Can You Forgive Her? (121 page)

3
.3. (p. 605)
an express train
: for a death by express train, see the end of Ferdinand Lopez, in
The Prime Minister
, Chapter 60.

1
. (p. 624)
quidnuncs
: literally, ‘what now?’, hence ‘gossips’.

1
. (p. 637)
sponging-houses
: used for the preliminary confinement of debtors.

2
. (p. 638) Inns of Court: there were four Inns, properly speaking
– the Inner and Middle Temples, Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn; they held the exclusive right to call students to the bar.

3
. (p. 638) Erebus: a place of darkness on the way to Hades.

4
. (p. 640)
tit-tat-to
: or ‘tick-tack-toe’ – children’s pencil-game like noughts and crosses.

1
. (p. 644)
the new court of the Louvre
: Napoleon III had extended the great public building of Paris by
adding new pavilions north and south of the Square du Carrousel between 1852 and 1857.

2
. (p. 645)
Brodshows
: ‘Bradshaw’s Railway Guide’ was first published in 1839.

1
. (p. 660)
pass the Rubicon: i.e. take a decisive step, as Caesar did when he crossed the small river of the Rubicon in his war against Pompey (49 B.C.).

1
. (p. 663) ‘
nollimy tangere’
: i.e.
noli me tangere
, or ‘touch me not’. No doubt a furious
Orlando
is meant by Mrs Greenow to allude to the hero of Ariosto’s epic
Orlando Furioso
.

2
. (p. 663)
poker and tongs
… actually,

Sure the shovel and tongs

To each other belongs.

(From the song ‘Widow Machree’ by Samuel Lover, popular during the 1850s.)

3
. (p. 670) a
bit of a breeze
: slang for a row.

1
. (p. 684)
a Gibus hat
: an opera or crush
hat, so called after its first maker.

2
. (p. 697) Tyburnio: the area immediately north of Hyde Park.

1
. (p. 693)
the hero of old
: Heracles was set to women’s work when a slave to Omphale, Queen of Lydia.

1
. (p. 709) the
great Assembly House
: the Conversationshaus at Baden contained drawing rooms, dining, concert, and gaming rooms. ‘The latter are open from 11 a.m. to 12
at night, and the fact that the lessee pays a rent of about 11.000
l
. and has beside to defray all the expenses of the establishment will afford some idea of the extent to which play is indulged in’ (Baedeker’s Rhine, 1861). The resident population of Baden was 7,000, but there were 40,000 visitors per annum. See the description in the opening chapter of George Eliot’s
Daniel Deronda
(1876).

2
. (p. 710)
napoleon
: a French gold coin worth 20 francs.

1
. (p. 721)
his own family borough
: the extension of the franchise and the redistribution of seats brought about by the Reform Bill of 1832 did not, in many cases, lessen the deference paid to the wishes of the aristocracy by the voters.

1
. (p. 733)
the clear-flowing Reuss
: the river which joins the Lake of Lucerne
at Lucerne.

1
. (p. 735)
stumpy;
slang for cash.

1
. (p. 756)
blue books:
official reports of Parliament and the Privy Council, issued with blue covers.

2
. (p. 759)
a certain time: see The Small House at Allington
, Chapter 43.

3
. (p. 760)
Tell’s chapel
: built in 1388 to commemorate William Tell, thirty-one years after the Swiss patriot’s death. Murray’s
Handbook
quotes
Sir James Mackintosh’s comment: The combination of what is grandest in nature, with what is pure and sublime in human conduct, affected me… more powerfully than any scene which I had ever seen.’

1
. (p. 767)
the church
: the church of St Leger or Stiftskirche has arcades on three sides. ‘The adjoining churchyard is filled with quaint old monuments, and the view from the cloister windows
is fine’ (Murray, op. cit.).

2
. (p. 767)
Mount Pilate
: or Piatus. One tradition derives the name from Pontius Pilate, who would have found an appropriate setting for his remorse among what Trollope calls its ‘frowning menaces’. The summit is very often capped with clouds.

