 Chapter 7 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. Dr. Thorn, the Bertrams, the West Indies, and the Spanish Maine. As I journeyed across France to Marseille and made then a terribly rough voyage to Alexandria, I wrote my allotted number of pages every day. On this occasion, more than once, I left my paper on the cabin table, rushing away to be sick in the privacy of my stateroom. It was February and the weather was miserable, but still I did my work. Labor, Omnia, Vincit, Improbus. I do not say that to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable most men to work at almost any season. I had previously to this arranged a system of task work for myself, which I would strongly recommend to those who feel as I have felt that labor, when not made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should never be allowed to become spesmotic. There was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the post office. I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the period which I have allotted myself for the completion of the work. In this, I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and demanding of me increased labor, so that the deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances at the time, whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with speed, I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about forty. It has been placed as low as twenty and has risen to one hundred twelve. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain two hundred fifty words. And as words, if not watch, will have a tendency to strangle, I have had every word counted as I went. In the bargains I have made with publishers, I have not of course with their knowledge, but in my own mind, undertaken always to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of hand, short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing my work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself especially in completing it within the proposed time, and I have always done so. There has ever been the record before me, and a week past with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart. I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been, so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic hercules. It is the tortoise which always catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise to half-make his journey. I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lessons as they entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their work, though burdened with another profession, and have done it almost without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to copy. The needed pages far ahead, very far ahead, have almost always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary with its dates and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand upon my industry, has done all that for me. There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination should allow himself to wait till inspiration moves him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the shoemaker were to wait for inspiration or the tallow chandler for the divine moment of melting. If the man whose business it is to write has eaten too many good things or has drunk too much or smoked too many cigars, as men who write sometimes will do, then his condition may be unfavorable for work. But so I'll be the condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence. The author wants that as does every other workman, that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than the inspiration. It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no higher pitch than mine has attained has no right to speak of the strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I'm ready to admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by the products of different men and I'm not disposed to rank my own very high. But my own experience tells me that a man can always do the work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself a habit of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I therefore venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship as the business of their lives even when they propose that the authorship be of the highest class known to avoid enthusiastic rushes with their pens and to seat themselves at their desks day by day as though they were lawyer's clerks and so let them sit until the allotted task shall be accomplished. While I was in Egypt I finished Dr. Thorn and on the following day began the Bertrams. I was now moved by a determination to excel if not in quality at any rate in quantity. An ignoble ambition for an author my readers will no doubt say but not I think altogether ignoble if an author can bring himself to look at his work as does any other workman. This had become my task. This was the furrow in which my plow was set. This was the thing the doing of which had fallen into my hands and I was minded to work at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever scamped my work. My novels whether good or bad have been as good as I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between each they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that I finished Dr. Thorn on one day and began the Bertrams on the next. I had then been nearly two months in Egypt and had at last succeeded in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty years have passed since that time and other years may yet run on before these pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official sin by describing here the nature of the difficulty which met me. I found on my arrival that I was to communicate with an officer of the Pasha who was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have been the gentleman who has lately dealt with our government as to the Suez Canal shares and who is now well known to the political world as Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentleman, an Armenian. I never went to his office nor do I know that he had an office. Every other day he would come to me at my hotel and bring with him servants and pipes and coffee. I enjoyed his coming greatly but there was one point on which we could not agree. As to money and other details it seemed as though he could hardly accede fast enough to the wishes of the postmaster general but on one point he was firmly opposed to me. I was desirous that the males should be carried through Egypt in twenty-four hours and he thought that forty-eight hours should be allowed. I was obstinate and he was obstinate and for a long time we could come to no agreement. At last his oriental tranquility seemed to desert him and he took upon himself to assure me with almost more than British energy that if I insisted on the quick transit a terrible responsibility would rest on my head. I made this mistake, he said, that I supposed that a rate of travelling which would be easy and secure in England could be attained with safety in Egypt. The Pasha his master would, he said, no doubt accede to any terms demanded by the British post office so great was his reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at once resign his position and retire into obscurity. It would be ruined but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head. I smoked my pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee with oriental quiescence but British firmness. Every now and again through three or four visits I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way and astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no longer any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office and he assured me with energetic complacence that it should be his care to see that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually kept and I believe is so still. I must confess, however, that my persistency was not the result of any courage specially personal to myself. While the matter was being debated it had been whispered to me that the peninsular and oriental steamship company had conceived that forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their traffic better than twenty-four and that as they were the great paymasters on the railway the minister of the Egyptian state who managed the railway might probably wish to accommodate them. I often wondered who originated that frightful picture of blood and desolation. Then it came from an English heart and an English hand I was always sure. From Egypt I visited the Holy Land and on my way inspected the post offices at Malta and Gibraltar. I could fill a volume with true tales of my adventures. The tales of all countries have, most of them, some foundation in such occurrences. There is one called John Bull on the Guadalquiver, the chief incident in which occurred to me and a friend of mine on our way up that river to Seville. We both of us handled the gold ornaments of a man whom we believed to be a bullfighter but who turned out to be a duke and a duke too who could speak English. How gracious he was to us and yet how thoroughly he covered us with ridicule. On my return home I received 400 pounds from Monsieur Chapman and Hall for Dr. Thorn and agreed to sell them the Bertrands for the same sum. This latter novel was written under