Anthony Trollope's "Not If I Know It"

Written 1882 (9 August)
Published 1882 Life, Christmas Number

Subject: Short Stories: "Not if I Know It"
Sender: owner-trollope-l@teleport.com

When I finished this very short tale, the last of our stories, I thought how once again we have another that is called a Christmas story in name only. On second thought, however, I see it as a sermon in itself, probably the kind given then and now at the end of the year. These are the sermons that ask us to forget and forgive, and to make amends for foolish quarrels that arise when families that come together once a year spend too much time in close proximity.

Thanks very much, Robert, for causing us to be able to read these fine stories!

Bart

Re: Short Story: "Not If I Know It:" His Last Story

Sutherland tells us this was probably the last story Trollope wrote, and that given the genuinely Christmas mood of the story and its teasingly sharp final line, it seems somehow fitting that it should be so.

The story fulfills Trollope's criteria for a Christmas story that is not phony. It is a story of reconciliation, in which one brother-in-law, Wilfred Horton, manages to forgive. if not quite forget, and the other, George Wade, overcomes his instinctive distrust and signs his name to a document which will help his sister's husband in his business. That fits Trollope's definition:

"A Christmas story, in the proper sense, should be the ebullition of some mind anxious to instil others with a desire for Christmas religious thought or Christmas festivities,--better yet, with Christmas charity."

Charity is what the two men struggle to come up to. I like that Trollope presents it as a struggle, and find it characteristic of his truth to human nature when he is at his best that the man who in fact triumphs, Wilfred Horton, throws the sting back back at George Wade in the final line. After all, pragmatically speaking he gets what Horton wants--George Wade signs and thus truly makes the incident erasable in memory.

That we get no festivities, but Christmas occurs in Church is to me a sign of Trollope's roots in the earlier part of the Victorian age. Although we are going to see a very festive Christmas go on in Orley Farm, in fact the family-centered gift-giving display that became the focus of Christmas around the time of Dickens's A Christmas Carol was an innovation, one I am not sure was such a good idea, given the movement of Christmas today out to the mall where Christmas buying goes on, and most hours of "Christmas" seem to be spent. Trollope harks back to Austen and the earlier age when Christmas occurred in Church to be followed by a good meal at home. (Digresson: Trollope does approve of duels and this too puts him back in time to before the later 18th century when duels began to become socially unacceptable and were prosecuted rigorously when found out.)

The story is full of good feeling which is not sentimental or meretricious because the forgiving is not overdone and the fight is in fact really fully resolved when George signs and gets his own back just a bit. I liked the scene of the three constrained at breakfast where their pride will not let them break down and be friends, the scene of the walk in the landscape which is part of what cools the two men off, and then the moment in church:

"a feeling did come on the hearts of both of them,--to one that the words had better not have been spoken, and to the other that they had better have been forgiven. Then came the Sacrament, more powerful with its thoughts than with its words, and the two men as they left the church were ready in truth to forgive each other--if only they knew how" (1995 Oxford Classics, ed. JSutherland, p. 574).

I also thought very well done the dialogues of Mary Wade, George's wife and Wilfred's sister, first with one man and then with another. In this Trollope shows he has not lost one iota of his gift for believable conversation at the very end.

I have been reading many very good critics and scholars on Trollope and find they often open by debating what is finally a silly way: is the "real" Trollope balanced or gloomy. Often they opt for one or the other. Is The Way We Live Now the true Trollope or Orley Farm or vice versa. Myself I think this story gives us the answer: he is a man who contains within him complex moods in which now one feeling and now another predominates, but in them all he always gives a fillip to the side he seems to be embodying before going on to yet another phase of a story--or his consciousness as embodied in his stories and characters.

I too would like to thank Robert for thinking of this idea of all of us reading the stories. They was a feasible project for many of us, and I hope everyone enjoyed it.

Ellen Moody

To Trollope-l

May 24, 1998

Re: Short Story: "Not If I Know It:" Yet One More on "Sign Here"

Again and again in Trollope's novels the hero finds himself inveigled, manipulated, pressured, tricked, or himself driven to sign a bill promising to pay a debt of his own or someone else's in a couple of months. Again and again said hero comes to disaster--or experiences the humilation of being followed around by a debt collector who keeps saying a versions of "Do be punctual." Trollope makes us feel angry at the man who demands the signing when the hero is led to sign the bill by the manipulation of his generosity or shame by someone else-- or equally by his desire for this so-called "friend" to push his career along. We are supposed to see our hero has been foolish or wrong, but Trollope is always sympathetic is always to the man who has signed the bill, not the the man who asks for the signature. The man who asks for the signature is often presented a villain. Examples of this last include Mark Robarts and Phineas Finn (heroes and signers) and Sowerby and Lawrence Fitzgerald (villains and men who pressure heroes). Charley Tudor is pure Trollope because he gets into debt all by his lonesome--I call him pure Trollope because the biographers agree this repeated experiene reflects Trollope's own signing of bills as a young man in London. Ther was even someone who followed him about saying something like "Do Be Punctual."

