Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

considered the matter within himself, and has resolved that such

  cruelty is the best mercy. No doubt the chances against literary

  aspirants are very great. It is so easy to aspire,--and to begin!

  A man cannot make a watch or a shoe without a variety of tools and

  many materials. He must also have learned much. But any young lady

  can write a book who has a sufficiency of pens and paper. It can

  be done anywhere; in any clothes--which is a great thing; at any

  hours--to which happy accident in literature I owe my success.

  And the success, when achieved, is so pleasant! The aspirants, of

  course, are very many; and the experienced councillor, when asked

  for his candid judgment as to this or that effort, knows that among

  every hundred efforts there will be ninety-nine failures. Then the

  answer is so ready: "My dear young lady, do darn your stockings;

  it will be for the best." Or perhaps, less tenderly, to the male

  aspirant: "You must earn some money, you say. Don't you think

  that a stool in a counting-house might be better?" The advice will

  probably be good advice,--probably, no doubt, as may be proved by

  the terrible majority of failures. But who is to be sure that he

  is not expelling an angel from the heaven to which, if less roughly

  treated, he would soar,--that he is not dooming some Milton to be

  mute and inglorious, who, but for such cruel ill-judgment, would

  become vocal to all ages?

  The answer to all this seems to be ready enough. The judgment,

  whether cruel or tender, should not be ill-judgment. He who

  consents to sit as judge should have capacity for judging. But in

  this matter no accuracy of judgment is possible. It may be that the

  matter subjected to the critic is so bad or so good as to make an

  assured answer possible. "You, at any rate, cannot make this your

  vocation;" or "You, at any rate, can succeed, if you will try." But

  cases as to which such certainty can be expressed are rare. The

  critic who wrote the article on the early verses of Lord Byron, which

  produced the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was justified in

  his criticism by the merits of the Hours of Idleness. The lines had

  nevertheless been written by that Lord Byron who became our Byron.

  In a little satire called The Biliad, which, I think, nobody knows,

  are the following well-expressed lines:--

  "When Payne Knight's Taste was issued to the town,

  A few Greek verses in the text set down

  Were torn to pieces, mangled into hash,

  Doomed to the flames as execrable trash,--

  In short, were butchered rather than dissected,

  And several false quantities detected,--

  Till, when the smoke had vanished from the cinders,

  'Twas just discovered that--THE LINES WERE PINDAR'S!"

  There can be no assurance against cases such as these; and yet we

  are so free with our advice, always bidding the young aspirant to

  desist.

  There is perhaps no career or life so charming as that of a successful

  man of letters. Those little unthought of advantages which I just

  now named are in themselves attractive. If you like the town, live in

  the town, and do your work there; if you like the country, choose

  the country. It may be done on the top of a mountain or in the

  bottom of a pit. It is compatible with the rolling of the sea and

  the motion of a railway. The clergyman, the lawyer, the doctor, the

  member of Parliament, the clerk in a public office, the tradesman,

  and even his assistant in the shop, must dress in accordance with

  certain fixed laws; but the author need sacrifice to no grace,

  hardly even to Propriety. He is subject to no bonds such as those

  which bind other men. Who else is free from all shackle as to hours?

  The judge must sit at ten, and the attorney-general, who is making

  his (pounds)20,000 a year, must be there with his bag. The Prime Minister

  must be in his place on that weary front bench shortly after

  prayers, and must sit there, either asleep or awake, even though

  ---- or ---- should be addressing the House. During all that Sunday

  which he maintains should be a day of rest, the active clergyman

  toils like a galley-slave. The actor, when eight o'clock comes,

  is bound to his footlights. The Civil Service clerk must sit there

  from ten till four,--unless his office be fashionable, when twelve

  to six is just as heavy on him. The author may do his work at five

  in the morning when he is fresh from his bed, or at three in the

  morning before he goes there. And the author wants no capital, and

  encounters no risks. When once he is afloat, the publisher finds

  all that;--and indeed, unless he be rash, finds it whether he be

  afloat or not. But it is in the consideration which he enjoys that

  the successful author finds his richest reward. He is, if not of

  equal rank, yet of equal standing with the highest; and if he be

  open to the amenities of society, may choose his own circles. He

  without money can enter doors which are closed against almost all

  but him and the wealthy. I have often heard it said that in this

  country the man of letters is not recognised. I believe the meaning

  of this to be that men of letters are not often invited to be

  knights and baronets. I do not think that they wish it;--and if

  they had it they would, as a body, lose much more than they would

  gain. I do not at all desire to have letters put after my name, or

  to be called Sir Anthony, but if my friends Tom Hughes and Charles

  Reade became Sir Thomas and Sir Charles, I do not know how I might

  feel,--or how my wife might feel, if we were left unbedecked. As

  it is, the man of letters who would be selected for titular honour,

  if such bestowal of honours were customary, receives from the general

  respect of those around him a much more pleasant recognition of

  his worth.

