THE GOLDEN LION OF GRANPERE.* THERE is nothing more surprising
in Mr. Trollope's workmanship than the slightness of the materials with which he constructs an amusing story. He has plenty of resource for his longer tales of English society, and though he rarely attempts a plot of much complexity or force, every one understands how, with his astonish- ing knowledge of the superficial strata of middle-class and aristo- cratic society in England, and the humour with which his observa- tion is always penetrated, he makes his longest tales full of vivacity from beginning to end. Bat a tale like the one before us is almost created out of nothing. No doubt Mr. Trollope has stayed a day or so at the Golden Lion of Granpere, in Lorraine, noted the village well, and observed there or elsewhere something suggesting the little misunderstandings between a girl and her uncle and the same girl and her lover, on which this tale is built up. But it is hardly possible to imagine anything slighter than the incident. The innkeeper's son is in love with the innkeeper's niece, or rather his wife'sniece, and she returns his love. The innkeeper, an affectionate, active, masterful, hasty-minded man, commits him- self hastily, and without the least consideration of the subject, to the view that such a match would be imprudent, and must not be permitted. His son, who has the same sort of masterful temper, goes off to Colmar, and takes a situation there in which he thrives rapidly. The innkeeper of Granpere in the meantime thinks his niece ought to be established in life, and favours the suit of a young linen merchant from Basle, who is thriving, well-looking, and a little effeminate. The whole story consists in narrating the efforts made by the innkeeper to force this suitor on his niece by the strenuous use of his great personal influence with her—she is almost as fond in a different way of her uncle as of his son—and of the mode in which he is foiled by his son after having nearly succeeded. And this is absolutely all. There is no incident of any kind be- yond this. There is hardly any field at all for Mr. Trollope's humour as distinguished from his sketching power, and still the story is, we will not say one of Mr. Trollope's best,—his Nuremberg and Prague stories are both, we think, better, and of course all the stories founded on his knowledge of London and London society are much better,—but still lively and interesting, and of that kind that induces people who have read one number of it,—it was and still is appearing in periodical parts in Good Words, though now published as a whole,—to note in their minds when the next is due and obtain it as soon as it is out.
How does Mr. Trollope manage to make so much of so little ? The story is hardly anything, the characters sketched, though truly sketched enough, are very slight, the field for humour is small, and till quite the close hardly perceptible, and there is no appeal at all, as might be expected in a story of Lorraine written apparently since the war, to political or military interests of any kind whatever. The whole secret seems to be that Mr. Trollope really knows what we may call the natural history of every kind of man or woman he seeks to sketch,—by which we mean not so much his or her interior thoughts and feelings, but the outward habits in which these thoughts and feelings are expressed, the local and professional peculiarities of manner and habit in every place and every trade, nay more, the minutiae of class demeanour, the value that is attached in particular situations to standing up Tether than sitting down, to making a statement which has to be made in one room rather than in another; in short, the characteristic dress in which the small diplomacies of all kinds of social life clothe themselves. For instance, in this little tale Mr. Trollope seems to be as much at home in the way in which courtship is carried on between a Basle linen merchant and the niece of an innkeeper who presides over the household management of * The Golden Lion of Granpere. By Anthony Trollope. London: Tinsley. her uncle's inn, as he is in the way in which English barristers and statesmen make their offers of marriage. He makes one of the great struggles of the little tale tarn on whether the heroine will consent to vacate her duties as head waiter for the supper of the Golden Lion, give up for once her function of ladling out the soup and so forth, and seat herself in her best clothes with her uncle and aunt and the young linen merchant who wants to marry her. All parties understand that this concession of dressing herself as her uncle wishes her to do, with some kind of special smartness, and sitting down beside her suitor at supper, is a great step gained towards betrothal, and the exact character of the combat which goes on to compel this concession, and the amount of significance attached to it by the girl herself after she has done it with a very bad grace, and by those who are putting her under pressure to receive the young linen merchant's attentions, are estimated with so much nicety that it reads quite like a chapter in the natural history of society of that kind, instead of a mere love-story. Then again, after the betrothal and after some disturbing elements have been introduced, a good deal turns on whether or not the heroine can be got to mark the linen she has bought with the initial of the man to whom she is engaged. It is fully understood by her aunt that if she can be got to do this, the assumption that the marriage is inevitable will be so stronglyimprinted on her mind that there will be no danger of a subsequent rupture ; and the heroine also knows this and avoids the operation of marking the linen. Again, during the conflict between the uncle and niece as to this marriage, the excellent advice given by the innkeeper's wife as to the best treatment to be adopted to the girl, and the individual reasons which impress that advice, good as it is, perhaps even more strongly on the wife's judgment than its mere excellence would have impressed it, are quite models of minute study in the details of manner and the advantages one manner has over another :— " 4 It will all come right if you will only be a little calm with her,' Madame Voss had said. He had tossed his head and declared that he was calm ;—the calmest man in all Lorraine. Then he had come to his wife again, and she had again given him some good practical advice. 