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
Club,--as 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
gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I reintroduced
the same characters 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 about 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 foul of Mrs.
Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their words, and
almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and standing
between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. "As to Mrs.
Proudie," 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 one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations.
I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in
writing about Mrs. Proudie, 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
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 hypocrite, 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, in 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 Mrs. Proudie, and still
live much in company with her ghost.
I have in a previous chapter said how I wrote Can 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 theatre 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 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 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 Barset. But I have hitherto failed. The 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 1867 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 in 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 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, 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 1867, 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, Mr. Tilley, became 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 of salary would not have amounted to above (pounds)400
a year, and I should have lost much more than that in literary
remuneration. 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 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 bad been a valuable public servant,
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 Mr. Scudamore was appointed to it. He no doubt
was possessed of gifts which I did not possess. 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 labours and wages of the immense body of men employed by
the Post Office. However, Mr. Scudamore was appointed; and I made
up my mind that I would fall back upon my old intention, and leave
the department. 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 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 been supposed that I left the Post
Office under pressure,--because I attended to hunting and to 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 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 9th, 1867.
"Sir,--I have received your letter of the 3d inst., in which you
tender your resignation as Surveyor in the Post Office service, and
state as your reason for this 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 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 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 still it 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, and to state how alive he is to the
loss which will be sustained by the department in 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 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 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 the thirty-three best years of my life;--I must not
say devoted, for devotion 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 myself injured or unappreciated in that my literary
efforts were slighted. But I had suffered very much bitterness on
that score in 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 benefit of others. That the public in little villages
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 St.
Heliers in Jersey); that the letter-carriers and sorters should not
be overworked; 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 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 Rowland Hill had done for the country, but believing him
to be entirely unfit to manage men or to arrange labour. It was a
pleasure to me to differ from him on all occasions;--and, looking
back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.
Having so steeped myself, as it were, in postal waters, I could not
go out from them 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 extreme delight in writing them, not allowing
myself to re-copy them, never having them re-copied by others, but
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 labour; 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 be taken afterwards,--by hand
or by machine, as may be. But the writer of a letter, if he wish his
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 out from his own mind.
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, Mr. James Virtue, the
printer and publisher, had asked me to edit a new magazine for
him, and had offered me a salary of (pounds)1000 a year for the work over
and above what might be due to me for my own contributions. 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 Mr. 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 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 the told me that
if I would not do the work he would find some other editor.
Upon this I consented to undertake 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 month to month, give
in to him a list of payments to be made to contributors, and that
he should pay them, allowing 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 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 and absolute confidence on the part of the proprietor,
and perpetual good humour, 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 it
never belies itself. The Liberal may cease to be liberal, or The
Fortnightly, alas! to come out once a fortnight. But The Cornhill
and The Argosy 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. Blackwood's has, indeed, always
remained Blackwood's, and Fraser's, though it has been bought and
sold, still does not sound amiss. Mr. Virtue, fearing the too
attractive qualities of his own name, wished the magazine to be
called Anthony Trollope's. But to this I objected eagerly. There
were then about the town,--still are about the town,--two or three
literary gentlemen, by whom to have had myself editored would
have driven me an exile from my country. After much discussion, we
settled on St. 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 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 omitted nothing which I thought might tend to
success. I read all manuscripts sent to me, and endeavoured to judge
impartially. I succeeded in obtaining the services of an excellent
literary corps. During the three years and a half of my editorship
I was assisted by Mr. Goschen, Captain Brackenbury, Edward Dicey,
Percy Fitzgerald, H. A. Layard, Allingham, Leslie Stephen, Mrs.
Lynn Linton, my brother, T. A. Trollope, and his wife, Charles
Lever, E. Arnold, Austin Dobson, R. A. Proctor, Lady Pollock, G.
H. Lewes, C. Mackay, Hardman (of the Times), George Macdonald, W.
R. Greg, Mrs. Oliphant, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Leoni Levi, Dutton
Cook--and others, whose names would make the list too long. It
might have been thought that with such aid the St. 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 paid its way. It reached, if I remember
right, a circulation of nearly 10,000--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 hubbub, and flurry, and excitement created by ubiquitous
sesquipedalian 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 have been able to give time
and intelligence 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, 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 to 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 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 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 aspirant who thinks that he can write an article,
or why the manager of a magazine should be doomed to read all that
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.