  If this be so,--if it be true that the career of the successful

  literary man be thus pleasant--it is not wonderful that many should

  attempt to win the prize. But how is a man to know whether or not

  he has within him the qualities necessary for such a career? He

  makes an attempt, and fails; repeats his attempt, and fails again!

  So many have succeeded at last who have failed more than once or

  twice! Who will tell him the truth as to himself? Who has power to

  find out that truth? The hard man sends him off without a scruple

  to that office-stool; the soft man assures him that there is much

  merit in his MS.

  Oh, my young aspirant,--if ever such a one should read these

  pages,--be sure that no one can tell you! To do so it would be

  necessary not only to know what there is now within you, but also

  to foresee what time will produce there. This, however, I think may

  be said to you, without any doubt as to the wisdom of the counsel

  given, that if it be necessary for you to live by your work, do not

  begin by trusting to literature. Take the stool in the office as

  recommended to you by the hard man; and then, in such leisure hours

  as may belong to you, let the praise which has come from the lips

  of that soft man induce you to pe
rsevere in your literary attempts.

  Should you fail, then your failure will not be fatal,--and what

  better could you have done with the leisure hours had you not so

  failed? Such double toil, you will say, is severe. Yes, but if

  you want this thing, you must submit to severe toil.

  Sometime before this I had become one of the Committee appointed

  for the distribution of the moneys of the Royal Literary Fund, and

  in that capacity I heard and saw much of the sufferings of authors.

  I may in a future chapter speak further of this Institution, which

  I regard with great affection, and in reference to which I should

  be glad to record certain convictions of my own; but I allude to it

  now, because the experience I have acquired in being active in its

  cause forbids me to advise any young man or woman to enter boldly

  on a literary career in search of bread. I know how utterly I

  should have failed myself had my bread not been earned elsewhere

  while I was making my efforts. During ten years of work, which I

  commenced with some aid from the fact that others of my family were

  in the same profession, I did not earn enough to buy me the pens,

  ink, and paper which I was using; and then when, with all my

  experience in my art, I began again as from a new springing point,

  I should have failed again unless again I could have given years

  to the task. Of course there have been many who have done better

  than I,--many whose powers have been infinitely greater. But then,

  too, I have seen the failure of many who were greater.

  The career, when success has been achieved, is certainly very

  pleasant; but the agonies which are endured in the search for that

  success are often terrible. And the author's poverty is, I think,

  harder to be borne than any other poverty. The man, whether rightly

  or wrongly, feels that the world is using him with extreme injustice.

  The more absolutely he fails, the higher, it is probable, he will

  reckon his own merits; and the keener will be the sense of injury

  in that he whose work is of so high a nature cannot get bread,

  while they whose tasks are mean are lapped in luxury. "I, with

  my well-filled mind, with my clear intellect, with all my gifts,

  cannot earn a poor crown a day, while that fool, who simpers in

  a little room behind a shop, makes his thousands every year." The

  very charity, to which he too often is driven, is bitterer to him

  than to others. While he takes it he almost spurns the hand that

  gives it to him, and every fibre of his heart within him is bleeding

  with a sense of injury.

  The career, when successful, is pleasant enough certainly; but when

  unsuccessful, it is of all careers the most agonising.

  CHAPTER XII ON NOVELS AND THE ART OF WRITING THEM

  It is nearly twenty years since I proposed to myself to write

  a history of English prose fiction. I shall never do it now, but

  the subject is so good a one that I recommend it heartily to some

  man of letters, who shall at the same time be indefatigable and

  light-handed. I acknowledge that I broke down in the task, because

  I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of

  my life. Though the book might be charming, the work was very much

  the reverse. It came to have a terrible aspect to me, as did that

  proposition that I should sit out all the May meetings of a season.

