not completed for that reason."
    "I suppose it will be done soon?"
    "It may, or it may not; but that won't affect your interest, you know."
    "I was thinking of the security."
    "Well, the security is not as perfect as it should be. I tell you that honestly; and if we were dealing with strangers we should expect to be called on to refund. And we should refund instantly, but at a great sacrifice, a ruinous sacrifice. Now, I want you to put so much trust in us,---in me, if I may be allowed to ask you to do so,---as to believe that your money is substantially safe. I cannot explain it all now; but the benefit which you have done us is immense."
    "I suppose it will all come right, Mr Rubb."
    "It will all come right, Miss Mackenzie."

Again, Margaret's remark about the security shows that she is sharper in these matters than the people dealing with her expect.

The first half of Chapter 9 finds Margaret mulling over the vital question of whether she should marry John Ball; whether she wants to marry John Ball---though Margaret's own wants always seem to come depressingly low on the list of everyone's priorities, sometimes even her own.

Trollope then makes it clear what Margaret does want:

    "It is not as if you two were young people, and wanted to be billing and cooing," Lady Ball had said to her the same evening.
    Miss Mackenzie, as she thought of this, was not so sure that Lady Ball was right. Why should she not want billing and cooing as well as another? It was natural that a woman should want some of it in her life, and she had had none of it yet. She had had a lover, certainly, but there had been no billing and cooing with him. Nothing of that kind had been possible in her brother Walter's house...

However---the critical passage comes next---and as with some of the passages in Rachel Ray, intimating Rachel's physical response to the man she loves, Trollope attracted some criticism for this---

...she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. She moved up her hair from off her ears, knowing where she would find a few that were grey, and shaking her head, as though owning to herself that she was old; but as her fingers ran almost involuntarily across her locks, her touch told her that they were soft and silken; and she looked into her own eyes, and saw that they were bright; and her hand touched the outline of her cheek, and she knew that something of the fresh bloom of youth was still there; and her lips parted, and there were her white teeth; and there came a smile and a dimple, and a slight purpose of laughter in her eye, and then a tear. She pulled her scarf tighter across her bosom, feeling her own form, and then she leaned forward and kissed herself in the glass....

---particularly in conjunction with Margaret's pondering of the dreariness of John Ball, and conversely the handsomeness of Samuel Rubb: some critics were outraged by the implication of her physical attraction towards any man; but most of all a man who - gasp! - was not a gentleman; and particularly since this thought leads to her rejection of John Ball's proposal: such things weren't supposed to factor into a woman deciding who to marry!

Be all that as it may, Margaret does reject John, and her rejection is put in acceptable (and properly Trollopean) terms:

Chapter 9:

"I know that the honour you have proposed to me is very great, and that I may seem to be ungrateful in declining it; but I cannot bring myself to feel that sort of love for you which a wife should have for her husband... It is not that I should be afraid of the duties which would fall upon me as your wife; but that the woman who undertakes those duties should feel for you a wife's love..."

The second half of Chapter 9 deals with Margaret's shifting attitude towards Littlebath and the Stumfoldians, though the shift is more within her own feelings than in her behaviour.

There are some interesting touches here, as she shocks Miss Baker with her views on things; and we may feel that though she has rejected two proposals by now, having been courted even for her money, and having had the Ball vs Rubb thoughts we know she has had, has woken her up.

There is one interesting and very sad touch here---

They were both quiet, conscientious, kindly women, each not without some ambition of activity, but each a little astray as to the way in which that activity should be shown. They were both alone in the world, and Miss Baker during the last year or two had become painfully so from the fact of her estrangement from her old friend Miss Todd...

As Kathy pointed out in >36 kac522:, we first met Miss Todd and Miss Baker travelling together in The Bertrams: such an arrangement argues a close friendship; yet here they hardly see each other. I think Trollope intends this as condemnation of the Stumfoldian way of life, wrecking friendships on ideological grounds.

My own eye was caught by two minor details:

But there were things, not bad in themselves, which she herself would never have done, because she was a lady. She would have broken her heart rather than marry a man who was not a gentleman. It was not unlady-like to eat cold mutton, and she ate it. But she would have shuddered had she been called on to eat any mutton with a steel fork...

Some of you will know of the odd form of literature from the first half of the 19th century known as "the silver-fork novel": these were pictures of life amongst the upper classes that focused on (as we would say now) the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy and the details of their lifestyle. They obtained that nickname via a critic jeering at one author's obsession with the fact that the upper classes "ate their fish with a silver fork".

But here we see the flip-side: for Miss Baker, though she is neither wealthy nor aristocratic, only a silver fork will do!

And this---

    "Would Miss Todd come if you were to ask her?"
    "Perhaps she would, but I don't think she'd be comfortable; or if she were, she'd make the others uncomfortable. She always does exactly what she pleases."
    "That's just why I think I should like her. I wish I dared to do what I pleased! We all of us are such cowards. Only that I don't dare, I'd go off to Australia and marry a sheep farmer."
    "You would not like him when you'd got him;---you'd find him very rough."
    "I shouldn't mind a bit about his being rough..."

Likely she wouldn't find him rough at all---and at least he wouldn't be marrying her for her money: our sheep-farmers were among our wealthiest and most successful men at this time and, in a few more decades, effectively became our landed gentry. :D

>71 lyzard: I enjoyed that chapter about the dinner, just because of all the detail. We tend to think of authors like Gaskell and Oliphant (really, most female authors) giving the minute details of domestic life, but this chapter from Trollope was very informative!

>75 lyzard: I think Trollope intends this as condemnation of the Stumfoldian way of life, wrecking friendships on ideological grounds.

Yes, excellent point.

Completed Book
I'm usually singularly focused and read quickly. I have finished the book.
I have read Chronicles of Barsetshire Collection, He Knew He Was Right and North and South. I did not find Miss Mackenzie as compelling as the previous reads. I found it to be very Austenish and *Yikes* I'm not a fan of Austen. I did find the same type of humor as in Austen. I would characterize this as an average read for me.

Thank you lyzard for creating the group and leading the discussions.

>71 lyzard: I was wondering if Mr Grandairs was a regular member of the staff or did they hire him for the occasion? From the same establishment which supplied the soup? My heart went out for the guests, there is nothing so awful as cold food...

Another thing about the party in Chapter 8 which struck me is the name of Mademoiselle Colza. Given Trollope's predilection for speaking names, what are we to make of it? Was it a well-known oil at the time?

>78 Tess_W:

Thanks for joining in, Tess! I hope that you will stick around or at least return for final discussions and reactions as others finish up.

I probably should have been clearer about that at the outset: as a group (mostly) we've worked through the Barchester and Palliser series and are now plugging our gaps with Trollope's lesser-known works, so the subject matter and quality does vary; so do people's responses! :)

>79 MissWatson:

No, he would have been hired for the occasion (and not cheaply), and that's the problem: he won't let the domestic staff help (a row with the cook over that holds up the dinner in the first place), and then he won't let the maids hand around the condiments. All of which defeats the purpose of dinner à la russe. :)

>80 MissWatson:

Yes, probably! - he's certainly telling his readers something about her, and maybe not just that she's a bit "oily". Colza oil was the main oil used in Europe for domestic and commercial lighting before the advent of gas - that is, some decades before now - so he might also be suggesting she's obsolete. :D

Just as a general observation---

I find it frustrating that we keep hearing about much fun life in Littlebath can be, but Margaret never sees that side of it. Not one assembly, not one card-party. The Stumfold touch cuts her off from that at the outset and she never finds her way back.

Remember, she has never been to a party! - not a real party. And if she had made her way into that side of society, who knows who she would have met, or what opportunities might have opened up?

Chapter 10 confirms the ominous rumblings about Margaret's loan - or :loan" to her brother and Samuel Rubb:

    "But though the money was so advanced without the completion of the mortgage, it was advanced on the distinct understanding that the security proffered in the first instance was to be forthcoming without delay. We now learn that the property is mortgaged to other parties to its full value, and that no security for your money is to be had.
    "I have seen both Mr Mackenzie and Mr Rubb, junior. As regards your brother, I believe him to have been innocent of any intention of the deceit, for deceit there certainly has been. Indeed, he does not deny it. He offers to give you any security on the business, such as the stock-in-trade or the like, which I may advise you to take. But such would in truth be of no avail to you as security. He, your brother, seemed to be much distressed by what has been done, and I was grieved on his behalf. Mr Rubb,---the younger Mr Rubb,---expressed himself in a very different way..."

We might recall that Margaret was brought to agree to this in the first place by the thought of holding a mortgage (Chapter 3: Mortgages, she knew, were good things, strong and firm, based upon landed security, and very respectable.)

Typically Margaret's first thought is not for herself, but for Tom:

What would he do,---he with his wife, and all his children, if things were in such a state as Mr Slow described them?

And having had that thought, she then sets to work on Samuel Rubb:

Miss Mackenzie, who desired nothing that was not her own, who scrupulously kept her own hands from all picking and stealing, gave herself no peace, after reading the lawyer's letter, till she was able to tell herself that Mr Rubb was to be forgiven for what he had done...

---to the point of convincing herself that the money was a gift!

I may say, though, that I find it exasperating that Trollope chooses to insert here a lecture on how women are naturally "less honest" than men---in the middle of a subplot about two men robbing a woman, a brother robbing his sister!

An observation as to women's long history having to put up with men's shit and/or being expected to look the other way might have been more to the point:

    "But tell me, have you not received a letter from your lawyer?"
    "Yes, I have."
    "And he has done all in his power to blacken me? I know it. Tell me, Miss Mackenzie, has he not blackened me? Has he not laid things to my charge of which I am incapable? Has he not accused me of getting money from you under false pretences,---than do which, I'd sooner have seen my own brains blown out? I would, indeed."
    "He has written to me about the money, Mr Rubb."
    "Yes; he came to me, and behaved shamefully to me; and he saw your brother, too, and has been making all manner of ignominious inquiries. Those lawyers can never understand that there can be anything of friendly feeling about money. They can't put friendly feelings into their unconscionable bills. I believe the world would go on better if there was no such thing as an attorney in it. I wonder who invented them, and why?"

Not to mention this:

Chapter 10:

With many women I doubt whether there be any more effectual way of touching their hearts than ill-using them and then confessing it. If you wish to get the sweetest fragrance from the herb at your feet, tread on it and bruise it.

Nice.

---and to follow on from that, we have what I consider to be one of the most dishonest passages that Trollope ever penned, to open Chapter 11:

There is, I know, a feeling abroad among women that this desire is one of which it is expedient that they should become ashamed; that it will be well for them to alter their natures in this respect, and learn to take delight in the single state. Many of the most worthy women of the day are now teaching this doctrine, and are intent on showing by precept and practice that an unmarried woman may have as sure a hold on the world, and a position within it as ascertained, as may an unmarried man. But I confess to an opinion that human nature will be found to be too strong for them....

This is something we should probably discuss more broadly when we finish up as it very much impacts the direction of this novel as a whole; but here I will just point out what I consider dishonest about this passage, namely that when Trollope says---

There is, I know, a feeling abroad among women that this desire is one of which it is expedient that they should become ashamed...

---what he actually doing is trying to make women who don't want to get married feel ashamed of themselves.

---and which is, mind you, positioned in the middle of Margaret considering whether she could marry Samuel Rubb!

Fortunately, however "naturally" eager she might be to get married---

Chapter 11:

Mr Rubb came, and she looked anxiously at his dress. He had on bright yellow kid gloves, primrose he would have called them, but, if there be such things as yellow gloves, they were yellow; and she wished that she had the courage to ask him to take them off. This was beyond her, and there he sat, with his gloves almost as conspicuous as Mr Maguire's eye...

This is interesting historically because there was a time when primrose gloves were the height of male fashion. So I'm not sure whether this is a suggestion that Mr Rubb is decades behind the time, or just solid Victorian disapproval of colour (men, or anyway gentleman, only wore black and white by this time).

