Robert Caro has been compared to Trollope for his delineation of men and politics in a recent multivolume biography of Lyndon Johnson. This similarity is particularly apparent in Caro's description of Coke Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson's opponent in the race for the US Senate in Texas in 1948. Stevenson had served as governor of Texas and despite his disdain for politics, he had received record majorities in his gubernatiorial campaigns. He was a scrupulously honest public servant, but he was also a proud man, too proud to stoop to indulging in a personal attack on a political opponent. Johnson knew this, and he capitalized on it. Reading this, I thought to myself: I know about proud men in politics. I know about Plantagenet Palliser. Perhaps one of the most telling portraits is that painted by his wife as she tells her friend Mrs. Finn that if he should hear treason being plotted against him, he would stop up his ears with his fingers. "He is all trust, even when he knows that he is being deceived. He is honor complete from head to foot." This is not to say that Coke Stevenson was a latter day Plantagenet Palliser. But the similarities between the detailed portrayals of the historical Coke Stevenson and the fictional Plantagenet Palliser serve to validate the authenticity of the fictional predecessor. Both even had similar political wives. Fay Stevenson was outgoing and friendly, but in contrast to Lady Glencora, she did not establish friendships for political purposes. Glencora undoubtedly had her political reasons. But Susan Hampshire, in an interview about the television series in which she played Glencora, said that politicians' wives told her they considered Glencora to be the model of the political wife. Lady Glen was a woman who could flatter Sir Orlando Drought during his visit to Gatherum, even though she disliked him and knew that her husband had not been gracious to him. An advantage of the novelist is the absolute freedom to reveal the inner workings of the mind, and our understanding of Plantagenet Palliser, who says so little, is enhanced by such direct disclosures as his reflection that he had not had a happy day since he took office, that he had had no gratification, and that he was unconvinced that he was doing the country any good. Glencora, on the other hand, is so articulate that she reveals the inner workings of her mind herself. Some of the last words we hear from her constitute a quick little aside to her young friend Emily Wharton: "Are not politics odd? A few years ago I only barely knew what the word meant. . . . I suppose it's wrong, but a state of pugnacity seems to me the greatest bliss we can reach here on earth." "I shouldn't like to be always fighting." "That's because you haven't known Sir Timothy Beeswax and two or three other gentlemen whom I could name. The day will come, I dare say, when you will care about politics."