1
After that they browsed for a minute or two in a semi-detached fashion. Nick found a set of Trollope which had a relatively modest and approachable look among the rest, and took down The Way We Live Now, with an armorial bookplate, the pages uncut. “What have you found there?” said Lord Kessler, in a genially possessive tone. “Ah, you’re a Trollope man, are you?” “ I’m not sure I am, really, ” said Nick. “I always think he wrote too fast. What was it Henry James said, about Trollope and his ‘great heavy shovelfuls of testimony to constituted English matters’?” Lord Kessler paid a moment’s wry respect to this bit of showing off, but said, “Oh, Trollope’s good. He’s very good on money.” “ Oh…yes…” said Nick, feeling doubly disqualified by his complete ignorance of money and by the aesthetic prejudice which had stopped him from ever reading Trollope. “To be honest, there’s a lot of him I haven’t yet read.” “ No, this one is pretty good, ” Nick said, gazing at the spine with an air of judicious concession. Sometimes his memory of books he pretended to have read became almost as vivid as that of books he had read and half forgotten, by some fertile process of auto-suggestion. He pressed the volume back into place and closed the gilded cage. .Alan Hollinghurst
2
Elgin himself looked ten years younger, now that he’d cast the die, but I thought exuberance had got the better of him when he strode into the saloon later, threw The Origin of Species on the table and announced:" It’s very original, no doubt, but not for a hot evening. What I need is some trollop." I couldn’t believe my ears, and him a church-goer, too. "Well, my lord, I dunno, ” says I. "Tientsin ain’t much of a place, but I’ll see what I can drum up –""Michel’s been reading Doctor Thorne since Taku, " cried he. "He must have finished it by now, surely! Ask him, Flashman, will you?" So I did, and had my ignorance, enlightened.George MacDonald Fraser