Though I do not wish in these pages to go back to the origin of
all the Trollopes, I must say a few words of my mother,--partly
because filial duty will not allow me to be silent as to a parent
who made for herself a considerable name in the literature of her
day, and partly because there were circumstances in her career
well worthy of notice. She was the daughter of the Rev. William
Milton, vicar of Heckfield, who, as well as my father, had been
a fellow of New College. She was nearly thirty when, in 1809, she
married my father. Six or seven years ago a bundle of love-letters
from her to him fell into my hand in a very singular way, having
been found in the house of a stranger, who, with much courtesy,
sent them to me. They were then about sixty years old, and had been
written some before and some after her marriage, over the space of
perhaps a year. In no novel of Richardson's or Miss Burney's have
I seen a correspondence at the same time so sweet, so graceful,
and so well expressed. But the marvel of these letters was in the
strange difference they bore to the love-letters of the present
day. They are, all of them, on square paper, folded and sealed,
and addressed to my father on circuit; but the language in each,
though it almost borders on the romantic, is beautifully chosen,
and fit, without change of a syllable, for the most critical eye.
What girl now studies the words with which she shall address her
lover, or seeks to charm him with grace of diction? She dearly likes
a little slang, and revels in the luxury of entire familiarity with
a new and strange being. There is something in that, too, pleasant
to our thoughts, but I fear that this phase of life does not conduce
to a taste for poetry among our girls. Though my mother was a writer
of prose, and revelled in satire, the poetic feeling clung to her
to the last.
In the first ten years of her married life she became the mother of
six children, four of whom died of consumption at different ages.
My elder sister married, and had children, of whom one still lives;
but she was one of the four who followed each other at intervals
during my mother's lifetime. Then my brother Tom and I were left to
her,--with the destiny before us three of writing more books than
were probably ever before produced by a single family. [Footnote:
The family of Estienne, the great French printers of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, of whom there were at least nine or ten,
did more perhaps for the production of literature than any other
family. But they, though they edited, and not unfrequently translated
the works which they published, were not authors in the ordinary
sense.] My married sister added to the number by one little anonymous
high church story, called Chollerton.
From the date of their marriage up to 1827, when my mother went
to America, my father's affairs had always been going down in the
world. She had loved society, affecting a somewhat liberal role
and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from
the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles.
An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from
the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate,
or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to
the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality
of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had
been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that
archduchesses were sweet. But with her politics were always an affair
of the heart,--as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning
from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in
every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so
thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she
generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it
must be acknowledged that she was emotional. I can remember now her
books, and can see her at her pursuits. The poets she loved best
were Dante and Spenser. But she raved also of him of whom all such
ladies were raving then, and rejoiced in the popularity and wept
over the persecution of Lord Byron. She was among those who seized
with avidity on the novels, as they came out, of the then unknown
Scott, and who could still talk of the triumphs of Miss Edgeworth.
With the literature of the day she was familiar, and with the poets
of the past. Of other reading I do not think she had mastered much.
Her life, I take it, though latterly clouded by many troubles, was
easy, luxurious, and idle, till my father's affairs and her own
aspirations sent her to America. She had dear friends among literary
people, of whom I remember Mathias, Henry Milman, and Miss Landon;
but till long after middle life she never herself wrote a line for
publication.
In 1827 she went to America, having been partly instigated by the
social and communistic ideas of a lady whom I well remember,--a
certain Miss Wright,--who was, I think, the first of the American
female lecturers. Her chief desire, however, was to establish
my brother Henry; and perhaps joined with that was the additional
object of breaking up her English home without pleading broken
fortunes to all the world. At Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio,
she built a bazaar, and I fancy lost all the money which may have
been embarked in that speculation. It could not have been much, and
I think that others also must have suffered. But she looked about
her, at her American cousins, and resolved to write a book about
them. This book she brought back with her in 1831, and published
it early in 1832. When she did this she was already fifty. When
doing this she was aware that unless she could so succeed in making
money, there was no money for any of the family. She had never before
earned a shilling. She almost immediately received a considerable
sum from the publishers,--if I remember rightly, amounting to two
sums of (pounds)400 each within a few months; and from that moment till
nearly the time of her death, at any rate for more than twenty
years, she was in the receipt of a considerable income from her
writings. It was a late age at which to begin such a career.
The Domestic Manners of the Americans was the first of a series
of books of travels, of which it was probably the best, and was
certainly the best known. It will not be too much to say of it that
it had a material effect upon the manners of the Americans of the
day, and that that effect has been fully appreciated by them. No
observer was certainly ever less qualified to judge of the prospects
or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been
worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation
was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women
do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes,
it ought to be ugly to all eyes,--and if ugly, it must be bad.
What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they
put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters?
The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar,--and she
told them so. Those communistic and social ideas, which had been so
pretty in a drawing-room, were scattered to the winds. Her volumes
were very bitter; but they were very clever, and they saved the
family from ruin.
