The Small House at Allington

(4.5 stars) A witty and incisive look at love, money, and marriage, this 1864 novel is the fifth of Anthony Trollope's six Barsetshire novels, with some of his best characters. Lily Dale, somewhat reminiscent of Jane Austen's women, lives with her widowed mother and sister Bell in the Small House on her uncle's estate. Both girls are of marriageable age, though they have no fortunes, and as the novel develops, the reader sees the extent to which marriage in Victorian England is often a business transaction, negotiated by families to ensure their daughters' welfare and continuing standard of living. Because Lily and Bell have no fortunes, their courtships become the primary vehicle through which Trollope examines the contrasts between marriages for love and marriages for convenience. When Lily falls hopelessly in love with Adolphus Crosbie, a young friend of her cousin Bernard, he returns her affection. Thinking that her uncle will give her a substantial dowry, Crosbie then proposes, and she accepts. When he discovers there will be no dowry, Crosbie suddenly wonders how he will support Lily in the manner to which he would like to become accustomed. One week after the betrothal, he has left Allington and become engaged to the wealthy, but cold, Lady Alexandrina De Courcy. Though the heartbroken Lily believes that she can never love another, the way she has loved Adolphus, she resolves (somewhat priggishly) to lead a good life and do good works. Her sister Bell refuses marriage to a cousin who had expected to to collect the dowry from their uncle. Other subplots continue this money/marriage theme. Johnny Eames, a young London clerk, loves Lily to the same degree that she loves Adolphus Crosbie, but he has made a rash promise to marry Amelia Roper, the daughter of his boarding house owner. Marriage to Johnny would greatly improve Amelia's way of life. As the fates of Lily, Bell, Adolphus Crosbie, Lady Alexandrina, Johnny Eames, Amelia Roper, and their parents and friends intertwine, Trollope depicts a cross-section of society, their attitudes toward love and marriage, and the economic impact of marriage. Minor characters reveal their attitudes toward work and their employers, and Trollope uses these to show sly parallels between marriage and work. Trollope, who comments on writing throughout the novel, has more in common with the social realism of George Eliot than with the melodrama of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. His use of Mrs. Roper, Amelia's mother, as a character with financial troubles is realistic without being maudlin, and Adolphus Crosbie, the bounder, is also realistic in his naive assumptions and his regrets. Filled with fascinating reflections on all levels of society, this novel also includes references to the Pallisers and to a few characters from previous Barsetshire novels. Outstanding, and thoroughly enjoyable. n Mary Whipple The Warden, #1 in the Barset series Barchester Towers (Penguin Classics), #2

Money was terribly important to Anthony Trollope who never quit his day job at the British Post Office but laboured industriously both at his novels and at his career in the British civil service. A typical Victorian civil servant in London worked from 10 to 4 for a little over a hundred pounds a year, wages with which a gentleman could pursue a comfortable life occupying a room in the city while dining at clubs, but wages at which he might not marry and raise a family without abandoning this high life. Having both required a much higher revenue, say a thousand a year. A family required a house not rooms, a carriage, not cabs, a housemaid for the wife not chores for the housewife. And there you know all you need to know of Adolphus Crowley, the man who jilts the novel's heroine, Lily Dale, when he learns she comes with no dowry. A hundred pounds a year also amounted to the wages of Doctor Crofts, a young country doctor with only poor patients. He feels it's not quite enough to allow him to pursue Bell, Lily's older sister. It was also the fantastic sum promised the wards of Hiram's Hospital in the earlier Barsetshire novel, the Warden. Johnny Eames, Lily Dale's other suitor, also belongs to the civil service but at somewhat under a hundred a year and lives in a boarding house in rather unpleasant company. And yet, money can't be everything. Lily Dale lives rent free with Bell and their widowed mother Mary in the small house of the title, while her bachelor uncle, the Squire of Allington whose land brings in some four thousand pounds a year, lives in the larger house. But when the childless uncle hints that their living there gives him some fatherly authority, the women refuse to recognize this and move out. On principle. We easily recognize Trollope in this careful working out of what actions are right and wrong, of how higher principles translate into practical everyday decisions. Trollope does paint his characters with more contrast here than in his other Barsetshire novels, making his villain a little more villainous than Sowerby in Framley Parsonage and his heroine Lily Dale purer than Mary Thorne in Doctor Thorne. But I can't say I liked Lily very much. I certainly sympathized with her plight and admired her fortitude, but I think Trollope idealized her too much and turned fortitude to stubborness. Fortunately, other characters make up for a priggish Lily. Since Trollope is Trollope, we end up sympathizing a little with the villain as he finds no solace in the woman for whom he left Lily. Uncle Christopher Dale relents somewhat in his position and acknowledges he loves his nieces, regardless of whatever duty he might or might not owe them. Johnny Eames, apparently more a more than slightly autobiographical character, grows up achieving something resembling manhood. And we meet Plantagenet Palliser, the hero of Trollope's other great series, the Palliser novels, who appears scandalously often with the young Lady Dumbello. What will

Beautiful book. Though it's the 5th book in the series, any newcomers to Trollope could profitably start here to get the flavor of the series.

The Small House at Allington, one of Trollope's Barsetshire novels of provincial life, does not require a familiarity with the other books in the series. Its plot device, much like the slightly superior Framley Parsonage, is to show the effects of poor choices and the way in which life sometimes gives folks pretty just desserts for the silly choices they make. As with all Trollope, though, the plot is a jaunty cover for his real theme, which is a social satire of his era in an effort to illumine human nature. Sometimes Trollope's plot devices had a different effect on the reader than he intended. Lily Dale, placed in the novel largely to illustrate the consequences attendant to self-willed dedication to victorian ideas of true love, in fact became a celebrated character in her time as an example of a perfect jilted lover. It is somewhat amusing reading the novel today, seeing how Trollope showed Lily as a stubborn girl from a stubborn family, stubbornly devoted to "Love", and then to think that in his time, Lily was seen as a perfect avatar of true love.This is a good read--lots of rich satire of persons of both high and low station. It is not Trollope's best, but it is a good read, and well worth a Sunday afternoon read. If you have not read Trollope, prepare for a richly human story laced with satire. If you have read Trollope, then expect a wit slightly less sharp but a story a bit more engaging than his others. His character Crosbie, the "villain" of sorts, is a fine creation, and this one is worth a read.

Lily Dale is sublimely happy when she becomes engaged to Adolphus Crosbie, assistant secretary in a government agency and a mortal Apollo to Lily. And Crosbie is happy too--while he is with Lily. But when he is invited to spend a week at Courcy Castle and is looked upon with favor by Lady Alexandrina De Courcy, the temptation to marry into a noble family is too much for him, and he becomes engaged for the second time in a few weeks.John Eames, a young government clerk, has loved Lily Dale for years. He longs to replace Crosbie in the jilted girl's affections, but she still loves Crosbie, despite his treachery. The ambitious Crosbie, however, soon finds that his aristocratic bride brings no money into the marriage, but maintains her expensive tastes. The marriage is a disaster from the start.As John Eames' fortunes rise and Crosbie's decline, the reader is led to believe, as all Lily's friends urge, that Eames will eventually win the heartbroken lass, but Lily stubbornly clings to her hopeless love.There are several subplots, some of them humorous, as Trollope's settings range from castle to rooming house, with vivid characters from varying social strata. As always, the characterizations are thorough and convincing. These are real people who behave realistically. Even when their actions seem surprising, they flow logically from the strong personal basis which the author has built into each character. Although the outcome is not nearly so pleasing as that of "Dr. Thorne," for instance, this book is a solidly enjoyable novel from one of the greatest literary series.