Transome, Harold

Mrs. Transome's younger son; a handsome, agreeable and selfish, but not dishonourable young man. "This determined aiming at something not easy but clearly possible marked the direction in which Harold's nature was strong; he had the energetic will and muscle, the self-confidence, the quick perception, and the narrow imagination which make what is admiringly called the practical mind . . . He was addicted at once to rebellion and to conformity, and only an intimate personal knowledge could enable any one to predict where his conformity would begin . . . In fact, Harold Transome was a clever, frank, good-natured egoist; not stringently consistent, but without any disposition to falsity; proud, but with a pride that was moulded in an individual rather than an hereditary form; unspeculative, unsentimental, unsympathetic; fond of sensual pleasures, but disinclined to all vice, and ttached as a healthy, clear sighted person, to all conventional morality, construed with a certain freedom." In his youth he had gone to the East, where he married a Greek woman, originally a slave, and made a fortune. A widower of thirty-four, he returns to England when his brother's death makes him the heir to the Transome estates. Breaking with the family traditions of Toryism, he stands for Parliament as a Radical, and is defeated after an exciting campaign and election. In looking into the estate business management, he finds that Mr. Jermyn, the family lawyer, has taken advantage of his position to his own profit, and starts legal proceedings against him. When he learns that Esther Lyon is the rightful owner of the estate he becomes genuinely interested in her, wants to marry her, but fails to win her love. In a public quarrel Mr. Jermyn tells Harold that he, Jermyn, is his father, and, as a result Harold and his mother leave England for a time.

<em>Felix Holt, the Radical</em>

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