 Chapter 4 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. Chapter 4. Ireland. My first two novels. 1841 to 1848. In the preceding pages I have given a short record of the first 26 years of my life. Years of suffering, disgrace, and inward remorse. I fear that my mode of telling will have left an idea simply of their absurdities, but in truth I was wretched, sometimes almost unto death, and have often cursed the hour in which I was born. There had clung to me a feeling that I had been looked upon always as an evil and encumbrance, a useless thing, as a creature of whom those connected with him had to be ashamed. And I feel certain now that in my young days I was so regarded. Even my few friends who had found with me a certain capacity for enjoyment were half afraid of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved, of a strong wish to be popular with my associates. No child, no boy, no lad, no young man had ever been less so. And I had been so poor and so little able to bear poverty. But from the day on which I set my foot in Ireland all these evils went away from me. Since that time who has had a happier life than mine? Looking round upon all those I know I cannot put my hand upon one. But all is not over yet, and mindful of that remembering how great is the agony of adversity, how crushing the despondency of degradation, how susceptible I am myself to the misery coming from contempt, remembering also how quickly good things may go and evil things come. I am often again tempted to hope, almost to pray, that the end may be near. Things may be going well now. Sin alequem infandom casum fortuna minaris nunc o nunc liqueat crudelum abrum pere vitam. There is unhappiness so great that the very fear of it is an alloy to happiness. I had then lost my father and sister and brother, have since lost another sister and my mother, but I have never as yet lost a wife or a child. When I told my friends that I was going on this mission to Ireland, they shook their heads, but said nothing to dissuade me. I think it must have been evident to all who were my friends that my life in London was not a success. My mother and elder brother were at this time abroad and were not consulted, did not even know my intention in time to protest against it. Indeed I consulted no one except a dear old cousin, our family lawyer, from whom I borrowed two hundred pounds to help me out of England. He lent me the money and looked upon me with pitying eyes, shaking his head. After all you were right to go, he said to me when I paid him the money a few years afterwards. But nobody then thought I was right to go. To become clerk to an Irish surveyor in Connacht with a salary of a hundred pounds a year at twenty-six years of age. I did not think it right even myself except that anything was right which would take me away from the general post office and from London. My ideas of the duties I was to perform were very vague, as were also my ideas of Ireland generally. Hitherto I had passed my time seated at a desk, either writing letters myself or copying into books those which others had written. I had never been called upon to do anything I was unable or unfitted to do. I now understood that in Ireland I was to be a deputy inspector of country post offices and that among other things to be inspected would be the postmaster's accounts. But as no other person asked a question as to my fitness for this work it seemed unnecessary for me to do so. On the fifteenth of September, 1841, I landed in Dublin without an acquaintance in the country and with only two or three letters of introduction from a brother clerk in the post office. I had learned to think that Ireland was a land flowing with fun and whiskey in which irregularity was the rule of life and where broken hands were looked upon as honourable badges. I was to live at a place called Banneher on the Shannon, which I had heard of because of its having once been conquered, though it had heretofore conquered everything including the devil. And from Banneher my inspecting tours were to be made chiefly into Connott but also over a strip of country eastwards, which would enable me occasionally to run up to Dublin. I went to a hotel which was very dirty and after dinner I ordered some whiskey punch. There was an excitement in this, but when the punch was gone I was very dull. It seemed so strange to be in a country in which there was not a single individual whom I had ever spoken to or even seen. And it was to be my destiny to go down into Connott and adjust accounts, the destiny of me who had never learned the multiplication table or done a sum in long division. On the next morning I called on the secretary of the Irish post office and learned from him that Colonel Maverly had sent a very bad character with me. He could not have sent a very good one, but I felt a little hurt when I was informed by this new master that he had been informed that I was worthless and must in all probability be dismissed. But, said the new master, I shall judge you by your own merits. From that time to the day on which I left the service I never heard a word of censure, nor had many months passed before I found that my services were valued. Before a year was over I had acquired the character of a thoroughly good public servant. The time went very pleasantly. Some adventures I had, two of which I told in the tales of all countries under the names of the O'Connor's of Castle Connor and Father Giles of Ballymoy. I will not swear to every detail in these stories, but the main purport of each is true. I could tell many others of the same nature were this the place for them. I found that the surveyor to whom I had been sent kept a pack of hounds and therefore I bought a hunter. I did not think he liked it, but he could not well complain. He never rode to hounds himself, but I did, and then and thus began one of the great joys of my life. I have ever since been constant to the sport, having learned to love it with an affection which I cannot myself fathom or understand. Surely no man has labored at it as I have done, or hunted under such drawbacks as to distances, money, and natural disadvantages. I'm very heavy, very blind, have been, in reference to hunting, a poor man, and am now an old man. I have often had to travel all night outside a male coach in order that I might hunt the next day, nor have I ever been in truth a good horseman, and I have passed the greater part of my hunting life under the discipline of the civil service. But it has been for more than thirty years a duty to me to ride to hounds, and I have performed that duty with a persistent energy. Nothing has ever been allowed to stand in the way of hunting, neither the writing of books, nor the work of the post office, nor other pleasures. As regarded the post office, it soon seemed to be understood that I was to hunt, and when my services were retransferred to England, no word of difficulty ever reached me about it. I have written on very many subjects, and on most of them with pleasure, but on no subject with such delight as that on hunting. I have dragged it into many novels, into too many no doubt, but I have always felt myself deprived of a legitimate joy when the nature of the tale has not allowed me a hunting chapter. Perhaps that which gave me the greatest delight was the description of a run on a horse accidentally taken from another sportsman, a circumstance which occurred to my dear friend Charles Buxton, who will be remembered as one of the members for Surrey. It was altogether a very jolly life that I led in Ireland. I was always moving about and soon found myself to be in pecuniary circumstances which were opulent in comparison with those of my past life. The Irish people did not murder me, nor did they even break my head. I soon found them to be good-humored, clever, the working class is very much more intelligent than those of England, economical and hospitable. We hear much of their spendthrift nature, but extravagance is not the nature of an Irishman. He will count the shillings in a pound much more accurately than an Englishman, and will, with much more certainty, get twelve penny-worth from each. But they are perverse, irrational and but little bound by the love of truth. I lived for many years among them, not finally leaving the country until 1859, and I had the means of studying their character. I had not been a fortnight in Ireland before I was to be sent down to a little town in the far west of County Galway to balance a defaulting postmaster's accounts, find out how much he owed, and report upon his capacity to pay. In these days such accounts are very simple. They adjust themselves from day to day, and a post office surveyor has nothing to do with them. At that time, though the sums dealt with were small, the forms of dealing with them were very intricate. I went to work, however, and made that defaulting postmaster teach me the use of those forms. I then succeeded in balancing the account and had no difficulty whatever in reporting that he was altogether unable to pay his debt. Of course he was dismissed, but he had been a very useful man to me. I never had any further difficulty in the matter. But my chief work was the investigating of complaints made by the public as to postal matters. The practice of the office was and is to send one of its servants to the spot to see the complainant and to inquire into the facts when the complainant is sufficiently energetic or sufficiently big to make himself well-heard. A great expense is often incurred for a very small object, but the system works well on the whole as confidence is engendered and a feeling is produced in the country that the department has eyes of its own and does keep them open. This employment was very pleasant, and to me always easy as it required at its close no more than the writing of a report. There were no accounts in this business, no keeping of books, no necessary manipulation of multitudinous forms. I must tell of one such complaint and inquiry, because in its result I think it was emblematic of many. A gentleman in County Kevan had complained most bitterly of the injury done to him by some arrangement of the post office. The nature of his grievance has no present significance, but it was so unendurable that he had written many letters couched in the strongest language. He was most irate and indulged himself in that scorn which is easy to an angry mind. The place was not in my district, but I was borrowed being young and strong that I might remember the edge of his personal wrath. It was midwinter, and I drove up to his house, a squire's country seat, in the middle of a snowstorm just as it was becoming dark. I was on an open, junting car, and was on my way from one little town to another, the