Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope

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Of one other misfortune which happened to me in those days I must
tell the tale. A junior clerk in the secretary's office was always
told off to sleep upon the premises, and he was supposed to be the
presiding genius of the establishment when the other members of
the Secretary's department had left the building. On an occasion
when I was still little more than a lad,--perhaps one-and-twenty
years old,--I was filling this responsible position. At about seven
in the evening word was brought to me that the Queen of,--I think
Saxony, but I am sure it was a Queen,--wanted to see the night
mails sent out. At this time, when there were many mail-coaches,
this was a show, and august visitors would sometimes come to see
it. But preparation was generally made beforehand, and some pundit
of the office would be at hand to do the honours. On this occasion
we were taken by surprise, and there was no pundit. I therefore
gave the orders, and accompanied her Majesty around the building,
walking backwards, as I conceived to be proper, and often in great
peril as I did so, up and down the stairs. I was, however, quite
satisfied with my own manner of performing an unaccustomed and most
important duty. There were two old gentlemen with her Majesty, who,
no doubt, were German barons, and an ancient baroness also. They
had come and, when they had seen the sights, took their departure
in two glass coaches. As they were preparing to go, I saw the two
barons consulting together in deep whispers, and then as the result
of that conversation one of them handed me a half-a-crown! That
also was a bad moment.

I came up to town, as I said before, purporting to live a jolly
life upon œ90 per annum. I remained seven years in the General Post
Office, and when I left it my income was œ140. During the whole
of this time I was hopelessly in debt. There were two intervals,
amounting together to nearly two years, in which I lived with
my mother, and therefore lived in comfort,--but even then I was
overwhelmed with debt. She paid much for me,--paid all that I
asked her to pay, and all that she could find out that I owed. But
who in such a condition ever tells all and makes a clean breast of
it? The debts, of course, were not large, but I cannot think now
how I could have lived, and sometimes have enjoyed life, with such
a burden of duns as I endured. Sheriff's officers with uncanny
documents, of which I never understood anything, were common
attendants on me. And yet I do not remember that I was ever locked
up, though I think I was twice a prisoner. In such emergencies some
one paid for me. And now, looking back at it, I have to ask myself
whether my youth was very wicked. I did no good in it; but was there
fair ground for expecting good from me? When I reached London no
mode of life was prepared for me,--no advice even given to me. I
went into lodgings, and then had to dispose of my time. I belonged
to no club, and knew very few friends who would receive me into
their houses. In such a condition of life a young man should no
doubt go home after his work, and spend the long hours of the evening
in reading good books and drinking tea. A lad brought up by strict
parents, and without having had even a view of gayer things, might
perhaps do so. I had passed all my life at public schools, where I
had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed them. Towards the good
books and tea no training had been given me. There was no house in
which I could habitually see a lady's face and hear a lady's voice.
No allurement to decent respectability came in my way. It seems to
me that in such circumstances the temptations of loose life will
almost certainly prevail with a young man. Of course if the mind be
strong enough, and the general stuff knitted together of sufficiently
stern material, the temptations will not prevail. But such minds
and such material are, I think, uncommon. The temptation at any
rate prevailed with me.

I wonder how many young men fall utterly to pieces from being turned
loose into London after the same fashion. Mine was, I think, of
all phases of such life the most dangerous. The lad who is sent
to mechanical work has longer hours, during which he is kept from
danger, and has not generally been taught in his boyhood to anticipate
pleasure. He looks for hard work and grinding circumstances.
I certainly had enjoyed but little pleasure, but I had been among
those who did enjoy it and were taught to expect it. And I had
filled my mind with the ideas of such joys.

And now, except during official hours, I was entirely without
control,--without the influences of any decent household around me.
I have said something of the comedy of such life, but it certainly
had its tragic aspect. Turning it all over in my own mind, as I
have constantly done in after years, the tragedy has always been
uppermost. And so it was as the time was passing. Could there be
any escape from such dirt? I would ask myself; and I always answered
that there was no escape. The mode of life was itself wretched. I
hated the office. I hated my work. More than all I hated my idleness.
I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in
life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of
authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which
I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued
out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was
out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In Official
life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not
seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could
command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama,
too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For
history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition.
But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved
very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the
months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was
passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgment
of the disgrace of postponing it. What reader will not understand
the agony of remorse produced by such a condition of mind?
The gentleman from Mecklenburgh Square was always with me in the
morning,--always angering me by his hateful presence,--but when the
evening came I could make no struggle towards getting rid of him.

