Dave's Book Blog: "The Eustace Diamonds" by Anthony Trollope

This is the third in the Palliser series of novels (it follows Can You Forgive Her? and Phineas Finn and precedes Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children) but it stands alone, although there are occasional appearances by characters from the other novels and you might not want to read them out of order in case you discovered who married whom which would be a bit of a spoiler.

Lizzie Greystock is a scheming, lying minx who persuades Lord Eustace to marry her; he soon dies having fathered a son. She is left the income (£4,000) from the Scottish estate for life and, so she claims, a £10,000 diamond necklace. But lawyers for the estate claim that the necklace is an heirloom. All is set for a legal battle in which possession is nine-tenths of the law.

She also wants to marry again, to gain a protector. She catches penniless Lord Faun in her wiles but he then wants to withdraw from the engagement because of the potential scandal about the necklace. So she then sets her cap at her cousin, barrister and MP (and also penniless) Frank Greystock. But he has pledged himself to governess Lucy Morris though all his friends tell him that he must break off this engagement because he cannot afford to marry on his barrister's income whilst still having the expenses that accrue to an MP (unpaid in these days). Every man who comes close to Lizzie is captivated by her beauty and turned inside out by her verbal dexterity in which she recasts all their honourable motives as bad and makes them believe that the only thing that they can do is to marry her; if she will have them.

The legal complexities surrounding whether the necklace could have been a gift, and the will-he-won't-he surrounding Lizzie and her two lovers make up the essence of the plot on the long-winded first half od the novel.

About half way through the book, after a typically Trollopian invocation of the joys of fox-hunting (he was a keen hunter and liked to include a scene about hunting in every novel), we meet a set of penniless adventures Lord George, Sir Griffin, Mrs Carbuncle and her daughter Lucinda Roanoke, and the preacher Mr Emilius. With the arrival of this crew the story really takes off and the plot begins to develop. The second half of the book is more like a thriller in the style of Wilkie Collins while the first half was a very slow social comedy with a plot worthy of Jane Austen.

As with Austen, we are entirely within the world of gentility. The novel depends for much of its tension on whether Lord Faun or Frank Greystock will behave like gentlemen according to their code of honour. There is comedy when Frank inadvertently rides the horse of a merchant. The lower classes are either clowns or crooks. And Lizzie's wickedness stems from the way she uses her position as a lady to get away with lying (she is believed by a jury even after she admits lying on oath on a previous occasion) and, perhaps, with stealing.

Trollope exposes his anti-Semitic prejudices. Moneylenders are repeatedly associated with Jews and Mr Emilius is suspect despite being a Church of England preacher because he is suspected of Jewish roots: "the fashionable foreign ci-devant Jew preacher"; "The man was a nasty, greasy, lying, squinting Jew preacher"; he has a "hooky nose". These were, of course, the prejudices of Trollope's age and social context (as were the anti-lower class prejudices noted above) amd therefore can be explained and understood, if not necessarily pardoned. But it does reflect badly on this novel as a work of art, because the use of stereotypical characters is lazy writing (and lazy thinking).

The central character of Lizzie, a clever but manipulative woman who is transparently awful while at the same time being hypnotically alluring, fundamentally a heroine who believes her own lies, who thinks she is much put upon, forced to fight for what is rightfully hers, is excellent. Frank, the hero, is another complex character: a man who knows what he wants to do to secure his long-term happiness but is too weak not to be repeatedly tempted by Lizzie and by the general opinions of his class of society. Another good character is Lord Fawn, who wants to please everybody and, of course, ends up pleasing no-one. Mr Emilius, despite his unpleasantness, is sexually magnetic. Trollope can draw characters with strengths and weaknesses. But Lucy Morris is much too good to be true and most of the minor characters, such as kind Lady Fawn ("known as a miracle of Virtue, Benevolence, and Persistency"; Ch 3), or cross Lady Linlithgow, or conscientious Mr Camperdown, are one dimensional.

I first read this book in August 2015 and I enjoyed it. Trollope is still popular among today's genteel middle classes who form a, important part of the reading public. Why? Reading it again in July 2023, I find that Trollope is hugely flawed:

The first half is too long and too dry. The second half rattles along. Although, in terms of pacing, the principal turning point occurs almost exactly half way through, the slowness of the first half compared to the second unbalances the pace of the book.

He desperately needed an editor. Not only does he write at far too much length, but there are errors:

Frank Greystock is over thirty and simultaneously nearly thirty;
one of the key points of the plot hinges on whether the diamonds were taken from the jewellers in Scotland on 4th September or in London on 24th September but Trollope tells us that Lizzie's honeymoon lasted six weeks in Scotland which meant that she couldn't have been in London until mid-October making this key point, repeatedly mentioned, irrelevant;
in chapter 24 we are told that there are only "a few stunted trees around" Portray Castle because trees don't prosper but earlier Lizzie had been accused of cutting down a forest of old oaks.

