 Chapter 10 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. The small house at Allington, Can You Forgive Her, Rachel Ray, and the Fortnightly Review. During the early months of 1862, Orley Farm was still being brought out in numbers, and at the same time, Brown, Jones, and Robinson was appearing in the Corn Hill Magazine. In September 1862, the small house at Allington began its career in the same periodical. The work on North America had also come out in 1862. In August 1863, the first number of Can You Forgive Her was published as a separate serial and was continued through 1864. In 1863, a short novel was produced in the ordinary volume form called Rachel Ray. In addition to these, I published during the time two volumes of stories called The Tales of All Countries. In the early spring of 1865, Miss Mackenzie was issued in the same form as Rachel Ray, and in May of the same year, the Belt and Estate was commenced with the commencement of the Fortnightly Review, of which periodical I will say a few words in this chapter. I quite admit that I crowded my wares into the market too quickly, because the reading world could not want such a quantity of matter from the hands of one author in so short a space of time. I had not been quite so fertile as the unfortunate gentleman who disgusted the publisher in Patternoster Row, in the story of whose productiveness I have always thought there was a touch of romance, but I had probably done enough to make both publishers and readers think that I was coming too often beneath their notice. Of publishers, however, I must speak collectively, as my sins were, I think, chiefly due to the encouragement which I received from them individually. What I wrote for the Cornhill Magazine I always wrote at the instigation of Mr. Smith. My other works were published by Monsieur Chapman and Hall in compliance with the contracts made by me with them, and always made with their goodwill. Could I have been two separate persons at one in the same time, of whom one might have been devoted to Cornhill and the other to the interests of the firm in Piccadilly? It might have been very well, but as I preserved my identity in both places, I myself became aware that my name was too frequent on title pages. Critics, if they ever trouble themselves with these pages, will of course say that in what I have now said, I have ignored altogether the one great evil of rapid production, namely that of inferior work. And of course, if the work was inferior because of the too great rapidity of production, the critics would be right. Giving to the subject the best of my critical abilities and judging of my own work as nearly as possible as I would that of another, I believe that the work which has been done quickest has been done the best. I have composed better stories, that is, have created better plots than those of Small House at Allington and Can You Forgive Her, and I have portrayed two or three better characters than are to be found in the pages of either of them. But taking these books all through, I do not think that I have ever done better work. Nor would these have been improved by any effort in the art of storytelling, had each of these been the isolated labor of a couple of years. How short does the time devoted to manipulation of a plot can be known only to those who have written plays and novels? I may say also how very little time the brain is able to devote to such wearing work. There are usually some hours of agonizing doubt, almost of despair, so at least it has been with me, or perhaps some days. And then with nothing settled in my brain as to the final development of events, with no capability of settling anything, but with a most distinct conception of some character or characters, I have rushed at the work as a writer rushes at a fence which he does not see. Sometimes I have encountered what, in hunting language, we call a cropper. I had such a fall in two novels of mine, of which I've already spoken, The Bertrams and Castle Richmond. I shall have to speak of other such troubles, but these failures have not arisen from overhurried work. When my work has been quicker done, and it has sometimes been done very quickly, the rapidity has been achieved by hot pressure, not in the conception, but in the telling of the story. Instead of writing eight pages a day, I have written sixteen. Instead of working five days a week, I have worked seven. I have trebled my usual average and have done so in circumstances which have enabled me to give up all my thoughts for the time to the book I have been writing. This has generally been done at some quiet spot among the mountains, where there has been no society, no hunting, no wist, no ordinary household duties. And I'm sure that the work so done has had in it the best truth and the highest spirit that I have been able to produce. At such times I have been able to imbue myself thoroughly with the characters I have had in hand. I have wandered alone among the rocks and woods, crying at their grief, laughing at their absurdities, and thoroughly enjoying their joy. I have been impregnated with my own creations to let it spend my only excitement to sit with the pen in my hand and drive my team before me at as quick a pace as I could make them travel. The critics will again say that all this may be very well as to the rough work of the author's own brain, but it will be very far from well in reference to the style in which that work has been given to the public. After all, the vehicle which a writer uses for conveying his thoughts to the public should not be less important to him than the thoughts themselves. An author can hardly hope to be popular unless he can use popular language. That is quite true, but then comes the question of achieving a popular, in other words, I may say a good and lucid style. How may an author best acquire a mode of writing which shall be agreeable and easily intelligible to the reader? He must be correct, because without correctness he can be neither agreeable nor intelligible. Readers will expect him to obey those rules which they, consciously or unconsciously, have been taught to regard as binding on language. And unless he does obey them, he will disgust. Without much labor, no writer will achieve such a style. He has very much to learn and when he has learned that much, he has to acquire the habit of using what he has learned with ease. But all this must be learned and acquired not while he is writing that which shall please but long before. His language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the great performer's fingers, as words come from the mouth of the indignant order, as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor, as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the telegraphist. A man who thinks much of his words as he writes them will generally leave behind him work that smells of oil. I speak here, of course, of prose, for in poetry we know that care is necessary and we form our taste accordingly. Rapid writing will no doubt give rise to an accuracy, chiefly because the ear, quick and true as may be its operation, will occasionally break down under pressure and before his sentence be closed will forget the nature of the composition with which it was commenced. A singular nominative will be disgraced by a plural verb because other pluralities have intervened and have tempted the ear into plural tendencies. Tautologies will occur because the ear in demanding fresh emphasis has forgotten that the desired force has already been expressed. I need not multiply these causes of error, which must have been stumbling blocks indeed when men wrote in the long sentences of Gibbon, but which McCulley, with his multiplicity of divisions, has done so much to enable us to avoid. A rapid writer will hardly avoid these errors altogether. Speaking of myself, I am ready to declare that with much training I have been unable to avoid them. But the writer for the press is rarely called upon. A writer of book should never be called upon to send his manuscript hot from his hand to the printer. It has been my practice to read everything four times at least, thrice in manuscript and once in print. Very much of my work I have read twice in print. In spite of this, I know that inaccuracies have crept through, not single spies, but in battalions. From this I gather that the supervision has been insufficient, not that the work itself has been done too fast. I'm quite sure that those passages which have been written with the greatest stress of labor and consequently with the greatest haste have been the most effective and by no means the most inaccurate. The small house at Allington redeemed my reputation with the spirited proprietor of the Corn Hill, which must, I should think, have been damaged by Brown, Jones, and Robinson. In it appeared Lily Dale, one of the characters which readers of my novels have liked the best. In the love with which she has been greeted, I have hardly joined with much enthusiasm, feeling that she is somewhat of a French prig. She became first engaged to a snob, who jilted her, and then though in truth she loved another man who was hardly good enough, she could not extricate herself sufficiently from the collapse of her first great misfortune, to be able to make up her mind to be the wife of one whom, though she loved him, she did not altogether reverence. Prig as she was, she made her way into the hearts of many readers, both young and old, so that from that time to this I have been continually honored with letters, the purport of which has always been to beg me to marry Lily Dale to Johnny Eames. Had I done so, however, Lily would never have so endeared herself to these people as to induce them to write letters to the author concerning her fate. It was because she could not get over her troubles that they loved her. Outside Lily Dale in the chief interest of the novel, the small house at Allington is, I think, good. The DeCursey family are alive, as is also Sir Raffle Buffle, who is a hero of the civil service. Sir Raffle was intended to represent a type, not a man, but the man for the picture was soon chosen and I was often assured that the portrait was very like. I have never seen the gentleman with whom I'm supposed to have taken the liberty. There is also an old squire down at Allington, whose life as a country gentleman with rather straightened means is, I think, well described. Of can you forgive her I cannot speak with too great affection, though I do not know that of itself it did very much to increase my reputation. As regards the story, it was formed chiefly on that of the play which my friend Mr. Bartley had rejected long since, the circumstances of which the reader may perhaps remember. The play had been called The Noble Jilt, but I was afraid of the name for a novel, lest the critics might throw a doubt on the nobility. There was more of tentative humility in that which I at last adopted. The character of the girl is carried through with considerable strength, but is not attractive. The humorous characters, which are also taken from the play, a buxom widow who with her eyes open chooses the most scampish of two selfish suitors because he is the better looking, are well done. Mrs. Greenough, between Captain Bellfield and Mr. Cheeseacre is very good fun, as far as the fun of novels is. But that which endears the book to me is the first presentation which I made in it of Plantagenet Palacer with his wife Lady Glencora. By no amount of description or a separation could I succeed in making any reader understand how much these characters, with their belongings, have been to me in my latter life, or how frequently I've used them for the expression of my political or social convictions. They have been as real to me as free trade was to Mr. Cobden, or the dominion of a party to Mr. Disraeli, and as I have not been able to speak from the benches of the House of Commons or to thunder from platforms or to be efficacious as a lecturer, they have served me as safety valves by which to deliver my soul. Mr. Plantagenet Palacer had appeared in the small house at Allington, but his birth had not been accompanied by many hopes. In the last pages of that novel he is made to seek a remedy for a foolish false step in life by marrying the grand heiress of the day. But the personage of the great heiress does not appear till she comes on the scene as