In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and
Latin. I made myself familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with
the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms,
and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street,
where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, because
he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas. That was Northumberland Street by
the Marylebone Workhouse, on to the back-door of which establishment
my room looked out--a most dreary abode, at which I fancy I must
have almost ruined the good-natured lodging-house keeper by my
constant inability to pay her what I owed.

How I got my daily bread I can hardly remember. But I do remember
that I was often unable to get myself a dinner. Young men generally
now have their meals provided for them. I kept house, as it were.
Every day I had to find myself with the day's food. For my breakfast
I could get some credit at the lodgings, though that credit would
frequently come to an end. But for all that I had often breakfast
to pay day by day; and at your eating-house credit is not given. I
had no friends on whom I could sponge regularly. Out on the Fulham
Road I had an uncle, but his house was four miles from the Post
Office, and almost as far from my own lodgings. Then came borrowings
of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery.

Before I tell how it came about that I left this wretched life,
I must say a word or two of the friendships which lessened its
misfortunes. My earliest friend in life was John Merivale, with whom
I had been at school at Sunbury and Harrow, and who was a nephew
of my tutor, Harry Drury. Herman Merivale, who afterwards became my
friend, was his brother, as is also Charles Merivale, the historian
and Dean of Ely. I knew John when I was ten years old, and am happy
to be able to say that he is going to dine with me one day this
week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those
days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he
had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury
which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close
friends. And then there was one W---- A----, whose misfortunes in
life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly
loved. He had been at Winchester and at Oxford, and at both places
had fallen into trouble. He then became a schoolmaster,--or perhaps
I had better say usher,--and finally he took orders. But he was
unfortunate in all things, and died some years ago in poverty. He
was most perverse; bashful to very fear of a lady's dress; unable
to restrain himself in anything, but yet with a conscience that
was always stinging him; a loving friend, though very quarrelsome;
and, perhaps, of all men I have known, the most humorous. And he
was entirely unconscious of his own humour. He did not know that
he could so handle all matters as to create infinite amusement out
of them. Poor W---- A----! To him there came no happy turning-point
at which life loomed seriously on him, and then became prosperous.

W---- A----, Merivale, and I formed a little club, which we called
the Tramp Society, and subjected to certain rules, in obedience to
which we wandered on foot about the counties adjacent to London.
Southampton was the furthest point we ever reached; but Buckinghamshire
and Hertfordshire were more dear to us. These were the happiest
hours of my then life--and perhaps not the least innocent, although
we were frequently in peril from the village authorities whom we
outraged. Not to pay for any conveyance, never to spend above five
shillings a day, to obey all orders from the elected ruler of the
hour (this enforced under heavy fines), were among our statutes.
I would fain tell here some of our adventures:--how A---- enacted
an escaped madman and we his pursuing keepers, and so got ourselves
a lift in a cart, from which we ran away as we approached the
lunatic asylum; how we were turned out of a little town at night,
the townsfolk frightened by the loudness of our mirth; and how we
once crept into a hayloft and were wakened in the dark morning by
a pitchfork,--and how the juvenile owner of that pitchfork fled
through the window when he heard the complaints of the wounded man!
But the fun was the fun of W---- A----, and would cease to be fun
as told by me.

It was during these years that John Tilley, who has now been for
many years the permanent senior officer of the Post Office, married
my sister, whom he took with him into Cumberland, where he was
stationed as one of our surveyors. He has been my friend for more
than forty years; as has also Peregrine Birch, a clerk in the House
of Lords, who married one of those daughters of Colonel Grant who
assisted us in the raid we made on the goods which had been seized
by the Sheriff's officer at Harrow. These have been the oldest and
dearest friends of my life, and I can thank God that three of them
are still alive.