1
. (p. 772)
Rouge et Noir
: card game played at a table which has two red and two black marks, on which the players’
stakes are placed.

2
. (p. 775)
sugarduties
: Gladstone reduced the tax on sugar in 1864.

3
. (p. 776)
French wines
: the duty on French wine was lowered as part of the Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1860; imports of French wine doubled between 1859 and 1869.

1
. (p. 786)
daughters of Danaus
: in Hades they had to try to fill jars with holes in the bottom, as a punishment for killing
their husbands.

1
. (p. 795)
modes of governing
: under the Second Empire (1852–70) the upper house or senate consisted of nominated or
ex
officiomembers; the lower house or corps
législatif
sat for only three months in the year, and could neither choose its own president nor publish its debates. All members of parliament had to take an oath of allegiance.

1
. (p. 811)
all
a-mort
: i.e. spiritless (e.g. Shakespeare, 1
Henry
VI, III, iii).

1
. (p. 818)
for the county
: county members were elected on a narrower
franchise than those elected by boroughs, and were regarded as representing the aristocratic landed interest. The county would therefore be more appropriate to a man of Palliser’s standing. Until 1858 county members were supposed to have a rent-roll
of over £600 per annum in the county itself.

1
. (p. 827)
the new writs were moved for
: the preliminary procedure for a parliamentary election.

2
. (p. 827)
purpureo genitus
: born in the purple.

1815 Battle of Waterloo
Lord George Gordon Byron,
Hebrew Melodies
Anthony Trollope born 24 April at 16 Keppel Street,
Bloomsbury, the fourth son of Thomas and Frances Trollope.
Family moves shortly after to Harrow-on-the-Hill

1823 Attends Harrow as a day-boy (—1825)

1825 First public steam railway opened
Sir Walter Scott,
The Betrothed
and
The Talisman
Sent as a boarder to a private
school in Sunbury,
Middlesex

1827 Greek War of Independence won in the battle of Navarino.
Sent to school at Winchester College. His mother sets
sail for the USA on 4 November with three of her children

1830 George IV dies; his brother ascends the throne as William IV
William Cobbett,
Rural Rides
Removed from Winchester. Sent again to Harrow until 1834

1832 Controversial First Reform Act extends
the right to vote
to approximately one man in five
Frances Trollope,
Domestic Manners of the Americans

1834 Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Poor Law Act
introduces workhouse to England
Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
The Last Days of Pompeii
Trollope family migrates to Bruges to escape creditors.
Anthony returns to London to take up a junior clerkship
in the General Post Office

1835 Halley’s
Comet appears. ‘Railway mania’ in Britain
Robert Browning,
Paracelsus
His father dies in Bruges

1840 Queen Victoria marries Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Penny Post introduced
Charles Dickens,
The Old Curiosity Shop
(—1841)
Dangerously ill in May and June

1841 Thomas Carlyle,
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in
History
Appointed Postal Surveyor’s Clerk for Central District of
Ireland.
Moves to Banagher, King’s County (now Co.
Offaly)

1843 John Ruskin,
Modern Painters
(vol. I)
Begins to write his first novel,
The Macdermots of Ballycloran

1844 Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation,
imprisoned for conspiracy; later released
William Thackeray,
The Luck of Barry Lyndon
Marries Rose Heseltine in June. Transferred to Clonmel,
Co. Tipperary

1846 Famine rages in
Ireland. Repeal of the Corn Laws
Dickens,
Dombey and Son
(—1848)
First son, Henry Merivale, born in March

1847 Charlotte Brontë,
Jane Eyre;
Emily Brontë,
Wuthering
Heights
A second son, Frederic James Anthony, born in September
The Macdermots of Ballycloran

1848 Revolution in France; re-establishment of the Republic.
The ‘Cabbage Patch Rebellion’ in Tipperary fails
Trollopes move to Mallow,
Co. Cork
The Kellys and the O’Kellys

1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
In Memoriam
La Vendée.
Writes
The Noble Jilt,
a play and the source of his
later novel
Can You Forgive Her?

