Anthony Trollope; His Work, Associates and Literary Originals

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Title: Anthony Trollope; His Work, Associates and Literary Originals
Author: Escott, T. H. S. (Thomas Hay Sweet)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Anthony Trollope; His Work, Associates and Literary Originals" ***

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[Illustration: ANTHONY TROLLOPE

(_From a drawing by Samuel Lawrence in the possession of Mrs. Anthony
Trollope_)]

ANTHONY
TROLLOPE
HIS WORK, ASSOCIATES
AND LITERARY ORIGINALS
BY T. H. S. ESCOTT

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXIII

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

TO THOSE OF

ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S

NAME AND BLOOD NOW LIVING, AND

TO THE FEW SURVIVORS AMONG HIS

FRIENDS WHOSE MEMORY OF HIM IS

FRESH AND DEAR, THIS MONOGRAPH

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

PREFACE

The beginning of my very juvenile acquaintance with Anthony Trollope has
been incidentally, but naturally, mentioned in the body of the present
work. Some of my nearest relatives had been with him at Winchester, and
had maintained their friendship with him till, during the sixties, there
began my own mature knowledge of him and the personal connection,
literary or social, that lasted till his death. In or about 1873, I was
commissioned by its editor to write for a magazine--now no doubt
defunct--“something full of actuality” about Trollope’s novels, how he
came to write them and who sat to him for his characters. “Be sure,”
were my editor’s instructions, “you put down nothing but what you get
from Trollope, and he wishes to appear about himself.” Not only, to the
best of my ability, did I do this; but, in the little writing-room at
his Montagu Square house, he himself went through every word of the
proof with me. So pleased did he seem to be with my performance that he
supplemented his remarks on it with many personal and literary details
about himself and those with whom, at the successive stages of his
career, he had to do. The material thus given covered indeed his whole
life from his infancy in Keppel Street down to the settlement in Montagu
Square, I think in 1873. “May I,” I asked, “make some notes to ensure my
remembering correctly?” “Certainly,” was the answer. “They will be no
good for what you have now sent to the printer, but some day, perhaps,
you will have more to say about me, and then your memoranda will tell
you as much as I know myself.” In 1882, partly through Trollope’s good
offices, I succeeded the then Mr. John Morley in _The Fortnightly
Review_ editorship. During the short time then remaining to my friend,
he more than once referred to the notes he had given me nearly ten years
earlier, adding, “Be sure you take care of them.”

In this way I have been nearly spared all necessity of consulting for
the present work Trollope’s own autobiography. Freshness therefore will,
I think, be found a characteristic of this volume. At the same time, I
have been greatly helped at many points by the oldest of Trollope’s,
till recently, surviving intimates, the late Lord James of Hereford, and
Trollope’s artistic colleague, to whom especially my obligations are
infinite, Sir J. E. Millais, as well as by Mr. Henry Trollope, the
novelist’s son. The account of Trollope’s earlier Post Office days owes
a great deal to the good offices of the few now living who had to do
with him at St. Martin’s-le-Grand: Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., Mr. Lewin
Hill, C.B., Colonel J. J. Cardin, C.B., and Mr. J. C. Badcock, C.B. To
these names I must add that of Sir Charles Trevelyan, who could recall
Trollope’s entrance in the public service, and who, before his death in
1886, talked to me more than once about _The Three Clerks_ and the
reputed portrait in it of himself. Similarly, Sir William Gregory of
Coole Park, Galway, the Harrow contemporary of Trollope and of Sidney
Herbert, before his death in 1892 supplied me with much material
illustrating Trollope’s earlier days in Irish and London society. I have
also been greatly helped as regards Trollope’s postal services at home
and abroad by Mr. Albert Hyamson of the General Post Office, as well as
in respect of Trollope’s closing days by Dr. Squire Sprigge, and in his
Sussex retirement by the Rev. A. J. Roberts, Vicar of Harting. The
sketch of Trollope in the hunting-field is, I believe, true to the life.
And this because its particulars, in the most obliging manner secured
for me by the son of Trollope’s oldest sporting friend, Mr. Sydney
Buxton, came from those of his family who had ridden by Trollope’s side
with the Essex hounds, or from Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Trollope’s
Garrick Club contemporary, my old friend Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, has,
I believe, ensured accuracy for the account of his long connection with
an institution dearer to him than any other of the kind.

T. H. S. ESCOTT.

WEST BRIGHTON,

_May 1913_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

APPRENTICESHIP TO LIFE

PAGE

A “tally-ho” story--Anthony Trollope’s ancestry, historical and
apocryphal--Among the Hampshire novelists--Frances Milton’s
girlhood--Acquaintance with Thomas Anthony Trollope--Marriage and
settlement in Keppel Street--Bright prospects soon clouded--Deep in the
mire of misfortune--The American experiment and its consequence--Sold
up--Mrs. Trollope becomes a popular authoress--Anthony at school--A
battle-royal and its sequel--Rough customs at Harrow--“Leg-bail”--A
family flight to Bruges--The future novelist as usher and prospective
soldier--Friendly influences at the Post Office--Autobiographical
touches in famous novels 3

CHAPTER II

THE NOVELIST AND THE OFFICIAL IN THE MAKING

Activity at the Post Office during the thirties--The romance of
letter-carrying--One of the State’s bad bargains--Trollope’s unhappy
life, in the office and out of it--The novelist in the making--London at
the beginning of the Victorian era--Lost opportunities--Mrs. Trollope’s
influence on her son’s works--Her religious opinions as portrayed
in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_--Anthony’s first leanings to
authorship--Literary labours of others of his name--With his mother
among famous contemporaries at home and abroad--The trials of a youthful
London clerk--Trollope’s remarkable friends of school and social
life 21

CHAPTER III

THE IRELAND THAT TROLLOPE KNEW

A fresh start--Off to Ireland--The dawn of better things--Ireland in the
forties and after--The Whigs and Tories in turn make vain efforts to
remove the nation’s chief grievances--The most deep-seated evils social
rather than political--Trollope’s bond of union with the “distressful
country”--Sowing the seed of authorship on Bianconi’s cars and in the
hunting-field--“It’s dogged as does it”--Ireland’s hearty welcome to the
Post Office official--Trollope and his contemporaries on the Irishman in
his true light--The future novelist at Sir William Gregory’s home--The
legislation of 1849--The history and race characteristics of the Irish
and the Jews compared--Irish novelists of Trollope’s day--Marriage with
Miss Heseltine in 1844--His social standing and hunting reputation in
Ireland--Interesting notabilities at Coole Park--Triumphant success of
Trollope’s Post Office plot--Scoring off the advocate 39

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST TWO IRISH NOVELS

Trollope’s first novel, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_--“The best Irish
story that has appeared for half a century”--Clever effects of light and
shade--The story’s principal characters and their allegorical
significance--Typical sketches of Irish life and institutions--The
working of the spy system in detection of crime--Some specimens of
Trollopian humour--_The Kellys and the O’Kellys_--Trollope’s second
literary venture--Links with its predecessor--Its plot and some of the
more interesting figures--The squire, the doctor, and the parson 60

CHAPTER V

COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE AND ITS LITERARY FRUITS

Trollope’s _Examiner_ articles--Opposing religious experiences of
boyhood and early manhood--Moulding influences of his Irish life--The
cosmopolitan in the making--Interest in France and the French--_La
Vendée_--Trollope’s relation to other English writers on the French
Revolution--The moving spirits of the Vendean insurrection--Peasant
royalist enthusiasm--Opening of the campaign--The Chouans of
fact and fiction--A republican
portrait-gallery--Barère--Santerre--Westerman--Robespierre--Eleanor
Duplay 81

CHAPTER VI

ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE AND HIS OWN

Maternal influence in the Barchester novels--Trollope’s first literary
success with _The Warden_--The Barchester cycle begun--Origin of the
_Barchester Towers_ plot--The cleric in English fiction--Conservatism
of Trollope’s novels--Typical scenes from _The Warden_--Hiram’s
Hospital--Archdeacon Grantly’s soliloquy--Crushing the rebels--Position
of the Barchester series in the national literature--Collecting the raw
material of later novels--The author’s first meeting with Trollope--The
novelist helped by the official--Defence of Mrs. Proudie as a realistic
study--The Trollopian method of railway travelling--A daily programme of
work and play 101

CHAPTER VII

ON AND OFF DUTY ROUND THE WORLD

Chafing in harness--“Agin the Government”--_The Three Clerks_--A visit
to Mrs. Trollope--Florentine visitors of note in letters and art--A
widened circle of famous friends--Diamond cut diamond--Trollope’s new
sphere of activity--In Egypt as G.P.O. ambassador--Success of his
mission--_Doctor Thorne_--Homeward bound--Post and pen work by the
way--North and South--_The West Indies and the Spanish Main_--Carlyle’s
praise of it--_Castle Richmond_ and some contemporary novels--An early
instance of Thackeray’s influence over Trollope’s writings--Famous
editors and publishers--The flowing tide of fortune 117

CHAPTER VIII

ESTABLISHMENT IN LONDON

Resettlement in England--Bright prospects for the future--Importance of
_The Cornhill_ connection--_Framley Parsonage_ and other novels of
clerical life--Some novelists and their illustrators--Trollope’s debt to
Millais--The social services of leading lights help him in his
historical pictures of the day--Election to the Garrick and Athenæum
Clubs--Anthony Trollope as he appeared in 1862--Leading Garrick
figures--Thackeray’s social and literary mastery over
Trollope--Thackeray, Dickens, and Yates in a Garrick squabble--A divided
camp--Trollope on Yates and Yates on Trollope--The origin of the
politico-diplomatic Cosmopolitan Club--Informal gatherings--Trollope
becomes a member--Some famous “Cosmo” characters--The end of the
club--Other clubs frequented by Trollope--The Fielding--The Arundel--The
Arts--The Thatched House--The Turf 134

CHAPTER IX

IN PERIODICAL HARNESS

Trollope’s one work in the Thackerayan vein--_Brown, Jones, and
Robinson_--Its failure--Thackeray’s two efforts to enter official life
by a side door--Trollope’s opinion of “untried elderly tyros”--And of
Thackeray’s limitations--His _Life of Thackeray_--Philippics against
open competition in the Civil Service--A Liberal by profession, but a
Tory at heart--Anthony’s _bon mot_--_The Pall Mall Gazette_--Hunting
life in Essex--Sir Evelyn Wood to the rescue--Trollope’s
cosmopolitanism--_The Fortnightly Review_, an English _Revue des deux
Mondes_--Its later developments 160

CHAPTER X

THE BROADENING OF THE LITERARY AND GEOGRAPHICAL HORIZON

Trollope as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Lewes among the lions of
literature and science at The Priory, Regent’s Park--Charles Dickens
present in the spirit, not in the flesh, thinks _Adam Bede_ is by
Bradbury or Evans, and doesn’t fancy it is Bradbury--Was there any
exchange of literary influence between George Eliot and
Trollope?--Trollope’s new departure illustrates the progress from the
idyllic to the epic--_Orley Farm_--Its plot--Trollope’s first visit to
the United States, in 1860 182

CHAPTER XI

AUTHOR, ARTIST, AND THEIR FEMININE SUBJECTS

Trollope and Millais succeed in their different spheres of life by
working on similar principles--The ideas which led Trollope to write
_Can You Forgive Her?_--Lady Macleod’s praises induce the heroine to
dismiss John Grey while Kate Vavasor’s devices draw her to her cousin
George--Alice’s spiritual and social surroundings take a great part in
moulding her character--Mrs. Greenow’s love affairs relieve the shadow
of the main plot--Burgo Fitzgerald tries to recapture Lady Glencora--Mr.
Palliser sacrifices his political position to ensure her safety--He is
rewarded at last--Other novels, both social and political 203

CHAPTER XII

RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY AND OPINIONS

Anglican orthodoxy and evangelical antipathies imbibed by Trollope in
childhood--His personal objections to the Low Church Party for
theological as well as social reasons--His characteristic revenge on
Norman Macleod for extorting from him a _Good Words_ novel--_Rachel Ray_
a case of “vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin”--And instead of a story for
evangelical readers a spun-out satire on evangelicalism--Its plot,
characters, and incidents--_Nina Balatka_ regarded as a problem Jew
story--_Linda Tressel_ to Bavarian Puritanism much as _Rachel Ray_ to
English--_Miss Mackenzie_ another hit at the Low Church--Its characters
and plot--_The Last Chronicle of Barset_ and _The Vicar of
Bullhampton_--Their serious elements, as well as social photographs and
occasional touches of satire against women, ever doing second thing
before first and then doing the first wrong--Both novels illustrate
Trollope’s views of the tragic volcano ever ready to break out from
under the social crust 223

CHAPTER XIII

PEN AND PLATFORM POLITICS

Failures of literary men in the political world at the beginning of the
nineteenth century--Trollope increases the number by going under at
Beverley--“Not in, but in at the death”--_Ralph the Heir_--Its plots and
politics--Trollope as editor of _The St. Paul’s Magazine_--_Phineas
Finn_--Some remarks on Trollope’s _Palmerston_--In the heart of
political society--The hero’s flirtations and fights in London--His
final return to the old home and friends--_Phineas Redux_--Again in
London--Charged with murder--Madame Goesler’s double triumph--Some
probable caricatures--Trollope renews acquaintance with Planty Pal and
his wife in _The Prime Minister_--The close of the political series
comes with _The Duke’s Children_ 245

CHAPTER XIV

AMERICAN MISSIONS AND COLONIAL TOURS

Trollope’s third visit to America--That of 1868 about the Postal Treaty
and Copyright Commission--Mr. and Mrs. Trollope’s Australian visit
(1871) to their sheep-farming son--Family or personal features and
influences in the colonial novels suggested by this journey--Trollope as
colonial novelist compared with Charles Reade and Henry Kingsley--Why
the colonial novels were preceded by _The Eustace Diamonds_--Rival South
African travellers--Trollope follows Froude to the Cape--What he thought
about the country’s present and future--How he found out Dr. Jameson and
Miss Schreiner--John Blackwood, Trollope’s particular friend among
publishers--Trollope, Blackwood’s pattern writer--_Julius
Cæsar_--Anthony’s birthday present to John--The South African book--What
the critics said--Well-timed and sells accordingly 269

CHAPTER XV

CLOSING ACQUAINTANCES, SCENES, AND BOOKS

Trollope on the third Earl Grey, the fourth Earl of Carnarvon, and the
Colonies--Intimacy at Highclere and its literary consequences--Trollope
and _Cicero_, 1879--Fraternally criticised by T. A. Trollope and
others--Fear of literary fogeydom produces later up-to-date novels
beginning with _He Knew He was Right_--A similarity between Trollope and
Dickens--Trollope and Delane--The editor’s article and novelist’s book
about social and financial scandals of the time--_Mr. Scarborough’s
Family_, Trollope’s first novel for a Dickens magazine--Retirement from
Montagu Square to North End, Harting--Last Irish novels, _An Eye for an
Eye_ (1879), _The Land Leaguers_ (1883), _Dr. Wortle’s School_--General
estimate--Last London residence--Seizure at Sir John Tilley’s--Death in
Welbeck Street--Funeral at Kensal Green 288

BIBLIOGRAPHY 309

INDEX 337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ANTHONY TROLLOPE _Frontispiece_

HARTING GRANGE--NORTH FRONT _To face page_ 3

HARTING GRANGE--SOUTH ENTRANCE “ 288

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

[Illustration: HARTING GRANGE. NORTH FRONT.]

CHAPTER I

APPRENTICESHIP TO LIFE

A “tally-ho” story--Anthony Trollope’s ancestry, historical and
apocryphal--Among the Hampshire novelists--Frances Milton’s
girlhood--Acquaintance with Thomas Anthony Trollope--Marriage and
settlement in Keppel Street--Bright prospects soon clouded--Deep in
the mire of misfortune--The American experiment and its
consequence--Sold up--Mrs. Trollope becomes a popular
authoress--Anthony at school--A battle-royal and its sequel--Rough
customs at Harrow--“Leg-bail”--A family flight to Bruges--The
future novelist as usher and prospective soldier--Friendly
influences at the Post Office--Autobiographical touches in famous
novels.

The Norman Tallyhosier, who accompanied William the Conqueror to
England, when hunting with his royal master in the New Forest, happened
to kill three wolves; the King at once dubbed him “Troisloup.” The
changes and corruptions of successive centuries left the word Trollope.
Such at least was the traditional account of the patronymic volunteered
by Anthony Trollope, when at Harrow, to his school-fellow, Sidney
Herbert, and afterwards forcibly extracted from him upon many different
occasions by the boys, whose fancy it tickled or whose incredulity it
provoked. Such scepticism was the more pardonable, because the earliest
Trollope of any distinction, Sir Andrew, in the fifteenth century, rose
to knighthood during the Wars of the Roses from beginnings more humble
than would be expected in the case of one whose forefathers were
personages at the Norman Court. However that may be, the Trollope stock
can claim description as ancient, honourable, and of high degree. Amid
many changes of employment and fortune, Anthony Trollope’s bearing and
conduct were those of one who, while modestly proud of his ancestral
honours, yet always saw in them a Sparta given him by birth to adorn a
social capital entrusted to him by nature for laying out at intellectual
interest. Throughout all his trials and vicissitudes he lived with men
distinguished by their position or achievements. Comparing himself with
these, he might well be satisfied, not only with his power of
transmuting manuscript into money, but with having done as little as
any, and less than some, to bring discredit upon family antecedents and
an historic name.

When Anthony Trollope’s _Autobiography_ appeared in 1883, much of its
contents was already familiar outside the limit of his personal
intimates. No man so largely preoccupied, as his temperament and
pursuits made him, with himself, ever talked less about his interests
and affairs except with a few particular friends in the privacy of home
life. In the year of his death, 1882, mentioning to the present writer
the sheets of self-record whose preparation he had several years before
finished, he described them as a series of pegs. “On them,” he added,
“may be hung those materials about my life and work which may be
gathered by those who, like yourself, may be disposed to say something
about me.”

For several reasons presently to appear, nothing could better match
later associations of the Trollope family than for its mythical founder
first to have been heard of in the county where much of his mother’s
girlhood was passed, and where Anthony sometimes found a retreat for his
declining years. Troisloup’s descendants--to assume that there existed
some foundation in fact for the story which, without having thought much
about it, young Anthony presaged the novelist’s inventiveness by telling
his Harrow schoolmates--made no further contributions to Hampshire
history, but gradually identified themselves with the north-midland or
the northern counties. When the family baronetcy was created in 1641
the Trollopes had settled near Stamford, and soon supplied Lincolnshire
with one of its great territorial magnates in Sir John Trollope, who for
more than a quarter of a century represented the southern division of
the county. He belonged to those “men of metal and large-acred squires”
mentioned by Disraeli as forming Lord George Bentinck’s chief bodyguard
of the Tory revolt against Sir Robert Peel in 1846. This was that
typical county member who, during the full-dress debates on the Bill for
opening the ports, agreed with Sir Charles Burrell, Sir William
Jolliffe, and Sir Charles Knightley not to follow their leader. Under
protection, it had been repeatedly said during the debate and on other
occasions, the land failed to provide food for the people; Sir John
Trollope declared there was not in his own neighbourhood a single acre
lying waste, that from 1828 to 1841 Lincoln county had enlarged its
wheat produce by 70 per cent., while the population had only increased
20 per cent. Thus, argued Sir John, there was a large surplus available
to feed the manufacturing districts.

So long as he could persuade himself of a protectionist reaction being
even remotely possible, Sir John Trollope stuck to the House of Commons,
and took an active part in its business. Not indeed till some time after
his leaders had suddenly acquiesced in free trade did he, in 1868,
become Lord Kesteven. The exact place of Anthony Trollope in the family
to which he belonged may be best described by saying that the high Tory,
protectionist M.P. just mentioned, the seventh baronet, and the novelist
were descended from a common ancestor, Sir Thomas Trollope, the fourth
baronet. Between these two cousins of the Trollope name may be traced,
as will appear hereafter, certain affinities of character and
temperament as well as of blood. At each successive stage of his career
Anthony Trollope was what circumstances made him. Few courses in an
entirely new direction have ever shown more clearly and more perceptibly
than Trollope’s the impress of hereditary influences. These, however,
were less on the paternal than on his mother’s side.

The Hampshire, whose hunting-ground may or may not have witnessed the
Norman lupicide’s threefold feat, began in the early eighteenth century
to be the nursing mother of novelists. First, in order of time as well
as of fame, comes Jane Austen, born at Steventon Rectory in 1775. Miss
Austen’s works are as severely undenominational and as studiedly secular
as those of Maria Edgeworth, or as the educational system of Thomas Day.
Elsewhere in the same county, towards the close of the Georgian era,
appeared an author possessing little in common with the woman of genius
who opened her series with _Sense and Sensibility_. Charlotte Mary
Yonge’s best known works of fiction are still _The Heir of Redclyffe_
and _The Daisy Chain_. These, with _Heartsease_ and _The Monthly
Packet_, formed the most popular manuals in High Church households
throughout the first half of the Victorian age. Five years after Jane
Austen’s birth, her parents brought with them to Heckfield Vicarage,
from their earlier home at Stapleton, near Bristol, the girl who, as
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s future wife, was to become Anthony Trollope’s
mother. To her third son, while yet a boy, she imparted the desire of
emulating the industry and skill by which she was then supporting the
household. The living at Heckfield had come to Frances Milton’s father
from New College, of which he had been a Fellow; it provided him with
leisure for intellectual pastimes, always praised but seldom
remunerated, and provided his vividly imaginative, keen-witted, and
sarcastic daughter with opportunities for her earliest studies of
provincial character and life. The Rev. William Milton was a
mathematician with a turn for practical mechanics. He had elaborated a
patent that for some time he hoped might make his fortune; he had given
proof of real ability in his favourite pursuit by submitting, during his
stay at Stapleton, a scheme to the authorities of the town for improving
Bristol port. Some merit these suggestions must have had, for the lines
they indicated were afterwards followed in the actual development of the
land and sea approaches to the harbour. The city corporation voted
their thanks to the author of the design, but gave him nothing more.

Meanwhile the unsuccessful inventor’s daughter Frances Milton, by her
personal endowments of a pleasant face, a bright manner, and a clever,
sarcastic tongue, was attracting admirers. Amongst these was a young
Chancery barrister, like Miss Milton’s father a Wykehamist and a Fellow
of New College.

One of Mr. Milton’s sons, Henry Milton, obtained an appointment in a
branch of the Civil Service afterwards ornamented by one of the Milton
name,[1] and was frequently visited by his sisters at his London rooms.
In this way Frances Milton and her lover contrived to see a good deal of
each other. The street where Frances Milton now kept house for her
brother was the same, Keppel Street, as that in which, though at a
different number, the Chancery barrister, with his wife, was afterwards
to live, and his children, amongst them his third son Anthony, were to
be born. Thomas Anthony Trollope’s Lincoln’s Inn chambers were within a
few minutes’ walk. When the two lovers were not billing and cooing
together in Bloomsbury, they were exchanging letters dealing with many
other subjects besides their own mutual attachment. In the earlier days
of courtship the swain addressed his epistles to Henry Milton on the
understanding that his sister was to see them. Sometimes on both sides
these epistles ran into elaborate and rather pedantic essays, while on
the gentleman’s they were couched in carefully thought out and even
precious language natural to a clever, reflective, well-read, and
rather supercilious young college don. Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s
lyrical ballads were coming out in 1798. Not less conservative in his
taste than in his politics, Thomas Anthony Trollope had only a sneer for
the fearful and wonderful products of the new romantic school: if Miss
Milton wished to see some new poems that were at least good literature,
let her read what had just been given to the world by two Wykehamist
bards. One of these was named Jones, the other Crowe. Both were Fellows
of New College, and both had won the highest praise of experts like
Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers. When he deals with other subjects,
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s epistolary style undergoes a portentous
change. Both the gentleman and the lady are equally business-like,
precise, and severely the reverse of ornate in the forecasts of their
united future. Read with the intervening reminiscence of _David
Copperfield_, Thomas Anthony Trollope’s summary of his present, and
estimate of his prospective circumstances, curiously remind one of the
language in which Wilkins Micawber described his obligations to “my
friend” Traddles, as well as of the complete arrangements he had made
for discharging these claims in full. The sum and substance of the
Milton-Trollope calculations is that at their marriage the husband--his
fellowship of course given up--would, from his Lincoln’s Inn practice
and his patrimony, be able to count on something like nine hundred a
year. On the other side the wife would bring a dowry of thirteen hundred
pounds, independently of any resources provided by her father. As a
fact, however, she was to receive a paternal allowance of fifty pounds a
year, as well as occasional additions for clothes or other specific
purposes.

On the strength of these figures there seemed nothing rash in
encountering the risk of an early union. Accordingly, on the
twenty-third of the proverbially unlucky month of May 1809, the marriage
was celebrated at the bride’s home, Heckfield. Then came the settlement
at 16 Keppel Street; there they remained almost uninterruptedly until
their migration to Harrow. There too were born their first five
children; while two daughters came in Harrow Weald. Of this family, five
died before they were sixty, the eldest son, Thomas Adolphus, and the
third, Anthony, dealt with in these pages, reached the threshold of old
age, though Anthony fell short by fifteen years of his elder brother’s
term. As soon as the Keppel Street children could, in nursery phrase,
take notice, they must have found themselves observed by interesting and
distinguished company. The father was known among solicitors for a man
quite as able as he was queer-tempered, and for a thoroughly sound
lawyer. He had also just chanced upon one of those little personal
advertisements sometimes useful at the Bar. His friend the artist Hayter
was then, on the Duke of Bedford’s commission, painting the picture that
speedily became famous, Lord William Russell’s trial; in Thomas Anthony
Trollope he found the original for a foremost member of the legal group
of spectators in the court.

Forensic success, however well won by brains, knowledge, and industry,
sometimes suddenly, sometimes by faintly observed degrees, is apt to
melt away. The head of the Keppel Street household could found, and to
some extent build up, a valuable practice, but he was without the temper
or tact which would ensure a politic or even a civil answer to a fool.
And to him, especially in the legal world, most people seemed fools. The
attorneys who brought briefs to his chambers, if their replies to his
questions did not exactly suit his phraseological whim, found themselves
as browbeaten as if they had been refractory or prevaricating witnesses
badgered by a cross-examining counsel. For a long time Thomas Anthony
Trollope’s clients meekly submitted to their fate, and, notwithstanding
his ill-temper and unpopularity, the bitter-tongued lawyer made so
handsome an income as to exchange the fogs of the Bloomsbury home for
the clear air and fine views of a bracing suburb. Harrow, as within an
easy drive of the law courts, was the spot selected. The residence,
substantially built after its owner’s designs, and comfortably
furnished, received the name of Julians. But though from one point of
view a monument of Thomas Anthony Trollope’s legal triumphs, it proved
a forerunner of his fall. As if under the breath of some evil genius,
who could have been none other than himself, the rising fabric of his
professional prosperity, by slow but sure degrees, crumbled into dust.
Once having discovered that they could get their work done practically
as well elsewhere by counsel not superior to the common courtesies of
life, the long-enduring solicitors brought their papers to Trollope no
more. Every week ruin, crushing and complete, drew visibly nearer. At
last there was decided on a move of the whole family from Keppel Street
to Julians.

Thomas Anthony Trollope’s New College Fellowship implied a competent
acquaintance with Greek and Latin; he had shown his turn for the law
when he won the Vinerian Scholarship. His ambition was that his sons
should follow in his steps. Beginning to despair of that, he grew
discontented with his own position at the Bar, notwithstanding his
brilliant start as an equity lawyer. The growing infirmities of his
temper frightened away clients; his practice fell off. With something
like infatuation he resolved on exchanging a profession in which he
might have made his fortune, and could still have done well, for a
pursuit so absolutely ruinous as farming. For the failure now in store
his own perverse impetuosity could alone be blamed. He was the most
industrious of men, as well as the most exemplary and self-denying in
all the relationships of life. “The truth is,” said Anthony Trollope,
“my father soon found that the three or four hundred acre farm, which he
rented of Lord Northwick, had been taken by him on a false
representation of its opportunities. Even in the bitterness of spirit
caused by the consequent disillusion, he looked forward, as he said, ‘to
some compensation in having more time to teach me and my brother Tom our
classics.’”

The Julians experiment initiated a series of reverses that beggared the
father; it would have left the sons without home or education, but for
the extraordinary exertions of a resourceful, gifted, and heroic wife.
Anthony Trollope’s mother had an indomitable faculty of finding material
for success in the very welter of misfortune. The eligible modern
mansion Julians had, of course, soon to be deserted for the much less
dignified and commodious Julians farm. Next came settlement beneath a
smaller and meaner roof. Even here Mrs. Trollope contrived almost
miraculously to transform her environment, and convert what threatened
to become a ruin into an habitable if not a comfortable shelter. It was
only after her departure on missions of domestic duty that Anthony
Trollope and his father realised the full misery growing out of the
removal from Bloomsbury to Harrow Weald. Weak lungs had been inherited
by most of the children from their father, whose health now, under the
quickly successive trials, had permanently given way. Further gold
invested in the agricultural experiment would, it had now become clear,
only pave and hasten the approach to the Bankruptcy Court.

“If he looks at a card, if he rattles a box,
Away fly the guineas from this Mr. Fox.”

The sentiment of the familiar couplet was exactly applicable to Thomas
Anthony Trollope. Except in the possession of the most capable and
unselfish wife in the world, and of children all intellectually above
the average, and in two instances destined to achieve fame as well as
fortune, fate and luck had an undying grudge against him. Part of his
little house property had become commercially useless because the
title-deeds were lost. At the same time something went wrong with money
which, at her marriage, had been settled on Mrs. Trollope.

Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer and Bloomerism did not become household words
till 1849. Almost fifty years Mrs. Bloomer’s senior, Robert Owen had
acquired in the State of Indiana twenty thousand acres of land for
establishing a communistic colony near the Wabash River, known as New
Harmony. Miss Frances Wright constituted herself in England at once the
missionary of Owen’s socialistic gospel and, by her habit, the
anticipatory pioneer of the Bloomer dress. In the Bloomer costume,
afterwards a standing subject of pictorial jokes in _Punch_, she
delivered a series of enthusiastic lectures throughout the south of
England. By her various proofs of disinterested zeal for the movement,
she secured first the interest, then the admiration and friendship, of
the lady who presided over the Trollope _ménage_ successively in London
and at Harrow, and whose natural sympathies always impelled her towards
whatever novelty might excite popular laughter and opposition. The short
tunic, the wide sash round the waist, the full trousers gathered in at
the ankles, and the broad-brimmed straw hat, generally held in the hand,
all proclaiming the presence of the earliest lady lecturer from the new
world, were soon familiar beneath the Trollope roof. They imprinted
themselves indelibly on the young Anthony’s mind. About the same time he
made some other useful or interesting acquaintances of a cosmopolitan
sort. Chief amongst these was the French republican soldier, General
Lafayette, who had fought in the United States army against the English.
The Trollope family’s experiences, whenever and wherever gathered,
formed a common stock on which all might and did draw as they chose for
conversational or literary use. In his parents’ earlier continental
trips Henry was the son usually taken, Anthony being left behind to the
tender mercies of his brother Tom, and his school work at Winchester.
Afterwards, however, Anthony found himself compensated for missing his
share in these earlier excursions by a quick succession, in a few years,
of more pleasure trips abroad than a lifetime brings to most English
boys.

For the moment, however, the effect of Miss Wright’s visits to Julians
or to the other Harrow abodes was to fill Thomas Anthony Trollope with
dreams of regaining in the new world what he had lost in the old; and
the rest of that clever but self-deluded good man’s record really
suggests an exaggerated version, from which Dickens’s genius shrank, of
the money-making experiments resorted to by Wilkins Micawber. America
was a young country, just acquiring a taste for the prettinesses and
elegancies of life. A bazaar or store for fancy goods, not of course in
New York, but at some provincial capital like Cincinnati, might prove a
success. The premises might also include a room to be used for lectures
or fine art exhibitions; if the latter, the French artist, Auguste
Hervieu, had long been an intimate of the Trollope household, and might
render valuable service. As a fact, the accomplished and amiable Gaul
had already been induced by Miss Wright to establish himself on American
soil. Nashoba, however, whither he had been directed, disappointed him;
he was now free to place himself entirely at the disposition of Mrs.
Trollope and the son, Henry, who had accompanied her. Commercially, the
transatlantic trip miscarried not less signally than everything else to
which Anthony Trollope’s father put his hand. At the same time it turned
his wife into a highly popular author, and created in her third son,
then a lad of seventeen, a determination to imitate the maternal
performance. The United States experience also provided a theme for her
earliest essay at recovering with her pen the prosperity that had been
blighted by her husband’s evil star. Even in some of the later fiction
that proved the chief gold-mine, Frances Trollope brought in her
American experiences. These, however, long before that, had formed the
exclusive subject of the book on which alone her earliest reputation
rested. _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ had been roughed out in a
first draft before her return voyage to England was at an end.

By this time, her husband’s embarrassments had reached the desperate
stage. In 1834 came the final crash. Mrs. Trollope now divided her time
between the direction of her home and the preparation of the book which
was to support it. Her husband occupied himself with his pen to less
profitable account. Even the pretence of farming had been well-nigh
given up. Early one morning in the March of 1834, young Anthony, then a
Harrow boy of nineteen in his last half, was told to drive his father to
London in the gig, which up to that time had been retained. To the boy’s
surprise, the point to be made for was not the more or less familiar
legal quarter, but St. Katherine’s Docks. Here the father disappeared
into a vessel bound for Antwerp; the lad regained the cottage at
Harrow, to find it in the bailiffs’ hands. The landlord, Lord Northwick,
had in fact put in an execution. The Trollopes, however, had made
substantial and loyal friends in the Harrow district. To know Mrs.
Trollope was to admire her courageous activity under calamities,
crushing or paralysing in their character and degree. When her own
roof-tree had been rooted up, offers of hospitality poured in from every
side. Still the eventual necessity of securing a home remained. The
father of the family had found the conventional ambulatory solution of
the difficulty, and, giving his creditors the security of “leg-bail,”
had fled, as we have seen, across the Channel. For the present their
settlement was Bruges, a house called the Château D’Hondt, just outside
St. Catharine Gate. Here the father recedes into the background. The
central figure of the whole Belgian episode is his wife, who during
these years left the impress of her own personality, moral and
intellectual, in characters so distinct upon her son that her example
decided for him what was to be his life’s business. Her pen formed the
staff on which the whole family leaned, and alone supported the roof
which sheltered them. Her husband’s days were visibly numbered. Lung
disease of a hopeless kind had set in with her son Henry and her
daughter Emily. Always nursing her invalids, she never failed to produce
her daily tale of “copy” for the printer.

At the time of her husband’s death in 1835 she was busy at, and soon
after published, her work on Paris and the French. The vivacity and
truth of this volume made it a success within a few weeks of its coming
out. It was not till some years later, when her son Anthony, preparing
at the time for authorship, directed attention to it, that its chapter
devoted to George Sand was discovered to be the best thing of its kind
that had yet come from an English pen. Mrs. Trollope’s books, beginning
with _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ in 1832 and, twenty-four years
later, ending with _Fashionable Life_, were mostly written in the
intervals of nursing, feeding, and in all ways caring for husband and
children smitten with a mortal disease. So far as they influenced her
third son, they will be reverted to in these pages. Mrs. Trollope was a
well-born, well-bred, well-connected, delicately nurtured as well as
exemplary woman. Her father, William Milton, the Heckfield clergyman,
had gone to the ancient and honourable stock of Gresleys for his bride.
The daughter of this marriage, Frances, had from her childhood lived in
the best society, metropolitan or provincial, during its most exclusive
periods. Her wealthier relatives and acquaintances never allowed their
connection with her to drop. Hence the opportunities which, quite as
much as those given by his paternal relationships, introduced Anthony
Trollope himself, as a young man, to the most desirable houses of his
day.

Meanwhile the elder Trollope’s death had been preceded by a crisis in
the life of his third son. Thirteen years before the date now reached,
his parents’ settlement at Harrow had naturally caused him to be sent as
a day-boy to the great school, then in the ground-swell left by domestic
disturbances which, though they had occurred so long since as almost to
be forgotten, projected some demoralising influence upon a generation
yet to come. In 1805, Joseph Drury retired from the headmastership.
George Butler was elected his successor by Archbishop Manners-Sutton’s
casting-vote, against Mark Drury, the local favourite. The poet Byron,
then a boy at the school and a monitor, led a rebellion against the new
Head. Other disturbances and barrings-out followed. Twelve years before
Anthony’s entrance there had happened events not favourable to the
position of day-boys at the school. The Harrow parishioners in 1810
petitioned Chancery for the restriction of the school to local
residents, chiefly, of course, shopkeepers. The counsel employed by the
school bore a name, Fladgate, which, in connection with the Garrick
Club, was to be well known by Anthony Trollope in later years. The whole
episode, being much talked about at the time, had the effect of
familiarising Trollope, while a boy, with the old school of lawyers,
figuring so frequently in his novels. Sir William Grant, as Master of
the Rolls, thought the boarders so essential to the school’s prestige
and prosperity, that he would not sanction any limitation of their
number. He risked, however, offending the masters by insisting on fresh
guarantees as regards day-boys for the rights of residence. “The
controversy,” said Trollope to the present writer, “had the effect of
adding a fresh sting to my position as a day-boy. The masters snubbed me
more than ever because I was one of the class which had brought about
legal interference with their vested interests. The young aristocrats,
who lived sumptuously in the masters’ houses, treated me like a pariah.”

At the same time the tenant of Julians Farm supplemented the supervision
of the boy’s home-lessons with Spartan severity of physical discipline,
at least one box on the ear for every false quantity in a Latin line.
Nor was there any gilding of the pill with pocket-money, books, or even
proper clothes. Harrow had then a larger percentage of exceedingly rich
men’s sons among its boys than either Eton or Winchester. Anthony’s
appearance may often have been against him; but the public opinion of
the place, if not at first, would in the long run have declared itself
against persecuting a boy who was not a fool, who knew the use of his
fists, and against whom the worst that could be said was that he came
from a poor home. He was, however, as throughout life he remained,
morbidly sensitive. “My mother,” he said to me in the year of his death,
“was much from home or too busy to be bothered. My father was not
exactly the man to invite confidence. I tried to relieve myself by
confiding my boyish sorrows to a diary that I have kept since the age of
twelve, which I have just destroyed, and which, on referring to it for
my autobiography some time since, I found full of a heart-sick,
friendless little chap’s exaggerations of his woes.”

In all great schools sets are inevitable, and disappointments,
heartburnings, and jealousies at real or imaginary exclusions are rife.
Trollope, however, showed himself capable of holding his own, both in
the schoolroom and in the playground. Judge Baylis, his contemporary,
admits that home boarders were often bullied and pursued with stones,
but emphatically testifies that Trollope, being big and powerful, got
off easily; he once, it seems, fought a boy named Lewis for nearly an
hour, punishing his adversary so heavily that he had to go home. Of
course it was, as at every big English school of the time, a rough and
occasionally a brutal life, enlivened with such customs as “rolling-in,”
“tossing,” and “jack-o’-lantern”; this last was put down by Longley, who
followed Butler as headmaster during Trollope’s time. The education was
exclusively Latin and Greek, as it was everywhere else. But at home
Anthony Trollope received a thorough grounding in modern languages,
especially French and Italian, from his accomplished mother, and was
noticed by his contemporary Sydney Herbert as a boy full of general
knowledge. At a private school kept by one of the Harrow Drurys near
Sunbury, some of the time coming between his two Harrow periods was
sandwiched in with really good results. Among his Harrow friends other
than Herbert were the three Merivales: John, afterwards Registrar in the
Court of Chancery, Herman, the permanent Colonial Under-Secretary, and
Charles, the Roman historian, who, as Archdeacon of Ely, remained
Trollope’s friend through life, and whom I have met at dinner at his
house in Montagu Square.

His father’s ambition to get Anthony, like his brothers Thomas and
Henry, into Winchester was fulfilled in 1827, when Anthony had for his
fellow-Wykehamists, amongst others, Roundell Palmer, Robert Lowe, and
Cardwell. The three years of St. Mary Winton were followed in 1830 by
another Harrow spell of three or four. After that Anthony Trollope, like
the rest of his family, remained a wanderer upon the face of the earth,
and homeless until his parents gained a resting-place at Bruges.
Disraeli’s Young Englanders in _Coningsby_, despairing of a career in
England, are about to join the Austrian service. Young Anthony Trollope,
if not from any Disraelian motive, seriously determined to do the same
thing. Subject to an examination in European languages, he contrived to
secure the promise of a cavalry commission in the Austrian army. To
place himself in the way of picking up the necessary acquaintance with
continental tongues, he became for a few weeks an usher in a Belgian
school. From that slavery he was delivered by the unexpected opening of
the employment that was to make him first a useful member of society,
and then a distinguished and a successful man.

In _A Publisher and His Friends_, the second John Murray, at Mrs.
Trollope’s request, is said to have obtained for her third son the Post
Office clerkship which took him back in 1834 from Bruges to London.
Other influences, however, co-operated in the same direction as those of
Albemarle Street. Among Mrs. Trollope’s wide, varied, and influential
acquaintance was Mrs. Clayton Freeling, daughter-in-law of the then
chief secretary at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Sir Francis Freeling. That
lady overflowed with admiration of the splendid struggle made by her
friend to keep her home together and secure a future for her boys. Sir
Henry Holland, the great physician of the time, a man whose word on any
subject went for much in official and political circles, had already
helped the future Sir Henry Taylor to a career in the Colonial Office;
he had also, as one gathers from his autobiography, been looking out for
a chance of doing the Trollopes a good turn. Any one of these agencies
would have been enough in young Anthony Trollope’s case. Their
combination in his favour gave him the additional advantage of reminding
the heads of the department he entered that he possessed powerful
friends in high places. His family connections stood him also in good
stead. So, said Mrs. Freeling, they ought to do, especially with the
Postmaster-General; for had not young Anthony’s kinsman, Admiral Sir
Henry Trollope, Sir Thomas Trollope’s grand-nephew, not only rendered
his country heroic service at sea in the French wars, but also won
special fame and promotion as a sort of amateur postman by carrying
despatches from the chief commander of the fleet abroad to the
Government in London--particularly in 1781, during the whole episode of
Gibraltar’s release by Admiral Rodney. Sixteen years later he secured
fresh distinction in suppressing the mutiny at the Nore. For reward a
peerage and the capital to support it would not have been excessive. As
it was, he only received such a pension as enabled him to lead a country
gentleman’s life in Herefordshire. The utmost therefore, urged Mrs.
Freeling, that the Whigs then in power could do for her friend’s boy
would be only an instalment towards paying the arrears of the public
debt due for Admiral Trollope’s tact, presence of mind, and naval
eminence. Finally, protested this indefatigable lady, the Whigs owed
some reparation for their breach of faith towards her _protégé’s_
father.

Thomas Anthony Trollope had indeed been actually promised a London
police-magistrateship by Lord Melbourne, who wriggled out of his
engagement under some backstairs pressure. Their reverses therefore had
not robbed the Trollope family of “friends at Court.” Young Anthony, in
fact, belonged by birth and connection to the governing classes. He
might well have aspired to a higher branch in the Civil Service. During
the Victorian era another man of letters, more brilliant perhaps but
less famous afterwards than Trollope became, Grenville Murray, was given
a position in the Foreign Office without satisfying any severer test of
fitness than was done by Trollope when he began work at St.
Martin’s-le-Grand. From one point of view what he had picked up at
Harrow and Winchester formed the least remunerative part of his
equipment. As a public school boy he had learned to look after himself,
let people see he was a gentleman, intended to be treated as one, and to
adapt himself to circumstances. As much classics as either school gave
him he might have acquired in his father’s study, if the teacher and the
scholar had not come to open war before the course was over. As it was,
Thomas Anthony Trollope, almost as soon as his son could hold a pen,
taught him the points to be aimed at in letter-writing--clearness,
conciseness, abstinence from the repetition of words or ideas, and the
non-introduction of any unnecessary or irrelevant matter. At the same
time he instructed him by example in the theory and practice of
_précis_ writing. This formed the morning’s educational routine in the
Harrow home. After tea came the mother’s turn. Mrs. Trollope was a far
more cultivated woman than might be supposed from her books. Proud, as
well as fond, of all her boys, she taught them of an evening enough
French, German, and Italian to speak and write these languages
correctly, as well as understand them when spoken, without difficulty,
and converse in them with ease.

“As for my father,” once said Trollope, “while the soul of honour and
unselfishness, after he gave up the Bar he showed a want of ballast, a
fickleness, and an inability to make both ends meet, really reminding
one of Micawber in _David Copperfield_.” Trollope’s own apprenticeship
to work for his livelihood came some years later than it had done to
Dickens. Years after the establishment of his literary fame, Trollope
adopted the habit of interspersing his stories with touches as really
autobiographical as anything in _David Copperfield_. He had not long
exchanged the Harrow home for continental wandering, when his efforts to
support himself began. These took an educational direction. His eldest
brother eventually became, under Dr. Jeune, a master at King Edward’s
School, Birmingham. To that height Anthony did not aspire, and was
satisfied, till some other employment came, if he could cease to be a
burden to his mother, by giving English lessons to small boys in a
Belgian school.

CHAPTER II

THE NOVELIST AND THE OFFICIAL IN THE MAKING

Activity at the Post Office during the thirties--The romance of
letter-carrying--One of the State’s bad bargains--Trollope’s
unhappy life, in the office and out of it--The novelist in the
making--London at the beginning of the Victorian era--Lost
opportunities--Mrs. Trollope’s influence on her son’s works--Her
religious opinions as portrayed in _The Vicar of
Wrexhill_--Anthony’s first leanings to authorship--Literary labours
of others of his name--With his mother among famous contemporaries
at home and abroad--The trials of a youthful London
clerk--Trollope’s remarkable friends of school and social life.

With his junior clerkship at the Post Office in 1834, Anthony Trollope’s
working life begins; now also commences his conscious preparation for
the literary labours that, seriously entered on a few years later, were
only to cease when death took the pen from his hand. The atmosphere of
the department which he was to serve for thirty years had in it much
calculated to stimulate the energies and even excite the imagination of
the new-comer. Till 1829 the postal headquarters had been, amongst other
places, at a house once belonging to Sir Robert Vyner in Lombard Street.
The St. Martin’s-le-Grand building had therefore been occupied just five
years when Anthony Trollope entered upon his Post Office experiences.
The early thirties were a season of great activity, of novel and
awakening enterprise at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Sir Francis Freeling,
supported, as chief secretary, by the Postmaster-General, the Duke of
Richmond, aimed at nothing less than reorganising the entire service.
Within a short time there were introduced thirty-nine specific reforms.
These dealt with the conveyance of letters by sea as well as land. The
whole system of mail-packets, when thus entirely recast, gradually made
deliveries from foreign parts as safe as those within the United
Kingdom. The steam-locomotive had just opened a rivalry with the
horse-drawn car which few people believed would at an early day achieve
complete success. As a fact, it was not till 1854 that Anthony Trollope
saw the Mail-Coach Office department become obsolete in the vocabulary
of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

The youth of nineteen, who after the fashion already described now
became a Government servant, with his boyish readiness for rebellion
against any constraints on his liberty, of course fretted at times
against his occupation. From his mother, however, he had inherited the
imaginative faculty which was to do more than make him a novelist. It
had indeed already given him some feeling of the national and imperial
services that might be rendered by the department to whose staff he
belonged. “Why,” he asked himself, “should not that great achievement be
sensibly promoted by my individual efforts?” The new ambition, however,
did not at once save him from trouble for unpunctuality and for scamping
his work. Still, he gradually became conscious of associations with the
national life and movement which ennobled even a junior clerk’s daily
drudgery. A romantic instinct had already invested the whole system
which gave him employment with a poetry of its own. Looking back, he saw
the opportunities for letter communication first considered and long
remaining an exclusively royal privilege. The lads with whom he was
thrown counted for lost every odd half-hour not spent in drinking,
smoking, and card-playing. Like them, he saw only his natural enemies in
blue-books and official documents of every kind. But one day, when there
were no high-jinks with his brother clerks, he lighted upon, and out of
curiosity dipped into a heap of musty records, which told him how,
throughout the Tudor period, the Master of the Posts was as entirely a
Court official as the king’s fool. The maintenance of post-horses out of
public taxes only gave loyal subjects the satisfaction of knowing that
they effectually contributed to their sovereign lord’s conveniences and
comforts. “As I pieced these fragments together into a continuous story,
I found myself,” Anthony Trollope would say, “not for the first time,
but more unmistakably than I had ever felt before, realising that a Post
Office servant’s career might be one of profit to himself as well as of
usefulness to his fellow-creatures in all their concerns and interests,
whether as citizens or as family breadwinners. From what I saw had been
done in the past, I mentally constructed a scheme of possibilities for
the future.” Not till the seventeenth century, as Anthony Trollope saw,
did the Post Office even attempt to secure, for all the king’s
tax-paying subjects, speed and certainty in their communications with
each other, both inland and overseas. Every step forward covered a very
little distance; without painfully sustained caution and vigilance,
there was the risk or rather certainty of relapse. As a fact, after that
no inch advanced ever had to be retraced.

For half a dozen years young Trollope had to be at St. Martin’s-le-Grand
daily from ten to six. During that time, the irregularities of postal
deliveries throughout the United Kingdom steadily diminished, and the
Post Office clerk in whom we are interested recognised that there was
good and even great work to be done in his branch of the public service.
He decided that all the snubs and reprimands with which, justly or
unjustly, he might be visited, should not cow him into incapacity for
doing his part. Not that the Anthony Trollope of fact, as distinguished
from him of fiction, can ever have been in more danger of finding his
energies trampled out by autocratic or plain-spoken officialism in
London than at an earlier period by schoolmasters or schoolfellows at
Harrow. At St. Martin’s-le-Grand, however, during the years which
preceded his Irish appointment in 1841, he was unquestionably, by all
who were set over him, looked upon as one of the State’s bad bargains.
Sir Francis Freeling’s successor in the chief secretaryship was Colonel
Maberly. Maberly in due course was followed by Rowland Hill, not in the
order of official promotion, but under the urgent pressure of public
opinion. Who, from all sides came the question, but the master-mind that
had invented penny postage was equal to supervising and directing the
official arrangements by which his own great reforms were to be carried
out? With both Maberly and Hill, Trollope at different periods was on
terms not merely of disaffection, or even of veiled rebellion, but of
open war. Between 1834 and 1841, after Freeling’s retirement, he seemed
to his new chief, Maberly, an ill-conditioned youth, always in scrapes.
From 1854-64 it was one long duel between the outsider, Secretary Hill,
and Trollope as champion of the department’s old exclusive officialism.

Throughout the Maberly period, Trollope lacked the two conditions for
doing himself justice--a reasonably sympathetic superior, and anything
like home comforts. The privations of lodging-house life, and the snubs
of those in authority over him at the Post Office, produced in him a
chronic, brooding discontent, which left him without wish or power to
show what he had it in him to become. Naturally ambitious, and with a
nervous longing for the good opinion of his fellow-creatures, he no
sooner found himself balked in gratifying these two master passions
than, hopeless of any change for the better, he sank into a lethargy of
disgust, not more with his position than with himself. As a boy he began
to keep a diary in the hope of relieving a constitutional melancholy,
almost paralysing his moral and mental power. The daily entries,
however, yielded him none of the consolation he had expected. The
continual introspection incidental to the task only produced depressing
and unwholesome effects. His one real solace was the habit of private
study that he never lost through life. The Harrow and Winchester
school-books had not been dispersed in the wreck of his home, but were
carried about with him wherever he went. His Latin rudiments at least he
had learned thoroughly at school or at home. Great was his happiness one
day during 1840 in discovering that he could read Horace and Cicero in
the original, not as task work, but with pleasure as literature.

Then there were the English writers, a taste for whom his mother had not
so much encouraged in her son as created. Of the old Elizabethan
classics, Spenser had become his favourite. From Fielding onwards, he
spent long evenings in his lodgings over the makers of English prose
fiction, making notes while he read as if he had been taking them up for
an examination. Jane Austen, however, gave him more pleasure than all
her predecessors put together. Very early in his Post Office days, he
came to the conclusion that _Pride and Prejudice_ pleased him better
than any other fiction he had ever read, was not perhaps so great a work
as _Ivanhoe_, but was immeasurably above _Tom Jones_. Considered
therefore as an intellectual and literary seed-time, quite apart from
the business habits they helped to form, Trollope’s early Post Office
years were very far from being misspent. Throughout life it was
Trollope’s tendency to ponder a petty vexation or trivial crossing of
his own will till it became a grievance. Of harsh experiences his youth
had a full share. The embittering official relations with Maberly first,
with Rowland Hill afterwards, and the hardship of an ill-kept and
cheerless Marylebone lodging, were the sequel to a stern preparatory
training, whether at school or home. Yet no one more indignantly than
Trollope himself would have resented the suggestion of his spirit having
been in any way broken by the paternal boxes on the ear over his Latin
syntax, by his Winchester flagellations, or afterwards by his daily Post
Office reprimands and rows.

Dwelling on the bright rather than the dark places of his early
retrospect, he had, at the age of nineteen, entered the Civil Service,
not unprepared to do the work expected of him, but also bent upon
tasting all those enjoyments which his school friends had found in
London life, and to which domestic poverty or severity had so far made
him almost a stranger. Some reminiscences of the London Trollope knew in
the thirties, though qualified by many modernising touches, may be found
in the pictures of City life given in _The Three Clerks_. The life as a
Post Office clerk he was free to lead was never better described than
by Aytoun and Martin:

“When I smoked my independent pipe along the quadrant wide,
With the many larks of London flaring up on every side,
Felt the exquisite enjoying, tossing nightly off, oh heavens!
Brandy at the cider cellars, kidneys, smoking hot, at Evans.
Or in the Adelphi sitting, half in rapture, half in tears,
Saw the glorious melodrama conjure up the shades of years.”

The existence which thus had the authors of the _Bon Gaultier Ballads_
for its laureates found its prose historian in Albert Smith, who, from
the doings of Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen in _Pickwick_, drew the
inspiration which produced the Medical Student, the Gent, and various
other treatises on the fast life of the shabby-genteel. These were once
accepted as manuals of fashion; they still serve to illustrate the
difference between then and now. The side streets of the West End were
throughout the thirties honeycombed with gambling-houses. The larger
thoroughfares were ablaze with “free-and-easys” or dancing saloons. It
was the dull, heavy, coarse, debauched London, which had not then at any
point given place to the bright and amusing London, that Trollope lived
to see. Of this chiefly pre-Victorian, gin-and-bitters-drinking capital,
the most characteristic features are sketched from life in _The Three
Clerks_. Touches of it are not wanting to his other stories, and may be
seen at one or two points in the passages between John Eames and his
landlady’s daughter in _The Small House at Allington_.

Anthony Trollope, during his early Post Office years, might excuse
himself for falling into his own Charlie Tudor’s Bohemian ways on the
plea of isolation from the domestic life of his social equals, and the
coldness of his own kith and kin. For that solitude no one was to blame
but himself. He was shy, proud, rather awkward after the fashion of
callow youths, and in his out-of-office hours apt to show an irritable
impatience of all conventional restraints. In after years he deplored
that as a youth he had avoided the humanising influence of intercourse
with refined women. The drawing-rooms and tea-tables of his lady
relatives belonging to the Lincolnshire baronet’s branch were open to
him; he shunned them all, some for one reason, some for another. Mrs.
Clayton Freeling, his earliest benefactress, would have always welcomed
him beneath her roof; he seldom or never came. She wrote letters to him
of entreaty that, for his brave and clever mother’s sake, he would make
the best of the opening she had helped to secure him. Her social circle
was agreeable and wide; within its circumference he had only to choose
eligible acquaintances. His early Belgian experiences had gained him
some lifelong friends; one or two tours with his parents in Germany, as
well as the many good wishers, won by his father and mother when
Lafayette’s guests at La Grange, might, had he cared for it, have opened
for him a wide, varied, and genuinely agreeable visiting-list. As a
fact, not till he had reached middle age and fame did he really care for
society. Had this taste come earlier, the kinsfolk of his own name were
a host in themselves.

The whole Trollope clan, with their innumerable outlying
connections--Gresleys, Hellicars, and Meetkerkes--had all in 1809
welcomed the Trollope-Milton marriage, to which he owed his existence.
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s wife had no sooner achieved success with her
pen than her countless kinsfolk rallied round her, while John Forster’s
and Sir Henry Taylor’s ever helpful interest survived the long series of
her husband’s reverses.[2] Before the settlement of Anthony Trollope’s
parents in Keppel Street, Sir John and Lady Trollope had been at great
pains to find out a suitable and really useful present for the occasion.
They were only consoled for their absence from the wedding by an early
prospect of making their new cousin’s (the bride’s) acquaintance, and in
seeing a very great deal of them both, perhaps in due time of others, in
town. Afterwards, when the tide had turned against him, even in the
darkest hour of his misfortunes, his relatives of the titled branch had
stood by Anthony Trollope’s father. The family seat in Lincolnshire,
Casewick, was still open to him during his worst troubles, and his wife
describes their visits there as the bright spots in their lives. Many
others of the Trollope family were scattered through the Midlands. The
laymen of the family had in some cases risen to consideration during the
Middle Ages, and contracted alliances with countless stocks at least as
good as themselves. Amongst those connections were some Dutch immigrants
named Meetkerke. A Miss Penelope Meetkerke, by her marriage with the
Rector of Cottery St. Mary, Herts, had become Anthony Trollope’s
grandmother, and had left posterity which, if soon becoming extinct, in
Anthony Trollope’s youth flourished sufficiently to provide him with a
welcome beneath many comfortable roofs.

But all this time Anthony Trollope’s mother was not only, as she had
always been, his wisest counsellor and best friend, but the one
influence that, continuing to form and furnish his mind, necessarily
shaped his career. Returning to England after her husband’s death at
Bruges in 1835, she had created a new mode of industry for herself and
domestic centre for those she loved at Hadley, near Barnet. Anthony
Trollope had the satisfaction of seeing a favourite sister, Cecilia,
become the wife of a Civil Service official, afterwards Sir John Tilley,
and comfortably settled in Cumberland, whence she lavished invitations
on her brother. Frances Trollope, too, at her various settlements,
abroad even more than at home, had it within her reach to bring many
little pleasures into his existence. At Hadley he passed some nights
every week in the bedroom always kept in readiness for him, and on
several occasions there were for him excursions to Paris, where his
mother long pitched her tent. In the home surroundings, Anthony’s
intellectual promise had shown itself neither so brightly nor so soon as
had been the case with his eldest brother Tom, or his sister Cecilia.
His mother, however, at no time doubted in her heart that he would
eventually become the household’s bright particular star. She had
noticed the daily entries in his childish journal, regularly kept but
carefully guarded because at Winchester some of its records had brought
down upon the writer the furious application of a cricket-stump by Tom.
Again, almost so soon as he could hold a pen, Anthony took to describing
imaginary situations in which he placed himself, explaining and
justifying his conduct in those fictitious circumstances. Frances
Trollope not only thought this good practice for an infant novelist; she
gradually led on her boy to discuss the details he depicted in their
effect upon characters other than his own. This, if the most useful and
instructive, formed the least stimulating part of her son’s training for
that literary walk she had made her own. In the Harrow days _The Magpie_
formed the manuscript exhibition of the family talent, supplemented by a
few outsiders, Drurys and Grants. Here Anthony at first had seemed to
lag behind the other contributors. He soon picked up, and had the
satisfaction of finding his little contributions in prose and verse
generally given a place. It was not, however, these boyish essays, but
the regular appearance at short intervals of his mother’s publications,
which sealed young Anthony’s resolution to make authorship the chief
business of his life.

