The Way We Live Now

"This is the one I’ve read the most. I can show it to you, because I have all my Trollope Society editions here. It is pretty big, but his books are very easy to read. The books I’ve chosen are the ones that you can read on their own. They’re my favourites of the standalones. The Way We Live Now is about a swindler or confidence trickster, Augustus Melmotte, who bears a strong resemblance to Robert Maxwell, if you remember him. It’s about an outsider who tries to make his way in British society and it’s all a house of cards. He’s trying to ramp up shares, he doesn’t have to put any money in and other people will take the hit, it’s about class and money and corruption. Even though this trickster financier is dubious socially, he has a daughter, Marie, who is a massive heiress. And there’s somebody named Lord Nidderdale who is so dissolute that no one of his own class will have him. So, a marriage is arranged between Marie Melmotte and Lord Nidderdale which, of course, falls apart when her father loses most of his money. And there’s this wonderful scene with Lord Nidderdale and his father—who can’t stand each other—about what he’s going to do now. And the father says to Lord Nidderdale, ‘How do you mean to live if you don’t marry her?’ He’s broke and he’s got to find someone rich and they have this incredible discussion about what’s available to him. There’s the Widow X. She’s got 8,000 a year. She’s 40, but… At the end Lord Nidderdale says, “It’s a pity there shouldn’t be a regular statement published with the amount of money, and what is expected in return. It’d save a deal of trouble.” That’s what I mean: it’s laid out there. But again, I said how great Trollope is at the unexpected. When everything is falling apart, Marie Melmotte goes to see Lord Nidderdale and says, ‘I have no friends and I need some advice’ and they talk. They are these two children essentially—even though he’s probably 40—whose parents are moving them around like chess pieces. There’s this really nice scene—of kindness, really—as they try to work out what she should do. What should he do? Given that he’s such a miscreant, Lord Nidderdale has those moments. Trollope’s characters, even if they seem outrageous and two-dimensional, there’s always that extra thing that you’re not expecting. I feel emotional about the narrator. The huge emotion for me was when I finished The Last Chronicle of Barset . That was the end of six months’ of reading because I read all six Pallisers first. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God! I’m coming to the end of six months of reading 12 massive novels.’ And then, in the last paragraph, Anthony says, “And now, if the reader will allow me to seize him affectionately by the arm, we will together take our last farewell of Barset and of the towers of Barchester.” I just burst into tears because I felt like someone was talking to me from the grave. I was feeling so wistful and then this sentence just jumped at me, like he was by my side. It’s hard to explain, but it was very powerful. But in terms of his characters, I think you do get emotionally involved. The former prime minister John Major has this thing for Lily Dale, who is one of Trollope’s most annoying heroines. Her fiancé dumps her and she decides she’s going to spend the rest of her life pining for him. I’m giving the keynote speech to the Trollope Society this year and I’m so annoyed that it won’t be in person, because I have been longing to grab John Major and say, ‘Why, why? Lily Dale! You’ve got to be kidding!’ So, yes, you do get emotionally involved with them, because they feel like real people. Though I’ve never burst into tears except that once. I was totally living in that world. Trollope does talk to you all the time, which I like. Maybe some people don’t like it, but he’s got a wonderful narrative voice. It’s very friendly and it’s very compact. He’s like a companion. I was feeling that I was going to miss hanging out with him. That’s what it was. I felt I was leaving him. You don’t at all. He’s extremely readable. I could go so far as to say that he’s an easy read. He’s got this easy flowing style and you get caught up in it very quickly. My father (the writer Mayo Simon) summed up Henry James’s novels to me as ‘Who gets the money? Who gets the girl?’ which is the plot of many Trollope novels too. Or, rather, who gets to keep the money? Who wants the money? Who doesn’t have the money? And who gets the girl?"

"Absolutely. And, slightly atypically for Trollope, it is a book written in a spirit of moral disgust. Trollope generally takes a detached, somewhat comic or ironic view of society. But here we have contempt for the state of Victorian Britain in 1875. Augustus Melmotte, the tycoon at the centre of the story, is a great character: A mysterious outsider with a bullying, charming, intimidating presence. He promises money and riches to London’s decadent and foppish aristocrats. He is really a speculator in railway bonds, with an American shyster, Hamilton K Fisker, as his partner. Aristocrats crowd on to his boards, as baubles, for the money. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . You sense an entire class of society wanting to be corrupted, wanting to believe in this man. Melmotte is the precursor of modern figures such as Bob Maxwell and Bernie Madoff, who bully or charm you into believing they have the key to boundless riches. Other writers have tried to capture the world of high finance, and failed, because finance is abstract and complicated. Trollope succeeded because his real interest was in bringing to life the way that money could change human character. There’s nothing abstract or complicated about greed, vanity and weakness. Tom Wolfe managed something similar a century later with The Bonfire of the Vanities ."