Framley Parsonage (Anthony Trollope, 1861)

Anthony Trollope. Framley Parsonage. Pub. 1861. Ed. Katherine Mullin and Francis O'Gorman. Oxford: World Classics, 2014.

• Serialized in the Cornhill 1/1860-4/1861, then 3 vol by Smith, Elder (see below)
• Good for: Cornhill intertextuality; 40 amazing description of the circulation of Mark's letter; 279 metafictive with periodical awareness; 385 a novel about the moral horror of credit -- an interesting spin on the economic marriage plot; 8, 192, 413 Trollope's moral vision; padding out Ch 7 to make it fit evenly to 3 vol format (in serial);

Overall impressions

I come away from FP struck by the evenness of its ethical perspective, the way that it imbricates the Austenian rural gentry marriage plot directly into the wider systems of politics, religion, and economics, and on that last point, the extended meditation on the dangers of the finance and credit economy at a point when those parts of the economy were first becoming more significant parts of its make-up. [Talk to Anna Kornbluh about this - credit and debt weighing on Mark's mind]. On a narrative rather level I'm again struck by Trollope the tally narrator who only once in a while inserts himself into the dieresis but generally situated himself so close to the narrated world. In terms of materiality, it's striking that Trollope leaves much of that un-narrated, leaving the bailiffs to implicitly catalogue the material world of Framley (could compare Roland Barthes' reality effect). Most often the material world is associated with women and domestic or marriage ceremony - the thingns of the men are money and horses. With writing, there's at least one interesting use of a letter to bend diegetic space and time, and the narration of Mark's letter from Gatherum's circulation which comically builds suspense. Something could be said about paper standing for wealth -- all Lufton has to do at the end is write on a piece of paper to make Mark's troubles essentially disappear.

General Notes

• I like the sense you get from Trollope of the connection of intimate, domestic relations a la Austen to wider political and cultural forces: political uncertainty after Crimean War, contested groups within the church and the relation of clergy to money
• Worth thinking about Dunstable's fortune, the capital shuttlecock of the narrative, being based on quack doctor, mass commodity skin cream
• Also the errors introduced by T writing at speed for publication in Cornhill: padding out Ch 27, the evenness of the plot to suit the 3 chapter installments
  • interesting too to think about Ruskin's Unto this Last being published in its pages (since both meditate on virtuous capitalism in different ways), and per the introduction of Thackeray writing about "Falling in Love" making what seems to be a facile comparison of Griselda and Lucy
• 8 significant description of Mark as neither Angel nor devil; "such as his training made him, such as he was"
• 22 deforestation
• 32: As Bowen says in his intro to Barchester Towers, the great theme of desire and shame in AT:

It is no doubt very wrong to long after a naughty thing. Nevertheless we all do long. One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam's fall. When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things. And ambition is a great vice,--as Mark Antony told us a long time ago,--a great vice, no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own advancement, and not the advancement of others. But then, how many of us are there who are not ambitious in this vicious manner? And there is nothing viler than the desire to know great people,--people of great rank, I should say; nothing worse than the hunting of titles and worshipping of wealth. We all know this, and say it every day of our lives. But presuming that a way into the society of Park Lane were open to us, and a way also into that of Bedford Row, how many of us are there who would prefer Bedford Row because it is so vile to worship wealth and title?

• 57ff Harold Smith's lecture arguing for understanding and "civilizing" Papua New Guinea
  • satirizing tension between church and civilization - might begin to compare to arnold
  • see below -- Tennyson's "Tithonus" follows this chapter in the Cornhill
• 58 "The aristocratic front row felt itself too intimate with civilization to care much about it"
• 65, 67 Mark's guilt
• 80-1 Mark signs a bill of accommodation for £400 for Sowerby
  • according to note, this makes Mark legally liable for that amount, and what Sowerby does is to use these bills as commodities in themselves
• 96 "I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world."
• 127 Mark's moderate clerical project
• 131 topical discussion of the payment of clergy, "an arrangement endowed with feudal charms"
  • with a relation back to The Warden (Trollope, 1855) and Barchester Towers
• 156-7 narrational technique: diegetic event -> general issue -> avuncular "I" narrative voice illustrating the point (compare Middlemarch (Eliot, 1872))
• 192 typical trollopian move: contrasting heroes in books with "heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear," there being no extremes here
• 198 Crawley's little girl learning Greek from books without covers - reminiscent of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss (1860
• 206 the persistent, ironic figuring of political turmoil in Greek mythological terms - giants and titans in the Conservative party
• 207 Supplehouse the journalist understands that people's interest in politics is personal, not policy based
• 213 "proper that the historian should drop a veil over their sufferings" interesting - that which is below narration
• 279 almost defensively metafictive, envisioning a critic criticizing Lufton as an imperfect hero
• what does other mid Victorian political fiction look like?
• 304 Fanny as a "true woman" when Mark admits his debts
• 308-10 how unfair and typical that Lady L blames Lucy for Lord L falling for her
• 319ff Lucy is quite movingly direct in confronting Lady L
• 328ff how does Crawley's pride fit into the character traits examined here? Who for instance is his balance in terms of humility? Lucy?
• 334 Duke as "great Llama" - note says interest in Tibetan Buddhism had been piqued in the late 1850s
• 339-40 interesting in an 1850s narrative to have landed gentry talking about saving themselves with nouveau riche money (Sowerby and Ms Dunstable that is)
• 356ff Dr Thorne's love letter to Ms Dunstable
• 360 Archdeacon Grantly's perception of middle class virtue opposed to aristocratic vice in Griselda's marriage to Dumbello
• 366 "having an establishment to keep up" a common euphemism for having a mistress
• 374 Fanny arguing for the unequal treatment of women in courting situations to Lady l
• 381 again almost Eliot-like in interpreting Mark's character for us
• 385 a novel about the moral horror of credit -- an interesting spin on the economic marriage plot
• 397 self pity isn't attractive, mark
• 413: Lady L says mark has been "very foolish...but also nothing worse." The measured moral vision of the book