I find it a great shame that Margaret never finds the courage to embrace Miss Todd as a friend; because seriously, no-one in this novel does (or tries to do) as much for her welfare as Miss Todd:

Chapter 11:

    "Mr Rubb, I'm very happy to see you," continued Miss Todd, accepting her guest's hand, glove and all. "I hope they haven't made you believe that you are going to have any dancing, for, if so, they have hoaxed you shamefully." Then she introduced them to Mr and Mrs Wilkinson.
    Mr Wilkinson was a plain-looking clergyman, with a very pretty wife. "Adela," Miss Todd said to Mrs Wilkinson, "you used to dance, but that's all done with now, I suppose."
    "I never danced much," said the clergyman's wife, "but have certainly given it up now, partly because I have no one to dance with."
    "Here's Mr Rubb quite ready. He'll dance with you, I'll be bound, if that's all."
    Mr Rubb became very red, and Miss Mackenzie, when she next took courage to look at him, saw that the gloves had disappeared...

****

Miss Mackenzie did not answer the appeal that was made to her. She was watching Mr Rubb narrowly, and knew that he was making a fool of himself. She could perceive also that Miss Todd would not spare him. She could forgive Mr Rubb for being a fool. She could forgive him for not knowing the meaning of words, for being vulgar and assuming; but she could hardly bring herself to forgive him in that he did so as her friend, and as the guest whom she had brought thither. She did not declare to herself that she would have nothing more to do with him, because he was an ass; but she almost did come to this conclusion, lest he should make her appear to be an ass also.

****

    "We've all got our wickednesses and imperfections."
    "No, no, not you, Mr Maguire. Mrs Fuzzybell, you don't think that Mr Maguire has any wickednesses and imperfections?"
    "I'm sure I don't know," said Mrs Fuzzybell, tossing her head.
    "Miss Todd," said Mr Maguire, "when I look into my own heart, I see well how black it is. It is full of iniquity; it is a grievous sore that is ever running, and will not be purified."
    "Gracious me, how unpleasant!" said Miss Todd.
    "I trust that there is no one here who has not a sense of her own wickedness."
    "Or of his," said Miss Todd.

****

    "How can you say such things?" asked Miss Baker, who was shocked by the tenor of the conversation.
    "It isn't I, my dear; it's Mr Rubb and Mr Maguire, between them. One says he has thrown off all decorum and the other declares himself to be a mass of iniquity. What are two poor old ladies like you and I to do in such company?"
    Miss Mackenzie, when she heard Mr Maguire declare himself to be a running sore, was even more angry with him than with Mr Rubb. He, at any rate, should have known better. After all, was not Mr Ball better than either of them, though his head was bald and his face worn with that solemn, sad look of care which always pervaded him?

---but of course, needy, greedy men aren't so easily disposed of:

Chapter 11:

    "As for happiness," continued Mr Maguire, "that is not to be looked for from society. They who expect their social hours to be happy hours will be grievously disappointed."
    "Are you not happy at Mrs Stumfold's?"
    "At Mrs Stumfold's? Yes;---sometimes, that is; but even there I always seem to want something. Miss Mackenzie, has it never occurred to you that the one thing necessary in this life, the one thing---beyond a hope for the next, you know, the one thing is---ah, Miss Mackenzie, what is it?"
    "Perhaps you mean a competence," said Miss Mackenzie.
    "I mean some one to love," said Mr Maguire.

>84 lyzard:, >85 lyzard:, >86 lyzard:
Sigh.
But I've ceased to consider Trollope more "enlightened" than other 19th (and most 20th) century male authors.

To his credit, he creates a dull, middle-aged woman, with no particular strengths or beauty, that we actually care about. So I'll give him that, which is more than I can say about Dickens, for example.

And at least he acknowledges (in the passage you quote in >86 lyzard:) that there are women who think differently about marriage (heavens!).

But in the end, it's his novel, so he can say: But I confess to an opinion...

Yeah, well, we don't have to agree with his opinion. We can only hope to find those few examples where he attempts to acknowledge women in ways his contemporary male authors wouldn't even have a clue.

>90 kac522:

It's because he can do that but can't / won't go a step further that I get angry.

I think there's a lot more to be said in this area, and relevant to how the plot here plays out, so we might come back to it at the end.

Margaret's refusal to let herself have some fun in Littlebath gets even more exasperating when we see what she is subjected to as even a part-time Stumfoldian:

Chapter 12:

    "Is there anything between you and Mr Maguire?" said Mrs Stumfold again. "I particularly wish to have a plain answer to that question."
    Miss Mackenzie, as I have said, became very red in the face. When it was repeated, she found herself obliged to speak. "Mrs Stumfold, I do not know that you have any right to ask me such a question as that."
    "No right! No right to ask a lady who sits under Mr Stumfold whether or not she is engaged to Mr Stumfold's own curate! Think again of what you are saying, Miss Mackenzie!" And there was in Mrs Stumfold's voice as she spoke an expression of offended majesty, and in her countenance a look of awful authority, sufficient no doubt to bring most Stumfoldian ladies to their bearings.
    "You said nothing about being engaged to him."
    "Oh, Miss Mackenzie!"
    "You said nothing about being engaged to him, but if you had I should have made the same answer. You asked me if there was anything between me and him; and I think it was a very offensive question."
    "Offensive! I am afraid, Miss Mackenzie, you have not your spirit subject to a proper control. I have come here in all kindness to warn you against danger, and you tell me that I am offensive! What am I to think of you?"
    "You have no right to connect my name with any gentleman's. You can't have any right merely because I go to Mr Stumfold's church. It's quite preposterous."

This is another example of Margaret finding her backbone when someone pushes her too far---and that person in turn finding out that for all her customary gentleness, Margaret won't be pushed:

    This was too much even for Miss Mackenzie.
    "Mrs Stumfold," she said, again rising from her seat, "I won't talk about this any more with you. Mr Maguire is nothing to me; and, as far as I can see, if he was, that would be nothing to you."
    "But it would,---a great deal."
    "No, it wouldn't. You may say what you like to him, though, for the matter of that, I think it a very indelicate thing for a lady to go about raising such questions at all. But perhaps you have known him a long time, and I have nothing to do with what you and he choose to talk about. If he is behaving bad to any friend of yours, go and tell him so. As for me, I won't hear anything more about it."

The other interesting thing here - and I may say that there's a second, similar scene later in the book - is how much this (and that) feels like a reworking of the face-off between Lady Catherine and Lizzie in Pride And Prejudice, albeit in a quite different social context. We know that Trollope admired Austen very much, to the point of offering his version of Sense And Sensibility in The Small House At Allington, and this, in a much more minor way, feels like another nod.

(The point being, I suppose, did such confrontations ever achieve their end??)

A couple of points relevant to our broader group reads:

Chapter 11:

    "Do you play cards much here?" asked Mr Rubb.
    "A great deal too much, Sir," said Miss Todd, shaking her head.
    "Have you many Dissenters in your parish, Mr Wilkinson?" asked Mr Maguire.
    "A good many," said Mr Wilkinson.
    "But no Papists?" suggested Mr Maguire.
    "No, we have no Roman Catholics."
    "That is such a blessing!" said Mr Maguire, turning his eyes up to Heaven in a very frightful manner...

Chapter 12:

    "You have no right to connect my name with any gentleman's. You can't have any right merely because I go to Mr Stumfold's church. It's quite preposterous. If I went to Mr Paul's church"---Mr Paul was a very High Church young clergyman who had wished to have candles in his church, and of whom it was asserted that he did keep a pair of candles on an inverted box in a closet inside his bedroom---"if I went to Mr Paul's church, might his wife, if he had one, come and ask me all manner of questions like that?"
    Now Mr Paul's name stank in the nostrils of Mrs Stumfold. He was to her the thing accursed. Had Miss Mackenzie quoted the Pope, or Cardinal Wiseman or even Dr Newman, it would not have been so bad...

Two digs here at the (supposed) intolerance of the Evangelicals: Mr Maguire's use of the derogatory term "Papists", which the moderate Mr Wilkinson firmly rejects; and Mrs Stumfold's hatred of the "very High Church" Mr Paul.

We went into the area of "very high Church" thoroughly in Oliphant's The Perpetual Curate. Trollope here and elsewhere takes it a lot less seriously, and considers it much less of a threat: he tends to see it as a fault of overenthusiastic young ministers - note "young clergyman" - something that they will grow out of as they gain wisdom in their profession. Several of his ministers in the Barchester books go through such a phase (and Mr Arabin never quite comes out of it, so clearly Trollope didn't consider it the end of the world).

Yes.

See, this kind of understanding is what we have a right to expect from Trollope; and it's why it is so infuriating when he takes these dishonest turns in pursuit of his "opinion":

Chapter 13:

But still, if she left all her chances to run from her, what other fate would she have but that of being friendless all her life? Of course she must risk much if she was ever minded to change her mode of life. She had said something to him as to the expediency of there being money on both sides, but as she said it she knew that she would willingly have given up her money could she only have been sure of her man. Was not her income enough for both? What she wanted was companionship, and love if it might be possible; but if not love, then friendship. This, had she known where she could purchase it with certainty, she would willingly have purchased with all her wealth...

Hello.

Speaking of Oliphant and The Perpetual Curate:

Her mind was by no means made up, and she did not know whether she wished to take him or to leave him. Now that the thing had come so near, what guarantee had she that he would be good to her if she gave him everything that she possessed? As to her cousin John Ball, she would have had many guarantees. Of him she could say that she knew what sort of a man he was; but what did she know of Mr Maguire? At that moment, as he sat there pleading his own cause with all the eloquence at his command, she remembered that she did not even know his Christian name. He had always in her presence been called Mr Maguire. How could she say that she loved a man whose very name she had not as yet heard?

As with the almost-schism between Margaret and Miss Baker because she doesn't know her address (>47 lyzard:), this is another light upon the rigidity of Victorian social conventions: they've known each other for nine months, most of the acquaintance social, and she has no idea of his first name.

(It doesn't help when she finds out: it's not quite "Obadiah", but...)

But the matter - as we should note well - is left like this:

Chapter 13:

    "If I have surprised you, will you say that you will take time to think of it?" pleaded Mr Maguire.
    Miss Mackenzie, speaking in the lowest possible voice, said that she would take time to think of it.
    When a lady says that she will take time to think of such a proposition, the gentleman is generally justified in supposing that he has carried his cause. When a lady rejects a suitor, she should reject him peremptorily. Anything short of such peremptory reaction is taken for acquiescence. Mr Maguire consequently was elated, called her Margaret, and swore that he loved her as he had never loved woman yet.
    "And when may I come again?" he asked.
    Miss Mackenzie begged that she might be allowed a fortnight to think of it.
    "Certainly," said the happy man...

(Note also that he has found out her name.)

And again, Anthony Trollope: if you understand, why are you sometimes so deliberately obtuse?---

Chapter 13:

"I don't know about that, Miss Todd; but it wasn't about money that I was doubting. What I've got is enough for both of us, if his wants are not greater than mine. What is the use of money if people cannot be happy together with it? I don't care a bit for money, Miss Todd; that is, not for itself. I shouldn't like to be dependent on a stranger; I don't know that I would like to be dependent again even on a brother; but I should take no shame to be dependent on a husband if he was good to me."

So he understands the discomfort (at least) of dependence; and yet he fights any idea of women supporting themselves. Sigh...

I have to say, the way all these men are angling for Margaret's money, hoping to use it for their own purposes, and never bothering to dress it up nicely while all the time expecting she should be grateful for this, is quite infuriating.

>98 MissWatson:

Yes, though I suppose we should note that on the whole Margaret prefers that they don't pretend with her. Margaret being what she is, in fact, each of her three suitors do best with her when being quite bald about their circumstances and showing her how she could help them.

Granted, there's a very big difference between that and expecting her to be grateful for it!

The other thing that comes to mind---I can't remember the source, like my "conduit" quote up top, but I have a memory of a passage mocking the "I thee endow" vow in the marriage ceremony on the grounds that it was nearly always the woman doing the endowing of worldly goods.

Anyway - "thank goodness", we might be inclined to say, though rather cruelly - Margaret is called away from Littlebath before she is compelled to give Mr Maguire an answer.

And then the circumstances in which she finds her brother Thomas and his family put Mr Maguire's proposal out of the question, as he will certainly not want her without her money:

The way that this is phrased is interesting (another point for later discussion):

Chapter 14:

    "I am afraid he is thinking of his wife and children."
    "Would there be nothing for them out of the business?" asked Miss Mackenzie.
    The junior partner at first shook his head, saying nothing. After a few minutes he did speak in a low voice. "If there be anything, it will be very little,---very little."
    Miss Mackenzie was rejoiced that she had given no definite promise to Mr Maguire. There seemed to be now a job for her to do in the world which would render it quite unnecessary that she should look about for a husband. If her brother's widow were left penniless, with seven children, there would be no longer much question as to what she would do with her money...