a married woman, and can you forgive her? He is the nephew and heir to a duke, the Duke of Omnium, who was first introduced in Dr. Thorn and afterwards in Framley Parsonage, and who is one of the belongings of whom I have spoken. In these personages and their friends, political and social, I have endeavored to depict the faults and frailties and vices, as also the virtues, the graces and the strength of our highest classes. And if I have not made the strength and virtues predominant over the faults and vices, I have not painted the picture as I intended. Plantagenet Palacer I think to be a very noble gentleman, such a one as justifies to the nation the seeming anomaly of an hereditary peerage and of primogeniture. His wife is, in all respects, very inferior to him, but she too has, or has been intended to have, beneath the thin stratum of her follies, a basis of good principle, which enabled her to live down the conviction of the original wrong which was done to her, and taught her to endeavor to do her duty in the position to which she was called. She had received a great wrong, having been made when little more than a child, to marry a man for whom she cared nothing. When, however, though she was little more than a child, her love had been given elsewhere. She had very heavy troubles, but they did not overcome her. As to the heaviest of these troubles, I will say a word in vindication of myself and of the way I handled it in my work. In the pages of Can You Forgive Her, the girl's first love is introduced, beautiful, well-worn, and utterly worthless. To save a girl from wasting herself, and an heiress from wasting her property on such a scamp, was certainly the duty of the girl's friends. But it must ever be wrong to force a girl into marriage with a man she does not love, and certainly the more so when there is another whom she does love. In my endeavor to teach this lesson, I subjected the young wife to the terrible danger of overtures from the man to whom her heart had been given. I was walking, no doubt, on ticklish ground, leaving for a while a doubt on the question whether the lover might or might not succeed. Then there came to me a letter from a distinguished dignitary of our church, a man whom all honored, treating me with severity for what I was doing. It had been one of the innocent joys of his life, said the clergyman, to have my novels read to him by his daughters. But now I was writing a book which caused him to bid them close it. Must I also turn away to vicious sensations such as this? Did I think that a wife contemplating adultery was a character fit for my pages? I asked him in return whether from his pulpit or at any rate from his communion table, he did not denounce adultery to his audience. And if so, why should it not be open to me to preach the same doctrine to mine? I made known nothing which the purest girl could not but have learned, and not not to have learned elsewhere. And I certainly lent no attraction to the sin which I indicated. His rejoinder was full of grace and enabled him to avoid the annoyance of argumentation without abandoning his cause. He said that the subject was so much too long for letters that he hoped I would go and stay a week with him in the country so that we might have it out. That opportunity, however, has never yet arrived. Lady Glencora overcomes that trouble and is brought partly by her own sense of right and wrong and partly by the genuine nobility of her husband's conduct to attach herself to him after a certain fashion. The romance of her life is gone, but there remains a rich reality of which she is fully able to taste the flavor. She loves her rank and becomes ambitious, first of social and then of political ascendancy. He is thoroughly true to her, after his thorough nature, and she, after her less perfect nature, is imperfectly true to him. In conducting these characters from one story to another, I realized the necessity not only of consistency, which had it been maintained by a hard exactitude would have been untrue to nature, but also of those changes which time always produces. There are perhaps but few of us who, after the lapse of ten years, will be found to have changed our chief characteristics. The selfish man will still be selfish, the false man false, but our manner of showing or of hiding these characteristics will be changed, as also our power of adding to or diminishing their intensity. It was my study that these people, as they grew in years, should encounter the changes which come upon us all, and I think that I have succeeded. The Duchess of Omnium, when she is playing the part of Prime Minister's wife, is the same woman as that Lady Glencora, who almost longs to go off with Bergo Fitzgerald, but yet knows that she will never do so. And the Prime Minister Duke, with his wounded pride and sourced spirit, is he who, for his wife's sake, left power in place when they were first offered to him. But they have undergone the changes which a life so stirring as theirs would naturally produce. To do all this thoroughly was in my heart from first to last, but I do not know that the game has been worth the candle. To carry out my scheme, I've had to spread my picture over so wide a canvas that I cannot expect that any lover of such art should trouble himself to look at it as a whole. Who will read, can you forgive her, Phineus Fin, Phineus Redux, and the Prime Minister consecutively, in order that they may understand the characters of the Duke of Omnium, of Plantagenet Palliser and of Lady Glencora? Who will ever know that they should be so red? But in the performance of the work I had much gratification and was enabled from time to time to have in this way that fling at the political doings of the day which every man likes to take, if not in one fashion, then in another. I look upon this string of characters carried sometimes into other novels than those just named as the best of work of my life. Taking them all together, I think that Plantagenet Palliser stands more firmly on the ground than any other personage I have created. On Christmas Day, 1863, we were startled by the news of Thackeray's death. He had then for many months given up the editorship of the Cornel magazine, a position for which he was hardly fitted either by his habits or temperament, but was still employed in writing for his pages. I had known him only for four years, but had grown into much intimacy with him and his family. I regard him as one of the most tender-hearted human beings I ever knew, who, with an exaggerated contempt for the foibles of the world at large, would entertain an almost equally exaggerated sympathy with the joys and troubles of individuals around him. He'd been unfortunate in early life, unfortunate in regard to money, unfortunate with an afflicted wife, unfortunate in having his home broken up before his children were fit to be his companions. This threw him too much upon clubs and taught him to dislike general society. But it never affected his heart or clouded his imagination. He could still revel in the pangs and joys of fictitious life and could still feel, as he did to the very last, the duty of showing to his readers the evil consequences of the evil conduct. It was perhaps his chief fault as a writer that he could never abstain from that dash of satire which he felt to be demanded by the weaknesses which he saw around him. The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little, or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. I myself regard Esmond as the greatest novel in the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great pathos. There are also in it a few scenes so told that even Scott has never equaled the telling. Let anyone who doubts this read the passage in which Lady Castlewood induces the Duke of Hamilton to think that his nuptials with Beatrice will be honored if Colonel Esmond will give away the bride. When he went from us, he left behind living novelists with great names, but I think that they who best understood the matter felt that the greatest master of fiction of his age had gone. Rachel Ray underwent a fate which no other novel of mine has encountered. Some years before this, a periodical called Good Words had been established under the editorship of my friend Dr. Norman MacLeod, a well-known Presbyterian pastor in Glasgow. In 1863, he asked me to write a novel for his magazine, explaining to me that his principles did not teach him to confine his matter to religious subjects, and paying me the compliment of saying that he would feel, himself, quite safe in my hands. In reply, I told him I thought he was wrong in his choice, that though he might wish to give a novel to the readers of Good Words, a novel for me would hardly be what he wanted, and that I could not undertake to write either with any special religious tendency or in any fashion different from that which was usual to me. As worldly and, if anyone thought me wicked, as wicked as I had here to forebeen, I must still be, should I write for Good Words. He persisted in his request, and I came to terms as to a story for the periodical. I wrote it and sent it to him, and shortly afterwards received it back, a considerable portion having been printed, with an intimation that it would not do. A letter more full of wailing and repentance no man ever wrote, it was, he said, all his own fault he should have taken my advice, he should have known better, but the story such as it was he could not give to his readers in the pages of Good Words. Would I forgive him? Any pecuniary loss to which his decision might subject me, the owner of the publication would willingly make Good. There was some loss, or rather would have been, in that money I exacted feeling that the fault had in truth been with the editor. There is the tale now to speak for itself. It is not brilliant nor in any way very excellent, but it certainly is not very wicked. There is some dancing in one of the early chapters described no doubt with that approval of the amusement which I have always entertained, and it was this to which my friend demurred. It is more true of novels than perhaps of anything else that one man's food is another man's poison. Miss McKenzie was written with a desire to prove that a novel may be produced without any love, but even in this attempt it breaks down before the conclusion. In order that I might be strong in my purpose, I took for my heroine a very unattractive old maid who was overwhelmed with money troubles, but even she was in love before the end of the book and made a romantic marriage with an old man. There is in this story an attack upon charitable bazaars made with a violence which will I think convince any reader that such attempts at raising money were at the time very odious to me. I beg to say that since that I have had no occasion to alter my opinion. Miss McKenzie was published in the early spring of 1865. At the same time I was engaged with others in establishing a periodical review in which some of us trusted much and from which we expected great things. There was, however, in truth so little combination of idea among us that we were not justified in our trust or in our expectations. And yet we were honest in our purpose and have, I think, done some good by our honesty. The matter on which we were all agreed was freedom of speech combined with personal responsibility. We would be neither conservative nor liberal, neither religious nor free-thinking, neither popular nor exclusive, but we would let any man who had a thing to say and knew how to say it speak freely. But he should always speak with the responsibility of his name attached. In the very beginning I militated against this impossible negation of principles and did so most irrationally, seeing that I had agreed to the negation of principles by declaring that nothing should appear denying or questioning the divinity of Christ. It was a most preposterous claim to make for such a publication as we proposed and it at once drove from us one or two who had proposed to join us. But we went on and our company, limited, was formed. We subscribed, I think, twelve-fifty each. I at least subscribed to that amount and having agreed to bring out our publication every fortnight after the manner of the well-known French publication, we called it the fortnightly. We secured the services of G.H. Louze as our editor. We agreed to manage our finances by