'Don't put it into her bead that there is to be a doubt,' said Madame Voss.—'I haven't put it into her head,' he answered angrily.—' No, my dear, no ; but do not allow her to suppose that anybody else can put it there either. Let the matter go on. She will see the things bought for her wedding, and when she remembers that she has allowed them to come into the house without remonstrating, she will be quite unable to object. Don't give her an opportunity of objecting.' Michel Voss again shook his head, as though his wife were an unreasonable woman, and swore that it was not he who had given Marie such opportunity. But he made up his mind to do as his wife recommended. 'Speak softly to her, my dear,' said Madame Voss.—' Don't I always speak softly ? ' said he, turn- ing sharply round upon his spouse. He made his attempt to speak softly when he met Marie about the house just before supper. He put his hand upon her shoulder, and smiled, and murmured some word of love. He was by no means crafty in what he did. Craft indeed was not the strong point of his character. She took his rough hand and kissed, it, and looked up lovingly, beseechingly into his face. She knew that he was asking her to consent to the sacrifice, and he knew that she was imploring him to spare her. This was not what Madame Voss had meant by speaking softly. Could she have been allowed to dilate upon her own convictions, or had she been able adequately to express her own ideas, she would have begged that there might be no sentiment, no romance, no kissing of hands, no looking into each other's faces,—no half-murmured tones of love. Madame Voss believed strongly that the every-day work of the world was better done without any of these glancings and glimmerings of moonshine. But then her husband was, by nature, of a fervid temperament, given to the influence of unexpressed poetic emotions ;—and thus subject, in spite of the strength of his will, to much weakness of purpose. Madame Voss perhaps condemned her husband in this matter the more because his romantic disposition never showed itself in his intercourse with her. He would kiss Marie's hand, and press Marie's wrist, and hold dialogues by the eye with Marie. But with his wife his speech was,—not exactly yea, yea, and nay, nay,—but yes, yes, and no, no. It was not unnatural therefore that she should specially dislike this weakness of his which came from his emotional temperament. 'I would just let things go, as though, there were nothing special at all,' she said again to him, before supper in a whisper —' And so I do. What would you have me say? '—' Don't mind petting her, but just be as you would be any other day.'—'I am as I would be any other day,' he replied. However, he knew that his wife was right, and was in a certain way aware that if he could only change himself and be another sort of man, he might manage the matter better. He could be fiercely angry, or caressingly affectionate. But he was unable to adopt that safe and golden mean which his wife recommended."
Perhaps the best instance of all of this delicate appreciation of the value of social strategy is the picture of the wretched linen-mer- chant's anxiety to get himself away from the girl to whom he had been betrothed, and who had broken off the engagement, without seeming to retreat in humiliation and in a manner involving ridicule on himself. The negotiation for the rather unseasonable October picnic as a mode of carrying off the parting with dignity, and with the appearance of a cheerful and voluntary retreat, is an admirable hit of the kind in which Mr. Trollope is so fertile. But we will leave that concluding bit of natural history for the reader's private enjoyment. Nothing can be more skilful too than the disgust which the sturdy innkeeper begins to feel at the young linen merchant's " greasy hair" directly he feels the burden of his company really upon him, and sees that he is and is to be an unsuccessful suitor, though before, while he had hoped that all would go well, and while he was priding himself on the excellent match he had made for his niece, he had rather respected the young man's carefully got-up hair as indicative of the polish of city manners. It is by the multitude of details of this minute kind that Mr. Trollope makes one feel how great a social naturalist he is. His conception of character is good and strong, but its strength is not so much in the inward grasp he has of it, as in the marvellous accuracy with which he clothes it in appropriate circumstances. Many English authors have far surpassed Mr. Trollope in their imaginative command of the interior scenery of character, but no one ever knew so well as Anthony Trollope how what he does see would express itself in the externals of society,— and this almost whatever the society be, so long as he has had a glimpse of it.
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