cause of his complaint having referenced to some male conveyance between the two. I was certainly very cold and very wet, and very uncomfortable when I entered his house. I was admitted by a butler, but the gentleman himself hurried into the hall. I at once began to explain my business. God bless me, he said. You are wet through. John, get Mr. Trollope some brandy and water, very hot. I was beginning my story about the post again when he himself took off my great coat and suggested that I should go up to my bedroom before I troubled myself with business. Bedroom, I exclaimed. Then he assured me that he would not turn a dog out on such a night as that, and into a bedroom I was shown, having first drank the brandy and water standing at the drawing room fire. When I came down I was introduced to his daughter, and the three of us went in to dinner. I shall never forget his righteous indignation when I again brought up the postal question on the departure of the young lady. Was I such a goth as to contaminate wine with business? So I drank my wine, and then heard the young lady sing while her father slept in his armchair. I spent a very pleasant evening, but my host was too sleepy to hear anything about the post office that night. It was absolutely necessary that I should go away the next morning after breakfast, and I explained that the matter must be discussed then. He shook his head and wrung his hands in unmistakable disgust, almost in despair. But what am I to say in my report, I asked. Anything you please, he said. Don't spare me if you want an excuse for yourself. Here I sit all the day with nothing to do when I like writing letters. I did report that Mr. Blank was now quite satisfied with the postal arrangement of his district, and I felt a soft regret that I should have robbed my friend of his occupation. Perhaps he was able to take up the poor law board, or to attack the excise. At the post office, nothing more was heard from him. I went on with the hunting surveyor at Bannehar for three years, during which at Kingston, the watering place near Dublin, I met Rose Heseltine, the lady who has since become my wife. The engagement took place when I had been just one year in Ireland, but there was still a delay of two years before we could be married. She had no fortune, nor had I any income beyond that which came from the post office, and there were still a few debts, which would have been paid off no doubt sooner, but for that purchase of the horse. When I had been nearly three years in Ireland, we were married on the 11th of June, 1844, and perhaps I ought to name that happy day as the commencement of my better life, rather than the day on which I first landed in Ireland. For though during these three years I had been jolly enough, I had not been altogether happy. The hunting, the whiskey punch, the rattling Irish life, of which I could write a volume of stories where this the place to tell them, were continually driving from my mind the still cherished determination to become a writer of novels. When I reached Ireland I had never put pen to paper, nor had I done so when I became engaged, and when I was married, being then twenty-nine, I had only written the first volume of my first work. This constant putting off of the day of work was a great sorrow to me. I certainly had not been idle in my new birth. I had learned my work, so that everyone concerned knew that it was safe in my hands, and I held a position altogether the reverse of that in which I was always trembling while I remained in London. But that did not suffice, did not nearly suffice. I still felt that there might be a career before me if I could only bring myself to begin the work. I did not think I much doubted my own intellectual sufficiency for the writing of a readable novel. What I did doubt was my own industry and the chances of the market. The vigor necessary to prosecute two professions at the same time is not given to everyone, and it was only lately that I had found the vigor necessary for one. There must be early hours, and I had not as yet learned to love early hours. I was still indeed a young man, but hardly young enough to trust myself to find the power to alter the habits of my life. And I had heard of the difficulties of publishing, a subject of which I shall have to say much should I ever bring this memoir to a close. I had dealt already with publishers on my mother's behalf, and knew that many a Tyro who could fill a manuscript lacked the power to put his matter before the public. And I knew too that when the matter was printed, how little had then been done towards the winning of the battle. I had already learned that many a book, many a good book, quote, is born to blush on the scene and wasted sweetness on the desert air, unquote. But still the purpose was strong within me, and the first effort was made after the following fashion. I was located at a little town called Drumsna, or rather village, in the county Latrim, where the postmaster had come to some sorrow about his money, and my friend John Maraville was staying with me for a day or two. As we were taking a walk in that most uninteresting country, we turned up through a deserted gateway, along a weedy, grass-grown avenue, till we came to the modern ruins of a country house. It was one of the most melancholy spots I ever visited. I will not describe it here because I have done so in the first chapter of my first novel. We wandered about the place, suggesting to each other causes for the misery we saw there, and while I was still among the ruined walls and decayed beams, I fabricated the plot of the McDermott's of belly chlorine. As to the plot itself, I do not know that I ever made one so good, or at any rate one so susceptible of pathos. I am aware that I broke down in the telling, not having yet studied the art. Nevertheless, the McDermott's is a good novel, and worth reading by anyone who wishes to understand what Irish life was before the potato disease, the famine, and the encumbered estates bill. When my friend left me, I set to work and wrote the first chapter or two. Up to this time, I had continued the practice of castle building, of which I have spoken, but now the castle I built was among the ruins of that old house. The book, however, hung with me. It was only now and then that I found either time or energy for a few pages. I commenced the book in September, 1843, and had only written a volume when I was married in June, 1844. My marriage was like the marriage of other people, and of no special interest to anyone except my wife and me. It took place at Rotherham in Yorkshire, where her father was the manager of a bank. We were not very rich, having about 400 pounds a year on which to live. Many people would say that we were two fools to encounter such poverty together. I can only reply that since that day I have never been without money in my pocket, and that I soon acquired the means of paying what I owed. Nevertheless, more than 12 years had to pass over our heads before I received any payment for any literary work which afforded an appreciable increase to our income. Immediately after our marriage, I left the west of Ireland in the hunting surveyor and joined another in the south. It was a better district, and I was enabled to live at Clonmel, a town of some importance, instead of at Banagher, which is little more than a village. I had not felt myself to be comfortable in my old residence as a married man. On my arrival there as a bachelor I had been received most kindly, and when I brought my English wife I fancied that there was a feeling that I had behaved badly to Ireland generally. When a young man has been received hospitably in an Irish circle, I will not say that it is expected of him that he should marry some young lady in that society, but it certainly is expected of him that he shall not marry any young lady out of it. I had given a fence and I was made to feel it. There has taken place a great change in Ireland since the days in which I lived at Banagher, and a change so much for the better that I have sometimes wondered at the obduracy with which people have spoken of the permanent ill condition of the country. Wages are now nearly double what they were then. The post office at any rate is paying almost double for a tomorrow labour. Nine shillings a week when it used to pay five shillings, and twelve shillings a week when it used to pay seven shillings. Banks have sprung up in almost every village. Rents are paid with more than English punctuality. And the religious enmity between the classes, though it is not yet dead, is dying out. Soon after I reached Banagher in 1841, I dined one evening with a Roman Catholic. I was informed next day by a Protestant gentleman who had been very hospitable to me that I must choose my party. I could not sit both at Protestant and Catholic tables. Such a caution would now be impossible in any part of Ireland. Home rule no doubt is a nuisance, and especially a nuisance because the professors of the doctrine do not at all believe in it themselves. There are probably no other twenty men in England or Ireland who would be so utterly dumbfounded and prostrated where home rule to have its way as the twenty Irish members who profess to support it in the House of Commons. But it is not to be expected that nuisances such as these should be abolished at a blow. Home rule is at any rate better and more easily managed to them than rebellion at the close of the last century. It is better than the treachery of the Union, less troublesome than O'Connell's monster meetings, less dangerous than Smith O'Brien in the Battle of the Cabbage Garden at Balangari, and very much less bloody than Fenianism. The descent from O'Connell to Mr. Butt has been the natural declension of a political disease, which we had no right to hope would be cured by any one remedy. When I had been married a year, my first novel was finished. In July 1845, I took it with me to the north of England and entrusted the manuscript to my mother to do with it the best she could among the publishers in London. No one had read it but my wife, nor, as far as I'm aware, has any other friend of mine ever read a word of my writing before it was printed. She, I think, has so read almost everything, to my very great advantage in matters of taste. I'm sure I have never asked a friend to read a line, nor have I ever read a word of my own writing aloud, even to her. With one exception, which shall be mentioned as I come to it, I have never consulted a friend as to a plot or spoken to any one of the work I have been doing. My first manuscript I gave up to my mother, agreeing with her that it would be as well that she should not look at it before she gave it to a publisher. I knew that she did