 Chapter 13 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. On English novelists of the present day. In this chapter, I will venture to name a few successful novelists of my own time, with whose works I am acquainted, and will endeavor to point whence their success has come and why they have failed when there has been failure. I do not hesitate to name Thackeray the first. His knowledge of human nature was supreme, and his characters stand out as human beings with a force and a truth which has not, I think, been within the reach of any other English novelist in any period. I know no character in fiction, unless it be Don Coyote, with whom the reader becomes so intimately acquainted as with Colonel Newcomb. How great a thing it is to be a gentleman at all parts. How we admire the man of whom so much may be said with truth. Is there anyone of whom we feel more sure in this respect than of Colonel Newcomb? It is not because Colonel Newcomb is a perfect gentleman that we think Thackeray's works have been so excellent, but because he has had the power to describe him as such, and to force us to love him, a weak and silly old man, on account of this grace of character. It is evident from all Thackeray's best work that he lived with the characters he was creating. He had always a story to tell until quite late in life, and he shows us that this was so not by the interest which he had in his own plots, I doubt whether his plots did occupy much of his mind, but by convincing us that his characters were alive to himself. With Becky Sharp, with Lady Castlewood and her daughter, and with Esmond, with Warrington, Penn Dennis and the major, with Colonel Newcomb and with Barry Lyndon, he must have lived in perpetual intercourse. Therefore, he has made these personages real to us. Among all our novelists, his style is the purest, as to my ear it is also the most harmonious. Sometimes it is disfigured by a slight touch of affectation, by little conceits which smell of the oil, but the language is always lucid. The reader with Outlamer knows what he means, and knows all that he means. As well as I can remember, he deals with no episodes. I think that any critic examining his work minutely would find that every scene, and every part of every scene, adds something to the clearness with which the story is told. Among all his stories, there is not one which does not leave on the mind a feeling of distress that women should ever be immodest or men dishonest, and of joy that women should be so devoted and men so honest. How we hate the idle selfishness of Penn Dennis, the worldliness of Beatrix, the craft of Becky Sharp, how we love the honesty of Colonel Newcomb, the nobility of Esmond, and the devoted affection of Mrs. Penn Dennis. The hatred of evil and love of good can hardly have come upon so many readers without doing much good. Late in Thackeray's life, he never was an old man, but towards the end of his career, he failed in his power of charming because he allowed his mind to become idle. In the plots which he conceived and in the language which he used, I do not know that there is any perceptible change. But in the Virginians and in Philip, the reader is introduced to no character with which he makes a close and undying acquaintance. And this, I have no doubt, is so because Thackeray himself had no such intimacy. His mind had come to be weary of that fictitious life which is always demanding the labor of new creation, and he troubled himself with his two Virginians and his Philip only when he was seated at his desk. At the present moment, George Eliot is the first of English novelists, and I am disposed to place her second of those of my time. She is best known to the literary world as a writer of prose fiction, and not improbably whatever of permanent fame she may acquire will come from her novels. But the nature of her intellect is very far removed indeed from that which is common to the tellers of stories. Her imagination is no doubt strong, but it acts in analyzing rather than in creating. Everything that comes before her is pulled to pieces so that the inside of it shall be seen, and be seen if possible by her readers as clearly as by herself. This searching analysis is carried so far that in studying her latter writings one feels oneself to be in company with some philosopher rather than with a novelist. I doubt whether any young person can read with pleasure either Felix Holt, Middlemarch, or Daniel Deronda. I know that they are very difficult to many that are not young. Her personifications of character have been singularly terse and graphic, and from them has come her great hold on the public, though by no means the greatest effect which she has produced. The lessons which she teaches remain, though it is not for the sake of the lessons that her pages are read. Seth Bede, Adam Bede, Maggie and Tom Tulliver, old Silas Marner, and much above all, Tito and Ramala, are characters which when once known can never be forgotten. I cannot say quite so much for any of those in her later works because in them the philosopher so greatly over tops the portrait painter that in the dissection of the mind the outward sign seems to have been forgotten. In her as yet there is no symptom whatever of that weariness of mind which when felt by the reader induces him to declare that the author has written himself out. It is not from decadence that we do not have another Mrs. Poiser, but because the author soars to things which seem to her to be higher than Mrs. Poiser. It is, I think, the defect of George Elliot that she struggles too hard to do work that shall be excellent. She lacks ease. Laterally the signs of this have been conspicuous in her style, which has always been and is singularly correct, but which has become occasionally obscure from her too great desire to be pungent. It is impossible not to feel the struggle, and that feeling begets a flavor of affectation. In Daniel Duranda, of which at this moment only a portion has been published, there are sentences which I have found myself compelled to read three times before I have been able to take home to myself all that the writer has intended. Perhaps I may be permitted here to say that this gifted woman was among my dearest and most intimate friends. As I am speaking here of novelists I will not attempt to speak of George Elliot's merit as a poet. There can be no doubt that the most popular novelist of my time, probably the most popular English novelist of any time, has been Charles Dickens. He has now been dead nearly six years, and the sale of his books goes on as it did during his life. The certainty with which his novels are found in every house, the familiarity of his name in all English-speaking countries, the popularity of such characters as Mrs. Gamp, Macabre, and Pexnip, and many others whose names have entered into the English language and become well-known words, the grief of the country at his death, and the honors paid to him at his funeral, all testify to his popularity. Since the last book he wrote himself, I doubt whether any book has been so popular as his biography by John Forster. There is nowithstanding such testimony as this. Such evidence of popular appreciation should go for very much, almost for everything, in criticism on the work of a novelist. The primary object of a novelist is to please, and this man's novels have been found more pleasant than those of any other writer. It might, of course, be objected to this, that, though the books have pleased they have been injurious, that their tendency has been immoral in their teaching vicious, but it is almost needless to say that no such charge has ever been made against Dickens. His teaching has ever been good. From all which, there arises to the critic a question whether, with such evidence against him as to the excellence of this writer, he should not subordinate his own opinion to the collected opinion of the world of readers. To me it almost seems that I must be wrong to place Dickens after Thackery and George Eliot, knowing as I do that so great a majority put him above those authors. My own peculiar idiosyncrasy in the matter forbids me to do so. I do acknowledge that Mrs. Gamp, Macabre, Peck Sniff, and others have become household words in every house, as though they were human beings. But to my judgment they are not human beings, nor are any of the characters human which Dickens has portrayed. It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man's power that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature. There is a drullery about them, in my estimation, very much below the humor of Thackery, but which has reached the intellect of all. While Thackery's humor has escaped the intellect of many. Nor is the pathos of Dickens human. It is stagy and melodramatic. But it is so expressed that it touches every heart a little. There's no real life in Smyke. His misery, his idiocy, his devotion for Nicholas, his love for Kate, are all overdone and incompatible with each other. But still the reader sheds a tear. Every reader can find a tear for Smyke. Dickens's novels are like Busico's plays. He has known how to draw his lines broadly so that all should see the color. He too, in his best days, always lived with his characters, and he too, as he gradually ceased to have the power of doing so, ceased to charm. Though they are not human beings, we all remember Mrs. Gamp and Pickwick. The boffins and veneerings do not, I think, dwell in the minds of so many. Of Dickens's style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules, almost