Lizzie's Suitors

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

The putative "corsair" Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, the only one of Lizzie's suitors who knows her role in the thefts, considers whether he should force her into marrying him. "He had been careful to reduce her to a condition of despair, that she would have undoubtedly have accepted him . . ." but "she was such a mass of deceit, that he was afraid of her."

He makes his decision: "in spite of her beauty, his judgement went against her. He did not dare to share even his boat with such a dangerous fellow-passenger."

Lizzie begins maneuvering to cut the last bond between Lucy and Frank.

Without even knowing of Lizzie's complicity in the theft of the diamonds, Frank knows her to be false: "she was affected, unreal,-- and, in fact a liar in every word and look and motion." Yet "he loved her after a fashion and was prone to sit near her, and was fool enough to be flattered by her caresses."

Lizzie knows the truth of her value vis-a-vis Lucy. "Lucy could hold her ground because she was real. You may knock about a diamond and not even scratch it; whereas paste in rough usage betrays itself. Lizzie, with all her self-assuring protestations, knew that she was paste, and knew that Lucy was real stone."

Lucinda Roanoke tries everything she can to shake her irascible suitor Sir Griffin Trewitt: "he knows that I detest him, and tee he goes on with it. I have told him a score of times, but nothing will make him give it up. It is not that he loves me, but he thinks that that will be his triumph." With a "ghastly smile," she suggests to Lizzie that the only hope is that either she or Sir Griffin murders the other.

The Eustace family, including Camperdown, begins to exert pressure on Lord Fawn to honor his commitment to Lizzie, concluding "it would be a good thing to get the widow married and placed under some decent control."

Fawn writes Lizzie a letter expressing his dislike for the idea of marrying her but says he will honor his vow if she so demands.


Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry