Autobiography of Anthony Trollope Read online

certainly was not taught. The assertion will scarcely be credited,

  but I do assert that I have no recollection of other tuition

  except that in the dead languages. At the school at Sunbury there

  was certainly a writing master and a French master. The latter was

  an extra, and I never had extras. I suppose I must have been in

  the writing master's class, but though I can call to mind the man,

  I cannot call to mind his ferule. It was by their ferules that I

  always knew them, and they me. I feel convinced in my mind that I

  have been flogged oftener than any human being alive. It was just

  possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at Winchester, and

  I have often boasted that I obtained them all. Looking back over

  half a century, I am not quite sure whether the boast is true; but

  if I did not, nobody ever did.

  And yet when I think how little I knew of Latin or Greek on leaving

  Harrow at nineteen, I am astonished at the possibility of such

  waste of time. I am now a fair Latin scholar,--that is to say, I

  read and enjoy the Latin classics, and could probably make myself

  understood in Latin prose. But the knowledge which I have, I have

  acquired since I left school,--no doubt aided much by that groundwork

  of the language which will in the process of years make its way

  slowly, even through the skin. There were twelve years of tuition

  in which I do not remember that I ever knew a lesson! When I left

  Harrow I was nearly at the top of the school, being a monitor, and,

  I think, the seventh boy. This position I achieved by gravitation

  upwards. I bear in mind well with how prodigal a hand prizes used

  to be showered about; but I never got a prize. From the first to

  the last there was nothing satisfactory in my school career,--except

  the way in which I licked the boy who had to be taken home to be

  cured.

  CHAPTER II MY MOTHER

  Though I do not wish in these pages to go back to the origin of

  all the Trollopes, I must say a few words of my mother,--partly

  because filial duty will not allow me to be silent as to a parent

  who made for herself a considerable name in the literature of her

  day, and partly because there were circumstances in her career

  well worthy of notice. She was the daughter of the Rev. William

  Milton, vicar of Heckfield, who, as well as my father, had been

  a fellow of New College. She was nearly thirty when, in 1809, she

  married my father. Six or seven years ago a bundle of love-letters

  from her to him fell into my hand in a very singular way, having

  been found in the house of a stranger, who, with much courtesy,

  sent them to me. They were then about sixty years old, and had been

  written some before and some after her marriage, over the space of

  perhaps a year. In no novel of Richardson's or Miss Burney's have

  I seen a correspondence at the same time so sweet, so graceful,

  and so well expressed. But the marvel of these letters was in the

  strange difference they bore to the love-letters of the present

  day. They are, all of them, on square paper, folded and sealed,

  and addressed to my father on circuit; but the language in each,

  though it almost borders on the romantic, is beautifully chosen,

  and fit, without change of a syllable, for the most critical eye.

  What girl now studies the words with which she shall address her

  lover, or seeks to charm him with grace of diction? She dearly likes

  a little slang, and revels in the luxury of entire familiarity with

  a new and strange being. There is something in that, too, pleasant

  to our thoughts, but I fear that this phase of life does not conduce

  to a taste for poetry among our girls. Though my mother was a writer

  of prose, and revelled in satire, the poetic feeling clung to her

  to the last.

  In the first ten years of her married life she became the mother of

  six children, four of whom died of consumption at different ages.

  My elder sister married, and had children, of whom one still lives;

  but she was one of the four who followed each other at intervals

  during my mother's lifetime. Then my brother Tom and I were left to

  her,--with the destiny before us three of writing more books than

  were probably ever before produced by a single family. [Footnote:

  The family of Estienne, the great French printers of the fifteenth

  and sixteenth centuries, of whom there were at least nine or ten,

  did more perhaps for the production of literature than any other

  family. But they, though they edited, and not unfrequently translated

  the works which they published, were not authors in the ordinary

  sense.] My married sister added to the number by one little anonymous

  high church story, called Chollerton.

  From the date of their marriage up to 1827, when my mother went

  to America, my father's affairs had always been going down in the

  world. She had loved society, affecting a somewhat liberal role

  and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from

  the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles.