as completely as that created by Carlisle. To readers who have taught themselves to regard language it must therefore be unpleasant. But the critic has driven to feel the weakness of his criticism when he acknowledges to himself, as he is compelled in all honesty to do, that with the language, such as it is, the writer has satisfied the great mass of the readers of his country. Both these great writers have satisfied the readers of their own pages. But both have done infinite harm by creating a school of imitators. No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens. If such a one wants a model for his language, let him take Thackery. Bulwer, or Lord Lighten, but I think that he is still better known by his earlier name, was a man of very great parts. Better educated than either of those I have named before him, he was always able to use his erudition, and he thus produced novels from which very much not only may be, but must be, learned by his readers. He thoroughly understood the political status of his own country, a subject on which I think Dickens was marvelously ignorant, and which Thackery had never studied. He had read extensively and was always apt to give his readers the benefit of what he knew. The result has been that very much more than amusement may be obtained from Bulwer's novels. There's also a brightness about them, the result rather of thought than of imagination, of study and of care than of mere intellect, which has made many of them excellent in their way. It is perhaps improper to class all his novels together as he wrote in varied manners, making in his earlier works, such as Pelham and Ernest Maltravers, pictures of a fictitious life, and afterwards pictures of life as he believed it to be, as in my novel and the Caxton's. But from all of them there comes the same flavor of an effort to produce effect. The effects are produced, but it would have been better if the flavor had not been there. I cannot say of Bulwer as a half of the other novelists whom I have named that he lived with his characters. He lived with his work, with the doctrines which at the time he wished to preach, thinking always of the effects which he wished to produce. But I do not think he ever knew his own personages, and therefore neither do we know them. Even Pelham and Eugene Aram are not human beings to us as are Pickwick and Colonel Newcombe and Mrs. Poiser. In his plots Bulwer has generally been simple, facile and successful. The reader never feels with him as he does with Wilkie Collins that it is all plot, or as with George Elliot that there is no plot. The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention, and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced by mannerism, and all that he did affectation was his fault. How shall I speak of my dear old friend Charles Lever and his rattling, jolly, joyous, swearing Irishman? Surely never did a sense of vitality come so constantly from a man's pen, nor from man's voice, as from his. I knew him well for many years, and whether in sickness or in health, I have never come across him without finding him to be running over with wit and fun. Of all the men I have encountered he was the surest fund of drollery. I have known many witty men, many who could say good things, many who would sometimes be ready to say them when wanted, though they would sometimes fail. But he never failed. Rows him in the middle of the night and wit would come from him before he was half awake. And yet he never monopolized the talk, was never a bore. He would take no more than his own share of the words spoken, and would yet seem to brighten all that was said during the night. His earlier novels, the later I have not read, are just like his conversation. The fun never flags, and to me when I read them they were never tedious. As to character he can hardly be said to have produced it. Corny Delaney, the old man's servant, may perhaps be named as an exception. Lever's novels will not live long, even if they may be said to be alive now, because it is so. What was his matter of working I do not know, but I should think it must have been very quick, and that he never troubled himself on the subject except when he was seated with a pen in his hand. Charlotte Bronte was surely a marvelous woman. If it could be right to judge the work of a novelist from one small portion of one novel, and to say of an author that he is to be accounted as strong as he shows himself to be in the strongest morsel of work, I should be inclined to put Ms. Bronte very high indeed. I know no interest more thrilling than that which she has been able to throw into the characters of Rochester and the governess in the second volume of Jane Eyre. She lived with those characters and felt every fiber of the heart, the longings of the one and the sufferings of the other. And therefore, though the end of the book is weak and the beginning not very good, I venture to predict that Jane Eyre will be read among English novels when many whose names are now better known shall have been forgotten. Jane Eyre and Esmond and Adam Bede will be in the hands of our grandchildren when Pickwick and Pelham and Harry Lorick were forgotten, because the men and women depicted are human in their aspirations, human in their sympathies, and human in their actions. In Villette, too, and in Shirley, there is to be found human life as natural and as real, though in circumstances not so full of interest as those told in Jane Eyre. The character of Paul in the former of the two is a wonderful study. She must herself have been in love with some Paul when she wrote the book, and have been determined to prove to herself that she was capable of loving one whose exterior circumstances were mean and in every way unprepossessing. There is no writer of the present day who has so much puzzled me by his eccentricities, impractibilities, and capabilities as Charles Reid. I look upon him as endowed almost with genius, but as one who has not been gifted by nature with ordinary powers of reasoning. He can see what is grandly noble and admire it with all his heart. He can see, too, what is foully vicious and hated with equal ardor. But in the common affairs of life, he cannot see what is right or wrong, and as he is altogether unwilling to be guided by the opinion of others, he is constantly making mistakes in his literary career and subjecting himself to reproach which he hardly deserves. He means to be honest. He means to be especially honest, more honest than other people. He has written a book called The Eighth Commandment on Belief of Honesty in Literary Transactions, a wonderful work, which has, I believe, been read by very few. I never saw a copy except that in my own library or heard of anyone who knew the book. Nevertheless, it is a volume that must have taken very great labour and have been written, as indeed he declares that it was written, without the hope of pecuniary reward. He makes an appeal to the British Parliament and British people on behalf of literary honesty, declaring that should he fail I shall have to go on blushing for the people I was born among. And yet of all the writers of my day, he has seemed to me to understand literary honesty the least. On one occasion, as he tells us in the book, he bought for a certain sum from a French author the right of using a plot taken from a play, which he probably might have used without such purpose, and also without infringing any international copyright act. The French author not unnaturally praises him for the transaction, telling him that he is un vrai gentleman. The plot was used by Reid in a novel, and a critic discovering the adaptation made known his discovery to the public. Whereupon the novelist became angry, called his critic a pseudonymuncle, and defended himself by stating the fact of his own purchase. In all this, he seems to me to ignore what we all mean when we talk of literary plagiarism and literary honesty. The sin of which the author is accused is not that of taking another man's property, but of passing off as his own creation that which he did not himself create. When an author puts his name to a book, he claims to have written all that there is therein, unless he makes direct signification. To the contrary. Some years subsequently there arose another similar question, in which Mr. Reid's opinion was declared even more plainly, and certainly very much more publicly. In a tale which he wrote, he inserted a dialogue from Swift and took without any acknowledgement. As might have been expected, one of the critics of the day fell foul of him for this bare-faced plagiarism. The author, however, defended himself with much abuse of the critic by asserting that whereas Swift had found the jewel, he had supplied the setting. An argument in which there was some little wit and would have been much excellent truth had he given the words as belonging to Swift and not to himself. A man possessed of so singular a mind must themselves be very strange, and they are strange. It has generally been his object to write down some abuse with which he has been particularly struck. The harshness, for instance, with which poppers or lunatics are treated, or the wickedness of certain classes. And he always, I think, leaves upon his readers an idea of great earnestness of purpose. But he has always left, at the same time on my mind, so strong a conviction that he has not really understood his subject, that I have ever found myself taking the part of those whom he has accused. So