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Authors: Anthony Trollope

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The Palliser Novels

BOOK: The Palliser Novels
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THE PALLISER NOVELS
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
CONTENTS

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?

 

 

PHINEAS FINN

 

 

THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS

 

 

PHINEAS REDUX

 

 

THE PRIME MINISTER

 

 

THE DUKE’S CHILDREN

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?
First published serially in 1864-1865
and in book form in 1864 (Volume I) and 1865 (Volume II)
CONTENTS
Volume I
 
I.  
Mr Vavasor and His Daughter
II.  
Lady Macleod
III.  
John Grey, the Worthy Man
IV.  
George Vavasor, the Wild Man
V.  
The Balcony at Basle
VI.  
The Bridge over the Rhine
VII.  
Aunt Greenow
VIII.  
Mr Cheesacre
IX.  
The Rivals
X.  
Nethercoats
XI.  
John Grey Goes to London
XII.  
Mr George Vavasor at Home
XIII.  
Mr Grimes Gets His Odd Money
XIV.  
Alice Vavasor Becomes Troubled
XV.  
Paramount Crescent
XVI.  
The Roebury Club
XVII.  
Edgehill
XVIII.  
Alice Vavasor’s Great Relations
XIX.  
Tribute from Oileymead
XX.  
Which Shall It Be?
XXI.  
Alice Is Taught to Grow Upwards,
Towards the Light
XXII.  
Dandy and Flirt
XXIII.  
Dinner at Matching Priory
XXIV.  
Three Politicians
XXV.  
In Which Much of the History of
the Pallisers Is Told
XXVI.  
Lady Midlothian
XXVII.  
The Priory Ruins
XXVIII.  
Alice Leaves the Priory
XXIX.  
Burgo Fitzgerald
XXX.  
Containing a Love Letter
XXXI.  
Among the Fells
XXXII.  
Containing an Answer to the Love Letter
XXXIII.  
Monkshade
XXXIV.  
Mr Vavasor Speaks to His Daughter
XXXV.  
Passion versus Prudence
XXXVI.  
John Grey Goes a Second Time to London
XXXVII.  
Mr Tombe’s Advice
XXXVIII.  
The Inn at Shap
XXXIX.  
Mr Cheesacre’s Hospitality
XL.  
Mrs Greenow’s Little Dinner in the Close
 
Volume II
 
XLI.  
A Noble Lord Dies
XLII.  
Parliament Meets
XLIII.  
Mrs Marsham
XLIV.  
The Election for the Chelsea Districts
XLV.  
George Vavasor Takes His Seat
XLVI.  
A Love Gift
XLVII.  
Mr Cheesacre’s Disappointment
XLVIII.  
Preparations for Lady Monk’s Party
XLIX.  
How Lady Glencora Went to
Lady Monk’s Party
L.  
How Lady Glencora Came Back
from Lady Monk’s Party
LI.  
Bold Speculations on Murder
LII.  
What Occurred in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall
LIII.  
The Last Will of the Old Squire
LIV.  
Showing How Alice Was Punished
LV.  
The Will
LVI.  
Another Walk on the Fells
LVII.  
Showing How the Wild Beast Got
Himself Back from the Mountains
LVIII.  
The Pallisers at Breakfast
LIX.  
The Duke of St Bungay in Search of
a Minister
LX.  
Alice Vavasor’s Name Gets into
the Money Market
LXI.  
The Bills Are Made All Right
LXII.  
Going Abroad
LXIII.  
Mr John Grey in Queen Anne Street
LXIV.  
The Rocks and Valleys
LXV.  
The First Kiss
LXVI.  
Lady Monk’s Plan
LXVII.  
The Last Kiss
LXVIII.  
From London to Baden
LXIX.  
From Baden to Lucerne
LXX.  
At Lucerne
LXXI.  
Showing How George Vavasor Received
a Visit
LXXII.  
Showing How George Vavasor Paid
a Visit
LXXIII.  
In Which Come Tidings of Great Moment
to All Pallisers
LXXIV.  
Showing What Happened in the Churchyard
LXXV.  
Rouge et Noir
LXXVI.  
The Landlord’s Bill
LXXVII.  
The Travellers Return Home
LXXVIII.  
Mr Cheesacre’s Fate
LXXIX.  
Diamonds Are Diamonds
LXXX.  
The Story Is Finished Within the Halls
of the Duke of Omnium

 

VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
Mr Vavasor and His Daughter
 

