Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  When the Autobiography enters into the Post Office District it acquires a note of comedy. The manner of Trollope’s admission into that august neighbourhood indeed demanded it. On reaching London from Belgium he was taken by his friend, the Secretary at the Stamp Office, Mr. Clayton Freeling, to St. Martin’s-le-Grand and there was examined. This is Trollope’s almost incredible account of the examination:

  I was asked to copy some lines from the Times newspaper with an old quill pen, and at once made a series of blots and false spellings. “That won’t do, you know,” said Henry Freeling to his brother Clayton. Clayton, who was my friend, urged that I was nervous and asked that I might be allowed to do a bit of writing at home and bring it as a sample on the next day. I was then asked whether I was a proficient in arithmetic. What could I say? I had never learned the multiplication table, and had no more idea of the rule of three than of conic sections.

  “I know a little of it,” I said humbly, whereupon I was sternly assured that on the morrow, should I succeed in showing that my handwriting was all that it ought to be, I should be examined as to that little of arithmetic. If that little should not be found to comprise a thorough knowledge of all the ordinary rules, together with practised and quick skill, my career in life could not be made at the Post Office. Going down the main stairs of the building Clayton Fielding told me not to be too downhearted. I was myself inclined to think that I had better go back to the school in Brussels. But nevertheless I went to work, and under the surveillance of my elder brother made a beautiful transcript of four or five pages of Gibbon. With a faltering heart I took these on the next day to the office. With my calligraphy I was contented, but certain that I should come to the ground among the figures. But when I got to “The Grand”, as we used to call our office in those days, from its site in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, I was seated at a desk without any further reference to my competency. No one condescended even to look at my beautiful penmanship.

  Readers of The Three Clerks will recognise the use that Trollope made afterwards of this experience.

  At last, however, he had a place in the world, and slowly, with many misgivings and hesitations and awkwardnesses, the true Trollope emerged. Himself he says that during these seven years that he now spent in London he was regarded as the black sheep of the service, and that he was for ever amazed that again and again he was not indignantly dismissed. But there must have been several of his seniors who very speedily discovered that in this hobbledehoy clumsy and shy young official there was no ordinary man. He was, of course, continually in trouble, arriving late and departing early, playing écarté with the other clerks for an hour or two in the early afternoon when he ought to have been at work, tracked to his desk by moneylenders, and even on one occasion by the irate mother of a young lady to whom he was supposed to be engaged; he survived these things, because after a time his heart grew into his work, and he was soon giving abundant evidence of that conscientious industry that, later on, was to astonish and shock the Victorian world in relation to his novel-writing.

  He remained seven years in the General Post Office, and when he left it his income was £140! During the whole of that time he was hopelessly in debt. For two years he lived with his mother, who helped him, financially, again and again. He belonged to no club, and had few friends, and was nearly, he confesses, ruined both morally and mentally by the lack of that affection that, throughout his life, he so passionately needed. But his escape came in time. There was created a new body of officers called surveyors’ clerks — seven surveyors in England, two in Scotland, and three in Ireland, and to each of these officers a clerk, whose duty it was to travel about the country under the surveyor’s orders, was attached.

  A report came from Ireland that the man sent there was incapable. Trollope applied for this post, and in August 1841, when he was twenty-six years of age, secured it. The post was £100 a year, but he was also to receive fifteen shillings a day for every day that he was away from home and sixpence for every mile that he travelled. He ends the Post Office chapter of the Autobiography triumphantly thus: “My income in Ireland, after paying my expenses, became at once £400. This was the first good fortune of my life.” Indeed he makes this departure to Ireland the absolute crisis of his existence, and he says so in words that must touch with their pathos and sincerity every human being who reads them. fin the preceding pages I have given a short record of the first twenty-six years of my life — years of suffering, disgrace, and inward remorse. I fear that my mode of telling will have left an idea simply of their absurdities; but in truth I was wretched — sometimes almost unto death, and have often cursed the hour in which I was born. There had clung to me a feeling that I had been looked upon always as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing — as a creature of whom those connected with him had to be ashamed. And I feel certain now that in my young days I was so regarded. Even my few friends who had found with me a certain capacity for enjoyment were half afraid of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved — of a strong wish to be popular with my associates. No child, no boy, no lad, no young man, had ever been less so. And I had been so poor, and so little able to bear poverty. But from the day in which I set foot in Ireland all these evils went away from me. Since that time who has had a happier life than mine? Looking round upon all those I know, I cannot put my hand upon one.)

  I have said that from this point the Autobiography strikes a gayer note; it is also less humanly close to the reader. Trollope himself seems to slip behind the record of his books, his finances, his methods, his opinions. There is always to the end the attraction of his simplicity and honesty, but the man is veiled.

