Aya tries to get interested in George Vavasor

and mostly succeeds

Mr. George Vavasor at Home/ Mr Grimes Gets his Odd Money

Summary:

Since we spent the last post learning about Mr. Grey and his house Trollope, who loves parallel structure, gives us a glimpse into George’s rooms and his life. George lives in a mostly secret set of rooms and prefers to meet people socially at the club. He also maintains a little house for hunting and that’s where he keeps his horses. If Mr. Grey is well known in the county and established George is his opposite, even his sister does not know his address and he uses the apartment mostly for business. The narrator observes: 

“I am not aware that he had any special reason for this peculiarity, or that there was anything about his mode of life that required hiding; but he was a man who had always lived as though secrecy in certain matters might at any time become useful to him. He had a mode of dressing himself when he went out at night that made it almost impossible that any one should recognise him. The people at his lodgings did not even know that he had relatives, and his nearest relatives hardly knew that he had lodgings. Even Kate had never been at the rooms in Cecil Street, and addressed all her letters to his place of business or his club. He was a man who would bear no inquiry into himself.” (Trollope, 101) 

I found wrestling with George to be interesting work while I reviewed these chapters. In some ways, he is very obvious in others he is totally opaque.  

Kate has written to George advising him to pursue Alice but George thinks mostly of how this would spite Mr. Grey. Whether or not this is a smokescreen is up to the reader to determine. I think it’s a question of “both-and” it’s convenient for George to marry Alice and he may even like her a little but it also suits him to be the means of putting out John Grey. 

George sits and waits and eventually, he’s told a guest is waiting to see him. This turns out to be Mr. Grimes who works at the Handsome Man which is a public house (or pub) and he wants to meet with Vavasor to discuss the upcoming election. They wait for a third man, Mr. Scruby. 

As Trollope signifies with his naming of them, these are not sparkling diamonds of virtue. There’s a suggestion that the men have met beforehand and what they’ll say to Mr. Vavasor has been back channeled but George is not totally unaware of this. 

Mr. Scruby is an attorney who helps with elections in the district Vavasor is running in. He says they must do a better job for George in this election than they did in the last. Grimes protests that any failure wasn’t his fault: he didn’t have enough time or money. Grimes says he was not paid his full bill George and Scruby say he was and eventually they settle that Grimes will get more money. The money is settled as a bill to be paid at a later date, which can be thought of as a debt. 

Analysis:

In these chapters ostensibly George is considering how much money to put into the election. However, as suggested by his reading of Kate’s letter and his consideration of Alice the meaning is more layered. His relationship with Alice is linked to his relationship to politics, if he pursues politics he needs money and Alice has money and may give it to him. Thus a step towards debt, such as taking on this bill to Mr. Grimes, is also a potential step towards Alice. In turn, his political ambition complicates his romantic ambitions not just because debt makes Alice more appealing but because we see in this chapter how competitive and selfish George is. He wants to win Alice so Grey will not have her, does he then want to win the Chelsea district for the same reason?

I’ve spent a lot of time, and will spend more, asking why Alice jilts Grey and why is she so vulnerable to George but these chapters prompt us to turn the question and ask why George is after Alice. Is it that he once “held” her and cannot admit defeat, as he cannot admit defeat in the last election for Chelsea and so means to run again? But why politics at all and why Alice at all? Does Alice’s love of politics have anything to do with George’s interest in her and why are they both enthralled with the London political scene? 

The men Vavasor deals with have little loyalty. Mr. Grimes will sell his pub and its customers to the highest bidder and he works hand in glove with Mr. Scruby behind George’s back to extort more money from him. George makes a reputation as a radical but here he is lingering over a letter about marrying a cousin: not a political pamphlet. I would argue that George is attracted to Alice for her beauty and her money but that he wants her because he is attracted by his own former ownership. Having pursued her earlier for her beauty and her money he returns to her because he wants what he once held. Extrapolating this reading of his character to the Chelsea districts which a man can hold but never own, suggests that politics prove a tempting moving target for Vavasor where he can win possession of the thing-- from someone else-- over and over again. 

This isn’t a very charming reading of George’s character: he wants to win and he wants to have something from someone else, but I think it’s backed up in the text. That George is so secretive is something to file away for sure but I think the major thrust of this chapter is the insight it brings in George’s actions regarding Alice and to a lesser degree his political career. 

There’s something about George that makes it hard to like him. How much of this is because Trollope portrays him as pursuing Alice without ever suggesting that he loves her? We as readers know that heroes will love their heroines and so we can tell just from this detail that George isn’t a hero. By having him associate with lower-class untrustworthy people the narrator also does George no favors. And then there’s the implicit suggestion that anyone who lives this way must be hiding something, match this with the story of his poor behavior around his past engagement to Alice and it’s a whole lot of murky bad behavior. What I think Trollope does not come out and write is that George keeps a mistress on the side and Alice requested he give her up and he did not. I draw this from reference Trollope makes to a third establishment George keeps in secret: a gentleman at the time might have kept his mistress in a set of rooms that no one else was supposed to know about. Should we dislike a character just because he engages in pre-marital sex? It looks different from 2021 than it did in the 1800s but George is stuck in the 1800s and I don’t think it makes sense to totally disregard the meaning this would have had at the time. 

Essentially: George is morally dangerous by the standards of his time. He’s already had his character called into question by the great scar he has on his face and he’s already been compared to the devil by family. As we meet more politicians it’ll be interesting to see how clean they keep their hands of men like Scruby and Grimes. Or, how clean the narrator keeps them, because this also suggests that George is essentially willing to buy his seat in Parliament and bribe the voters to vote for him. 

It’s complicated because as Trollope portrays it, and knew from experience, this was the system of voting in England and to a large degree everyone fought the same crooked fight. It doesn’t make it fair to make it standard but it does somewhat lessen the impact these chapters could have if George were, for example, stealing the election with fraud as opposed to buying it the way anyone standing for the seat would. By portraying him as a man stuck in a broken system Trollope elevates this character he otherwise degrades-- so which is it? 

George is trickier and more interesting than I gave him credit for being but ultimately I don’t know how I feel about him. And, if I remember correctly, it just gets more complicated as we go along.