Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

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 Merewether, the present

Member for Northampton. I am 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 Doctor Thorne, the

novel of which I am now speaking, has a larger sale than any other

book of mine.

Early in 1858, while I was writing Doctor Thorne, 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 mails 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 (pounds)400,--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 (pounds)300 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

& 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 Hounslow Heath, he said that he 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.

As I journeyed across France to Marseilles, and made thence a

terribly rough voyage to Alexandria, I wrote my allotted number of

pages every day. On this occasion more than once I left my paper

on the cabin table, rushing away to be sick in the privacy of my

state room. It was February, and the weather was miserable; but

still I did my work. Labor omnia vincit improbus. I do not say that

to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such

exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable

most men to work at almost any season. I had previously to this

arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly

recommend to those who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not

made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should

never be allowed to become spasmodic. There was no day on which

it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my

duty to write reports for the Post Office. I was free to be idle if

I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second

profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain

self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have always

prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the

period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work.

In this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have

written, so that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for

a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there, staring

me in the face, and demanding of me increased labour, so that the

deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the

time,--whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or

whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with

speed,--I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average

number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has

risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been

made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched, will have

a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went. In

the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of course,

with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always to

supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out

of hand short of the number by a single word. I may also say that

the excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing

my work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided

myself especially in completing it within the proposed time,--and

I have always done so. There has ever been the record before me,

and a week passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a

blister to my eye, and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow

to my heart.

I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a

man of genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius,

but had I been so I think I might well have subjected myself to

these trammels. Nothing surely is so potent as a law that may not

be disobeyed. It has the force of the water drop that hollows the

stone. A small daily task, If it be really daily, will beat the

labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always

catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in

glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise

to make half his journey.

I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and

painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They

have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lessons as they

entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and they

have failed to write their best because they have seldom written at

ease. I have done double their work--though burdened with another

profession,--and have done it almost without an effort. I have not

once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger

of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to "copy."

The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost always

been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates

and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly

demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.

There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to

such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his

imagination should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves

him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been

able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the

shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for

the divine moment of melting. If the man whose business it is to

write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or

smoked too many cigars,--as men who write sometimes will do,--then

his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the

condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have

sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy

which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence.--Mens

sana in corpore sano. The author wants that as does every other

workman,--that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the

surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on

my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than

the inspiration.

It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no

higher pitch than mine has attained, has no right to speak of the

strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I am ready

to admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by

the products of different men, and am not disposed to rank my own

very high; but my own experience tells me that a man can always do

the work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself the

habit of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I

therefore venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship

as the business of their lives, even when they propose that that

authorship be of the highest class known, to avoid enthusiastic

rushes with their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day

by day as though they were lawyers' clerks;--and so let them sit

until the allotted task shall be accomplished.

While I was in Egypt, I finished Doctor Thorne, and on the following

day began The Bertrams. I was moved now by a determination to excel,

if not in quality, at any rate in quantity. An ignoble ambition

for an author, my readers will no doubt say. But not, I think,

altogether ignoble, if an author can bring himself to look at his

work as does any other workman. This had become my task, this

was the furrow in which my plough was set, this was the thing the

doing of which had fallen into my hands, and I was minded to work

at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever

scamped my work. My novels, whether good or bad, have been as good

as I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between

each they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that, I

finished Doctor Thorne on one day, and began The Bertrams on the

next.

I had then been nearly two months in Egypt, and had at last

succeeded in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty

years have passed since that time, and other years may yet run on

before these pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official

sin by describing here the nature of the difficulty which met me.

I found, on my arrival, that I was to communicate with an officer

of the Pasha, who was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have

been the gentleman who has lately dealt with our Government as to

the Suez Canal shares, and who is now well known to the political

world as Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentlemen, an

Armenian. I never went to his office, nor do I know that he had an

office. Every other day he would come to me at my hotel, and bring

with him servants, and pipes, and coffee. I enjoyed his coming

greatly; but there was one point on which we could not agree. As

to money and other details, it seemed as though he could hardly

accede fast enough to the wishes of the Postmaster-General; but

on one point he was firmly opposed to me. I was desirous that the

mails should be carried through Egypt in twenty-four hours, and he

thought that forty-eight hours should be allowed. I was obstinate,

and he was obstinate; and for a long time we could come to

no agreement. At last his oriental tranquillity seemed to desert

him, and he took upon himself to assure me, with almost more than

British energy, that, if I insisted on the quick transit, a terrible