The Old Curiosity Club discussion

I think most of you are waiting for the last thread and since I have it ready, here it is:

Chapters 19-24

“For the man himself, the reader, it is hoped, will feel some compassion.” (Chapter 23)

Dear Curiosities,

I don’t know how you feel about our first Trollope novel here in the Curiosity Club, but I certainly feel amazed by the last part of Cousin Henry. Immediately after his interview with young Henry Jones, lawyer Apjohn, by both using psychology and ratiocination, comes to the conclusion that Isabel’s rival must still be in the possession of the will – being of too timid and undecided a nature as to destroy it unless he feels cornered – but that now, after this talk with his lawyer, there is quite some danger that Henry might get rid of the will after all. Mr. Apjohn surely knows his onions.

I was, as I said, amazed by the ending of the novel. Of course, it was a foregone conclusion that Isabel would end up the uncontested owner of Llanfeare and that we could expect what most people might think a happy ending, but I did not expect the kind of ending Trollope gave to the story, i.e. Apjohn taking the initiative by simply barging in on Cousin Henry one day before the trial, with Isabel’s father in tow, and then browbeat Henry at his own breakfast table. His way of taking stock of the books – his prior musings told him that the will must be somewhere in the library – and of considering what kind of literature his former client, Uncle Indefer, had preferred, and his decision to have a go at Taylor’s sermons was quite a surprise, as well as Cousin Henry’s final act of desperation and his grapple with Mr. Apjohn. It is hard to tell which feeling prevailed in Mr. Apjohn’s breast – his smug pride of having unravelled the mystery of the hidden will, his contempt for Cousin Henry or his satisfaction with having helped Isabel to come into the possession of the estate.

As to Henry, it was fascinating how carefully the narrator once again unfathomed the inner turmoil of this negatively depicted protagonist: His determination to destroy the will after all and then his readiness to procrastinate in order to buy time and live one more day without having committed the deed, which would mark some kind of Rubicon; his fears of eternal damnation and his attempts to bargain with God, and then his child-like feeling of being protected by his bed. After all, Mr. Apjohn proved a good winner and let him get off rather generously, making even sure that Isabel would pay him the £ 4,000 out of the estate.

How many novelists would have sacrificed a more suspenseful plot containing the redoubted duel between the craven cousin and the bullying Mr. Cheekey for the sake of the kind of realism we find in this story? Would Dickens have been able to resist the temptation? Trollope probably knew that quite often in life you are afraid of something which does not come off after all, and so he simply decided that there would be no libel suit and that Mr. Cheekey, whom, I bet, we all looked forward to meeting, given all the information the narrator provided us with, would remain off-stage. Neither did the narrator make use of the little detail about Isabel’s wanting some books to be sent to her – and so, in the end, Isabel remained quite a side character in comparison with Mr. Apjohn and her infamous cousin.

When she finally takes possession of the estate, she also takes possession of Mr. Owen – even though at first, she thought that this would be out of the question. What do you think of her way of making the dithering suitor marry her?

”’William,’ she said, ‘take me in your arms and kiss me. How often have you asked during the last month! Now I have come for it.’”

Say what you will, but Isabel Brodrick is light-years away from the more passive and submissive heroines we get in Dickens’s novels, and probably also quite different from how Victorian ladies were supposed to have behaved in a comparable situation.

Are you happy with the ending? Would you have wished more of a punishment upon the head of Cousin Henry? Would you have wished the eponymous hero to have given more of a fight? And what do you think of Mr. Apjohn’s hazardous game?

I won’t post a thread on the novel as a whole so that you may as well give your impression about the book in its entirety here. I can tell you that I really enjoyed this little book and that I am curious to learn about your reactions to it.

I feel Henry and Apjohn were the only well developed characters. As frustrated as one becomes with Henry, his weakness and turmoil was utterly believable. Henry's dilemma is what kept me reading. It seems Trollope focused on this being primarily a character study of Cousin Henry.

My initial reaction was disappointment with the conclusion. I felt it somewhat anticlimactic. I was left feeling cheated; what would Henry have done had he not inadvertently disclosed himself to Mr. Apjohn? It would have been far more satisfying to experience Henry under the hostile scrutiny of Mr. Cheeky. It was interesting to hear Tristram's take on the ending and ponder his reasonings as to why Trollope chose to close the story this way. I shall contemplate this some more.

Allowing Henry the £4,000 from the estate was generous. Seeing Henry sent off with a large sum of money was frustrating, as I began to turn on Henry in proportion to how he allowed the money to have a greater influence on his rationalisations.

I wonder how many of you caught it, or if you just glossed over it, as I did initially:

"...In anticipation of the future, that in due time an eldest son was born, that Llanfeare was entailed upon him and his son, and that he was so christened as to have his somewhat grandiloquent [great word!] name inscribed as William Apjohn Owen Indefer Jones."

