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Is He Popenjoy?

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Anthony Trollope's 47 novels contain many surprises, one of which is this delightful novel, which bears one of the most unlikely titles in all of literature. There is no better way to leave the megrims by the wayside than to immerse yourself into another time and place. Trollope was the Victorian story-teller par excellence. After having read a quarter of his vast output, I have yet to discover a clinker in the bunch.

A notorious curmudgeon, the Marquess of Brotherton has quitted England for the sunny shores of Italy. News filters back to his relatives that he has married an Italian and fathered a male heir, given the courtesy title of Lord Popenjoy. His mother and siblings are in a tizzy, as they are asked to quit the premises of the ancestral home to make way for a return of the prodigal head of the family with wife and heir.

It seems, however, that there is little news and much doubt about the legality of the Marquess's nuptuals; and therefore doubt as to whether his so-called son is actually the heir Popenjoy.

There is a delightful fox hunt (common to many of Trollope's novels), and a stormy marriage between the Marquess's young brother and a clergyman's daughter. She dares to dance the forbidden Kappa Kappa (the Lambada of its day) with a young wastrel, and raises the protective ire of every duenna within a hundred mile radius.

Look for some very amusing -- and controversial -- put-downs of the emerging feminist movement.

This is a good book to start reading Trollope. His two long series -- the Barsetshire and Palliser novels -- require a long commitment. Popenjoy is just right!

Trollope's best known novels are the Barchester series, which focuses on clerical life and church-related issues, and the Palliser series, which deals largely with politics. The lesser-known Trollope novels, however, include some of my personal favorites; they have little to do either with politicians or with the clergy, but are essentially comedies of manners.

In Trollope's Is He Popenjoy?, young Mary Lovelace is rich, pretty, innocent, and fond of having 'nonsense' spoken to her. Lord George Germain, younger brother to the Marquis of Brotherton, is exceedingly handsome, but also staid, stodgy, and short of money - and he has never spoken a word of nonsense in his life. His elder brother, who lives in Italy, is a bachelor; Lord George has therefore some expectations of eventually becoming the next Marquis. When he marries Miss Lovelace after a disappointment over another young lady - his cousin, Adelaide de Baron - the couple first live at Manor Cross with Lord George's widowed mother and his three spinster sisters. Lady Sarah, Lady Susannah, and Lady Amelia are virtuous women, but stodgy and severe like their brother, and not very congenial company for the young bride. Before approving the marriage, however, Mary's father, the Dean of Brotherton, stipulated that his daughter should have a house of her own in London and spend half of the year there.

In London, George is soon being pursued by his old flame Adelaide de Baron, now Mrs Houghton, while Mary starts a friendship with Adelaide's cousin, Captain de Baron - a young man adept at speaking the nonsense Mary so enjoys hearing. Captain de Baron understands the innocent nature of his intimacy with Mary ('more like that of children than grown people,' as he tells a mutual friend). Unfortunately, the friendship between Mary and the Captain is viewed as flirtation - or worse - not only by London society at large, but also by her own husband.

Meanwhile George's elder brother, the Marquis, has returned from Italy with an Italian wife, and a two-year-old heir of dubious legitimacy. The Marquis seems at pains to offend all his family and neighbors, and George is reluctantly drawn on by the Dean to launch a legal investigation into whether the Marquis's young son really has a right to be claimed as heir to the Brotherton title and property.

I generally enjoy Trollope, and I would have appreciated this novel much more if there had not been such a great many unpleasant characters in it - too many to make for very pleasant reading. Lord George's sisters are judgmental and officious, his mother tedious. Adelaide Houghton is a bit like Mansfield Park's Mary Crawford but without wit, charm, or redeeming qualities of any kind. As for the Marquis of Brotherton - just imagine the obnoxiousness of Northanger Abbey's John Thorpe multiplied tenfold. Worst of all, Lord George himself is quite unsympathetic; when reading the scenes in which he appeared, I could not help conjuring up a mental picture of the repellent Soames Forsyte from The Forsyte Saga.

As a second son, Lord George Germain is content to remain in the background. His elder brother, who has cast off those same cares and responsibilities, lives in Italy and depends on him to take care of the family lands and tenants. Though not the reigning Marquis, George enjoys living a quiet and repressed life in the family manor. He also enjoys the freedom to choose a bride and, after being disappointed in his first love because of his penury, finds solace in the wealthy arms of the local Dean's daughter, Mary Lovelace. Mary is an innocent, fun-loving girl with a vivid imagination who is doted upon by her father and dreams of being swept away by a romantic hero. Though George is quite different from her daydream knight, she accepts his offer of marriage and teaches herself that she will come to love him eventually.

