Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

by Anthony Trollope

  the other sex in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought

  to have contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her, were

  her trouble any other than it is.

  "She is what she is, and she remains in her abject, pitiless,

  unutterable misery, because this sentence of the world has placed

  her beyond the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said,

  no doubt, that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection

  to female virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from

  vice. But this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception

  of those who have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand.

  Instead of the punishment, there is seen a false glitter of gaudy

  life,--a glitter which is damnably false,--and which, alas I has

  been more often portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of

  young girls, than have those horrors which ought to deter, with

  the dark shadowings which belong to them.

  "To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex,

  as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life

  is, happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice

  and misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be

  handled with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless,

  may be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened."

  Those were my ideas when I conceived the story, and with that

  feeling I described the characters of Carry Brattle and of her

  family. I have not introduced her lover on the scene, nor have I

  presented her to the reader in the temporary enjoyment of any of

  those fallacious luxuries, the longing for which is sometimes more

  seductive to evil than love itself. She is introduced as a poor

  abased creature, who hardly knows how false were her dreams, with

  very little of the Magdalene about her--because though there may

  be Magdalenes they are not often found--but with an intense horror

  of the sufferings of her position. Such being her condition, will

  they who naturally are her friends protect her? The vicar who has

  taken her by the hand endeavours to excite them to charity; but

  father, and brother, and sister are alike hard-hearted. It had

  been my purpose at first that the hand of every Brattle should be

  against her; but my own heart was too soft to enable me to make

  the mother cruel,--or the unmarried sister who had been the early

  companion of the forlorn one.

  As regards all the Brattles, the story is, I think, well told.

  The characters are true, and the scenes at the mill are in keeping

  with human nature. For the rest of the book I have little to say.

  It is not very bad, and it certainly is not very good. As I have

  myself forgotten what the heroine does and says--except that she

  tumbles into a ditch--I cannot expect that any one else should

  remember her. But I have forgotten nothing that was done or said

  by any of the Brattles.

  The question brought in argument is one of fearful importance. As

  to the view to be taken first, there can, I think, be no doubt. In

  regard to a sin common to the two sexes, almost all the punishment

  and all the disgrace is heaped upon the one who in nine cases out

  of ten has been the least sinful. And the punishment inflicted is

  of such a nature that it hardly allows room for repentance. How is

  the woman to return to decency to whom no decent door is opened?

  Then comes the answer: It is to the severity of the punishment alone

  that we can trust to keep women from falling. Such is the argument

  used in favour of the existing practice, and such the excuse

  given for their severity by women who will relax nothing of their

  harshness. But in truth the severity of the punishment is not known

  beforehand; it is not in the least understood by women in general,

  except by those who suffer it. The gaudy dirt, the squalid plenty,

  the contumely of familiarity, the absence of all good words and all

  good things, the banishment from honest labour, the being compassed

  round with lies, the flaunting glare of fictitious revelry, the

  weary pavement, the horrid slavery to some horrid tyrant,--and then

  the quick depreciation of that one ware of beauty, the substituted

  paint, garments bright without but foul within like painted sepulchres,

  hunger, thirst, and strong drink, life without a hope, without the

  certainty even of a morrow's breakfast, utterly friendless, disease,

  starvation, and a quivering fear of that coming hell which still

  can hardly be worse than all that is suffered here! This is the

  life to which we doom our erring daughters, when because of their

  error we close our door upon them! But for our erring sons we find

  pardon easily enough.

  Of course there are houses of refuge, from which it has been

  thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only

  repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily

  be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope

  to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at

  all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached

  the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe.

  To me the mistake which we too often make seems to be this,--that

  the girl who has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if

  possible, at any rate out of speech, as though she had never existed,

  and that this ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, put

  in part also from a dread of the taint which the sin brings with

  it. Very low as is the degradation to which a girl is brought when

  she falls through love or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for

  luxurious ease, still much lower is that to which she must descend

  perforce when, through the hardness of the world around her,

  she converts that sin into a trade. Mothers and sisters, when the

  misfortune comes upon them of a fallen female from among their

  number, should remember this, and not fear contamination so strongly

  as did Carry Brattle's married sister and sister-in-law.

