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Palliser #5
The Prime Minister
An alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.
A novel of social, sexual and domestic politics, The Prime Minister raises one of the most enduring questions - whether a morally scrupulous gentleman can make an effective leader.
A novel of social, sexual and domestic politics, The Prime Minister raises one of the most enduring questions - whether a morally scrupulous gentleman can make an effective leader.
704 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1876
182 people are currently reading
2761 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Trollope
2,291 books1,760 followersAnthony Trollope became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works, known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire; he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.
Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...
Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 331 reviews
July 9, 2019
In The Prime Minister Plantagenet Palliser is revealed as a man too thin-skinned for party politics but remarkable for his honesty and integrity, Trollope's Perfect Gentleman.
May 4, 2023
4.5 stars
Well, I must say that The Prime Minister is my second favorite after Can You Forgive Her? among the novels from Anthony Trollope’s six-volume political series The Palliser.
Trollope in The Palliser mainly focuses on people from high society, such as the aristocracy and upper-middle class (as we would probably call them today).
The Prime Minister - the fifth novel in the series - is no exception. The author unfolds before the reader’s eyes a story of a young man, named Ferdinand Lopez, who is intelligent and educated but looks foreign, has a foreign name, and therefore is not appreciated by the true English gentlemen.
This young adventurer, or interloper as some characters of the book call him, is ready to face all the difficulties that may arise and is determined to succeed at any cost.
His fondest dream is to enter Parliament and marry the lovely heiress of a wealthy English barrister. Lopez truly seems to love his bride-to-be. He succeeds in marrying the young lady, but this turns out to be only a palliative. In the end, all his plans and even his life turn to ashes.
In retrospect, it would be worth saying that Lopez could have been successful had the circumstances been more auspicious to him. Such men, full of fresh energy, were about to play their role in the British society of that epoch. The world was changing, and the social norms and values were changing with it. Little by little, more and more people were beginning to embrace diversity in various spheres of life.
These evolutional transformations penetrate the fates of Trollope’s characters and change them.
Of course, we will again meet Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser. The married couple gets along relatively well. Palliser’s political career is on the rise. The title of the book hints at his new appointment. However, the burden of high responsibilities weighs heavily on him and risks overwhelming the punctilious and well-intentioned man.
Will he and Glencora manage to get through this time with decency?
Glencora is committed to helping her husband move his career forward. She is candid, at times sarcastic, witty, with a touch of romanticism, and not always rational.
There are some passages in the book that may seem repetitive or too tortuous, but ultimately it is an enthralling read that gives a valuable ‘screenshot’ of life in Victorian England.
Well, I must say that The Prime Minister is my second favorite after Can You Forgive Her? among the novels from Anthony Trollope’s six-volume political series The Palliser.
Trollope in The Palliser mainly focuses on people from high society, such as the aristocracy and upper-middle class (as we would probably call them today).
The Prime Minister - the fifth novel in the series - is no exception. The author unfolds before the reader’s eyes a story of a young man, named Ferdinand Lopez, who is intelligent and educated but looks foreign, has a foreign name, and therefore is not appreciated by the true English gentlemen.
This young adventurer, or interloper as some characters of the book call him, is ready to face all the difficulties that may arise and is determined to succeed at any cost.
His fondest dream is to enter Parliament and marry the lovely heiress of a wealthy English barrister. Lopez truly seems to love his bride-to-be. He succeeds in marrying the young lady, but this turns out to be only a palliative. In the end, all his plans and even his life turn to ashes.
In retrospect, it would be worth saying that Lopez could have been successful had the circumstances been more auspicious to him. Such men, full of fresh energy, were about to play their role in the British society of that epoch. The world was changing, and the social norms and values were changing with it. Little by little, more and more people were beginning to embrace diversity in various spheres of life.
These evolutional transformations penetrate the fates of Trollope’s characters and change them.
Of course, we will again meet Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser. The married couple gets along relatively well. Palliser’s political career is on the rise. The title of the book hints at his new appointment. However, the burden of high responsibilities weighs heavily on him and risks overwhelming the punctilious and well-intentioned man.
Will he and Glencora manage to get through this time with decency?
Glencora is committed to helping her husband move his career forward. She is candid, at times sarcastic, witty, with a touch of romanticism, and not always rational.
There are some passages in the book that may seem repetitive or too tortuous, but ultimately it is an enthralling read that gives a valuable ‘screenshot’ of life in Victorian England.
August 17, 2019
An absolutely fantastic novel, and definitely one that's reignited my love of Anthony Trollope. This novel is a brilliant look at politics and marriage, moving and fascinating and engaging throughout. I'd highly recommend.
August 27, 2022
There is such a thing as being TOO moral, as proven by the two main catalysts in The Prime Minister. First we have Emily, a young woman who is very sure she knows better than her father and other adults in her life that she is capable of making the best judgement of the proper husband for herself. Very shortly after the marriage she finds out how wrong she was, but her determination to bear her punishment almost destroys her entire family. Then we have Plantaganet Palliser, who is made Prime Minister, but refuses to compromise his principles even for the good of the country. He shortly comes to understand that that is not at all how government works. Again, Lady Cora, his wife, sees the way more clearly, but is prevented from acting because of her sex. The one time she disobeys him has disastrous results.
But this is Trollope, and there must be problems and setbacks and near misses to keep us reading, and no one is better at it. Women had a terrible time of it in Victorian times in England. They were bound to obey either their fathers or their husbands or their brothers or sons. The only real freedom came for rich widows with no other family; they could do as they pleased.
Even so, some women were smart enough to get around all that by maneuvering and manipulation, such as Lady Glencora Palliser, who is a joy to watch. She is the gem of the five Palliser novels I have read so far. I have one more to go in this series, and I'll miss it when I finish.
But this is Trollope, and there must be problems and setbacks and near misses to keep us reading, and no one is better at it. Women had a terrible time of it in Victorian times in England. They were bound to obey either their fathers or their husbands or their brothers or sons. The only real freedom came for rich widows with no other family; they could do as they pleased.
Even so, some women were smart enough to get around all that by maneuvering and manipulation, such as Lady Glencora Palliser, who is a joy to watch. She is the gem of the five Palliser novels I have read so far. I have one more to go in this series, and I'll miss it when I finish.
March 8, 2019
In this novel from 1876, taken from contemporaneous political events, Prime Minister The Duke of Omnium is almost scandalised after refunding a scoundrel’s £50 election expenses when a proto-tabloid hack pens an exposé. In 2016, a series of scruple-free mountebanks can hoodwink 52% of the population into voting themselves out an organisation that secures their basic workers’ and human rights, with the full backing and support of millionaire tabloid hacks and gammon-faced oligarch asshats. In 2019, politicians can piddle tens of millions of public cash on non-existent shipping companies, and never have to account for their actions, or stir the pot of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, and never have to account for their actions, or shoot someone on 5th avenue and not lose a single vote. It is a sad moment in time when we pine for the aristocratic, autocratic, divinely bestowed yet somewhat civilised rule of 1876.
May 11, 2022
A look at the effects of an overly scrupulous moral code in both love and politics, explored through the characters of Emily Wharton and Plantagenent Palliser, respectively. We get to meet again some old friends from earlier in the Palliser series. This novel is engaging and interesting, but a bit too repetitive for me at times.
February 18, 2013
I started my odyssey through Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series of political novels in early 2011, beginning with Can You Forgive Her? I said at the outset of my review of this book that the year was to be my Trollope period, an author I had hitherto overlooked. Well, I only made it as far as Phineas Redux, the fourth in the series, which I reviewed in October, 2011, just before a trip to Egypt. I was sidetracked, as I am invariably am, setting off in the pursuit of various literary foxes, shifting from one horse to another in mid-gallop. I took time out but I was out for almost a year and a half!
Now I’m back on course, having finished The Prime Minister, the sequel to Phineas Redux, at the weekend. Once again I immersed myself in the high Victorian political and social milieu; once again I was captivated by the intrigues and the machinations of Trollope’s most engaging character – Lady Glencora Palliser, now the Duchess of Omnium. Her husband, Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, formerly the Chancellor of the Exchequer and now the Prime Minister, has at last made it to the top of the greasy pole, but, oh my, what a struggle she has trying to stop him from sliding back down!
Her problem is simply stated: Plantagenet is the noblest Roman of them all, something of a drawback when it comes to the realities of modern political life. He heads a coalition, a compromise on men and measures, cobbled together to break a political deadlock. He becomes Prime Minister, moreover, simply because there is no one else suitable at the time, not as the fruit of his own ambition. But, alas, he is not comfortable in the role; he is far too honest, far too thin-skinned and far, far too scrupulous. The Duchess, if only it were possible, could have done it so much better;
They should have made me Prime Minister...I could have done all the dirty work. I could have given away garters and ribbons and made my bargains while giving them. I would give pensions or withheld them and make stupid men peers..... a man at a regular office has to work and that is what Plantagenet is fit for. He wants always to be doing something...............but a Prime Minister should never go beyond generalities about commerce, agriculture, peace and general philanthropy. Of course he should have the gift of the gab and that Plantagenet hasn't got....I could do a Mansion House dinner to a marvel.
Oh, Glencora, you were a hundred years too early!
The truth is that the Duke, for all his moral rectitude, or because of his moral rectitude, is a dull dog, high-minded but uninspiring, wholly unsuited for a position which demands the kind of personal and managerial skills that he simply does not have. Does Trollope conceive of him as an admirable figure? Yes, he obviously does, though he is clearly one best suited the second rank of political life, far better as a Chancellor, where he can ponder the ins and outs of decimalisation – one of his obsessions – without having to concern himself with the kind of things that the Duchess understands are an essential part of effective leadership. A good Prime Minister has to be a consummate actor. Glencora realises this; Plantagenet does not. No, that’s not quite true: he does not want to play a part. Playing a part, to be more exact, involves compromising his Olympian ideals of probity and honour.
Those who are interested in present day English political realities will find The Prime Minister dryly amusing at points, not least when the author touches on the nature of coalition government. England does not love coalitions, Disraeli said. That may be true, but England has to suffer coalition;
...coalitions of this kind have been generally feeble, sometimes disastrous, and on occasions, even disgraceful. When a man, perhaps through a long political life, has bound himself to a certain code of opinions, how can he change the code in a moment? And when at the same moment, together with the change, he secures power, patronage, and pay, how shall the public voice absolve him?
The Prime Minister is certainly a political novel, but the game – unlike the novels of Disraeli himself - is played in the minor key; the politics are the personal. There are really no high ideological issues at stake, no great clash of principles. The focus, rather, is on social, sexual and domestic politics, the politics of marriage above all, particularly as this bears on property relations.
The author is particularly good on the position of women in the Victorian world. Marriage to a virtuous gentleman, as he sees it, is that highest thing they can aim for, but he does not shy away from the penalties: the frustration of limited prospects and circumscribed lives. It’s also a novel of contrasting types. There is the practical Glencora, a foil to the high-minded Plantagenet. But the greatest contrast of all is between the Duke, a very perfect, gentle knight, and one Ferdinand Lopez, a parvenu, an interloper and - in his personal impact on the lifes of those with whom he comes into contact - something of an incubus.
Where Lopez comes from, who and what his antecedents were, and how this outsider managed to graft himself on to the highest reaches of English society is never fully explained. Why Glencora takes him up – with unfortunate consequences for her husband – is also something of a mystery, given that he is wholly without connections or influence. Lopez, as an interloper, becomes the butt of all sorts of mid-Victorian prejudices. He is “a man without a father, a foreigner, a black Portuguese nameless Jew...[with] a bright eye, a hook nose and a glib tongue.” Whether or not Lopez is Jewish he certainly takes on the role of the unscrupulous financier, comparing himself at one point to Shakespeare’s Shylock.
Lopez is the kind of figure that might very well find a resonance with a modern readership, particularly as we all now live in ABC – the Aftermath of the Banking Crisis. He’s not a banker himself but he is a speculator, a man who uses the money of others wholly without any kind of scruple. Amongst other things he deals in guano, which may or may not be intended to convey the author’s own estimation of a particular kind of entrepreneurial capitalism! Lopez has nothing, no background, no wealth, no prospects; nothing beyond his wit.
In his smooth glibness, he manages to contract a socially advantageous marriage to one Emily Wharton, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer, who also happens to be a scion of England’s old rural Tory squirearchy.
I’ve admired a great many of Trollope’s female characters hitherto, particularly Glencora (who could not admire and love her?), Madame Max Goesler and even the colourful and slightly disreputable Lizzie Eustace.
