Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

therefore venture to advise young men who look forward to authorship

as the business of their lives, even when they propose that that

authorship be of the highest class known, to avoid enthusiastic

rushes with their pens, and to seat themselves at their desks day

by day as though they were lawyers' clerks;--and so let them sit

until the allotted task shall be accomplished.

While I was in Egypt, I finished Doctor Thorne, and on the following

day began The Bertrams. I was moved now by a determination to excel,

if not in quality, at any rate in quantity. An ignoble ambition

for an author, my readers will no doubt say. But not, I think,

altogether ignoble, if an author can bring himself to look at his

work as does any other workman. This had become my task, this

was the furrow in which my plough was set, this was the thing the

doing of which had fallen into my hands, and I was minded to work

at it with a will. It is not on my conscience that I have ever

scamped my work. My novels, whether good or bad, have been as good

as I could make them. Had I taken three months of idleness between

each they would have been no better. Feeling convinced of that, I

finished Doctor Thorne on one day, and began The Bertrams on the

next.

I had then been nearly two months in Egypt, and had at last

succeeded in settling the terms of a postal treaty. Nearly twenty

years have passed since that time, and other years may yet run on

before these pages are printed. I trust I may commit no official

sin by describing here the nature of the difficulty which met me.

I found, on my arrival, that I was to communicate with an officer

of the Pasha, who was then called Nubar Bey. I presume him to have

been the gentleman who has lately dealt with our Government as to

the Suez Canal shares, and who is now well known to the political

world as Nubar Pasha. I found him a most courteous gentlemen, an

Armenian. I never went to his office, nor do I know that he had an

office. Every other day he would come to me at my hotel, and bring

with him servants, and pipes, and coffee. I enjoyed his coming

greatly; but there was one point on which we could not agree. As

to money and other details, it seemed as though he could hardly

accede fast enough to the wishes of the Postmaster-General; but

on one point he was firmly opposed to me. I was desirous that the

mails should be carried through Egypt in twenty-four hours, and he

thought that forty-eight hours should be allowed. I was obstinate,

and he was obstinate; and for a long time we could come to

no agreement. At last his oriental tranquillity seemed to desert

him, and he took upon himself to assure me, with almost more than

British energy, that, if I insisted on the quick transit, a terrible

responsibility would rest on my head. I made this mistake, he

said,--that I supposed that a rate of travelling which would be

easy and secure in England could be attained with safety in Egypt.

"The Pasha, his master, would," he said, "no doubt accede to

any terms demanded by the British Post Office, so great was his

reverence for everything British. In that case he, Nubar, would at

once resign his position, and retire into obscurity. He would be

ruined; but the loss of life and bloodshed which would certainly

follow so rash an attempt should not be on his head." I smoked my

pipe, or rather his, and drank his coffee, with oriental quiescence

but British firmness. Every now and again, through three or four

visits, I renewed the expression of my opinion that the transit

could easily be made in twenty-four hours. At last he gave way,--and

astonished me by the cordiality of his greeting. There was no

longer any question of bloodshed or of resignation of office, and

he assured me, with energetic complaisance, that it should be his

care to see that the time was punctually kept. It was punctually

kept, and, I believe, is so still. I must confess, however, that my

persistency was not the result of any courage specially personal to

myself. While the matter was being debated, it had been whispered

to me that the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company had

conceived that forty-eight hours would suit the purposes of their

traffic better than twenty-four, and that, as they were the great

paymasters on the railway, the Minister of the Egyptian State,

who managed the railway, might probably wish to accommodate them.

I often wondered who originated that frightful picture of blood

and desolation. That it came from an English heart and an English

hand I was always sure.

From Egypt I visited the Holy Land, and on my way inspected the

Post Offices at Malta and Gibraltar. I could fill a volume with

true tales of my adventures. The Tales of All Countries have, most

of them, some foundation in such occurrences. There is one called

John Bull on the Guadalquivir, the chief incident in which occurred

to me and a friend of mine on our way up that river to Seville. We

both of us handled the gold ornaments of a man whom we believed to

be a bull-fighter, but who turned out to be a duke,--and a duke,

too, who could speak English! How gracious he was to us, and yet

how thoroughly he covered us with ridicule!

On my return home I received (pounds)400 from Messrs. Chapman & Hall for

Doctor Thorne, and agreed to sell them The Bertrams for the same sum.

This latter novel was written under very vagrant circumstances,--at

Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Glasgow, then at sea, and at last

finished in Jamaica. Of my journey to the West Indies I will say

a few words presently, but I may as well speak of these two novels

here. Doctor Thorne has, I believe, been the most popular book that

I have written,--if I may take the sale as a proof of comparative

popularity. The Bertrams has had quite an opposite fortune. I do not

know that I have ever heard it well spoken of even by my friends,

and I cannot remember that there is any character in it that has

dwelt in the minds of novel-readers. I myself think that they are

of about equal merit, but that neither of them is good. They fall

away very much from The Three Clerks, both in pathos and humour.

There is no personage in either of them comparable to Chaffanbrass the

lawyer. The plot of Doctor Thorne is good, and I am led therefore

to suppose that a good plot,--which, to my own feeling, is the

most insignificant part of a tale,--is that which will most raise

it or most condemn it in the public judgment. The plots of Tom Jones

and of Ivanhoe are almost perfect, and they are probably the most

popular novels of the schools of the last and of this century; but

to me the delicacy of Amelia, and the rugged strength of Burley

and Meg Merrilies, say more for the power of those great novelists

than the gift of construction shown in the two works I have named.

A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour

and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention,

the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals

known to the world or to the author, but of created personages

impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking,

the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the

vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the

agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must,

however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. That

of The Bertrams was more than ordinarily bad; and as the book was

relieved by no special character, it failed. Its failure never

surprised me; but I have been surprised by the success of Doctor

Thorne.

At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the

failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale,

and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which

had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all

made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel,

I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two

years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible

author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to

me,--I might add (pounds)600 a year to my official income. I was still

living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure

my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a week, on (pounds)1400

a year. If more should come, it would be well;--but (pounds)600 a year I

was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but

was very pleasant when it came.

On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the

Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had

to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the

letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the

men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their

labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer,

and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and

then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home

afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in

Glasgow, all belonging to The Bertrams, are not good.

Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West

Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system

there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices

generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British

Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be

postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands

have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated

for residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous

for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the

stables had become Augean. I was also instructed to carry out in

some of the islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to

the island Governor, and in others to propose some such plan. I

was then to go on to Cuba, to make a postal treaty with the Spanish

authorities, and to Panama for the same purpose with the Government

of New Grenada. All this work I performed to my satisfaction, and

I hope to that of my masters in St. Martin's le Grand.

But the trip is at the present moment of importance to my subject,

as having enabled me to write that which, on the whole, I regard