  In 1870 I brought out three books,--or rather of the latter of

  the three I must say that it was brought out by others, for I had

  nothing to do with it except to write it. These were Sir Harry

  Hotspur of Humblethwaite, An Editor's Tales, and a little volume

  on Julius Caesar. Sir Harry Hotspur was written on the same plan as

  Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, and had for its object the telling

  of some pathetic incident in life rather than the portraiture of a

  number of human beings. Nina and Linda Tressel and The Golden Lion

  had been placed in foreign countries, and this was an English story.

  In other respects it is of the same nature, and was not, I think,

  by any means a failure. There is much of pathos in the love of

  the girl, and of paternal dignity and affection in the father.

  It was published first in Macmillan's Magazine, by the intelligent

  proprietor of which I have since been told that it did not make

  either his fortune or that of his magazine. I am sorry that it

  should have
been so; but I fear that the same thing may be said of

  a good many of my novels. When it had passed through the magazine,

  the subsequent use of it was sold to other publishers by Mr.

  Macmillan, and then I learned that it was to be brought out by them

  as a novel in two volumes. Now it had been sold by me as a novel

  in one volume, and hence there arose a correspondence.

  I found it very hard to make the purchasers understand that I had

  reasonable ground for objection to the process. What was it to me?

  How could it injure me if they stretched my pages by means of lead

  and margin into double the number I had intended. I have heard the

  same argument on other occasions. When I have pointed out that in

  this way the public would have to suffer, seeing that they would

  have to pay Mudie for the use of two volumes in reading that which

  ought to have been given to them in one, I have been assured that

  the public are pleased with literary short measure, that it is

  the object of novel-readers to get through novels as fast as they

  can, and that the shorter each volume is the better! Even this,

  however, did not overcome me, and I stood to my guns. Sir Harry

  was published in one volume, containing something over the normal

  300 pages, with an average of 220 words to a page,--which I

  had settled with my conscience to be the proper length of a novel

  volume. I may here mention that on one occasion, and one occasion

  only, a publisher got the better of me in a matter of volumes. He

  had a two-volume novel of mine running through a certain magazine,

  and had it printed complete in three volumes before I knew where I

  was,--before I had seen a sheet of the letterpress. I stormed for

  a while, but I had not the heart to make him break up the type.

  The Editor's Tales was a volume republished from the St. Paul's

  Magazine, and professed to give an editor's experience of his

  dealings with contributors. I do not think that there is a single

  incident in the book which could bring back to any one concerned

  the memory of a past event. And yet there is not an incident in it

  the outline of which was not presented to my mind by the remembrance

  of some fact:--how an ingenious gentleman got into conversation

  with me, I not knowing that he knew me to be an editor, and pressed

  his little article on my notice; how I was addressed by a lady with

  a becoming pseudonym and with much equally becoming audacity; how

  I was appealed to by the dearest of little women whom here I have

  called Mary Gresley; how in my own early days there was a struggle

  over an abortive periodical which was intended to be the best

  thing ever done; how terrible was the tragedy of a poor drunkard,

  who with infinite learning at his command made one sad final effort

  to reclaim himself, and perished while he was making it; and lastly

  how a poor weak editor was driven nearly to madness by threatened

  litigation from a rejected contributor. Of these stories, The Spotted

  Dog, with the struggles of the drunkard scholar, is the best. I

  know now, however, that when the things were good they came out

  too quick one upon another to gain much attention;--and so also,

  luckily, when they were bad.

  The Caesar was a thing of itself. My friend John Blackwood had set

  on foot a series of small volumes called Ancient Classics for English

  Readers, and had placed the editing of them, and the compiling of

  many of them, in the hands of William Lucas Collins, a clergyman

  who, from my connection with the series, became a most intimate

  friend. The Iliad and the Odyssey had already come out when I was

  at Edinburgh with John Blackwood, and, on my expressing my very strong

  admiration for those two little volumes,--which I here recommend

  to all young ladies as the most charming tales they can read,--he

  asked me whether I would not undertake one myself. Herodotus was

  in the press, but, if I could get it ready, mine should be next.

  Whereupon I offered to say what might be said to the readers of

  English on The Commentaries of Julius Caesar.