Why was it ever necessary? To the point of contemplating Mr Maguire!?

But of course, she is saved from that only via one more man wanting her money, albeit not for himself:

    "What am I to do about Sarah and the children?"
    This was a question that could be answered by no general platitude,---by no weak words of hopeless consolation. Coming from him to her, it demanded either a very substantial answer, or else no answer at all. What was he to do about Sarah and the children? Perhaps there came a thought across her mind that Sarah and the children had done very little for her,---had considered her very little, in those old, weary days, in Arundel Street. And those days were not, as yet, so very old. It was now not much more than twelve months since she had sat by the deathbed of her other brother,---since she had expressed to herself, and to Harry Handcock, a humble wish that she might find herself to be above absolute want...

And we should note this too, while Margaret is asking so dismally little of her life:

Chapter 14:

Cold meat was brought up for Margaret's dinner, and they all sat down to one of those sad sick-house meals which he or she who has not known must have been lucky indeed. To Margaret it was nothing new. All the life that she remembered, except the last year, had been spent in nursing her other brother; and now to be employed about the bed-side of a sufferer was as natural to her as the air she breathed...

These two quotes in conjunction:

Chapter 14:

She made certain rapid calculations in her head. She must give up Mr Maguire. There was no doubt about that. She must give up all idea of marrying any one, and, as she thought of this, she told herself that she was perhaps well rid of a trouble...?

****

But on entering the room she found her cousin, John Ball. She was, in truth, glad to see him; for, after all, she thought that she liked him the best of all the men or women that she knew. He was always in trouble, but then she fancied that with him she at any rate knew the worst. There was nothing concealed with him,---nothing to be afraid of.

So on some level she's quite aware that she hasn't gotten to the bottom of either Mr Rubb or Mr Maguire.

And this---

Chapter 14:

    As he left her, he just referred to what had passed between them. "This is no time, Margaret," said he, "to ask you whether you have changed your mind?"
    "No, John; there are other things to think of now; are there not? And, besides, they will want here all that I can do for them."
    She spoke to him with an express conviction that what was wanted of her by him, as well as by others, was her money, and it did not occur to him to contradict her.

All of these quoted matters culminate, in Chapter 15, in Margaret consciously trying to kill off that part of herself that wants something more out of life, as symbolised by the destruction of her secret poetry:

As she sat by his bedside, night after night, she seemed to feel that she had fallen again into her proper place, and she looked back upon the year she had spent at Littlebath almost with dismay. Since her brother's death, three men had offered to marry her, and there was a fourth from whom she had expected such an offer. She looked upon all this with dismay, and told herself that she was not fit to sail, under her own guidance, out in the broad sea, amidst such rocks as those. Was not some humbly feminine employment, such as that in which she was now engaged, better for her in all ways? Sad as was the present occasion, did she not feel a satisfaction in what she was doing, and an assurance that she was fit for her position? Had she not always been ill at ease, and out of her element, while striving at Littlebath to live the life of a lady of fortune? She told herself that it was so, and that it would be better for her to be a hard-working, dependent woman, doing some tedious duty day by day, than to live a life of ease which prompted her to longings for things unfitted to her...

>104 lyzard: That scene is heartbreaking.

>105 MissWatson:

It's interesting that, at that point - not due to anything that happens later, that is overtly "worse" - she hits her personal low.

(We are also, at that point, exactly halfway through the novel...and I'd better get my butt in gear!)

Finished!

Margaret, meanwhile, has herself in something of a mess---we can't really say romantically, but while she has sort-of refused Mr Maguire (or anyway, let him know about the money in the expectation that he won't want her any more), that the break is not clean gives her reason / excuse not to listen to Samuel Rubb. (And despite her being closer to giving in to Mr Maguire, there is distinctly more regret in her refusal of Mr Rubb.)

But for all this back-and-forthing, she is better pleased to see John Ball than either of the others...even though that mean seeing Sir John and Lady Ball too.

We should probably do the Balls this bit of justice, though: their need of money is genuinely urgent, and not just entitlement or rapaciousness; not just that:

Chapter 15:

...on that evening she learned from her cousin that the horses had been sold to the man who farmed the land, and were hired every other day for two hours' work.

But having done that---Lady Ball wants smacking:

    "I don't think there'll be anything, aunt. As far as I can understand there will be nothing certain. They may probably get a hundred and twenty-five pounds a-year." This she named, as being the interest of the money she had lent---or given.
    "A hundred and twenty-five pounds a-year. That isn't much, but it will keep them from absolute want."
    "Would it, aunt?"
    "Oh, yes; at least, I suppose so..."

---remembering that we've seen before that three or four hundred a year was considered an appropriate sum for a young couple to get married on; here we're talking about a widow and six children (not counting Susanna).

So she pretty much deserves this:

    Then Miss Mackenzie, having considered for one moment, resolved to make a clean breast of it all, and this she did with the fewest possible words.
    "I'm going to divide what I've got with them, and I hope it will make them comfortable."
    "What!" exclaimed her aunt.
    "I'm going to give Sarah half what I've got, for her and her children. I shall have enough to live on left."
    "Margaret, you don't mean it?"
    "Not mean it? why not, aunt? You would not have me let them starve. Besides, I promised my brother when he was dying."
    "Then I must say he was very wrong, very wicked, I may say, to exact any such promise from you; and no such promise is binding. If you ask Sir John, or your lawyer, they will tell you so. What! exact a promise from you to the amount of half your income. It was very wrong."
    "But, aunt, I should do the same if I had made no promise."
    "No, you wouldn't, my dear. Your friends wouldn't let you. And indeed your friends must prevent it now. They will not hear of such a sacrifice being made."
    "But, aunt---"
    "Well, my dear."
    "It's my own, you know." And Margaret, as she said this, plucked up her courage, and looked her aunt full in the face.

This is nice, too:

Chapter 16:

His mother had told him that he might model this woman to his will, and had repeated to him that story which he had heard so often of the wrong that had been done to him by his uncle Jonathan... There was no need, one would have said, to have stirred him on that subject. But his mother, on this morning, in the ten minutes before prayer-time, had told him of it all again, and had told him also that the last vestige of his uncle's money would now disappear from him unless he interfered to save it...

But to do John Ball separate justice, there's a vein of better quality in him quite missing from his parents:

...and yet he had not spoken to Margaret on the subject during the journey, and would now have taken her to the lawyer's chambers without a word, had she not interrupted him and stopped him...

And we also learn at this point that John is the one of Margaret's suitors (perhaps along with Samuel Rubb, to do him his justice) to separate the thought of her from the thought of her money:

When she took hold of him by the coat, he looked for a moment into her face, and thought that in its trouble it was very sweet. She leaned somewhat against him as she spoke, and he wished that she would lean against him altogether. There was about her a quiet power of endurance, and at the same time a comeliness and a womanly softness which seemed to fit her altogether for his wants and wishes. As he looked with his dull face across into the square, no physiognomist would have declared of him that at that moment he was suffering from love, or thinking of a woman that was dear to him. But it was so with him, and the physiognomist, had one been there, would have been wrong...

Even Margaret does him an injustice in her thoughts; though she does herself a greater one:

    "If your mind is made up, Margaret, I have nothing to say against it. You know what my wishes are. They are just the same now as when you were last with us. It isn't only for the money I say this, though, of course, that must go a long way with a man circumstanced as I am; but, Margaret, I love you dearly, and if you can make up your mind to be my wife, I would do my best to make you happy."
    "I hadn't meant you to talk in that way, John," said Margaret.
    But she was not much flurried. She was now so used to these overtures that they did not come to her as much out of the common way. And she gave herself none of that personal credit which women are apt to take to themselves when they find they are often sought in marriage. She looked upon her lovers as so many men to whom her income would be convenient, and felt herself to be almost under an obligation to them for their willingness to put up with the incumbrance which was attached to it...

But after all that---

---in Mr Slow's chambers, a great shock awaits both of them:

Chapter 16:

    But presently his eye fell from the shelf and settled upon the box on the floor. There, on that box, he saw the name of Walter Mackenzie.
    This did not astonish him, as he immediately said to himself that these papers were being searched with reference to the business on which his cousin was there that day; but suddenly it occurred to him that Margaret had given him to understand that Mr Slow did not expect her. He stepped over to her, therefore, one step over the papers, and asked her the question, whispering it into her ear.
    "No," said she, "I had no appointment. I don't think he expects me."
    He returned to his seat, and again sitting down with his chin on the top of his umbrella, surveyed the parchments that lay upon the ground. Upon one of them, that was not far from his feet, he read the outer endorsements written as such endorsements always are, in almost illegible old English letters---
    "Jonathan Ball, to John Ball, junior---Deed of Gift."

>109 lyzard: But to do John Ball separate justice, there's a vein of better quality in him quite missing from his parents

This is something that puzzled me pretty much from this point forward. How did John turn out so relatively decent from a couple of, frankly, indecent parents? Trollope didn't convince me on this point. Yes, John whines a lot about his misfortune (egged on by his mother), but he does act justly in all his dealings with Margaret. The parents, on the other hand, are something else entirely.

>111 kac522:

Well, people do turn out differently from their parents; just as well, too, in a lot of cases. :D

In this respect we are just coming to a key moment, in Chapter 18, when we learn that John defied his parents in the matter of his first marriage:

In the early days of his youth, before the cares of the world had made him hard, he had married his Rachel without a penny, and his father had laughed at him, and his mother had grieved over him. Tough and hard, and careworn as he was now, defiled by the price of stocks, and saturated with the poison of the money market, then there had been in him a touch of romance and a dash of poetry, and he had been happy with his Rachel...

---so that streak has always been there - "romance", Trollope says; "decency" we might say - though buried in recent years under layers of self-pity. Obviously his parents have never been any different, so perhaps being decent is his form of rebellion. :)

>110 lyzard: I am not entirely sure what exactly the lawyers have uncovered here, Trollope is so vague about it.

>115 lyzard:

It is confusing but I will try to unravel it. :D

The first thing we hear is that the Mackenzie brothers received about 25,000 pounds between them under Jonathan Ball's will; that he left it to them after a quarrel with his brother, Sir John, in preference to leaving it to Sir John or to John Ball.

It is never clear where that money came from, though at one point Lady Ball calls it, "Money which Sir John made."

There was then a lawsuit between Sir John and the Mackenzies over the will. The Balls lost, and lost half their remaining money in the fight.

Now---in researching the bequest, in the course of preparing the documents that will allow Margaret to legally sign over half of her estate to Sarah, Mr Slow (who represented the Mackenzies in the lawsuit) has come across a deed of gift.

This was - and is - a way of transferring property other than money (that is, an actual piece of property, or shares, or anything else valuable) from one party to another, usually within families.

The point of a deed of gift is that, unlike a will, it cannot be contested.

At one point, Jonathan Ball intended to gift a piece of property to his nephew, upon John's coming of age. Then he had a row with his brother and had a new will made leaving everything to the Mackenzies.

Now it seems that he had the deed of gift made up (I would guess, by another lawyer), but then changed his mind, sold the property, bequeathed the money.

Under these conditions - if the deed of gift was legal - then the sale of the property was illegal; and the money issuing from that sale belongs to John in lieu of the gift of the property.

Presumably Jonathan thought his will superseded his gift, but that was incorrect.

If he had the deed made up by a different lawyer, it may be that it ended up amongst his papers and was put away after his death without anyone knowing about it---until now, when Mr Slow discovers it in researching documents pertaining to Margaret's situation. Certainly it never came to light during the Ball / Mackenzie lawsuit---which, remember, was about the will.

That's as much as I can make out. As you say, it isn't very clear; although perhaps these things were better understood at time of writing.

My question is over the legality of the gift: I thought such deeds had to be signed by both parties, though this one can't have been, since John doesn't know about it. Or maybe that was a condition brought in later to prevent misunderstandings like this? Or maybe it is John's non-signature that the later court-case addresses (people keep telling Margaret she has grounds for a fight)?