It will not be difficult, when the proper place for doing so is reached,
to find in Frances Trollope’s volumes the germs from which grew some of
Anthony Trollope’s novels. Especially in the case of the clerical novels
that first brought him fame, the son’s fidelity to the maternal example
stands revealed. As a clergyman’s daughter, Frances Trollope in her
earliest days had seen more of parsonage life than, at a corresponding
period, was the experience of her son. None of her books created such a
stir as _The Vicar of Wrexhill_, which fluttered the dovecots of
evangelicalism in 1837, just eighteen years before her son made his
earliest hit with _The Warden_. That story presented no occasion for its
display; but those which came after showed pretty clearly that their
author had inherited some at least of his clever parent’s antipathy to
evangelical modes of conversation and temper. Not that Frances
Trollope, in the other schools of religious or moral thought then more
or less active, found her ideas better represented than by the
evangelicals themselves. She regarded as worthless for any practical
influence upon daily conduct the godless ethics incorporated into the
educational systems of Richard Edgeworth and of Thomas Day. On the other
hand, she never found the slightest spiritual attraction in the High
Anglican novelists with a purpose, represented at first by Elizabeth
Sewell, and afterwards by Charlotte Yonge.

The personages and incidents described in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ may or
may not have included the Harrow clergyman, J. W. Cunningham. The more
carefully wrought accounts of mental distress, aggravated by Calvinistic
treatment, were a transcript of the ordeal through which her friend
Henrietta Skerrett had passed. Subsequently she had misgivings lest her
caricature might have gone too far, and showed some anxiety in
admonishing her children to remember that, while in matters of religion,
as of daily life, all excess must have its dangers, some good might
surely be found in every form of faith honestly held. She had, she said,
been brought up a Church of England woman. On the same lines she
honestly tried to train her children, putting them through their Church
catechism, collect, epistle, and gospel every Sunday, and seriously
begging them to remember that once they began by being unbelievers, they
would probably end with becoming Whigs or even Radicals. Meanwhile it
was one of the detested Whigs, Sydney Smith himself, who was advertising
the novelist and delighting all those for whom she laboured by quoting
_The Vicar of Wrexhill_ in his letter to Lord John Russell.

The evangelicals at that time were notorious for an officious and
pushing activity which made them interfere the more energetically where
they were the least welcome, and which secured for them, it was said,
far more than their due share of the good things in the Church. Hence
the great and immediate success of Mrs. Trollope’s satire upon Low
Churchmanship, more particularly in its social or secular aspects. It
at once had the effect of deepening popular interest in the author, and
gave her a place among the celebrities of the season. Incidentally this
novel produced two other results. In the first place, so far as he ever
gave such matters a thought, it imbued Anthony Trollope with his
earliest prejudices against evangelicalism. Secondly, it reflected
attention on its writer’s earlier works. Thus the critics were set upon
discovering merits they had at first missed in _Jonathan Jefferson
Whitlaw_, issued a twelvemonth earlier. This was altogether a stronger
composition than others of the series, which had by this time given
their author a high place among the literary favourites of the period.
_Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_ appeared about half a generation in advance
of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_; to that book it is without any resemblance in
spirit or treatment. It had, however, the undoubted effect of recruiting
fresh popular forces to the side of the movement already started against
slavery.

His mother’s dauntless industry furnished Anthony Trollope with an
inspiration which was to last throughout his life. With it there also
came shrewd and sensible advice. The boy had an idea that, after the
manner of one of his own Three Clerks, he might have increased his
pocket-money without any fresh draft on the family exchequer by
newspaper scribbling. Frances Trollope would not hear of it. “You left
school,” she said, “sooner than you ought to have done, or than we once
expected there would be any need for you to do. Make good the dropped
stitches of your own education before you take upon yourself to teach or
to amuse others in print. Remember the time for reading is now. Reading
you must have, not so much because of what it will tell you as because
it will teach you how to observe, and supply you with mental pegs on
which to hang what you pick up about traits and motives of your
fellow-creatures.” “We Trollopes,” was the burden of this lady’s wise
counsels, “are far too much given to pen and ink as it is without your
turning scribbler when you might do something better. Harrow and
Winchester will stand you in good stead at the Post Office; make St.
Martin’s-le-Grand the instrument that will open the oyster of the world.
Imitate my particular industry as much as you like, only do not let the
publishers break your heart by treating its products as their
playthings.” Anthony may have seen the wisdom of the advice; never for a
moment did he abandon his deeply formed and silently cherished designs
of literary fame. His brother Henry had been preferred before him by the
home circle to conduct the already mentioned _Magpie_. Very good. The
race of life should no sooner begin in earnest than he would run that
relative off his legs, and make all who bore the Trollope name proud of
it for his sake. In 1840, too, his brother Tom had made so successful a
dash into print with _A Summer in Western France_, that even his
cautious mother thought he might look forward to giving up his
Birmingham mastership. About this time, too, Charles Dickens, then at
the height of his _Pickwick_ fame, and long Mrs. Trollope’s friend,
introduced himself to the household. This, of course, had the effect of
deepening Anthony’s self-dedication to the novelist’s calling. From the
very first, whether at home, school, or at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the
attempt by entreaty or argument to shake a purpose or conviction once
formed aroused his instinct of pugnacity, as well as of contradiction.

The scenes and figures with which Frances Trollope filled her countless
canvases were so diversified that they could not but include many types
of character and place which her son afterwards made his own. To the
goodwill of her critics and of the literary rank and file Frances
Trollope was indifferent. Such a discipline as she had gone through
developed the sterner rather than the gentler qualities of womanhood.
Adversity and bereavement had pointed her pen with a sarcastic
sharpness, inherited only in a very moderate degree by her son, as much
above her in humour as he is below her in satire. Of that Mrs. Trollope
showed herself aware, when during the last eight years of her life,
having read _The Warden_, she impressed on her son the wisdom of working
the peculiar vein of narrative comedy it disclosed. “Of this,” she said,
“you owe nothing to me, and as yet I have observed nothing like it in
others of your period.” Mrs. Trollope’s comedy of the sort that best
suited the taste of the thirties and early forties is seen at its best
in _The Widow Barnaby_, _The Widow Married_, _The Widow Wedded_,
_Hargrave, the Man of Fashion_, _The Lottery of Marriage_, and in
_Petticoat Government_, to name only a few out of many. Of the group now
mentioned, the earliest, _The Widow Barnaby_, with its sketches of Bath
and Cheltenham ball-rooms, and of the conquests which the eminently
marriageable aunt set her niece an example of making, gave Anthony
Trollope some crude hints on which he greatly improved for Mrs.
Greenow’s adventures in _Can You Forgive Her?_ Mrs. Trollope’s novels
further resembled her son’s after 1855 in being none of them failures;
most of them indeed proved successively, in their way, little goldmines.
Family reminiscences, especially of a literary kind, were not in Anthony
Trollope’s way. Admiration of his mother’s heroic performances with her
pen in the way of bread-winning was unmixed with any admission of having
himself profited, either in his work, or in his relations with his
readers or with the publishers, from her gifts or from her reputation.
“She kept us all,” he would say, “from homelessness and want. As regards
myself,” he continued, “my special debt to her was that, but for the
‘open sesame’ which my sonship to her gave me, I should have had to wait
much longer than I did for my initiation into life and society upon all
those levels which it is part of a novelist’s stock-in-trade to know.”

Throughout the years following her husband’s death, Mrs. Trollope’s
literary biography was less of a personal record than a family
chronicle. Her industrial prosperity did not entirely exempt her from
occasional buffetings with publishers and editors. Such anxieties she
talked over with her favourite third son. A good while, therefore, in
advance of his turning author on his own account, Anthony Trollope had
seen something of the storms and cares which agitate the novelist’s
course. He only accompanied his mother once or twice to the great houses
which opened their doors for her reception at Paris. But she no sooner
returned than she confided to the lad whatever she had seen and heard
during his absence. In this way, while still working himself up through
junior positions at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Anthony Trollope received
animated accounts from his mother of her Paris experiences. Amongst
these was her presentation at the Palace of Louis Philippe and his
Queen. On that occasion, Mrs. Trollope’s keen speech and ready wit,
according to a family tradition not perhaps entirely substantiated,
inspired her with an epigram in the same vein as Lady Blessington’s
well-known witticism at the expense of Napoleon III.[3] Admiring
_Domestic Manners of the Americans_, the French king, who himself in
1796 had found a refuge beyond the Atlantic, smilingly asked Mrs.
Trollope whether she would like to revisit the United States. “I
longed,” was her comment, “to return the question to him.” Her son told
the present writer she actually did so. The most valuable and
interesting result to Anthony himself of his mother’s frequent domicile
and great popularity abroad was an insight into all the great _salons_,
with their ornaments, of the time. Madame Récamier and Madame Mohl, as
yet only Miss Clarke, were among the most distinguished of these ladies.
The connection between the brightest as well as generally the best
society of London and Paris was even closer under the Orleanist monarchy
than that between the fastness or smartness of the two capitals became
under the third Empire or has ever been since then. The future Lord
Lytton and his brother, Sir Henry Bulwer, were both noticed by young
Trollope in this company, where the most commanding figure was, however,
universally recognised in the tall, well-proportioned form with the
handsome face, and its bright but grave expression, of Sir Henry Taylor.
The cosmopolitan coteries of which his mother’s name sufficed to make
her son free were more miscellaneously representative than any other
social assemblies of the time.

Friction against all sorts of odd people in the business of making a
livelihood out of her pen had not left Frances Trollope without the
pride of order and lineage becoming a daughter of the ancient Gresley
stock. That spirit she wished to remain in the family. Not, therefore,
without some misgivings did she see the mixed society of the time open
its doors to her sons. She was equally ready to satirise the polite
systems of Paris and Vienna. She enjoyed, however, both capitals in
their way. As for the French metropolis, it ought of course to be under
a legitimist sovereign. Failing, however, a Bourbon of the older branch,
she could manage to do with the bourgeois Court of Louis Philippe. With
respect to her boys, they had, she thanked Providence, enough of the
Trollope and Milton pride to keep them proof against contracting any
democratic taint of ideas or of demeanour. She had at first intended
that they should ripen into Parliament men. Fate had decided against
that. She had herself, by holding up to both of them the dark side of
the picture, done what she could to cool the literary enthusiasm both of
Tom and Tony. The rest she must leave to Heaven. The literary gift,
indeed, was much to be thankful for. She had beheld its growth with
pride, and done what she could to train it in her children, but only as
the intellectual ornament, adding a suitable grace and finish to those
whom Providence had above all things intended should be gentlefolk. It
was something to be, as Mrs. Trollope had undoubtedly made herself, the
most talked of and the most widely read among novelists. If that
achievement were not enough on which to rest, Mrs. Trollope, it must be
remembered, was a very sensitive and impressionable, as well as clever
and energetic woman. From her infancy she had lived among those who
always spoke as if the socially levelling movement, inseparable from the
Whig and Radical propagandism of the time, must have results ruinous,
not only to Church and Throne, but to the privileged classes, whose
welfare was as essential to the country as that of the Crown and Altar
itself.

To Mrs. Trollope there had seemed something of an indignity in her son
being bound over to Government service under an arbitrary taskmaster at
St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Whoever his chief there may have been, Colonel
Maberly or Rowland Hill, the fetters that bound him did not prove very
galling. No short-handedness in the department, no vindictive coercion
by the head of his room ever prevented young Anthony Trollope from
promptly obeying his mother’s invitation when she saw some opportunity
socially favourable for her boy. In town or country she rose every
morning at half-past four, and, sitting down to work at once, got nearly
her day’s task accomplished before breakfast. When she visited her
daughter and son-in-law in Cumberland, she made a kind of triumphal
progress through the county, crowning her round of visits with a little
stay at Lowther Castle, the headquarters of north country Toryism. Her
host, Lord Lonsdale, knew she had at least one son a Government clerk;
she must have him up there for a little change, to show him the place.
And so, throughout Anthony Trollope’s youthful turn at the Post Office,
it continued. Money troubles, of course, he had. A young man without
private means, however much in luck’s way, could not have rubbed
shoulders with the best people in England and France without being
sorely put to it at times for ready cash. Naturally he got into debt,
and had small transactions with the petty usurers, then as now ready to
accommodate youthful civilians on the security of their weekly wage. His
recourse to the professional money-lender had the advantage of
preserving to him many private friendships which might otherwise have
been forfeited. Even as regards his mother, if there were advances to
him from that quarter, they generally came at her initiative rather than
at his own request. She usually contrived to have enough for her own
industry and health. Even when her ventures were most prosperous, she
denied herself much that she would have liked. Her son therefore, in all
his juvenile straits, seldom, if indeed ever, drew upon her. Others with
whom he was more or less closely connected, Meetkerkes or Miltons, were
suffered to know nothing whatever about his difficulties.

A well-connected young man like Anthony Trollope, however pressed at
any particular time, could always, if prepared to pay the price, have
raised ready money enough for existing personal needs. His transactions
with money-lenders were not, even in his earliest and most impecunious
youth, serious enough to prevent a settlement with the usurers before
the debt had swelled to any large amount. Such experiences of this sort
as he had find their way, after a rather monotonous fashion, into many
of his novels. They first appear in _The Three Clerks_, declared, both
by Robert Browning and, in terms still more enthusiastic, by his wife,
the poetess, to be Trollope’s best piece of work up to the year 1858.
After an eleven years’ interval the accommodating M‘Ruen of _The Three
Clerks_ is reintroduced in the same capacity, as the Clarkson who holds
the bill backed by Phineas Finn for Laurence Fitzgibbon. Whatever the
name under which he trades, or the period to which he belongs, this
dealer in ready cash is a personal reminiscence of Trollope’s boyish
out-at-elbows Post Office days. In each of the novels now mentioned the
burden of his talk admits only of a slight verbal variation. The form of
the reproach to Charley Tudor is, “You are so unpunctual”; the
exhortation to Phineas is, “Now, do be punctual.”

Trollope had, however, managed his small money matters on the whole so
well that he left no debts behind him when, in 1841, a friendly loan of
£200, duly repaid, supplied him with his Irish outfit. That was exactly
six years before he made the approach to literature by the road of
journalism. Charles Dickens, who admired his mother’s cleverness and
courage, had given her his good offices with the man who, as editor of
_The Examiner_ in 1847, was to become a power on the weekly press. As a
fact Dickens’ introduction of Mrs. Trollope to John Forster was destined
to promote her son’s interests by opening to him the columns of _The
Examiner_, after the manner presently to be described, in 1848.

One more famous friend of a very different kind from Forster had been
brought by family accident within Anthony Trollope’s reach. This was
Lord Ashley, afterwards to become Lord Shaftesbury. Recognising Frances
Trollope’s cleverness, and anxious to enlist it on the side of his own
philanthropies, he had encouraged her to interest the public in the
miseries of industrial life in the Black Country. The representative of
the “poor man’s peer” with Mrs. Trollope in this matter had been his
secretary, a dweller in Camberwell, the father of no less a son than
Benjamin Jowett. The story embodying Mrs. Trollope’s fulfilment of the
Shaftesbury suggestion, _The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong,
the Factory Boy_, was published in 1840, when, greatly to her disgust,
it found more friends among the Chartists than in any other class.
Ashley did not succeed to the family title till 1851. By that time
Anthony Trollope had left St. Martin’s-le-Grand for ten years. But some
time before then the future Lord Shaftesbury’s concern for Irish
distress made him open communications with Anthony Trollope, as one who
had inherited his mother’s faculty of keen observation, and whose
opinion, based on local knowledge of Irish difficulties and wants,
promised to be, as it proved, of real value to practical and
philanthropic statesmanship. This however, like the various events
connected with it, will more fittingly find a place in a new chapter.

CHAPTER III

THE IRELAND THAT TROLLOPE KNEW

A fresh start--Off to Ireland--The dawn of better things--Ireland
in the forties and after--The Whigs and Tories in turn make vain
efforts to remove the nation’s chief grievances--The most
deep-seated evils social rather than political--Trollope’s bond of
union with the “distressful country”--Sowing the seed of authorship
on Bianconi’s cars and in the hunting-field--“It’s dogged as does
it”--Ireland’s hearty welcome to the Post Office official--Trollope
and his contemporaries on the Irishman in his true light--The
future novelist at Sir William Gregory’s home--The legislation of
1849--The history and race characteristics of the Irish and the
Jews compared--Irish novelists of Trollope’s day--Marriage with
Miss Heseltine in 1844--His social standing and hunting reputation
in Ireland--Interesting notabilities at Coole Park--Triumphant
success of Trollope’s Post Office plot--Scoring off the advocate.

In his periodical murmurings at the dispensations of fate, Anthony
Trollope spared himself at least as little as he did others. In the
retrospective censures upon Colonel Maberly and any others in authority
over him during his initiation into the Government service, he magnified
rather than extenuated his own shortcomings. Private letters about him
to his own relatives from those of the Freeling family, who long
remained in more or less close touch with the Post Office, show the low
esteem in which he complains of having been held by his official masters
to have been for the most part imaginary. The impression, even in its
most unfavourable aspects, left behind him at St. Martin’s-le-Grand on
his transfer to Ireland in 1841 was not so much one of incapacity for
work as of indisposition to it. If he showed himself to be unpunctual,
spiritless, and untidy, that was generally put down to want, not of
power, but of proper training for his duties. According to the habit of
the time, all subjects not classical had been “extras” at Anthony
Trollope’s schools. Thanks to his home lessons, from the beginnings of
his official course he could express himself clearly and tersely; he had
inherited and retained throughout life his mother’s clear, flowing
calligraphy. Of arithmetic, however, he knew little or nothing. Here, as
in other respects, he improved as he went on. A spruce and finished
official in his youth he never indeed became; but, on landing at Dublin
in the September of 1841, he had outgrown the unpunctuality, the want of
method, and the _gaucheries_ which so often opened against him the vials
of Colonel Maberly’s wrath. Thrown on his own resources in dealing with
all sorts of people, from departmental overseers in St.
Martin’s-le-Grand to lodging-house landladies in Marylebone, he had
picked up enough worldly wisdom and insight into character to compensate
for any failing of personal or official equipment.

Once in Ireland, he had no sooner looked round him than he fancied he
could see a resemblance between the condition of the country and his own
state and prospects. This inspired him with a kind of sympathetic
affection for the Irish people. In the June before Trollope landed at
Dublin, Queen Victoria’s first Parliament had come to an end, with the
result that, of the long-promised Whig reforms for Ireland, the only
instalments actually carried into effect were an unpopular Poor Law of
doubtful efficacy, and certain measures, largely dictated by the
Conservative opposition, for dealing with the inveterate evils of tithe
collection as well as with municipal corporations. It was the Irish
tithe abuses which had caused a literary admirer of Anthony Trollope’s
mother, Sydney Smith, to say: “There is no cruelty like it in all
Europe, in all Asia, in all discovered parts of Africa, and in all that
we have ever heard of Timbuctoo.” For centuries Ireland had been not
only the object of English misrule and neglect, but the victim of the
English party system. The exigencies of that party system secured
periodical surrenders to Irish agitators, which were called
concessions, and spasmodic outbursts of eleemosynary lavishness, which
were in reality merely part payments of long overdue debts. Three years
before the Victorian era began, the Tories, led by Peel, had made way
for the Whigs under Melbourne. Whoever was out or whoever was in,
O’Connell remained master of the position. Without truckling to that
dictator, neither Whig nor Tory minister thought of moving a step. The
habit of English surrender to Irish importunity, when sufficiently
persevering and acute, had, when Anthony Trollope crossed St. George’s
Channel, produced the feeling that agitation and outrage were the two
infallible instruments for wresting the demands of the moment. Neither
of the two great political connections had shown more statesmanship than
its rival in its Irish policy. But for the three months nominal tenure
of office by Peel in 1835, the Whigs had enjoyed unbroken control of
affairs during more than a decade.

Now, in the month of Anthony Trollope’s first crossing the Irish
Channel, a change had come, and the Tories were to have their turn. When
therefore Trollope passed his first night in Dublin, the Castle was
enjoying the novel experience of a Conservative Viceroy, Lord de Grey.
His official term coincided with some attempt at improving the state of
the country from which much was hoped. The most important and promising
project recommended by his predecessors Peel, however, had shelved. Five
years before Trollope’s departure from St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the Whig
ministers had contemplated introducing railways into Ireland. Peel’s
opposition to that proposal precluded him from himself adopting it,
notwithstanding his private conviction of its usefulness. Instead he
took the earliest step towards that Roman Catholic endowment at which,
when out of office, he had so often shied. In the early future, he let
it be understood, he would increase the education grant and qualify the
Roman Catholics for receiving gifts and holding property for charitable
and religious uses. At the same time, he promised an extension of the
county franchise, and votes in boroughs to all who paid poor rates. The
great feature in the Conservative surrender to popular Irish feeling
was the abandonment of Protestant ascendency as an administrative
principle. There was now appointed for dealing with charitable bequests
a new Commission, half of whose members were Irish Papists, and whose
secretary belonged to the same denomination. The new policy secured a
permanent endowment for paying Roman Catholic priests and building Roman
Catholic chapels.

But these measures of Irish relief, however well received, attracted
less attention than the personality of the man who, as Trollope settled
down to his Post Office work, had just been installed at the viceregal
lodge. The magnificent presence, the great wealth, the fine temper, and
the impartial sympathies of Lord de Grey had not yet, and indeed never
did, endear him to the Irish heart; but they had really impressed the
Irish imagination. The _personnel_ of Peel’s whole administration was
marked by two characteristics: first, its deference to the principle of
aristocratic connection; secondly, its recognition of past official
services. The chief Irish secretary under Lord de Grey, Lord Eliot, was,
like Grey himself, the subject of Orange criticism. Such censure in the
circumstances of the time was looked upon as a recommendation, while as
for Lord de Grey, the only doubt felt about him was whether he might not
prove somewhat too much of the _beau sabreur_ to labour only for peace.
Never since the introduction of constitutional government could Ireland
have been more under the control of an individual ruler than when
Trollope made his acquaintance with the country. Neither his Tory
supporters nor the most influential of his personal adherents, Stanley
and Graham, had been consulted in the appointments made. If further
proof were needed of the Prime Minister’s determination to dominate the
administration, it would be found in the fact that, to make sure of
crossing swords himself with Palmerston in the Commons over imperial
policy, he dispensed with a Foreign Under Secretary in the Lower House.
To the Irish people therefore, as Trollope discovered directly he began
to know something of the country, Peel was not only the head of the new
Government, but concentrated in himself its most decisive authority and
its highest prerogatives.

The educational reforms and the Roman Catholic educational subsidies to
which Peel had early given the Conservative sanction were not to be
carried out in Grey’s time, and did not come within Trollope’s
observation. “Property has its duties as well as its rights.” So in 1838
had said Thomas Drummond, the engineer officer who filled for five years
the chief secretaryship. The words dwelt in the Irish mind long after
their echoes had died away from the Irish ear. In his new quarters,
Anthony Trollope had no sooner time to look round than he descried
everywhere detailed proof of Drummond’s remark having lost none of its
force since it was first made. Excessive population and deficient
production were the two great evils, each social rather than political,
of the land from the Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear. In England there
was at this time an average of one agricultural labourer to every
thirty-four cultivated acres. In Ireland the average was one to every
fourteen. One-third of the entire population depended for food on the
little plots round their cabins on the barren hillside or on the
uncertain moor. The great monument of English enterprise for relieving
Irish need was the large workhouse in each new Poor Law district,
execrated by the masses, and only acquiesced in by those who were better
off. Within two years of Trollope’s arrival in Dublin, there had set in
a steady increase of crime, and an addition, visible on all sides, to
the chronic distress. Nor did the lot of those who owned the soil
display to Trollope much that raised them greatly above its industrial
occupants. His boyish acquaintance with his father’s agricultural
failures in Harrow Weald seemed to repeat themselves, as he observed the
struggles of the Irish squireens, in the dilapidated tenements that they
still called their country houses, to postpone indefinitely the evil day
of being sold up by the attorney and the usurer. The urban
neighbourhoods were no better off than the rural. Most of the towns
within Trollope’s district had once been the seats of some small
industries. Many if not most of these had now declined into a languor
which had often caused them to be entirely abandoned, and had sometimes
withdrawn the bulk of the population they had formerly supported from
their homes.

On all sides, therefore, melancholy and desolation were in the
foreground on which Trollope daily gazed. In the desponding moods of
which he had naturally many after first realising his loneliness in a
strange country, Trollope’s fancy could not but detect a certain
congeniality between his own lot, present or future, and the dismal
destinies, the depressing sights and sounds surrounding him. The
distressful country thus found, in its newest comer, one who at heart
was as distressful as itself. The social and political atmosphere of the
country, even before Trollope came, had begun to be stirred by the note
of Celtic preparation for throwing off the Saxon yoke. Trollope’s
apprenticeship to his Irish work corresponded with the birth of the
Young Ireland movement. In that, however, there could be nothing which
appealed to his imagination with anything like the force of the human
wastage, daily in some new form presented to his eye.

But if his surroundings seemed saddening, almost, at times, to
stupefaction, Trollope gradually extracted from them food for honest and
severe thought, as well as a stimulus for invigorating exertion, both of
body and mind. In Ireland for the present he had to live. Ireland
therefore should yield him the material out of which he should make for
himself a name among State servants, as well as reputation and perhaps
fortune with his pen. When the forties were drawing to a close, railway
development was among the specifics periodically applied to the healing
of Irish distress. But when Trollope first knew the country that mode of
treatment belonged to the future. The popular method of locomotion was
that begun in the year of his own birth, 1815, by an Italian settler,
who thought he saw the beginnings of a fortune. Charles Bianconi started
his operations in 1815 by running cars from Clonmel to Cahir. Of these
conveyances he had travelling in 1841 as many as sufficed regularly at
short intervals to touch all the more important southern and western
towns. The daily total of the collective miles covered by them was three
thousand six hundred. The animals used would have been enough to mount a
cavalry regiment. Half the secret of Bianconi’s success was, as he
explained to Trollope, the discovery of short cuts between the different
stages, and ensuring to his vehicles a maximum of speed with a minimum
expenditure of motive power. Trollope was not slow to profit by the
hint, nor would he ever have done so well as he did in the capacity of
surveyor but for Bianconi’s itinerary instructions. The shrewd Milanese
also took him behind the scenes of the Irish people in their daily life.
“The most apparently poverty-stricken of the peasant farmers for whom my
cars have found fresh markets,” he said, “are very often,
notwithstanding their dirty and dilapidated dwellings, comparatively
well-to-do. And when, filled with pity for a man looking sadly
out-of-elbows, you drop some sympathetic word, you must be prepared to
hear that his cows and sheep upon the mountains are to be reckoned by
tens and scores, and to be told that he is, maybe, richer than your
honour.” Thus early in his Hibernian apprenticeship did the new
surveyor, as regards the state of the people among whom he was to live,
receive the extra official lessons that, supplemented by his own later
observation, made him a sounder authority on most Irish subjects than
nine-tenths of the statesmen legislating for them at Westminster.

The way of business was also to prove with Trollope the way of amusement
and sport. Anthony Trollope had learned to sit a horse in the Spartan
severity of the Harrow Weald days. Dared or commanded by his brother Tom
to put, bare-backed, a half-broken steed at hedges or ditches in the
biggest field of the paternal farm, he was taught at least how to stick
on, and never forgot the lesson. “It’s dogged as does it” was often in
the mouth of a smaller personage in _Orley Farm_; and, as will
presently be seen, it was doggedness which made Trollope both a
sportsman and a novelist.

During his clerkly days at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the already mentioned
visits to his sister, Lady Tilley, in Cumberland, and to other houses
which had stables, helped him to complete his equestrian education. When
therefore, at the age of twenty-six, he began in Ireland, he knew all
about riding to hounds, could take up his own line across country, and
hold his own against the rest of the field. To create the nucleus of a
hunting stable, and secure a really good single mount to begin with,
Trollope found easy enough. For some time before the end of his Irish
term the one hunter had grown into three, each equally serviceable and
creditable to its owner’s judgment of horseflesh. The only trouble at
the beginning of his Irish hunting days was a misgiving as to the
welcome waiting him from his fellow-sportsmen. Already he had been
disappointed at the little notice of his workmanlike turnout, as he
flattered himself, taken in the village where he was staying. He had,
however, no sooner taken his part in a forty minutes’ run, with a good
scent and over a stiffish country, than his sporting, and consequently
his social fortune was made. Adventures are to the adventurous. The
bustling novelty of his Irish situation had effectually roused Trollope
from his moody reveries, had taken him out of himself, and wakened to
new life dormant energies of mind as well as body.

On all sides, without any efforts of his own or introductions from
others to smooth the way, sprang up acquaintances, soon to develop into
lifelong friends. On one of these occasions the chase for the day had
come to an end; the fox was killed, and Trollope, finding himself some
dozen miles farther from home than he had reckoned, was meditating how
to make his way back to the little inn where he put up before the
darkness had descended upon a country of which he knew nothing. “My
house,” said a friendly voice at his elbow, “is close here, and with us
you must stay till to-morrow, and perhaps, when you know what sort of
people we are, for some little time after.” The next morning he saw his
hosts were in the thick of preparations for a ball that night. Gentlemen
partners were sadly wanted for the dance. The visitor surely would not
refuse his presence at a pinch, and would let his new friends send for
his evening clothes, which were of course with his other things at his
temporary headquarters on the other side of the moor. At the age of
five-and-twenty Anthony Trollope, if even then something of a heavy
weight, was not the less a dancing man, and in favour with lovely young
ladies. “Be sure to send my pumps with the rest of my things,” was the
message he emphasised to the raw Irish factotum whom he had just taken
into his service. The portmanteau thus commanded duly arrived, and, when
unpacked, proved to contain in the way of footgear only a pair of
bedroom slippers and some boots, double-ironed on the soles, waterproof,
absolutely impervious to cold or wet, and made before he left London
according to their purchaser’s special instructions, for the roughest
sporting use. Beneath the roof where he was staying no foot was so near
Trollope’s as to yield it a covering which would safely carry him
through the evening’s evolutions. To trouble his host further was quite
out of the question. There was, therefore, nothing to do but to take the
manservant into his confidence. “Do not,” came that person’s comforting
reply, “make yourself uneasy. I will send on a quick pony a boy who
knows all the short cuts. The dance shall be kept back an hour or so. By
the time it fairly begins, your pumps, I engage, will be waiting before
your dressing-room fire.” All of which things, as Trollope in one of his
short stories has related, came to pass.

Trollope’s early experiences in Ireland were of the priest as well as of
the squire. Once at least he found in the popish vicar of a remote
Galway village an ex-Guardsman with whose fashionable escapades, a few
years earlier, Mayfair and St. James’s had rung. All that, at first
hand, he now saw and heard confirmed him in an impression which had
gradually been deepening ever since he set foot in the country. The
Irish traditionally had the reputation of being a pastoral and
agricultural people. What Trollope now learned and saw for himself of
their real characteristics, especially of their keen business instinct,
and insistence in their purchases on getting full value for their money,
showed him a race qualified above all things to excel in trade. “Old
Trollope banging about,” was Froude’s description of Trollope when
engaged in his study of mankind. He confessed, however, the accuracy of
Trollope’s Irish impressions, and with his own pen several years later
illustrated the Irish aptitudes from the same point of view as Trollope
had taken. In 1889 appeared Froude’s only novel, an Irish one, _The Two
Chiefs of Dunboy_. Its central idea was the permanent ruin of the
Irishman at home by centuries of anarchy, of misrule, and by all the
evils that followed in their train. Only transplant him sufficiently far
from his native soil to conditions that give scope for his keenness in
bargain making and his shrewd instinct when to take and when to avoid
commercial risks, and he becomes the wariest and surest builder up of
fortunes on the face of the earth. Thus, the hero of Froude’s story,
Patrick Blake, with his warehouses and his shipping on the Loire,
develops not only into a leader of men but a prince among capitalists,
and yet, at every turn of his fortunes, in thought, word, and deed,
remains a genuine Celt.

Much the same idea, notwithstanding the difference of its setting forth,
was present to another writer, whom Froude may not have known, but who
was among the most intimate of Trollope’s comrades of the pen. Charles
Lever’s college scapegraces or hard-riding, hard-drinking subalterns
have but to leave the old home behind them, and then, as surely as they
do so, achieve military or diplomatic fame. The spirited and accurate
description of Waterloo in Lever’s most popular novel is but the
culminating point of Charles O’Malley’s march from one success to
another, since the day on which the Duke of Wellington, then Sir Arthur
Wellesley, had embarked at Cork his contingent for the Peninsula.
Trollope, indeed, never elaborated this thought as deliberately and
circumstantially as was done by Froude in _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_, or
even as Lever in his short stories and O’Dowd papers. The fact itself,
however, had been perceived by Trollope long before it had been put down
in his note-book by Froude, who, by the way, lived long enough to take
Trollope more seriously than he had at first been disposed to do, and to
acknowledge that his breezy or boisterous exterior veiled unsuspected
gifts of sagacious insight and accurate inference. Galway was known by
Trollope even better than Dublin. Again and again in his smaller pieces
are reminders that the most prosperous business houses in Cadiz and
Madrid were founded by men who went forth from Connaught to seek their
fortunes in the sunniest South, and whose descendants still kept a hold
on the concerns founded by their sires.

Once he had fairly settled down to his Irish work, Trollope’s manner
took on the official veneer which it never afterwards quite lost, but
which no more suppressed than it entirely concealed the genuine, genial
nature which won him friends thick and fast in the hunting-field and on
his daily rounds. There was one social centre, whose owners and whose
guests made it a second home for the visitor, and a most instructive
school for the study of Irish life and character. Immemorially belonging
to successive generations of Gregorys of official rank and great local
consideration, Coole Park, near Gort, then had as its master, Trollope’s
old Harrow schoolfellow, Sir William Gregory, who lived till 1892, and
who had entered Parliament as member for Dublin shortly after Trollope’s
Irish course began. Here the novelist found himself in a hotbed of
social varieties, and in the heart of a district literally overflowing
with the local colour, incidents, and personages enriching his earliest
novel. The period was that in which the old picturesque, lawless
_régime_ of Sir Jonah Barrington’s memoirs had not been effaced by the
modern Anglicising dispensation. In his little park, full of retainers
who would have risen as one man to repel any invasion of his ancestral
roof, William Gregory lived a patriarchal life simple enough in its
ordinary course, but fringed with some of the circumstance proper to a
stock rooted in the soil from mythical times. Few visitors of
consideration passed any time in Connaught without Coole Park’s
hospitable doors opening to them.

The earliest year of Trollope’s Irish residence saw him an _habitué_ of
the place, and introduced him to the home life, not only of the local
magnates, but of the surrounding peasantry, then generally in the
clutches of the “gombeen man,” sometimes a peasant himself, sometimes a
shopkeeper or fifth-rate solicitor, who, at usurious rates of interest,
used to advance the tenants money to make up their rent. Gregory, if not
Trollope, lived to see all this changed, and the “gombeen man’s”
occupation taken from him by the fixing of those fair rents which have
created a race of peasant proprietors that shrink from no sacrifice to
keep their instalments fully paid up. The master of Coole Park shared
with his visitor most of his literary, political, and especially
classical tastes which had survived the bodily ill-usage of Harrow and
Winchester, as well as the subsequent privations of Harrow Weald.
Gregory and Trollope had both kept up a trifle of their Greek, as well
as a little more of their Latin. They could cap with each other
quotations from Virgil or Horace, or the more familiar passages of less
known authors. Each of them read the old authors with tolerable ease and
therefore with some real enjoyment, not as subjects crammed for
examinations, but as literature. Coole Park in these days had declined a
good deal from the glories of its social gatherings and of its convivial
junketings in the ancestral past. But, to quote Charles Lever, met here
among others by Trollope, the Coole Park hosts set a noble example to
the whole countryside in not letting the gaieties of their
well-appointed roof be interfered with by irregularly paid rents. The
declining prosperity of the territorial class, however reluctant
Trollope and others may have been to forecast such a prospect, was
manifestly destined to result in the legislation actually brought by the
year 1849. Of course, when the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849 actually
came, Trollope, or those who saw things through the same spectacles as
himself, had no good to say about it.

The pauper landlords, who had not the means to put their tenants in the
way of doing justice to the land they occupied, were never so personally
odious to the tillers of the soil as the new men brought in after 1849.
“Down at heels, out at elbows, with no clothes in his wardrobe, and
nothing but an overdraft at his bankers, the landlord of whom I saw so
much in the early forties was yet in a way the father of his people,
and, in his rough, thriftless way, had real care for his tenantry.
Heaven protect the Irish tenant from the territorial speculator whom the
Encumbered Estates Act could not but instal in his place.” Nothing in
its way could be more shrewd or sensible than Trollope’s view of the
national results likely to flow from the legislation of 1849. “True,” he
said, “these measures will bring fresh capital into the country, but at
what a price. The new and improved owners, urged on by their scientific
bailiffs, will promptly put up rents all round. The old vicious circle
will once again begin with a changed centre, and under fresh conditions.
There will be the old poverty. Another land question of a more acute
sort will thus have been prepared for. It will, unless I am greatly
mistaken, be managed by agitators of a kind yet unknown who will work
the business entirely for their own venal ends.” How far this prediction
had its fulfilment was exemplified by Trollope in the last of his Irish
novels, _The Land Leaguers_, left unfinished because of his death. This,
however, by the way.

It is enough here to point out that Ireland was the country in which
Trollope first showed the literary value of the observant habits that
his Post Office work had caused him to pick up and gradually to perfect.
The mental alertness and the inquisitorial searching below the surface
and behind the scenes for the causes of whatever met his eye were
essentially the products of his official training. Their exercise upon
the facts and characters of daily life was due to the happy chance that
sent him across St. George’s Channel; and his Irish experiences first
called into activity all the more important powers that were afterwards
to bring him fame and fortune in the Barchester novels.

For the rest, Trollope well repaid the warmth of his Irish welcome by
combating the traditional misrepresentation of the Irish character.
Racial generalisations, he saw, must always suggest so many exceptions
as to be practically worthless. Nations exhibit largely prevalent
tendencies rather than fixed and universal traits. To quote from
Trollope’s table-talk: “As well call all Welshmen thieves because of the
nursery lines about Taffy as pronounce thriftlessness a peculiarly Irish
fault on the strength of Samuel Lover’s caricatures in _Handy Andy_,
Lever’s portrait of an Irish dragoon, or the casual impressions of a
holiday trip in Kerry and Connemara.” So far back as 1780, Arthur Young,
in his _Tour in Ireland_, had touched on the fallacies besetting the
popular conception of the tendencies and aptitudes specially distinctive
of the exceedingly mixed races that inhabited the country. During the
nineteenth century, however, Trollope, among Englishmen, was the
earliest observer and writer to bring the same truth out in prominent
relief, and so to impress it upon an acute student of his countrymen
like Lever as to cause him, in his later stories, to modify his own
opinions about the essentially representative features of his Irish
types. A clever Dublin lady, under whose eye Trollope made his earliest
Irish observations, told me his close looking into the commonest objects
of daily life always reminded her of a woman in a shop examining the
materials for a new dress. He could therefore not fail to have been
struck, while on his official rounds, by the frequent signs in the local
physiognomy and temperament in Galway and, indeed, throughout all
Connemara, of a Jewish as well as Spanish strain largely mingled with
the aboriginal Celtic.

Trollope, it has been seen, had entered on his Irish employment with a
firm persuasion of being destined to follow the maternal example, and to
commence novelist as soon as he had got together enough material for his
first chapter. The resolve of devoting himself to fiction gained fresh
strength from his early visits, already described, to Coole Park. The
beginning there of his acquaintanceship with Charles Lever was in itself
to Trollope a literary event. Lever’s earliest novel, _Harry Lorrequer_,
had at that time been recently running through the _Dublin University
Magazine_. With the exception of his mother, the creator of _Charles
O’Malley_ was the earliest writer of fiction whom Trollope had ever
known. Of Fenimore Cooper he had heard much from his mother, who often
saw him in Paris. Walter Scott, it occurred to him, had by his genius
thrown the glamour of romance over the Highlands; he who wrote _The Last
of the Mohicans_ had rescued the Red Indians from the commonplace. In
like manner too the Irish romancist to whom Gregory had made him known
had comically idealised the mess-room and parade-ground. Why, in the
fullness of time should not Anthony himself find some class of the
community from which to extract literary entertainment for readers on
the lookout for novelty? Pending that, it would not be waste of time to
found a preliminary essay upon the daily doings of the people among whom
for the present his lot was cast. Miss Edgeworth’s _Castle Rackrent_ and
_The Absentee_ he had read about the same time as he first pored over
the pages of Jane Austen’s _Pride and Prejudice_. Then, at the close of
the eighteenth century, and before the middle of the nineteenth, had
come from various hands many Irish stories racy of the soil with which
Trollope first made acquaintance in Gregory’s library.

Mrs. S. C. Hall’s masterpiece, _The Whiteboy_, did not come before 1845.
Long before then, however, she had made hits on both sides of St.
George’s Channel with, to name only a few in a long list, _The
Buccaneer_ and _The Outlaw_. Two years Mrs. Hall’s senior, but like her
then still living and flourishing, was William Carleton; his _Traits and
Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, having first appeared in _The Christian
Examiner_, was republished as a book in 1830. Nine years later appeared
Carleton’s longest, most ambitious and, as Trollope found it, really
stimulating story, _Fardorougha the Miser_. So far as Lever himself had
been under any obligations to his predecessors, it was rather to the
ideas and incidents, than to the personages scattered through Lady
Morgan’s vivacious pages. Far the most famous Irish novel of the time
was Gerald Griffin’s _The Collegians_, which owed most of its later fame
to its having formed the foundation of the popular Irish melodrama, _The
Colleen Bawn_. The forties were too early for Trollope to meet, at Coole
Park or elsewhere, a writer born in 1830, and so exactly fifteen years
his junior. This was the now little known, if not entirely forgotten,
Charles Joseph Kickham, who, dying in 1882, had lived long enough, as
the writer of _Sally Cavanagh, or The Untenanted Graves_, and
_Knocknagow, or The House of Tipperary_, to be acclaimed the Irish
Dickens. None of the writers nor their books now mentioned proved so
useful to Trollope as one or two from William Carleton’s pen. The first
of these was a volume that had followed _Fardorougha the Miser_ in 1839,
and that, under the title of _Tales of Ireland_, was always compared by
Trollope to Dean Ramsay’s _Reminiscences of Scottish Life and
Character_. Three more of Carleton’s books completed Anthony Trollope’s
literary training for the work of an Irish novelist. These were
_Valentine M‘Clutchy_, _the Irish Agent_, _The Tithe Procter_, and _The
Squanders of Castle Squander_.

Going to Ireland as a bachelor, Anthony Trollope had been naturally
expected, by the public opinion of the localities where he became known,
to find a wife among its residents. It was indeed on Irish soil, at a
well-known seaside resort, that he first met the lady to whom he in 1842
became engaged, and who in 1844 took his name. Her home, however, was in
Yorkshire, at Rotherham, near Sheffield, where her father, Mr.
Heseltine, had the management of a bank. With his marriage closes the
earliest instalment of Anthony Trollope’s Irish experiences. He had
begun his abode in the country as a man entirely unknown except to the
few who had heard of his mother’s books. That did not always prove a
recommendation, for from the day of her having found, as was said, in
the Harrow clergyman named Cunningham, the Vicar of Wrexhill’s original,
Mrs. Trollope had been charged with putting her friends or enemies into
her stories. To such an extent was this supposed to be the case that
when, several years afterwards, Charles Lever was thrown into her
society at Florence, he markedly avoided her, whether as a partner at a
whist-table or a next-door neighbour at dinner. Anthony Trollope’s
friendship therefore with Lever, so far from originating in his
acquaintance with Mrs. Trollope, would have been rather hindered by it,
and was indeed a very gradual growth that had not reached maturity even
when Trollope’s novels had become at least as popular as those of Lever
himself.

But, during the earlier years of his long sojourn amongst them, the
Irish classes and masses knew Trollope, not as a writer, but as the
impersonation of the severest officialism. Not having gone to a
University after school, nor even since his school-days having had time
to move in society and assimilate its easier ways, he long combined much
of youthful crudity with civilian stiffness. He had, in fact,
unconsciously formed his manner upon that of the men who were around him
and above him at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. As a companion and
conversationalist he lacked the lightness of touch, the elasticity and
ease communicated to each other by young men of his station in life, at
college, at the club, or in the companionship of travel. At Harrow, none
of his school-fellows had done him a better turn than William Gregory,
his later friend of Coole Park, by disposing of a rumour, which local
invention had not been slow to embroider with more sinister legends,
that Trollope’s father was an outlaw. Hence, of course, the
discreditable appearance of the boy himself. What an outlaw meant, none
of them exactly knew. But the word had an evil sound. Doubtless the
person whom it indicated must, by certain misdemeanours, have made
himself the enemy of his species. This is the kind of defamatory gossip
which pursues its victim long after the incidents that have given rise
to the lie are forgotten. Gregory therefore sometimes found occasion for
repeating to his Connaught neighbours the contradiction by which he had
so signally served his friend at school.

The best idea of Trollope’s sporting life in Ireland during these years
is to be gathered, not from any of the rather bald entries in his
characteristically honest autobiography, but from certain passages in
his book, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, presently to be mentioned.
Roscommon county was credited by Trollope with the best gentlemen riders
to be met with throughout Ireland.[4] But, in truth, during the forties
Trollope could enter no Irish hunting-field without finding himself
before a picked tribunal of experts in horseflesh and horsemanship. To
these judges his performances in the saddle soon approved themselves.
Courage and perseverance he never wanted; he soon acquired notable skill
in shaping his course to the point for which quarry and pack were likely
to steer. He knew also how to get out of his mount the utmost
performance with the least exhaustion. Between himself and the animal he
bestrode there existed a real sympathy. Still it was some time before
the critics of the covert-side allowed his hands on his horse to be as
good as his seat was firm. On the whole, however, he gradually won among
sportsmen something like the reputation in the Connaught chase that was
afterwards to be secured by his own Phineas Finn for the management of
Lord Chiltern’s “Bonebreaker” on the broad pastures and the awkward
banks and ditches of Northamptonshire. His taste for the stage made him
also a real country-house acquisition when private theatricals were
going on.

In the ball-room he showed the same inexhaustible vigour and energy as
in the hunting-field. In this way his own feats and accomplishments, to
the speedy extension of his visiting-list, justified in all quarters the
introductions given him by his friends at Coole Park. Galway has been
immemorially pre-eminent among Irish counties for its hospitality. The
entertainments of Lord Clancarty at Garbally had secured European fame,
before Trollope’s day, for the best known, most cosmopolitan and
convivial of its owners--British Ambassador successively at the Hague
and at Brussels, as well as for a short time English representative at
the Vienna Congress. The Garbally festivities, however, were rather
stories of which Trollope had heard than scenes in which he had played a
part. His introduction behind the scenes of Irish politics and
journalism grew out of no other cause than his intimacy at Coole Park.
In 1842 his friend Gregory became Member for Dublin. Had Trollope chosen
to do so, he could have said a great deal about this electoral contest,
and could have acquainted us with some among the most typical and
miscellaneous Irish notabilities of the time. Those in whose company we
should have found ourselves would have included Sir John and Lady Burke,
a host and hostess of the patrician and joyous old school; their
handsome son, about whose wavy golden hair the maidens of his native
land went wild; Granby Calcraft, a broken-down Irish swell whom
Thackeray had seen and satirised; a gentleman named Nolan, but
universally known as “Tom the Devil”; as well as the little group whose
members, next to the candidates themselves, were active combatants in
the Dublin election. These included two academic clergymen, one Tresham
Gregg, the other Professor Butt, both of them Protestant patriots, vying
with each other in the strength of their lungs and in the exuberance of
their spoken or written rhetoric. The company would have been incomplete
had it not included the greatest character of his time, Remy Sheehan,
with a figure like a peg-top, but brimful of the finest Irish brains,
who reinforced by the pen in his paper and by his speech on the platform
the Castle power that promoted Gregory’s triumph, and that was exercised
throughout by the Viceroy, Lord de Grey, through his chief secretary,
Lord Eliot.

By 1850, though with his literary spurs still to win, Trollope had risen
from the surveyor’s clerkship to the position of Post Office inspector.
In that capacity he found himself intellectually pitted against the
shrewdest and most popular of Irish advocates then living. This
encounter of wits ended in a victory for Trollope. At that time, it must
be prefaced, Post Office orders were as practically unused as postal
notes were unknown. Small sums, when transmitted by post, were sent in
coin of the realm. These enclosures occasionally went wrong. Trollope
made it part of his duty to rectify, by tracing, these miscarriages.
Such a quest he once pursued, after a method of his own, in county Cork.
He marked a sovereign, and, carefully wrapping it up in a sheet of
notepaper, enclosed it in a stamped envelope, addressed by him to the
furthest post-town in the district. Having posted this in the ordinary
way, he began his operations. Riding on horseback, he timed himself to
reach every stage on the road taken by the vehicle carrying the
post-bags, just before the coach or mail-cart came in. At every
successive stoppage he practically asserted the right of a Government
inspector to search the mail-bags. The process was continued throughout
the journey till the stage at which the inspector, looking into the bag,
found his letter had been opened, had been re-sealed, and the decoy coin
it contained abstracted. His next move was to retrace his way to the
village most recently passed through.

The police now conducted the search, and found the marked sovereign in
the postmistress’s possession. That lady, a great local favourite as it
happened, was placed on her trial shortly afterwards at the Tralee
Assizes. Her many friends co-operated to secure for her defence Isaac
Butt, then one of the chief counsel on the circuit, afterwards C. S.
Parnell’s predecessor in the Home Rule leadership at Westminster. Butt
no sooner got Trollope into the witness-box than he began to
cross-examine him after the fashion for which he was famous. In this
case the barrister’s object was to play upon the inspector’s notoriously
choleric sensibilities, to worry him into some contradiction or blunder
of testimony, and thus hold him up before the jury as a reckless
circulator of libels and sarcasms about Irish things and persons, for
the amusement of an English audience. Reading aloud or describing
certain passages alleged to have been penned by Trollope concerning
Ireland, Butt asked whether a man who wrote thus loosely could be
trusted in his assertions about the truth and honesty of others.

Never did the ingenious and ably executed plan of an eminent advocate
more completely miscarry. Trollope never once lost his temper or his
head. Instead of being bewildered, he remained clear and exact from
first to last. Was he, asked Butt, perfectly certain that he had marked
in a particular way one side or both sides of the coin? Yes, he was; and
with overwhelming politeness he again described, for the benefit of the
jury, the secret meaning of the mark he had chosen, and the instrument
with which he had made it. At one point, indeed, he showed the faintest
sign of hesitation. Just then he remembered that a witty Scotsman in the
House of Commons had recently called the Irish members, Isaac Butt among
them, “talking potatoes.” The thought of the simile at once smoothed out
the frown on Trollope’s face. As a fact, it was a duel between two men
not, upon the whole, ill-matched. Butt knew of Trollope’s rasping manner
and proneness to passionate explosion. Nothing of that sort showed
itself now. The witness maintained his composure unruffled throughout,
disarming, as to some extent it seemed, even his legal adversary by his
urbane good-humour. The two, however, found the opportunity of
exchanging Parthian shots at each other, just before they separated.
“Good-morning, triumphant Post Office Inspector,” was Butt’s farewell
utterance. Trollope’s amiably satirical, if rather baldly _tu quoque_
rejoinder, was, “Good-morning, triumphant cross-examiner.”

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST TWO IRISH NOVELS

Trollope’s first novel, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_--“The best
Irish story that has appeared for half a century”--Clever effects
of light and shade--The story’s principal characters and their
allegorical significance--Typical sketches of Irish life and
institutions--The working of the spy system in detection of
crime--Some specimens of Trollopian humour--_The Kellys and the
O’Kellys_--Trollope’s second literary venture--Links with its
predecessor--Its plot and some of the more interesting figures--The
squire, the doctor, and the parson.

Had Anthony Trollope’s first novel found many Irish readers before the
trial in the Tralee courthouse, Isaac Butt might have based upon it some
more interrogatories or sarcasms than those recorded in the last
chapter, to prejudice his audience against its author. He would have
found his material in the trial scene at Carrick towards the story’s
close. In 1844, the year of his marriage, Trollope had been moved from
his station in western Ireland to Clonmel in the south. By this time he
had not only completed the plan, but had written a volume of his
earliest novels. In his _Autobiography_, as well as in the text itself
of _The Macdermots_, the circumstances out of which his first attempt at
fiction grew have been explained by the author in words that,
transferred to Mr. Thorold’s introduction,[5] need not be repeated here.
The book itself had been begun in September 1843. Finished at Clonmel,
it was taken by its author in 1845 to England. On this occasion he
approached no publisher directly, but placed the manuscript in his
mother’s hands, to do with it what she could. Her good offices secured
its publication on the half-profit system by Newby in 1847.

The critics were very generally against this initial venture, which, for
all practical purposes, fell indeed still-born from the Press. Naturally
the author considered it a failure. Here, however, he was less than just
to himself; for, if it had gone very wide of immediate success, it
belonged to that class of miscarriages which nevertheless to the
judicious seem as full of promise as Benjamin Disraeli’s maiden speech.
The collective wisdom of the Commons would have none of that; but
individual members, who were also seasoned and trustworthy judges,
predicted great things for the parliamentary _débutant_ on the strength
of those rhetorical extravagances which had been laughed down. So with
_The Macdermots of Ballycloran_. The professional reviewers had little
but what was contemptuous to say about it. There were others--reviewers
in their time--whose knowledge of literature generally and of Ireland in
particular made their opinion worth having. These soon recognised in the
book a true picture of the country, a correct insight into its people,
real felicity as well as power in seizing the genius of the place and
time, and bodying it forth in words. Such were William Gregory himself,
whose house had really been the cradle of the story, and his friend,
possessed of a literary taste not less sound than his own, Sir Patrick
O’Brien, M.P. for King’s County during most of the Victorian age. These,
and others equally competent to form an opinion in such a matter, did
not hesitate to call Anthony Trollope’s earliest work the best Irish
story that had appeared for something like half a century.

Maria Edgeworth’s _Castle Rackrent_ (1800) had introduced readers to the
first unconventional Irishman they had seen for generations. This was
Thady Quirk, who, unlike his predecessors in fiction, contrived to
express himself without a stage brogue, and supplied entertainment as
well as, when necessary, information, though not decorating every other
sentence with a bull. As a fact, Trollope probably borrowed nothing from
Miss Edgeworth. The only resemblance between _Castle Rackrent_ and _The
Macdermots_ is to be found in the truth to nature, the freshness, the
simplicity, and the strength common to each. Had he, however, incurred
such an obligation, he would but have followed the example of Sir Walter
Scott, who, it will be remembered, attributed his own _Waverley_ to the
inspiration of the Irish authoress. About the same time that Anthony
Trollope was busy on his first novel, Emily Brontë had been achieving
immortality with her single romance. _Wuthering Heights_ and _The
Macdermots of Ballycloran_ resemble each other in that they are moving
and powerful rather than pleasant reading. Both writers were possessed,
in a degree equally deep and overpowering, by their different subjects.
Gloom pervades the atmosphere of each. But whereas the sombreness of
_Wuthering Heights_ lacks relief throughout from any gleam of humour or
even light, the tragic effects of _The Macdermots_ are heightened by the
social incidents and conversational by-play that form the staple of
successive pages or even chapters, amid the squalor, the misery, the
sin, and the horrors following each other thick and fast as the story
approaches its blood-stained climax. Reading Shakespeare with her sons,
Frances Trollope had pointed out the art with which the coarse dialogue
of the watchmen in _Macbeth_, the grave-digger’s mirthful memories of
Yorick in _Hamlet_, and the nurse’s frivolities in _Romeo and Juliet_
are the skilfully planned preludes that, through force of contrast,
intensify the terror and melancholy of the appalling sequel. There is
something not unworthy to be called Shakespearean in the transitions
that mark Trollope’s first novel. The peasant marriage-junketings, the
race dinner with the ball to follow, contrast with and heighten those
later acts of the drama where the curtain rises on the battered and
bleeding body of the villain of the piece, while his avenging murderer
stands, a doomed man, at the gallows’ foot, and his victim succumbs to
the long drawn-out agonies of the ordeal which had deprived her of fair
fame, of home, of brother, as well as the, through all, blindly loved
author of her guilt.

Trollope’s first two novels, like a few more, following after a long
interval and to be examined in their proper place, dealt exclusively
with Ireland and the Irish as he had seen both during the earlier years
of his acquaintance with the country. The waste of gifts, of energies,
and the persistent refusal profitably to employ qualities and occasions
out of which fortunes might be made, had appealed to Trollope’s sense of
pathos, directly he began to know the country. Long after their crazy
roof-trees had ceased properly to shelter them from the wind and rain,
starving families refused to exchange their homes for the large
workhouses that now studded the land. The fortunes of men and women who
ought to have been leaders of the middle class were melting to
nothingness before the fire of failures and losses that seemed as
irresistible as fate. A sort of dry-rot, as Trollope put it, moral and
intellectual not less than material, seemed preying everywhere on the
vitals of the people. And this in a land whose men lacked few endowments
which, with due discipline and direction, would have brought them
success, and whose daughters abounded in the beauty, brightness, and
grace that are heaven’s best means for making homes happy and refined.
Miss Edgeworth in _Castle Rackrent_, it has been seen, tells her story
through the medium of an old dependent of the place before its fortunes
had quite gone. In the opening pages of _The Macdermots_, Trollope
employs for the same purpose the guard of the Boyle coach. His are the
reminiscences out of which the novelist manufactures the fall from their
high estate of a family boasting the inevitable Irish kings for their
ancestors. For the rest, the sketches of place and character are from
what Trollope saw with his own eyes while going his Post Office rounds,
or from what he had picked up while staying with his friends at Coole
Park.

The head of the household, Larry Macdermot, known only by his Christian
name to his children, to his tenants, who seldom pay their rents, and to
his creditors impatiently waiting to foreclose their mortgages, is a
whining, helpless imbecile, in years little, if at all, past middle age,
but, from the combined effects of misfortune and whisky-soaking,
already in his dotage. As a younger son, Larry’s father had inherited
some six hundred acres, let in small holdings, and a house recently
constructed for him by a builder named Flannelly, who has, of course, a
mortgage upon it. This roof, now sadly out of repair, just sheltered
Larry himself, his daughter Feemy, and his son Thady, who acted as his
bailiff. The young man keeps up the pretence of transacting the business
of the property by passing a few hours every morning in a tumble-down
room which he calls his office. Thady’s parts, like many of his
qualities, are naturally good. He is neither a profligate nor a
drunkard, but the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which he has been
brought up have starved the energies that, in happier surroundings,
might have retrieved the fortunes of a race whose degradation, never out
of his sight or mind, keeps him in a chronic condition of grievance and
discontent. By a few quiet but skilful touches in Trollope’s best
manner, signs in Thady of sensitiveness to the jeopardised Macdermot
honour gradually reveal themselves. They mark the slow dawn of a
presentiment that he is the agent chosen by fate for punishing him who
has inflicted the one foul stain yet possible on the Macdermot honour.

