Anthony Trollope's "Mrs General Talboys"

Written 1860 (6 - 10 November)
Published 1861 (2 February), The London Review, rejected by Cornhill
Published in a book 1863 (February), Tales of All Countries: Second Series, Chapman and Hall

Trollope-l

January 13,1998

Re: Short Story: "Mrs General Talboys"

This story was written around the time Trollope wrote "A Ride Across Palestine" and offended the original readers just as strongly. "Coarse, indelicate, a low tone" are just a few of the epithets hurled at it. My view is that like the incident told in "The O'Conors of Castle Conor" this story takes off from someone Trollope observed while staying with his brother in Rome (which visit Sutherland refers us to in his notes to the story).

It's also a story that lends itself to multiple interpretations, though not because we have an unreliable or naive or involved narrator. The narrator is simply the detached reporter on the spot--a familiar device used by writers then and today by Gore Vidal and William Styron. It gives an air of impersonal detachment to a piece. The narrator seems to leave us to judge or make up our minds what we think of Mrs Talboys. I say "seems" because of course he shapes the story through tones which seem to condemn her. The question is, Why? This we are left to decide for ourselves.

The most obvious view would be Mrs Talboys was wrong to separate herself from her husband. She is the modern independent woman bored at home; she goes around denouncing other people's prejudices. No stiff prude she. She seems to be compared unfavorably with Mrs Mackinnon who on first blush seems a happy married woman, content to sit by her man's fire, "exquisitely pretty, always in good humor, never stupid, self-denying to a fault." Mrs Mackinnon is "spiteful" about Mrs Talboys, and with good reason: Mrs Talboys flirts with her husband. But I think the general way the narrator speaks of Mrs Mackinnon's life suggest she was not as content with her lot as she resolves to appear:

"I used to think she should have been happier. There is, however, no knowing the inside of another man's house, or reading the riddles of another man's joy or sorrow" (Sutherland, Early Short Stories, p 212).

If Mrs Talboys slanders her husband by somehow letting it be thought she left him because the head-nurse of her house with whom she left her children, Mrs Upton, liked the General too much, Mrs Mackinnon has cause to be dissatisfied with how "Mackinnon goes on." He seems to lust after every woman that comes near him.

Which gets me to another way of reading this story. I can think of a very coarse word for Mrs Talboys' way of teasing men, of flirting suggestively with them, of leaving herself open to suggestions for a liaision, and then turning to stone or ice or as at the close of the story becoming indigant ("The man has insulted me"). Trollope shows us a woman who courts adventure, and that includes sexual adventures with other women's husbands (we are told the other women are not keen over her), but is when push comes to more than shove cold, perhaps unware of what's she's doing, but perhaps not.

Trollope is once again ambiguously exploring some unpleasant but very real aspects of sexual relationships or encounters which occur between men and women who are not married or not official lovers. He is doing this as frankly as he dares. There is the curious trip to the tomb of the strong Roman matron who our narrator doubts really should receive "the credit" she or her "bereaved and desolate husband" do; there is the picture of her as the strong woman who likes to drink, talks radical talk and is served by O'Brien as her Ganymede, O'Brien who later takes her for that walk, who has himself such matrimonial troubles for which he wanted sympathy.

There is a curious sophistication to the tone with which Trollope describes the gatherings in Rome his narrator attends. "Demi-monde" is too strong a word for it, but these are not innocent scenes, any of them. Again too bad he couldn't tell us more and more frankly. Rather than call this story coarse I'd call it delicate in its skirting of the slightly lascivious, and not sufficiently bold in its attempt to present people whose marriage does not satisfy or imprisons them.

Ellen Moody

Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:15:51 -0500
Subject: Short Stories "Mrs General Talboys"
To: trollope-l@teleport.com

Ellen's post of Jan. 13 is the only one I've seen on this story, so I'll be following along on some of the points in it.

Ellen uses the term 'exploring' for Trollope's approach with Mrs Talboys and her ways, and that is a good word. Of course he couldn't have her take that boat to Naples, but he got away with giving us a woman who at least would 'talk the talk' if not 'walk the walk' of extramarital adventure. In a coarse way, she is a tease, but also she tries to break some new ground in the name of female independence. Her pronouncements shock the other members of her set, yet they also sound immature and harmless, given her resultant actions.