good a heart and so wrong a head, surely no novelist ever before had combined. In storytelling, he has occasionally been almost great. Among his novels, I would especially recommend the Cloyster and the Hearth. I do not know that in this work or in any he has left a character that will remain, but he has written some of his scenes so brightly that to read them would always be a pleasure. Of Wilkie Collins, it is impossible for a true critic not to speak with admiration, because he has excelled all his contemporaries in a certain most difficult branch of his art. But as it is a branch which I have not myself at all cultivated, it is not unnatural that his work should be very much lost upon me individually. When I sit down to write a novel, I do not at all know, and I do not very much care how it is to end. Wilkie Collins seems so to construct his that he not only before writing plans everything on down to the minutest detail from the beginning to the end, but then plots it all back again to see that there is no piece of necessary dovetailing which does not dovetail with absolute accuracy. The construction is most minute and most wonderful, but I can never lose the taste of the construction. The author seems always to be warning me to remember that something happened at exactly half past two o'clock on Tuesday morning, or that a woman disappeared from the road just 15 yards beyond the fourth milestone. One is constrained by mysteries and hemmed in by difficulties, knowing, however, that the mysteries will be made clear and the difficulties overcome at the end of the third volume. Such work gives me no pleasure. I am, however, quite prepared to acknowledge that the want of pleasure comes from fault of my intellect. There are two ladies of whom I would fain say a word, though I feel that I am making my list too long in order that I may declare how much I have admired their work. They are Annie Thackeray and Rhoda Brotten. I have known them both and have loved the former almost as though she belonged to me. No two writers were ever more dissimilar, except in this that they are both feminine. Miss Thackeray's characters are sweet, charming, and quite true to human nature. In her writings, she is always endeavoring to prove that good produces good and evil evil. There is not a line of which she need be ashamed, not a sentiment of which she should not be proud. But she writes like a lazy writer who dislikes her work and who allows her own want of energy to show itself in her pages. Miss Brotten, on the other hand, is full of energy, though she too, I think, can become tired over her work. She, however, does take the trouble to make her personages stand upright on the ground, and she has the gift of making them speak as men and women do speak. You beast! said Nancy, sitting on the wall to the man who was to be her husband, thinking that she was speaking to her brother. Now Nancy, whether right or wrong, was just the girl who would, as circumstances then were, have called her brother a beast. There is nothing wooden about any of Miss Brotten's novels, and in these days so many novels are wooden. But they are not sweet savored, as are those by Miss Thackeray, and are therefore less true to nature. In Miss Brotten's determination not to be mockish and mis-ish, she has made her ladies do and say things which ladies would not do and say. They throw themselves at men's heads, and when they are not accepted only think how they may throw themselves again. Miss Brotten is still so young that I hope she may live to overcome her fault in this direction. There is one other name without which the list of best-known English novelists of my time would certainly be incomplete, and that is the name of the present Prime Minister of England. Mr. Disraeli has written so many novels, and has been so popular as a novelist that whether for good or ill, I feel myself compelled to speak of him. He began his career as an author early in life, publishing Vivian Gray when he was 23 years old. He was very young for such work, though hardly young enough to justify the excuse that he makes in his own preface that it is a book written by a boy. Dickens was, I think, younger when he wrote his sketches by Bas, and as young when he was writing the Pickwick papers. It was hardly longer ago than the other day when Mr. Disraeli brought out Lothair, and between the two there were eight or ten others. To me they have all had the same flavor of paint and unreality. In whatever he has written he has affected something which has been intended to strike his readers as uncommon and therefore grand. Because he has been bright and a man of genius, he has carried his object as regards the young. He has struck them with astonishment and aroused in their imagination ideas of a world more glorious, more rich, more witty, more enterprising than their own. But the glory has been the glory of pasteboard and the wealth has been a wealth of tinsel. The wit has been the wit of hairdressers and the enterprise has been the enterprise of mount-backs. An audacious conjurer has generally been his hero. Some youth who by wonderful cleverness can obtain success by every intrigue that comes to his hand. Through it all there's a feeling of stage properties, a smell of hair oil, an aspect of blow, a remembrance of tailors, and that pricking of the conscience which must be the general accompaniment of paste diamonds. I can understand that Mr. Disraeli should, by his novels, have instigated many a young man and many a young woman on their way in life, but I cannot understand that he should have instigated anyone to good. Vivian Gray has had probably as many followers as Jack Shepherd and has led his followers in the same direction. Lo there, which is, as yet, Mr. Disraeli's last work, and I think undoubtedly his worst, has been defended on a plea somewhat similar to that by which he has defended Vivian Gray. As that was written when he was too young, so was the other when he was too old, too old for a work of that nature, though not too old to be Prime Minister. If his mind were so occupied with greater things as to allow him to write such a work, yet his judgment should have sufficed to induce him to destroy it when written. Here that flavor of hair oil, that flavor of false jewels, that remembrance of tailors comes out stronger than in all the others. Though there is falser even than Vivian Gray, and Lady Corisand, and the daughter of the Duchess, more inane and un-woman-like than Venetia or Henrietta Temple, it is the very bathouse of storytelling. I have often lamented and have as often excused to myself that lack of public judgment which enables readers to put up with bad work because it comes from good or from lofty hands. I never felt the feeling so strongly or was so little able to excuse it as when a portion of the reading public received lo-there with satisfaction. End of Chapter 13 Recorded With a Cold by Jessica Louise, Minneapolis, Minnesota Chapter 14 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollop This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop On Criticism Literary criticism in the present day has become a profession, but it has ceased to be an art. Its object is no longer that of proving that certain literary work is good and other literary work is bad in accordance with rules which the critic is able to define. English criticism at present rarely even pretends to go so far as this. It attempts, in the first place, to tell the public whether a book be or be not worth public attention and, in the second place, so to describe the purport of the work as to enable those who have not time or inclination for reading it to feel that, by a shortcut, they can become acquainted with its contents. Both these objects, if fairly well carried out, are salutary. Though the critic may not be a profound judge himself, though not unfrequently he be a young man making his first literary attempts, with tastes and judgment still unfixed, yet he probably has a conscience in the matter and would not have been selected for that work had he not shown some aptitude for it. Though he may not be the best possible guide to the undiscerning, he will be better than no guide at all. Real substantial criticism must, from its nature, be costly and that which the public wants should at any rate be cheap. Advice is given to many thousands which, though it may not be the best advice possible, is better than no advice at all. Then that description of the work criticized, that compressing of the much into very little, which is the work of many modern critics or reviewers, does enable many to know something of what is being said who without it would know nothing. I do not think it is incumbent on me at present to name periodicals in which this work is well done and to make complaints of others by which it is scammed. I should give a fence and might probably be unjust. But I think I may certainly say that as some of these periodicals are certainly entitled to great praise for the manner in which the work is done generally, so are others open to very severe censure and that the praise and that the censure are chiefly due on behalf of one virtue and its opposite vice. It is not critical ability that we have a right to demand or its absence that we are bound to deplore. Critical ability for the price we pay is not attainable. It is a faculty not peculiar to Englishmen and when displayed is very frequently not appreciated. But that critics should be honest we have a right to demand and critical dishonesty we are