16 - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope

Delve into the captivating life and mind of Anthony Trollope, an iconic figure in literature, through his own words. His autobiography is a rollercoaster of emotions, from side-splitting humor to poignant honesty. Discover the fascinating insights he provides on his unique approach to writing, viewing it more as a labor than a form of art. Trollopes die-hard fans will be thrilled by his candid evaluation of his own work and his recognition of his novels flaws and accomplishments. This autobiography extends beyond just his literary life, providing an intimate look at his years juggling his passion for writing with a full-time job at the post office.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter fifteen of the Autobiography of Anthony Trollop. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Autobiography of Anthony Trollop.
The last chronicle of Barsett leaving the post Office Saint
Paul's magazine. I will now go back to the year
eighteen sixty seven, in which I was still living at

(00:23):
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 weather tight as it should be. We had a
domain there sufficient for the cows, and for the making

(00:45):
of our butter and hay, for strawberries, asparagus, green peas
out of door, peaches for roses. Especially in such everyday luxuries,
no place was ever more excellent. It was only twelve
miles from London and admitted therefore a frequent intercourse with
the metropolis. It was also near enough to the Reruthing
country for hunting purposes. No doubt, the Shoreditch station by

(01:09):
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 eighteen fifty nine to eighteen seventy

(01:32):
one 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

(01:54):
authorities of the department no slightest pretext for fault finding.
I hunted always at least twice a week. I was
frequent in the wist room at 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.

(02:15):
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 five thirty 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 five a year extra for

(02:37):
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.

(03:01):
All those I think who have lived as literary men,
working daily as literary laborers, 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

(03:23):
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've become a little lenient to myself to write
with my watch before me, and to require from myself
two hundred fifty words every quarter of an hour. I

(03:45):
have found that the two hundred fifty 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

(04:08):
practice to all heroes 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

(04:30):
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 Paternaster Row, and which must at any rate

(04:51):
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

(05:12):
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

(05:35):
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 eighteen sixty six
in eighteen sixty seven, the last Chronicle of Barsett was

(05:56):
brought out by George Smith in sixpenny monthly numbers. You
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

(06:16):
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, mister Smith
and I determined to make the experiment with sixpenny parts.
As he paid me three thousand for the use of
my manuscript, the loss, if any, did not fall upon me.

(06:39):
If I remember right, the enterprise was not altogether successful.
Taking it as a whole, I regard this as the
best novel I've written. I was never quite satisfied with
the development of the plot, which consisted in the loss
of a check of a charge made against a clergyman
for stealing it. And of absolute uncertainty on the part

(06:59):
of the clergyman himself as to the manner in which
the check had found its way into his hands. I
cannot quite make myself believe that even such a man
as mister 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 check of
a third person. Such fault I acknowledge, acknowledging at the

(07:20):
same time that I have never been capable of constructing
with complete success the intricacies of a plot that required
to be unraveled. 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 mister

(07:44):
Crawley were I feel true to nature and well described.
The surroundings, too, are good. Missus Prudy 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 savor of
English country life all through the book. It was with

(08:05):
many misgivings that I killed my old friend, missus Prudy.
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 Athenium Club, as

(08:25):
was then my wont when I had slept the previous
night in London. As I was there, two clergymen, each
with a magazine in his hand, seated themselves, one on
one side of the fire and one on the other,
close to me. They soon began to abuse what they
were reading, and each was reading some part of some
novel of mine. The gravemen of their complaint lay in

(08:47):
the fact that I reintroduced the same character so often.
Here said, one is that Archdeacon, whom we have had
in every novel he has ever written. And here said
the other is the old Duke, whom he has talked
till everybody is tired of him. If I could not
invent new characters, I would not write novels at all.
Then one of them fell fall of missus Prudy. It

(09:09):
was impossible for me not to hear their words, and
almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got
up standing between them. I acknowledged myself to be the
culprit as to missus Prudy. I said, I will go
home and kill her before the week is over, and
so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded, and

(09:30):
one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations.
I have sometimes regretted the deed. So great was my
delight in writing about missus Prudy, so thorough was my
knowledge of all the shades of her character. It was
not only that she was a tyrant, a bully, a
would be priestess, a very vulgar woman, and one who

(09:51):
would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed
with her, but that at the same time she was
conscientious by no means a hip, really believing in the
brimstone which she threatened, and anxious to save the souls
around her from its horrors. And as her tyranny increased,
so did the bitterness of the moments of her repentance increase.