Ballycloran itself, with its down-at-heel occupants, typifies
allegorically, with sustained power and rugged picturesqueness, the
agricultural and pastoral Ireland which Trollope had seen and studied in
all its varieties. Less indomitably idle than his drivelling father had
always been, as well as in all respects a better man, Thady might have
been trained to a life of family and national service. His habitually
dormant powers might at any time have been roused to vigorous, fruitful
action but for the deadening and demoralising influence of his
environment. Innocent and ignorant of the sins of cities, he was
comparatively free from the commonest vices of the country. Father
Mathew’s mission had not yet inflamed the Irish peasantry with a passion
for temperance; but without any such teaching, Thady Macdermot had never
fallen a victim to strong drink. His chief enemy was his own
temperament, which, when we first meet him, it is clear may, in some
unforeseen conditions, be suddenly and dangerously kindled into
ferocious passion. Less from any words escaping him on the subject than
his habitual air of sullen and silent preoccupation do we know that he
thinks of little else than his own decadence from his forefathers. He
had always felt that his family was sinking lower and lower daily,
without finding it in him to arrest the process for the future, or move
a finger in repairing the ruin of the past. Therefore he had only become
more gloomy, more tyrannical. His one companion and his only resource is
his pipe, his one employment to fill and refill it. Into such a lot
neither pleasure nor excitement could enter, and, especially for a Celt,
Trollope would have his readers feel, that way madness lies.

Thus, through the gradual development of the plot, we know instinctively
that some Nemesis will declare itself on an existence which has lost the
force or the desire to rise out of an atmosphere whose slow poison has
stunted and deformed its growth. In its joylessness as well as in its
decline from the better fortunes of earlier days, the picture of
Ballycloran not only reflected the prevailing depression, agricultural
and industrial, of the country, but harmonised with the lamentations
from fashionable lips over the final eclipse of the gaiety of its
capital. Irish society leaders of the good old days, when the sporting
season did not keep them to their castles in Connaught or Ulster, used
on a grand scale to keep up their houses in Fitzwilliam or Merrion
Square in their native metropolis. All that had gone. Huge, overgrown,
vulgar London had snuffed out select, elegant, and refined Dublin, whose
stately quadrangles and picturesque avenues were deserted by their
proper occupants for some spick-and-span new mansions which stared one
out of countenance in Tyburnia, or some more modest tenement in a dingy
angle of Mayfair. The glories of the Viceregal Court had long since
begun to pale. The impatiently waited royal visits that it was hoped
might bring compensation were as yet repeatedly delayed. In this way the
fair city on the Liffey had been largely shorn of its attractions and
pleasures, just as the rich soil of the surrounding country was
impoverished by ignorance and neglect. Some hint of this formed the
minor key in Trollope’s powerful and pathetic dirge over the progressive
extinction of the family lamps at Ballycloran. In certain details,
therefore, as well as in general idea, the Macdermots formed the
microcosm of an entire people. Its genius, always feminised as Erin, is
appropriately personified by the daughter of the ill-starred house, on
the common ruin of whose members the curtain falls. Trollope’s Irish
experiences, as has been already said, gave him some acquaintance with
the Young Ireland movement, and its combined appeals to the patriotic
and romantic sensibilities, as well as to the cupidity, of a populace
readily lending itself to the wiles of skilled agitators.

The oratorical or literary blandishments of Smith O’Brien’s
self-summoned and mercenary camp-followers caught their victims in
snares exactly paralleled by the novels with which Feemy had debauched
her imagination and by the appeals of the lover who wrought her
overthrow. Her picture given in the first chapter of the story is a
delineation of racial features not peculiar to any one epoch of Irish
narrative. The girl’s temperament is that of her nation; her form and
figure are the perennial attributes of those belonging to her sex and
class. Here is the daughter of the Macdermots, the incarnation of her
country. At the age of twenty, when the reader first sees her, Feemy was
a tall, dark girl, with that bold, upright, well-poised figure so
peculiarly Irish. She walked as if all the blood of the old Irish
princes was in her veins. Her step, at any rate, was princely. Feemy
also had large bright-brown eyes, and long, soft, shining, dark-brown
hair, which was divided behind, fell over her shoulders, or was tied
with ribbons. She had the well-formed nose common to all of those coming
of old families; and a bright olive complexion, only the olive was a
little too brown, the skin a little too coarse. Feemy’s mouth, moreover,
was half an inch too long. But her teeth were white and good, and her
chin was well turned, with a dimple large enough for any finger Venus
might put there. In all, Feemy was a fine girl to a man not too
well-accustomed to refinement. Her hands were too large and too red, but
if Feemy had got gloves enough to go to Mass with, it was all she could
do in that way. For the rest, she was as badly shod as gloved. She
shared, therefore, with her other beautiful countrywomen an entire
absence of the neatness whose attraction, did they but understand it,
for men might have prevented their appearing so often as poor Feemy too
usually appeared.[6] In the figure thus described, there lay energies
and passions as strong as those concealed in her brother, if only any
object stimulating their fair and wholesome exercise had presented
itself.

“Men, some to business, some to pleasure take,
But ev’ry woman is at heart a rake.”

By which familiar couplet Pope of course meant nothing more than that
the essentially feminine and, it may be, entirely blameless appetite for
enjoyment, for the most part only a love of change, is no more
eradicable from the sex than love of power.

This maiden scion of a decayed stock rebelled with the whole strength of
her being, not so much against the poverty or the meanness as against
the intolerably dull sameness of life in the jerry-built tenement, now
hardly fifty years old. The mortgage on this, held by its constructor
Flannelly, places at his mercy the doomed remnants of those who had once
owned the estate. Something has been already said about the popular
Irish murmurs at the waning splendours of the Viceregal Court. The
continuance of many material abuses might have been acquiesced in almost
without complaint if Dublin Castle had become once more the living and
shining centre of a social system ablaze with hospitalities, and
communicating a sense of importance, stir, and of quickly circulating
capital, such as would have gratified even those excluded from its
entertainments. The time nominally taken by Trollope for his story is
the nineteenth century’s third decade. He himself, we have seen, did not
reach Ireland till 1841, and drew only what he actually saw. Nor, since
his arrival, had anything happened to betray him into anachronism.

In the fifties, not less than they had done in the forties, the poets,
prophets, preachers, and teachers of _The Nation_ still expatiated in
glowing terms on the good time coming when, with the aid of republican
France, Ireland should receive from the statesmen who were her sons the
glories of a new birth, and Dublin should once again be as it was when
it had its own parliament sitting in St. Stephen’s Green. Like
expectations had been encouraged in Feemy by the literature she loved.
With the help of the saints and of luck, her novelists had taught her
that a lover, brave, handsome, gallant, and sufficiently well-to-do, who
would think of nothing else but pouring silver, gold, and precious
stones into his sweetheart’s lap, would yet appear to her at some
appointed time not known. For such a prospect she had fitted herself
with some accomplishments. She could play on an old spinet which had
belonged to her mother, she had made herself a good dancer, and found
herself lifted into another sphere when, with the help of the music and
the movement, she forgot in her partner’s arms the cares, the meanness,
and the gloom of the family hearthside.

When alone, however, she still fed her fancy with the cheap,
ill-printed, trashy, and mischievous books that were to the Irish
girlhood in her day what the penny novelette and the sixpenny shocker
have, since her time, become to readers of her age, sex, and condition
on both sides of St. George’s Channel. While Feemy’s town sisters might
have been in raptures over the broadsheets wherein an earthly paradise
was promised by writers who addressed with equal skill the romantic
taste of the kitchen and the political passions of the mob, Feemy was
giving her eyes, her heart and soul to _The Mysterious Assassin_, as her
only refuge from Thady Macdermot’s everlasting talk about potatoes,
oats, pigs, and from the dread, darkening the household like a cloud,
that, impatient for principal as well as interest, Mr. Joe Flannelly of
Carrick-on-Shannon might come down upon Ballycloran, to make himself
master of the place and all within it.

Well would it have been for the Macdermots had their fair representative
sought no further distraction from her dulness than the trivial and
vulgar reading that, whatever its faults, was not calculated to do more
lasting harm to the reader than was received by town labourers and rural
peasants from the tawdry sedition mongers of Gavan Duffy’s literary
staff. Writing in the earlier forties, Trollope economised his approval
of most English measures for reforming Irish abuses. Even when not bad
in themselves, those expedients might be corrupted by the human agents
to which they were entrusted. The establishment of an Irish constabulary
force dates from Liverpool’s administration and Wellington’s
Lord-Lieutenancy in 1823. Changes in that body continued to be made till
the consolidation of the various Acts connected with the subject had for
its sequel Sir Robert Peel’s establishment in 1836 of the Irish
Constabulary. Just a generation later, at Queen Victoria’s command, this
body became known by its present name, the Royal Irish Constabulary. The
duties of this imperial force, from the first, included certain civil
services not imposed upon policemen of the United Kingdom. Such are the
yearly collection of agricultural statistics, the management of the
decennial census, the conduct by auction sales of goods taken under
distress warrants, the inspection of weights and measures, the practical
administration of the Food, Drugs, and Explosives Acts. The Irish
Constabulary, too, are charged with the prevention of smuggling and of
illicit distillation. The officers of this force are now chosen by Civil
Service examinations. Vacancies for district inspectors are filled, one
half by cadets, and one half by selected constables of exceptional
merit.

To this body in its earlier days, as reconstituted by Peel, belonged the
evil genius of Trollope’s first novel, Myles Ussher. Captain Ussher was
his local title; for the revenue police were at that time organised as a
military force. He had of course received his appointment without
submission to any educational test. The natural son of a wealthy landed
proprietor in Ulster, he owed his appointment entirely to family
influence. He could read, write, knew something of figures, and had once
learned, but had long since entirely forgotten, some Latin grammar.

There are touches in the description of this man showing that the
novelist had profited by the _Ethics_, which, to quote Trollope’s words
to the writer, “at least helped me here, though they had not done so in
the Oxford scholarship examination for which I read them.” For Ussher’s
valour was the spurious courage that comes of ignorance, and arises in
equal parts from animal spirits and from not having yet experienced the
evil effects of danger rather than from real capabilities of enduring
its consequences. In other words, we are told, never having been hit in
a duel, he would have no hesitation in fighting one; never having had a
bad fall on horseback, he was a bold rider; never having had his head
broken in a row, he would readily go into one. To pain, if it were not
absolutely disabling, he was indifferent, because, not having yet
suffered its acute form, he lacked the imagination to make him realise
the possibility of sometimes experiencing it to such a degree. This kind
of courage is shrewdly declared by Trollope to be that by far the most
generally met with, as well as fully sufficient for the life Captain
Ussher had to lead. The quality that chiefly gave Ussher some vogue with
the better classes of his district, was his unfailing self-confidence
and unconcealed belief in his ability, whether in war or love, to carry
through any purpose he had taken up. His keen, calculating Irish brain
had taught him the universal readiness to accept men at their own
valuation of themselves. Acting on that principle, he had created for
himself an impression, strong everywhere but especially among women, of
being irresistible in whatever he might take up, and of having received
from fate itself a guarantee against failure, whether in things of
business or of the heart. Add to all this that, in a country where a
little money goes a long way, Ussher contrived to be always supplied
with ready cash.

What wonder therefore if in this favourite of destiny Feemy’s
novel-nourished, romance-excited, and ill-regulated fancy saw the
realisation of her fondest visions? Of course the mounted policeman,
with the graceful seat on his horse, the uniform which became his
handsome figure so well, became to her one of the knightly figures with
whom the writers that she loved had peopled her imagination. And then
his conversation, resembling Othello’s, about “most disastrous chances,
moving accidents by flood and field, and hair-breadth escapes” in the
regions where his duty lay, “of rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose
heads touch heaven.” Feemy probably had never read Shakespeare, or she
might have learned wisdom from Desdemona. A sense of Æschylean fate, no
more to be shunned than softened, runs through this tragedy, whose
closing acts are not without the strength and pathos of Dickens in
_Oliver Twist_, and at some points touch the Shakespearean level.
Feemy’s father may not, indeed, have loved Ussher, or even “oft invited
him.” But not on that account a less frequent or warmly received guest,
he rode from his barracks, three miles distant, at Mohill, to
Ballycloran to pass almost daily a whole morning or evening. Captain
Ussher’s local unpopularity as a Protestant and a remorselessly vigilant
official was nothing to his disadvantage in Feemy’s eyes. She saw in it
only a proof of her lover’s devotion to his duty, and of his heroic
determination of not flinching from any risk of life or limb in
fulfilling the obligations he had taken upon himself.

The one member of the Ballycloran household who sees through the
policeman’s designs upon the girl is Pat Brady, Thady Macdermot’s
counsellor, rent-collector, and factotum. Even Thady, but for hampering
considerations, would not lack the spirit to repel Ussher’s advances,
and by doing so secure his sister’s safety. What, however, he mentally
asks, can he do? The exciseman, on the strength of a mere vague
suspicion, is not to be forbidden the house. That at best would only
provoke his sister’s indignant disgust. Thady therefore remains
inactive, and the only effect of the vague hints and irresponsible
suggestions received from different quarters is to intensify a silent,
sullen hatred of the man. That, henceforth, by a series of slow
degrees--the description of which is Trollope’s earliest exhibition of
high literary art--becomes his ruling passion. Not that, even yet, he
has in his heart doomed Ussher to death for his intrusions upon the
fallen family’s hospitality, and for the scandalous gossip that is
raised against Feemy. Till the final stage comes within sight, Thady’s
detestation is for the most part speechless, except when the accident of
Ussher’s voice or presence rouses the young man to a passing fit of
uncontrollable fury. About this time Ussher made a professional _coup_
which, while more than ever concentrating upon himself the ill-will of
the district at large, and in particular of Thady Macdermot, showed such
adroitness and such contempt of personal danger combined as to deepen
poor Feemy’s admiration of her hero. A wretch named Cogan, a Government
spy, disclosed all the secrets of the trade in illicit potheen: the men
who chiefly conducted it, and the places where the run spirits were to
be found. The pauper peasants had been driven to this traffic because it
offered the only chance of avoiding starvation.

Ussher’s official triumph in running the “potheen men” to earth leads
directly up to the catastrophe. It secures the policeman’s promotion,
but inflames to madness his detestation by Thady, who, little better
than a peasant himself, sympathises with the peasantry that Ussher is
hunting down. Feemy, on the other hand, idolising her lover’s
intrepidity, ignores the local misery that is wrought by his daring
devotion to duty. She thus unconsciously widens the gulf between her
brother and herself. Trollope’s Post Office discipline, hardening his
sensibilities, and constantly giving a fresh edge to his natural acumen,
fitted him successfully to investigate in all its workings the
contraband spirits trade and the spy system used for its detection. This
fact gave more than an ordinary novelist’s value to what he had to say
on the subject. Among the lower classes, two typical specimens of the
human degradation it works are seen in Joe Reynolds and Pat Brady.
Reynolds is a mere desperado, waging a truceless war with the world and
with law. Brady has never been reduced to Reynolds’ straits for money
and food; indeed the occupation alone of squeezing arrears from the
Macdermot tenantry has always placed him a little above the dread of
starvation. Will the young master of Ballycloran be induced, through
Brady as the tool of Reynolds, to join the “boys” in exacting reprisals
for the harshness meted out to them by the law?

The “boys” are bent on drawing Thady into their schemes of revenge,
likely to prove murderous, upon two of his special abominations, not
only Ussher but the builder, Flannelly’s man of business, Keegan, who
aimed at himself possessing Ballycloran. With a sigh of relief, the
reader finds Thady resist the “boys’” overtures, and, for the time,
hopes he may yet be kept from the crowning crime which destiny had
seemed to reserve for him. One of Ussher’s most recent captures goes by
the name of Tim. This, on a much earlier page, has caused an ejected
cottager to anticipate the policeman’s end with the words: “I’d sooner
be in Tim’s shoes this night than in Captain Ussher’s, fine gentleman as
he thinks hisself.” So far, however, Thady holds aloof from any projects
of retribution, likely to involve bloodshed, against the men whose names
had become bywords throughout the countryside. Nevertheless, we are
still made to feel that, superhuman agencies, in the shape of
foreordained circumstances, will draw Thady’s neck into the hangman’s
noose.

What did Trollope, after careful inquiry, find the spy system, in its
social and moral consequences, to be? At the outset he admits that paid
informers frequently bring to justice criminals who would otherwise slip
through the meshes of the legal net. On the other hand, the system
involves not only the degradation of all concerned with it, but very
often the grossest miscarriages of justice. Chief among the villainies
of Irish espionage is the premium placed upon false informations by the
prospect of blood-money. Next to that evil comes the deliberate
manufacture of offences by those who have a money interest in
fabricating baseless charges against the innocent and unwary. Trollope
does not charge the Government with encouraging these informers, or even
recognising them. All he says is that those charged with the execution
of criminal laws do frequently secure their own advancement by the most
iniquitous and demoralising methods.[7]

The resistance offered by Thady Macdermot to the schemes of ruffians who
would stick at nothing fills many powerful pages in Trollope’s first
story. The young master of Ballycloran is preoccupied with the issues of
his sister’s fate, and maddened with the insinuations to which Ussher’s
visits gave the point. Ussher himself will die a violent death, but as
regards who is to deal the avenging blow the reader is kept in the
sustained agony of a trying and artistically prolonged suspense. Some of
those seized by Ussher for systematic evasion of the Excise duties
protest their innocence while, bound together in twos and threes with
cords, they are being huddled off to prison. To one of these Ussher
exclaimed: “You mean to threaten me, you ruffian.” “I doesn’t threaten
you”, was the answer, “but there is them as does; and it will be a black
night’s work to you for what you are doing with the boys, for trying to
make out the rint with the whisky, not for themselves but for them as is
your friends.” Thus dramatically is set forth the Irish question, as it
seemed to Trollope when he first knew the country. At the same time, the
followers of his narrative, their interest in the characters now fairly
roused, experience a sense of relief at discovering that they may think
that Thady at least will be no party in doing the execrated policeman,
or anyone else, to death.

The atmosphere at this point is so heavily charged with moral issues as
to be depressing almost beyond tolerance. After the example set in such
cases by Shakespeare, and indeed in a way Shakespeare might have
approved, Trollope at once relieves the situation and at the same time,
by the force of contrast, deepens its tragedy with humorous interludes
more illustrative of Irish character than descriptions that should run
to many pages. The peasants, whose inability to pay high rent for
miserably bad land, and who, in Trollope’s words, have had recourse to
illegal means for easing them of their difficulties, may have been
driven to become “ribbon men,” but, even when separated from ruin by
less than a step, throw themselves heart and soul into the noisy
hilarities of a wake or a wedding. The description of Pat Brady’s
marriage-feast, followed by the improvised cottage ball, might be the
letterpress written up to some painting from the brush of an Irish
Morland. Even the moody young master of Ballycloran, who is among the
guests, in spite of his scowling glances and his inaudible imprecations
on the policeman, has caught the contagious gaiety of the occasion.
Ussher, also of the company, leads out Feemy as his partner. The
prevailing merriment cannot indeed dispel the haunting thought that it
may prove to be a dance of death. But the party itself ends, as it
began, in whisky and in peace. Thady indeed, having taken more whisky
than is his wont, exchanges hot words with Ussher afterwards. But the
popular voice hints only, if at all, at what is to come in Brady’s
whisper to Joe Reynolds: “It’s little Mr. Thady loves the Captain, and
it’s little he ever will.”

This small melodramatic touch is followed by pen-and-ink pictures of
society and sport, again driving the figure of a skeleton at the feast
into the distant background. Carrick is to have some races, and
afterwards a race ball. The night before, there is a dinner; one of the
chief figures at this is a gentleman jockey, Bob Gayner, whose life is
spent in riding steeplechases, and consequently in reducing his weight
to the lowest possible figure. At this particular banquet he has not
swallowed a mouthful. Our last sight of him is, when the diners
disperse, standing against the fire-place sucking a lemon, with a large
overcoat on, and a huge choker round his neck.

Quick, however, on the heels of all this festivity comes the warning
that mischief more serious than ever is in the wind. The parish priest
in _The Macdermots_, Father John, never proselytises, never intrigues,
and only exacts from his flock alms enough to keep body and soul
together. His device, however, to keep Feemy out of danger by moving her
from Ballycloran to the care of Mrs. McKeon, together with her husband
touched off in one of Trollope’s happiest character miniatures, has
failed. The lover who, on one plea after another, had evaded Feemy’s
repeated request of marriage, thinks now of nothing less than of making
her his wife, but, being content to retain her as a possession, has no
objection to punish Thady Macdermot for his unmannerly speech by
carrying off his sister. How that design fails of execution, and how
Feemy is not abducted, but Ussher, at the instant of lifting her into
the carriage, is felled to the ground a corpse by Thady’s smashing
bludgeon, forms a scene comparable, for blood-curdling force of
description, with Nancy’s murder by Bill Sykes, and did indeed win from
Charles Dickens his earliest admission that Trollope had strength as
well as glibness. The long-drawn-out strain on her whole being of the
events thus summarised has caused Feemy’s days to be numbered. She dies
suddenly while waiting to give evidence at her brother’s trial. All that
remains now is the execution of the death-sentence on Thady. The last
words that he hears before the bolt is drawn are those of Father John’s
prayer that God will receive him into His mercy.

The scenes of violence and desolation on which the curtain falls may
almost be compared for impressiveness with any picture of the collective
ruin wrought by Nemesis in Greek drama, or as the close of _Hamlet_
itself. Yet the gloom which darkens the whole narrative derives at once,
for the moment, relief from lighter interludes. Bob Gayner in _The
Macdermots_ prepares the way for Dot Blake in _The Kellys and the
O’Kellys_. One chapter also in Trollope’s first novel so overflows with
comedy passing into farce as appropriately to presage the rich and
varied humour that is on the whole the dominant note of his second
effort. Among the magistrates whom Thady Macdermot’s crime have called
in solemn conclave together, are two, Jonas Brown of Brown Hall and Mr.
Webb of Ardrum. In all respects but social or official status, these
two form a complete contrast. The ungenial and unpopular Brown, one of
Ussher’s most habitual hosts, has from the first angrily maintained the
absence of any extenuating feature in the murder committed by Thady
Macdermot. Webb, on the other hand, naturally amiable and beloved
throughout his neighbourhood, almost goes so far as to deny Thady’s
moral criminality. In the attempt to rescue something of his sister’s
honour he merely committed justifiable homicide. His remarks on Thady’s
opponents had been so severe as to be taken for personal insults by the
Brown faction. The master of Brown Hall therefore demands from Webb a
written assurance that his words were pointed at no member of the Brown
family, but receives an answer regretting that he cannot comply with
such a request. This, it must be remembered, was in the days before the
duel had become obsolete.

Brown’s two sons, Fred and George, have from the first been spoiling for
a fight. “The sod’s the only place now, father,” each exultingly
exclaims, adding: “I like him the better for not recanting.” Fred takes
a more serious view, remarks that Webb is a cursed good shot, suggests
his father should make his will before he goes out. It would also be as
well, in case of accidents, to have a doctor handy, for, as one of the
sons thoughtfully remarks: “Though so vital a part as the head be not
touched, the body is all over tender bits,” devoutly adding, in words
that really have a touch of Dogberry or Shakespearean clown about them:
“May heaven always keep lead out of my bowels; I’d sooner have it in my
brains.” The father has fidgeted a good deal between these two fires of
filial thoughtfulness and counsel, but so far has said nothing. At the
last remark, his patience deserts him, and he exclaims: “D---- your
brains! I don’t believe you’ve got any,” presently adding that the
affair is one of which he has had some experience, while as yet neither
of the young men has been out. The preliminaries of the duel may be
comedy; the combat itself rises to farce. _The Macdermots_ contains, as
will have been seen, touches of more polished humour than this, though
in most cases it is broad enough to suggest Anthony Trollope’s
inheritance of the gift from his clever mother.

Such passages as that last dwelt upon in _The Macdermots_ prepared, as
had been suggested, the way for the transition to the next novel, _The
Kellys and the O’Kellys_. That story, indeed, is not without some
incidents only less sombre than those which diffuse their colour through
the earlier book. It is characteristic of Trollope’s novels that the
underplot is often of as much importance, and the source of as sustained
an interest, as the main plot itself. In _The Kellys and the O’Kellys_,
the secondary narrative not only keeps pace with the primary, but
reflects the general character of its interest and displays a parallel
for some of its occurrences. The period, a little later than the time
chosen for _The Macdermots_, is that of O’Connell’s agitation, trial,
and unimpaired ascendency. Among those brought to Dublin by the
Liberator’s appearance before his judges are two men. One is the head of
the O’Kelly, as of the Kelly clans, now Lord Ballindine; the other is a
young man of about his own age, a widow trader’s son, Martin Kelly, whom
the nobleman contemptuously acknowledges as a sort of fifteenth cousin.
This group is completed by the evil genius of the story, Dot Blake. Both
the peer and the peasant happen just now to be united by a similarity of
object, more closely binding them for the moment than the tie of remote
kinship. Fond of the turf, with one or two horses in training for the
English “classical” races, Viscount Ballindine is bent on improving his
finances by sharing his title with an heiress, Fanny Wyndham; her
guardian, the Earl of Cashel, having other views for her, is actively
concerned to prevent communications between his ward and her lover.

Now for Martin Kelly. Simeon Lynch, the Ballindine estate manager, under
the present Viscount’s father, has feathered his nest so well as to have
amassed a fortune that has raised his children far above the social
level of their birth. His son, Barry Lynch, has even been at Eton with
young Lord Ballindine; though in Barry’s case the “learning of the
humanities have not softened manners or prevented them from being
fierce.” His daughter Anastasia, known as Anty, divides the paternal
property with her brother. She is therefore a very considerable catch.
Nevertheless the plebeian Martin Kelly, with his Irish self-confidence,
has set his heart on winning her. That project is resisted as strongly,
by Anty’s brother, as Fanny Wyndham’s guardian objects to his ward’s
union with Ballindine. Lord Cashel does what he considers his duty to
the young lady in his charge shrewdly and, so far as her lover is
concerned, harshly. Much whisky, and a money greediness that has
swallowed up other passions, have gradually degraded Barry Lynch into a
ruffianly sot, with no other thought than, by foul means if fair fail,
to become master of his sister’s share in the property their father
divided equally by will between them. The brother’s drunken ferocity
proves the death-warrant to his schemes. Driven from home by Barry’s
barbarity, Anty Lynch finds a humble refuge beneath the roof of Mrs.
Kelly, Martin Kelly’s mother. To these extremities, the relations
between Fanny Wyndham and Lord Ballindine naturally present no parallel.
Even with them, however, the course of true love runs at least as
roughly as is its proverbial wont.

The figures gathered round the leading personages in this twin drama
illustrate the closeness with which Trollope studied every phase of
Irish life. They are as racy of the soil as Charles Lever himself. Their
truth and freshness indeed so much impressed Lever that they suggested
to him the new variety of Irish character to be met with in his latest
writings. The Irish squire who lives more by his wits than his land,
Walter Blake, might indeed, had he wanted such inspiration, have
supplied the germ of Dudley Sewell in _Sir Brook Fossbrooke_, and the
other products of the post-Lorrequer period. An effeminate, slightly
made man of about thirty, good-looking, gentlemanlike, with a cold,
quiet, grey eye, and a thin lip, infallible on racing matters, riding
boldly good horses, always drinking the very best claret that Dublin
could procure, a finished gambler, who makes his six hundred a year, as
to style of life, do the work of as many thousands. Here is a
description entirely in the later Leverian style, and with the Leverian
ring in the words of the well-bred, sporting adventurer, who plays his
own game with such an entire absence of scruple, and with such polished
serenity, that his friend Frank Ballindine has to thank some of Dot
Blake’s remarks to Lord Cashel for the temporary rupture of his
engagement with Fanny Wyndham. Lever’s first profession was medicine.
How well Trollope understood its Irish representatives may be seen from
his sketch of Doctor Colligan, who, attending Anty Lynch in the illness
brought on by her brother’s brutality, resents, by knocking him down, a
hint from Barry that he would make it worth the physician’s while to
contrive the patient’s death. Of special interest, in view of what
Trollope’s next novel was to be, is the Anglican clergyman on the
Ballindine property, George Armstrong, whose life is a battle with
tradesmen and tithe-payers, but who, though on one occasion Frank
Ballindine has to supply him with a suit of clothes before despatching
him on some errand to his lady-love, can always enjoy a good dinner when
he gets one, and pilots his sorry hunter so cleverly as generally to be
in at the death when out with hounds.

CHAPTER V

COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE AND ITS LITERARY FRUITS

Trollope’s _Examiner_ articles--Opposing religious experiences of
boyhood and early manhood--Moulding influences of his Irish
life--The cosmopolitan in the making--Interest in France and the
French--_La Vendée_--Trollope’s relation to other English writers
on the French Revolution--The moving spirits of the Vendean
insurrection--Peasant royalist enthusiasm--Opening of the
campaign--The Chouans of fact and fiction--A republican
portrait-gallery--Barère--Santerre--Westerman--Robespierre--Eleanor
Duplay.

At the time of their first appearance the two Irish novels just
described were commercial and literary failures. They preceded, however,
even if they did not help to bring about, a turn for good in their
author’s fortunes. It was indeed only after the full establishment of
Trollope’s reputation that both _The Macdermots_ and _The Kellys and the
O’Kellys_ were shown by the reflected light of success to abound in
promise. The discovery might have been made earlier had not the books
long remained practically unknown. However, Dickens’ friend and
biographer, John Forster, then the most formidable critic and exacting
editor on the London Press, thought sufficiently well of Trollope’s work
to commission from him for _The Examiner_ certain articles about the
districts chiefly affected by the successive ravages of plague and
famine in 1847. The broken fences, the deserted farms, and the
monotonously endless stretches of misery and destitution in Trollope’s
Post Office district, including Cork, Kerry, and Clare, were soon to be
further disfigured by sights more terrible. Starvation did but prepare
the way for the most hideous forms of new and ghastly disease.

Sufferers soon found their skins tight drawn, like a drum, to the face,
and covered with small light hairs, as of those on a gooseberry. The
poor wretches thus plague-stricken, having no longer roofs to shelter
them, were huddled together in wigwams pitched under park walls, with no
other food than that which the charity of the owners of these demesnes
supplied. Conspicuous among the landlords who answered these appeals
were Lord Dunkellin and Edmund O’Flaherty of Knockbane, near Galway. Out
of all this misery, the political agitators, largely imported from the
other side of the Atlantic, had begun in 1846 to make capital. This was
their way of drawing Ireland into the subversive vortex which had
already sucked in nearly the whole European continent. The appeal of the
sedition mongers seemed to Trollope a failure, or at best but partially
and superficially successful. As to the general condition in 1848, he
told _The Examiner_ that it was not a revolutionary year, at least for
Ireland. They talked about rows. But these, he said, existed only in
newspaper columns. From Portrush to Waterford, and from Connemara to
Dublin, there would be found no trace of any widespread, popular plan
for converting peasant occupiers into sovereign proprietors. No one
realised more fully than the Connaught crofter the folly and futility of
the talk about abolishing the difference between employers and employed.
In England, wrote Trollope, there was too much intelligence to look for
any general improvement on a sudden. In Ireland there was too little
intelligence to look for any improvement at all.

The English Government, now under Sir Robert Peel, had taken the first
step towards relieving Irish distress by freeing the ports for the
admission of foreign grain in 1846. Trollope himself had seen the
universal alleviation following the arrival of Indian corn for the
starving people. Next, Lord John Russell, as Prime Minister in 1847,
instituted relief-works to help the unemployed masses. These measures
were attacked from two different quarters. Among the Irish peasantry
some complained of not being fed absolutely for nothing. The landed
classes were disposed to doubt the necessity of any State interference
at all. But in his third Irish novel, _Castle Richmond_ (1860), dealing
with the famine period, Trollope himself testified to the alacrity shown
by the territorial class in co-operating with the State. And Trollope
was likely to be an impartial judge. His personal sympathies were not
then with the Whigs. The English public man with whom he was chiefly in
communication, the philanthropic Lord Shaftesbury, having served under
Wellington and Peel, passed for a Conservative. The main points of his
_Examiner_ articles have been already given. The whole little series
formed an answer to the charges against ministers brought by their
censors, alike in Press and Parliament. The seven years he had passed on
the other side of St. George’s Channel had indeed been turned to such
good account as to make him an authority on Irish affairs in their then
most prominent aspect.

Meanwhile, by the personal intercourse of society, or by instructive and
inspiring correspondence with useful friends, Trollope had improved his
acquaintance with men, manners, and things in a way that was afterwards
to bear literary fruit. Between 1846 and 1850, his mother still lived at
Florence, and though Anthony did not actually visit Florence till 1853,
he and Mrs. Trollope, during those years, held regular and copious
communication with each other through the post. In this way many
pleasant glimpses are caught of diverse personalities famous, or at
least interesting. There is F. W. Faber, first met at Mr. Sloane’s, the
wealthy Anglo-Florentine, who gave the church of Santa Croce its new
front. To Faber, Trollope was apparently first attracted by his having
been the most brilliant Harrovian of his time. This acquaintanceship at
once deeply interested Mrs. Trollope, and was to have a lasting effect
upon her son. His first religious lessons may have been those in the
Church catechism. He had then been taken in spiritual charge by
Cunningham, the evangelical vicar of Harrow, caricatured, it was
generally believed, in Mrs. Trollope’s _Vicar of Wrexhill_. To that
divine he did his best in the way of listening as a duty, but the
copious interspersion of casual conversation by him and other Low Church
teachers with scriptural tags and devout ejaculations first made
Trollope secretly think he was talking nonsense. In this way the
youthful Anthony imbibed a sceptical disgust for the social ways and
religious tenets of all that school. Filled with these prejudices, he
came under a spiritual influence very different from any of which so far
he had any experience.

His Winchester days had closed with missing New College. A little later
he found himself hopelessly beaten for a small entrance scholarship on a
minor foundation at Cambridge. To both Universities he made several
short visits. At Oxford he heard the future Cardinal Newman preach from
the pulpit of St. Mary’s. The effect of those sermons was deepened by
many conversations with the preacher, and afterwards with the already
mentioned F. W. Faber, whose personal charm was felt as strongly by
Anthony as it had been by his mother, through whom indeed the son first
knew that accomplished divine and poet, both in his Anglican and his
Roman stage. Not indeed that Anthony Trollope was ever near to becoming
a partisan of either side. Still at the outset his sympathies were, as
afterwards, inclined towards the moderate, lettered, and generally
accomplished members of the High Church party. As a boy, while with his
parents abroad, he had seen and liked the home life of Roman Catholics.
During the interval that separated his Irish stories from his third
novel, he turned to good account the opportunities provided him by his
mother for improving his knowledge of continental institutions, secular
or religious, and the personal types they tended to produce. At each
fresh point of his literary evolution Trollope’s industry in some degree
took on the colour of the surroundings amid which it was exercised. The
earlier of his Irish books grew out of his Post Office work in the “Isle
of Saints.” Between 1848 and 1850, his cosmopolitan training had begun,
and indeed advanced some way. Some years later his _Tales of All
Countries_ was to form a memorial of his experiences as a citizen of the
world. Before these, came _La Vendée_. That novel, if written at all,
would have been written probably in a very different manner but for the
recent widening in his social, religious, and political horizons.

Trollope had been born amid the world-wide ferment of the ground swell
following the great national convulsion in France with which the
eighteenth century closed. Those commotions had seemed the more real and
recent to his childhood from the constant conversational references to
them as portending what England herself might expect. He had heard
stories of the privations and hair-breadth escapes experienced by
refugees from the reign of terror when struggling to place the Straits
of Dover between themselves and their oppressors of the first French
republic. In those parts of England from the first, at least by name
familiar to him, he had seen the country houses where the royalist
_émigrés_ had found an asylum more than once during the years between
the murder of the French king and the Vienna Congress. He had heard
English prejudice describe French loyalty to the old _régime_ as a mere
pose, and Protestant prejudice refuse to see anything that was worthy
the name of “true religion and undefiled” in the teachings of the Popish
priesthood or in the daily life of their most loyal devotees. His more
recent intercourse with men like Faber and Newman had, without leading
him to a spiritual crisis, caused him to review and recast his religious
conceptions. He had been taught as a boy to turn his back on all
pre-Reformation doctrines and rites. His own experiences had now more
than reconciled him to the working of the papal system in Ireland. On
the whole he had found the Irish Roman Catholic priests kindly and far
from bigoted men, honestly anxious to do their duty towards their flock,
as well as towards the official representatives of that Protestant
ascendency which in their heart they were bound to detest. Neither had
Trollope, always open though his keen eyes were, known many authentic
cases of priestly greed, intrigue, intolerance, or proselytism. The
conventional charges, in fact, made by evangelicals against the
hierarchy and officials of a foreign Church could from Trollope’s own
experience be disproved. The mere fact of such accusations being brought
deepened his distrust and dislike of Low Churchism and all its ways.

Possessed by such a spirit of reaction from the popular Calvinism which
his mother had lashed in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_, he sat down, after
_The Kellys and the O’Kellys_, to his third novel, _La Vendée_. By that
time half a century had passed since the issues and methods of the
French Revolutionaries, which destroyed Burke’s friendship with Fox, had
left Whiggism in a state of intestine feud. An impulse such as had urged
Coleridge and Southey into the Tory camp produced in Trollope a desire
to write a story showing the French royalists in politics at their best,
and the reasonableness of their religion as one by which to live and
die. His public school associations had been genuine Wykehamist--that is
to say, high Tory in Church and State. As a boy of fifteen he had heard
of the “three days” which, on July 27, 1830, sent the last of the
Bourbons, Charles X, from his French throne across the English Channel.
At the age of thirty-three, while, as has been seen, going his Post
Office rounds through Connaught, he had watched the progress of the
second French Revolution of the nineteenth century. He might have been
presented in his British asylum to the lately arrived “Mr. Smith,” who
was none other than the Louis Philippe formerly, with the results
already described, visited in his palace by Trollope’s mother. _Hodie
tibi, cras mihi_, while _La Vendée_ was in course of preparation for the
press, English Tories and many who were not Tories had persuaded
themselves that reform in politics, dissent in religion, and the
progressive removal of ancient landmarks in Church or State would
gradually bring this country under the same pernicious influences as
those which had unsettled and devastated the greater part of the world
beyond the Dover Straits. In _La Vendée_ Trollope successfully
fulfilled the twofold end of flattering conservative sentiment,
religious or political, and of breaking comparatively fresh soil, as
well as portraying new characters in a period that then seemed almost
modern.

Readers of Disraeli’s novels will remember the advice urged by Rigby on
Coningsby to “read Mr. Wordy’s history of the late war, in twenty
volumes, proving clearly that Providence was on the side of the Tories.”
No one knew better than Rigby’s reputed original, John Wilson Croker, or
for that matter Disraeli himself, the compendious utility of Alison’s
_History of Europe_. Elsewhere Trollope may easily have found the
historic facts on which he based his third novel. From Alison he learned
to deduce a moral in accord with the prevailing English sentiment. Like
many of his countrymen who cared nothing for party, Trollope felt
something of disgust at the Whig enthusiasm for Napoleon as the
reconstructor of the European system, notwithstanding his rise to power
by violating all those principles of civil and religious liberty which
Whigs, by their historic traditions, were bound to hold sacrosanct.
Without pretending to be a specialist in modern French history, Trollope
knew enough of the country and the people to look for the real security
of a gradual return to law and order, not in the exercise of coercive
force by any individual however great, but in the national instincts and
tendencies making for conservatism, political or religious, and, as he
thought, underrated by recent English writers on the subject. This
aspect of national character and life it became his business to bring
out in _La Vendée_. His Irish stories had already maintained and
illustrated the view that the Celt as he existed on the other side of
St. George’s Channel could be as business-like, as thrifty, as sober in
thought as the Saxon or the Lowland Scot himself. So _La Vendée_ was to
dispose of similar fallacies about the French rooted in the English
mind. Genuine religion could exist in a Roman Catholic land, as well as
genuine loyalty and uncalculating patriotism among a people
conventionally considered fickle, frivolous, and, naturally incapable of
the patient, self-repressive, and sustained effort by which Northern
nations are content slowly to await and effect the reforms that Southern
races precipitate and mar by revolutions.

Trollope occupies a middle place among the three novelists of the
Victorian age who have acknowledged the literary fascination of the
French revolutionary period in some one of its aspects, or in the events
growing out of it. Carlyle, essentially a humourist before being an
historian, first made the subject his own, and in some degree helped by
his research and method his successors in their treatment of it. Five
years after Carlyle, Bulwer-Lytton wrote _Zanoni_, the earliest English
novel descriptive of Paris during the Terror. Dickens’ _Tale of Two
Cities_ came out some time later, in 1859. Trollope’s contribution,
therefore, to the romance of the revolutionary series, chronologically
might have owed something to Alison, who alone among those of an earlier
date had touched the phases of the theme specially appealing to our
novelist. In fiction the dates just given would exempt him from any
suspicion of obligation to Bulwer or Dickens. His originality stamps
itself on the opening chapter of _La Vendée_, and is consistently
maintained throughout. Before the action of the novel begins, its
royalist heroes can no longer doubt the resolution reached by the
municipality of Paris that the king should fall. The Convention, in
fact, was already founding the republic. The actual process, indeed, had
advanced far enough to array the country gentlemen of La Vendée (1850)
and their retainers in arms against the new _régime_. The entirely fresh
descriptive feature of the opening chapters is the account of social
Paris when the Jacobins were entrapping Louis XVI.

Here Trollope drew not on Alison, but the first-hand knowledge conveyed
to him by his mother. Mrs. Trollope, in her turn, had been taken behind
the political scenes of the period by the man whom the royalists in her
son’s story agreed could alone save the throne. This was the same
General Lafayette that Trollope’s parents had visited in his French
country house and that always remained their chief friend abroad. During
the early months of 1792, most of the _haute noblesse_ had exchanged
the French capital for London or for the English country houses, many of
them, as has been already said, familiar to Trollope. They left,
however, behind them enough of wit, beauty, and fashionable brilliance
to prevent the capital from losing its character of the Western world’s
polite metropolis. The city, in a phrase of a contemporary writer, H. S.
Edwards, that took Trollope’s fancy, from having been the Lutetia of the
ancients had become the lætitia of the moderns. Intellectual interest in
the progress of the Revolution, up to the beginning of the king’s
imprisonment, had the effect of obliterating class distinctions. It
produced a certain solidarity between the professional classes which
supplied the revolutionary leaders, and the more enlightened of the
aristocracy that, long since admitting the necessity of drastic social
ameliorations, had, as Trollope summarises it, approved the early
demands of the _tiers état_, had applauded the tennis-court oath, had
entered with enthusiasm into the _fête_ of the Champ de Mars. These had
credulously persuaded themselves that sin, avarice, and selfishness were
about to be banished from the world by philosophy.

Bitter experience had already taught them their mistake. Philosophy
placed no check upon human nature’s worst passions. The high-flown
panegyrics on virtue in the abstract were practically consistent with
the letting loose of the tiger and the ape in individuals. The feast of
reason that followed the beheading of the king proved the introduction
to the long-drawn-out orgy of fiends lasting till Robespierre’s death in
1794. What refuge could there be for the now undeceived dupes of their
own fond expectations but in flight? Those who from the first had
remained courtiers or royalists, and those whom a spurious philanthropy
had caused to dally with wholesale homicide, hastened to put the English
Channel between themselves and a capital and country from which had
vanished all hope of personal safety or service to their fellow-men.
Some gallant spirits had long lingered on near the place of the king’s
confinement, refusing even now to despair of some happy chance that
might favour his escape from his enemies, and enable his friends to
conduct him permanently out of danger.

Such were the historical circumstances and actual conditions of the time
without a knowledge of which Trollope’s third novel cannot be rightly
understood. Its title came from the new republican name for the vintage
districts of Anjou and Poitou, La Vendée (_vendange_). Those of its
gentry who had rallied round the king were known in Paris as the
Poitevins. The hope of which this little group supplied the leaders was
scarcely so forlorn as it has been described since, during the seven
years period covered by Trollope’s novel, the Vendean resistance to the
Convention was carried on not only with unfailing courage but
occasionally with substantial military success. In Paris, where the
story opens, the Poitevins had attracted to their number some among the
more moderate members of the Assembly, and particularly certain of those
who had been officers of the royal bodyguard. They formed themselves
into a club whose meetings were held in the Rue Vivienne. The last of
these gatherings took place on August 12, 1792, and lasted just long
enough to acquaint all present with the final and complete defeat of the
moderates, who so far had clung to the conviction that in some
unexplained manner the monarchy would be preserved from final overthrow.
Against all gentler counsels, against, in Trollope’s words, the firmness
of Roland, the eloquence of Vergniaud, the patriotism of Guadet, the
brute force of Paris had prevailed.

Louis XVI, his worst enemies could not deny, had inherited none of his
predecessor’s vices, and had shown himself the friend of popular rights.
He had indeed actually himself convoked the Assembly that had no sooner
come together than it resolved on his destruction. The Poitevins,
however, had correctly estimated their resources in their respective
neighbourhoods. With a good heart they now welcome and prepare for open
war. When told that the sovereign’s defenders are outvoted in the
Assembly and that resistance to the people is vain, they one and all
protest against dignifying by that name the mob of blood-thirsty
ruffians who for the time have the capital at their mercy. The real
voice of the French people is for the monarch’s restoration to his
rights. Under the Vendean gentry as leaders the masses will rise like
one man against the demagogues who so foully misrepresent them. The real
enemies of France and of the king are in each case the same men. To save
the country from the usurpations of the Assembly falsely called national
is also to deliver the lawful ruler from the dungeon to which, in the
midst of this heroic oratory, comes the news of Louis having been
consigned.

That for the present the mission of the patriots in Paris cannot proceed
further is now admitted by all. Before, however, the patriots disperse,
each to his own provincial neighbourhood, we have made acquaintance with
the clearly and picturesquely characterised individuals of whom they
consist. Its most prominent member, Lescure, is a type, historically
true, of the educated and enlightened Frenchman, keenly alive to the
abuses and evils of the aristocratic system that were at the root of
popular degradation and distress. His mind had been nurtured, and his
political education derived, from studying classical republicanism, as
it existed in Athens and Rome. He was deeply read in Rousseau, Voltaire,
and in the whole literature of the encyclopædists. An amiably
philanthropic disposition had combined with tendencies of his
intellectual culture to take for his watchwords Liberty, Fraternity,
though not, it would seem, Equality. On perceiving the new movement to
mean universal surrender to an ignorant and brutal mob, he drew back, to
find himself gradually pressed into the presidency of the little
Poitevin society. This personification of high-minded and cultivated
philanthropy numbered amongst its followers the youthful heir to an
ancient and wealthy territorial marquisate, Henri de Larochejaquelin.[8]
His principles had been formed on those of his elder, Lescure, but his
temperament, eager, impetuous, delighting in the rush and whirl of
social gaiety, forms a contrast to his staid and judicious senior. In
one respect he stands out as a product of the period. The new generation
was often noticeable for the precocious manhood developed in the
hothouse atmosphere of a convulsive epoch. Since reaching his
seventeenth year, the young noble now mentioned, in consequence of his
father’s ill-health, had taken upon himself the paternal estates’
management, and his sister Agatha’s guardianship.

Adolphe Denot is another who has a place in this little company. Born to
a position of territorial ownership in Poitou, Denot represents in
Trollope’s story the superficial votaries of political change, ready to
take up with the newest mode in public affairs, without the trouble of
inquiring into its significance or worth. Without Lescure’s historical
knowledge and reflective habits, he belonged to the same section of
French society as that in which Lescure had been reared. The earliest
French protests against the tyranny of ages came from the French
nobility themselves. Never in the theatre at Versailles had louder
applause been excited than by the lines of Voltaire’s play, produced
during the interval separating the first from the last quarter of the
eighteenth century: “I am the son of Brutus, and bear graven on the
heart the love of liberty and a horror of kings.” In the cheers that
greeted these words, Trollope’s Denot might have followed the vogue by
joining. J. J. Rousseau no doubt made himself personally responsible for
the doctrine of the people’s sovereignty and its consequences. Before,
however, its proclamation by him, Voltaire’s wit had secured the notion
acceptance with rank, fashion, aristocracy, and even the Court circle.
Recently, however, the enthusiasts for freedom in the royal playhouse
had discovered everything which savoured of revolution to be
insufferably vulgar. He had therefore gone over to Larochejaquelin’s
lead, and enrolled himself under Lescure in the little Poitevin clique.
Petted and caressed, as Trollope puts it, by the best and fairest in
France, the revolution was still in its infancy when men discovered it
to be a beast of prey, big with war, anarchy, and misrule.

The royalist organisation now described having been disbanded in the
capital, the scene changes to those regions of southern France known as
La Vendée. The country gentlemen of Anjou and Poitou were generally
landlords of the smaller kind. They lived in comfort, but without any
ambition for mere splendour. No pride in the antiquity of their race
prevented their treating their tenants and household retainers less as
dependents than equals. The instances of this now given exemplify
Trollope’s favourite thesis that in a patrician dispensation
characterised by thoughtfulness on the part of its controllers for those
who live under it, there is more of the true democratic spirit than
marks the most levelling variety of popular self-rule. The gentlemen of
La Vendée have no sooner reappeared in their country homes than the
counter-revolution, without any fostering agitation on their part,
almost of its own accord sets in.

The Vendeans had heard from their rural seclusion of the king’s
imprisonment, and of the insults offered by his republican jailors to
the time-honoured ordinances of Church and State. There is no need for
Lescure, Larochejaquelin, and the others to stimulate the local
peasantry by fresh appeals against the emissaries of the detested
republic. These only show themselves for the purpose of enrolling fresh
conscripts, and forcibly apprehending a reluctant recruit. The
spontaneous popular resistance ends in a pitched battle, with victory
for the royalists. Operations are now on a larger scale. The struggle is
no longer between small local garrisons on the one hand, and hastily
levied, imperfectly disciplined royalist bodies on the other. Henceforth
two armies, each tolerably marshalled and fairly equipped, meet each
other in the field. Sieges are laid, attacks are delivered, sometimes
repelled and sometimes succumbed to; all the combatants are engaged,
towns are captured, private parks transform themselves into entrenched
camps. Durbellière particularly, the country seat of the
Larochejaquelins, becomes the theatre of a war conducted with
sanguinary resolution on both sides, and with constantly varying
fortunes. Among each host brave deeds in plenty are done. With the
royalists the most picturesque, heroic, and victorious figure is that of
Henri de Larochejaquelin, whose red sash and shoulder-band prove the
same talisman of triumph as the snow-white plume of Henry of Navarre
when he defeated the Duke of Mayenne at Ivry.

With the republicans too were to be found men equally capable or
courageous, if less personally attractive. In the French romance that
followed the Irish novels Trollope made no pretence of making his
imagination the handmaid of history. Bulwer-Lytton, in _The Last of the
Barons_, circumstantially constructed a bold and picturesque hypothesis
as a plausibly conjectural explanation of the quarrel between Edward IV
and Warwick. That was not at all in Trollope’s way. Equally little is
his inclination, after the fashion of Sir Walter Scott, to play fast and
loose with recorded facts, and to represent authenticated events in the
light, and from the point of view, which happened to suit him. For the
most part Trollope follows through every detail the accurate chronicle
of the time. In one case, however, that he may account for the
disappearance from his narrative of the character he calls Adolphe
Denot, he departs from the historic record. According to Trollope, the
Chouans, or Bretons who continued the Vendean War, followed a
mysterious, if not an actually insane leader. The alleged mystery is
mere invention. No personage of the period is more historical than Jean
Cottereau, who from the first led the Bretons, and whose signal, the cry
of the screech-owl (_chat-huant_), gave their name to the little Breton
band. Nor can it be said that the historian’s version of events is, even
for artistic purposes, improved on by the novelist’s discovery, in the
Vendean leader, of Adolphe Denot, who, in an hour of what his friends
charitably called mental aberration, had left the good cause of Church
and King, had thrown in his lot with the revolutionaries. Since then he
had remained out of sight.

At the point now under consideration, the novelist might indeed have
done better, for himself as well as for his readers, had he exercised
his fancy at least on the lines marked out by the historian. At the same
time he deserves the praise of having caught the spirit of his period,
as well as of having imbued his pages with a fair amount of genuine
local colour. One word may be said about the pen-and-ink artist’s
methods and the effect of his picture as a whole. The pervading tone,
subdued if not, as in his first story, _The Macdermots_, sombre, at
well-chosen points is relieved by the introduction of those lighter
tints that Trollope’s quick eye for the humorous never failed in the
right place to bring out. In the loyalist households, of the Vendean
squires, the servants are treated less as inferiors than equals. Seeing
in their employers their friends, and during war-time their comrades,
they vie with each other in proving their devotion to the good cause.
There thus sets in among them a generous rivalry as to who shall be
nearest their lords in the hour of peril. Such a competition provides
many happy openings for sketches of votaries of the sceptre and the
crozier outdoing each other in the still-room and the servants’ hall.

There still remain Trollope’s estimates of the republican managers who,
differing about much, agreed in calling the Vendeans mean curs, fit only
for utter extermination. Six years earlier than the writing of _La
Vendée_, Macaulay’s article on Barère had appeared in the spring number
of _The Edinburgh Review_. The estimates of that particular
revolutionary leader given by the historian and by the novelist
generally agree with each other, but in every detail show the mutual
independence of their writers. Macaulay’s account is an oratorical
indictment, delivered in a more than usually impressive manner, and
declaring that an amalgam of sensuality, poltroonery, baseness,
effrontery, mendacity, and barbarity, such as in a novel would be
condemned for caricature, was realised in Barère. Beside the essayist’s
portrait of Bertrand Barère, place that in the novel which is our
immediate concern, the one man, in a little party armed to the teeth,
without sword, constantly playing with a little double-barrelled pistol,
which he continually cocked and uncocked, and of which the fellow lay on
the table before him. A tall, well-built, handsome man about thirty
years of age, with straight black hair brushed upright from his
forehead, his countenance gave the idea of eagerness and impetuosity
rather than of cruelty or brutality. He was, however, essentially
egotistical and insincere. A republican not from conviction but from
prudential motives, he only deserted the throne when he saw that it was
tottering.

For a time Barère supported the moderate party in the republic, and
voted with the Girondists. He gradually joined the Jacobins, as he saw
they were triumphing over their rivals. He was afterwards one of those
who handed over the leaders of the Reign of Terror to the guillotine,
and assisted in denouncing Robespierre and St. Just. He was one of the
very few who managed to outlive the Revolution, and did so for nearly
half a century. Nature had not formed him to be a monster gloating in
blood. The republic had altered his disposition, and taught him, among
those with whom he associated, to delight in the work which they
required at his hands. Thus he became one of those who loudly called for
more blood, while blood on every side was running in torrents. He too it
was who demanded the murder of the queen, when Robespierre would have
saved her. Before the Revolution he had been a wealthy aristocrat; he
still wears the costume of his earlier period in the blue dress-coat,
buttoned closely, notwithstanding the heat of the weather, round his
body; the carefully tied cravat, disfigured by no wrinkle; the tightly
fitting breeches that show the well-shaped leg. As a contrast to this
sometime nobleman gibbeted by Macaulay, Trollope presents one to another
notoriety of the period, known as the “King of the Faubourgs.” This was
a large, rough, burly man, about forty years of age, of Flemish descent,
by trade a brewer, by name Santerre, without fine feelings to be
distressed at the horrid work set him to do, but filled with a coarse
ambition, which made him a ready tool for the schemers who used his
physical powers, courage, and wealth to their own ends.

The gallery given us by Trollope contains one more portrait, of fresher
interest in itself, and not less life-like in its swift, sure strokes.
Westerman in Carlyle’s description appears as an Alsatian. With Trollope
he is a pure Prussian, a mercenary soldier who, banished from his native
land, took service as a private in the army of the French republic, was
soon promoted to be an officer, and after this promotion, foreseeing the
future triumph of the extreme republicans, declared himself their
adherent, and, joining Dumourier’s army, became that general’s
aide-de-camp at the time of his attempt to sell the French legions to
their Prussian and Austrian adversaries. Then Westerman left his master,
and had since been the most prompt and ruthless military executioner of
the Convention’s sternest behests. Westerman, as drawn by Trollope, is
both soldier and politician. Two other military personages directing the
campaign against the Vendeans, Bourbotte and Chouardin, take no interest
in the affairs of State, and are merely rough, bold, brave fighters.
Conspicuous among the Vendean leaders was Cathelineau. His spirited and
fearless life’s work, crowned by a soldier’s brave death, excited the
sympathetic admiration of the republic’s two military servants. That
tribute to an enemy’s great qualities was enough to draw down upon them
the anger of their superiors, especially of Barère. It was not, however,
a time to visit such offences with a severe penalty. Both Bourbotte and
Chouardin escaped without any formal reprimand.

To the sketch of Robespierre and the analysis of his character,
Trollope, as might be expected, gives particular care. Here he
supplements rather than follows those who before him had made this
subject their own. “Seagreen incorruptible” was, says Carlyle,
physically a coward, kept from flinching or turning tail only by his
moral strength of purpose. Not so, is Trollope’s verdict. Courage indeed
went conspicuously in hand with constancy of resolution, temperance in
power, and love of country. If at the last he gave way, it was from the
inward torment caused him too late by the discovery that his whole
career had been a blunder, and that none of the objects which he had
first set before himself were fulfilled. Poor mutilated worm, exclaims
the novelist of _La Vendée_, what was there of pusillanimity in the
remorse of conscience prostrating his whole physical frame, when he
compared the aims which animated him at his beginnings with the results
he saw all about him at his close? From Carlyle, Trollope knew of
Mirabeau’s prophecy on hearing Robespierre’s maiden speech: “This man
will do somewhat; he believes every word he says.” So staunch and
sympathetic a Tory as Alison echoes as well as amplifies that view. And
with him Trollope, who like many other writers about this period had
learnt the usefulness of Alison, agrees.

To the English novelist, not less than to the English historian,
Robespierre’s career stands out not as the offspring of any individual
character, but as representing the delusions of the age. Chief among
those errors ranked a belief in the natural innocence of man. With this
fallacy had united itself another--the lawfulness of doing evil that
good might come. Once exterminate by wholesale bloodshed all who
embodied the debasing influences of a corrupt aristocracy, the masses
would rise to the full height of their native greatness. Thus a
triumphant democracy, enthroned upon mountains of patrician corpses,
would wield its beneficent sceptre over a purified and reanimated
society. Here as elsewhere agreeing with, perhaps indebted to, Alison,
Trollope also speaks of Robespierre as omnipotent in Convention and in
the Committee, but as having, too, his master, the will of the populace
of Paris. In union with and in dependence on that, he could alone act,
command, and be obeyed. Alison puts the same idea rather differently
when he says: “Equally with Napoleon during his career of foreign
conquest, Robespierre always marched with the opinions of five millions
of men.”