  An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from

  the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate,

  or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to

  the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality

  of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had

  been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that

  archduchesses were sweet. But with her politics were always an affair

  of the heart,--as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning

  from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in

  every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so

  thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she

  generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it

  must be acknowledged that she was emotional. I can remember now her

  books, and can see her at her pursuits. The poets she loved best

  were Dante and Spenser. But she raved also of him of whom all such

  ladies were raving then, and rejoiced in the popularity and wept

  over the persecution of Lord Byron. She was among those who seized

  with avidity on the novels, as they came out, of the then unknown

  Scott, and who could still talk of the triumphs of Miss Edgeworth.

  With the literature of the day she was familiar, and with the poets

  of the past. Of other reading I do not think she had mastered much.

  Her life, I take it, though latterly clouded by many troubles, was

  easy, luxurious, and idle, till my father's affairs and her own

  aspirations sent her to America. She had dear friends among literary

  people, of whom I remember Mathias, Henry Milman, and Miss Landon;

  but till long after middle life she never herself wrote a line for

  publication.

  In 1827 she went to America, having been partly instigated by the

  social and communistic ideas of a lady whom I well remember,--a

  certain Miss Wright,--who was, I think, the first of the American

  female lecturers. Her chief desire, however, was to establish

  my bro
ther Henry; and perhaps joined with that was the additional

  object of breaking up her English home without pleading broken

  fortunes to all the world. At Cincinnati, in the State of Ohio,

  she built a bazaar, and I fancy lost all the money which may have

  been embarked in that speculation. It could not have been much, and

  I think that others also must have suffered. But she looked about

  her, at her American cousins, and resolved to write a book about

  them. This book she brought back with her in 1831, and published

  it early in 1832. When she did this she was already fifty. When

  doing this she was aware that unless she could so succeed in making

  money, there was no money for any of the family. She had never before

  earned a shilling. She almost immediately received a considerable

  sum from the publishers,--if I remember rightly, amounting to two

  sums of (pounds)400 each within a few months; and from that moment till

  nearly the time of her death, at any rate for more than twenty

  years, she was in the receipt of a considerable income from her

  writings. It was a late age at which to begin such a career.

  The Domestic Manners of the Americans was the first of a series

  of books of travels, of which it was probably the best, and was

  certainly the best known. It will not be too much to say of it that

  it had a material effect upon the manners of the Americans of the

  day, and that that effect has been fully appreciated by them. No

  observer was certainly ever less qualified to judge of the prospects

  or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been

  worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation

  was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women

  do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes,

  it ought to be ugly to all eyes,--and if ugly, it must be bad.

  What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they

  put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters?

  The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar,--and she

  told them so. Those communistic and social ideas, which had been so

  pretty in a drawing-room, were scattered to the winds. Her volumes

  were very bitter; but they were very clever, and they saved the

  family from ruin.

  Book followed book immediately,--first two novels, and then a book

  on Belgium and Western Germany. She refurnished the house which

  I have called Orley Farm, and surrounded us again with moderate

  comforts. Of the mixture of joviality and industry which formed

  her character, it is almost impossible to speak with exaggeration.

  The industry was a thing apart, kept to herself. It was not necessary

  that any one who lived with her should see it. She was at her table

  at four in the morning, and had finished her work before the world

  had begun to be aroused. But the joviality was all for others.

  She could dance with other people's legs, eat and drink with other

  people's palates, be proud with the lustre of other people's finery.

  Every mother can do that for her own daughters; but she could do it

  for any girl whose look, and voice, and manners pleased her. Even

  when she was at work, the laughter of those she loved was a pleasure

  to her. She had much, very much, to suffer. Work sometimes came

  hard to her, so much being required,--for she was extravagant, and

  liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known she

  was the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy.