bound to expose. If the writer will tell us what he thinks though his thoughts be absolutely vague and useless we can forgive him. But when he tells us what he does not think actuated either by friendship or by animosity then there should be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism of which there is most reason to complain. It is a lamentable fact that men and women lend themselves to this practice who are neither vindictive nor ordinarily dishonest. It has become the custom of the trade under the veil of which excuse so many tradesmen justify their malpractices. When a struggling author learns that so much has been done for A. by the Barsature Gazette so much for B. by the Dillsborough Herald and again so much for C. by that powerful Colleton organ the evening pulpit and is told also that A and B and C have been favored through personal interest he also goes to work among the editors or the editors wives or perhaps if he cannot reach their wives with their wives first or second cousins. When once the feeling has come upon an editor or a critic that he may allow himself to be influenced by other considerations than the duty he owes to the public all sense of critical or of editorial honesty falls from him at once. Facilis de Sensus Everni in a very short time that editorial honesty becomes ridiculous to himself. It is for other purpose that he wields the power and when he is told what is his duty and what should be his conduct the preacher of such doctrine seems to him to be quixotic. Where have you lived my friend for the last twenty years he says in spirit if not in word that you come out now with such stuff as old fashioned as this and thus dishonesty begets dishonesty till dishonesty seems to be beautiful. How nice to be good natured how glorious to assist struggling young authors especially if the young author be also a pretty woman how gracious to oblige a friend then the motive though still pleasing departs further from the border of what is good in what way can the critic better repay the hospitality of his wealthy literary friend than by good natured criticism or more certainly insurer for himself a continuation of hospitable favors. Some years since a critic of the day a gentleman well known then in literary circles showed me the manuscript of a book recently published the work of a popular author it was handsomely bound and was a valuable and desirable possession it had just been given to him by the author as an acknowledgement for a laudatory review in one of the leading journals of the day as I was expressly asked whether I did not regard such a token as a sign of grace both in the giver and in the receiver I said that I thought it should neither have been given nor have been taken my theory was repudiated with scorn and I was told that I was straight laced visionary and impracticable in all that the damage did not lie in the fact of that one present but in the feeling on the part of the critic that his office was not debased by the acceptance of presence from those whom he criticized this man was a professional critic bound by his contract with certain employers to review such books as were sent to him how could he when he had received a valuable present for praising one book censure another by the same author while I write this I well know that what I say if it be ever noticed at all will be taken as a straining at gnats as a pretense of honesty or at any rate as an exaggeration of scruples I have said the same thing before and have been ridiculed for saying it but nonetheless I am sure that English literature generally is suffering much under this evil all those who are struggling for success have forced upon them the idea that their strongest efforts should be made of praise those who are not familiar with the lives of authors will hardly believe how low will be the forms which their struggles will take how little presence will be sent to men who write little articles how much flattery may be expended even on the keeper of a circulating library with what profuse and distant genuflections approaches are made to the outside railing of the temple which contains within it the great thunderer of some metropolitan periodical publication the evil here is not only that done to the public when interested council is given to them but extends to the debasement of those who have at any rate considered themselves fit to provide literature for the public I am satisfied that the remedy for this evil must lie in the conscience and deportment of authors themselves if once the feeling could be produced that it is disgraceful for an author to ask for praise and demands for praise are I think disgraceful in every walk of life the practice would gradually fall into the hands only of the lowest and that which is done only by the lowest soon becomes despicable even to them the sin when perpetuated with unflagging labor brings with it at best very poor reward that work of running after critics editors publishers the keepers of circulating libraries and their clerks is very hard and must be very disagreeable he who doesn't must feel himself to be dishonored or she it may perhaps help to sell in addition but can never make an author successful I think it may be laid down as a golden rule in literature that there should be no intercourse at all between an author and his critic the critic as critic should not know his author nor the author as author his critic as censure should beget no anger so should praise beget no gratitude the young author should feel that criticisms fall upon him as due or hail from heaven which as coming from heaven man accepts as fate praise let the author try to obtain by wholesome effort censure let him avoid possible by care and industry but when they come let him take them as coming from some source which he cannot influence and with which he should not meddle I know no more disagreeable trouble into which an author may plunge himself then of a quarrel with his critics or any more useless labor than that of answering them it is wise to presume at any rate that the reviewer has simply done his duty and has spoken of the book according to the dictates of his conscience nothing can be gained by combating the reviewer's opinion if the book which he has disparaged be good his judgment will be condemned by the praise of others if bad his judgment will be confirmed by others or if unfortunately the criticism of the day be in so evil a condition generally that such ultimate truth cannot be expected the author may be sure that his efforts made on behalf of his own book will not set matters right if injustice be done him let him bear it to do so is consonant with the dignity of the position which he ought to assume to shriek and scream and sputter to threaten actions and to swear about the town that he has been belied and defamed and that he has been accused of bad grammar or a false metaphor of a dull chapter or even of a borrowed heroine will leave on the minds of the public nothing but a sense of irritated impotence if indeed there should spring from an author's work any assertion by a critic injurious to the author's honor if the author be accused of falsehood or of personal motives which are discreditable to him then indeed he may be bound to answer the charge it is hoped however that he may be able to do so with clean hands or he will so stir the mud in the pool as to come forth dirtier than he went into it I have lived much among men by whom the English criticism of the day has been vehemently abused I have heard it said that to the public it is a false guide and that to authors it is never a trustworthy mentor I do not concur in this wholesale censure there is of course criticism and criticism there are at this moment one or two periodicals to which public and authors may safely look for guidance though there are many others from which no spark of literary advantage may be obtained but it is well that both public and authors should know what is the advantage which they have a right to expect there have been critics and there probably will be again though the circumstances of English literature do not tend to produce them with power sufficient to entitle them to speak with authority these great men have declared Tanquam ex cathedra that such a book has been so far good and so far bad or that it has been altogether good or altogether bad and the world has believed them when making such assertions they have given their reasons explained their causes and have carried conviction very great reputations have been achieved by such critics but not without infinite study in the labor of many years such are not the critics of the day of whom we are now speaking in the literary world as it lives at present some writer is selected for the place of critic to a newspaper generally some young writer who for so many shillings a column shall review whatever book is sent to him and express an opinion reading the book through for the purpose if the amount of honorarium is measured with the amount of labor will enable him to do so a laborer must measure his work by his pay or he cannot live from criticism such as this must for the most part be the general reader has no right to expect philosophical analysis or a literary judgment on which confidence may be placed but he probably may believe that the books praised will be better than the books censured and that those which are praised by periodicals which never censure are better worth his attention than those which are not noticed and readers will also find that by