The Claverings
Encyclopedia
The Claverings is a novel by Anthony Trollope
, written in 1864 and published in 1866–67. It is the story of a young man starting out in life, who must find himself a profession and a wife; and of a young woman who made a marriage of convenience
and must abide the consequences.
Sir Hugh Clavering. At the novel's beginning, Harry is jilted by his fiancée, the sister of Sir Hugh's wife, who proceeds to marry Lord Ongar, a wealthy but debauched earl
.
Harry's father urges him to make the church his profession; but Harry aspires to become a civil engineer
, of the type of Robert Stephenson
, Joseph Locke
, and Thomas Brassey
. To this end, he becomes a pupil at the firm of Beilby and Burton.
A year and a half later, Harry has become engaged to Florence Burton, the daughter of one of his employers. He presses her for an early marriage; but although she loves him deeply, she refuses, insisting that they wait until he has an income adequate to support himself and a family.
At this point, Lord Ongar dies, and his widow returns to England. Sir Hugh, her nearest male relative, is a hard and selfish man, and refuses to see her upon her arrival. This lends spurious credence to rumours about her conduct; and it forces her sister, Lady Clavering, to ask Harry to assist her when she returns.
Harry fails to tell Lady Ongar of his engagement; and, in a moment of weakness, he embraces and kisses her. This puts him in a position where he must behave dishonourably toward one of the two women in his life: either he must break his engagement, or he must acknowledge that he has gravely insulted Lady Ongar. Although he loves Florence Burton and knows that she is the better woman, he is unwilling to subject Lady Ongar to further misery.
Lady Ongar, because of her considerable wealth, is pursued by others. She is courted by Count Pateroff, one of her late husband's friends, and by Archie Clavering, Sir Hugh's younger brother. Count Pateroff's scheming sister Sophie Gourdeloup, the only woman who will see Lady Ongar because of the rumours about her conduct, wants her to remain single so that Mme. Gourdeloup can continue to exploit her.
Mme. Gourdeloup sees to it that Lady Ongar learns about Harry's engagement. Meanwhile, Florence Burton learns that Harry has been seeing Lady Ongar regularly, and decides that she must release him if he does not truly love her.
Through the good influence of his mother, Harry comes to realize that Florence Burton is the better woman and the less deserving of dishonorable treatment. To her letter offering to end their engagement, he responds with a reaffirmation of his love for her. He also writes to Lady Ongar, regretting his past conduct toward her and making it clear that he intends to remain true to his fiancée.
Soon thereafter, Sir Hugh and Archie Clavering are both drowned when their yacht goes down off Heligoland
. This makes Harry's father the new baronet and the possessor of Clavering Park, with Harry the heir apparent
. This increase in wealth allows him to marry immediately and to give up engineering, a profession for which he almost certainly lacked sufficient self-discipline. Lady Ongar gives up much of her property to the family of the new earl, and retires into seclusion with her widowed sister.
To Michael Sadleir
, The Claverings was a precursor of Phineas Finn
and Phineas Redux
. Lady Ongar rejected Harry's honest love and married for worldly gain, and found misery despite her worldly wealth; in the Phineas novels, Lady Laura Standish chose the wealthy Robert Kennedy over the warm-hearted Finn, and found herself subjected to her husband's gloomy and domineering temperament. Both women were eventually freed by widowhood; but by then the men who had truly loved them were committed to others and beyond their reach.
Evangelical
clergymen in Trollope's novels were generally portrayed as "self-righteous, dictatorial, intolerant, and decidedly not gentlemen". Examples include Obadiah Slope of Barchester Towers
, Samuel Prong of Rachel Ray
, and Jeremiah Maguire of Miss Mackenzie. In The Claverings, however Henry Clavering's curate
Samuel Saul is depicted as "an Evangelical of courage, zeal, and selflessness". His diligence is contrasted to his rector's idleness; and Trollope rewards him with the hand of Fanny Clavering, Harry's sister, and with the living
of the parish upon Henry Clavering's accession to the baronetcy.
from February 1866 to May 1867; it was the fourth and last of Trollope's novels published in the magazine. It was issued in book form by Smith, Elder & Co.
in 1867. In the course of setting the book in type, a section of two-thirds of a page of the Cornhill text was omitted, probably accidentally.