not give me credit for the sort of cleverness necessary for such work. I could see it in the faces and hear in the voices of those of my friends who were around me at the house in Cumberland, my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and I think my brother, that they had not expected me to come out as one of the family authors. There were three or four in the field before me, and it seemed to be almost absurd that another should wish to add himself to the number. My father had written much, those long ecclesiastical descriptions, quite unsuccessfully. My mother had become one of the popular authors of the day. My brother had commenced and had been fairly well paid for his work. My sister, Mrs. Tilly, had also written a novel, which was at the time in manuscript, which was published afterwards without her name, and it was called Collerton. I could perceive that this attempt of mine was felt to be an unfortunate aggravation of the disease. My mother, however, did the best she could for me, and soon reported that Mr. Newby of Mortimer Street was to publish the book. It was to be printed as his expense, and he was to give me half the profits. Half the profits! Many a young author expects much from such an undertaking. I can, with truth, declare that I expected nothing. And I got nothing. Nor did I expect fame or even acknowledgement. I was sure that the book would fail, and it did fail most absolutely. I never heard of a person reading it in those days. If there was any notice taken of it by any critic of the day, I did not see it. I never asked any questions about it, or wrote a single letter on the subject to the publisher. I have Mr. Newby's agreement with me, in duplicate, and one or two preliminary notes, but beyond that I did not have a word for Mr. Newby. I am sure that he did not wrong me and that he paid me nothing. It is probable that he did not sell fifty copies of the work. Of what he did sell, he gave me no account. I do not remember that I felt in any way disappointed or hurt. I am quite sure that no word of complaint passed my lips. I think I may say that after the publication I never said a word about the book, even to my wife. The fact that I had written and published it and that I was writing another did not in the least interfere with my life or with my determination to make the best I could of the post office. In Ireland I think that no one knew that I had written a novel. But I went on writing. The McDermott's was published in 1847 and the Kellys and the O. Kellys followed in 1848. I changed my publisher, but did not change my fortune. This second Irish story was sent into the world by Mr. Colburn, who had long been my mother's publisher, who reigned in Great Marlborough Street and I believe created the business which is now carried on by Mr. Hurston Blackett. He had previously been in partnership with Mr. Bentley in New Burlington Street. I made the same agreement as before as to half-profits and with precisely the same results. The book was not only not read but was never heard of at any rate in Ireland. And yet it is a good Irish story, much inferior to the McDermott's as to plot but superior in the mode of telling. Again I held my tongue and not only said nothing but felt nothing. Any success would I think have carried me off my legs but I was altogether prepared for failure. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the writing of these books I did not imagine when the time came for publishing them that anyone would condescend to read them. But in reference to the O'Kelly's there arose a circumstance which set my mind to work on a subject which has exercised it much ever since. I made my first acquaintance with criticism. A dear friend of mine to whom the book had been sent, as have all my books, wrote me word to Ireland that he had been dining at some club with the man high in authority among the gods of the Times newspaper and that this special god had almost promised that the O'Kelly's should be noticed in that most influential of organs. The information moved me very much but it set me thinking whether the notice should it even appear would not have been more valuable at any rate, more honest if it had been produced by other means. If for instance the writer of the notice had been instigated by the merits or demerits of the book instead of by the friendship of a friend. And I made up my mind then that should I continue this trade of authorship I would have no dealings with any critic on my own behalf. I would neither ask for nor deplore criticism, nor would I ever thank a critic for praise or quarrel with them even in my own heart for censure. To this rule I have adhered with absolute strictness and this rule I would recommend to all young authors. What can be got by touting among the critics is never worth the ignominy. The same may of course be said of all things acquired by ignominious means. But in this matter it is so easy to fall into the dirt. There seems to be but little fault in suggesting to a friend that a few words in this or that journal would be of service But any praise so obtained must be an injustice to the public for whose instruction and not for the sustentation of the author such notices are intended. And from such mild suggestion the dissent to crawling at the critic's feet to the sending of presence and at last to a mutual understanding between critics and criticised is only too easy. Other evils follow for the denouncing of which this is hardly the place though I trust I may find such place before my work is finished. I took no notice of my friend's letter but I was not the less careful in watching the times. At last the review came, a real review in the times. I learned it by heart and can now give if not the words the exact purport. Of the Kellys and the O. Kellys we may say what the master said to his footmen when the man complained of the constant supply of legs of mutton on the kitchen table. Well John legs of mutton are good substantial food. And we may say also what John replied. Substantial sir yes they are substantial but a little coarse. That was the review and even that did not sell the book. From Mr. Colburn I did receive an account showing that 375 copies of the book had been printed that 140 had been sold to those I presume who liked substantial food though it was coarse and that he had incurred a loss of 63 pounds, 19 shillings, one and a half pence. The truth of the account I never for a moment doubted nor did I doubt the wisdom of the advice given to me in the following letter though I never thought of obeying it. My dear sir I am sorry to say that absence from town and other circumstances have prevented me from earlier inquiring into the results of the sale of the Kellys and the O. Kellys with which the greatest efforts have been used but in vain. The sale has been, I regret to say, so small that the loss upon the publication is very considerable and it appears clear to me that although in consequence of the great number of novels that are published the sale of each with some few exceptions must be small yet it is evident that readers do not like novels on Irish subjects as well as on others. Thus you will perceive it is impossible for me to give any encouragement to you to proceed in novel writing. As however I understand you have nearly finished the novel Lavendee perhaps you will favour me with the sight of it when convenient. I remain etc. etc. H. Colburn. This, though not strictly logical, was a rational letter telling a plain truth plainly. I did not like the assurance that the greatest efforts had been used thinking that any efforts which might be made for the popularity of a book ought to have come from the author but I took in good part Mr. Colburn's assurance that he could not encourage me in the career I had commenced. I would have bet twenty to one against my own success but by continuing I could lose only pen and paper and if the one chance in twenty did turn up in my favour then how much might I win? End of Chapter 4 Recording by Jessica Louise, St. Paul, Minnesota Chapter 5 of The Autobiography of Anthony Trollop This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Autobiography of Anthony Trollop Chapter 5 My First Success 1849-1855 I had at once gone to work on a third novel and had nearly completed it when I was informed of the absolute failure of the former. I find, however, that the agreement for its publication was not made till 1850 by which time I imagine that Mr. Colburn must have forgotten the disastrous result of the O'Kelly's as he thereby agreed to give me twenty pounds down for my new historical novel to be called Love on Day. He agreed also to pay me thirty pounds more when he had sold three hundred fifty copies and fifty pounds more should he sell four hundred fifty within six months. I got my twenty pounds and then heard no more of Love on Day not even receiving any account. Perhaps the historical title had appeared more alluring to him than an Irish subject though it was not long afterwards that I received a warning from the very same house of business against historical novels as I will tell at length when the proper time comes. I have no doubt that the result of the sale of this story was no better than that of the two that had gone before. I asked no questions, however, and to this day have received no information. The story is certainly inferior to those which had gone before chiefly because I knew accurately the life of the people in Ireland and knew in truth nothing of the life in the Love on Day country and also because the facts of the present time came more within the limits of my powers of storytelling than those of past years. But I read the book the other day and I'm not ashamed of it. The conception as to the feeling of the people is, I think, true. The characters are distinct and the tale is not dull. As far as I can remember, this morsel of criticism is the only one that was ever written on the book. I had, however, received twenty pounds. Alas, alas, years were to roll by before I should earn by my pen another shilling and indeed I was well aware that I had not earned that but that the money had been talked out of, the worthy publisher by the earnestness of my brother who made the bargain for me. I have known very much of publishers and have been surprised by much in their mode of business by the apparent lavishness and by the apparent hardness to authors in the same men but by nothing so much as by the ease with which they can occasionally be persuaded to throw away small sums of money. If you will only make the payment future instead of present, you may generally twist a few pounds in your own or your client's favor. You might as well promise her twenty pounds, this day six months will do very