  We continued this renewed life at Harrow for nearly two years,

  during which I was still at the school, and at the end of which

  I was nearly nineteen. Then there came a great catastrophe. My

  father, who, when he was well, lived a sad life among his monks and

  nuns, still kept a horse and gig. One day in March, 1834, just as

  it had been decided that I should leave the school then, instead

  of remaining, as had been intended, till midsummer, I was summoned

  very early in the morning, to drive him up to London. He had been

  ill, and must still have been very ill indeed when he submitted to

  be driven by any one. It was not till we had started that he told

  me that I was to put him on board the Ostend boat. This I did,

  driving him through the city down to the docks. It was not within

  his nature to be communicative, and to the last he never told me

  why he was going to Ostend. Something of a general flitting abroad

  I had heard before, but why he should have flown first, and flown

  so suddenly, I did not in the least know till I returned. When I got

  back with the gig, the house and furniture were all in the charge

  of the sheriff's officers.

  The gardener who had been with us in former days stopped me as I

  drove up the road, and with gestures, signs, and whispered words,

  gave me to understand that the whole affair--horse, gig, and

  barness--would be made prize of if I went but a few yards farther.

  Why they should not have been made prize of I do not know. The

  little piece of dishonest business which I at once took in hand

  and carried through successfully was of no special service to any

  of us. I drove the gig into the village, and sold the entire equipage

  to the ironmonger for (pounds)17, the exact sum which he claimed as being

  due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed

  to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy

  that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness.

  When I got back to the house a scene of devastation was in progress,

  which still was not without its amusement. My mother, through

  her various troubles, had contrived to keep a certain number of

  pretty-pretties which were dear to her heart. They were not much,

  for in those days the ornamentation of houses was not lavish as it

  is now; but there was some china, and a little glass, a few books,

  and a very moderate supply of household silver. These things, and

  things like them, were being carried down surreptitiously, through

  a gap between the two gardens, on to the premises of our friend

  Colonel Grant. My two sisters, then sixteen and seventeen, and the

  Grant girls, who were just younger, were the chief marauders. To

  such forces I was happy to add myself for any enterprise, and

  between us we cheated the creditors to the extent of our powers,

  amidst the anathemas, but good-humoured abstinence from personal

  violence, of the men in charge of the property. I still own a few

  books that were thus purloined.

  For a few days the whole family bivouacked under the Colonel's

  hospitable roof, cared for and comforted by that dearest of all women,

  his wife. Then we followed my father to Belgium, and established

  ourselves in a large house just outside the walls of Bruges. At

  this time, and till my father's death, everything was done with

  money earned by my mother. She now again furnished the house,--this

  being the third that she had put in order since she came back from

  America two years and a half ago.

  There were six of us went into this new banishment. My brother

  Hen
ry had left Cambridge and was ill. My younger sister was ill.

  And though as yet we hardly told each other that it was so, we began

  to feel that that desolating fiend, consumption, was among us. My

  father was broken-hearted as well as ill, but whenever he could

  sit at his table he still worked at his ecclesiastical records. My

  elder sister and I were in good health, but I was an idle, desolate

  hanger-on, that most hopeless of human beings, a hobbledehoy

  of nineteen, without any idea of a career, or a profession, or

  a trade. As well as I can remember I was fairly happy, for there

  were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in

  love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But

  as to my future life I had not even an aspiration. Now and again

  there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that

  she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while

  she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have

  thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were

  the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.

  Then, by degrees, an established sorrow was at home among us. My

  brother was an invalid, and the horrid word, which of all words were

  for some years after the most dreadful to us, had been pronounced.

  It was no longer a delicate chest, and some temporary necessity

  for peculiar care,--but consumption! The Bruges doctor had said

  so, and we knew that he was right. From that time forth my mother's

  most visible occupation was that of nursing. There were two sick

  men in the house, and hers were the hands that tended them. The

  novels went on, of course. We had already learned to know that they

  would be forthcoming at stated intervals,--and they always were

  forthcoming. The doctor's vials and the ink-bottle held equal

  places in my mother's rooms. I have written many novels under many

  circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my

  whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing

  herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear

  from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do,

  I never saw equalled. I do not think that the writing of a novel

  is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do;