Emily Wharton is a contrast in every way; she is a crashing bore. Her one defining characteristic is a perverse obstinacy, coupled with dog-like notions of duty. She is obstinate in her desire to marry Lopez, though she knows nothing about him, and she is obstinate in widowhood – sorry for the spoiler – when he has conveniently been dispatched, Anna Karenina-style, though he had previously used her shamefully in an attempt to milk her father's wealth. After his death she descends into morbid mourning, even though the marriage was a disaster. In fact her widowhood becomes a badge of personal self-immolation. The man was unworthy of her; she should never have married; she rejected honest and true love; it's all her fault - mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Why poor Andrew Fletcher, part of the family’s county set, continued in his unrelenting devotions I have no idea!
I was tempted to write that The Prime Minister is a kind of comedy of manners, except there is not really much in the way of comedy (The Duchess has a few good self-deprecating lines, though). It’s certainly a superb panorama, ranging over aspects of Victorian life, attitudes and manners at the higher reaches of society, the kind of parts that Dickens never reached or wanted to reach. Trollope, moreover, has a crisp and engaging style.
There is also, at least it seems to me, an intriguing ambiguity in his message. He obviously disapproves of the morally reprehensible Lopez, but Lopez, or people like him, were the motors of Victorian transformation, the risk takers and the deal makers. Is he really suggesting that the only alternative is the unimpeachable Whartons and Fletchers, the epitome of rural stasis and torpor? Ah, but as Abel Wharton, Emily's father, reflects "...the world was changing around him every day. Royalty was marrying out of its degree. Peers' sons were looking only for money. And, more than that, peers' daughters were bestowing themselves on Jews and shopkeepers." The world is changing, yes, but all change is accompanied by fear, uncertainty and prejudice.
Anyway, read it and make up your own mind. I assure you it’s well worth the effort. You may even, like me, be engaged enough to cry out in frustration when the plot takes a particular turn, or certain characters prove to be more than usually annoying. I defy anyone, moreover, not to hate Quintus Slide the newspaper proprietor, as slimy as any modern press baron.
So, yes, I’ve bagged my fifth literary Munro in the Trollope range. I spy the last, The Duke’s Children, in the distance. I promise my next review shall not be as distant.
February 16, 2024
More compelling Trollope storytelling in this, The Prime Minister (1876), the fifth instalment of the Palliser series.
Our old favourites are joined by a scoundrel called Ferdinand Lopez, and Emily Wharton who he marries to the dismay of her friends and family.
Meanwhile Planty Pal becomes the reluctant Prime Minister of a coalition government.
Both Emily Wharton and Plantagenent Palliser are conflicted by exacting forms of personal morality which result in much angst for both of them.
Another overly lengthy novel that always managed to keep me engaged despite the frequently trademark meandering style complete with moments of high drama, tragedy, sorrow, joy, and deep dives into politics.
Business as usual then.
5/5
Can a morally scrupulous English gentleman make an effective Prime Minister? This is one of the enduringly fascinating problems posed in The Prime Minister (1876). And as Plantaganet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, overenthusiastically supported by Lady Glencora, presides over the Coalition government, Trollope reaches into the highest echelons of the English establishment, depicting political realities rather than ideology, portraying social, sexual and domestic politics as well as the public variety. The world of the novel is perplexed and dominated by the handsome impostor Ferdinand Lopez. Even the Duke and Duchess are not immune to his malign influence, as Lopez pursues Emily Wharton for her charm and her fortune, and plots to win membership of that most exclusive of English clubs, the Houses of Parliament.
The Prime Minister is the fifth and central novel in Trollope's Palliser series.
Our old favourites are joined by a scoundrel called Ferdinand Lopez, and Emily Wharton who he marries to the dismay of her friends and family.
Meanwhile Planty Pal becomes the reluctant Prime Minister of a coalition government.
Both Emily Wharton and Plantagenent Palliser are conflicted by exacting forms of personal morality which result in much angst for both of them.
Another overly lengthy novel that always managed to keep me engaged despite the frequently trademark meandering style complete with moments of high drama, tragedy, sorrow, joy, and deep dives into politics.
Business as usual then.
5/5
Can a morally scrupulous English gentleman make an effective Prime Minister? This is one of the enduringly fascinating problems posed in The Prime Minister (1876). And as Plantaganet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, overenthusiastically supported by Lady Glencora, presides over the Coalition government, Trollope reaches into the highest echelons of the English establishment, depicting political realities rather than ideology, portraying social, sexual and domestic politics as well as the public variety. The world of the novel is perplexed and dominated by the handsome impostor Ferdinand Lopez. Even the Duke and Duchess are not immune to his malign influence, as Lopez pursues Emily Wharton for her charm and her fortune, and plots to win membership of that most exclusive of English clubs, the Houses of Parliament.
The Prime Minister is the fifth and central novel in Trollope's Palliser series.
February 19, 2019
Just as I think Trollope might not maintain his ability to excite his readers because having many brilliantly told novels, I see this is a silly question his genius in story telling remains as stellar as always. I started this wondering what will this be all about besides the obvious title! Trollope makes politics enjoyable to me because he shows all the irony and all the human elements which makes it as a kind of "Big Show"! You can see that even though times change politics and human beings are basically the same as ever but with current ways of the time measured in all human emotions are in play. So even if you are tired of politics, as I am, you can enjoy his stories because it is not all politics but more so a story about certain people. You don't just have one scenario going on in his stories but many which makes you feel you have entered his England!
You see how apolitical person is immersed in the political tent and sees that no matter what one does, it is to be not enough or too much. You see how certain personalities have a harder time because their skin is not thick enough to hear the bitter words said about them. You see, yes "The Press", thinking they know best for the public and putting their spin on things which can destroy a person completely innocent.
Also in this story it brings a man of unknown background and a foreign name with all the prejudice of just that. If the man be good then bigoted views are an extreme hindrance to him but if a man be evil, it brings these prejudicial forward much more. Times have changed, yet are the same. We can be more open but to shut one's eyes completely is both harmful and foolish. Let a man be judged by his action and character, not his looks or name, that is how it should be.
This story shows how detrimental a choice in a partner for life can effect a person when the one they choose brings them lower down. This part of the story was extremely suspenseful to the very end. Many times I was surprised the direction that was taken and I kept thinking of the Barsetshire series and a big disappointment that was certainly could be corrected except for obstinate behavior. You can never be sure how exactly Trollope will decide certain fates. A happy ending is not for all!
I could talk tons in this story but the more I say will give surprises away and that would be no fun for you! I could have read this straight through from 1/3 onward because it was that engaging but I had to live life and sleep; though I slept less near the end!
I did not read this edition but a Delphi Collection of his works which an insane amount of highlights and notes were taken. If interested look up my Trollope shelf above.
In this edition it gives a synopsis which I find a little misleading. Things were done in the government but not very much because items were not forwarded until the end of the term. The state of status quo was the mainstay activity.
"First published in 1876, the fifth Palliser novel narrates how the opposing Whigs and Tories form a fragile coalition government, with Plantagenet Palliser, the wealthy and hard-working Duke of Omnium, installed as Prime Minister. The Duchess, formerly Lady Glencora Palliser, attempts to support her husband by hosting lavish parties at Gatherum Castle in Barsetshire, a family residence barely used until now. Palliser is initially unsure that he is fit to lead, then grows to enjoy the high office, and finally becomes increasingly distressed when his government proves to be too weak and divided to accomplish anything. His own inflexible nature does not help."
My synopsis in brief- The Duke of Omnium is asked to be Prime Minister and the Duchess who is a strong character helps him or does she hinder? An unknown Englishman named Lopez looks to make his way in society with his choice of a rich man's daughter, Emily.
Emily will decide her own fate in life!
Can you read this by itself? Again I say yes as all in his series but YOU MISS OUT ON MANY THINGS THAT A TRUE LOVER OF DETAIL MUST HAVE TO ENJOY COMPLETELY!
Loved this and all his series but this is to be placed in my favorite shelf! I look forward to the last book in the series which I will begin early March! 💟💖💜💕
Also I found out in this book a question I regarding Prime Minister, Gresham. I was thinking this might be Frank Gresham from the Barestshire series but it was not the same man because Frank Gresham was present but not as the PM.
💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢
**** * ****Spoiler Alert*** ****
As I see more and more of Glencora and Palliser, I see they are quite different but quite completely suited for each other. She is a strong character which he generally lets her have her way which if she was married to a man who was more restrictive of female power would make her miserable. She brings him to reality yet neither can change the other person, we are as we are unless we so want to change.
I was glad that Emily came to her senses at the end and did not end up, obstinate Lily who I am still upset with her choice in the Barsetshire series.
Interesting about Lopez and the train station, I would not have thought this coming. We finally learn something about him, unlike he told others he did not know his parents, he knew his father. I saw how Trollope starts to soften us up even for the bad characters, so you go from liking, hating and then a kind of pity though he had a bad character.
You see how apolitical person is immersed in the political tent and sees that no matter what one does, it is to be not enough or too much. You see how certain personalities have a harder time because their skin is not thick enough to hear the bitter words said about them. You see, yes "The Press", thinking they know best for the public and putting their spin on things which can destroy a person completely innocent.
Also in this story it brings a man of unknown background and a foreign name with all the prejudice of just that. If the man be good then bigoted views are an extreme hindrance to him but if a man be evil, it brings these prejudicial forward much more. Times have changed, yet are the same. We can be more open but to shut one's eyes completely is both harmful and foolish. Let a man be judged by his action and character, not his looks or name, that is how it should be.
This story shows how detrimental a choice in a partner for life can effect a person when the one they choose brings them lower down. This part of the story was extremely suspenseful to the very end. Many times I was surprised the direction that was taken and I kept thinking of the Barsetshire series and a big disappointment that was certainly could be corrected except for obstinate behavior. You can never be sure how exactly Trollope will decide certain fates. A happy ending is not for all!
I could talk tons in this story but the more I say will give surprises away and that would be no fun for you! I could have read this straight through from 1/3 onward because it was that engaging but I had to live life and sleep; though I slept less near the end!
I did not read this edition but a Delphi Collection of his works which an insane amount of highlights and notes were taken. If interested look up my Trollope shelf above.
In this edition it gives a synopsis which I find a little misleading. Things were done in the government but not very much because items were not forwarded until the end of the term. The state of status quo was the mainstay activity.
"First published in 1876, the fifth Palliser novel narrates how the opposing Whigs and Tories form a fragile coalition government, with Plantagenet Palliser, the wealthy and hard-working Duke of Omnium, installed as Prime Minister. The Duchess, formerly Lady Glencora Palliser, attempts to support her husband by hosting lavish parties at Gatherum Castle in Barsetshire, a family residence barely used until now. Palliser is initially unsure that he is fit to lead, then grows to enjoy the high office, and finally becomes increasingly distressed when his government proves to be too weak and divided to accomplish anything. His own inflexible nature does not help."
My synopsis in brief- The Duke of Omnium is asked to be Prime Minister and the Duchess who is a strong character helps him or does she hinder? An unknown Englishman named Lopez looks to make his way in society with his choice of a rich man's daughter, Emily.
Emily will decide her own fate in life!
Can you read this by itself? Again I say yes as all in his series but YOU MISS OUT ON MANY THINGS THAT A TRUE LOVER OF DETAIL MUST HAVE TO ENJOY COMPLETELY!
Loved this and all his series but this is to be placed in my favorite shelf! I look forward to the last book in the series which I will begin early March! 💟💖💜💕
Also I found out in this book a question I regarding Prime Minister, Gresham. I was thinking this might be Frank Gresham from the Barestshire series but it was not the same man because Frank Gresham was present but not as the PM.
💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢
**** * ****Spoiler Alert*** ****
As I see more and more of Glencora and Palliser, I see they are quite different but quite completely suited for each other. She is a strong character which he generally lets her have her way which if she was married to a man who was more restrictive of female power would make her miserable. She brings him to reality yet neither can change the other person, we are as we are unless we so want to change.
I was glad that Emily came to her senses at the end and did not end up, obstinate Lily who I am still upset with her choice in the Barsetshire series.
Interesting about Lopez and the train station, I would not have thought this coming. We finally learn something about him, unlike he told others he did not know his parents, he knew his father. I saw how Trollope starts to soften us up even for the bad characters, so you go from liking, hating and then a kind of pity though he had a bad character.
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December 21, 2020One of the main themes of Trollope's Palliser is about the challenges faced by Phineas Finn in British politics owing to his foreign background. In this novel, Phineas is a more marginal figure and it instead presents the figure of Ferdinand Lopez. Much of the early sections of the novel appear to follow a similar narrative arc to that trodden by Phineas, as Ferdinand's background creates opposition to his marriage proposal to Emily Wharton from her Tory father; "It was monstrous and out of the question that a daughter of the Whartons, one of the oldest families in England, should be given to a friendless Portuguese,—a probable Jew... the world as it was now didn't care whether its sons-in-law were Christian or Jewish;—whether they had the fair skin and bold eyes and uncertain words of an English gentleman, or the swarthy colour and false grimace and glib tongue of some inferior Latin race. But he cared for these things;—and it was dreadful to him to think that his daughter should not care for them."