What is is about men and their legacies? For heaven's sake.

I can't help but think this is one of those cases where the 19th century readers had innate understandings of primogeniture laws and traditions that gave them some insight into the subtleties of this story that I, as a 21st century American, will never quite understand. Why does Isabel have to take her uncle's name, even once she's married? And how sad is it that she must turn the estate over to Owen? (There really should have been a sequel in which we see Owen as the squire and he turns out to be worse than Henry.)

Like Jane, I felt let down by the ending. Red herrings everywhere! When Apjohn told Henry he'd still have to go to trial, I thought, "Oh ho! Things will now get interesting when Henry must still face Cheeky!" But, no. Then Owen didn't seek out Isabel, and I thought, "Ah ha! Isabel will not get her happily ever after, after all!" But, no. (And what an anti-climax that was! Poor Owen was not developed very well.) Finally, as someone who watches waaay too many movies, I thought for sure that when Apjohn left Isabel at Llanfeare, we'd have a final scene of her alone in the library, where she'd pull another book off the shelf containing the actual final will, leaving it all to Henry again, and get an evil smile on her face. That would have been delicious. But, no.

Sometimes the things that attract us to our spouse are also the things that drive us crazy about them. The same can be said of this story. Living in Henry's mind was maddening, but it also, in retrospect, was my favorite part of the story. I can see why Henry got the covetous space on the book's cover. I still don't get why Isabel had to turn Owen down, for being an heiress, and then for not being an heiress, but then could accept him once she was an heiress again. I'm totally befuddled.

Finally (at least for now), I was disappointed at the will's revelation. It all just came to Apjohn over time? Too convenient. Though it did provide Tristram with the opportunity to use the word "ratiocination", which I had to look up and am glad to know, at least for the next 10 minutes until I forget it again.

"Ratiocination" is a word I gleaned from Poe, to be more precise from his detective stories - and, interestingly, in The Purloined Letter the main situation is quite similar to the one in our novel here, where Henry decides to hide the book containing the will in a library. Had I been Henry, I would have trusted on two things: A - Hardly anyone would open a book of sermons when there are lots of other non-Austen books around. B - The Chances that someone opens a particular book diminish with the number of books that are around that particular book.

I can imagine that Mr Owen will make a not so good new squire because he allowed himself to be bullied and ditched by Isabel again and again. He can't have a lot of pluck.

I must confess that I did not bother too much about the name change Isabel had to go through because for me the story was over when the main conflict was solved as clearly, Henry was the most interesting person in the story in my eyes.

As to the ending that most certainly is anti-climactic: I definitely liked it because of the bathos that consisted in an elderly lawyer and an insignificant milksop tussling on the floor over the chance to get at a book and open it. Mary Lou's film version ending might be more satisfying to our expectations about fiction, but the ending devised by Trollope is certainly taken from real life.

Tristram wrote: ""I can imagine that Mr Owen will make a not so good new squire because he allowed himself to be bullied and ditched by Isabel again and again. He can't have a lot of pluck."

I think we know who'll be wearing the trousers!

I thought of Poe too, in regard to Apjohn's armchair detection.

Had the will been in a copy of Pride and Prejudice, Tristram, you might have gone to your grave a pauper, but someone else would have come across it fairly quickly.

My daughters know I tend to squirrel things away and have been told to go through things carefully when I go to my reward. One of them told me in no uncertain terms that I was NOT to hide anything in my books because there's no way they will leaf through all of them. And here I was, hoping they'd read and treasure each one! Harrumph.

I expected to see one last encounter between the cousins after the will was found, but Trollope chose not to have that meeting. In retrospect, I think that was a good choice. There's no scenario I can picture between the two of them that would have added to the ending. It does seem as if Henry's exit was another anticlimax, though. Again, in my Hollywood version, I might have Henry's carriage pass Isabel's as the church bells ring out her triumphant return, and he sinks uncomfortably lower in his seat.

I actually was rather disappointed in the ending. Not in what happened with the will, I fully expected that Isabel would gain the estate and Henry would move on his way. But I did expect Mr. Owen to stick to his guns and refuse to marry Isabel, leaving her alone in the huge house with her servants.
That was My Hollywood ending. Of course, there would be many fortune hunters coming around to marry her, I guess.

I really did enjoy this book especially the last half. I will definitely want to read more Trollope.

Tristram wrote: "Say what you will, but Isabel Brodrick is light-years away from the more passive and submissive heroines we get in Dickens’s novels, and probably also quite different from how Victorian ladies were supposed to have behaved in a comparable situation."




Yes, I think you're right, and then there's this part:

"Now I shall be your wife," she said at last, when her breath had returned to her.

"It should not be so."