very vagrant circumstances. At Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Glasgow, then at sea and at last finished in Jamaica. Of my journey to the West Indies I will say a few words presently but I may as well speak of these two novels here. Dr. Thorn has, I believe, been the most popular book that I have written if I may take the sale as proof of comparative popularity. The Bertrands has had quite an opposite fortune. I do not know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even by my friends and I cannot remember that there is any character in it that has dwelt in the minds of novel readers. I myself think that they are of about equal merit but that neither of them is good. They fall away very much from the three clerks both in pathos and humor. There is no personage in either of them comparable to Chaffenbrass the lawyer. The plot of Dr. Thorn is good and I am led therefore to suppose that a good plot, which to my own feeling is the most insignificant part of a tale, is that which will most raise it or condemn it in the public judgment. The plots of Tom Jones and of Ivanhoe are almost perfect and they are probably the most popular novels of the schools of the last end of this century. But to me the delicacy of Amelia and the rugged strength of Burley and Meg Merleys say more for the power of those great novelists than the gift of construction shown in the two works I have named. A novel should give a picture of common life and livened by humor and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention the canvas should be crowded with real portraits not of individuals known to the world or to the author but of created personages impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking the plot is but the vehicle for all of this and when you have the vehicle without the passengers a story of mystery in which the agents never spring to life you have but a wooden show. There must however be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. That of the Bertrams was more than ordinarily bad and as the book was relieved by no special character it failed. Its failure never surprised me but I have been surprised by the success of Dr. Thorn. At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale and the notices elicited from the critics and the feeling which had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers all made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel I could certainly sell it and if I could publish three in two years confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible author of whom the publisher and Paternoster Rowe had complained to me I might add six hundred pounds a year to my official income. I was still living in Ireland and could keep a good house over my head ensure my life, educate my two boys and hunt perhaps twice a week on fourteen hundred pounds a year. If more should come it would be well but six hundred pounds a year I was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming but was very pleasant when it came. On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had to do there but I know that I walked all over the city with the letter carriers going up to the top flats of the houses as the men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their labors had I not trudged every step with them. It was mid-summer and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble and then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home afterwards and write a love scene. But the love scenes written in Glasgow, all belonging to the Bertrams, are not good. Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West Indies when the Aegean stables of our post office system there. Up to that time, and at that time, our colonial post offices generally were managed from home and were subject to the British Postmaster General. Gentlemen were set out from England to be postmasters, surveyors and whatnot, and as our West Indian islands have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated for residents, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the stables had become Aegean. I was also instructed to carry out in some of the islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to the island governor and in others to propose some such plan. I was then to go on to Cuba to make a postal treaty with the Spanish authorities and to Panama for the same purpose with the government of Nugrenada. All this work I performed to my satisfaction and I hope to that of my masters in St. Martin's Legrand. But the trip is at the present moment of importance to my subject as having enabled me to write that which on the whole I regard as the best book that has come from my pen. It is short and I think I may venture to say amusing, useful and true. As soon as I had learned from the secretary at the general post office that this journey would be required I proposed the book to Macier Chapman and Hall demanding 250 for a single volume. The contract was made without any difficulty and when I returned home the work was complete in my desk. I began it on board the ship in which I left Kingston, Jamaica for Cuba and from week to week I carried it on as I went. From Cuba I made my way to St. Thomas and through the island down to Demerara and then back to St. Thomas which is the starting point for all the places in that part of the globe to St. Martha, Carthagina, Aspenwall, over the Isthmus to Panama up to the Pacific to a little harbor on the coast of Costa Rica then to cross Central America through Costa Rica and down the Nicaragua River to the Mosquito Coast. And after that, home by Bermuda and New York. Should anyone want further details of the voyage are they not written in my book? The fact memorable to me now is that I never made a single note while writing or preparing it. Preparation indeed there was none. The descriptions and opinions came hot onto the paper from their causes. I will not say that this is the best way of writing a book intended to give accurate information but it is the best way of producing to the eye of the reader and to his ear that which the eye of the writer has seen and his ear heard. There are two kinds of confidence which a reader may have in his author which two kinds the reader who wishes to use his reading well should carefully discriminate. There is a confidence in facts and a confidence in vision. The one man tells you accurately what has been. The other suggests to you what may or perhaps what must have been or what ought to have been. The former requires simple faith. The latter calls upon you to judge for yourself and form your own conclusions. The former does not intend to be prescient nor the latter accurate. Research is the weapon used by the former. Observation by the latter. Either may be false. Willfully false as also either may be steadfastly true. As to that the reader must judge for himself. But the man who writes Quarente Calamo who works with a rapidity which will not admit of accuracy may be as true and in one sense as trustworthy as he who bases every word upon a rock of facts. I have written very much as I have traveled about and though I have been very inaccurate I have always written the exact truth as I sought and I have I think drawn my pictures correctly. The view I took of the relative position in the West Indies of black men and white men was the view of the Times newspaper at that period and there appeared three articles in that journal one closely after another which made the fortune of the book. Had it been very bad I suppose its fortune could not have been made for it even by the Times newspaper. I afterwards became acquainted with the writer of those articles the contributor himself informing me that he had written them. I told him that he had done me a greater service than could be often done by one man to another but that I was under no obligation to him. I do not think that he saw the matter quite in the same light. I am aware that by that criticism I was much raised in my position as an author. Whether such lifting up by such means is good or bad for literature is a question which I hope to discuss in a future chapter. But the result was immediate to me for I at once went to Chapman and Hall and successfully demanded six hundred pounds for my next novel. End of Chapter 7 Recording by Jessica Louise, St. Paul, Minnesota Chapter 8 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollope This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollope The Corn Hill Magazine and Family Parsonage Soon after my return from the West Indies I was enabled to change my district in Ireland for one in England. For some time past my official work had been of a special nature taking me out of my own district but through all that Dublin had been my home and there my wife and children had lived. I had often sighed to return to England with a silly longing. My life in England for twenty-six years from the time of my birth to the day on which I left it had been wretched. I had been poor, friendless and joyless. In Ireland it had constantly been happy. I had achieved the respect of all with whom I was concerned. I had made for myself a comfortable home and I had enjoyed many pleasures. Hunting itself was a great delight to me and now as I