Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

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.

CHAPTER XVI BEVERLEY

Very early in life, very soon after I had become a clerk in St.

Martin's le Grand, when I was utterly impecunious and beginning

to fall grievously into debt, I was asked by an uncle of mine, who

was himself a clerk in the War Office, what destination I should

like best for my future life. He probably meant to inquire whether

I wished to live married or single, whether to remain in the Post

Office or to leave it, whether I should prefer the town or the

country. I replied that I should like to be a Member of Parliament.

My uncle, who was given to sarcasm, rejoined that, as far a he knew,

few clerks in the Post Office did become Members of Parliament. I

think it was the remembrance of this jeer which stirred me up to

look for a seat as soon as I had made myself capable of holding one

by leaving the public service. My uncle was dead, but if I could

get a seat, the knowledge that I had done so might travel to that

bourne from whence he was not likely to return, and he might there

feel that he had done me wrong.

Independently of this, I have always thought that to sit in the

British Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to

every educated Englishman. I do not by this mean to suggest that

every educated Englishman should set before himself a seat in

Parliament as a probable or even a possible career; but that the man

in Parliament has reached a higher position than the man out,--that

to serve one's country without pay is the grandest work that a man

can do,--that of all studies the study of politics is the one in

which a man may make himself most useful to his fellow-creatures,--and

that of all lives, public political lives are capable of the highest

efforts. So thinking,--though I was aware that fifty-three was too

late an age at which to commence a new career,--I resolved with

much hesitation that I would make the attempt. Writing now at an

age beyond sixty, I can say that my political feelings and convictions

have never undergone any change. They are now what they became when

I first began to have political feelings and convictions. Nor do I

find in myself any tendency to modify them as I have found generally

in men as they grow old. I consider myself to be an advanced, but

still a Conservative-Liberal, which I regard not only as a possible,

but as a rational and consistent phase of political existence.