Autobiography of Anthony Trollope - Anthony Trollope

it, however distasteful it may be. It is his business, and he will

starve if he neglects it. So have I felt that, when anything in the

shape of a novel was required, I was bound to produce it. Nothing

can be more distasteful to me than to have to give a relish of

Christmas to what I write. I feel the humbug implied by the nature

of the order. A Christmas story, in the proper sense, should be

the ebullition of some mind anxious to instil others with a desire

for Christmas religious thought, or Christmas festivities,--or,

better still, with Christmas charity. Such was the case with Dickens

when he wrote his two first Christmas stories. But since that the

things written annually--all of which have been fixed to Christmas

like children's toys to a Christmas tree--have had no real savour

of Christmas about them. I had done two or three before. Alas!

at this very moment I have one to write, which I have promised to

supply within three weeks of this time,--the picture-makers always

require a long interval,--as to which I have in vain been cudgelling

my brain for the last month. I can't send away the order to another

shop, but I do not know how I shall ever get the coffin made.

For the Graphic, in 1873, I wrote a little story about Australia.

Christmas at the antipodes is of course midsummer, and I was not

loth to describe the troubles to which my own son had been subjected,

by the mingled accidents of heat and bad neighbours, on his station

in the bush. So I wrote Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, and was well

through my labour on that occasion. I only wish I may have no

worse success in that which now hangs over my head.

When Harry Heathcote was over, I returned with a full heart to

Lady Glencora and her husband. I had never yet drawn the completed

picture of such a statesman as my imagination had conceived. The

personages with whose names my pages had been familiar, and perhaps

even the minds of some of my readers--the Brocks, De Terriers, Monks,

Greshams, and Daubeneys--had been more or less portraits, not of

living men, but of living political characters. The strong-minded,

thick-skinned, useful, ordinary member, either of the Government or

of the Opposition, had been very easy to describe, and had required

no imagination to conceive. The character reproduces itself from

generation to generation; and as it does so, becomes shorn in

a wonderful way of those little touches of humanity which would

be destructive of its purposes. Now and again there comes a burst

of human nature, as in the quarrel between Burke and Fox; but, as

a rule, the men submit themselves to be shaped and fashioned, and

to be formed into tools, which are used either for building up or

pulling down, and can generally bear to be changed from this box

into the other, without, at any rate, the appearance of much personal

suffering. Four-and-twenty gentlemen will amalgamate themselves

into one whole, and work for one purpose, having each of them to

set aside his own idiosyncrasy, and to endure the close personal

contact of men who must often be personally disagreeable, having

been thoroughly taught that in no other way can they serve either

their country or their own ambition. These are the men who are

publicly useful, and whom the necessities of the age supply,--as

to whom I have never ceased to wonder that stones of such strong

calibre should be so quickly worn down to the shape and smoothness

of rounded pebbles.

Such have been to me the Brocks and the Mildmays, about whom I have

written with great pleasure, having had my mind much exercised in

watching them. But had I also conceived the character of a statesman

of a different nature--of a man who should be in something perhaps

superior, but in very much inferior, to these men--of one who could

not become a pebble, having too strong an identity of his own. To

rid one's self of fine scruples--to fall into the traditions of

a party--to feel the need of subservience, not only in acting but

also even in thinking--to be able to be a bit, and at first only a

very little bit,--these are the necessities of the growing statesman.

The time may come, the glorious time when some great self action

shall be possible, and shall be even demanded, as when Peel gave

up the Corn Laws; but the rising man, as he puts on his harness,

should not allow himself to dream of this. To become a good, round,

smooth, hard, useful pebble is his duty, and to achieve this he

must harden his skin and swallow his scruples. But every now and

again we see the attempt, made by men who cannot get their skins to

be hard--who after a little while generally fall out of the ranks.

The statesman of whom I was thinking--of whom I had long thought--was

one who did not fall out of the ranks, even though his skin would

not become hard. He should have rank, and intellect, and parliamentary

habits, by which to bind him to the service of his country; and he

should also have unblemished, unextinguishable, inexhaustible love

of country. That virtue I attribute to our statesmen generally.

