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| First Written | 1876 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN-10 | 0192811479 |
| My Copy | Oxford paperback set |
| First Read | March 24, 2022 |
The Prime Minister
And ditto on p 346 when they go to Richmond - this was just a day or two after I visited my friends in Richmond also. Synchronicity!
Noted on April 13, 2022
I read this partially on my March 2022 trip to the UK, and I got to the point about the assault in St. James Park along Birdcage Walk (~p 204 in my copy) just a day after I walked through the same park myself. That was fun!
Noted on April 13, 2022
Trollope is so good at describing situations of persistent grace. This isn't the first time where a character is too proud to accept some gift and has to be worn down by the long and consistent work of the people around who love them.
At the end of this one (spoilers!), the widow Emily is mourning her ill-advised marriage to Ferdinand Lopez. When he dies, her family persistently and gently pulls her out of mourning and into the true relationships that we’ve known she's always had. They don't undermine her mourning, but they help her finally allow some space for happiness in her life as well.
The note was struck in Can You Forgive Her?, where of course really the hardest part is if the person could ever forgive themselves. He’s got a fine touch for the actual work of forgiveness.
Noted on April 13, 2022
The fifth in the 'Palliser' series. It's split about 1/3 between the travails of Planty Palliser and his wife Glencora as they rise to the PM position, and 2/3 with some new characters, Emily Wharton's predictably disastrous romance with Ferdinand Lopez. These are so great; really hard to evaluate these as individual novels instead of one long superwork. This has to be one of the lesser in the series, but I still enjoyed every page.
Noted on April 13, 2022
He had never sworn at her before, and now she burst out into a flood of tears. It was to her a terrible outrage. I do not know that a woman is very much the worse because her husband may forget himself on an occasion and "rap out an oath at her," as he would call it when making the best of his own sin. Such an offence is compatible with uniform kindness and most affectionate consideration. I have known ladies who would think little or nothing about it,—who would go no farther than the mildest protest,—"Do remember where you are!" or, "My dear John!"—if no stranger were present. But then a wife should be initiated into it by degrees; and there are different tones of bad language, of which by far the most general is the good-humoured tone. We all of us know men who never damn their servants, or any inferiors, or strangers, or women,—who in fact keep it all for their bosom friends; and if a little does sometimes flow over in the freedom of domestic life, the wife is apt to remember that she is the bosomest of her husband's friends, and so to pardon the transgression.
Quoted on April 13, 2022
[Interesting to see a basic 'financialization' of trade described (and with such disdain): you don't actually need to buy and sell actual products like a shopkeeper, you can buy and sell an 'interest' in it.]
It was evident on that day to Sexty Parker that his partner was a man of great resources. Though things sometimes looked very bad, yet money always "turned up." Some of their buyings and sellings had answered pretty well. Some had been great failures. No great stroke had been made as yet, but then the great stroke was always being expected. Sexty's fears were greatly exaggerated by the feeling that the coffee and guano were not always real coffee and guano. His partner, indeed, was of opinion that in such a trade as this they were following there was no need at all of real coffee and real guano, and explained his theory with considerable eloquence. "If I buy a ton of coffee and keep it six weeks, why do I buy it and keep it, and why does the seller sell it instead of keeping it? The seller sells it because he thinks he can do best by parting with it now at a certain price. I buy it because I think I can make money by keeping it. It is just the same as though we were to back our opinions. He backs the fall. I back the rise. You needn't have coffee and you needn't have guano to do this. Indeed the possession of the coffee or the guano is only a very clumsy addition to the trouble of your profession. I make it my study to watch the markets;—but I needn't buy everything I see in order to make money by my labour and intelligence."
Quoted on April 13, 2022
He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.
Quoted on April 13, 2022
I give credit to my opponents in Parliament for that desire quite as readily as I do to my colleagues or to myself. The idea that political virtue is all on one side is both mischievous and absurd. We allow ourselves to talk in that way because indignation, scorn, and sometimes, I fear, vituperation, are the fuel with which the necessary heat of debate is maintained.
Quoted on April 13, 2022