contemplated a move to England and a house in the neighbourhood of London I felt that hunting must be abandoned. Footnote. It was not abandoned till sixteen more years had passed away. Nevertheless I thought that a man who could write books ought not to live in Ireland, ought to live within the reach of the publishers, the clubs and the dinner parties of the metropolis. So I made my request at headquarters and with some little difficulty got myself appointed to the eastern district of England which comprised Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingtonshire and the greater part of Hertfordshire. At this time I did not stand very well with the dominant interest at the general post office. My old friend Colonel Maverly had been, sometimes since, squeezed into and his place was filled by Mr Rowland Hill, the originator of the penny post. With him I never had any sympathy nor he with me. In figures and facts he was most accurate, but I never came across anyone who so little understood the ways of men, unless it was his brother Frederick. To the two brothers, the servants of the post office, men, numerous enough to have formed a large army in old days, were so many machines who could be counted on for their exact work without deviation, as wheels may be counted on, which are kept going always at the same pace and always by the same power. Rowland Hill was an industry as public servant, anxious for the good of his country, but he was a hard task master, and one who would, I think, have put the great department with which he was concerned, altogether out of gear by his hardness, had he not been at last controlled. He was the chief secretary, my brother-in-law who afterwards succeeded him, came next to him, and Mr Hill's brother was the junior secretary. In the natural course of things I had not, from my position, to do with the management of affairs, but from time to time I found myself more or less mixed up in it. I was known to be a thoroughly efficient public servant. I'm sure I may say so much of myself without fear of contradiction from anyone who has known the post office. I was very fond of the department, and when matters came to be considered I generally had an opinion of my own. I have no doubt that I often made myself very disagreeable. I know that I sometimes tried to do so. But I could hold my own because I knew my business and was useful. I had given official offence by the publication of the three clerks. I afterwards gave greater offence by a lecture on the civil service which I delivered in one of the large rooms at the general post office to the clerks there. On this occasion, the postmaster general with whom personally I enjoyed friendly terms sent for me and told me that Mr Hill had told him that I ought to be dismissed. When I asked his lordship whether he was prepared to dismiss me, he only laughed. The threat was no threat to me as I knew myself to be too good to be treated in that fashion. The lecture had been permitted and I had disobeyed no order. In the lecture which I delivered there was nothing to bring me to shame but it advocated the doctrine that a civil servant is only a servant as far as his contract goes and that he is beyond that as free a man in politics as free in his general pursuits and as free in opinion as those who are in open professions and open trades. All this is very nearly admitted now but it certainly was not admitted then. At that time no one in the post office could even vote for a member of parliament. Through my whole official life I did my best to improve the style of official writing. I have written I should think many of them necessarily very long. Some of them dealing with subjects so absurd as to allow a touch of burlesque. Some few in which a spark of indignation or a slight glow of pathos might find an entrance. I have taken infinite pains with these reports habituating myself always to write them in the form in which they should be sent without a copy. It is by writing thus that a man can throw on to his paper the exact feeling with which his mind is impressed at the moment. A rough copy or that which is called a draft is written in order that it may be touched and altered and put upon stilts. The waste of time moreover in such an operation is terrible. If a man knows his craft with his pen he will have learned to write without the necessity of changing his words or the form of his sentences. I had learned so to write my reports that they who read them read it was that I meant them to understand. But I do not think that they were regarded with favor. I have heard horror expressed because the old forms were disregarded and language used which had no savor of red tape. During the whole of this work in the post office it was my principle always to obey authority in everything instantly, but never to allow my mouth to be closed as to the expression of my opinion. They who had the ordering very often did not know the work as I knew it, could not tell as I could what would be the effect of this or that change. When carrying out instructions which I knew should not have been given I never scrupled to point out the fatuity of the improper order in the strongest language that I could decently employ. I have reveled in these official correspondences and look back to some of them as the greatest delights of my life. But I'm not sure that they were so delightful to others. I succeeded however in getting the English district which could hardly have been refused to me and prepared to change our residence towards the end of 1859. At the time I was writing Castle Richmond the novel which I had sold to Monsieur Chapman and Hall for 600 pounds. But there arose at this time a certain literary project which probably had a great effect upon my career. Whilst traveling on postal service abroad or writing over the rural districts in England or arranging the males in Ireland and for such the last 18 years had now been my life I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the literary life in London. It was probably some feeling of this which had made me anxious to move my penance back to England. But even in Ireland where I was still living in October 1859 I had heard of the Corn Hill magazine which was to come out on the 1st of January 1860 under the editorship of Thackeray. I had at this time written from time to time certain short stories which had been published in different periodicals in which in due time were republished under the name of Tales of All Countries. On the 23rd of October 1859 I wrote to Thackeray whom I had I think never then seen offering to send him for the magazine written of these stories. In reply to this I received two letters one from M. Smith and Elder the proprietors of the Corn Hill dated 26th of October and the other from the editor written two days later. That from Mr. Thackeray was as follows My dear Mr. Trollop Smith and Elder have sent you their proposals and the business part done let me come to the pleasure and say how very glad indeed I shall be to have you as a cooperator in our new magazine and looking over the annexed program you will see whether you can't help us in many other ways besides tail-telling. Whatever a man knows about life and its doings that let us hear about. You must have tossed a good deal about the world and have countless sketches in your memory in your portfolio. Pleased to think if you can fervish besides a novel. When events occur and you have a good lively tale bear us in mind. One of our chief objects in this magazine is the getting out of novel spinning and back into the world. Don't understand me to disparage our craft especially your wares. I often say I am like the pastry cook and don't care for tarts but prefer bread and cheese but the public love the tarts luckily for us and we must bake and sell them. The excitement in my family one evening when Petterfamilius who goes to sleep on a novel almost always when he tries it after dinner came upstairs into the drawing-room wide awake and calling for the second volume of the three clerks. I hope the Cornhill magazine will have as pleasant a story. And the Chapmans if they were the honest men I take them to be I've no doubt have told you with what sincere liking your works have been read by yours very faithfully Thackery. This was very pleasant and so was the letter from Smith and Elder offering me one thousand pounds for the copyright of a three volume novel to come out in the new magazine on condition that the first portion of it should be in their hands by December twelfth. There was much in all this that astonished me in the first place the price which was more than double what I had yet received and nearly double that which I was about to receive then there was the suddenness of the call it was already the end of October and a portion of the work was required to be in the printer's hands within six weeks. Castle Richmond was indeed half written but that was sold to Chapman and it had already been a principal with me in my art that no part of a novel should be published till the entire story was completed. I knew from what I read from month to month that this hurried publication of incompleted work was frequently I might perhaps say always adopted by the leading novelists of the day. That such has