Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  haste,--for I had but an hour at my disposal,--I rushed to Chapman

  & Hall in Piccadilly, and said what I had to say to Mr. Edward

  Chapman in a quick torrent of words. They were the first of a great

  many words which have since been spoken by me in that back-shop.

  Looking at me as he might have done at a highway robber who had

  stopped him on Hounslow Heath, he said that he supposed he might

  as well do as I desired. I considered this to be a sale, and it

  was a sale. I remember that he held the poker in his hand all the

  time that I was with him;--but in truth, even though he had declined

  to buy the book, there would have been no danger.

  CHAPTER VII "Doctor thorne"--"THE BERTRAMS"--"THE WEST INDIES" AND "THE SPANISH MAIN"

  As I journeyed across France to Marseilles, and made thence a

  terribly rough voyage to Alexandria, I wrote my allotted number of

  pages every day. On this occasion more than once I left my paper

  on the cabin table, rushing away to be sick in the privacy of my

  state room. It was February, and the weather was miserable; but

  still I did my work. Labor omnia vincit improbus. I do not say that

  to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such

  exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable

  most men to work at almost any season. I had previously to this

  arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly

  recommend to those who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not

  made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should

  never be allowed to become spasmodic. There was no day on which

  it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my

  duty to write reports for the Post Office. I was free to be idle if

  I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second

  profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain

  self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have always

  prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the

  period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work.

  In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have

  written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for

  a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring

  me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the

  deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the

  time,--whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or

  whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with

  speed,--I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average

  number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has

  risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been

  made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have

  a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went. In

  the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of course,

  with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always to

  supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out

  of hand short of the number by a single word. I may also say that

  the excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing

  my work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided

  myself especially in completing it within the proposed time,--and

  I have always done so. There has ever been the record before me,

  and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a

  blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow

  to my heart.

  I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a

  man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius,

  but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to

  these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not

  be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the

  stone. A small daily task, If it be really daily, will beat the

  labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always

  catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in

  glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise

  to make half his journey.

  I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and

  painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They

  have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lessons as they

  entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they

  have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at

  ease. I have done double their work--though burdened with another

  profession,--and have done it almost without an effort. I have not

  once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger

  of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to "copy."

  The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost always

  been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates

  and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly

  demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.

  There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to

  such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his

  imagination should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves

  him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been

  able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the

  shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for

  the divine moment of melting. If the man whose business it is to

  write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or

  smoked too many cigars,--as men who write sometimes will do,--then

  his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the

  condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have

  sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy

  which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence.--Mens

  sana in corpore sano. The author wants that as does every other

  workman,--that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the

  surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on

  my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than

  the inspiration.

  It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no

  higher pitch than mine has attained, has no right to speak of the

  strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I am ready

  to admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by

  the products of different men, and am not disposed to rank my own

  very high; but my own experience tells me that a man can always do

  the work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself the

  habit of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I

  therefore venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship

  as the business of their lives, even when they propose that that

  authorship be of the highest class known, to avoid enthusiastic

  rushes with their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day

  by day as though they were lawyers' clerks;--and so let them sitr />
  until the allotted task shall be accomplished.

  While I was in Egypt, I finished Doctor Thorne, and on the following

  day began The Bertrams. I was moved now by a determination to excel,

  if not in quality, at any rate in quantity. An ignoble ambition

  for an author, my readers will no doubt say. But not, I think,

  altogether ignoble, if an author can bring himself to look at his

  work as does any other workman. This had become my task, this

  was the furrow in which my plough was set, this was the thing the

  doing of which had fallen into my hands, and I was minded to work

  at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever

  scamped my work. My novels, whether good or bad, have been as good

  as I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between

  each they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that, I

  finished Doctor Thorne on one day, and began The Bertrams on the

  next.

  I had then been nearly two months in Egypt, and had at last

  succeeded in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty

  years have passed since that time, and other years may yet run on

  before these pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official

  sin by describing here the nature of the difficulty which met me.