So this---

Chapter 17:

    John Ball had known that there had been some intention on his uncle's part, before the quarrel between his father and his uncle, to make over to him, on his coming of age, a certain property in London, and he had been told that the money which the Mackenzies had inherited had ultimately come from this very property. His uncle had been an eccentric, quarrelsome man, prone to change his mind often, and not regardful of money as far as he himself was concerned. John Ball remembered to have heard that his uncle had intended him to become possessed of certain property in his own right the day that he became of age, and that this had all been changed because of the quarrel which had taken place between his uncle and his father. His father now never spoke of this, and for many years past had seldom mentioned it. But from his mother he had often heard of the special injury which he had undergone.
    "His uncle," she had said, "had given it, and had taken it back again,---had taken it back that he might waste it on those Mackenzies."
    All this he had heard very often, but he had never known anything of a deed of gift...

By the way, since the narrative now refers to Mr Slow's partner, Mr Bideawhile, we should note that (as with Miss Todd and Miss Baker) we've met them before: they represent the Gresham family, and are mentioned in Doctor Thorne; and they show up in Orley Farm representing Sir Peregrine Orme, and in He Knew He Was Right, refusing to represent Louis Trevelyan. (We know from the latter that, John Ball's doubts notwithstanding, they are honest lawyers.)

Anyway---as we have here pre-empted, in going over the papers pertaining to Margaret's inheritance, Mr Slow has discovered that she, or rather the Mackenzie brothers before her, had no right to Jonathan Ball's money.

We recall that, in Chapter 1, before Walter's will is read, Margaret dares go no further than a hope that he has left her "above want"; now she doesn't even have that---and she has accepted responsibility for Sarah and the children:

Chapter 18:

    "John," she said, when they had walked half the length of that side of the square, "I have heard dreadful news."
    Then that deed of gift was, after all, a fact; and Mr Slow, instead of being a rogue, must be the honestest old lawyer in London! He must have been at work in discovering the wrong that had been done, and was now about to reveal it to the world. Some such idea as this had glimmered across Mr Ball's mind as he had sat in Mr Slow's outer office, with his chin still resting on his umbrella.
    But though some such idea as this did cross his mind, his thought on the instant was of his cousin.
    "What dreadful news, Margaret?"
    "It is about my money..."

****

"But I could understand him," she said, in reply; "I could see by his face, and I knew by the tone of his voice, that he was almost certain. I know that he is sure of it. John, I shall be a beggar, an absolute beggar! I shall have nothing; and those poor children will be beggars, and their mother..."

John Ball's reaction to all this is understandably mixed---and after twenty-five years of brooding on the suspected injustice done him, we can hardly be surprised if the money is at the forefront of his thoughts.

But Margaret herself comes into his thinking to a commendable degree too. John is more than willing to offer a solution to her problems---but not also to take on the entire Mackenzie clan: not when he has nine children of his own.

Given the points raised in >111 kac522: and >112 lyzard:, we should note this:

Chapter 18:

Then an idea came into his head. If this money was not hers, it was his. If it was not his, then it was hers. Would it not be well that they should solve all the difficulty by agreeing then and there to be man and wife? It was true that since his Rachel's death he had seen no woman whom he so much coveted to have in his home as this one who now leaned on his arm. But, as he thought of it, there seemed to be a romance about such a step which would not befit him...

We know he once had "romance" enough to defy his parents over the penniless Rachel. All these years later we see that streak is still there, but he has learned (from those same parents) to be ashamed of it. He can have these thoughts still, but is he past the age of acting on them?

Oh, Margaret...

And the sad thing is, she's quite right.

Chapter 18:

"Oh John! if you could understand! How am I to look my aunt in the face. Don't you know that she would not wish to have me there at all if I was a poor creature without anything?"

****

Margaret Mackenzie's heart and spirit had been sullied by no mean feeling with reference to her own wealth. It had never puffed her up with exultation. But she calculated on the meanness of others, as though it was a matter of course, not, indeed, knowing that it was meanness, or blaming them in any way for that which she attributed to them. Four gentlemen had wished to marry her during the past year. It never occurred to her now, that any one of these four would on that account hold out a hand to help her. In losing her money she would have lost all that was desirable in their eyes, and this seemed to her to be natural...

Almost quite right, anyway:

John Ball did not attempt to follow her, but stood there awhile looking after her. He felt, in his heart, and knew by his judgement, that she was a good woman, true, unselfish, full of love, clever too in her way, quick in apprehension, and endowed with an admirable courage. He had heard her spoken of at the Cedars as a poor creature who had money. Nay, he himself had taken a part in so speaking of her. Now she had no money, but he knew well that she was a creature the very reverse of poor...

Now---this is both fascinating and exasperating.

Exasperating because we know Trollope is never going to let it come to this (it would be a better novel if he did); but fascinating in that he lets Margaret's thoughts tend this way:

Chapter 18:

...she did begin to think of her own position. What should she do, and how should she commence to do it? She had declared to herself but lately that the work for which she was fittest was that of nursing the sick. Was it not possible that she might earn her bread in this way? Could she not find such employment in some quarter where her labour would be worth the food she must eat and the raiment she would require? There was a hospital somewhere in London with which she thought she had heard that John Ball was connected. Might not he obtain for her a situation such as that?

This is about a decade after the Crimean War, when Florence Nightingale rose to prominence and changed both nursing itself and the public perception of it---from a dirty job for lower-class women to a "noble profession"---and most importantly in context, to one of the first professions that women who were not lower-class might think of as "a career".

That Trollope even lets Margaret consider hospital nursing as a means of supporting herself shows how much things had changed---but of course there is an insuperable obstacle in the path of her doing so, namely, her author won't have it...

Jeez Louise.

Rather hospital nursing than this, surely?---

Chapter 19:

Lady Ball went up to her in her bedroom immediately after breakfast, and there remained with her for some time. Her aunt at first was tender with her, giving her tea and only asking her gentle little questions at intervals; but as the old lady became impatient at learning nothing, she began a system of cross-questions, and at last grew to be angry and disagreeable...

****

"I can't make anything out of you," said Lady Ball, getting up from her chair with angry alacrity; "and I must say that I think it very ungrateful of you, seeing all that I have done for you."

Now---we need to be fair to John Ball, even through some things where he really deserves slapping; and again in light of >111 kac522: and >112 lyzard: we should note here that even after so many miserable years, Lady Ball fears that "romantic streak" in him. So it has always been there in spite of his parents' best efforts, and still poses (in her view) a threat:

Her son had distinctly told her that he was not engaged to his cousin, and had in fact told her nothing else distinctly; but she, when she had seen how careful he had been in supplying Margaret's wants himself, with what anxious solicitude he had pressed wine on her; how he had sat by her saying soft words to her---Lady Ball, when she remembered this, could not but think that her son had deceived her. And if so, why had he wished to deceive her? Could it be that he had allowed her to give away half her money, and had promised to marry her with the other half? There were moments in which her dear son John could be very foolish, in spite of that life-long devotion to the price of stocks, for which he was conspicuous. She still remembered, as though it were but the other day, how he had persisted in marrying Rachel, though Rachel brought nothing with her but a sweet face, a light figure, a happy temper, and the clothes on her back. To all mothers their sons are ever young, and to old Lady Ball John Ball was still young, and still, possibly, capable of some such folly as that of which she was thinking...

And she's right:

If she could only have known the whole truth; how her son's thoughts were running throughout the day, even as he sat at the Abednego board, not on Margaret with half her fortune, but on Margaret with none! how he was recalling the sweetness of her face as she looked up to him in the square, and took him by his coat, and her tears as she spoke of the orphan children, and the grace of her figure as she had walked away from him, and the persistency of her courage in doing what she thought to be right! how he was struggling within himself with an endeavour, a vain endeavour, at a resolution that such a marriage as that must be out of the question!

And because things are never so bad they can't get worse---

Chapter 19:

On the next day a letter reached her which had been redirected from Gower Street. It was from Mr Maguire...

As Birgit noted in >98 MissWatson:, it is infuriating that Margaret is somehow supposed to be grateful for her series of bad bargains---each worse than the last! Just look at this paragraph:

One man had wanted her money to buy a house on a mortgage, and another now asked for it to build a church, giving her, or promising to give her, the security of the pew rents. Which of the two was the worst? They were both her lovers, and she thought that he was the worst who first made his love and then tried to get her money. These were the ideas which at once occurred to her upon her reading Mr Maguire's letter. She had quite wit enough to see through the whole project; how outsiders were to be induced to give their money, thinking that all was to be given; whereas those inside the temple,---those who knew all about it,---were simply to make for themselves a good speculation. Her cousin John's constant solicitude for money was bad; but, after all, it was not so bad as this...

If we could be sure that Trollope was being ironic it wouldn't be so hard to take, but there is still the sense that these men are doing what any man would do, and that it is only the degree of honesty (or otherwise) with which they go about it that makes their conduct objectionable or not.

It is, of course, absolutely par for the course that the evangelical minister should be the least honest of the lot...

In light of what happens later, I think we ought to highlight Margaret's final reply to Mr Maguire.

We know that she wrote to him once already intimating that she intended to share her money with Tom's family, thinking that would be enough to frighten him off:

Chapter 15:

She said that her brother's health and affairs were at present in such a condition as to allow her to think of nothing else; that she completely understood Mr Maguire's position, and that it was essential that he should not be kept in suspense. Under these combined circumstances she had no alternative but to release him from the offer he had made. This she did with the less unwillingness as it was probable that her pecuniary position would be considerably altered by the change in her brother's family which they were now expecting almost daily.

Since that didn't work, she is now much more forthright in her response:

Dear Sir,
I have got your letter to-day, and I hasten to answer it at once. All that to which you allude between us must be considered as being altogether over, and I am very sorry that you should have had so much trouble. My circumstances are altogether changed. I cannot explain how, as it would make my letter very long; but you may be assured that such is the case, and to so great an extent that the engagement you speak of would not at all suit you at present. Pray take this as being quite true, and believe me to be
Your very humble servant,
Margaret Mackenzie.

****

She was angry with Mr Maguire for the words he had written about her brother's affairs; for his wish to limit her kindness to her nephews and nieces, and also for his greediness in being desirous of getting her money at once; but as to the main question, she thought herself bound to answer him plainly...

And she has answered him plainly.

However---

Chapter 19:

Mr Maguire when he received her letter, did not believe a word of it. He did not in the least believe that she had actually lost everything that had once belonged to her, or that he, if he married her now, would obtain less than he would have done had he married her before her brother's death. But he thought that her brother's family and friends had got hold of her in London; that Mr Rubb might very probably have done it; and that they were striving to obtain command of her money, and were influencing her to desert him. He thinking so, and being a man of good courage, took a resolution to follow his game, and to see whether even yet he might not obtain the good things which had made his eyes glisten and his mouth water...

And just to (so to spreak) rub it in, Trollope sets this against Samuel Rubb's behaviour: of course he still wants the money, and he comes comes to the Cedars (yellow gloves and all) to advise Margaret to fight for it; to express his own willingness to fight for it; but there is also this---

    "Whether you have got your fortune, or whether you've got nothing, they're the same. I've seen you tried alongside of your brother, when he was a-dying, and, Margaret, I like you now better than ever I did."
    "Mr Rubb, at present, all that cannot mean anything."
    "But doesn't it mean anything? By Jove! it does though. It means just this, that I'll make you Mrs Rubb to-morrow, or as soon as Doctors' Commons, and all that, will let us do it; and I'll chance the money afterwards..."

****

    "No, no, no!" said she.
    "But I say yes. Why should it be no? If there never should come a penny out of this property I will put a roof over your head, and will find you victuals and clothes respectably. Who will do better for you than that? And as for the fight, by Jove! I shall like it. You'll find they'll get nothing out of my hands till they have torn away my nails."
    Here was a new phase in her life. Here was a man willing to marry her even though she had no assured fortune...

It's not graceful; but do him justice, it's honest. (And from a man we know can be dishonest: but Margaret brings out his better nature.)

>120 lyzard: "That Trollope even lets Margaret consider hospital nursing as a means of supporting herself shows how much things had changed---but of course there is an insuperable obstacle in the path of her doing so, namely, her author won't have it..."

I would imagine some of his readers might not have it, either. They'd come to expect certain endings from Trollope and he didn't disappoint.

>125 kac522:

I suspect that he (and perhaps his readership) would have considered Margaret "soiled" by contact with actual work.

ETA: I'm not saying you're wrong, but it was lose-lose: Trollope delivering his expected endings was something he got criticised for; but yes, if Margaret had gone off to work in a hospital, they wouldn't have liked that either, probably.

