Written 1861 (27 January - February 1)
Published 1861 (November 2 & 9), Public Opinion
Published in a book 1863 (February), Tales of All Countries:
Second Series, Chapman and Hall
From: hansenb@frb.gov
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 09:58:00 -0500
Subject: Short Stories "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box"
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
Who amongst us has never traveled abroad under circumstances which caused us all the while to worry about our valuables? Even in the days of traveler's checks and credit cards, there are those excursions where something valuable must be kept in sight. I enjoyed the fact that the potential scam Robinson suspects the Greenes of running, of a sham disappearance of their money, is so like what modern crooks do; ask strangers to replace 'lost' money so they can retrieve a car that has been towed away, or some such.
And, haven't we seen before this little touch of Trollope's concerning the wife of the present narrator?; in this story, how if Robinson were to have been delayed in the continuance of his tour, the 'present Mrs Robinson would not have been sitting opposite.' I like that touch.
Bart
hansenb@frb.gov
January 27, 1998
To Trollope-l
Re: Short Stories: Sometimes a Box is Just A Box
Another comment Ruth apRoberts makes about Trollope's fiction is how rare he avails himself of poetic symbols; she argues Trollope's plots do not embody mythic patterns and do not lend themselves to consistent allegoresis. She does allow how there can be symbols in his stories, but when there are symbols, these are made from concrete obstacles which for various reasons within the terms of the story or the character's obsessions become symbols for the characters. Thus for us Mr Greene's box is just a box; for Mr Robinson it becomes a comic obsession. As I was reading the story I found myself wishing I had an e-text of it so I could count how many times the word box is used by each of the characters. I
very much enjoyed this story. It has all the pleasures of the text I suggested TWWLN lacks: a slowly built up landscape, deep ambiguity in the characters' talk (they say things that have many different kinds of meaning, much of which they are not totally aware of), a curious atmosphere or mood peculiar to the text at hand, in this case I'll hazard the story's mood recalls a cunning game combined with the obsessions of the comically foolish characters.
One of the most interesting things about the story Bart alluded to is the narrator's guilt or innocence. Again when I read this story with my students I found myself at odds with a number of them. This time a young man gave the short talk, and filled with all my talk of unreliable narrators and the use of irony in Trollope, he came up with the idea that the narrator in "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box" was a thief, that never went to Como, and that the most important (=punch) line in the story was that of the Boots in the penultimate paragraph:
"He took the money, looked into my face, and then whispered to me, 'Why did you not give me a word of notice beforehand?' he said, and winked his eye. He was evidently a thief, and took me to be another, but what did it matter?'" (Sutherland ed, p 296).
This time I did get a large number of students on my side who agreed with me this could not be, this was a perverse overemphasis on how we don't have someone beyond our first-person narrator to tell us what actually happened either directly or through hints. Still I had to agree at the time that one of the points of the story was a comic elaboration on mistrust. How in fact do we behave to strangers that we meet while we travel? What do we know of them? On what basis can we judge them? or they us?
This is in fact another story on the theme of travel, and Trollope again seems to be suggesting to see the world we must get out of the carriage, out of our own vanities, and preoccupations, and try to enter into the world we have spent so much money and energy coming to. The Greenes' box (while just a box) also "stood" for their respective inabilities to care for anything but themselves, to see everything in terms of English values, and to rely on their money not only to get them what they wanted, but as a measure of their worth, and an instrument to bully the native people they encounter whose greed is justified by the obtuseness of the Greenes.
Mine is too heavy a tone. Trollope's is curiously light and yet cunning. It reminded me of Elizabethan coney-catching stories where one side tries to outwit the other, and all get a comeuppance.
Ellen
From: hopfnerj@cc.tacom.army.mil
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 21:01:56 -0500
Subject: Short Stories: Box Bites Man
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
A couple days ago, Ellen Moody commented this way about Trollope's story, "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box":
"Ruth apRoberts...does allow how there can be symbols in his stories, but when there are symbols, these are made from concrete obstacles which for various reasons within the terms of the story or the character's obsessions become symbols for the characters. Thus for us Mr Greene's box is just a box ... "
. . . if not, indeed, a somewhat tedious box!