  His exterior life becomes now very much the life of other successful novelists. There are first the adventures in Ireland, adventures of which he made full use later in his four Irish novels; then his engagement in 1842 to a Miss Heseltine, whose father was a bank manager at Rotherham, near Sheffield, and his marriage to her in 1844; then the circumstances that led to the publication of his first two novels, The Macdermots of Ballycloran and The Kellys and the O’Kellys. Although these novels had no success at the moment, the writing of them showed definitely where his real vocation lay. He followed them, with his historical novel, La Vendée, still-born like the two first. Then came an attempt at play-writing, followed in 1853 by The Warden. Then his preferment to the post of surveyor, which meant an increase of income from about £450 to £800, the birth of two sons in Clonmel, the publication in 1857 of Barchester Towers — and Fame!

  From 1857 to his death in 1882 he stands before the world the familiar figure of many a Diary and Book of Recollections: the heavy, burly, genial, gruff, direct, kind-hearted citizen of the Garrick and Reform Clubs, the friend of Thackeray and Dickens and all the writing men of his period, the incessantly industrious worker, untiring novelist, contributor to every magazine, editor and compiler, traveller to America, the British Colonies, Italy, always finding time in the middle of all this for his two favourite devotions, his family and his hunting.

  But we fancy that we see, behind this burly, energetic, popular figure, always that little boy, dirty, neglected, longing to be loved, hiding.

  One sees from the Autobiography — and one knows also from other sources — that the constant regular production of his works of fiction led towards the close of his life to some feeling of satiety on the part of his public. He felt this rather deeply, I think, being conscious that some of those later works had certain positive merits insufficiently recognised.

  In 1873 he took a house in Montagu Square, intending to end there both his days and his work. In the late autumn of 1882, however, he stayed for a time at Garland’s Hotel, Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, and on the 3rd of November, while dining at the house of his brother-in-law, St. John Tilley, he had a paralytic seizure. He was moved to a nursing home, and after a month’s illness died on the evening of the 6th of December. On the Saturday following, December 9, he was buried, not far from Thackeray’s grave, in Kens
al Green.

  CHAPTER II. THE FIRST THREE NOVELS

  WHEN Trollope married Miss Rose Heseltine on the nth of June 1844 he had been nearly three years in Ireland and had written the first volume of his first novel.

  Novel-writing was in the very bones of the Trollope family, and he had already had dealings with publishers on his mother’s behalf. He says himself that he never much doubted his own intellectual ability to write a readable novel, but he did doubt (mirabile dictu!) his industry and the chances of the market.

  Then he had already an occupation that filled very thoroughly his time; he had not yet accustomed himself to early rising, had formed at once that passion for hunting that was never afterwards to desert him, and was so deeply interested in Ireland that the actual life before him drove out the fictitious stories that, born novelist as he was, must often have besieged his brain.

  It was, however, that same actual life that plunged him in! He was living at a little town called Drumsna in County Leitrim, and his friend John Merivale was staying with him. In the course of their walk one afternoon they passed through a deserted gateway, along a weedy grass-grown avenue, and arrived at the ruins of a country house. This house and its surroundings he describes in the first chapter of his first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran. While he was wandering among the melancholy ruins the whole plot of The Macdermots came to him, and in that instant the course of the remainder of his life was settled.

  But the book was not yet written. He managed the first chapter or two, and then, as with many another novelist before and after him, the book hung fire and was put aside.

  After his marriage he went to live in Clonmel, a town of considerable size; at the end of the first year of his married life The Macdermots of Ballycloran was finished. He took the manuscript with him to Cumberland, where the Trollope family was then living, and handed it over to his mother. His feelings of shyness and hesitation were natural.

  I knew that my mother did not give me credit for the sort of cleverness necessary for such work. I could see in the faces and hear in the voices of those of my friends who were around me at the house in Cumberland — my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and, I think, my brother — that they had not expected me to come out as one of the family authors. There were three or four in the field before me, and it seemed to be almost absurd that another should wish to add himself to the number. My father had written much — those long ecclesiastical descriptions — quite unsuccessfully. My mother had become one of the popular authors of the day. My brother had commenced, and had been fairly well paid for his work. My sister, Mrs. Tilley, had also written a novel, which was at the time in manuscript, which was published afterwards without her name, and was called Chollerton. I could perceive that this attempt of mine was felt to be an unfortunate aggravation of the disease.

  Nevertheless, in consequence of his mother’s efforts, the book was at once accepted by a publisher, Newby of Mortimer Street. The novel was to appear at the publisher’s expense, and the young author was to receive half the profits. A fine sound that would have in most young authors’ ears! But Trollope was not quite as other young authors. He knew something of the inside of the publishing world, of the multitude of new books, of the indifference of a great section of the public. He says that he expected nothing, neither fame nor acknowledgement — that he expected, in fact, only failure. And that was very nearly what he got.

  If there was any notice taken of it by any critic of the day, I did not see it. I never asked any questions about it, or wrote a single letter on the subject to the publisher. I have Mr. Newby’s agreement with me, in duplicate, and one or two preliminary notes, but beyond that I did not have a word from Mr. Newby. I am sure that he did not wrong me in that he paid me nothing. It is probable that he did not sell fifty copies of the work; — but of what he did sell he gave me no account.

