Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

for guidance, though there are many others from which no spark of

literary advantage may be obtained. But it is well that both public

and authors should know what is the advantage which they have a

right to expect. There have been critics,--and there probably will

be again, though the circumstances of English literature do not

tend to produce them,--with power sufficient to entitle them to

speak with authority. These great men have declared, tanquam ex

cathedra, that such a book has been so far good and so far bad, or

that it has been altogether good or altogether bad;--and the world

has believed them. When making such assertions they have given

their reasons, explained their causes, and have carried conviction.

Very great reputations have been achieved by such critics, but not

without infinite study and the labour of many years.

Such are not the critics of the day, of whom we are now speaking.

In the literary world as it lives at present some writer is selected

for the place of critic to a newspaper, generally some young

writer, who for so many shillings a column shall review whatever

book is sent to him and express an opinion,--reading the book through

for the purpose, if the amount of honorarium as measured with the

amount of labour will enable him to do so. A labourer must measure

his work by his pay or he cannot live. From criticism such as this

must far the most part be, the general reader has no right to expect

philosophical analysis, or literary judgment on which confidence

may be placed. But he probably may believe that the books praised

will be better than the books censured, and that those which are

praised by periodicals which never censure are better worth his

attention than those which are not noticed. And readers will also

find that by devoting an hour or two on Saturday to the criticisms

of the week, they will enable themselves to have an opinion about

the books of the day. The knowledge so acquired will not be great,

nor will that little be lasting; but it adds something to the

pleasure of life to be able to talk on subjects of which others are

speaking; and the man who has sedulously gone through the literary

notices in the Spectator and the Saturday may perhaps be justified

in thinking himself as well able to talk about the new book as

his friend who has bought that new book on the tapis, and who, not

improbably, obtained his information from the same source.

As an author, I have paid careful attention to the reviews which

have been written on my own work; and I think that now I well know

where I may look for a little instruction, where I may expect only

greasy adulation, where I shall be cut up into mince-meat for the

delight of those who love sharp invective, and where I shall find

an equal mixture of praise and censure so adjusted, without much

judgment, as to exhibit the impartiality of the newspaper and its

staff. Among it all there is much chaff, which I have learned bow

to throw to the winds, with equal disregard whether it praises or

blames;--but I have also found some corn, on which I have fed and

nourished myself, and for which I have been thankful.

I will now go back to the year 1867, in which I was still living at

Waltham Cross. I had some time since bought the house there which

I had at first hired, and added rooms to it, and made it for our

purposes very comfortable. It was, however, a rickety old place,

requiring much repair, and occasionally not as weathertight as it

should be. We had a domain there sufficient for the cows, and for

the making of our butter and hay. For strawberries, asparagus, green

peas, out-of-door peaches, for roses especially, and such everyday

luxuries, no place was ever more excellent. It was only twelve

miles from London, and admitted therefore of frequent intercourse

with the metropolis. It was also near enough to the Roothing country

for hunting purposes. No doubt the Shoreditch Station, by which it

had to be reached, had its drawbacks. My average distance also to

the Essex meets was twenty miles. But the place combined as much

or more than I had a right to expect. It was within my own postal

district, and had, upon the whole, been well chosen.

The work that I did during the twelve years that I remained there,

from 1859 to 1871, was certainly very great. I feel confident that

in amount no other writer contributed so much during that time to

English literature. Over and above my novels, I wrote political

articles, critical, social, and sporting articles, for periodicals,

without number. I did the work of a surveyor of the General Post

Office, and so did it as to give the authorities of the department

no slightest pretext for fault-finding. I hunted always at least

twice a week. I was frequent in the whist-room at the Garrick. I

lived much in society in London, and was made happy by the presence

of many friends at Waltham Cross. In addition to this we always

spent six weeks at least out of England. Few men, I think, ever lived

a fuller life. And I attribute the power of doing this altogether

to the virtue of early hours. It was my practice to be at my table

every morning at 5.30 A. M.; and it was also my practice to allow

myself no mercy. An old groom, whose business it was to call me,

and to whom I paid (pounds)5 a year extra for the duty, allowed himself no

mercy. During all those years at Waltham Cross he was never once

late with the coffee which it was his duty to bring me. I do not

know that I ought not to feel that I owe more to him than to any

one else for the success I have had. By beginning at that hour I

could complete my literary work before I dressed for breakfast.

