Croquet and Trollope

The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope

published1864

 

 

Lily Dale, taking pride in her own lawn, has declared often that it is no good attempting to play croquet up at the Great House. The grass, she says, grows in tufts, and nothing that Hopkins, the gardener, can or will do has any effect upon the tufts. But there are no tufts at the Small House. As the squire himself has never been very enthusiastic about croquet, the croquet implements have been moved permanently down to the Small House, and croquet there has become quite an institution.

…. “There’s mamma,” said Lily. “Mamma, Mr Crosbie wants to play croquet by moonlight.”

“I don’t think there is light enough for that,” said Mrs Dale.

“There is light enough for him,” said Lily, “for he plays quite independently of the hoops; don’t you, Mr Crosbie?”

“There’s very pretty croquet light, I should say,” said Mr Crosbie, looking up at the bright moon; “and then it is so stupid going to bed.”

“Yes, it is stupid going to bed,” said Lily; “but people in the country are stupid, you know…”

 

 

comments: Reading Trollope is always a joy, and he wrote so many books this joy will go on forever, I will never run out. I loved this one: the story of a widow and her young marriageable daughters living in the eponymous house, at the edge of the grounds of a Big House, where the dead father’s brother is in charge. There are young men at the house and there is always an opportunity for the young people to get together - the book is big on croquet, as metaphor as well as excuse for flirting as in the rather dashing conversation above.

“Before Mr Crosbie took his final departure from Allington he could get through the hoops; and Lily, though she was still queen of the croquet ground, had to acknowledge a male sovereign in that dominion.”

 It is not at all obvious who will end up with whom – and that continues till very late on (and maybe after it ends).

There is an excellent clothes moment in the book – the young men sharing a lodging house in London are constantly advancing and retreating in their dealings with the young women in the house. They are forever terrified and hopeful, often at the same time. In this case the huge crinoline skirts of the day are going to play a part:

She made way for him to a chair which was between herself and the wall. Cradell looked half afraid of his fortunes as he took the proffered seat; but he did take it, and was soon secured from any positive physical attack by the strength and breadth of Miss Roper’s crinoline. (this NYPL fashion illustration gives some idea of the scale of the problem/protection)

 

Interestingly, it is clear that the young men quite like the idea of their names being linked with that of a married woman: this is seen as dashing and desirable so long as it doesn’t go too far.

These chaps are junior civil servants: Trollope is very good and very funny on office life, which in some ways hasn’t changed since then.

Life may be more serious in the upper echelons of government.

Plantaganet Palliser makes a minor appearance here - our old friend Planty Pall, a key Trollope character from other books such as this one. I once wrote a whole article for the Guardian about bad character names in novels, and he was high up there on the list. Anyway, he is rather endearingly useless with a woman he might have a fancy for:

She certainly looked as though she liked him; but how was he to begin? The art of startling the House of Commons and frightening the British public by the voluminous accuracy of his statistics he had already learned; but what was he to say to a pretty woman?

He sounds a bit like the young Prince Charles.

The local church is descried as ‘pervious to the wet’ – nowadays you would only find that word in its opposite, impervious. And throughout the book there are characters who are ‘illused’ – it took me a shamingly long time to realize that they are ‘ill-used’ – I had thought it was some strange version of being under an illusion, deluded….

There will be more posts on this book (eventually) as so much to say about it.

There is another post on crinolines here.

Croquet scene by Winslow Homer, 1866, from the Google Art Project File:Winslow Homer - Croquet Scene - Google Art Project.jpg - Wikimedia Commons