Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

world where I would.

  A little before the date of my resignation, Mr. James Virtue, the

  printer and publisher, had asked me to edit a new magazine for

  him, and had offered me a salary of (pounds)1000 a year for the work over

  and above what might be due to me for my own contributions. I had

  known something of magazines, and did not believe that they were

  generally very lucrative. They were, I thought, useful to some

  publishers as bringing grist to the mill; but as Mr. Virtue's business

  was chiefly that of a printer, in which he was very successful,

  this consideration could hardly have had much weight with him. I

  very strongly advised him to abandon the project, pointing out to

  him that a large expenditure would be necessary to carry on the magazine

  In accordance with my views,--that I could not be concerned in it

  on any other understanding, and that the chances of an adequate

  return to him of his money were very small. He came down to Waltham,

  listened to my arguments with great patience, and the told me that

  if I would not do the work he would find some other editor.

  Upon this I consented to undertake the duty. My terms as to salary

  were those which he had himself proposed. The special stipulations

  which I demanded were: firstly, that I should put whatever I pleased

  into the magazine, or keep whatever I pleased out of it, without

  interference; secondly, that I should, from month to month, give

  in to him a list of payments to be made to contributors, and that

  he should pay them, allowing me to fix the amounts; and, thirdly,

  that the arrangement should remain in force, at any rate, for two

  years. To all this he made no objection; and during the time that

  he and I were thus bound together he not only complied with these

  stipulations, but also with every suggestion respecting the magazine

  that I made to him. If the use of large capital, combined with wide

  liberality and absolute confidence on the part of the proprietor,

  and perpetual good humour, would have produced success, our magazine

  certainly would have succeeded.

  In all such enterprises the name is the first difficulty. There

  is the name which has a meaning and the name which has none--of

  which two the name that has none is certainly the better, as it

  never belies itself. The Liberal may cease to be liberal, or The

  Fortnightly, alas! to come out once a fortnight. But The Cornhill

  and The Argosy are under any set of circumstances as well adapted

  to these names as under any other. Then there is the proprietary

  name, or, possibly, the editorial name, which is only amiss because

  the publication may change hands. Blackwood's has, indeed, always

  remained Blackwood's, and Fraser's, though it has been bought and

  sold, still does not sound amiss. Mr. Virtue, fearing the too

  attractive qualities of his own name, wished the magazine to be

  called Anthony Trollope's. But to this I objected eagerly. There

  were then about the town,--still are about the town,--two or three

  literary gentlemen, by whom to have had myself editored would

  have driven me an exile from my country. After much discussion, we

  settled on St. Paul's as the name for our bantling--not as being

  in any way new, but as enabling it to fall easily into the ranks

  with many others. If we were to make ourselves in any way peculiar,

  it was not by our name that we were desirous of doing so.

  I do not think that we did make ourselves in any way peculiar,--and

  yet there was a great struggle made. On the part of the proprietor,

  I may say that money was spent very freely. On my own part, I

  may declare that I omitted nothing which I thought might tend to

  success. I read all manuscripts sent to me, and endeavoured to judge

  impartially. I succeeded in obtaining the services of an excellent

  literary corps. During the three years and a half of my editorship

  I was assisted by Mr. Goschen, Captain Brackenbury, Edward Dicey,

  Percy Fitzgerald, H. A. Layard, Allingham, Leslie Stephen, Mrs.

  Lynn Linton, my brother, T. A. Trollope, and his wife, Charles

  Lever, E. Arnold, Austin Dobson, R. A. Proctor, Lady Pollock, G.

  H. Lewes, C. Mackay, Hardman (of the Times), George Macdonald, W.

  R. Greg, Mrs. Oliphant, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Leoni Levi, Dutton

  Cook--and others, whose names would make the list too long. It

  might have been thought that with such aid the St. Paul's would have

  succeeded. I do not think that the failure,--for it did fail,--arose

  from bad editing. Perhaps too much editing might have been the

  fault. I was too anxious to be good, and did not enough think of

  what might be lucrative.

  It did fail, for it never paid its way. It reached, if I remember

  right, a circulation of nearly 10,000--perhaps on one or two occasions

  may have gone beyond that. But the enterprise had been set on foot

  on a system too expensive to be made lucrative by anything short of

  a very large circulation. Literary merit will hardly set a magazine

  afloat, though, when afloat, it will sustain it. Time is wanted--or

  the hubbub, and flurry, and excitement created by ubiquitous

  sesquipedalian advertisement. Merit and time together may be

  effective, but they must be backed by economy and patience.

