Orley Farm

Orley Farm, reference 6, is a book which I first read more than fifty years ago and which I happened to take up again in the middle of January, as noticed at reference 5. A book which must have made an impression in the past, having clocked up three other notices (references 1 thru 3) over the years.

My copy of the book comes from the Trollope Society, possibly via an Oxfam shop, although there are none of the usual pencil markings inside the front cover suggesting second hand. Maybe Abebooks. While I read from reference 8, that 20 of his novels, including this one, are no longer available in their edition – while 27 others, plus the autobiography, are. At an average of £16 each plus membership fee, which I think a reasonable price for a quality hardback, much better made than the sort of thing you are likely to come across on the new fiction table at Waterstones. That said, I find that I have read only a fraction of the oeuvre, perhaps a third of the total, and I suspect that I would struggle with most of the rest of it.

Notwithstanding, I have found Orley Farm a good read, getting through its 736 pages in a little over a month, with other reads intervening. Arranged in 80 chapters, perhaps first published at the rate of one a week – to be compared with Simenon’s Maigret writing rate, as I recall, of a ten-page chapter in a three-hour session, early in the morning. With a book done in a fortnight or so.

The story is filled out with various commercial, domestic, maternal and romantic sub-plots, but the main business is that of conducting the defence of an otherwise well-liked and well-respected lady at her trial in a country town on a felony charge on which those conducting said defence come to be pretty sure that she was guilty. By way of a taster, an older and eminent barrister with whom she is friendly causes some upset when he decides that she needs the help of the sort of criminal lawyers who spend most of their time at the Old Bailey, defending all kinds of unsavoury people. While a younger barrister, brought in as a junior, is squeamish about defending such a person. He wants all his clients to be pure in heart and mind, free from any taint – and certainly not guilty of any criminal offence.

Another thread, only brought out in the second half, is the burden of guilt of a solitary crime, even one with some good mitigation. A burden which cannot be shared, a burden which, I dare say, sits lighter on some than others.

There is some fox hunting, which provides a bit of colour – and a prop for one of the romantic sub-plots – in part reflecting Trollope’s fondness for the sport. It seems he had the nerve needed for it – a test that I am fairly sure I would fail, would have failed, even as a young man.

We are reminded, from time to time, that some of the characters are Jews. It is decently done, but I suppose reflects the interests and attitudes of the middle England of the time. Reminders which survive in the novels of Aldous Huxley, more than half a century later.

The author is visible in a way which he is usually not in a novel written today: we get some authorly interjections, in his own voice, as it were. We also get quite a lot of story presented from more than one point of view. Thoroughly modern as far as that goes.

I got to like Millais illustrations better than I had at first viewing. Perhaps Millais was of the time and knew his business, nicely catching the tone and tenor of the book.

PS: the paired snaps above of one of the illustrations turned up by Google, illustrate the vagaries of reproduction of even what might be thought of as a straightforward black-and-white drawings. The version in my hard copy – facing page 52 – is a lot more like that on the left than that on the right – and a good deal better. Quite a lot has been lost in translation to my screen. Which I find a little odd, as the illustrations in my hard copy were reproduced from those in an 1862 edition – reproduction which may well, for all I know, have involved computers. But I imagine the original blocks are long gone, quite possibly recycled more or less at the time.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fix.html. On morphine.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-massive-dose.html. Convalescence.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/death-of-salesman.html. Demise of commercial tables. I associate to the Commercial Inn in Cullompton, in Devon, in the late 1960s, a cider house. A place now better known to me as the source of our brick dates.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/tate-and-pie.html. A Latin tag.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-passing-of-barchester.html. 

Reference 6: Orley Farm - Anthony Trollope - 1861.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orley_Farm_(novel). 

Reference 8: https://trollopesociety.org/.