Autobiography of Anthony Trollope Read online

  Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

  Anthony Trollope

  Энтони Троллоп

  EBook of Autobiography of Anthony Trollope by Anthony Trollope (www.anthonytrollope.com)

  Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

  Preface

  It may be well that I should put a short preface to this book. In

  the summer of 1878 my father told me that he had written a memoir

  of his own life. He did not speak about it at length, but said

  that he had written me a letter, not to be opened until after his

  death, containing instructions for publication.

  This letter was dated 30th April, 1876. I will give here as much

  of it as concerns the public: "I wish you to accept as a gift from

  me, given you now, the accompanying pages which contain a memoir

  of my life. My intention is that they shall be published after

  my death, and be edited by you. But I leave it altogether to your

  discretion whether to publish or to suppress the work;--and also

  to your discretion whether any part or what part shall be omitted.

  But I would not wish that anything should be added to the memoir.

  If you wish to say any word as from yourself, let it be done in

  the shape of a preface or introductory chapter." At the end there

  is a postscript: "The publication, if made at all, should be effected

  as soon as possible after my death." My father died on the 6th of

  December, 1882.

  It will be seen, therefore, that my duty has been merely to pass

  the book through the press conformably to the above instructions.

  I have placed headings to the right-hand pages throughout the book,

  and I do not conceive that I was precluded from so doing. Additions

  of any other sort there have been none; the few footnotes are my

  father's own additions or corrections. And I have made no alterations.

  I have suppressed some few passages, but not more than would amount

  to two printed pages has been omitted. My father has not given any

  of his own letters, nor was it his wish that any should be published.

  So much I would say by way of preface. And I think I may also give

  in a few words the main incidents in my father's life after he

  completed his autobiography.

  He has said that he had given up hunting; but he still kept two

  horses for such riding as may be had in or about the immediate

  neighborhood of London. He continued to ride to the end of his

  life: he liked the exercise, and I think it would have distressed

  him not to have had a horse in his stable. But he never spoke

  willingly on hunting matters. He had at last resolved to give up

  his favourite amusement, and that as far as he was concerned there

  should be an end of it. In the spring of 1877 he went to South

  Africa, and returned early in the following year with a book on

  the colony already written. In the summer of 1878, he was one of

  a party of ladies and gentlemen who made an expedition to Iceland

  in the "Mastiff," one of Mr. John Burns' steam-ships. The journey

  lasted altogether sixteen days, and during that time Mr. and Mrs.

  Burns were the hospitable entertainers. When my father returned,

  he wrote a short account of How the "Mastiffs" went to Iceland.

  The book was printed, but was intended only for private circulation.

  Every day, until his last illness, my father continued his work.

  He would not otherwise have been happy. He demanded from himself

  less than he had done ten years previously, but his daily task was

  always done. I will mention now the titles of his books that were

  published after the last included in the list which he himself has

  given at the end of the second volume:--

  An Eye for an Eye, . . . . 1879

  Cousin Henry, . . . . . . 1879

  Thackeray, . . . . . . . 1879

  The Duke's Children, . . . . 1880

  Life of Cicero, . . . . . 1880

  Ayala's Angel, . . . . . 1881

  Doctor Wortle's School, . . . 1881

  Frau Frohmann and other Stories, . 1882

  Lord Palmerston, . . . . . 1882

  The Fixed Period, . . . . . 1882

  Kept in the Dark, . . . . . 1882

  Marion Fay, . . . . . . 1882

  Mr. Scarborough's Family, . . . 1883

  At the time of his death he had written four-fifths of an Irish

  story, called The Landleaguers, shortly about to be published; and

  he left in manuscript a completed novel, called An Old Man's Love,

  which will be published by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons in 1884.