...a final word on the subject of Margaret's subsequent career:

Chapter 20:

    "What you say about earning your bread is very proper; and I and John and your uncle also have been thinking of that. But I should be glad if some additional assistance should be provided for you, in the event of old age, you know, or illness. Now, as to earning your bread, I remarked to John that you were peculiarly qualified for being a lady's companion."
    "For being what, aunt?"
    "For being companion to some lady in the decline of life, who would want to have some nice mannered person always with her. You have the advantage of being ladylike and gentle, and I think that you are patient by disposition."
    "Aunt," said Miss Mackenzie, and her voice as she spoke was hardly gentle, nor was it indicative of much patience. Her hysterics also seemed for the time to have given way to her strong passionate feeling. "Aunt," she said, "I would sooner take a broom in my hand, and sweep a crossing in London, than lead such a life as that. What! make myself the slave of some old woman, who would think that she had bought the power of tyrannising over me by allowing me to sit in the same room with her? No, indeed! It may very likely be the case that I may have to serve such a one in the kitchen, but it shall be in the kitchen, and not in the drawing-room. I have not had much experience in life, but I have had enough to learn that lesson!"
    Lady Ball, who during the first part of the conversation had been unrolling and winding a great ball of worsted, now sat perfectly still, holding the ball in her lap, and staring at her niece. She was a quick-witted woman, and it no doubt occurred to her that the great objection to living with an old lady, which her niece had expressed so passionately, must have come from the trial of that sort of life which she had had at the Cedars...

Again, we know it's not going to happen; but still, Margaret's wholesale rejection of what was generally considered the one acceptable way for "a lady" to earn her living, in favour of hard, specialised labour, is a tiny breakthrough. (Furthermore, her summation of the working conditions of most companions is entirely accurate.)

Margaret's confrontation with Lady Ball ends with her declaring her intention of leaving the Cedars almost immediately, so as "not to eat any bread but my own"; though John persuades her to stay a little longer---with the intention of offering her an alternative profession:

Chapter 20:

    They had now come to a little gate, of which John Ball kept a key, and which led into the grounds belonging to the Cedars. The grounds were rather large, and the path through them extended for half a mile, but the land was let off to a grazier. When inside the wall, however, they were private; and Mr Ball, as soon as he had locked the gate behind him, stopped her in the dark path, and took both her hands in his. The gloom of the evening had now come round them, and the thick trees which formed the belt of the place, joined to the high wall, excluded from them nearly all what light remained.
    "And now," said he, "I will tell you my plan."
    "What plan?" said she; but her voice was very low.
    "I proposed it once before, but you would not have it then..."

****

How often since the tidings of her loss had reached her had the idea of such a meeting as this come before her! how often had she seemed to listen to such words as those he now spoke to her! Not that she had expected it, or hoped for it, or even thought of it as being in truth possible; but her imagination had been at work, during the long hours of the night, and the romance of the thing had filled her mind, and the poetry of it had been beautiful to her. She had known---she had told herself that she knew---that no man would so sacrifice himself; certainly no such man as John Ball, with all his children and his weary love of money! But now the poetry had come to be fact, and the romance had turned itself into reality...

We appreciate that Trollope is being deliberately unromantic here, or perhaps more correctly striving for the romance of ordinariness; but there is still something exasperating about Margaret being so satisfied and so grateful for (really) so little, and considering John so magnanimous for giving her the chance to be responsible for nine children (ten, counting Susanna) and to live with Lady Ball!

However---

    "I shall tell my mother this evening," he said, "as I hate mysteries; and I shall tell my father also. Of course there may be something disagreeable said before we all shake down happily in our places, but I shall look to you, Margaret, to be firm."
    "I shall be firm," she said, "if you are."
    "I shall be firm," was the reply...

Okay, I'll allow some romance in this... :)

Chapter 21:

It was not simply that her great care had been vanquished for her. It was this, that the man who had a second time come to her asking for her love, had now given her all-sufficient evidence that he did so for the sake of her love. He, who was so anxious for money, had shown her that he could care for her more even than he cared for gold. As she thought of this, and made herself happy in the thought, she would not rise at once from her bed, but curled herself in the clothes and hugged herself in her joy...

But of course---you can't have an Eden without a snake in it:

Chapter 21:

It was clear enough to him that the Mackenzies of Gower Street were not interfering with him; very probably they might have hoped and attempted to keep the heiress among them; that assertion that there was no room for her in the house---as though they were and ever had been averse to having her with them---seemed to imply that such was the case. It was the natural language of a disappointed woman. But if so, that hope was now over with them. And then the young lady had plainly exposed the suspicions which they all entertained as to the Balls. These grand people at the Cedars, this baronet's family at Twickenham, must have got her to come among them with the intention of keeping her there. It did not occur to him that the baronet or the baronet's son would actually want Miss Mackenzie's money. He presumed baronets to be rich people; but still they might very probably be as dogs in the manger, and desirous of preventing their relative from doing with her money that active service to humanity in general which would be done were she to marry a deserving clergyman who had nothing of his own...

Not that a snake is actually needed:

Chapter 21:

    Lady Ball, on entering the room, had been nearest to Margaret, but she walked round the table away from her usual place for prayers, and accosted her son.
    "Good-morning, John," she said, giving him her hand.
    Margaret waited a second or two, and then addressed her aunt.
    "Good-morning, aunt," she said, stepping half across the rug.
    But her aunt, turning her back to her, moved into the embrasure of the window. It had been decided that there was to be an absolute cut between them! As long as she remained in that house Lady Ball would not speak to her...

This is the second time that Trollope juxtaposes a particularly bad piece of behaviour by Lady Ball with the gathering for family prayers. It isn't clear if he's just being sardonic, or if he's making a point about this being, at the time, habitual rather than sincere.

Poor Margaret:

Chapter 21:

    "Pardon me for a moment," said he. "Before you call Margaret to come down I would wish to explain to you for what purpose I have come here."
    Lady Ball, when she heard the man call her niece by her Christian name, listened with all her ears. Under no circumstances but one could such a man call such a woman by her Christian name in such company.
    "Lady Ball," he said, "I do not know whether you may be aware of it or no, but I am engaged to marry your niece."
    Lady Ball, who had not yet resumed her seat, now did so.
    "I had not heard of it," she said.
    "It may be so," said Mr Maguire.
    "It is so," said Lady Ball.
    "Very probably. There are many reasons which operate upon young ladies in such a condition to keep their secret even from their nearest relatives. For myself, being a clergyman of the Church of England, professing evangelical doctrines, and therefore, as I had need not say, averse to everything that may have about it even a seeming of impropriety, I think it best to declare the fact to you..."

Now---to step outside the narrative for a moment:

This is why, in >60 lyzard:, I highlighted John Ball's response to Margaret's rejection of his first proposal.

He tells her then (in Chapter 7) to take her time and think about his offer: that doing so doesn't commit her to anything, that "no harm" can come of her doing so.

This is exactly how she behaves with respect to Mr Maguire's offer - she does take her time, she does think about it - and John Ball is furious with her for doing so. Somehow, in this context, her failure to say 'no' immediately means 'yes', even though it is followed - as we know; as Lady Ball refuses to believe; as John apparently has his doubts about in spite of Margaret's word - a flat rejection.

What the hell!?

It's not even "no means yes": it's worse than that: if a woman even hesitates, it's yes.

And this in a society where a woman is supposed to be grateful for any proposal, and to make her decision "rationally" instead of just in terms of her emotions!

You can't win, can you?

You can't win, in fact, sums up nearly everything that happens to Margaret from this point. She's condemned for not telling John about this situation, even though - as she points out - she has no opportunity to say anything about anything: they barely get five minutes alone after the proposal, and all that is dedicated to how Lady Ball is going to react.

Plus---women were not, in general, supposed to reveal that they'd received a proposal, if they rejected that proposal. They were supposed to help maintain the man's dignity by saying nothing. Not that there is much dignity about any of Margaret's suitors, but that was the convention. Presumably after an engagement you were supposed to reveal it, in pursuit of "having no secrets"---but again, when should that have happened?

In my opinion, John Ball's behaviour from this point is reprehensible: he shows himself, in fact, very much the son of his mother.

Honestly? - Margaret would have been best off with Samuel Rubb. And that's just sad.

>132 lyzard: He's such a sleaze, isn't he. It's interesting how Trollope's portrayal of Maguire gets worse and worse, which makes Mr Rubb look almost desirable, primrose gloves and all.

>114 lyzard: Thanks Liz, that helps a lot.

>134 kac522:

As with the nursing, Trollope would never have let that happen; but yes, in some ways that was certainly the most attractive option.

>135 MissWatson:

I'm glad, I wasn't sure. :D

I think this is one of those things that Trollope's readers would have known without being told.

So you're going to punish her for being desirable (one way or the other) to other men?

Chapter 22:

As he had sat listening to his mother's energetic accusation against the woman he had promised to marry, hearing her bring up argument after argument to prove that Margaret had, in fact, been engaged to that clergyman,---that she had intended to marry that man while she had money, and had not, up to that day, made him fully understand that she would not do so,---he had himself said little or nothing, claiming to himself the use of that night for consideration. The circumstances against Margaret he owned to be very strong. He felt angry with her for having had any lover at Littlebath. It was but the other day, during her winter visit to the Cedars, that he had himself proposed to her, and that she had rejected him. He had now renewed his proposal, and he did not like to think that there had been any one else between his overtures. And he could not deny the strength of his mother's argument when she averred that Mr Maguire would not have come down there unless he had had, as she said, every encouragement...

It isn't put like that, and I don't really think Trollope means us to think this, but I wonder if the problem isn't that Mr Maguire's conduct hasn't exposed John to himself? He might have gussied it up by telling himself, and her, that he "cared" for her then, but the reality is, at the outset he was fortune-hunting just as baldly as Mr Maguire - Margaret was brought to the Cedars so that he could chase her money - and perhaps this is too much like looking in a mirror.

Chapter 22:

    "John," she said, "you will not be surprised at my telling you that, after what has occurred, I shall leave this place to-day."
    "You must not do that," he said.
    "Ah, but I must do it. There are some things John, which no woman should bear or need bear. After what has occurred it is not right that I should incur your mother's displeasure any longer. All my things are ready. I want you to have them taken down to the one o'clock train."
    "No, Margaret; I will not consent to that."
    "But, John, I cannot consent to anything else. Yesterday was a terrible day for me. I don't think you can know how terrible. What I endured then no one has a right to expect that I should endure any longer. It was necessary that I should say something to you of what had occurred, and that I said last night. I have no further call to remain here, and, most positively, I shall go to-day."
    He looked into her face and saw that she was resolved, but yet he was not minded to give way. He did not like to think that all authority over her was passing out of his hands. During the night he had not made up his mind to pardon her at once. Nay, he had not yet told himself that he would pardon her at all. But he was prepared to receive her tears and excuses, and we may say that, in all probability, he would have pardoned her had she wept before him and excused herself. But though she could shed tears on this matter,---though, doubtless, there were many tears to be shed by her,---she would shed no more before him in token of submission...

Though of course we're not going to get that book, but---in the following chapters, Miss Mackenzie becomes at least a glimpse into the realities of life for many, many women: dreary lodgings, hard work and low pay---and loneliness:

Chapter 25:

She had often told herself, in those days of her philosophy at Littlebath, that she did not care to be a lady; and she told herself now the same thing very often when she was thinking of the hospital. She cosseted herself with no false ideas as to the nature of the work which she proposed to undertake. She knew very well that she might have to keep rougher company than that of Buggins if she put her shoulder to that wheel. She was willing enough to do this, and had been willing to encounter such company ever since she left the Cedars. She was prepared for the roughness. But she would not put herself beyond the pale, as it were, of her cousin's hearth, moved simply by a temptation to relieve the monotony of her life. When the work came within her reach she would go to it, but till then she would bear the wretchedness of her dull room upstairs. She wondered whether he ever thought how wretched she must be in her solitude...

Trollope's "dishonesty", as I call it, intervenes here: he can always summon up an acceptable (we won't say desirable here) husband, when the reality was any man you could catch, or - much more likely - no man at all.