a board which was to meet once a fortnight and of which I was the chairman. And we determined that the payments for our literature should be made on a liberal and strictly ready money system. We carried out our principles till our money was all gone and then we sold the copyright to Monsieur Chapman and Hall for a trifle. But before we parted with our property we found that a fortnightly issue was not popular with the trade through it whose hands the work must reach the public. And as our periodical had not become sufficiently popular itself to bear down such opposition, we succumbed and brought it out once a month. Still it was the fortnightly, and still it is the fortnightly. Of all the serial publications of the day it is probably the most serious, the most earnest, the least devoted to amusement, the least flippant, the least jacose, and yet it has the face to show itself month after month to the world with so absurd misnomer. It is, as all who know the laws of modern literature are aware, a very serious thing to change the name of a periodical. By doing so you begin an altogether new enterprise. Therefore should the name be well-chosen, whereas this was very ill-chosen, a fault for which I alone was responsible. That theory of eclecticism was altogether impracticable. It was as though a gentleman should go into the House of Commons determined to support no party but to serve as country by individual utterances. Such gentlemen have gone into the House of Commons, but they have not served their country much. Of course the project broke down. Liberalism free thinking and open inquiry will never object to appear in company with their opposites because they have the conceit to think that they can quell those opposites. But the opposites will not appear in conjunction with liberalism free thinking and open inquiry. As a natural consequence our new publication became an organ of liberalism free thinking and open inquiry. The result has been good, and though there is much in the now established principles of the fortnightly with which I do not myself agree, I may safely say that the publication has assured an individuality and asserted for itself a position in our periodical literature which is well understood and highly respected. As to myself and my own hopes in the matter, I was craving after some increase in literary honesty, which I think is still desirable, but which is hardly to be attained by the means which then recommended themselves to me. In one of the early numbers I wrote a paper advocating the signature of the authors to periodical writing, admitting that the system should not be extended to journalistic articles on political subjects. I think that I made the best of my case, but further consideration has caused me to doubt whether the reasons which induced me to make an exception in favor of political writing do not extend themselves also to writing on other subjects. Much of the literary criticism which we now have is very bad indeed. So bad is to be open to the charge both of dishonesty and incapacity. Books are criticized without being read, are criticized by favor, and are trusted by editors to the criticism of the incompetent. If the names of the critics were demanded, editors would be more careful. But I fear the effect would be that we should get but little criticism, and that the public would put but little trust in that little. An ordinary reader would not care to have his books recommended to him by Jones, but the recommendation of the great unknown comes to him with all the weight of the times, the spectator, or the Saturday. Though I admit so much, I am not a recreant from the doctrine I then preached. I think that the name of the author does tend to honesty, and that the knowledge that it will be inserted adds much to the author's industry and care. It debars him also from illegitimate license and dishonest assertions. A man should never be ashamed to acknowledge that which he is not ashamed to publish. In the fortnightly everything has been signed, and in this way good has, I think, been done. Signatures to articles and other periodicals have become much more common since the fortnightly was commenced. After a time Mr. Lewis retired from the editorship feeling that the work pressed too severely on his moderate strength. Our loss in him was very great, and there was considerable difficulty in finding a successor. I must say that the present proprietor has been fortunate in the choice he did make. Mr. John Morley has done the work with admirable patience, zeal, and capacity. Of course he has not got around him a set of contributors whose modes of thought are what we may call much advanced. He being much advanced himself would not work with other aides. The periodical has a peculiar tone of its own, but it holds its own with ability. And though there are many who perhaps hate it, there are none who despise it. When the company sold it, having spent about 9,000 on it, it was worth little or nothing. Now I believe it to be good property. My own last personal concern with it was on a matter of fox hunting. Footnote. I have written various articles for its sins, especially to Uncicero, to which I devoted great labor. There came out in it an article from the pen of Mr. Freeman, the historian, condemning the amusement, which I love, on the grounds of cruelty and general brutality. Was it possible, asked Mr. Freeman, quoting from Cicero, that any educated man should find delight in so course a pursuit? Always bearing in mind my own connection with the fortnightly, I regarded this almost as a rising of a child against the father. I felt at any rate bound to answer Mr. Freeman in the same columns, and I obtained Mr. Morley's permission to do so. I wrote my defense of fox hunting, and there it is. In regard to the charge of cruelty, Mr. Freeman seems to assert that nothing unpleasant should be done to any of God's creatures except for a useful purpose. The protection of a lady's shoulders from the cold is a useful purpose, and therefore a dozen fur-bearing animals may be snared in the snow and left to starve to death in the wires in order that the lady may have the tippet. Though a tippet of wool would serve the purpose as well as a tippet of fur, but the congregation and helpful amusement of one or two hundred persons on whose behalf a single fox may or may not be killed is not a useful purpose. I think that Mr. Freeman has failed to perceive that amusement is as needful and almost as necessary as food and raiment. The absurdity of the further charge as to the general brutality of the pursuit and its consequent unfitness for an educated man is to be attributed to Mr. Freeman's ignorance of what is really done and said in the hunting field, perhaps to his misunderstanding of Cicero's words. There was a rejoinder to my answer, and I asked for space for further remarks. I could have it, the editor said, if I much wished it, but he preferred that the subject should be closed. Of course I was silent. His sympathies were all with Mr. Freeman, and against the foxes who, but for fox hunting, would cease to exist in England. And I felt that the fortnightly was hardly the place for the defence of the sport. Afterwards Mr. Freeman kindly suggested to me that he would be glad to publish my article in a little book to be put out by him condemnatory of fox hunting generally. He was to have the last word and the first word, and that power of picking to pieces which he is known to use in so masterly a manner without any reply from me. This I was obliged to decline. If he would give me the last word, as he would have the first, then I told him I should be proud to join him in the book. This offer did not, however, meet his views. It had been decided by the Board of Management, somewhat in opposition to my own ideas on the subject, that the fortnightly review should always contain a novel. It was, of course, natural that I should write the first novel, and I wrote the Belt and Estate. It is similar in its attributes to Rachel Ray and to Miss Mackenzie. It is readable and contains scenes which are true to life, but it has no particular merits and will add nothing to my reputation as a novelist. I have not looked at it since it was published, and now, turning back to it in my memory, I seem to remember almost less of it than of any book that I have written. End of Chapter 10. Recording by Jessica Louise, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chapter 11 of the autobiography of Anthony Trollop. This LibriVax recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. The Claverings, the Paul-Mal Gazette, Nina Baletka, and Linda Tressel. The Claverings, which came out in 1866 and 1867, was the last novel which I wrote for The Corn Hill, and it was for this that I received the highest rate of pay that was ever accorded to me. It was the same length as Framley Parsonage and the price was $2,800. Whether much or little it was offered by the proprietor of the magazine and was paid in a single check. In The Claverings, I did not follow the habit which had now become very common to me of introducing personages whose names are already known to the readers of novels and whose characters were familiar to myself. If I remember rightly, no one appears here who had appeared before or who has been allowed to appear since. I consider the story as a whole to be good, though I am not aware that the public has ever corroborated that verdict. The chief character is that of a young woman who has married manifestly for money and rank, so manifestly that she does not herself pretend, even while she is making the marriage, that she has any other reason. The man is old, disreputable, and a worn-out debauchee. Then comes the punishment natural to the offence. When she is free, the man whom she had loved and who had loved her is engaged to another woman. He vacillates and is weak, in which weakness is the fault of the book, as he plays the part of the hero. But she is strong, strong in her purpose, strong in her desires, and strong in her consciousness that the punishment which comes upon her has been deserved. But the chief merit of The Claverings is in the genuine fun of some of the scenes. Humor has not been my forte, but I am inclined to think that the characters of Captain Boodle, Archie Clavering, and Sophie Gordeloupe are humorous. Count Pateroff, the brother of Sophie, is also good, and disposes of the young hero's interference in a somewhat masterly manner. In The Claverings, too, there is a wife whose husband is a brute to her, who loses an only child, his heir, and who is rebuked by her lord because the boy dies. Her sorrow is, I think, pathetic. From beginning to end, the story is well told. But I doubt now whether anyone reads The Claverings. When I remember how many novels I have written, I have no right to expect that above a few of them shall endure even to the second year beyond publication. This story closed my connection with The Cornhill Magazine, but not with its owner, Mr. George Smith, who subsequently brought out a further novel of mine in a separate form, and who about this time established The Paul Maul Gazette, to which paper I was for some years a contributor. It was in 1865 that The Paul Maul Gazette was commenced, the name having been taken from a fictitious periodical, which was the offspring of Thackeray's brain. It was set on foot by the unassisted energy and resources of George Smith, who had succeeded by means of his magazine and his publishing connection in getting around him a society of literary men, who sufficed as far as literary ability went to float the paper at one under favorable auspices. His two strongest staffs probably were Jacob Omnium, whom I regard as the most forcible newspaper writer of my days, and Fitz James Stephen, the most conscientious and industrious. To them, The Paul Maul Gazette owed very much of its early success, and to the untiring energy and general ability of its proprietor. Among its other contributors were George Luz, Hane, who I think came up from Edinburgh for employment on its columns, Lord Houghton, Lord Strangford, Charles Maraville, Greenwood, the present editor, Greg, myself, and very many others, so many others that I have met at a Paul Maul dinner a crowd of guests who could have filled the House of Commons more respectively than I have seen it filled even on important occasions. There are many who now