# Lord Nidderdale Tries His Hand Again explained — The Way We Live Now

> Chapter companion for The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope.

## What happens

Lord Nidderdale, under pressure from his father the Marquis to marry an heiress, decides to renew his suit to Marie Melmotte despite her recent failed elopement with Sir Felix Carbury. He visits the Melmotte house, where he speaks with Marie alone. Marie, though initially defiant and honest about her feelings for Sir Felix, eventually engages with Nidderdale's persistence. The chapter also shows Melmotte's preoccupation with his political and social ambitions, including a visit from a priest and preparations for a dinner with an Imperial Majesty.

## Themes in this chapter

### Marriage as Financial Transaction

Nidderdale's courtship of Marie is explicitly driven by the need to restore his family's wealth, with the Marquis viewing the marriage as a financial arrangement.

### Speculation and Ruin

The precariousness of Melmotte's fortune is hinted at through the Marquis's lawyer's doubts and Marie's awareness of a potential 'dreadful convulsion.'

### Love vs. Practicality

Marie's insistence on love and her rejection of Nidderdale's practical, father-driven proposal contrast with the societal expectation of marrying for money.

## Character check-ins

### Lord Nidderdale

Renews his suit to Marie Melmotte under paternal pressure, despite doubts about her elopement and the stability of Melmotte's fortune.

### Marie Melmotte

Defends her feelings for Sir Felix and resists Nidderdale's advances, but is anxious about her future and the potential collapse of her father's affairs.

### Augustus Melmotte

Preoccupied with political and social engagements, including a priest's visit and preparations for a dinner with an Imperial Majesty; dismissive of the priest's concerns.

### Lord Alfred Grendall

Accompanies Melmotte and dismisses the priest's visit as madness.

### Georgiana Longestaffe

Present at lunch but soon departs to meet Lady Monogram.

### Madame Melmotte

Present at lunch and instructed to receive guests in the drawing-room.

## Key lines

> It has become an institution, like primogeniture, and is almost as serviceable for maintaining the proper order of things. Rank squanders money; trade makes it;⁠—and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour.

Marrying an heiress is as accepted as the inheritance of the eldest son, preserving social hierarchy: the aristocracy spends wealth, commerce creates it, and then commerce buys aristocratic status by restoring its luster.

_This passage satirizes the Victorian system where aristocratic families rely on mercantile wealth to sustain their status._

> A girl who has run away with her lover and has been brought back again by her friends, must for a time find it difficult to appear in society with ease. But when a girl has run away without her lover⁠—has run away expecting her lover to go with her, and has then been brought back, her lover not having stirred, her state of mind must be peculiarly harassing.

A young woman who elopes and is retrieved faces social awkwardness, but one who elopes alone because her lover failed to join her endures an especially painful humiliation.

_The narrator highlights Marie's doubly embarrassing position after Sir Felix abandoned the elopement._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_way_we_live_now_se/chapters/lvii-lord-nidderdale-tries-his-hand-again
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