Chapter 23:

    "There ought to be a fight, Miss Mackenzie; I know that there ought. I believe I'm right in supposing, if all this is allowed to go by the board as it is going, that you won't have, so to say, anything of your own."
    "I shall have to earn my bread like other people; and, indeed, I am endeavouring now to put myself in the way of doing so."
    "I'll tell you how you shall earn it. Come and be my wife. I think we've got a turn for good up at the business. Come and be my wife. That's honest, any way."
    "You are honest," said she, with a tear in her eye.
    "I am honest now," said he, "though I was not honest to you once;" and I think there was a tear in his eye also.

****

    "You despise me, like enough, because I am only a tradesman?"
    "What am I myself, that I should despise any man? No, Mr Rubb, I am thankful and grateful to you; but it cannot be."
    Then he took up his hat, and, turning away from her without any word of adieu, made his way out of the house.
    "He really do seem a nice man, Miss," said Mrs Buggins. "I wonder you wouldn't have him liefer than go into one of them hospitals."

Here we go...

Chapter 23:

    "What am I to do, then? This Mr Maguire is making charges against me."
    "Oh, John!"
    "He is saying that I am robbing you, and trying to cover the robbery by marrying you. Both my own lawyer, and Mr Slow, have told me that a plain statement of the whole case must be prepared, so that any one who cares to inquire may learn the whole truth, before I can venture to do anything which might otherwise compromise my character..."

Chapter 24:

If he could once succeed in convincing the lady that her best chance of regaining her fortune lay in his assistance, or if he could even convince her that his interference must result, either with or without her good wishes, in dividing her altogether from the Ball alliance, then she would be almost compelled to throw herself into his arms. That she was violently in love with him he did not suppose, nor did he think it at all more probable that she should be violently in love with her cousin. He put her down in his own mind as one of those weak, good women, who can bring themselves easily to love any man, and who are sure to make useful wives, because they understand so thoroughly the nature of obedience. If he could secure for her her fortune, and could divide her from John Ball, he had but little doubt that she would come to him, in spite of the manner in which she had refused to receive him in Arundel Street...

I'm not prepared to say he doesn't deserve it - you can certainly look at this situation as having a measure of karma in it - but in spite of everything I think we have to sympathise with John here...and perhaps excuse some of his anger with Margaret:

Chapter 24:

(Is the use of that verb deliberate?? Surely!)

Not at once, but with crafty gradations, the author sloped away to the point of his subject. How fearful was it to watch the way in which the strong, wicked ones,---the roaring lions of the earth, beguiled the ignorance of the innocent, and led lonely lambs into their slaughter-houses. All this, much amplified, made up half the article; and then, after the manner of a pleasant relater of anecdotes, the clerical story-teller began his little tale...

****

With loud trumpetings, he summoned the lion to appear and plead guilty, or to stand forward, if he dared, and declare himself innocent with his hand on his heart. If the lion could prove himself to be innocent the writer of that article offered him the right hand of fellowship, an offer which the lion would not, perhaps, regard as any strong inducement; but if the lion were not innocent---if, as the writer of that article was well aware was the case, the lion was basely, greedily, bestially guilty, then the writer of that article pledged himself to give the lion no peace till he had disgorged his prey, and till the lamb was free to come back, with all her property, to that Christian circle in Littlebath which had loved her so warmly and respected her so thoroughly...

It must be galling to know she listened to Mr Maguire at all, in the face of this attack; though of course we know what he doesn't, that she made the mistake of assuming that he was, what he here asserts that he is - in the most outrageous of all his lies:

In this letter he reasserted the statement he had made to Lady Ball as to Miss Mackenzie's engagement to himself, and added some circumstances which he had not mentioned to Lady Ball. He said, that having become engaged to that lady, he had, in consequence, given up his curacy at Littlebath, and otherwise so disarranged his circumstances, as to make it imperative upon him to take the steps which he was now taking. He had come up to London, expecting to find her anxious to receive him in Gower Street, and had then discovered that she had been taken away to the Cedars. He could not, he said, give any adequate description of his surprise, when, on arriving there, he heard from the mouth of his own Margaret that she was now engaged to her cousin. But if his surprise then had been great and terrible, how much greater and more terrible must it have been when, step by step, the story of that claim upon her fortune revealed itself to him! He pledged himself, in his letter, as a gentleman and as a Christian minister, to see the matter out. He would not allow Miss Mackenzie to be despoiled of her fortune and her hand,---both of which he had a right to regard as his own...

Wow. At least Samuel Rubb is honestly dishonest. :D

Even more so than Margaret's confrontation with Mrs Stumfold in Chapter 12 (quoted in >92 lyzard:), this scene with Lady Ball has echoes of that between Lizzie and Lady Catherine in Pride And Prejudice.

Chapter 25:

    "Well, Margaret, to come to the point at once, the fact is this. You must renounce any idea that you may still have of becoming my son's wife." Then she paused.
    "Has John sent you here to say this?" demanded Margaret.

****

    "Margaret, if you put yourself into a passion, how can you understand reason? You ought to know, yourself, by the very fact of your being in a passion, that you are wrong. Would there be no disgrace, after all that has come out about Mr Maguire?"
    "No, none---none!" almost shouted this modern Griselda. "There could be no disgrace. I won't admit it. As for his marrying me, I don't expect it. There is nothing to bind him to me. If he doesn't come to me I certainly shall not go to him. I have looked upon it as all over between him and me; and as I have not troubled him with any importunities, nor yet you, it is cruel in you to come to me in this way. He is free to do what he likes---why don't you go to him?..."

****

    "Margaret, that is nonsense. In your position you are very wrong to set your natural friends at defiance. If you will only authorise me to say that you renounce this marriage---"
    "I will not renounce it," said Margaret, who was still standing up. "I will not renounce it. I would sooner lose my tongue than let it say such a word. You may tell him, if you choose to tell him anything, that I demand nothing from him; nothing. All that I once thought mine is now his, and I demand nothing from him. But when he asked me to be his wife he told me to be firm, and in that I will obey him. He may renounce me, and I shall have nothing with which to reproach him; but I will never renounce him---never." And then the modern Griselda, who had been thus galvanised into vitality, stood over her aunt in a mood that was almost triumphant...

Only Lady Ball isn't stupid enough to repeat the outcome of it to John, which is of course Lady Catherine's fatal mistake. :D

The pity in all this is that Margaret can talk this way to Lady Ball, and John can speak of her as he does to Mr Slow in Chapter 24, but they can't / won't say it to each other.

Well, I have finished it and can safely say that it won't be a favourite. He was so mean to his heroine! What I do like about his novels is that some people make guest appearances, like Lady Glencora. Keeping my other comments until everyone else has finished it.

>144 MissWatson:

Thanks, Birgit! - please do. :)

I will probably be wrapping the run-through tomorrow, maybe Thursday*, and we can have our full discussion then.

(*I am a bit all over the place due to a minor catastrophe, i.e. my microwave died last night, and I am focused upon that to the exclusion of pretty much all else!)

This is an interesting touch: early work-from-home (which, at least at this level of society, Trollope does not seem to disapprove); though from our point of view, poor woman!---

Chapter 25:

"I never see such amicableness! 'Tis a wonder to hear, Miss, how everybody is talking about it everywheres. Where we was last night---that is, Buggins and I---most respectable people in the copying line---it isn't only he as does the copying, but she too; nurses the baby, and minds the kitchen fire, and goes on, sheet after sheet, all at the same time; and a very tidy thing they make of it, only they do straggle their words so..."

Well, no---

Chapter 26:

"My dear," said the beautifully-dressed lady, "you don't know me, I think..."

****

"But nobody has said a word against you. Even that stupid clergyman, who calls you the lamb, has not pretended to say that you were his lamb. We had the whole story of the Lion and the Lamb in the Inverary Interpreter, but I had no idea that it was you, then. But the long and the short of it is, that my husband says he must know his cousin; and to tell the truth, it was he that sent me; and we want you to come and stay with us in Cavendish Square till the lawsuit is over, and everything is settled."

---but remember this, from Chapter 1:

The Mackenzie baronet people had not noticed her. They had failed to make much of Walter with his twelve thousand pounds, and did not trouble themselves with Margaret, who had no fortune of her own...

This is about seventeen years before, and not necessarily Clara's fault (certainly she would have been obeying the dictums of the male part of the family, even assuming she had married into it at that time); but still, this belated notice of the despoiled heiress is a bit on the nose.

However---it is certainly the best thing for Margaret at this point, so we won't quibble.

Particularly in light of this:

"I suppose you are thinking now of another cousin, but it's not at all proper that you should go to his house;---not as yet, you know. And you need not suppose that he'll object because of what I said about Lady Ball and myself. The Capulets and the Montagues don't intend to keep it up for ever; and, though we have never visited Lady Ball, my husband and the present Sir John know each other very well."

Chapter 26:

When she had been about three weeks with the Mackenzies, Sir John Ball came to see her. He had written to her once before that, but his letter had referred simply to some matter of business. When he was shown into the drawing-room in Cavendish Square, Mrs Mackenzie and Margaret were both there, but the former in a few minutes got up and left the room. Margaret had wished with all her heart that her hostess would remain with them. She was sure that Sir John Ball had nothing to say that she would care to hear, and his saying nothing would seem to be of no special moment while three persons were in the room. But his saying nothing when special opportunity for speaking had been given to him would be of moment to her. Her destiny was in his hands to such a degree that she felt his power over her to amount almost to a cruelty. She longed to ask him what her fate was to be, but it was a question that she could not put to him. She knew that he would not tell her now; and she knew also that the very fact of his not telling her would inflict upon her a new misery, and deprive her of the comfort which she was beginning to enjoy. If he could not tell her at once how all this was to be ended, it would be infinitely better for her that he should remain away from her altogether...

We understand what he's doing with respect to the settling of the property, but really, he should understand her situation better than he seems to (Chapter 25: She wondered whether he ever thought how wretched she must be in her solitude...). It's either extremely thoughtless or, as Margaret thinks, rather cruel:

This was not to be endured. Margaret declared to herself that she could not live and bear it. Let the people around her say what they would, it could not be that he would treat her in this way if he intended to make her his wife. It would be better for her to make up her mind that it was not to be so, and to insist on leaving the Mackenzies' house. She would go, not again to Arundel Street, but to some lodging further away, in some furthest recess of London, where no one would come to her and flurry her with false hopes...

****

    "The truth is, Mrs Mackenzie, that he has no more idea of marrying me than he has of marrying you."
    "Margaret, how can you talk such nonsense?"
    "It is not nonsense; it is true; and it will be much better that it should all be understood at once. I have nothing to blame him for, nothing; and I don't blame him; but I cannot bear this kind of life any longer. It is killing me. What business have I to be living here in this way, when I have got nothing of my own, and have no one to depend on but myself?"

Anyway---for whatever reason---not to fill out his chapters, as Miss Mackenzie was never serialised---Trollope takes a sudden lurch into comedy and callbacks in Chapter 27, with several old friends and acquaintances making an appearance.

Most notably, of course:

    "But you must positively bring Griselda," said Lady Glencora Palliser, by whom the business of this mission was conducted.
    "Of course, I understand that," said Mrs Mackenzie. "But what if she won't come?"
    "Griseldas are made to do anything," said Lady Glencora, "and of course she must come."

Speaking of Griseldas, an actual Griselda also makes an appearance:

"Under the canopy, duchess," just whispered Lady Hartletop. Lady Hartletop was a young woman who knew her right hand from her left under all circumstances of life, and who never made any mistakes. The duchess looked up in her confusion to the centre of the ceiling, but could see no canopy. Lady Hartletop had done all that could be required of her, and if the duchess were to die amidst her difficulties it would not be her fault...

---remembering that Lady Hartletop is the former Griselda Grantly.

We've also know the Duchess of St. Bungay, of course; while Mrs Conway Sparkes also appeared in Can You Forgive Her? (these two didn't like each other there, either).

Speaking of callbacks, I meant to highlight this, in Chapter 24.

We know how Trollope felt about the newspapers at this time, one in particular:

The little story was told, therefore, without the mention of any names. Mr Maguire had read other little stories told in another way in other newspapers, of greater weight, no doubt, than the Littlebath Christian Examiner, and had thought that he could wield a thunderbolt as well as any other Jupiter; but in wielding thunderbolts, as in all other operations of skill, a man must first try his 'prentice hand with some reticence...

:D

>149 lyzard: Bit dense, here--what's the significance of being a Griselda?

