An interrogation by the Vulturess

Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds: Reading Notes, Part V

Trollope on the expense of rising in society: "let nobody dream that he can be somebody without having to pay for that honor."

Lady Linlithgow's welcome to Lucy is a chilly one. Under questioning, Lucy describes her mirthful life among Lady Fawn and her daughters, to which the Vultureress responds: "you won't find anything to laugh at here; at least, I don't. If you want to laugh, you can laugh upstairs."

Though Lucy hopes to keep private the identity of her betrothed, Lady Linlithgow performs a remarkable crossexamination, not only extracting that information but adding to it a merciless -- and quite accurate -- assessment of the motivations at play.

Addressing his readers, Trollope defends his writing of a book with an unheroic hero such as Frank Greystock. "With whom are we to sympathize? says the reader . . . Oh my reader, when you have called the dearest of your friends round you to your hospitable table, how many heroes are there sitting at the board? . . . We cannot have heroes to dine with us. There are none. But neither are our friends villians, -- whose every aspiration is for evil."

Trollope severely disapproves of the then fashionable ponytail as "a dorsal excresence."

Tempted by Lizzie's rank, wealth, and beauty, Frank continues to postpone answering the love letters from his betrothed. "A man does not write a love letter easily when he is in doubt himself whether he does or does not mean to be a scoundrel."

Lizzie's son, the heir, makes a brief appearance -- though he is not described nor does he speak -- in order to be flaunted at the childless John Eustace (much as the diamonds were flaunted before Frank Greylock). The appearance made "the boy was done and carried away. Lizzie had played that card and had turned her trick."


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