Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

aware that an artist should keep in his hand the power of fitting

the beginning of his work to the end. No doubt it is his first

duty to fit the end to the beginning, and he will endeavour to do

so. But he should still keep in his hands the power of remedying

any defect in this respect.

"Servetur ad imum

Qualis ab incepto processerit,"

should be kept in view as to every character and every string of

action. Your Achilles should all through, from beginning to end,

be "impatient, fiery, ruthless, keen." Your Achilles, such as he

is, will probably keep up his character. But your Davus also should

be always Davus, and that is more difficult. The rustic driving his

pigs to market cannot always make them travel by the exact path

which he has intended for them. When some young lady at the end

of a story cannot be made quite perfect in her conduct, that vivid

description of angelic purity with which you laid the first lines

of her portrait should be slightly toned down. I had felt that the

rushing mode of publication to which the system of serial stories

had given rise, and by which small parts as they were written were

sent hot to the press, was injurious to the work done. If I now

complied with the proposition made to me, I must act against my

own principle. But such a principle becomes a tyrant if it cannot

be superseded on a just occasion. If the reason be "tanti," the

principle should for the occasion be put in abeyance. I sat as

judge, and decreed that the present reason was "tanti." On this my

first attempt at a serial story, I thought it fit to break my own

rule. I can say, however, that I have never broken it since.

But what astonished me most was the fact that at so late a day

this new Cornhill Magazine should be in want of a novel. Perhaps

some of my future readers will he able to remember the great

expectations which were raised as to this periodical. Thackeray's

was a good name with which to conjure. The proprietors, Messrs.

Smith & Elder, were most liberal in their manner of initiating the

work, and were able to make an expectant world of readers believe

that something was to be given them for a shilling very much in

excess of anything they had ever received for that or double the

money. Whether these hopes were or were not fulfilled it is not for

me to say, as, for the first few years of the magazine's existence,

I wrote for it more than any other one person. But such was certainly

the prospect;--and how had it come to pass that, with such promises

made, the editor and the proprietors were, at the end of October,

without anything fixed as to what must be regarded as the chief

dish in the banquet to be provided?

I fear that the answer to this question must be found in the habits

of procrastination which had at that time grown upon the editor.

He had, I imagine, undertaken the work himself, and had postponed

its commencement till there was left to him no time for commencing.

There was still, it may be said, as much time for him as for me.

I think there was,--for though he had his magazine to look after,

I had the Post Office. But he thought, when unable to trust his

own energy, that he might rely upon that of a new recruit. He was

but four years my senior in life but he was at the top of the tree,

while I was still at the bottom.

Having made up my mind to break my principle, I started at once from

Dublin to London. I arrived there on the morning of Thursday, 3d

of November, and left it on the evening of Friday. In the meantime

I had made my agreement with Messrs. Smith & Elder, and had arranged

my plot. But when in London, I first went to Edward Chapman, at 193

Piccadilly. If the novel I was then writing for him would suit

the Cornhill, might I consider my arrangement with him to be at an

end? Yes; I might. But if that story would not suit the Cornhill,

was I to consider my arrangement with him as still standing,--that

agreement requiring that my MS. should be in his hands in the

following March? As to that, I might do as I pleased. In our dealings

together Mr. Edward Chapman always acceded to every suggestion made

to him. He never refused a book, and never haggled at a price. Then

I hurried into the City, and had my first interview with Mr. George

Smith. When he heard that Castle Richmond was an Irish story, he

begged that I would endeavour to frame some other for his magazine.

He was sure that an Irish story would not do for a commencement;--and

he suggested the Church, as though it were my peculiar subject. I

told him that Castle Richmond would have to "come out" while any

other novel that I might write for him would be running through the

magazine;--but to that he expressed himself altogether indifferent.

He wanted an English tale, on English life, with a clerical flavour.

On these orders I went to work, and framed what I suppose I must

call the plot of Framley Parsonage.