>151 kac522:

Griselda was a figure in folklore who represented (wifely) submission and obedience, to the nth degree. She is confronted with all sorts of (frankly cruel and rather sick) "tests" by her husband, like him declaring that their children have to be put to death, or that he's going to divorce her and remarry; and she shows what a "good" wife she is by not saying boo.

So to call a woman a "Griselda" is to comment on how submissive she is.

To Trollope's credit, he generally uses the term disapprovingly or sardonically---as here, where he keeps pointing out that Margaret is not in fact a Griselda, at least not in her dealings with people who tick her off, like Lady Ball. She is more submissive when people are nice to her, however.

But when Glencora uses that term. it is because of the reputation Margaret has acquired due to being "the lamb" in the newspapers, where she is presented as being unable to defend herself.

(There was always a sense that Trollope was being ironic in calling Griselda Grantly that name: her parents were clearly expecting a different kind of daughter!)

>152 lyzard: Thank you.

>153 kac522:

It occurs to me that this is a secular / feminine version of Abraham and Isaac.

"Oh you don't really have to do it, I just wanted to see if you would..."

>154 lyzard: Yep, that was my immediate thought upon reading your description.

>149 lyzard: Oh, I didn't catch that! It's clearly time to re-read the Barchester books.

And I think that Trollope is not allowing his heroine enough resistance to the way John treats her, she's far too much like a Griselda in those scenes.

>156 MissWatson:

:D

Well, that's the kind of thing we need to tackle in the general discussion.

Between Clara Mackenzie's interference, events at the bazaar and the slow rolling onwards of the lawsuit, matters have begun to resolve themselves---except that Mr Maguire will not go away; and nor will the newspapers:

Chapter 28:

As the thing went on, the periodical itself and the writer of the article became courageous by habit, till things were printed which Sir John Ball found it almost impossible to bear. It was declared that he was going to desert the lamb, now that he had taken all the lamb's property; and that the lamb, shorn of all her fleece, was to be condemned to earn her bread as a common nurse in the wards of a common hospital,---all which information came readily enough to Mr Maguire by the hands of Miss Colza...

****

When the legal inquiry into the proper disposition of Mr Jonathan Ball's property was over, and when it was known that, as the result of that inquiry, the will in favour of the Mackenzies was to be set aside and the remains of the property handed over to Sir John, then that very influential newspaper, which in the early days of the question had told the story of the Lion and the Lamb, told it all again, tearing, indeed, the Littlebath Christian Examiner into shreds for its iniquity, but speaking of the romantic misfortune of the lamb in terms which made Sir John Ball very unhappy. The fame which accrued to him from being so publicly pointed out as a lion, was not fame of which he was proud. And when the writer in this very influential newspaper went on to say that the world was now looking for a termination of this wonderful story, which would make it pleasant to all parties, he was nearly beside himself in his misery...

****

On the very day on which the result of the legal investigation was officially communicated to him, he sat in the old study at the Cedars with two newspapers before him. In one of these there was a description of his love, which he knew was intended as furtive ridicule, and an assurance to the public that the lamb's misfortunes would all be remedied by the sweet music of the marriage bell. What right had any one to assert publicly that he intended to marry any one? In his wretchedness and anger he would have indicted this newspaper also for a libel, had not his lawyer assured him that, according to law, there was no libel in stating that a man was going to be married. The other paper accused him of rapacity and dishonesty in that he would not marry the lamb, now that he had secured the lamb's fleece; so that, in truth, he had no escape on either side...

Ah. So we see here that (per >143 lyzard:) Lady Ball has, in fact, told John a version of her encounter with Margaret, though certainly not all of it:

Chapter 28:

And it must be remembered that from day to day his own mother, who lived with him, who sat with him late every night talking on this one subject, was always instigating him to abandon his cousin. It had been admitted between them that he was no longer bound by his offer. Margaret herself had admitted it,---"does not attempt to deny it," as Lady Ball repeated over and over again...

Really?---

"She did it without knowing that she did so," Lady Ball would answer; "but in some language she must have assented."

Nice:

    "Very well. Then I suppose I may arrange to go. I did not think, John, that I should be turned out of your father's house so soon after your father's death. I did not indeed."
    Thereupon Lady Ball got out her handkerchief, and her son perceived that real tears were running down her face.
    "Nobody has ever spoken of your going except yourself, mother."
    "I won't live in the house with her."
    "And what would you have me do? Would you wish me to let her go her way and starve by herself?"
    "No, John; certainly not. I think you should see that she wants for nothing. She could live with her sister-in-law, and have the interest of the money that the Rubbs took from her. It was your money."

We understand, though we might agree with Trollope about his "cowardice", why John is so reluctant to look like he is being forced into any action by the papers; but this---THIS should have been an inducement to marry Margaret instantaneously! :D

Yes, okay: this is intolerable; though I guess the upside is that, at this point, it doesn't matter what he does, so he may as well do what he likes:

Chapter 28:

    "Since this matter has been before the public you have ingeniously contrived to mitigate the wrath of public opinion by letting it be supposed that you purposed to marry the lady whose wealth you were seeking to obtain by legal quibbles. You have made your generous intentions very public, and have created a romance that has been, I must say, but little becoming to your age. If all be true that I heard when I last saw Miss Mackenzie at Twickenham, you have gone through some ceremony of proposing to her. But, as I understand, that joke is now thought to have been carried far enough; and as the money is your own, you intend to enjoy yourself as a lion, leaving the lamb to perish in the wilderness.
    "Now I call upon you to assert, under your own name and with your own signature, what are your intentions with reference to Margaret Mackenzie. Her property, at any rate for the present, is yours. Do you intend to make her your wife, or do you not? And if such be your intention, when do you purpose that the marriage shall take place, and where?
    "I reserve to myself the right to publish this letter and your answer to it; and of course shall publish the fact if your cowardice prevents you from answering it...

Well---between these threads and the Carlingford ones, we seem to have a surfeit lately of bad proposals; and I think we can add this to the list:

Chapter 29:

    "I suppose I ought to return the compliment," she said, "and declare that no cousin who had been kept so long out of his own money ever behaved so well as you have done. I can assure you that I have thought of it very often,---of the injustice that has been involuntarily done to you."
    "It has been unjust, has it not?" said he, piteously, thinking of his injuries. "So much of it has gone in that oilcloth business, and all for nothing!"
    "I'm glad at any rate that Walter's share did not go."
    He knew that this was not the kind of conversation which he had desired to commence, and that it must be changed before anything could be settled. So he shook himself and began again...

****

    "I hope you have understood," he continued, "that while all this was going on I could propose no arrangement of any kind."
    "I know you have been very much troubled."
    "Indeed I have. It seems that any blackguard has a right to publish any lies that he likes about any one in any of the newspapers, and that nobody can do anything to protect himself! Sometimes I have thought that it would drive me mad!"
    But he again perceived that he was getting out of the right course in thus dwelling upon his own injuries...

****

    "It is no good, however, talking about all that; is it, Margaret?"
    "It will cease now, will it not?"
    "I cannot say. I fear not. Whichever way I turn, they abuse me for what I do. What business is it of theirs?"
    "You mean their absurd story---calling you a lion."
    "Don't talk of it, Margaret."
    Then Margaret was again silent. She by no means wished to talk of the story, if he would only leave it alone...

But the punchline is worth it.

Particularly since Margaret, we recall, has had very little laughter in her life (it was Mr Rubb making her laugh that led her to overlook the primrose gloves):

Chapter 29:

    Then there was a course of embassies between the dining-room and drawing-room in the Mackenzie mansion. The servant was sent to ask the gentleman his name, and the gentleman sent up to say that he was a clergyman,—that his name was not known to Mrs Mackenzie, but that he wanted to see her most particularly for a few minutes on very special business. Then the servant was despatched to ask him whether or no he was the Rev. Jeremiah Maguire, of Littlebath, and under this compulsion he sent back word that such was his designation. He was then told to go. Upon that he wrote a note to Mrs Mackenzie, setting forth that he had a private communication to make, much to the advantage of her cousin, Miss Margaret Mackenzie. He was again told to go; and then told again, that if he did not leave the house at once, the assistance of the police would be obtained. Then he went. "And it was frightful to behold him," said the servant, coming up for the tenth time. But the servant no doubt enjoyed the play, and on one occasion presumed to remark that he did not think any reference to the police was necessary. "Such a game as we've had up!" he said to the coachman that afternoon in the kitchen.
    And the game that they had in the drawing-room was not a bad game either. When Mr Maguire would not go, the two women joined in laughing, till at last the tears ran down Mrs Mackenzie's face...

Well, yes:

Chapter 30:

Sir John, as he went eastwards into the city, did think about it; and before he had reached his own house that evening, he had brought himself to regard Mrs Mackenzie's scheme in a favourable light. He was not blind to the advantage of taking his wife from a house in Cavendish Square, instead of from lodgings in Arundel Street; and he was aware that his mother would not be blind to that advantage either. He did not hope to be able to reconcile her to his marriage at once; and perhaps he entertained some faint idea that for the first six months of his new married life the Cedars would be quite as pleasant without his mother as with her...

I think we'll leave it there---thank you, all!

I have some overall thoughts to add here (the tenor of which you can no doubt guess), but please start adding your own reactions and final comments.

Thank you Liz, for taking us through this!

One thing I noticed is the very limited number of people we really get to know. The Mackenzies of Incharrow are mentioned in the first chapter and disappear from sight, and suddenly Mrs Mackenzie pops up like a jack-in-the-box to make everything all right. And then the children? We are told they are numerous, but barely learn a name, Susanna is dropped with no part in the events, and Mary Jane only has a fleeting appearance. Of course, in Victorian times children were not to be seen, but in a financially embarrassed household the girls would have been needed for housekeeping. Even Jack Ball, who is personally affected by everything as the next heir, and who should take a personal interest, is nowhere in sight.

And every time Trollope says that Margaret is no modern Griselda I wanted to slap him, because that's exactly what he makes her. The only person to whom she stands up is Lady Ball.

I've been avoiding commenting because I'm in the minority and enjoyed the book. I've always identified with Fanny Price (as opposed to Emma Woodhouse), and so Miss Mackenzie fits right in for me.

Because I didn't find it a "love story" I was only mildly frustrated with John Ball. In my family there are a whole bunch of the male persuasion just like him, so it's par for the course for me. He is middle-aged and bald and burdened with kids and nasty parents; this is not Burgo Fitzgerald or even Phineas Finn. He's spent the last 20 years brooding about how he's going to support everybody and keep up the estate after his father dies--we've already heard of some "retrenchment" in the family.

So it's no surprise to me that it takes him until everything is finally settled (who knows? maybe Margaret's suit could undo the whole thing?), and that is just how a man in my family would operate. I think Mrs Walter says it best in Chapter 26:

"Yes, and he is a man, and, like most men, very dumb when they have anything at heart which requires care in the speaking. He knows no better than to let things be as they are; to leave the words all unspoken till he can say to you, 'Now is the time for us to go and get ourselves married;' just as he might tell you that now was the time to go and dine."

"But will he ever say that?"

"Of course he will. If he does not say so when all this business is off his mind, when Mr Maguire and his charges are put at rest, when the lawyers have finished their work, then come to me and tell me that I have deceived you."

I can't tell you how much this reminds me of my own father or brother!

And during all this John always defends Margaret against any bad-mouthing from his mother. Despite his inner doubts, he never speaks ill of her.

John and Margaret are very, very real to me, and their characters, however dull and frustrating, are fairly consistent throughout the novel. I appreciate them just as they are.

Before I respond specifically to comments and go on to my own remarks, I feel like I just need to say this:

I quite enjoy this novel AS a novel, but I have an overarching problem with it, in that there is so much in Margaret's life that is presented without criticism.

Which would be okay, if I felt that it was nevertheless intended as criticism, but I don't think it is. There seems to be too much of an "Oh well, that's just the way things are" air to it: a man taking a woman's circumstances far too casually. He's sorry for her, but he really doesn't let her - he won't let her - take any action to change those circumstances - because he intends to "reward" her with a marriage that however you look at it is unsatisfactory...even if he compels Margaret to feel otherwise. As Birgit says in >98 MissWatson:, she's expected to be so grateful for so little.

It's not good enough, and it crystallises my major problem with Trollope as a novelist.