  In the summer of 1880 my father left London, and went to live at

  Harting, a village in Sussex, but on the confines of Hampshire. I

  think he chose that spot because he found there a house that suited

  him, and because of the prettiness of the neighborhood. His last

  long journey was a trip to Italy in the late winter and spring of

  1881; but he went to Ireland twice in 1882. He went there in May

  of that year, and was then absent nearly a month. This journey did

  him much good, for he found that the softer atmosphere relieved

  his asthma, from which he had been suffering for nearly eighteen

  months. In August following he made another trip to Ireland, but

  from this journey he derived less benefit. He was much interested

  in, and was very much distressed by, the unhappy condition of the

  country. Few men know Ireland better than he did. He had lived

  there for sixteen years, and his Post Office word had taken him

  into every part of the island. In the summer of 1882 he began his

  last novel, The Landleaguers, which, as stated above, was unfinished

  when he died. This book was a cause of anxiety to him. He could not

  rid his mind of the fact that he had a story already in the course

  of publication, but which he had not yet completed. In no other

  case, except Framley Parsonage, did my father publish even the

  first number of any novel before he had fully completed the whole

  tale.

  On the evening of the 3rd of November, 1882, he was seized with

  paralysis on the right side, accompanied by loss of speech. His

  mind had also failed, though at intervals his thoughts would return

  to him. After the first three weeks these lucid intervals became

  rarer, but it was always very difficult to tell how far his mind

  was sound or how far astray. He died on the evening of the 6th of

  December following, nearly five weeks from the night of his attack.

  I have been led to say these few words, not at all from a desire

  to supplement my father's biography of himself, but to mention the

  main incidents in his life after he had finished his own record. In

  what I have here said I do not think I have exceeded his instructions.

  Henry M. Trollope.

  September, 1883.

  CHAPTER I My education 1815-1834

  In writing these pages, which, for the want of a better name, I shall

  be fain to call the autobiograp
hy of so insignificant a person as

  myself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little

  details of my private life, as of what I, and perhaps others round

  me, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such as

  they have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literary

  career offers to men and women for the earning of their bread. And

  yet the garrulity of old age, and the aptitude of a man's mind to

  recur to the passages of his own life, will, I know, tempt me to say

  something of myself;--nor, without doing so, should I know how to

  throw my matter into any recognised and intelligible form. That I,

  or any man, should tell everything of himself, I hold to be impossible.

  Who could endure to own the doing of a mean thing? Who is there

  that has done none? But this I protest:--that nothing that I say

  shall be untrue. I will set down naught in malice; nor will I give

  to myself, or others, honour which I do not believe to have been

  fairly won. My boyhood was, I think, as unhappy as that of a young

  gentleman could well be, my misfortunes arising from a mixture of

  poverty and gentle standing on the part of my father, and from an

  utter want on my part of the juvenile manhood which enables some

  boys to hold up their heads even among the distresses which such

  a position is sure to produce.

  I was born in 1815, in Keppel Street, Russell Square; and while a

  baby, was carried down to Harrow, where my father had built a house

  on a large farm which, in an evil hour he took on a long lease from

  Lord Northwick. That farm was the grave of all my father's hopes,

  ambition, and prosperity, the cause of my mother's sufferings, and

  of those of her children, and perhaps the director of her destiny

  and of ours. My father had been a Wykamist and a fellow of New

  College, and Winchester was the destination of my brothers and

  myself; but as he had friends among the masters at Harrow, and as

  the school offered an education almost gratuitous to children living

  in the parish, he, with a certain aptitude to do things differently

  from others, which accompanied him throughout his life, determined

  to use that august seminary as "t'other school" for Winchester, and

  sent three of us there, one after the other, at the age of seven.

  My father at this time was a Chancery barrister practising in

  London, occupying dingy, almost suicidal chambers, at No. 23 Old

  Square, Lincoln's Inn,--chambers which on one melancholy occasion

  did become absolutely suicidal. [Footnote: A pupil of his destroyed

  himself in the rooms.] He was, as I have been informed by those

  quite competent to know, an excellent and most conscientious lawyer,

  but plagued with so bad a temper, that he drove the attorneys from

  him. In his early days he was a man of some small fortune and of

  higher hopes. These stood so high at the time of my birth, that

  he was felt to be entitled to a country house, as well as to that

  in Keppel Street; and in order that he might build such a residence,

  he took the farm. This place he called Julians, and the land runs

  up to the foot of the hill on which the school and the church

  stand,--on the side towards London. Things there went much against

  him; the farm was ruinous, and I remember that we all regarded the

  Lord Northwick of those days as a cormorant who was eating us up.