1851 The Great Exhibition
Herman Melville,
Moby Dick
Sent to survey and reorganize postal system in southwest
England and Wales (—1852)

1852 First pillar box in the British Isles introduced in St Helier,
Jersey, on Trollope’s
recommendation

1853 Thackeray,
The Newcomes
(—1855)
Moves to Belfast to take post as Acting Surveyor for the
Post Office

1854 Britain becomes involved in the Crimean War (—1856)
Appointed Surveyor of the Northern District of Ireland

1855 David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls, Zambia
(Zimbabwe)
Dickens,
Little Dorrit
(—1857)
Moves to Donnybrook, Co. Dublin
The Warden.
Writes
The New Zealander
(published 1972)

1857 Indian Mutiny (—1858)
Thomas Hughes,
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
Barchester Towers

1858 Irish Republican Brotherhood founded in Dublin
George Eliot,
Scenes of Clerical Life
Travels to Egypt, England and the West Indies on postal
business
Doctor Thorne

1859 Charles Darwin,
On the Origin of Species
Leaves Ireland to settle in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire,
after being appointed
Surveyor of the Eastern District of
England
The Bertrams and the West Indies and the Spanish Main

1860 Dickens,
Great Expectations (—1861)
Framley Parsonage
(—1861, his first serialized fiction) and
Castle Richmond

1861 American Civil War (—1865)
John Stuart Mill,
Utilitarianism.
Mrs Beeton
Book of Household
Management
Travels to USA to research a travel book
Orley Farm
(—1862)

1862 Elizabeth
Barrett Browning,
Last Poems
Elected to the Garrick Club
The Small House at Allington
(—1864) and
North America

1863 His mother dies in Florence
Rachael Ray

1864 Elizabeth Gaskell,
Wives and Daughters
(—1866)
Elected to the Athenaeum Club
Can You Forgive Her?
(—1865)

1865 Abraham Lincoln assassinated
Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Fortnightly Review
founded by Trollope (among
others)
Miss Mackenzie, The Belton Estate
(—1866)

1866 Eliot,
Felix Holt the Radical
The Claverings
(—1867),
Nina Balatka
(—1867) and
The Last Chronicle
of Barset
(—1867)

1867 Second Reform Act extends the franchise further,
enlarging the electorate to almost two million
Algernon Charles Swinburne,
A Song of Italy
Resigns from the GPO and assumes editorship of
St Paul’s
Magazine
Phineas Finn
(—1869)

1868 Last public execution in London
Wilkie Collins,
The Moonstone
Visits the USA on a postal mission; returns to England to
stand unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Beverley,
Yorkshire
He Knew He Was Right
(—1869)

1869 Suez Canal opened
Richard Doddridge Blackmore,
Lorna Doone
The Vicar of Bullhampton
(—1870)

1870 Married Woman’s Property Act passed
Dickens,
The Mystery of Edwin
Drood
Resigns editorship of
St Paul’s Magazine
Ralph the Heir
(—1871),
Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite,
and
a translation of
The Commentaries of Caesar

1871 Eliot,
Middlemarch
(—1872)
Gives up house at Waltham Cross and sails to Australia
with Rose to visit his son Frederic
The Eustace Diamonds
(—1873)

1872 Thomas Hardy,
Under the Greenwood Tree
and
A Pair of Blue
Eyes
(—1873)
Travels in
Australia and New Zealand and returns to
England via the USA
The Golden Lion of Granpere

1873 Mill,
Autobiography
Settles in Montagu Square, London
Lady Anna
(—1874),
Phineas Redux
(—1874);
Australia and New
Zealand
and
Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush
Life

1874 The first Impressionist Exhibition in Paris
Hardy,
Far From the Madding Crowd
The Way We Live Now
(—1875)