When I had been nearly seven years in the Secretary's office of
the Post Office, always hating my position there, and yet always
fearing that I should be dismissed from it, there came a way of
escape. There had latterly been created in the service a new body
of officers called surveyors' clerks. There were at that time
seven surveyors in England, two in Scotland and three in Ireland.
To each of these officers a clerk had been lately attached, whose
duty it was to travel about the country under the surveyor's orders.
There had been much doubt among the young men in the office whether
they should or should not apply for these places. The emoluments
were good and the work alluring; but there was at first supposed
to be something derogatory in the position. There was a rumour that
the first surveyor who got a clerk sent the clerk out to fetch his
beer, and that another had called upon his clerk to send the linen
to the wash. There was, however, a conviction that nothing could be
worse than the berth of a surveyor's clerk in Ireland. The clerks
were all appointed, however. To me it had not occurred to ask for
anything, nor would anything have been given me. But after a while
there came a report from the far west of Ireland that the man sent
there was absurdly incapable. It was probably thought then that
none but a man absurdly incapable would go on such a mission to the
west of Ireland. When the report reached the London office I was
the first to read it. I was at that time in dire trouble, having
debts on my head and quarrels with our Secretary-Colonel, and a
full conviction that my life was taking me downwards to the lowest
pits. So I went to the Colonel boldly, and volunteered for Ireland
if he would send me. He was glad to be so rid of me, and I went.
This happened in August, 1841, when I was twenty-six years old. My
salary in Ireland was to be but œ100 a year; but I was to receive
fifteen shillings a day for every day that I was away from home,
and sixpence for every mile that I travelled. The same allowances
were made in England; but at that time travelling in Ireland was
done at half the English prices. My income in Ireland, after paying
my expenses, became at once œ400. This was the first good fortune
of my life.

CHAPTER IV

IRELAND--MY FIRST TWO NOVELS

1841-1848

In the preceding pages I have given a short record of the first
twenty-six years of my life,--years of suffering, disgrace, and
inward remorse. I fear that my mode of telling will have left an idea
simply of their absurdities; but, in truth, I was wretched,--sometimes
almost unto death, and have often cursed the hour in which I was
born. There had clung to me a feeling that I had been looked upon
always as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing,--as a creature
of whom those connected with him had to be ashamed. And I feel
certain now that in my young days I was so regarded. Even my few
friends who had found with me a certain capacity for enjoyment were
half afraid of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to
be loved,--of a strong wish to be popular with my associates. No
child, no boy, no lad, no young man, had ever been less so. And I
had been so poor, and so little able to bear poverty. But from the
day on which I set my foot in Ireland all these evils went away
from me. Since that time who has had a happier life than mine?
Looking round upon all those I know, I cannot put my hand upon
one. But all is not over yet. And, mindful of that, remembering
how great is the agony of adversity, how crushing the despondency
of degradation, how susceptible I am myself to the misery coming
from contempt,--remembering also how quickly good things may go
and evil things come,--I am often again tempted to hope, almost to
pray, that the end may be near. Things may be going well now--

"Sin aliquem infandum casum, Fortuna, minaris;
Nunc, o nunc liceat crudelem abrumpere vitam."

There is unhappiness so great that the very fear of it is an alloy
to happiness. I had then lost my father, and sister, and brother,--have
since lost another sister and my mother;--but I have never as yet
lost a wife or a child.

When I told my friends that I was going on this mission to Ireland
they shook their heads, but said nothing to dissuade me. I think
it must have been evident to all who were my friends that my life
in London was not a success. My mother and elder brother were
at this time abroad, and were not consulted;--did not even know
my intention in time to protest against it. Indeed, I consulted
no one, except a dear old cousin, our family lawyer, from whom I
borrowed œ200 to help me out of England. He lent me the money, and
looked upon me with pitying eyes--shaking his head. "After all,
you were right to go," he said to me when I paid him the money a
few years afterwards.

But nobody then thought I was right to go. To become clerk to
an Irish surveyor, in Connaught, with a salary of œ100 a year, at
twenty-six years of age! I did not think it right even myself,--except
that anything was right which would take me away from the General
Post Office and from London.

