Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  rushing mode of publication to which the system of serial stories

  had given rise, and by which small parts as they were written were

  sent hot to the press, was injurious to the work done. If I now

  complied with the proposition made to me, I must act against my

  own principle. But such a principle becomes a tyrant if it cannot

  be superseded on a just occasion. If the reason be "tanti," the

  principle should for the occasion be put in abeyance. I sat as

  judge, and decreed that the present reason was "tanti." On this my

  first attempt at a serial story, I thought it fit to break my own

  rule. I can say, however, that I have never broken it since.

  But what astonished me most was the fact that at so late a day

  this new Cornhill Magazine should be in want of a novel. Perhaps

  some of my future readers will he able to remember the great

  expectations which were raised as to this periodical. Thackeray's

  was a good name with which to conjure. The proprietors, Messrs.

  Smith & Elder, were most liberal in their manner of initiating the

  work, and were able to make an expectant world of readers believe

  that something was to be given them for a shilling very much in

  excess of anything they had ever received for that or double the

  money. Whether these hopes were or were not fulfilled it is not for

  me to say, as, for the first few years of the magazine's existence,

  I wrote for it more than any other one person. But such was certainly

  the prospect;--and how had it come to pass that, with such promises

  made, the editor and the proprietors were, at the end of October,

  without anything fixed as to what must be regarded as the chief

  dish in the banquet to be provided?

  I fear that the answer to this question must be found in the habits

  of procrastination which had at that time grown upon the editor.

  He had, I imagine, undertaken the work himself, and had postponed

  its commencement till there was left to him no time for commencing.

  There was still, it may be said, as much time for him as for me.

  I think there was,--for though he had his magazine to look after,

  I had the Post Office. But he thought, when unable to trust his

  own energy, that he might rely upon that of a new recruit. He was

  but four years my senior in life but he was at the top of the tree,

  while I was still at the bottom.

  Having made up my mind to break my principle, I started at once from

  Dublin to London. I arrived there on the morning of Thursday, 3d

  of November, and left it on the evening of Friday. In the meantime

  I had made my agreement with Messrs. Smith & Elder, and had arranged

  my plot. But when in London, I first went to Edward Chapman, at 193

  Piccadilly. If the novel I was then writing for him would suit

  the Cornhill, might I consider my arrangement with him to be at an

  end? Yes; I might. But if that story would not suit the Cornhill,

  was I to consider my arrangement with him as still standing,--that

  agreement requiring that my MS. should be in his hands in the

  following March? As to that, I might do as I pleased. In our dealings

  together Mr. Edward Chapman always acceded to every suggestion made

  to him. He never refused a book, and never haggled at a price. Then

  I hurried into the City, and had my first interview with Mr. George

  Smith. When he heard that Castle Richmond was an Irish story, he

  begged that I would endeavour to frame some other for his magazine.

  He was sure that an Irish story would not do for a commencement;--and

  he suggested the Church, as though it were my peculiar subject. I

  told him that Castle Richmond would have to "come out" while any

  other novel that I might write for him would be running through the

  magazine;--but to that he expressed himself altogether indifferent.

  He wanted an English tale, on English life, with a clerical flavour.

  On these orders I went to work, and framed what I suppose I must

  call the plot of Framley Parsonage.

  On my journey back to Ireland, in the railway carriage, I wrote the

  first few pages of that story. I had got into my head an idea of

  what I meant to write,--a morsel of the biography of an English

  clergyman who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation

  by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of

  those around him. The love of his sister for the young lord was

  an adjunct necessary, because there must be love in a novel. And

  then by placing Framley Parsonage near Barchester, I was able to

  fall back upon my old friends Mrs. Proudie and the archdeacon. Out

  of these slight elements I fabricated a hodge-podge in which the

  real plot consisted at last simply of a girl refusing to marry the

  man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly.

  Nothing could be less efficient or artistic. But the characters

  were so well handled, that the work from the first to the last

  was popular,--and was received as it went on with still increasing

  favour by both editor and proprietor of the magazine. The story was

  thoroughly English. There was a little fox-hunting and a little

  tuft-hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian cant. There

  was no heroism and no villainy. There was much Church, but more

  love-making. And it was downright honest love,--in which there was

  no pretence on the part of the lady that she was too ethereal to

  be fond of a man, no half-and-half inclination on the part of the

  man to pay a certain price and no more for a pretty toy. Each of

  them longed for the other, and they were not ashamed to say so.