devoting an hour or two on Saturday to the criticisms of the week they will enable themselves to have an opinion about the books of the day the knowledge so acquired will not be great nor will that little be lasting but it adds something to the pleasure of life to be able to talk on subjects of which others are speaking and the man who is sedulously gone through the literary spectator in the Saturday may perhaps be justified in thinking himself as well able to talk about the new book as his friend who has bought that new book on the tapas and who not improbably obtained his information from the same source as an author I have paid careful attention to the reviews which have been written on my own work and I think that now I well know where I may look for a little instruction where I may expect only a little of a pre-C adulation where I shall be cut up into mince-meat for the delight of those who love sharp invective and where I shall find an equal measure of praise and censure so adjusted without much judgment as to exhibit the impartiality of the newspaper and its staff among it all there is much chaff which I have learned how to throw to the winds with equal disregard whether it praises or blames but I have also found some corn on which I have fed and nourished myself and for which I have been thankful end of chapter 14 chapter 15 of the autobiography of Anthony Trollop this LibriVox recording is in the public domain autobiography of Anthony Trollop the last chronicle of Barsett leaving the post office St. Paul's magazine I will now go back to the year 1867 in which I was still living at Waltham Cross I had sometimes since bought the house there which I had at first hired and added rooms to it and made it for our purposes very comfortable it was however a rickety old place requiring much repair and occasionally not as weather tight as it should be we had a domain there sufficient for the cows and for the making of our butter and hay for strawberries, asparagus green peas, out-of-door peaches for roses especially in such everyday luxuries no place was ever more excellent it was only 12 miles from London and admitted therefore a frequent intercourse with the metropolis it was also near enough to the ruling country for hunting purposes no doubt the shore-ditch station by which it had to be reached had its drop-backs my average distance also to the Essex Meats was 20 miles but the place combined as much or more than I had a right to expect it was within my own postal district and had upon the whole been well chosen the work that I did during the 12 years that I remained there from 1859 to 1871 was certainly very great I feel confident that in amount no other writer contributed so much during that time to English literature over and above my novels I wrote political articles, critical social and sporting articles for periodicals without number I did the work of a surveyor of the general post office and so did it as to give the authorities of the department no slightest pretext for fault finding I hunted always at least twice a week I was frequent in the Wist Room at Garrick I lived much in society in London and was made happy by the presence of many friends at Walden Cross in addition to this we always spent six weeks at least out of England few men I think ever lived a fuller life and I attribute the power of doing this all together to the virtue of early hours it was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30 a.m. and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy an old groom whose business it was to call me and to whom I paid five a year extra for the duty allowed himself no mercy during all those years at Walden Cross he was never once late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me I do not know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to anyone else for the success I have had by beginning at that hour I could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast all those I think who have lived as literary men working daily as literary laborers will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write but then he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours so have tutored his mind that it shall not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen and gazing at the wall before him till he shall have found the words with which he wants to express his ideas it had at this time become my custom and it still is my custom though late I've become a little lenient to myself to write with my watch before me and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went but my three hours were not devoted entirely to writing I always began my task by reading the work of the day before an operation which would take me half an hour and which consisted chiefly in weighing with my ear the sound of the words and phrases I would strongly recommend this practice to all writers and writers that their work should be read after it has been written is a matter of course that it should be read twice at least before it goes to the printers I take to be a matter of course but by reading what he has last written just before he recommences his task the writer will catch the tone and spirit of what he is then saying and will avoid the fault of seeming to be unlike himself this division of time allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary volume a day and if kept up through ten months would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year the precise amount which so greatly acerbated the publisher in pattern aster row and which must at any rate be felt to be quite as much as the novel readers of the world can want from the hands of one man I have never written three novels in a year but by following the plan above described I have written more than as much as three volumes and by adhering to it over a course of years I have been enabled to have always on hand for some time back now one or two or even three unpublished novels in my desk beside me were I to die now there are three such besides the prime minister half of which has only yet been issued one of these has been six years finished and has never seen the light since it was first tied up in the wrapper which now contains it I look forward with some grim pleasantry to its publication after another period of six years and to the declaration of the critics that it has been the work of a period of life at which the power of writing novels had passed from me not improbably however these pages may be printed first in 1866 and 1867 the last chronicle of Barcet was brought out by George Smith in six penny monthly numbers I do not know that this mode of publication had been tried before or that it answered very well on this occasion indeed the shilling magazines had interfered greatly with the success of novels published in numbers without other accompanying matter the public finding that so much might be had for a shilling in which a portion of one or more novels was always included were unwilling to spend their money on the novel alone feeling that this certainly had become the case in reference to novels published in shilling numbers George Smith and I determined to make the experiment with six penny parts as he paid me three thousand for the use of my manuscript the loss if any did not fall upon me if I remember right the enterprise was not altogether successful taking it as a whole I regard this as the best novel I've written I was never quite satisfied with the development of the plot which consisted in the loss of a check of a charge made against a clergyman for stealing it and of absolute uncertainty on the part of the clergyman himself as to the manner in which the check had found its way into his hands I cannot quite make myself believe that even such a man as Mr. Crawley could have forgotten how he got it nor would the generous friend who was anxious to supply his wants have supplied them by tendering the check of a third person such fault I acknowledge acknowledging at the same time that I have never been capable of constructing with complete success the intricacies required to be unraveled but while confessing so much I claimed to have portrayed the mind of the unfortunate man with great accuracy and great delicacy the pride, the humility the manliness, the weakness the conscientious rectitude and bitter prejudices of Mr. Crawley were I feel true to nature and well described the surroundings too are good Mrs. Prudy at the palace is a real woman and the poor old dean dying is also real the archdeacon in his victory is very real there is a true saver of English country life all through the book it was with many misgivings that I killed my old friend Mrs. Prudy I could not I think have done it but for a resolution taken and declared under circumstances of great momentary pressure it was thus that it came about I was sitting one morning at work upon the novel at the end of the long drawing room of the Athenaeum club as was then my want when I had slept the previous night in London as I was there two clergymen each with a magazine in his hand seated themselves one on one side of the fire and one on the other close to me they soon began to abuse what they were reading and each was reading some part of some novel of mine the gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I reintroduced the same character so often here said one is that Arch deacon whom we have had in every novel he has ever written and here said the other is the old Duke whom he has talked about till everybody is tired of him if I could not