The last paragraph of Ellen's post talks about Trollope presenting 'people whose marriage does not satisfy or imprisons them.' What comes to mind here is to recall that the Talboy marriage was begun perhaps around 1840, which was not a time where every union was a loving bond between equals.

The one item I found interesting is how Trollope made Mrs Talboys' 'suitor' an Irishman. Why couldn't he have been English like the rest of the group? This kind of reminds me of how the authors of that era would use a Jew to represent an unsavory type, as though none of their English countrymen could take those roles.

Finally, Mrs T is described as having a dimpled chin, which I have been led to believe elsewhere, is a stamp of approval by Trollope.

Bart

Then John Mize replied:

January 20, 1998

Re: Mrs General Talboys

To me Mrs. General Tallboys is another story about a supposedly independent woman who doesn't have the courage of her convictions. She believes in sexual liberation in the abstract, but is insulted when someone thinks that she would act on her supposed convictions. If Tallboys had run off to Naples with O'Brien would Trollope have been shocked and disgusted?

I can't decide whether Trollope really means for us to take the Mackinnons as the ideal; she, with her conventional morality and he, with his tiresome, conventional, safe, almost scripted flirtations. I would hope not. Personally I would like to see Trollope deal with a woman who actually defies convention completely. He knew Frances Wright; so, he was not unfamiliar with the type. He always seems to write about women who claim to be independent but lack the courage or ruthlessness or whatever to follow through. These women ultimately care too much what the world thinks to go all the way. Is their ultimate reverence for the idols of the tribe a fatal flaw or a saving grace?

I can't help wondering how Trollope would have regarded a woman who really didn't care about society or its rules. It probably was impossible to be such a woman in the 19th century. In the U.S. the powers-that-be sent Victoria Woodhull to prison for flouting the rules, and she was sufficiently chastened to reinvent herself as a respectable lady.

I think of two women from a later time, Amelia Earhart and Simone Weil. Just before her marriage Earhart wrote a note to her fiance, George Putnam, in which she said in part:

On our life together I want you to understand that I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I think the difficulties which arise may best be avoided should you or I become interested deeply (or in passing) with anyone else. Please let us not interfere with the other's work or play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection I may have to keep some place where I can go and to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.

Weil never married; she apparently was never even romantically involved with anyone, because she believed that passion was necessarily the enemy of independence. She refused to accept any relationship in which one party either tries to control the other in any way or changes his or her behavior in order to please the other. For her friendship had to be completely disinterested to be acceptable. By society's standards Earhart was an abandoned woman, and Weil, a pure, albeit odd, maiden. Neither, however, gave a damn about society's standards

John Mize

Re: Short Story: Richard Mullen on "Mrs General Talboys"

I have been reading Richard Mullen's Penguin Companion to Trollope and would like again to recommend it to all newcomers to Trollope. Mullen does not write with the pizzazz or dry wit of Sutherland (whose Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction is a delight to read from cover-to-cover, more fun than many of the hundreds of novels he must have read to rite); but he is solid, lucid, and each of the entries is a little essay which points you towards general topics, other texts by Trollope and various themes in his fiction.

The one on "Mrs General Talboys" caught my eye, and since we have not had much talk about this interesting story I'd like to bring up the context Mullen places it in. He says it is a story which belongs to the Victorian conversation about divorce. Mullen says Thackeray rejected it because of the reference to one of the characters' two illegitimate children, and that Rose Trollope found it "ill-natured" (that's interesting, shows she sympathized with Mrs General Talboys), but that it's about people who are dissatisfied with their partners, people who have left their partners, and extra-marital affairs (just hinted at). Mullen sees it as "a good study of human behavior when social restrictions are removed." I would like to add it's unusual in its frankness; most of Trollope's novels deal with divorce through a depiction of unconscious and conscious bigamy.