been the case is proved by the fact that Dickens, Thackeray and Mrs. Gaskell died with unfinished novels of which portions had already been published. I had not yet entered upon the system of publishing novels and parts and therefore had never been tempted but I was aware that an artist should keep in his hand the power of writing the beginning of his work to the end. No doubt it is his first duty to fit the end to the beginning and he will endeavor to do so but he should still keep in his hands the power of remedying any defect in this respect. Servitor Ad Imum Qualis Ab Incepto Processirit should be kept in view as to every character and every string of action. All through from beginning to end be impatient, fiery, ruthless, keen. Your Achilles, such as he is will probably keep up his character but your Davus also should always be Davus and that is more difficult. The rustic driving his pigs to market cannot always make them travel by the exact path which he has intended for them. When some young lady at the end of a story cannot be made quite perfect in her conduct the description of angelic purity with which you laid down the first lines of her portrait should be slightly toned down. I had felt that the rushing mode of publication to which the system of serial stories had given rise and by which small parts as they were written were sent hot to the press was injurious to the work done. If I now complied with the proposition made to me I must act against my own principle but such a principle becomes a tyrant if it cannot be superseded on a just occasion. If the reason be tomty the principle should for the occasion be put in abeyance. I sat as judge and decreed that the present reason was tomty. On this my first attempt at a serial story I thought it fit to break my own rule. I can say, however, that I've never broken it since. But what astonished me most was the fact that at so late a day this new Corn Hill magazine should be in want of a novel. Perhaps some of my future readers will be able to remember the great expectations which were raised as to this periodical. Thackeries was a good name with which to conjure. The proprietors, Monsieur Smith and Elder, were most liberal in their manner of initiating the work and were able to make an expectant world of readers believe that something was to be given them for a shilling very much in excess of anything they had ever received for that or double the money. Whether these hopes were or were not fulfilled it is not for me to say, as for the first few years of the magazine's existence I wrote for it more than any other one person. But such was certainly the prospect and how had it come to pass that with such promises made the editor and the proprietors were at the end of October without anything fixed as to what must be regarded as the chief dish in the banquet to be provided. I fear that the answer to this question must be found in the habits of procrastination which had at that time grown upon the editor. He had, I imagine, undertaken the work himself and had postponed its commencement till there was left to him no time for commencing. There was still, it may be said, as much time for him as for me. I think there was, for though he had his magazine to look after in the post office. But he thought, when unable to trust his own energy, that he might rely upon that of a new recruit. He was but four years my senior in life but he was at the top of the tree while I was still at the bottom. Having made up my mind to break my principle I started at once from Dublin to London. I arrived there on the morning of Thursday the 3rd of November and left it on the evening of Friday. In the meantime I had made my agreement with Mr. Smith and Elder and had arranged my plot. But when in London I first went to Edward Chapman at 193 Piccadilly If the novel I was then writing for him would suit the Cornhill might I consider my arrangement with him to be at an end? Yes I might. But if that story would not suit the Cornhill was I to consider my arrangement with him as still standing that agreement requiring that my manuscript should be in his hands following March? As to that I might do as I pleased. In our dealings together Mr. Edward Chapman always exceeded to the every suggestion made to him. He never refused a book and never haggled at a price. Then I hurried into the city and had my first interview with Mr. George Smith. When he heard that Castle Richmond was an Irish story he begged that I would endeavor to frame some other for his magazine. His story would not do for a commencement and he suggested the church as though it were my peculiar subject. I told him that Castle Richmond would have to come out while any other novel that I might write for him would be running through the magazine but to that he expressed himself altogether indifferent. He wanted an English tale on English life with a clerical flavor. On these orders I went to work on the work of Framley Parsonage. On my journey back to Ireland in the railway carriage I wrote the first few pages of that story. I had got into my head an idea of what I meant to write. A morsel of the biography of an English clergyman who should not be a bad man but one led into temptation by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of those around him. The love of his sister for the young lord sunk to necessary because there must be love in a novel. And then by placing Framley Parsonage near Barchester I was able to fall back upon my old friends, Mrs. Prudy and the Archdeacon. Out of these slight elements I fabricated a hodgepodge in which the real plot consisted at last simply of a girl refusing to marry the man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly. Nothing could be less efficient or artistic. But the characters were so well handled that the work from the first to the last was popular and was received as it went on with still increasing favor by both editor and proprietor of the magazine. The story was thoroughly English. There was a little fox hunting and a little tough hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian Kant. There was no heroism and no villainy. There was much church but more speaking. And it was downright honest love in which there was no pretense on the part of the lady that she was too ethereal to be fond of a man. No half and half inclination on the part of the man to pay a certain price and no more for a pretty toy. Each of them longed for the other and they were not ashamed to say so. Consequently they in England who were living or had lived the same sort of life liked Framley Parsonage. I think myself that Lucy Robarts was perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever drew. The most natural at any rate of those who have been good girls. She was not as dear to me as Kate Woodward in the three clerks but I think she is more like real human life. Indeed I doubt whether such a character could be more lifelike than Lucy Robarts. And I will say also that in this novel there is no very weak part, no long succession of dull pages. The production of novels in serial form forces upon the author the conviction that he should not allow himself to be tedious in any single part. I hope no reader will must understand me. In spite of that conviction the writer of stories and parts will often be tedious. That I have been so myself is a fault that will lie heavy on my tombstone. But the writer when he embarks in such a business should feel that he cannot afford to have many pages skipped out of the few which are to meet the reader's eye at the same time. Who can imagine the first half of the first volume of Waverly coming out in shilling numbers? I had realized this when I was writing Framley Parsonage and working on the conviction which had thus come home to me I fell into no bathos of dullness. I subsequently came across a piece of criticism which was written on me as a novelist by a brother novelist very much greater than myself and whose brilliant intellect and warm imagination led him to a kind of work the very opposite of mine. