On Trollope and England

Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

The history of England was a treasure store for Anthony Trollope. In the first volume of his fine biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero, there’s a moment where Trollope is describing the fragility of late republican Rome, the years during the rise of Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Ceasar, roughly 133-27 BC. Romans at the time were uncertain what the future would hold. To illustrate this point Trollope spirals off into reflection about England:

In all that man has done as yet in the way of government the seeds of decay are apparent when looked back upon from an age in advance. The period of Queen Elizabeth was very great to us, yet by what dangers were we enveloped in her days! But for a storm at sea we might have been subjected to Spain. By what a system of falsehood and petty tyrannies were we governed through the reign of James I and Charles I! What periods of rottenness and danger there have been since! How little glorious was the reign of Charles II, how full of danger that of William!—ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle! And today—are there not many who are telling us that we are losing the liberties which our forefathers got for us, and that no judgment can be passed on ‘save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation’? We are a great nation and the present threatenings are probably vain. Nevertheless the seeds of decay are no doubt inherent in our policies and our practices—so manifestly inherent that future historians will pronounce upon them with certainty.

In this paragraph, Trollope covers some 200 years, dashing from Elizabeth I (1533-1603) up to Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768), from the attack of the Spanish Armada in 1588 up to the Seven Years’ War which lasted from 1756-1763. And he compares all of these figures and events—their greatness, danger, bad weather, and absent glory—to his own present, that is 1880.

Aside from Trollope’s beautiful prose, I was first struck by his ease with England’s history. It was a knowledge that he shared with his readers. The narrow escapes and the ‘periods of rottenness’, to say nothing of the embattled ‘liberties’ of his present, were references that went without elaboration.

By the way, Trollope makes several other revealing mentions about his view of England which I must share. Cicero, he said, gave his life for a single word:

Respublica, the Republic… the one word which to his ear contained a political charm. It was the Shibboleth by which men were to be conjured into well-being. The word Constitution is nearly as potent with us.

I found this last remark fascinating. Constitution, not Parliament or Liberty or Empire was the watchword for himself and his readers.

At another point, Trollope said that the final stage of Cicero’s life was a steady descent toward assassination. The decline began after his single year as consul in 63 BC at 43 years of age. It lasted his remaining twenty years; a drawn out defeat. But a defeat, said Trollope, that was not unlike those meted out to others.

We are, I think, somewhat proud of the courage shown by public men of our country who have suffered either justly or injustly under the laws. Our annals are bloody and many such have had to meet their death. They have done so generally with becoming manliness. Even though they may have been rebels against the powers of the day, their memories have been made green because they have fallen like brave men. Sir Thomas More, who was no rebel, died well and crowned a good life by his manner of leaving it. Thomas Cromwell submitted to the axe without a complaint. Lady Jane Grey, when on the scaffold, yielded nothing in manliness to the others. Cranmer and the martyr bishops perished nobly. The Earl of Essex, and Raleigh, and Strafford, and Strafford’s master showed no fear when the fatal moment came. In reading the fate of each we sympathise with the victim because of a certain dignity at the moment of death. But there is, I think, no crisis of life in which it is so easy for a man to carry himself honourably as that in which he has to leave it.

Once again, Trollope reached for history. It was relevant because:

Cicero had that moment also to face; and, when it came, he was as brave as the best Englishmen of them all.

My lasting impression here was Trollope’s nuance and generosity. He regarded England’s history as one of heroes and heroines, inhabited with the likes of More, Cromwell, Cranmer, and Elizabeth I, attributing honour to Catholic and Protestant, rebel and loyalist alike. But he also thought this same history was haphazard, marked with just and unjust suffering, a tale of war, lawmaking, death and fear. There was even something taken from his martyrs when he remarked that their quiet nobility at the last was ‘easy’. To him, England’s history was not an inevitable climb, neither were his Englishmen faultless. He was critical of what he praised. He spoke, it seemed to me, with true affection.

Trollope’s regard for England then appears very much like his attitude toward the Church of England in his novel Barchester Towers. Or, to be even more specific, the love he described in that same novel between Francis Arabin and Eleanor Bold. Both characters have their flaws. They seem to meet too late in life and after too much heartbreak to succeed in marriage—yet how madly do they fall in love and how badly do we wish for their success! Trollope tells us their story, very much like he tells the story of England—as something great and brave in the midst of tragedy, decay, narrow escapes and absent glory.