Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  a period of life at which the power of writing novels had passed

  from me. Not improbably, however, these pages may be printed first.

  In 1866 and 1867 The Last Chronicle of Barset was brought out by

  George Smith in sixpenny monthly numbers. I do not know that this

  mode of publication had been tried before, or that it answered very

  well on this occasion. Indeed the shilling magazines had interfered

  greatly with the success of novels published in numbers without

  other accompanying matter. The public finding that so much might

  be had for a shilling, in which a portion of one or more novels was

  always included, were unwilling to spend their money on the novel

  alone. Feeling that this certainly had become the case in reference

  to novels published in shilling numbers, Mr. Smith and I determined

  to make the experiment with sixpenny parts. As he paid me (pounds)3000

  for the use of my MS., the loss, if any, did not fall upon me. If

  I remember right the enterprise was not altogether successful.

  Taking it as a whole, I regard this as the best novel I have

  written. I was never quite satisfied with the development of the

  plot, which consisted in the loss of a cheque, of a charge made

  against a clergyman for stealing it, and of absolute uncertainty

  on the part of the clergyman himself as to the manner in which the

  cheque had found its way into his hands. I cannot quite make myself

  believe that even such a man as Mr. Crawley could have forgotten

  how he got it, nor would the generous friend who was anxious to

  supply his wants have supplied them by tendering the cheque of a

  third person. Such fault I acknowledge,--acknowledging at the same

  time that I have never been capable of constructing with complete

  success the intricacies of a plot that required to be unravelled.

  But while confessing so much, I claim to have portrayed the mind

  of the unfortunate man with great accuracy and great delicacy. The

  pride, the humility, the manliness, the weakness, the conscientious

  rectitude and bitter prejudices of Mr. Crawley were, I feel, true

  to nature and well described. The surroundings too are good. Mrs.

  Proudie at the palace is a real woman; and the poor old dean dying

  at the deanery is also real. The archdeacon in his victory is very

  real. There is a true savour of English country life all through

  the book. It was with many misgivings that I killed my old friend

  Mrs. Proudie. I could not, I think, have done it, but for a resolution

  taken and declared under circumstances of great momentary pressure.

  It was thus that it came about. I was sitting one morning at work

  upon the novel at the end of the long drawing-room of the Athenaeum

  Club,--as was then my wont when I had slept the previous night in

  London. As I was there, two clergymen, each with a magazine in his

  hand, seated themselves, one on one side of the fire and one on

  the other, close to me. They soon began to abuse what they were

  reading, and each was reading some part of some novel of mine. The

  gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I reintroduced

  the same characters so often! "Here," said one, "is that archdeacon

  whom we have had in every novel he has ever written." "And here,"

  said the other, "is the old duke whom he has talked about till

  everybody is tired of him. If I could not invent new characters, I

  would not write novels at all." Then one of them fell foul of Mrs.

  Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their words, and

  almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and standing

  between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. "As to Mrs.

  Proudie," I said, "I will go home and kill her before the week is

  over." And so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded,

  and one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations.

  I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in

  writing about Mrs. Proudie, so thorough was my knowledge of all the

  shades of her character. It was not only that she was a tyrant,

  a bully, a would-be priestess, a very vulgar woman, and one who

  would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed with

  her; but that at the same time she was conscientious, by no means

  a hypocrite, really believing in the brimstone which she threatened,

  and anxious to save the souls around her from its horrors. And as

  her tyranny increased so did the bitterness of the moments of her

  repentance increase, in that she knew herself to be a tyrant,--till

  that bitterness killed her. Since her time others have grown up

  equally dear to me,--Lady Glencora and her husband, for instance;

  but I have never dissevered myself from Mrs. Proudie, and still

  live much in company with her ghost.

  I have in a previous chapter said how I wrote Can You Forgive Her?

  after the plot of a play which had been rejected,--which play had

  been called The Noble Jilt. Some year or two after the completion

  of The Last Chronicle, I was asked by the manager of a theatre to

  prepare a piece for his stage, and I did so, taking the plot of

  this novel. I called the comedy Did He Steal It? But my friend the

  manager did not approve of my attempt. My mind at this time was

  less attentive to such a matter than when dear old George Bartley

  nearly crushed me by his criticism,--so that I forget the reason

  given. I have little doubt but that the manager was right. That

  he intended to express a true opinion, and would have been glad to

  have taken the piece had he thought it suitable, I am quite sure.