Trollope writes using the omniscient point of view. The narrator's voice repeatedly intrudes from time to time:

"Although the first two chapters of this new history have been devoted to the fortunes and personal attributes of Lady Eustace, the historian begs his readers not to believe that that opulent and aristocratic Becky Sharp is to assume the dignity of heroine in the forthcoming pages." (CHAPTER 3 Lucy Morris)
"the poor narrator has been driven to expend his four first chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once the action of his story." (CHAPTER 4 Frank Greystock)

The intrusion of the author can be done with great effect. It can be Brechtian, reminding the reader that it is just a story. It can be a way of adding humour; Henry Fielding in Tom Jones does this. It can comment on the action. Trollope doesn't seem to have any coherent reason for his intrusions. It just adds words.

The concept of suspense seems alien to Trollope. The diamonds have vanished so Trollope immediately tells us where they are because "The chronicler states this at once, as he scorns to keep from his reader any secret that is known to himself." In chapter 12 of his Autobiography (1883), Trollope contrasts his 'realistic' novels with the 'sensationalist' novels of Wilkie Collins. "The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by the other are charmed by the continuation and gradual development of a plot." Which would be all very well if Trollope's characters actually had character development but they don't.

Trollope repeatedly flouts the dictum 'show, don't tell'. He shows and then he tells. From his omniscient narrator's point of view, he tells us the innermost thoughts of each of his principal characters. He describes their characters at length, in almost as much detail as he describes their physical characteristics. He leaves almost nothing to the reader's imagination. And if you haven't got it the first time round, he tells you again. And again.

And perhaps this is the secret of his success. The reader doesn't have to do any work. Thus, Trollope is accessible to all. He is the fiction equivalent of easy listening. You can just let Trollope waft over you. And, nowadays at least, because he is a Victorian novelist and therefore regarded as highbrow, you can claim literary bragging rights for having read him. But he wrote 47 novels and most of them were long: never mind the quality, count the quantity is a maxim that springs to mind.

At my U3A 'The English Novel' book group, we were asked to compare Lizzie Eustace with Becky Sharp, the bad-girl protagonist of Thackeray's Vanity Fair; Trollope himself makes this comparison. There is a difference. Becky Sharp was always a penniless chancer whereas Lizzie's post-widowhood crimes were committed even though she was comfortably off; Becky was eventually punished by society, being forced into poverty-stricken exile abroad, while Lizzie retired to a very comfortable Scottish seclusion.

We also learned that Trollope's mother was a prolific writer. We were told she wrote 114 books. Wikipedia itself only claims "over 100 volumes" (some books were published in multi-volume format) and lists 34 novels and 7 non-fiction works written between 1832 (when Mrs T was already in her 50s) and 1856 which gives a galloping rate of nearly two every year. Trollope set himself the target of writing 40 pages per week, about 10,000 words (I try to write 7,000 words per week but the majority of those don't make it into the final version). This is why, I believe, Trollope's work is careless, unstructured and paradoxically lazy: he simply didn't have time to create properly rounded minor characters from social strata witch which he was unacquainted.

Selected Quotes:

