Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  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'Conors of Castle Conor, 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 do 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 laboured at it as I

  have done, or hunted under such drawbacks as to distances, money, and

  natural disadvantages. I am 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 mail-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 re-transferred 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-humoured, clever--the

  working classes 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 pennyworth

  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 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 Cavan 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 mid-winter, 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 jaunting

  car, and was on my way from one little town to another, the cause

  of his complaint having reference to some mail 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

  greatcoat, 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; and I like writing letters." I did report that Mr.---- 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 Banagher for three years,

  during which, at Kingstown, 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 whisky punch, the

  rattling Irish life,--of which I could write a volume of stories

  were 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 berth. I had

  learned my work, so that every one 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 do 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 vigour necessary to prosecute two professions at the same time

  is not given to every one, and it was only lately that I had found

  the vigour 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--

  "is born to blush unseen

  And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

  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 Leitrim,

  where the postmaster had come to some sorrow about his money; and

  my friend John Merivale 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 Macdermots

  of Ballycloran. 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 Macdermots is a good novel, and worth

  reading by any one 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 that 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 any one 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 (pounds)400 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 twelve 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 and 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, but 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 offence, 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 its rural labour,--9s. a week

  when it used to pay 5s., and 12s. a week when it used to pay 7s.

  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 it themselves. There are probably

  no other twenty men in England or Ireland who would be so utterly

  dumfounded and prostrated were 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 than the 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 and the battle of the cabbage-garden at Ballingary,

  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 intrusted

  the MS. 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 am 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 am 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.