Mullen also says it portrays Rome in this period very well. Trollope was sympathetic to the revolutionary movement towards unification and democracy; we see the expatriate community as Trollope saw it, a bit Bohemian, and yet susceptible to tales about spiritual mediums and willing to go to seances and listen to trick table-rapping.

Ellen Moody

A couple of years later I listed a group of stories by Trollope and suggested people pick from them to read a few for "Winter Solstice". Here is the thread which resulted:

Subject: [trollope-l] Winter Solstice Stories/Mrs. General Talboys

From: Dagny

Ellen, thank you for all the wonderful suggestions for Winter Solstice stories, we now have a wealth of them to choose from (and I love ghost stories). I was especially intrigued to notice on your list Elizabeth Gaskell's "Lizzie Leigh". I have never read any of Gaskell's work but "Lizzie Leigh" is the group read for the Amer-BritClassicLit list in February.

Ellen wrote (regarding "Mrs. General Talboys"):

"Trollope has some masterpieces in the story vein; 'Mrs General Talboys' is not one of them"

Good, I have so enjoyed the first three of the Barset novels that I hated to avoid his short stories.

I read Mrs. G. T. in the 2nd manner you mentioned in your original post. That she should not have "lead on" the various gentlemen, even going so far as to make assignations when she was had no intention of having an affair with them. It came as a great shock to me when she made a big fuss about being "insulted." The poor man was too embarrassed to even return to the city with the group.

The rest of the group seemed, however, to know that nothing would come of the flirtation. When Mrs. Talboys and O'Brien went off alone together during the outing the narrator said: "That he would undoubtedly get a slap in the face, metaphorically, we all felt certain for none of us doubted the rigid propriety of the lady's intentions."

When Mrs. Talboys returned to the group and said she had been insulted (she did go off alone with him--what did she expect?), someone tried to smooth the situation over by saying he had taken too much wine. Mrs. Talboys answered that it was a premeditated insult.

I have to say that I was aggravated by Mrs. Talboys' behaviour.

Dagny

January 13,1998

Re: Short Story: "Mrs General Talboys"

Dagny and Catherine both ask about "Mrs General Talboys'. We read this and all Anthony Trollope's short stories here on Trollope-l a while back. Trollope has some masterpieces in the story story vein; 'Mrs General Talboys' is not one of them, but it is an interesting story from the autobiographical point of view and for its unusually frank sexual content. It also depicts the Roman and Italian milieu in which the unconventional relationships of Thomas Adophus Trollope's family occurrred which Howard Merkin asked about.

First here's what Mullen has to say in The Penguin Companion. It is a story which belongs to the Victorian (highly indirect) conversation about divorce. Mullen says Thackeray rejected it because of the reference to one of the characters' two illegitimate children, and that Rose Trollope found it "ill-natured" (that's interesting, shows she sympathized with "Mrs General Talboys"). Mullen says it's about people who are dissatisfied with their partners, people who have left their partners, and extra-marital affairs (just hinted at). Mullen sees it as "a good study of human behavior when social restrictions are removed." I would like to add it's unusual in its frankness; most of Trollope's novels deal with divorce through a depiction of unconscious and conscious bigamy.

Mullen also says it portrays Rome in this period very well. Trollope was sympathetic to the revolutionary movement towards unification and democracy; we see the expatriate community as Trollope saw it, a bit Bohemian, and yet susceptible to tales about spiritual mediums and willing to go to seances and listen to trick table-rapping.

Ellen

From: "Catherine Crean"

Last night I reread "Mrs. General Tallboys" a short story by Anthony Trollope. This story describes the artistic milieu in Italy so well I have to believe that Trollope took it from real life. Fanny Trollope and her family must have known some interesting people in Florence. I wonder how much Anthony resented his mother's relationship with his brother. Anthony always seemed to be the odd man out. The more I learn about Fanny Trollope (and I do admire her greatly) the more I'm impressed with Anthony's ability to deal with his mother's choices. I always ask myself how Trollope managed to be such a good psychologist, especially as regards male/female relationships. In "Mrs.. General Tallboys" we get an insightful portrait of people living "la vie boheme." Trollope is not pulling any punches here. Didn't Thackeray reject this story from Cornhill for being too risqué?

Catherine