In 1867, an American edition bearing the date 1866 was released by Harper
. In that same year, Tauchnitz
of Leipzig
produced an English-language edition; a Dutch edition titled De Claverings was released by Brast of Dordrecht
; and a Russian translation, Klaveringi, was issued in St. Petersburg
. In 1875, A. Moe of Stavanger
released a Norwegian translation, Familien Clavering
More recently, editions have been released by Dover Publications
in 1977, by Oxford University Press
in 1986, and by the Trollope Society in 1994.
Trollope received £2800 for the novel; in 1867, he also published The Last Chronicle of Barset, for which he received £3000. In 1860, George Murray Smith
, Cornhills publisher, had paid him £1000 for Framley Parsonage
, his first serial in the magazine.
Contemporary critics received the novel favorably, speaking approvingly of the moral lesson in the misery suffered by Lady Ongar after she married for money rather than love. A review in The Spectator
declared that "Mr. Trollope draws with a sincerity that never fails him the true and natural punishment of her sin". The Saturday Review
critic wrote that she had done "a wrong and a wicked thing", and that "she is punished just enough, and not more than enough, to vindicate the ways of society to women... Perhaps, if anything, she escapes too lightly."
Later critics also regarded the work highly. Sadleir described it as one of Trollope's five technically faultless books: "there is not a loose end, not a patch of drowsiness, not a moment of false proportion." Still more recently, David Skilton wrote that "it has been usual to pronounce it among the most perfect and attractive productions of the novelist's pen", while pointing out that by the 1980s, critics were less insistent on the formal perfection shown by The Claverings, and more receptive to "the complexities of the Victorian multiplot novel".
The novel sold well at the time of its initial publication, but has fallen from popularity since then. Skilton suggests that the volume of Trollope's production during 1866–67 may have overwhelmed critics and readers alike.
of Barchester: Henry Clavering, as a clergyman, is pressured to give up fox hunting
by Bishop and Mrs. Proudie of the Barsetshire novels
.
Archie Clavering is abetted in his courtship of Lady Ongar by his friend Captain Boodle; in The Vicar of Bullhampton
(1870), there is a passing reference to "little Captain Boodle".
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
, written in 1864 and published in 1866–67. It is the story of a young man starting out in life, who must find himself a profession and a wife; and of a young woman who made a marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
and must abide the consequences.
Plot summary
Harry Clavering is the only son of Reverend Henry Clavering, a well-to-do clergyman and the paternal uncle of the affluent baronetBaronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
Sir Hugh Clavering. At the novel's beginning, Harry is jilted by his fiancée, the sister of Sir Hugh's wife, who proceeds to marry Lord Ongar, a wealthy but debauched earl
Earl
An earl is a member of the nobility. The title is Anglo-Saxon, akin to the Scandinavian form jarl, and meant "chieftain", particularly a chieftain set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced with duke...
.
Harry's father urges him to make the church his profession; but Harry aspires to become a civil engineer
Civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...
, of the type of Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS was an English civil engineer. He was the only son of George Stephenson, the famed locomotive builder and railway engineer; many of the achievements popularly credited to his father were actually the joint efforts of father and son.-Early life :He was born on the 16th of...
, Joseph Locke
Joseph Locke
Joseph Locke was a notable English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with railway projects...
, and Thomas Brassey
Thomas Brassey
Thomas Brassey was an English civil engineering contractor and manufacturer of building materials who was responsible for building much of the world's railways in the 19th century. By 1847, he had built about one-third of the railways in Britain, and by time of his death in 1870 he had built one...
. To this end, he becomes a pupil at the firm of Beilby and Burton.
A year and a half later, Harry has become engaged to Florence Burton, the daughter of one of his employers. He presses her for an early marriage; but although she loves him deeply, she refuses, insisting that they wait until he has an income adequate to support himself and a family.
At this point, Lord Ongar dies, and his widow returns to England. Sir Hugh, her nearest male relative, is a hard and selfish man, and refuses to see her upon her arrival. This lends spurious credence to rumours about her conduct; and it forces her sister, Lady Clavering, to ask Harry to assist her when she returns.
Harry fails to tell Lady Ongar of his engagement; and, in a moment of weakness, he embraces and kisses her. This puts him in a position where he must behave dishonourably toward one of the two women in his life: either he must break his engagement, or he must acknowledge that he has gravely insulted Lady Ongar. Although he loves Florence Burton and knows that she is the better woman, he is unwilling to subject Lady Ongar to further misery.