well. The publisher, though he knows that the money will never come back to him, thinks it worth his while to rid himself of your importunity at so cheap a price. But while I was writing Lavande, I made a literary attempt in another direction. In 1847 and 1848 there had come upon Ireland the desolation and destruction, first of the famine and then of the pestilence which succeeded the famine. It was my duty at that time to be travelling constantly in those parts of Ireland in which the misery and troubles then arising were perhaps at their worst. The western parts of Cork, Cary and Clare were preeminently unfortunate. The efforts, I may say the successful efforts, made by the government to stay the hands of death will still be in the remembrance of many. How Sir Robert Peel was instigated to repeal the corn laws and how subsequently Lord John Russell took measures for employing the people and supplying the country with Indian corn. The expediency of these latter measures was questioned by many. The people themselves wished, of course, to be fed without working and the gentry who were mainly responsible for the rates were disposed to think that the management of affairs was taken too much out of their own hands. My mind at the time was busy with the matter and thinking that the government was right I was inclined to defend them as far as my small powers went. SGO, Lord Cindy Goodolf and Osborn, was at that time denouncing the Irish scheme of the administration and in the times using very strong language as those who remember his style will know. I fancied then as I still think that I understood the country much better than he did and I was anxious to show that the steps taken for mitigating the terrible evil of the times were the best which the minister of the day could have adopted. In 1848 I was in London and full of my purpose I presented myself to Mr. John Forster who has since been an intimate and valued friend but who was at that time the editor of the examiner. I think that that portion of the literary world which understands the fabrication of newspapers will admit that neither before his time nor since has there been a more capable editor of a weekly newspaper. As a literary man he was not without his faults. That which the cab man is reported to have said of him before the magistrate is quite true. He was always, quote, an arbitrary cove, unquote. As a critic he belonged to the school of Bentley and Gifford who would always bray in a literary mortar all critics who disagreed from them as though such disagreement were a personal offense requiring personal castigation. But that very eagerness made him a good editor. Into whatever he did he put his very heart and soul. During his time the examiner was almost all that a liberal weekly paper should be. So to John Forster I went and was shown into that room in Lincoln's infields in which some three or four years earlier Dickens had given that reading of which there is an illustration with portraits in the second volume of his life. At this time I knew no literary men. A few I had met when living with my mother but that had been now so long ago that all such acquaintance had died out. I were as far as a man could get such knowledge from the papers of the day and felt myself as in part belonging to the guild, through my mother and in some degree by my own unsuccessful efforts. But it was not probable that anyone would admit my claim. Nor on this occasion did I make any claim. I stated my name in official position and the fact that opportunities had been given me of seeing the poor houses in Ireland and of making myself acquainted with the circumstances at the time. Would a series of letters on the subject be accepted by the examiner? The great man, who loomed very large to me, was pleased to say that if the letters should recommend themselves by their style and matter, if they were not too long and if every reader will know how on such occasions an editor will guard himself, if this and if that, they should be favourably entertained. They were favourably entertained, if printing and publication be favourable entertainment, but I heard no more of them. The world in Ireland did not declare that the government had at last been adequately defended, nor the treasurer of the examiner send me a check in return. Whether there ought to have been a check, I do not even yet know. A man who writes a single letter to a newspaper, of course, has not paid for it, nor for any number of letters on some point personal to himself. I have since written sets of letters to newspapers and have been paid for them, but then I have bargained for a price. On this occasion I had hopes, but they never ran high, and I was not much disappointed. I have no copy now of those letters and could not refer to them without much trouble, nor do I remember what I said, but I know that I did my best in writing them. When my historical novel failed as completely as had its predecessors, the two Irish novels, I began to ask myself whether, after all, that was my proper line. I had never thought of questioning the justice of the verdict expressed against me, the idea that I was the unfortunate owner of unappreciated genius never troubled me. I did not look at the books after they were published, feeling sure that they had been, as it were, damned with good reason. But still I was clear in my mind that I would not lay down my pen. Then and therefore I determined to change my hand and to attempt a play. I did attempt the play, and in 1850 I wrote a comedy, partly in blank verse and partly in prose, called The Noble Jilt. The plot I afterwards used in a novel called Can You Forgive Her. I believe that I did give the best of my intellect to the play, and I must own that when it was completed it pleased me much. I copied it and recopied it, touching it here and touching it there, and then sent it to my very old friend, George Bartley, the actor, who had, when I was in London, been stage manager of one of the great theatres, and who would, I thought, for my own sake and for my mother's, give me the full benefit of his professional experience. I have now before me the letter which he wrote to me, the letter which I have read a score of times. It was altogether condemnatory. When I commenced, he said, I had great hopes of your production. I did not think it opened dramatically, but that might have been remedied. I knew then that it was all over, but as my old friend warmed to the subject, the criticism became stronger and stronger till my ears tingled. At last came the fatal blow. As to the character of your heroine, I felt at a loss how to describe it, but you have done it for me in the last speech of Madame Bruto. Madame Bruto was the heroine's aunt. Margaret, my child, never play the jilt again to the most unbecoming character. Play it with what skill you will, it meets but little sympathy. And this, be assured, would be its effect upon an audience, so that I must reluctantly add that had I been still a manager, the noble jilt is not a play I could have recommended for production. This was a blow that I did feel. The neglect of a book is a disagreeable fact which grows upon an author by degrees. There is no special moment of agony, no stunning violence of condemnation, but a piece of criticism such as this, from a friend and from a man undoubtedly capable of forming an opinion, was a blow in the face. But I accepted the judgment loyally and said not a word on the subject to anyone. I merely showed the letter to my wife, declaring my conviction that it must be taken as gospel. And as critical gospel it has since been accepted. In later days I have more than once read the play, and I know that he was right. The dialogue, however, I think to be good, and I doubt whether some of the scenes be not the brightest and the best work I ever did. Just at this time another literary project loomed before my eyes, and for six or eight months had considerable size. I was introduced to Mr. John Murray and proposed to him to write a handbook for Ireland. I explained to him that I knew the country better than most other people, perhaps better than any other person, and could do it well. He asked me to make a trial of my skill and to send him a certain number of pages, undertaking to give me an answer within a fortnight after he should have received my work. I came back to Ireland and for some weeks I labored very hard. I did the city of Dublin and the county of Cary, in which lies the lake scenery of Calarney, and I did the route from Dublin to Calarney, altogether completing nearly a quarter of the proposed volume. The roll of manuscript was sent to Albemarle Street, but was never opened. At the expiration of nine months from the date on which it reached that time-honored spot, it was returned without a word, in answer to a very angry letter from myself. I insisted on having back my property, and got it. I need hardly say that my property has never been of the slightest use to me. In all honesty, I think that, had he been less dilatory, John Murray would have got a very good Irish guide at a cheap rate. Early in 1851 I was sent upon a job of special official work, which for two years so completely absorbed my time that I was able to write nothing. A plan was formed for extending the rural delivery of letters, and for adjusting the work which up to that time had been done in a very irregular manner. A country letter carrier would be sent in one direction, in which there were but few letters to be delivered. The arrangement having originated probably at the request of some influential person, while in another direction there was no letter carrier because no influential person had exerted himself. It was intended to set this right throughout England, Ireland and Scotland, and I quickly did the work in the Irish district to which I was attached. I was then invited to do the same in a portion of England, and I spent two of the happiest years of my life at the task. I began in Devonshire, and visited I think I may say every nook in that county. In Cornwall, Somersetshire, the greater part of Dorsetshire, the Channel Islands, part of Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, and the six southern Welsh counties. In this way I had an opportunity of seeing a considerable portion of Great Britain, with my newtness which few have enjoyed, and I did my business after a fashion in which no other official man has worked at least for many years. I went almost everywhere on horseback. I had two hunters of my own, and here and there, where I could, I hired a third horse. I had an Irish groom with me, an old man who has now been in my service for 35 years, and in this manner I saw almost every house. I think I may say every house of importance in this large