On my journey back to Ireland, in the railway carriage, I wrote the

first few pages of that story. I had got into my head an idea of

what I meant to write,--a morsel of the biography of an English

clergyman who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation

by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of

those around him. The love of his sister for the young lord was

an adjunct necessary, because there must be love in a novel. And

then by placing Framley Parsonage near Barchester, I was able to

fall back upon my old friends Mrs. Proudie and the archdeacon. Out

of these slight elements I fabricated a hodge-podge in which the

real plot consisted at last simply of a girl refusing to marry the

man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly.

Nothing could be less efficient or artistic. But the characters

were so well handled, that the work from the first to the last

was popular,--and was received as it went on with still increasing

favour by both editor and proprietor of the magazine. The story was

thoroughly English. There was a little fox-hunting and a little

tuft-hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian cant. There

was no heroism and no villainy. There was much Church, but more

love-making. And it was downright honest love,--in which there was

no pretence on the part of the lady that she was too ethereal to

be fond of a man, no half-and-half inclination on the part of the

man to pay a certain price and no more for a pretty toy. Each of

them longed for the other, and they were not ashamed to say so.

Consequently they in England who were living, or had lived, the

same sort of life, liked Framley Parsonage. I think myself that

Lucy Robarts is perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever

drew,--the most natural, at any rate, of those who have been good

girls. She was not as dear to me as Kate Woodward in The Three

Clerks, but I think she is more like real human life. Indeed

I doubt whether such a character could be made more lifelike than

Lucy Robarts.

And I will say also that in this novel there is no very weak part,--no

long succession of dull pages. The production of novels in serial

form forces upon the author the conviction that he should not allow

himself to be tedious in any single part. I hope no reader will

misunderstand me. In spite of that conviction, the writer of stories

in parts will often be tedious. That I have been so myself is a

fault that will lie heavy on my tombstone. But the writer when he

embarks in such a business should feel that he cannot afford to have

many pages skipped out of the few which are to meet the reader's

eye at the same time. Who can imagine the first half of the first

volume of Waverley coming out in shilling numbers? I had realised

this when I was writing Framley Parsonage; and working on the

conviction which had thus come home to me, I fell into no bathos

of dulness.

I subsequently came across a piece of criticism which was written

on me as a novelist by a brother novelist very much greater than

myself, and whose brilliant intellect and warm imagination led him

to a kind of work the very opposite of mine. This was Nathaniel

Hawthorne, the American, whom I did not then know, but whose works

I knew. Though it praises myself highly, I will insert it here,

because it certainly is true in its nature: "It is odd enough," he

says, "that my own individual taste is for quite another class of

works than those which I myself am able to write. If I were to meet

with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe I should

be able to get through them. Have you ever read the novels of Anthony

Trollope? They precisely suit my taste,--solid and substantial,

written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of

ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of

the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants

going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they

were being made a show of. And these books are just as English as

a beef-steak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an

English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still

I should think that human nature would give them success anywhere."

This was dated early in 1860, and could have had no reference to

Framley Parsonage; but it was as true of that work as of any that

I have written. And the criticism, whether just or unjust, describes

with wonderful accuracy the purport that I have ever had in view

in my writing. I have always desired to "hew out some lump of the

earth," and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk

here among us,--with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated

baseness,--so that my readers might recognise human beings like to

themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods

or demons. If I could do this, then I thought I might succeed

in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that

honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood

fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure; and sweet, and

unselfish; that a man will be honoured as he is true, and honest,

and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious,

and things nobly done beautiful and gracious. I do not say that

lessons such as these may not be more grandly taught by higher

flights than mine. Such lessons come to us from our greatest poets.

But there are so many who will read novels and understand them, who

either do not read the works of our great poets, or reading them

miss the lesson! And even in prose fiction the character whom

the fervid imagination of the writer has lifted somewhat into the

clouds, will hardly give so plain an example to the hasty normal

reader as the humbler personage whom that reader unconsciously feels

to resemble himself or herself. I do think that a girl would more

probably dress her own mind after Lucy Robarts than after Flora

Macdonald.

There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching

either virtue or nobility,--those, for instance, who regard

the reading of novels as a sin, and those also who think it to be