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American, whom I did not then know but whose works I knew. Though it praises myself highly I will insert it here because it certainly is true in its nature. It is odd enough, he says, that my own individual taste is for quite another class of works than those which I myself am able to write. If I were to meet with such books designed by another writer I don't believe I should be able to get through them. Have you ever read the novels of Anthony Trollop? They precisely suit my taste, solid and substantial, written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case with all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that they were being so of. And these books are just as English as a beef steak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible, but still I should think that human nature would give them success anywhere. This was dated early in 1860 and could have had no reference to family parsonage, but it was as true of that work as of any that I've written. And the criticism, whether just or unjust, describes with wonderful accuracy the purport that I have ever had in view in my writing. I've always desired to hew out some lump of the earth and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk here among us with not more of excellence nor with exaggerated baseness so that my readers might recognize human beings like to themselves and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods or demons. If I could do this I thought I might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novel reader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy, that truth prevails while falsehood fails, that a girl will be loved as she is pure and sweet and unselfish, that a man will be honored as he is true and honest and brave of heart, that things meanly done are ugly and odious, and things nobly done are beautiful and gracious. I do not say that lessons such as these may not be more grandly taught by higher flights than mine. Such lessons come to us from our greatest poets. But there are so many who will read novels and understand them, who either do not read the works of our great poets or reading them miss the lesson. And even in prose fiction the character whom the fervent imagination of the writer has lifted somewhat into the clouds will hardly give so plain an example to the hasty normal reader of the humbler personage whom that reader unconsciously feels to resemble himself or herself. I do think that a girl would more probably dress her own mind after Lucy Robards than after Flora MacDonald. There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility, those for instance who regard the reading of novels as a sin, and those also who think it to be simply an idle pastime. They look upon the tellers of stories and describe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. I have regarded my art from so different a point of view that I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience. I do believe that no girl has risen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before, and that some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth considering. I think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness, but some may perhaps have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach, and I have thought it might best be done by representing to my readers characters like themselves or to which they might liken themselves. Family I think that the meaning of my varsanage or rather my connection with the Corn Hill was the means of introducing me very quickly to that literary world from which I had hitherto been severed by the fact of my residence in Ireland. In December 1859, while I was still very hard at work on my novel, I came over to take charge of the eastern district and settled myself at a residence about twelve miles from London in Hertfordshire, but on the borders called Waltham House. This I took on lease and subsequently bought after I had spent about one thousand pounds on improvements. From hence I was able to make myself frequent both in Corn Hill and Piccadilly and to live when the opportunity came among men of my own pursuit. It was in January 1860 that Mr. George Smith, to whose enterprise we owe not only the Corn Hill magazine, but the Paul Malgazette, gave a sumptuous dinner to his contributors. It was a memorable banquet in many ways, but chiefly so to me because on that occasion I first met many men who afterwards became my most intimate associates. It can rarely happen that one such occasion can be the first starting point of so many friendships. It was at that table and on that day that I first saw Thackeray, Charles Taylor, Sir, then whom in later life I have loved no man better, Robert Bell, G. H. Loves and John Everett Millet. With all these men I afterwards lived on affectionate terms, but I will here speak especially of the last because from that time he was joined with me in so much of the work that I did. Mr. Millet was engaged to illustrate family parsonage, but this was not the first work he did for the magazine. In the second number there is a picture of his accompanying Moncton Millen's unspoken dialogue. The first drawing he did for family parsonage did not appear till after the dinner of which I've spoken and I did not think that I knew at the time that he was engaged on my novel. When I did know it it made me very proud. He afterwards illustrated Orly Farm, The Small House at Allington, Rachel Ray and Phineas Finn. Altogether he drew from my tales eighty-seven drawings and I do not think that more conscientious work was ever done by man. Writers of novels know well and so ought readers of novels to have learned that there are two modes of illustrating, either of which may be adopted equally by a bad and by a good artist. To which class Mr. Millet belongs I need not say, but as a good artist it was open to him simply to make a pretty picture, or to study the work of the author writing he was bound to take a subject. I have too often found that the former alternative has been thought to be the better, as it certainly is the easier method. An artist will frequently dislike to subordinate his ideas to those of an author and will sometimes be too idle to find out what those ideas are. But this artist was neither proud nor idle in every figure that he drew it was his object to promote the views of the writer whose work he had undertaken to illustrate, and he never spared himself any pains in studying that work, so as to enable him to do so. I have carried on some of those characters from book to book and have had my own early ideas impressed indelibly on my memory by the excellence of his delineations. Those illustrations were commenced fifteen years ago and from that time up to this day my affection for the man of whom I am speaking has increased. To see him has always been a pleasure. His voice has been a sweet sound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised without joining the eulogist. I have never heard a word spoken against him without opposing the censurer. These words, should he ever see them, will come to him from the grave and will tell him of my regard, as one living man never tells another. Sir Charles Taylor who carried me home in his brigham that evening and thus commenced intimacy which has since been very close was born to wealth and was therefore not compelled by the necessities of a profession to enter the lists as an author. But he lived much with those who did so and could have done it himself had want or ambition stirred him. He was our king at the Garrick Club to which however I did not yet belong. He gave the best dinners of my time and was, happily I may say is, footnote, alas, within a year of the writing of this he went from us. The best giver of dinners. A man rough of tongue, brisk in his manners, odious to those who dislike him, somewhat inclined to tyranny, he is the prince of friends, honest as the son, and as open-handed as charity itself. Robert Bell has now been dead nearly ten years. As I look back over the interval and remember how intimate we were it seems odd to me that we should have known each other for no more than six years. He was a man who had lived by his pen from his very youth and was so far successful that I do not think that want ever came near him. But he never made that mark which his industry and talents would have seemed to ensure. He was a man well known to literary men but not known to readers. As a journalist he was useful and conscientious but his plays and novels never made himself happy. He wrote a life of canning and he brought out an annotated edition of the British poets but he achieved no great success. I have known no man better read in English literature. Hence his conversation had a peculiar charm but he was not equally happy with his pen. He will long be remembered of the literary fund committees of which he was a staunch and most trusted supporter. I think it was he who first introduced me to that board. It has often been said that literary men are peculiarly apt to think that they are slighted and unappreciated. Robert Bell certainly never achieved the position in literature which he once aspired to fill and which he was justified in thinking that he could earn for himself. I frequently discussed these subjects with him but I never heard from his mouth a word of complaint as to whether the chimes go at midnight and he loved to have ginger hot in his mouth. On such occasions no sound ever came out of a man's lips sweeter than his wit and gentle revelry. George Luz with his wife whom all the world knows as George Eliot has also been and still is one of my dearest friends. He is I think the acutest critic I know and the severest. His severity however is a fault. His intention to be honest even when honesty may give pain has constant to give pain when honesty has not required it. He is essentially a doubter and has encouraged himself to doubt till the faculty of trusting has almost left him. I'm not speaking of the personal trust which one man feels in another but of that confidence in literary excellence which is I think necessary for the full enjoyment of literature. He did believe thoroughly. Nothing can be more charming than the unstinted admiration which he has accorded to everything that comes from the pen of the wonderful woman to whom his lot has been united. To her name I shall recur again when speaking of the novelists of the present day. Of