(10:13):
And that she knew herself to be a tyrant till
that bitterness killed her. Since her time, others have grown
up equally dear to me, Lady Glencora and her husband,
for instance. But I have never dissevered myself from missus Prudy,
and still live much in company with her ghost. I
have in a previous chapter said how I wrote, can

(10:35):
you forgive Her? After the plot of a play which
had been rejected, which play had been called The Noble Jilt.
Some year or two after the completion of the last chronicle,
I was asked by the manager of a theater to
prepare a piece for his stage, and I did so,
taking the plot of this novel I called the Comedy?
Did he steal it? But my friend, the manager did

(10:56):
not approve of my attempt. My mind at this time
was less attentive to such a matter than when dear
old George Bartley nearly crushed me by his criticism. So
that I forget the reason given. I have little doubt
but that the manager was right, that he intended to
express a true opinion, and would have been glad to
have taken the piece had he thought it suitable. I

(11:16):
am quite sure. I have sometimes wished to see during
my lifetime a combined republication of those tales which are
occupied with the fictitious county of Barsetshire. These would be
The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, and the
Last Chronicle of Barsett. But I have hitherto failed. The

(11:40):
copyrights are in the hands of four different persons, including myself,
and with one of the four I have not been
able to prevail to act in concert with the others. Footnote.
Since this was written, I have made arrangements for doing
as I have wished, and the first volume of the
series will now very shortly be published. In eighteen sixty seven,

(12:01):
I made up my mind to take a step in
life which was not unattended with peril, which many would
call rash, and which when taken I should be sure
at some period to regret. This step was the resignation
of my place at the post Office. I have described
how it was that I contrived to combine the performance
of its duties with my other avocations in life. I

(12:24):
got up always very early, but even this did not suffice.
I worked always on Sundays, as to which no scruple
of religion made me unhappy, and not unfrequently. I was
driven to work at night in the winter when hunting
was going on, I had to keep myself very much
on the alert. And during the London season, when I
was generally two or three days of the week in town,

(12:45):
I found the official work to be a burden. I
had determined some years previously, after due consideration with my wife,
to abandon the Post Office when I had put by
an income equal to the pension to which I should
be entitled if I remained in the department till I
was sixty. That I had now done, and I sighed
for liberty. The exact time chosen, the autumn of eighteen

(13:10):
sixty seven, was selected because I was then about to
undertake other literary work in editing a new magazine, of
which I shall speak very shortly. But in addition to
these reasons there was another, which was I think at
last the actuating cause. When Sir Rowland Hill left the
Post Office and my brother in law, mister Tilley, became

(13:30):
secretary in his place, I applied for the vacant office
of under Secretary. Had I obtained this, I should have
given up my hunting, have given up much of my
literary work at any rate would have edited no magazine,
and would have returned to the habit of my youth
in going daily to the General post Office. There was
very much against such a change in life. The increase

(13:53):
of salary would not have amounted to above four hundred
a year, and I should have lost much more than
that in literary rnumers. I should have felt bitterly the
slavery of attendance at an office from which I had
then been exempt for five and twenty years. I should
too have greatly missed the sport which I loved, but
I was attached to the department. Had imbued myself with

(14:16):
a thorough love of letters, I mean the letters which
are carried by the post, and was anxious for their welfare,
as though they were all my own. In short, I
wished to continue the connection. I did not wish moreover
that any younger officer should again pass over my head.
I believed that I had been a valuable public servant,

(14:37):
and I will own to a feeling existing at that
time that I had not altogether been well treated. I
was probably wrong in this. I had been allowed to
hunt and to do as I pleased, and to say
what I liked, and had in that way received my reward.
I applied for the office, but mister Scudamore was appointed
to it. He, no doubt was possessed of gifts which

(14:59):
I did not p He understood the manipulation of money
and the use of figures, and was a great accountant.
I think that I might have been more useful in
regard to the labors and wages of the immense body
of men employed by the Post Office. However, mister Scudamore
was appointed, and I made up my mind that I
would fall back upon my old intention and leave the department.