  I have sometimes wished to see during my lifetime a combined

  republication of those tales which are occupied with the fictitious

  county of Barsetshire. These would be The Warden, Barchester

  Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and The Last Chronicle

  of Barset. But I have hitherto failed. The copyrights are in the

  hands of four different persons, including myself, and with one of

  the four I have not been able to prevail to act in concert with the

  others. [Footnote: Since this was written I have made arrangements

  for doing as I have wished, and the first volume of the series will

  now very shortly be published.]

  In 1867 I made up my mind to take a step in life which was not

  unattended with peril, which many would call rash, and which, when

  taken, I should be sure at some period to regret. This step was

  the resignation of my place in the Post Office. I have described

  how it was that I contrived to combine the performance of its duties

  with my other avocations in life. I got up always very early; but

  even this did not suffice. I worked always on Sundays,--as to which

  no scruple of religion made me unhappy,--and not unfrequently I

  was driven to work at night. In the winter when hunting was going

  on, I had to keep myself very much on the alert. And during the

  London season, when I was generally two or three days of the week

  in town, I found the official work to be a burden. I had determined

  some years previously, after due consideration with my wife, to

  abandon the Post Office when I had put by an
income equal to the

  pension to which I should be entitled if I remained in the department

  till I was sixty. That I had now done, and I sighed for liberty.

  The exact time chosen, the autumn of 1867, was selected because I

  was then about to undertake other literary work in editing a new

  magazine,--of which I shall speak very shortly. But in addition to

  these reasons there was another, which was, I think, at last the

  actuating cause. When Sir Rowland Hill left the Post Office, and

  my brother-in-law, Mr. Tilley, became Secretary in his place, I

  applied for the vacant office of Under-Secretary. Had I obtained

  this I should have given up my hunting, have given up much of my

  literary work,--at any rate would have edited no magazine,--and

  would have returned to the habit of my youth in going daily to the

  General Post Office. There was very much against such a change in

  life. The increase of salary would not have amounted to above (pounds)400

  a year, and I should have lost much more than that in literary

  remuneration. I should have felt bitterly the slavery of attendance

  at an office, from which I had then been exempt for five-and-twenty

  years. I should, too, have greatly missed the sport which I loved.

  But I was attached to the department, had imbued myself with a

  thorough love of letters,--I mean the letters which are carried by

  the post,--and was anxious for their welfare as though they were

  all my own. In short, I wished to continue the connection. I did

  not wish, moreover, that any younger officer should again pass over

  my head. I believed that I bad been a valuable public servant,

  and I will own to a feeling existing at that time that I had not

  altogether been well treated. I was probably wrong in this. I had

  been allowed to hunt,--and to do as I pleased, and to say what

  I liked, and had in that way received my reward. I applied for

  the office, but Mr. Scudamore was appointed to it. He no doubt

  was possessed of gifts which I did not possess. He understood

  the manipulation of money and the use of figures, and was a great

  accountant. I think that I might have been more useful in regard

  to the labours and wages of the immense body of men employed by

  the Post Office. However, Mr. Scudamore was appointed; and I made

  up my mind that I would fall back upon my old intention, and leave

  the department. I think I allowed two years to pass before I took

  the step; and the day on which I sent the letter was to me most

  melancholy.

  The rule of the service in regard to pensions is very just. A man

  shall serve till he is sixty before he is entitled to a pension,--unless

  his health fail him. At that age he is entitled to one-sixtieth of

  his salary for every year he has served up to forty years. If his

  health do fail him so that he is unfit for further work before the

  age named, then he may go with a pension amounting to one-sixtieth

  for every year he has served. I could not say that my health had

  failed me, and therefore I went without any pension. I have since

  felt occasionally that it has been supposed that I left the Post

  Office under pressure,--because I attended to hunting and to my

  literary work rather than to postal matters. As it had for many

  years been my ambition to be a thoroughly good servant to the public,

  and to give to the public much more than I took in the shape of

  salary, this feeling has sometimes annoyed me. And as I am still

  a little sore on the subject, and as I would not have it imagined

  after my death that I had slighted the public service to which I

  belonged, I will venture here to give the reply which was sent to

  the letter containing my resignation.

  "GENERAL POST OFFICE,

  October 9th, 1867.