Billy Russell as we always used to call him I may say that I never knew but one man equal to him in the quickness and continuance of witty speech. He was also an Irishman whom I had known from an earlier date and also with close intimacy. Of the two I think that Lever was perhaps the more astounding producer of good things. His manner was perhaps a little a happier and his turns more sharp and unexpected. But Billy also was marvelous. Whether abroad as special correspondent or at home amidst the flurry of his newspaper work he was a charming companion. His ready always gave him the last word. Of Thackeray I will speak again when I record his death. There were many others whom I met for the first time at George Smith's table. Albert Smith for the first and indeed for the last time as he died soon after. Higgins whom all the world knew as Jacob Omnium a man I greatly regarded. Dallas who for a time was literary critic to the times and who certainly in that capacity did better work than has appeared since in the same department. George Augustus Salah who had he given himself fair play would have risen to higher eminence than that of being the best writer in his day of sensational leading articles. And Fitz James Stephen a man of very different caliber who had not yet culminated but who no doubt will culminate among our judges. There were many others but I cannot now make various names as identified with those banquets. Of family personage I need only further say that as I wrote it I became more closely than ever acquainted with the new shire which I had added to the English counties. I had it all in my mind its roads and railroads its towns and parishes its members of parliament and the different hunts which rode over it. I knew all the great lords in their castles the squires and their parks the rectors and their churches. This was the fourth novel of which I had placed the scene in Barsature and as I wrote it I made a map of the dear county. Throughout these stories there has been no name given to a fictitious site which does not represent to me a spot of which I know all the accessories as though I had lived and wandered there. End of chapter 8 Recording by Jessica Louise St. Paul Minnesota Chapter 9 of the autobiography of Anthony Trollop This LibriVox recording is in the public domain autobiography of Anthony Trollop Castle Richmond Brown, Jones and Robinson North America Orley Farm When I had half finished Framley Parsonage I went back to my other story Castle Richmond which I was writing for Monsieur Chapman and Hall I think that this was the only occasion on which I have had two different novels in my mind at the same time. This however did not create either difficulty or confusion. Many of us live in different circles and when we go from our friends in the town to our friends in the country we do not usually fail to remember the little details of the one life or the other. The parson at Rusticum with his wife and his wife's mother and all his belongings and our old friend the squire with his family history and farmer Mudge who has been cross with us because we rode so unnecessarily over his barley and that Raskley Poacher, once a game keeper who now traps all the foxes and Pretty Mary Cann whose marriage with the Wheelwright we did something to expedite though we are alive to them all do not drive out of our brain the club gossip or the memories of the dinners or any incident of our London intonacies in our lives we are always weaving novels and we manage to keep the different tales distinct a man does in truth remember that which it interests him to remember and when we hear that memory has gone as age has come on we should understand that the capacity for interest in the matter concerned has perished a man will be generally very old and feeble and forgets how much money he has in the funds there is a good deal to be learned by anyone who wishes to write a novel well but when the art has been acquired I do not see why two or three should not be well written at the same time I've never found myself thinking much about the work that I had to do till I was doing it I have indeed for many years almost abandoned the effort to think trusting myself with the narrowest thread of a plot to work the matter when the pen is in my hand but my mind is constantly employing itself on the work I have done had I left either family personage or Castle Richmond half finished 15 years ago I think I could complete the tales now with very little trouble I have not looked at Castle Richmond since it was published and poor as the work is I remember all the incidents Castle Richmond certainly was not a success though the plot is a fairly good plot and is much more of a plot than I have generally been able to find the scene is laid in Ireland during the famine and I'm well aware now that English readers no longer like Irish stories I cannot understand why it should be so as the Irish character is peculiarly well fitted for romance but Irish subjects generally have become distasteful this novel however is of itself a weak production the characters do not excite sympathy the heroine has two lovers one of whom is a scamp and the other a prick as regards the scamp the girls mother is her own rival rivalry of the same nature has been admirably depicted by Thackeray in his Esmond but there the mother's love seems to be justified by the girls indifference in Castle Richmond the mother strives to rob her daughter of the man's love the girl herself has no character and the mother who is strong enough is almost revolting the dialogue is often lively and some of the incidents are well told but the story as a whole was a failure I cannot remember however that it was roughly handled by the critics when it came out and I much doubt whether anything so hard was said of it then as that which I've said here I was now settled at Waltham Cross in a house in which I could entertain a few friends modestly our cabbages and strawberries made our own butter and killed our own pigs I occupied it for twelve years and they were years to me of great prosperity in 1861 I became a member of the Garrick Club with which institution I have since been much identified I had belonged to it about two years when on Thackeray's death I was invited to fill his place on the committee and I have been one of that August body ever since having up to that time lived very little among men having known hitherto nothing of clubs having even as a boy been banished from social gatherings I enjoyed infinitely at first the gayity of the Garrick it was a festival to me to dine there which I did indeed but seldom and a great delight to play a rubber in the little room upstairs of an afternoon I'm speaking now of the old club in King Street I have wist before dinner has since that become a habit with me so that unless there'd be something else special to do unless there be hunting or I'm wanted to ride in the park by the young tyrant of my household it is my custom always in the afternoon I have sometimes felt sore with myself for this persistency feeling that I was making myself a slave to an amusement which has not after all very much to recommend it that I would break myself away from it and swear off as Rip Van Winkle says but my swearing off has been like that of Rip Van Winkle and now as I think of it coolly I do not know but that I have been right to cling to it as a man grows old he wants amusement more even than when he is young and then it becomes so difficult to find amusement reading should no doubt be the delight of men's leisure hours had I to choose between books and cards I should no doubt take the books but I find that I can seldom read with pleasure for above an hour and a half at a time or more than three hours a day as I write this I'm aware that hunting must soon be abandoned after sixty it is given but to few men to ride straight across country and I cannot bring myself to adopt any other mode of riding I think that without cards I should now be much at a loss when I began to play at the Garrick I did so simply because I liked the society of the men who played I think that I became popular among those with whom I associated I have long been aware of a certain weakness in my own character which I may call a craving for love I have ever had a wish to be liked by those around me a wish that during the first half of my life was never gratified in my school days no small part of my misery came from the envy with which I regarded the popularity of popular boys they seemed to me to live in a social paradise while the desolation of my pandemonium was complete and afterwards when I was in London as a young man I had but few friends among the clerks in the post office I held my own fairly for the first two or three years but even then I regarded myself as something of a pariah my Irish life had been much better I had had my wife and children and had been sustained by a feeling of general respect but even in Ireland I had in truth lived but little in society our means had been sufficient for our wants but insufficient for entertaining others it was not till we had settled ourselves at Waltham that I really began to live much with others the Garrick Club was the first assemblage of men at which I felt myself to be popular I soon