Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope

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I have now before me the letter which he wrote to me,--a letter
which I have read a score of times. It was altogether condemnatory.
"When I commenced," he said, "I had great hopes of your production.
I did not think it opened dramatically, but that might have been
remedied." I knew then that it was all over. But, as my old friend
warmed to the subject, the criticism became stronger and stronger,
till my ears tingled. At last came the fatal blow. "As to the
character of your heroine, I felt at a loss how to describe it,
but you have done it for me in the last speech of Madame Brudo."
Madame Brudo was the heroine's aunt. "'Margaret, my child, never
play the jilt again; 'tis a most unbecoming character. Play it
with what skill you will, it meets but little sympathy.' And this,
be assured, would be its effect upon an audience. So that I must
reluctantly add that, had I been still a manager, The Noble Jilt
is not a play I could have recommended for production." This was a
blow that I did feel. The neglect of a book is a disagreeable fact
which grows upon an author by degrees. There is no special moment
of agony,--no stunning violence of condemnation. But a piece of
criticism such as this, from a friend, and from a man undoubtedly
capable of forming an opinion, was a blow in the face! But I
accepted the judgment loyally, and said not a word on the subject
to any one. I merely showed the letter to my wife, declaring my
conviction, that it must be taken as gospel. And as critical gospel
it has since been accepted. In later days I have more than once
read the play, and I know that he was right. The dialogue, however,
I think to be good, and I doubt whether some of the scenes be not
the brightest and best work I ever did.

Just at this time another literary project loomed before my eyes,
and for six or eight months had considerable size. I was introduced
to Mr. John Murray, and proposed to him to write a handbook for
Ireland. I explained to him that I knew the country better than
most other people, perhaps better than any other person, and could
do it well. He asked me to make a trial of my skill, and to send
him a certain number of pages, undertaking to give me an answer
within a fortnight after he should have received my work. I came
back to Ireland, and for some weeks I laboured very hard. I "did"
the city of Dublin, and the county of Kerry, in which lies the
lake scenery of Killarney, and I "did" the route from Dublin to
Killarney, altogether completing nearly a quarter of the proposed
volume. The roll of MS. was sent to Albemarle Street,--but was never
opened. At the expiration of nine months from the date on which it
reached that time-honoured spot it was returned without a word, in
answer to a very angry letter from myself. I insisted on having
back my property,--and got it. I need hardly say that my property
has never been of the slightest use to me. In all honesty I think
that had he been less dilatory, John Murray would have got a very
good Irish Guide at a cheap rate.

Early in 1851 I was sent upon a job of special official work, which
for two years so completely absorbed my time that I was able to
write nothing. A plan was formed for extending the rural delivery
of letters, and for adjusting the work, which up to that time had
been done in a very irregular manner. A country letter-carrier
would be sent in one direction in which there were but few letters
to be delivered, the arrangement having originated probably at
the request of some influential person, while in another direction
there was no letter-carrier because no influential person had exerted
himself. It was intended to set this right throughout England,
Ireland, and Scotland; and I quickly did the work in the Irish
district to which I was attached. I was then invited to do the same
in a portion of England, and I spent two of the happiest years of
my life at the task. I began in Devonshire; and visited, I think
I may say, every nook in that county, in Cornwall, Somersetshire,
the greater part of Dorsetshire, the Channel Islands, part of
Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire,
Monmouthshire, and the six southern Welsh counties. In this way I
had an opportunity of seeing a considerable portion of Great Britain,
with a minuteness which few have enjoyed. And I did my business
after a fashion in which no other official man has worked at
least for many years. I went almost everywhere on horseback. I had
two hunters of my own, and here and there, where I could, I hired
a third horse. I had an Irish groom with me,--an old man, who has
now been in my service for thirty-five years; and in this manner I
saw almost every house--I think I may say every house of importance--in
this large district. The object was to create a postal network
which should catch all recipients of letters. In France it was, and
I suppose still is, the practice to deliver every letter. Wherever
the man may live to whom a letter is addressed, it is the duty of
some letter-carrier to take that letter to his house, sooner or
later. But this, of course, must be done slowly. With us a delivery
much delayed was thought to be worse than none at all. In some places
we did establish posts three times a week, and perhaps occasionally
twice a week; but such halting arrangements were considered to
be objectionable, and we were bound down by a salutary law as to
expense, which came from our masters at the Treasury. We were not
allowed to establish any messenger's walk on which a sufficient
number of letters would not be delivered to pay the man's wages,
counted at a halfpenny a letter. But then the counting was in our
own hands, and an enterprising official might be sanguine in his
figures. I think I was sanguine. I did not prepare false accounts;
but I fear that the postmasters and clerks who absolutely had the
country to do became aware that I was anxious for good results.
It is amusing to watch how a passion will grow upon a man. During
those two years it was the ambition of my life to cover the country
with rural letter-carriers. I do not remember that in any case a
rural post proposed by me was negatived by the authorities; but I
fear that some of them broke down afterwards as being too poor, or
because, in my anxiety to include this house and that, I had sent
the men too far afield. Our law was that a man should not be required
to walk more than sixteen miles a day. Had the work to be done been
all on a measured road, there would have been no need for doubt as
to the distances. But my letter-carriers went here and there across
the fields. It was my special delight to take them by all short
cuts; and as I measured on horseback the short cuts which they would
have to make on foot, perhaps I was sometimes a little unjust to
them.

