The Three Clerks | Page 4

striking, as being somewhat unusual with Trollope, is the
depiction of the public-house, 'The Pig and Whistle', in Norfolk Street,
the landlady, Mrs. Davis, and the barmaid, Norah Geraghty. We can
almost smell the gin, the effluvia of stale beer, the bad tobacco, hear the
simpers and see the sidlings of Norah, feel sick with and at
Charley:--he 'got up and took her hand; and as he did so, he saw that
her nails were dirty. He put his arms round her waist and kissed her;
and as he caressed her, his olfactory nerves perceived that the pomatum
in her hair was none of the best ... and then he felt very sick'. But, oh,
why 'olfactory nerves'? Was it vulgar in early Victorian days to call a
nose a nose?
How far different would have been Dickens's treatment of such
characters and such a scene; out of Mrs. Davis and Norah he would
have extracted fun, and it would never have entered into his mind to
have brought such a man as Charley into contact with them in a manner
that must hurt that young hero's susceptibilities. Thackeray would have
followed a third way, judging by his treatment of the Fotheringay and
Captain Costigan, partly humorous, partly satirical, partly serious.
Trollope was not endowed with any spark of wit, his satire tends
towards the obvious, and his humour is mild, almost unconscious, as if
he could depict for us what of the humorous came under his
observation without himself seeing the fun in it. Where he sets forth
with intent to be humorous he sometimes attains almost to the tragic;
there are few things so sad as a joke that misses fire or a jester without
sense of humour.
Of the genius of a writer of fiction there is scarce any other test so sure

as this of the reality of his characters. Few are the authors that have
created for us figures of fiction that are more alive to us than the
historic shadows of the past, whose dead bones historians do not seem
to be able to clothe with flesh and blood. Trollope hovers on the border
line between genius and great talent, or rather it would be more fair to
say that with regard to him opinions may justly differ. For our own part
we hold that his was not talent streaked with genius, but rather a
jog-trot genius alloyed with mediocrity. He lacked the supreme
unconsciousness of supreme genius, for of genius as of talent there are
degrees. There are characters in The Three Clerks that live; those who
have read the tale must now and again when passing Norfolk Street,
Strand, regret that it would be waste of time to turn down that rebuilt
thoroughfare in search of 'The Pig and Whistle', which was 'one of
these small tranquil shrines of Bacchus in which the god is worshipped
with as constant a devotion, though with less noisy demonstration of
zeal than in his larger and more public temples'. Alas; lovers of
Victorian London must lament that such shrines grow fewer day by day;
the great thoroughfares know them no more; they hide nervously in
old-world corners, and in them you will meet old-world characters,
who not seldom seem to have lost themselves on their way to the pages
of Charles Dickens.
Despite the advent of electric tramways, Hampton would still be
recognized by the three clerks, 'the little village of Hampton, with its
old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river.' Hampton
is now as it then was, the 'well-loved resort of cockneydom'.
So let us alight from the tramcar at Hampton, and look about on the
outskirts of the village for 'a small old-fashioned brick house, abutting
on the road, but looking from its front windows on to a lawn and
garden, which stretched down to the river'. Surbiton Cottage it is called.
Let us peep in at that merry, happy family party; and laugh at Captain
Cuttwater, waking from his placid sleep, rubbing his eyes in
wonderment, and asking, 'What the devil is all the row about?' But it is
only with our mind's eye that we can see Surbiton Cottage--a cottage in
the air it is, but more substantial to some of us than many a real jerry-
built villa of red brick and stucco.

Old-fashioned seem to us the folk who once dwelt there, old- fashioned
in all save that their hearts were true and their outlook on life sane and
clean; they live still, though their clothes be of a quaint fashion and
their talk be of yesterday.
Who knows but that they will live long after we who love them shall be
dead and turned to dust?
W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE.

CONTENTS
I. THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES II. THE