My ideas of the duties I was to perform were very vague, as were
also my ideas of Ireland generally. Hitherto I had passed my time,
seated at a desk, either writing letters myself, or copying into
books those which others had written. I had never been called upon
to do anything I was unable or unfitted to do. I now understood that
in Ireland I was to be a deputy-inspector of country post offices,
and that among other things to be inspected would be the postmasters'
accounts! But as no other person asked a question as to my fitness
for this work, it seemed unnecessary for me to do so.

On the 15th of September, 1841, I landed in Dublin, without an
acquaintance in the country, and with only two or three letters of
introduction from a brother clerk in the Post Office. I had learned
to think that Ireland was a land flowing with fun and whisky, in
which irregularity was the rule of life, and where broken heads were
looked upon as honourable badges. I was to live at a place called
Banagher, on the Shannon, which I had heard of because of its having
once been conquered, though it had heretofore conquered everything,
including the devil. And from Banagher my inspecting tours were to
be made, chiefly into Connaught, but also over a strip of country
eastwards, which would enable me occasionally to run up to Dublin.
I went to a hotel which was very dirty, and after dinner I ordered
some whisky punch. There was an excitement in this, but when the
punch was gone I was very dull. It seemed so strange to be in a
country in which there was not a single individual whom I had ever
spoken to or ever seen. And it was to be my destiny to go down into
Connaught and adjust accounts,--the destiny of me who had never
learned the multiplication table, or done a sum in long division!

On the next morning I called on the Secretary of the Irish Post
Office, and learned from him that Colonel Maberly had sent a very
bad character with me. He could not have sent a very good one; but
I felt a little hurt when I was informed by this new master that he
had been informed that I was worthless, and must, in all probability,
be dismissed. "But," said the new master, "I shall judge you by your
own merits." From that time to the day on which I left the service,
I never heard a word of censure, nor had many months passed before
I found that my services were valued. Before a year was over, I
had acquired the character of a thoroughly good public servant.

The time went very pleasantly. Some adventures I had;--two of
which I told in the Tales of All Countries, under the names of The
O'Conors of Castle Conor, and Father Giles of Ballymoy. I will not
swear to every detail in these stories, but the main purport of
each is true. I could tell many others of the same nature, were
this the place for them. I found that the surveyor to whom I had
been sent kept a pack of hounds, and therefore I bought a hunter.
I do not think he liked it, but he could not well complain. He never
rode to hounds himself, but I did; and then and thus began one of
the great joys of my life. I have ever since been constant to the
sport, having learned to love it with an affection which I cannot
myself fathom or understand. Surely no man has laboured at it as I
have done, or hunted under such drawbacks as to distances, money, and
natural disadvantages. I am very heavy, very blind, have been--in
reference to hunting--a poor man, and am now an old man. I have
often had to travel all night outside a mail-coach, in order that
I might hunt the next day. Nor have I ever been in truth a good
horseman. And I have passed the greater part of my hunting life
under the discipline of the Civil Service. But it has been for
more than thirty years a duty to me to ride to hounds; and I have
performed that duty with a persistent energy. Nothing has ever
been allowed to stand in the way of hunting,--neither the writing
of books, nor the work of the Post Office, nor other pleasures.
As regarded the Post Office, it soon seemed to be understood that
I was to hunt; and when my services were re-transferred to England,
no word of difficulty ever reached me about it. I have written on
very many subjects, and on most of them with pleasure, but on no
subject with such delight as that on hunting. I have dragged it
into many novels,--into too many, no doubt,--but I have always felt
myself deprived of a legitimate joy when the nature of the tale has
not allowed me a hunting chapter. Perhaps that which gave me the
greatest delight was the description of a run on a horse accidentally
taken from another sportsman--a circumstance which occurred to my
dear friend Charles Buxton, who will be remembered as one of the
members for Surrey.