All this I did on horseback, riding on an average forty miles a
day. I was paid sixpence a mile for the distance travelled, and it
was necessary that I should at any rate travel enough to pay for
my equipage. This I did, and got my hunting out of it also. I have
often surprised some small country postmaster, who had never seen
or heard of me before, by coming down upon him at nine in the
morning, with a red coat and boots and breeches, and interrogating
him as to the disposal of every letter which came into his office.
And in the same guise I would ride up to farmhouses, or parsonages,
or other lone residences about the country, and ask the people how
they got their letters, at what hour, and especially whether they
were delivered free or at a certain charge. For a habit had crept
into use, which came to be, in my eyes, at that time, the one sin
for which there was no pardon, in accordance with which these rural
letter-carriers used to charge a penny a letter, alleging that the
house was out of their beat, and that they must be paid for their
extra work. I think that I did stamp out that evil. In all these
visits I was, in truth, a beneficent angel to the public, bringing
everywhere with me an earlier, cheaper, and much more regular delivery
of letters. But not unfrequently the angelic nature of my mission
was imperfectly understood. I was perhaps a little in a hurry to
get on, and did not allow as much time as was necessary to explain
to the wondering mistress of the house, or to an open-mouthed farmer,
why it was that a man arrayed for hunting asked so many questions
which might be considered impertinent, as applying to his or her
private affairs. "Good-morning, sir. I have just called to ask a
few questions. I am a surveyor of the Post Office. How do you get
your letters? As I am a little in a hurry, perhaps you can explain
at once." Then I would take out my pencil and notebook, and wait
for information. And in fact there was no other way in which the
truth could be ascertained. Unless I came down suddenly as a summer's
storm upon them, the very people who were robbed by our messengers
would not confess the robbery, fearing the ill-will of the men. It
was necessary to startle them into the revelations which I required
them to make for their own good. And I did startle them. I became
thoroughly used to it, and soon lost my native bashfulness;--but
sometimes my visits astonished the retiring inhabitants of country
houses. I did, however, do my work, and can look back upon what I
did with thorough satisfaction. I was altogether in earnest; and
I believe that many a farmer now has his letters brought daily to
his house free of charge, who but for me would still have had to
send to the post-town for them twice a week, or to have paid a man
for bringing them irregularly to his door.

This work took up my time so completely, and entailed upon me so
great an amount of writing, that I was in fact unable to do any
literary work. From day to day I thought of it, still purporting
to make another effort, and often turning over in my head some
fragment of a plot which had occurred to me. But the day did not
come in which I could sit down with my pen and paper and begin
another novel. For, after all, what could it be but a novel? The
play had failed more absolutely than the novels, for the novels
had attained the honour of print. The cause of this pressure of
official work lay, not in the demands of the General Post Office,
which more than once expressed itself as astonished by my celerity,
but in the necessity which was incumbent on me to travel miles
enough to pay for my horses, and upon the amount of correspondence,
returns, figures, and reports which such an amount of daily travelling
brought with it. I may boast that the work was done very quickly
and very thoroughly,--with no fault but an over-eagerness to extend
postal arrangements far and wide.