Whether or no, she, whom you are to forgive, if you can, did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand of this our English world, I am not prepared to say with any strength of affirmation. By blood she was connected with big people, — distantly connected with some very big people indeed, people who belonged to the Upper Ten Hundred if there be any such division; but of these very big relations she had known and seen little, and they had cared as little for her. Her grandfather, Squire Vavasor of Vavasor Hall, in Westmoreland, was a country gentleman, possessing some thousand a year at the outside, and he therefore never came up to London, and had no ambition to have himself numbered as one in any exclusive set. A hot-headed, ignorant, honest old gentleman, he lived ever at Vavasor Hall, declaring to any who would listen to him, that the country was going to the mischief, and congratulating himself that at any rate, in his county, parliamentary reform had been powerless to alter the old political arrangements. Alice Vavasor, whose offence against the world I am to tell you, and if possible to excuse, was the daughter of his younger son; and as her father, John Vavasor, had done nothing to raise the family name to eminence, Alice could not lay claim to any high position from her birth as a Vavasor. John Vavasor had come up to London early in life as a barrister, and had failed. He had failed at least in attaining either much wealth or much repute, though he had succeeded in earning, or perhaps I might better say, in obtaining, a livelihood. He had married a lady somewhat older than himself, who was in possession of four hundred a year, and who was related to those big people to whom I have alluded. Who these were and the special nature of the relationship, I shall be called upon to explain hereafter, but at present it will suffice to say that Alice Macleod gave great offence to all her friends by her marriage. She did not, however, give them much time for the indulgence of their anger. Having given birth to a daughter within twelve months of her marriage, she died, leaving in abeyance that question as to whether the fault of her marriage should or should not be pardoned by her family.

When a man marries an heiress for her money, if that money be within her own control, as was the case with Miss Macleod’s fortune, it is generally well for the speculating lover that the lady’s friends should quarrel with him and with her. She is thereby driven to throw herself entirely into the gentleman’s arms, and he thus becomes possessed of the wife and the money without the abominable nuisance of stringent settlements. But the Macleods, though they quarrelled with Alice, did not quarrel with her
à l’outrance
. They snubbed herself and her chosen husband; but they did not so far separate themselves from her and her affairs as to give up the charge of her possessions. Her four hundred a year was settled very closely on herself and on her children, without even a life interest having been given to Mr Vavasor, and therefore when she died the mother’s fortune became the property of the little baby. But, under these circumstances, the big people did not refuse to interest themselves to some extent on behalf of the father. I do not suppose that any actual agreement or compact was made between Mr Vavasor and the Macleods; but it came to be understood between them that if he made no demand upon them for his daughter’s money, and allowed them to have charge of her education, they would do something for him. He was a practising barrister, though his practice had never amounted to much; and a practising barrister is always supposed to be capable of filling any situation which may come his way. Two years after his wife’s death Mr Vavasor was appointed assistant commissioner in some office which had to do with insolvents, and which was abolished three years after his appointment. It was at first thought that he would keep his eight hundred a year for life and be required to do nothing for it; but a wretched cheeseparing Whig government, as John Vavasor called it when describing the circumstances of the arrangement to his father, down in Westmoreland, would not permit this; it gave him the option of taking four hundred a year for doing nothing, or of keeping his whole income and attending three days a week for three hours a day during term time, at a miserable dingy little office near Chancery Lane, where his duty would consist in signing his name to accounts which he never read, and at which he was never supposed even to look. He had sulkily elected to keep the money, and this signing had been now for nearly twenty years the business of his life. Of course he considered himself to be a very hardly-used man. One Lord Chancellor after another he petitioned, begging that he might be relieved from the cruelty of his position, and allowed to take his salary without doing anything in return for it. The amount of work which he did perform was certainly a minimum of labour. Term time, as terms were counted in Mr Vavasor’s office, hardly comprised half the year, and the hours of weekly attendance did not do more than make one day’s work a week for a working man; but Mr Vavasor had been appointed an assistant commissioner, and with every Lord Chancellor he argued that all Westminster Hall, and Lincoln’s Inn to boot, had no right to call upon him to degrade himself by signing his name to accounts. In answer to every memorial he was offered the alternative of freedom with half his income; and so the thing went on.

There can, however, be no doubt that Mr Vavasor was better off and happier with his almost nominal employment than he would have been without it. He always argued that it kept him in London; but he would undoubtedly have lived in London with or without his official occupation. He had become so habituated to London life in a small way, before the choice of leaving London was open to him, that nothing would have kept him long away from it. After his wife’s death he dined at his club every day on which a dinner was not given to him by some friend elsewhere, and was rarely happy except when so dining. They who have seen him scanning the steward’s list of dishes, and giving the necessary orders for his own and his friend’s dinner, at about half past four in the afternoon, have seen John Vavasor at the only moment of the day at which he is ever much in earnest. All other things are light and easy to him, — to be taken easily and to be dismissed easily. Even the eating of the dinner calls forth from him no special sign of energy. Sometimes a frown will gather on his brow as he tastes the first half glass from his bottle of claret; but as a rule that which he has prepared for himself with so much elaborate care, is consumed with only pleasant enjoyment. Now and again it will happen that the cook is treacherous even to him, and then he can hit hard; but in hitting he is quiet, and strikes with a smile on his face.

BOOK: The Palliser Novels
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