Cashing In

Trollope is excellent on money. He hasn't got Dickens's massive mythic power, but he knows how the stuff works, and to the degree to which we are all in thrall to its power.

Take this fine bit, from a uniformly fine much longer paragraph, on Mrs Greenow, one of the characters in the comic sub-plot of Can You Forgive Her?:

But she had already married for money once, as she told herself very plainly on this occasion, and she thought she might now venture on a little love. Her marriage for money had been altogether successful. The nursing of old Greenow had not been very disagreeable to her, nor had it taken longer than she had anticipated. She had now got all the reward that she had ever promised herself, and she really did feel grateful to his memory. I almost think that amongst those plentiful tears some few drops belonged to sincerity.

There's a refreshing, clubbable tolerance behind this clear-sighted analysis that you rarely find in the Victorian novel. Jane Austen has something of this, but her charity wouldn't extend to the Mrs Greenows of this world. Trollope's charity is central to his vision. I suppose that's why he tends to be regarded as a comfortable writer, peddling a kind of early version of the compassionate conservatism we've all come to roundly distrust. But I trust Trollope, because he doesn't hide from what money can and does do to people. Mrs Greenow is, in many ways, a dreadful woman, but she's also extremely likeable in her fashion.

By the way, the chap who wrote the rather snooty introduction to my edition of the novel (one Sir Edward Marsh, whoever he be, the edition being one of those natty little OUP World Classics in hardback that you don't see around anymore) thinks the entire Mrs Greenow plot is a waste of time and extraneous to the concerns of the novel. Never trust a Trollope fan, which is what he purports to be. Rarely has a major writer (and I think he is one, when on form) been so badly served by his 'supporters'. A bit like all those dreadful Jane-ites, I guess.