SIR HARRY HOTSPUR OF HUMBLETHWAITE

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

Sir Harry's principal concern, contemplating his will, has to do with maintaining the family's reputation as upper  class stewards of the lands, villages and inhabitants of the Hotspur holdings;  a relationship that has lasted 400 years and that is now in some danger of disarray due to the death of the elder son at a premature age.  Harry sees that the best solution is to marry his daughter Emily to a suitable suitor with a lot of money and a title, but the most obvious candidate, Lord Alfred, is devoid of any merit in Emily's eyes.  There's another possibility, cousin George Hotspur, but he's not regarded as honorable or rich.  In fact, he, as a result of a Parisian upbringing and an overly liberal education, is somewhat of a rakehell whose only interests are gambling, drinking and card sharpery.  Somewhat at a loss, Sir Harry throws a party and invites the cousin, hoping against hope that he is reformable and that faced with the chance of becoming wealthy and powerful, he might abandon his heedless ways and become a responsible citizen and a worthy husband for his daughter.

So Emily falls in love with the young ne'er-do-well, convinced that she can change him into a loyal servitor and trustworthy land owner.  Young Harry is deeply in debt to London money-lenders and his first thought is to somehow influence Sir Harry to pay off his debts.  But he's such a waster that, even though Emily loves him, it seems like throwing money down the drain to regularize cousin Harry's financial affairs.  Later it's revealed that not only is he in debt, but he's a criminal, having cheated another young man with marked cards.  Emily discovers all this but loves him anyway, being the sort of young lady who, once committed, never changes her mind.

After a certain amount of waffling about, with Harry trying to act civilized and Emily trying to convince her father that he's salvageable, Sir Harry agrees to pay the bills and to provide an annual income for Harry of 500 L's a year.  But even so, the young villain eventually realizes that being stuck in the country for the rest of his life is not a situation that appeals to him.  He would much rather marry his actress girl-friend and drink brandy and gamble with his friends, than marry Emily and spend his life cooped up in a structured rural farming society. which he didn't know anything about anyhow.

Devastated (spoiler alert), Sir Harry and his wife and daughter travel to Italy in hopes of distracting Emily from her single-minded love, but to no avail.  She passes away and is buried in Lugano.  Returning home, Sir Harry creates a new will, leaving everything to a rich relative of his wife.

This was in a way an unsatisfactory book, partly because the plot was overly obvious, and the tragic ending was evident early in the denouement.  The main interest to me lay in Trollope's astute and well presented observations, psychological and social.  I learned more about him in this book than in the Barsetshire novels.  Trollope has a sort of kaleidoscopic ability to study his characters while he's developing their roles:  with a twist of the kaleidoscope sleeve, he's able to view his people from an entirely new viewpoint, and describe their behaviors from a stance that might not have been previously obvious to the reader, or anticipated through the plot development.  These sorts of changes also indicate possible events that may have transpired in Trollope's own life.  As in:  how did he become aware of the feelings and actions of gamblers and card-players if he hadn't experienced similar situations in his own life?  And it's not only in small details that this sort of connection is evinced;  it pervades the whole book:  he reveals throughout his familiarity with social behavior on all levels of British society as well as his feelings about how individuals cope with the invisible mores which govern their lives. 

It was quite surprising and enlightening, a side of Trollope i hadn't noticed in such a powerful way before, and on the basis of that, i'd recommend the book highly.  I'm sure other readers are familiar with this talent on the part of T, and this is in all probability one reason why he's so popular.  So maybe it just took this long for me to get it, haha...  anyway, it was an unusual experience and will most likely lead this reader to more of his books...