'conversation' piece, the background being filled with slighter
but always live figures.

Particularly 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