Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

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

as the best book that has come from my pen. It is short, and, I

think I may venture to say, amusing, useful, and true. As soon as

I had learned from the secretary at the General Post Office that

this journey would be required, I proposed the book to Messrs.

Chapman & Hall, demanding (pounds)250 for a single volume. The contract

was made without any difficulty, and when I returned home the work

was complete in my desk. I began it on board the ship in which I

left Kingston, Jamaica, for Cuba,--and from week to week I carried

it on as I went. From Cuba I made my way to St. Thomas, and through

the island down to Demerara, then back to St. Thomas,--which is

the starting-point for all places in that part of the globe,--to

Santa Martha, Carthagena, Aspinwall, over the Isthmus to Panama, up

the Pacific to a little harbour on the coast of Costa Rica, thence

across Central America, through Costa Rica, and down the Nicaragua

river to the Mosquito coast, and after that home by Bermuda and New

York. Should any one want further details of the voyage, are they

not written in my book? The fact memorable to me now is that I

never made a single note while writing or preparing it. Preparation,

indeed, there was none. The descriptions and opinions came hot

on to the paper from their causes. I will not say that this is the

best way of writing a book intended to give accurate information.

But it is the best way of producing to the eye of the reader, and

to his ear, that which the eye of the writer has seen and his ear

heard. There are two kinds of confidence which a reader may have

in his author,--which two kinds the reader who wishes to use his

reading well should carefully discriminate. There is a confidence

in facts and a confidence in vision. The one man tells you accurately

what has been. The other suggests to you what may, or perhaps what

must have been, or what ought to have been. The former require simple

faith. The latter calls upon you to judge for yourself, and form

your own conclusions. The former does not intend to be prescient,

nor the latter accurate. Research is the weapon used by the former;

observation by the latter. Either may be false,--wilfully false; as

also may either be steadfastly true. As to that, the reader must

judge for himself. But the man who writes currente calamo, who

works with a rapidity which will not admit of accuracy, may be as

true, and in one sense as trustworthy, as he who bases every word

upon a rock of facts. I have written very much as I have, travelled

about; and though I have been very inaccurate, I have always

written the exact truth as I saw it ;--and I have, I think, drawn

my pictures correctly.

The view I took of the relative position in the West Indies

of black men and white men was the view of the Times newspaper at

that period; and there appeared three articles in that journal, one

closely after another, which made the fortune of the book. Had it

been very bad, I suppose its fortune could not have been made for

it even by the Times newspaper. I afterwards became acquainted with

the writer of those articles, the contributor himself informing me

that he had written them. I told him that he had done me a greater

service than can often be done by one man to another, but that I was

under no obligation to him. I do not think that he saw the matter

quite in the same light.

I am aware that by that criticism I was much raised in my position

as an author. Whether such lifting up by such means is good or bad

for literature is a question which I hope to discuss in a future

chapter. But the result was immediate to me, for I at once went to

Chapman & Hall and successfully demanded (pounds)600 for my next novel.

CHAPTER VIII THE "CORNHILL MAGAZINE" AND "FRAMLEY PARSONAGE"

Soon after my return from the West Indies I was enabled to change

my district in Ireland for one in England. For some time past my

official work had been of a special nature, taking me out of my

own district; but through all that, Dublin had been my home, and

there my wife and children had lived. I had often sighed to return

to England,--with a silly longing. My life in England for twenty-six

years from the time of my birth to the day on which I left it, had

been wretched. I had been poor, friendless, and joyless. In Ireland

it had constantly been happy. I had achieved the respect of all

with whom I was concerned, I had made for myself a comfortable

home, and I had enjoyed many pleasures. Hunting itself was a great

delight to me; and now, as I contemplated a move to England, and a

house in the neighbourhood of London, I felt that hunting must be

abandoned. [Footnote: It was not abandoned till sixteen more years

had passed away.] Nevertheless I thought that a man who could

write books ought not to live in Ireland,--ought to live within

the reach of the publishers, the clubs, and the dinner-parties of

the metropolis. So I made my request at headquarters, and with some

little difficulty got myself appointed to the Eastern District of

England,--which comprised Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire,

Huntingdonshire, and the greater part of Hertfordshire.