Book followed book immediately,--first two novels, and then a book
on Belgium and Western Germany. She refurnished the house which
I have called Orley Farm, and surrounded us again with moderate
comforts. Of the mixture of joviality and industry which formed
her character, it is almost impossible to speak with exaggeration.
The industry was a thing apart, kept to herself. It was not necessary
that any one who lived with her should see it. She was at her table
at four in the morning, and had finished her work before the world
had begun to be aroused. But the joviality was all for others.
She could dance with other people's legs, eat and drink with other
people's palates, be proud with the lustre of other people's finery.
Every mother can do that for her own daughters; but she could do it
for any girl whose look, and voice, and manners pleased her. Even
when she was at work, the laughter of those she loved was a pleasure
to her. She had much, very much, to suffer. Work sometimes came
hard to her, so much being required,--for she was extravagant, and
liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known she
was the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy.
We continued this renewed life at Harrow for nearly two years,
during which I was still at the school, and at the end of which
I was nearly nineteen. Then there came a great catastrophe. My
father, who, when he was well, lived a sad life among his monks and
nuns, still kept a horse and gig. One day in March, 1834, just as
it had been decided that I should leave the school then, instead
of remaining, as had been intended, till midsummer, I was summoned
very early in the morning, to drive him up to London. He had been
ill, and must still have been very ill indeed when he submitted to
be driven by any one. It was not till we had started that he told
me that I was to put him on board the Ostend boat. This I did,
driving him through the city down to the docks. It was not within
his nature to be communicative, and to the last he never told me
why he was going to Ostend. Something of a general flitting abroad
I had heard before, but why he should have flown first, and flown
so suddenly, I did not in the least know till I returned. When I got
back with the gig, the house and furniture were all in the charge
of the sheriff's officers.
The gardener who had been with us in former days stopped me as I
drove up the road, and with gestures, signs, and whispered words,
gave me to understand that the whole affair--horse, gig, and
barness--would be made prize of if I went but a few yards farther.
Why they should not have been made prize of I do not know. The
little piece of dishonest business which I at once took in hand
and carried through successfully was of no special service to any
of us. I drove the gig into the village, and sold the entire equipage
to the ironmonger for (pounds)17, the exact sum which he claimed as being
due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed
to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy
that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness.
When I got back to the house a scene of devastation was in progress,
which still was not without its amusement. My mother, through
her various troubles, had contrived to keep a certain number of
pretty-pretties which were dear to her heart. They were not much,
for in those days the ornamentation of houses was not lavish as it
is now; but there was some china, and a little glass, a few books,
and a very moderate supply of household silver. These things, and
things like them, were being carried down surreptitiously, through
a gap between the two gardens, on to the premises of our friend
Colonel Grant. My two sisters, then sixteen and seventeen, and the
Grant girls, who were just younger, were the chief marauders. To
such forces I was happy to add myself for any enterprise, and
between us we cheated the creditors to the extent of our powers,
amidst the anathemas, but good-humoured abstinence from personal
violence, of the men in charge of the property. I still own a few
books that were thus purloined.
For a few days the whole family bivouacked under the Colonel's
hospitable roof, cared for and comforted by that dearest of all women,
his wife. Then we followed my father to Belgium, and established
ourselves in a large house just outside the walls of Bruges. At
this time, and till my father's death, everything was done with
money earned by my mother. She now again furnished the house,--this
being the third that she had put in order since she came back from
America two years and a half ago.
There were six of us went into this new banishment. My brother
Henry had left Cambridge and was ill. My younger sister was ill.
And though as yet we hardly told each other that it was so, we began
to feel that that desolating fiend, consumption, was among us. My
father was broken-hearted as well as ill, but whenever he could
sit at his table he still worked at his ecclesiastical records. My
elder sister and I were in good health, but I was an idle, desolate
hanger-on, that most hopeless of human beings, a hobbledehoy
of nineteen, without any idea of a career, or a profession, or
a trade. As well as I can remember I was fairly happy, for there
were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in
love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But
as to my future life I had not even an aspiration. Now and again
there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that
she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while
she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have
thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were
the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.
Then, by degrees, an established sorrow was at home among us. My
brother was an invalid, and the horrid word, which of all words were
for some years after the most dreadful to us, had been pronounced.
It was no longer a delicate chest, and some temporary necessity
for peculiar care,--but consumption! The Bruges doctor had said
so, and we knew that he was right. From that time forth my mother's
most visible occupation was that of nursing. There were two sick
men in the house, and hers were the hands that tended them. The
novels went on, of course. We had already learned to know that they
would be forthcoming at stated intervals,--and they always were
forthcoming. The doctor's vials and the ink-bottle held equal
places in my mother's rooms. I have written many novels under many
circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my
whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing
herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear
from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do,
I never saw equalled. I do not think that the writing of a novel
is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do;
but it is a task that may be supposed to demand a spirit fairly
at ease. The work of doing it with a troubled spirit killed Sir
Walter Scott. My mother went through it unscathed in strength,
though she performed all the work of day-nurse and night-nurse to
a sick household;--for there were soon three of them dying.