>165 MissWatson:

Thank you for joining in, Birgit!

You're right, it is strange. I think it's meant to emphasise her isolation - her emotional isolation - but Trollope doesn't really follow through so we're just left with these connections happening more or less out of sight.

I do wonder, though, if it's also an aspect of writing "a novel without love", as if he initially intended the book to go in a different direction? If he didn't really want connections?

As for the Griselda aspect, perhaps we can take it as a reflection of exactly how submissive women were expected to be that Margaret is considered *not* submissive?

I think it's more than just her "standing up" to people (or not) that disqualifies her, though: I think it's that when she makes up her mind to do something, she does it. Her decision to split her money with Sarah, the way she leaves the Cedars for lodgings, that sort of thing. She can be swayed by kindness, but she isn't prevented from doing what she feels she must by argument or by "what will the neighbours say" or any other external factor. That sense of personal purpose is un-Griselda-like.

>166 kac522:

I don't disagree with what you say, Kathy, and I do understand John's "there's many a slip" attitude and his desire to have the money question settled.

My problem is his behaviour in the face of the first appearance of Mr Maguire.

He's offended that she's listened to any other man: what's so wonderful about him that she shouldn't? And he's offended that she behaves towards Mr Maguire exactly as he told her would be "no harm" if she behaved that way towards him.

And because he's offended, he does doubt her, even though she tells him to his face that he did not accept Mr Maguire either verbally or in writing, even after she shows him the exchange of letters. And he won't accept the plain reality of there not having been time for her to say anything about Mr Maguire: instead he chooses to be offended over her "silence" too.

This is only hours after he asks her to marry him. If he had said one word of that, she wouldn't have gone. Instead he lets her leave the Cedars, even though he knows what she's going to in London. And then he doesn't come near her for days and says nothing personal when he does---he just leaves her in limbo. And at this point the money question hasn't come into it, so it isn't a matter of wanting things "settled".

There is so much passive-aggressive punishment of Margaret in all this. John doesn't behave violently, like his mother, but he has his own way of showing his displeasure and it's just as nasty.

Okay---while I'm on this track I might as well keep rolling.

My complaint here is not about Miss Mackenzie per se, though this novel is an example of a problem I have with Trollope; even *the* problem I have with Trollope; which we might encapsulate thus---

Chapter 11:

There is, I know, a feeling abroad among women that this desire is one of which it is expedient that they should become ashamed; that it will be well for them to alter their natures in this respect, and learn to take delight in the single state. Many of the most worthy women of the day are now teaching this doctrine, and are intent on showing by precept and practice that an unmarried woman may have as sure a hold on the world, and a position within it as ascertained, as may an unmarried man. But I confess to an opinion that human nature will be found to be too strong for them...

Chapter 30:

It has been said of women that they have an insane desire for matrimony...

I called this dishonest in the first place and I stand by that. It wouldn't be so insufferable if it was an honest failure of imagination, but it is too clear from Trollope's ouevre that this represents a deliberate refusal to see any perspective but his own.

In fact there are all sorts of dishonesties functioning here. Some women did and do want marriage as an end in itself, of course, but for others the "desire" for marriage he talks about so glibly was in reality a desire for sex and/or children, with marriage merely the means to and end. We can forgive that, because we know he couldn't say so.

And - let me be clear about this - it is not a problem that he builds so many of his novels around love-and-a-happy-marriage. That is fine; that is one reality.

It is his rejection of the other realities that sticks in my craw.

Trollope's ability to put himself in the mindset of someone he disagreed with or disapproved of is one of his great strengths as a novelist, but here there is a line he will not cross.

And I find it particularly infuriating because we know he was capable of writing sympathetic portraits of women being forced into marriages that they didn't want. I'm not thinking here so much of Glencora (we see her mostly when the forcing has been done), but Lucinda Roanoke in The Eustace Diamonds, who avoids marriage with a hateful man - a man who wants to marry her chiefly so he is legally free to punish her for her abhorrence of him - by suffering a complete breakdown before the wedding.

But he always assumes that one particular man is the problem---that these women would happily marry "someone else".

This is my problem; this is his failure as a novelist: he always provides that "someone else". He always summons up a man of whom his heroines can say (to paraphrase Margaret's initial refusal of John here), that they "can love him with affection of the sort which would be due to a husband".

Furthermore, his woman are always perfectly happy---and perfectly grateful. Look at Margaret here: what does he give her? - a dull husband, nine step-children and a bitch of a mother-in-law; and yet there's never a qualm on her part about any of that. All we hear about is how "joyful" she is.

The truth is, many women never married because there was no-one for them to marry---either literally no-one, numerically (there was a vast "surplus" of women in Victorian society), or because they owned no property and were therefore unwanted. Some women married men they cared nothing for - not even the "affection of the sort which would be due to a husband" - because they couldn't support themselves and it was that or slow starvation.

I've brought this up before, but Trollope's most infuriating in this respect novel might be The Vicar of Bullhampton, where he goes a long way down an honest road---and then wimps out and conjures up a husband.

There are things he won't face---like thirty-six-year-old Margaret Mackenzie only being desirable as long as she has money; like John Ball taking the money and not the woman; like Margaret working in a hospital and living and dying alone.

He won't face the fact that some women had no opportunity to marry. He won't face the fact that some women made purely interested marriages because they had no alternative. And he won't face the fact that some women did not want to get married.

Whenever he touches on that last point, either young women are getting brainwashed by the feminists (as here), or there's something wrong with them: there are several books where he insists that all "healthy", or "healthy-minded", young women want marriage---and if they don't, well, of course they're not healthy-minded...

This is where we came in: the dishonesty of that opening passage to Chapter 11, when in bemoaning that women were being made "ashamed" of wanting to marry, he's actually trying to make them feel ashamed if they don't.

BUT---a very big BUT---all of this represents, among other things, a refusal to face that the world was changing; that ideas were changing: that educational opportunities were opening up for women, that even work opportunities were being created; that women were beginning to have a choice.

There is no acknowledgement of this from Trollope - female independence of any kind is invariably either rejected or ridiculed - but it is a fact, and we need to keep in mind when reading and analysing his novels that there is a blind spot operating within them.

Phew! - sorry about that.

Again---I'm not trashing Miss Mackenzie as a standalone novel here: as that, it is fine and interesting; but it is one of the novels that illustrates the blind spot and therefore tends to trigger me.

Ahem. As you may have noticed... :D

So I guess my final point is this:

According to Trollope, he set out to write "a novel without love"...and couldn't do it.

More accurately, he found he couldn't write a novel without marriage---because he could not or would not envision any other fate for his heroine.

And if there must be marriage, then there must be love...

Well! - having frightened everyone away with my insane ranting, there's seems nothing left to do but move onto our next projects! :D

For those participating, we will will be moving on to the next work in Margaret Oliphant's Carlingford series, Miss Marjoribanks. We do not have a time for this yet, but September is most likely. Please check in and say whether this suits you, or whether you would prefer either August or October.

Our next Trollope read will be The Belton Estate, which I would like to squeeze in before the end of the year.

...and if anyone else does have comments to add here, please do! Give me an argument if you like. :D

>173 lyzard: Either September or October will work for me for Miss Marjoribanks, I think.

Sorry I'm not very chatty about Miss Mackenzie. I was sick at the beginning of the month and I am still trying to catch up. I did enjoy the book, and tend to agree with >166 kac522:.

>174 lyzard: OK, I have a comment/question, I guess.

In >170 lyzard: you said:
a refusal to face that the world was changing; that ideas were changing: that educational opportunities were opening up for women, that even work opportunities were being created; that women were beginning to have a choice.

My question--what mainstream male writer in English was doing this in 1865? Certainly not Charles Dickens. I haven't read all of Wilkie Collins or Thackeray, so I can't comment there, but what I've read doesn't impress me. Certainly no 19th c. American male writer that I can think of. And there were plenty of female writers that weren't acknowledging this either, at least outright. Perhaps under the radar (like Margaret Oliphant or Mary Elizabeth Braddon or sometimes Elizabeth Gaskell), but not overtly at this time. Perhaps George Eliot is the only female author where a woman has a bit of agency and independence, but not always.

What you are expecting from mid-19th century male writers doesn't seem (to me) to happen until we get to George Gissing, Bernard Shaw, E. M. Forster, maybe Hardy a bit. That's not until the end of the 19th century. And there are a host of 20th century male writers that have less understanding of a woman's position than Trollope does in 1865. Trollope may not agree, but he at least acknowledges that there are other points of view about a woman's position in society.

So....point me to those male authors circa 1865 who do what you're expecting Trollope to do.

>176 kac522:

I didn't mean to imply that Trollope was uniquely guilty in this respect - certainly not - and as you note, mainstream authors are mainstream for a reason.

My problem is that his novels are otherwise so detailed and realistic---to the point that he was criticised at the time for being, not a novelist at all, but merely "a recorder" (which is exactly what makes his writing so valuable now, of course).

We know, too, how sympathetically he could write about people he disagreed with or disapproved of; yet in this one area, he simply would not.

This was certainly a hot-button issue and it isn't surprising to find middle-aged male authors shying away from it---particularly with respect to the work / education aspect of it. But the fact that someone so otherwise realistic as Trollope would not even contemplate an outcome for a woman but marriage is unacceptable. Particularly, as I say, because he manipulates his plots in an unrealistic way to bring that outcome about.

That's bad enough, but that he supports it with mockery - of women for being desperate or "insane", to use the word he produces in Miss Mackenzie, to marry; but also of women for not wanting marriage - is cheap and nasty. As is his contention that women who don't want to marry are mentally ill.

I don't expect realism from Dickens in this area: his idiosyncrasies are what they are; but I do expect it from Trollope, and I think I have a right to, given his body of work.

But you're right that you were more likely to find honest writing in this area away from the mainstream, or amongst more minor, or radical, novelists. And your mention of Wilkie Collins is interesting, because he did often use women's difficult circumstances as a basis for his plots. Do you know his novel No Name? That starts with sisters being disinherited and having to find ways support themselves: one takes the Good Girl route of self-sacrifice and hard work, the other...doesn't. (And in the interests of full disclosure, the ending does involve marriage!)

And again, I'm not directing all this criticism at Miss Mackenzie by any means. Merely, this is one of the novels in which Trollope's working out of the plot to bring about a marriage-ending feels contrived. And this was supposed to be his "novel without love"! But he wouldn't have an outcome that didn't involve marriage, and that meant, in his terms, there also had to be love, or at least "love".

Anyway! - that's more than enough out of me. :D

>175 cbl_tn:

Thank you for checking in, Carrie, and very sorry you've been unwell.

Sorry, I have been busy and I also needed some time to think about the arguments.

I have no particular like or dislike for Margaret's suitors, I am in the habit of taking 19th century males in the period's novels as they are shown, and that is usually indifferent or ignorant of women's real feelings. What I find problematic here is that they are all shown as driven by the pecuniary motive, although John Ball is the most sympathetic, given his situation.

In some ways I think he was writing against his readers' expectation by not promising them love: the men are after the money for rational reasons, and Margaret should have chosen John Ball on account of his rank. And then he either chickened out, or Margaret's character developed a life of its own by actually loving John. That's not a problem for me, but that he makes her such a limp, quietly submissive woman instead of allowing her to unfold her wings once she is on her own, that's the most disappointing aspect of the book.

>177 lyzard: Oh, it's been ages since I read No Name, maybe I'll revisit it.

I'll be on vacation in August/September, so late September or October would suit me better for Miss Marjoribanks.

I very much liked No Name when I read it years ago, and it's one I'd like to revisit sometime!

>178 lyzard: Thanks, Liz! I am fully recovered now, but still trying to catch up where I fell behind on things. I still have all of June's reading to review. I may need to borrow one of your sloths for encouragement...

>179 MissWatson:

Chickened out, which is part of my complaint: his realism fails him at such moments.

Yes, she has potential that is never allowed an outlet: that kind of realism he's okay with.

Noted, Birgit, thanks!

>180 cbl_tn:

One more to add to the list of projects!

Hey, I only just posted my March sloth, no need to feel guilty about June. :)

As things have fallen out, October suits me best for a group read of Miss Marjoribanks so we will make that a definite plan.

Hope to see you there. :)

Thanks, Liz. Looking forward to it!

Bumping this to remind people that we have scheduled The Belton Estate for January.

I've got my copy downloaded.