Apart from the failure of moral fortitude and nerve which weakened and
clouded his end, what particular feature in Robespierre’s temperament
and life gave colour to the charge of cowardice that Carlyle at least
considers so irrefutable? The answer is suggested by Trollope in what
forms the most original passage in this portion of his story. One fond
and tender dream Robespierre could never banish. Once let France, happy,
free, illustrious, and intellectual, own how much she owed to the most
disinterested patriot among her sons, Robespierre would retire to his
small paternal estate in Artois; evincing the grandeur of his soul by
the rejection of all worldly rewards, receiving nothing from his country
but adoration. While in Trollope’s pages he is represented as
preoccupied with visions like these, his garret is entered by a young
woman, decently but very plainly dressed. This was Eleanor Duplay, who,
when Robespierre allowed himself to dream of a future home, was destined
to be the wife of his bosom and the mother of his children. Eleanor
Duplay possessed no mark of superiority to others of her age (about
five-and-twenty) and station. The eldest of four sisters, she specially
helped her mother in caring for the house, of which Robespierre had
become an inmate. With no political aptitude or taste of her own, she
had caught, as she believed, political inspiration from his words,
finding in his pseudo-philosophical dogmas, at once repulsive and
ridiculous to modern ears, great truths begotten of reason and capable
of regenerating her fellow-creatures.

Eleanor Duplay has a special object in approaching Robespierre at this
moment, which brings her into the central current of the story. She had,
in fact, undertaken to plead with her father’s lodger the Vendean cause.
Both the girl herself, and the public opinion whose echoes she caught,
were shocked by the wholesale massacre of women and children now going
on in the doomed district after which Trollope called his story. What
work, she had asked herself, when rallying her courage to the task, so
fitting for the wife-elect of a ruler of the people as to implore the
stern magistrate to temper justice with mercy? Her lover’s reception of
the first hint at her prayer is not promising. The Vendeans, he says,
must be not only conquered but crushed. The religion of Christ, he goes
on, declares that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the
children to the third and fourth generation. Hence the babes must share
the fate of their parents. As for the mothers, it is, says Robespierre,
a false sentiment which teaches us to spare the iniquities of women
because of their sex. This interview leads up to one of the most
dramatic situations of the novel, and is so managed as during its
progress to bring out in effective relief the feature of Robespierre’s
character, which other expositors of it have noticed, but which none
illustrated so fully as Trollope. Eleanor Duplay’s petition had not been
completed when her lover’s suspicion--his predominating trait--expresses
itself in an outburst of dark and terrible anger. In vain she assures
him that no one has set her on to talk to him of this. In ordinary men
suspicion sometimes clouds love; in Robespierre, as he is here
described, it strangled the possibility of love at its birth.

CHAPTER VI

ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE AND HIS OWN

Maternal influence in the Barchester novels--Trollope’s first
literary success with _The Warden_--The Barchester cycle
begun--Origin of the _Barchester Towers_ plot--The cleric in
English fiction--Conservatism of Trollope’s novels--Typical scenes
from _The Warden_--Hiram’s Hospital--Archdeacon Grantly’s
soliloquy--Crushing the rebels--Position of the Barchester series
in the national literature--Collecting the raw material of later
novels--The author’s first meeting with Trollope--The novelist
helped by the official--Defence of Mrs. Proudie as a realistic
study--The Trollopian method of railway travelling--A daily
programme of work and play.

At each successive stage of Anthony Trollope’s literary advance, what he
wrote was, throughout his Post Office days, suggested by no premeditated
adventurous effort or mission such as produced the Dotheboys Hall
chapter in _Nicholas Nickleby_, but was coloured and conditioned by the
shifting circumstances of his daily routine. His surroundings, whatever
for the time they may have been, provided his theme. Out of past
reminiscence, when not from present observation, grew his personages. It
was not in his nature to live two lives, one that of a Post Office
servant, the other that of an author. He made a single life subserve two
ends, one official, the other literary. To this must be added the
twofold obligation to his mother visibly pervading the works that are
now being examined, as the earliest and most stable foundation of his
fame. From the clerical preferences shown in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ he
imbibed his dislike of evangelicalism and its representatives. Mrs.
Trollope too, by early initiating him into the mysteries of feminine
character, imparted to him the skill in feminine analysis displayed
throughout each of his stories that won real and lasting popularity.
Frances Trollope’s appreciations of national character and of its
individual instances invest her book about France with a grace, charm,
and literary effect generally wanting to her _Domestic Manners of the
Americans_. Her sympathetic insight into French life and thought
attracted her son to the same subjects, and go some way towards
explaining the choice of a theme for his third novel, _La Vendée_. That
book brought its author the first money he ever made by his pen, £20.

Except perhaps the cultured and gracious High Churchmanship of the
character which gives the story its name, nothing of parental
inspiration can be seen in the general temper, the subject-matter, the
_dramatis personæ_, or their settings, of the book that, following _La
Vendée_ after an interval of five years, first raised its writer to a
recognised place among the novelists of his time. This was _The Warden_.
Its glimpses of cathedral close, cloister, and of their dignitaries at
duty, or in the private ease of their own homes, owe nothing, whether as
regards treatment or feeling, to Mrs. Trollope’s evangelical
caricatures. Equally independent are they, on the one hand, of Mrs.
Sherwood’s Low Church delineations, or, on the other, of the romances by
which Elizabeth Missing Sewell and Charlotte Mary Yonge rendered lasting
service to the Anglican movement in the nineteenth century’s second
half. Trollope himself always disclaimed any special first-hand intimacy
with clerical life or exclusively clerical society. As a fact, however,
something of the sort had been always familiar to him, if not from
personal experience, still from family tradition. His ancestor, a London
merchant’s son, eventually a dignified and well-known Berkshire vicar,
might easily, if studied from his portraits alone, have suggested
particular features and whole personages for the Barchester gallery. In
connection with the course of its author’s general development, now
being traced, _The Warden_ is a real landmark for other reasons than
that it formed his earliest introduction to the public as a novelist who
had not mistaken his calling and whose works must be read. It was his
fourth attempt at fiction, and enabled him to place before his readers
some lineaments and traits of his most original and best-liked
creations. Its way, however, to popularity was won by slow degrees.
While opening the Barchester series, _The Warden_ did not complete its
growth into world-wide favour till that series had advanced some way.

Apropos of his real start with this book, Trollope, in 1856, told Lord
Houghton that only 750 copies were printed, that they remained over ten
years in hand, but that he regarded the book with affection because,
after having previously written and published for ten years to no
satisfactory purpose, he had made £9, 2_s._ 6_d._ by the first year’s
sale. “Since then,” he added with quiet satisfaction, “I have improved
even upon that.” From the biographical point of view necessarily taken
in these pages, _The Warden_ is specially interesting from being the
second full revelation of its author’s attitude to life and character at
the dawn of his literary success. The pervading temper of _The Warden_
closely resembles that previously shown in _La Vendée_, and may
therefore be described as one of social, moral, and intellectual
conservatism. In the English story, the personal contrasts of
ecclesiastical life making up most of the book were suggested, after the
fashion described by the author, during a summer ramble in Salisbury
Close. That, however, was not the way in which he came by the notion,
not only of _The Warden_, but of _Barchester Towers_ as well.

Both novels, in Trollope’s own words to the present writer, grew out of
_The Times_ correspondence columns during a dull season of the fifties.
The letters raised and argued, for several days or weeks together, the
controversial issue whether a beneficed clergyman could be justified in
systematic absenteeism from the congregation for whose spiritual welfare
he was responsible. The ecclesiastic who had supplied the subject for
this newspaper discussion was first vehemently attacked by open enemies
or candid friends; he then received the best defence possible from
zealous partisans; and so, after an empty bout of argument, the matter
ended. With Anthony Trollope it had only just begun. The whole question
appealed strongly to his natural turn for social casuistry, especially
of the more disputatious sort. The disclosures of personal motive,
rivalry, and object, as the discussion widened and advanced, were
personified by his imagination in a company of concrete forms. The
leading journal’s letters came from many different persons, and combined
every possible variety of opinion. None of the correspondents were known
to the novelist, while his creative touch was secretly endowing them
with the nature, the habit, and the form that was to give them something
like immortality in his pages. Who, he had asked himself, were these
_Times_ letter-writers in private life; what manner of men did they seem
to their associates in the Church and the world, to their families at
home, to their friends abroad? The mental answers to these questions,
elaborated by him during his official progress throughout the country,
resulted in the bodying forth of things unknown, clerical or lay.

Thus did strong imagination, as Hippolyta puts it,[9] call for the first
time into existence beings who, though now belonging to a past order,
for the Victorian age were as full of actuality as Septimus Harding and
Archdeacon Grantly, and who will be scarcely less useful to the
nineteenth-century historian than, in their pictures of the early
Georgian epoch, both Lecky and Macaulay found Congreve’s Parson
Barnabas, Fielding’s amiably evangelical Parson Adams, and his
antithesis Parson Trulliber. With those personages there are no
creations in the Barchester novels that can be compared. And this for
the sufficient reason that Fielding, like Congreve, aimed at reproducing
with the pen the vigorous effects of George Morland’s brush. Trollope,
on the other hand, had no sooner advanced some way with _The Warden_ and
the stories which followed it than he had satisfied himself that his
most successful and congenial line was that of light-comedy narrative.
The social atmosphere breathed, and the men and women brought before us
in the Barchester novels are not dominantly, still less exclusively,
clerical. Some of the most popular types are introduced chiefly for the
purpose of connecting the more or less ecclesiastical fictions that
followed _The Warden_ with the panorama of Church dignitaries that
formed Trollope’s early speciality. Even in _Barchester Towers_ several
of the sketches most conspicuous for inherent vitality are altogether
lay. The Stanhopes, and of these the Signora above all, who makes of her
sofa a throne before which the Barchester manhood prostrates itself,
Mrs. Bold with her genuine or pretended lovers, form the purely secular
background against which the Quiverfuls of Puddingdale, the Crawleys of
Hogglestock, are thrown out in strong, sometimes painful, but always
effective, relief.

As in _The Warden_ Archdeacon Grantly leads the way to _Barchester
Towers_, so in _Barchester Towers_ Mr. Arabin, Fellow of Lazarus,
Oxford, links that novel to _The Last Chronicle of Barset_; while the
Thornes of Ullathorne open the way to _Doctor Thorne_, Squire Thorne’s
cousin, the social and medical oracle of Greshamsbury Manor, not far
from Gatherum Castle, whose owner, the Duke of Omnium, is to be the
central figure in the political novels. As to _Doctor Thorne_, the
heroine, Mary Thorne, if not quite such a masterpiece as Miss Dunstable,
combines with the Scatcherd portraits to explain the abiding and even
growing popularity of this really great novel. What Trollope’s
sympathies were in _La Vendée_, such they showed themselves, not only in
_The Warden_ but in all his subsequent dealing with social and political
topics. “Ask for the old paths, where there is the good way, and walk
therein, and find rest therein.” The Hebrew prophet’s words[10] might
have furnished Trollope with a congenial text for a lay-sermon that
would have summed up all his convictions and have reflected, as in a
mirror, the essential and deep-rooted conservatism of his mind. At the
General Election of 1868, indeed, Trollope was to stand as a Liberal for
Beverley. His training in the Civil Service had long since deepened his
distrust of innovation and his hearty resistance to whatever savoured of
new-fangled ideas. At the Post Office, whether serving under Whig or
Tory chiefs, he always stood for the straitest traditions of the
department. He showed himself as obstinately conservative in the
traditions of its routine as his natural tone of mind, fortified by his
mother’s precepts and prejudices, had caused him to be in politics.

As a clerical portrait-painter Trollope produced his work in advance of
George Eliot by four years. Nothing but mutual dissimilarity can be
found between the two schools in which they were respectively trained
for the work. Nor had George Eliot ever lived in Trollope’s exclusive
social environment. Yet Mr. Irwine, in _Adam Bede_, in his refined
vicarage, with his high-bred mother for housekeeper, might be claimed as
a distant relation by Archdeacon Grantly, notwithstanding the
diametrically opposite associations and experiences of the two
novelists. With George Eliot, its Irwines imparted to the Church a grace
and sweetness that made itself felt even by Dissenters and infidels.
“Imagine,” Anthony Trollope seems to murmur in a series of audible
asides, “the curse of a religious establishment that took its tone not
from the Grantlys but the Slopes.” _The Warden_, like the rest of the
series it opened, is too universally familiar to need any analysis of
its characters or its incidents here. It contains, however, certain
passages which strike the social keynote of its author’s personal
predilections in matters connected with ecclesiastical polity. The
portions of the book now referred to show, in such clear-cut sentences,
so unambiguously and picturesquely, their author’s fondness for the old
_régime_, notwithstanding, if not almost because of, its defects, that a
few extracts from them will recall more clearly his standpoint in the
Barchester books than could be done by pages of description or comment.
About Septimus Harding himself nothing need be said. St. Cross Hospital,
the original of his Hiram’s Hospital, lies about a mile from Winchester
in the Twyford direction. Its chief custodian might naturally therefore
be a Wykehamist. Could anything, therefore, so gentle have come from the
college of St. Mary Winton? Anthony Trollope would have answered “Yes,”
and did indeed once call _The Warden_ an idealised photograph, whose
chief features were, by an eclectic process, taken from more than one
member of the Sewell family whom, if he had first seen at Winchester, he
only came to know well and observe closely when visiting New College, as
his brother’s guest.

Equally realistic was the genesis of the principal figures grouped round
the Warden. They comprise such old friends as his devoted daughter
Eleanor; John Bold, her declared lover, who is denounced by the
masterful Archdeacon as an enemy of the Establishment, but whom Mr.
Harding is not unwilling to take for his second son-in-law; the inmates
of the hospital themselves; the grateful Bunce, the Warden’s favourite
and champion; Abel Handy, who leads the rebels and malcontents; Mr.
Chadwick, whose family have supplied the Bishops of Barchester with
stewards from time immemorial; the local man of business enlisted on
behalf of the _status quo_; and, in the background, the London advisers
of the Warden’s friends, Cox and Cummins, who recommend Mr. Harding to
seek an interview with that very eminent Queen’s Counsel, a thorough
Churchman, a sound Conservative, in every respect the best man to be
got, Sir Abraham Haphazard. When in due course that conference has been
obtained, Trollope’s portrait of the legal pundit is at one or two
points reminiscent of that sound lawyer, notwithstanding his life’s
failure, his own father. There is also a paternal touch in the portrait
of Mr. Harding himself. The Warden’s sumptuous treatise on church music
recalls Thomas Anthony Trollope’s erudite work, the _Encyclopædia
Ecclesiastica_, mentioned to, if not encouraged by, John Murray, but
never issuing from Albemarle Street.

Anthony Trollope’s style has been said by twentieth-century critics to
lack distinction. But the various pictures of Dr. Grantly’s intervention
in the hospital affairs have the strength, the certainty, and the ease
of touch which declared in every line the observant humorist. In the
pages to which the reader will presently be referred, Trollope shows his
constitutional liking for the old, well-to-do, gentlemanlike
Erastianism of the Establishment not by any generalities of comment or
of moral reflection, but by narrative and descriptive diction as direct,
graphic, and significant as any that ever came from his own or from any
other contemporary pen. Archdeacon Grantly is on his way to Hiram’s
Hospital; noting the signs of picturesque prosperity around him, he
thinks with growing bitterness of those whose impiety would venture to
disturb the goodly grace of cathedral institutions. The Archdeacon’s
complacency has at once been deepened and has developed a new
sensitiveness by the mutiny among Hiram’s almsmen, for the purpose of
quelling which he is now on his way to the hospital. The ringleaders
have not organised the movement without some opposition. The petition to
the diocesan authorities setting forth their grievances has only secured
signatures with some difficulty. The hundred a year claimed by the
almsmen as their right seems to several more likely to be plundered by
their children or belongings than to benefit themselves. The Handy and
Skulpit faction has, however, now been put on its mettle, and already
snaps its fingers at the resistance of the powers that be, “especially
old Catgut with Calves to help him”--otherwise Mr. Harding with his
violoncello, and his son-in-law, in his ecclesiastical war paint.

All these things are well known to the Archdeacon, with whom, as the
representative of Anglican orthodoxy in its most attractive form,
Trollope makes it plain enough what his own sympathies are. Who, our
author asks, would not feel charity for a prebendary, when walking the
quiet length of that long aisle at Winchester, looking at those decent
houses, at that trim grass plat, and feeling the solemn, orderly comfort
of the spot? Or who could be hard upon a dean, while wandering about the
sweet close of Hereford, and owning that here solemn tower and storied
window are all in unison and all perfect? Again, who could lie basking
in the halls of Salisbury, gaze on Jewel’s Library, and on that
unequalled spire, without feeling that bishops should sometimes be rich?
Looking upon this pleasant scene almost with a proprietorial interest,
the Archdeacon had answered his father-in-law’s question, Why shouldn’t
they petition? with a brazen echo of the inquiring words and a remark
that he would like to say something to them altogether, and let them
know why they shouldn’t.

Poor Mr. Harding is equally terror-stricken at this first threat of what
is coming, and at his relative’s later insistence on the Warden’s
company upon the occasion. And now the eventful afternoon has come; the
hour has struck. See the Archdeacon as, in Trollope’s picture, he stands
up to make his speech. Erect in the middle of that little square, he
looked like an ecclesiastical statue placed there as a fitting
illustration of the Church militant here on earth; his shovel-hat,
large, new, and well pronounced, a Churchman’s hat in every inch,
declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker’s broad brim; his
heavy eyebrow, large, open eyes, full mouth and chin, expressed the
solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine cloth,
told how well-to-do was its estate. One hand ensconced within his
pocket, he evinced the stubborn hold which our mother Church keeps on
her temporal possessions. The other loose for action, was ready to
fight, if need be, in her defence. Below these the decorous breeches and
neat black gaiters, showing so admirably that well-turned leg, betokened
the grace, the decency, the outward beauty of our church establishment.
Thus much for the orator.[11] The speech that follows, read at full
length in the original text, will be admitted to justify every word said
about this episode here. It is also to be noticed that, within less than
ten years of his earliest essay in fiction, Trollope had touched the
high-water mark of his literary excellence. As regards terseness and
picturesqueness combined, he never afterwards described any scene with
more power and felicity than Dr. Grantly’s address to the insurgent
almsmen, and his father-in-law’s inward misery while he is compelled to
stand by and listen.

Greater writers than Trollope have failed always to be sure of doing
their best work, as indeed they have themselves been the first to admit.
“I consider,” said Murray to Byron, “about half of your _Don Juan_ to be
first-rate.” Disclaiming that measure of praise, the poet continued:
“Were it as you say, I should have surpassed Homer, Virgil, Dante, and
Shakespeare; for about which of these can it be said that half of his
work was up to the highest level of his power?” If throughout the rest
of _The Warden_, and in its Barchester successors, Trollope had kept up
the concentration of thought, the close packing of graphic phrase, and
the general exercise of brain-power at the same point as in the
specimens now given, he might have left behind him portraits scarcely
less instinct with immortality than David Copperfield, Micawber,
Steerforth, Uriah Heep, or, passing to the rival of him who created
these, Arthur Pendennis, Clive, Ethel, and Colonel Newcome. Even as it
is, the succession of works beginning with _The Warden_, ending with
_The Last Chronicle of Barset_, and taking just twelve years for their
production, will bear comparison with all but the masterpieces of
Trollope’s greatest contemporaries. They will, that is, find a place
only a little below _The Newcomes_ and _Our Mutual Friend_ or George
Eliot’s _Middlemarch_. Among the fathers of English fiction, Trollope
ranks with Richardson for novelty of ideas and genuine originality of
characters. His portraits may exaggerate personal features, but the more
important of his creations are met with in his pages for the first time.
Good or bad, excellent or mediocre, his Barchester men, women, and
children are in all their lineaments his own.

Among those figuring in Messrs. Longmans’ authors’ list during the
fifties was the Rev. James Pycroft, author of _The Cricket Field_, as
well as one or two stories. Pycroft’s opinion was justly valued and
sometimes asked by William Longman. Apropos of _The Warden_, soon after
its publication Pycroft said to Longman: “Here at least you are breaking
new ground. Novels of adventure, of naval or military life, and of
politics by Plumer Ward’s successor Benjamin Disraeli, must be at a
discount. But the domestic economy of the Church, as it is sketched
here, is absolutely virgin soil. Let your new author stick to that; so
will he add to your wealth and, if he have staying power, build up his
own fame.” That judgment of a clerical and literary expert, duly
conveyed by the verdict of the publisher to the author, was followed in
1858 by _The Athenæum_ calling _The Warden_ a clever, spirited, sketchy
story, upon the difficulties surrounding that vexed question, the
administration of charitable trusts. Here was enough encouragement for
Trollope to write, and for Longman to publish, _Barchester Towers_; for
that, the author did not go more out of his way specially to make any
clerical studies than for _The Warden_. He had, to quote his own words
to the present writer, “seen a certain amount of clergymen on my Post
Office tours, just as I had seen them before at Harrow or Winchester; I
think too I may have inherited some of my good mother’s antipathies
towards a certain clerical school. But if I have shown any particular
knowledge of or insight into clerical life, it has been evolved from
knowledge of the world in general, varied experience, real hard study,
and a serious course of self-culture. And, I most emphatically add, not
from special intimacy with one, or indeed any, cathedral precinct and
its personages. Take my Barchester. Here and there may be detected a
touch of Salisbury, sometimes perhaps of Winchester. But what I am
conscious of having depicted is the Platonic idea ([Greek: idea]) of a
cathedral town; after all,” he added, “in clerical nature of either sex
there is a great deal of human nature. Humanity varies infinitely in its
outer garb; its inward heart is much about the same everywhere. Aproned
prelates and gaitered deans, with their domestic belongings, are much as
the middle-aged gentlemen who are the heads of purely secular
households. Is there as close a family likeness between my different
Barchester books as there used to be between the successive instalments
of _The Naggletons_ in _Punch_; and is Mrs. Proudie more ecclesiastical
because she possesses to an usual degree the petticoated intermeddler’s
capacity of making her husband’s life a burden to him? Dickens gibbeted
cant in the person of Dissenters, of whom I never knew anything. I have
done so in Mr. Slope, an Anglican, but the unbeneficed descendant of my
mother’s Vicar of Wrexhill.”

The twelve years separating _The Warden_ from _The Last Chronicle of
Barset_ produced fifteen novels. Of these, six were variations on the
Barchester theme, nine placed the reader among scenes and persons
entirely new. Among the characters thus introduced to the public were
some who soon became as real as their author, and whose names to-day are
at least as familiar as his own. Trollope was often accused of
exaggeration in the case of his Barchester folk. He met the charge in
this way. “If you look at them as likenesses of persons seen in the
everyday life of cathedral towns, or in their little ecclesiastical
worlds elsewhere, it may be so. But from my point of view their
ecclesiastical setting is merely an accident. Take them for what I meant
them--typical actors and actresses in the comedy of life on the domestic
and provincial stage--where am I guilty of extravagance or caricature?
_Cucullus non facit monachum._ A man may wear a black coat and white
choker, and clothe his nether limbs in priestly gear, without losing his
idiosyncrasies as a human being. As Sam Slick said, there is a great
deal of nature in human nature; even, he might have added, among the
clerical class. I costumed and styled my people ecclesiastically for the
sake of novelty. Beyond that I never intended my clerical portraiture to
go.”

While making his studies and arranging his materials for the stories of
English life that will bear comparison with Jane Austen, he did a good
deal of reading, chiefly with a view of generally equipping himself for
magazine and perhaps even newspaper writing. At the great world show in
Hyde Park of 1851 he humorously proposed to exhibit four three-volume
novels, all failures, but together furnishing a conclusive proof of
industry. That was before the one-volume success of _The Warden_. The
triumphant discovery of the line in which he could command success did
not dispel some misgivings as to the dropped stitches and the blank
places in his education. These weak points must be seen to without
delay. So he sets his mother and his brother Tom certain pieces of
research work to do. First they were to hunt up thirteen names, not
biblical, of personal forces in the world’s history, beings of
unquestionable genius--great men, great women, great captains, and great
rebels. With the exception of the relatives now mentioned, Trollope
certainly never requisitioned friend or kinsfolk in this way. Throughout
his life he had two fears: first, lest he should write himself out;
secondly, lest the intellectual nourishment he took in should be unequal
to the creative effort of pen that he put forth. Hence, whether in
Ireland, in Essex, or in London, he always had a regular supply of books
from Mudie’s. These, if he did not look into them, he expected his wife,
his niece, or some other member of his home circle to read and to talk
about to him. But in England, as in Ireland, it was the Post Office
servant who made the novelist.

While that process was going forward I first became known to Anthony
Trollope. Living, as a child, with my parents at Budleigh Salterton in
South Devon, I found one day the morning’s lessons interrupted by the
announcement that a strange gentleman who seemed in a hurry desired to
see my father at once. The visitor, then on his Post Office rounds in
the west, and known as the author of _The Warden_, and the visited had
not seen each other since the days when they were schoolboys at
Winchester together. The stranger, I can just recollect, as I watched
him at our midday dinner, seemingly added to his naturally large
dimensions by a shaggy overcoat, or it may have been a large,
double-breasted pea-jacket, making him look like one of those
sea-captains about whom in the fifties we used to hear a great deal on
the Devonshire coast. Penny postage, with all its intended benefits, was
then, it must be remembered, on its trial. Every corner of the western
counties had been, or at the time referred to was being, travelled over
by Trollope for the purpose of ensuring the regular delivery of letters
throughout the kingdom, of inquiring into all complaints, with a view
of investigating the circumstances and removing the cause. This official
pilgrimage was for two reasons a landmark in Trollope’s course, literary
and official. It gave him all that he wanted in the way of human
varieties for peopling not only the pages of _The Warden_ but, in their
earlier portions, of the other Barchester books. Secondly, it enabled
him to show that the public department he had entered as a youth of
nineteen had now no more active, alert, and resourceful servant than
himself. He had for some time reported the usefulness of roadside
letter-boxes in France, and advised their being tried in England. His
proposal was experimentally adopted. On his suggestion of the exact spot
for the purpose, the first pillar-box was erected at St. Heliers,
Jersey, in 1853.

Four years after having created that monument of his official zeal and
skill, he improved on his success with _The Warden_ by the appearance,
in 1857, of _Barchester Towers_. On the additions made by this new story
to the group first seen in _The Warden_, it is needless here to dwell.
Mr. Slope again illustrates Trollope’s hereditary dislike of the average
evangelical clergyman. As for Slope’s patroness, Mrs. Proudie,
Trollope’s apology for her may be given here in his own words. These
were first addressed to the already mentioned James Pycroft, William
Longman’s friend. “Before you put her down as a freak of fancy, let me
ask you one question. Review the spiritual lords and their better halves
such as you have known, and tell me whether it is the bishop or the
bishop’s wife who always takes the lead in magnifying the episcopal
office? If you and I live long enough, we shall see an indefinite
extension of the movement that has already created new sees in
Manchester and Ripon. In the larger and older sees there will be a cry
that the diocesan work is too heavy for one man; then will come the
demand for the revival of suffragan bishops. You now speak about the
higher and lower order of the clergy; you will then have a superior and
inferior class of prelates. If at some great country-house gathering
there happen to be a full-grown wearer of the mitre and his episcopal
assistant, you may expect to hear the hostess debating whether the
suffragan should have his seat at the dinner-table when the guests sit
down, or whether his chief might not prefer that he should come in
afterwards with the children and the governess to dessert. He, good easy
man, may take it all meekly enough, but not so his lady. When the
suffragans are multiplied, human nature will undergo some great
revolution if the suffraganesses do not contain a good many who are as
fussy, as officious, as domineering, and ill-bred as my chatelaine of
the Barchester palace.”

“Boy, help me on with my coat.” Those were the only words I can
recollect Trollope addressing to me on the occasion just described. It
was not until the earliest years of my London work, that I heard his
voice again. He had then settled in or near London, and had vouchsafed
me the beginnings of an acquaintance which a little later was to grow
into an intimacy ended only by his death. During the seventies, my
occupations took me a great deal about different parts of the United
Kingdom. One November day, at Euston Station, he entered the compartment
of the train in which I was already seated, on some journey due north.
Just recognising me, he began to talk cheerily enough for some little
time; then, putting on a huge fur cap, part of which fell down over his
shoulders, he suddenly asked: “Do you ever sleep when you are
travelling? I always do”; and forthwith, suiting the action to the word,
sank into that kind of snore compared by Carlyle to a Chaldean trumpet
in the new moon. Rousing himself up as we entered Grantham, or Preston,
Station, he next inquired: “Do you ever write when you are travelling?”
“No.” “I always do.” Quick as thought out came the tablet and the
pencil, and the process of putting words on paper continued without a
break till the point was reached at which, his journey done, he left the
carriage.

Several years later, when recalling this meeting, he told me that during
this journey he had added a couple of chapters to a serial story. Ever
since he had first turned novelist in Ireland, he had found himself too
busy with Post Office work to do much in the day, too tired and sleepy
for anything like a long spell of labour at night. He recollected having
heard Sir Charles Trevelyan speak of the intellectual freshness and
capacity for prolonged exertion felt by him when, having gone to bed an
hour or so before midnight, he woke up as long after. “Never,” said Sir
Charles, “did my brain seem clearer or stronger, and the work of minute
writing easier or better done than when, indisposed to sleep, I went
through my papers, often in the quiet which precedes the dawn.” The
suggestion was no sooner made than followed. At first Trollope exactly
imitated Trevelyan, and, after a short nap, worked for an hour or two,
and then composed himself to slumber again. By degrees he made the
experiment of taking as much sleep as he could by 5.30 A.M. Then, if he
did not wake of his own accord, he was called, in his early days by his
old Irish groom, afterwards by another servant. Coffee and bread and
butter were brought to him in his dressing-room. Then came the daily
task of pen he had set himself. This accomplished, if in London he
mounted his horse for never less than a good half-hour’s ride in Hyde
Park before sitting down to the family breakfast as nearly as possible
at eleven. That left him with a comfortable sense of necessary duty
fulfilled, and the whole day lay before him for pleasure or business,
his chief afternoon amusement being a rubber at the Garrick.

CHAPTER VII

ON AND OFF DUTY ROUND THE WORLD

Chafing in harness--“Agin the Government”--_The Three Clerks_--A
visit to Mrs. Trollope--Florentine visitors of note in letters and
art--A widened circle of famous friends--Diamond cut
diamond--Trollope’s new sphere of activity--In Egypt as G.P.O.
ambassador--Success of his mission--_Doctor Thorne_--Homeward
bound--Post and pen work by the way--North and south--_The West
Indies and the Spanish Main_--Carlyle’s praise of it--_Castle
Richmond_ and some contemporary novels--An early instance of
Thackeray’s influence over Trollope’s writings--Famous editors and
publishers--The flowing tide of fortune.

The high-class Civil Service official is opposed to change. Trollope’s
constitutional conservatism shows itself in his sympathetic and
approving tolerance of those parts and personages in the ecclesiastical
polity generally held to call more than others for the reformer’s
pruning-knife. At the Post Office, towards the public, and the juniors
of his department, a martinet, Trollope never outgrew something of the
rebel’s readiness, on the slightest provocation, to rise against the
powers that be. His feud with Rowland Hill had become, during the later
years of Hill’s secretaryship, the talk of the office. During something
like a quarter of a century, in divers capacities and in many different
parts of the world, he had proved his strenuous, varied,
self-sacrificing loyalty to the public service. Yet uniform zeal for his
work did not prevent him from sometimes measuring swords with his
chiefs. It was _The Three Clerks_, published in 1858, which, rather than
any of the socio-clerical stories, first commended Trollope to Thackeray
as a story-teller. What specially attracted Thackeray to this novel was
its Katie Woodward, the best specimen of an English girl which the
author had yet drawn. The leading incidents passed for a satire upon the
scheme of competitive examinations then advocated chiefly by Sir Charles
Trevelyan, the undoubted Sir Gregory Hardlines of the story. This
element of caricature, and the outspoken criticism of the highest
magnates, had already roused much official and personal wrath, when the
novelist crowned his offence by orally preaching to the rank and file
the duty of a stout stand against the attack by the ruling powers not
only on their clerkly rights but their privileges as Englishmen.

At this time the Civil Service had not become a free profession. In one
of the great rooms of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Trollope collected and told
malcontents of the place that it was their duty to agitate till, outside
office-hours and in all personal relationships, they were as much their
own masters as if they had nothing to do with State employ. Mr.
Secretary Rowland Hill was at once up in arms. The firebrand who had
thus tried to inflame the worst passions of the Queen’s servants ought,
he declared openly, to be dismissed. These words, and the incidents
which had led up to them, eventually reached the Postmaster-General,
then the second Lord Colchester, a member of the Derby Government. The
inflammatory speaker was therefore sent for by the Minister, and told
that the authorities of the department were anxious to be relieved of
his services. “Is your lordship,” meekly asked Trollope, “prepared to
dismiss me?” In reply Lord Colchester, who, with his father’s Eldonian
Toryism, combined a certain sense of humour that his father did not
possess, smiling oracularly, deprecated any recourse to extremities.
From that portion of his long duel with Rowland Hill, Trollope
consequently came forth with flying colours.

After such a triumph over his chief adversary, he thought he might allow
himself a little holiday. His mother still lived at Florence. This town,
though not becoming the national capital till 1864, had long been among
the most cosmopolitan, interesting, and pleasant of social centres in
Europe. Many of the names best known in Anglo-Saxon letters and art on
both sides of the Atlantic were habitual visitors or occasional
residents. England had its representatives in Elizabeth and Robert
Browning, at their beautiful villa, Casa Guidi, its outside a thicket of
flowers whose fragrance could be scented from afar, its interior a
jungle of carpets and tapestry such as Clytemnestra might have bade her
lord to tread on his return from Troy. Among other notable figures were
E. C. Grenville Murray, of whom more will be said hereafter, and Charles
Lever, then recently appointed vice-consul at Spezzia. In 1867 Lever
became consul at Trieste, but neither his earlier nor his later office
prevented his constant reappearance among those acquaintances on the
Arno with whom, almost up to the time of his death in 1872, he appears
specially at home and at his best in or out of his native Dublin.

One memorable experience Anthony Trollope brought away from his visit to
his mother at Florence. She took him to see Walter Savage Landor at
Fiesole. Their host some years earlier had appeared in _Bleak House_ as
Boythorn, greatly, as was said, to his own indignation. As a fact, none
received more pleasure from the sketch than Landor himself. “Dickens,”
he said to young Trollope, “never did anything more life-like than when
he portrayed my superficial ferocity and inherent tenderness.” He then
told his visitors on no account to miss reading two works which he had
recently taken up, and had indeed to some extent rediscovered. One of
these was Hope’s _Anastasius_; the other was the work[12] by which
Trelawny had made his name, just a generation before Byronic
associations widened his notoriety, largely developed his anecdotal
vein, and qualified him for sitting to Thackeray for the portrait of
Captain Sumphington. Of other famous Anglo-Florentines Trollope saw much
not only then, but afterwards. For the _Bleak House_ incident just
described, exactly as I heard it from them, I am indebted to two of
these, the future Lord Houghton, then Monckton Milnes, and Edward Smythe
Pigott, who died, on the eve of the twentieth century, dramatic censor,
but at the time now looked back upon was a brilliant young man of an old
Somerset stock and of some fortune, just plunging into literature and
journalism. The acquaintance thus begun gradually ripened into a
lifelong intimacy. This gave Pigott the distinction of being one among
the very few who can have been almost simultaneously consulted, by two
nineteenth-century novelists so well known as Anthony Trollope and
George Eliot, about developments of plot and character in at least two
stories by each of these writers that eventually appeared about the same
time.

Through some of those already mentioned, Trollope made two interesting
additions to his acquaintances, either of which would have sufficed to
make his stay in Florence a thing to be remembered. One of these was R.
C. Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, then on his Italian travels;
the other was Frederick Leveson-Gower, the late Lord Granville’s
brother, to whom he became subsequently indebted for much of his insight
into parliamentary and party matters, all utilised by him to the full in
his later political novels. Among the brethren of the brush on
pilgrimage to the capital of Italian art, J. E. Millais, long afterwards
to become Trollope’s friend and illustrator, was in Florence during
Trollope’s visit, but did not meet him then. Frederick Leighton and G.
F. Watts, however, were both for the first time seen by Trollope more
than once during a foreign trip, marking a distinct stage in his
intellectual growth. Watts at this time was a painter of established
renown, having executed his Westminster Hall cartoon of Caractacus in
1843. Leighton had made his mark more recently, though it was on another
Italian trip some years before Trollope saw him that he had gathered
local colour and inspiration for his great picture of “Cimabue’s Madonna
carried in procession through the streets of Florence,” and bought by
Queen Victoria in 1855.

In Florence too, when Trollope first saw it, were also other men of mark
and interest, with whom the acquaintance, then first made, grew
afterwards in England to familiar friendship. The first and only Lord
Glenesk, at that time Algernon Borthwick, proposed Trollope for the
English Club. When the two men dined there for the first time together,
they were joined by another famous Anglo-Tuscan, the then renowned
correspondent of _The Morning Post_, James Montgomery Stuart, always
full of good stories, especially about the twin literary leaders and
rivals at the time, Carlyle and Macaulay. One was to the following
effect: Sixteen years after its publication in _The Edinburgh_,
Carlyle’s _Frederick the Great_ wiped out Macaulay’s estimate of the
Prussian sovereign. Montgomery Stuart, touching on the subject to
Macaulay, whom he knew well, saw his face suddenly crimson. Then came a
torrent of invective against Carlyle, whose writings Stuart was told to
avoid as so much poison. As a novelist, Trollope had not then gone
beneath the surface for the cross-currents and the violent eddies that
disturb the waters of matrimonial life. He had a rare opportunity of
studying such incidents first hand during his stay under the shadow of
Brunelleschi’s Duomo; for the place then was known by the French as
pre-eminently the city of _les femmes galantes_, and was already not
less notorious than Paris itself as the abode of Anglo-Saxon couples
detached, semi-detached, or some time since wholly disunited. The
already mentioned Charles Lever, whose habitual absences at Florence
from his Spezzia vice-consulate would have cost him his post but for the
unfailing entertainment with which his vivacious reports furnished the
Foreign Office, was far from being the only old friend from Ireland to
repeat on Italian soil the welcome he had given on Irish to the same
visitor just a generation earlier. Sir William Gregory of Coole Park,
and at least one of the Moyville Vandeleurs, all from time to time shone
forth in this pleasantest of Anglo-Italian constellations.

The trip now described so brightened Trollope himself as, in my old
friend Pigott’s words, to make him help Charles Lever towards keeping
Florence society in good spirits. It sent him back to England with a
mind full of fresh ideas and characters for his books. But at this
locomotive epoch Trollope was fond of applying to his own circumstances
the words of Tristram Shandy’s scullion: “We are here to-day, and there
to-morrow.” Before he could settle down to another novel, he was under
marching orders again. The truth is St. Martin’s-le-Grand now saw in
Trollope not only a capable servant but a seasoned and tactful man of
the world, with the wit to turn his cosmopolitan experiences into
political as well as literary capital. The service, thought Lord
Colchester, still at the head of the department, might as well get out
of him, while he was there, all they could. Anthony Trollope therefore
found himself told off to the land of the Pharaohs under circumstances
that involve some reference to previous Anglo-Egyptian relations. A new
Anglo-Egyptian treaty was wanted. The chief Irish surveyor, as Trollope
then was, seemed to the rulers of St. Martin’s-le-Grand the proper
person to negotiate it. From Dublin, therefore, to London, quick as
steam could take him, the G.P.O. ambassador sped. Preoccupied and
overcharged with official affairs, he found time in the midst of
arrangements for his departure eastward, to plant the new novel which he
had just planned, _Doctor Thorne_, upon a publisher, not however on the
new Burlington Street house to which he had already mentioned it.
Richard Bentley, having first entertained Trollope’s terms, £400 down,
for the book, cried off. The figure, he said, must be reduced by at
least one hundred. In the case of the man with whom he had now to deal,
it would have been wiser to refuse the manuscript outright than to make
any attempt at beating down the author. The novelist at once told Mr.
Bentley that, having changed his terms, he need trouble himself to think
no more of the matter. The miscarriage of these negotiations was to have
consequences more far-reaching than could have been foreseen by Trollope
himself. He at once went to Chapman and Hall, then doing their business
at 193 Piccadilly. The senior partner, Edward Chapman, agreed to take
_Doctor Thorne_ at its writer’s valuation. Thus began a connection
noticeable alike in the annals of that publishing house and in the
career of Trollope himself.

The time taken by these little matters did not prevent Trollope’s
reaching Egypt on the appointed day. On his arrival at Cairo, the first
thing that struck Trollope, like most other new-comers to the place, and
unfamiliar with oriental sights, was the donkey-boys--who are, or were,
to Cairo much what commissionaires are to London--waiting at central
points to take messages and letters. Trollope had arranged for himself a
little programme of travel in the Near East. He did not therefore
propose lingering on the Nile a day longer than his mission absolutely
required. One of nineteenth-century Cairo’s social peculiarities noticed
by Trollope was the rarity of private or official addresses among native
personages. Parcels and papers were left for them at Shepheard’s or some
other hotel, and eventually came into their hands when they next
happened to be passing that way. The manager of the inn where Trollope
put up, in reply to a question about the residence or office of the
Pasha’s minister with whom the visitor’s business lay, assured him that
anything left at the hotel bureau could not fail to be placed before
him. This did not at all accord with Trollope’s ideas. He insisted on
sallying forth at once with all the documents; he had already
ascertained in what direction he might encounter or at least hear of the
official whom he wanted. Approaching the first donkey-boy visible in the
street, he flung himself into the saddle and rode off on his errand. The
desired individual, however, remained for the present out of sight.

On returning to his hotel, Trollope heard that his Excellency Nubar Bey
had called, and was waiting to see him. That able and urbane Armenian
statesman many years later became the Khedive Tewfik’s Prime Minister.
Received by him at Cairo in the eighties, I found he had not forgotten
his interviews with Trollope in 1858. Very pleasant, very
conversational, but somewhat peremptory had he found the author of the
Barchester novels. “It was, however,” continued Nubar, “some time before
Mr. Trollope found me, I fear, quite satisfactory; even then his manner
of negotiating had about it less of the diplomatist than of the author
who might have meditated scolding his publisher if he did not come round
to his terms, and of carrying his literary wares elsewhere.” The one
difference between Nubar and his visitor was the rate of speed at which
the mails should be carried between Alexandria and Suez. In pressing for
a longer time than Trollope thought necessary, the Egyptian official was
suspected by the envoy from St. Martin’s-le-Grand, as he himself said,
and perhaps quite wrongly,[13] of wishing to oblige the Peninsular and
Oriental Company rather than the British Government. The matter was soon
adjusted in accordance with the English view.

While these diplomatic conversations were in progress, Trollope
contrived, of course, not to neglect his writing. The fortnight he
remained in Cairo sufficed for completing the novel already on hand,
_Doctor Thorne_, and commencing a new story that came out a year later,
_The Bertrams_. For that work, the rest of Trollope’s oriental
wanderings (1858-59) provided useful and entertaining material. The
Palestine scenes in that novel reflected the author’s experiences of a
visit to Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. Then came the return journey
home through Spain. In _John Bull_, one of the stories in _Tales of All
Countries_ (1861-1870), he recorded what happened to himself during an
excursion on the Guadalquivir. In Spain there were no postal treaties to
be engineered, and no English Post Offices to inspect. His adventure on
the Spanish river, that of mistaking a Castilian Duke for a
bull-fighter, had occurred just after a little spell of work, _en route_
for England once more. The postal arrangements of Malta and Gibraltar
were overhauled, with the result that private residents and business
houses on “the Rock” received their letters more regularly, if not
earlier, than they did before.

The period of Trollope’s excursions now described was historically
memorable as that which witnessed the beginning of the Suez Canal. In
the record of Trollope’s own life, his prodigious powers of writing
against time, rivalled only by Mr. Gladstone’s feats, on his oratorical
pilgrimages, of speaking against it, reached their culminating point.
Six years before Trollope’s birth, the pedestrian record had been broken
by Captain Barclay’s walk of a thousand miles in a thousand hours. At
the age of forty-three Trollope was habitually performing analogous
feats of endurance with his pen, and could have backed himself to cover
more pages of two hundred and fifty words each in a working year than
any writer of his time. The pace at which he passed from one piece of
task-work to another, or rather combined several at the same time,
caused the most brilliant of Trollope’s Post Office contemporaries, F.
I. Scudamore, to say that nothing could give an idea of the man’s
all-embracing versatility but Ducrow at Astley’s simultaneously riding
half a dozen horses round the ring. Test the truth of this simile by the
work of the twelve months that opened with the Egyptian mission. Of
course, too, that record further reminds one that only a man endowed
with very exceptional strength of brain and body could have prolonged
his course to the threshold of old age without wearing himself out
before.

The material for the serious love-making and flirtation pictures amid
Syrian ruins, palm-trees, and deserts had been collected, but not
entirely worked up, before that expedition closed. The finishing strokes
were to be given during a hurried stay at Glasgow, whither he had been
sent on Post Office business. So far, few men of Trollope’s social taste
and literary notoriety could have made fewer personal acquaintances
among the rank and file of his craft. About newspaper writers, and
editors in particular, personally he knew absolutely nothing. His
journey beyond the Tweed introduced him in Edinburgh to the most
distinguished Scotch journalist of the day, Alexander Russel, who had
made for himself on _The Scotsman_ a position at least equal to that
belonging in London to J. T. Delane of _The Times_. On the Conservative
side James Hannay had not then been installed at _The Edinburgh
Courant_. As, however, on comparing notes in London many years after the
two men found out, Hannay and Trollope had just met each other beneath
Professor Blackie’s roof.

The eventfulness to Trollope of the year 1858 did not end with the
incidents already recorded. He had acquitted himself so well in his
Egyptian treaty-making, not less than in the tour of inspection which
went with it, that on his return from Scotland he had scarcely unpacked
in London before receiving orders to prepare for a voyage across the
Atlantic. In _He Knew He was Right_, Mrs. Trevelyan’s father stands for
a favourable specimen of a West Indian governor. The postmasters and
other officials of that sort provided for our transatlantic dependencies
were often not up to Sir Marmaduke Rowley’s mark. As a consequence, the
British postal service in this part of the world had become
disorganised, discredited, and even somewhat discreditable, besides
being, at its best, irregular and ineffective. Trollope had already
given repeated proof that the public service possessed no man more
competent than himself for investigating abuses, for detecting failures
or weak spots in a system, and for effectively reprimanding the local
officials who were responsible. These congenial tasks were now once more
filled to perfection. Of course, before leaving England he had held the
inevitable interview with the publisher he had selected for the book
that the tour was to produce. This volume, for it did not run to more,
was most of it written on board ship. He had begun his work while
steaming out of Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, and had still some thousands
of miles to traverse. He continued it uninterruptedly amid all the other
duties of his absence.

The entire copy, ready for the printer to the last comma, was in his
dressing-case when the cab from Waterloo deposited the traveller at his
London door. This was in the autumn of 1858. Since leaving home he had
explored the chief points in the West Indies, visited British Guiana and
Columbia, as well as crossed and recrossed Central America. In the
course of his homeward route, for the first time he touched New York;
this and the political metropolis of the States, Washington, he was, as
will be shown in due order, several times to revisit. Meanwhile, his
earliest experiences of the New World were recorded in a style whose
spirit, ease and picturesqueness impressed publishers and readers alike
with a feeling of the vigour and variety always apparently at his
command. Entirely unlike anything he had yet attempted, his descriptions
of South American scenery, manners, character, and of its negro
population, displayed the same swiftness and sureness of realistic touch
as had hitherto made the places and personages familiar to the public
from his first successes pulsate with the breath and movement of life.

_The West Indies and the Spanish Main_ also had the effect of raising
his reputation, not only with the public, but with the fellow-craftsmen
of his own art. Thomas Carlyle in 1861 recognised its graphic power, and
in characteristic terms endorsed its estimates of the black man’s place
in creation. Carlyle’s compliment seemed the more welcome and unexpected
because some years earlier, in 1851, the Chelsea sage had been the
subject of remark anything but eulogistic by Trollope. “Surely,” he
writes to his mother and brother, “eight shillings for Carlyle’s
_Latterday Pamphlets_ cannot be considered anything but a very bad
bargain, because the grain of sense belonging to the book is smothered
in such a sack of the sheerest nonsense as to be useless.” During the
earlier years of the Victorian era, the social patronage of the rich and
great was still considered almost, if not quite, essential for a
successful advance towards literary fame. Sir Henry Taylor, of whose
relations with Trollope special mention will afterwards be made, had
first introduced Carlyle both to Holland and to Lansdowne House. The
Blessington-D’Orsay _ménage_ in London had ended before Carlyle had
become a lion or Trollope’s great drawing-room experiences had begun. It
is therefore pure fiction to speak, as some have done, of the men who
wrote _Sartor Resartus_ and _The Warden_ respectively ever meeting each
other or seeing Benjamin Disraeli and Louis Napoleon at Gore House.

The end of the fifties and the earlier sixties were to effect a
transformation-scene in Trollope’s mature position and prospects, at
once fortunate and complete. This was his connection with Thackeray,
with the house of Smith and Elder, as with certain other of the members
of its artistic or literary staff, above all J. E. Millais. In the
October of 1860 Trollope, then officially resettled on the other side of
St. George’s Channel, was dividing his time between Post Office
inspection, in the northern parts of Ireland, and the composition of his
third Irish novel, _Castle Richmond_. Trollope, it has been already
seen, in his _Examiner_ letters for John Forster, 1848, had defended the
steps taken by the English Government for the relief of Irish distress,
not as adequate in themselves, but as being the best practicable under
the circumstances. That opinion, twelve years later, he now illustrated
with forcible and picturesque description in _Castle Richmond_. But at
this point a few words must be given to the relations in which this
story exhibits its author with other experts in his art then living. He
had found, we already know, his earliest model in Jane Austen. During
the sixties and afterwards Thackeray became his declared master. In the
first place the novel shows its author going, like his greatest
contemporaries, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and even Dickens himself,
to Blue books for scenery, incident, and even germs of character.
Trollope did not, however, as was done by Reade in _Put Yourself in His
Place_, lift the contents of a State paper into any description of an
existing evil, such as the excesses of trade unionism. Still less did he
appropriate official or other printed matter, after the fashion of
Collins, who, in _Man and Wife_, illustrated the anomalies of the
Anglo-Scotch marriage laws by reproducing _in extenso_ the reports of
famous trials, and supported his attack upon the malignant effects of
inordinate athleticism by citing from _The Lancet_ the testimony of
doctors who had given evidence that suited his arguments.

Trollope, in _Castle Richmond_, while as realistic as Collins or Reade,
had assimilated his facts more artistically than either, subordinating
them at every turn to the development of his characters, or rather of
that development making them a perfectly natural part. Every
neighbourhood, like every form of suffering and want, he describes, he
had not only himself seen, but minutely studied and worked out, in his
own words, as he would a sum, its true lessons. His impressions remained
the more vivid because he trusted to no notes taken at the time to
preserve them. For instances aptly illustrative of the exact impression
he wished to convey, or of the moral he desired to point, Post Office
experience and severe habits of private cultivation had made his memory
serviceable enough to dispense with pocket-book and pencil. As an
account at once clear, picturesque, and powerful, of the crowning
calamities that came upon Ireland after the potato famine in the first
half of the nineteenth century, _Castle Richmond_ will almost bear
comparison with the classical records of national visitations in other
ages and in other lands, whether penned by eye-witnesses, or by men
whose genius enabled them to describe that of which they had only heard,
with the verisimilitude of actual experience. In the first of these
classes Trollope might thus nearly claim a place with Thucydides or
Boccaccio, in the second with Daniel Defoe, who lived, indeed, during
the great plague of 1665, but only as a child of seven years old; while
to Defoe’s earlier or later rivals must be added Pliny as chronicler of
the plague at Rome in the second century B.C., and, in our own day,
Father Thomas Gasquet, whose pen-and-ink picture, published 1894, of the
mediæval “Black Deaths,” left on the mind an impression scarcely less
powerful than that produced by the author of _Robinson Crusoe_ himself.

In addition to the merits of _Castle Richmond_ as an historical novel,
Trollope’s impending connection with _The Cornhill Magazine_, under
Thackeray’s editorship, invests with special interest an undesigned
coincidence of idea between a central feature in the plot of _Castle
Richmond_ and in that of _Esmond_, published eight years before
Trollope’s third Irish novel came out. Both stories show the girl’s
lover as the subject of an unsought attachment conceived for him by the
lady in whom he himself hopes to find only a mother-in-law. In _Castle
Richmond_, the part of Thackeray’s Esmond falls to Trollope’s Owen
Fitzgerald. Here, however, the resemblance ends. In _Esmond_ the mother
is as completely without strength of character as without fever or force
of passion, and calmly bestows her affection on the young man by way of
consoling him for her daughter’s cruel indifference. In _Castle
Richmond_ feminine insipidity is the daughter’s attribute, while the
mother, strong to repulsiveness, deliberately tries to supplant the girl
in her lover’s affections. There is this further difference too: Harry
Esmond, robbed of Beatrix, finds peace and happiness in her parent,
while Owen Fitzgerald, discovering Lady Clara Desmond is bent on having
the heir to Castle Richmond, his own cousin Herbert, never marries at
all.

A contrast in all respects to Harry Esmond’s wife, Lady Desmond stands
out as the most impressive figure in the last of Trollope’s earlier
novels. Her life and heart story personifies a tragic element that,
though of a very different sort, marks this book as clearly as it
pervades and suffuses _The Macdermots_. _On ne badine pas avec l’amour_;
Alfred de Musset’s title might really serve as a motto to Trollope’s
book. The beautiful girl who, from being nobody, becomes Countess of
Desmond, has persuaded, or tried to persuade herself, that the marriage
which brings position and title can very well dispense with love. She
has no sooner acted on this principle than she finds her mistake;
whether as wife or widow, to the last page of the book the misery of her
desolation is unrelieved. The decline of the Desmond race, and the
lonely house on a bleak moor inhabited by the last Earl’s widow, with
her son and daughter, are painted with the same force of delineation as,
thirteen years earlier in _The Macdermots_, had acquainted those able to
judge for themselves with the coming of a new novelist of a most
uncommon order. Rugged harshness and gloomy power have been recognised
above as constituting the dominant note of _The Macdermots_. Qualities
of the same sort contribute to invest with an air of stern melancholy
rather than pathos the figure of the widow who reigns at Desmond Court
in the sombre house bequeathed by her husband, entirely unrelieved by
the performance of those gracious and winning philanthropies, ordained,
it would seem, by Providence, by way of solacing the loneliness and
lightening the shadows of bereavement. Not the stern, if passionately
loving Countess, but her daughter Clara, is the one angel of good works
issuing from the three-storeyed, quadrangular, heaven-forsaken old
house, rumoured to cover ten acres,[14] to help the young ladies at
Richmond Castle, the Miss Fitzgeralds, in the distribution of Indian
corn. That was the article of food which, first prepared by Clara
Desmond and her friends with their own hands in the public kitchens, had
been provided by the Government for mitigating the horrors of general
starvation. _Castle Richmond_ contains in Clara Desmond, as a type of
pure, winning, picturesque girlhood, a worthy successor to Katie
Woodward in _The Three Clerks_, as well as a fit precursor of the Lucy
Robarts about to be introduced in _Framley Parsonage_.

As regards Trollope’s approaching connection with the house of Smith and
Elder and their most famous man of letters, it is worth recalling that,
so far back as 1848, Anthony Trollope, like others of the G.P.O. staff,
had been up in arms at the rumoured invasion of St. Martin’s-le-Grand by
a fresh outsider for an assistant secretaryship. This was none other
than Thackeray himself, who had received the actual offer or the promise
of the place from Lord Clanricarde. Trollope’s personal associations,
therefore, of his subsequent editor and model, were in marked contrast
to the loving admiration animating all later references to the man in
whom Trollope saw his literary and personal ideal, but in whom, had
Thackeray secured the position, he would have found an adversary not
less detested than Rowland Hill himself. It was in the October of 1859
that Thackeray, when entering on _The Cornhill_ enterprise, received
from Trollope an offer of a selection for the new magazine from his
_Tales of All Countries_. The proposal brought in the shape of reply two
letters, both equally satisfactory, since each of them afforded
practical proof of the golden opinion, both among writers and
publishers, which Trollope had now securely won. Not even excepting
George Henry Lewes, no expert in his craft detected literary pretenders
more keenly or exposed them more pitilessly than Thackeray. His business
colleagues, Smith and Elder, like the Blackwoods and only one or two
more of that day, had the gift of discovering sound promise, and of
never producing anything but really good work. “Neither John Blackwood
nor George Smith,” said Anthony Trollope to me many years later, “let
anything worth doing slip through his fingers, rated a manuscript’s
value too high or too low, or ever misjudged the humour of the hour and
the taste of the public. Nor,” he added, remembering _The Warden_ days,
“did, I am bound to say, William Longman either.”

Twelve years before the date now reached, a packet of closely written
letter-paper slips from an unknown parsonage on the Yorkshire moors had
reached the firm subsequently connected with the author of _Vanity
Fair_. George Smith, the life, soul, and brains of the establishment,
lost not a moment in addressing himself to the unknown budget. “From 9
A.M. to noon, afterwards, with scarcely a pause, till the lamps were
lighted,” he told Trollope, who told the present writer, “I read on,
absorbed in the small, clear calligraphy enshrining such strange, strong
thought. Beyond doubt there had fallen into my lap a precious stone of
the rarest order. In forming that opinion,” continued Smith to Trollope,
“I went entirely by my own judgment, and communicated it to the author
the same day.” The consequence was that, in 1847, Smith and Elder
brought out _Jane Eyre_. Its unknown, shrinking writer, who could
scarcely be tempted to her publishers’ dinner-table, quietly took her
place in the front rank of the English authoresses.

The master-mind of George Smith still ruled the house to which Trollope
had introduced himself. Smith at least had carefully read, and was
favourably impressed by, Trollope’s fresh and minute insight into
provincial life and character, whatever its phases, ecclesiastical
indeed first, but almost equally lay. “The man,” he said, “who can draw
so well country society in cathedral towns, being himself a rider to
hounds, can have nothing to learn from Surtees if he touches it
occasionally from the sporting side.” Smith therefore commissioned from
Trollope a three-volume novel for £1000, to be run through the new
magazine. At the same time, in terms of very exceptional cordiality,
Thackeray personally welcomed to his pages the author of _The Three
Clerks_; for Thackeray, while seeing a possible rival to Trollope as a
clerical novelist in the creator of Mr. Gilfil and the Rev. Amos Barton,
never doubted Trollope’s qualifications for success in fiction whence
churchmen and church matters should be banished. The encouraging
communication to Trollope from his new editor contained one casual
expression so characteristically appropriate to its recipient that in
passing it may be mentioned here. Thackeray speaks of Trollope’s having
“tossed a good deal about the world.” Just twelve years after this use
of that expression, James Anthony Froude put, with a slight difference,
the same idea when, a little more picturesquely, he spoke of Trollope as
having “banged about the world” more than most people. At the point now
reached there rolled to Trollope the tide which, adroitly taken by him
as it was at the flood, bore him in life from the fame he had already
secured to uninterrupted fortune and wealth. That tide, after, as often
happens, a slight falling off of readers on his death, has, within
thirty years of that event, been followed by an undoubted revival of his
popularity with twentieth-century readers, not less wide and marked than
that enjoyed by him in his own age. The new epoch of the varied and
industrious career thus opened provides appropriate material for a fresh
chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

ESTABLISHMENT IN LONDON

Resettlement in England--Bright prospects for the
future--Importance of _The Cornhill_ connection--_Framley
Parsonage_ and other novels of clerical life--Some novelists and
their illustrators--Trollope’s debt to Millais--The social services
of leading lights help him in his historical pictures of the
day--Election to the Garrick and Athenæum Clubs--Anthony Trollope
as he appeared in 1862--Leading Garrick figures--Thackeray’s social
and literary mastery over Trollope--Thackeray, Dickens, and Yates
in a Garrick squabble--A divided camp--Trollope on Yates and Yates
on Trollope--The origin of the politico-diplomatic Cosmopolitan
Club--Informal gatherings--Trollope becomes a member--Some famous
“Cosmo” characters--The end of the club--Other clubs frequented by
Trollope--The Fielding--The Arundel--The Arts--The Thatched
House--The Turf.