In the course of the job I visited Salisbury, and whilst wandering
there one mid-summer evening round the purlieus of the cathedral I
conceived the story of The Warden,--from whence came that series of
novels of which Barchester, with its bishops, deans, and archdeacon,
was the central site. I may as well declare at once that no one
at their commencement could have had less reason than myself to
presume himself to be able to write about clergymen. I have been
often asked in what period of my early life I had lived so long
in a cathedral city as to have become intimate with the ways of a
Close. I never lived in any cathedral city,--except London, never
knew anything of any Close, and at that time had enjoyed no peculiar
intimacy with any clergyman. My archdeacon, who has been said to be
life-like, and for whom I confess that I have all a parent's fond
affection, was, I think, the simple result of an effort of my moral
consciousness. It was such as that, in my opinion, that an archdeacon
should be,--or, at any rate, would be with such advantages as
an archdeacon might have; and lo! an archdeacon was produced, who
has been declared by competent authorities to be a real archdeacon
down to the very ground. And yet, as far as I can remember, I had
not then even spoken to an archdeacon. I have felt the compliment
to be very great. The archdeacon came whole from my brain after
this fashion;--but in writing about clergymen generally, I had to
pick up as I went whatever I might know or pretend to know about
them. But my first idea had no reference to clergymen in general.
I had been struck by two opposite evils,--or what seemed to me to
be evils,--and with an absence of all art-judgment in such matters, I
thought that I might be able to expose them, or rather to describe
them, both in one and the same tale. The first evil was the
possession by the Church of certain funds and endowments which had
been intended for charitable purposes, but which had been allowed
to become incomes for idle Church dignitaries. There had been more
than one such case brought to public notice at the time, in which
there seemed to have been an egregious malversation of charitable
purposes. The second evil was its very opposite. Though I had been
much struck by the injustice above described, I had also often
been angered by the undeserved severity of the newspapers towards
the recipients of such incomes, who could hardly be considered
to be the chief sinners in the matter. When a man is appointed to
a place, it is natural that he should accept the income allotted
to that place without much inquiry. It is seldom that he will be
the first to find out that his services are overpaid. Though he be
called upon only to look beautiful and to be dignified upon State
occasions, he will think œ2000 a year little enough for such beauty
and dignity as he brings to the task. I felt that there had been
some tearing to pieces which might have been spared. But I was
altogether wrong in supposing that the two things could be combined.
Any writer in advocating a cause must do so after the fashion of
an advocate,--or his writing will be ineffective. He should take up
one side and cling to that, and then he may be powerful. There should
be no scruples of conscience. Such scruples make a man impotent for
such work. It was open to me to have described a bloated parson,
with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every
duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined
from the poor,--defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances
of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet,
and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working,
ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the
rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand
on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal
spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous,
and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes
recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate
the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that
it may be lashed. Caricature may too easily become a slander, and
satire a libel. I believed in the existence neither of the red-nosed
clerical cormorant, nor in that of the venomous assassin of the
journals. I did believe that through want of care and the natural
tendency of every class to take care of itself, money had slipped
into the pockets of certain clergymen which should have gone
elsewhere; and I believed also that through the equally natural
propensity of men to be as strong as they know how to be, certain
writers of the press had allowed themselves to use language which
was cruel, though it was in a good cause. But the two objects
should not have been combined--and I now know myself well enough
to be aware that I was not the man to have carried out either of
them.