remember, and no doubt when this is published there will be left some to remember, the great stroke of business which was done by the revelations of a visitor to one of the casual words of London. A person had to be selected who would undergo the misery of a knight among the usual occupants of a casual ward in a London poor house, and who should at the same time be able to record what he felt and saw. The choice fell upon Mr. Greenwood's brother, who certainly possessed the courage and the powers of endurance. The description, which was very well given, was, I think, chiefly written by the brother of the casual himself. It had a great effect, which was increased by secrecy as to the person who encountered all the horrors of that night. I was more than once assured that Lord Houghton was the man. I heard it asserted also that I myself had been the hero. At last the unknown one could no longer endure that his honor should be hidden and revealed the truth. In opposition I feared to promises to the contrary, and instigated by a conviction that if known he could turn his honors to account. In the meantime, however, that record of a knight passed in a workhouse had done more to establish the sale of the journal than all the legal lore of Stephen or the polemical power of Higgins or the critical acumen of Luz. My work was various. I wrote much on the subject of the American war on which my feelings were at the time very keen, subscribing, if I remember right, my name to all that I wrote. I contributed also some sets of sketches of which those concerning hunting found favor with the public. They were republished afterwards and had a considerable sale, and may I think still be recommended to those who are fond of hunting as being accurate in their description of the different classes of people who are to be met in the hunting field. There was also a set of clerical sketches which was considered to be of sufficient importance to bring down upon my head the critical wrath of a great dean of that period. The most ill-natured review that was ever written upon any work of mine appeared in the contemporary review with reference to these clerical sketches. The critic told me that I did not understand Greek. That charge has been made not unfrequently by those who have felt themselves strong in that pride-producing language. It is much to read Greek with ease, but it is not disgraceful to be unable to do so. To pretend to read it without being able, that is disgraceful. The critic, however, had been driven to wrath by my saying that deans of the Church of England loved to revisit the glimpses of the metropolitan moon. I also did some critical work for the palm-mall, as I did also for the fortnightly. It was not to my taste, but was done in conformity with strict conscientious scruples. I read what I took in hand, and said what I believed to be true, always giving to the matter time altogether in commiserate with the pecuniary result to myself. In doing this for the palm-mall I fell into great sorrow. A gentleman, whose wife was dear to me as if she were my own sister, was in some trouble as to his conduct in the public service. He had been blamed, as he thought unjustly, and vindicated himself in a pamphlet. This he handed to me one day, asking me to read it and express my opinion about it if I found that I had an opinion. I thought the request injudicious, and I did not read the pamphlet. He met me again, and handing me a second pamphlet pressed me very hard. I promised him that I would read it, and that if I found myself able I would express myself, but that I must not say what I wish to think but what I did think. To this, of course, he assented. I then went very much out of my way to study the subject, which was one requiring study. I found, or thought that I found, that the conduct of the gentleman in his office had been in discreet, but that charges made against himself affecting his honor were baseless. This I said, emphasizing much more strongly than was necessary the opinion which I had formed of his indiscretion, as will so often be the case when a man has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledgehammer, in using which, either for defense or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives. Of course there was a fence, and a breaking off of intercourse between loving friends, and a sense of wrong received, and I must own too of wrong done. It certainly was not open to me to whitewash with honesty him whom I did not find to be white. But there was no duty incumbent on me to declare what was his color in my eyes, no duty even to ascertain. But I had been ruffled by the persistency of the gentleman's request, which should not have been made, and I punished him for his wrong doing by doing a wrong myself. I must add that, before he died, his wife succeeded in bringing us together. In the early days of the paper, the proprietor, who at that time acted also as chief editor, asked me to undertake a duty, of which the agony would indeed at no one moment have been so sharp as that endured in the casual ward, but might have been prolonged until human nature sank under it. He suggested to me that I should, during an entire season, attend the May meetings in Exeter Hall, and give a graphic and if possible amusing description of the proceedings. I did attend one, which lasted three hours, and wrote a paper which I think was called a Zulu in search of a religion. But when the meeting was over, I went to that spirited proprietor and begged him to impose upon me some task more equal to my strength. Not even on behalf of the Palmall Gazette, which was very dear to me, could I go through a second May meeting, much less endure a season of such martyrdom. I have to acknowledge that I found myself unfit for work on a newspaper. I had not taken to it early enough in life to learn its ways and bear its troubles. I was fidgety when any work was altered in accordance with the judgment of the editor, who of course was responsible for what appeared. I wanted to select my own subjects, not to have them selected for me, to write when I pleased, and not when it suited others. As a permanent member of the staff, I was of no use, and after two or three years I dropped out of the work. From the commencement of my success as a writer, which I date from the beginning of the Cornhill magazine, I had always felt an injustice in literary affairs which had never afflicted me or even suggested itself to me while I was unsuccessful. It seemed to me that a name once earned carried with it too much favor. I indeed had never reached a height to which praise was awarded as a matter of course, but there were others who sat on higher seats to whom the critics brought unmeasured incense and adulation, even when they wrote as they sometimes did write, Trash, which from a beginner would not have been thought worthy of the slightest notice. I hope no one will think that in saying this I am actuated by jealousy of others. Though I never reached that height, still I had so far progressed that that which I wrote was received with too much favor. The injustice which struck me did not consist in that which was withheld from me, but in that which was given to me. I felt that aspirants coming up below me might do work as good as mine and probably much better work, and yet fail to have it appreciated. In order to test this, I determined to be such an aspirant myself and to begin a course of novels anonymously in order that I might see whether I could obtain a second identity, whether as I had made one mark by such literary ability as I possessed I might succeed in doing so again. In 1865 I began a short tale called Nina Bellatka, which in 1866 was published anonymously in Blackwood's magazine. In 1867 this was followed by another of the same length called Linda Tressel. I will speak of them together as they are of the same nature and of nearly equal merit. Mr. Blackwood, who himself read the manuscript of Nina Bellatka, expressed an opinion that it would not from its style be discovered to have been written by me, but it was discovered by Mr. Hutton of the Spectator, who found the repeated use of some special phrase which had rested upon his ear too frequently when reading for the purpose of criticism, other works of mine. He declared in his paper that Nina Bellatka was by me, showing I think more sagacity than good nature. I ought not, however, to complain of him, as of all the critics of my work he has been the most observant, and generally the most eulogistic. Nina Bellatka never rose sufficiently high in reputation to make its detection of matter of any importance. Once or twice I heard the story mentioned by readers who did not know me to the author, and always with praise, but it had no real success. The same may be said of Linda Tressel. Blackwood, who of course knew the author, was willing to publish them, trusting that works by an experienced writer would make their way, even without the writer's name, and he was willing to pay me for them, perhaps half what they would have fetched with my name. But he did not find the speculation answer, and declined a third attempt, though a third such tale was written for him. Nevertheless, I am sure that the two stories are good. Perhaps the first is somewhat the better, as being the less lacquer mouse. They were both written very quickly, but with a considerable amount of labor, and both were written immediately after visits to the towns in which the scenes are laid. Prague, mainly, and Nuremberg. Of course, I had endeavored to change not only my manner of language, but my manner of storytelling also. And in this, paced Mr. Hutton, I think that I was successful. English life in them there was none. There was more of romance proper than had been usual with me. And I made an attempt at local coloring, at descriptions of scenes and places, which has not been usual with me. In all this I am confident that I was, and in measure, successful. In the loves, and fears, and hatreds, both of Nina and of Linda, there is much that is pathetic. Prague is Prague, and Nuremberg is Nuremberg. I know that the stories are good, but they missed the object with which they had been written. Of course there is not in this any evidence that I might not have succeeded a second time, as I succeeded before, had I gone on with the same dogged perseverance. Mr. Blackwood, had I still further reduced my price, would probably have continued the experiment. Another ten years of unpaid, unflagging labor might have built up a second reputation, but this at any rate did seem clear to me, that with all the increased advantages which practice in my art must have given me, I could not induce English readers to read what I gave to them, unless I gave it with my name. I do not wish to have it supposed from this that I quarrel with public judgment and affairs of literature. It is a matter of course that in all things the public should trust to established reputation. It is as natural that a novel reader wanting novels should send to a library for those by George Eliot or Wilkie Collins, as that a lady when she wants a pie for a picnic should go to Fortnum and Mason. Fortnum and Mason can only make themselves Fortnum and Mason by dint of time and good pies combined. If Titian were to send us a portrait from the other world, as certain dead poets send their poetry by means of a medium, it would be some time before the art critic of the times would discover its value. We may sneer at the want of judgment thus displayed, but such slowness of judgment is human and has always existed. I say all this here because my thoughts on the matter have forced upon me the conviction that very much consideration is due to the bitter feelings of disappointed authors. We who have succeeded are so apt to tell new aspirants not to aspire, because the thing to be done may probably be beyond their reach. My dear young lady, how do you not better stay at home and darn your stockings? As, sir, you have asked for my candid opinion, I can only counsel you to try some other work of life which may be better suited to your abilities. What old established successful author has not said such words as these to humble aspirants for critical advice, till they have become almost formulas? No doubt there is cruelty in such answers, but the man who makes them has considered the matter within himself and has resolved that such cruelty is