The first effect of Trollope’s connection with _The Cornhill Magazine_,
its editor, and its owners was to make his life more literary and less
official than it had so far been. Naturally, therefore, he decided on
leaving Ireland as soon as he could, and on establishing himself in
London, the one place where he could satisfactorily pursue the career
now brought within his reach. Not, indeed, that the prospect opening to
him in 1860 included a sudden or a final severance of his connection
with a country where he had passed nearly a score of eventful and
prosperous years, where he had first discovered his real strength, and
where by slow degrees the Post Office hack had transformed himself into
the popular man of letters. From the St. Martin’s-le-Grand point of
view, he was but exchanging a Post Office surveyorship in Ulster for a
like position in the English eastern counties, where he could generally
order his movements as suited his interests and tastes.

When in 1841, on his outward journey, he first crossed St. George’s
Channel at the age of twenty-six, it was with a mind agitated by morbid
discontent for the past, and charged with gloomy misgivings for the
future. The process of improvement had indeed been slow and often
painful, but it was now complete. The clouds which so long darkened his
existence had finally lifted. He no longer brooded over the gloomy
retrospect; the path that lay before him was brightened by the hope born
of actual achievement. From the country to which, just a quarter of a
century ago, he had brought a past of failure, he took back a present of
success, and a future of assured fame. The long gallops with the Meath
hounds and the Ward staghounds, or the several other packs with which he
rode, by quickening his circulation, had strengthened his nerves, and
generally placed him in the highest state of physical fitness. With the
exhilarating sense of being at home in the saddle, there had come an
inspiring confidence in his powers of thought and language. Moreover,
his term of Irish and English service combined had been varied by the
foreign missions which, as already described, trained his pen to
versatility, and brought him fresh credit in new lines of literary
performance. All this had helped him so much with his London chiefs as
to ensure him the home appointment for which he now applied. The
surveyorship of the eastern counties, secured by Trollope after some
little difficulty and delay, gave him the chance of keeping up his
favourite sport by settling him comfortably in Hertfordshire, at Waltham
Cross. Here he was within easy reach of more than one East Anglian pack,
as well as the social life of the metropolis in which he had been born,
but of which, since his boyhood, he had seen little, and of whose social
life he knew nothing.

He had scarcely settled down to the combined parts of State servant,
London _littérateur_, and eastern county fox-hunter, when he followed up
his first success of _The Warden_ with a book indicating the greatest
stride in the direction of fame and fortune he had yet made. This was
_Framley Parsonage_. The appearance of its first instalment in _The
Cornhill_ had been arranged for during one of Trollope’s earlier flights
across the Channel before he had resettled himself in England. Among the
stories thus far written by its author, it possessed most of actuality
in its incidents, as well as of personal charm in its characters. These
qualities were due to the fact that the views of life and character,
clerical or lay, contained in its pages, were as a whole those of the
era to which the book belonged. In 1838 the State had done something
towards the restraint of pluralities in the Church. When, therefore, he
had finished the book that first made its mark, the Anglicanism of
Trollope’s youthful reminiscence was something more than merely
threatened. There had indeed actually begun the reform of those
ecclesiastical abuses and the curtailment of those privileges whose
picturesque aspects on their social and personal side appealed so
strongly to Trollope’s conservative and artistic sense, and his
sympathies with which show themselves in all his clerical stories long
after the old system was not only doomed, but already passing away. The
change had begun, it must be remembered, some ten years before the
appearance of _The Warden_. Even then the old Church and State polity
was tottering to its fall. By the time _Framley Parsonage_ was running
through _The Cornhill_, it had been practically replaced by the new
_régime_.

The modernised picture of clerical life from the social point of view,
taken in _Framley Parsonage_, distinguishes it not only from anything
said on the same subject by Trollope himself before, but from George
Eliot’s sketch of the Anglican rector and rectory given in _Adam Bede_
(1859). _The Cornhill_ proprietor and editor had agreed that what they
wanted from Trollope was an up-to-date socio-clerical story, depicting
the most characteristic features and incidents of upper middle-class
English society in provincial districts, dominated to a certain extent
by orthodox ecclesiastical and aristocratic or squirearchical influence.
These requirements were satisfied to the minutest detail. The rectory,
the country house, and the castle, like the inmates of each, described
in _Framley Parsonage_, exactly reflect all that was most distinctive
of the sixties, and therefore invest the story with something of the
usefulness to the historian of the future possessed by Jane Austen’s
novels, or discerned by Lecky and Macaulay in Fielding and Smollett.
There was scarcely an English village without a rectory or a house whose
occupant might have passed for Lord Lufton or Mark Robarts. One used,
indeed, to hear the most circumstantial stories of how Trollope had
himself met these characters during his Post Office tours. He had, of
course, on these official rounds, so increased in every direction a
large and varied acquaintanceship that he had become something of a
household word throughout England as a State servant some time before
his books lay on every drawing-room table. As for Lucy Robarts, she took
the hearts of the vicarage and country-house public by storm, to retain
them even after Lily Dale made her bow in _The Small House at
Allington_. Her reputed originals multiplied so rapidly that every
neighbourhood soon possessed one of them, to whom the novelist, it was
added, had lost his heart before he made her his heroine, and to whom he
would have made an offer at a certain country ball had he not
unfortunately possessed a wife already.

_Framley Parsonage_, therefore, from which dates his trade value with
the publishers, was the earliest novel that made him a favourite with
the hundreds of English households, the great event in whose lives is
the arrival of the weekly book-box from Mudie’s. The personal intimacy
between Trollope’s readers and his characters at the point now reached
began to be quickened and deepened by J. E. Millais, whose tastes,
sympathies, and exceptional insight into the life and characters
depicted by Trollope qualified him, beyond any other artist of his time,
to interpret with his brush the most characteristic creations of the
novelist’s pen. Who shall say how much in its mental pictures of Mr.
Pickwick and other Dickensian beings the popular imagination was helped
by the illustrations of “Phiz”? Would the Rugby boys, for instance,
described in _Tom Brown_, have roared with laughter, as they did, if
Hablot K. Browne’s pencil had not breathed a new reality into the
novelist’s account of Mr. Winkle’s equestrian difficulties, of Jingle’s
boasted performances in the West Indian cricket-field, or into the fat
boy’s fiendish interruption of the tender passages between Rachael
Wardle and Tracy Tupman. Dickens also derived scarcely less signal
service from George Cattermole in _The Old Curiosity Shop_, and from
George Cruikshank in _Oliver Twist_. With writers of less genius than
Dickens, such as Charles Lever and Harrison Ainsworth, their personages
and situations were often saved only from complete failure by the same
artist’s help.

More conspicuously than in any of these instances did Trollope’s
association with Millais make the artist an active, if not the chief,
partner in the creation of the novelist’s characters. In 1861 Trollope
had not begun the personal acquaintance, which soon ripened into a
lifelong intimacy, with the master of the brush whose personal charm and
genial fellowship brought fresh brightness and lasting joy into the
novelist’s life, at the same time that his drawings acquainted the
Anglo-Saxon world with the manner and meaning of every expression on
Lucy Robarts’ face, with her every gesture or movement, with the
plaiting of her hair, with the simple little pendant of dull gold on her
velvet neckband, with the fringe of her bodice, and with the very folds
of her dress.

This fortunate conjunction of pen and pencil resulted to hosts of
readers, American as well as English, in a real revelation of country
life. These now realised, as they had never done before, the principles
underlying the modern village polity with all its personal gradations in
the scale of dignity and rank. Trollope’s novels and Millais’ engravings
thus completed for multitudes the lessons in provincial existence and
character which Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen had begun. The country
parish was now shown as the State in miniature, the kingly power being
represented, in the present instance, by Lord Lufton and his mother at
Framley Court. Between the Court and the Parsonage the relations
described reflected the union of the civil and the spiritual authority.
With _Framley Parsonage_, therefore, in the early sixties, begins the
period when Trollope’s successive books were events in the publishing
year, and the instalments of his work were awaited with scarcely less
interest than each coming portion of Dickens’s _Great Expectations_,
then running through _All the Year Round_, or of Thackeray’s _Lovel the
Widower_ and _Roundabout Papers_, then appearing in the same magazine
pages as Trollope’s. Thackeray, indeed, had destined his own _Lovel_ for
the chief fiction of _The Cornhill_. It did not seem to him quite strong
enough for that honour. Hence the opening which he gave Trollope. Now,
too, began Trollope’s introduction into the literary and general society
of the capital in which he had been born, partly bred, and in which he
had served his earliest apprenticeship to the Government service that
formed the foundation of his fortunes. Of its real life, except from
outside, he as yet knew nothing.

Such chance glimpses into society in London as Trollope had secured in
his earliest days were due almost or entirely to the good offices of the
old Harrow friend, William Gregory, who subsequently, as has been
already described, did so much to make his Irish sojourn profitable as
well as pleasant. Among the more prominent figures in the great world of
their day occasionally visited by Trollope was Lord Clanricarde, who, in
London as well as in Ireland, was fond of playing the part of Mæcenas to
young men of promise. Together with Gregory, Trollope, a young man under
thirty, dined with Clanricarde in Carlton House Terrace. On entering the
drawing-room, they found its only occupant a fat elderly parson. He
must, the new-comers whisperingly agreed, be the family chaplain. The
conjecture had not been murmured in a tone low enough to prevent its
being overheard by the divine, who in a moment began to convince them
that he was not one of their host’s dependants by, in Trollope’s words,
“chaffing them out of their lives” until they descended to the
dining-room, and even after that. This incident forms Trollope’s
introduction to Sydney Smith, without whom, in the early forties, no
fashionable party was complete. The most useful entertainer and friend
secured by Gregory to Trollope was, however, Henry Thoby Prinsep, whose
acquaintanceship had proved of earlier value to Thackeray. This genial,
opulent, and influential Indian official had three sons, the second,
Trollope’s particular friend, being the clever and popular artist “Val”
Prinsep; while the two others, still living, were respectively in the
Indian Civil and Military Service. Prinsep kept open house for Trollope,
as for many others, beneath his roof.

Anthony Trollope’s personal knowledge of Thackeray began to improve
itself into friendship; at Thoby Prinsep’s, also, he heard many amusing
stories about a gentleman’s adventures in quest of a parliamentary
seat,[15] as well as met habitually the artist Millais, whom he first
knew from George Smith, and who, in the manner already described, was so
appreciably to promote the novelist’s advance towards a world-wide
popularity. As Prinsep’s guest also, Trollope made another artistic
friendship, that with the painter Watts, whom, it will be remembered, he
had already seen at Florence. Among Prinsep’s other notable visitors
were the reigning beauties of the time, Lady Somers, Miss Virginia
Pattle, and the highly endowed daughters of a gallant officer in “John
Company’s” army, now only recollected as “Old Blazer.” The same company
was sometimes adorned by the great artistic and literary patron of that
period, Lord Lansdowne, as well as an anecdotical Nestor of the polite
world, who nearly saw the nineteenth century out, Alfred Montgomery.
This gentleman humorously claimed, by his conversational reminiscences
of cathedral towns, to have given Trollope some hints for his Barchester
characters. Montgomery’s social services proved, indeed, scarcely less
invaluable than Gregory’s, and opened to Trollope many doors on the
higher levels.

At the houses now referred to, he heard all the gossip about the
celebrities of the forties: how, notwithstanding his starched austerity
in the House, Sir Robert Peel’s social playfulness in private life made
him really delightful; how Lord Lincoln was quite the pleasantest of all
Peel’s followers; how Lord George Bentinck, though private secretary to
Canning, was quite uneducated, and only got into parliament by an
accident, to become Tory leader by a fluke. He heard too, how, when not
at a race, Lord George attended the House of Commons; how, going down to
Westminster from White’s after dinner, he slept soundly all the evening
on a back bench; and how, though in 1847 he had resigned over Russell’s
Jew Bill, he wished all the Jews back in the Holy Land, because the
Tories had become a No Popery and No Jew party. Thus Trollope was a
looker-on at the game when, on the Tory side, the players were Lord
Granby, as Bentinck’s successor, and Herries, who sportingly admitted
that, though Bentinck had given the mount, it was Dizzy’s riding which
won the race. Some of Anthony Trollope’s later novels take one to a
resort called the Beargarden. In their author’s younger days a haunt
that might have appropriately borne that name was the Hanover Rooms on
one of their smartest gala nights. For about a century, from 1775 to
1875, these premises were used for concerts and balls, till, at the
later of the dates just mentioned, they were utilised as the Hanover
Square Club. When W. H. Gregory and Anthony Trollope were youths about
town, these rooms were not only fashionable, but fast. In one of the
vestibules or passages, the two friends witnessed a noticeable but, as
it proved, a somewhat risky feat of strength by the Lord Methuen of the
day, performed upon a baronet, who, from his immense estates in the
principality, was known--like those who were before and after him in his
title--as the King of Wales. Sir Watkin William Wynne weighed some
fifteen stone. Methuen, to relieve the dullness of a waiting interval,
lifted him by the trousers waist-band, and held him out at full length
with one hand, only to drop him when the trousers material gave way.

In the sixties, indeed, few were left who had been fashionable figures
in Trollope’s boyhood. Besides Gregory, however, when Trollope took up
his eastern counties’ surveyorship, the most notable survivor, in
addition to Alfred Montgomery, was Sir Henry Taylor, who had been at the
Colonial Office before Trollope went to Ireland as a surveyor’s clerk.
He was there still in the year that Trollope re-established himself in
an English home at Waltham House. During the early sixties, Sir Henry
Taylor’s literary fame and social influence, still at their height, had
opened the best houses in England, both to himself and to any person of
promise he might take up. No man was ever at any time less on the look
out for a patron or an introduction to patrons than Anthony Trollope.
Taylor himself owed his official career, as well as much of his
commanding place in society, to the great physician of the time, Sir
Henry Holland. That medical magnate, having in earlier years befriended
Mrs. Trollope, now joined Taylor in advancing the interests of her son.
The two had even hoped to secure Trollope’s election to the Athenæum by
the committee, some years before that event actually took place--in
1864. Meanwhile, as Milnes’s guest at the Sterling Club, Trollope made
intellectual acquaintances as distinguished as any whom he met
afterwards at the Athenæum, and heard specimens of the conversation at a
meal, which had been the speciality of some famous London sets, but then
in the process of dying out. This was the dinner- or breakfast-table talk
which, seldom or never becoming general, chiefly assumed the form of a
monologue by a single brilliantly gifted performer. S. T. Coleridge in
remote times had founded the school, with Sidney Smith for his
successor, Macaulay and Carlyle for his subsequent followers. “It was,
no doubt,” said Trollope to me, “a good discipline for an impatient and
irritable listener, but it never seemed to teach one anything.” It was
three years before his Athenæum membership that Thackeray’s good offices
introduced Trollope to the Garrick Club, April 5, 1861, and so gave him
a recognised place among the professional literary workers of his time.

His connection with this club was fraught with consequences of no small
interest in themselves, as well as in their influence upon Trollope’s
personal relations with some of his best-known contemporaries. The
Athenæum, which some years later was to bear Trollope’s name on its
books, had been founded in 1824, and stood upon the Pall Mall site once
occupied by Carlton House. Its early, and indeed immediate success, was
largely due to the personal efforts of John Wilson Croker, the Rigby of
Disraeli’s novels, and the distinguished patronage secured by Croker for
the enterprise. The name it now bears did not finally supersede the
appellation first suggested, the “Society,” till 1830, when the present
building, designed by Decimus Burton, opened to receive the members. The
Mæcenas of his age, the great Lord Lansdowne, had deigned to become an
original member. He attracted to the place not only some half-dozen of
his political contemporaries or juniors in the front rank of politics,
such as Sir James Mackintosh, Romilly, Macaulay and Brougham, but also
the brightest lights in the firmament of literature or science at Bowood
and Lansdowne House, Thomas Moore and Theodore Hook, Humphry Davy and
Michael Faraday.

Trollope’s earliest club, the Garrick, was the Athenæum’s junior by some
seven years. It originated in an idea thrown out at a meeting in Drury
Lane Theatre, August 7, 1831. The proposal had no sooner taken definite
shape than measures for translating it into existence were pushed
promptly forward. By October 15, 1831, several members had been elected,
the rules had been drawn up and approved, as well as the general
committee appointed. The Duke of Sussex, the foremost, in all
intellectual movements, of George III’s sons, had actively associated
himself with the project from the first. He figured in the earliest
members’ list as patron, and presided over the opening dinner, February
13, 1832, at Probat’s Hotel, 35 King’s Street, Covent Garden. Here the
club was housed till, a full generation later, its establishment beneath
its present roof in Garrick Street. The Garrick, therefore, known to
Trollope during his earlier years in London, was not that at which,
rather than at his home in Montagu Square, he found it sometimes
convenient, in his later days, to entertain his friends, but the genuine
and original “little G,” as Thackeray affectionately used to call it,
and as Thackeray’s most devoted disciple, Trollope himself, got into the
way of denominating it too.

Before describing his early Garrick associates, let it be recalled what
these saw in Trollope himself. At this time, his forty-fifth year,
Trollope was passing into a remarkably vigorous middle age. As for the
bodily signs of advancing years, which visibly multiplied on him after
having completed his first half-century, not a trace was to be found in
1862. Upright and elastic in figure, he showed to special advantage, and
seemed some years younger than his age, in the saddle, from which men at
the club window occasionally saw him descending, while a groom was in
waiting to take his horse home. His voice, sharp, authoritative,
inclining to severe always, sometimes peremptory and gruff, had in it
the ring of perfect vigour and health, as of body, so of mind and nerve.
The official manner, contracted, as has been seen, during the period of
his Irish surveyorship, had become a part of the man himself, though it
veiled a more than feminine self-consciousness. Trollope’s “abrupt
bow-wow” way, as it came to be called, was not merely the personal
peculiarity of a well-bred man of the world, but, by all who knew him
and his antecedents, was recognised as a note of the social school in
which he had been trained quite as much as an attribute of the
individual. The good old High Churchmen of the pre-ritualistic period,
whether at Winchester, Oxford, in the rectory, or the manor house,
distrusted and discouraged the _suaviter in modo_, because they thought
it likely to enervate the _fortiter in re_.

Fresh from these austere warnings, theoretical and practical, against
the enfeebling influences of grace and urbanity of demeanour, Trollope
began his official pupillage at St. Martin’s-le-Grand under the Draconic
Colonel Maberly, who communicated to most of his juniors his own
healthy contempt for mere courtesy of speech and amenity of manner.
Moreover, during the early sixties, the social influence insensibly
exhaled by a man of Thackeray’s intellectual calibre upon his
worshippers resulted in Trollope’s modelling not only his diction but
his deportment on him whom he had taken for his social patron as well as
literary master. Thackeray, though spoken of by Trollope and others as
one of the Garrick fathers, did not, as a fact, come in till 1832. Even
thus he was by five years the club senior of Dickens, who joined in
1837. During all Trollope’s earlier time, therefore, without a rival to
dispute his claim or to dissent from his ruling, in the frequent
absences of Dickens, he pervaded and dominated the place. Dickens,
indeed, as an old friend of his mother, welcomed Trollope on his
election. Thackeray’s favour it was which admitted Trollope to the set
whose central figure was the author of _Vanity Fair_. Thus, at the
beginning of his London course, did circumstances give Trollope a place
among those whose bond of union was devotion to Thackeray, and whom
loyalty constrained to see personal opponents to themselves in all
demurrers to their great master’s ruling.

The leading Thackerayans, and therefore Trollope’s warm partisans, among
the early Garrick members, grouped themselves round a Sussex baronet, a
figure prominent in the society of his time, as well as filling a
position especially conspicuous and authoritative in all cricketing
circles, not more in his county, where he had done much to revive the
game he liked so much and played so well, than on the committee of the
Marylebone Club. Wherever, indeed, manly sports of any kind were
popular, there Sir Charles Taylor was a personage. With this rich,
clever, sarcastic man about town was Henry de Bathe, who did not inherit
the family baronetcy till 1870, but who, at the time now recalled,
shared with Taylor the distinction of being a Garrick autocrat. Taylor’s
shrewd, bitter social estimates and aphorisms were remembered in the
club long after he was forgotten. One of his deliverances, suggested by
the accuracy of Whyte-Melville’s social descriptions, had taken the
form of a caution to novelists, and was given to me by Trollope, to the
following effect: “Would that other writers about society would learn
from Melville. Then we should hear less than we do about icing the
claret and taking the chill off the champagne.” Trollope abstained from
putting Taylor into any of his books. In _Black Sheep_, however, Edmund
Yates took him for the original of his Lord Dollamore, and drew him to
the life in his consultation, in all difficulties, of a favourite
walking-stick.

More general and genuine than the club popularity either of Taylor or
Bathe was that enjoyed by another of Trollope’s earliest and warmest
Garrick friends, Mr. Fladgate, with whom may be coupled James Christie.
Both of these outlived Trollope, Christie by fifteen years, Fladgate by
seven, the latter retaining, to the day of his death, the affectionate
style of “Papa,” bestowed upon him as one of the club’s earliest
members. The solicitors to whose firm “Papa” Fladgate belonged are still
the Garrick’s legal advisers. Another of Garrick’s contemporaries, or
even seniors, who has lived into this third year of King George V, is
Sir Charles Rivers-Wilson, to-day not only the club’s _doyen_, but
trustee. After him comes perhaps the sole survivor of those with whom
Trollope used to dine off the famous Garrick steak, Sir Bruce Seton. Two
years Trollope’s junior in club standing, he was for many years a
constant member of a little dining-group at the club, comprising, in
addition to himself, the late Sir Richard Quain, Algernon Borthwick, who
died Lord Glenesk, and William Howard Russell of _The Times_. The epoch
now recalled was fruitful of curiosities in club character who have long
since gone out of date. Among the club representatives of the drama were
James Anderson and Walter Lacy, both actors of the old school,
tragedians whose masters were Kemble and Kean, as well as impressive
elocutionists of a certain majestic dignity. These two men, if about the
same age, were not, at least in their later years, on terms of mutual
friendship. Trollope, who soon became a committee-man, took a keen
interest in everything that concerned the management of the place, knew
the names of nearly all the servants, and had their _dossiers_ by
heart. Thus he had a closer acquaintance than he might otherwise have
had with George Farmer, the club steward, whose methods remained in
force long after he had passed away, who thus, within his own sphere,
left his mark on the club economy, and who was also as great a despot
downstairs as Taylor, Bathe, and Thackeray in the upper regions.

The details of facts and figures already given show that, during most of
the sixties, Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope were all members of the
Garrick together. “We were, however,” to quote Trollope’s own words,
“two sets as widely separated from each other, and as seldom
intermingling, as if we had been assembled under two entirely different
roofs; I never saw Thackeray and Dickens engaged in any regular
conversation. If either of them entered a room when the other and only
one or two more, perhaps, were its occupants, he seemed to have come in
to look for something he had mislaid, and, if he did not make rather an
abrupt exit, stayed only to bury himself in a newspaper, in silence, or
in forty winks. Once, and once only, I can recall Thackeray making a
remark about Dickens’s writing, though to whom I shall abstain from all
effort to recall. The subject was _Little Dorrit_, then appearing in
monthly parts. ‘I cannot,’ observed some one, ‘see the falling off in
Dickens complained of by his critics.’ ‘At least,’ rejoined Thackeray,
‘it must be admitted that a good deal of _Little D._ is d----d rot.’”
And here it should be explained that, when Trollope joined the Garrick
in 1861, the club was still in the ground-swell of an internal dispute
which, four years earlier, had agitated it to its very foundations, and
divided its members into two mutually embittered companies.

The incident which had led to this state of civil war, insignificant and
even contemptible in itself, would probably have passed off without
serious results, but that, after the fashion now to be described, it had
the effect of ranging the two giants of the place, Dickens and
Thackeray, on opposite sides. Edmund Yates had criticised Thackeray,
not, it may be admitted, in the best taste, in a cheap paper so obscure
as to be entirely below a great man’s notice. The material for these
remarks, Thackeray maintained, could only come from the writer’s chance
meeting with himself in the Garrick smoking-room. Beyond any writer of
his time, Thackeray, on grounds of good taste and good sense alone,
should have been magnanimous enough to pocket this annoyance as an
indiscretion, of which he had himself set such flagrant examples. Such
had been the ridicule and abuse heaped by his pen for years on Edward
Bulwer-Lytton, on Dionysius Lardner, and only desisted from when the
public began to resent the monotony of these acrimonious insults. His
caricature of his own Garrick acquaintance, Archdeckne, in _Pendennis_
as Foker, had been at least as gross a violation of all club amenities
as any paragraphs written by Yates. Neither in its beginnings, its
progress, nor its end was Trollope in the slightest degree mixed up in
this episode, whose finale may be briefly recapitulated. At the instance
of the novelist who had found such dire cause of personal offence in the
poor little peccant paragraphs, Edmund Yates was called upon by the club
committee to apologise to the illustrious object of his attack, or to
resign. On the advice of Dickens, he refused the ultimatum; a general
meeting was then held, and he was formally expelled. All this, though in
every detail before his time, seemed so comparatively fresh, and formed
the subject of so many conversational retrospects, that Trollope may
well have found it difficult to avoid expressing an opinion on the
personal merits of the case. Such casual comments are not likely to have
been too gentle towards the vanquished party, and for these reasons. As
a member of Thackeray’s _Cornhill_ staff, and owing his warm reception
at the club to his editor’s introduction, the author of _Framley
Parsonage_ was not, from personal accidents, likely to be prepossessed
in Yates’s favour.

Trollope, though sixteen years the older of the two, had still to make
his literary, if not his official reputation, when Yates entered the
Post Office as clerk in the missing-letter department in 1847. Each of
them may have served the same masters at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, but each
was the representative and disciple of a literary school essentially
different from that to which the other belonged. Trained by Dickens on
_Household Words_, Yates first showed what he could do as a novelist in
his master’s line with _Broken to Harness_, so early as 1854, just a
year before Trollope had made himself known to the public by _The
Warden_. The two men, therefore, notwithstanding Trollope’s seniority,
were yet sufficiently near each other to be contemporaries and rivals.
Yates’s expulsion from the Garrick was followed by the withdrawal, not
only of Dickens himself, but of Wilkie Collins and one or two more.
Independently, however, of the Yates incident, Dickens had already made
up his mind to leave the club because the assistant editor of his
magazine, W. H. Wills, had been rejected from it.

Henceforth Thackeray reigned at the club alone, and next to him, as it
seemed to some, came Trollope. While his connection with the club, or
with them, still lay in the future, Thackeray’s henchman had secured the
ejection of a member for no other reason than his having incurred the
personal displeasure of the great man who ruled the place. Yates,
however, left some friends as well as several enemies behind him at the
Garrick. Among the former was W. H. Russell, who long afterwards, when
the affair had become ancient history, ventured to praise his writings
in the presence of Anthony Trollope. It was then reported--and the
statement has been repeated since his death--that Yates owed much of his
success as a novelist to Mrs. Cashel Hoey’s co-operation. When,
therefore, Trollope spoke of this lady as having written his books for
him, he was originating no slander, but merely repeating a current piece
of literary gossip, which Yates’s literary methods may to some extent
have explained.

Most practised literary workmen in their social hours are silent, even
to their intimate friends, about what occupies their pens and thoughts
for the moment. That, however, was not Yates’s way. Whether he might be
writing a book or editing a periodical, he liked to discuss in detail
the progress of his work among those with whom he habitually lived. The
_mise-en-scène_, and the persons of his stories furnished topics of
table talk with his shrewd and highly-endowed wife first, afterwards
with the clever women who were often in her drawing-room. To that number
belonged Mrs. Hoey, who had worked with him on Dickens’ magazines, and
who was a constant visitor at his house. To her in a special degree he
unfolded the plot, incidents, and even portions of the dialogue in the
novel he had in hand, inviting from her criticism, suggestions for
improvement not only in single episodes, but in the structure of the
book. Of course Mrs. Hoey often submitted in writing the notions for
which she had been conversationally asked. Yates was not the person to
underrate or even to be silent about his obligations to any literary
adviser he valued, and might well have mentioned the matter to Trollope
himself, had the two ever held any friendly conversation on literary
matters.

As it was, Trollope erred in repeating a loose rumour as a statement of
fact. That slip in judgment and tact naturally aggravated the soreness
felt by Yates at his other Garrick troubles, and was deeply resented.
The two men, indeed, for more than ten years remained strangers. Their
oldest and kindest friend, Sir Richard, then simply Dr. Quain, expressed
his pleased surprise to meet them both as guests at the same club
dinner-table towards the close of the seventies, whispering in his
pleasant Irish way to the host, “How did you manage to bring them two
together?” Perhaps modern English literature might be searched in vain
for men at once so eminent, so touchy, so ready to take offence with
each other, and with all the world besides, as the four now mentioned:

“Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer.”

It seems necessary to go back to Horace’s description of Achilles for a
summary of the qualities personified by the literary quartet now
referred to. And yet Yates appreciated Thackeray’s greatness as well as
that of his chief, Dickens; while underrating none of his rival’s
masterpieces, Thackeray was fond of telling the question often put to
him by his children: “Why don’t you write books, real books, like Mr.
Dickens?” Apart from their mutual compliments, paid on such occasions as
the Theatrical Fund dinner,[16] there was no parade of exceptional
cordiality between the two greatest novelists of their age.

High genius always appreciates genius, whatever its personal setting.
Dickens and Thackeray were, therefore, above the pettiness of belittling
each other. Between Anthony Trollope, however, and Edmund Yates, with
all their cleverness, there always existed a good deal of mutual
depreciation and jealousy. Especially was this the case in and after
1868; for in that year F. I. Scudamore, who had been made a G.P.O.
Secretary over Trollope’s head, took Yates for his assistant in
arranging the transfer of the telegraphs from a private company to the
State. Yates, therefore, thought he had as good reason as Trollope for
pride in his work as a Post Office servant; while, as for his social
antecedents, if he had not been, like Trollope, at a public school, he
had, before going to a German university, been in its best days under
Dyne, at Highgate School. Neither man had many pretensions to real
scholarship, but Yates had read and remembered the regulation Latin
Classics well enough to quote them quite as aptly as Trollope. In
facility and force of literary expression, he was at least Trollope’s
equal; in ready wit and resourcefulness he was his superior. But of the
English life that Trollope depicted he knew nothing. The success of
Thackeray and of Dickens he could understand and admire. Both of them
describe different aspects, and hit off certain angles of personal
character connected with that existence which Yates knew and had
studied. But as for Trollope, with his parsons, sporting or priggish,
his insipid young ladies and the green, callow boys upon whom experience
was wasted, and opportunities thrown away--in a word, these washed-out
imitations of Thackeray, as to Yates they seemed--it passed Yates’s
comprehension that the public should find any flavour to its taste in
all this. It even stirred his indignation to hear of publishers paying
such a writer prices approaching those commanded by the twin chiefs of
his craft themselves.

It must be remembered, too, that Yates’s notions of what constitutes
conversational cleverness were largely those he had imbibed as a youth
in the school of Albert Smith. Hence the opinion recorded in his
autobiography, that Trollope did not shine in society and had only
humour of a very second-rate kind. Yates himself, like Dickens, talked
well, and talked for effect. From both his parents he had inherited
marked histrionic power, which showed itself in his performances as
_raconteur_, in the inflections of his voice and the gesture of his
hands. To Trollope such action and pose were altogether foreign. With
real humour, indeed, he overflowed, as has already been shown from _The
Macdermots_ and _The Warden_, and as will be seen more fully later on,
but, unlike Yates, he kept it for his books, and never wasted it on
social effects. Moreover, Trollope had committed what Yates resented as
an unpardonable sin by refusing to sit for his portrait in the
“Celebrities at Home” then appearing in _The World_. It should, however,
be mentioned that, after this honour had been declined, Yates, in his
magazine, _Time_, published about Trollope a highly eulogistic article,
whose proof, before it appeared, he sent Trollope, not only to read, but
to revise and touch up as he pleased. The Post Office, like other public
departments, has had its literary ornaments, whose best traditions
subsequently to the period now dealt with have been perpetuated by Mr.
Buxton Forman, in the domain of literary criticism, and by Mr. A. B.
Walkley, as an authority on the drama in all its developments. But, in
the nineteenth century, Yates and Trollope ran each other a neck and
neck race for priority as representatives of St. Martin’s-le-Grand in
_belles lettres_.

High animal spirits and irrepressible buoyancy entered largely into the
Dickensian estimate of social wit and humour. Few, if any, of these
qualities belonged to Trollope by nature, or had become his acquisition
by habit. A writer who put so much felicity and fun into the lighter
passages of his stories could not, indeed, but occasionally introduce
happiness and pungency into his table talk. But, as Anthony Trollope
himself remarked, “the conversational credit of our family is maintained
not by me but by my brother Tom.” Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s academic
training, natural subtlety, and turn for humorous paradox caused him,
after a fashion always entertaining and often original, to play with the
problems of metaphysics and theology, amid the applause of those
Florentine circles where he was better known and appreciated than in any
London drawing-rooms or clubs. His brother Anthony at his best brimmed
over with shrewd common-sense. Occasionally, when asked a question, he
put his answer in a memorable shape, but, apart from the distinction won
by his pen, was welcomed in Society not so much for a talker as for a
listener.

Anthony Trollope’s election to the Athenæum has already been mentioned
as coming twelve years after his admission to the Garrick. In 1874 too,
he was made free of another little society that, unlike the two clubs
already named, has recently ceased to exist. The Cosmopolitan Club
originated in a period whose social usages, though belonging to the last
half of the Victorian era, are separated from the twentieth century by a
space of more than years. The earliest move made towards the formation
of this little club was by A. H. Layard, in conjunction with Sir Robert
Morier, among the most successful diplomatists of his time. During his
Foreign Office days in London he was the occupant of some Bond Street
rooms. Here the private meeting of men, for the most part belonging to
politics, foreign or domestic, first became weekly or bi-weekly
institutions. Other authorities, equally well informed, hold the true
founder of the institution to have been Sir William Stirling Maxwell,
who, before the settlement on premises of their own, gave the society a
home in his Knightsbridge house. Certain it is that, after a few years,
the increase in members made it necessary to start housekeeping on their
own account. Among the several roofs beneath which the Cosmopolitans
have settled themselves, that sheltering them during most of Trollope’s
time was 45 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, where the artist, G. F.
Watts, formerly had his studio. When Trollope joined the Club in or
about 1874, the method of election dispensed entirely with the usual
club ballot-box, which always remained as unknown as the process of
blackballing itself. Together with one or two more, known to most of the
members by introduction as an occasional visitor, Trollope had produced
a good impression on the premises. In due time therefore, as a proof of
membership, he paid the modest entrance fee at the club’s bankers. This
done, till the year 1880 he remained among the most regular _habitués_
of the place. The accommodation consisted of a single room. The weekly
meetings were held on Thursday and Sunday evenings, between ten and
midnight, during the session. No solid refreshments were served; but on
a side-table were tea, coffee, and aerated waters, with its usual
spirituous adjuncts.

Among those most frequently at the place in Trollope’s time were
Tennyson, who, on his visits to London, found the “Cosmo” more congenial
than most other resorts, and his friend Monckton Milnes, after 1863 Lord
Houghton, who more than any other of his friends had induced Peel, when
Premier, to bestow the laureateship on Tennyson after Wordsworth’s
death. Abraham Hayward; Grant Duff; Lord Barrington, one of Disraeli’s
secretaries; Henry Drummond-Wolff; Lord Granville’s brother, Frederick
Leveson-Gower; Robert G. W. Herbert, so long permanent Under Secretary
at the Colonial Office; his successor Robert Meade; and the
already-mentioned Sir Richard Quain--all were conspicuous in the little
group of which Trollope formed one in the tobacco parliaments of the
little Mayfair caravanserai. As noticeable as any of the foregoing, and
often playing a really important part in the secret political history of
his period, was Dr. Quin, whom Trollope first met at the Cosmopolitan,
and whose good words about Trollope’s novels helped to secure their
admission to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Perhaps the only
cabinet negotiation of which Trollope knew something from behind the
scenes was that pressed on Dr. Quin by Disraeli in 1868, with a view of
detaching Lord Granville from his Liberal allegiance and inducing him to
serve under Lord Derby. In the days now looked back upon, the
Cosmopolitan Club was the paradise of the intelligent foreigner in
London. Thither the French statesman Adolphe Thiers was repeatedly
brought by Kinglake, and there Trollope gained an insight into political
manœuvres, domestic or foreign, which he found highly useful for his
later books.

The Cosmopolitan Club survived Trollope by exactly twenty-five years.
Shortly after the twentieth century had completed its first decade, most
of the Cosmopolitans whom Trollope knew had followed him to the grave.
The younger men that now came on had their own resorts. Moreover, it
must be remembered that, even until well into the nineteenth century’s
second half, smoking after dinner was allowed in very few houses.
Gradually the future King Edward VII’s influence removed the social
prejudice against tobacco, with a result that the cigar or cigarette
became not less universal than the coffee. At the same time, too, such
of the old Cosmopolitans as were left felt less disposed than in their
younger day to go out after dinner. The new generation also which had
risen up did not appreciate the honour of membership as keenly as had
been done by its predecessors. In 1902 the sanitary arrangements of the
Charles Street premises were found to be in a parlous state. The house,
in fact, which had not been overhauled for a century, was discovered to
be literally afloat with sewage under the basement. The cost of the
necessary repairs was prohibitive. Still struggling against dissolution,
the club migrated to the Alpine Society’s rooms in Savile Row, and
dragged on a maimed existence till 1907, in or after which it was
formally wound up.

In 1862, then, Anthony Trollope’s club life began on the King’s Street,
Covent Garden, premises, shortly before his day visited by the domestic
convulsions already described. At the date now looked back upon, the
Garrick, though by far the most distinguished of the number, was only
one among several literary and theatrical societies which were not their
own landlords. Among the other clubs of that class, the most notable was
the Fielding, which found its home, first at Offley’s Hotel, afterwards
at the Cider Cellars, and which was much frequented by Dickens and
Yates, subsequently to the Garrick split. Here, after he had consulted
with Trollope on the subject, an unsuccessful attempt was made by E. F.
S. Pigott to bring Dickens and Thackeray amicably together. Trollope’s
loyalty to Thackeray did not permit him actually to join the Fielding,
but did not prevent his frequently visiting the place, chiefly as the
guest of Pigott, who used, by-the-bye, to say that “Anthony’s”
well-meant but impatient zeal had caused the miscarriage of the delicate
personal negotiations that native kindness and tact fitted him above all
men to conduct.

The Covent Garden district in Trollope’s earlier London days was
honeycombed by more or less Bohemian societies, housed beneath various
roofs, but all equally unfamiliar to Trollope. The Arundel Club, indeed,
patronised into existence by the Talfourd family, was once visited by
him, together with Charles Reade, long after it had established itself
within walls of its own in Salisbury Street, Strand. But the Savage,
then in its struggling infancy at Ashley’s, Henrietta Street, the
Reunion in Maiden Lane, the Knights of the Round Table at Simpson’s in
the Strand, he had never heard of till I myself mentioned these places
to him. All these were journalistic haunts, with a certain vogue during
the nineteenth century’s second half. The only advantage Trollope could
have derived from entering any one of them might have been a little more
first-hand knowledge than he ever possessed about newspaper writers,
their manners, and their methods. An occasional glimpse of the resorts
now named might have helped him to avoid the mistakes concerning
newspaper life and men that, as it is, he generally commits when
touching on the subject in his stories. Yet Trollope’s club experiences
were far from being confined to the bodies already mentioned.

The interest in stage matters inherited by Trollope from his mother may
have caused him some disappointment, but was not without its practical
advantages. The exercise of attempting and failing to write a good play,
_The Noble Jilt_, helped to produce a capital story, _Can You Forgive
Her?_--presently to be mentioned--as well as helped him as a novelist by
putting him on his guard against some of his literary defects. His
admiration for his _Cornhill_ editor and model, Thackeray, was perhaps
responsible for a tendency in Trollope occasionally to buttonhole his
reader, to obtrude on him the author’s own personality, and not
sufficiently to leave to events and characters the telling of their tale
and the pointing of their moral. The smallest experience in dramatic
writing shows him who essays it, as Trollope did, the necessity of vivid
effects, and the presentation of incidents in such a way as to dispense
with the author’s appearance in the _rôle_ of chorus.

The newspaper writer who turns novelist has already learned, in the
exercise of his craft, the art of handling words, with other details of
literary technique. Trollope, it has been seen, was practically without
newspaper knowledge or training. He could scarcely have found a better
substitute for these than the discipline, disappointing and fruitless as
at the time it seemed, of casting his crude ideas in a dramatic shape.
Socially also in the early sixties Trollope’s theatrical proclivities
attracted him to certain pleasant circles that otherwise he might not
have entered. Miss Kate Terry had not then become Mrs. Arthur Lewis, but
chance made Trollope acquainted with that accomplished actress’s future
husband. This gentleman’s rooms in Jermyn Street were at that time the
social headquarters of the gifted group then engaged in forming the
Artists’ Rifle Corps. Sculptors, painters, authors, as well as players
assisted in the movement, out of which there also gradually grew the
Arts Club. The earliest idea for its domicile was nothing grander than a
modest tenement in the then pre-eminently artistic quarter of Fitzroy
Square, where the Arts men would find and desire no more creature
comforts than a few Windsor chairs, plain deal tables, long clays, and
sanded floors. Instead of this, the new club’s originators made a
successful bid for 17 Hanover Square, close to Tenterden Street. It was
an historic mansion belonging to the Adam period in the eighteenth
century, with elaborate marble mantelpieces, ceilings painted by
Angelica Kauffmann, and superb old oak staircases. Here, in 1863, the
Arts Club came into existence. To some extent the child of the
secessions from the Garrick, the Arts Club in its beginnings was much
favoured by the Dickensian faction. Dickens, indeed, himself never
belonged to it, but his eldest son, who afterwards succeeded him in the
conduct of _All the Year Round_, made it his chief “house of call,” and
in its picturesque dining-room, together with the happily still
surviving Mr. Marcus Stone, used frequently to have the author of his
being for his guest. Among the most prominent of the Thackeray faction
connected with the Arts in its earliest days was Anthony Trollope, who
enjoyed all club life with as keen a zest as did his master, Thackeray
himself.

About the same time as his connection with the Arts, Trollope became an
original member of a very different fraternity. This was the Civil
Service Club, 86 St. James’s Street, as its name implies, intended
primarily for those composing the staff of our Government offices. The
expenses of its maintenance necessitated the admission of outsiders. In
1865, therefore, it dropped the original name, to receive its present
style, the Thatched House Club--a topographical designation in every way
suitable, seeing that the house stands on nearly the same site as that
once occupied by the historical Thatched House tavern. By the time,
however, of this change, Trollope had ceased all connection with the
place. Nor, he told me, did he ever re-cross its threshold until the
occasion, mentioned above, on which the present writer brought him and
Edmund Yates together as fellow-guests in its dining-room. Towards the
close of his London life Trollope joined the Turf Club in Piccadilly
which, in a previous state of existence, had been the Arlington in
Arlington Street, famous for the high points of its whist and the
expertness of its players. The card room at the Turf was, however, to
Trollope the least of its attractions, and indeed his recreations of
this sort were always, I am pretty sure, confined to afternoon whist at
the Athenæum.

CHAPTER IX

IN PERIODICAL HARNESS

Trollope’s one work in the Thackerayan vein--_Brown, Jones, and
Robinson_--Its failure--Thackeray’s two efforts to enter official
life by a side door--Trollope’s opinion of “untried elderly
tyros”--And of Thackeray’s limitations--His _Life of
Thackeray_--Philippics against open competition in the Civil
Service--A Liberal by profession, but a Tory at heart--Anthony’s
_bon mot_--_The Pall Mall Gazette_--Hunting life in Essex--Sir
Evelyn Wood to the rescue--Trollope’s cosmopolitanism--_The
Fortnightly Review_, an English _Revue des Deux Mondes_--Its later
developments.

Trollope’s London course, literary and social, began, as has been
already shown, under Thackeray’s ægis. To the first editor of _The
Cornhill_ he owed his place in the set with which he soon became, and
always remained, a favourite, as well as his earliest profitable
connection with periodical letters. Naturally and properly Trollope
repaid this debt to the utmost of his power, not only by every possible
acknowledgment of lasting gratitude, but by the occasional compliment of
literary imitation. The novels of English country life contributed by
him to _The Cornhill_--_Framley Parsonage_ in 1860, and _The Small House
at Allington_ that began to follow it in 1862, the year before
Thackeray’s death--showed no sign of Thackeray’s influence. These were
the two books that completed the process, begun by _The Warden_ in 1855,
of placing permanently the public he by this time understood beneath the
spell of his pen. Before, however, the introduction of _The Cornhill_
readers to Lily Dale, John Eames, and Adolphus Crosbie, Trollope had
contributed to the same magazine a loosely written, satirical sketch,
_Brown, Jones, and Robinson_, which a hostile critic might be excused
for describing as Thackeray-and-water. With a congenial subject,
Trollope could always be depended on for abundant humour and irony. Both
these qualities in _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_ lack the spontaneity or
ease without which the charm of Trollope’s writing disappears. So, in
fact, thought Trollope himself; so too, however courteously he softened
the expression of his opinion, did the polite and amiable Mr. George
Smith. Yet even so, _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_ is not at all poorer
than Thackeray’s own mark as seen in many of his earlier pieces for
_Fraser_, and in many of the _Roundabout Papers_ which he hurried
through for _The Cornhill_ while the printers were waiting for copy. It
was Trollope’s single unqualified failure. Never again was he betrayed
by his Thackeray homage into the mistake of mimicry.

As a fact, too, no one knew better than did Trollope, not only his own
limitations and deficiencies, but Thackeray’s as well. The plums of the
Postmaster-General’s department should in every case fall to men already
at work in the office. That feeling of _esprit de corps_ had in 1846
made Trollope oppose Rowland Hill’s introductions from outside to St.
Martin’s-le-Grand. Two years later, or twelve years before Trollope’s
connection with him began, Thackeray himself had, equally to Trollope’s
disgust, contemplated an act of intrusion like Rowland Hill’s in the
Postal Service. In 1848 the assistant-secretaryship fell vacant. The
then Postmaster-General, Lord Clanricarde, the staunchest friend
possessed by the novelist among those in high place, let Thackeray know
he would do his best to secure him the billet. Lord Clanricarde’s second
in command plainly told his chief that the thing was impossible. The
Minister at once gave way, and accepted the official nominee, of course
not a little to Thackeray’s chagrin.

On this transaction Trollope’s remark was that, had Thackeray succeeded
in his attempt, he would surely have ruined himself. No man, he added,
could be fit for the management and performance of special work who had
learned nothing of it before his thirty-seventh year, Thackeray’s then
age. No man, he further insisted, could be more signally unfit for it
than Thackeray. The achievement of his ambition in this matter would
have summoned him to duties impossible of performance except after a
long course of expert training. In some cases, Trollope admitted, an
“untried, elderly tyro” might have put himself into harness and
discharged after a fashion the first duty of maintaining discipline over
a large body of men; but of all men in the world Thackeray was the most
egregiously and fatally disqualified for anything of the sort. The whole
subject was one on which Trollope felt some difficulty in expressing
himself. On the one hand, his grateful admiration of Thackeray made him
anxious not to do that great man any injustice in the matter. On the
other hand, his loyalty to his brethren of the Civil Service made him
resent his idol’s apparent belief that a man may be a Government
secretary with a generous salary and have nothing to do. Nor, he adds,
did Thackeray consider how inexpressibly wearisome he would have found
the details of his work, or in effect how impossible to a man of his
habits and intolerance of all ties would have been attendance in the
city every day from eleven to five. The conclusion, therefore, however
reluctantly reached, is that Thackeray so underrated the intellectual
demands made by their employments on the servants of the State as to see
no difficulty in combining the mechanical drudgery of a public office
with the creative labour of novel-writing and his other literary work.
Yes, not without a touch of bitterness Trollope sums it all up: he might
have done it had he risen at five, and sat at his private desk for three
hours before beginning the day’s grind at the G.P.O. On this subject
Trollope could speak with the practical experience of one who had gone
through the exhausting monotony of the official mill, and who had taxed
almost to breaking point his exceptional strength by combining with it
his unceasing commissions for publishers.

Thackeray’s official aspirations were the fond dreams of a literary man
who would fain have recalled in the nineteenth century that Augustan age
in which, under Queen Anne, Joseph Addison was a Secretary of State,
and, under George I, Matthew Prior became British Ambassador in Paris.
Again, since the State is still accustomed to reward with money, titles
of honour, garters, or stars, Thackeray wanted to know why men of
letters should not have their turn as well as politicians and soldiers.
Even in our own evil times the great Anglo-Saxon State on the other side
of the Atlantic delighted to honour the pen in this way. The United
States had sent Washington Irving (1830) as Minister to London; more
than twenty years later (1853), it had made Nathaniel Hawthorne its
consul at Liverpool. Fired by these precedents, six years after the
miscarriage of his Post Office design, Thackeray (November 1854) had
applied for the vacant secretaryship of our Washington Legation, with
the result that Lord Clarendon, who then controlled the Foreign Office,
replied: first, that the place was already filled; secondly, that it
would be unfair to appoint out of the service; thirdly, that being a
great novelist would not necessarily ensure a man’s being a good
Minister.

When, therefore, Thackeray visited the United States, he did so in his
own coat, as he himself put it, and not in the Queen’s. Nor, is
Trollope’s comment, is there anyone on whom the Queen’s coat would have
sat so ill. However that may be, there are few modern cases which could
be cited in support of a literary man’s claim to employment in the
English service abroad. During the years following Thackeray’s
unsuccessful suit the official prospect for English literature somewhat
brightened. Grenville Murray had combined diplomacy and authorship
before Thackeray applied for Washington. Trollope’s own friend, Charles
Lever, was first introduced to the consular service in 1852. Burton’s
experiences of the same department date from 1861. In 1868 James Hannay
was not too generously rewarded with the Barcelona consulship for his
newspaper services to the Conservative cause. Since then Mr. James
Bryce’s success at our Washington Embassy has brought us further in the
direction of the great novelist’s dream than would have looked possible
in Thackeray’s day.

These are not the only manifestations of the candour that blended itself
with the warmth of Trollope’s appreciative friendship for Thackeray. His
literary master’s defeat by Cardwell in the Oxford election in 1857
suggests a remark on “his foredoomed failure in the House of Commons,
had he ever entered it, a failure rendered inevitable by his intolerance
of tedium, his impatience of slow work, and his want of definite or
accurate political convictions.”[17] More even than this, when Trollope
comes to think about it, he feels by no means sure of Thackeray as
_Cornhill_ editor having been the right man in the right place. Did not,
he implies, Thackeray’s own often-cited article in his magazine about
the editorial position, _Thorns in the Cushion_, justify that misgiving?
The great man was too perfunctory, could not bring himself personally to
deal with all the manuscripts which poured in; he was obliged, in fact,
as all editors are, to entrust some of the supervisory work to his
subordinates. Worse than that, however, Thackeray actually rejected one
of Trollope’s proffered contributions in the shape of a short story, on
the ground that it might bring a blush to the cheek of the young person.
Nothing could be more curiously characteristic of the man who gives it
than the opinion formed by the author of _Framley Parsonage_ of the
first editor of _The Cornhill_. Trollope was compounded in nearly equal
parts of an enthusiastic impulsiveness that came to him by nature, and
of a shrewdly judicial man-of-the-world temper, largely formed and
strengthened by his experiences of life in general, and, in a greater
degree, of his Post Office experiences in particular. His twofold
estimate of Thackeray signally illustrates this balance of opposite
tendencies.

John Forster, who, after the fashion already described, had given
Trollope his first chance of appearing in print, was one among the
latest survivors of those who knew Thackeray intimately. Told in the
year of his death, 1876, of Thackeray in the Men of Letters series being
allotted to Trollope, he remarked with surprise, “Why, Trollope only
knew him as editor of _The Cornhill_.” These things were before my
time. Neither to me nor, I think, to any of my day, did Trollope
volunteer any remarks about the extent to which circumstances had
carried his personal knowledge of Thackeray. That the literary
acquaintance of the two men eventually ripened into something like
social intimacy was the opinion of Thackeray’s own familiars, such as
the already mentioned E. F. S. Pigott and Tom Taylor who, though six
years the great man’s junior, had been with him at Cambridge, and whose
friendship with him to the day of his death was as unbroken as it was
close. The same view on this point was taken also by G. A. Sala, who
personally disliked Trollope, and had formerly resented his approaches
to Thackeray, as well as by the accomplished and socially omniscient Sir
W. A. Fraser, who, from his own independent experience, circumstantially
confirmed to me the accuracy shown by Trollope in his rendering of all
Thackerayan details. Both these henchmen of the great novelist were book
and, incidentally, autograph collectors. Shortly before his death,
Fraser and Trollope, each on a separate occasion going to dine with
Thackeray at Palace Gate, brought with him a specially bound set of
Thackeray’s works that the author might write his name therein. To both
men Thackeray excused himself from doing so at the time, promised that
he would see to the matter next day, and return the volumes. Meanwhile,
the fatal Christmas had come and gone; the great man was no more. The
books were punctually sent back to their owners. In neither set had
Thackeray’s name been written.

Trollope’s _Cornhill_ experiences, under Thackeray first and, in the
case of _The Claverings_, under his successor, marked by far the most
important and profitable connection with periodical literature. As a
journalist, however, he had begun on the weekly press in 1848, while he
was doing Post Office duty in Ireland. In 1859 or 1860 Merivale’s
_History of the Romans under the Empire_ excited in him a wish to combat
the views expressed in that work about the Cæsars. The result was two
articles on the subject, one dealing with Julius, the other with
Augustus, in the _Dublin University Magazine_. By that time Charles
Lever’s editorship of this periodical had ceased; but his good word
helped Trollope with his successor. The articles then written, and just
noticed, formed the germ of a future book hereafter to be mentioned.
But, at the date of these _Dublin University_ opportunities, Trollope
was so entirely overcome with indignant disgust at the prospect of the
Civil Service being thrown open to competitive examination, that he
could write or think about little else. The _Dublin University Magazine_
allowed him to relieve his overwrought feelings by discharging several
pages of furious invective at the proposed change and its authors.

Whatever at different periods Trollope might think and call himself, his
natural prejudices were always those of aristocratic and reactionary
Toryism. Upon whatever grade, and whatever the work, provided it was not
of an essentially plebeian kind, the public offices of this country must
be reserved for gentlemen. Examinations might in some degree test
brains; they could not ensure breeding. Without the ideas, the
antecedents, and the social training which must remain the privilege of
birth, mere book knowledge, diligence, and aptitude for drudgery would
not of themselves guarantee the State the higher qualities it had a
right to expect in its servants. Here spoke the same spirit as that
which had impelled Anthony Trollope’s kinsman, the great Conservative
squire, Sir John Trollope, in 1846 to place loyalty to his Protectionist
principles before loyalty to his leader, Sir Robert Peel. Asseverations
of this kind were much in request as arguments with those bent on
retaining State employment for the exclusive profit of the privileged
classes. Nor beyond these rhetorical commonplaces, with their
conventional appeals to a pseudo-aristocratic feeling, did Anthony
Trollope’s case against competitive examinations go. He lived long
enough, if not cordially to acquiesce in the new system, yet, becoming
Sir Charles Trevelyan’s personal friend, to agree with him that
competition did not in its working involve more evils than patronage.

While on one of his visits to the Irish capital, about his contributions
to the academic periodical, he first made, through the social offices
of Charles Lever, one of the friendships that he renewed with special
appreciation in his later life. J. S. Le Fanu had succeeded Lever as the
editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_; to Le Fanu’s house in
Merrion Square Trollope, accordingly, was taken by Lever. Here in the
course of the evening a young lady--his host’s niece--asked whether she
should read something to them she had written. The budding authoress
became celebrated a little later as Miss Rhoda Broughton, and the
manuscript in hand was that of a story that established her as a
novelist in 1867, _Not Wisely, but Too Well_. Recalling this incident
many years afterwards, Lever said: “Never before or since did I see
Anthony Trollope so agreeable or so witty as on the evening he listened
to the extracts Miss Broughton recited from her earliest book. In fact,
the only _mot_ with which I can ever credit him was flashed out on that
occasion. The talk, I think, had been brought by W. H. Russell, who was
of the party, to some one specially disliked by Trollope. ‘But,’ said
Trollope, dismissing the subject, ‘let us hope better things of him in
the future, as the old lady said when she heard that F. D. Maurice had
preached the eventual salvation of all mankind.’”

Trollope took his place in the social and literary life of London under
conditions and at an age that ensured his enjoying these new experiences
with a greater zest than had they come earlier, and because they were
the deferred, and occasionally the despaired of reward for toil,
endurance, exile, equal to the picturing of his fondest dream. At the
age of forty-five, with powers of enjoyment, as of work, yet unimpaired,
he had in advance guaranteed himself against inconvenience from any
possible check in his literary course by the eastern district
surveyorship. This raised him above the dependence of a publisher’s
hack, and enabled him to make better terms for his books. Its social as
well as official experiences might, as he shrewdly foresaw, be trusted
to ensure his imagination such a constant supply of fresh material as
would preserve freshness and guard him against the sin of
self-repetition. Thus, in little more than ten years after his earliest
and unsuccessful novel, _The Macdermots_, and in five years after his
first success with _The Warden_, he had won a position which rendered it
tolerably certain that no new literary enterprise would be floated by
men like George Smith, without the invitation of his services and
goodwill. In another work[18] I have stated so fully the origin of _The
Pall Mall Gazette_ that any references to it here must be confined to
the few points of contact between that newspaper and Trollope, whom it
did not concern, in his impressions of this journalistic incident,
circumstantially to bring out the fact that, beyond its name, _The Pall
Mall Gazette_ of real life owed nothing to Thackeray, and, as regards
all its details, was the exclusive device of its first owner and its
first editor. The announcement of the historical paper, prepared by
Frederick Greenwood, who alone planned and who long conducted it, said
nothing about a journal written “by gentlemen for gentlemen,” but only
that a few men of letters had decided upon starting on a new venture
which they thought would be found different from anything then before
the public. Contributions of course were invited from Trollope upon any
social events or humours of the hour that interested him. By this time
he was as well known in certain parts of England as he had begun to be
nearly a quarter of a century earlier, on the other side of St. George’s
Channel, for an enthusiastic and intrepid rider to hounds.