However, in this case the Tory worldview proves correct, as Ferdinand is revealed after his marriage to be a a self-seeking, intriguing adventurer. As always with Trollope, his politics is a rather conservative form of liberalism which views foreign born city speculators while presenting the landed gentry with approval; after Lopez's descent into penury and suicide Emily eventually marries an English Tory MP. It's an odd conception for a novel where the Liberal Prime Minister declares that "You are a Liberal because you know that it is not all as it ought to be." If this novel suggests limits to Trollope's previously liberal stances towards Ireland and Judaism, it does present a more familiar view that women are poor judges of character and circumstance. Emily's foolish love for Ferdinand is matched by Lady Glencora's equally foolish attempts to propose him as a by-election candidate. As she complains at one point; "Of course I understand nothing, because I'm a woman."
The novel does have some conventional liberal propositions; Mill would have approved of the way the novel criticises Lopez's domination of Emily, if not her unstinting loyalty to him; "He was most desirous to make her subject to his will in all things, and quite prepared to exercise tyranny over her to any extent." Trollope is equally critical of the way Lopez's speculation leads the family of his partner into poverty; "You're a lady, and your father's a rich man, and your husband thinks no end of himself. And we're poor people, so it don't matter whether we're robbed and ruined or not. That's about it."
However, in this case the Tory worldview proves correct, as Ferdinand is revealed after his marriage to be a a self-seeking, intriguing adventurer. As always with Trollope, his politics is a rather conservative form of liberalism which views foreign born city speculators while presenting the landed gentry with approval; after Lopez's descent into penury and suicide Emily eventually marries an English Tory MP. It's an odd conception for a novel where the Liberal Prime Minister declares that "You are a Liberal because you know that it is not all as it ought to be." If this novel suggests limits to Trollope's previously liberal stances towards Ireland and Judaism, it does present a more familiar view that women are poor judges of character and circumstance. Emily's foolish love for Ferdinand is matched by Lady Glencora's equally foolish attempts to propose him as a by-election candidate. As she complains at one point; "Of course I understand nothing, because I'm a woman."
The novel does have some conventional liberal propositions; Mill would have approved of the way the novel criticises Lopez's domination of Emily, if not her unstinting loyalty to him; "He was most desirous to make her subject to his will in all things, and quite prepared to exercise tyranny over her to any extent." Trollope is equally critical of the way Lopez's speculation leads the family of his partner into poverty; "You're a lady, and your father's a rich man, and your husband thinks no end of himself. And we're poor people, so it don't matter whether we're robbed and ruined or not. That's about it."
April 27, 2012
Classic Trollope; more than one plot line running, a good villian, some interesting reflections on the Victorian parliamentary scene with a few identifiable caricatures (spot Disraeli anyone?), plenty of moves from town to country, a sprinkle of impossibly good characters and plenty of old favourites from previous books.
Lopez is a good villain; a stockbroker (Trollope was suspicious of the corruption of economics) and is sharply contrasted with Arthur Fletcher, his rival in love; and they are pitted against each other in a by-election. The most complex character is Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, who is the Prime Minister of the title. He has agonies whilst in high office because of his honesty and scrupulousness. contrast with his wife Lady Glencora who says that she should have been Prime Minister because she would have made the decisions he was unable to; she felt he would have been better as Chancellor.
Tolstoy rated this book very highly and both novels dealt with valuies and issues that were contemporary. There is a spectacular similarity to Anna Karenina, a suicide by train, both imagined without having read the others book at the time.
There are a host of well drawn minor characters and the plot lines are brought together well at the end.
Lopez is a good villain; a stockbroker (Trollope was suspicious of the corruption of economics) and is sharply contrasted with Arthur Fletcher, his rival in love; and they are pitted against each other in a by-election. The most complex character is Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, who is the Prime Minister of the title. He has agonies whilst in high office because of his honesty and scrupulousness. contrast with his wife Lady Glencora who says that she should have been Prime Minister because she would have made the decisions he was unable to; she felt he would have been better as Chancellor.
Tolstoy rated this book very highly and both novels dealt with valuies and issues that were contemporary. There is a spectacular similarity to Anna Karenina, a suicide by train, both imagined without having read the others book at the time.
There are a host of well drawn minor characters and the plot lines are brought together well at the end.
January 25, 2015
I didn’t mean to read ‘The Prime Minister’ quite so soon, or to rush through it quite so quickly, but I had to step back into Trollope’s world because there seemed to be so many old friends I wanted to see again, so many interesting new people to meet, so many intriguing things happening.
Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, was Prime Minister!
He headed a coalition government, and he had risen not so much as the result of his own charisma and ambition, more because there was no other candidate acceptable to all of the parties and willing to do the job. Now to rise to such a position is a great thing, but I feared for the new Prime Minister. He was too honest, too sensitive, and too unwilling to compromise his principles. Wonderful qualities in so many ways, but qualities you would want in a right-hand man, that would make you want to pick him for your team or hold him up as a role model; but not qualities that would make him a great leader of men.
The Duchess of Omnium – the erstwhile Lady Glencora Palliser – on the other hand was in her element. She would entertain, she would socialise, she would intrigue. She would play her part to the full, and she was in so many ways a far better politician that her husband. Never was it clearer that they loved each other but they would never quite understand each other.
It was lovely to watch them and to listen to them. And, maybe even better, were the conversations between the Duchess and her dearest friend Mrs Finn – the erstwhile Madame Max. That friendship is so well balanced and so well drawn.
The stories of the Duke and Duchess are set against – and entangled with – the stories of Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton.
Ferdinand Lopez was a handsome adventurer of Portuguese-Jewish descent. It was clear from the start that he was to be the villain of the piece, and he plotted and schemed to acquire wealth and rise up through society. He was determined to secure the hand of Emily Wharton, the daughter of a wealthy and successful barrister. Mr Wharton was firmly set against the match, and determined that his daughter would only marry the son of an English gentleman. He favoured Emily’s childhood friend Arthur Fletcher, but Lopez had her heart.
The deadlock was broken when Lopez, apparently, saved the life of Emily’s brother, and her father reluctantly consented to the marriage.
It was then that Lopez’s campaign escalated. He used his wife to extract significant sums of money from his father-in-law to fund speculations, he exploited – and cheated his lower class business partner. He has some successes but he had more failures, and put more and more pressure on his wife to extract more funds from her father. His attempt to enter the House of Commons, to established him as an English gentleman, fails and Arthur Fletcher takes the seat. he blames everyone but himself.
That had consequence for the Duchess of Omnium – who had been charmed by Lopez and so gave him her support – and in turn for the Prime Minister, who could not, would not, allow his wife’s name – or his principles – to be compromised.
Mr Wharton realised that when he dismissed Lopez’s suit he had neglected to consider other things that would make him an unsuitable husband for his daughter. He did what he could, Emily knew that she had to accept the consequences of her decision; the arc of the relationship between father and daughter was one of my favourite things about this novel.
As Lopez made his determined rise and when he came tumbling down he did a great deal of damage. When both his business and his marriage collapsed around him he made the most dramatic of exits. The repercussions of his actions though would be felt for a long, long time.
His end was inevitable, but the gap that he left was huge, he was such a fascinating, charismatic character. It took the story a while to re-establish itself without him.
But there is a whole world in this story, and the world continues to turn. I loved watching so much going on, at Westminster, in the town, in the country. The scope of the story is vast, and the author’s command of it is magnificent.
There are themes that are horribly relevant today – the consequences of coalition government, and the role the fourth estate – represented here by Mr Quintus Slide …..
There are many things that can be said about this book. I have come to see that Trollope accepted society’s norms and believed that they would continue to hold sway; that he could draw a good villain but he clearly gave much more time to the great and the good; that he gave consideration to how a gentleman should live and behave, and of the consequences of their social position and above all of marriage for women ……
Above all this is a wonderfully rich human drama.
The world that Trollope has created in the Palliser novels and the people that live in it are so very, very real.
I find it easy to simply accept it for what it is, and I love spending time there.
Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, was Prime Minister!
He headed a coalition government, and he had risen not so much as the result of his own charisma and ambition, more because there was no other candidate acceptable to all of the parties and willing to do the job. Now to rise to such a position is a great thing, but I feared for the new Prime Minister. He was too honest, too sensitive, and too unwilling to compromise his principles. Wonderful qualities in so many ways, but qualities you would want in a right-hand man, that would make you want to pick him for your team or hold him up as a role model; but not qualities that would make him a great leader of men.
The Duchess of Omnium – the erstwhile Lady Glencora Palliser – on the other hand was in her element. She would entertain, she would socialise, she would intrigue. She would play her part to the full, and she was in so many ways a far better politician that her husband. Never was it clearer that they loved each other but they would never quite understand each other.
It was lovely to watch them and to listen to them. And, maybe even better, were the conversations between the Duchess and her dearest friend Mrs Finn – the erstwhile Madame Max. That friendship is so well balanced and so well drawn.
The stories of the Duke and Duchess are set against – and entangled with – the stories of Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton.
Ferdinand Lopez was a handsome adventurer of Portuguese-Jewish descent. It was clear from the start that he was to be the villain of the piece, and he plotted and schemed to acquire wealth and rise up through society. He was determined to secure the hand of Emily Wharton, the daughter of a wealthy and successful barrister. Mr Wharton was firmly set against the match, and determined that his daughter would only marry the son of an English gentleman. He favoured Emily’s childhood friend Arthur Fletcher, but Lopez had her heart.
The deadlock was broken when Lopez, apparently, saved the life of Emily’s brother, and her father reluctantly consented to the marriage.
It was then that Lopez’s campaign escalated. He used his wife to extract significant sums of money from his father-in-law to fund speculations, he exploited – and cheated his lower class business partner. He has some successes but he had more failures, and put more and more pressure on his wife to extract more funds from her father. His attempt to enter the House of Commons, to established him as an English gentleman, fails and Arthur Fletcher takes the seat. he blames everyone but himself.
That had consequence for the Duchess of Omnium – who had been charmed by Lopez and so gave him her support – and in turn for the Prime Minister, who could not, would not, allow his wife’s name – or his principles – to be compromised.
Mr Wharton realised that when he dismissed Lopez’s suit he had neglected to consider other things that would make him an unsuitable husband for his daughter. He did what he could, Emily knew that she had to accept the consequences of her decision; the arc of the relationship between father and daughter was one of my favourite things about this novel.
As Lopez made his determined rise and when he came tumbling down he did a great deal of damage. When both his business and his marriage collapsed around him he made the most dramatic of exits. The repercussions of his actions though would be felt for a long, long time.
His end was inevitable, but the gap that he left was huge, he was such a fascinating, charismatic character. It took the story a while to re-establish itself without him.
But there is a whole world in this story, and the world continues to turn. I loved watching so much going on, at Westminster, in the town, in the country. The scope of the story is vast, and the author’s command of it is magnificent.
There are themes that are horribly relevant today – the consequences of coalition government, and the role the fourth estate – represented here by Mr Quintus Slide …..
There are many things that can be said about this book. I have come to see that Trollope accepted society’s norms and believed that they would continue to hold sway; that he could draw a good villain but he clearly gave much more time to the great and the good; that he gave consideration to how a gentleman should live and behave, and of the consequences of their social position and above all of marriage for women ……
Above all this is a wonderfully rich human drama.
The world that Trollope has created in the Palliser novels and the people that live in it are so very, very real.
I find it easy to simply accept it for what it is, and I love spending time there.
October 14, 2022
Although not passionate about politics, I have enjoyed following the various political careers over the course of this series. Now, after all these years, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium is Prime Minister. I'm far enough removed from this both in terms of location and time, to not be sure how accurate this depiction is, but it was certainly interesting!
The Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton is fascinating, well written, but again is antisemitic - this is occasionally almost balanced out by a quote that these views are becoming outdated, but the tropes are reinforced so quickly, and repeatedly, that I'm not sure what the purpose of those half-hearted counter arguments really was.
Almost all of the villains in this series do seem to be Jewish, and it's the one aspect that drains some of the fun from the series. It doesn't ruin them for me, I still appreciate the strengths, but it is noticeable and not really something that can be ignored. I haven't read enough from this era to know if this is the case due to the time period, or if it is Trollope's own personal prejudice seeping through the stories. However, I also wouldn't want these sections removed, because I feel it important to read a book as the author intended, faults and all. Lots to think about, good and bad,in regards to the Palliser series.
The Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton is fascinating, well written, but again is antisemitic - this is occasionally almost balanced out by a quote that these views are becoming outdated, but the tropes are reinforced so quickly, and repeatedly, that I'm not sure what the purpose of those half-hearted counter arguments really was.
