Volume 31, Number 13 · August 16, 1984
'A Roaring Positive Fellow'
By V.S. Pritchett
The Letters of Anthony Trollope; Volume I, 1835–1870 Volume II, 1871–1882
edited by N. John Hall
Stanford University Press, 1082 pp., $87.50 (the set)
In the portraits done in middle life, Anthony Trollope is a threatening figure. The bald head gleams, the eyes behind the small steel spectacles glare, the nose is ready to snort, the rough beard looks like a bunch of thistles: the ungainly man in the frock coat and loud trousers has the general air of a ferocious headmaster with a cane behind his back. He looks greedy for the opportunity of contradicting you loudly, flat in the face. Yet for all the fierce fuss and noise the bear will not hurt a fly. James Russell Lowell gave a comic account of meeting him in Boston in 1861:
Review, 1929 words
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