the best mercy. No doubt the chances against literary aspirants are very great. It is so easy to aspire, and to begin. A man cannot make a watch or a shoe without a variety of tools and many materials. He must also have learned much. But any young lady can write a book who has a sufficiency of pens and paper. It can be done anywhere, in any clothes which is a great thing, at any hours to which happy accident in literature I owe my success. And the success, when achieved, is so pleasant. The aspirants, of course, are very many, and the experienced counselor, when asked for his candid judgment as to this or that effort, knows that among every hundred efforts there will be ninety-nine failures. Then the answer is so ready. My dear young lady, do darn your stockings, it will be for the best. Or perhaps less tenderly to the male aspirant, you must earn some money, you say. Don't you think that a stool in a counting house might be better? The advice will probably be good advice. Probably no doubt, as may be proved by the terrible majority of failures. But who is to be sure that he is not expelling an angel from the heaven to which, if less roughly treated, he would soar? That he is not dooming some Milton to be mute and inglorious, who but for such cruel ill judgment would become vocal to all ages. The answer to all this seems to be ready enough. The judgment, whether cruel or tender, should not be ill judgment. He who consents to sit as judge should have capacity for judging. But in this matter no accuracy of judgment is possible. It may be that the matter subjected to the critic is so bad or so good as to make an assured answer possible. You at any rate cannot make this your vocation, or you at any rate can succeed, if you will try. But cases as to which such certainty can be expressed are rare. The critic who wrote the article on the early verses of Lord Byron, which produced the English Bards and Scotch reviewers, was justified in his criticism by the merits of the hours of illness. The lines had nevertheless been written by that Lord Byron who became our Byron. And a little satire called the billiard, which I think nobody knows, are the following well-expressed lines. When pain's night's taste was issued to the town, a few Greek verses in the text set down were torn to pieces, mangled into hash, doomed to the flames as execrable trash. In short were butchered rather than dissected, and several false quantities detected, till when the smoke had vanished from the cinders, it was just discovered that the lines were pinders. There can be no assurance against cases such as these, and yet we are so free with our advice, always bidding the young aspirant to desist. There's perhaps no career or life so charming is that of a successful man of letters. Those little unthought of advantages which I just now named are in themselves attractive. If you like the town, live in the town and do your work there. If you like the country, choose the country. It may be done on top of a mountain or in the bottom of a pit. It is compatible with the rolling of the sea and the motion of a railway. The clergyman, the lawyer, the doctor, the member of parliament, the clerk in a public office, the tradesman, and even his assistant in the shop must dress in accordance with certain fixed laws, but the author needs sacrifice to no grace, hardly even to propriety. He is subject to no bounds such as those which bind other men. Who else is free from all shackle as to ours? The judge must sit at ten, and the attorney general who is making his twenty thousand a year must be there with his bag. The prime minister must be in his place on that weary front bench shortly after prayers and must sit there either asleep or awake, even though blank or blank should be addressing the house. During all that Sunday which he maintains should be a day of rest, the active clergyman toils like a galley slave. The actor, when eight o'clock comes, is bound to his footlights. The civil service clerk must sit there from ten till four unless his office be fashionable when twelve to six is just as heavy on him. The author may do his work at five in the morning when he is fresh from his bed, or at three in the morning before he goes there, and the author wants no capital and encounters no risks. When once he is afloat, the publisher finds all that, and indeed unless he be rash finds it whether he be afloat or not. But it is in the consideration which he enjoys that the successful author finds his richest reward. He is, if not of equal rank, yet of equal standing with the highest, and if he be open to the amenities of society, may choose his own circles. He without money can enter doors which are closed against almost all but him and the wealthy. I have often heard it said that in this country the man of letters is not recognized. I believe the meaning of this to be that men of letters are not often invited to be knights in baronettes. I do not think that they wish it, and if they had it, they would as a body lose much more than they would gain. I do not at all desire to have letters put after my name or to be called Sir Anthony, but if my friends Tom Hughes and Charles Reed became Sir Thomas and Sir Charles, I do not know how I might feel, or how my wife might feel if we were left unbedecked. As it is, the man of letters who would be selected for titular honor, if such bestowal of honors were customary, receives from the general respect of those around him a much more pleasant recognition of his work. If this be so, if it be true that the career of the successful literary man be thus pleasant, it is not wonderful that many should attempt to win the prize. But how is a man to know whether or not he has within him the qualities necessary for such a career? He makes an attempt and fails, repeats his attempt, and fails again. So many have succeeded at last to have failed more than once or twice. Who will tell him the truth is to himself? Who has power to find out that truth? The hard man sends him off without a scruple to that office stool. The soft man assures him that there is much merit in his manuscript. Oh, my young aspirant, if ever such a one should read these pages, be sure that no one can tell you. To do so, it would be necessary not only to know what there is now within you, but also to foresee what time will produce there. This, however, I think may be said to you, without any doubters to the wisdom of the counsel-given, that if it be necessary for you to live by your work, do not begin by trusting to literature. Take the stool in the office as recommended to you by the hard man, and then, in such leisure hours as may belong to you, let the praise which has come from the lips of that soft man induce you to persevere in your literary attempts. Should you fail, then your failure will not be fatal, and what better could you have done with the leisure hours had you not so failed? Such double-toil, you will say, is severe. Yes, but if you want this thing, you must submit to severe toil. Sometime before this I had become one of the committee appointed for the distribution of the monies of the Royal Literary Fund, and in that capacity I heard and saw much of the sufferings of authors. I may, in a future chapter, speak further of this institution, which I regard with great affection, and in reference to which I should be glad to record certain convictions of my own. But I allude to it now, because the experience I have acquired in being active in its cause forbids me to advise any young man or woman to enter boldly on a literary career in search of bread. I know how utterly I should have failed myself had my bread not been earned elsewhere while I was making my efforts. During ten years of work, which I commenced with some aid from the fact that others of my family were in the same profession, I did not earn enough to buy me the pens, ink, and paper which I was using. And then, when, with all my experience in my art, I began again as from a new springing point, I should have failed again unless again I could have given years to the task. Of course, there have been many who have done better than I. Many whose powers have been infinitely greater, but then too, I have seen the failure of many who were greater. The career, when success has been achieved, is certainly very pleasant, but the agonies which are endured in the search for that success are often terrible, and the author's poverty is, I think, harder to be born than any other poverty. The man, whether rightly or wrongly, feels that the world is using him with extreme injustice. The more absolutely he fails, the higher it is probable he will reckon his own merits, and the keener will be the sense of injury in that he whose work is of so high a nature cannot get bread while they whose tasks are mean, are lapped in luxury. I, with my well-fitted mind, with my clear intellect, with all my gifts, cannot earn a poor crown a day while that fool, who simpers in a little room behind a shop, makes his thousands every year. The very charity to which he too often is driven is bitterer to him than to others. While he takes it, he almost spurns the hand that gives it to him, and every fiber of his heart within him is bleeding with a sense of injury. The career, when successful, is pleasant enough, certainly, but when unsuccessful, it is of all careers the most agonizing. End of chapter eleven, recording by Jessica Louise Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chapter twelve of the autobiography of Anthony Trollop. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. On novels and the art of writing them. It is nearly twenty years since I proposed to myself to write a history of English prose fiction. I shall never do it now, but the subject is so good a one that I recommend it heartily to some man of letters, who shall at the same time be indefatigable and light-handed. I acknowledge that I broke down in the task because I could not endure the labor in addition to the other labors of my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that proposition that I should sit out all the main meetings of the season. According to my plan of such a history, it would be necessary to read an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so to read them as to point out the excellences of those which are the most excellent and to explain the defects of those which, though defective, had still reached sufficient reputation to make them worthy of notice. I did read many after this fashion, and here and there I have the criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many, they were written on some blank page within the book. I have not, however, even a list of the books so criticized. I think that the Arcadia was the first and Ivanhoe the last. My plan, as I settled it at last, had been to begin with Robinson Crusoe, which is the earliest really popular novel which we have in our language, and to continue the review so as to include the works of all English novelists of reputation, except those who might still be living when my task should be completed. But when Dickens and Bulwer died, my spirit flagged, and that which I had already found to be very difficult had become almost impossible to me at my then period of life. I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than Robinson Crusoe, and made my way through a variety of novels which were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no pleasure, whatever. I never worked harder than at the Arcadia, or read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Afroben, but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on the whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still think that the book is one well worthy to be written. I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as a novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature which has created and nourished the profession which I follow, and I was stirred up to make such an attempt by a conviction that there still exists among us Englishmen, a prejudice in respect to novels which might perhaps be lessened by such a work. This prejudice is not against the reading of novels as is proved by their general acceptance among us, but it exists strongly in reference to the appreciation in which they are professed to be held, and it robs them of much of that high character which they may claim to have earned by their grace, their