Almost all of the villains in this series do seem to be Jewish, and it's the one aspect that drains some of the fun from the series. It doesn't ruin them for me, I still appreciate the strengths, but it is noticeable and not really something that can be ignored. I haven't read enough from this era to know if this is the case due to the time period, or if it is Trollope's own personal prejudice seeping through the stories. However, I also wouldn't want these sections removed, because I feel it important to read a book as the author intended, faults and all. Lots to think about, good and bad,in regards to the Palliser series.
October 19, 2016
This is the fifth novel in the Palliser series. It was a favorite of Tolstoy, and readers may notice the similarity of an incident in The Prime Minister to what is perhaps the most famous incident in Tolstoy's fiction. (It appears that each man wrote his relevant passage before the other's passage had appeared in print.)
Trollope focuses here on politics and marriage, and the compromises that can often be necessary to success in either, but can sometimes be destructive as well. Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, is asked to form, and does form, a coalition government. His wife, Lady Glencora, is now taking an active interest in political machinations as well. Theirs is a complicated marriage -- don't forget that when they were newly wed, Glencora almost ran off with Burgo Fitzgerald, in Can You Forgive Her? -- so it makes for a good story. They are older now and have reached the age when marriage becomes more alliance than romance.
Trollope devotes a good portion of his narrative to the career of Ferdinand Lopez, a career intertwined with the Pallisers, not least of all because Lopez himself is a candidate for a seat in Parliament. Lopez is another example of a favorite Trollope type. He is not a gentleman. And when non-gentlemen begin to make headway into what used to be the exclusive world of gentlemen, trouble always looms.
Like a lot of Trollope's later fiction, The Prime Minister is darker than some of his earlier fiction.
Trollope focuses here on politics and marriage, and the compromises that can often be necessary to success in either, but can sometimes be destructive as well. Plantagenet Palliser, now Duke of Omnium, is asked to form, and does form, a coalition government. His wife, Lady Glencora, is now taking an active interest in political machinations as well. Theirs is a complicated marriage -- don't forget that when they were newly wed, Glencora almost ran off with Burgo Fitzgerald, in Can You Forgive Her? -- so it makes for a good story. They are older now and have reached the age when marriage becomes more alliance than romance.
Trollope devotes a good portion of his narrative to the career of Ferdinand Lopez, a career intertwined with the Pallisers, not least of all because Lopez himself is a candidate for a seat in Parliament. Lopez is another example of a favorite Trollope type. He is not a gentleman. And when non-gentlemen begin to make headway into what used to be the exclusive world of gentlemen, trouble always looms.
Like a lot of Trollope's later fiction, The Prime Minister is darker than some of his earlier fiction.
September 16, 2021
Oh, man. So often Trollope's novels lack action. But this was a page-turner. Initially I was as gullible as Emily Wharton about her suitor Ferdinand Lopez. Trollope unveils the racial prejudice of her father, and I found myself on Team Lopez. Then, not so much.
Emily marries a man she is infatuated with, having no knowledge whatsoever of what he did for a living. What is your business, Ferdinand? Poor girl! That she should have been allowed to marry a man, and then to have to ask such a question! (It reminded me of my friend's troubled marriage: six months in she discovered that her husband believed himself incapable of sinning! Poor girl!)
The title is The Prime Minister. While the parliamentary details bored me, the dynamics of the Duke and Duchesses' marriage did not.
Emily marries a man she is infatuated with, having no knowledge whatsoever of what he did for a living. What is your business, Ferdinand? Poor girl! That she should have been allowed to marry a man, and then to have to ask such a question! (It reminded me of my friend's troubled marriage: six months in she discovered that her husband believed himself incapable of sinning! Poor girl!)
The title is The Prime Minister. While the parliamentary details bored me, the dynamics of the Duke and Duchesses' marriage did not.
August 10, 2021
I liked some of it. The politics in this one bored me. I found myself skimming near the end. The love triangle was interesting enough.
January 9, 2019
Goodreads lost this review from 2013:
Lady Glen (Duchess of Omnium to you) is an early Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in this, trying to build a Camelot from her husband's shaky government. While Parliament's sitting she hosts a different glitzy society dinner every evening at their charming Carlton Terrace home, filling it with beautiful fresh flowers and ices. During recess, everyone's invited down to Gatherum Castle where she's spent a fortune remodelling the gardens and on staff to run the thing almost like a hotel.
The Duke, our Prime Minister, has one word for it all: “vulgar”. Gasp! But he's just a nineteenth century guy married to a twentieth century girl, and she ain't going to let his prejudices stand in her way. He tells her not to meddle in the selection for the next candidate at Silverbridge. She does it anyway... and chooses the young male lead from the other plot ... Ferdinand Lopez.
Ferdinand Lopez is Jewish and Portugese. And a businessman. Gasp! But he went to the right schools, is a member of the right clubs, and, you know, they're all trying to be modern and cool with it ... until Emily Wharton – an English rose whose father happens to have about sixty thousand pounds a year and is sort of betrothed to her brother/cousin/nephew/whatever – falls in love. It's heartache, family angst, and huge heaps of prejudice and anti-semitism a-go-go.
There's some of the funnest ever Palliser moments in the third part. Top draw. But then the fourth feels a little unnecessary. The wet PM gets wetter, the wheels fall off Lady G's Camelot, and – inevitably – someone dies and makes someone we quite like but who was having a rough time an heir to a massive fortune. This is always happening in Trollope.
Bits I liked:
“She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.”
“For the moment there was not even a necessity to pretend that Home Rule was anything but an absurdity from beginning to end;”
“My patriotism just goes far enough to make me unhappy, and Lord Tyrone thinks that while Dublin ladies dance at the Castle, and the list of agrarian murders is kept low, the country is admirably managed.”
“It is easy for a man to say that he will banish care, so that he may enjoy the full delights of the moment. But this is a power which none but a savage possesses, - or perhaps an Irishman.”
“'The thing is to be happy if you can,' said Arthur.
'No; - that is not the thing. I'm not much of a philosopher, but as far as I can see there are two philosophies in the world. The one is to make one's self-happy, and the other is to make other people happy. The latter answers the best … Gird yourself up and go on with what you've got to do. Put your work before your feelings. What does a poor man do, who goes out hedging and ditching with a dead child lying in his house? If you get a blow in the face, return it if it ought to be returned, but never complain of the pain. If you must have your vitals eaten into, - have them eaten into like a man,'
… 'It does seem unmanly to run away because of a girl.'
'Because of anything! Stop and face it, whatever it is.' … The elder brother put his hand out and laid it affectionately upon the younger one's arm.”
“'Is it pride?' asked Sir Orlando.
'It may be shyness,' said the wise Boffin.'The two things are so alike you can never tell the difference. But the man who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister.'”
“The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalizing the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.”
“The major stood for a while transfixed to the place, and, cold as was the weather, was bathed in perspiration. A keen sense of having 'put his foot into it' almost crushed him for a time.”
“and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn't big enough, who was contented with a little box at Hornsey last summer,”
“Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle?”
“A Conservative in Parliament is, of course, obliged to promote a great many things which he does not really approve. … You can't have tests and qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly throttled by Radicals.”
“When a man is in difficulty about money, even a lie,—even a lie that is sure to be found out to be a lie,—will serve his immediate turn better than silence. There is nothing that the courts hate so much as contempt;—not even perjury.”
“'I will never say that I didn't do it;—but that it was my wife who did.'
'Adam said so,—because he chose to tell the truth.'
'And Adam has been despised ever since,—not because he ate the apple, but because he imputed the eating of it to a woman.'”
"'You're just as bad as all the rest, Mr. Finn, with your pretended secrecy. A girl with her first sweetheart isn't half so fussy as a young Cabinet Minister.'”
"'Such consummate impudence I never met in my life before!'
'Nor perhaps so much unprevaricating downright truth.'”
“'It seems to me that many men,—men whom you and I know,—embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions, but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them.'”
“'I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform.'”
“And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms.”
“Did he think that a woman was a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed, but for all purposes as good as new?”
"'I shall know why I pay this £500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me, … has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the injury which you had done.'
'Say it abroad. Say it everywhere.'
'No, Glencora.'
'Do you think that I would have you spare me if it was my fault? And how would it hurt me? Will it be new to any one that I have done a foolish thing? Will the newspapers disturb my peace? I sometimes think, Plantagenet, that I should have been the man, my skin is so thick; and that you should have been the woman, yours is so tender.'
'But it is not so.'
'Take the advantage, nevertheless, of my toughness. Send him the £500 without a word, ... Then if the papers talk about it—"
'A question might be asked about it in the House.'
'Or if questioned in any way,—say that I did it. Tell the exact truth. You are always saying that nothing but truth ever serves. Let the truth serve now. I shall not blench. Your saying it all in the House of Lords won't wound me half so much as your looking at me as you did just now.' … Pay this man the money, and then if anything be said about it, explain that it was my fault, and say that you paid the money because I had done wrong.'
'Cora,' he said, 'you do not quite understand it.'
'I never understand anything, I think,' she answered.
'Not in this case,—perhaps never,—what it is that a husband feels about his wife. Do you think that I could say a word against you, even to a friend?'
'Why not?'
'I never did. I never could. If my anger were at the hottest I would not confess to a human being that you were not perfect,—except to yourself.'
'Oh, thank you! If you were to scold me vicariously I should feel it less.'
'Do not joke with me now, for I am so much in earnest! And if I could not consent that your conduct should be called in question even by a friend, do you suppose it possible that I could contrive an escape from public censure by laying the blame publicly on you?'
'Stick to the truth;—that's what you always say.'
'I certainly shall stick to the truth. A man and his wife are one. For what she does he is responsible.'
'They couldn't hang you, you know, because I committed a murder.'
'I should be willing that they should do so. No;—if I pay this money I shall take the consequences. I shall not do it in any way under the rose. But I wish you would remember— … I wish you would think that in all that you do you are dealing with my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish that such division were possible. You say that I am thin-skinned.'
'Certainly you are. What people call a delicate organisation,—whereas I am rough and thick and monstrously commonplace.'
'Then should you too be thin-skinned for my sake.'
'I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as this is.'”
Lady Glen (Duchess of Omnium to you) is an early Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in this, trying to build a Camelot from her husband's shaky government. While Parliament's sitting she hosts a different glitzy society dinner every evening at their charming Carlton Terrace home, filling it with beautiful fresh flowers and ices. During recess, everyone's invited down to Gatherum Castle where she's spent a fortune remodelling the gardens and on staff to run the thing almost like a hotel.
The Duke, our Prime Minister, has one word for it all: “vulgar”. Gasp! But he's just a nineteenth century guy married to a twentieth century girl, and she ain't going to let his prejudices stand in her way. He tells her not to meddle in the selection for the next candidate at Silverbridge. She does it anyway... and chooses the young male lead from the other plot ... Ferdinand Lopez.
Ferdinand Lopez is Jewish and Portugese. And a businessman. Gasp! But he went to the right schools, is a member of the right clubs, and, you know, they're all trying to be modern and cool with it ... until Emily Wharton – an English rose whose father happens to have about sixty thousand pounds a year and is sort of betrothed to her brother/cousin/nephew/whatever – falls in love. It's heartache, family angst, and huge heaps of prejudice and anti-semitism a-go-go.
There's some of the funnest ever Palliser moments in the third part. Top draw. But then the fourth feels a little unnecessary. The wet PM gets wetter, the wheels fall off Lady G's Camelot, and – inevitably – someone dies and makes someone we quite like but who was having a rough time an heir to a massive fortune. This is always happening in Trollope.
Bits I liked:
“She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.”
“For the moment there was not even a necessity to pretend that Home Rule was anything but an absurdity from beginning to end;”
“My patriotism just goes far enough to make me unhappy, and Lord Tyrone thinks that while Dublin ladies dance at the Castle, and the list of agrarian murders is kept low, the country is admirably managed.”
“It is easy for a man to say that he will banish care, so that he may enjoy the full delights of the moment. But this is a power which none but a savage possesses, - or perhaps an Irishman.”
“'The thing is to be happy if you can,' said Arthur.
'No; - that is not the thing. I'm not much of a philosopher, but as far as I can see there are two philosophies in the world. The one is to make one's self-happy, and the other is to make other people happy. The latter answers the best … Gird yourself up and go on with what you've got to do. Put your work before your feelings. What does a poor man do, who goes out hedging and ditching with a dead child lying in his house? If you get a blow in the face, return it if it ought to be returned, but never complain of the pain. If you must have your vitals eaten into, - have them eaten into like a man,'
… 'It does seem unmanly to run away because of a girl.'
'Because of anything! Stop and face it, whatever it is.' … The elder brother put his hand out and laid it affectionately upon the younger one's arm.”