Lady Ongar, because of her considerable wealth, is pursued by others. She is courted by Count Pateroff, one of her late husband's friends, and by Archie Clavering, Sir Hugh's younger brother. Count Pateroff's scheming sister Sophie Gourdeloup, the only woman who will see Lady Ongar because of the rumours about her conduct, wants her to remain single so that Mme. Gourdeloup can continue to exploit her.
Mme. Gourdeloup sees to it that Lady Ongar learns about Harry's engagement. Meanwhile, Florence Burton learns that Harry has been seeing Lady Ongar regularly, and decides that she must release him if he does not truly love her.
Through the good influence of his mother, Harry comes to realize that Florence Burton is the better woman and the less deserving of dishonorable treatment. To her letter offering to end their engagement, he responds with a reaffirmation of his love for her. He also writes to Lady Ongar, regretting his past conduct toward her and making it clear that he intends to remain true to his fiancée.
Soon thereafter, Sir Hugh and Archie Clavering are both drowned when their yacht goes down off Heligoland
Heligoland
Heligoland is a small German archipelago in the North Sea.Formerly Danish and British possessions, the islands are located in the Heligoland Bight in the south-eastern corner of the North Sea...
. This makes Harry's father the new baronet and the possessor of Clavering Park, with Harry the heir apparent
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....
. This increase in wealth allows him to marry immediately and to give up engineering, a profession for which he almost certainly lacked sufficient self-discipline. Lady Ongar gives up much of her property to the family of the new earl, and retires into seclusion with her widowed sister.
Major themes
The Claverings treats what Skilton calls "Trollope's dominating concern of the eighteen-sixties": the choice of a career, in a broad sense. For a woman, the only possible career is marriage; for a man, it involves the choice of a profession as well as of a spouse.To Michael Sadleir
Michael Sadleir
Michael Sadleir was a British novelist and book collector.-Biography:He was born Michael Sadler, though upon beginning to publish novels he altered the spelling of his name to differentiate himself from his father, Michael Ernest Sadler, a historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leeds...
, The Claverings was a precursor of Phineas Finn
Phineas Finn
Phineas Finn is a novel by Anthony Trollope and the name of its leading character. The novel was first published as a monthly serial from October 1867 to May 1868 in St Paul's Magazine. It is the second of the "Palliser" series of novels...
and Phineas Redux
Phineas Redux
Phineas Redux is a novel by Anthony Trollope, first published in 1873 as a serial in The Graphic. It is the fourth of the "Palliser" series of novels and the sequel to the second book of the series, Phineas Finn.-Synopsis:...
. Lady Ongar rejected Harry's honest love and married for worldly gain, and found misery despite her worldly wealth; in the Phineas novels, Lady Laura Standish chose the wealthy Robert Kennedy over the warm-hearted Finn, and found herself subjected to her husband's gloomy and domineering temperament. Both women were eventually freed by widowhood; but by then the men who had truly loved them were committed to others and beyond their reach.
Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
clergymen in Trollope's novels were generally portrayed as "self-righteous, dictatorial, intolerant, and decidedly not gentlemen". Examples include Obadiah Slope of Barchester Towers
Barchester Towers
Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It is possibly Trollope's best known work...
, Samuel Prong of Rachel Ray
Rachel Ray (novel)
Rachel Ray is an 1863 novel by Anthony Trollope. It recounts the story of a young woman who is forced to give up her fiancé because of baseless suspicions directed toward him by the members of her community, including her sister and the pastors of the two churches attended by her sister and...
, and Jeremiah Maguire of Miss Mackenzie. In The Claverings, however Henry Clavering's curate
Curate
A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest...
Samuel Saul is depicted as "an Evangelical of courage, zeal, and selflessness". His diligence is contrasted to his rector's idleness; and Trollope rewards him with the hand of Fanny Clavering, Harry's sister, and with the living
Benefice
A benefice is a reward received in exchange for services rendered and as a retainer for future services. The term is now almost obsolete.-Church of England:...
of the parish upon Henry Clavering's accession to the baronetcy.
Development and publication history
Trollope wrote The Claverings between 21 August and 31 December 1864. The work was serialized in the Cornhill MagazineCornhill Magazine
The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels...
from February 1866 to May 1867; it was the fourth and last of Trollope's novels published in the magazine. It was issued in book form by Smith, Elder & Co.
Smith, Elder & Co.