  "Sir,--I have received your letter of the 3d inst., in which you

  tender your resignation as Surveyor in the Post Office service, and

  state as your reason for this step that you have adopted another

  profession, the exigencies of which are so great as to make you

  feel you cannot give to the duties of the Post Office that amount

  of attention which you consider the Postmaster-General has a right

  to expect.

  "You have for many years ranked among the most conspicuous members

  of the Post Office, which, on several occasions when you have been

  employed on large and difficult matters, has reaped much benefit

  from the great abilities which you have been able to place at its

  disposal; and in mentioning this, I have been especially glad to

  record that, notwithstanding the many calls upon your time, you

  have never permitted your other avocations to interfere with your

  Post Office work, which has been faithfully and indeed energetically

  performed." (There was a touch of irony in this word "energetically,"

  but still it did not displease me.)

  "In accepting your resignation, which he does with much regret,

  the Duke of Montrose desires me to convey to you his own sense of

  the value of your services, and to state how alive he is to the

  loss which will be sustained by the department in which you have

  long been an ornament, and where your place will with difficulty

  be replaced.

  (Signed) "J. TILLEY."

  Readers will no doubt think that this is official flummery; and

  so in fact it is. I do not at all imagine that I was an ornament

  to the Post Office, and have no doubt that the secretaries and

  assistant-secretaries very often would have been glad to be rid of

  me; but the letter may be taken as evidence that I did not allow

  my literary enterprises to interfere with my official work. A man

  who takes public money without earning it is to me so odious that

  I can find no pardon for him in my heart. I have known many such,

  and some who have craved the power to do so. Nothing would annoy

  me more than to think that I should even be supposed to have been

  among the number.

  And so my connection was dissolved with the department to which

  I had applied the thirty-three best years of my life;--I must not

  say devoted, for devotion implies an entire surrender, and I certainly

  had found time for other occupations. It is however absolutely true

  that during all those years I had thought very much more about the

  Post Office than I had of my literary work, and had given to it a

  more unflagging attention. Up to this time I had never been angry,

  never felt myself injured or unappreciated in that my literary

  efforts were slighted. But I had suffered very much bitterness on

  that score in reference to the Post Office; and I had suffered not

  only on my own personal behalf, but also and more bitterly when I

  could not promise to be done the things which I thought ought to be

  done for the benefit of others. That the public in little villages

  should be enabled to buy postage stamps; that they should have

  their letters delivered free and at an early hour; that pillar

  letter-boxes should be put up for them (of which accommodation

  in the streets and ways of England I was the originator, having,

  however, got the authority for the er
ection of the first at St.

  Heliers in Jersey); that the letter-carriers and sorters should not

  be overworked; that they should be adequately paid, and have some

  hours to themselves, especially on Sundays; above all, that they

  should be made to earn their wages and latterly that they should

  not be crushed by what I thought to be the damnable system of

  so-called merit;--these were the matters by which I was stirred to

  what the secretary was pleased to call energetic performance of my

  duties. How I loved, when I was contradicted,--as I was very often

  and, no doubt, very properly,--to do instantly as I was bid, and then

  to prove that what I was doing was fatuous, dishonest, expensive,

  and impracticable! And then there were feuds--such delicious feuds!

  I was always an anti-Hillite, acknowledging, indeed, the great thing

  which Sir Rowland Hill had done for the country, but believing him

  to be entirely unfit to manage men or to arrange labour. It was a

  pleasure to me to differ from him on all occasions;--and, looking

  back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.

  Having so steeped myself, as it were, in postal waters, I could not

  go out from them without a regret. I wonder whether I did anything

  to improve the style of writing in official reports! I strove to

  do so gallantly, never being contented with the language of my own

  reports unless it seemed to have been so written as to be pleasant

  to be read. I took extreme delight in writing them, not allowing

  myself to re-copy them, never having them re-copied by others, but

  sending them up with their original blots and erasures,--if blots

  and erasures there were. It is hardly manly, I think, that a

  man should search after a fine neatness at the expense of so much

  waste labour; or that he should not be able to exact from himself

  the necessity of writing words in the form in which they should be

  read. If a copy be required, let it be taken afterwards,--by hand

  or by machine, as may be. But the writer of a letter, if he wish his

  words to prevail with the reader, should send them out as written

  by himself, by his own hand, with his own marks, his own punctuation,

  correct or incorrect, with the evidence upon them that they have

  come out from his own mind.

  And so the cord was cut, and I was a free man to run about the