Nevertheless I thought much about it, and on the 29th of July,
1853,--having been then two years without having made any literary
effort,--I began The Warden, at Tenbury in Worcestershire. It was
then more than twelve months since I had stood for an hour on the
little bridge in Salisbury, and had made out to my own satisfaction
the spot on which Hiram's hospital should stand. Certainly no work
that I ever did took up so much of my thoughts. On this occasion
I did no more than write the first chapter, even if so much. I had
determined that my official work should be moderated, so as to allow
me some time for writing; but then, just at this time, I was sent
to take the postal charge of the northern counties in Ireland,--of
Ulster, and the counties Meath and Louth. Hitherto in official
language I had been a surveyor's clerk,--now I was to be a surveyor.
The difference consisted mainly in an increase of income from about
œ450 to about œ800;--for at that time the sum netted still depended
on the number of miles travelled. Of course that English work
to which I had become so warmly wedded had to be abandoned. Other
parts of England were being done by other men, and I had nearly
finished the area which had been entrusted to me. I should have
liked to ride over the whole country, and to have sent a rural
post letter-carrier to every parish, every village, every hamlet,
and every grange in England.

We were at this time very much unsettled as regards any residence.
While we were living at Clonmel two sons had been born, who certainly
were important enough to have been mentioned sooner. At Clonmel we
had lived in lodgings, and from there had moved to Mallow, a town
in the county Cork, where we had taken a house. Mallow was in the
centre of a hunting country, and had been very pleasant to me. But
our house there had been given up when it was known that I should
be detained in England; and then we had wandered about in the western
counties, moving our headquarters from one town to another. During
this time we had lived at Exeter, at Bristol, at Caermarthen,
at Cheltenham, and at Worcester. Now we again moved, and settled
ourselves for eighteen months at Belfast. After that we took a
house at Donnybrook, the well-known suburb of Dublin.

The work of taking up a new district, which requires not only that
the man doing it should know the nature of the postal arrangements,
but also the characters and the peculiarities of the postmasters
and their clerks, was too heavy to allow of my going on with my
book at once. It was not till the end of 1852 that I recommenced it,
and it was in the autumn of 1853 that I finished the work. It was
only one small volume, and in later days would have been completed
in six weeks,--or in two months at the longest, if other work had
pressed. On looking at the title-page, I find it was not published
till 1855. I had made acquaintance, through my friend John Merivale,
with William Longman the publisher, and had received from him an
assurance that the manuscript should be "looked at." It was "looked
at," and Messrs. Longman made me an offer to publish it at half
profits. I had no reason to love "half profits," but I was very
anxious to have my book published, and I acceded. It was now more
than ten years since I had commenced writing The Macdermots, and
I thought that if any success was to be achieved, the time surely
had come. I had not been impatient; but, if there was to be a time,
surely it had come.

The novel-reading world did not go mad about The Warden; but I soon
felt that it had not failed as the others had failed. There were
notices of it in the press, and I could discover that people around
me knew that I had written a book. Mr. Longman was complimentary,
and after a while informed me that there would be profits to divide.
At the end of 1855 I received a cheque for œ9 8s. 8d., which was
the first money I had ever earned by literary work;--that œ20 which
poor Mr. Colburn had been made to pay certainly never having been
earned at all. At the end of 1856 I received another sum of œ10
15s. 1d. The pecuniary success was not great. Indeed, as regarded
remuneration for the time, stone-breaking would have done better.
A thousand copies were printed, of which, after a lapse of five or
six years, about 300 had to be converted into another form, and sold
as belonging to a cheap edition. In its original form The Warden
never reached the essential honour of a second edition.

I have already said of the work that it failed altogether in
the purport for which it was intended. But it has a merit of its
own,--a merit by my own perception of which I was enabled to see
wherein lay whatever strength I did possess. The characters of the
bishop, of the archdeacon, of the archdeacon's wife, and especially
of the warden, are all well and clearly drawn. I had realised to
myself a series of portraits, and had been able so to put them on
the canvas that my readers should see that which I meant them to
see. There is no gift which an author can have more useful to him
than this. And the style of the English was good, though from most
unpardonable carelessness the grammar was not unfrequently faulty.
With such results I had no doubt but that I would at once begin
another novel.