  According to my plan of such a history it would be necessary

  to read an infinity of novels, and not only to read them, but so

  to read them as to point out the excellences of those which are

  most excellent, and to explain the defects of those which, though

  defective, had still reached sufficient reputation to make them

  worthy of notice. I did read many after this fashion,--and here

  and there I have the criticisms which I wrote. In regard to many,

  they were written on some blank page within the book; I have not,

  however, even a list of the books so criticised. I think that the

  Arcadia was the first, and Ivanhoe the last. My plan, as I settled

  it at last, had been to begin with Robinson Crusoe, which is the

  earliest really popular novel which we have in our language, and

  to continue the review so as to include the works of all English

  novelists of reputation, except those who might still be living

  when my task should be completed. But when Dickens and Bulwer died,

  my spirit flagged, and that which I had already found to be very

  difficult had become almost impossible to me at my then period of

  life.

  I began my own studies on the subject with works much earlier than

  Robinson Crusoe, and made my way through a variety of novels which

  were necessary for my purpose, but which in the reading gave me no

  pleasure whatever. I never worked harder than at the Arcadia, or

  read more detestable trash than the stories written by Mrs. Aphra

  Behn; but these two were necessary to my purpose, which was not only

  to give an estimate of the novels as I found them, but to describe

  how it had come to pass that the English novels of the present

  day have become what they are, to point out the effects which they

  have produced, and to inquire whether their great popularity has on

  the whole done good or evil to the people who read them. I still

  think that the book is one well worthy to be written.

  I intended to write that book to vindicate my own profession as

  a novelist, and also to vindicate that public taste in literature

  which has created and nourished the profession which I follow.

  And I was stirred up to make such an attempt by a conviction that

  there still exists among us Englishmen a prejudice in respect

  to novels which might, perhaps, be lessened by such a work. This

  prejudice is not against the reading of novels, as is proved by their

  general acceptance among us. But it exists strongly in reference

  to the appreciation in which they are professed to be held; and it

  robs them of much of that high character which they may claim to

  have earned by their grace, their honesty, and good teaching.

  No man can work long at any trade without being brought to consider

  much, whether that which he is daily doing tends to evil or to

  good. I have written many novels, and have known many writers of

  novels, and I can assert that such thoughts have been strong with

  them and with myself. But in acknowledging that these writers have

  received from the public a full measure of credit for such genius,

  ingenuity, or perseverance as each may have displayed, I feel that

  there is still wanting to them a just appreciation of the excellence

  of their calling, and a general understanding of the high nature

  of the work which they perform.

  By the common consent of all mankind who have read, poetry takes

  the highest place in literature. That nobility of expression, and

  all but divine grace of words, which she is bound to attain before

  she can make her footing good, is not compatible with prose. Indeed

  it is that which turns prose into poetry. When that has been in

  truth achieved, the reader knows that the writer has soared above

&nbs
p; the earth, and can teach his lessons somewhat as a god might teach.

  He who sits down to write his tale in prose makes no such attempt,

  nor does he dream that the poet's honour is within his reach;--but

  his teaching is of the same nature, and his lessons all tend to

  the same end. By either, false sentiments may be fostered; false

  notions of humanity may be engendered; false honour, false love,

  false worship may be created; by either, vice instead of virtue

  may be taught. But by each, equally, may true honour, true love;

  true worship, and true humanity be inculcated; and that will be

  the greatest teacher who will spread such truth the widest. But

  at present, much as novels, as novels, are bought and read, there

  exists still an idea, a feeling which is very prevalent, that novels

  at their best are but innocent. Young men and women,--and old men

  and women too,--read more of them than of poetry, because such reading

  is easier than the reading of poetry; but they read them,--as men

  eat pastry after dinner,--not without some inward conviction that

  the taste is vain if not vicious. I take upon myself to say that

  it is neither vicious nor vain.

  But all writers of fiction who have desired to think well of their

  own work, will probably have had doubts on their minds before they

  have arrived at this conclusion. Thinking much of my own daily

  labour and of its nature, I felt myself at first to be much afflicted

  and then to be deeply grieved by the opinion expressed by wise and

  thinking men as to the work done by novelists. But when, by degrees,

  I dared to examine and sift the sayings of such men, I found them

  to be sometimes silly and often arrogant. I began to inquire what

  had been the nature of English novels since they first became common

  in our own language, and to be desirous of ascertaining whether they

  had done harm or good. I could well remember that, in my own young

  days, they had not taken that undisputed possession of drawing-rooms

  which they now hold. Fifty years ago, when George IV. was king, they

  were not indeed treated as Lydia had been forced to treat them in

  the preceding reign, when, on the approach of elders, Peregrine

  Pickle was hidden beneath the bolster, and Lord Ainsworth put away

  under the sofa. But the families in which an unrestricted permission