Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  poverty creates? The subject will not stand an argument;--and yet

  authors are told that they should disregard payment for their work,

  and be content to devote their unbought brains to the welfare of

  the public. Brains that are unbought will never serve the public

  much. Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you

  would very soon take away from England her authors.

  I say this here, because it is my purpose as I go on to state what

  to me has been the result of my profession in the ordinary way in

  which professions are regarded, so that by my example may be seen

  what prospect there is that a man devoting himself to literature

  with industry, perseverance, certain necessary aptitudes, and fair

  average talents, may succeed in gaining a livelihood, as another man

  does in another profession. The result with me has been comfortable

  but not splendid, as I think was to have been expected from the

  combination of such gifts.

  I have certainly always had also before my eyes the charms of

  reputation. Over and above the money view of the question, I wished

  from the beginning to be something more than a clerk in the Post

  Office. To be known as somebody,--to be Anthony Trollope if it be

  no more,--is to me much. The feeling is a very general one, and

  I think beneficent. It is that which has been called the "last

  infirmity of noble mind." The infirmity is so human that the man who

  lacks it is either above or below humanity. I own to the infirmity.

  But I confess that my first object in taking to literature as a

  profession was that which is common to the barrister when he goes

  to the Bar, and to the baker when he sets up his oven. I wished to

  make an income on which I and those belonging to me might live in

  comfort.

  If indeed a man writes his books badly, or paints his pictures

  badly, because he can make his money faster in that fashion than

  by doing them well, and at the same time proclaims them to be the

  best he can do,--if in fact he sells shoddy for broadcloth,--he

  is dishonest, as is any other fraudulent dealer. So may be the

  barrister who takes money that he does not earn, or the clergyman

  who is content to live on a sinecure. No doubt the artist or the

  author may have a difficulty which will not occur to the seller of

  cloth, in settling within himself what is good work and what is

  bad,--when labour enough has been given, and when the task has been

  scamped. It is a danger as to which he is bound to be severe with

  himself--in which he should feel that his conscience should be set

  fairly in the balance against the natural bias of his interest. If

  he do not do so, sooner or later his dishonesty will be discovered,

  and will be estimated accordingly. But in this he is to be governed

  only by the plain rules of honesty which should govern us all.

  Having said so much, I shall not scruple as I go on to attribute

  to the pecuniary result of my labours all the importance which I

  felt them to have at the time.

  Barchester Towers, for which I had received (pounds)100 in advance, sold

  well enough to bring me further payments--moderate payments--from

  the publishers. From that day up to this very time in which I am

  writing, that book and The Warden together have given me almost

  every year some small income. I get the accounts very regularly,

  and I find that I have received (pounds)727 11S. 3d. for the two. It is

  more than I got for the three or four works that came afterwards,

  but the payments have been spread over twenty years.

  When I went to Mr. Longman with my next novel, The Three Clerks,

  in my hand, I could not induce him to understand that a lump sum

  down was more pleasant than a deferred annuity. I wished him to

  buy it from me at a price which he might think to be a fair value,

  and I argued with him that as soon as an author has put himself into

  a position which insures a sufficient sale of his works to give a

  profit, the publisher is not entitled to expect the half of such

  proceeds. While there is a pecuniary risk, the whole of which must

  be borne by the publisher, such division is fair enough; but such

  a demand on the part of the publisher is monstrous as soon as the

  article produced is known to be a marketable commodity. I thought

  that I had now reached that point, but Mr. Longman did not agree with

  me. And he endeavoured to convince me that I might lose more than

  I gained, even though I should get more money by going elsewhere.

  "It is for you," said he, "to think whether our names on your

  title-page are not worth more to you than the increased payment."

  This seemed to me to savour of that high-flown doctrine of the

  contempt of money which I have never admired. I did think much

  of Messrs. Longman's name, but I liked it best at the bottom of a

  cheque.

  I was also scared from the august columns of Paternoster Row by

  a remark made to myself by one of the firm, which seemed to imply

  that they did not much care for works of fiction. Speaking of a

  fertile writer of tales who was not then dead, he declared that ----

  (naming the author in question) had spawned upon them (the publishers)

  three novels a year! Such language is perhaps justifiable in regard

  to a man who shows so much of the fecundity of the herring; but I

  did not know how fruitful might be my own muse, and I thought that

  I had better go elsewhere.

  I had then written The Three Clerks, which, when I could not sell

  it to Messrs. Longman, I took in the first instance to Messrs.

