Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

as an author. Whether such lifting up by such means is good or bad

for literature is a question which I hope to discuss in a future

chapter. But the result was immediate to me, for I at once went to

Chapman & Hall and successfully demanded (pounds)600 for my next novel.

Soon after my return from the West Indies I was enabled to change

my district in Ireland for one in England. For some time past my

official work had been of a special nature, taking me out of my

own district; but through all that, Dublin had been my home, and

there my wife and children had lived. I had often sighed to return

to England,--with a silly longing. My life in England for twenty-six

years from the time of my birth to the day on which I left it, had

been wretched. I had been poor, friendless, and joyless. In Ireland

it had constantly been happy. I had achieved the respect of all

with whom I was concerned, I had made for myself a comfortable

home, and I had enjoyed many pleasures. Hunting itself was a great

delight to me; and now, as I contemplated a move to England, and a

house in the neighbourhood of London, I felt that hunting must be

abandoned. [Footnote: It was not abandoned till sixteen more years

had passed away.] Nevertheless I thought that a man who could

write books ought not to live in Ireland,--ought to live within

the reach of the publishers, the clubs, and the dinner-parties of

the metropolis. So I made my request at headquarters, and with some

little difficulty got myself appointed to the Eastern District of

England,--which comprised Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire,

Huntingdonshire, and the greater part of Hertfordshire.

At this time I did not stand very well with the dominant interest

at the General Post Office. My old friend Colonel Maberly had

been, some time since, squeezed into, and his place was filled by

Mr. Rowland Hill, the originator of the penny post. With him I never

had any sympathy, nor he with me. In figures and facts he was most

accurate, but I never came across any one who so little understood

the ways of men,--unless it was his brother Frederic. To the two

brothers the servants of the Post Office,--men numerous enough to

have formed a large army in old days,--were so many machines who

could be counted on for their exact work without deviation, as

wheels may be counted on, which are kept going always at the same

pace and always by the same power. Rowland Hill was an industrious

public servant, anxious for the good of his country; but he was

a hard taskmaster, and one who would, I think, have put the great

department with which he was concerned altogether out of gear by

his hardness, had he not been at last controlled. He was the Chief

Secretary, my brother-in-law--who afterwards succeeded him--came

next to him, and Mr. Hill's brother was the Junior Secretary. In

the natural course of things, I had not, from my position, anything

to do with the management of affairs;--but from time to time I found

myself more or less mixed up in it. I was known to be a thoroughly

efficient public servant; I am sure I may say so much of myself

without fear of contradiction from any one who has known the Post

Office;--I was very fond of the department, and when matters came

to be considered, I generally had an opinion of my own. I have

no doubt that I often made myself very disagreeable. I know that I

sometimes tried to do so. But I could hold my own because I knew

my business and was useful. I had given official offence by the

publication of The Three Clerks. I afterwards gave greater offence

by a lecture on The Civil Service which I delivered in one of the

large rooms at the General Post Office to the clerks there. On this

occasion, the Postmaster-General, with whom personally I enjoyed

friendly terms, sent for me and told me that Mr. Hill had told him

that I ought to be dismissed. When I asked his lordship whether

he was prepared to dismiss me, he only laughed. The threat was

no threat to me, as I knew myself to be too good to be treated in

that fashion. The lecture had been permitted, and I had disobeyed

no order. In the lecture which I delivered, there was nothing

to bring me to shame,--but it advocated the doctrine that a civil

servant is only a servant as far as his contract goes, and that he

is beyond that entitled to be as free a man in politics, as free in

his general pursuits, and as free in opinion, as those who are in

open professions and open trades. All this is very nearly admitted

now, but it certainly was not admitted then. At that time no one

in the Post Office could even vote for a Member of Parliament.

Through my whole official life I did my best to improve the style

of official writing. I have written, I should think, some thousands

of reports,--many of them necessarily very long; some of them

dealing with subjects so absurd as to allow a touch of burlesque;

some few in which a spark of indignation or a slight glow of pathos

might find an entrance. I have taken infinite pains with these

reports, habituating myself always to write them in the form in

which they should be sent,--without a copy. It is by writing thus

that a man can throw on to his paper the exact feeling with which

his mind is impressed at the moment. A rough copy, or that which

is called a draft, is written in order that it may be touched and

altered and put upon stilts. The waste of time, moreover, in such

an operation, is terrible. If a man knows his craft with his pen,

he will have learned to write without the necessity of changing

his words or the form of his sentences. I had learned so to write

my reports that they who read them should know what it was that I

meant them to understand. But I do not think that they were regarded

with favour. I have heard horror expressed because the old forms

were disregarded and language used which had no savour of red-tape.

