An American Woman

Anthony Trollope wrote forty-seven novels, forty-two short stories and five travel books.

Others have been more productive but nevertheless a respectable output rendered exceptional because for thirty-three years he had a serious job working for the Post Office and went fox hunting whenever the opportunity presented itself. One of his novels is poignant: He Knew He Was Right.

When he was forty-five, in 1860, he had been happily married for sixteen years with two teenage sons. With his wife, Rose, he went to Florence to stay with his brother where he met Kate Field a twenty-two year old from Boston, Massachusetts. He lost his heart to her, keeping up a correspondence for the rest of his life and visiting her several times in America – she came to London at least once. She never married. Inexplicably Wikipedia makes no mention of this influence on Trollope in his entry although she merits her own entry – worth reading.

In HKHWR Louis Trevelyan’s tragic end recalls that of Trollope’s own father. He starts depicting feisty American women in his novels and depicts a friendship between his heroine, Emily Trevelyan, and an older man – her godfather and a contemporary of her father; and the novel is also sometimes set in Florence. While emphatically his marriage was not unhappy his affection for Kate was considerable. This from his autobiography, only seen after his death:

“There is an American woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to be a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures which has graced my later years.” These are strong words from a married Victorian of mature years about a woman twenty-two years younger than him.

I haven’t read the book but watched the 2004 BBC serialisation yesterday. It has a good cast, some excellent subplots and a script by Andrew Davies. Davies keeps the plot moving, allowing the characters to break the fifth wall and address the viewer. Bill Nighy plays Laura’s older admirer; you can see him on the left of the DVD case, above. Anna Massey is outstanding as an elderly spinster. Among the younger actors, David Tennant plays the part of a minor canon at Wells Cathedral to comic perfection. (He went on to be the 10th and 14th Doctor Who.) I enjoyed the four one hour episodes enormously.