  I do not know what sum a single copy of that first edition of The Macdermots in good state would fetch to-day, but I do not suppose that seventy pounds would purchase it.

  He felt neither disappointment nor discouragement at this result, and in the following year, 1848, his second novel, The Kellys and the O’Kellys, was published, this time by his mother’s publisher, Mr. Colburn. The same agreement was made as before, and there were the same results. There were a few reviews and one in The Times — the consequence of a good word from a friend — which ran as follows:

  Of The Kellys and the O’Kellys we may say what the master said to his, footman when the man complained of the constant supply of legs of mutton on the kitchen table: “Well, John, legs of mutton are good substantial food”; and we may say also what John replied: “Substantial, sir — yes, they are substantial, but a little coarse.”

  Three hundred and seventy-five copies of the book were printed, a hundred and forty were sold, and Mr. Colburn lost £63: 10: 1½.

  Trollope was in no way disheartened — he says that he had enjoyed the writing of the books but had not expected that anyone would read them — soon finished his third novel, and for this Mr. Colburn agreed to give him twenty pounds down. This was an historical novel entitled La Vendée, and of this too, save for the twenty pounds, there were no results. No one reviewed it; no one apparently read it; nor, I fancy, from that day to this has it received any notice whatever.

  In considering these three books, therefore, it would be natural enough for the modern critic of Trollope to decide that they were too bad for words. However many works of fiction may be cast before a greedy world, it has never been and probably never will be the case that there are too many good ones. These three books were published, and copies of them were, one must suppose, sent to the journals of the day. Moreover, Mrs. Trollope had already a very considerable name in the world of letters, and a book by her son should have stirred somewhere a little wind of attention.

  Even to-day, when the interest in the works of Trollope has so amazingly revived, it is hard to discover any criticism or appreciation of them. Mr. Michael Sadleir, the most sympathetic of all Trollope’s commentators, alone has a kind word for the two first and an estimate of La Vendée. The Macdermots and The O’Kellys had the honour some years ago of reproduction in a cheap popular pocket edition, but sold less well, I believe, than any other of the series.

  What can we conclude, then, but that they were the crude immature production of a young novelist who had not yet learnt the beginnings of his art?

  With this in his mind, how fine a surprise follows for the inquiring reader! The Macdermots is almost in the first flight of Trollope, and for one reader at least The Kellys ranks with The Warden, Barchester Towers, The Last Chronicle, Orley Farm, The Duke’s Children, and The Way We Live Now as his finest flower, and I believe that its inclusion with these later works can quite easily be defended.

  However this may be, there can be no doubt but that these three books offer most interesting study for the Trollope student, and in The Kellys at least every side of the later full development of Trollope’s art may be found. That the books should have attracted no critical attention whatever is absolutely astounding. A first novel of The Macdermots’ calibre if published to-day would rouse comment everywhere. Nor must we conclude from this that the average of English fiction was much higher in 1847 than it is to-day. The exact opposite was the truth. There were the half-dozen great men of the time, and then, as any student of the novel of the “‘forties” will at once admit, the fall was far and deep indeed.

  One true explanation of the neglect was that both The Macdermots and The O’Kellys are much more in accord with the realism of to-day than they were with the happy-go-lucky cheery untidiness of the Irish novels of the “‘forties”.

  Although there had been other grimmer Irish novelists like the Banims and Gerald Griffin, those two happy optimists, Lover and Lever, had taught the English public the kind of thing to expect from Ireland — something loose and humorous — humour of the tomboy physical kind — a hero whose good-natured indifference to knocks and
money was equalled by his liking for drink and pretty women, a chronicle that ended only with the weariness of the narrator or the exigencies of serial publication, events that depended as much on lively illustrations as on the art of the narrator for their credibility.

  How different from Charles O’Malley, Handy Andy, and Harry Lorrequer were these two sombre, grim, and uncompromising novels! And how fine a feather in Trollope’s cap that from the very first he should have struck for what he believed to be truth and reality, and then contented himself with public failure because he had enjoyed writing the books and had never expected any readers!

  Of The Macdermots he says:

  As to the plot itself, I do not know that I ever made one so good — or, at any rate, one so susceptible of pathos. I am aware that I broke down in the telling, not having yet studied the art. Nevertheless The Macdermots is a good novel, and worth reading by anyone who wishes to understand what Irish life was before the potato disease, the famine, and the Encumbered Estates Bill.

  There is, however, more to be said about The Macdermots than that modest summary permits. I doubt whether there is any reader to-day who cares about the Encumbered Estates Bill, but he must be a poor reader indeed who is not stirred by the fate of the unhappy Feemy and her brother Thady.

  The story is of the simplest, but broadens, as every story ought to do, into the full bounds of its environment, so that we behold in the first chapter only the deserted ruins of the old Irish demesne with the broken bridge, the trickling bog stream, the worn foot-path made of soft bog mould, the fallen fir tree, the house open to heaven with the rotting joists and beams, “like the skeleton of a felon left to rot on an open gibbet,” the lawn and drive covered with brown dock-weeds and sorrels.