Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

responsibility would rest on my head. I made this mistake, he

said,--that I supposed that a rate of travelling which would be

easy and secure in England could be attained with safety in Egypt.

"The Pasha, his master, would," he said, "no doubt accede to

any terms demanded by the British Post Office, so great was his

reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at

once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be

ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly

follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my

pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence

but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four

visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit

could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,--and

astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no

longer any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office, and

he assured me, with energetic complaisance, that it should be his

care to see that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually

kept, and, I believe, is so still. I must confess, however, that my

persistency was not the result of any courage specially personal to

myself. While the matter was being debated, it had been whispered

to me that the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company had

conceived that forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their

traffic better than twenty-four, and that, as they were the great

paymasters on the railway, the Minister of the Egyptian State,

who managed the railway, might probably wish to accommodate them.

I often wondered who originated that frightful picture of blood

and desolation. That it came from an English heart and an English

hand I was always sure.

From Egypt I visited the Holy Land, and on my way inspected the

Post Offices at Malta and Gibraltar. I could fill a volume with

true tales of my adventures. The Tales of All Countries have, most

of them, some foundation in such occurrences. There is one called

John Bull on the Guadalquivir, the chief incident in which occurred

to me and a friend of mine on our way up that river to Seville. We

both of us handled the gold ornaments of a man whom we believed to

be a bull-fighter, but who turned out to be a duke,--and a duke,

too, who could speak English! How gracious he was to us, and yet

how thoroughly he covered us with ridicule!

On my return home I received (pounds)400 from Messrs. Chapman & Hall for

Doctor Thorne, and agreed to sell them The Bertrams for the same sum.

This latter novel was written under very vagrant circumstances,--at

Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Glasgow, then at sea, and at last

finished in Jamaica. Of my journey to the West Indies I will say

a few words presently, but I may as well speak of these two novels

here. Doctor Thorne has, I believe, been the most popular book that

I have written,--if I may take the sale as a proof of comparative

popularity. The Bertrams has had quite an opposite fortune. I do not

know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even by my friends,

and I cannot remember that there is any character in it that has

dwelt in the minds of novel-readers. I myself think that they are

of about equal merit, but that neither of them is good. They fall

away very much from The Three Clerks, both in pathos and humour.

There is no personage in either of them comparable to Chaffanbrass the

lawyer. The plot of Doctor Thorne is good, and I am led therefore

to suppose that a good plot,--which, to my own feeling, is the

most insignificant part of a tale,--is that which will most raise

it or most condemn it in the public judgment. The plots of Tom Jones

and of Ivanhoe are almost perfect, and they are probably the most

popular novels of the schools of the last and of this century; but

to me the delicacy of Amelia, and the rugged strength of Burley

and Meg Merrilies, say more for the power of those great novelists

than the gift of construction shown in the two works I have named.

A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour

and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention,

the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals

known to the world or to the author, but of created personages

impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking,

the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the

vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the

agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must,

however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. That

of The Bertrams was more than ordinarily bad; and as the book was

relieved by no special character, it failed. Its failure never

surprised me; but I have been surprised by the success of Doctor

Thorne.

At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the

failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale,

and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which

had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all

made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel,

I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two

years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible

author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to

me,--I might add (pounds)600 a year to my official income. I was still

living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure

my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a week, on (pounds)1400

a year. If more should come, it would be well;--but (pounds)600 a year I

was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but

was very pleasant when it came.

On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the

Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had

to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the

letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the

men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their

labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer,

and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and

then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home

afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in

Glasgow, all belonging to The Bertrams, are not good.

Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West

Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system

there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices

generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British

Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be

postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands

have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated

for residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous

for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the

stables had become Augean. I was also instructed to carry out in

some of the islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to

the island Governor, and in others to propose some such plan. I

was then to go on to Cuba, to make a postal treaty with the Spanish

authorities, and to Panama for the same purpose with the Government

of New Grenada. All this work I performed to my satisfaction, and

I hope to that of my masters in St. Martin's le Grand.

But the trip is at the present moment of importance to my subject,

as having enabled me to write that which, on the whole, I regard

as the best book that has come from my pen. It is short, and, I

think I may venture to say, amusing, useful, and true. As soon as

I had learned from the secretary at the General Post Office that

this journey would be required, I proposed the book to Messrs.

Chapman & Hall, demanding (pounds)250 for a single volume. The contract

was made without any difficulty, and when I returned home the work

was complete in my desk. I began it on board the ship in which I

left Kingston, Jamaica, for Cuba,--and from week to week I carried

it on as I went. From Cuba I made my way to St. Thomas, and through

the island down to Demerara, then back to St. Thomas,--which is

the starting-point for all places in that part of the globe,--to

Santa Martha, Carthagena, Aspinwall, over the Isthmus to Panama, up

the Pacific to a little harbour on the coast of Costa Rica, thence

across Central America, through Costa Rica, and down the Nicaragua

river to the Mosquito coast, and after that home by Bermuda and New

York. Should any one want further details of the voyage, are they

not written in my book? The fact memorable to me now is that I

never made a single note while writing or preparing it. Preparation,

indeed, there was none. The descriptions and opinions came hot

on to the paper from their causes. I will not say that this is the

best way of writing a book intended to give accurate information.

But it is the best way of producing to the eye of the reader, and

to his ear, that which the eye of the writer has seen and his ear

heard. There are two kinds of confidence which a reader may have

in his author,--which two kinds the reader who wishes to use his

reading well should carefully discriminate. There is a confidence

in facts and a confidence in vision. The one man tells you accurately

what has been. The other suggests to you what may, or perhaps what

must have been, or what ought to have been. The former require simple

faith. The latter calls upon you to judge for yourself, and form

your own conclusions. The former does not intend to be prescient,

nor the latter accurate. Research is the weapon used by the former;

observation by the latter. Either may be false,--wilfully false; as

also may either be steadfastly true. As to that, the reader must

judge for himself. But the man who writes currente calamo, who

works with a rapidity which will not admit of accuracy, may be as

true, and in one sense as trustworthy, as he who bases every word

upon a rock of facts. I have written very much as I have, travelled

about; and though I have been very inaccurate, I have always

written the exact truth as I saw it ;--and I have, I think, drawn

my pictures correctly.

The view I took of the relative position in the West Indies

of black men and white men was the view of the Times newspaper at

that period; and there appeared three articles in that journal, one

closely after another, which made the fortune of the book. Had it

been very bad, I suppose its fortune could not have been made for

it even by the Times newspaper. I afterwards became acquainted with

the writer of those articles, the contributor himself informing me

that he had written them. I told him that he had done me a greater

service than can often be done by one man to another, but that I was

under no obligation to him. I do not think that he saw the matter

quite in the same light.

I am aware that by that criticism I was much raised in my position