invent new characters I would not write novels at all then one of them fell fall of Mrs. Prudy it was impossible for me not to hear their words and almost impossible to hear them and be quiet I got up standing between them I acknowledged myself to be the culprit as to Mrs. Prudy I said I will go home and kill her before the week is over and so I did the two gentlemen were utterly confounded and one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations I have sometimes regretted the deed so great was my delight in writing about Mrs. Prudy so thorough was my knowledge of all the shades of her character it was not only that she was a tyrant a bully a would-be priestess a very vulgar woman and one who would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed with her but that at the same time she was conscientious by no means a hypocrite really believing in the brimstone which she threatened and anxious to save the souls around her from its horrors and as her tyranny increased so did the bitterness of the moments of her repentance increase in that she knew herself to be a tyrant that bitterness killed her since her time others have grown up equally dear to me Lady Glencora and her husband for instance but I have never desevered myself for Mrs. Prudy and still live much in company with her ghost I have in a previous chapter said how I wrote can you forgive her after the plot of a play which had been rejected which play had been called the noble jilt some year or two after the completion of the last chronicle I was asked by the manager of a theater to prepare a piece for his stage and I did so taking the plot of this novel I called the comedy did you steal it but my friend the manager did not approve of my attempt my mind at this time was less attentive to such a matter than when dear old George Bartley nearly crushed me by his criticism so that I forget the reason given I have little doubt but that the manager was right that he intended to express a true opinion I would have been glad to have taken the piece had he thought it suitable I'm quite sure I have sometimes wished to see during my lifetime a combined republication of those tales which are occupied with the fictitious county of Barsacher these would be the warden Barchester Towers, Dr. Thorn Framley Parsonage and the last chronicle of Barsat but I have hitherto failed the copyrights are in the hands of four different persons including myself and with one of the four I have not been able to prevail to act in concert with the others footnote since this was written I have made arrangements for doing as I have wished and the first volume of the series will now very shortly be published in 1867 I made at my mind to take a step in life which was not unattended with Perl which many would call rash and which when taken I should be sure at some period to regret this step was the resignation of my place at the post office I have described how it was that I contrived to combine the performance of its duties with my other avocations in life I got up always very early but even this did not suffice I worked always on Sundays as to which no scruple of religion made me unhappy and not unfrequently I was driven to work at night in the winter when hunting was going on I had to keep myself very much on the alert and during the London season when I was generally two or three days of the week in town I found the official work to be a burden I had determined some years previously after due consideration with my wife to abandon the post office when I had put by an income equal to the pension to which I should be entitled if I remained in the department till I was sixty that I had now done and I sighed for liberty the exact time chosen the autumn of 1867 was selected because I was then about to undertake other literary work in editing a new magazine of which I shall speak very shortly but in addition to these reasons there was another which was I think at last the actuating cause when Sir Roland Hill left the post office and my brother and law Mr. Tilly became secretary in his place I applied for the vacant office of under secretary had I obtained this I should have given up my hunting I should have given up much of my literary work at any rate would have edited no magazine and would have returned to the habit of my youth and going daily to the general post office there was very much against such a change in life the increase of salary would not have amounted to above four hundred a year and I should have lost much more than that in literary renumeration I should have felt bitterly the slavery of attendance at an office from which I had then been exempt for twenty years I should too have greatly missed the sport which I loved but I was attached to the department had imbued myself with a thorough love of letters I mean the letters which are carried by the post and was anxious for their welfare as though they were all my own in short I wished to continue the connection I did not wish moreover that any younger officer should again pass over my head I believed that I had been a valuable public servant and I will own to a feeling existing at that time that I had not altogether been well treated I was probably wrong in this I had been allowed to hunt and to do as I pleased and to say what I liked and had in that way received my reward I applied for the office but Mr. Scudamore was appointed to it he no doubt was possessed of gifts which I did not possess he understood the manipulation of money and the use of figures and was a great accountant I think that I might have been more useful in regard to the labors and wages of the immense body of men employed by the post office however Mr. Scudamore was appointed and I made up my mind that I would fall back upon my old intention and leave the department I think I allowed two years to pass before I took the step and the day on which I sent the letter was to me most melancholy the rule of the service in regard to his pension is very just a man shall serve till he is 60 before he is entitled to a pension unless his health fail him at that age he is entitled to one sixtieth of his salary for every year he has served up to 40 years if his health do fail him so that he is unfit for further work before the age named then he may go with a pension amounting to one sixtieth for every year he has served I could not say that my health therefore I went without any pension I have since felt occasionally that it has been supposed that I left the post office under pressure because I tended to hunting into my literary work rather than to postal matters as it had for many years been my ambition to be a thoroughly good servant to the public and to give to the public much more than I took in the shape of salary this feeling has sometimes annoyed me and as I am still a little sore on the subject I would not have imagined after my death that I had slighted the public service to which I belonged I will venture here to give the reply which was sent to the letter containing my resignation General Post Office October 9th 1867 Sir, I have received your letter of the third this month in which you tender your resignation as surveyor in the post office service and state is your reason for the step that you have adopted another profession the exigencies of which are so great as to make you feel you cannot give to the duties of the post office that amount of attention which you consider the postmaster general has a right to expect you have for many years ranked among the most conspicuous members of the post office which on several occasions when you have been employed on large and difficult matters has reaped much benefit from the great abilities which you have been able to place at its disposal and in mentioning this I have been especially glad to record that notwithstanding the many calls upon your time you have never permitted your other avocations to interfere with your post office work which has been faithfully and indeed energetically performed there was a touch of irony in this word energetically but it still did not displease me in accepting your resignation which he does with much regret the Duke of Montrose desires me to convey to you his own sense of the value of your services and to state how alive he is to the loss which will be sustained by the department in which you have long been an ornament and where your place will with difficulty be replaced signed J. Tilly readers will no doubt think that this is official flummary and so in fact it is I do not at all imagine that I was an ornament to the post office and have no doubt that the secretaries and assistant secretaries very often would have been glad to be rid of me but the letter may be taken as evidence that I did not allow my literary enterprises to interfere with my official work a man who takes public money without earning it is to me so odious that I can find no pardon for him in my heart I have known many such and some who have craved the power to do so nothing would annoy me more than to think that I should even be supposed to have been among the number and so my connection was dissolved with the department to which I had applied to the 33 best years of my life I must not say devoted for devotion implies an entire surrender and I certainly had found time for other occupations it is however absolutely true that during all those years I had thought very much more about the post office than I had of my literary work and had given to it a more unflagging attention up to this time I had never been angry never felt