“'Is it pride?' asked Sir Orlando.
'It may be shyness,' said the wise Boffin.'The two things are so alike you can never tell the difference. But the man who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister.'”
“The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalizing the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.”
“The major stood for a while transfixed to the place, and, cold as was the weather, was bathed in perspiration. A keen sense of having 'put his foot into it' almost crushed him for a time.”
“and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn't big enough, who was contented with a little box at Hornsey last summer,”
“Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle?”
“A Conservative in Parliament is, of course, obliged to promote a great many things which he does not really approve. … You can't have tests and qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly throttled by Radicals.”
“When a man is in difficulty about money, even a lie,—even a lie that is sure to be found out to be a lie,—will serve his immediate turn better than silence. There is nothing that the courts hate so much as contempt;—not even perjury.”
“'I will never say that I didn't do it;—but that it was my wife who did.'
'Adam said so,—because he chose to tell the truth.'
'And Adam has been despised ever since,—not because he ate the apple, but because he imputed the eating of it to a woman.'”
"'You're just as bad as all the rest, Mr. Finn, with your pretended secrecy. A girl with her first sweetheart isn't half so fussy as a young Cabinet Minister.'”
"'Such consummate impudence I never met in my life before!'
'Nor perhaps so much unprevaricating downright truth.'”
“'It seems to me that many men,—men whom you and I know,—embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions, but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them.'”
“'I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform.'”
“And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms.”
“Did he think that a woman was a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed, but for all purposes as good as new?”
"'I shall know why I pay this £500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me, … has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the injury which you had done.'
'Say it abroad. Say it everywhere.'
'No, Glencora.'
'Do you think that I would have you spare me if it was my fault? And how would it hurt me? Will it be new to any one that I have done a foolish thing? Will the newspapers disturb my peace? I sometimes think, Plantagenet, that I should have been the man, my skin is so thick; and that you should have been the woman, yours is so tender.'
'But it is not so.'
'Take the advantage, nevertheless, of my toughness. Send him the £500 without a word, ... Then if the papers talk about it—"
'A question might be asked about it in the House.'
'Or if questioned in any way,—say that I did it. Tell the exact truth. You are always saying that nothing but truth ever serves. Let the truth serve now. I shall not blench. Your saying it all in the House of Lords won't wound me half so much as your looking at me as you did just now.' … Pay this man the money, and then if anything be said about it, explain that it was my fault, and say that you paid the money because I had done wrong.'
'Cora,' he said, 'you do not quite understand it.'
'I never understand anything, I think,' she answered.
'Not in this case,—perhaps never,—what it is that a husband feels about his wife. Do you think that I could say a word against you, even to a friend?'
'Why not?'
'I never did. I never could. If my anger were at the hottest I would not confess to a human being that you were not perfect,—except to yourself.'
'Oh, thank you! If you were to scold me vicariously I should feel it less.'
'Do not joke with me now, for I am so much in earnest! And if I could not consent that your conduct should be called in question even by a friend, do you suppose it possible that I could contrive an escape from public censure by laying the blame publicly on you?'
'Stick to the truth;—that's what you always say.'
'I certainly shall stick to the truth. A man and his wife are one. For what she does he is responsible.'
'They couldn't hang you, you know, because I committed a murder.'
'I should be willing that they should do so. No;—if I pay this money I shall take the consequences. I shall not do it in any way under the rose. But I wish you would remember— … I wish you would think that in all that you do you are dealing with my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish that such division were possible. You say that I am thin-skinned.'
'Certainly you are. What people call a delicate organisation,—whereas I am rough and thick and monstrously commonplace.'
'Then should you too be thin-skinned for my sake.'
'I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as this is.'”
October 13, 2019
Let’s get this out of the way: Trollope was quintessentially a man of his times and surely believed in his heart of hearts that anyone not English was inferior, not to be trusted and probably a greasy Jew to boot. This attitude is not uncommon when one reads a lot of Victorian fiction. I love Trollope’s novels but that he was a chauvinistic xenophobe, there is no question in my mind. The only exception to this that I’ve encountered so far is Madam Max, though I get the feeling he didn’t trust her completely either; at least not at first. I think where Trollope’s real sympathies lie is with upper class women who are trapped by unfair marriage laws and conventions which is something most modern readers can get behind. In some ways The Prime Minister is a novel of two marriages.
Trollope starts off this fifth book in his Palliser series with the villain of the piece, one Ferdinand Lopez. As you can tell from the name, he is not English. One guess how Trollope feels about him. Lopez, who supports himself by speculating on the market, wants to marry Emily Wharton, the daughter of a rich English barrister and sister of his friend, the feckless Everett Wharton. Mr. Wharton is vehemently opposed to this proposal of marriage. Emily has another suitor who her father prefers, a family friend whom she’s known since childhood, Arthur Fletcher. Emily is strong willed and has a penchant for dark, smooth talking men; drama ensues. Emily displays some of stubborn qualities of Lily Dale from The Small House At Allington, which will make the average reader (me) want to slap her.
Parallel to the trials of Emily Wharton are the trials of Plantagenet Palliser and his wife, Lady Glencora (aka the Duke and Duchess of Omnium). When Palliser is put forth as Prime Minister of a coalition government, this new role tests his marriage as it has never been tested since its shaky beginnings when Palliser put his wife before his career and politics and whisked her off to the Continent in Can You Forgive Her? Palliser feels useless as fainant Prime Minister and Glencora wants to help him become the kind of man history books are written about, so she pulls out all the stops to become a social hostess par excellance, using all her charm and spending prodigious amounts of money to promote her husband, even if he barely shows at any of the dinners or balls or country weeks she arranges. If the Duke and Duchess of Omnium were more on the same page, they would be a power couple never seen before in 19th century England. They actually complement one another. But that conflict, he retiring, honest to a fault but thin-skinned and she gregarious, shrewd and thick-skinned is what fuels the novel.
I enjoyed, apart from the two main stories, the glimpses of characters from previous books…not just Mr. and Mrs. Phineas Finn but also there is mention of Lady Carbury and Mr. Broune last seen in The Way We Live Now and Frank Gresham from the Barsetshire Chronicles (specifically Dr. Thorne) has a small role as friend and advisor to Arthur Fletcher.
Trollope starts off this fifth book in his Palliser series with the villain of the piece, one Ferdinand Lopez. As you can tell from the name, he is not English. One guess how Trollope feels about him. Lopez, who supports himself by speculating on the market, wants to marry Emily Wharton, the daughter of a rich English barrister and sister of his friend, the feckless Everett Wharton. Mr. Wharton is vehemently opposed to this proposal of marriage. Emily has another suitor who her father prefers, a family friend whom she’s known since childhood, Arthur Fletcher. Emily is strong willed and has a penchant for dark, smooth talking men; drama ensues. Emily displays some of stubborn qualities of Lily Dale from The Small House At Allington, which will make the average reader (me) want to slap her.
Parallel to the trials of Emily Wharton are the trials of Plantagenet Palliser and his wife, Lady Glencora (aka the Duke and Duchess of Omnium). When Palliser is put forth as Prime Minister of a coalition government, this new role tests his marriage as it has never been tested since its shaky beginnings when Palliser put his wife before his career and politics and whisked her off to the Continent in Can You Forgive Her? Palliser feels useless as fainant Prime Minister and Glencora wants to help him become the kind of man history books are written about, so she pulls out all the stops to become a social hostess par excellance, using all her charm and spending prodigious amounts of money to promote her husband, even if he barely shows at any of the dinners or balls or country weeks she arranges. If the Duke and Duchess of Omnium were more on the same page, they would be a power couple never seen before in 19th century England. They actually complement one another. But that conflict, he retiring, honest to a fault but thin-skinned and she gregarious, shrewd and thick-skinned is what fuels the novel.
I enjoyed, apart from the two main stories, the glimpses of characters from previous books…not just Mr. and Mrs. Phineas Finn but also there is mention of Lady Carbury and Mr. Broune last seen in The Way We Live Now and Frank Gresham from the Barsetshire Chronicles (specifically Dr. Thorne) has a small role as friend and advisor to Arthur Fletcher.
August 24, 2023
Another excellent AT read! Although much of the politics went over my head, my respect for Plantagenet Palliser still stands and I am looking forward to the last book of the series.
The book had a very difficult and painful storyline which included anti-Semitism, voracious greed, and great sorrow. This twisted into another instance of annoying female obstinacy which Trollope seems to enjoy featuring. Lady Glencora was not a large part of this particular story, but she is just as pridefully stubborn and a bit annoying at times.
But still, I will continue with my new friend. There are many more ahead of me and for that I do not mind. 😊
The book had a very difficult and painful storyline which included anti-Semitism, voracious greed, and great sorrow. This twisted into another instance of annoying female obstinacy which Trollope seems to enjoy featuring. Lady Glencora was not a large part of this particular story, but she is just as pridefully stubborn and a bit annoying at times.
But still, I will continue with my new friend. There are many more ahead of me and for that I do not mind. 😊
September 2, 2022
Excellent book on the politics of the time, and then for one living with the choice that they made.
August 31, 2017
Sometimes, enough is just enough.
I've read through a plethora of 19th century books. Some bothered me. Some bothered me a great deal. Some bothered me only a little. But for some reason this one bothered me to the point that I was willing to chuck it at the wall and let it go.
I think in part it's Trollope's arch-conservativeness. As far as I can tell, in not a single one of the books I've read does he profess an idea that one could call liberal. That is in apparent and, to me, befuddling, contrast to his biography and the general admiration bestowed on him by everyone, in his time and after. I suppose it's possible that every single one of his novels is a satire, and the characters he lauds he secretly hates, but I don't see it.
This (apparent) archconservativism expresses itself in the stodgily bourgeois nature of his characters, at least the good ones. If you're not upper-upper-middle class, you're vulgar, shady, loose, or all three. The option of knowing and minding your place in a cap-in-your-hand sort of way is allowed, but that's basically it. Women of character are punished. Women who display character are punished too.
So of course Emily, who dares to display character against her profoundly prejudiced, unreasonable father is punished by falling into the hands and under the sway of a tyrannical, deceitful, money-grabbing, greedy foreigner, probably a Jew. Very probably a Jew. The words dirty foreign dark Portuguese Jew have repeated so often in the novel either spoken by characters or narrated that I was getting seriously uncomfortable. Nobody except Emily even thought of saying "hey, does that matter?" and, of course, Emily has been proven wrong. By the middle of the novel, Emily already thoroughly understood that there is "something" which can only be had in terms of manners, breeding and personal integrity that only the family of an English gentleman can produce.
Whew, seriously?
Not only is our grabby money-starved (probably) Jew all of these things, and a terrible abusive husband, he's also just terrible as a businessman, because Trollope can't really reconcile himself to the idea of what he calls speculation and we sort of tend to call "modern finance". Which I can understand, really, I just wish it were not so universal in his books.
As for the A-plot, the one concerning the actual eponymous Prime Minister, it's barely worth reading, it's so boring.
If this were a one-time event, I would probably tolerate both the perfect Mary Sue daughter who is punished for her rebellion, and the crusty (but somehow completely right and amazing) racist father, and even the greasy (I'm not joking) Jew, but it's not. The other books are all like that, so what am I supposed to think?
I've read through a plethora of 19th century books. Some bothered me. Some bothered me a great deal. Some bothered me only a little. But for some reason this one bothered me to the point that I was willing to chuck it at the wall and let it go.
I think in part it's Trollope's arch-conservativeness. As far as I can tell, in not a single one of the books I've read does he profess an idea that one could call liberal. That is in apparent and, to me, befuddling, contrast to his biography and the general admiration bestowed on him by everyone, in his time and after. I suppose it's possible that every single one of his novels is a satire, and the characters he lauds he secretly hates, but I don't see it.
This (apparent) archconservativism expresses itself in the stodgily bourgeois nature of his characters, at least the good ones. If you're not upper-upper-middle class, you're vulgar, shady, loose, or all three. The option of knowing and minding your place in a cap-in-your-hand sort of way is allowed, but that's basically it. Women of character are punished. Women who display character are punished too.
So of course Emily, who dares to display character against her profoundly prejudiced, unreasonable father is punished by falling into the hands and under the sway of a tyrannical, deceitful, money-grabbing, greedy foreigner, probably a Jew. Very probably a Jew. The words dirty foreign dark Portuguese Jew have repeated so often in the novel either spoken by characters or narrated that I was getting seriously uncomfortable. Nobody except Emily even thought of saying "hey, does that matter?" and, of course, Emily has been proven wrong. By the middle of the novel, Emily already thoroughly understood that there is "something" which can only be had in terms of manners, breeding and personal integrity that only the family of an English gentleman can produce.
Whew, seriously?