Theme tracking

Reading/writing

• 40 entertaining description of the circulation of Mark's letter to Fanny (letter itself also significant)
• 80-1 The bill of accommodation Mark signs for Sowerby
• 127 Mark not the type of parson to denounce novel-reading
• 198 Crawley's little girl learning Greek from books without covers - reminiscent of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss (1860)
• 378 letter from Sowerby to Roberts being written and simultaneously read: stitching together diegetic time and space

Materiality

• 96 "insignificant chatter" about linen
• 190ish the materiel of becoming a prebendary
• 202 Lucy playing shop with the Crawley children - exchange value in domestic space
• 361-2 gender, literature, materiality in Griselda's wedding dress
• 399 Fanny's pride in the things in her drawing room making her send the bailiffs there first

Shakespeare references

• 31 "the labour we delight in physics pain" - Macbeth; bishop proudie about inviting the heiress miss dunstable to stay
• 32 "And ambition is a great vice,--as Mark Antony told us a long time ago,--a great vice, no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own advancement, and not the advancement of others." -- Julius Caesar
• 75 Et tu, Brute? -- Caesar
• 90 "Would be Benedicts" who would be suitors to Mark's sisters - Much Ado
• 127 Cakes and ale -Twelfth Night
• 193 "she never told her love, nor did she allow concealment to 'feed on her damask cheek' - Twelfth Night
• 195 a hawk from a heron - paraphrasing hamlet
• 234 Twelfth Night again associated with Lucy - concealment feed on her damask cheek, sitting like Patience on a monument
• 272 Angels and ministers - Hamlet
• 302 "filed his mind" Macbeth
• 383 cakes and ale Twelfth night again
• "his ass's ears were tickled" like bottom in Midsummer dream
• 433 top of his bent - hamlet

Cornhill Publication

• Published by Smith, Elder (George Smith) and first edited by Thackeray, "a name to conjure with" (Smith)
• serialized novel inaugurates the Cornhill in January 1860
• illustrations by John Everett Millais ("Lord Lufton and Lucy Robarts" facing Ch X in #4 April 1860)
  • UW copy (bound Volume 1 Jan-June 1860) doesn't have all illustrations (one facing first page of novel, for ex -- this isn't in the ProQuest version, either...)
• serialized with Thackeray's Lovel the Widower -- two novels rather than one was "novel" (Wellesley Index)
• #2 (February 1860, vol 1 ch. 4-6) framed by Thomas Hood's "To Goldenhair (from Horace)" and, most interestingly, Tennyson's "Tithonus" after ch. 6, when Harold Smith is lecturing about "civilizing" Papua New Guinea and making a satirical point about the tension between church and civilization:

"Oh, civilization! thou that ennoblest mankind and makest him equal to the gods, what is like unto thee?" Here Mrs. Proudie showed evident signs of disapprobation, which no doubt would have been shared by the bishop, had not that worthy prelate been asleep. But Mr. Smith continued unobservant; or at any rate, regardless. (173 Cornhill, ~58 in Oxford)

• • Gives a different gloss to "The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts" in "Tithonus"
  • First published here in Cornhill; Ricks quotes a letter from Tennyson: "My friend Thackeray and his publishers had been so urgent with me to sent them something, that I ferreted among my old books and found this Tithonus, written upwards of a quarter of a century ago..." (Tennyson ed. Ricks 1112)
    • "Tithonus" followed by an essay about Hogarth ("William Hogarth: painter, engraver, philosopher (Part I)") by George Augustus Sala
• Emily Bronte's "The Outcast Mother" in May 1860 issue
  • "The Portent" by George MacDonald follows - great engraving by WJ Linton (?)
• Thackeray positioning his aesthetic priorities for the fiction in his first essay (food metaphor), his response to good sales in "Victories" essay later