became a member of other clubs there was the arts club in Hanover Square of which I saw the opening but from which after three or four years I withdrew my name having found that during these three or four years I had not once entered the building then I was one of the originators of the civil service club not from judgement but instigated to do so by others that also I left for the same reason in 1864 I received the honour of being selected by the committee at the Athenaeum for this I was indebted to the kindness of Lord Stanhope and I never was more surprised than when I was informed of the fact about the same time I became a member of the Cosmopolitan a little club that meets twice a week in Charles Street, Berkeley Square and supplies to all its members and its members friends tea and brandy and water without charge the gatherings there I used to think one met Jacob Omnium Moncton Mimes Tom Hughes William Sterling Henry Reeve Arthur Russell Tom Taylor and such like and generally a strong political element thoroughly well mixed gave a certain spirit to the place Lord Reipen Lord Stanley William Forster Lord Enfield Lord Kimberley George Benton Vernon Harcourt Bromley Davenport Archbill Hueson with many others used to whisper the secrets of parliament with free tongues afterwards I became a member of the turf which I found to be serviceable or the reverse only for the playing of wist at high points in August 1861 I wrote another novel for the Cornhill magazine it was a short story about one volume in length and was called the struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson in this I attempted a style for which I certainly was not qualified and to which I never had again recourse it was meant to be funny and full of slang and was intended as a satire on the ways of trade still I think that there is some good fun in it but I've heard no one else express such an opinion I did not know that I ever heard any opinion expressed on it except by the publisher who kindly remarked that he did not think it was equal to my usual work though he had purchased the copyright he did not republish the story in a book form till 1870 and then it passed into the world of letters subcilentio I do not know that it was ever criticized or ever read I received 600 pounds for it from that time to this I've been paid at about that rate for my work 600 pounds for the quantity contained in an ordinary novel volume 5000 pounds for a long tale published in 20 parts which is equal in length to 5 such volumes I have occasionally I think received something more than this never I think less for any tale except when I've published my work anonymously footnote since the date at which this was written I have encountered a diminution in price having said so much I need not further specify the prices as I mentioned I will however when I'm completing this memoir give a list of all the sums I have received for my literary labors I think that Brown Jones and Robinson was the hardest bargain I ever sold to a publisher in 1861 the war of secession had broken out in America and from the first I interested myself much in the question my mother had 30 years previously written a very popular but as I had thought a somewhat unjust book about our cousins over the water she had seen what was distasteful in the manners of a young people but had hardly recognized their energy I had entertained for many years an ambition to follow her footsteps there and to write another book I had already paid a short visit to New York City and State on my way home from the West Indies but had not seen enough then to justify me in the expression the breaking out of the war did not make me think that the time was peculiarly fit for such an inquiry as I wished to make but it did represent itself as an occasion on which a book might be popular I consequently consulted the two great powers with whom I was concerned Monsieur Chapman and Hall the publishers were one power and I had no difficulty in arranging my affairs with them they agreed to publish the book on my terms and bade me Godspeed on my journey the other power was the postmaster general in Mr. Rolland Hill the secretary of the post office I wanted leave of absence for the unusual period of nine months and fearing that I should not get it by the ordinary process of asking the secretary I went direct to his lordship is it on the plea of ill health he asked looking into my face which was then that of a very robust man his lordship knew the service as well as anyone living and must have seen much of falseness and fraudulent pretense or he could not have asked that question I told him that I was very well but that I wanted to write a book had I any special ground to go upon in asking for such indulgence I had I said done my duty well by the service there was a good deal of demuring but I got my leave for nine months and I knew that I had earned it Mr. Hill attached to the minute granting me the leave an intimation that it was to be considered as a full equivalent for the special services rendered by me to the department I declined however to accept the grace with such a stipulation and it was withdrawn by the directions of the post semester general footnote during the period of my service in the post office I did very much special work for which I never asked any renumeration and never received any though payments for special services were common in the department at that time but if there was to be a question of such renumeration I did not choose that my work should be valued at the price put upon it by Mr. Hill I started for the states in August and returned in the following May the war was raging during the time that I was there and the country was full of soldiers a part of the time I spent in Virginia Kentucky and Missouri among the troops along the line of attack I visited all the states except California which had not then seceded failing to make my way into the seceding states unless I was prepared to visit them with an amount of discomfort I did not choose to endure I worked very hard at the task I had assigned to myself and did I think see much of the matters and institutions of the people nothing struck me more than their persistence in the ordinary pursuits of life in spite of the war which was around them now their industry nor amusement seemed to meet with any check schools hospitals and institutes were by no means neglected because new regiments were daily required the truth I take it is that we all of us soon adapt ourselves to the circumstances around us though three parts of London were in flames I should no doubt expect to have my dinner served to me if I lived in the quarter which was free from fire the book I wrote was very much longer than that on the West Indies but was also written almost without a note it contained much information and with many inaccuracies was a true book but it was not well done it is tedious and confused and will hardly I think be a future value to those who wish to make themselves acquainted with the United States it was published about the middle of the war just at the time in which the hopes of those who loved the south were most buoyant the north were the strongest but it expressed an assured confidence which never quavered in a page or in a line that the north would win this assurance was based on the merits of the northern cause of the superior strength of the northern party in a conviction that England would never recognize the south and that France would be guided in her policy by England I was right in my prophecies and right I think on the grounds on which they were made the northern cause was bad the south had provoked the quarrel because its political supremacy was checked by the election of Mr. Lincoln to the presidency it had to fight as a little man against a big man and fought gallantly that gallantry and a feeling based on a misconception as to American character that the southerners are better gentlemen than their northern brethren did create sympathy here but I believe that the country was too just to be led into political action by a spirit of romance and I was warranted in that belief there was a moment in which the northern cause was in danger and the danger lay certainly in the prospect of British interference Monsieur Slidle and Mason two men insignificant in themselves had been sent to Europe by the southern party and had managed to get on board the British male steamer called the Trent at the Havana most undue importance was attached to this mission by Mr. Lincoln's government and efforts were made to stop them a certain Commodore Wilkes doing duty as policemen on the seas did stop the Trent and took the men out they were carried one to Boston and one to New York and were incarcerated amidst the triumph of the nation Commodore Wilkes who had done nothing in which a brave man could take glory was made a hero and received a prize sword England of course demanded her passengers back and the states for a while refused to surrender them but Mr. Seward was at the time the secretary of state and Mr. Seward with many political faults was a wise man I was at Washington at the time and it was known there that the contest among the leading northerners was very sharp on the matter Mr. Sumner and Mr. Seward were