Not only is our grabby money-starved (probably) Jew all of these things, and a terrible abusive husband, he's also just terrible as a businessman, because Trollope can't really reconcile himself to the idea of what he calls speculation and we sort of tend to call "modern finance". Which I can understand, really, I just wish it were not so universal in his books.
As for the A-plot, the one concerning the actual eponymous Prime Minister, it's barely worth reading, it's so boring.
If this were a one-time event, I would probably tolerate both the perfect Mary Sue daughter who is punished for her rebellion, and the crusty (but somehow completely right and amazing) racist father, and even the greasy (I'm not joking) Jew, but it's not. The other books are all like that, so what am I supposed to think?
December 6, 2013
Lady Glen (Duchess of Omnium to you) is an early Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in Trollope's penultimate Palliser, trying to build a Camelot around her glorious husband's government. She hosts a different glitzy society dinner every evening at their charming Carlton Terrace home, filling it with beautiful fresh flowers and ices. And then, during recess, everyone comes down to Gatherum Castle where she's spent her fortune on new linen and remodeling the gardens.
The Duke, our Prime Minister, has one word for it all: "vulgar". Gasp! But he's just a nineteenth century guy married to a twentieth century girl, and she isn't one to let his prejudices stand in her way. He refuses to let her meddle in the election for the next member for Silverbridge ... and so she does it anyway. And chooses the young male lead from the novel's other plot ... Mr Ferdinand Lopez ...
Ferdinand Lopez is Jewish and Portuguese. Gasp! And a businessman. Gasp! But it isn't all bad, as he went to the right schools, is a member of the right clubs and, to their credit, everyone's trying to be modern and cool about him. Until Emily Wharton – an English rose whose father (more importantly) has about sixty thousand pounds – falls in love with him! There's a cousin who's always been in love with her (isn't there always?), and she's about to throw him over for a Portuguese Jew! It's heartache, family angst, and huge heaps of antisemitism a-go-go.
It's all very exciting, with some of the very best Palliser action in the third quarter of the book. Yowsers! After which the last quarter feels a bit flat and a bit ... "we’ve been here before" ... girls not marrying the man everyone knows they ought to ... likeable young chaps unexpectedly inheriting wealth and baronetcies.
Bits I liked:
"She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar."
"'The thing is to be happy if you can,' said Arthur.
'No; - that is not the thing. I'm not much of a philosopher, but as far as I can see there are two philosophies in the world. The one is to make one's self-happy, and the other is to make other people happy. The latter answers the best ... Gird yourself up and go on with what you've got to do. Put your work before your feelings. What does a poor man do, who goes out hedging and ditching with a dead child lying in his house? If you get a blow in the face, return it if it ought to be returned, but never complain of the pain. If you must have your vitals eaten into, - have them eaten into like a man,'
... 'It does seem unmanly to run away because of a girl.'
'Because of anything! Stop and face it, whatever it is.'
... The elder brother put his hand out and laid it affectionately upon the younger one's arm."
"'Is it pride?' asked Sir Orlando.
'It may be shyness,' said the wise Boffin. 'The two things are so alike you can never tell the difference. But the man who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister.'"
"The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalizing the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social."
In real life, I'm contented in a little box in Hornsey!:
"and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn't big enough, who was contented with a little box at Hornsey last summer,"
"Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle?"
"A Conservative in Parliament is, of course, obliged to promote a great many things which he does not really approve. ... You can't have tests and qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly throttled by Radicals."
"When a man is in difficulty about money, even a lie,—even a lie that is sure to be found out to be a lie,—will serve his immediate turn better than silence. There is nothing that the courts hate so much as contempt; — not even perjury."
"'I will never say that I didn't do it; — but that it was my wife who did.'
'Adam said so,— because he chose to tell the truth.'
'And Adam has been despised ever since, — not because he ate the apple, but because he imputed the eating of it to a woman.'"
"'You're just as bad as all the rest, Mr. Finn, with your pretended secrecy. A girl with her first sweetheart isn't half so fussy as a young Cabinet Minister.'"
"'Such consummate impudence I never met in my life before!'
'Nor perhaps so much unprevaricating downright truth.'"
"'It seems to me that many men, — men whom you and I know, — embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions, but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them.'"
"'I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform.'"
"“And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms."
"Did he think that a woman was a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed, but for all purposes as good as new?"
When we're not being rude about Portuguese Jews, Trollope's digging at Ireland and the Irish:
"“For the moment there was not even a necessity to pretend that Home Rule was anything but an absurdity from beginning to end;"
"My patriotism just goes far enough to make me unhappy, and Lord Tyrone thinks that while Dublin ladies dance at the Castle, and the list of agrarian murders is kept low, the country is admirably managed."
"It is easy for a man to say that he will banish care, so that he may enjoy the full delights of the moment. But this is a power which none but a savage possesses, - or perhaps an Irishman."
Lady G is so modern! If she hadn't been written in the nineteenth century, we'd think she was an anachronism!:
The Duke opens: "'I shall know why I pay this £500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me, ... has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the injury which you had done.'
'Say it abroad. Say it everywhere.'
'No, Glencora.'
'Do you think that I would have you spare me if it was my fault? And how would it hurt me? Will it be new to any one that I have done a foolish thing? Will the newspapers disturb my peace? I sometimes think, Plantagenet, that I should have been the man, my skin is so thick; and that you should have been the woman, yours is so tender.'
'But it is not so.'
'Take the advantage, nevertheless, of my toughness. Send him the £500 without a word, ... Then if the papers talk about it —"
'A question might be asked about it in the House.'
'Or if questioned in any way, — say that I did it. Tell the exact truth. You are always saying that nothing but truth ever serves. Let the truth serve now. I shall not blench. Your saying it all in the House of Lords won't wound me half so much as your looking at me as you did just now.' ... Pay this man the money, and then if anything be said about it, explain that it was my fault, and say that you paid the money because I had done wrong.'
'Cora,' he said, 'you do not quite understand it.'
'I never understand anything, I think,' she answered.
'Not in this case, — perhaps never, — what it is that a husband feels about his wife. Do you think that I could say a word against you, even to a friend?'
'Why not?'
'I never did. I never could. If my anger were at the hottest I would not confess to a human being that you were not perfect, — except to yourself.'
'Oh, thank you! If you were to scold me vicariously I should feel it less.'
'Do not joke with me now, for I am so much in earnest! And if I could not consent that your conduct should be called in question even by a friend, do you suppose it possible that I could contrive an escape from public censure by laying the blame publicly on you?'
'Stick to the truth; — that's what you always say.'
'I certainly shall stick to the truth. A man and his wife are one. For what she does he is responsible.'
'They couldn't hang you, you know, because I committed a murder.'
'I should be willing that they should do so. No; — if I pay this money I shall take the consequences. I shall not do it in any way under the rose. But I wish you would remember — ... I wish you would think that in all that you do you are dealing with my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish that such division were possible. You say that I am thin-skinned.'
'Certainly you are. What people call a delicate organisation, — whereas I am rough and thick and monstrously commonplace.'
'Then should you too be thin-skinned for my sake.'
'I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as this is.'”
The Duke, our Prime Minister, has one word for it all: "vulgar". Gasp! But he's just a nineteenth century guy married to a twentieth century girl, and she isn't one to let his prejudices stand in her way. He refuses to let her meddle in the election for the next member for Silverbridge ... and so she does it anyway. And chooses the young male lead from the novel's other plot ... Mr Ferdinand Lopez ...
Ferdinand Lopez is Jewish and Portuguese. Gasp! And a businessman. Gasp! But it isn't all bad, as he went to the right schools, is a member of the right clubs and, to their credit, everyone's trying to be modern and cool about him. Until Emily Wharton – an English rose whose father (more importantly) has about sixty thousand pounds – falls in love with him! There's a cousin who's always been in love with her (isn't there always?), and she's about to throw him over for a Portuguese Jew! It's heartache, family angst, and huge heaps of antisemitism a-go-go.
It's all very exciting, with some of the very best Palliser action in the third quarter of the book. Yowsers! After which the last quarter feels a bit flat and a bit ... "we’ve been here before" ... girls not marrying the man everyone knows they ought to ... likeable young chaps unexpectedly inheriting wealth and baronetcies.
Bits I liked:
"She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar."
"'The thing is to be happy if you can,' said Arthur.
'No; - that is not the thing. I'm not much of a philosopher, but as far as I can see there are two philosophies in the world. The one is to make one's self-happy, and the other is to make other people happy. The latter answers the best ... Gird yourself up and go on with what you've got to do. Put your work before your feelings. What does a poor man do, who goes out hedging and ditching with a dead child lying in his house? If you get a blow in the face, return it if it ought to be returned, but never complain of the pain. If you must have your vitals eaten into, - have them eaten into like a man,'
... 'It does seem unmanly to run away because of a girl.'
'Because of anything! Stop and face it, whatever it is.'
... The elder brother put his hand out and laid it affectionately upon the younger one's arm."
"'Is it pride?' asked Sir Orlando.
'It may be shyness,' said the wise Boffin. 'The two things are so alike you can never tell the difference. But the man who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister.'"
"The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalizing the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social."
In real life, I'm contented in a little box in Hornsey!:
"and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn't big enough, who was contented with a little box at Hornsey last summer,"
"Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle?"
"A Conservative in Parliament is, of course, obliged to promote a great many things which he does not really approve. ... You can't have tests and qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly throttled by Radicals."
"When a man is in difficulty about money, even a lie,—even a lie that is sure to be found out to be a lie,—will serve his immediate turn better than silence. There is nothing that the courts hate so much as contempt; — not even perjury."
"'I will never say that I didn't do it; — but that it was my wife who did.'
'Adam said so,— because he chose to tell the truth.'
'And Adam has been despised ever since, — not because he ate the apple, but because he imputed the eating of it to a woman.'"
"'You're just as bad as all the rest, Mr. Finn, with your pretended secrecy. A girl with her first sweetheart isn't half so fussy as a young Cabinet Minister.'"
"'Such consummate impudence I never met in my life before!'
'Nor perhaps so much unprevaricating downright truth.'"
"'It seems to me that many men, — men whom you and I know, — embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions, but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them.'"
"'I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform.'"
"“And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms."
"Did he think that a woman was a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed, but for all purposes as good as new?"
When we're not being rude about Portuguese Jews, Trollope's digging at Ireland and the Irish:
"“For the moment there was not even a necessity to pretend that Home Rule was anything but an absurdity from beginning to end;"
"My patriotism just goes far enough to make me unhappy, and Lord Tyrone thinks that while Dublin ladies dance at the Castle, and the list of agrarian murders is kept low, the country is admirably managed."
"It is easy for a man to say that he will banish care, so that he may enjoy the full delights of the moment. But this is a power which none but a savage possesses, - or perhaps an Irishman."
Lady G is so modern! If she hadn't been written in the nineteenth century, we'd think she was an anachronism!:
The Duke opens: "'I shall know why I pay this £500. Because she who of all the world is the nearest and the dearest to me, ... has in her impetuous folly committed a grievous blunder, from which she would not allow her husband to save her, this sum must be paid to the wretched craven. But I cannot tell the world that. I cannot say abroad that this small sacrifice of money was the justest means of retrieving the injury which you had done.'
'Say it abroad. Say it everywhere.'
'No, Glencora.'
'Do you think that I would have you spare me if it was my fault? And how would it hurt me? Will it be new to any one that I have done a foolish thing? Will the newspapers disturb my peace? I sometimes think, Plantagenet, that I should have been the man, my skin is so thick; and that you should have been the woman, yours is so tender.'
'But it is not so.'
'Take the advantage, nevertheless, of my toughness. Send him the £500 without a word, ... Then if the papers talk about it —"
'A question might be asked about it in the House.'
'Or if questioned in any way, — say that I did it. Tell the exact truth. You are always saying that nothing but truth ever serves. Let the truth serve now. I shall not blench. Your saying it all in the House of Lords won't wound me half so much as your looking at me as you did just now.' ... Pay this man the money, and then if anything be said about it, explain that it was my fault, and say that you paid the money because I had done wrong.'
'Cora,' he said, 'you do not quite understand it.'
'I never understand anything, I think,' she answered.
'Not in this case, — perhaps never, — what it is that a husband feels about his wife. Do you think that I could say a word against you, even to a friend?'
'Why not?'
'I never did. I never could. If my anger were at the hottest I would not confess to a human being that you were not perfect, — except to yourself.'
'Oh, thank you! If you were to scold me vicariously I should feel it less.'
'Do not joke with me now, for I am so much in earnest! And if I could not consent that your conduct should be called in question even by a friend, do you suppose it possible that I could contrive an escape from public censure by laying the blame publicly on you?'
'Stick to the truth; — that's what you always say.'