district. The object was to create a postal network which should catch all recipients of letters. In France it was, and I suppose still is, the practice to deliver every letter. Wherever the man may live to whom a letter is addressed it is the duty of some letter carrier to take that letter to his house sooner or later. But this of course must be done slowly. With us a delivery much delayed was thought to be worse than none at all. In some places we did establish posts three times a week, and perhaps occasionally twice a week, but such halting arrangements were considered to be objectionable, and we were bound down by a salutary law as to expense, which came from our masters at the treasury. We were not allowed to establish any messenger's walk on which a sufficient number of letters would not be delivered to pay the man's wages, counted at a half penny a letter. But then the counting was in our own hands, and an enterprising official might be sanguine in his figures. I think I was sanguine. I did not prepare false accounts, but I fear that the postmasters and clerks who absolutely had the country to do became aware that I was anxious for good results. It is amusing to watch how a passion will grow upon a man. During those two years it was the ambition of my life to cover the country with rural letter carriers. I do not remember that in any case a rural post proposed by me was negative by the authorities, but I fear that some of them broke down afterwards as being too poor, or because in my anxiety to include this house and that, I had sent the men too far afield. Our law was that a man should not be required to walk more than sixteen miles a day. Had the work to be done all on a measured road, there would have been no need for doubt as to the distances. But my letter carriers went here and there across the fields. It was my special delight to take them by all shortcuts, and as I measured on horseback the shortcuts which they would have to make on foot, perhaps I was sometimes a little unjust to them. All this I did on horseback, riding on average forty miles a day. I was paid six pence a mile for the distance traveled, and it was necessary that I should at any rate travel enough to pay for my equipage. This I did, and got my hunting out of it also. I was often surprised some small country postmaster who had never seen or heard of me before by coming down upon him at nine in the morning with a red coat and boots and britches and interrogating him as to the disposal of every letter which came into his office. And in the same guise I would ride up to farmhouses or parsonages or other lone residences about the country and ask the people how they got their letters, at what hour and especially whether they were delivered free or at a certain charge. For a habit had crept into use which came to be in my eyes at that time the one sin for which there was no pardon, in accordance with which these rural letter carriers used to charge a penny, a letter, alleging that the house was out of their beat, and that they must be paid for their extra work. I think that I did stamp out that evil. In all these visits I was in truth a beneficent angel to the public, bringing everywhere with me an earlier, cheaper, and much more regular delivery of letters. But not unfrequently the angelic nature of my mission was imperfectly understood. I was perhaps a little in a hurry to get on and did not allow as much time as was necessary to explain to the wandering mistress of the house or to an open mouthed farmer why it was that a man arrayed for hunting asked so many questions which might be considered impertinent as applying to his or her private affairs. Good morning, sir. I have just called to ask a few questions. I'm Saraya of the post office. How do you get your letters? As I am in a little hurry, perhaps you can explain it once. Then I would take out my pencil and notebook and wait for information. And in fact there was no other way in which the truth could be ascertained. Unless I came down suddenly as a summer storm upon them the very people who were robbed by our messengers would not confess the robbery fearing the ill will of the men. It was necessary to startle them into the revelations which I required them to make for their own good. And I did startle them. I became thoroughly used to it and soon lost by native bashfulness but sometimes my visits astonished the retiring inhabitants of country houses. I did however do my work and can look back upon what I did with thorough satisfaction. I was altogether in earnest and I believe that many a farmer now has his letters brought daily to his house free of charge. Who but for me would still have had to send to the post town for them twice a week or to have paid a man for bringing them irregularly to his door. This work took up my time so completely and entailed upon me so great an amount of writing that I was in fact unable to do any literary work. From day to day I thought of it still purporting to make another effort and often turning over in my head some fragment of a plot which had occurred to me. But the day did not come in which I could sit down with my pen and paper and begin another novel. For after all what could it be but a novel? The play had failed more absolutely than the novels for the novels had attained the honor of print. The cause of this pressure of official work lay not in the demands of the general post office which more than once expressed itself as astonished by my celerity. But in the necessity which was incumbent on me to travel miles enough to pay for my horses and upon the amount of correspondence, returns, figures and reports which such an amount of daily traveling brought with it. I may boast that the work was done very quickly and very thoroughly with no fault but an over eagerness to extend postal arrangements far and wide. In the course of the job I visited Salisbury and whilst wandering there one mid-summer evening round the Perlew's of the Cathedral I conceived the story of the Warden. From whence came that series of novels of which Barchester, with its bishops, deans and archdeacons, was the central site. I may as well declare at once that no one at their commencement could have had less reason than myself to presume himself to be able to write about clergymen. I have been often asked in what period of my early life I had lived so long in a cathedral city as to have become intimate with the ways of a close. I never lived in any cathedral city except London, never knew anything of any close, and at that time had enjoyed no peculiar intimacy with any clergymen. My Archdeacon, who has been said to be lifelike and for whom I confess that I have all a parent's fond affection, was I think the simple result of an effort of my moral consciousness. It was such as that in my opinion that an Archdeacon should be, or at any rate would be, with such advantages as an Archdeacon might have, and lo, an Archdeacon was produced, who has been declared by competent authorities to be a real Archdeacon down to the very ground. And yet as far as I can remember I had not then even spoken to an Archdeacon. I have felt the compliment to be very great. The Archdeacon came whole from my brain after this fashion, but in writing about clergymen generally I had to pick up as I went whatever I might know or pretend to know about them. But my first idea had no reference to clergymen in general. I had been struck by two opposite evils, or what seemed to me to be evils, and with an absence of all art judgment and such matters I thought that I might be able to expose them, or rather to describe them, both in one and the same tale. The first evil was the possession by the church of certain funds and endowments which had been intended for charitable purposes but which had been allowed to become income for idle church dignitaries. There had been more than one such case brought to public notice at the time in which there seemed to have been an egregious malversation of the charitable purposes. The second evil was its very opposite. Though I had been much struck by the injustice above described, I had also often been angered by the undeserved severity of the newspapers towards the recipients of such incomes, who could hardly be considered to be the chief sinners in the matter. When a man is appointed to a place it is natural that he should accept the income allotted to that place without much inquiry. It is seldom that he will be the first to find out that his services are overpaid. Though he be called upon only to look beautiful and to be dignified upon state occasions, he will think two thousand pounds a year little enough for such beauty and dignity as he brings to the task. I felt that there had been some tearing to pieces which might have been spared. But I was altogether wrong in supposing that the two things could be combined. Any writer in advocating a cause must do so after the fashion of an advocate, or his writing will be ineffective. He should take up one side and cling to that, and then he may be powerful. There should be no scruples of conscience. Such scruples make a man impotent for such work. It was open to me to have described a bloated parson with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every duty required from him and living riotously on funds perloined from the poor, defying as he did so the moderate remonstrances of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet, and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working, ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who without a leg to stand on without any true case might have been induced by personal spite to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous, and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programs recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed. Caricature may too easily become a slander, and satire a libel. I believed in the existence neither of the red-nosed clerical cormorant, nor in that of the venomous assassin of the journals. I did believe that through want of care and the natural tendency of every class to take care of itself, money had slipped into the pockets of certain clergymen which should have gone elsewhere. And I believed also that through the equally natural propensity of men to be as strong as they know how to be, certain writers of the press had allowed themselves to use language which was cruel, though it wasn't a good cause. But the two objects should not have been combined, and I now know myself well enough to be aware that I was not the man to have carried out either of them. Nevertheless, I thought much about it, and on the 29th of July, 1853, having been then two years without having made any literary effort, I began the warden at Tenbury in Worcestershire. It