First published as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between May and December 1870, Anthony Trollope’s Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite differs from much of his fiction. Rather than constructing a large number of “portraits” as he normally did, Trollope sought to focus on “some pathetic incident in life,” describing the novel to the founder and editor of Macmillan’s Magazine as a common love story with a sad conclusion.
The protagonist is Emily Hotspur, daughter to Sir Harry Hotspur. A wealthy man who lost his son two years earlier, Sir Harry must consider passing on his estate to a cousin named George Hotspur. While George possesses wit and charm, his reputation as a gambler causes Sir Harry to reject him as heir. Instead, he takes the unusual step of settling the estate on Emily and hoping that whoever she marries will choose to adopt the name Hotspur. Because he is a just man, Sir Harry bestows on George £5,000 and a promise that he will inherit double that amount upon Sir Harry’s death.
While Sir Harry and his wife, Lady Elizabeth, choose a suitable prospect in Lord Alfred Gesley, son of Harry’s old friend the Marquis of Milnthrop, Emily does not care for him. Instead, she falls in love with George, who has not accepted Sir Harry’s money with the grace and understanding for which Harry had hoped. Instead, he does his best to attract Emily, understanding the fortune she will bring to a marriage.
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Despite her father’s warnings and evidence that George leads an improvident life, Emily cannot resist his charms. She feels that she can change George and promises not to marry him unless Sir Harry approves, which he does not. George continues his racetrack gambling, lying about it to Emily. Lady Elizabeth is horrified when she asks Emily what she would do if George had done “the wickedest things in the world,” and her daughter replies, “I might break my heart in thinking of it, but I should never give him up.”
Trollope does paint a sympathetic mother figure when he has Elizabeth also succumb to George, “not knowing why, but feeling that she herself became bright, amusing, and happy when talking to him.” When George is pressed by creditors and in danger of criminal charges, he accepts Sir Harry’s payment of his debts and promise of a yearly income if he will stay away from Emily. The Hotspurs take the miserable young woman to Italy, where she will later die, ostensibly of a broken heart, leaving behind grieving parents.
In describing Hotspur in the opening sentences as “a mighty person in Cumberland, and one who well understood . . . what sort the magnificence, which his position as a great English commoner required of him,” Trollope prepares readers for a fall from grace that will be all the greater due to Hotspur’s position and wealth. The fact that he was “a proud man” hints at the stubbornness that will lead him to sacrifice his daughter to his own ideals. That the sacrifice will be made becomes clear as foreshadowing when Emily tells her mother, “George will always be to me the dearest thing in the whole world—dearer than my own soul.”
While Trollope rarely sketched true villains in his novels, George Hotspur comes close. He has no redeeming qualities, and as a drinker, womanizer, and gambler, he fails to accept responsibility for his own actions, anathema to Trollope. Trollope did not lack understanding regarding moneylenders; he had had experience with them in his own youth. However, he had never stooped to lying and theft, and when George does so, his social designation as “gentleman” assumes the emptiness of a mere label.
The book opened to mixed reviews but remains important as an unusual Victorian indictment of the narrow-mindedness often accompanying ancestral pride. It is readily available.
Bibliography
Bradbury, Sue. Introduction to Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite, by Anthony Trollope. London: The Trollope Society, 1992, vii–xvii.
Kincaid, James. The Novels of Anthony Trollope. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.