All those I think who have lived as literary men,--working daily

as literary labourers,--will agree with me that three hours a day

will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then he should

so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously

during those three hours,--so have tutored his mind that it shall

not be necessary for him to sit nibbling his pen, and gazing at the

wall before him, till he shall have found the words with which he

wants to express his ideas. It had at this time become my custom,--and

it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient

to myself,--to write with my watch before me, and to require from

myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250

words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went. But my

three hours were not devoted entirely to writing. I always began

my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which

would take me half an hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing

with my ear the sound of the words and phrases. I would strongly

recommend this practice to all tyros in writing. That their work

should be read after it has been written is a matter of course,--that

it should be read twice at least before it goes to the printers,

I take to be a matter of course. But by reading what he has last

written, just before he recommences his task, the writer will catch

the tone and spirit of what he is then saying, and will avoid the

fault of seeming to be unlike himself. This division of time allowed

me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day,

and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results

three novels of three volumes each in the year;--the precise amount

which so greatly acerbated the publisher in Paternoster Row, and which

must at any rate be felt to be quite as much as the novel-readers

of the world can want from the hands of one man.

I have never written three novels in a year, but by following the

plan above described I have written more than as much as three

volumes; and by adhering to it over a course of years, I have been

enabled to have always on hand,--for some time back now,--one or

two or even three unpublished novels in my desk beside me. Were I

to die now there are three such besides The Prime Minister, half

of which has only yet been issued. One of these has been six years

finished, and has never seen the light since it was first tied up

in the wrapper which now contains it. I look forward with some grim

pleasantry to its publication after another period of six years,

and to the declaration of the critics that it has been the work of

a period of life at which the power of writing novels had passed

from me. Not improbably, however, these pages may be printed first.

In 1866 and 1867 The Last Chronicle of Barset was brought out by

George Smith in sixpenny monthly numbers. I do not know that this

mode of publication had been tried before, or that it answered very

well on this occasion. Indeed the shilling magazines had interfered

greatly with the success of novels published in numbers without

other accompanying matter. The public finding that so much might

be had for a shilling, in which a portion of one or more novels was

always included, were unwilling to spend their money on the novel

alone. Feeling that this certainly had become the case in reference

to novels published in shilling numbers, Mr. Smith and I determined

to make the experiment with sixpenny parts. As he paid me (pounds)3000

for the use of my MS., the loss, if any, did not fall upon me. If

I remember right the enterprise was not altogether successful.

Taking it as a whole, I regard this as the best novel I have

written. I was never quite satisfied with the development of the

plot, which consisted in the loss of a cheque, of a charge made

against a clergyman for stealing it, and of absolute uncertainty

on the part of the clergyman himself as to the manner in which the

cheque had found its way into his hands. I cannot quite make myself

believe that even such a man as Mr. Crawley could have forgotten

how he got it, nor would the generous friend who was anxious to

supply his wants have supplied them by tendering the cheque of a

third person. Such fault I acknowledge,--acknowledging at the same

time that I have never been capable of constructing with complete

success the intricacies of a plot that required to be unravelled.

But while confessing so much, I claim to have portrayed the mind

of the unfortunate man with great accuracy and great delicacy. The

pride, the humility, the manliness, the weakness, the conscientious

rectitude and bitter prejudices of Mr. Crawley were, I feel, true

to nature and well described. The surroundings too are good. Mrs.

Proudie at the palace is a real woman; and the poor old dean dying

at the deanery is also real. The archdeacon in his victory is very

real. There is a true savour of English country life all through

the book. It was with many misgivings that I killed my old friend

Mrs. Proudie. I could not, I think, have done it, but for a resolution

taken and declared under circumstances of great momentary pressure.

It was thus that it came about. I was sitting one morning at work

upon the novel at the end of the long drawing-room of the Athenaeum