"Not after that? Will you dare to say so to me,—after that? You could never hold up your head again. Say that you are happy? Tell me that you are happy. Do you think that I can be happy unless you are happy with me?" Of course he gave her all the assurances that were needed, and made it quite unnecessary that she should renew her prayer.

I think it's pretty safe to say no Dickens heroine would sexually ambush a man into marriage. I started this book as an Isabel fan and that is how I conclude it.

Tristram wrote: "As to the ending that most certainly is anti-climactic: I definitely liked it because of the bathos that consisted in an elderly lawyer and an insignificant milksop tussling on the floor over the chance to get at a book and open it."

Oh, absolutely. This scene made me want to see it as a film adaptation.

I am still on the fence about whether this book is very funny intentionally or by accident.

Mary Lou wrote: "I can't help but think this is one of those cases where the 19th century readers had innate understandings of primogeniture laws and traditions that gave them some insight into the subtleties of this story that I, as a 21st century American, will never quite understand."

One thing that was new to me was Apjohn's advice (which Isabel and co accepted) that they should restore the entailment on the male heir so they could avoid fiascos like the one they'd just gone through with the will uncertainty, and everyone in the family would always know where they stood going forward.

This goes against my meritocratic principles (not to mention the sexism of it), but it did help me to understand how people could defend something like entailment. I can't say I agree, but I do understand a little more that it might be seen as fostering stability.

Bobbie wrote: "I really did enjoy this book especially the last half. I will definitely want to read more Trollope."

Me, too.

What's wrong with entailment is it does what it does regardless of who is deserving and who is undeserving. Remember in Pride & Prejudice how one big reason mama Bennett was in such a rush to marry off her daughters was because the property was entailed?

As soon as papa Bennett died, the property would pass to the next male heir, and mama and her daughters would be thrown out into the street. This forced mama (and papa) to marry off their daughters even to undeserving men if it came to that. And all because they had only daughters.

The way I look at this story is uncle Indefer was acting like the living embodiment of entailment. He gave the property to an undeserving male heir, instead of to Isabel who deserved it and would have taken care of it. And why? To perpetuate the name. Tradition. Mindless tradition.

Having said that, in an agricultural community one does have to be careful about divvying up property among multiple heirs. Do that and after several generations no one has a plot of land large enough to live off. This, I believe, is what primogeniture protected against. It became the eldest son's responsibility to take care of siblings (and mother) if they needed caring for.

With this book I mostly loved to hate the characters. And to be totally honest, I am not sure if I would ever pick up a Trollope book again if it's not with a group like this one. While it was very interesting to have a look into Cousin Henry's mind for a while, it drudged on a bit too long for my liking.

For me the ending felt a bit anticlimactic too, for the already mentioned reasons. I do think that while Owens will be the squire in name, Isabel will still be the true squire. Just like she was when Uncle Indefer was still alive.

Xan wrote: "What's wrong with entailment is it does what it does regardless of who is deserving and who is undeserving. Remember in Pride & Prejudice how one big reason mama Bennett was in such a rush to marry..."

Right--Austen hates entailment to the male heir. Sense and Sensibility has a male heir who refuses to provide properly for his sisters and mother, so there you go. How it is supposed to work is often not how it works, and it's weird in Cousin Henry that nobody seems to notice this even though they are uniformly agreed that Isabel would make a better and more rightful heir than Henry.

Having said that, in an agricultural community one does have to be careful about divvying up property among multiple heirs. Do that and after several generations no one has a plot of land large enough to live off. This, I believe, is what primogeniture protected against.

In Ireland, for instance, Catholics for a long time were not allowed primogeniture: property had to be divided up between all the sons. This meant eventually there were almost no large Catholic estates, and given that you couldn't vote if you didn't meet a property threshold, this was an effective means of keeping Protestants politically dominant.

I suppose this was the kind of thing on Indefer's mind when he was thinking things through. Although the same purpose of not dividing the estate is served whether he leaves it to his nephew or his niece, so--I don't know, I don't think anyone ever sees Indefer as over-endowed in the brains department.

Fascinating info about the Catholics in Ireland, Julie. Thanks for sharing that.

In Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver touched on "hillbillies" being land-rich, and therefore self-sufficient in many ways, and the efforts to buy up their land in order to take power away from them. I'm not explaining it well, but Gerald O'Hara had it right when he said, "The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts."

Mary Lou wrote: "Fascinating info about the Catholics in Ireland, Julie. Thanks for sharing that.

In Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver touched on "hillbillies" being land-rich, and therefore self-sufficient in many wa..."

In the area I come from there is a saying, especially amongst rural populations, which goes, "Liebe vergeht, Hektar besteht". Rougly translated into English, it means, "Love fades, hectares endure." It's not very romantic, but I guess it is true.

My grandparents were always quite keen on acquiring land, and my grandmother would always say that it was good to buy land because it was the only thing they stopped making.