  Hurst & Blackett, who had become successors to Mr. Colburn. I had

  made an appointment with one of the firm, which, however, that

  gentleman was unable to keep. I was on my way from Ireland to Italy,

  and had but one day in London in which to dispose of my manuscript.

  I sat for an hour in Great Marlborough Street, expecting the return

  of the peccant publisher who had broken his tryst, and I was about

  to depart with my bundle under my arm when the foreman of the

  house came to me. He seemed to think it a pity that I should go,

  and wished me to leave my work with him. This, however, I would not

  do, unless he would undertake to buy it then and there. Perhaps he

  lacked authority. Perhaps his judgment was against such purchase.

  But while we debated the matter, he gave me some advice. "I hope

  it's not historical, Mr. Trollope?" he said. "Whatever you do,

  don't be historical; your historical novel is not worth a damn."

  Thence I took The Three Clerks to Mr. Bentley; and on the same

  afternoon succeeded in selling it to him for (pounds)250. His son still

  possesses it, and the firm has, I believe, done very well with the

  purchase. It was certainly the best novel I had as yet written.

  The plot is not so good as that of the Macdermots; nor are there

  any characters in the book equal to those of Mrs. Proudie and the

  Warden; but the work has a more continued interest, and contains

  the first well-described love-scene that I ever wrote. The passage

  in which Kate Woodward, thinking that she will die, tries to
take

  leave of the lad she loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I

  read it. I had not the heart to kill her. I never could do that.

  And I do not doubt but that they are living happily together to

  this day.

  The lawyer Chaffanbrass made his first appearance in this novel,

  and I do not think that I have cause to be ashamed of him. But this

  novel now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I

  introduced a character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by

  which I intended to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme

  of competitive examination, of which at that time Sir Charles

  Trevelyan was the great apostle. Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended

  for Sir Charles Trevelyan,--as any one at the time would know who

  had taken an interest in the Civil Service. "We always call him

  Sir Gregory," Lady Trevelyan said to me afterwards, when I came

  to know her and her husband. I never learned to love competitive

  examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir Charles Trevelyan.

  Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer,

  was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears

  in The Three Clerks under the feebly facetious name of Sir Warwick

  West End.

  But for all that The Three Clerks was a good novel.

  When that sale was made I was on my way to Italy with my wife,

  paying a third visit there to my mother and brother. This was in

  1857, and she had then given up her pen. It was the first year in

  which she had not written, and she expressed to me her delight that

  her labours should be at an end, and that mine should be beginning

  in the same field. In truth they had already been continued for

  a dozen years, but a man's career will generally be held to date

  itself from the commencement of his success. On those foreign

  tours I always encountered adventures, which, as I look back upon

  them now, tempt me almost to write a little book of my long past

  Continental travels. On this occasion, as we made our way slowly

  through Switzerland and over the Alps, we encountered again and

  again a poor forlorn Englishman, who had no friend and no aptitude

  for travelling. He was always losing his way, and finding himself

  with no seat in the coaches and no bed at the inns. On one occasion

  I found him at Coire seated at 5 A. M. in the coupe of a diligence

  which was intended to start at noon for the Engadine, while it was

  his purpose to go over the Alps in another which was to leave at

  5.30, and which was already crowded with passengers. "Ah!" he said,

  "I am in time now, and nobody shall turn me out of this seat,"

  alluding to former little misfortunes of which I had been a witness.

  When I explained to him his position, he was as one to whom life

  was too bitter to be borne. But he made his way into Italy, and

  encountered me again at the Pitti Palace in Florence. "Can you

  tell me something?" he said to me in a whisper, having touched my

  shoulder. "The people are so ill-natured I don't like to ask them.

  Where is it they keep the Medical Venus?" I sent him to the Uffizzi,

  but I fear he was disappointed.

  We ourselves, however, on entering Milan had been in quite as much

  distress as any that he suffered. We had not written for beds,

  and on driving up to a hotel at ten in the evening found it full.

  Thence we went from one hotel to another, finding them all full.

  The misery is one well known to travellers, but I never heard of

  another case in which a man and his wife were told at midnight to

  get out of the conveyance into the middle of the street because the

  horse could not be made to go any further. Such was our condition.

  I induced the driver, however, to go again to the hotel which was

  nearest to him, and which was kept by a German. Then I bribed the

  porter to get the master to come down to me; and, though my French

  is ordinarily very defective, I spoke with such eloquence to

  that German innkeeper that he, throwing his arms round my neck in

  a transport of compassion, swore that he would never leave me nor

  my wife till he had put us to bed. And he did so; but, ah! there

  were so many in those beds! It is such an experience as this which

  teaches a travelling foreigner how different on the Continent is

  the accommodation provided for him, from that which is supplied

  for the inhabitants of the country.