  I think, upon the whole, that publishers themselves have been the

  best editors of magazines, when they have been able to give time

  and intelligence to the work. Nothing certainly has ever been done

  better than Blackwood's. The Cornhill, too, after Thackeray had

  left it and before Leslie Stephen had taken it, seemed to be in

  quite efficient hands--those hands being the hands of proprietor

  and publisher. The proprietor, at any rate, knows what he wants and

  what he can afford, and is not so frequently tempted to fall into

  that worst of literary quicksands, the publishing of matter not for

  the sake of the readers, but for that of the writer. I did not so

  sin very often, but often enough to feel that I was a coward. "My

  dear friend, my dear friend, this is trash!" It is so hard to speak

  thus--but so necessary for an editor! We all remember the thorn

  in his pillow of which Thackeray complained. Occasionally I know

  that I did give way on behalf of some literary aspirant whose work

  did not represent itself to me as being good; and as often as I did

  so, I broke my trust to those who employed me. Now, I think that

  such editors as Thackeray and myself,--if I may, for the moment, be

  allowed to couple men so unequal,--will always be liable to commit

  such faults, but that the natures of publishers and proprietors

  will be less soft.

  Nor do I know why the pages of a magazine should be considered to

  be open to any aspirant who thinks that he can write an article,

  or why the manager of a magazine should be doomed to read all that

  may be sent to him. The object of the proprietor is to produce

  a periodical that shall satisfy the public, which he may probably

  best do by securing the services of writers of acknowledged ability.

  CHAPTER XVI BEVERLEY

  Very early in life, very soon after I had be
come a clerk in St.

  Martin's le Grand, when I was utterly impecunious and beginning

  to fall grievously into debt, I was asked by an uncle of mine, who

  was himself a clerk in the War Office, what destination I should

  like best for my future life. He probably meant to inquire whether

  I wished to live married or single, whether to remain in the Post

  Office or to leave it, whether I should prefer the town or the

  country. I replied that I should like to be a Member of Parliament.

  My uncle, who was given to sarcasm, rejoined that, as far a he knew,

  few clerks in the Post Office did become Members of Parliament. I

  think it was the remembrance of this jeer which stirred me up to

  look for a seat as soon as I had made myself capable of holding one

  by leaving the public service. My uncle was dead, but if I could

  get a seat, the knowledge that I had done so might travel to that

  bourne from whence he was not likely to return, and he might there

  feel that he had done me wrong.

  Independently of this, I have always thought that to sit in the

  British Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to

  every educated Englishman. I do not by this mean to suggest that

  every educated Englishman should set before himself a seat in

  Parliament as a probable or even a possible career; but that the man

  in Parliament has reached a higher position than the man out,--that

  to serve one's country without pay is the grandest work that a man

  can do,--that of all studies the study of politics is the one in

  which a man may make himself most useful to his fellow-creatures,--and

  that of all lives, public political lives are capable of the highest

  efforts. So thinking,--though I was aware that fifty-three was too

  late an age at which to commence a new career,--I resolved with

  much hesitation that I would make the attempt. Writing now at an

  age beyond sixty, I can say that my political feelings and convictions

  have never undergone any change. They are now what they became when

  I first began to have political feelings and convictions. Nor do I

  find in myself any tendency to modify them as I have found generally

  in men as they grow old. I consider myself to be an advanced, but

  still a Conservative-Liberal, which I regard not only as a possible,

  but as a rational and consistent phase of political existence.

  I can, I believe, in a very few words, make known my political

  theory; and, as I am anxious that any who know aught of me should

  know that, I will endeavour to do so.

  It must, I think, be painful to all men to feel inferiority. It should,

  I think, be a matter of some pain to all men to feel superiority,

  unless when it has been won by their own efforts. We do not

  understand the operations of Almighty wisdom, and are, therefore,

  unable to tell the causes of the terrible inequalities that

  we see--why some, why so many, should have so little to make life

  enjoyable, so much to make it painful, while a few others, not

  through their own merit, have had gifts poured out to them from

  a full hand. We acknowledge the hand of God and His wisdom, but

  still we are struck with awe and horror at the misery of many of

  our brethren. We who have been born to the superior condition,--for,

  in this matter, I consider myself to be standing on a platform with

  dukes and princes, and all others to whom plenty and education and

  liberty have been given,--cannot, I think, look upon the inane,

  unintellectual, and tossed-bound life of those who cannot even

  feed themselves sufficiently by their sweat, without some feeling

  of injustice, some feeling of pain.

  This consciousness of wrong has induced in many enthusiastic but

  unbalanced minds a desire to set all things right by a proclaimed

  equality. In their efforts such men have shown how powerless they

  are in opposing the ordinances of the Creator. For the mind of the

  thinker and the student is driven to admit, though it be awestruck

  by apparent injustice, that this inequality is the work of God.

  Make all men equal to-day, and God has so created them that they

  shall be all unequal to-morrow. The so-called Conservative, the

  conscientious, philanthropic Conservative, seeing this, and being

  surely convinced that such inequalities are of divine origin, tells

  himself that it is his duty to preserve them. He thinks that the

  preservation of the welfare of the world depends on the maintenance

  of those distances between the prince and the peasant by which he

  finds himself to be surrounded; and, perhaps, I may add, that the

  duty is not unpleasant, as he feels himself to be one of the princes.

  But this man, though he sees something, and sees that very clearly,

  sees only a little. The divine inequality is apparent to him, but

  not the equally divine diminution of that inequality. That such

  diminution is taking place on all sides is apparent enough; but it

  is apparent to him as an evil, the consummation of which it is his

  duty to retard. He cannot prevent it; and, therefore, the society

  to which he belongs is, in his eyes, retrograding. He will even,

  at times, assist it; and will do so conscientiously, feeling that,

  under the gentle pressure supplied by him, and with the drags and

  holdfasts which he may add, the movement would be slower than it

  would become if subjected to his proclaimed and absolute opponents.

  Such, I think, are Conservatives; and I speak of men who, with the

  fear of God before their eyes and the love of their neighbours warm

  in their hearts, endeavour to do their duty to the best of their

  ability.

  Using the term which is now common, and which will be best understood,

  I will endeavour to explain how the equally conscientious Liberal

  is opposed to the Conservative. He is equally aware that these

  distances are of divine origin, equally averse to any sudden

  disruption of society in quest of some Utopian blessedness; but he

  is alive to the fact that these distances are day by day becoming

  less, and he regards this continual diminution as a series of

  steps towards that human millennium of which he dreams. He is even

  willing to help the many to ascend the ladder a little, though he

  knows, as they come up towards him, he must go down to meet them.

  What is really in his mind is,--I will not say equality, for the

  word is offensive, and presents to the imagination of men ideas of

  communism, of ruin, and insane democracy,--but a tendency towards

  equality. In following that, however, he knows that he must be

  hemmed in by safeguards, lest he be tempted to travel too quickly;

  and, therefore, he is glad to be accompanied on his way by the

  repressive action of a Conservative opponent. Holding such views,

  I think I am guilty of no absurdity in calling myself an advanced

  Conservative-Liberal. A man who entertains in his mind any

  political doctrine, except as a means of improving the condition

  of his fellows, I regard as a political intriguer, a charlatan,

  and a conjurer--as one who thinks that, by a certain amount of wary

  wire-pulling, he may raise
himself in the estimation of the world.

  I am aware that this theory of politics will seem to many to be stilted,

  overstrained, and, as the Americans would say, high-faluten. Many

  will declare that the majority even of those who call themselves

  politicians,--perhaps even of those who take an active

  part in politics,--are stirred by no such feelings as these, and

  acknowledge no such motives. Men become Tories or Whigs, Liberals

  or Conservatives, partly by education,--following their fathers,--partly

  by chance, partly as openings come, partly in accordance with the

  bent of their minds, but still without any far-fetched reasonings

  as to distances and the diminution of distances. No doubt it is

  so; and in the battle of politics, as it goes, men are led further

  and further away from first causes, till at last a measure is opposed

  by one simply because it is advocated by another, and Members of

  Parliament swarm into lobbies, following the dictation of their

  leaders, and not their own individual judgments. But the principle

  is at work throughout. To many, though hardly acknowledged, it is

  still apparent. On almost all it has its effect; though there are

  the intriguers, the clever conjurers, to whom politics is simply

  such a game as is billiards or rackets, only played with greater

  results. To the minds that create and lead and sway political

  opinion, some such theory is, I think, ever present.

  The truth of all this I had long since taken home to myself. I had

  now been thinking of it for thirty years, and had never doubted.

  But I had always been aware of a certain visionary weakness about

  myself in regard to politics. A man, to be useful in Parliament,

  must be able to confine himself and conform himself, to be satisfied

  with doing a little bit of a little thing at a time. He must

  patiently get up everything connected with the duty on mushrooms,

  and then be satisfied with himself when at last he has induced

  a Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that he will consider the

  impost at the first opportunity. He must be content to be beaten

  six times in order that, on a seventh, his work may be found to

  be of assistance to some one else. He must remember that he is one

  out of 650, and be content with 1-650th part of the attention of

  the nation. If he have grand ideas, he must keep them to himself,