was then more than twelve months since I had stood for an hour on the little bridge in Salisbury and had made out to my own satisfaction the spot on which Hiram's hospital should stand. Certainly no work that I ever did took up so much of my thoughts. On this occasion I did no more than write the first chapter, even if so much. I had determined that my official work should be moderated, so as to allow me some time for writing. But then, just at this time, I was sent to take the postal charge of the northern counties in Ireland, of Ulster and the county's Meath and Luth. Hitherto in official language I had been a surveyor's clerk. Now I was to be a surveyor. The difference consisted mainly in an increase of income from about £450 to about £800, for at that time the sum netted still depended on the number of miles traveled. Of course that English work to which I had become so warmly wedded had to be abandoned. Other parts of England were being done by other men, and I had nearly finished the area which had been entrusted to me. I should have liked to ride over the whole country and to have sent a rural post-letter carrier to every parish, every village, every hamlet and every grange in England. We were at this time very much unsettled as regards any residents. While we were living at Clonmel, two sons had been born who certainly were important enough to have been mentioned sooner. At Clonmel we had lived in lodgings and from there had moved to Mallow, a town in the county Cork, where we had taken a house. Mallow was in the centre of a hunting country and had been very pleasant to me, but our house there had been given up when it was known that I should be detained in England, and then we had wandered about in the western counties, moving our headquarters from one town to another. During this time we had lived at Exeter, at Bristol, at Caremarthen, at Cheltenham and at Worcester. Now we again moved and settled ourselves for 18 months at Belfast. After that we took a house at Donniebrook, the well-known suburb of Dublin. The work of taking up a new district which requires not only that the man doing it should know the nature of the postal arrangements, but also the characters and the peculiarities of the postmasters and their clerks, was too heavy to allow of my going on with my book at once. It was not till the end of 1852 that I recommended it, and it was in the autumn of 1853 that I finished the work. It was only one small volume, and in later days would have been completed in six weeks, or in two months at the longest, if other work had pressed. On looking at the title page I find it was not published till 1855. I had made acquaintance through my friend John Maryville with William Longman, the publisher, and had received from him an assurance that the manuscript should be looked at. It was looked at, and Monsieur Longman made me an offer to publish it at half-profits. I had no reason to love half-profits, but I was very anxious to have my book published, and I acceded. It was now more than ten years since I had commenced writing the McDermott's, and I thought that if any success was to be achieved, the time surely had come. I had not been impatient, but if there was to be a time, surely it had come. The novel reading world did not go mad about the warden, but I soon felt that it had not failed as the others had failed. There were notices of it in the press, and I could discover that people around me knew that I had written a book. Mr. Longman was complimentary, and after a while informed me that there would be profits to divide. At the end of 1855 I received a check for nine pounds, eight shillings, eight pence, which was the first money I had ever earned by literary work, that twenty pounds, which poor Mr. Colburn had been made to pay, certainly never having been earned at all. At the end of 1856 I received another sum of ten pounds, fifteen shillings, one pence. The pecuniary success was not great. Indeed, as regarded renumeration for the time, stone-breaking would have done better. A thousand copies were printed, of which, after a lapse of five or six years, about three hundred had to be converted into another form, and sold as belonging to a cheap addition. In its original form the warden never reached the essential honor of a second addition. I have already said of the work that it failed altogether in the purport for which it was intended, but it has a merit of its own, a merit by my own perception of which I was unable to see wearing lay whatever strength I did possess. The characters of the bishop, of the Archdeacon, of the Archdeacon's wife, and especially of the warden, are well and clearly drawn. I had realized to myself a series of portraits, and had been able so to put them on the canvas that my readers should see that which I meant them to see. There is no gift which an author can have more useful to him than this. And the style of the English was good, though from most unpardonable carelessness the grammar was not unfrequently faulty. With such results I had no doubt but that I would at once begin another novel. I will here say one word as a long deferred answer to an item of criticism which appeared in the Times newspaper as to the warden. In an article, if I remember rightly, on the warden and barchester towers combined, which I would call good-natured, but that I take it for granted that the critics of the Times are actuated by higher motives than good-nature. That little book and its sequel are spoken of in terms which were very pleasant to the author. But there was added to this a gentle word of rebuke at the morbid condition of the author's mind which had prompted him to indulge in personalities. The personalities in question having referenced to some editor or manager of the Times newspaper. For I had introduced one Tom Towers as being potent among the contributors to the Jupiter, under which name I certainly did allude to the Times. But at that time, living away in Ireland, I had not even heard the name of any gentleman connected with the Times newspaper and could not have intended to represent any individual by Tom Towers. As I had created an Archdeacon, so I created a journalist, and the one creation was no more personal or indicative of morbid tendencies than the other. If Tom Towers was at all like any gentleman connected with the Times, my moral consciousness must again have been very powerful. End of Chapter 5 Recording by Jessica Louise, St. Paul, Minnesota Chapter 6 of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollop This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop Barchester Towers and The Three Clerks 1855 to 1858 It was, I think, before I started on my English tours among the rural posts that I made my first attempt at writing for a magazine. I had read, soon after they came out, the two first volumes of Charles Menvale's History of the Romans under the Empire, and had got into some correspondence with the author's brother as to the author's views about Caesar. Hence arose in my mind a tendency to investigate the character of probably the greatest man who ever lived, which tendency in after-years produced a little book of which I shall have to speak when its time comes, and also a taste generally for Latin literature, which has been one of the chief delights of my later life. And I may say that I became at this time as anxious about Caesar and as desirous of reaching the truth as to his character, as we have all been in regard to Bismarck in these latter days. I lived in Caesar and debated with myself constantly whether he crossed the Rubicon as a tyrant or as a patriot. In order that I might review Mr. Meravelle's book without feeling that I was dealing unwarrantably with a subject beyond me, I studied the commentaries thoroughly, and went through a mass of other reading which the object of a magazine article hardly justified, but which has thoroughly justified itself in the subsequent pursuits of my life. I did write two articles, the first mainly on Julius Caesar and the second on Augustus, which appeared in the Dublin University magazine. They were the result of very much labor, but there came from them no pecuniary product. I had been very modest when I sent them to the editor, as I had been when I called on John Forster, not venturing to suggest the subject of money. After a while I did call upon the proprietor of the magazine in Dublin, and was told by him that such articles were generally written to obliged friends, and that articles written to obliged friends were not usually paid for. The Dean of Ely, as the author of the work in question now is, was my friend, but I think I was wronged, as I certainly had no intention of obliging him by my criticism. Afterwards, when I returned to Ireland, I wrote other articles for the same magazine, one of which intended to be very savage in its denunciation, was on an official blue book just then brought out, preparatory to the introduction of competitive examinations for the civil service. For that, and some other article, I now forget what I was paid. Up to the end of 1857, I had received fifty-five pounds for the hard work of ten years. It was while I was engaged on barchester towers that I adopted a system of writing, which, for some years afterwards, I found to be very serviceable to me. My time was greatly occupied in travelling, and the nature of my travelling was now changed. I could not any longer do it on horseback. Railroads afforded me my means of conveyance, and I found that I passed in railway carriages very many hours of my existence. Like others, I used to read, though Carlisle has since told me that a man when travelling should not read, but sit still and label his thoughts. But if I intended to make a profitable business out of my writing, and at the same time to do my best for the post office, I must turn these hours to more account than I could do even by reading. I made for myself, therefore, a little tablet, and found after a few days' exercise that I could write as quickly in a railway carriage as I could at my desk. I worked with a pencil, and what I wrote my wife copied afterwards. In this way was composed the greater part of Barchester Towers, and of the novel which succeeded it, and much also of others subsequent to them. My only objection to the practice came from the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to be subject when going to work before four or five fellow passengers. But I got used to it, as I had done to the amazement of the West Country farmers' wives when asking them after their letters. In the writing of Barchester Towers, I took great delight. The bishop and Mrs. Prudy were very real to me, as were also the troubles of the Archdeacon and the loves of Mr. Slope. When it was