Lizzieites and Anti-Lizzieites

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

The iron box for the diamonds stolen by professional thieves at a railway inn while Lizzie sleeps. In reality, the diamonds are safe beneath Lizzie's pillow, but she instinctively allows the police to believe the theft was successful.

Lizzie maintains her falsehood with Frank, whom she enlists in advising her how to deal with the "theft."

Neglected by her putative betrothed, Lucy Morris is outwardly confident but "there grew at her heart a little weed of care, which from week to week spread its noxious, heavy-scented leaves, and robbed her of her joyousness."

Lucy's dreary life with the Vultureress has few duties. Lady Linlithgow "simply chose to have some one sitting with her to whom she could speak and make little cross-grained, sarcastic, and ill-natured remarks."

Society divides into "Lizzieites and Anti-Lizzieites," with the Conservatives, led by Frank Greystock, holding Lizzie as an innocent victim and mistreated and the Liberals defending Lord Fawn and finding much to suspect in the robbery.

At a gathering of the Pallisers and their circle at Matching Priory -- including the Grey's of "Can You Forgive Her?" and the Chilterns and Madame Goesler of "Phineas Finn" -- all the latest rumors of the Eustace Diamonds' fate arrive by telegraph. Uncomfortably for him, Lord Fawn is among the guests. The aged, increasingly childlike Duke of Omnium obsessed with the scandal.

Glencora archly proclaims she is "quite envious" of "that little purring cat, Lady Eustace, having been so very--very clever" finding

It "delightful to think that a woman has stolen her own property and put all the police into a state of ferment."


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