  My father's clients deserted him. He purchased various dark gloomy

  chambers in and about Chancery Lane, and his purchases always went

  wrong. Then, as a final crushing blow, and old uncle, whose heir he

  was to have been, married and had a family! The house in London was

  let; and also the house he built at Harrow, from which he descended

  to a farmhouse on the land, which I have endeavoured to make known

  to some readers under the name of Orley Farm. This place, just as it

  was when we lived there, is to be seen in the frontispiece to the

  first edition of that novel, having the good fortune to be delineated

  by no less a pencil than that of John Millais.

  My two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to Harrow

  School from the bigger house, and may probably have been received

  among the aristocratic crowd,--not on equal terms, because a

  day-boarder at Harrow in those days was never so received,--but at

  any rate as other day-boarders. I do not suppose that they were well

  treated, but I doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy

  which I endured. I was only seven, and I think that boys at seven

  are now spared among their more considerate seniors. I was never

  spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house

  and the school without a daily purgatory. No doubt my appearance

  was against me. I remember well, when I was still the junior boy

  in the school, Dr. Butler, the head-master, stopping me in the

  street, and asking me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow

  and the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow

  School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a boy as I! Oh, what

  I felt at that moment! But I could not look my feelings. I do not

  doubt that I was dirty;--but I think that he was cruel. He must

  have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was

  in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise

  me by my face.

  At this time I was three years at Harrow; and, as far as I can

  remember, I was the junior boy in the school when I left it.

  Then I was sent to a private school at Sunbury, kept by Arthur

  Drury. This, I think, must have been done in accordance with the

  advice of Henry Drury, who was my tutor at Harrow School, and my

  father's friend, and who may probably have expressed an opinion that

  my juvenile career was not proceeding in a satisfactory manner at

  Harrow. To Sunbury I went, and during the two years I was there,

  though I never had any pocket-money, and seldom had much in the

  way of clothes, I lived more nearly on terms of equality with other

  boys than at any other period during my very prolonged school-days.

  Even here, I was always in disgrace. I remember well how, on one

  occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators

  of some nameless horror. What it was, to this day I cannot even

  guess; but I was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged

  to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. We each had to write out

  a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. During the

  whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. We were

  not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished.

  Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. Mrs. Drury,

  when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. There were

  ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. It broke

  my heart, knowing myself to be innocent, and suffering also under

  the almost equally painful feeling that the other three--no doubt

  wicked boys--were the curled darlings of the school, who would never

  have selected me to share their wickedness with them. I contrived

  to learn, from words that fe
ll from Mr. Drury, that he condemned

  me because I, having come from a public school, might be supposed

  to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term

  he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong.

  With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not

  the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years

  ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered

  curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!--at any

  rate as far as I was concerned. I remember their names well, and

  almost wish to write them here.

  When I was twelve there came the vacancy at Winchester College which

  I was destined to fill. My two elder brothers had gone there, and

  the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost

  his chance of New College. It had been one of the great ambitions

  of my father's life that his three sons, who lived to go to Winchester,

  should all become fellows of New College. But that suffering man

  was never destined to have an ambition gratified. We all lost the

  prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our

  reach. My eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went

  to Oxford, taking three exhibitions from the school, though he

  lost the great glory of a Wykamist. He has since made himself well

  known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian

  subjects. He is still living as I now write. But my other brother

  died early.

  While I was at Winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse.

  He gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was,

  took another farm. It is odd that a man should conceive,--and in

  this case a highly educated and a very clever man,--that farming

  should be a business in which he might make money without any

  special education or apprenticeship. Perhaps of all trades it is

  the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be

  done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. And it is

  one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable.

  He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital.

  This was the last step preparatory to his final ruin.