'I certainly shall stick to the truth. A man and his wife are one. For what she does he is responsible.'
'They couldn't hang you, you know, because I committed a murder.'
'I should be willing that they should do so. No; — if I pay this money I shall take the consequences. I shall not do it in any way under the rose. But I wish you would remember — ... I wish you would think that in all that you do you are dealing with my feelings, with my heartstrings, with my reputation. You cannot divide yourself from me; nor, for the value of it all, would I wish that such division were possible. You say that I am thin-skinned.'
'Certainly you are. What people call a delicate organisation, — whereas I am rough and thick and monstrously commonplace.'
'Then should you too be thin-skinned for my sake.'
'I wish I could make you thick-skinned for your own. It's the only way to be decently comfortable in such a coarse, rough-and-tumble world as this is.'”
April 5, 2023
I decided to read this book because scholars agree “The Prime Minister” is the “English novel” that Anna Karenina was reading in the train and which, according to some interpretation, was partly responsible for her adulterous behavior.
Perhaps this was not the ideal intro to Trollope, since it is number 5 in his Palliser saga, but works as a stand alone also.
Because I read this as related to AK I found some similarities between both books. The suicide being an obvious one. Tolstoy said a real life suicide inspired Anna’s, but I’m sure Ferdinand’s end also contributed. The parallel structure of two alternating stories, one with a male the other with a female protagonist is also similar. The Prime Minister and Lev vs. Anna and Emily. But Emily is such a tiresome character! And the Prime minister is so pusillanimous!!! Tolstoy can writes circles around Trollope.
Trollope is also contemporary of Dickens and,having just finished David Copperfield, the comparison between both authors is impossible to elude. Trollope loses. There are many reasons that I could spend a whole essay enumerating, but the main one for me is love. Dickens loves everyone of his creatures, Trollope is entertaining but detached. He does not especially love his characters and neither did I.
Aside from these inevitable comparisons/connections, these novel was entertaining but a bit odious. After just finishing the seasons quartet by Ali Smith I am especially sensitive to English xenophobia, and in this novel the outsider was such an amoral monster Trollope’s depiction was quite vomit inducing.
Perhaps this was not the ideal intro to Trollope, since it is number 5 in his Palliser saga, but works as a stand alone also.
Because I read this as related to AK I found some similarities between both books. The suicide being an obvious one. Tolstoy said a real life suicide inspired Anna’s, but I’m sure Ferdinand’s end also contributed. The parallel structure of two alternating stories, one with a male the other with a female protagonist is also similar. The Prime Minister and Lev vs. Anna and Emily. But Emily is such a tiresome character! And the Prime minister is so pusillanimous!!! Tolstoy can writes circles around Trollope.
Trollope is also contemporary of Dickens and,having just finished David Copperfield, the comparison between both authors is impossible to elude. Trollope loses. There are many reasons that I could spend a whole essay enumerating, but the main one for me is love. Dickens loves everyone of his creatures, Trollope is entertaining but detached. He does not especially love his characters and neither did I.
Aside from these inevitable comparisons/connections, these novel was entertaining but a bit odious. After just finishing the seasons quartet by Ali Smith I am especially sensitive to English xenophobia, and in this novel the outsider was such an amoral monster Trollope’s depiction was quite vomit inducing.
December 1, 2018
When the characters' xenophobia is justified by the events of the plot, it simply means that the author was more insular and xenophobic than his characters. Even though I suspect this fitted with the expectations of the target audience. And it's a pity, because the other major plot thread, which gave the book its title and made this really and truly a Palliser novel, was really good - best in the cycle so far, to my thinking. The personalities and ambitions of Plantagenet and Glencora received plenty of in-depth treatment which made me love the characters more than ever, and being based on politics improved rather than detracted from their story.
September 23, 2025
This is my first Trollope novel. I picked it up based on the innumerable recommendations it has received from luminaries (e.g. Leo Tolstoy, Robert Caro, John Podhoretz, etc). Trollope strikes me as a competent prose stylist and fastidious plotter, but he is not a singular talent. It is understandable that he's overlooked relative to other Victorian novelists: Eliot, Bronte, Wilde, Dickens, etc. I realize this novel isn't an optimal introduction to Trollope as it is near the end of the Palliser hexalogy. I should've perhaps have committed more completely to the series before jumping in headfirst. I believe the glowing recommendation are due to its portrait of reluctant leadership, which is something the Anglo tradition has long revered, though it is possibly a myth that we're leaving in the past.
I certainly see the appeal of this novel, but its style is too unremarkable and its stakes are too low to sustain its length. It's decidedly not a work of high fiction even if it is quite a realistic depiction of politics. Rather, it's designed to appeal to the upper-middle brow tastes of its time, which means its elevated relative to similar fare today, but it isn't a memorable exercise in the study of character even if the character scenarios are memorable in the history of fiction. In other words, most of the character motivations and self-knowledge are unchanged over the course of the novel and everything about the psychology at work is quite familiar to a PMC person of the 21st century. Nonetheless, it has had an important effect on the heights reached by the novel as an artform. Its influence on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and the indirect on Flaubert's Madame Bovary are clear.
What makes the Victorian era novel so great is its insistence on social plots. Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister (1876), the fifth of his Palliser novels, is no exception on this front. It interweaves political intrigue with domestic drama (perhaps an early and unwitting entrant in the crusade to destroy the public-private distinction), contrasting the world of power with the world of personal ambition. At its core stands the Duke of Omnium, Plantagenet Palliser, a man of unimpeachable integrity but no instinct for power politics. His elevation is not the result of personal ambition but of compromise and circumstance. He is the acceptable and available choice to lead otherwise fractious liberal and conservative coalitions. He's the man to hold things together during an otherwise unremarkable historical moment because of his neutrality and honesty (this often remains a popular approach to putting further leaders even among today's political parties). The novel follows his struggles to maintain authority and dignity in a position that ill suits his temperament. Despite being central, the Duke is a somewhat inert character.
Paralleling the Duke’s story is that of his wife, Lady Glencora, whose vivacity and social influence are both a boon and a burden. She longs to support her husband by hosting glittering social gatherings and widening his popularity, but her lively nature often clashes with his more austere sense of propriety. Their marriage, though founded on deep respect and loyalty, is challenged by these divergent dispositions. Trollope portrays their mutual devotion alongside the strains imposed by politics and personality, creating one of the most modern portraits of marriage in Victorian fiction.
The domestic subplot introduces Ferdinand Lopez (he's also the character the novels open up with), a financial speculator of foreign extraction, ambitious but unscrupulous. Although not the central figure and ultimately a selfish agent of chaos, Lopez feels like the most charismatic and dynamic character in the novel. He seeks to rise in society through political and marital advancement. He sets his sights on Emily Wharton, daughter of the respectable but stubborn Mr. Wharton. Despite her father’s objections (the basis of which is antisemitism masquerading as xenophobia and class snobbery) and the existence of a more honorable alternative suitor, Arthur Fletcher, Emily marries Lopez, dazzled by his charm and convinced of her independence of judgment. However, she soon discovers his selfishness, dishonesty, and reckless pursuit of wealth and position. Lopez’s attempt to secure a parliamentary seat with financial support from the Duke ends disastrously, embroiling the Prime Minister in scandal and exposing Lopez’s venality. Lopez’s career collapses, and his reckless speculations ruin him financially. He ultimately takes his own life (a scene that clearly left an impression on Tolstoy as it involves Lopez throwing himself in front of a train), leaving Emily in disgrace and sorrow.
Quickly, Emily is redeemed, though Trollope didn't dare drag her deep into the gutter with Lopez. Her slow return to stability, and the eventual reconciliation with Arthur Fletcher, serves as a moral counterpoint to the rise and fall of her husband. Through this arc, Trollope critiques the dangers of unbridled ambition, and the vulnerability of women in marriage. In this way, the novel's moral world is utterly liberal for the time. This liberal vision is also tempered by traditional moral scruples exemplified by the Duke.
By novel’s end, the Duke has resigned, relieved yet chastened. His tenure demonstrates the impossibility of holding and using political power without compromise, and his withdrawal underscores Trollope’s ambivalent view of political life. It's noble in ideal but ignoble in practice, a permanently fallen realm that can only work when populated with men of the highest moral character. The conclusion restores the duke to the sphere where he thrives. He is once again a husband devoted to his wife, his family, and his private sense of honor. Lady Glencora also emerges as both supportive and indispensable, her love counterbalancing his rigidity. She pays no real price for the trouble she causes her husband.
All told, Trollope has effectively plotted a complex web of social gambits while also blending in satire (Trollope would have lots of ridicule for day traders and bitcoin enthusiasts) and commentary on public and private issues of his day. The social commentary and political and domestic realism, distinguish The Prime Minister, though I think we are sorely in need of a modern re-reappraisal.
I certainly see the appeal of this novel, but its style is too unremarkable and its stakes are too low to sustain its length. It's decidedly not a work of high fiction even if it is quite a realistic depiction of politics. Rather, it's designed to appeal to the upper-middle brow tastes of its time, which means its elevated relative to similar fare today, but it isn't a memorable exercise in the study of character even if the character scenarios are memorable in the history of fiction. In other words, most of the character motivations and self-knowledge are unchanged over the course of the novel and everything about the psychology at work is quite familiar to a PMC person of the 21st century. Nonetheless, it has had an important effect on the heights reached by the novel as an artform. Its influence on Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and the indirect on Flaubert's Madame Bovary are clear.
What makes the Victorian era novel so great is its insistence on social plots. Anthony Trollope’s The Prime Minister (1876), the fifth of his Palliser novels, is no exception on this front. It interweaves political intrigue with domestic drama (perhaps an early and unwitting entrant in the crusade to destroy the public-private distinction), contrasting the world of power with the world of personal ambition. At its core stands the Duke of Omnium, Plantagenet Palliser, a man of unimpeachable integrity but no instinct for power politics. His elevation is not the result of personal ambition but of compromise and circumstance. He is the acceptable and available choice to lead otherwise fractious liberal and conservative coalitions. He's the man to hold things together during an otherwise unremarkable historical moment because of his neutrality and honesty (this often remains a popular approach to putting further leaders even among today's political parties). The novel follows his struggles to maintain authority and dignity in a position that ill suits his temperament. Despite being central, the Duke is a somewhat inert character.
Paralleling the Duke’s story is that of his wife, Lady Glencora, whose vivacity and social influence are both a boon and a burden. She longs to support her husband by hosting glittering social gatherings and widening his popularity, but her lively nature often clashes with his more austere sense of propriety. Their marriage, though founded on deep respect and loyalty, is challenged by these divergent dispositions. Trollope portrays their mutual devotion alongside the strains imposed by politics and personality, creating one of the most modern portraits of marriage in Victorian fiction.
The domestic subplot introduces Ferdinand Lopez (he's also the character the novels open up with), a financial speculator of foreign extraction, ambitious but unscrupulous. Although not the central figure and ultimately a selfish agent of chaos, Lopez feels like the most charismatic and dynamic character in the novel. He seeks to rise in society through political and marital advancement. He sets his sights on Emily Wharton, daughter of the respectable but stubborn Mr. Wharton. Despite her father’s objections (the basis of which is antisemitism masquerading as xenophobia and class snobbery) and the existence of a more honorable alternative suitor, Arthur Fletcher, Emily marries Lopez, dazzled by his charm and convinced of her independence of judgment. However, she soon discovers his selfishness, dishonesty, and reckless pursuit of wealth and position. Lopez’s attempt to secure a parliamentary seat with financial support from the Duke ends disastrously, embroiling the Prime Minister in scandal and exposing Lopez’s venality. Lopez’s career collapses, and his reckless speculations ruin him financially. He ultimately takes his own life (a scene that clearly left an impression on Tolstoy as it involves Lopez throwing himself in front of a train), leaving Emily in disgrace and sorrow.
Quickly, Emily is redeemed, though Trollope didn't dare drag her deep into the gutter with Lopez. Her slow return to stability, and the eventual reconciliation with Arthur Fletcher, serves as a moral counterpoint to the rise and fall of her husband. Through this arc, Trollope critiques the dangers of unbridled ambition, and the vulnerability of women in marriage. In this way, the novel's moral world is utterly liberal for the time. This liberal vision is also tempered by traditional moral scruples exemplified by the Duke.
By novel’s end, the Duke has resigned, relieved yet chastened. His tenure demonstrates the impossibility of holding and using political power without compromise, and his withdrawal underscores Trollope’s ambivalent view of political life. It's noble in ideal but ignoble in practice, a permanently fallen realm that can only work when populated with men of the highest moral character. The conclusion restores the duke to the sphere where he thrives. He is once again a husband devoted to his wife, his family, and his private sense of honor. Lady Glencora also emerges as both supportive and indispensable, her love counterbalancing his rigidity. She pays no real price for the trouble she causes her husband.