myself injured or unappreciated in that my literary efforts were slighted but I had suffered very much bitterness on that score in reference to the post office and I had suffered not only on my own personal behalf but also and more bitterly when I could not promise to be done the things which I thought ought to be done for the benefits of others that the public and little villages should be enabled to buy postage stamps that they should have their letters delivered to me and at an early hour that pillar letter boxes should be put up for them of which accommodation in the streets and ways of England I was the originator having however got the authority for the erection of the first at St. Heliers in Jersey that the letter carriers and sorters should not be overworked that they should be adequately paid and have some hours to themselves especially on Sundays above all that they should be made to earn their wages and later they should not be crushed by what I thought to be the damnable system of so-called merit these were the matters by which I was stirred to what the secretary was pleased to call energetic performance of my duties how I loved when I was contradicted as I was very often and no doubt very properly to do instantly as I was bid and then to prove that what I was doing was fatuous, dishonest, expensive and impracticable and then there were feuds malicious feuds I was always an anti-Hillite acknowledging indeed the great thing which Sir Rolland Hill had done for the country but believing him to be entirely unfit to manage men or to arrange labor it was a pleasure to me to differ from him on all occasions and looking back now I think that in all such differences I was right having so steeped myself as it were in postal waters I could not go out from them without a regret I wonder whether I did anything to improve the style of writing in official reports I strove to do so gallantly never being contented with the language of my own reports unless it seemed to have been so written as to be pleasant to be read I took extreme delight in writing them not allowing myself to recopy them never having them recopied by others but sending them up with their original blots and erasures if blots and erasures there were it is hardly manly I think that a man should search after a fine at the expense of so much waste labor or that he should not be able to exact from himself the necessity of writing words in the form in which they should be read if a copy be required let it be taken afterwards by hand or by machine as may be but the writer of a letter if he wishes words to prevail with the reader should send them out as written by himself by his own hand with his own marks his own punctuation correct or incorrect with the evidence upon them that they have come from out of his own mind and so the cord was cut and I was a free man to run about the 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 it offered me a salary of one thousand 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 cheaply 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 Walden listened to my arguments with great patience and then 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 humor 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 to the name that has none is certainly the better as it never belies itself the liberal may cease to be liberal and the fortnightly alas to come out once a fortnight but the corn hill and the argacy 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 a miss because the publication may change hands Blackwoods has indeed always remained Blackwoods and Fratures though it has been bought and sold still does not sound a miss Mr. Virtue fearing the too attractive qualities of his own name wished the magazine to be called Anthony Trollops 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 edited would have driven me in 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 years if we were to make ourselves in any way peculiar it was not by our name that we were desirous of doing so I did 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 made clear that I admitted nothing which I thought might tend to success I read all manuscripts sent to me and endeavored to judge impartially I succeeded in obtaining the services of an excellent literary core during the three years and a half of my editorship I was assisted by Mr. Goshen Captain Brackenbury Edward Dicey Persevich Gerald H. A. Laird Allingham Leslie Stephen Mrs. Lynn Linton my brother T. A. Drollop and his wife Charles Lever E. Arnold Austin Dobson R. A. Proctor Lady Pollock G. H. Lews C. Mackie Hardman of the Times George McDonald W. R. Gregg Mrs. Olyphant Sir Charles Trevelyan Leonie 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 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 ten thousand 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 on a float 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've been able to give time and intelligence to the work nothing certainly has ever been done more than blackwoods the cornhill to after Thackery 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 quick sands 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 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 what Thackery 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 Thackery 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 End of Chapter 15 Recording by Jessica Louise Minneapolis, Minnesota Very early in life very soon after I had become a clerk in St. Martin's Le Grand when I was utterly impacunious 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 acquire whether I wish 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 member of parliament my uncle who was given to sarcasm rejoined that as far 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 borne 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 I was still thinking though I was aware that 53 was too late in 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 60 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 by 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 ought of me should know that, I will endeavor 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 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 named 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 today and God has so created them that they shall be unequal tomorrow the so-called conservative 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 ordinances 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 hold-fests 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 before their eyes and their love of their neighbors warm in their hearts endeavor to do their duty to the best of their ability using the term which is now common in which will be best understood I will endeavor 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 and 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 that he has the ability 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 would end as the Americans would say highfalutin 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 wigs liberals or conservatives partly by education following their fathers partly by chance partly as openings come partly in accordance with the content 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 intrigues 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 30 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 someone else he must remember that he is one out of 650 and be content with one 650th part of the attention if he have grand ideas he must keep them to himself unless by chance he can work his way up to the top of the tree in short he must be a practical man now I knew that in politics I could never become a practical man I should never be satisfied with a soft word from the Chancellor of the Exchequer but would always be flinging my overtext catch up in his face nor did it seem to me to be capable that I should ever become a good speaker I had no special gifts that way and had not studied the art early enough in life to overcome natural difficulties I had found that with infinite labor I could learn a few sentences by heart and deliver them monotonously indeed but clearly or again if there was something special to be said I could say it in a commonplace fashion but always as though I were in a hurry but I had no power of combining as a public speaker should always do that which I had studied with that which occurred to me at the moment it must be all lesson which I found to be best or else all impromptu which was very bad indeed unless I had something special on my mind I was thus aware that I could do no good by going into Parliament that the time for it if there could have been a time had gone by but still I had an almost insane desire to sit there and be able to assure myself that my uncle's scorn had not been deserved in 1867 it had been suggested to me that in the event of a dissolution I should stand for one division of the county of Essex and I had promised that I would do so though the promise at that time was as rash a one as a man could make I was instigated to this by the late Buckston, a man whom I greatly loved and who was very anxious that the county for which his brother had sat and with which the family were connected should be relieved from what he regarded as the thralldom of Toryism but there was no dissolution then Mr. Disraeli passed his reform bill by the help of the Liberal Member for Newark and the summoning of a new Parliament was postponed until the next year by