Borthrop Trumbull

Borthrop Trumbull, usually addressed as Mr. Trumbull, is a distinguished bachelor, auctioneer, and second cousin of Peter Featherstone. A familiar public figure whose placards advertise his sales of land and cattle, he moves between the business of valuing property and the performance of valuing himself. At Featherstone’s funeral and at the later sale of Edwin Larcher’s furnishings, his confident talk, inflated taste, and delight in his own phrases turn him into a comic study of provincial status: he is often wrong or uninformed, but rarely doubtful of his importance.

Identity and Standing

Trumbull’s public reputation rests on his auctioneering business and his visible presence in the district. He has dealt with land and cattle, and Featherstone had treated him more agreeably than other relatives because he was useful in business matters. In the funeral programme dictated by Featherstone, Trumbull was named as a bearer. The connection gives him a plausible place among the family’s circle, though not the privileged knowledge that others suppose he may have.

The narrator distinguishes Trumbull’s self-regard from outright greed. He considers himself a man of merit and believes that, if Featherstone had remembered him in a generous bequest, the gift would have been deserved rather than solicited. He insists to himself that he has not ingratiated himself with the old man, but has advised him from more than twenty years’ experience, beginning with his apprenticeship at fifteen. His professional habit of estimating things at a high price becomes a broader disposition: he admires his own judgment as readily as the objects he sells.

At Featherstone’s House

During the tense period before Featherstone’s will is known, Trumbull’s conduct encourages the relatives to speculate about what he might receive. He enters the parlor late in the morning and asks Mary Garth for ham and ale, occupying the space between Mrs. Waule and Solomon. When Solomon hints at whether Featherstone has remembered him, Trumbull remarks that the old man has relied on him considerably, then presses his lips together and frowns as though withholding meaningful information.

Solomon and Mrs. Waule try to draw him into talk about the will. Trumbull answers Solomon’s question with an elaborate account of rhetorical questions, presenting ordinary conversation as a lesson in elevated speech. He then implies that testamentary dispositions sometimes favor undeserving people. His words sound suggestive, but they do not disclose any real knowledge: the narrator makes clear that Trumbull knows nothing about Featherstone’s will and would be difficult to force into admitting ignorance.

When Mrs. Waule raises the possibility that the estate might be given to charity, Trumbull avoids answering her directly. He patrols the room, adjusts his clothes and hair, and picks up a book from Mary’s work-table. Reading aloud the title and opening of Anne of Geierstein, he gives his attention to literary performance while the relatives wait for a response about the estate. The servant’s arrival with food closes the interval in which he might have answered. His display of learning thus serves, in practice, as an elegant evasion of a serious family question.

The same mixture of hospitality and self-display appears when he speaks with Mary about books. He identifies the author of Anne of Geierstein as Sir Walter Scott, praises Ivanhoe, and asks whether she subscribes to the Middlemarch library. When she explains that Fred Vincy brought her book, Trumbull presents himself as a great reader with two hundred volumes bound in calf and pictures by Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Titian, Vandyck, and others. He offers to lend Mary any book she wants. His willingness to share his collection is courteous, but it is also another occasion to enumerate the possessions that support his idea of himself as a cultivated man.

Style, Taste, and Self-Presentation

Trumbull’s distinguishing trait is the way professional sales language spills into everyday life. He favors superior phrases, corrects his own supposedly poor wording, and is loud enough to dominate a conversation. In company he often stands or walks about, pulls down his waistcoat, trims himself with a forefinger, and plays with his large seals. These repeated gestures make his self-confidence visible, while his ceremonial diction turns small exchanges into performances.

His literary manner is not simply ignorance. He can identify Scott and name major painters, but his learning is bound up with display and with a belief in his own authority. He reads Anne of Geierstein aloud with conspicuous emphasis and pronounces the last word of its opening sentence in a way he regards as enhancing its sound. The narrator’s joke is that Trumbull does not say things begin; in private life and on his handbills, they commence. His vocabulary announces the distinction he wishes to possess even when the distinction itself becomes comic.

At the Larcher sale, he applies this instinct to commercial praise. The event is a lively public occasion, not a sign of financial distress: Edwin Larcher’s success in the carrying business has enabled him to buy a mansion near Riverston, and the sale offers its furnishings to prospective buyers. Trumbull advertises the hall furniture as including carving by a contemporary of Gibbons. His professional enthusiasm treats even an ordinary or awkward object as an opportunity for persuasive language.

A second fender, reportedly overlooked in its proper place, receives special attention after Will Ladislaw enters the room. Trumbull praises its polished steel, openwork, and sharp edge, first acknowledging that its design might not suit ordinary taste and then predicting that the style will become fashionable. He solicits bids and insists on the object’s quality and chastity of design. The episode shows him using fluency and confidence to create value in public, whether or not the article naturally commands it.

The Larcher Sale and Will Ladislaw

Trumbull welcomes Will at the sale as a connoisseur, placing him in a conspicuous relation to the works and objects being auctioned. That welcome meets a tense public mood. Will believes that observers may regard him as an adventurer whose designs on property have been frustrated, and he is particularly conscious of the town’s contempt for his Polish background and its ignorance of Dante. His defiant posture contrasts with Trumbull’s expansive ease: one stands silent under suspicion, while the other speaks as though every object and audience were awaiting his judgment.

When the Supper at Emmaus is brought forward, Trumbull appeals directly to Will’s expertise, noting that he has been abroad and should understand the merit of such things. The auctioneer presents the painting as an Italian work by the celebrated Guido, praises it as an Old Master, and imagines it as suitable for a charitable institution. His sales pitch mixes art-historical language, claims about the frame, and an appeal to civic munificence. By directing the picture toward Will, he also makes the young man’s knowledge part of the public spectacle of the sale.

Will answers with a bid of five pounds. Trumbull responds with deep remonstrance, continuing the contest between the auctioneer’s theatrical valuation and the bidder’s cool intervention. In this scene, Trumbull’s importance is not that he controls the story’s major choices, but that his public performance supplies a stage on which questions of taste, money, social standing, and expertise become visible. He embodies a local world in which confidence can confer authority, even when knowledge is partial and judgment is inseparable from self-advertisement.