  Consequently they in England who were living, or had lived, the

  same sort of life, liked Framley Parsonage. I think myself that

  Lucy Robarts is perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever

  drew,--the most natural, at any rate, of those who have been good

  girls. She was not as dear to me as Kate Woodward in The Three

  Clerks, but I think she is more like real human life. Indeed

  I doubt whether such a character could be made more lifelike than

  Lucy Robarts.

  And I will say also that in this novel there is no very weak part,--no

  long succession of dull pages. The production of novels in serial

  form forces upon the author the conviction that he should not allow

  himself to be tedious in any single part. I hope no reader will

  misunderstand me. In spite of that conviction, the writer of stories

  in parts will often be tedious. That I have been so myself is a

  fault that will lie heavy on my tombstone. But the writer when he

  embarks in such a business should feel that he cannot afford to have

  many pages skipped out of the few which are to meet the reader's

  eye at the same time. Who can imagine the first half of the first

  volume of Waverley coming out in shilling numbers? I had realised

  this when I was writing Framley Parsonage; and working on the

  conviction which had thus come home to me, I fell into no bathos

  of dulness.

  I subsequently came across a piece of criticism which was written

  on me as a novelist by a brother novelist very much greater than

  myself, and
whose brilliant intellect and warm imagination led him

  to a kind of work the very opposite of mine. This was Nathaniel

  Hawthorne, the American, whom I did not then know, but whose works

  I knew. Though it praises myself highly, I will insert it here,

  because it certainly is true in its nature: "It is odd enough," he

  says, "that my own individual taste is for quite another class of

  works than those which I myself am able to write. If I were to meet

  with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe I should

  be able to get through them. Have you ever read the novels of Anthony

  Trollope? They precisely suit my taste,--solid and substantial,

  written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of

  ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of

  the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants

  going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they

  were being made a show of. And these books are just as English as

  a beef-steak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an

  English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still

  I should think that human nature would give them success anywhere."

  This was dated early in 1860, and could have had no reference to

  Framley Parsonage; but it was as true of that work as of any that

  I have written. And the criticism, whether just or unjust, describes

  with wonderful accuracy the purport that I have ever had in view

  in my writing. I have always desired to "hew out some lump of the

  earth," and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk

  here among us,--with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated

  baseness,--so that my readers might recognise human beings like to

  themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods

  or demons. If I could do this, then I thought I might succeed

  in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that

  honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood

  fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure; and sweet, and

  unselfish; that a man will be honoured as he is true, and honest,

  and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious,

  and things nobly done beautiful and gracious. I do not say that

  lessons such as these may not be more grandly taught by higher

  flights than mine. Such lessons come to us from our greatest poets.

  But there are so many who will read novels and understand them, who

  either do not read the works of our great poets, or reading them

  miss the lesson! And even in prose fiction the character whom

  the fervid imagination of the writer has lifted somewhat into the

  clouds, will hardly give so plain an example to the hasty normal

  reader as the humbler personage whom that reader unconsciously feels

  to resemble himself or herself. I do think that a girl would more

  probably dress her own mind after Lucy Robarts than after Flora

  Macdonald.

  There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching

  either virtue or nobility,--those, for instance, who regard

  the reading of novels as a sin, and those also who think it to be

  simply an idle pastime. They look upon the tellers of stories as

  among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a

  wicked world. I have regarded my art from so different a point of

  view that I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons,

  and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable

  to my audience. I do believe that no girl has risen from the reading

  of my pages less modest than she was before, and that some may have

  learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. I

  think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness

  is to be found the road to manliness; but some may perhaps have

  learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but

  gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and

  I have thought it might best be done by representing to my readers

  characters like themselves,--or to which they might liken themselves.