(15:21):
I think I allowed two years to pass before I
took the step, and the day on which I sent
the letter was to me most melancholy. The rule of
the service in regard to pensions is very just. A
man shall serve till he is sixty before he is
entitled to a pension, unless his health fail him. At
that age. He is entitled to one sixtieth of his

(15:44):
salary for every year he has served up to forty years.
If his health do fail him so that he is
unfit for further work before the age named, then he
may go with a pension amounting to one sixtieth for
every year he has served. I could not say that
my health had failed me, and therefore I went without
any pension. I have since felt occasionally that it has

(16:06):
been supposed that I left the Post Office under pressure
because I tended to hunting into my literary work rather
than to postal matters, as it had for many years
been my ambition to be a thoroughly good servant to
the public, and to give to the public much more
than I took in the shape of salary. This feeling
has sometimes annoyed me, and as I am still a

(16:27):
little sore on the subject, and as I would not
have it imagined after my death that I had slighted
the public service to which I belonged, I will venture
here to give the reply which was sent to the
letter containing my resignation, General Post Office, October ninth, eighteen
sixty seven. Sir, I have received your letter of the

(16:48):
third this month, in which you tender your resignation as
surveyor in the Post Office service, and state is your
reason for the step that you have adopted another profession,
the exigencies of which are so great as to make
you feel you cannot give to the duties of the
Post Office that amount of attention which you consider the
Postmaster General has a right to expect. You have for

(17:10):
many years ranked among the most conspicuous members of the
Post Office, which, on several occasions, when you have been
employed on large and difficult matters, has reaped much benefit
from the great abilities which you have been able to
place at its disposal. And in mentioning this, I have
been especially glad to record that, notwithstanding the many calls
upon your time, you have never permitted your other avocations

(17:33):
to interfere with your post Office work, which has been
faithfully and indeed energetically performed. There was a touch of
irony in this word energetically, but it still did not
displease me. In accepting your resignation, which he does with
much regret, the Duke of Montrose desires me to convey
to you his own sense of the value of your services,

(17:55):
and to state how alive he is to the loss
which will be sustained by the department which you have
long been an ornament, and where your place will with
difficulty be replaced. Signed J. Tilley. Readers will no doubt
think that this is official flummery, and so in fact
it is I do not at all imagine that I

(18:17):
was an ornament to the Post Office, and have no
doubt that the secretaries and assistant secretaries very often would
have been glad to be rid of me. But the
letter may be taken as evidence that I did not
allow my literary enterprises to interfere with my official work.
A man who takes public money without earning it is
to me so odious that I can find no pardon

(18:38):
for him in my heart. I have known many such
and some who have craved the power to do so.
Nothing would annoy me more than to think that I
should even be supposed to have been among the number.
And so my connection was dissolved with the department to
which I had applied to the thirty three best years
of my life. I must not say devoted, for devotion

(19:00):
implies an entire surrender, and I certainly had found time
for other occupations. It is, however, absolutely true that during
all those years I had thought very much more about
the Post Office than I had of my literary work,
and had given to it a more unflagging attention. Up
to this time, I had never been angry, never felt

(19:22):
myself injured or unappreciated. In that my literary efforts were slighted.
But I had suffered very much bitterness on that score
and reference to the post Office. And I had suffered
not only on my own personal behalf, but also and
more bitterly, when I could not promise to be done
the things which I thought ought to be done for
the benefits of others. That the public and little villages