During the whole of this work in the Post Office it was my principle

always to obey authority in everything instantly, but never to allow

my mouth to be closed as to the expression of my opinion. They who

had the ordering of me very often did not know the work as I knew

it,--could not tell as I could what would be the effect of this

or that change. When carrying out instructions which I knew should

not have been given, I never scrupled to point out the fatuity of

the improper order in the strongest language that I could decently

employ. I have revelled in these official correspondences, and look

back to some of them as the greatest delights of my life. But I am

not sure that they were so delightful to others.

I succeeded, however, in getting the English district,--which

could hardly have been refused to me,--and prepared to change our

residence towards the end of 1859. At the time I was writing Castle

Richmond, the novel which I had sold to Messrs. Chapman & Hall

for (pounds)600. But there arose at this time a certain literary project

which probably had a great effect upon my career. Whilst travelling

on postal service abroad or riding over the rural districts

in England, or arranging the mails in Ireland,--and such for the

last eighteen years had now been my life,--I had no opportunity

of becoming acquainted with the literary life in London. It was

probably some feeling of this which had made me anxious to move

my penates back to England. But even in Ireland, where I was still

living in October, 1859, I had heard of the Cornhill Magazine, which

was to come out on the 1st of January, 1860, under the editorship

of Thackeray.

I had at this time written from time to time certain short stories,

which had been published in different periodicals, and which in due

time were republished under the name of Tales of All Countries. On

the 23d of October, 1859, I wrote to Thackeray, whom I had, I think,

never then seen, offering to send him for the magazine certain of

these stories. In reply to this I received two letters,--one from

Messrs. Smith & Elder, the proprietors of the Cornhill, dated 26th

of October, and the other from the editor, written two days later.

That from Mr. Thackeray was as follows:--

"36 ONSLOW SQUARE, S. W.

October 28th.

"MY DEAR MR. TROLLOPE,--Smith & Elder have sent you their proposals;

and the business part done, let me come to the pleasure, and say

how very glad indeed I shall be to have you as a co-operator in

our new magazine. And looking over the annexed programme, you will

see whether you can't help us in many other ways besides tale-telling.

Whatever a man knows about life and its doings, that let us hear

about. You must have tossed a good deal about the world, and have

countless sketches in your memory and your portfolio. Please

to think if you can furbish up any of these besides a novel. When

events occur, and you have a good lively tale, bear us in mind. One

of our chief objects in this magazine is the getting out of novel

spinning, and back into the world. Don't understand me to disparage

our craft, especially YOUR wares. I often say I am like the

pastrycook, and don't care for tarts, but prefer bread and cheese;

but the public love the tarts (luckily for us), and we must bake and

sell them. There was quite an excitement in my family one evening

when Paterfamilias (who goes to sleep on a novel almost always

when he tries it after dinner) came up-stairs into the drawing-room

wide awake and calling for the second volume of The Three Clerks.

I hope the Cornhill Magazine will have as pleasant a story. And

the Chapmans, if they are the honest men I take them to be, I've no

doubt have told you with what sincere liking your works have been

read by yours very faithfully,

"W. M. THACKERAY."

This was very pleasant, and so was the letter from Smith & Elder

offering me (pounds)1000 for the copyright of a three-volume novel, to

come out in the new magazine,--on condition that the first portion

of it should be in their hands by December 12th. There was much in

all this that astonished me;--in the first place the price, which

was more than double what I had yet received, and nearly double

that which I was about to receive from Messrs. Chapman & Hall.

Then there was the suddenness of the call. It was already the end

of October, and a portion of the work was required to be in the

printer's hands within six weeks. Castle Richmond was indeed half

written, but that was sold to Chapman. And it had already been

a principle with me in my art, that no part of a novel should

be published till the entire story was completed. I knew, from

what I read from month to month, that this hurried publication of

incompleted work was frequently, I might perhaps say always, adopted

by the leading novelists of the day. That such has been the case,

is proved by the fact that Dickens, Thackeray, and Mrs. Gaskell

died with unfinished novels, of which portions had been already

published. I had not yet entered upon the system of publishing

novels in parts, and therefore had never been tempted. But I was