under Mr. Lincoln the two chiefs of the party understood that Mr. Sumner was opposed to the rendition of the men and Mr. Seward in favor of it Mr. Seward's councils at last prevailed with the president and England's declaration of war was prevented I dined with Mr. Seward on the day of the decision meeting Mr. Sumner at his house and was told as I left the dining room what the decision had been during the afternoon I and others had received intimation through the embassy I probably have to leave Washington at an hour's notice this I think was the severest danger that the northern cause encountered during the war but my book though it was right in its views on this subject and wrong in none other as far as I know was not a good book I can recommend no one to read it now in order that he may be either instructed or amused as I can do that on the West Indies it served its purpose at the time received by the public and by the critics before starting to America I had completed Orly Farm a novel which appeared in shilling numbers after the manner in which Pickwick, Nicholas, Nicolby and many others had been published most of those among my friends who talked to me now about my novels and are competent to form an opinion on the subject say that this is the best I have written in this opinion I do not coincide I think that the highest merit that your novel can have consists in perfect delineation of character rather than in plot or humor or pathos and I shall before long mention a subsequent work in which I think the main character of the story is so well developed as to justify me in asserting its claim above the others the plot of Orly Farm is probably the best I've ever made but it has the fault of declaring itself and thus coming to an end too early in the book it tells her ancient lover that she did forge the will the plot of Orly Farm has unraveled itself and this she does in the middle of the tale independently however of this the novel is good Sir Peregrine Orm his grandson Madeline Stavely Mr. Furnival Mr. Chaffenbrass and the commercial gentlemen are all good the hunting is good the lawyer's talk is good and Mr. Kentwise sells his tables and chairs with spirit I do not know that there is a dull page in the book I'm fond of Orly Farm and I'm especially fond of its illustrations by Millet which are the best I have seen in any novel in any language I now felt that I had gained my object in 1862 I had achieved that which I contemplated when I went to London in 1834 and towards which I made my first attempt I began the McDermids in 1843 I had created for myself a position among literary men and had secured to myself an income on which I might live in ease and comfort which ease and comfort have been made to include many luxuries from this time for a period of 12 years my income averaged 4,500 pounds a year of this I spent about two thirds and put by one I ought perhaps to have done better to have spent one third and put by two but I have ever been too well inclined to spend freely that which has come easily this however has been so exactly the life which my thoughts and aspirations had marked out thoughts and aspirations which used to cause me to blush with shame because I was so slow in forcing myself to the work which they demanded that I have felt some pride in having attained it I have before said how entirely I failed to reach the altitude of those who think that a man devoted to letters should be indifferent to the pecuniary results for which work is generally done an easy income has always been regarded by me as a great blessing not to have to think of six pence or very much of shillings not to be unhappy because the coals have been burned too quickly and the house linen wants renewing not to be hard by the rigor of necessity from opening one's hands perhaps foolishly to one's friends all this to me has been essential to the comfort of life I have enjoyed the comfort for I may almost say the last 20 years though no man in his youth had less prospect of doing so or would have been less likely at 25 to have had such luxuries for told to him by his friends but though the money has been sweet the respect, the friendships and the mode of life which has been achieved have been much sweeter in my boyhood when I would be crawling up to school with dirty boots and trousers through the muddy lanes I was always telling myself that the misery of the hour was not the worst of it but that the mud and solitude and poverty of the time would ensure me mud and solitude and poverty throughout my life those lads about me would go into parliament or become rectors and deans or squires of parishes or advocates thundering at the bar they would not live with me now but neither should I be able to live with them in after years nevertheless I have lived with them when at the age in which others go to the universities I became a clerk in the post office I felt that my old visions were being realized I did not think at a high calling I did not know then how very much good work may be done by a member of the civil service who will show himself capable of doing it the post office at last grew upon me and forced itself into my affections I became intensely anxious that people should have their letters delivered to them punctually but my hope to rise had always been built on the writing of novels and at last by the writing of novels I had risen that I ever totied anyone or that I have acquired the character of a tough hunter but here I do not scruple to say that I prefer the society of distinguished people and that even the distinction of wealth confers many advantages the best education is to be had at a price as well as the best broadcloth the son of a peer is more likely to rub his shoulders against well informed men than the son of a tradesman the graces come easier to the wife of him who has had great-grandfathers than they do to her whose husband has been less or more fortunate as he may think it the discerning man will recognize the information in the graces when they are achieved without such assistance and will honor the owners of them the more because of the difficulties they have overcome but the fact remains that the society of the well-born and of the wealthy will as a rule be worth seeking I say this now because these are the rules by which I have lived and these are the causes which have instigated me to work I have heard the question argued on what terms should a man of inferior rank live with those who are manifestly superior to him if a marquis or an earl honor me who have no rank with his intimacy am I in my intercourse with him to remember our close acquaintance or his high rank I have always said that where the difference in position is quite marked the overtures to intimacy should always come from the higher rank but if the intimacy be ever fixed then that rank should be held of no account it seems to me that intimate friendship admits of no standing but that of equality I cannot be the sovereign's friend nor probably the friend of many very much beneath the sovereign because such equality is impossible when I first came to Weldon Cross in the winter of 1859, 1860 I had almost made up my mind that hunting was over I could not then count upon an income which would enable me to carry on an amusement which I should doubtless find much more expensive in England than in Ireland I brought with me out of Ireland one mare but she was too light for me to ride in the hunting field as however the money came in I very quickly fell back into my old habits first one horse was bought then another and then a third till it became established as a fixed rule that I should not have less than four hunters in this table sometimes when my boys have been at home I have had as many as six Essex was the chief scene of my sport and gradually I became known there almost as well as though I had been the sixth squire to the matter born few have investigated more closely than I have done the depth and breadth and water holding capacities of an Essex ditch it will I think be accorded to me by Essex men generally that I have ridden hard the cause of my delight in the amusement I have never been able to analyze to my own satisfaction in the first place even now I know very little about hunting much of the accessories on the field I'm too blind to see hounds turning and cannot therefore tell whether the fox has gone this way or that indeed all the notice I take of hounds is not to ride over them my eyes are so constituted that I can never see the nature of a fence I either follow someone or ride at it with the full conviction that I may be going into a horse pond or a gravel pit I have jumped into both one and the other I'm very heavy and have never ridden expensive horses I'm also now old for such work being so stiff that I cannot get on to my horse without the aid of a block or a bank but I ride still after the same fashion with a boy's energy determined to get ahead if it may possibly be done hating the roads despising young men who ride them and with a feeling that life cannot with all her riches have given me anything better than when I have gone through a long run to the finish keeping a place not of glory but of credit among my juniors End of Chapter 9 Recording by Jessica Louise, St. Paul, Minnesota