(19:44):
should be enabled to buy postage stamps. That they should
have their letters delivered free and at an early hour.
That pillar letter boxes should be put up for them,
of which accommodation in the streets and ways of England.
I was the originator, having however, got the authority for
the erection of the first at Saint Helier's in Jersey.
That the letter carriers and sworders should not be overworked,

(20:07):
That they should be adequately paid and have some hours
to themselves, especially on Sundays. Above all, that they should
be made to earn their wages, and latterly, that they
should not be crushed by what I thought to be
the damnable system of so called merit. These were the
matters by which I was stirred to what the Secretary
was pleased to call energetic performance. Of my duties. How

(20:30):
I loved when I was contradicted, as I was very often,
and no doubt very properly, to do instantly as I
was bid, and then to prove that what I was
doing was fatuous, dishonest, expensive and impracticable. And then there
were feuds, such delicious feuds. I was always an anti Hillite,
acknowledging indeed the great thing which Sir Roland Hill had

(20:51):
done for the country, but believing him to be entirely
unfit to manage men or to reigne labor. It was
a pleasure to me to differ from him on all occasions.
And looking back now, I think that in all such difference,
as I was right, having so steeped myself, as it were,
in postal waters, I could not go out from them

(21:12):
without a regret. I wonder whether I did anything to
improve the style of writing in official reports. I strove
to do so gallantly, never being contented with the language
of my own reports unless it seemed to have been
so written as to be pleasant to be read. I
took an extreme delight in writing them, not allowing myself
to recopy them, never having them recopied by others, but

(21:34):
sending them up with their original blots and erasures, if
blots and erasures there were. It is hardly manly I
think that a man should search after a fine neatness
at the expense of so much waste labor, or that
he should not be able to exact from himself the
necessity of writing words in the form in which they
should be read. If a copy be required, let it

(21:55):
be taken afterwards by hand or by machine, as may be.
But the writer of a letter, if he wishes words
to prevail with the reader, should send them out as
written by himself, by his own hand, with his own marks,
his own punctuation correct or incorrect, with the evidence upon
them that they have come from out of his own mind.

(22:15):
And so the cord was cut, and I was a
free man to run about the world where I would.
A little before the date of my resignation, mister James Virtue,
the printer and publisher, had asked me to edit a
new magazine for him, and had offered me a salary
of one thousand a year for the work, over and
above what might be due to me for my own contributions.

(22:38):
I had known something of magazines, and did not believe
that they were generally very lucrative. They were I thought
useful to some publishers as bringing grist to the mill.
But as mister Virtue's business was chiefly that of a printer,
in which he was very successful, this consideration could hardly
have had much weight with him. I very strongly advised
him to abandon the project, pointing out to him that

(23:00):
a large expenditure would be necessary to carry on the
magazine in accordance with MY views, that I could not
be concerned in it on any other understanding, and that
the chances of an adequate return to him of his
money were very small. He came down to Waltham, listened
to my arguments with great patience, and then told me
that if I would not do the work, he would
find some other editor. Upon this I consented to undertake

(23:25):
the duty. My terms as to salary were those which
he had himself proposed. The special stipulations which I demanded
were firstly that I should put whatever I pleased into
the magazine, or keep whatever I pleased out of it
without interference. Secondly, that I should, from months a month
give in to him a list of payments to be
made to contributors, and that he should pay them, allowing

(23:47):
me to fix the amounts, and thirdly, that the arrangement
should remain in force at any rate for two years.
To all this he made no objection, and during the
time that he and I were thus bound together, he
knew not only complied with these stipulations, but also with
every suggestion respecting the magazine that I made to him.
If the use of large capital, combined with wide liberality

(24:10):
and absolute confidence on the part of the proprietor and
perpetual good humor would have produced success, our magazine certainly
would have succeeded. In all such enterprises. The name is
the first difficulty. There is the name which has a
meaning and the name which has none, of which two.
The name that has none is certainly the better, as

(24:31):
it never belies itself. The Liberal may cease to be liberal,
or the fortnightly alast to come out once a fortnight.
But the Cornhill and Argacy are under any set of
circumstances as well adapted to these names as under any other.
Then there is the proprietary name, or possibly the editorial name,
which is only amiss because the publication may change hands.