honesty, and good teaching. No man can work long at any trade without being brought to consider much whether that which he is daily doing tends to evil or to good. I have written many novels and have known many writers of novels, and I can assert that such thoughts have been strong with them and with myself. But in acknowledging that these writers have received from the public a full measure of credit for such genius, ingenuity, or perseverance as may have been displayed, I feel that there is still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence of their calling and a general understanding of the high nature of the work which they perform. By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes the highest place in literature. That nobility of expression and all but divine grace of words which she is bound to attain before she can make her footing good is not compatible with prose. Indeed it is that which turns prose into poetry. When that has been in truth achieved, the reader knows that the writer has soared above the earth and can teach his lessons somewhat as a God might teach. He who sits down to write his tale in prose makes no such attempt, nor does he dream that the poet's honor is within his reach. But his teaching is of the same nature and his lessons all tend to the same end. By either false sentiments may be fostered, false notions of humanity may be engendered, false honor, false love, false worship may be created. By either vice instead of virtue may be taught. But by each equally may true honor, true love, true worship and true humanity be inculcated. And that will be the greatest teacher who will spread such truth the widest. But at present much of novels as novels are bought and read there exists still an idea, a feeling which is very prevalent that novels at their best are but innocent. Young men and women and old men and women too read more of them than of poetry because such reading is easier than the reading of poetry. But they read them as many pastry after dinner not without some inward conviction that the taste is vain if not vicious. I take upon myself to say that it is neither vicious nor vain. But all writers of fiction who have desired to think well of their own work will probably have had doubts on their minds before they have arrived at this conclusion. Thinking much of my own daily labor and of its nature I felt myself at first to be much afflicted and then to be deeply grieved by the opinion expressed by wise and thinking men as to the work done by novelists. But when by degrees I dared to examine and sift the sayings of such men I found them to be sometimes silly and often arrogant. I began to inquire what had been the nature of English novels since they first became common in their own language and to be desirous of ascertaining whether they had done harm or good. I could well remember that in my own young days they had not taken that undisputed possession of drawing rooms which they now hold. Fifty years ago when George IV was king they were not indeed treated as Lydia had been forced to treat them in the preceding reign when on the approach of elders peregrine pickle was hidden beneath the bolster and Lord Ainsworth put away under the sofa. But the families in which an unrestricted permission was given for the reading of novels were very few and from many they were altogether banished. The high poetic genius and correct morality of Walter Scott had not altogether succeeded in making men and women understand that lessons which were good in poetry could not be bad in prose. I remember that in those days an embargo was laid upon novel reading as a pursuit which was to the novelist a much heavier tax than that want of full appreciation which I now complain. There is, we all know, no such embargo now. May we not say that people of an age to read have got too much power into their own hands to endure any very complete embargo. Novels are read right and left above stairs and below in townhouses and in country personages by young countesses and by farmers' daughters, by old lawyers and by young students. It has not only come to pass that a special provision of them has to be made for the godly but that the provision so made must now include books which a few years since the godly would have thought to be profane. It was this necessity which a few years since induced the editor of Good Words to apply to me for a novel which indeed when supplied was rejected but which now probably owing to further change in the same direction would have been accepted. If such be the case, if the extension of novel reading would be so wide as I've described it, then very much good or harm must be done by novels. The amusement of the time can hardly be the only result of any book that is read and certainly not so with a novel which appeals especially to the imagination and solicits the sympathy of the young. A vast proportion of the teaching of the day, greater probably than many of us have acknowledged to ourselves, comes from these books which are in the hands of all readers. It is from them that girls learn what is expected from them and what they are to expect when lovers come and also from them that young men unconsciously learn what are or should be or maybe the charms of love. Though I fancy that few young men will think so little of their natural instincts and powers as to believe that I'm right in saying so. Many other lessons are also taught. In these times when the desire to be honest is pressed so hard is so violently assaulted by the ambition to be great in which riches are the easiest road to greatness when the temptations to which men are subjected dull their eyes to the perfected inequities of others. When it is so hard for a man to decide vigorously that the pitch which so many are handling will defile him if it be touched. Men's conduct will be actuated much by that which is from day to day depicted to them as leading to glorious or inglorious results. The woman who is described as having obtained all that the world holds to be precious by lavishing her charms and her caresses unworthily and heartlessly will induce other women to do the same with theirs as will she who is made interesting by exhibitions of bold passion teach others to be spuriously passionate. The young man who in a novel becomes a hero perhaps a member of parliament and almost a prime minister by trickery, falsehood and flash cleverness will have many followers whose attempts to rise in the world ought to lie heavily on the conscience of the novelists who create fictitious caliostros. There are jack shepherds other than those who break into houses and out of prisons. McKeeves who deserve gallows more than gays hero. Thinking of all this as novelists surely must do as I certainly have done through my whole career it becomes to him a matter of deep conscience how he shall handle those characters by whose words and doings he hopes to interest his readers. It will very frequently be the case that he will be tempted to sacrifice something for effect to say a word or two here or to draw a picture there for which he feels that he has the power in which when spoken or drawn would be alluring. The regions of absolute vice are foul and odious. The savor of them till custom has hardened the palette and the nose is disgusting. In these he will hardly tread but there are outskirts on these regions on which sweet smelling flowers seem to grow and grass to be green. It is in these borderlands that the danger lies. The novelist may not be dull. If he commit that fault he can do neither harm nor good. He must please and the flowers and the grass in these neutral territories sometimes seem to give him so easy an opportunity of pleasing. The writer of stories must please or he will be nothing and he must teach whether he wished to teach or no. How shall he teach lessons of virtue and at the same time make himself a delight to his readers? That sermons are not in themselves often thought to be agreeable we all know nor our disquisitions on moral philosophy supposed to be pleasant reading for our idle hours but the novelist if he have a conscience must preach his sermons with the same purpose as the clergyman and must have his own system of ethics. If he can do this efficiently if he can make virtue alluring and vice ugly while he charms his readers instead of wearying them then I think Mr. Carlyle need not call him distressed nor talk of that long ear of fiction nor question whether he be or not the most foolish of existing mortals. I think that many have done so so many that we English novelists may boast as a class that has been the general result of our own work. Looking back to the past generation I may say with certainty that such was the operation of the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austin and Walter Scott. Coming down to my own times I find such to have been the teaching of Thackeray, of Dickens and of George Elliot. Speaking as I shall speak to any who read these words with that absence of self-personality which the dead may claim I will boast that such has been the result of my own writing. Can anyone by search through the works of the six great English novelists I've named find a scene, a passage or a word that would teach a girl to be immodest or a man to be dishonest? When men in their pages have been described as dishonest and women is immodest have they not ever been punished? It is not for the novelists to say boldly and simply because you lied here or were heartless there because you Lydia Bennett forgot the lessons of your honest home or you Earl Lester were false through your ambition or you Beatrix loved too well the glitter of the world therefore you shall be scourged with scourges either in this world or in the next. But it is for him to show as he carries on in his tale that his Lydia or his Lester or his Beatrix will be dishonored in the estimation of all readers by his or her vices. Let a woman be drawn clever, beautiful, attractive so as to make men love her and women almost envy her and let her be made also heartless, unfeminine and ambitious of evil grandeur as was Beatrix what a danger is there not and such a character. To the novelists who shall handle it what peril of doing harm? But if at last it have been so handled that every girl who reads of Beatrix shall say oh not like that let me not be like that and that every youth shall say let me not have such a one as that to press to my bosom anything rather than that. Then will not the novelist have preached his sermon as perhaps no clergyman can preach it? Very much of a novelist's work must appertain to the intercourse between young men and young women. It is admitted that a novel can hardly be made interesting or successful without love. Some few might be named but even in those the attempt breaks down and the softness of love is found to be necessary to complete the story. Pickwick has been named as an exception to the rule but even in Pickwick there are three or four sets of lovers whose little amatory longings give a softness to the work. I tried it once with Miss Mackenzie but had to make her fall in love at last. In this frequent allusion to the passion which most stirs the imagination of the young there must be danger. Of that the writer of fiction is probably well aware. Then the question has to be asked whether the danger may not be so averted that good may be the result and to be answered. In one respect the necessity of dealing with love is advantageous, advantageous from the very circumstance which has made love necessary to all novelists. It is necessary because the passion is one which interests or has interested all. Everyone feels it has felt it or expects to feel it or else rejects it with an eagerness which still perpetuates the interest. If the novelist therefore can so handle the subject as to do good by his handling as to teach wholesome lessons in regard to love the good which he does will be very wide. If I can teach politicians that they can do their business better by truth than by falsehood I do a great service but it is done to a limited number of persons. But if I can make young men and women believe that truth and love will make them happy then if my writings be popular I shall have a very large class of pupils. No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. Madam, says Sir Anthony in the play, a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge and blossoms through the year and depend on it Mrs. Malaprop and they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last. Sir Anthony was no doubt right but he takes it for granted that the longing for the fruit is an evil. The novelist who writes of love thinks differently and thinks that the honest love of an honest man is a treasure which a good girl may fairly hope to win and that if she can be taught to wish only for that she will have been taught to entertain only wholesome wishes. I can easily believe that a girl should be taught to wish to love by reading how Laura Bell loved Pendennis. Pendennis was not in truth a very worthy man nor did he make a very good husband but the girl's love was so beautiful and the wife's love when she became a wife was so woman-like and at the same time so sweet, so unselfish, so wifely, so worshipful in the sense in which wives are told they ought to worship their husband that I cannot believe that any girl can be injured or even not benefited by reading of Laura's love. There once used to be many who thought and probably there still are some even here in England who think that a girl should hear nothing of love till the time in which she is to be married. That no doubt was the opinion of Sir Anthony Absolute and of Mrs. Malaprop but I'm hardly disposed to believe that the old system was more favorable than ours to the purity of manners. Lydia languished though she was constrained by fear of her aunt to hide the book yet had peregrine pickle in her collection. While human nature talks of love so forcibly it can hardly serve our turn to be silent on the subject. Naturum expelles furka, taiman uske rekorat. There are countries in which it has been in accordance with the manner of the upper classes that the girl should be brought to marry the man almost out of the nursery or rather perhaps out of the convent without having enjoyed that freedom of thought which the reading of novels and of poetry will certainly produce but I do not know that the marriages so made have been thought to be happier than our own. Among English novels of the present day and among English novelists a great division is made. There are sensational novels and anti-sensational. Sensational novelists and anti-sensational. Sensational readers and anti-sensational. The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by the other are charmed by the continuation and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either there is a failure in art. Let those readers who believe that they do not like sensational scenes in novels think of some of those passages from our great novelists which have charmed them the most. Of Rebecca in the castle with Ivanhoe. Of Burley in the cave with Morton. Of the mad lady tearing the veil of the expectant bride and Jane Eyre. Of Lady Castlewood as in her indignation she explains to the Duke of Hamilton Henry Esmond's right to be present at the marriage of his grace with Beatrix. May I add of Lady Mason as she makes her confession at the feet of Sir Peregrine Orm. Will anyone say that the authors of these passages have sinned in their being oversensational? No doubt a string of horrible incidents bound together without truth and detail and told as affecting personages without character. Wooden blocks who cannot make themselves known to the reader as men and women does not instruct or amuse or even fill the mind with awe. Horrors heaped upon horrors which are horrors only in themselves and not as touching any recognized and known person are not tragic and soon cease even to horrify. And such would be tragic elements of a story may be increased without end and without difficulty. I may tell you of a woman murdered, murdered in the same street with you in the next house that she was a wife murdered by her husband, a bride, not yet a weak a wife. I may add to it forever. I may say that the murderer roasted her alive. There is no end to it. I may declare that a former wife was treated with equal barbarity and may assert that as the murderer was led away to execution he declared his only sorrow, his only regret to be that he could not live to treat a third wife after the same fashion. There is nothing so easy as the creation and the accumulation of fearful incidents after this fashion. If such creation and accumulation be the beginning and the end of the novelist's work and novels have been written which seem to be without other attractions nothing can be more dull or more useless. But not on that account are we averse to tragedy in prose fiction. As in poetry so in prose he who can deal adequately with tragic elements is a greater artist and reaches a greater aim than the writer whose efforts never carry him above the mild walks of everyday life. The bride of Lamermore is a tragedy throughout in spite of its comic elements. The life of Lady Castle would of whom I've spoken is a tragedy. Rochester's wretched thralldom to his mad wife in Jane Eyre is a tragedy. But these stories charm us not simply because they are tragic but because we feel that men and women with flesh and blood, creatures with whom we can sympathize are struggling amidst their woes. It all lies in that. No novel is anything for the purposes either of comedy or tragedy unless the reader can sympathize with the characters whose name he finds upon the pages. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch his reader's heart and draw his tears and he has so far done his work well. Truth let there be, truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth, I do not know that a novel can be too sensational. I did intend when I meditated that history of English fiction to include within its pages some rules for the writing of novels or I might perhaps say with more modesty to offer some advice on the art to such tyros in it as might be willing to take advantage of the experience of an old hand. But the matter would, I fear, be too long for this episode and I'm not sure that I have as yet got the rules quite settled in my own mind. I will, however, say a few words on one or two points which my own practice has pointed out to me. I have from the first felt sure that the writer when he sits down to commence his novel should do so not because he has to tell a story but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause. Some series of events or some development of character will have presented itself to his imagination and this he feels so strongly that he thinks he can present his picture in strong and agreeable language to others. He sits down and tells a story because he has a story to tell. As you, my friend, when you have heard something which has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos will hurry to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel has been received graciously by the public and has made for itself a success then the writer naturally feeling that the writing of novels is within his grasp looks about for something to tell and another. He cudgels his brains, not always successfully and sits down to write not because he has something which he burns to tell but because he feels it to be incumbent on him to be telling something. As you, my friend, if you are very successful in the telling of that first story will become ambitious of further storytelling and will look out for anecdotes in the narration of which you will not and probably sometimes distress your audience. So it has been with many novelists who after some good work, perhaps after very much good work have distressed their audience because they have gone on with their work till their work has become simply a trade with them. Need I make a list of such seeing that it would contain the names of those who have been the greatest in the art of British novel writing? They have at last become weary of that portion of a novelist's work which is of all the most essential to success. That a man as he grows old should feel the labor of writing to be a fatigue is natural enough but a man to whom writing has become a habit may write well though he be fatigued but the weary novelist refuses any longer to give his mind to that work of observation and reception from which has come his power without which work his power cannot be continued which work should be going on not only when he's at his desk but in all his walks abroad, in all his movements through the world, in all his intercourse with his fellow creatures. He's become a novelist as another has become a poet because he has in those walks abroad unconsciously for the most part been drawing in matter from all that he has seen and heard but this has not been done without labor even when the labor has been unconscious. Then there comes a time when he shuts his eyes and shuts his ears. When we talk of memory fading as age comes on it is such shutting of eyes and ears that we mean. The things around cease to interest us and we cannot exercise our minds upon them. To the novelist thus wearied there comes the demand for further novels. He does not know his own defect and even if he did he does not wish to abandon his own profession. He still writes but he writes because he has to tell a story not because he has a story to tell. What reader of novels has not felt the woodenness of this mode of telling? The characters do not live in move but are cut out of blocks and are propped against the wall. The incidents are arranged in certain lines. The arrangement being as palpable to the reader as it has been to the writer but do not follow each other as results naturally demanded by previous action. The reader can never feel as he ought to feel that only for that flame of the eye only for that angry word only for that moment of weakness all might have been different. The course of the tale is one piece of stiff mechanism in which there is no room for a doubt. These it may be said are reflections which I, being an old novelist might make useful to myself for discontinuing my work but can hardly be needed by those tyros of whom I have spoken. That they are applicable to myself I readily admit but I also find that they apply to many beginners. Some of us who are old fail at last because we are old. It would be well that each of us should say to himself solve senescentum mature sanus ecum ne pecet ad extremum ridendus. But many young fail also because they endeavor to tell stories when they have none to tell. And this comes from idleness rather than from innate incapacity. The mind has not been sufficiently at work when the tale has been commenced nor is it kept sufficiently at work as the tale has continued. I've never troubled myself much about the construction of plots and I'm not now insisting specially on thoroughness and a branch of work in which I myself have not been very thorough. I'm not sure that the construction of a perfected plot has been at any period within my power but the novelist has other aims than the elucidation of his plot. He desires to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creatures of his brain should be to them speaking moving living human creatures. This he can never do unless he know those fictitious personages himself and he can never know them unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy. They must be with him as he lies down to sleep and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them. He must argue with them, quarrel with them, forgive them and even submit to them. He must know of them whether they be cold-blooded or passionate, whether true or false and how far true and how far false. The depth and the breadth and the narrowness and the shallowness of each should be clear to him. And as here in our outer world we know that men and women change, become worse or better as temptation or conscience may guide them. So should these creations of his change and every change should be noted by him. On the last day of each month recorded every person in his novel should be a month older than on the first. If the would-be novelists have aptitudes that way all this will come to him without much struggling. But if it do not come I think he can only make novels of wood. It is so that I have lived with my characters and thence has come whatever success I have obtained. There's a gallery of them and of all in that gallery I may say that I know the tone of the voice and the color of the hair, every flame of the eye and the very clothes they wear. Of each man I