I always feel when posting on a 'classic' that anything I write will be terribly inadequate as so many others have written essays, criticism and biographies already about the author. So it will be no surprise to Random Readers that there will be no erudite or academic analysis of the Prime Minister, as I am neither, and that I open this post by the words I Love Plantaganet Palliser.
As with Jeb Bartlett in the West Wing, Plantagenet Palliser is the Prime Minister we all wish we could have. Honest, true, conscientious, hardworking, a genuine love for his country and his wish to serve the same are all characteristics he has in abundance. But if there is one thing only that AT does in this book, it is to show that being this good and this honest can be a drawback when you are in politics. He is painfully thin skinned, shrinks from hard decisions and is upset and hurt when he is criticised or when the press attack him. His wife, the Duchess of Omnium who we know better as Lady Glencora, is just the opposite:
"They should have made me Prime Minister…I could have done all the dirty work. I could have given away garters and ribbons and made my bargains while giving them. I would give pensions or withheld them and make stupid men peers….. a man at a regular office has to work and that is what Plantagenet is fit for. He wants always to be doing something……………but a Prime Minister should never go beyond generalities about commerce, agriculture, peace and general philanthropy. Of course he should have the gift of the gab and that Plantagenet hasn't got….I could do a Mansion House dinner to a marvel"
When reading this passage I have to admit that I thought of a previous Prime Minister's wife who was rather too keen in interfering in her husband's politics and had dubious friends and favourites. No prizes for guessing who.
After being an unwilling bride The Duchess has come to love her husband and to appreciate his fine qualities and is determined to help him when he heads up the Government by determining to make a splash in society to boost his presence and standing. However, it is through this that she meets up with one Ferdinand Lopez, an unscrupulous financial speculator who has, after initial opposition, 
married Emily Wharton the daughter of a wealthy lawyer. The Duchess decides to interest herself in him and his wife and to use her influence to obtain the vacant seat of Silverbridge which has been in the hands of the Dukes of Omnium and always returns his candidate. The Duke puts his foot down by refusing to nominate anyone now that he is Prime Minister and this honesty and rectitude costs him dear as, when Lopez loses the seat and petitions to Plantagenet for recompense for his lost money (which has already been paid by his father in law) and the Prime Minister pays up, it then becomes known in the press and an onslaught is unleashed on the legality and dubiousness of this transaction.
The story of Ferdinand Lopez, his courtship and marriage of Emily Wharton, is one of the two intertwining strands in The Prime Minister and, though I know that Trollope is known as an author who creates strong women, I do sometimes wonder if this is right. Emily is not strong, but obstinate and cannot see that the man she loves is a scoundrel. She persists in marrying him and brings sorrow and disgrace upon her family. As with the Bertrams, which I reviewed earlier this month, and prior to that Can you Forgive Her, the women in these stories are mainly known for their havering about, their indecision and, in the end, stupidity which causes disaster. They nearly always end up happier than they deserve and I get quite cross with them at times.
These Palliser novels are quite quite wonderful. The breadth and depth of them and the political insight leaves me breathless with admiration. I have started to re-read them over the last few months, wildly out of order, but as I know them well for me that does not really matter. If you are a new reader then I would say that you must read them in the correct way. I have just finished the Duke's Children, which I will write about another day, and am now knee deep in Phineas Redux which kept me up till after midnight last night. There is something about Trollope's writing which gives me immense satisfaction and delight, a feeling which lasts long after I have closed up the book and read the last page and I have so many more of his awaiting my attention and re-reads that I know if I never read anything else for the rest of my life, I would be happy and entertained.
It is rather unfashionable to say that one likes another Prime Minister, John Major, but I always did like him and me liking a politician is such a rare occurrence that it rather took me by surprise. I then learned that he loved Trollope and had read and re-read all his books many times (the Establishment of course thought this was a sign of how frightfully middle class he was and not 'one of us') and this made me warm to him even more. Of course, he also loved cricket and on the day he was kicked out of office in the morning, he appeared at a Test Match at Lord's cricket ground in the afternoon. A man who has his priorities right.
I am digressing I know but there is a link with Trollope and politics which will remain as relevant today as it was when he was writing. The machinations and intriguing in the House as described by AT is not different and the characters depicted are instantly recognisable in the current crop of inmates who we are blessed with at the moment. Here is Anthony on what a Prime Minister should be:
"The fault is he (Plantagenet) takes things too seriously. If he could be got to believe that he might eat and sleep and go to bed and amuse himself like other men, he might be a very good Prime Minister. He is over troubled by his conscience….one wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genus; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laed; he should have a good digestion, genial manners and, above all, a thick skin. These are things we want, but we can't always get them and have to do without them'
Are you listening Mr Cameron?
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Other Trollope related posts you might be interested in
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2011/01/i-am-a-trollope.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/02/kept_in_the_dar.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/03/can_you_forgive.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2011/01/i-am-a-trolloperedux.html
http://randomjottings.typepad.com/random_jottings_of_an_ope/2007/02/the_pallisers.html
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All my copies of the Palliser novels are in the new Oxford World Classics collection, recently redesigned and being reissued. Clear font, lovely paper and excellent introductions. My thanks to OUP to their generosity in feeding my Trollope Mania.
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