At Waltham House, where his Post Office duties had made it convenient to
settle, he was within practicable distance of several different meets.
At Harlow, some ten miles from Waltham, were the kennels of the Essex
pack, and with these he soon became a familiar figure. His earliest
hunting friend, Charles Buxton, between 1865 and 1871 Member for East
Surrey, on Trollope’s re-establishment in the home counties, was himself
still a keen rider to hounds; Buxton’s friendship and introduction
proved of special service to Trollope in connection with his favourite
pastime. During Trollope’s experience of the Essex country, the district
opened to him by his friends of the Buxton family was that known as the
Roothings, chiefly hunted by the staghounds, but occasionally also the
scene of a fox hunt. Famous for its stiff riding, it abounded in
formidable fences and in deep ditches. In the sixties Trollope was a
very heavy weight, and therefore frequently in difficulties; of these he
made light, pulling himself together with surprising speed after a
series of spills, and seldom failing to hold a good place at the end of
a run. Of his fellow-Nimrods in the East Anglian region, there are still
left Sir Evelyn Wood and Mr. E. N. Buxton, from personal experience to
testify to the undaunted alacrity with which, after having been lost to
view in the field, Trollope scaled the sides of a Roothing dyke,
reappeared in the saddle, and pushed on with unabated vigour.

In addition to his weight, fatal, of course, to anything like equestrian
elegance, Trollope had to contend against a defect of vision which no
artificial relief entirely obviated. Hence some of the difficulties that
used to beset him with the Essex pack and with H. Petre’s staghounds.
His popularity in the field generally brought him timely relief in
answer to his call for help. Such proved the case when, on one occasion,
he had been making up lost ground after a fall in the middle of a
ploughed field. The fellow-sportsman who then answered to his cry was no
less a person than the present Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. “For
heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Trollope, “be careful; I am afraid to move
lest I should trample on my spectacles which have just fallen off my
nose.” Quick as thought, the future Field-Marshal alighted from his
horse, and retrieved the glasses. Having fitted them to his nose,
Trollope rejoined the hunt with as much serene sturdiness as if the
little contretemps had never occurred. Trollope’s sporting performances
in the eastern home counties had also a social side he found highly
useful for the purposes of his novels. Many of the sportsmen lived at
London or elsewhere, renting at local inns a certain amount of stabling
for their horses, together with suites of rooms for themselves during
the season. They thus formed a club whose members, as often as
convenient, dined together, and of which Trollope soon became free. It
was a pleasant, cheery life that exactly suited the eminently clubbable
Trollope. Glimpses of it are given in those passages of _Phineas Finn_
describing the performances of that novel’s hero on Lord Chiltern’s
Bonebreaker.

As Trollope wrote, so did he ride, confident that the animal he
bestrode, equally the novelist’s Pegasus as his Irish mare, would in
each case carry him successfully from point to point. Whether with the
pen or on horseback, he took his own line. Neither checks nor even falls
prevented his finishing at the spot and the hour he had from the first
fixed. As much as he could desire of the sport he loved, in a good
country, and with social accessories just suited to him; a constitution,
naturally of iron, as yet practically untouched by years, and revealing
no unsound spot; a sense of official importance gratified by the
authority delegated to him from St. Martin’s-le-Grand; the inheritance
at the London club he most frequented, the Garrick, of something like
Thackeray’s own position; ascendency firmly established and wide
popularity permanently won in the calling of novelist; freedom from all
present anxiety as to his circumstances, and every year bringing a solid
addition to his funded savings--all this surely formed a combination,
such as might have made him who commanded it the happiest, as he was
certainly the most fortunate, of men. And yet Trollope’s life was
chronically saddened by recurrent moods of indefinable dejection and
gloom. A sardonic melancholy he had himself imputed to Thackeray. In his
own case the sardonic element was wanting, but the melancholy was
habitually there, darkening his outlook alike upon the present and the
future. “It is, I suppose,” he said, addressing the friend to whom, more
than to any other, he unbosomed himself, Sir J. E. Millais, “some
weakness of temperament that makes me, without intelligible cause, such
a pessimist at heart.”

These seizures of despondency generally overtook him as he was riding
home from a day with the hounds. They began with the reflection that he
rode heavier in each successive season, and that in the course of nature
the hunting, repeatedly prolonged beyond what he had fixed as its term,
would have to be given up. The vague presentiment of impending calamity,
as he himself put it, came, no doubt, from nothing more than an
increasingly practical discovery of the Horatian truth:

“_Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes._”[19]

Against the depressing influences thus engendered, Trollope lacked the
natural resources of his two most famous contemporaries. Thackeray, if
he had not always at his command spirits as high as Dickens, by an
effort of purely intellectual strength could generally secure the
enjoyment of life against the intrusion of unwelcome fancies and gloomy
thoughts. Anthony Trollope was without Dickens’ perennially boyish zest
of existence or Thackeray’s stubborn opposition to the first approach of
the “blue devils.” His manner, habitually abrupt and sometimes
imperious, concealed an almost feminine sensibility to the opinions of
others, a self-consciousness altogether abnormal in a seasoned and
practical man of the world, as well as a strong love of approbation,
whether from stranger or friend. The inevitable disappointment of these
instincts and desires at once pained and ruffled him beyond his power to
conceal, and so produced what his physician and friend, Sir Richard
Quain, once happily called “Trollope’s genial air of grievance against
the world in general, and those who personally valued him in
particular.”

The founding of _The Pall Mall Gazette_ and other literary events
belonging to the year 1865 were landmarks in Trollope’s progress for
social rather than literary reasons. Some very slight sketches,
exclusively or for the most part on hunting, were contributed by him to
the evening paper which Frederick Greenwood’s experience and
inventiveness had been helped by George Smith’s capital to create.[20]
In those days more dining than is the habit to-day was considered
essential to journalistic enterprise. George Smith’s earliest _Pall
Mall_ dinners soon became famous, and found Anthony Trollope a frequent
guest. At these hospitalities he greatly extended the literary and
political acquaintanceship which he had begun to make at the Garrick and
at the Cosmopolitan, as well as added to it specimens of intellectual
power, culture, and cosmopolitan knowledge hitherto seldom collected
beneath the same London roof. Such were the three survivors among the
chief original writers for _The Saturday Review_: H. S. Maine, his
former Cambridge pupil and subsequently _Saturday_ colleague, William
Vernon Harcourt, and G. S. Venables, about whom it was then, as it still
remains, uncertain whether he did or did not sit to Thackeray for the
Warrington of _Pendennis_.

The second Lord Lytton, then attached to our Lisbon embassy, Julian
Fane, and the eighth Viscount Strangford represented various branches of
_belles lettres_, as well as of diplomacy and cosmopolitanism, in the
company among which Trollope now found himself. Not the elder alone, but
both the two brothers who were successively the seventh and eighth Lords
Strangford are reflected, even to their personal appearance, in the
Waldershare of Disraeli’s _Endymion_--fair with short, curly, brown hair
and blue eyes, not exactly handsome, but with a countenance full of
expression, and the index of quick emotions, whether of joy or sorrow.
George Smythe, the seventh of the Strangford Viscounts, the reputed
original of Coningsby, was no longer alive at the time of these _Pall
Mall_ dinners. His brother and successor, Percy, figured among
Greenwood’s most important contributors from the first. None of the
group now mentioned had the same vivid interest for Trollope as
Strangford; but the most distinguished of the others, notably Fitzjames
Stephen, William Rathbone Greg, George Henry Lewes, and James Hannay,
exercised upon him something of the same educational influence that they
did upon Greenwood himself. Many years subsequently to this, Trollope
met as a guest at the Cosmopolitan Club the ex-officer of the French
Navy, L. M. J. Viaud, who, as Pierre Loti, became famous in 1880. “I
could not,” was Trollope’s comment, “amid the many personal
dissimilarities of the two, but be struck by a certain resemblance
between James Hannay’s breezy picturesqueness in stating his views of
history or politics, and the touches, as graphic as they were delicate,
that made Viaud’s descriptions, whether in conversation or writing,
living things.”

The period now reached was to present Trollope with another new
connection in periodical literature, not less noticeable in itself, and
more far-reaching in some of its consequences than any of those already
mentioned. His first dealings with the publishers Chapman and Hall,
while still settled at 193 Piccadilly, were, as has been already said,
over _Dr. Thorne_ in 1858. Pre-eminent among the nineteenth century
writers as the novelist of English home-life, Trollope possessed, and on
occasion showed, as much of international sympathy as Bulwer-Lytton
himself, and, by original observation as well as by English and foreign
reading, took real pains to keep himself in touch with the higher
European thought of his time. Occasionally he took his summer holiday at
a pretty little hamlet in the Black Forest, Höllenthal, near Freiburg.
Here he sometimes received visits from well-placed continental friends
who, in a few hours’ talk, took him effectively behind the scenes of
European society letters, politics, or finance. From Höllenthal, too,
were made those excursions that not only acquainted him with the
most-desired hospitalities of Cologne, Frankfort, and Berlin, but that
also brought him into the heart of the Fatherland’s inner life as seen,
now in obscure towns or obscurer villages, now in the studies and
lecture-rooms of thinkers and writers. Such were the experiences that
suggested to Trollope’s active mind the possibility of founding a
magazine which should be for England what the _Revue des deux Mondes_
was for France; that periodical, as was happily said by Lord Morley of
Blackburn, had “brought down abstract discussion from the library to
the man in the street.” Why should not, Trollope asked himself, the like
of this be done here. The same idea had occurred almost simultaneously
to others of light and learning in contemporary literature. Huxley, E.
A. Freeman, Sir R. F. Burton, E. S. Beesly, Mr. Frederick Harrison, and
the present poet laureate, Mr. Alfred Austin, promised the enterprise
their “vote and interest”; Lord Houghton, without whose counsel and
goodwill no undertaking of the sort could then have been carried out,
forwarded it not only with his blessing but his purse.

Among others less well known but not less active co-operating to the
same end were Danby Seymour, Charles Waring, a shrewd, genial
Yorkshireman of intellectual tastes and parliamentary ambitions, whose
interest in the project had been secured by one already mentioned more
than once in these pages, E. F. S. Pigott. Waring, who subsequently
married a daughter of Sir George Denys of Draycote, Yorkshire, and was
from 1865 to 1868 M.P. for Poole, became the father of Captain Walter
Waring, returned in 1907 for Banffshire. In the sixties, however, he was
a man about town, living in The Albany, as generous and eclectic in his
bachelor hospitalities as, after his marriage, in the cosmopolitan
banquets which during the eighties gave his house, 3 Grosvenor Square, a
place of its own in the chronicle of the London season. During that
subsequent period Waring once thought of buying back from its
possessors, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the periodical to founding which
he had contributed. Then, however, Trollope, at whose instance Pigott’s
influence had originally prevailed on Charles Waring to co-operate in
bringing _The Fortnightly Review_ to the birth, was dead against the
parting of the property to any new purchaser.

At the date now looked back upon, Waring’s Albany Chambers were
frequented by other clever and notable men, all of them, in their
different ways, highly useful at its beginnings to the literary
enterprise. Such were Ralph Earle, who, as Benjamin Disraeli’s private
secretary during part of 1859, sat for Berwick-on-Tweed. Soon after
this Earle gave up politics, as he had before given up diplomacy. He had
the Italian or Spanish genius for statecraft, but no special
qualifications for a deliberative assembly. The knowledge of
international policy and finance, picked up in the course of his
European wanderings, he employed congenially and successfully in
negotiating concessions from foreign sovereigns and statesmen for great
capitalists engaged in railways and other public works, especially Baron
de Hirsch. Earle’s House of Commons contemporary, Danby Seymour,
Waring’s predecessor in the representation of Poole, was without the
rare intellectual power and subtlety that marked Disraeli’s former
secretary. He was, however, a typical specimen of the intellectual and
political man about town, with an altogether extraordinary knowledge of
high-class periodicals in every European country and language. Be sure,
was his advice, to cultivate as an entirely new feature, the best
account that can be written for each number of all contemporary
movements, foreign as well as domestic, with their tendency and value,
whether in the region of politics, letters, science, or economics.
Seymour’s suggested article at once became a feature, and received from
Trollope himself the title, “Home and Foreign Affairs.” The little
conferences in the Piccadilly precinct that preceded the appearance of
_The Fortnightly_ proved a valuable experience to Trollope. They took
him for the first time in his life behind the political scenes, and
brought him into close quarters with men from whom he afterwards drew
the political figures that flit through his later novels.

Danby Seymour had held subordinate office in Lord Palmerston’s second
administration. His brother Alfred, often with him on these occasions,
had been member for Shaftesbury. They both had fine estates in
Wiltshire--subsequently disposed of to Mr. Percy Wyndham--as well as
Mayfair houses, one in Curzon Street, the other near it, and each
possessed a fine collection of pictures. In a word, the Seymour kinsmen,
to whom _The Fortnightly Review_ operations alone introduced Trollope,
were thoroughly characteristic of the class and period that he
introduced in _Can You Forgive Her?_ (1864), and which afterwards he was
to describe more minutely in the political novels that began with
_Phineas Finn_.

Trollope showed his knowledge of recent and remote history by reminding
his company that leading out of the same corridor as Waring’s rooms were
those in which Douglas Cook, creator and first editor of _The Saturday
Review_, saw, of a Tuesday morning, his contributors, and later in the
day dined his great friends or wealthy patrons of the Hope and Pelham
name. A generation earlier Trollope discovered, in the same Piccadilly
precinct, Lord Althorp had rallied his followers for the attack upon the
Conservatives under the Duke of Wellington that was to establish the
reform ministry of Grey. Such formed the associations of the four walls
within which were completed the arrangements that resulted in the
appearance, on the 15th of May, 1865, of the first number of _The
Fortnightly Review_, with the cry, “No party but a free platform.” At
the same time, the choice of George Henry Lewes as first editor, on the
then Mr. John Morley’s recommendation, seemed to promise that the
champions of progress were not likely to have the worst of it in any
discussions which might enliven the pages of _The Fortnightly_. The
title explains itself; the Review was to appear on the first and
fifteenth of each month, at a price of two shillings. In 1866 Mr. Morley
succeeded Lewes as editor. The October issue of that year announced the
suspension for the present of the mid-monthly number. Thus, among the
three _Fortnightly_ editors during Trollope’s time, the earliest, George
Lewes, was the only one who conducted a magazine literally true to its
title. With the number of January, 1867, the present series began; at
the same time the price was raised from a florin to half a crown.

Trollope always felt a paternal interest, and sometimes exercised a
paternal power, in the periodical that thus at its different stages
associated itself with so many well-known names, and that, without any
loss of position, had in infancy dropped any etymological claim to the
name given it by Trollope himself. When _The Fortnightly_ funds, raised
in the manner already described, had been spent, the copyright passed to
the publishers. Of these, Frederick Chapman, by his energy and zeal for
the enterprise, had already made himself a part of the Review, uniformly
co-operating, then and afterwards, in all matters that pertained to it,
with Trollope. Thus far, Trollope sympathised with, or did not
reprobate, the advanced opinions advocated by its chief writers. He
remained, indeed, for many years afterwards, enough of a Liberal to
remonstrate with Mr. Alfred Austin on securing for his elder brother,
Tom, the Italian correspondence of _The Standard_, at the price, he
feared, of his conversion to Conservatism. For though, as has already
been seen, Trollope’s inborn prejudices, social training, and personal
antipathies were all strongly Conservative, the accidents of later
experience, operating on his actively controversial temper; made him
pass for a Liberal during those Palmerstonian and early Gladstonian eras
when Liberalism took its principles from the reactionary moderates
rather than the progressives. He wished to see in power men whose
administrative abilities would secure prosperity and a fair distribution
of material comforts, as well as civil or political rights at home, and
the exercise of English influence to redress international grievances,
and to put down oppression abroad. But this was coupled always with the
condition of the country being ruled and represented by the privileged
classes, to whom no one was more proud of belonging than himself. So
long as they were in the hands of gentlemen, he really cared little
about the political label borne by those responsible for the conduct of
affairs. The demagogue and leveller, whether on the platform or in
print, were always the same abominations to his earlier manhood that the
professional agitator and the foreign fomenters of Irish disaffection
became to his later years.

His favourite intellectual progeny, as he regarded _The Fortnightly
Review_, might be trusted, he thought, to reflect his own ideas, and to
avoid the falsehood of extremes, at least as much in one direction as in
the others. He therefore felt something of a Lear’s paternal pain and
indignation when the editor and his self-willed contributors seemed bent
on converting the periodical from a platform for the discussion of all
questions by the light of pure reason, on lines agreeable to impartial
intellect alone, into a pulpit, as it struck Trollope, for maintaining
the most audacious and subversive neologies, social or political, civil
or religious. His misgivings were exchanged for certainty during the
course of 1867. In that year the war between labour and capital reached
its height. The public had not recovered from the horror and disgust it
had received from the trades union excesses which Broadhead had
instigated at Sheffield, when Mr. Frederick Harrison came out with his
famous defence of strikes and unions in _The Fortnightly Review_. Nor
was it the industrial question only on which _The Fortnightly_ articles
excited Trollope’s apprehension. To the end of the sixties and to the
first year of the next decade belonged the acutest phase of the
perennial dispute whether national elementary teaching should rest on a
purely secular, on a chiefly religious basis, or should be supported on
the result of a compromise between the two. That last was the
ministerial view which, in his pending Elementary Schools Bill, W. E.
Forster, as vice-President of the Council, and practically Education
Minister, aimed at establishing. He thus, of course, satisfied neither
side. The religious educationalists of the National Union, with
Manchester for its headquarters, charged the author of the 1870 Bill
with indifference whether the rising generation was brought up in the
Christianity of its forefathers, or victimised to the heathenish fads
and godless crotchets of the secularist and agnostic education-mongers,
looked upon with the same horror by Trollope as all other radicals or
revolutionaries. On the other hand, the Birmingham League, with Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain for its political champion, and the unimpeachably
Christian Congregational minister, R. W. Dale, for its prophet and
guide, held that, in the long run, both learning and religion would fare
best if in State schools religion formed no part of the official
curriculum. So, too, thought, or as Trollope fancied, seemed to think,
the leading spirits of _The Fortnightly Review_. Against these Anthony
Trollope was up in arms. The articles advocating the League’s policy
suggested a deliberate plot to suppress the Holy Scriptures in the
National schools.

His disapproval of the political school whose ascendency _The
Fortnightly_ confessed did not prevent him from being one of its
contributors. In addition to the novel he ran through it, _The Belton
Estate_, presently to be dwelt on, he made the Review an arena for a
struggle with E. A. Freeman about the morality of field sports in
general, and of his own greatly enjoyed hunting in particular. This
controversy, marked on both sides by prejudice rather than argument, and
by vigour instead of subtlety, was, as might have been expected, no
better than a waste of time, temper, and space. Had it been possible to
bring forward any new pros or cons, neither Freeman nor Trollope was the
man to do it. Ouida and her friend, Sir Frederick Johnstone, talking
over the matter at one of her Langham Hotel _causeries intimes_, “where
cigarettes and even cigars were permitted,” said: “I think if these two
pundits had handed the matter over to us, we could have put a little
more life into it, and perhaps sent up by a few copies the periodical
which is the pasture-ground of professors and prigs.” Trollope was as
far from being a prig as from being a philosopher. But he had equally
few qualifications for a controversialist likely to freshen up an
ancient theme, and in this disability he was well matched with Freeman.

Meanwhile, he had invested capital in the house of Chapman and Hall;
after the publishing business had been turned into a limited company he
remained one of the shareholders, and transmitted his interest in it to
those in whose favour he drew his will. He was, from its foundation to
the end of his life, a director of the company, but besides this, his
intimacy with the manager of its publishing business, Frederick Chapman,
as well as with that gentleman’s well-to-do relatives with a large share
in the concern, gave, and kept for Trollope to the day of his death, the
position of an _amicus curiæ_, whose literary advice was asked and
taken on important matters. But the sensational stage of the development
of _The Fortnightly_ was not fully reached during his life. He survived,
however, to witness the first signs of its advent in an article which,
under the signature “Judex,” appeared in the spring of 1880, after
Beaconsfield’s final overthrow, and the formation of Gladstone’s second
Cabinet. “It was,” said the writer of the article now recalled, “an
extraordinary victory won by the nation against an extraordinary man, in
some of his powers never surpassed, whose life was the most astonishing
of all careers in the annals of parliament, and who, though decisively
vanquished, would not, it was to be hoped, retire, because a Liberal
Government, more than any other, imperatively needs a strong Opposition
for the due and sane performance of its work.” This composition was at
once discovered to have the importance of a State paper. The editor, Mr.
John Morley, had not then entered parliament as member for
Newcastle-on-Tyne. Previously, however, to that he had fought not only
Blackburn but Westminster under the Gladstonian flag. He was known to
stand high in the Liberal leader’s confidence. It was generally
asserted, without contradiction then or since, that the pseudonym at the
end of the piece veiled the identity of no less a person than W. E.
Gladstone himself. Trollope, at the most, did not think much of it, and
drily remarked that fictitious pen names violated one of the principles
of the Review. He had consistently protested, and indeed actively
struggled against, the conversion of an impartial and philosophical
magazine into the mouthpiece of men to whose opinions he could not
reconcile himself, though their expression was judiciously revised by an
editor not only as able, but as fair-minded as any periodical was
fortunate enough to possess. Having retired from practical opposition,
and accepted what he thought was the inevitable, he remarked: “The
whirligig of time brings its own revenges, and wisdom is justified of
her children. I shall not live to see it, but a generation or so hence
_The Fortnightly_, recovering from these its earlier excesses, will
revert to its original mission, and give the world the best which can be
written for or against any school of politics and philosophy in Church
or State.” This characteristic prediction has at least, in the twentieth
century, fulfilled itself to the letter. Under its present accomplished
editor, as under his latest predecessors, irrespectively of party
position or personal proclivities, the periodical has been opened to all
competent writers with a message to deliver.

CHAPTER X

THE BROADENING OF THE LITERARY AND GEOGRAPHICAL HORIZON

Trollope as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Lewes among the lions
of literature and science at The Priory, Regent’s Park--Charles
Dickens present in the spirit, not in the flesh, thinks Adam Bede
is by Bradbury or Evans, and doesn’t fancy it is Bradbury--Was
there any exchange of literary influence between George Eliot and
Trollope?--Trollope’s new departure illustrates the progress from
the idyllic to the epic--_Orley Farm_--Its plot--Trollope’s first
visit to the United States, in 1860.

Thackeray’s death in 1863 had left Trollope without any special intimate
among his fellow-craftsmen. Several years later, indeed, his success as
a novelist brought him, after the manner to be duly mentioned in its
proper place, into business relations with Dickens, his mother’s rather
than his own old friend. John Forster, it has been seen, may be said
first to have brought him out in print. With that ex-editor of _The
Examiner_, Trollope always maintained some social intimacy, visiting him
first in the Lincoln’s Inn Chambers, where he so long lived, and
afterwards more frequently at his house in Queen’s Gate. Here the chief
new literary acquaintance formed by Trollope was with the second Lord
Lytton, who snatched from his diplomatic employments abroad enough time
for constant reappearance in literary circles at home. Between 1865 and
1875, however, the most interesting and eventful visits paid by Trollope
to any host among contemporary writers were those to Mr. and Mrs. G. H.
Lewes at The Priory, North Bank, Regent’s Park. At these well-known
Sunday afternoon receptions, Trollope first found himself at the social
heart of the highest nineteenth century culture. G. H. Lewes, George
Eliot, and Anthony Trollope were all nearly of an age. How far Lewes and
his scientific tastes affected George Eliot’s literary style may be an
open question. There is no doubt that George Eliot in her turn
influenced Trollope’s views of life and character. In Trollope’s time,
the regular Sunday _habitués_ of the double drawing-room at The Priory,
for the most part men, seldom failed to number among them Frederick
Leighton, whose drawings for _Romola_ decorated the walls; E. S. Beesly,
History Professor at London University College; Robert Browning always;
sometimes, on his rare visits to London, Alfred Tennyson; the
philosophers Herbert Spencer, John Tyndall, E. F. S. Pigott invariably;
occasionally Owen Jones, to whose decorative art The Priory owed
scarcely less than the Crystal Palace itself; some men of note from the
Universities; and generally one or two foreigners of distinction in
letters, science, or art.

Of all this company, none more frequently than Trollope obtained a seat
near Mrs. Lewes’ armchair on the left of the fire-place. The two
novelists never talked publicly about themselves, but among the guests
there were some who noticed a kind of parallel in George Eliot’s and
Anthony Trollope’s literary courses. The earliest successes of both with
the general public won the favour also of their most famous
fellow-authors. Thackeray pleasantly complained if, after the day’s work
was done, he could not at once refresh himself with _The Three Clerks_.
George Eliot’s _Scenes of Clerical Life_ had no sooner appeared in
_Blackwood’s_ than Dickens conjured all those about him to read them,
saying, “They are the best things I have seen since I began my course.”
A little later, Miss Marian Evans, to recall for a moment the name which
never, by the by, appeared on the title-page of any of her books, set
the literary world speculating about the identity veiled by the George
Eliot pseudonym. Dickens alone penetrated the mystery, after reading the
description of Hetty Sorrel doing her back hair. Only a woman, and one
of first-rate genius, could have written that, he said. Hence his
oracular reply, through his daughter, to a letter asking his opinion on
the subject: “Papa wishes me to say he feels sure _Adam Bede_ is either
by Bradbury or Evans, and he doesn’t think it’s Bradbury.”[21]

George Eliot, like many other great writers, avoided, so far as
possible, reading the periodical reviews of her books. Love of
approbation was with her a phrenological organ strongly developed; as
all writers cannot but do, she found sweetness in the appreciation of
her work by other labourers in the same literary field as her own.
During the later fifties she made more than one visit to Florence and
its neighbourhood in quest of materials and local colour for _Romola_,
published in 1863. On those occasions she saw much of Anthony Trollope’s
elder brother, Thomas Adolphus, who had made the Tuscan capital his
home, and who never left it save on a short and rare visit to England.
Anthony Trollope’s familiarity with the place dated, as has been seen,
from the visit paid by him to his mother during her residence there.
Those early reminiscences naturally increased Anthony Trollope’s
interest in _Romola_. “A delightful generous letter from Mr. Anthony
Trollope about _Romola_” brightened and encouraged the authoress in one
of those moods of passing depression that sometimes beset the most
intellectual toilers. “The heartiest, most genuine, moral and generous
of men.” Such, at an earlier state of their acquaintance, had been the
impression given by the author of _The Small House at Allington_ to the
hostess of The Priory at those Sunday afternoon receptions. In common
with his fellow-guests Trollope felt to the full the austere charm of
George Eliot’s grave urbanity, and of her conversation--brightened
indeed by no flashes of humour, but occasionally seasoned with
utterances of penetrating sagacity condensed into epigram. With this
woman of genius Trollope became a personal favourite. More than that,
the two novelists appreciably, to some extent, influenced each other.
“I am not at all sure,” George Eliot told Mrs. Lynn Linton, “that, but
for Anthony Trollope, I should ever have planned my studies on so
extensive a scale for _Middlemarch_, or that I should, through all its
episodes, have persevered with it to the close.”

Trollope’s progress as a novelist owed something to his acquaintance
with the two chief literary women of his age. Mention has already been
made of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s preference over all his earlier
stories for _The Three Clerks_. Nothing else of his, she said, had thus
far combined so happily pure romance with realistic incident. This
praise, he told the present writer, had the effect of doubling his care
with the labour of plot-weaving in connection with character-drawing.
This was in 1858. In 1862 _Orley Farm_ produced nearly the same
compliment to him from the author of _Adam Bede_. Ten years after Mrs.
Browning’s hints came the inspiring and instructive intercourse with
George Eliot. Fresh from that association Trollope began to deal less
superficially than his earlier stories had required with feminine
problems. Into his comedy narrative of manners were now introduced
questions of social casuistry, involving moral issues of a graver kind
than those which so far had charged his atmosphere. Among the most
marked of Trollope’s mental features was his receptivity. This had been
already shown by the literary account to which he successively turned
his Post Office experiences at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in Ireland, and
again after that in England, provincial as well as metropolitan. His
admiration of George Eliot’s art generally, particularly of those
qualities in her work that secured her the compliment of comparison with
Shakespeare, did without affecting his literary style and method to some
degree influence, as he himself felt, his views of character and life.

_Can You Forgive Her?_ (1864), as will presently be shown, marked a
fresh stage in the novelist’s evolution. In the manifestation of poetic
gifts the natural order of advance has always been from the idyllic to
the epic. Whether with the founder of pastoral poetry this may have been
the case we do not know, since from Theocritus there have come down to
us from him no strains more militant than those in which he celebrated
the rivalries, the loves, the alternate fears and hopes, not of a purely
ideal Arcadia, but as those sentiments existed in everyday life among
the Syracusan swains and shepherds whom in real life he knew. The
Virgilian Bucolics were in wide circulation before, at the wish of
Augustus, the Æneid was begun. So with English poets. Milton’s shorter
and gentler compositions preceded _Paradise Lost_ by the best part of a
generation. Alexander Pope’s Pastorals soothed pleasantly the popular
ear while their author still meditated in his Twickenham grotto the
English presentation of the Greek and Latin heroic masterpieces. So too
with Trollope. The broader canvas, the greater variety of personages,
and the swifter sequence of stirring incident exemplified a progress
corresponding with that just explained.

Something of the same sort had already happened, or was about to take
place with a literary ornament of the Victorian age, of an order more
illustrious than Anthony Trollope. The greatest, probably, of modern
English poets who have ever filled the office of laureate made his first
successful appeal to the public with compositions that were in metre
much what Trollope’s _Cornhill_ stories were in prose. Six years older
than Anthony Trollope, Alfred Tennyson had first caught the English ear
with his rural lays and lyrics of English home life. The taste thus
gratified, as well as to some extent created, demanded prose fiction
possessing domestic interest of the same kind. The public had delighted
in _The Miller’s Daughter_, _The Sisters_, _The Gardener’s Daughter_,
_Dora_, _Audley Court_, and _Edwin Morris_ from the poet. It, therefore,
found what exactly suited its mood in _Framley Parsonage_, and _The
Small House at Allington_ from the novelist. The way for Trollope’s
popularity had also been prepared, not only by writers of his own
period, but by the gradual evolution of the English novels at the hand
of its earlier masters. His stories of everyday life began to appear
while Jane Austen’s novels were still in the highest favour and Maria
Edgeworth’s still retained much of their original vogue. Charlotte
Yonge had first extended her fame from the High Church circles to the
general public a little later, and retained her position well into the
nineteenth century’s second half. But the well-to-do and more or less
cultivated English households that read and discussed _The Heir of
Redclyffe_ had by no means ceased to care for the analysis of feminine
character as illustrated by English fiction’s earliest master of that
art, Samuel Richardson. There were, too, Richardson’s less famous or now
almost forgotten successors; these numbered not only Thomas Holcroft,
but Robert Page, whose _Hermsprang_ contains studies of girlhood and
womanhood as effective, and, in their day as much admired, as any of the
portraits in “those large, still books,” to apply to them Tennyson’s
description. The welcome given to those heroines on their first
appearance before the public presaged in its warmth and universality the
reception awaiting the latter-day descendants of the men, the matrons,
and widows whom Richardson’s example had encouraged Trollope to think no
labour of observation or of pen too great, if, as he had seen them, he
could in his stories, to the life, reproduce, not only them, but their
social atmosphere and surroundings. This Trollope did, and an older
generation, which knew Richardson first-hand, encouraged its juniors to
see in Lily Dale and Lucy Robarts most of what an earlier age had found
in Clarissa Harlowe and Pamela.

Such were the earlier among the literary labourers in something like his
own path of industry who undoubtedly, as no one saw more clearly than he
did himself, acted as the pioneers of Trollope’s particular industry. In
what relation did he stand to his own contemporaries? More than any
other of these George Eliot disciplined and developed personages in
themselves often commonplace, by means of abnormal experiences and
exceptionally dramatic situations. Trollope, on the other hand, before
the season of his personal intercourse with George Eliot during the
early sixties and thereafter, found the familiar conjunctures of
everyday life abundantly rich in all the opportunities he needed for
the evolution of those characters--daughters, mothers, and
sweethearts--to whom his readers had no sooner been introduced than they
began to share Trollope’s own love for these, the novelist’s own
creations. It was during 1862, the year of his first visit to America,
that Trollope first acquainted his readers with feminine types whose
display and development required another set of surroundings as well as
incidents somewhat outside the common routine. The earliest of the fresh
ventures belongs to 1862. The monthly parts in which _Orley Farm_ then
appeared, as several of Dickens’ and Thackeray’s novels had already been
issued, were not the only detail wherein Trollope conformed to the great
examples of his time. During the early sixties the popularity of the
sensational novel, introduced by Mrs. Henry Wood, was confirmed by
Wilkie Collins and was still further increased and extended by Miss
Braddon. No one, as will be more fully seen on a later page, mirrored
more promptly and faithfully than Trollope the literary tendencies of
this time. Always quick to take a hint, Trollope therefore introduced
the sensational element into the novel _Orley Farm_, and, by its
successful appeal to interests, which it had not yet fallen within his
scope to touch, completely justified the new experiment.

The seeds of the plot for the story now to be considered had been long
sown in Anthony Trollope’s mind. He himself partly attributed their
promise of fruitfulness to conversations on the subject with his brother
Thomas Adolphus. When their father removed his household gods from
Bloomsbury to Harrow Weald he became, it may be remembered, successively
the occupant of two houses. The first, a convenient and even handsome
building, had been raised by himself under the name of Julians. The
second roof that sheltered him and his family was a farmhouse he had
found standing on the ground he rented. This formed the original of the
structure in which Trollope laid the scene of a novel that had engaged
him earlier than his _Cornhill_ stories. Some of the most stirring
incidents in _Orley Farm_ grow out of events which took place several
years before the opening of the narrative.

The Johnsons were a family that had done well in the hardware business.
They had, indeed, almost attained the dignity of county standing.
Suddenly they fell upon evil times. As a result, Mr. Johnson’s name
appeared in _The Gazette_. He had, however, one valuable asset in the
person of his handsome daughter Mary. This young lady’s calm and
dignified beauty eventually attracted, among her father’s north-country
acquaintances, old Sir Joseph Mason, a desolate widower of Groby Park,
Yorkshire, whose ambition it had always been to become the founder of a
territorial line. His three daughters had all married well; each of
them, together with their husbands, shared their father’s social
aspirations. Such were some of the ready-made relatives by whom Mary
Johnson, on giving her hand in marriage to Sir Joseph Mason, was to find
herself surrounded. Though Sir Joseph Mason’s chief estate and principal
country house lay to the north of the Trent, his favourite residence had
long been the modest building in one of the home counties known as Orley
Farm situated between twenty and thirty miles from London. At the time
of his settlement at Orley Farm, Sir Joseph Mason’s son and heir by his
first marriage, Joseph Mason junior, had almost reached the age of
forty, when, to his chagrin and his nearest kith and kin’s disgust, his
father’s second marriage bore fruit in the birth of a brother, Lucius
Mason. The undoubted inheritor of the chief Mason property, Groby Park,
Joseph Mason had always counted on possessing, on his father’s death,
Orley Farm as well. When, however, old Sir Joseph’s will came to be
read, it disclosed a codicil bequeathing Orley Farm to his infant son,
Lucius. Another testamentary disposition equally unexpected was that of
£2000 to Miriam Usbech, the daughter of that attorney, Jonathan Usbech,
employed by Sir Joseph Mason to draft the Will with the codicil, round
which the interest of the story centres. The provisions of that
document, contested by the eldest son, had formed the subject of an
action which he brought against Lady Mason before the novel begins.
That had been decided in Lady Mason’s favour. The curtain thus rises on
the late Sir Joseph’s eldest son, baffled by his step-mother in the
effort legally to assert his ownership of the entire Mason property,
and, by this failure, more keenly even than his sisters embittered
against her. His half-brother, Lucius, now between twenty and
twenty-five, having finished his education in a German university, has
brought home with him scientific ideas of farming, and of land
improvement generally, which are greatly to increase the value of the
Orley Farm, whose master, on attaining his majority, he became.
Meanwhile his half-brother, settled at the Yorkshire headquarters of the
family, Groby, has held no intercourse with him. Sir Joseph Mason’s two
sons have indeed always been strangers to each other.

By this time also, Miriam Usbech, a beneficiary, as has been already
mentioned, under Sir Joseph’s Will to the extent of £2000, has become
the wife of a local solicitor, Dockwrath, whose practice lies near Orley
Farm. This man had received from Lady Mason, during the minority of her
son Lucius, a grant of land on the understanding that it should remain
in his hands until it might be wanted by her son, as possessor of the
farm. Lucius has no sooner arrived at his majority than the contingency
thus forecast is realised. The ground in question has become, he finds,
essential for the improvement he is bent on introducing into the estate.
Dockwrath, therefore, has, in the earlier chapters of the book,
conceived a grudge against Lucius Mason, as well as a strong suspicion
of his mother. A search among the papers of his father-in-law, Jonathan
Usbech, discloses the fact that the alleged witnesses to old Sir Joseph
Mason’s signature of a codicil devising Orley Farm to Lucius must, on
the same day, have witnessed also the execution of another legal
instrument. That strikes Dockwrath as, to say the least of it, odd; he
therefore hunts up these witnesses and puts to them the question: Did
they, on the date of certifying Sir Joseph Mason’s signature of the
codicil, certify also in a like capacity his signature of the other
paper? So far from thinking she did anything of the sort, the
interrogated witness felt quite certain that she had only seen Sir
Joseph writing his name once.

The results of this inquiry are communicated by Dockwrath to the master
of Groby Park, who forthwith commences a second suit against his
step-mother on the charge of perjury committed at the first trial. At
this point begins the real action of the novel under conditions so
sombre, and in an atmosphere loaded so depressingly with a sense of
coming evil, that considerations of art and nature imperatively demand
some relief. This lighter element is supplied by expedients resembling
those which, for a similar purpose, were adopted so skilfully in
Trollope’s first book, _The Macdermots_. The humorous passages, now
following in brisk and varied succession, without actually advancing the
movement of the story are no mere excrescences upon it. They give life
and reality to the figures in the central episode, and in their place
are perfectly natural as being Dockwrath’s experiences on his momentous
journey to Groby Park. Their drollery relaxes the nerve tension at a
painful point, but deepens, by the force of contrast, the dark
presentiment of the tragic catastrophe to which the freakish fun of the
commercial-room visited by Dockwrath forms a comic prelude. Humorous
criticism or witty dialogue, seasoned with incisive repartee, was not
Trollope’s strongest point. He is, however, seen at his best in these
laughter-moving descriptions of bagmen’s buffoonery or in the sketches
of platitude-mongering vulgarity, which his fresh and vigorous seizure
of slight personal distinctions redeems from commonplace.

Samuel Dockwrath was a little man with sandy hair, a pale face, and
stone-blue eyes. Those who knew Anthony Trollope in the flesh saw in him
one who, at his prime, had stood some six feet in his socks, with the
other parts of his person on a corresponding scale. It was not, however,
his goodly proportions of body that so much impressed the judicious
observer as the penetrating fire of the quick blue eyes. This was
intensified rather than concealed by the large, heavy spectacles which
so entirely remedied any natural infirmity of vision that, after he had
taken to wearing them, his eyes never missed a single characteristic
feature of his fellow-creatures, or failed accurately and at once to
stamp the impression they received on the retentive brain. Those were
the eyes that had themselves seen on his Post Office doors--for the most
part those in England--each one of Dockwrath’s companions in the
commercial-room of the Bull Inn at Leeds. Dickens himself, unsurpassed
in sketching the humours of the road as well as the outer and inner life
of its travellers’ houses of call, paid Trollope a special compliment on
the rapid successions of life-like touches with which he draws a
contrast between the arrival at an inn of regular _habitués_ and
strangers--the former loud, jocular, assured, or, in case of deficient
accommodation, loud, angry, and full of threats; the strangers shy,
diffident, doubtful, anxious to propitiate the chambermaid by great
courtesy. To the latter belonged Dockwrath. To the former belonged
another arrival by the same train, called Moulder, whose salutation to
the girl at the bar, “Well, Mary, my dear, what’s the time of day with
you?” is met with the reply, “Time to look alive and keep moving.” This
has been introduced by a living picture of Dockwrath’s effort to make
himself as much at home as the freest and easiest frequenters of the
place by calling for a pair of public slippers, while solacing himself
with a glass of mahogany-coloured brandy and water and a cigar. Here end
the comic preliminaries.

The tragic realities that have brought Dockwrath from London to
Yorkshire are opened by the solicitor’s call on Joseph Mason at Groby
Park. The £2000, it must be remembered, which old Sir Joseph had left to
Dockwrath’s wife were devised to her in the codicil that it is the real
object of Dockwrath’s interview with Lady Mason’s stepson to upset.
Ostensibly, therefore, as Dockwrath reminds the squire of Groby, the
solicitor’s own interest lies in maintaining, not invalidating the
supplementary bequests. Duty, however, has first claim upon the man of
law, who begins his conversation by hinting that Joseph Mason’s
representatives, Round and Crook, have been slack in guarding their
clients’ interest. Will not Mr. Dockwrath, Mr. Mason suggests, see Round
and Crook themselves, and so save time and trouble by imparting to them
his tale of misgivings and suspicions? No, Dockwrath will do nothing of
the sort. His message is for Joseph Mason alone. Then comes the decisive
conversation in which Dockwrath’s shrewdness tells him that his cue is
only to begin with piquing Mason’s curiosity and emphasising by a
significant reserve the imputations against his stepmother. At last, he
sees reason to fear he may be irritating and offending rather than
interesting the squire of Groby by his prolix exordium. He therefore
concentrates all his damning suggestions into the one word, forgery.
Even this only elicits from Joseph Mason the remark: “I always felt sure
my father never intended to sign such a codicil as that.” The question
about the line of action to be now taken is the more difficult because
the children of Sir Joseph Mason’s first marriage have already disputed
the will with the result that a Court of Justice has given its award in
Lady Mason’s favour. Before deciding on further litigation, Joseph Mason
must consult his men of business in London. Meanwhile, what is likely to
be said by the undoubted witnesses to the will and the alleged witnesses
to the codicil--did they or did they not upon the same day attest the
signatures to separate documents?

When the conference arranged between Mason and Dockwrath takes place,
Bridget Bolster, who is known to have been a witness to the Will, and
alleged to have witnessed also a codicil, in an interview with Messrs.
Round and Crook has most positively declared her certainty that she
never attested more than one document on the same day. Still, Messrs.
Round and Crook are against prosecuting Lady Mason. Joseph Mason’s
emphatic rejoinder, “I will never drop the prosecution,” encourages for
a moment Dockwrath’s hope of getting the business. On that point Mason
is as obstinate as on the other. The case, therefore, goes forward under
the London attorney’s management. Trollope justly prided himself on the
accuracy with which, thanks to the experts he consulted, are presented
the legal details in the trial and in all the business connected with
it. The entire episode is, like the characters that figure in it, a
piece of skilfully contrived realism. The Old Bailey barrister,
Chaffanbrass, who rises to his work so meekly, smiling gently while he
fidgets about with his papers as though he were not at first quite
master of the situation; Sir Richard Leatherham, the Solicitor-General
and the leading counsel for the prosecution, are none of them
full-length sketches from life. Each is a composite of many originals.
Nor is there a single member of the group who does not recall, by some
trick of manner, of voice, or by some other distinctive peculiarity, the
qualities of advocates well known in the era during which Cairns,
Coleridge, and Ballantine were in the full flush of their forensic fame.

Dickens, in _A Tale of Two Cities_, notoriously found his model for
Darnay’s counsel, Stryver, in Edwin James. Of James I can recall
Trollope’s remark: “I had scarcely ever seen him, out of court or in it,
but I have been told he had Chaffanbrass’s habit of constantly arranging
and re-arranging his wig, and of sometimes, for effect, dropping his
voice so low that it could scarcely be heard.” The other court scenes
form a little series of artistically disposed photographs. More skilful
even than these clever descriptions is the manner in which a few simple
and well-chosen words, remarkable for their power, less of expression
than suggestion, bring Lady Mason’s anguish and agony home to the reader
as vividly as could be done by any minute and harrowing details of her
countenance and carriage. Even so, the suspense caused by these Acts in
the drama called for mitigation by Trollope’s favourite device of
entertaining interlude. The by-play of the under-plot now introduced
shows throughout the true mastery of his art here reached by Trollope.

Lady Mason’s good looks, noble bearing, and painful position, have
deeply interested her leading counsel, Furnival, her acquaintance in
society long before he became her advocate in Court. Hence, the one
deviation from exact verisimilitude in this part of the book. The
commencement of the proceedings finds Lady Mason without a solicitor of
her own, and anxious above all things to dispense with one. After the
service of the writ upon her, she consults her admiring neighbour, the
chivalrous Sir Peregrine Orme, who naturally pronounces the solicitor a
necessary evil. To that, her objection still remains. Assured that she
has a warm friend in Furnival, a barrister of high repute, she visits
him at his chambers, Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn. On his advice she places
her affairs in the hands of a solicitor he recommends, Solomon Aram, as
the cleverest criminal solicitor known to Furnival. Meanwhile, the
presence at her husband’s business rooms of so attractive a client
excites Mrs. Furnival’s suspicions in such a degree that a series of
domestic scenes is only closed by the lady leaving the family roof in
Harley Street. The immediate sequel is given with Trollope’s happiest
humour. The housekeeper predicts misery for the barrister if his wife
remains inexorable, but is at once told by the butler that their master
would live twice as jolly without her, and that it would only be “the
first rumpus of the thing.” Is it not, reflectively asks the novelist,
the fear of the “first rumpus” which keeps together many a couple. Even
the special and manifest pains taken with them do not, as Trollope
himself felt, entirely redeem the trial chapter from the charge of
anti-climax.

The already-mentioned Sir Peregrine Orme belongs to the class of county
_preux chevaliers_, of which one situation in a later novel--_Phineas
Finn_--displays for a moment the Duke of Omnium as another specimen.

The trial had been fixed, but not begun, when Lady Mason finds herself
at the house of the baronet whom she had first known years ago as a
county neighbour, and one of her husband’s colleagues at the Quarter
Sessions. More recently, the widow of _Orley Farm_ and the
daughter-in-law of the baronet who resides at The Cleeve have become
close friends. Still fair, tall, graceful, and comely, Lady Mason
retains enough of her original beauty to have won this fine old
gentleman’s heart. To his daughter-in-law he confides his intention of
offering the widow his hand. For that purpose the call at The Cleeve has
been arranged. To stand by her throughout the approaching ordeal, to
defend her against the tongues of wicked men and against her own
weakness, is the duty that the widow’s mature and knightly lover would
now perform. All this is said while he gently strokes the silken hair of
the lady who, having sunk to the ground, is kneeling at his feet. The
agonised recipient of the old man’s chivalrous proposal mingles, with
her murmured reply, some words deprecating the shame and trouble she
might bring upon him and his. The offer, however, is not rejected, and
the conversation ends by Lady Mason becoming Sir Peregrine Orme’s
bride-elect. The next meeting between the pair is of a very different
kind. Not that even this opens with any approach to self-incrimination
on the lady’s part. Greetings, however, had been scarcely exchanged when
she shows her desire to break off the engagement. “If,” pleads Sir
Peregrine, “we were to be separated now, the world would say I had
thought you guilty of this crime.” After this, no more of the sweet
smiles, which have been so much admired, play over Lady Mason’s face.
“Sir Peregrine,” she says, “I am guilty, guilty of all this with which
they charge me.” That admission seals, of course, Lady Mason’s social
fate, and withdraws her from any active part in the rest of the
narrative. What remains, however, is saved from the reproach of mere
supplementary padding by the really surprising skill and resourcefulness
in which the rest of the story abounds. All that concerns Lady Mason
herself has been, and remains to the end, of a uniformly depressing hue.
But among the junior counsel for the defence is a young barrister, Felix
Graham, enamoured of a judge’s daughter, Madeline Staveley. This young
lady is much after the pattern of Trollope’s earlier heroines; while her
lover prefigures a youthful variety of the sort to be met with in one,
at least, of his later stories, but with more originality of character
and view than had so far been shown by most of his young men. The
clearness and freshness of Felix Graham’s portrait stand out the more
boldly by reason of the complete contrast to him forthcoming in Madeline
Staveley’s other lover, old Sir Peregrine Orme’s grandson. In all moral
and social qualities, he worthily reproduces the old baronet’s
character, but reflects too truly the conventional young country squire
to present the union between intellectual gifts and high principles
forthcoming in his rival, the young barrister.

This is only one among several passages that by expedience, which might
be described as Trollope’s speciality, sustain the novel’s interest to
the end. “None but himself can be his parallel.” And really the
dexterity with which Trollope winds up the characters and incidents of
_Can You Forgive Her?_ suggests a comparison with his equestrian
perseverance in the hunting field. That quality records itself in
Phineas Finn’s management of Lord Chiltern’s Bonebreaker. For a minute
or two the horse has got manifestly out of control; the spectators think
it is infallibly heading and leading its rider to irrecoverable grief,
when the Irish Nimrod suddenly, not less than surely, recovering
himself, regains authority over the beast, and sends him and his rider
straight as a die over the brook with those impracticable sides. When
riding among the first flight, side by side with Sir Evelyn Wood or Mr.
E. N. Buxton, after the Essex, or with Mr. H. Petre’s staghounds,
Trollope, we have seen, like others, sometimes found himself at the
bottom of a Roothing ditch, only in a twinkling to pull himself
together, reappear in the open, regain his saddle, and finish in the
field that saw the end of the chase. The adroitness of the horseman,
Phineas Finn, displayed by the novelist of _Orley Farm_, prevented what
in less skilful hands would have been the evaporation of the story’s
interest after the tragic _dénoûment_ of Peregrine Orme’s courtship.
But, by this time, the bluff, artless sportsman, which was all that many
of his country neighbours and some of his London acquaintances saw in
Trollope, had mastered every portion of the novelist’s technique as
thoroughly as he had long since done all departments of Post Office
business. To the spectators, Trollope’s Irish Nimrod on Lord Chiltern’s
Bonebreaker may have seemed doomed to mishap, but without, thanks to his
skill and coolness, having been in actual peril. So with Trollope in
_Orley Farm_. The apparently inevitable dullness of reaction from
painfully exciting incidents threatened, as many a reader thought, to
spoil a first-rate novel’s close. These had not estimated at its true
value the author’s rare resourcefulness in his art.

Other fortunes than those of Madeline Staveley and her two lovers have
to be advanced a stage. The finishing touches have not, so far, been
given to Lady Mason’s loyal friend of her own sex, Sir Peregrine’s
daughter-in-law. In person, if not altogether in experience, Mrs. Orme
presents a picturesque contrast to her unhappy friend. Lady Mason, tall
and stately, makes the journey every day to the Court in one of The
Cleeve carriages. Seated by her side is Mrs. Orme, small in size,
delicate in limb, with soft, blue wondering eyes and a dimpled cheek.
Apart from the present calamity, a past sorrow has forged a sympathetic
link between the two. The châtelaine of The Cleeve has suffered a blow
only less terrible than that which has crushed her companion. After a
year of happy wedlock, her husband, Sir Peregrine’s only child, the
pride of all who knew him, the hope of his political party in the
county, had fallen one day from his horse, and was brought home to The
Cleeve a corpse. The delicacy and strength of genuine pathos make
themselves felt throughout every page describing the intercourse between
these two ladies, after Mrs. Orme knows her friend’s guilt, before or
during the trial itself. Nor, even here, is it all untempered
melancholy. The character sketches thrown off in a few sentences people
the scene with figures all entertainingly appropriate to the judicial
drama like that now begun. The witness, Bridget Bolster, we see
preparing for action, with the perfect understanding of her claim to be
well fed when brought out for work in her country’s service, to have
everything she wanted to eat and drink at places of public
entertainment, and then to have the bills paid behind her back.
“Something to your tea” is the promise she has received from Dockwrath,
interpreted by Moulder as a steak, by Dockwrath himself as ham and eggs,
and by Bridget, as an amendment, as kidneys. Close upon the bold
witness, Bridget, comes the timid witness, Kenneby, whose utmost hope
and prayer are that he may leave the box without swearing to a lie, who
replies to Dockwrath’s suggestion of refreshment: “It is nothing to me;
I have no appetite; I think I’ll take a little brandy and water.” By way
of moral sustenance to the nervous Kenneby, Moulder relates a legal
reminiscence of his youth: It was at Nottingham; there had been some
sugars delivered, and the rats had got at it. “I’m blessed if they
didn’t ask me backwards and forwards so often that I forgot whether they
was seconds or thirds, though I had sold the goods myself. And then the
lawyer said he’d have me prosecuted for perjury.” Mr. Moulder himself
fancies something hot, toasted and buttered, to his tea, openly
asserting, while refreshing himself, that Lady Mason has no better
chance of escape than--“than that bit of muffin has,” with which words
the savoury morsel in question disappeared from the fingers of the
commercial traveller into his throat.

To turn from the doings of Trollope’s _personæ_ to those of Trollope,
himself. Before finishing _Orley Farm_ he had arranged a trip across the
Atlantic, which, as usual, was to combine industry with amusement. The
first thing, therefore, had been to obtain a commission from his
publishers, Chapman and Hall, for a book about his journey and
experiences. The settlement of that business, on his own terms, was
effected without a hitch. The other preliminary, involving a reference
to his Post Office superiors, threatened recrudescence of the immemorial
and inveterate feud with Rowland Hill, now the Post Office Secretary.
Nine months leave of absence formed the application made by the surveyor
of the eastern counties to the Postmaster-General, then Lord Stanley of
Alderley, direct instead of through the active head of the department,
his enemy Hill. “Is it,” rejoined the Minister, with a look of bland
cynicism as he eyed Trollope’s particularly vigorous form and country
squire’s face, “on the plea of ill-health?” “No,” came the answer, “I
want a holiday, and to write a book about it, and I think, my lord, my
many years labour in the public service have earned it for me.” The
forms on which the leave was granted were, at Hill’s instance, that it
should be considered a full equivalent for any special services rendered
by the surveyor to the department. To that condition, suggested, as he
knew it had been, by the Post Office Secretary, Trollope demurred. It
was therefore withdrawn at the Postmaster-General’s order.

Anthony Trollope’s first sojourn on the other side of the Atlantic began
in the August of 1861, and lasted to the May of the following year. The
occurrences between these dates included the earlier battles of the
American Civil War, and to some extent decided his route. Travelling for
recreation and rest as well as profit, he purposely avoided the dangers
and discomforts of the seceding states, but, even thus, frequently found
himself in the direct line of fire. For the time he allowed himself, he
went too far and too fast. An atmosphere loaded with the din and smoke
of conflicting armies did not promote the calm and close study of the
nation’s social or political life and institutions. These, however, were
surprisingly little interrupted by the conflict. The comparative
regularity with which the routine of peace in the forum, in the Law
Courts, in the State Assemblage, and beneath the private roof, preserved
their continuity practically undisturbed by the shocks and convulsions
of war, may have struck other English travellers at the time. By
Trollope they were brought to bear with a force and freshness that
imparted special interest and value to the book on North America, begun
by him after his accustomed fashion, in the midst of his transatlantic
travels, and carried some way towards completion before he had returned
to England.

The work suffers from its author’s laborious attempts to impress the
reader with a sense of its variety and fullness. It is neither a record
of travel nor history; Trollope, had he taken more time about it, would
have seen the mistake of trying to make it both. His impressions of the
country are wanting less in animation and accuracy than in literary
methods and logical arrangement of ideas. Before landing from his
outward voyage he had persuaded himself that the final victory would
rest with the North. This belief had not been shaken by the news of the
Confederate success at Bull Run (July 21, 1861); which had created among
all sections of English society, and elicited from the English Press,
much of the exultant enthusiasm for the Secessionists, of whom Gladstone
himself said that Jefferson Davis had called into existence a new
nation. “Nothing,” were Trollope’s words to the present writer,
“impressed me more during this troublous time than the immensity of the
strength in reserve at the Union’s command. Moreover,” he added, “I was
kept well abreast with the latest political news from Europe.” The
Southerners’ only chance, as none knew better than themselves, or
rather, than their leading spirits, had always been European
intervention on their behalf. Napoleon III might have moved in that
direction, had Palmerston given the signal, but no one really doubted
either that France had resolved to follow the English lead or that
England, whatever her irresponsible personal sympathies here and there,
would take no real part in the quarrel. One international incident
belonging to the struggle first became known to Trollope when dining at
the White House, November 1861. The Federal seizure of the Southern
agents, Mason and Slidell, on board the British West Indian mail
steamer, had caused the diplomatic crisis that made their Washington
post first acquaint Trollope and his other guests with the possible
necessity of all English subjects at short notice leaving the States.

Exactly a generation before her third son’s visit to the New World,
Trollope’s mother was thought, by her son, to have wounded the national
susceptibilities in her _Domestic Manners of the Americans_. As a fact,
except in Ohio, that book did not attract as much attention, even at
the time of its publication (1832), as Anthony Trollope himself
believed. It had been quite forgotten by, or rather had never been known
to the generation that had welcomed her son as its guest. Indeed, by
1861-2 Dickens had long since received plenary forgiveness for offences
in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ and the _American Notes_ much more serious than
those of Mrs. Trollope. Nor did Anthony Trollope’s on the whole
complimentary estimate of his American hosts, in his own forthcoming
book, however pleasantly received at the moment, live much longer in the
popular remembrance than his mother’s rather thin satire. Already the
novels which had won him popularity in England were favourites in the
United States. Then, as to-day, what the American public valued from him
was the qualities which had endeared to the whole of the Anglo-Saxon
race his Barchester books.

Trollope’s subsequent visits to the States may have left some mark on
his writings, and have given him an occasional suggestion for stories
like _The American Senator_, but had no influence upon the place filled
by him in the New World as in the Old. On both sides of the Atlantic,
the amiable motive of his _North America_ was recognised, but its
warmest welcome was not found in the land that it described. A
subsequent chapter will contain specific facts and figures enabling the
reader to form an accurate idea of Trollope’s progress to popularity
with the United States Republic. Meanwhile we return to the novelist’s
new departure in fiction, opened to some extent in _Orley Farm_, but
beginning more decidedly with _Can You Forgive Her?_

CHAPTER XI

AUTHOR, ARTIST, AND THEIR FEMININE SUBJECTS

Trollope and Millais succeed in their different spheres of life by
working on similar principles--The ideas which led Trollope to
write _Can You Forgive Her?_--Lady Macleod’s praises induce the
heroine to dismiss John Grey while Kate Vavasor’s devices draw her
to her cousin George--Alice’s spiritual and social surroundings
take a great part in moulding her character--Mrs. Greenow’s love
affairs relieve the shadow of the main plot--Burgo Fitzgerald tries
to recapture Lady Glencora--Mr. Palliser sacrifices his political
position to ensure her safety--He is rewarded at last--Other
novels, both social and political.