Smith, Elder & Co. was a firm of British publishers who were most noted for the works they published in the 19th century.The firm was founded by George Smith and Alexander Elder and successfully continued by George Murray Smith .They are notable for producing the first edition of the Dictionary...
in 1867. In the course of setting the book in type, a section of two-thirds of a page of the Cornhill text was omitted, probably accidentally.
In 1867, an American edition bearing the date 1866 was released by Harper
Harper (publisher)
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
. In that same year, Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers.Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz , born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798...
of Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
produced an English-language edition; a Dutch edition titled De Claverings was released by Brast of Dordrecht
Dordrecht
Dordrecht , colloquially Dordt, historically in English named Dort, is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, located in the province of South Holland. It is the fourth largest city of the province, having a population of 118,601 in 2009...
; and a Russian translation, Klaveringi, was issued in St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. In 1875, A. Moe of Stavanger
Stavanger
Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...
released a Norwegian translation, Familien Clavering
More recently, editions have been released by Dover Publications
Dover Publications
Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
in 1977, by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
in 1986, and by the Trollope Society in 1994.
Trollope received £2800 for the novel; in 1867, he also published The Last Chronicle of Barset, for which he received £3000. In 1860, George Murray Smith
George Murray Smith
George Murray Smith was the son of George Smith who with Alexander Elder started the Victorian publishing firm of Smith, Elder & Co.. His brainchild, The Cornhill Magazine, was the premier fiction-carrying magazine of the 19th century.The firm was extremely successful. G. M...
, Cornhills publisher, had paid him £1000 for Framley Parsonage
Framley Parsonage
Framley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It was first published in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.-Synopsis:...
, his first serial in the magazine.
Literary significance and reception
Trollope thought that The Claverings was well written, with both humor and pathos, "though I am not aware that the public has ever corroborated that verdict". In his autobiography, written in 1875–76, he lamented that "I doubt now whether anyone reads The Claverings.Contemporary critics received the novel favorably, speaking approvingly of the moral lesson in the misery suffered by Lady Ongar after she married for money rather than love. A review in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
declared that "Mr. Trollope draws with a sincerity that never fails him the true and natural punishment of her sin". The Saturday Review
Saturday Review (London)
The Saturday Review of politics, literature, science, and art was a London weekly newspaper established by A. J. B. Beresford Hope in 1855....
critic wrote that she had done "a wrong and a wicked thing", and that "she is punished just enough, and not more than enough, to vindicate the ways of society to women... Perhaps, if anything, she escapes too lightly."
Later critics also regarded the work highly. Sadleir described it as one of Trollope's five technically faultless books: "there is not a loose end, not a patch of drowsiness, not a moment of false proportion." Still more recently, David Skilton wrote that "it has been usual to pronounce it among the most perfect and attractive productions of the novelist's pen", while pointing out that by the 1980s, critics were less insistent on the formal perfection shown by The Claverings, and more receptive to "the complexities of the Victorian multiplot novel".
The novel sold well at the time of its initial publication, but has fallen from popularity since then. Skilton suggests that the volume of Trollope's production during 1866–67 may have overwhelmed critics and readers alike.
Connections to other Trollope works
Although The Claverings is considered one of Trollope's "singletons", it is apparently set within the dioceseDiocese
A diocese is the district or see under the supervision of a bishop. It is divided into parishes.An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese. An archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or had importance due to size or historical significance...
of Barchester: Henry Clavering, as a clergyman, is pressured to give up fox hunting
Fox hunting
Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase, and sometimes killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds, and a group of followers led by a master of foxhounds, who follow the hounds on foot or on horseback.Fox hunting originated in its current...
by Bishop and Mrs. Proudie of the Barsetshire novels
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
.
Archie Clavering is abetted in his courtship of Lady Ongar by his friend Captain Boodle; in The Vicar of Bullhampton
The Vicar of Bullhampton
The Vicar of Bullhampton is an 1870 novel by Anthony Trollope. It is made up of three intertwining subplots: the courtship of a young woman by two suitors; a feud between the titular Broad Church vicar and a Low Church nobleman, abetted by a Methodist minister; and the vicar's attempt to...
(1870), there is a passing reference to "little Captain Boodle".
External links
- The Claverings—easy-to-read HTML version at University of Adelaide Library
- The Claverings at Project Gutenberg
- The Claverings, reproduction of 1866 Harper & Brothers edition at archive.org