"for Mr Robinson it becomes a comic obsession.I very much enjoyed this story. It has all the pleasures of the text I suggested TWWLN lacks: a slowly built up landscape, deep ambiguity in the characters' talk (they say things that have many different kinds of meaning, much of which they are not totally aware of), a curious atmosphere or mood peculiar to the text at hand, in this case I'll hazard the story's mood recalls a cunning game combined with the obsessions of the comically foolish characters."
What struck me in this story is how, yet again, we have personal embarrassment as a source of motivation or dramatic tension. Here the narrator is mortified at being thought a would-be thief (and, I'll agree, truly mortified: I don't think Trollope was trying to imply that Robinson dissembled, knowing all along that the chest was in his room).
This is a theme that runs through a number of the earlier stories, where a series of narrators are embarrassed: because of
Embarrassment recurs, in various ways, in others of the stories involving travel (think of the Reverend Horne in "The Relics of General Chasse," or Mrs. Thompson in "The Chateau of Prince Polignac"; or of the mistaken Irishman in "Mrs. General Talboys." Or, more subtlely, of the attempt by Miss Dawkins to manipulate Mr. Damer in "An Unprotected Female").
Ellen also wrote:
"Again when I read this story with my students I found myself at odds with a number of them. This time a young man gave the short talk, and filled with all my talk of unreliable narrators and the use of irony in Trollope, he came up with the idea that the narrator in "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box" was a thief, that never went to Como . . . "
But this interpretation requires, not simply that the narrator be unreliable, but that he be an outright liar: the narrative says unambiguously that Robinson did go to Como.
"This time I did get a large number of students on my side who agreed with me this could not be, this was a perverse overemphasis on how we don't have someone beyond our first-person narrator to tell us what actually happened either directly or through hints. Still I had to agree at the time that one of the points of the story was a comic elaboration on mistrust. How in fact do we behave to strangers that we meet while we travel? What do we know of them? On what basis can we judge them? or they us?"
Trollope seems to have been struck by the humor in a traveler's tendency to trust a countryman met abroad, to an extent that never would be expected were the acquaintance made at home. This comes up in "An Unprotected Female," and again in "A Ride across Palestine": it's tempting to see Trollope wincing to recollect some of the ugly Englishmen with whom he has shared time while traveling.
"This is in fact another story on the theme of travel, and Trollope again seems to be suggesting to see the world we must get out of the carriage, out of our own vanities, and preoccupations, and try to enter into the world we have spent so much money and energy coming to."
Maybe so, but if this was Trollope's aim here I think he was being rather indirect about making his point. I agree that the Greenes clearly are no different on the road than they'd be back home: they consistently ignore the chance to really see a new part of the world on its own terms. (It may be that our first look at Mr. Greene was meant as a visual foreshadowing: Mr. Greene will see only that slice of terrain that can be viewed from inside the closed carriage, lest he get a sore throat. He travels inside a box and won't get out.)
"The Greenes' box (while just a box) also "stood" for their respective inabilities to care for anything but themselves, to see everything in terms of English values, and to rely on their money not only to get them what they wanted, but as a measure of their worth, and an instrument to bully the native people they encounter whose greed is justified by the obtuseness of the Greenes."
In this sense the box also symbolizes the Greenes in terms of how closed-up they are, how little open to any casual addition to the contents they had upon arrival in a new country.
"Mine is too heavy a tone. Trollope's is curiously light and yet cunning. It reminded me of Elizabethan coney-catching stories where one side tries to outwit the other, and all get a comeuppance."
I agree. Given the way Trollope kept emphasizing how the Greenes were making a big to-do about how special was the one box, I thought the story was setting us up for a revelation that the box was a red herring--that the Greenes kept nothing of value there, and were hoping thieves would be tricked into taking it in preference to any of the other luggage. I didn't see the ending coming, where the missing box would prove to have been in Robinson's room the whole time.