(24:53):
Blackwoods has indeed always remained Blackwoods and Frasures. Though it
has been bought and sold, still does not sound amiss.
Mister Virtue, fearing the too attractive qualities of his own name,
wished the magazine to be called Anthony Trollop's. But to
this I objected eagerly. There were then about the town,
still are about the town two or three literary gentlemen

(25:15):
by whom to have had myself editored would have driven
me an exile from my country. After much discussion, we
settled on Saint Paul's as the name for our bantling,
not as being in any way new, but as enabling
it to fall easily into the ranks with many others.
If we were to make ourselves in any way peculiar,
it was not by our name that we were desirous

(25:35):
of doing so. I do not think that we did
make ourselves in any way peculiar. And yet there was
a great struggle made on the part of the proprietor.
I may say that money was spent very freely on
my own part. I may declare that I admitted nothing
which I thought might tend to success. I read all
manuscripts sent to me, and endeavored to judge him partially

(25:58):
I succeeded in obtaining services of an excellent literary corps.
During the three years and a half of my editorship,
I was assisted by Mister Goshen, Captain Brackenbury, Edward Dicey,
Percy Fitzgerald, H. A. Layard, Allingham, Leslie Stephen, Missus Lynn Linton,
my brother T. A. Trollop and his wife, Charles lever

(26:21):
E Arnold, Austin Dobson, R. A. Proctor, Lady Pollock, G. H. Lewes, C.
Mackie Hardman of the Times, George mac Donald, W. R. Gregg,
Missus Oliphant, Sir Charles Chavellion Leoni, Levi Dutton Cook, and
others whose names would make the list too long. It

(26:42):
might have been thought that with such aid the Saint
Paul's would have succeeded. I do not think that the failure,
for it did fail, arose from bad editing. Perhaps too
much editing might have been the fault. I was too
anxious to be good and did not enough think of
what might be lucrative. It did fail, for it never

(27:02):
paid its way. It reached, if I remember right, a
circulation of nearly ten thousand, perhaps on one or two
occasions may have gone beyond that, but the enterprise had
been set on foot on a system too expensive to
be made lucrative by anything short of a very large circulation.
Literary merit will hardly set a magazine afloat, though when
afloat it will sustain it. Time is wanted or the

(27:26):
hubbub and flurry and excitement created by ubiquitous sesquipadalian advertisement.
Merit and time together may be effective, but they must
be backed by economy and patience. I think upon the
whole that publishers themselves have been the best editors of
magazines when they've been able to give time and intelligence

(27:47):
to the work. Nothing certainly has ever been done better
than Blackwood's The Cornhill, Too, after Thackeray had left it
and before Leslie Stephen had taken it, seemed to be
in quite efficient hands, those hands being the hands of
proprietor and publisher. The proprietor, at any rate knows what
he wants and what he can afford, and is not
so frequently tempted to fall into that worst of literary quicksands,

(28:11):
the publishing of matter not for the sake of the readers,
but for that of the writer. I did not so
sin very often, but often enough feel that I was
a coward. My dear friend, my dear friend, this is trash.
It is so hard to speak thus, but so necessary
for an editor. We all remember the thorn in his

(28:31):
pillow of which Thackeray complained occasionally. I know that I
did give way on behalf of some literary aspirant whose
work did not represent itself to me as being good,
And as often as I did so, I broke my
trust to those who employed me. Now I think that
such editors as Thackeray and myself, if I may for

(28:52):
the moment be allowed to couple men so unequal, will
always be liable to commit such faults, but that the
natures of publishers and proprietors will be less soft. Nor
do I know why the pages of a magazine should
be considered to be open to any aspirt who thinks
that he can write an article, or why the manager
of a magazine should be doomed to read all that

(29:14):
may be sent to him. The object of the proprietor
is to produce a periodical that shall satisfy the public,
which he may probably best do by securing the services
of writers of acknowledged ability end of Chapter fifteen. Recording
by Jessica Luise, Minneapolis, Minnesota,