done, Mr. W. Longman required that it should be subjected to his reader, and he returned the manuscript to me with a most laborious and voluminous criticism, coming from whom I never knew. This was accompanied by an offer to print the novel on the half-profit system, with a payment of one hundred pounds in advance out of my half-profits, on condition that I would comply with the suggestions made by his critic. One of those suggestions required that I should cut the novel down to two volumes. In my reply I went through the criticisms, rejecting one and accepting another almost alternately, but declaring at last that no consideration should induce me to cut out a third of my work. I'm at a loss to know how such a task could have been performed. I could burn the manuscript, no doubt, and write another book on the same story, but how two words out of six are to be withdrawn from a written novel I cannot conceive. I believe such tasks have been attempted, perhaps performed, but I refuse to make even the attempt. Mr. Longman was too gracious to insist on his critic's terms, and the book was published. Certainly none the worse, and I do not think much the better for the care that had been taken with it. The work succeeded just as the warden had succeeded. It achieved no great reputation, but it was one of the novels which novel readers were called upon to read. Perhaps I may be assuming upon myself more than I have a right to do, in saying now that Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century. But if that be so, its life has been so far prolonged by the vitality of some of its younger brothers. Barchester Towers would hardly be so well known as it is had there been no family parsonage and no last chronicle of Barchet. I received my 100 pounds in advance with profound delight. It was a positive and most welcome increase to my income, and might probably be regarded as a first real step on the road to substantial success. I'm well aware that there are many who think that an author in his authorship should not regard money, nor a painter or sculptor or composer in his art. I do not know that this unnatural sacrifice is supposed to extend itself further. A barrister, a clergyman, a doctor, an engineer, and even actors and architects may without disgrace follow the bent of human nature and endeavor to fill their bellies and clothe their backs, and also those of their wives and children, as comfortably as they can by the exercise of their abilities and their crafts. They may be as rationally realistic as made the butchers and the bakers, but the artist and the author forget the high glories of their calling if they condescend to make a money return a first object. They who preach this doctrine will be much offended by my theory and by this book of mine, if my theory and my book come beneath their notice. They require the practice of a so-called virtue which is contrary to nature and which in my eyes would be no virtue if it were practiced. They are like clergymen who preach sermons against the love of money but who know that the love of money is so distinctive a characteristic of humanity that such sermons are mere platitudes called for by customary but unintelligent piety. All material progress has come from man's desire to do the best he can for himself and those about him, and civilization and Christianity itself have been made possible by such progress. Though we do not all of us argue this matter out within our breasts, we do all feel it, and we know that the more a man earns, the more useful he is to his fellow men. The most useful lawyers as a rule have been those who have made the greatest incomes, and it is the same with the doctors. It would be the same in the church if they who have the choosing of bishops always chose the best man. And it has in truth been so too in art and authorship. Did Titian or Rubens disregard their pecuniary rewards? As far as we know, Shakespeare worked always for money, giving the best of his intellect to support his trade as an actor. In our own century, what literary names stand higher than those of Byron, Tennyson, Scott, Dickens, McCullian, Carlisle? And I think I may say that none of those great men neglected the pecuniary result of their labors. Now and then a man may arise among us who in any calling, whether it be in law, in physics, in religious teaching, in art or literature, may in his professional enthusiasm utterly disregard money. All will honor his enthusiasm, and if he be wifeless and childless, his disregard of the great object of men's work will be blameless. But it is a mistake to suppose that a man is a better man because he despises money. Few do so, and those few in doing so suffer a defeat. Who does not desire to be hospitable to his friends, generous to the poor, liberal to all, munificent to his children, and to be himself free from the casking fear which poverty creates? The subject will not stand an argument, and yet authors are told that they should disregard payment for their work and be content to devote their unbought brains to the welfare of the public. Brains that are unbought will never serve the public much. Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors. I say this here because it is my purpose as I go on to state what to me has been the result of my profession in the ordinary way in which professions are regarded, so that by my example may be seen what prospect there is that a man devoting himself to literature with industry, perseverance, certain necessary aptitudes, and fair average talents may succeed in gaining a livelihood, as another man does in another profession. The result with me has been comfortable but not splendid, as I think was to have been expected from the combination of such gifts. I've certainly always had also before my eyes the charms of reputation. Over and above the money view of the question I wished from the beginning to be something more than a clerk in the post office, to be known as somebody, to be Anthony Trollop if it be no more, is to me much. The feeling is a very general one, and I think beneficent. It is that which has been called the last infirmity of noble mind. The infirmity is so human that the man who lacks it is either above or below humanity. I own to the infirmity, but I confess that my first object in taking to literature as a profession was that which is common to the barrister when he goes to the bar, and to the baker when he sets up his oven. I wished to make an income on which I and those belonging to me might live in comfort. If indeed a man writes his books badly, or paints his pictures badly, because he can make his money faster in that fashion than by doing them well, and at the same time proclaims them to be the best he can do. If in fact he sells shoddy for broadcloth, he is dishonest, as is any other fraudulent dealer. So may be the barrister who takes money that he does not earn, or the clergyman who is content to live on a sinecure. No doubt the artist or the author may have a difficulty which will not occur to the seller of cloth, in settling within himself what is good work and what is bad, when labor enough has been given and when the task has been scamped. It is a danger as to which he is bound to be severe with himself, in which he should feel that his conscience should be set fairly in the balance against the natural bias of his interest. If he do not do so, sooner or later his dishonesty will be discovered, and will be estimated accordingly. But in this he is to be governed only by the plain rules of honesty which should govern us all. Having said so much, I shall not scruple as I go on to attribute to the pecuniary result of my labors all the importance which I felt them to have at the time. Barchester Towers, for which I had received a hundred pounds in advance, sold well enough to bring me further payments, moderate payments, from the publishers. From that day up to this very time in which I am writing, that book and the warden together have given me almost every year some small income. I get the accounts very regularly, and I find that I have received 727 pounds, 11 shillings, 3 pence for the two. It is more than I got for the three or four works that came afterwards, but the payments have been spread over 20 years. When I went to Mr. Longman with my next novel, The Three Clerks, in my hand, I could not induce him to understand that a lump summed down was more pleasant than a deferred annuity. I wished him to buy it from me at a price which he might think to be a fair value, and I argued with him that as soon as an author has put himself into a position which ensures a sufficient sale of his works to give a profit, the publisher is not entitled to expect the half of such proceeds. While there is a pecuniary risk, the whole of which must be borne by the publisher, such division is fair enough. But such a demand on the part of the publisher is monstrous as soon as the article produced is known to be a marketable commodity. I thought that I had now reached that point, but Mr. Longman did not agree with me, and he endeavored to convince me that I might lose more than I gained, even though I should get more money by going elsewhere. It is for you, said he, to think whether our names on your title-page are not worth more to you than the increased payment. This seemed to me to savor of that high-flown doctrine of the contempt of money which I have never admired. I did think much of Mr. Longman's name, but I liked it best at the bottom of a check. I was also scared from the august columns of Paternoster Row by a remark made to myself by one of the firm, which seemed to imply that they did not much care for works of fiction. Speaking of a fertile writer of tales who was not then dead, he declared that, naming the author in question, had spawned upon them, the publishers, three novels a year. Such language is perhaps justifiable in regard to a man who shows so much of the fecundity of the herring, but I did not know how fruitful might be my own muse, and I thought that I had better go elsewhere. I had then written the three clerks, which, when I could not sell it to Mr. Longman, I took in the first instance to Mr. Hearst and Blackett, who had become successors to Mr. Colburn. I had made an appointment with one of the firm, which, however, that gentleman was unable to keep. I was on my way from Ireland to Italy, and had but one day in London in which to dispose of my manuscript. I sat for an hour in Great Marlborough Street, expecting the return of the peckant publisher who had broken his trist, and I was about to depart with my bundle under my arm when the foreman of the house came to me. He seemed to think at a pity that I should go and wished me to leave my work with him. This, however, I would not do, unless he would undertake to buy it then and there. Perhaps he lacked authority. Perhaps his judgment was against such purchase. But while he debated the matter, he gave me some advice. I hope it's not historical, Mr. Trollop. He said, I do don't be historical. Your historical novel is not worth a damn. Thence I took the three clerks to Mr. Bentley, and on the same afternoon succeeded in selling it to him for two hundred fifty pounds. His son still possesses it, and the firm has, I believe, done very well with the purchase. It was certainly the best novel I had as yet written. The plot is not so good as that of the McDermott's, nor are there any characters in the book equal to those of Mrs. Prudy and the Warden, but the work has a more continued interest, and contains the first well-described love scene that I ever wrote. The passage in which Kate Woodward, thinking that she will die, tries to take leave of the lad she loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it. I had not the heart to kill her. I never could do that, and I do not doubt but that they are living happily together to this day. The lawyer Chaffenbrass made his first appearance in this novel, and I do not think that I have caused to be ashamed of him. But this novel now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I introduced a character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by which I intended to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme of competitive examination, of which at that time Sir Charles Trevelyan was the great apostle. Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended for Sir Charles Trevelyan, as anyone at the time would know who had taken an interest in the civil service. We always call him Sir Gregory, Lady Trevelyan said to me afterwards when I came to know her and her husband. I never learned to love competitive examination, but I became, and am, very fond of Sir Charles Trevelyan. Sir Stafford Northoot, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears in the three clerks under the feebly facetious name of Sir Warwick West End. But for all that the three clerks was a good novel. When that sale was made I was on my way to Italy with my wife, paying a third visit there to my mother and brother. This was in 1857, and she had then given up her pen. It was the first year in which she had not written, and she expressed to me her delight that her labours should be at an end, and that mine should be beginning in the same field. In truth they had already been continued for a dozen years, but a man's career will generally be held to date itself from the commencement of a success. On those foreign tours I always encountered adventurers which, as I look back upon them now, tempt me almost to write a little book of my long past, Continental Travels. On this occasion, as we made our way slowly through Switzerland and over the Alps, I encountered again and again a poor, forlorn Englishman, who had no friend and no aptitude for travelling. He was always losing his way, and finding himself with no seat in the coaches and no bed at the inns. On one occasion I found him at Croix, seated at five a.m. in the coupe of a diligence, which was intended to start at noon for the Angadine, while it was his purpose to go over the Alps in another which it was to leave at five thirty, and which was already crowded with passengers. Ah, he said, I'm in time now, and nobody shall turn me out of this seat, alluding to former little misfortunes of which I had been a witness. When I explained to him his position, he was as one to whom life was too bitter to be born. But he made his way into Italy, and encountered me again at the Pt Palace in Florence. Can you tell me something? He said to me in a whisper, having touched my shoulder. The people are so ill-natured, I don't like to ask them. Where isn't they keep the medical venus? I sent him to the Uffizi, but I fear he was disappointed. We ourselves, however, on entering Milan, had been in quite as much distress as any that he suffered. We had not written for beds, and on driving up to a hotel at ten in the evening found it full. Thence we went from one hotel to another, finding them all full. The misery is one well known to travelers, but I never heard of another case in which a man and his wife were told at midnight to get out of the conveyance into the middle of the street because the horse could not be made to go any further. Such was our condition. I induced the driver, however, to go again to the hotel which was nearest to him, and which was kept by a German. Then I bribed the porter to get the master to come down to me, and though my French is ordinarily very defective, I spoke with such eloquence to that German innkeeper that he, throwing his arms around my neck in a transport of compassion, swore that he would never leave me, nor my wife, till he had put us to bed. And he did so, but ah, there were so many in those beds. It is such an experience as this which teaches a traveling foreigner how different on the continent is the accommodation provided for him from that which is supplied for the inhabitants of the country. It was on a previous visit to Milan when the telegraph wires were only just opened to the public by the Austrian authorities that we had decided one day at dinner that we would go to Verona that night. There was a train at six reaching Verona at midnight and we asked some servant of the hotel to telegraph for us ordering supper and beds. The demand seemed to create some surprise, but we persisted and were only mildly grieved when we found ourselves charged Twenties-Wen-Ziggers for the message. Telegraphy was new at Milan, and the prices were intended to be almost prohibitory. We paid our Twenties-Wen-Ziggers and went on, consoling ourselves with the thought of our ready supper and our assured beds. When we reached Verona, there arose a great cry along the platform for senior trollop. I put out my head and declared my identity when I was weighted upon by a glorious personage dressed like a bow for a ball with half a dozen others almost as glorious behind him who informed me with his hat and his hand that he was the landlord of the duetore. It was a heating moment, but it became more hot when he asked after my people, Maison. I could only turn around and point to my wife and brother-in-law. I had no other people. There were three carriages provided for us, each with a pair of gray horses. When we reached the house, it was all lit up. We were not allowed to move without an attendant with a lighted candle. It was only gradually that the mistake came to be understood. On us there was still the horror of the bill, the extent of which could not be known till the hour of departure had come. The landlord, however, had acknowledged to himself that his inductions had been ill-founded, and he treated us with clemency. He had never before received a telegram. I apologize for these tales, which are certainly outside my purpose, and will endeavor to tell no more that shall not have a closer relation to my story. I had finished the three clerks just before I left England, and when in Florence was cuddling my brain for a new plot. Being then with my brother, I asked him to sketch me a plot, and he drew out that of my next novel called Dr. Thorn. I mention this particularly because it was the only occasion in which I have had recourse to some other source than my own brains for the thread of a story. How far I may unconsciously have adopted incidents from what I have read, either from history or from works of imagination, I do not know. It is beyond question that a man employed as I have been must do so. But when doing it, I have not been aware that I have done it. I have never taken at another man's work and deliberately framed my work upon it. I am far from censoring this practice in others. Our greatest masters in works of imagination have obtained such aid for themselves. Shakespeare dug out of such scorries whenever he could find them. Ben Johnson, with heavier hand, built up his structures on his studies of the classics, not thinking it beneath them to give, without direct acknowledgement, whole pieces translated from both poets and historians. But in those days no such acknowledgement was usual. Plagery existed and was very common, but was not known as a sin. It is different now, and I think that an author, when he uses either the words or the plot of another, should own as much, demanding to be credited with no more of the work than he has himself produced. I may say also that I have never printed as my own a word that has been written by others. Footnote. I must make one exception to this declaration. The legal opinion as to heirlooms in the Eustace Diamonds was written for me by Charles Merweather, the present member for Northampton. I'm told that it has become the ruling authority on the subject. It might probably have been better for my readers had I done so, as I am informed that Dr. Thorn, the novel of which I'm now speaking, has a larger sale than any other book of mine. Early in 1858, while I was writing Dr. Thorn, I was asked by the great men at the General Post Office to go to Egypt to make a treaty with the Pasha for the conveyance of our males through that country by railway. There was a treaty in existence but that had reference to the carriage of bags and boxes by camels from Alexandria to Suez. Since its date the railway had grown and was now nearly completed and a new treaty was wanted. So I came over from Dublin to London, on my road, and again went to work among the publishers. The other novel was not finished but I thought I had now progressed far enough to arrange a sale while the work was still on the stocks. I went to Mr. Bentley and demanded four hundred pounds for the copyright. He acceded but came to me the next morning at the General Post Office to say that it could not be. He had gone to work at his figures after I had left him and had found that three hundred pounds would be the outside value of the novel. I was intent upon the larger sum and in furious haste for I had but an hour at my disposal. I rushed to Chapman and Hall in Piccadilly and said what I had to say to Mr. Edward Chapman in a quick torrent of words. They were the first of a great many words which have since been spoken by me in that back shop. Looking at me as he might have done at a highway robber who had stopped him on Hoonslow Heath, he said that he is supposed he might as well do as I desired. I considered this to be a sale and it was a sale. I remember that he held the poker in his hand all the time that I was with him but in truth even though he had declined to buy the book there would have been no danger. End of Chapter 6 Recording by Jessica Louise, St. Paul, Minnesota