?Written 1862 (March or by March), Archibald Green story
Published 1863 A Welcome: Original Contributions in Poetry and Prose Addressed to
Alexandria, Princess of Wales (Emily Faithfull)
Published in a book 1867 (August), Lotta Schmidt and Other
Stories, Strahan
To Trollope-l
February 16, 1998
Re: Short Stories: "Miss Ophelia Gledd"
Here we have another of Trollope's short stories in this volume which is clearly based on his life, in this case on a semi-romantic attachment to Kate Fields which has intrigued his biographers.
What I'd like to bring up tonight is that it is written in the first person. Trollope is again the gauche Mr Archibald Green. He was or is Mr Green in the two Irish tales, in "The Panjandrum", in "The Man who Kept His Money in a Box". All these may be originally meant to be part of a group of comic stories centering on a single persona -- with whom Trollope identified -- the inadequate male. I guess "green" had some of the same connotations in the 19th century as it has today. Ophelia is clearly a romantic lady name, and Gledd brings us back down to earth.
It's not a bad story: it was written for a feminist magazine of the day, and it contains a convincing portrait of a gay confident and pretty young woman whose strength of character has enabled her to rise above "the loss of wealth" so that Miss Gledd feels no "no other discomfort than the actual want of those things which hard money buys." The scene of sleigh-riding is very well done (there is another similiar one in Howells's A Modern Instance. The story presents a debate or meditation over the differences between American and English culture, and I certainly was attracted to Mr Green's way of describing what he found so attractive in Miss Gledd:
"By this time I had quite become a convert to the general opinion, and was ready to confess in any presence, that Miss Gledd was a beauty. As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us. There was a sense of companionship about her which no woman that I have ever know excelled her. She had a way of adapting herself to the friend of the moment which was beyond anything winning" (Sutherland, p 450).
One hopes Rose assumed this was a fiction, but it's hard to deny there seem to be a number of passages directly transcribed from life. For example, "Mr Green" also goes on to say:
"Her voice was decidedly very pleasant; and as t othat nasal twang I am not sure that I was ever right about it. I wasn't in love with her, and didn't want to fall in love with her."
And at another point in the story he says this "nasal twang which had at first been so detestable to me, had recommended itself to my hearing. At different periods of my life I have learned to love an Irish brogue and a northern burr" [the latter was Rose's accent].
When sleighing it is Trollope himself who says:
"I felt that I should have liked to cross the Rocky Mountains with her, over to the Pacific, and to have come home round by California, Peru, and the Pampas" (Sutherland pp 442 & 450).
It's not provable that these stories which are in the first person and are closely connected to Trollope's experiences, life, deepest memories of joy or trauma are inferior to those transmuted or displaced into stories which are distanced from him. In Volume Two some of the best stories, those which form "The Editor's Tales," are in the first person, and in my opinion--and Trollope's too--the best story he ever wrote (he asserts this somewhere in his Autobiography) is "The Spotted Dog," an editor's tale.
Still it seems that in this volume, with the exceptions of "A Ride Across Palestine" and "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box," those stories which are written in the first person and can uniformly also be directly connected to Trollope's own life are not works of art in the same way his displaced stories in the third-person are. They often lack a good ending, or we are provided with a punch line.
It's not clear if this is because they are too close to his life or because of the character of the persona. In "The Editor's Tales" we shall find the first-person narrator is not this boisterous, bull-in-a-china shop type who makes a fool out of himself and says uncomfortable things of all sorts. The editor is self-deprecating, quiet, self-questioning, very quiet and restrained, embarrassed and distressed for the people who bring their manuscripts to or need work from him. I also think one of the reasons "A Ride Across Palestine" works is the narrator is more not a John Bull or George Walker--or Archibald Green. I am half-tempted to conclude it is the character of the first-person narrator, the face of himself that Trollope shows to us, we don't like.
On the other hand I wonder if he didn't work hard enough on these because he didn't have to invent the story. Thus he didn't have to imagine the structure and work through it through scenes and created presences. "The Man who Kept His Money in a Box" works because of the virtuouso use of irony and finally enigmatic nature of what happened--a matter of art.
Since no-one was able to answer my earlier query--is there is novel told in the first-person by Trollope?--it may be that such questions don't interest others. But I find them of real interest because I always want to understand the art of a tale and where the power of literature comes from. After all it's only words on a page.
Ellen Moody
John Hopfner answered me:
Subject: Short Stories: "Ophelia Gledd"
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
On 2/16 Ellen commented on this story as follows:
What I'd like to bring up tonight is that it is written in the first person. Trollope is again the gauche Mr Archibald Green."
Yes, although here we've got an Archibald Green who's no longer a green youth himself. And I didn't find him so gauche as to be off-putting as the narrative voice.
In fact, I liked the opening of this story quite a lot. It managed to hook my interest immediately. The person who could read the opening paragraphs and not want to continue is a stronger soul than me.
"The story presents a debate or meditation over the differences between American and English culture, and I certainly was attracted to Mr Green's way of describing what he found so attractive in Miss Gledd:'By this time I had quite become a convert to the general opinion, and was ready to confess in any presence, that Miss Gledd was a beauty.'"
I liked this bit too, and found it true to life in addition to being well-written. Surely we all have known people who were acknowledged to be lovely women or handsome men, even though they didn't have classically regular features. There is an extent to which intelligence, animation, good humor, empathy, or some combination of the four can render a person striking who doesn't seem so at first blush.
"It's not provable that these stories which are in the first person and are closely connected to Trollope's experiences, life, deepest memories of joy or trauma are inferior to those transmuted or displaced into stories which are distanced from him."
Oh, certainly. Even though my experience, at the moment, is limited to the early short stories, I'll agree that Trollope wasn't doomed to failure when he wrote in the first person. Or when he used some anecdote or situation from life, for that matter.
"Still it seems that in this volume, with the exceptions of "A Ride Across Palestine" and "The Man Who Kept His Money in a Box," those stories which are written in the first person and can uniformly also be directly connected to Trollope's own life are not works of art in the same way his displaced stories in the third-person are. "
Here too I agree, although "Ophelia Gledd" is I think one of the better stories in this volume, from those that appear to have come directly from Trollope's life.
"It's not clear this is because they are too close to his life or because of the character of the persona... I am half-tempted to conclude it is the character of the first-person narrator, the face of himself that Trollope shows to us, we don't like."
That could be, you're right. Sometimes when he's writing in the first person Trollope seems to be expecting an emotional reaction from me that I find myself unready to give. This isn't a problem most of the time, but occasionally it gets in my way. Maybe we'll have more to say on this heading after the group has tackled some of the Editor's Tales from the next volume.
"On the other hand I wonder if he didn't work hard enough on these because he didn't have to invent the story. Thus he didn't have to imagine the structure and work through it through scenes and created presences. To me "The Man who Kept His Money in a Box" works because of the virtuoso use of irony and finally enigmatic nature of what happened--a matter of art."
Whereas "George Walker," say, despite evidence of art in the writing, winds up being mostly the unadorned story of something that once happened to a trivial man? Telling point, I think. The first-person stories I haven't liked have been those where what Trollope took to be the tension or crux of the tale was something I found either uninteresting or silly. This hasn't happened in the stories Trollope constructed from the outside in, rather than making use of his experience and going too directly from the inside out.