this new reform bill Essex was portioned out into three of two electoral divisions one of which, that adjacent to London, would it was thought be altogether Liberal after the promise which I had given the performance of which would have cost me a large sum of money absolutely in vain, it was felt by some that I should be selected as one of the candidates for the new division and as such I was proposed by Mr. Charles Buckston but another gentleman who would have been bound by previous pledges to support me was put forward by what I believed to have been the defeating interest and I had to give way at the election this gentleman with another Liberal who had often stood for the county was returned without a contest, alas alas they were both unseated at the next election when the great conservative reaction took place in the spring of 1868 I was sent to the United States on a postal mission of which I will speak presently while I was absent that a solution took place on my return I was somewhat too late to look out for a seat but I had friends who knew the weakness of my ambition and it was not likely therefore that I should escape the peril of being put forward for some impossible borough as to which the Liberal party would not choose that it should go to the conservatives without a struggle at last after one or two others Beverly was proposed to me and to Beverly I went I must however exculpate the gentleman who acted as my agent from undue persuasion exercise towards me he was a man who thoroughly understood parliament having sat there himself and he sits there now at this moment he understood Yorkshire or at least the east riding of Yorkshire in which Beverly is situated certainly better than anyone alive he understood all the mysteries of canvassing and he knew well the traditions the condition and the prospect was the Liberal party I will not give his name but they who knew Yorkshire in 1868 will not be at a loss to find it so said he you are going to stand for Beverly I replied gravely that I was thinking of doing so you don't expect to get in he said again I was grave I would not I said be sanguine but nevertheless I was disposed to hope for the best oh no continued he with good you will get in I don't suppose he really expected but there is a fine career open to you you will spend a thousand and lose the election then you will petition and spend another thousand you will throw out the elected members there will be a commission and the borough will be disfranchised for a beginner such as you are that will be a great success in yet in the teeth of this from a man who knew all about it I persisted in going to Beverly the borough which returned two members had long been represented by Sir Henry Edwards of whom I think I'm justified in saying that he had contracted a close intimacy with it for the sake of the seat there had been many contests many petitions many void elections many members but through it all Sir Henry had kept his seat if not with permanence yet with the fixity of tenure next door to permanence I fancy that with a little management between the parties the borough might at this time have returned a member of each color quietly but there were spirits there who did not love political quietude and it was at last decided that there should be two liberal and two conservative candidates Sir Henry was joined by a young man of fortune in quest of a seat and I was grouped with Mr. Maxwell the eldest son of Lord Harry's a Scotch Roman Catholic peer who lives in the neighborhood when the time came I went down to canvas and spent I think the most wretched fortnight of my manhood in the first place I was subject to a bitter tyranny from grinding vulgar tyrants they were doing what they could or said that they were doing so to secure me a seat of parliament and I was to be in their hands at any rate the period of my candidature on one day both of us Mr. Maxwell and I wanted to go out hunting we proposed to ourselves but the one holiday during this period of intense labor but I was assured as was he also by a public and who is working for us that if we committed such a crime he and all Beverly would desert us from morning to evening every day I was taken around the lanes and by ways of that uninteresting town canvassing every voter exposed to the rain up to my knees and slush and utterly unable to assume that air of triumphant joy with which a jolly successful candidate should be invested at night every night I had to speak somewhere which was bad and to listen to the speaking of others which was much worse when on one Sunday I proposed to go to the Minster church I was told that was quite useless as the church party were all certain to support Sir Henry indeed said the public and my tyrant he goes there in a kind of official profession and you'd better not allow yourself to be seen in the same place so I stayed away and admitted my prayers no church of England church in Beverly would on such an occasion have welcomed a liberal candidate I felt myself to be a kind of pariah in the burl to whom was opposed all that was pretty and all that was nice and all that was ostensibly good but perhaps my strongest sense of discomfort arose from the conviction that my political ideas were all leather and prunella to the men whose votes I was soliciting they cared nothing for my doctrines not be made to understand that I should have any I had been brought to Beverly either to beat Sir Henry Edwards which however no one probably thought to be feasible or to cause him the greatest possible amount of trouble and convenience and expense there were indeed two points on which a portion of my wished for supporters seemed to have opinions and on both these points I was driven by my opinions to oppose them some were anxious for the ballot which had not then been law and some desired the permissive bill I hated and do hate both these measures thinking it to be unworthy of a great people to free itself from the evil results of vicious conduct by unmanly restraints undue influence on voters is a great evil from which this country had already done much to emancipate itself by extending electoral divisions and by an increase of independent feeling these I thought and not secret voting where the weapons by which electoral intimidation should be overcome and as for drink I believe in no parliamentary restraint but I do believe in the gradual effect of moral teaching and education but a liberal to do any good at Beverly should have been able to swallow such nets as those I would swallow nothing and was altogether the wrong man I knew from the commencement of my candidature how it would be of course that well-trained gentleman who condescended to act as my agent had understood the case and I ought to have taken his thoroughly kind advice he had seen it all and had told himself that it was wrong that one so innocent in such ways as I so utterly unable to fight such a battle should be carried down into Yorkshire merely to spend money and to be annoyed he could not have said more than he did say and I suffered for my obstinacy of course I was not elected Sir Henry Edwards and his comrade became members for Beverly and I was at the bottom of the poll I paid 400 for my expenses and then returned to London my friendly agent in his railery had of course exaggerated the cost he had when I arrived at Beverly asked me for a check for 400 and told me that the sum would suffice it did suffice how it came to pass that exactly that should be required I never knew but such was the case then there came a petition not from me but from the town the inquiry was made and two gentlemen were unseated the borough was disfranchised Sir Henry Edwards was put on his trial for some kind of parliamentary offence and was acquitted in this way Beverly's privileges of borough and my parliamentary ambition were brought to an end at the same time when I knew the result I did not altogether regret it it may be that Beverly might have been brought to political confusion and Sir Henry Edwards relegated to private life without the expenditure of my hard earned money and without that fortnight of misery but connecting the things together as it was natural that I should do I did flatter myself that I had done some good it had seemed to me that nothing could be worse nothing more unpatriotic nothing more absolutely opposed to the system of representative government then the time honored practices of the borough of Beverly it had come to pass that political cleanliness was odious to the citizens there was something grand in the scorn with which a leading liberal there turned up his nose at me when I told him that there should be no bribery no treating not even a pot of beer on one side it was a matter for study to see how at Beverly politics were appreciated because they might subserve electoral purposes and how little it was understood that electoral purposes which are in themselves a nuisance should be endured in order that they may subserve politics and then the time the money the mental energy which had been expended in making the borough a secure seat for a gentleman who had realized the idea that it would become him to be a member of parliament this use of the borough seemed to be realized and approved in the borough generally the inhabitants had taught themselves to think that it was for such purposes that boroughs were intended to have assisted in putting an end to this even in one town was to a certain extent a satisfaction end of chapter 16 recording by Jessica Louise Minneapolis Minnesota