Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

called upon only to look beautiful and to be dignified upon State

occasions, he will think (pounds)2000 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

(pounds)450 to about (pounds)800;--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 (pounds)9 8s. 8d., which was

the first money I had ever earned by literary work;--that (pounds)20 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 (pounds)10

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