All told, Trollope has effectively plotted a complex web of social gambits while also blending in satire (Trollope would have lots of ridicule for day traders and bitcoin enthusiasts) and commentary on public and private issues of his day. The social commentary and political and domestic realism, distinguish The Prime Minister, though I think we are sorely in need of a modern re-reappraisal.
May 25, 2024
The Prime Minister is essentially two stories, loosely connected by a thin thread of plot, but strongly linked thematically. The first story involves Emily Wharton, a young woman from a wealthy family who marries Ferdinand Lopez, a suave man who turns out to be a scoundrel. The second focuses on our old friends Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser, now the Duke and Duchess of Omnium. The Duke becomes the Prime Minister of a successful coalition government, but crumples under the weight of public criticism when he becomes involved in a minor political scandal involving Lopez.
Both of these stories are about characters who make mistakes and, despite having opportunities to move on with their lives, cannot forgive themselves. Trollope is the ultimate humanist, and his depictions of Emily and the Duke are compassionate and realistic. In both cases, their obsessive thoughts about their mistakes, the way others view them, and their unworthiness to be granted any kind of happiness are easily recognizable to the modern reader as anxiety. In both cases as well, it is the support of family and true friends that allow the characters to eventually begin to repair themselves.
Each story also has its unique elements. In the Wharton plotline, Emily's father is initially very resistant to her marriage to Lopez because he is part Portuguese, might be Jewish, and doesn't come from a well-known family. We are all used to stories where prejudice blinds someone to a a person's virtues, but what's interesting in this case is that it blinds Mr. Wharton to Lopez's vices. He's so focused on Lopez's outer trappings that he doesn't take the time to know him and realize what a bad person he is—a quality totally independent of his ethnicity. When Emily eventually wears him down about the marriage, he consents without considering the things that really matter.
On the Palliser side, Trollope is very interested in politics, but always from a human angle. He explores what it takes to be a good prime minister, which essentially boils down to a thick skin and the ability to win others over. This is in contrast to the Duke's character, which is noble to the point of folly, industrious, and sensitive. I really liked the chapter where the Duchess talks about why she would make a better prime minister than her husband, if only their genders were reversed.
Both of these stories are about characters who make mistakes and, despite having opportunities to move on with their lives, cannot forgive themselves. Trollope is the ultimate humanist, and his depictions of Emily and the Duke are compassionate and realistic. In both cases, their obsessive thoughts about their mistakes, the way others view them, and their unworthiness to be granted any kind of happiness are easily recognizable to the modern reader as anxiety. In both cases as well, it is the support of family and true friends that allow the characters to eventually begin to repair themselves.
Each story also has its unique elements. In the Wharton plotline, Emily's father is initially very resistant to her marriage to Lopez because he is part Portuguese, might be Jewish, and doesn't come from a well-known family. We are all used to stories where prejudice blinds someone to a a person's virtues, but what's interesting in this case is that it blinds Mr. Wharton to Lopez's vices. He's so focused on Lopez's outer trappings that he doesn't take the time to know him and realize what a bad person he is—a quality totally independent of his ethnicity. When Emily eventually wears him down about the marriage, he consents without considering the things that really matter.
On the Palliser side, Trollope is very interested in politics, but always from a human angle. He explores what it takes to be a good prime minister, which essentially boils down to a thick skin and the ability to win others over. This is in contrast to the Duke's character, which is noble to the point of folly, industrious, and sensitive. I really liked the chapter where the Duchess talks about why she would make a better prime minister than her husband, if only their genders were reversed.
They should have made me Prime Minister, and have let him be Chancellor of the Exchequer. I begin to see the ways of Government now. I could have done all the dirty work. I could have given away garters and ribbons, and made my bargains while giving them. I could select sleek, easy bishops who wouldn't be troublesome. I could give pensions or withhold them, and make the stupid men peers. I could have the big noblemen at my feet, praying to be Lieutenants of Counties. I could dole out secretaryships and lordships, and never a one without getting something in return. I could brazen out a job and let the 'People's Banners' and the Slides make their worst of it. And I think I could make myself popular with my party, and do the high-flowing patriotic talk for the benefit of the Provinces. A man at a regular office has to work. That's what Plantagenet is fit for. He wants always to be doing something that shall be really useful, and a man has to toil at that and really to know things. But a Prime Minister should never go beyond generalities about commerce, agriculture, peace, and general philanthropy. Of course he should have the gift of the gab, and that Plantagenet hasn't got. He never wants to say anything unless he has got something to say. I could do a Mansion House dinner to a marvel!
Read
February 25, 2011I put this book down months ago, right in the middle of it. It wasn't engaging me enough at the time to finish it when I had other things I had to read for various reasons. When I came back to it, it sucked me right it. Either I put it down 2 pages before it got good, or I just wasn't in the mood.
Perhaps I had just read so much Trollope that I needed a little break so I could come back and appreciate him even more. Goodness, how I love his words!
Here are some themes in this book:
--How disrespecting the judgement of your elders (when they are respectable elders) can get you into big trouble/cause much misery--even when you think you are "in love"
--the meanness of jealousy, and how it shows YOU to be the idiot
--how you begin & continue to hate one whom YOU have wronged
--the difference between "manliness" and "deportment"
--on how real men don't run away (from their miseries or problems but act like men and show the world a brave face) and they don't howl(show their misery to everyone, again, putting a brave face on it for the sake of others)
--on how we can show an excess of grief and that it can actually be produced by pride and that sometimes we have to put it off and think of how our despondancy affects others who love us
--on the importance of really KNOWING the person you marry, before you marry them
--on trusting and protecting those you love
And more! As is common with Trollope, he delights in creating beautiful relationships and families. I love Emily's relationship with her father--it is particularly beautiful, and with her brother (and between father/son as well). I also love the brother relationship between Arthur & John Fletcher.They are good people, honest and loving, and FORGIVING and FORBEARING. As I have mentioned before, I just love that Trollope had such a gorgeous talent of creating real people, whom you could love and hate.
This book also has Trollope, through the Duke's words, expounding his own political view on politics and equality, and very interesting words they were.
Gosh, I've totally been focusing on the one part of the story, the Wharton family, completely forgetting the story of the Duke and Duchess of Omnium and their rise to stardom when he is made Prime Minister. I think that part of the book is what made it drag to me, the Duke's inward troubles while he performed his duties were lengthy passages. It was inteesting, but got over long. However, how they solved their problems and how they loved and stuck by each other was beautiful. I am SO looking foward to reading the end of their story in the next and last book of the Palliser series. I'll be sad to see it end.
Perhaps I had just read so much Trollope that I needed a little break so I could come back and appreciate him even more. Goodness, how I love his words!
Here are some themes in this book:
--How disrespecting the judgement of your elders (when they are respectable elders) can get you into big trouble/cause much misery--even when you think you are "in love"
--the meanness of jealousy, and how it shows YOU to be the idiot
--how you begin & continue to hate one whom YOU have wronged
--the difference between "manliness" and "deportment"
--on how real men don't run away (from their miseries or problems but act like men and show the world a brave face) and they don't howl(show their misery to everyone, again, putting a brave face on it for the sake of others)
--on how we can show an excess of grief and that it can actually be produced by pride and that sometimes we have to put it off and think of how our despondancy affects others who love us
--on the importance of really KNOWING the person you marry, before you marry them
--on trusting and protecting those you love
And more! As is common with Trollope, he delights in creating beautiful relationships and families. I love Emily's relationship with her father--it is particularly beautiful, and with her brother (and between father/son as well). I also love the brother relationship between Arthur & John Fletcher.They are good people, honest and loving, and FORGIVING and FORBEARING. As I have mentioned before, I just love that Trollope had such a gorgeous talent of creating real people, whom you could love and hate.
This book also has Trollope, through the Duke's words, expounding his own political view on politics and equality, and very interesting words they were.
Gosh, I've totally been focusing on the one part of the story, the Wharton family, completely forgetting the story of the Duke and Duchess of Omnium and their rise to stardom when he is made Prime Minister. I think that part of the book is what made it drag to me, the Duke's inward troubles while he performed his duties were lengthy passages. It was inteesting, but got over long. However, how they solved their problems and how they loved and stuck by each other was beautiful. I am SO looking foward to reading the end of their story in the next and last book of the Palliser series. I'll be sad to see it end.
January 10, 2014
Trollope always gives us more than one story - sometimes several stories. In this there are two stories that do loosely touch each other. I'm not sure either couldn't have been told without the other, and having them together made this quite long (it is the length only that has me shorting it a star). At the same time, having them together added an element to each that might not have happened had they been separate.
The story that is of the title provides us with a more complete characterization of Plantagenet Palliser than we have had before. In three of the four previous novels, he was somewhat of a background character, and in the fourth his wife, Lady Glencora, got the spotlight. As shy and aloof as he is, it's hard not to come to admire him. With this story are brought along many of the political characters we have seen in the Phineas Finn novels, including Mr. Finn himself.
The other story is of characters we have not seen before. Emily Wharton (written before Edith Wharton was even born, I thought how lucky we are that her name is Emily!) is a young and wealthy woman who doesn't seem especially enamored of the man who has been in love with her for several years.
Although all of the novels in this series can be read independently of the others, this one I would not recommend be read without having read the others. Trollope provides less back story that the reader would appreciate knowing.
The story that is of the title provides us with a more complete characterization of Plantagenet Palliser than we have had before. In three of the four previous novels, he was somewhat of a background character, and in the fourth his wife, Lady Glencora, got the spotlight. As shy and aloof as he is, it's hard not to come to admire him. With this story are brought along many of the political characters we have seen in the Phineas Finn novels, including Mr. Finn himself.
The other story is of characters we have not seen before. Emily Wharton (written before Edith Wharton was even born, I thought how lucky we are that her name is Emily!) is a young and wealthy woman who doesn't seem especially enamored of the man who has been in love with her for several years.
The beau ideal of a man which she then pictured to herself was graced, first with intelligence, then with affection, and lastly with ambition. She knew no reason why such a hero as her fancy created should be born of lords and ladies rather than of working mechanics, should be English rather than Spanish or French. The man could not be her hero without education, without attributes to be attained no doubt more easily by the rich than by the poor; but, with that granted, with those attained, she did not see why she or why the world, should go back beyond the man's own self.Beyond this, I'll not give you any spoilers: this work contains the most villainous, underhanded, despicable character I've encountered in Trollope. I wouldn't throw my kindle against the wall, and I surely wanted to see what would happen next.
Although all of the novels in this series can be read independently of the others, this one I would not recommend be read without having read the others. Trollope provides less back story that the reader would appreciate knowing.
October 5, 2016
The 5th book in the Palliser series introduces the reader to one of the darker characters in Trollope's Victorian world. One of the pleasures of reading this author is the complexity of the main characters. Heroes, heroines and villains are often portrayed with both admirable characteristics and flaws. In "The Prime Minister" we encounter many of the same characters from the previous four books and, for the first time, are introduced to the character of Ferdinand Lopez. Mr. Lopez is probably the most detestable character in the series, so far, but even he has one or two, albeit small, redeeming qualities (some might question this). I will confess that this one seemed to go on a little long and I found myself getting a little impatient in some of the later chapters. That said, my "Summer of Trollope" has been a great reading experience and I look forward to completing the series with "The Duke's Children". It is a pleasure to read such erudite political discourse at a time when, here in the United States, one of our Presidential candidates has lowered the standards of conduct to levels which are an embarrassment to its citizens. Cheers!
November 14, 2016
Saltando con un doppio carpiato la saga del Barsetshire di stampo ecclesiastico (che andrò a concedermi ormai sul prossimo anno) , ho preferito cimentarmi come lettura impegnativa di questo mese sulla cosiddetta serie "politica" di Anthony Trollope.
Nella bella edizione doppia Sellerio, ben 1.128 pagine di sonante britannicità, protagonista è Emily – coinvolta e travolta da un matrimonio sbagliato con un arrivista avventuriero, la cui vita travagliata è scandita dagli interessanti intermezzi politici, così spiccatamente attuali, che mai appesantiscono questo grande classico vittoriano di suprema bellezza.
Che maestria, che classe! a Trollope io mi inchino e lo ringrazio per le belle e intense settimane trascorse insieme! :)
Nella bella edizione doppia Sellerio, ben 1.128 pagine di sonante britannicità, protagonista è Emily – coinvolta e travolta da un matrimonio sbagliato con un arrivista avventuriero, la cui vita travagliata è scandita dagli interessanti intermezzi politici, così spiccatamente attuali, che mai appesantiscono questo grande classico vittoriano di suprema bellezza.
Che maestria, che classe! a Trollope io mi inchino e lo ringrazio per le belle e intense settimane trascorse insieme! :)
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