At this time I did not stand very well with the dominant interest

at the General Post Office. My old friend Colonel Maberly had

been, some time since, squeezed into, and his place was filled by

Mr. Rowland Hill, the originator of the penny post. With him I never

had any sympathy, nor he with me. In figures and facts he was most

accurate, but I never came across any one who so little understood

the ways of men,--unless it was his brother Frederic. To the two

brothers the servants of the Post Office,--men numerous enough to

have formed a large army in old days,--were so many machines who

could be counted on for their exact work without deviation, as

wheels may be counted on, which are kept going always at the same

pace and always by the same power. Rowland Hill was an industrious

public servant, anxious for the good of his country; but he was

a hard taskmaster, and one who would, I think, have put the great

department with which he was concerned altogether out of gear by

his hardness, had he not been at last controlled. He was the Chief

Secretary, my brother-in-law--who afterwards succeeded him--came

next to him, and Mr. Hill's brother was the Junior Secretary. In

the natural course of things, I had not, from my position, anything

to do with the management of affairs;--but from time to time I found

myself more or less mixed up in it. I was known to be a thoroughly

efficient public servant; I am sure I may say so much of myself

without fear of contradiction from any one who has known the Post

Office;--I was very fond of the department, and when matters came

to be considered, I generally had an opinion of my own. I have

no doubt that I often made myself very disagreeable. I know that I

sometimes tried to do so. But I could hold my own because I knew

my business and was useful. I had given official offence by the

publication of The Three Clerks. I afterwards gave greater offence

by a lecture on The Civil Service which I delivered in one of the

large rooms at the General Post Office to the clerks there. On this

occasion, the Postmaster-General, with whom personally I enjoyed

friendly terms, sent for me and told me that Mr. Hill had told him

that I ought to be dismissed. When I asked his lordship whether

he was prepared to dismiss me, he only laughed. The threat was

no threat to me, as I knew myself to be too good to be treated in

that fashion. The lecture had been permitted, and I had disobeyed

no order. In the lecture which I delivered, there was nothing

to bring me to shame,--but it advocated the doctrine that a civil

servant is only a servant as far as his contract goes, and that he

is beyond that entitled to be as free a man in politics, as free in

his general pursuits, and as free in opinion, as those who are in

open professions and open trades. All this is very nearly admitted

now, but it certainly was not admitted then. At that time no one

in the Post Office could even vote for a Member of Parliament.

Through my whole official life I did my best to improve the style

of official writing. I have written, I should think, some thousands

of reports,--many of them necessarily very long; some of them

dealing with subjects so absurd as to allow a touch of burlesque;

some few in which a spark of indignation or a slight glow of pathos

might find an entrance. I have taken infinite pains with these

reports, habituating myself always to write them in the form in

which they should be sent,--without a copy. It is by writing thus

that a man can throw on to his paper the exact feeling with which

his mind is impressed at the moment. A rough copy, or that which

is called a draft, is written in order that it may be touched and

altered and put upon stilts. The waste of time, moreover, in such

an operation, is terrible. If a man knows his craft with his pen,

he will have learned to write without the necessity of changing

his words or the form of his sentences. I had learned so to write

my reports that they who read them should know what it was that I

meant them to understand. But I do not think that they were regarded

with favour. I have heard horror expressed because the old forms

were disregarded and language used which had no savour of red-tape.

During the whole of this work in the Post Office it was my principle

always to obey authority in everything instantly, but never to allow

my mouth to be closed as to the expression of my opinion. They who

had the ordering of me very often did not know the work as I knew

it,--could not tell as I could what would be the effect of this

or that change. When carrying out instructions which I knew should

not have been given, I never scrupled to point out the fatuity of

the improper order in the strongest language that I could decently

employ. I have revelled in these official correspondences, and look

back to some of them as the greatest delights of my life. But I am

not sure that they were so delightful to others.

I succeeded, however, in getting the English district,--which

could hardly have been refused to me,--and prepared to change our