George and Mary take up residence with George's mother and sisters at Manor Cross, where Mary is sorely tried by the prim and proper lifestyle and rigid moral standards. Luckily, a premarital stipulation made by her father requires Lord George to acquire a home in London for the season, where she wholeheartedly flees. She quickly finds herself in trouble there. Though innocent in nature, the friendship that she forms with a dashing young captain begins to stir up gossip that angers her husband. His jealousy is provoke and, though he's guilty himself of romantic intrigues with his former love, he becomes angry with Mary and her would-be suitor. A rift in their relationship quickly ensues and is made worse by the return of his elder brother with an Italian wife and a son whose parentage is brought into question. The Dean, afraid to lose the possibility that he will one day be grandfather to a Marquis, convinces George to begin a legal investigation into the identity and legitimacy of this newly arrived Lord Popenjoy (the name given to the Marquis' heir.) The probe is inconclusive but becomes a moot point when the little boy dies, followed soon after by his odious father, leaving behind the title to George and his offspring. Will the resolution of this problem free the way for George and Mary to resolve their differences? Will they be drawn together by the birth of their own heir? Or is Mary's new-found independence going to be a wall between them that will never fall?

Certainly not among Trollope's best works, this book was a bit tedious. Most of the characters are unlikable with few - or no - redeeming qualities. Even George and Mary are difficult to like. I would recommend the Barset novels and a few of the other of his works before encouraging anyone to read this one. However, I did find some little gems within its pages:

"It is not what one suffers that kills one, but what one knows that other people see that one suffers."

"The Baroness...seemed to have no hesitation in speaking of man generally as a foul worm who ought to be put down and kept under, and merely allowed to be the father of children."

"My idea of a perfect world is one where nobody would ever have to get up."

I think the Dean's love for his daughter, though a bit overdone, was especially touching. For instance, "Anything he might have said of myself I could have borne. He could have applied no epithet to me which, I think, could even have ruffled me. But he spoke evil of you....Then I was full of wrath...I did not even attempt to control myself; but I took him by the throat and flung him violently to the ground." and "In his own habits he was simple. The happiness of his life had been to see his daughter happy. His very soul had smiled within him when she had smiled in his presence."

"...the tidings must be untrue. And yet he believed and rejoiced in believing every word of them. He was a pious man, and did not know that he was lying. He was an anxious Christian, and did not know that he was doing his best to injure an enemy behind he back. He hated the Dean; but he thought that he loved him....thought that he was most anxious for the salvation of the Dean's soul." (How true this is of so many Christians today!)

"Each must give way to the other if there is to be any happiness." (My own parent's recipe for marital success.)

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us,--excepting Jones who has committed the one sin that we will not forgive, that we ought not to forgive."

This book is second-rate Trollope, but provides a first-rate look of what a Victorian mind is like -- from the inside. For in this book, Trollope seems to take for granted that primogeniture, female submission, and aristocracy are all good things, but Trollope is too good an author to permit his story to conform with his opinions: the aristocrats are largely fools; the eldest sons generally pale by comparison to their kid brothers; the women are almost all sharper than the men. Even so, the sense one gets reading this book is that Trollope approves of primogeniture, aristocracy, and the subjugation of women. It is almost as if Trollope has stretched outmoded Victorian morals as far as they can be stretched and it will take a pinprick to pop them altogether.

There are some familiar Trollopean themes here: how headstrong newlyweds can turn minor spats into a serious rupture (He Knew He was Right, Kept in the Dark), how artful women can manipulate weak-willed men (The Claverlings, Mrs. Hurtle in The Way We Live Now). The central plot, summarized in the quesion that makes up the title, introduces us to one of Trollope's most lovable rascals, the Marquis of Brotherton, lovable because his rascality is so straightforward and lacking in guile. The other plot is about a sombre, priggish, not terrible bright Lord George who tries to dominate his flighty wife (Cf. Can You Forgive Her?), but she can easily run circles around him. What makes this top-notch Trollope is the wonderful gallery of fools, scoundrels and schemers -- and some people who manage to be all three. The wit andd satire is sustained throughout. Trollope hated all reformers and do-gooders, but he especially
disliked feminists. Here he has great fund at the expensive of Baroness Banmann, Selina Protest and Antonia Q. Fleabody, who lecture at "The Rights of Women Institute, Established for the Relief of the Disabilities of Females", popularly known as "the disabilities".