  Framley Parsonage--or, rather, my connection with the Cornhill--was

  the means of introducing me very quickly to that literary world

  from which I had hitherto been severed by the fact of my residence

  in Ireland. In December, 1859, while I was still very hard at work

  on my novel, I came over to take charge of the Eastern District,

  and settled myself at a residence about twelve miles from London,

  in Hertfordshire, but on the borders both of Essex and Middlesex,--which

  was somewhat too grandly called Waltham House. This I took on

  lease, and subsequently bought after I had spent about (pounds)1000 on

  improvements. From hence I was able to make myself frequent both

  in Cornhill and Piccadilly, and to live, when the opportunity came,

  among men of my own pursuit.

  It was in January, 1860, that Mr. George Smith--to whose enterprise

  we owe not only the Cornhill Magazine but the Pall Mall Gazette--gave

  a sumptuous dinner to his contributors. It was a memorable banquet

  in many ways, but chiefly so to me because on that occasion I first

  met many men who afterwards became my most intimate associates.

  It can rarely happen that one such occasion can be the first

  starting-point of so many friendships. It was at that table, and

  on that day, that I first saw Thackeray, Charles Taylor (Sir)--than

  whom in latter life I have loved no man better,--Robert Bell, G. H.

  Lewes, and John Everett Millais. With all these men I afterwards

  lived on affectionate terms;--but I will here speak specially of

  the last, because from that time he was joined with me in so much

  of the work that I did.

  Mr. Millais was engaged to illustrate Framley Parsonage, but this

  was not the first work he did for the magazine. In the second number

  there is a picture of his accompanying Monckton Milne's Unspoken

  Dialogue. The first drawing he did for Framley Parsonage did not

  appear till after the dinner of which I have spoken, and I do not

  think that I knew at the time that he was engaged on my novel. When

  I did know it, it made me very proud. He afterwards illustrated

  Orley Farm, The Small House of Allington, Rachel Ray, and Phineas

  Finn. Altogether he drew from my tales eighty-seven drawings, and

  I do not think that more conscientious work was ever done by man.

  Writers of novels know well--and so ought readers of novels to

  have learned--that there are two modes of illustrating, either of

  which may be adopted equally by a bad and by a good artist. To

  which class Mr. Millais belongs I need not say; but, as a good

  artist, it was open to him simply to make a pretty picture, or to

  study the work of the author from whose writing he was bound to take

  his subject. I have too often found that the former alternative

  has been thought to be the better, as it certainly is the easier

  method. An artist will frequently dislike to subordinate his ideas

  to those of an author, and will sometimes be too idle to find out

  what those ideas are. But this artist was neither pro
ud nor idle.

  In every figure that he drew it was his object to promote the

  views of the writer whose work he had undertaken to illustrate, and

  he never spared himself any pains in studying that work, so as to

  enable him to do so. I have carried on some of those characters from

  book to book, and have had my own early ideas impressed indelibly

  on my memory by the excellence of his delineations. Those illustrations

  were commenced fifteen years ago, and from that time up to this

  day my affection for the man of whom I am speaking has increased.

  To see him has always been a pleasure. His voice has been a sweet

  sound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised

  without joining the eulogist; I have never heard a word spoken

  against him without opposing the censurer. These words, should he

  ever see them, will come to him from the grave, and will tell him

  of my regard,--as one living man never tells another.

  Sir Charles Taylor, who carried me home in his brougham that

  evening, and thus commenced an intimacy which has since been very

  close, was born to wealth, and was therefore not compelled by the

  necessities of a profession to enter the lists as an author. But

  he lived much with those who did so,--and could have done it himself

  had want or ambition stirred him. He was our king at the Garrick

  Club, to which, however, I did not yet belong. He gave the best

  dinners of my time, and was,--happily I may say is, [Footnote:

  Alas! within a year of the writing of this he went from us.]--the

  best giver of dinners. A man rough of tongue, brusque in his manners,

  odious to those who dislike him, somewhat inclined to tyranny, he

  is the prince of friends, honest as the sun, and as openhanded as

  Charity itself.

  Robert Bell has now been dead nearly ten years. As I look back

  over the interval and remember how intimate we were, it seems odd

  to me that we should have known each other for no more than six

  years. He was a man who had lived by his pen from his very youth;

  and was so far successful that I do not think that want ever came

  near him. But he never made that mark which his industry and talents

  would have seemed to ensure. He was a man well known to literary

  men, but not known to readers. As a journalist he was useful

  and conscientious, but his plays and novels never made themselves