  I found, on my arrival, that I was to communicate with an officer

  of the Pasha, who was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have

  been the gentleman who has lately dealt with our Government as to

  the Suez Canal shares, and who is now well known to the political

  world as Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentlemen, an

  Armenian. I never went to his office, nor do I know that he had an

  office. Every other day he would come to me at my hotel, and bring

  with him servants, and pipes, and coffee. I enjoyed his coming

  greatly; but there was one point on which we could not agree. As

  to money and other details, it seemed as though he could hardly

  accede fast enough to the wishes of the Postmaster-General; but

  on one point he was firmly opposed to me. I was desirous that the

  mails should be carried through Egypt in twenty-four hours, and he

  thought that forty-eight hours should be allowed. I was obstinate,

  and he was obstinate; and for a long time we could come to

  no agreement. At last his oriental tranquillity seemed to desert

  him, and he took upon himself to assure me, with almost more than

  British energy, that, if I insisted on the quick transit, a terrible

  responsibility would rest on my head. I made this mistake, he

  said,--that I supposed that a rate of travelling which would be

  easy and secure in England could be attained with safety in Egypt.

  "The Pasha, his master, would," he said, "no doubt accede to

  any terms demanded by the British Post Office, so great was his

  reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at

  once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be

  ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly

  follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my

  pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence

  but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four

  visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit

  could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,--and

  astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no

  longer any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office, and

  he assured me, with energetic complaisance, that it should be his

  care to see that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually

  kept, and, I believe, is so still. I must confess, however, that my

  persistency was not the result of any courage specially personal to

  myself. While the matter was being debated, it had been whispered

  to me that the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company had

  conceived that forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their

  traffic better than twenty-four, and that, as they were the great

  paymasters on the railway, the Minister of the Egyptian State,

  who managed the railway, might probably wish to accommodate them.

  I often wondered who originated that frightful picture of blood

  and desolation. That it came from an English heart and an English

  hand I was always sure.

  From Egypt I visited the Holy Land, and on my way inspected the

  Post Offices at Malta and Gibraltar. I could fill a volume with

  true tales of my adventures. The Tales of All Countries have, most

  of them, some foundation in such occurrences. There is one called

  John Bull on the Guadalquivir, the chief incident in which occurred

  to me and a friend of mine on our way up that river to Seville. We

  both of us handled the gold ornaments of a man whom we believed to

  be a bull-fighter, but who turned out to be a duke,--and a duke,

  too, who could speak English! How gracious he was to us, and yet

  how thoroughly he covered us with ridicule!

  On my return home I received (pounds)400 from Messrs. Chapman & Hall for

  Doctor Thorne, and agreed to sell them The Bertrams for the same sum.

  This latter novel was written under very vagrant circumstances,--at

  Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Glasgow, then at sea, and at last

  finished in Jamaica. Of my journey to the West Indies I will say

  a few words presently, but I may as well speak of these two novels

  here. Doctor Thorne has, I believe, been the most popular book that

  I have written,--if I may take the sale as a proof of comparative

  popularity. The Bertrams has had quite an opposite fortune. I do not

  know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even by my friends,

  and I cannot remember that there is any character in it that has

  dwelt in the minds of novel-readers. I myself think that they are

  of about equal merit, but that neither of them is good. They fall

  away very much from The Three Clerks, both in pathos and humour.

  There is no personage in either of them comparable to Chaffanbrass the

  lawyer. The plot of Doctor Thorne is good, and I am led therefore

  to suppose that a good plot,--which, to my own feeling, is the

  most insignificant part of a tale,--is that which will most raise

  it or most condemn it in the public judgment. The plots of Tom Jones

  and of Ivanhoe are almost perfect, and they are probably the most

  popular novels of the schools of the last and of this century; but

  to me the delicacy of Amelia, and the rugged strength of Burley

  and Meg Merrilies, say more for the power of those great novelists

  than the gift of construction shown in the two works I have named.

  A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour

  and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention,

  the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals

  known to the world or to the author, but of created personages

  impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking,

  the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the

  vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the

  agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden sho
w. There must,

  however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. That

  of The Bertrams was more than ordinarily bad; and as the book was

  relieved by no special character, it failed. Its failure never

  surprised me; but I have been surprised by the success of Doctor

  Thorne.

  At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the

  failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale,

  and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which

  had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all

  made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel,

  I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two

  years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible

  author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to

  me,--I might add (pounds)600 a year to my official income. I was still

  living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure

  my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a week, on (pounds)1400

  a year. If more should come, it would be well;--but (pounds)600 a year I

  was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but

  was very pleasant when it came.

  On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the

  Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had

  to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the

  letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the

  men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their

  labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer,

  and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and

  then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home

  afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in

  Glasgow, all belonging to The Bertrams, are not good.

  Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West

  Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system

  there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices

  generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British

  Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be

  postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands

  have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated