Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  the American market. But I do know that what the publishers have

  received here is very trifling. I doubt whether Messrs. Chapman &

  Hall, my present publishers, get for early sheets sent to the States

  as much as 5 per cent. on the price they pay me for my manuscript.

  But the American readers are more numerous than the English, and

  taking them all through, are probably more wealthy. If I can get

  (pounds)1000 for a book here (exclusive of their market), I ought to be

  able to get as much there. If a man supply 600 customers with shoes

  in place of 300, there is no question as to such result. Why not,

  then, if I can supply 60,000 readers instead of 30,000?

  I fancied that I knew that the opposition to an international

  copyright was by no means an American feeling, but was confined to

  the bosoms of a few interested Americans. All that I did and heard

  in reference to the subject on this further visit,--and having

  a certain authority from the British Secretary of State with me I

  could hear and do something,--altogether confirmed me in this view.

  I have no doubt that if I could poll American readers, or American

  senators,--or even American representatives, if the polling could

  be unbiassed,--or American booksellers, [Footnote: I might also say

  American publishers, if I might count them by the number of heads,

  and not by the amount of work done by the firms.] that an assent

  to an international copyright would be the result. The state of

  things as it is is crushing to American authors, as the publishers

  will not pay them a liberal scale, knowing that they can supply

  their customers with modern English literature without paying for

  it. The English amount of production so much exceeds the American,

  that the rate at which the former can be published rules the

  market. it is equally injurious to American booksellers,--except

  to two or three of the greatest houses. No small man can now acquire

  the exclusive right of printing and selling an English book. If

  such a one attempt it, the work is printed instantly by one of the

  leviathans,--who alone are the gainers. The argument of course is,

  that the American readers are the gainers,--that as they can get

  for nothing the use of certain property, they would be cutting their

  own throats were they to pass a law debarring themselves from the

  power of such appropriation. In this argument all idea of honesty

  is thrown to the winds. It is not that they do not approve of

  a system of copyright,--as many great men have disapproved,--for

  their own law of copyright is as stringent as is ours. A bold

  assertion is made that they like to appropriate the goods of other

  people; and that, as in this case, they can do so with impunity,

  they will continue to do so. But the argument, as far as I have been

  able to judge, comes not from the people, but from the bookselling

  leviathans, and from those politicians whom the leviathans are able

  to attach to their interests. The ordinary American purchaser is

  not much affected by slight variations in price. He is at any rate

  too high-hearted to be affected by the prospect of such variation.

  It is the man who wants to make money, not he who fears that he may

  be called upon to spend it, who controls such matters as this in

  the United States. It is the large speculator who becomes powerful

  in the lobbies of the House, and understands how wise it may

  be to incur a great expenditure either in the creation of a great

  business, or in protecting that which he has created from competition.

  Nothing was done in 1868,--and nothing has been done since (up to

  1876). A Royal Commission on the law of copyright is now about to

  sit in this country, of which I have consented to be a member; and

  the question must then be handled, though nothing done by a Royal

  Commission here can effect American legislators. But I do believe

  that if the measure be consistently and judiciously urged, the

  enemies to it in the States will gradually be overcome. Some years

  since we had some quasi private meetings, under the presidency of

  Lord Stanhope, in Mr. John Murray's dining-room, on the subject of

  international copyright. At one of these I discussed this matter of

  American international copyright with Charles Dickens, who strongly

  declared his conviction that nothing would induce an American to

  give up the power he possesses of pirating British literature. But

  he was a man who, seeing clearly what was before him, would not

  realise the possibility of shifting views. Because in this matter

  the American decision had been, according to his thinking, dishonest,

  therefore no other than dishonest decision was to be expected from

  Americans. Against that idea I protested, and now protest. American

  dishonesty is rampant; but it is rampant only among a few. It

  is the great misfortune of the community that those few have been

  able to dominate so large a portion of the population among which

  all men can vote, but so few can understand for what they are

  voting.

  Since this was written the Commission on the law of copyright has

  sat and made its report. With the great body of it I agree, and

  could serve no reader by alluding here at length to matters which

  are discussed there. But in regard to this question of international

  copyright with the United States, I think that we were incorrect

  in the expression of an opinion that fair justice,--or justice

  approaching to fairness,--is now done by American publishers to

  English authors by payments made by them for early sheets. I have

  just found that (pounds)20 was paid to my publisher in England for the

  use of the early sheets of a novel for which I received (pounds)1600 in

  England. When asked why he accepted so little, he assured me that

  the firm with whom he dealt would not give more. "Why not go to

  another firm?" I asked. No other firm would give a dollar, because

  no other firm would care to run counter to that great firm which

  had assumed to itself the right of publishing my books. I soon after

  received a copy of my own novel in the American form, and found

  that it was published for 7 1/2d. That a great sale was expected

  can be argued from the fact that without a great sale the paper and

  printing necessary for the republication of a three-volume novel

  could not be supplied. Many thousand copies must have been sold.

  But from these the author received not one shilling. I need hardly

  point out that the sum of (pounds)20 would not do more than compensate

  the publisher for his trouble in making the bargain. The publisher

  here no doubt might have refused to supply the early sheets, but

  he had no means of exacting a higher price than that offered. I

  mention the circumstance here because it has been boasted, on behalf

  of the American publishers, that though there is no international

  copyright, they deal so liberally with English authors as to make

  it unnecessary that the English author should be so protected.

  With the fact of the (pounds)20 just brought to my knowledge, and with the

  copy of my boo
k published at 7 1/2d. now in my hands, I feel that

  an international copyright is very necessary for my protection.

  They among Englishmen who best love and most admire the United

  States, have felt themselves tempted to use the strongest language

  in denouncing the sins of Americans. Who can but love their personal

  generosity, their active and far-seeking philanthropy, their love

  of education, their hatred of ignorance, the general convictions

  in the minds of all of them that a man should be enabled to walk

  upright, fearing no one and conscious that he is responsible for

  his own actions? In what country have grander efforts been made by

  private munificence to relieve the sufferings of humanity? Where

  can the English traveller find any more anxious to assist him than

  the normal American, when once the American shall have found the

  Englishman to be neither sullen nor fastidious? Who, lastly, is

  so much an object of heart-felt admiration of the American man and

  the American woman as the well-mannered and well-educated Englishwoman

  or Englishman? These are the ideas which I say spring uppermost

  in the minds of the unprejudiced English traveller as he makes

  acquaintance with these near relatives. Then he becomes cognisant

  of their official doings, of their politics, of their municipal

  scandals, of their great ring-robberies, of their lobbyings and

  briberies, and the infinite baseness of their public life. There

  at the top of everything he finds the very men who are the least

  fit to occupy high places. American public dishonesty is so glaring

  that the very friends he has made in the country are not slow

  to acknowledge it,--speaking of public life as a thing apart from

  their own existence, as a state of dirt in which it would be an

  insult to suppose that they are concerned! In the midst of it all

  the stranger, who sees so much that he hates and so much that he

  loves, hardly knows how to express himself.

  "It is not enough that you are personally clean," he says, with

  what energy and courage he can command,--"not enough though the

  clean outnumber the foul as greatly as those gifted with eyesight

  outnumber the blind, if you that can see allow the blind to lead

  you. It is not by the private lives of the millions that the outside

  world will judge you, but by the public career of those units whose

  venality is allowed to debase the name of your country. There never

  was plainer proof given than is given here, that it is the duty of

  every honest citizen to look after the honour of his State."

  Personally, I have to own that I have met Americans,--men, but more

  frequently women,--who have in all respects come up to my ideas of

  what men and women should be: energetic, having opinions of their

  own, quick in speech, with some dash of sarcasm at their command,

  always intelligent, sweet to look at (I speak of the women), fond

  of pleasure, and each with a personality of his or her own which

  makes no effort necessary on my own part in remembering the difference

  between Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Green, or between Mr. Smith and Mr.

  Johnson. They have faults. They are self-conscious, and are too

  prone to prove by ill-concealed struggles that they are as good as

  you,--whereas you perhaps have been long acknowledging to yourself

  that they are much better. And there is sometimes a pretence at

  personal dignity among those who think themselves to have risen

  high in the world which is deliciously ludicrous. I remember two

  old gentlemen,--the owners of names which stand deservedly high

  in public estimation,--whose deportment at a public funeral turned

  the occasion into one for irresistible comedy. They are suspicious

  at first, and fearful of themselves. They lack that simplicity of

  manners which with us has become a habit from our childhood. But

  they are never fools, and I think that they are seldom ill-natured.

  There is a woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to be

  a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of

  the chief pleasures which has graced my later years. In the last

  fifteen years she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend.

  She is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark

  by thinking of her. I do not know that I should please her or do

  any good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages

  would amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of

  myself without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me.

  I trust she may live to read the words I have now written, and to

  wipe away a tear as she thinks of my feeling while I write them.

  I was absent on this occasion something over three months, and

  on my return I went back with energy to my work at the St. Paul's

  Magazine. The first novel in it from my own pen was called Phineas

  Finn, in which I commenced a series of semi-political tales. As I

  was debarred from expressing my opinions in the House of Commons,

  I took this method of declaring myself. And as I could not take my

  seat on those benches where I might possibly have been shone upon

  by the Speaker's eye, I had humbly to crave his permission for a

  seat in the gallery, so that I might thus become conversant with

  the ways and doings of the House in which some of my scenes were

  to be placed. The Speaker was very gracious, and gave me a running

  order for, I think, a couple of months. It was enough, at any rate,

  to enable me often to be very tired,--and, as I have been assured

  by members, to talk of the proceedings almost as well as though

  Fortune had enabled me to fall asleep within the House itself.

  In writing Phineas Finn, and also some other novels which followed

  it, I was conscious that I could not make a tale pleasing chiefly,

  or perhaps in any part, by politics. If I write politics for my

  own sake, I must put in love and intrigue, social incidents, with

  perhaps a dash of sport, for the benefit of my readers. In this

  way I think I made my political hero interesting. It was certainly

  a blunder to take him from Ireland--into which I was led by the

  circumstance that I created the scheme of the book during a visit

  to Ireland. There was nothing to be gained by the peculiarity, and

  there was an added difficulty in obtaining sympathy and affection

  for a politician belonging to a nationality whose politics are not

  respected in England. But in spite of this Phineas succeeded. It

  was not a brilliant success,--because men and women not conversant

  with political matters could not care much for a hero who spent

  so much of his time either in the House of Commons or in a public

  office. But the men who would have lived with Phineas Finn read the

  book, and the women who would have lived with Lady Laura Standish

  read it also. As this was what I had intended, I was contented. It

  is all fairly good except the ending,--as to which till I got to

  it I made no provision. As I fully intended to bring my hero again

  into the world, I was wrong to marry him to a simple pretty Irish

  girl, who could only be felt as an encumbrance on s
uch return. When

  he did return I had no alternative but to kill the simple pretty

  Irish girl, which was an unpleasant and awkward necessity.

  In writing Phineas Finn I had constantly before me the necessity

  of progression in character,--of marking the changes in men and

  women which would naturally be produced by the lapse of years. In

  most novels the writer can have no such duty, as the period occupied

  is not long enough to allow of the change of which I speak. In

  Ivanhoe, all the incidents of which are included in less than a

  month, the characters should be, as they are, consistent throughout.

  Novelists who have undertaken to write the life of a hero or heroine

  have generally considered their work completed at the interesting

  period of marriage, and have contented themselves with the advance

  in taste and manners which are common to all boys and girls as

  they become men and women. Fielding, no doubt, did more than this

  in Tom Jones, which is one of the greatest novels in the English

  language, for there he has shown how a noble and sanguine nature

  may fall away under temptation and be again strengthened and made

  to stand upright. But I do not think that novelists have often

  set before themselves the state of progressive change,--nor should

  I have done it, had I not found myself so frequently allured back

  to my old friends. So much of my inner life was passed in their

  company, that I was continually asking myself how this woman would

  act when this or that event had passed over her head, or how that

  man would carry himself when his youth had become manhood, or

  his manhood declined to old age. It was in regard to the old Duke

  of Omnium, of his nephew and heir, and of his heir's wife, Lady

  Glencora, that I was anxious to carry out this idea; but others added

  themselves to my mind as I went on, and I got round me a circle of

  persons as to whom I knew not only their present characters, but

  how those characters were to be affected by years and circumstances.

  The happy motherly life of Violet Effingham, which was due to the

  girl's honest but long-restrained love; the tragic misery of Lady

  Laura, which was equally due to the sale she made of herself in her

  wretched marriage; and the long suffering but final success of the

  hero, of which he had deserved the first by his vanity, and the