Dr. Wortle's School

‘When I am taking a walk through the fields and get one of my feet deeper than usual into the mud, I always endeavour to bear it as well as I may before the eyes of those who meet me rather than make futile efforts to get rid of the dirt and look as though nothing had happened. The dirt, when it is rubbed and smudged and scraped, is more palpably dirt than the honest mud.’ ‘I will not admit that I am dirty at all,’ said the Doctor. ‘Nor do I, in the case which I describe. I admit nothing; but I let those who see me form their own opinion. If any one asks me about my boot I tell him that it is a matter of no consequence. I advise you to do the same. You will only make the smudges more palpable[...]'

My first Trollope. It's a focused narrative coming in at about 200 pages, concerning a scandal around the private life of Wortle's best employee. I loved the matter-of-fact Puddicombe, a fellow rector of the Doctor's who is used as a sounding board, and hope to see him again in another novel. Trollope's a good observer of contradition, namely stated preference versus revealed preference. The book isn't about the nature of the scandal, which involves bigamy - Trollope intentionally spoils it in the beginning - but rather how the characters deal with revelations, and pinpointing exactly what wider society really finds objectionable about it.

My mother is a huge Trollope fan but I had always found his enormo-tomes and their searching questions (Can You Forgive Her? Is He Popenjoy? Can U Dig It? etc.) a bit daunting, so this is my first Trollope read. It's shorter than many of his books and less heavy-going than I expected. The young love subplot is a drag but the examination of the way smear campaigns work (especially as regards women) is very astute and hasn't aged a day. The American shenanigans of young Mr Peacocke and his adversary, the impoverished Plantation heir and grifter Robert Lefroy, were at times as compelling as Jack London. So yeah, if you like 19th century fiction by the likes of Elizabeth Gaskell or George Eliot, then this could well interest you.