They who are without it are, I think, mean indeed. This man should

have it as the ruling principle of his life; and it should so rule

him that all other things should be made to give way to it. But he

should be scrupulous, and, being scrupulous, weak. When called to

the highest place in the council of his Sovereign, he should feel

with true modesty his own insufficiency; but not the less should

the greed of power grow upon him when he had once allowed himself

to taste and enjoy it. Such was the character I endeavoured to

depict in describing the triumph, the troubles, and the failure

of my Prime Minister. And I think that I have succeeded. What the

public may think, or what the press may say, I do not yet know,

the work having as yet run but half its course. [Footnote: Writing

this note in 1878, after a lapse of nearly three years, I am obliged

to say that, as regards the public, The Prime Minister was a failure.

It was worse spoken of by the press than any novel I had written.

I was specially hurt by a criticism on it in the Spectator. The

critic who wrote the article I know to be a good critic, inclined

to be more than fair to me; but in this case I could not agree with

him, so much do I love the man whose character I had endeavoured

to portray.]

That the man's character should be understood as I understand

it--or that of his wife's, the delineation of which has also been

a matter of much happy care to me--I have no right to expect, seeing

that the operation of describing has not been confined to one novel,

which might perhaps be read through by the majority of those who

commenced it. It has been carried on through three or four, each

of which will be forgotten even by the most zealous reader almost

as soon as read. In The Prime Minister, my Prime Minister will not

allow his wife to take office among, or even over, those ladies who

are attached by office to the Queen's court. "I should not choose,"

he says to her, "that my wife should have any duties unconnected

with our joint family and home." Who will remember in reading

those words that, in a former story, published some years before,

he tells his wife, when she has twitted him with his willingness

to clean the Premier's shoes, that he would even allow her to clean

them if it were for the good of the country? And yet it is by such

details as these that I have, for many years past, been manufacturing

within my own mind the characters of the man and his wife.

I think that Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, is a perfect

gentleman. If he be not, then am I unable to describe a gentleman.

She is by no means a perfect lady; but if she be not all over

a woman, then am I not able to describe a woman. I do not think

it probable that my name will remain among those who in the next

century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction;--but

if it does, that permanence of success will probably rest on the

character of Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Rev. Mr.

Crawley.

I have now come to the end of that long series of books written by

myself with which the public is already acquainted. Of those which

I may hereafter be able to add to them I cannot speak; though I

have an idea that I shall even yet once more have recourse to my

political hero as the mainstay of another story. When The Prime

Minister was finished, I at once began another novel, which is now

completed in three volumes, and which is called Is He Popenjoy?

There are two Popenjoys in the book, one succeeding to the title

held by the other; but as they are both babies, and do not in the

course of the story progress beyond babyhood, the future readers,

should the tale ever be published, will not be much interested in

them. Nevertheless the story, as a story, is not, I think, amiss.

Since that I have written still another three-volume novel, to

which, very much in opposition to my publisher, I have given the

name of The American Senator. [Footnote: The American Senator and

Popenjoy have appeared, each with fair success. Neither of them has

encountered that reproach which, in regard to The Prime Minister,

seemed to tell me that my work as a novelist should be brought to

a close. And yet I feel assured that they are very inferior to The

Prime Minister.] It is to appear in Temple Bar, and is to commence

its appearance on the first of next month. Such being its

circumstances, I do not know that I can say anything else about it

here.

And so I end the record of my literary performances,--which I

think are more in amount than the works of any other living English

author. If any English authors not living have written more--as

may probably have been the case--I do not know who they are. I find

that, taking the books which have appeared under our names, I have

published much more than twice as much as Carlyle. I have also

published considerably more than Voltaire, even including his

letters. We are told that Varro, at the age of eighty, had written

480 volumes, and that he went on writing for eight years longer.

I wish I knew what was the length of Varro's volumes; I comfort

myself by reflecting that the amount of manuscript described as a

book in Varro's time was not much. Varro, too, is dead, and Voltaire;

whereas I am still living, and may add to the pile.