It was altogether a very jolly life that I led in Ireland. I
was always moving about, and soon found myself to be in pecuniary
circumstances which were opulent in comparison with those of my
past life. The Irish people did not murder me, nor did they even
break my head. I soon found them to be good-humoured, clever--the
working classes very much more intelligent than those of
England--economical, and hospitable. We hear much of their spendthrift
nature; but extravagance is not the nature of an Irishman. He
will count the shillings in a pound much more accurately than an
Englishman, and will with much more certainty get twelve pennyworth
from each. But they are perverse, irrational, and but little bound
by the love of truth. I lived for many years among them--not finally
leaving the country until 1859, and I had the means of studying
their character.

I had not been a fortnight in Ireland before I was sent down to a
little town in the far west of county Galway, to balance a defaulting
postmaster's accounts, find out how much he owed, and report upon
his capacity to pay. In these days such accounts are very simple.
They adjust themselves from day to day, and a Post Office surveyor
has nothing to do with them. At that time, though the sums dealt
with were small, the forms of dealing with them were very intricate.
I went to work, however, and made that defaulting postmaster teach
me the use of those forms. I then succeeded in balancing the account,
and had no difficulty whatever in reporting that he was altogether
unable to pay his debt. Of course, he was dismissed; but he had
been a very useful man to me. I never had any further difficulty
in the matter.

But my chief work was the investigating of complaints made by the
public as to postal matters. The practice of the office was and
is to send one of its servants to the spot to see the complainant
and to inquire into the facts, when the complainant is sufficiently
energetic or sufficiently big to make himself well heard. A great
expense is often incurred for a very small object; but the system
works well on the whole, as confidence is engendered, and a feeling
is produced in the country that the department has eyes of its own
and does keep them open. This employment was very pleasant, and
to me always easy, as it required at its close no more than the
writing of a report. There were no accounts in this business, no
keeping of books, no necessary manipulation of multitudinous forms.
I must tell of one such complaint and inquiry, because in its result
I think it was emblematic of many.

A gentleman in county Cavan had complained most bitterly of the
injury done to him by some arrangement of the Post Office. The
nature of his grievance has no present significance; but it was
so unendurable that he had written many letters, couched in the
strongest language. He was most irate, and indulged himself in
that scorn which is easy to an angry mind. The place was not in my
district, but I was borrowed, being young and strong, that I might
remember the edge of his personal wrath. It was mid-winter, and I
drove up to his house, a squire's country seat, in the middle of a
snowstorm, just as it was becoming dark. I was on an open jaunting
car, and was on my way from one little town to another, the cause
of his complaint having reference to some mail conveyance between
the two. I was certainly very cold, and very wet, and very
uncomfortable when I entered his house. I was admitted by a butler,
but the gentleman himself hurried into the hall. I at once began to
explain my business. "God bless me!" he said, "you are wet through.
John, get Mr. Trollope some brandy and water--very hot." I was
beginning my story about the post again when he himself took off my
greatcoat, and suggested that I should go up to my bedroom before
I troubled myself with business. "Bedroom!" I exclaimed. Then
he assured me that he would not turn a dog out on such a night as
that, and into a bedroom I was shown, having first drank the brandy
and water standing at the drawing-room fire. When I came down I was
introduced to his daughter, and the three of us went in to dinner.
I shall never forget his righteous indignation when I again brought
up the postal question on the departure of the young lady. Was I
such a Goth as to contaminate wine with business? So I drank my
wine, and then heard the young lady sing while her father slept
in his armchair. I spent a very pleasant evening, but my host was
too sleepy to hear anything about the Post Office that night. It
was absolutely necessary that I should go away the next morning
after breakfast, and I explained that the matter must be discussed
then. He shook his head and wrung his hands in unmistakable
disgust,--almost in despair. "But what am I to say in my report?"
I asked. "Anything you please," he said. "Don't spare me, if you
want an excuse for yourself. Here I sit all the day--with nothing
to do; and I like writing letters." I did report that Mr.---- was
now quite satisfied with the postal arrangement of his district;
and I felt a soft regret that I should have robbed my friend of his
occupation. Perhaps he was able to take up the Poor Law Board, or
to attack the Excise. At the Post Office nothing more was heard
from him.

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