This story differs in that Trollope shows sympathy for the man who wants the other man to sign. We see it from his point of view. Of course Trollope makes it easier since the signing is not underwriting a debt but only signing to express one's trust in one's friend. Still to sign your name to support another monetarily can have its dangers, and to show us Wilfred Horton's need for the signing is something new. Or his Horton a quiet but real risk; or is it really "Not if I Know it." An ambiguous line to end the short fictions on, no?

Ellen Moody

Here is an expanded and much revised version of the posting I wrote in 1998 which I placed on Trollope-l in 1999:

December 26, 1999

Re: Christmas Short Story: "Not If I Know It"

Those who have been reading or watching Christmas stories on TV or the cinema, might like to read about Trollope's last story, 'Not If I Know It'. According to John Sutherland, 'Not If I Know It' is probably the last fiction Trollope ever wrote. It has a genuine Christmas feel; we seem to be urged to have charity for one another, to reconcile ourselves, to forgive and if not forget, at least get along.

The story: one brother-in-law, Wilfred Horton, manages to forgive, if not quite forget, the distrust of the other, George Wade. George Wade is at first unwilling to undersign a bill for Horton, but Wade overcomes his distrust and reluctance and signs his name to a document which will help his sister's husband in his business. It shows how situational ethics control Trollope's fiction: in most of his novels, we are to see that his heroes are wrong to countersign bills. They put themselves in danger. They are inveigled, manipulated, pressured, tricked, or themselves driven to sign a bill; repeatedly the hero comes to disaster -- or experiences the humilation of being followed around by a debt collector who keeps saying a versions of "Do be punctual." The autobiographical background is Trollope's own humiliation and harassment by debt collectors. In An Autobiography Trollope tells us he was followed around by a man who would say 'Do be punctual'.

In 'Not If I Know It" Trollope shows sympathy for the man who wants the other man to sign. We see it from the point of view of the man who needs the signature and his wife. Trollope does make it easier since the signing is not underwriting a debt but only signing to express one's trust in one's friend.

The story opens swiftly with a sharp quarrel and wounding words which are only later explained. The unfolding of the story explains the words and relationships of the people talking to one another. The point is to show us how difficult charity is; the two brothers-in-law have quite a struggle to forgive and to reconcile themselves. In fact, they don't quite . I like that Trollope presents it as a struggle, and find it characteristic of his truth to human nature when he is at his best that the man who in fact triumphs, Wilfred Horton, throws the sting back back at George Wade in the final line. After all, pragmatically speaking he gets what Horton wants -- George Wade signs and thus truly makes the incident erasable in memory. Yet he doesn't or can't forget the verbal sting and can't resist a last retort, an attempt to retaliate with an equal sting. Trollope knows how important words are. They matter. He knows how people are controlled by their egos and pride -- more it seems than by practical need. The story is full of good feeling which is not sentimental or meretricious because the forgiving is not overdone.

That we get no festivities, but Christmas occurs in Church is a sign of Trollope's roots in the earlier part of the Victorian age. In this story Trollope harks back to the eighteenth-century and the earlier when Christmas occurred in Church to be followed by a good meal at home. The scene where the three people are constrained at breakfast and their pride will not let them break down and be friendly first is very good. Trollope's real gift for evoking a sense of place and landscape is felt in the walk in the landscape which helps the two men to cool off. The 'high' point of the story insofar as it is 'Christmasy' is the moment in church:

"a feeling did come on the hearts of both of them, -- to one that the words had better not have been spoken, and to the other that they had better have been forgiven. Then came the Sacrament, more powerful with its thoughts than with its words, and the two men as they left the church were ready in truth to forgive each other--if only they knew how" (1995 Oxford Classics, ed. JSutherland, p. 574).

The dialogues of Mary Wade, George's wife and Wilfred's sister, first with one man and then with another were also very well done Trollope shows he has not lost one iota of his gift for believable conversation at the very end of his writing career, when he is in bad pain (possibly from angina) and nearer death than anyone supposed.

I saw and very much enjoyed Alistair Sim in A Christmas Carol last night (I watched it with my younger daughter who had never seen 'the real' Scrooge before, just mocks on it). I was moved despite the melodramatic techniques. Yet after all Scrooge is not real; no one is really that ogre-like; Bob Cratchit is not real; no one is really that overtly desperate nor kind. Dickens's art is expressionistic; he projects attitudes, feelings. Trollope's art is that of the realist. The ghost in Trollope is the memory that lingers in our hearts. It's true one is never near weeping with Trollope's Christmas stories; tears come to my eyes yet once more when Scrooge entered the drawing-room of his nephew and asked the niece to forgive an old man.

Ellen


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