  It was on a previous visit to Milan, when the telegraph-wires were

  only just opened to the public by the Austrian authorities, that

  we had decided one day at dinner that we would go to Verona that

  night. There was a train at six, reaching Verona at midnight, and

  we asked some servant of the hotel to telegraph for us, ordering

  supper and beds. The demand seemed to create some surprise; but

  we persisted, and were only mildly grieved when we found ourselves

  charged twenty zwanzigers for the message. Telegraphy was new at

  Milan, and the prices were intended to be almost prohibitory. We

  paid our twenty zwanzigers and went on, consoling ourselves with the

  thought of our ready supper and our assured beds. When we reached

  Verona, there arose a great cry along the platform for Signor

  Trollope. I put out my head and declared my identity, when I

  was waited upon by a glorious personage dressed like a beau for a

  ball, with half-a-dozen others almost as glorious behind him, who

  informed me, with his hat in his hand, that he was the landlord of

  the "Due Torre." It was a heating moment, but it became more hot

  when he asked after my people,--"mes gens." I could only turn round,

  and point to my wife and brother-in-law. I had no other "people."

  There were three carriages provided for us, each with a pair of

  grey horses. When we reached the house it was all lit up. We were

  not allowed to move without an attendant with a lighted candle. It

  was only gradually that the mistake came to be understood. On us

  there was still the horror of the bill, the extent of which could

  not be known till the hour of departure had come. The landlord,

  however, had acknowledged to himself that his inductions had been

  ill-founded, and he treated us with clemency. He had never before

  received a telegram.

  I apologise for these tales, which are certainly outside my purpose,

  and will endeavour to tell no more that shall not have a closer

  relation to my story. I had finished The Three Clerks just before

  I left England, and when in Florence was cudgelling my brain for

  a new plot. Being then with my brother, I asked him to sketch me a

  plot, and he drew out that of my next novel, called Doctor Thorne.

  I mention this particularly, because it was the only occasion in

  which I have had recourse to some other source than my own brains

  for the thread of a story. How far I may unconsciously have adopted

  incidents from what I have read,--either from history or from works

  of imagination,--I do not know. It is beyond question that a man

  employed as I have been must do so. But when doing it I have not

  been aware that I have done it. I have never taken another man
's

  work, and deliberately framed my work upon it. I am far from

  censuring this practice in others. Our greatest masters in works

  of imagination have obtained such aid for themselves. Shakespeare

  dug out of such quarries whenever he could find them. Ben Jonson,

  with heavier hand, built up his structures on his studies of

  the classics, not thinking it beneath him to give, without direct

  acknowledgment, whole pieces translated both from poets and

  historians. But in those days no such acknowledgment was usual.

  Plagiary existed, and was very common, but was not known as a sin.

  It is different now; and I think that an author, when he uses either

  the words or the plot of another, should own as much, demanding to

  be credited with no more of the work than he has himself produced.

  I may say also that I have never printed as my own a word that has

  been written by others. [Footnote: I must make one exception to

  this declaration. The legal opinion as to heirlooms in The Eustace

  Diamonds was written for me by Charles Merewether, the present

  Member for Northampton. I am told that it has become the ruling

  authority on the subject.] It might probably have been better for

  my readers had I done so, as I am informed that Doctor Thorne, the

  novel of which I am now speaking, has a larger sale than any other

  book of mine.

  Early in 1858, while I was writing Doctor Thorne, I was asked by

  the great men at the General Post Office to go to Egypt to make a

  treaty with the Pasha for the conveyance of our mails through that

  country by railway. There was a treaty in existence, but that had

  reference to the carriage of bags and boxes by camels from Alexandria

  to Suez. Since its date the railway had grown, and was now nearly

  completed, and a new treaty was wanted. So I came over from Dublin

  to London, on my road, and again went to work among the publishers.

  The other novel was not finished; but I thought I had now progressed

  far enough to arrange a sale while the work was still on the stocks.

  I went to Mr. Bentley and demanded (pounds)400,--for the copyright. He

  acceded, but came to me the next morning at the General Post Office

  to say that it could not be. He had gone to work at his figures

  after I had left him, and had found that (pounds)300 would be the outside

  value of the novel. I was intent upon the larger sum; and in furious