I will here say one word as a long-deferred answer to an item of
criticism which appeared in the Times newspaper as to The Warden.
In an article-if I remember rightly--on The Warden and Barchester
Towers combined--which I would call good-natured, but that I take
it for granted that the critics of the Times are actuated by higher
motives than good-nature, that little book and its sequel are spoken
of in terms which were very pleasant to the author. But there was
added to this a gentle word of rebuke at the morbid condition of the
author's mind which had prompted him to indulge in personalities,--the
personalities in question having reference to some editor or manager
of the Times newspaper. For I had introduced one Tom Towers as being
potent among the contributors to the Jupiter, under which name I
certainly did allude to the Times. But at that time, living away in
Ireland, I had not even heard the name of any gentleman connected
with the Times newspaper, and could not have intended to represent
any individual by Tom Towers. As I had created an archdeacon, so had
I created a journalist, and the one creation was no more personal
or indicative of morbid tendencies than the other. If Tom Towers
was at all like any gentleman connected with the Times, my moral
consciousness must again have been very powerful.

CHAPTER VI

"BARCHESTER TOWERS" AND THE "THREE CLERKS"

1855-1858

It was, I think, before I started on my English tours among the
rural posts that I made my first attempt at writing for a magazine.
I had read, soon after they came out, the two first volumes of
Charles Menvale's History of the Romans under the Empire, and had
got into some correspondence with the author's brother as to the
author's views about Caesar. Hence arose in my mind a tendency to
investigate the character of probably the greatest man who ever
lived, which tendency in after years produced a little book of
which I shall have to speak when its time comes,--and also a taste
generally for Latin literature, which has been one of the chief
delights of my later life. And I may say that I became at this time
as anxious about Caesar, and as desirous of reaching the truth as
to his character, as we have all been in regard to Bismarck in these
latter days. I lived in Caesar, and debated with myself constantly
whether he crossed the Rubicon as a tyrant or as a patriot. In
order that I might review Mr. Merivale's book without feeling that
I was dealing unwarrantably with a subject beyond me, I studied the
Commentaries thoroughly, and went through a mass of other reading
which the object of a magazine article hardly justified,--but which
has thoroughly justified itself in the subsequent pursuits of my
life. I did write two articles, the first mainly on Julius Caesar,
and the second on Augustus, which appeared in the Dublin University
Magazine. They were the result of very much labour, but there came
from them no pecuniary product. I had been very modest when I sent
them to the editor, as I had been when I called on John Forster,
not venturing to suggest the subject of money. After a while I did
call upon the proprietor of the magazine in Dublin, and was told
by him that such articles were generally written to oblige friends,
and that articles written to oblige friends were not usually paid
for. The Dean of Ely, as the author of the work in question now
is, was my friend; but I think I was wronged, as I certainly had
no intention of obliging him by my criticism. Afterwards, when I
returned to Ireland, I wrote other articles for the same magazine,
one of which, intended to be very savage in its denunciation, was
on an official blue-book just then brought out, preparatory to the
introduction of competitive examinations for the Civil Service. For
that and some other article, I now forget what, I was paid. Up to
the end of 1857 I had received œ55 for the hard work of ten years.

It was while I was engaged on Barchester Towers that I adopted a
system of writing which, for some years afterwards, I found to be
very serviceable to me. My time was greatly occupied in travelling,
and the nature of my travelling was now changed. I could not
any longer do it on horseback. Railroads afforded me my means of
conveyance, and I found that I passed in railway-carriages very
many hours of my existence. Like others, I used to read,--though
Carlyle has since told me that a man when travelling should not
read, but "sit still and label his thoughts." But if I intended
to make a profitable business out of my writing, and, at the same
time, to do my best for the Post Office, I must turn these hours
to more account than I could do even by reading. I made for myself
therefore a little tablet, and found after a few days' exercise
that I could write as quickly in a railway-carriage as I could at
my desk. I worked with a pencil, and what I wrote my wife copied
afterwards. In this way was composed the greater part of Barchester
Towers and of the novel which succeeded it, and much also of others
subsequent to them. My only objection to the practice came from
the appearance of literary ostentation, to which I felt myself to
be subject when going to work before four or five fellow-passengers.
But I got used to it, as I had done to the amazement of the west
country farmers' wives when asking them after their letters.

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