During the years in which Trollope’s industry and fame both reached
their height, J. E. Millais and Sir Henry James, afterwards Lord James
of Hereford, were among the friends of whom he saw most, and who knew
him best. About the former’s hospitalities something will be said
presently. As regards his connection with the latter, Millais in my
hearing once attributed his rare success as an illustrator of Trollope’s
novels to the writer and the artist both setting about their different
work in the same way. “As it proceeds,” he added, “each creative or
inventive stroke is inspired and stimulated or corrected as the case may
be, by mental reference to the unseen models of memory.” This was
Millais’ way of putting it. Trollope’s own words on the subject were, “A
right judgment in selection of personal traits or physical features will
ensure life likeness in representation. Horace, as Englished by
Conington, talks of ‘searching for wreaths the olive’s rifled bower.’
The art practised by Millais and myself is the effective combination of
the details, which observation has collected for us from every quarter,
and their fusion into an harmonious unity.”

Politics and sport colour and dominate a large proportion of the novels
belonging to the _Can You Forgive Her?_ period. For the personal studies
those works implied, author and artist alike found all they wanted
during their summer visits to Millais’ Highland home, or in the autumn
at the Kent or Wiltshire shooting-box of Henry James. Here they
collected representatives of the polite world in all its aspects of
pleasure or business, from the heir apparent to the latest Junior Lord
of the Admiralty and the most recent importation in the way of popular
sportsmen or reigning beauties from the other side of the Atlantic.

Later on, Trollope occasionally induced Millais to witness the hounds
throw off in those East Anglian pastures where he had placed the Roebury
Club’s headquarters, to which the author of _Can You Forgive Her?_ had
wished personally to introduce his illustrator. The similarity of
Millais’ and Trollope’s methods now considered will be best understood
from a concrete instance. Of the artist’s academy paintings in 1887, one
was reproduced as a coloured supplement to _The Illustrated Sporting and
Dramatic News_ by the name of “Portia.” Without being exactly a
portrait, the painting, like the coloured engraving after it, recalled
to every one a well-known man’s pretty daughter who had then just come
out. This young lady, indeed, had never sat to the artist; but she had
given him unconsciously the central idea for his work, into which,
during its progress, he introduced features or touches, whose suggestion
came to him from other faces.

So was it exactly with the creations of Trollope’s pen in their
companionship with those of Millais’ pencil. The literary period which,
actually opening with _Orley Farm_, produced nothing so significant of
Trollope’s advance in his craft and in his views of feminine character,
as _Can You Forgive Her?_ This was published in 1864. Much of it,
however, had been written some years previously, even so far back as
when the stories that first established him in favour with every class
were the great attraction of _The Cornhill_. We have already seen how
many manor houses and parsonages disputed with each other in the
alleged possession of the originals from whom the novelist had drawn
Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, and their belongings. Trollope’s creative power
reached its height as he approached early middle age. His Post Office
rounds, throughout the whole country south of the Trent, had acquainted
him first-hand with every phase of womanhood, from sweet seventeen to
full-blown and flirting forty. Were some readers beginning to talk about
a satiety of bread and butter misses? _Orley Farm_ had at least reminded
such critics of its author’s capacity to be something more than the
prose laureate of virginal varieties like those to be met with in every
English village during the sixties beneath the manor or the parsonage
roof. _Can You Forgive Her?_ realised the higher expectations first
raised by _Orley Farm_ as to the literary results that might be produced
by the bolder conceptions of the sex, the broader and deeper outlook
upon the tragi-comedy of daily life that Trollope had begun to exhibit.

The Barchester series had been comedy narrative, pure and simple. The
later stories with which we are now concerned belong more or less to
melodrama. This progress of the novelist’s development possesses an
interest biographical not less than literary. Not only were Trollope’s
intellectual gifts largely inherited from his mother; to her also he was
indebted for the circumstances that supplied them with the material on
which they exercised themselves, as well as the experiences that gave
them colour and discipline. Thus Archdeacon Grantly was his maternal
grandfather, the Rev. William Milton, suave in manner, nice in person,
always doing his duty according to his lights, a former Fellow of New
College, vicar of Heckfield. As his youthful guest, the author of
_Barchester Towers_ had been introduced to clerical life on its social
side, and had observed the personal germs that afterwards grew into the
Warden, Mr. Harding, and Dean Arabin. Much also of his earliest interest
in feminine character he owed to his generally affectionate
reminiscences of his mother--her sustained courage in domestic
adversity, her cheery helpfulness to all around her, and the reserve
fund of strength and resourcefulness, which never failed her for each
fresh trial, as it came.

Trollope’s time in Ireland was the making of him, not only as a public
servant and writer, but as a social student. His boyhood in Harrow Weald
had familiarised him with the Orley Farm of his story, and with elements
of his characters in it. But, at the same time that his experiences on
the other side of the St. George’s Channel were shaping themselves in
_Castle Richmond_, they were preparing him to people with suitable
figures the pages not more of _Orley Farm_ than _Can You Forgive Her?_
Before Trollope was despatched from St. Martin’s-le-Grand on duty to
Ireland, he knew, naturally enough, very little of men, women, and
horses. In the second, at least, of those subjects, he had acquired
proficiency at the date of his final return to England. His estimate of
the sex, based on an extensive and careful generalisation, used to come
out in conversational fragments which may now be pieced together.
Thackeray and Bulwer-Lytton, here for once in agreement, and both,
perhaps unconsciously, under the Byronic influence, might have professed
a doubt whether women as a class could be considered reasonable
creatures, in the same sense as men. Trollope never went so far as this.
He did, however, admit that their ruling passion, a love of power,
habitually neutralised the tact imputed to them as an instinct, and
might obscure their intellectual perceptions, and impair their common
sense. “Hence,” he would add, “the inquisitorial officiousness which
makes my Mrs. Proudie not in the least a caricature, but, stripped of
her Episcopal surroundings, the commonplace of most English households.”

Throughout the whole period of his literary activity, Trollope was a
diligent reader of history, finding in its revelations of human
character the best supplements to his own studies from life, as well as
the most fruitful hints for the creation of the leading ladies in his
own romance. He never pursued these historical studies more diligently,
or with more definite result, than while engaged on the preparation of
_Can You Forgive Her?_ They had brought him to the conclusion that in
love affairs women are generally without discrimination. “If,” he said,
“of royal rank, they almost invariably choose their favourites ill. Thus
Elizabeth of England, Catherine II of Russia, Queen Christina of Spain,
and her daughter Isabella had the pick of great, brave, wise, and witty
men. So far from turning their opportunities to profit, they all took
dunderheads for their rulers.” How wide, therefore, the mark was that
paradoxical pundit who declared it better for a country to have a king
than a queen as its nominal head, because a king always became the
creature of women, while a queen had to put herself in the hands of men.
To make the same true, we must assume that queens always chose their
lovers well, which, being women, as a fact they seldom do.

The origin and cause of women’s troubles in nine cases out of ten are
their constitutional indisposition to compromise, whose necessity they
ought to have learnt, if not in the experience of life generally, yet
from the special example of the politicians to whom they invariably
incline. For nowadays all women are Conservatives, and Conservatism, as
we know it to-day, having political surrender for its essence, is ever a
compromise with Radicalism. In the seventeenth century they used to be
Jacobites. And that, most properly; for the special foibles of the sex
are identical with the traditional perversities of the Stuarts.
“Mankind,” said Lord Palmerston, “are, for the most part, good fellows
enough, but rather conceited.” So the Duc de Sully thought James II not
a bad sort of man, but incurably given to doing the second thing before
the first. And that is the invariable feminine tendency. We can all
sing, or say:

“It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be happy and true.
It is good to be off with the old love before one is on with the new.”

But when and where did one ever find the woman who willingly acted on
the precept?

This much by way of putting the reader in personal touch with
Trollope’s ideas when he set to work on _Can You Forgive Her?_ That
novel was the product of the same period as _The Small House at
Allington_; its monthly parts began while _The Cornhill_ was still
unfolding the tale of the wrongs suffered at Crosbie’s hands by one of
Trollope’s nicest and most guileless maidens. Except for the jilting
common to both, _Can You Forgive Her?_ presents a complete contrast to
_The Small House at Allington_. Among the novels belonging to the
earlier sixties, it has more of kinship to _Orley Farm_ than to any
other. Its comedy is quite as often and as suddenly changed for
melodrama, or even tragedy. Indeed, throughout these stories of the
period now under consideration, one of Trollope’s leading ideas is that
the thinnest possible partition divides human contact in the most
civilised society from primitive savagery, and that the withdrawal of
certain artificial restraints may mean a relapse into the reign of
crime.

It was of course a mere coincidence, but the interrogative title, _Can
You Forgive Her?_ reminds one that in 1859, five years earlier, there
had appeared a novel by another author also propounding a question on
its first page. This was Bulwer-Lytton’s _What Will He do with It?_ The
individuals about whom that inquiry is made equal in variety and
multitude those whom Trollope’s readers are asked whether they can
pardon. Both books, however, beyond this, resemble each other in the
adroit connection of the central plot with the several underplots and
the personal relations borne by the characters in the one to those in
the other. It is an old story told by Trollope himself long before he
put it into his autobiography how the movement of _Can You Forgive Her?_
was originally designed for stage representation and put into a play,
_The Noble Jilt_, never acted or accepted. More closely analytical of
feminine motive, conduct, and ethics than anything he had yet written,
_Can You Forgive Her?_ forms a link uniting Trollope’s purely social
stories with those which were political as well. Now, for the first
time, the shadow of the august party chief as well as social Grand
Seignior, the Duke of Omnium, throws itself over the incidents and
personages so far as these belong to politics. One of the reasons for
their unfavourable comparison with the Barchester company is that they
come after it. But of this presently. To-day _Can You Forgive Her?_
acquires a new interest from the fact of its showing its author as the
pioneer of the problem novel, the point of which generally comes to
this--how to act in the conflict between passion or self-indulgence and
the laws of good behaviour. Semiramis, an Uebermensch of the earlier
world, solved it in one way, _Libito felicito in sua legge_. A gallant
French dragoon officer, discussing the matter with a decadent, suggested
another solution. “Je trouve ça tout simple, c’était son devoir.”
Trollope’s way out of the difficulty is that, in the long run, fortune
and fate show themselves on the side of good and true hearts.
Consequently, these can afford to wait upon events. From representative
English girls of the upper class and grass-widows, to stateswomen and
potential duchesses, every one has more or less, and generally more, to
be forgiven.

The various lady schemers had, according to Trollope the fashion of the
sex, laid their plans with what they congratulated themselves must prove
an infallible ingenuity. Alas! upon all such projects rests some blight
of miscarriage. Time, place, opportunity, and character, all in turn,
have been inaccurately judged. The organising faculty and providential
power on which the leading ladies pique themselves would, but for
certain happy accidents, have resulted in misadventure or downright
disaster. Hence throughout this story, beneath a surface of feminine
scheming or social frivolity, there runs a tragic undercurrent, and the
novel, as a whole, formed a satire, in some passages of a very lurid
kind, upon the shallowness of woman’s overrated wit and the hollowness
of her worldly wisdom. The _dramatis personæ_ of both sexes are
perpetually heading for the precipice that means ruin. Will they, is the
question the reader finds himself constantly asking, by some better
influence be brought into the pathway of redemption?

The she of the opening chapter, whom you are to forgive if you can (only
one, by the way, of the many needing forgiveness), belonged to a family
some of whose various members suggest more than an accidental
resemblance to the ancestral Trollopes. So, at least, it is with Squire
Vavasor, Vavasor Hall, Westmorland. This hot-headed, ignorant, honest
old gentleman shuts himself up in his northern home because it is there
alone that parliamentary reform has had no power to alter the old
political arrangements. His younger son, John Vavasor, like Anthony
Trollope’s father, came up to London as a barrister early in life, only
to fail, or at best to make a bare livelihood. He differs, however, from
his obvious prototype, the unsuccessful agriculturist of Harrow Weald,
in finding a wife with a competence as well as rich in aristocratic
connections. The relatives of this lady, _née_ Alice Macleod, are still
debating whether they shall or shall not condone her indiscretion, when
she dies, leaving the widower with a little girl, her namesake, on whom
exclusively her fortune is settled. This daughter grows into the heroine
round whom the interest of the story centres.

John Vavasor and his daughter Alice have a comfortable house in Queen
Anne Street; though the father, living much at the old university club,
seldom dines at home, except when he entertains. Other stories produced
during the _Can You Forgive Her?_ period, and presently to be noticed,
contained much satire upon the religious school whose manifestation
Trollope disapproved, or whose sincerity he suspected. Even in _Can You
Forgive Her?_ there occur on an early page some words uncomplimentary to
evangelicalism, as well as perhaps intended to suggest that Alice
Vavasor might have less to be forgiven if she had been brought up in a
different spiritual atmosphere, for her aunt, Lady Macleod, widow of Sir
Archibald Macleod, K.C.B., suffered from two of the most serious
drawbacks to goodness that afflict a lady. A Calvinistic Sabbatarian in
religion, she was, in worldly matters a devout believer in the high rank
of her noble relatives. She could worship a youthful marquis, though he
lived a life that would disgrace a heathen among heathens. She could
condemn men and women to eternal torments for listening to profane music
in the park on Sunday. Yet, as Trollope emphasises, she was a good
woman, giving a great deal away, owing no man anything, and striving to
love her neighbours. Then she bore much pain with calm unspeaking
endurance, and lived in trust of a better world. In the case of her
so-called niece, but in reality her cousin, she had been one of the
family commission responsible for Alice’s nurture from her infancy.

Other circumstances were, or had been, equally little favourable, as
Trollope would have one understand, to the formation of Alice Vavasor’s
character. She had not long been out of the nursery before,
notwithstanding Lady Macleod’s remonstrances, she was sent to a foreign
boarding school. After that, she lived for a time with her strait-laced,
narrow-minded aunt at Cheltenham. Her years there were passed in a
chronic state of rebellion against her surroundings. When she could
stand them no longer, she arranged with her father that the two should
keep house together in London. That experiment had been going on so long
that in the opening chapter Alice has passed her twenty-fourth birthday.
Father and daughter, beneath the same roof, lived independently of each
other. Alice’s absolute control of the fortune inherited from her mother
makes her the mistress not only of the house but of herself. She does
the honours of her father’s table on the understanding that when she
sits at its head no guests connected with the peerage, on the one hand,
or the Low Church party, on the other, are to be present. Had she
further stipulated for a sprinkling of Anglican bishops and ambassadors,
she would no doubt have had her way. In a word, this young lady’s will
had never been crossed, nor had she any opportunity for consulting the
preferences of others till the particular love affair with the suitor,
pressed on her by the whole family, and indeed at the beginning favoured
by herself, John Grey. He, though her first formally betrothed, was not
her earliest declared lover; for her cousin George Vavasor had won her
temporary affections before John Grey’s turn came. From that
entanglement, however, she was supposed to have freed herself some two
years in advance of her introduction into these pages. Lady Macleod’s
praises of the Cambridgeshire squire, now her husband-elect, set the
bride that was to be on doubting whether he was suited to her. The young
lady even asked herself whether she should not make the _amende_ to
George Vavasor for his dismissal by again taking him into favour.

To that end is working George Vavasor’s sister Kate, who finds it
consistent with her sincere friendship for Alice to promote her
unscrupulous and impecunious brother’s suit with all the unconscionable
ingenuity of her sex. The latest device in that direction is a Swiss
tour. On this George is to escort the two ladies, his sister Kate and
his cousin Alice. From this event grow the chief incidents and
complications, serious, or farcical or both together. Already the young
lady, as masterful as she is capricious, has broken John Grey to harness
by ignoring his reasonable feeling that if the two ladies need a
cavalier for the conventional, perfectly safe and easy Swiss round, they
would find one more appropriate in himself than in a possible rival. The
nephew and destined heir of a wealthy Cumbrian squire, George Vavasor
has expectations, but not the command of ready money necessary for his
parliamentary ambitions and his general habits of life. Alice Vavasor’s
inherited income would supply him with the requisite funds. The varying
fortunes of the two lovers, played off by Alice against each other
through most of the chapters, are diversified by sketches of George
Vavasor’s doings in politics, or in the hunting-field. And these are
alternated with various episodes testing or illustrating the unselfish
devotion of John Grey.

While occupied with describing in his novel George Vavasor’s return to
Chelsea, Trollope himself was looking out for a parliamentary seat. How
it fared with him in that quest will presently be related with all due
and new details. Meanwhile, it may be said in passing that the comic
business between George Vavasor and the parliamentary agents, Scruby
and Grimes, is taken literally from all that Trollope went through
himself. Equally autobiographical are the Roebury Club passages, with
the entire account of George Vavasor’s hunting arrangements and runs
over the Midland and East Anglian pastures. A brewer or two, a banker, a
would-be fast attorney, a sporting literary gentleman, and a young
unmarried M.P., without any particular home of his own in the country,
formed the Roebury Club, whose headquarters were at the King’s Head or
Roebury Inn. There they had their own wine-closet, and led a jolly life.
George Vavasor himself did not regularly belong to this society; he
could not but see something of its members out of doors, while they, on
their part, criticised him after no complimentary fashion. “He’s a bad
sort of fellow,” said Grindley, “he’s so uncommonly dark. He was heir to
some small property in the north, but he lost every shilling of that
when he was in the wine trade.” “You’re wrong there,” commented Maxwell,
“he made a pot of money in it, and had he stuck to it, he would have
been a rich man.” Such is a fair specimen of Trollope’s efforts to
lighten the dark shadows cast on his pages by George Vavasor’s
forbidding personality and sinister career.

But these portions of the story are provided with a more sustained and
effectively humorous contrast in Mrs. Greenow and her courtship by the
military adventurer Captain Bellfield, and the well-to-do Norfolk
farmer, Cheesacre. The widowed and well-dowered relative of the Vavasors
shares her younger kinswoman’s contempt for the conventional advice
about being off with the old love before being on with the new. Here and
there, she suggests a family likeness to the widow Barnaby in the story
of that name, written by Trollope’s mother. That does not prevent the
husbandless lady and the two competitors for her hand being really
original creations. How the rival pursuers of the widow’s purse and
person, with laughter-moving ingenuity, try to outwit each other and to
commend each his own unselfish devotion to the lady; how she in her turn
sees through both, fools them to her heart’s content, and, womanlike,
finally takes the military scamp, is told by Trollope with a humour for
which he owed little to his mother, and in which he was excelled by none
of his contemporaries. Mrs. Greenow herself, like the others, may need
forgiveness, but will be at once unanimously pardoned for her very
innocent flirtations.

It is different with another lady, first introduced into this book, but
in later volumes destined to be among the author’s most finished
socio-political figures. Alice Vavasor is only removed at a safe
distance from the abyss into which a morbid impulse, which she herself
knew not to be love, periodically prompts her to throw herself, when she
becomes Mrs. John Grey. Alice’s cousin-lover skirts much more closely
than was ever done by Alice herself the slippery verge of the rocks
looking down upon ruin, and, though saved from actual destruction, so
far falls over as to disappear from the story.

The gradually progressive stages of Lady Glencora’s transformation from
a drawing-room doll into an ambitious and masterful stateswoman will be
traced in a subsequent chapter; without anticipating details, they may
be said to exemplify and confirm the remarks already made about
Trollope’s progress from the idyllic to the epic. Thus, during the
decade that followed _The Cornhill_ novels, Trollope showed himself
scarcely less happy and effective in his sketches of mature and prosaic
womanhood than in the innocence or sweet tormenting play[22] of the
maidens peopling the British Arcadia in which he first displayed the
powers afterwards to be exercised in the bolder and stronger flights now
mentioned.

The gallery of fashionable culprits in _Can You Forgive Her?_ contains
none in greater need of pardon than Lady Glencora, here, together with
her future husband, “Planty Pal,” first met with. Perhaps, however, the
worst sinner of all is the unscrupulous match-maker, Lady Monk, who
gives her nephew, Burgo Fitzgerald, enough ready cash for his meditated
elopement with Lady Glencora, now for some time the present “Planty
Pal’s,” and so the future Duke of Omnium’s, wife. Burgo Fitzgerald, in
his relation to Lady Glencora, forms a counterpart to George Vavasor in
his doings with Alice. In each case the pair are connected by
cousinship; while, at some former time, Burgo Fitzgerald has been Lady
Glencora’s declared and favoured lover, just as Alice Vavasor had once,
before the novel’s opening, not rejected the addresses of George. Mr.
Palliser, too, finds an exact parallel in John Grey. Both men are of
sterling worth, of unspotted honour, but neither likely to inspire a
woman with a warmer sentiment than respect or tolerance. Both these
admirable men have their most dangerous rivals in two different kinds of
scamp: Grey in the unscrupulous, and, on the whole, ill-looking George;
Palliser in the handsomest, but also the most worthless, of God’s
creatures, Burgo Fitzgerald, whose faultless face, dark hair, and blue
eyes no woman could see without being fascinated.

Again, both Alice and her noble kinswoman, Glencora, are similarly
conjured by a chorus of family dowagers to let no sentimental
infatuation betray them into the calamity of giving themselves to the
wrong man. As a fact, the by no means highly emotional, or now even
juvenile, but clear-headed and strong-willed Alice seems throughout more
likely to fall into the snare than the drawing-room butterfly, still
little more than a girl, Glencora. But the rich “daughter of a hundred
earls”[23] in the peerage of Scotland, under an external charm of face
of the apparently innocent and babyish kind known as _la beauté de
diable_, together with an apparent warm impulsiveness of temperament,
conceals a severely practical and business-like shrewdness, such as to
ensure a wisely restraining prudence from being in the end overborne by
any sudden temptation of the heart. She threw over Burgo Fitzgerald for
Plantagenet Palliser without compunction or sigh. There is no reason to
suppose her literary creator dreamed of making her do anything else than
fool the lover of her youth by not refusing point blank to leave her
husband, or even that in his heart the _soi-disant_ seducer believed he
could prevail on her to do so. One need not, therefore, feel surprised
at reading that Burgo Fitzgerald bore it like a man--never groaning
openly or quivering once at any subsequent mention of Lady Glencora’s
name. On the marriage morning he had hung about his club door in Pall
Mall, listening to the bells, occasionally saying a word or two with
admirable courage about the wedding. Then he went about again as usual,
living the old reckless life in London, in country houses, and
especially in the hunting field, where he always seems riding for
something worse than a fall. He did, as a fact, in his _maladroit_
tempting of Providence, occasionally kill a horse, much nobler and far
more deserving of life than himself.

Kate Vavasor, George Vavasor’s sister, puts forth dauntless pertinacity
and some cleverness in the attempt to oust John Grey from her cousin
Alice’s heart and replace him by her brother. Unlike, however, that
brother, she would stoop to no dishonourable devices. When George, in
desperate straits for money to cover his election expenses and other
calls, suggests requisitioning Alice, she plainly tells him it is an
ungentlemanlike way of raising the wind, with which she will have
nothing to do. Meanwhile, the strands of the central plot have been
interwoven with personages and incidents that are preparatory to the
political novels afterwards to appear, beginning with _The Prime
Minister_, 1876, and ending with _The Duke’s Children_, 1880. The
scandals that once seemed likely to grow out of Lady Monk’s ball have
been nipped in the bud or altogether averted. Immediately afterwards,
wisely considering change of scene to be best for all persons concerned,
Mr. Palliser refuses the Chancellorship of the Exchequer that he may
place his wife beyond reach of temptation by taking her abroad. The
party includes Alice as her cousin Glencora’s companion, and it does its
travels in the grand manner.

In its general results and special incidents, the journey succeeds
beyond its organiser’s fondest hopes. At Baden-Baden the good fortunes
of the tour reach their terminating point. Mr. Palliser receives from
his wife the smilingly whispered announcement that he may soon expect
the long waited, earnestly desired heir to his estates, and to the ducal
title that in the course of nature must soon be his. With such a
prospect before him he can afford to be generous. He gratifies his lady
by getting her old and worthless sweetheart, who has staked and lost his
last sovereign on the roulette board at the _Kursaal_, out of some
trouble with his hotel bill as well as in other ways standing between
him and ruin. At Baden, too, he meets John Grey, who has now developed
parliamentary ambitions, and who soon becomes intimate with Mr. and Lady
Glencora Palliser; he also finds George Vavasor’s disappearance to have
removed his last difficulty with Alice. Before the return to England had
been accomplished, Palliser, now Chancellor of the Exchequer-elect, has
settled to exchange his representation of Silverbridge for that of the
county, and to get Grey, already his warm supporter, into the vacant
seat. The son and heir fulfils the promise declared at Baden, of his
expected coming. The birth is followed by John Grey’s marriage with
Alice, by his entrance to the House of Commons, and by Mr. Palliser’s
introduction of his first budget. The parliamentary maxims with which
this story is sprinkled have from the present narrative’s point of view
a certain biographical interest, because they suggest the attention
already by Trollope to the career at St. Stephen’s, unsuccessfully
essayed by him four years after _Can You Forgive Her?_ had appeared.
Amongst the pieces of advice to aspirants at Westminster is the sound,
practical counsel not to be inaccurate, not to be long winded, and above
all not to be eloquent, since of all faults eloquence is the most
damnable.

Trollope’s original interest in _The Fortnightly Review_, about which
enough has been said in an earlier chapter, was quickened by the
opportunity thus possibly opened to him for the appearance of his own
work in its pages. His few occasional articles for it have been already
mentioned. The first novel written by him for the periodical, _The
Belton Estate_, ran its course in the Review soon after the last
instalment of _Can You Forgive Her?_ had appeared, and was followed some
time later by _The Eustace Diamonds_. Not one of his longer novels, it
recalls in its main theme the principal idea underlying the book which
has just been analysed here. In _The Belton Estate_ the heroine, Clara
Amedroz, has, like more than one of the ladies in _Can You Forgive
Her?_, two lovers, neither absolutely ineligible but greatly differing
in their value, and one of them, as in _Can You Forgive Her?_, the
lady’s cousin. The less desirable of the two comes upon the stage first,
Captain Aylmer, a member of Parliament. His suit succeeds. After the
usual Trollopian fashion the engagement is broken off; and there appears
the cousin, Will Belton, who in due course yields to Clara’s charms,
proposes, and is rejected. Then comes Aylmer’s temporary reinstatement
and at last dismissal. Cousin Will proves eventually the lucky man; and
upon him, as the heir to Clara’s father, and as Clara’s husband, the
curtain falls. The display of minute feminine analysis, such as began
with _Orley Farm_ and was continued in _Can You Forgive Her?_
characterises also _The Belton Estate_. The feminine idiosyncrasies
examined with much precision and often great skill belonged to the same
class as those of _Can You Forgive Her?_ The action, however, is much
quicker, and the swift succession of events is far less painful. The
forsaken Captain Aylmer takes to no evil courses, is never in danger of
coming to a bad end, but judiciously improves his worldly possessions by
making up to and wedding a rich baronet’s daughter, who, according to
the positive assertion of Miss Amedroz, might be pretty but for her very
decided and remarkable squint.

This was by no means the last time of Trollope’s introducing this
antenuptial situation. Something like half-a-dozen years were yet to
pass before its exhibition again in _The Golden Lion of Granpere_
(1872). This is a pretty little story of unsophisticated life in the
province of Lorraine; Marie Bromar is the pretty niece and ward of
Michel Voss, the popular, prosperous, and somewhat arbitrary proprietor
of the well-supported Grandpere hostelry known as the _Lion d’Or_. His
son George, the inheritor of his father’s masterful disposition, falls
in love with Marie, but, being driven from home by misunderstanding,
leaves the ground clear for rivals. During his absence the girl is
courted by a rich linen-buyer of a neighbouring town, whose addresses
are favoured by Marie’s guardian uncle. Everything prospers the wooing
of Adrian Urmand, the trader. The wedding eve has come: the pair are to
meet in church to-morrow. At this juncture George Voss returns. All the
confusion and doubts arising out of his long absence are cleared up.
With the light heart, that, in the case of Trollope’s young ladies, no
amatory perplexities or cares seem to depress, Marie throws over the new
love for the old, and the slight series of episodes ends in happiness,
not only for a family, but the entire neighbourhood, marred, however, by
something more than misgivings that the niece and ward of my host of the
_Lion d’Or_ may yet have to pay the penalty for having played so fast
and loose with two such blameless and desirable competitors for her
hand. The short and slight story now noticed contains not a little to
recall the third product of its author’s pen, more than twenty years
earlier, _La Vendée_ (1850). The later, like the earlier novel, exactly
catches the simple old-world spirit and atmosphere of its subject and
its scene. As a boy, by repeated if shortening sojourns abroad, Trollope
had familiarised himself with the details and personages of the daily
round in France and Germany. These experiences, instead of being dimmed
by time, remained with him fresh and vivid throughout his life. In _The
Golden Lion of Granpere_ the absolute authority of Michael Voss as the
family head, the primitive existence throughout controlled by him, the
domestic economy of the entire district, the absence of class
distinction, the universal horror at Marie’s violated troth, the appeal
to the _curé_ to remonstrate with her--all this is depicted with
pleasant art. It is perhaps rendered the more effective by its contrast
with the pictures of English fashionable society in Trollope’s other
books belonging to the same period.

Before, however, resuming the consideration of those, it would be an
inconvenient departure from the chronological arrangement followed, so
far as possible, in these pages not to complete our view of the domestic
stories, for the most part entirely English as to place and personages,
that followed the Barchester books. Of his _Cornhill_ readers, Trollope
took farewell, not as photographer of the Allington group, but in _The
Claverings_ (1867). _Can You Forgive Her?_, it has been seen, forms the
link between the novels of home life and those of politics. _The
Claverings_ connects the novels that introduced us to Barchester Palace
and close in its best-known prelate’s time with the great world outside
of peers, cabinet ministers, party leaders, society queens, and
princesses in which the Marchioness of Hartletop, _née_ Griselda
Grantly, was taking her part. The Rev. Henry Clavering of the family
which gives its name to the book held a living in Bishop Proudie’s
diocese. The grouping of events and characters not only discloses no
trace of approach to repetition, but by the freshness and vigour of its
effects shows throughout its author at his best. The plot is of the
simple straightforward kind of which Trollope made himself a master.

The temptation to indulge in the Thackerayan vein, yielded to some years
earlier, was responsible for Trollope’s poorest piece of work, _Brown,
Jones, and Robinson_, already mentioned; it was successfully withstood
in _The Claverings_, with the result that Trollope widened the circle of
his believers by a combination of _dramatis personæ_ and scenes scarcely
below the mark of Dickens. The clash of rival love-making echoes
throughout successive chapters, but with a ring altogether different
from that heard in earlier variations on the same theme. The strongest
personal force in the book is Julia Brabazon, who jilts a suitable lover
of her own age and rank to marry a rich and senile profligate. The
forsaken lover, Harry Clavering, clever, handsome, though somewhat weak,
has crowned a brilliant college course with a Fellowship. He decides on
becoming a civil engineer; and with that view enters the office of
Beilby and Burton, the latter of these two being the real head of the
firm. In that gentleman’s daughter, Florence Burton, the new pupil
finds consolation for his lost love, and even much relief, in the
society of a quiet, clean girl, the exact antithesis of the brilliant,
beautiful, and dashing Julia, now Lady Ongar. Soon after the conclusion
of an engagement between Harry and Florence, there returns to England
Lady Ongar, now a rich, still fascinating, and much-sought-after widow,
bent on atoning for her former infidelity by giving herself and her
fortune to the young man who had been her earlier conquest. About
Florence or the Burton family she knows nothing. Harry therefore soon
finds himself in the position of Ulysses when that hero had upon his
hands at the same time his own true Penelope and the bright Circe. Only
after a severe conflict of emotions does he decide on maintaining his
fidelity with Florence. That determination had been no sooner acted on
than it is splendidly rewarded; for the death at sea of his two uncles
leaves him a wealthy baronet.

In this story, as in so many others of Trollope’s, the best scenes bring
forward characters concerned only in a secondary way with the central
narrative. Madame Gordeloup, the most enjoyable and essentially
Dickensian portrait in the gallery, has made Lady Ongar’s acquaintance
during her widowhood’s earliest days; small of stature, she acts in
everything with quickness and decision, and flavours all her words with
vehemence. Her character may be read in her eyes, whose watchful
brightness makes them seem to emit sparks. At this point of the story
Harry has not come into the title. Captain Archibald Clavering, Sir Hugh
Clavering’s brother and heir presumptive, is in want of just such a wife
as Lady Ongar might make him. Widows are proverbially wooed with more
success through the good offices lent by a friend of their sex than
directly. In Madame Gordeloup, with her clear brains, tactful manner,
knowledge of her own sex generally, and of Lady Ongar in particular,
Captain Clavering sees the exact agent for furthering his matrimonial
designs. Before committing himself to Madame Gordeloup, he takes into
his confidence a seasoned and resourceful club friend, Captain Boodle.
There now follows a delightful succession of scenes between the highly
endowed little Polish lady and Clavering’s representative, the gallant
Boodle. Their only practical upshot is Archibald Clavering’s parting
with £70 to the quick-witted Madame Gordeloup. The one parallel of these
passages is that portion of _Dombey and Son_ that recalls the
intervention on Captain Cuttle’s behalf with Mrs. MacStinger, his
landlady.

CHAPTER XII

RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY AND OPINIONS

Anglican orthodoxy and evangelical antipathies imbibed by Trollope
in childhood--His personal objections to the Low Church Party for
theological as well as social reasons--His characteristic revenge
on Norman Macleod for extorting from him a _Good Words_
novel--_Rachel Ray_ a case of “vous l’avez voulu, George
Dandin”--And instead of a story for evangelical readers a spun-out
satire on evangelicalism--Its plot, characters, and
incidents--_Nina Balatka_ regarded as a problem Jew story--_Linda
Tressel_ to Bavarian Puritanism much as _Rachel Ray_ to
English--_Miss Mackenzie_ another hit at the Low Church--Its
characters and plot--_The Last Chronicle of Barset_ and _The Vicar
of Bullhampton_--Their serious elements, as well as social
photographs and occasional touches of satire against women, ever
doing second thing before first and then doing the first
wrong--Both novels illustrate Trollope’s views of the tragic
volcano ever ready to break out from under the social crust.

The beginnings of Anthony Trollope’s religious sympathies came from his
own home. The social and moral influences that he, as a boy,
unconsciously imbibed here were altogether anti-evangelical. John Wesley
died in 1791, leaving behind him the contemptuously called “Methodies.”
Charles Simeon, whose Cambridge disciples were scornfully known as
“Sims,” lived till 1836. Between those two dates, practically indeed up
to 1850, weekday religion was only in vogue among distinctively
evangelical surroundings, though in 1850 Charlotte Yonge’s writings
began to exercise a sort of spiritual missionary force in High Anglican
households. Into a Low Church environment Anthony Trollope had not been
born. His grandfathers on both sides, clergymen of the orthodox, highly
respectable, and not unamiable kind, were disposed, by ancestral or
aristocratic tradition, towards sacramental Anglicanism. Like the rest
of Trollope’s clerical relatives, they boasted their doctrinal descent
from the High Church divines of the Stuart period, and would have
disapproved as much as was done by the lady who wrote _The Heir of
Redclyffe_ any violation of an habitual reserve on all religious
subjects except upon devotional occasions.

With all the children of Thomas Anthony and Frances Trollope the Church
catechism, with the epistles and gospels of the season, was included in
the home lessons. Anything more than that would have been called
evangelical or Low Church. As in other upper middle-class households of
the time, so beneath the Trollope roof it became the rising generation’s
fixed idea that Low-churchism must be a mark of vulgarity, a sort of
spiritually parasitic growth, flourishing, alas, among the small
tradesmen, whose sons were educated at some private venture schools, but
happily unknown in the superior educational or social soil, which grew
something better than English grammar and arithmetic. From the nursery,
these notions had been confirmed in Anthony Trollope, not only by the
pervading sentiments or table-talk of his elders, but by the official
authority of his mother’s old friend and frequent visitor, Dr. Nott, one
among the Winchester canons, whose spare figure, pale, delicate
features, black gaiters reaching to the knee, spotlessly white neckcloth
of many folds, and elegant Italian scholarship, suggested not a few
touches for cultured and cosmopolitan Dr. Stanhope in the Barchester
group. Dr. Nott, an exemplary priest of his period, had been one of the
Princess Charlotte’s tutors, and had initiated the structural repairs
that prevented Winchester Cathedral from falling into ruin. His
periodical calls upon Mrs. Trollope became the occasion for an examining
review of the children--were they good, obedient, truthful, and
industrious? When answering, one day, these questions, Anthony and his
elder brother Tom volunteered the statement that, if they were not quite
everything which could be wished, it was because of their nurse Farmer
being an Anabaptist. Such heterodoxy, Dr. Nott admitted, might be
deplorable, but did not, he added, absolve the children from the duty of
subordination. This was resented by the two brothers as a snub, and
intensified their disgust with schismatics, including Low Church of
every degree.

In 1837 Mrs. Trollope’s bitter attack upon evangelicalism in _The Vicar
of Wrexhill_ deepened still further her children’s loathing of
“Methodies” and all whose religious faith did not conform to a
gentlemanlike Anglicanism. How these preferences and prejudices coloured
_Barchester Towers_ and the novels that followed, it has been already
pointed out. Not that Trollope grew up into an irreligious or other than
God-fearing man. It was indeed to some extent the intellectual man’s
contempt for the crass, ignorant infidelity of the time that, as years
went on, deepened his respect for genuine piety in all its
manifestations, and made his strictures upon certain of its unseasonable
and mischievous phases so different as to tone and spirit from the
satire of Dickens upon the same phenomena. His turn of mind was not
fervently devotional, but for spiritual as well as social reasons he
disliked Churchmen of Mr. Slope’s variety. His great ground of quarrel
with evangelicalism was its tendency to divorce conduct from religion.
The Mosaic law and ritual were confessedly so exacting as to be suited
only for the earliest stage of the Divine revelation. They were
superseded entirely by Christianity, independent, in its pure and early
form, of all externals, but progressively overloaded with superstitious
ceremonies and doctrines, some of which the Protestant Reformation was
said to have abrogated. Evangelicalism, however, with its ruthless
insistence on a series of psychological experiences and of emotional
developments, as the indispensable tests of genuine conversion and
effectual deliverance from the wrath to come, instituted a kind of
subjective ordeal, in comparison of which the yoke of Hebrew formalism
was easy and the burden of Popish ritual light.

A man could know for certain whether he had or had not performed the
religious acts enjoined on him by his spiritual superiors; but could
not, in the nature of things, be equally sure of having realised all the
ghostly sensations, and of having exactly attained to that frame of mind
necessary, as he was told, for salvation. The first stage in the process
prescribed for all penitents by the evangelical doctors, the being
brought under conviction of sin, might seem simple; but how long was
that phase of agony to last, or, if the painful experience were not
followed by a consciousness of peace and pardon, did it mean that the
Divine wrath was not to be appeased? About this the evangelical teachers
shrank from committing themselves, with the result, as it seemed to
Trollope, that the newly wakened soul must be left indefinitely to
torment itself with doubts whether its failure to pass, in the orthodox
order, from distress and disturbance to peace and joy, might not imply
guilt beyond all hope of pardon. At the best these disabling agitations
could not fail, while inflicting torment on those who suffered them, to
disqualify human beings for the performance of their daily duties to
each other, as well as to make religion itself, not an invigorating
inspiration, but a paralysing terror.

In a word, evangelicalism, as conceived of by Trollope, puzzled,
perplexed, and irritated him. Of the evangelical teachers, with the
shibboleths they parade as well as the stultifying inconsistencies these
imply, he would say, “Your profession does not make you a Christian. For
that, you must act like one. Yet,” he added, “we are told good works,
though the test of religion, are also a snare, and certainly make for
perdition if performed by those not in a state of grace or merely as
moral duties.” “You tell me,” I once heard Trollope say to an
evangelical monitor perhaps almost old enough to have sat under Grimshaw
or Romaine, “that, in effect, virtue becomes vice if its practical
pursuit be not sanctified by a mystical motive not within the
understanding of all. Such a theory, I retort, can in its working have
only one of two results--the immorality of antinomianism, or a
condition of perplexity and confusion which must drive men from religion
in disgust and despair.”

_Barchester Towers_ contained Trollope’s earliest embodiment of
Low-churchmanship in Mr. Slope, with his baneful influence on Mrs.
Proudie. Primarily the Barchester bishopess personified the tendency of
her sex to mistake worry for work and fuss for energy. In simple truth,
the Established Church was to Trollope, from his pervadingly official
point of view, a branch of the Civil Service, which could not properly
be carried on if irregular influences and emotions or imperfectly
qualified persons were allowed to have a voice in it. Hence the famous
caricature of the she ecclesiastic in 1857.

In the year now reached by this narrative, 1863, Trollope renewed his
attack upon the religionists he detested, after a fashion and under
circumstances that give to the book _Rachel Ray_ a genuine biographical
significance. The genesis of _Rachel Ray_ is indeed throughout a
revelation of its author’s idiosyncrasies, shown perhaps even more in
the facts connected with its publication than in the unrelieved
bitterness of its sectarian strictures. Trollope, at the time of its
publication being arranged for, was in the full tide of his success and
fame. He could make his own terms with editors or publishers. _Good
Words_, when--from 1862 to 1872--conducted by a Presbyterian minister,
Norman Macleod, though in no sense a denominational organ, could not
afford to fly in the face of evangelical prejudices. Naturally Trollope
understood this so well that when applied to by its editor for a story,
he deprecated the offer on the ground of his not being a “goody-goody”
writer, as well as of his inability or indisposition to suit his
sentiments or his language to Macleod’s public. In reply to those
objections, the novelist received from the editor the promise of a free
hand and the assurance that no attempt to gag him should be made.
Trollope therefore reluctantly accepted the engagement, and proceeded to
fulfil it in a temper deeply resenting the pressure that had been placed
upon him. “Vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin;”[24] _caveat emptor_: on
such principles Trollope made the bargain and set to work. For, if _Good
Words_ would not have the novel, a forfeit could be squeezed out and
another publisher found. This is what actually happened. The author’s
misgivings were fulfilled to the letter. The magazine manager sent back
to the author the manuscript, accompanied by the fine, and the book
found its publishers in Chapman and Hall.

How, after all these years, will the novel strike the reader to-day?
Trollope affected to see the specific reasons of the rejection by
Macleod in its praise of dancing as a healthy and innocent recreation.
Nothing of the sort. Nor, it is certain, would any controversial
passages, however little in harmony with Presbyterian ideas, have made
Macleod pronounce it impossible. As it was, the story served Trollope as
the vehicle, less of his own notions about spiritual truth and falsehood
than of his inveterate and violent antipathies to certain manifestations
of the religious spirit in individuals and in daily conduct. For the
first time since the Slope episodes in _Barchester Towers_, he saw and
used his opportunity for letting the evangelicals have it. All that they
did or thought, and the most typical members of their class, were
depicted with not less personal bitterness against their religious faith
than was displayed, in his _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, by the historian Gibbon towards the primitive Christians as the
great disturbing and anti-social force of the second and third
centuries. Wherever evangelicals are found or whithersoever these
pietists go, they bring with them discomfort, suspicion, and ill-will.
They may not be chargeable with those sins of the passions that are the
infirmities of manlier natures. They therefore hold themselves entitled
to unlimited indulgence in scandal-mongering, backbiting, and other
social devices for gratifying their sense of power, by making all those
about them uncomfortable.

In the course of his sojourns at or near Bath, Cheltenham, and other
West of England resorts, Trollope had personally experienced and
resented the widespread ascendency, social and political, of the Low
Church Party. For that reason the scene of _Rachel Ray_ is laid in that
South Devon district which, within Trollope’s recollection, had been
torn by ecclesiastical feuds arising from differences about the costume
proper to be worn during the conduct of divine service. This suggested
to Thomas Hood his clever lines, less well-known now perhaps than they
deserve to be:

“I see there is a pretty stir, about things down at Exeter;
Whether a clergyman should wear a black dress or a white dress.
For me I neither know nor care whether a clergyman should wear
a black dress or a white dress.
I have a grievance of my own, a wife that preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night dress.”

The local quarrels thus satirised by the humorist, much and widely
talked about at the time, long left the clerical atmosphere of the
neighbourhood in a highly electrical state. While local animosities were
at their height, Trollope had been on Post Office duty in the south-west
of England. In the Baslehurst of the story, and in other Exeter suburbs,
he describes the points at which, for the moment, evangelicalism had
triumphed. Here, during the fifties, he had his veritable originals: the
severe, imperious Puritan, Mrs. Prime, and the younger sister Rachel
whom she bullies, living with their mother Mrs. Ray, a sweet-tempered,
gentle, loving woman, endowed with a still attractive person, having
much in common with her second born, Rachel, and, like her, somewhat
tyrannised over by the elder of her two daughters. The husband survived
by Mrs. Ray is a good specimen of Trollope’s terse character-sketching.
He managed the property of dean and chapter, knew the rights and wrongs
of prebendaries, minor canons, vicars choral, and even choristers. He
had, however, passed away long before the story opens, and is only
mentioned to point the contrast of the widow’s earlier orthodox
clerical surroundings with the irregular spiritual influences that now
agitate her home.

When we make this lady’s acquaintance, there is in progress, beneath her
roof, a pitiless attempt on the part of the elder sister, Dorothea, by
rigorous evangelical discipline, to crush worldliness out of the
younger, her mother’s favourite, who gives the title to the novel. A
long course of Calvinistic bullying has almost broken Mrs. Ray’s spirit.
To that tyranny of soul Miss Ray has never quite surrendered herself.
Its shadows fall, however, heavily enough over her young life; the iron
of its terrors and threats had begun to penetrate her inmost being, when
Luke Rowan’s appearance flashes a ray of hope upon her overcast life.
The new-comer to Baslehurst is the partner in the brewery, hitherto
entirely in the hands of Mr. Tappitt. The Tappitts, at whose house Miss
Ray first meets Rowan, fervently admire the Low Church clergyman Mr.
Prong. This pastor resembles the Barchester Mr. Slope, not only in being
generally objectionable, but in the same mercenary attachment whether to
Mrs. Ray herself or to her widowed daughter, Mrs. Prime, as Slope
conceived to Mrs. Bold.

The incidents of the story naturally grow out of Rachel Ray’s courtship
by the latest addition to the brewery staff, less welcomed by the
Tappitt circle than tolerated as a worldly intruder whose salvation is
rather a matter of prayer than of belief. Doleful indeed are the
prognostications of the results likely to follow their acquaintance
called forth by Rowan’s earliest _tête-à-tête_ with Miss Ray. This,
really the opening scene in the action of the story, gives Trollope
scope for the humour that alone redeems from failure a story as painful
as _The Kellys and the O’Kellys_, without the pathetic power and witty
relief that have made his second novel worthier of republication than
_Rachel Ray_.

Before passing to another book with which _Rachel Ray_ tempts
comparison, something must be said about the new experiment of which
_Linda Tressel_ formed the second product. Change of scene, of
characters, and of interest, as well as anonymity of authorship, in the
year of his departure from the Post Office, 1867, marked Trollope’s dual
venture. Each owed something to the stimulating and instructive society
in which Trollope found himself as the guest of the famous editor and
publisher to whom he had been introduced years earlier by John Forster,
but whom he scarcely knew well till the Scotch tours that Post Office
duties or holiday recreation called him to make during the nineteenth
century’s second half. In the case of both stories, also, the skill with
which the local colour was laid on struck all critics, not less than the
truth to life with which the essentially German characters, with their
social and moral backgrounds, were depicted.

_Nina Balatka_ came first of the two in 1867. Its scene is laid in
Prague, the old Bohemian capital. Here there exists a large Jewish
colony. Among its members, the distinction between Hebrew and Gentile is
marked with such depth and bitterness that an intermarriage between the
two races is considered degrading to each. The girl who gives her name
to the story, a broken-down tradesman’s daughter, and the niece of a
rich merchant Zamenoy, has given her heart to an Israelite engaged in
commerce, Anton Trendellsohn. This suitor, in his many dealings with old
Balatka, Nina’s father, has shown himself a considerate creditor. The
roof beneath which Nina lives is legally due to him for her father’s
debts. Trendellsohn, however, has not even pressed for the title deeds.
These would establish his right to the property, but are now in other
Jewish hands, those of Zamenoy. The lover’s generosity and
self-sacrificing devotion to Nina are accompanied by all the suspicion
of his race and by a characteristic resentment of the overreaching
practised, as he considers, on him. The Zamenoys, representing the evil
genius of the story, are only bent on breaking off the engagement of the
two lovers. As the first step to that end they contrive to secrete the
title deeds, now wanted by Trendellsohn, in his sweetheart’s desk. Next
they tell Trendellsohn that the girl he loves has appropriated them. A
search is made, the documents are found in the place described by the
Zamenoys, and Trendellsohn believes that he has been fooled. The lovers
part. About the same time old Balatka dies. Deserted alike by the man to
whom she has given her heart and by her rich relations, who have gone
over to the Zamenoys, Nina resolves on suicide. With Trendellsohn at
length, love proves a stronger motive than greed. A messenger from him
arrives bidding Nina return to her place in his heart. Thus, happily, in
marriage, ends the story, really remarkable for clever analysis of
motive in the conflict with the essentially Hebraic Trendellsohn between
the passion for a woman and for real estate.

The situation had the undoubted merit of originality as well as of being
artistically presented in a singularly suitable environment immemorially
associated with congenial traditions. The story’s success in magazine
shape was afterwards heightened by its anonymity, and by the extent to
which the studied air of secrecy enveloping the composition and all to
do with it piqued curiosity. In London, at any rate, the first to solve
the mystery was R. H. Hutton of _The Spectator_, not only the subtlest
literary critic of his time, but an omnivorous reader of novels, with an
instinct for discovering in their most commonplace occurrences and least
likely characters a new revelation of their author’s personality and
mental habit. He had already watched and commented on Trollope’s
evolution from the domestic to the cosmopolitan stage. He knew
Trollope’s turns of expression and leading ideas about the human combat
of interest with feeling from his social conversation as well as his
books. Dining at a table near Laurence Oliphant’s at the Athenæum, with
no other companion than the last chapter of _Nina Balatka_, he received
and soon afterwards uttered, the inspiration: “The ‘great unknown’ of
the _Blackwood_ story is Anthony Trollope.” Intimate with the Blackwoods
though he was, Oliphant was not fully assured of the facts; “I believe,”
he said oracularly, “they are satisfied with its reception.” Such proved
to be the case. Although, as John Blackwood put it, not selling, it was
telling. Blackwood’s London manager, one of Trollope’s Garrick
intimates, received orders from Edinburgh to encourage Trollope, with
“the author of _Nina Balatka_” for his pen name, to let the Magazine
have another novel from his pen.

This second book, by the title of _Linda Tressel_, began its course some
five years after the publication of _Rachel Ray_, and introduced its
readers to an interest, personal or spiritual, of much the same sort.
The locality had changed from Exeter to Nuremberg. Here, at The Red
House, lived the eponymous heroine in charge of her aunt. This relative,
Frau Staubach, however well-meaning or conscientious, lacked the
gentleness, the grace, and the feminine charm generally, of her English
prototype, the mother with whom Rachel Ray passed her time. Yet, though
in a less degree than the Devonshire widow, who sat under Mr. Prong, the
petticoated pietist of Nuremberg is a kindly woman at heart. Only the
iron creed, which makes her whole being so grievous a burden to herself
and to those about her, constrains her to see wickedness in joy; in
every form of pleasure a species of profligacy; in all love for children
a pernicious indulgence endangering their eternal welfare; and, in every
woman, Satan’s easy prey, until guarded by a middle-aged, respectable,
unlovable and austere husband. Such a one she has found for her niece in
her lodger, Peter Steinmarc. He has the recommendation of being
small-minded, selfish, ugly, and so just the man destined to make
unhappy for life a bright, handsome, high-spirited girl, such as her own
young ward. In the English story, the destined victim, after a
comparatively short captivity, escapes her doom, though not before her
whole nature has suffered from the ordeal. The spirit of Rachel Ray’s
Bavarian sister of misfortune is not easily worn out; but, eventually,
her spirit is broken, and she is proclaimed the bride-elect of the
odious consort selected by her aunt. At the psychological moment,
however, Death, the deliverer, steps in; poor Linda dies before being
called to put on her wedding dress. Her remorseless aunt watches her
slow departure from life without pity or tears, but in a spirit of
half-vindictive satisfaction with the order of fate. After Linda Tressel
has breathed her last, Frau Staubach, with all the self-complacency in
the world, relapses into a chronic state of puritanical morosity, more
dark and odious than that which had been so far her normal condition. In
this novelette there are none of the humorous flashes constantly
enlivening _Rachel Ray_. Its monotony of unrelieved sadness becomes
fatal. One can scarcely, therefore, be surprised that Blackwood did not
press its author for further anonymous ventures.

Before breaking the entirely new ground on which he had for some time
set his thoughts, Trollope produced at the end of the sixties a little
group of novels in his earlier and happiest vein. The first of these,
_Miss Mackenzie_ (1865), forms something of a link between the narrative
attacks on the religionism that was his bugbear and some at least among
the social novels which followed it. In _Miss Mackenzie_ the only
clergyman drawn at full length, Jeremiah Maguire, is one among the
several candidates for the heroine’s hand. He would have fared better in
his wooing with more of the gentleman about him and less of an
unmistakable squint. His chief rivals are Mr. Rubb, the business partner
of Miss Mackenzie’s surviving brother, socially poor Maguire’s inferior,
and the lady’s cousin, a poor baronet’s son, John Ball, whose suit
eventually succeeds. At her first appearance, the lady who thus becomes
a bride is thirty years old, has an income of £800 a year, and, by the
death of her elder brother, for whom she kept house, has been left alone
in the world. The chief feature in the story is the Rev. Jeremiah
Maguire’s pertinacity in the effort to secure the sufficiently
well-dowered lady. In that endeavour he has the support of the religious
set at Littlebath, whose leaders are the Rev. and Mrs. Stumfold, and in
which Miss Todd and Miss Baker, first heard of in _The Bertrams_,
reappear.

Much of this, at first amusing enough, is so spun out as soon to become
monotonous and gradually to lose all its point. To begin with, the
satire lacked the merit of originality, and lost all freshness long
before Trollope served up in _Rachel Ray_ a _réchauffé_ of the Slope
passages from _Barchester Towers_. Dickens, indeed, had been the first
(1836) to treat the public with its taste in the Stiggins of _Pickwick_,
the predecessor of the _Bleak House_ Chadband (1853). In Dickens’ hands
it was good business enough, and served for a fresh spice to his
fooling. Trollope, however, professed to delineate, not only the
superficial humours associated with the graver subjects, but some at
least among the spiritual or, at any rate, the deeper interests of the
time. He ought not, then, to have been contented with reflecting the
images, the ideas, and the jargon, which more than a quarter of a
century earlier (1837) his mother, in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_, had
echoed from the Stiggins of _Pickwick_, and which _The Saturday Review_
had since hackneyed to death before Trollope unwillingly accepted his
commission from the editor of _Good Words_. During the nineteenth
century’s second half, the Prongs, whom Trollope hated, had ceased to
be, to any marked degree, representative of provincial churchmanship.
The commercial argument justifies, indeed, all this loose and spiteful
vituperation of his pet religious aversions.

By 1860, however, Trollope had achieved a unique position as at once the
founder and producer of fiction as a serious profession, which, followed
a certain number of hours daily, cannot fail of yielding an annual
income. The habit of, in his own phrase, exacting from himself so many
words at a sitting could not but be unfavourable to excellence of
execution, though it interfered marvellously little, if at all, with his
variety and versatility. Those gifts, during 1867-8, he had exhibited in
taking his readers from the familiar home scenes to the less known
corners of continental Europe. Here his work, though passing muster
sufficiently well with the public, did not promise the material success
which he knew he could still command in other fields. Consequently,
before venturing on the experiment to be recorded in the next chapter,
he returned to the Barchester vein with the certainty, soon realised, of
convincing publishers and public that it still contained ore not less
valuable and pleasant than he had last drawn from it a decade ago. The
extracts given at the close of the present chapter will show that from
reviewers’ and booksellers’ point of view Trollope might well applaud
himself on the reception of _Rachel Ray_. Nevertheless it was a
novelist’s business to create. In _Rachel Ray_, he soon became
conscious, to quote his own words to the present writer, of having set
up certain religious or quasi-religious images chiefly, he admitted, for
the purpose of belabouring them with verbal blows even as in _The Old
Curiosity Shop_ Quilp vents his hatred on Christopher Nubbles in attacks
on the wooden figure to which he gives Kit’s name.

Nearly half a generation has passed since, during the eventful ramble,
already described in its proper place, round Salisbury Close, there had
occurred to him the earliest of those ecclesiastical varieties whose
portraiture amid their domestic or social surroundings soon brought him
fortune and fame. Before closing the gallery of these sketches, he would
draw one more clergyman of the same honest, manly English type as Mark
Robarts, and would show his readiness to recognise elevation of
character and purity of soul when, if possible, existing in an ordained
minister of the gospel of views as decidedly Low Church as the detested
Mr. Prong himself. This latter purpose was accomplished by _The Last
Chronicle of Barset_ (1867). Nothing could be more dramatically complete
than the contrast presented to the sleek, luxurious divines, or the
well-fed, well-clothed, muscular officials of the church militant, in
whom the novelist delighted, than the austere, gaunt, ill-nourished,
poverty-stricken perpetual curate of Hogglestock in the marsh. The
chronic gloom of his constitutional melancholy is deepened and saddened
by the sombre Calvinism of a creed that admits or asks no ray of relief
for the hardship of a lot still representing, with not less of faithful
cruelty than when Trollope wrote, the hard lives of so many among the
most spiritually-minded, most industrious, and not the least
well-educated of the country clergy. The Rev. Josiah Crawley’s great
qualities, his concealed accomplishments, and his shrinking silent
heroism, have won the admiration of the academic, highly-cultivated,
and well-to-do Dean Arabin, who has married Mr. Harding’s favourite,
youngest daughter Eleanor. This friendship of the prosperous Anglican
official for the half-starved incumbent gives rise to the chief and only
sensational episode of the book, at once revealing, as well as
altogether caused by, Crawley’s utter lack of all business methods,
forgetfulness of facts, and heedlessness of consequences. Nor, in these
respects, is the daughter of Crawley’s old friend, the Warden, formerly
the rich widow, Mrs. Bold, and now Mrs. Arabin, in all matters having to
do with money much better.

The crisis of the novel has been brought about in this way. Lord
Lufton’s agent has lost a cheque for £20 made payable to bearer, and
afterwards found to have been used by Crawley in settling a butcher’s
bill. Asked how he got the draft, he hesitatingly answered that no doubt
it formed part of the sum paid to him by the agent as tithes. That, it
soon appeared, was impossible, for the tithe payment some time since
actually made had been, as was always the case, in bank notes. Then,
after reconsidering the matter, Crawley revised his account; surely the
cheque must have been part of a loan made by Dean Arabin. To him, now
absent from his deanery on an Italian tour, inquiries were telegraphed,
bringing the statement on the sum having been advanced by bank notes.
Crawley’s continued inability satisfactorily to explain the matter now
coincides with the agent’s declaration that he must have dropped the
cheque while visiting Crawley’s house. Appearances, therefore, at every
point are dead against the wretched perpetual curate, who had naturally
excited or confirmed suspicions by the lame, and, as they have so far
proved, baseless versions of the matter, stammered out by him in his
agony. Crawley is known throughout the district for an upright,
conscientious, as well as confused and muddle-headed man. His
parishioners’ conversation on the subject, and, at last, their reluctant
belief in his guilt are not only in Trollope’s best manner, dashed with
humour and knowledge of nature, but echo with Shakespearean fidelity the
words and thoughts sure to have been forthcoming in local gossip about
such an incident. Briefly they are to this effect--“Well, we believe
he’s a good man, and we think he wouldn’t have done it, but for being so
dreadful poor.”