  I at once went to work, and in three months from that day the little

  book had been written. I began by reading through the Commentaries

  twice, which I did without any assistance either by translation

  or English notes. Latin was not so familiar to me then as it has

  since become,--for from that date I have almost daily spent an

  hour with some Latin author, and on many days many hours. After

  the reading what my author had left behind him, I fell into the

  reading of what others had written about him, in Latin, in English,

  and even in French,--for I went through much of that most futile

  book by the late Emperor of the French. I do not know that for a

  short period I ever worked harder. The amount I had to write was

  nothing. Three weeks would have done it easily. But I was most

  anxious, in this soaring out of my own peculiar line, not to disgrace

  myself. I do not think that I did disgrace myself. Perhaps I was

  anxious for something more. If so, I was disappointed.

  The book I think to be a good little book. It is readable by all, old

  and young, and it gives, I believe accurately, both an account of

  Caesar's Commentaries,--which of course was the primary intention,--and

  the chief circumstances of the great Roman's life. A well-educated

  girl who had read it and remembered it would perhaps know as much

  about Caesar and his writings as she need know. Beyond the consolation

  of thinking as I do about it, I got very little gratification from

  the work. Nobody praised it. One very old and very learned friend

  to whom I sent it thanked me for my "comic Caesar," but said no

  more. I do not suppose that he intended to run a dagger into me.

  Of any suffering from such wounds, I think, while living, I never

  showed a sign; but still I have suffered occasionally. There

  was, however, probably present to my friend's mind, and to that

  of others, a feeling that a man who had spent his life in writing

  English novels could not be fit to write about Caesar. It was as

  when an amateur gets a picture hung on the walls of the Academy.

  What business had I there? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. In the press it

  was most faintly damned by most faint praise. Nevertheless, having

  read the book again within the last month or two, I make bold to say

  that it is a good book. The series, I believe, has done very well.

  I am sure that it ought to do well in years to come, for, putting

  aside Caesar, the work has been done with infinite scholarship, and

  very generally with a light hand. With the leave of my sententious

  and sonorous friend, who had not endured that subjects which had

  been grave to him should be treated irreverently, I will say that

  such a work, unless it be light, cannot answer the purpose for which

  it is intended. It was not exactly a schoolbook that was wanted,

  but something that would carry the purposes of the schoolroom even

  into the leisure hours of adult pupils. Nothing was ever better

  suited for such a purpose than the Iliad and the Odyssey, as done

 
by Mr. Collins. The Virgil, also done by him, is very good; and so

  is the Aristophanes by the same hand.

  CHAPTER XIX "RALPH THE HEIR"--"THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS"--"LADY ANNA"--"AUSTRALIA"

  In the spring of 1871 we,--I and my wife,--had decided that we

  would go to Australia to visit our shepherd son. Of course before

  doing so I made a contract with a publisher for a book about the

  Colonies. For such a work as this I had always been aware that

  I could not fairly demand more than half the price that would be

  given for the same amount of fiction; and as such books have an

  indomitable tendency to stretch themselves, so that more is given

  than what is sold, and as the cost of travelling is heavy, the

  writing of them is not remunerative. This tendency to stretch comes

  not, I think, generally from the ambition of the writer, but from

  his inability to comprise the different parts in their allotted

  spaces. If you have to deal with a country, a colony, a city, a

  trade, or a political opinion, it is so much easier to deal with

  it in twenty than in twelve pages! I also made an engagement with

  the editor of a London daily paper to supply him with a series of

  articles,--which were duly written, duly published, and duly paid

  for. But with all this, travelling with the object of writing is

  not a good trade. If the travelling author can pay his bills, he

  must be a good manager on the road.

  Before starting there came upon us the terrible necessity of coming

  to some resolution about our house at Waltham. It had been first

  hired, and then bought, primarily because it suited my Post Office

  avocations. To this reason had been added other attractions,--in the

  shape of hunting, gardening, and suburban hospitalities. Altogether

  the house had been a success, and the scene of much happiness. But

  there arose questions as to expense. Would not a house in London

  be cheaper? There could be no doubt that my income would decrease,

  and was decreasing. I had thrown the Post Office, as it were,

  away, and the writing of novels could not go on for ever. Some of

  my friends told me already that at fifty-five I ought to give up

  the fabrication of love-stories. The hunting, I thought, must soon

  go, and I would not therefore allow that to keep me in the country.

  And then, why should I live at Waltham Cross now, seeing that