could assert whether he would have said these or the other words. Of every woman, whether she would have then smiled or so frowned. When I should feel that this intimacy ceases then I shall know that the old horse should be turned out to grass. That I shall feel it when I ought to feel it I will by no means say. I do not know that I am at all wiser than Gilblast's canon. But I do know that the power indicated is one without which the teller of tales cannot tell them to any good effect. The language in which the novelist is to put forth his story, the colors with which he is to paint his picture must of course be to him matter of much consideration. Let him have all other possible gifts, imagination, observation, erudition in industry, they will avail him nothing for this purpose unless he can put forth his work in pleasant words. If he be confused, tedious, harsh or unharmonious, readers will certainly reject him. The reading of a volume of history or on science may represent itself as a duty. And though the duty may by a bad style be made very disagreeable, the conscientious reader will perhaps perform it. But the novelist will be assisted by no such feeling. Any reader may reject his work without the burden of a sin. It is the first necessity of his position that he make himself pleasant. To do this much more is necessary than to write correctly. He may indeed be pleasant without being correct, as I think can be proved by the works of more than one distinguished novelist. But he must be intelligible, intelligible without trouble, and he must be harmonious. Any writer who is read even a little will know what is meant by the word intelligible. It is not sufficient that there be a meaning that may be hammered out of the sentence, but that the language should be so pollucid that the meaning should be rendered without an effort of the reader. And not only some proposition of meaning, but the very sense, no more and no less, which the writer has intended to put into his words. What Macaulay says should be remembered by all writers. How little the all-important art of making meaning pollucid is studied now. Hardly any popular author except myself thinks of it. The language used should be as ready and as efficient a conductor of the mind of the writer to the mind of the reader, as is the electric spark which passes from one battery to another battery. In all written matter, the spark should carry everything. But in matters of recondite, the recipient will search to see that he misses nothing and that he takes nothing away too much. The novelist cannot expect that any such search will be made. A young writer who will acknowledge the truth of what I'm saying will often feel himself tempted by the difficulties of language to tell himself some one little doubtful passage, some single collocation of words, which is not quite what it ought to be, will not matter. I know well what a stumbling block such a passage may be, but he should leave none such behind him as he goes on. The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself. As to that harmonious expression, which I think is required, I shall find it more difficult to express my meaning. It will be granted, I think, by readers that such a style may be rough and yet both forcible and intelligible, but it will seldom come to pass that a novel written in a rough style will be popular, and less often that a novelist who habitually uses such a style will become so. The harmony which is required must come from the practice of the ear. There are few ears naturally so dull that they cannot, if time be allowed to them, decide whether a sentence when read be or be not harmonious. And the sense of such harmony grows on the ear when the intelligence has once informed itself as to what is and what is not harmonious. The boy, for instance, who learns with accuracy the prosody of a sapphic stanza and has received through his intelligence a knowledge of its parts, will soon tell by his ear whether a sapphic stanza be or be not correct. Take a girl endowed with gifts of music, well instructed in her art with perfect ear, and read to her such a stanza with two words transposed, as, for instance, Mercurinam te docilis magistro, movit anfion canendo lapides, tuctestudo resonare septum, calida nervis. And she will find no halt in the rhythm, but a schoolboy with none of her musical acquirements or capacities, who has, however, become familiar with the meters of the poet, will at once discover the fault. And so will the writer become familiar with what is harmonious in prose. But in order that familiarity may serve him in his business, he must so train his ear that he shall be able to weigh the rhythm of every word as it falls from his pen. This, when it has been done for a time, even for a short time, will become so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how each sound, which he is about to utter, will affect the force of his climax. If a writer will do so, he will charm his readers. Though his readers will probably not know how they've been charmed. In writing a novel, the author soon becomes aware that a burden of many pages is before him. Circumstances require that he should cover a certain and generally not a very confined space. Short novels are not popular with readers generally. Critics often complain of the ordinary length of novels of the three volumes to which they are subjected. But few novels which have attained great success in England have been told in fewer pages. The novel writer who sticks to novel writing as his profession will certainly find that this burden of length is incumbent on him. How shall he carry his burden to the end? How shall he cover his space? Many great artists have by their practice opposed the doctrine which I now propose to teach, but they have succeeded, I think, in spite of their fault and by dint of their greatness. There should be no episodes in a novel. Every sentence, every word through all those pages should tend to the telling of the story. Such episodes distract the attention of the reader and always do so disagreeably. Who has not felt this to be the case, even with the curious impertinent and with the history of the man on the hill? And if it be so with Cervantes and Fielding, who can hope to succeed? Though the novel which you have to write must be long, let it all be one. And this exclusion of episodes should be carried down into the smallest details. Every sentence and every word used should tend to the telling of the story. But, the young novelist will say, with so many pages before me to be filled, how shall I succeed if I thus confine myself? How am I to know beforehand what space the story of mine will require? There must be the three volumes or the certain number of magazine pages which I have contracted to supply. If I may not be discursive, should occasion require, how shall I complete my task? The painter suits the size of his canvas to his subject and must I, in my art, stretch my subject to my canvas? This undoubtedly must be done by the novelist and if he will learn his business, may be done without injury to his effect. He may not paint different pictures on the same canvas which he will do if he allow himself to wander away to matters outside his own story. But by studying proportion in his work, he may teach himself so to tell his story that it shall naturally fall into the required length. Though his story should be all one, yet it may have many parts. Though the plot itself may require but few characters, it may be so enlarged as to find its full development in many. There may be subsidiary plots which shall all tend to the elucidation of the main story and which will take their places as part of the one and same work. As there may be many figures on a canvas which shall not to the spectator seem to form themselves into separate pictures. There is no portion of a novelist's work in which this fault of episodes is so common as in the dialogue. It is so easy to make any two person's talk on any casual subject with which the writer presumes himself to be conversant. Literature, philosophy, politics, or sport may thus be handled in a loosely discursive style and the writer while indulging himself in filling his pages is apt to think that he is pleasing his reader. I think he can make no greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part of a novel but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to that but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind he at once feels that he is being cheated into taking something which he did not bargain to accept when he took up that novel. He does not at that moment require politics or philosophy but he wants a story. He will not perhaps be able to say in so many words that at some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story but when it does so he will feel it and the feeling will be unpleasant. Let the intending novel writer, if he dealt this, read one of Bulver's novels in which there is very much to charm and then ask himself whether he is not been offended by devious conversations. And the dialogue on which the modern novelist is in consulting the taste of his probable readers must depend most has to be constrained also by other rules. The writer may tell much of his story in conversations but he may only do so by putting such words into the mouths of his personages as persons so situated would probably use. He's not allowed for the sake of his tale to make his characters give utterance to long speeches such as are not commonly heard for men and women. The ordinary talk of ordinary people is carried on in short, sharp, expressive sentences which very frequently are never completed, the language of which even among educated people is often incorrect. The novel writer in constructing his dialogue must so steer between absolute accuracy of language which would give to his conversation an air of pedantry and the slovenly inaccuracy of ordinary talkers which if closely followed would offend by an appearance of grimace. As to produce upon the ear of his readers a sense of reality. If he be quite real he will seem to attempt to be funny. If he be quite correct he will seem to be unreal and above all let the speeches be short. No character should utter much above a dozen words at a breath unless the writer can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the specialty of the occasion. In all this human nature must be the novel writer's guide. No doubt effective novels have been written in which human nature has been set at a defiance. I might name Caleb Williams as one and Adam Blair as another but the exceptions are not more than enough to prove the rule. But in following human nature he must remember that he does so with a pen in his hand and that the reader who will appreciate human nature will also demand artistic ability and literary aptitude. The young novelist will probably ask or more probably think himself how he is to acquire that knowledge of human nature which will tell him with accuracy what men and women would say in this or that position. He must acquire it as the compositor who is to print his words has learned the art of distributing his type by constant and intelligent practice. Unless it be given to him to listen and to observe so to carry away as it were the manners of people in his memory as to be able to say to himself with assurance that these words might have been said in a given position and that those other words could not have been said I do not think that in these days he can succeed as a novelist. And then let him be aware of creating tedium. Who has not felt the charm of a spoken story up to a certain point and then suddenly become aware that it has become too long and is the reverse of charming. It is not only that the entire book may have this fault but that this fault may occur in chapters and passages and pages and paragraphs. I know no guard against this so likely to be effective as the feeling of the writer himself. When once the sense that the thing is becoming long has grown upon him he may be sure that it will grow upon his readers. I see the smile of some who will declare to themselves that the words of a writer will never be tedious to himself. Of the writer of whom this may be truly said it may be said with equal truth that he will always be tedious to his reader. End of chapter 12. Recording by Jessica Louise, Minneapolis, Minnesota.