At this time there came from some quarter an offer to me of a
commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and so it was apparently
my destiny to be a soldier. But I must first learn German and
French, of which languages I knew almost nothing. For this a year
was allowed me, and in order that it might be accomplished without
expense, I undertook the duties of a classical usher to a school
then kept by William Drury at Brussels. Mr. Drury had been one of
the masters at Harrow when I went there at seven years old, and is
now, after an interval of fifty-three years, even yet officiating
as clergyman at that place. [Footnote: He died two years after
these words were written.] To Brussels I went, and my heart still
sinks within me as I reflect that any one should have intrusted to
me the tuition of thirty boys. I can only hope that those boys went
there to learn French, and that their parents were not particular
as to their classical acquirements. I remember that on two occasions
I was sent to take the school out for a walk; but that after the
second attempt Mrs. Drury declared that the boys' clothes would not
stand any further experiments of that kind. I cannot call to mind
any learning by me of other languages; but as I only remained in
that position for six weeks, perhaps the return lessons had not
been as yet commenced. At the end of the six weeks a letter reached
me, offering me a clerkship in the General Post Office, and I
accepted it. Among my mother's dearest friends she reckoned Mrs.
Freeling, the wife of Clayton Freeling, whose father, Sir Francis
Freeling, then ruled the Post Office. She had heard of my desolate
position, and had begged from her father-in-law the offer of a
berth in his own office.
I hurried back from Brussels to Bruges on my way to London, and
found that the number of invalids had been increased. My younger
sister, Emily, who, when I had left the house, was trembling on
the balance,--who had been pronounced to be delicate, but with that
false-tongued hope which knows the truth, but will lie lest the
heart should faint, had been called delicate, but only delicate,--was
now ill. Of course she was doomed. I knew it of both of them,
though I had never heard the word spoken, or had spoken it to any
one. And my father was very ill,--ill to dying, though I did not
know it. And my mother had decreed to send my elder sister away to
England, thinking that the vicinity of so much sickness might be
injurious to her. All this happened late in the autumn of 1834, in
the spring of which year we had come to Bruges; and then my mother
was left alone in a big house outside the town, with two Belgian
women-servants, to nurse these dying patients--the patients being
her husband and children--and to write novels for the sustenance
of the family! It was about this period of her career that her best
novels were written.
To my own initiation at the Post Office I will return in the next
chapter. Just before Christmas my brother died, and was buried at
Bruges. In the following February my father died, and was buried
alongside of him,--and with him died that tedious task of his,
which I can only hope may have solaced many of his latter hours. I
sometimes look back, meditating for hours together, on his adverse
fate. He was a man, finely educated, of great parts, with immense
capacity for work, physically strong very much beyond the average
of men, addicted to no vices, carried off by no pleasures, affectionate
by nature, most anxious for the welfare of his children, born to
fair fortunes,--who, when he started in the world, may be said to
have had everything at his feet. But everything went wrong with
him. The touch of his hand seemed to create failure. He embarked
in one hopeless enterprise after another, spending on each all the
money he could at the time command. But the worse curse to him of
all was a temper so irritable that even those whom he loved the
best could not endure it. We were all estranged from him, and yet
I believe that he would have given his heart's blood for any of
us. His life as I knew it was one long tragedy.
After his death my mother moved to England, and took and furnished
a small house at Hadley, near Barnet. I was then a clerk in the
London Post Office, and I remember well how gay she made the place
with little dinners, little dances, and little picnics, while
she herself was at work every morning long before others had left
their beds. But she did not stay at Hadley much above a year. She
went up to London, where she again took and furnished a house,
from which my remaining sister was married and carried away into
Cumberland. My mother soon followed her, and on this occasion did
more than take a house. She bought a bit of land,--a field of three
acres near the town,--and built a residence for herself. This, I
think, was in 1841, and she had thus established and re-established
herself six times in ten years. But in Cumberland she found the
climate too severe, and in 1844 she moved herself to Florence,
where she remained till her death in 1863. She continued writing
up to 1856, when she was seventy-six years old,--and had at that
time produced 114 volumes, of which the first was not written till
she was fifty. Her career offers great encouragement to those who
have not begun early in life, but are still ambitious to do something
before they depart hence.
She was an unselfish, affectionate, and most industrious woman,
with great capacity for enjoyment and high physical gifts. She was
endowed too, with much creative power, with considerable humour,
and a genuine feeling for romance. But she was neither clear-sighted
nor accurate; and in her attempts to describe morals, manners, and
even facts, was unable to avoid the pitfalls of exaggeration.