From Jill Spriggs,
Very interesting you should mention this, John, considering that you haven't read Trollope before, because this is exactly what happens in The Eustace Diamonds.
Jill Spriggs
To which Bart replied:
You never know how much symbolism an author means to weave into tales like this. For me, it's enough that it is a clever story about foolish travelers abroad with a surprise ending thrown in. Surely the box could be a metaphor for English insularity and how some travel in a closed manner, trusting none of the servants and clinging to their comfy hotel.
Looking back at that ending though, it does look a little odd that the narrator does not express more outrage, or even embarrassment. He doesn't make much of a fuss - 'who in blazes hid this trunk under my carpet?!?' Maybe he IS a crook, but the story taken straight up is quite interesting enough.
Bart
hansenb@frb.gov
RE: Short Story: Box Bites People
Probably I enjoyed rereading this story because I had such a pleasant expeience with my students over it. They got a great kick out of it. As all the books we read become intertwined with our memories, so Trollope's stories are for me forever mixed with the hours I spent with students over them. While I agree with John Hopfner that we cannot allow ourselves to think Mr Robinson deliberately hid the box, for then how can we explain his frantic trip; if we don't believe in the trip, what are we to believe? Trollope is not Agatha Christie writing the story of a crazed sociopathic liar. This narrator is actually somewhat more reliable than the others we have met because we are to believe in the accuracy of his portraits of the Greenes insofar as a brief acquaintance with them allows for accuracy.
On the other hand, I very much liked the fact that others on our list seemed to take my student's point of view, as when Bart wrote:
"Looking back at that ending though, it does look a little odd that the narrator does not express more outrage, or even embarrassment. He doesn't make much of a fuss - 'who in blazes hid this trunk under my carpet?!?' Maybe he IS a crook, but the story taken straight up is quite interesting enough."
The story does encourage us to distrust the Greenes, and wonder if they are trying to fleece Robinson and the inn-keepers. It's about distrust. I read The Eustace Diamonds only once, and remember Lizzie putting the jewels in a box and putting that box under her feet in a carriage, and getting away from a constable and lawyer, but don't remember any doubt as to what's in the box on the part of the narrator--or Lizzie, or for that matter the constable and lawyer.
Ellen Moody
From John Mize:
I was fooled by the ending also. I thought that the Greenes were grifters, pretending to be rich fools, and they wanted a free ride from their new English friend. Why else would they telegraph the fact that they had so many valuable things in the box? I was probably influenced by having read Surtees' Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds a couple of months ago. Facey knew that the appearance of wealth can get you almost anything want you for free. I was a little disappointed when the Greenes turned out to be as stupid as they appeared to be.
April 19, 1998
Re: Short Story: "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box
I cannot resist reporting that when we got to the end of the stories we read and I asked my students which story from among Trollope's Early Short Stories they enjoyed most, many of them spoke up for "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box." This one amused them very much. They got a great kick out of talking about who had the box when, and who was the real crook. Some remained convinced the Greenes were running a con-game; others insisted Robinson was a thief. I suppose it was the repetition of the word "box" that was irresistible.
Today I read also read a student journal about this story in which a student declared that "the point is emphasizes that the main characters keep their valuables with them to display these at their leisure in a desperate attempt to impress anyone they might come into contact with." They also derived moral lessons from it which are most amusing. This same student wrote that he learned "Never, ever keep everything you own in something that can be easily lost or stolen. Also one's material possessions should have nothing to do with the person's character." They have been so imbued with the notion that they are learning lessons about how to live their lives by reading literature they don't know quite what to do with this story at the same time as they find it a relief however unconsciously to parody the idea.
The problem is of course they are such literalists. I remember one student entered into Robinson's point of view so that he talked of "hating" the Greenes and their "precious box" and talking of how much we "learn" when they are "penniless" and how gratifying it all was. How he didn't feel sorry for them at all.
If you keep your sense of humor as you read student papers, there is much to enjoy. I suppose Austen's Mr Bennet would agree with me and ask if I would like to read Mr Collins's latest.
Ellen Moody