"It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies – who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two – that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself." (CHAPTER 1 Lizzie Greystock)
"Admiral Greystock ... was a man who liked whist, wine – and wickedness in general we may perhaps say, and whose ambition it was to live every day of his life up to the end of it. People say that he succeeded, and that the whist, wine, and wickedness were there, at the side even of his dying bed." (CHAPTER 1 Lizzie Greystock)
"It was a new pleasure, and one which, though he had ridiculed it, he had so often coveted." (CHAPTER 1 Lizzie Greystock)
"she had no idea what her money would do, and what it would not" (CHAPTER 2 Lady Eustace)
"They were long, large eyes – but very dangerous. To those who knew how to read a face, there was danger plainly written in them." (CHAPTER 2 Lady Eustace)
"How few there are among women, few perhaps also among men, who know that the sweetest, softest, tenderest, truest eyes which a woman can carry in her head are green in colour!" (CHAPTER 2 Lady Eustace)
"it is nicer to be born to £10,000 a year than to have to wish for £500." (CHAPTER 3 Lucy Morris)
"Her light-brown hair was soft and smooth and pretty. As hair it was very well, but it had no speciality." (CHAPTER 3 Lucy Morris)
"It frequently happens with men that they fail to analyse these things, and do not make out for themselves any clear definition of what their feelings are or what they mean. We hear that a man has behaved badly to a girl, when the behaviour of which he has been guilty has resulted simply from want of thought." (CHAPTER 4 Frank Greystock)
"His father was a fine old Tory of the ancient school, who thought that things were going from bad to worse, but was able to live happily in spite of his anticipations." (CHAPTER 4 Frank Greystock)
"To have been always in the right, and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism – and yet never to lose anything, not even position, or public esteem, is pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession that a man can have." (CHAPTER 4 Frank Greystock)
"There is, probably, no man who becomes naturally so hard in regard to money as he who is bound to live among rich men, who is not rich himself, and who is yet honest." (CHAPTER 9 Showing what the Miss Fawns Said, and what Mrs Hittaway Thought)
"he was slow and could not think and hear at the same time." (CHAPTER 10 Lizzie and her Lover)
"She looks like a beautiful animal that you are afraid to caress for fear it should bite you" (CHAPTER 12 I Only Thought Of It)
"The only doubt might be whether paste diamonds might not better suit her character." (CHAPTER 17 The Diamonds are Seen in Public)
"To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged, is a man’s delight; – to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman’s." (CHAPTER 18 And I Have Nothing to Give)
"But I get into debt, unfortunately; and as for other men’s wives, I am not sure that I may not do even that some day." (CHAPTER 19 As My Brother)
"The quickness with which she sprung from her position, and the facility with which she composed not her face only, but the loose lock of her hair and all her person, for the reception of the coming visitor, was quite marvellous." (CHAPTER 19 As My Brother)
"As a house it was not particularly eligible, the castle form of domestic architecture being exigeant in its nature and demanding that space, which in less ambitious houses can be applied to comfort, shall be surrendered to magnificence." (CHAPTER 21 ‘Ianthe’s Soul’)
"as the world goes now, young widows are not miserable" (CHAPTER 21 ‘Ianthe’s Soul’)
"It is pleasant to win in a fight; – but to be always fighting is not pleasant." (CHAPTER 21 ‘Ianthe’s Soul’)
"that strong indignation at injustice which the unjust always feel when they are injured." (CHAPTER 23 Frank Greystock’s First Visit to Portray)
"It is the debauched broken drunkard who should become a teetotaller, and not the healthy hard-working father of a family who never drinks a drop of wine till dinnertime." (CHAPTER 24 Showing what Frank Grey stock thought about Marriage)
"The outside world to them was a world of pretty, laughing, ignorant children; and lawyers were the parents, guardians, pastors and masters by whom the children should be protected from the evils incident to their childishness." (CHAPTER 28 Mr Dove in his Chambers)
"When you have your autumn holiday in hand to dispose of it, there is nothing more aristocratic that you can do than to go to Scotland. Dukes are more plentiful there than in Pall Mall, and you will meet an earl or at least a lord on every mountain." (CHAPTER 32 Mr and Mrs Hittaway in Scotland)
"how, my lord, would you, who are giving hundreds, more than hundreds, for this portrait of your dear one, like to see it in print from the art critic of the day, that she is a brazen-faced hoyden who seems to have had a glass of wine too much, or to have been making hay?" (CHAPTER 35 Too Bad For Sympathy)
"With whom are we to sympathize? says the reader, who not unnaturally imagines that a hero should be heroic." (CHAPTER 35 Too Bad For Sympathy)
"He had not eyes clear enough to perceive that his cousin was a witch whistling for a wind, and ready to take the first blast that would carry her and her broomstick somewhere into the sky." (CHAPTER 35 Too Bad For Sympathy)
"The nothing with which the dean had hitherto been contented had always included every comfort of life, a well-kept table, good wine, new books, and canonical habiliments with the gloss still on; but as the Bobsborough tradesmen had, through the agency of Mrs Greystock, always supplied him with these things as though they came from the clouds, he really did believe that he had never asked for anything." (CHAPTER 35 Too Bad For Sympathy)
"For five minutes, during which everybody else was speaking to everybody – for five minutes, which seemed to her to be an hour, Lizzie spoke to no one, and no one spoke to her." (CHAPTER 37 Lizzie’s First Day)
"I’m not a man who does things without thinking; and when I have thought I don’t want to think again." (CHAPTER 41 ‘Likewise the Bears in Couples Agree’)
"We never know where each other’s shoes pinch each other’s toes." (CHAPTER 54 ‘I Suppose I May Say A Word’)
"Perhaps, on the whole, more power is lost than gained by habits of secrecy." (CHAPTER 57 Humpty Dumpty)
"pleasures should never be made necessities, when the circumstances of a gentleman’s life may perhaps require that they shall be abandoned for prolonged periods." (CHAPTER 57 Humpty Dumpty)
"You may knock about a diamond, and not even scratch it; whereas paste in rough usage betrays itself" (CHAPTER 65 Tribute)
"There was a twang in his voice which ought to have told her that he was utterly untrustworthy. There was an oily pretence at earnestness in his manner which ought to have told that he was not fit to associate with gentlemen." (CHAPTER 66 The Aspirations of Mr Emilius)
"Mrs Carbuncle was much too strong, and had fought her battle with the world much too long, to regard such word-pelting as that." (CHAPTER 73 Lizzie’s Last Lover) Love word-pelting
"A man, to be a man in her eyes, should be able to swear that all his geese are swans; – should be able to reckon his swans by the dozen, though he have not a feather belonging to him, even from a goose’s wing." (CHAPTER 73 Lizzie’s Last Lover)
"I never was so sick of anything in my life as I am of Lady Eustace." (CHAPTER 80 What Was Said About It All At Matching)