At last comes the explanation. When, overcome with the terrors of
necessity and shame, Crawley accepted the Dean’s offer of money help,
Mrs. Arabin left the room to get the cash. While absent, without her
husband’s knowledge, she slipped into the envelope containing the notes
an additional £20 in the form of a cheque. Crawley himself showed his
usual negligence by not examining the contents of the envelope. With
equally little wisdom, Mrs. Arabin never considered how her generosity
might compromise the poor clergyman. Even these facts, however, do not
fully clear up the mystery, for how did the cheque get into Mrs.
Arabin’s hands? But that too proves to be quite a simple matter.
Womanlike, as Trollope would have said, without the slightest aptitude
for such affairs, she piqued herself on her ability to manage business
concerns. She kept her own private banking account: by way of improving
its figures she dabbled now and then in a few small speculations. In
this way she had made the local inn her own property. The landlord and
landlady whom she had put in, like the rest of their relatives, were
always in difficulties. Lord Lufton’s agent, on going his rounds, had
entered the small hostelry. Here he had dropped the cheque, which was
promptly found by the innkeeper’s brother and used by him in paying
certain arrears of rent. Thus the real thieves were the licensed
victuallers, the tenants whom, without the Dean’s knowledge, Mrs. Arabin
possessed. The excellence of women within their own department, their
foredoomed and demonstrable blunders whenever they step out of it, were
ideas tragically set forth in _Orley Farm_, and, with the accompaniments
of less disaster, in _Can You Forgive Her?_ _The Last Chronicle of
Barset_ gave the novelist not only the chance of reverting to them in a
first-rate plot, but of doing some justice to the evangelical parson
while, after an amusingly characteristic fashion, dealing a covert
stroke of feminine satire.

The second of the two stories marking, for the present, Trollope’s
farewell to the church, was _The Vicar of Bullhampton_. This was
published in 1870, but mostly written a good deal earlier. Some of the
incidents connected with its publication too truthfully exhibit its
author’s temper in dealing with his publishers not less significantly
than the recital of Mrs. Arabin’s blunders in disposing of the cheque
which got poor Mr. Crawley into such trouble, recalling the view of
feminine limitations that he never modified. Trollope, as usual, had
been punctual to the day with the _Bullhampton_ manuscript, for Bradbury
and Evans’ _Once a Week_. He had scarcely delivered it when, to his
indignant disgust, he received from the publishers a request that his
“vicar” might be held over to make way for an English version of Victor
Hugo’s _L’homme qui rit_. The want of patriotism implied in the new
proposal roused Trollope’s resentment, he wished it to be understood,
quite as much as did the disregard of his own convenience. A pretentious
French Radical’s “grinning man” was, in an English magazine, to be
reckoned of more account than a carefully prepared story of national
life by an English gentleman, who, however liberal and advanced some of
his views, had, in and out of print, always been the champion of English
institutions. Worse even than this, it soon turned out that Trollope’s
clergyman was not to see the light in _Once a Week_ at all, but in
another property of the same owners, _The Gentleman’s Magazine_. That
closed the transaction in this quarter. The story, issued at once by
Chapman and Hall, strengthened the ties already connecting his literary
progress with the fortunes of that House.

At each successive stage of the novelist’s course, Trollope has already
been shown to have gained in breadth and depth of outlook upon life, in
power and certainty of character analysis, as well as in a dramatic
perception of the potential tragedies belonging to everyday existence.
He now habitually used the most ordinary conjunctures as agencies for
disturbing, with their grave or grim issues, the decorous surface of
conventionally monotonous and serene lives. In _The Vicar of
Bullhampton_ all this was exemplified after a fashion scarcely less
striking than in _Orley Farm_ or _Can You Forgive Her?_

Picture Trollope himself as having, at the age of twenty-three, found
his way into Holy Orders, instead of the General Post Office, and Frank
Fenwick, the before-mentioned clergyman, might well pass for a study of
the author. Broad-shouldered and broad-minded, the young Bullhampton
priest keeps all his powers of mind and body at the highest point of
fitness. Just, generous, upright, and kind-hearted, he is ever ready to
speak his mind, out of season perhaps as well as in it, and has all a
healthy Briton’s determination not to let a mean advantage be taken of
him, especially by those whose social ideas and antecedents differ from
his own, or who offend any of his John Bull notions about honour and
manliness. He finds in his wife a congenial, not too assertive, and
sympathetic helpmate. Her great friend Mary Lowther, the heroine of the
piece, is staying with them at the vicarage when the story opens; she
has already a lover, favoured by the hospitable Fenwicks, a neighbouring
young squire, Harry Gilmore.

Here, in passing, it may be pointed out that the locality, as the names
used will suggest, has much to identify it with the midland counties and
the north of England, to both of which Trollope, as a boy, had been
taken more than once by his mother. On the other hand, both the
Barchester local colour and nomenclature are throughout conspicuous by
their absence. To resume our plot: while away from the vicarage on a
visit to Miss Marrable, a maiden aunt, Mary meets and becomes engaged to
a cousin, Walter Marrable, a wealthy baronet’s nephew, but himself
without any visible means of subsistence. In that respect he resembles
the young lady he loves. These money difficulties bring everything
between the two young people to an end. Soon after what is supposed to
be their final separation, Mary hears of her old lover’s engagement to
his uncle’s ward, Edith Brownlow. In despair herself, and overcome by
the persistent importunities of her friends, Mary Lowther accepts Harry
Gilmore, only, however, to throw him over when Marrable, unexpectedly
coming into his uncle’s property, renews his marriage proposals. Such,
it will be recognised, is the regulation course run by true love
throughout the whole extent of Trollopian fiction, making, in all that
concerns affections, the last clerical story uniform with the books that
had immediately or, at some distance of time, preceded it.

Round this main episode is clustered another series of events,
connecting the vicar with his parish. These furnish some of the best
scenes in the book as well as serve to introduce the same kind of
melodramatic element, first noticeable in _Dr. Thorne_, afterwards
receiving greater prominence in _Orley Farm_. Thus did Trollope
practically acknowledge the influence upon the novel-reading public now
firmly exercised by experts in sensational effects like Mrs. Henry Wood,
Wilkie Collins, and Miss Braddon. Among the Bullhampton vicar’s
parishioners are an unbending old miller, his daughter Carry, who has
gone wrong, and his ne’er-do-well son, Sam Brattle, now under suspicion
for a murder committed in the village. The Brattles are therefore an
undesirable family. So thinks the Marquis of Trowbridge, the landlord of
the murdered man. They happen to be tenants of Gilmore, who, meeting one
day at the vicarage Lord Trowbridge, is asked point blank to clear his
property of them. Here the vicar himself intervenes, turning on the
Marquis with sharp words for his uncharitable and inexcusable demand.
Lord Trowbridge, a pompous brainless peer, puffed up with the sense of
his extreme importance, is for the moment too much overwhelmed by the
parson’s audacity to say anything.

Presently, however, his feeling of offended dignity takes practical
shape and prepares vengeance in giving a plot of ground, exactly
opposite the parsonage gates, as the site for a Primitive Methodist
Chapel, to the local minister of that sect, one Puddleham. This
territorial donation soon proves to be not Trowbridge property at all.
As a part of the glebe land it is at the vicar’s exclusive disposal. The
Marquis, therefore, now suffers the further mortification of being
compelled to make a full apology to Fenwick for the infringement of his
rights, as well as to pull down so much of the chapel as has been
already built. All of this conclusively proves, to Trollope’s naïvely
undisguised satisfaction, that Providence is on the side of the State
Church. The sooner, therefore, Defoe’s _The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters_ is literally adopted, the better for the peace, purity, and
morals of the community. The same retributive poetical justice that
deals so sharply with the Puddlehamites, with all poachers on the
establishment’s preserves, and with their patron who wears the
Trowbridge title, now befriends the Brattles. Sam turns out to be
innocent; poor Carry, if she cannot regain her innocence, displays
qualities which at least secure sympathy, and is prevented from falling
over the rock of ruin to the lowest depth of degradation. The sturdy,
hot-tempered old atheist, her father does not recant his theological
heresies, but at least compares favourably with an evangelical
Nonconformist.

Q.E.D. The favourable reception in store for the book is to be explained
by other circumstances than the skill in the novelist’s technique
running through its successive parts and the humour generally redeeming
it from dullness. Low Churchmanship was becoming unpopular. Readers of
the mid-Victorian epoch saw telling hits and lifelike portraits in what
may to-day seem not much removed above the level of caricature. At the
time, therefore, _Rachel Ray_ won, not only a popular, but a literary
success. The welcome given generally to it by the reviewers formed as
great a compliment as Trollope had yet received from the Press. Among
the religious papers, indeed, _The Guardian_ and _The English Churchman_
left _Rachel Ray_ and its companion stories severely alone, _The Times_
reviewer, however, recognised in it a new proof of Trollope’s insight
into human nature and a fresh justification of the immense favour
enjoyed by him with the most intelligent class of novel readers. “A
delightful tale,” enthusiastically exclaims this critic, placing its
author with Defoe and Richardson. “If,” it was added, “Trollope, like
Defoe, has little imagination, what he possesses is so clear that we do
not feel the want of suggestion; while his detailed knowledge of
conventional custom is unsurpassed by the author of _Clarissa_.”

“O happy art of fiction,” gushes this enthusiast, “which can thus adjust
the balance of fortune, raising the humble and weak to an equality in
our hearts with the proud and great!” The eulogistic note thus sounded
by the Choragus of the daily Press was at once taken up, prolonged, and
swelled in the weekly journals. To _The Athenæum_, _Rachel Ray_ seemed a
book sure to do more than any critical protests to correct existing
vices of public taste. The women of the tale were admirable, being
treated with skill which must surprise even those to whom the author’s
strength is most familiar. To _The Spectator_, _Rachel Ray_ demonstrated
that, as a censor, Trollope had gifts far above sarcasm, and that he had
made good his place between Thackeray the satirist and Dickens the
caricaturist. _The Spectator_ subsequently hedges by admitting that the
author of _Rachel Ray_ leant rather in the direction of Dickens than of
Thackeray, and that his powers fitted him less for satire than for
caricature. _The Saturday Review_ closed an outburst of panegyric with a
declaration that Trollope’s tact, discretion, and gentlemanly taste,
combined with his literary power and his faculty of devising imaginary
characters, made him eminently successful in describing the inner life
of young women.

_The Saturday_ alone, in the Press, weekly as well as daily, noticed the
attacks on evangelicalism as follows: “Mr. Prong is not an unfair
representation of the lower clerical order in provincial towns; but the
accuracy of the portrait does not make it a pleasant study, the foolish
language, the pert fanaticism and the petty tricks of the worst
evangelical class are not agreeable reading. Whatever of comic there is
in them is soon exhausted unless the author glaringly exaggerates every
symptom to spice his description.” The compliments forthcoming by the
famous weekly then under Douglas Cook’s absolute editorial control, but
owned by Beresford Hope and generally reflecting its proprietor’s
antipathies to all forms and expression of faith not distinctly
Anglo-Catholic, admit of another explanation than its natural
benediction on the religious portraits drawn by a writer who was then so
much in its own way of thinking as Trollope. In 1864 Anthony Trollope’s
_North America_ had received such sharp treatment in _The Saturday
Review_ that his friends, G. H. Lewes and the famous lady bearing his
name, were concerned to find some way of counteracting what they called
the nasty notice. Eventually, some time later, Lewes himself did justice
to Trollope’s transatlantic experiences in _The Fortnightly Review_.

Before that he had succeeded in influencing an important section of the
political Press in Trollope’s favour. Trollope’s next experiment in
fiction, as well as certain events in his life connected with it, will
form the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER XIII

PEN AND PLATFORM POLITICS

Failures of literary men in the political world at the beginning of
the nineteenth century--Trollope increases the number by going
under at Beverley--“Not in, but in at the death”--_Ralph the
Heir_--Its plots and politics--Trollope as editor of _The St.
Paul’s Magazine_--_Phineas Finn_--Some remarks on Trollope’s
_Palmerston_--In the heart of political society--The hero’s
flirtations and fights in London--His final return to the old home
and friends--_Phineas Redux_--Again in London--Charged with
murder--Madame Goesler’s double triumph--Some probable
caricatures--Trollope renews acquaintance with Planty Pal and his
wife in _The Prime Minister_--The close of the political series
comes with _The Duke’s Children_.

“Anthony’s ambition to become a candidate for Beverley is inscrutable to
me. Still, it is the ambition of many men, and the honester the man who
entertains it, the better for us, I suppose.” So wrote Charles Dickens
to Thomas Adolphus Trollope in the December of 1868. Exactly
twenty-seven years before that date, the literary pre-eminence of
Dickens, together with his championship, with pen and on platform, of
social and administrative reform had, in 1841, brought the author of
_Oliver Twist_ the offer of a seat for Reading. During the pre-Victorian
age the future Lord Beaconsfield’s adventures in search of a
constituency had begun in 1832, some five years after the completion of
_Vivian Grey_. Disraeli’s contemporary in letters, and so a novelist
older in point of years and fame than Dickens, Edward Bulwer-Lytton came
before the electors of St. Ives as the writer of _Pelham_, not to
mention a novel and the prose or poetical miscellanies which had
preceded it. Sixteen years after Dickens declined standing for the
Berkshire capital, Thackeray (1857) unsuccessfully contested the city of
Oxford. The political tradition had therefore been sufficiently
confirmed and adorned by the leading fellow-craftsmen in his art by
1868. This was the year in which, at the General Election, Trollope
tried his chance at Beverley. The illustrious precedents thus followed
by him, though numerous, were not altogether encouraging. Benjamin
Disraeli himself, in 1837, had owed his success at Maidstone not to his
brilliant romance, or even to his effective _Runnymede Letters_ and
telling pamphlets, but to his adoption by the sitting member, Wyndham
Lewis, who held the place in his pocket.

At that date the popular tide had begun decidedly to turn against the
Whigs. Even the famous and eloquent man of letters, then worth many
votes to the Whigs on a division, T. B. Macaulay, had owed the
opportunity of his memorable displays in defence of the Grey Reform Bill
to his having been brought into the House by Lord Lansdowne for the
family borough of Calne. Macaulay’s partner in the primacy of English
letters, W. M. Thackeray, did not, in 1857, make much of a fight against
Cardwell at Oxford. Yet in that contest Thackeray had enjoyed advantages
entirely denied Trollope at Beverley. In the first place, Thackeray, as
a member, of whom naturally it was proud, had the influence of the
Reform Club at his back. Further, he had originally presented himself to
the Oxford electors at the suggestion of a universally as well as an
altogether exceptionally popular resident, Charles Neate, a Fellow of
Oriel; with him Thackeray had long lived in affectionate intimacy. Under
Neate’s personal guidance, and with him for prompter as well as
introducer, the novelist canvassed the place and spoke from the
hustings. Neate too, though unseated on petition, had carried the seat
against Cardwell during the previous March. His own reputation was
therefore concerned in seeing that his recently vanquished rival did not
retrieve his discomfiture. Nevertheless, on the declaration of the poll,
July 21 (1857), the author of _Vanity Fair_ was shown not only to have
lost the day, but to have failed in favourably impressing any large body
of the electors. “It is,” was Thackeray’s comment, “what I expected,
and I take it as the British schoolboy takes his floggings, sullenly and
in silence.” He had indeed scarcely reached his constituency before
writing to Dickens. “Not more than 4 per cent of the people here, I have
found out, have ever heard of my writings. Perhaps as many as 6 per cent
know yours, so it will be a great help to me if you will come and speak
for me.”

At Beverley Trollope had no person of commanding authority to speak for
him at all; unlike Thackeray, he was not a member of the Reform. The
managers at the Liberal headquarters gave him his first introduction to
the place, where he found himself at least as well received as he could
have expected. Some ten or fifteen years later the thought and reading
involved in the preparation of his political stories and his _Lord
Palmerston_ (1882) had more or less familiarised him with the temper,
the issues, and the personages of public controversy. It was without any
of even that preparation that he began to canvass the Minster town of
the East Riding. _Can You Forgive Her?_ indeed (1864), like _Rachel Ray_
of the same period, had contained passages casually mentioning rather
than attempting to describe the war of parties at Westminster, or the
appeals of the rival chiefs to the country. At the General Election,
therefore, that made Gladstone for the first time Prime Minister, and
brought our novelist as his supporter, Trollope knew little more of
politics than average newspaper readers and a good deal less than the
newspaper writers.

By his failure at Oxford in 1857, Thackeray, according to Trollope, was
saved from a situation in which he could not have shone. Probably the
same thing might have been said eleven years later of Trollope himself
after the Beverley misadventure of 1868. As parliamentary candidates
both men, indeed, belonged to the same description. Proud of being
English gentlemen first and popular writers afterwards, they looked, in
Trollope’s own words, upon a place at St. Stephen’s as the birthright of
a well-born, well-bred, and well-to-do Briton.[25] Like others of the
social order with which they identified themselves, their Westminster
ambitions implied no more idea of being useful than does entrance into
any first-class club. The real and serious difference between the two
candidatures was this. At Oxford Charles Neate had long been watching
for a vacancy which might suit Thackeray; the single reason that took
Trollope to Beverley was its allotment to him in return for a
contribution to the Liberal election fund. Beverley then possessed two
members. The Conservative candidates were stronger than any likely to be
found on the other side. Sir Henry Edwards had not only held the borough
for the Conservatives before coming into the baronetcy, but afterwards
had contributed to its institutions of all kinds so munificently as
almost to have made its representation his own and his friends’
appanage. He had now chosen for his colleague Captain Kennard, who had
already secured a good start of Trollope, and had spared neither labour
nor money in locally ingratiating himself. On the other hand, Trollope
soon made many friends who, in some cases, already knew his writings and
were gratified to find in their author a gentleman with every mark of
good breeding, as well as a shrewd, genial, and often delightful
companion.

Trollope’s comrade in the fight, then Marmaduke Maxwell of Everingham,
became subsequently Lord Herries and the Duke of Norfolk’s
father-in-law; for him Trollope had all the personal charm which he had
long found in his writings. The two representatives of Liberalism were
thus well assorted, and each in his own way did yeoman service to the
other. From his father, however, Trollope inherited an irritable
intolerance of fools and bores; he found several of both among his
Beverley friends. The business of electioneering degenerated into
drudgery before it was half done. The hunting season was in full swing;
Trollope felt that he should go out of his mind in disgust if he missed
a few days off with the hounds. The recreation was not indeed enjoyed at
the cost of the seat, because the Conservative success could never have
been for a moment in doubt. It did, however, make the novelist play a
worse second to Maxwell and so leave him even further behind the two
Tory victors than might otherwise have been the case. Though Trollope
fell short of success at Beverley, the invitation of his local friends
to try again and the pressure of official Liberalism not to withdraw his
name from the candidates’ list are enough to show that his failure had
its redeeming points. His Post Office experience and his power, improved
by the practice, of getting up and expressing himself on any subject
would have helped him to make at least a respectable figure had he ever
been returned. As a speaker, he not only exemplified his own counsel,
already quoted, to those ambitious of addressing parliament, but he
delighted without exception, and on both sides, his Beverley audiences
by the sonorous delivery of virile periods, clothing in clear and terse
phrase thoughts that were the condensed essence of practical wisdom and
shrewd insight.

A few years after the election I happened to be visiting, at Brantingham
Thorp, Mr. Christopher Sykes. He had himself between 1865 and 1868
filled the seat contested by Trollope in the latter year. Beverley lay
within an easy drive. In my host’s old constituency there still
flourished the local gentlemen who had vigorously worked with head,
heart, and hand for Trollope. They included Mr. Charles Langdale, Mr.
Alfred Crosskill, Mr. Daniel Bayes, Mr. Hawkshaw, the famous civil
engineer--a connection by marriage of the great Josiah Wedgwood--Mr.
Charles Elwell, and Mr. F. Hall of _The Yorkshire Post_, the oldest
member of that newspaper’s staff, which indeed, before the journal
actually started, he did much to get together. Both these last-named
gentlemen, still, I am happy to know, alive and well, have themselves
supplied me with some details and put me in the way of getting others.
These authorities have made me independent of my own memory and even
Trollope’s own reminiscences in the matter.

The county families of course threw their influence into the scale of
Trollope’s Conservative opponent. The balance of speaking talent was
undoubtedly on Trollope’s side; on the platform he derived his chief
assistance from Mr. James Stewart, of Hull, from Colonel Hodgson, a
very large employer of Beverley labour, and especially from Mr. William
Carey Upton, a Baptist minister. During the struggle, the Conservatives
paid our novelist a compliment he much appreciated by undertaking on
their side to withdraw Kennard, if their opponents would scratch
Trollope. This would have meant Sir Henry Edward’s and Mr. Marmaduke
Maxwell’s uncontested return. The official Liberals might have accepted
the suggestion, but the working men, deeply impressed by Trollope’s
unconventional treatment of familiar subjects and the sense of
intellectual power of all he said, would not for a moment hear of it,
and this though Trollope almost ostentatiously failed to do himself and
his supporters justice.

His sportsmanship formed a real point in his favour, for the Beverley
electors, like other Yorkshiremen, love a horse, and are instinctively
attracted to a bold rider to hounds. Trollope therefore did himself no
harm by letting the householders see him in his top boots and pink
riding through the streets on the way to a famous meet. His mistake was
the selection for sport of a time at which his committee were working
for him night and day, and his own presence could ill be dispensed with
at public meetings or private conclaves. Liberalism’s association with
Home Rule placed Trollope, in his later years, among the Conservatives.
Had they enlisted his distinction, ability, and energy on their side at
the first dissolution after the Derby-Disraeli Household Franchise Bill,
he would undoubtedly have been found Sir Henry Edward’s colleague on the
declaration of the poll. But in 1868 the Conservative educators, by
their discovery of the Conservative working man, rode on a wave of
popularity, rising in many places to enthusiasm. As for the “another
attempt” mentioned by Trollope to his Beverley friends, that was never
to be made, because, before the next general election, Beverley had lost
its independent political existence, less, however, in consequence of
its political corruption than by reason of certain municipal
irregularities. As the judges who disfranchised the place themselves
said, it was the “double event” which secured the political extinction
of the place. “I did not,” was Trollope’s characteristic comment on the
whole affair, “get in, yet I was in at the death; for the effort of my
defeat involved Beverley’s own parliamentary demise, under circumstances
less tantalising than those of our friend Kinglake’s parliamentary
extinction; for, unlike me, he got in only to be kicked out, while I at
least had the satisfaction of seeing those who had walked over me faring
worse than myself, inasmuch as they not only lost their seats but their
money too.”[26]

Every incident, personage, or issue connected with Trollope’s
electioneering errand to Yorkshire was, after his usual fashion, turned
into “copy.” The novel thus inspired did not appear till 1871. It forms
a well-written record of its author’s personal partialities or
prejudices during the adventure already described. More than any of his
books belonging to this period, it recalls, by the loaded colour of its
lampoons and the unwonted bitterness of its satire, his mother’s way of
dealing with the persons and things she had found disagreeable. For the
rest, the humorous notes, whether in the way of local description or
personal caricature, have, more frequently than is found in any other
novel, a Dickensian ring. If occasionally laboured, as well as, for the
most part, not below the average in writing, it is as regards plot
almost as complicated and confusing as those parts of the Scriptural
narrative dealing with the kings of Israel and Judah called by the same
name. Not less baffling than to the Biblical student the rival Jehorams
and Ahaziahs, are, in _Ralph the Heir_, the two prominent personages
named Ralph Newton. The story unfolds itself on these lines: Old Squire
Newton of Newton Priory, a rich country gentleman, has only one child,
Ralph, an illegitimate son, on whom all his love and hopes are fixed.
His estates, however, are entailed on his nephew, another Ralph Newton,
distinguished from his namesake as Ralph the Heir. This young man, a
spendthrift, equally weak and handsome, is universally admitted to be
the best fellow in the world. His only enemy is the uncle whom the law
compels to leave him the estate. His chief friend, formerly his
guardian, is Sir Thomas Underwood--a former Solicitor-General--a widower
living at Popham Villa, Fulham, with his two daughters. To this
household is presently added a niece, Mary Bonner, from abroad. Ralph
the Heir, now more than usually in debt, has his heaviest creditor in
Neefit the tailor, whose hunting breeches--his speciality--are of
world-wide fame.

Some critics have scented in Trollope’s Neefit a likeness to the Mr.
Bond Sharp of Disraeli’s _Henrietta Temple_. The resemblance, however,
is but imaginary, because Mr. Bond Sharp, though professionally a maker
of clothes, is the idealised usurer of Disraeli and romance, while
Neefit has nothing to do with professional money-lending, and only
supplies Ralph with cash in the character of his future son-in-law, the
husband-elect of his daughter and heiress, Polly. Hence his indignation
when Ralph backs out of the match, although the would-be father-in-law
gets his money back with interest, for the tailor’s daughter is not the
only matrimonial string to his bow. Reflection and delay increase Ralph
the Heir’s objection to entire pecuniary dependence on the tailor’s
daughter and heiress as his wife. He has hit upon what may prove a more
excellent way. True, his uncle, the present owner and occupant of Newton
Priory, is strong and well enough to have many years of life before him.
Still, some day, in the course of nature, the place must be Ralph’s.
It’s money worth could never be such an object to him as now, when he
knows not where to turn for funds. Why not, therefore, exhaust every
possible means for converting his reversionary interest into ready cash.
Rather than sell himself to father-in-law Neefit, with Polly for his
bride, why not sell outright to his uncle for a good round sum, say
£50,000, his Newton rights? Horace’s Ulysses, rent by the Circean and
Penelopeian rivalries, and Captain MacHeath, divided betwixt Polly and
Lucy, personify the failing of indecision as familiarly as Buridan’s
ass itself. Both are almost outdone by the average Trollopian youth or
maiden’s perplexity in the final selection of a lover from three or four
candidates for the place. Most pre-eminently is Ralph the Heir, Ralph
the wobbler. Having loved or talked about loving Polly Neefit, and
ridden away, he goes through the farcical process of giving what he is
pleased to call his heart first to Clarissa Underwood, next to Mary
Bonner, and then to Clarissa again. At this point, however, that young
lady has something to say, with the result of finding that not Ralph the
Heir, but his younger brother, the Rev. Gregory Newton, is the right man
for her husband. At the same time Mary Bonner similarly gives his
_congé_ to Ralph the Heir, and her hand to Ralph who is not the Heir.

“He that will not when he may,
When he will he shall have nay.”

So it had befallen one of Trollope’s Three Clerks who loved the barmaid.
So it was now to befall Ralph the Heir.

At the point now reached Polly’s reappearance effects a complete change
in the situation. When he had formerly, as he thought for ever, bidden
her farewell, Polly’s affection for him by its vulgar exuberance had
jarred on the hard-up, but fastidious Heir. Now the young lady keeps him
at a distance, repulsing him with piquant prettiness, only to attract
him. The old flame of a mercenary passion is rekindled. After all there
is no reason, Ralph the Heir admits, against Polly’s becoming a
gentleman’s wife. So it is all arranged; even the happy day is
provisionally mentioned. The nuptial settlements have been drawn up, but
are still unsigned when, hey presto! fresh surprises all round, and
instead of flirting, jilting, and all the rest of it, we are in the
thick of a political fight, reflecting in each detail Trollope’s
Beverley conflict. There is, however more than that. Ralph the Heir’s
namesake, Squire Newton’s illegitimate son, falls out of favour with his
father; Squire Newton himself breaks his neck out hunting. Thus by
several undeserved strokes of luck the Heir enters upon his heritage.
By this time, however, Sir Thomas Underwood has decided on re-entering
public life. He has, he hopes, found the necessary seat in the borough
of Percycross, _alias_ that Beverley contested by Trollope himself, and
now satirised in _Ralph the Heir_. Underwood’s colleague in the fight is
Mr. Griffenbottom; his opponents are Westmacott in the Liberal and
Ontario Moggs in the Radical interest. The Tory triumph is followed by
the unseating on petition of both those who have won it; the
disfranchisement of the borough completes the barrenness of their
victory.

Quite the best drawn figure amid the electioneering crush is the Radical
candidate. Ontario Moggs belongs to a class of idealised Industrials
brought into fashion by George Eliot, attempted also by Mrs. Lynn
Linton, raised to their highest perfection in _Adam Bede_, and brought
down to a more familiar level in _Felix Holt_. With that Radical,
Ontario Moggs can at least hold his own. He is, it is true, something of
a prig, with a solemnity of manner and a pompous pithiness of artificial
phrase making him a little absurd. His real cleverness, however, is not
below his conceit; his readiness of speech, quickness at the detection
of fallacy and power of argument, justly entitle him to his high
reputation at the Cheshire Cheese and other debating Clubs. During
Trollope’s time the Labour member had still to win the vogue and power
brought in by the twentieth century. Still the Moggs of _Ralph the Heir_
forms a creditable study of those captains of Northumbrian industry,
some among whom were to win their way to the Treasury bench. By this
time Ralph the Heir’s rejected love, Miss Neefit, has shed all her
vulgarity. Realising the folly and danger of aspiring to the affection
of her father’s trying and impecunious customers, she has the good sense
to invest her fortune, hand, and heart in a life-partnership with a born
gentleman, if of inferior station, like Ontario Moggs.

Trollope’s hard common sense, detective vigilance, refusal to be imposed
upon, and absolute pitilessness for transgressors, when discharging his
Post Office duties, represented only one side of his character. From
another point of view his judgment and intellect were subordinate to his
emotions. This sentimentalism showed itself equally in his politics and
in his estimate of the personages to whom he introduced the public in
his books; with those personal creations he lived, as he often said, so
intimately as to be really hurt by his readers not taking the same
interest in them as he did himself. Hence his mortification at the
indifference largely manifested to the _dramatis personæ_ of the
political novels that followed _Phineas Finn_. For those stories, now
about to be considered, Trollope had prepared himself, not only by the
ordinary experiences of London life, but by those of his Beverley
campaign. He had also gone through a course of political reading, one of
whose literary results was to be his book on Palmerston. This, though
published subsequently to the political novels, had been written before
them, and may be, for other reasons, appropriately mentioned now.

One Disraelian phrase, and one only, was sometimes quoted approvingly by
Trollope. “The free patrician life” of England produced, he always held,
the nation’s best rulers. Of that dispensation, in his patriotism, his
sympathies, at once popular and aristocratic, in home affairs, and in
his championship of oppressed nationalities abroad, Palmerston struck
him as the best type of the time. For Trollope, too, there was something
of natural congeniality in Palmerston’s schoolboy delight at those
political doings which he loved to describe as “capital strokes, and all
off my own bat,” in his brushes with the Court, and in his tit-for-tat
with John Russell. When putting his Palmerston monograph together, he
received useful hints and help from Sir Alexander Cockburn, whose
friendship he owed to Sir Richard Quain. In this way, he found himself
able to appreciate the value to Palmerston of the services rendered him
by Sir Henry Bulwer during his Paris residence at serious continental
conjunctures. Hence, too, Trollope could rate at its true worth
Palmerston’s diplomacy, first, as shown by the quadruple treaty of 1834,
secondly, by the quadrilateral treaty of six years later leading up to
the London conference of 1840. Finally, Bulwer and Cockburn enabled him
to correct the popular impression of English statesmanship abroad being
overruled by the Queen and the Prince Consort, and to show that,
throughout the Austro-Italian questions then in progress, the principles
consistently held and carried out by our Foreign Office were not those
embodying the regard for the Austrian Empire held at the palace, but of
the zeal for Italian unity at that time animating the English people.

Some reference to current politics entered, as has been seen, into
_Rachel Ray_ (1863). The subject was first made a prominent feature in
_Can You Forgive Her?_ (1864). Here we are first formally introduced to
more or less public personages with whom our acquaintance is now to be
improved. Trollope had not been impelled to his Beverley candidature by
any active share in the Gladstonian enthusiasm, then beginning to show
itself throughout the country, nor can the Gladstonian lineaments be
clearly traced in any of the parliamentary portraits whose gallery opens
with _Phineas Finn_ (1869). The sorrows, the disappointment, the
labours, and the other varieties of penance awaiting the average borough
candidate, form the autobiographical element in the novel that marked
the new period in Trollope’s life beginning with his retirement from the
Post Office. After _Ralph the Heir_, _Phineas Finn_ takes the reader
into the heart of the political system, at St. Stephen’s, in Whitehall,
in Pall Mall, and in the country-houses, where leaders of parties,
whether peers or commoners, Cabinet Ministers and all their hangers on,
congregate. The electioneering reminiscences that give life and colour
to _Ralph the Heir_ make it therefore a fit introduction to Trollope’s
efforts in the new literary vein which, while a paid servant of the
State, he did not think desirable to work.

That was not the only fresh test applied by him in this, his fifty-third
year, to the loyalty of his readers. The example of famous or successful
contemporaries always excited a spirit of emulation in Trollope. Not
only had Dickens and Thackeray added to their reputation and wealth as
magazine editors, but, in the same capacity, men of whom he thought so
meanly as G. A. Sala and Edmund Yates had done well. The ex-Post Office
surveyor, therefore, resolved to spend part of his freedom from official
harness in the same _rôle_. The Virtues of City Road had just started a
monthly, _The St. Paul’s Magazine_. Anthony Trollope, with Mr. Edward
Dicey for his assistant, readily took the helm. He led off with an
instalment of fiction different from anything else he had yet attempted.
Had this not come after the Barchester series and therefore been judged
by that earlier standard, it might have had as many readers if not
admirers as the other pen and ink pictures of English life of which _The
Warden_, in 1855, had been the first. _Phineas Finn_, that first showed
Trollope as a political novelist, after having run through _The St.
Paul’s_, was republished in two volumes octavo (Virtue and Co.), 1869.
It was continued five years later with _Phineas Redux_. This originally
appeared in _The Graphic_ and was republished (Chapman and Hall) in two
volumes, 1874. The group of novels now referred to contained other
works, to be mentioned in their proper place, and only ended with _The
Duke’s Children_ (1880) two years before Trollope’s death. All these
books are traversed by a slight connecting thread of name, incident, or
character. As to this, however, it will be best to let these stories
speak for themselves, beginning with the earliest of the number,
_Phineas Finn_.

The personage giving his name to this book is the son of an Irish
doctor, Malachi Finn, living at Killaloe, county Clare, well-known
throughout the province of Connaught, possessing no private fortune, but
a good practice and an expensive family. The household idolatry lavished
upon the son is thus commented on by the shrewd, sensible father. “So
far he seems as good as any other man’s goose, but much more evidence is
wanted for establishing his claim to any qualities of the swan.”
Phineas, however, is no sooner seen in London than he begins to be a
success. Mr. Low, in whose chambers he reads law, who on his own
account entertains but checks certain parliamentary ambitions, is a
steady-going preceptor, social and legal, of the old school, who
admonishes his pupil to beware of distractions from his professional
training. Phineas, however, has already joined the Reform Club and found
many good houses open to him. Among the earliest of his Pall Mall and
Mayfair acquaintances Laurence Fitzgibbon, a happy-go-lucky Irishman,
cleverly sketched after the manner of Charles Lever, is already in the
House, and easily persuades Phineas that it is the only career worth
pursuing. An opportunity soon comes; the Loughshane constituency wants a
progressive candidate at the General Election; the Reform Club committee
promises a liberal contribution to his expenses if Phineas will stand.
Even thus Phineas’ allowance from his father must of course be
increased. The Killaloe doctor, talked over by the ladies of his family,
will do his very utmost to help his son in maintaining the new position.
Phineas, accordingly, is returned to Parliament, and is still in his
first session when, by sheer good luck, he gets an Under-Secretaryship.
Then comes the first check; Phineas kicks over the traces on an Irish
question. Mr. Monk may at some points vaguely reflect Gladstone. It is
at least Finn’s loyalty to Monk which involves the loss of his
Ministerial office, and, with it, of his seat for Loughshane, which, out
of office, he cannot support in a style agreeable to his enlarged views
of an M.P.’s social consequence.

Nothing therefore is to be done but to resettle himself in the land of
his birth. Even after his retirement there come signs of returning luck
in the shape of a Government post worth £1000 a year. That enables him
to settle modestly in Dublin with his youthful sweetheart, Mary Flood
Jones, for his wife. The heart which he can offer this excellent lady is
no longer a virgin one, for during his London years he has had two or
three serious love affairs. One of these, in its sequel rather tragic,
has been with Lady Laura Standish, the impoverished Earl of Brentford’s
daughter. That has been really a case of love at first sight on both
sides, for Lady Laura, having given Phineas her affection at the
beginning, does not conceal that he has it to the end. She only refuses
him because her father’s poverty compels her to marry a rich plebeian,
Mr. Kennedy, M.P., like Phineas himself, a political supporter of
Plantagenet Palliser, who eventually becomes the Duke of Omnium. The
handsome person and the shallow purse of the young Irish member have
also appealed warmly to Madame Max Goesler, a rich widow; she has
indeed, it having been apparently Leap Year, hinted to Phineas at the
acceptance of her hand and fortune as the best way out of his money
difficulties. This good-hearted, fascinating, and refreshingly
straightforward lady, whom he, after becoming a widower, marries, had
been suspected of angling for Planty Pal’s uncle, the reigning Duke of
Omnium. At least the duke’s infatuation for “Mrs. Max” had filled Lady
Glencora Palliser with a droll horror, lest the great man should
actually make her his wife and become the father of an heir who would
disinherit Planty Pal himself. Madame Goesler, however, has never any
thought of aiming at anyone above her own social level. The gracious but
decisive dismissal of her noble suitor converts Lady Glencora into her
fast friend. Throughout the rest of the story and indeed afterwards,
among all Lady Glencora’s intimates, none ranked so high in her regard
and confidence as the sensible and kindly lady who had been wise enough
to refuse a duke.

Out of Phineas Finn’s attachment to Lady Laura arises an entirely fresh
entanglement of heart actually attended by results serious enough, and
at one time threatening to change the whole current of the narrative. In
Lady Laura’s drawing-room Phineas meets a beautiful heiress, Violet
Effingham, the bride-elect of Lady Laura’s brother, the red-haired,
red-faced, shaggy, and untamable Lord Chiltern, who bears something of a
family likeness to the St. Aldegonde of Disraeli’s _Lothair_, but who
really represents Trollope’s snapshot at the Lord Hartington of his own
day, who died eighth Duke of Devonshire. The fact of Miss Effingham
being thus bespoke does not warn off the philandering Phineas. Lady
Laura has the mortification of seeing her own devotion to him requited
by his deliberate attempt to cut out Chiltern, and so prevent the
marriage that she had set her heart on for her brother. Still, she sits
by, agonised at heart, but uncomplaining. Nor does the spectacle of
Finn’s fickleness and shallowness lose him the love which, in spite of
herself, he had won.

Her brother views matters less passively. He has rather liked Phineas,
shown him much attention in London, mounted him on his most intractable
hunter, Bonebreaker, in the eastern counties, and admired the success
with which the doctor’s son from Killaloe has conquered that self-willed
steed. He is not, however, prepared to tolerate Phin’s poaching on his
manor. He will maintain the right to his sweetheart even at the price of
blood. Eventually the two agree to settle it at the pistol’s point.
Blankenberg in Belgium becomes the scene of a combat in which Phineas
receives a not very serious wrist wound. This encounter has been called
an anachronism; it disposes, the critics have said, if nothing else did,
of the one merit, that of absolute truth to life in all details,
specially claimed by Trollope for the novel. How stand the facts? Prince
Albert, indeed, made duelling unfashionable; but there were several
cases of duels fought in Victoria’s reign. Certainly, during the period
of the Blankenberg encounter in _Phineas Finn_, hostile meetings at
Boulogne were often the talk of the town. Only a generation and a half
have passed since there still flourished at St. Stephen’s, and
occasionally dined with Mr. Gladstone, the wonderful Ogorman Mahoon who,
if report spoke truly, had once at least “killed his man.” In 1852 a
Canterbury election dispute caused a duel between George Smythe,
Coningsby’s original, and Colonel Frederick Romilly. About this time,
too, is nearly the date at which an ordeal of the same kind was gone
through by Reginald Russell in Paris.

Phineas Finn’s Irish exile was short. He had recently lost his wife in
Dublin, when a letter from his old friend, Lady Laura Standish’s
cousin, Barrington Erle, told him of just the thing to suit him in the
shape of a parliamentary investment for a little legacy into which he
had come. This was the vacant seat in Lord Brentford’s borough of
Tankerville. To London therefore he hurries. In the solitude of his
Jermyn Street Hotel he is surprised and gladdened by a letter from the
former Violet Effingham, now Lady Chiltern, conveying a particularly
cordial invitation to their country house, Harrington Hall. So he feels
himself really on the way back to the old life formerly so much enjoyed
and, as it seemed, but a few months since withdrawn from him for ever.
But his welcome is not absolutely unanimous. Among those who, as a
personal offence to themselves, resent his reappearance after having
made up their minds that he was finally out of their way, Finn’s most
malevolent ill-wisher is Mr. Bonteen. Phineas has just got back to St.
Stephen’s as member for Tankerville; shortly afterwards goes into the
Reform Club; here, stung by Bonteen’s remarks, he almost comes to blows
with Bonteen; a little later he is seen walking home Mr. Bonteen’s way.
The next morning Bonteen is found dead in a Mayfair alley with his skull
broken, manifestly by such a pocket bludgeon as Finn is known to be in
the habit of carrying for protection against garrotters. The Irish
member’s arrest follows; it might have gone hard with him in court but
for Madame Goesler’s resourcefulness, devotion, and ready wit. The tide
of circumstantial evidence, so far flowing strongly against Phineas, now
turns, and, thanks entirely to Madame Goesler’s vigilance and skill,
gives Trollope the chance of a hit at his old enemies, the evangelicals,
by setting in conclusively against a dissenting minister who now
replaces Phineas in the dock, but just contrives to cheat the gallows.
Phineas, of course, finds a rising statesman’s ideal wife in Madame
Goesler, and is henceforth known as the prosperous middle-aged M.P.

Here, it will be seen, is the same blending as in _Orley Farm_ and _Can
You Forgive Her?_ of tears with laughter, of the terrible with the
ludicrous, and of more than melodrama with downright farce. The darker
background to the social or political scenes is supplied chiefly by the
relations between Mr. Kennedy and his wife, to whom might be added
Phineas Finn himself. To begin with, Lady Laura Standish probably would
never have become Lady Laura Kennedy if the handsome young Irishman who
won her heart directly she saw him had pressed his suit with the
audacity she perhaps looked for against that of the priggish and insipid
Kennedy. As it is, loving him from the first, she nurses a steadily
deepening passion for him till her widowhood, where Trollope with
artistic delicacy leaves her, feeling no doubt that all the proprieties
of fiction would be violated if married happiness were awarded to the
two parties in a flirtation that, innocent throughout in itself, had
been associated with such domestic discomfort and havoc. Take her for
what the novelist meant her to be, Lady Laura, well thought out, firmly,
not less than, at each point, consistently drawn, is a good specimen of
the mid-nineteenth century society woman of the better sort. She had,
indeed, her exact parallel in at least one commanding ornament of
Mayfair drawing-rooms concerning whom Lord Beaconsfield said, “She needs
only a husband of the right sort to be a statesman’s helpmate.” On both
sides the Laura and Phineas friendship is pure throughout; it is only
not absolutely without reproach because the lady refuses to give it up
after her husband’s disapproval and jealousy have been plainly and, for
success, too peremptorily signified. Kennedy commits that and other
mistakes because he does not quite come up to the idea of Trollope’s
perfect gentleman and man of the world. To begin with he is a devout
Presbyterian; this defect alone was almost as fatal in Trollope’s eyes
as it would have been with Charles II himself. When they are staying at
Loughlinter Lady Laura complains of her headache and begs to be excused
kirk. Kennedy delivers a little discourse on the malady of headache
generally and his wife’s headache in particular. The ailment, he lays
down, proceeds from either the stomach or nerves. In the former case the
walk to church should prove beneficial; in the latter, the malady, he
plainly intimates, comes from Phineas Finn. This insinuation acts as a
last straw. Lady Laura Kennedy leaves her husband’s house and settles
with her father abroad at Dresden. There Phineas is about to visit her
when, before starting, he adds insult to injury by asking Kennedy
whether he can take any message to his wife. This naturally leads to an
angry scene between the two men shortly afterwards, with fresh violence
on both sides.

Trollope loved newspaper writers even a little less than he did
evangelicals; in _The Warden_ he had dealt some rather clumsy thrusts at
them. In his later novels, including that now considered, he personifies
them in the vulgar, unscrupulous Quintus Slide of _The People’s Banner_.
This ruffian of the Press embitters and complicates the Finn-Kennedy
embroglio for personal spite against Phineas and for the enlivenment of
his own columns with some spicy personalities obtained from the now
half-maddened Kennedy himself. Infuriated with jealousy because, not
unnaturally, incredulous of the really Platonic conditions of his wife’s
friendship with Phineas, Kennedy has one more personal passage with the
Irish Member, noticeable only because it contains a repetition of the
attempt at murder with a pistol that had already, when the quarrel lay
between John Grey and George Vavasor, done duty in _Can You Forgive
Her?_ As for Lady Laura, she lives out a faded life in attendance on her
father, Lord Brentford, and only reappears in England to hear from her
old lover of his intention to secure himself against pecuniary troubles
in the future by persuading Madame Goesler to become Mrs. Finn. This is
the second announcement of the same kind which poor Lady Laura has had
to face; for some years earlier it was to her also he confided his
intention of trying his chance with Violet Effingham. This is a little
too much even for so fond and blind an admirer of Phineas as the widowed
Lady Laura Kennedy. “Why,” she exclaims, “to me of all persons in the
world do you come with the story of your intentions? I could bear it
when you came to me about Violet, because I loved her even though she
robbed me, but how am I to bear it now in the case of a woman I loathe?”

The curtain falls upon poor Lady Laura, sobbing her heart out upon the
false one’s breast in Saulsby Park with self-reproaches for having
worshipped him instead of her God; upon Phineas flourishing as Madame
Goesler’s husband, a prosperous middle-aged M.P., refusing the offer of
a place in Mr. Gresham’s Government because, as the newly made Mrs.
Phineas Finn puts it, a rich wife’s husband can afford to prefer freedom
to responsibility. The only figures of the Phineas group prominently
reappearing in the subsequent political stories are Planty Pal
transformed into the Duke of Omnium and his Duchess, formerly Lady
Glencora. The new duke presides over no Cabinet, but takes a paternal
interest in public affairs generally, and is specially delighted at the
improved prospects of his old fiscal fad, decimal coinage. The duchess,
having sown all her wild oats, settles down into a great political lady
of the most aspiring and imperious kind. Her mistakes in that part
illustrate Trollope’s favourite moral that the feminine ambition “which
o’erleaps itself” spoils instead of adorns whatever it may touch.

There is little, as has been already said, in Trollope’s first two
political novels to fix the parliamentary period to which they belong.
As regards good looks, Phineas may have had something in common with
Colonel King-Harman, whom the novelist occasionally met at the Arts
Club, but at all other points Trollope’s Irish Member, by his fine
presence, winning manners, and his return to St. Stephen’s after an
interval of absence, suggests Sir John Pope Hennessy rather than any
other representative of the Emerald Isle during the pre-Household
Suffrage portion of the Victorian age. For the rest, Prime Minister
Gladstone and Prime Minister Gresham only resemble each other in the
first letter of their names. The future Lord Beaconsfield, however, is
clearly meant by Daubeny. Disraeli is the subject of a verbal photograph
as the brilliant and unscrupulous charlatan who dishes the Whigs, not
over parliamentary reform but over Church Disestablishment. But the
politician pitted against Daubeny bears scarcely a remote resemblance to
Disraeli’s arch antagonist. Among those who resist Daubeny’s designs,
the foremost, the already-mentioned Gresham, universally respected,
admired, is too reserved and self-contained for popularity. He therefore
recalls Sir Robert Peel rather than the most famous of Peel’s disciples
or successors. Trollope’s Turnbull as the angular, inflexibly upright,
middle-class M.P. shows no trace of the Cobden, John Bright, or any of
that school reflected in the Job Thornberry of Disraeli’s _Endymion_.
The fact of the publication of _Endymion_ being later, by some ten
years, than that of _Phineas Finn_ does away with the suggestion that
Trollope’s Turnbull was modelled from Disraeli’s Thornberry. In like
manner Monk, Trollope’s ideal parliament man, is evolved entirely from
his creator’s inner consciousness. So too Plantagenet Palliser had no
original among the well-born, scientific financiers of the House of
Commons in Trollope’s time, but merely personifies his creator’s notion
of the pattern gentleman, the soul of honour and of chivalrous
consideration in his treatment equally of Lady Glencora’s flirtations
when his bride-elect and of her ill-devised socio-political strategies
after she has become Duchess of Omnium. At each stage of his development
from the Planty Pal of _Can You Forgive Her?_ to the inheritance of the
ducal title in _Phineas Redux_, these aspects of his character are
consistently, logically, as well as at every point effectively,
sustained. When, in _Phineas Finn_, his uncle’s death sends him to the
Upper House, to be known henceforth as the duke, while not holding
office he becomes the oracle, the good genius and presiding potentate of
his party.

_The Prime Minister_ (1876) shows him as the First Lord of the Treasury,
always gracious, calm, and strong, though often harassed by his wife’s
intermeddling in public affairs, and, as in the case of Ferdinand Lopez,
by her patronage of discreditable supporters. For, if the duke be the
ornament of his order and his vocation, Lady Glencora, since becoming
Her Grace, has transformed herself into a satire upon feminine
aspiration when untempered by true womanly feeling and good sense. The
Duchess of Omnium was, I fancy, felt by Trollope himself to be, as he
put it to me, _une grande dame manquée_. Trollope’s lifelong Harrow
contemporary and loyal friend, Sir William Gregory, so often mentioned
in these pages, called his Irish member a libel upon the Irish
gentleman. The relations in which Phineas Finn stood to his own sex were
those of Trollope’s duchess to the genuine great lady of existing
political drawing-rooms. Of moral fibre, harder and coarser than when
first introduced as the girlish but even then sufficiently shrewd Lady
Glencora, she provokes, when seen in _The Prime Minister_,
disadvantageous comparison with another politician’s wife, her equal in
fortune, whom she once called an adventuress, but has since promoted to
the first place in her friendship. Mrs. Max Goesler, now Mrs. Phineas
Finn, who herself might have been a duchess had she liked, is a rising
statesman’s model wife, knowing exactly when to help her husband by
appearing in the foreground, and how to advance his interests by
unadvertised activity behind the scenes. But then Mrs. Max was a real
figure in the society of Trollope’s day, and the Duchess of Omnium was
an abstraction.

The characters, however, in _The Prime Minister_, on which Trollope
relied to popularise the book, by relieving the strain of the demand
that the purely political portions made on the reader’s attention are
those of Emily Wharton, whose life is marred by her marriage with the
aspiring incarnation of city scampdom, Lopez, and of Arthur Fletcher,
Emily’s blameless lover, who eventually becomes her husband. Trollope
himself was never seen to greater advantage than in the best
professional society. Especially did he shine when talking with doctors
like his particular friend, Sir Richard Quain, or with lawyers of the
old school such as he had first known from his father. Nothing,
therefore, in _The Prime Minister_ is better than Emily’s father, the
shrewd old-world barrister, reminiscent of the bygone legal celebrities,
Jockey Bell, the first conveyancer of his time, or Leech, Master of the
Rolls.[27] The snobbish and pretentious knave, Lopez, has entrapped into
partnership in his commercial infamies a city drudge as low as
personally he is harmless, named Parker. Not unworthy of Dickens, is the
praise deserved by the simple and graphic drollery of Trollope’s
description of Sexty Parker amid the mean surroundings of his suburban
home, with his poor wife’s affrighted protests at the dangerous degree
to which he is being made the tool of Lopez, or Parker’s picture on his
seaside holiday, smoking his pipe and drinking his gin and water in the
shabby villa’s porch, while his ill-clad and ill-nourished children make
mischief of every kind in the stony and almost flowerless garden. An
effective contrast to these scenes of squalid domesticity is forthcoming
in the varied company at Gatherum Castle, now inhabited by Planty Pal as
Duke of Omnium, and despotically managed by Lady Glencora as duchess,
who, by way of forming a party of her own, has invited some rather shady
guests. Among these is Lopez; how the duke sees through him, soon
showing him the door, and how His Grace, beset by an uncongenial
house-party, platonically consoles himself with Lady Rosina De Courcy as
well as follows her advice to take care of his health by wearing cork
soles, is told in Trollope’s best manner.

With this social by-play are mingled the Silverbridge parliamentary
contests; here Beverley is drawn upon once more, and the election
agents, Sprugeon and Sprout, are pen and ink photographs of Trollope’s
Yorkshire friends. _The Prime Minister_ ends with the hideous suicide of
the villain of the piece, Ferdinand Lopez. All the incidents leading up
to that catastrophe make very unpleasant reading indeed.

Infinitely superior to _The Prime Minister_ is _The Duke’s Children_.
Here our author regains his old and happier cunning in the portrait of
Isabel Boncassen. This American beauty combines high intellectual power
with absolute perfection of face and figure. Still more arresting is her
English counterpart, Lady Mabel Grex. That heroine, an impoverished and
profligate nobleman’s daughter, had passed scathless through the trying
ordeal of her earlier days. Neither the keenness of her insight nor the
strength of her will is impaired; her capacity of entire devotion where
her heart is really touched has not suffered from any hardening
experiences of life’s seamy side. Yet some time has to pass before she
can do justice to these great qualities, though from the first she makes
herself felt as the good genius of the story. Meanwhile, the widowed
Duke of Omnium has had trouble both with his sons and daughter. These
vexations to some degree involve Lady Mabel Grex. His eldest son, Lord
Silverbridge, a good deal both of the scapegrace and the spendthrift,
has managed to drop £70,000 on a single race. The duke’s only daughter,
Lady Mary Palliser, is scarcely less unsatisfactory. With the pick of
the peerage as well as the plutocracy to choose from, she perversely
refuses to marry anyone but Frank Tregear, a Cornish squire’s penniless
younger son. Frank, however, and Lady Mabel Grex are already the
subjects of a reciprocal passion. This attachment is doomed for money
reasons never to end in marriage. Even after she has convinced herself
that this love is hopeless, Mabel Grex only becomes resigned to the
inevitable after a long and agonised struggle with herself. It ends,
however, in her accepting an offer from the duke’s heir, Silverbridge.
At the same time Frank Tregear breaks off with Mabel and transfers his
affections to the Duke of Omnium’s daughter, the already mentioned Lady
Mary. Defeated at every point, as well as crushed under the burden of a
hopeless love, Mabel Grex passively accepts the doom of aimless poverty
and absolute desolation for the rest of her days.

CHAPTER XIV

AMERICAN MISSIONS AND COLONIAL TOURS

Trollope’s third visit to America--That of 1868 about the Postal
Treaty and Copyright Commission--Mr. and Mrs. Trollope’s Australian
visit (1871) to their sheep-farming son--Family or personal
features and influences in the colonial novels suggested by this
journey--Trollope as colonial novelist compared with Charles Reade
and Henry Kingsley--Why the colonial novels were preceded by _The
Eustace Diamonds_--Rival South African travellers--Trollope follows
Froude to the Cape--What he thought about the country’s present and
future--How he found out Dr. Jameson and Miss Schreiner--John
Blackwood, Trollope’s particular friend among publishers--Trollope,
Blackwood’s pattern writer--_Julius Cæsar_--Anthony’s birthday
present to John--The South African book--What the critics
said--Well-timed and sells accordingly.

So far, it has been practicable to follow Trollope’s productions almost
exactly in the order in which they came from his pen. The political
novels, as has been seen, constitute a series whose successive parts are
even more closely connected than the various instalments of the
Barchester novels. Thus, _Phineas Finn_ and _Phineas Redux_ form a
single story; _The Prime Minister_ and _The Duke’s Children_ contain the
underplots or afterplots of what has gone before. The Beverley adventure
and its reflection in _Ralph the Heir_, three years afterwards (1871),
formed the biographical prelude to the little group of stories in which
_Phineas Finn_ came first. The examination of these in the preceding
chapter, once begun, had to be completed, or their unity would have been
lost. Hence, some unavoidable little interruption of strict
chronological sequence and the momentary neglect, now to be repaired, of
Trollope’s other doings in the Beverley year. The value set by the
Government on Trollope’s Post Office work was shown immediately after
he had resigned his post at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Nothing could be more
complimentary than the request that he would make a third journey to the
United States for the conclusion of a new postal treaty at
Washington.[28] That task occupied exactly three months and three weeks;
it was begun April 8th and ended July 27th. Then he brought back to
England a success more complete than, from the uncongenial variety of
the American representatives with whom he had to deal, he had at times
feared might prove possible.

The visit also had its literary usefulness. While occupied with the
Washington officials he studied the traits subsequently bodied forth in
his _American Senator_, and before he went home he made advantageous
arrangements with the publishers in New York. During the fourteen years
of life, however, which still remained for him he crossed and recrossed
the Atlantic twice more; altogether therefore he made no less than five
different appearances in the great Republic. Each of them was turned by
him to good account not more in business matters than in observing the
American-Irish developments described elaborately in _The Land
Leaguers_. The United States public and publishers also did Trollope a
particularly good turn by appreciating the political novels, less
warmly, indeed, than the Barchester books, but far more cordially than
had been done by home consumers of these products. The one work that New
York readers would not have was _The Cornhill_ reprint, _Brown, Jones
and Robinson_, pronounced, not perhaps unjustly, by the first American
critic of the day, Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie, the most stupid story ever
coming from the same pen. With that exception Trollope’s magazine
pieces suited the taste of New York better than they did that of London;
during 1860 _Harper’s_ pleased all its friends by publishing his short
stories, _The Courtship of Susan Bell_, _The O’Conors of Castle Conor_,
and _Relics of General Chassé_. These were produced here in the three
volumes entitled _Tales of All Countries_. Trollope’s style, both in his
earlier and later days, was occasionally apt to be much influenced by
his friend Charles Lever. Of the compositions just enumerated, _The
O’Conors_, a transcript of his own early Irish observations, had a
remarkable American success, perhaps because a certain adventurous
breeziness of movement as of style exactly suited a public whose passing
taste had for the moment been more or less formed, not only by Charles
Lever, but by those who had been before him, as Fenimore Cooper and
Captain Marryat. _Harper’s_ did also more for Trollope than show him as
a short story writer at his best; it introduced its readers to _The
Small House at Allington_, _Orley Farm_, as well as to several of his
less known efforts, such as _Lady Anna_.

Generally, the transatlantic verdict confirmed that of the old country
and gave the palm to the pen and ink photographs of provincial home
life. In one respect, however, America strikingly showed its
independence of English estimates by unanimously crediting the political
series from _Phineas Finn_ to _The Duke’s Children_ with a vividness of
portraiture, an experience of and an insight into the leading
personages, forces, and incidents of British public life such as
Trollope’s own countrymen had not then discovered. Why this should have
been so it is not difficult to see. In England, those who cared for the
political novel were still under the Disraelian spell when Trollope put
forth his impressions of public life as he had observed it in the
stories that opened with _Phineas Finn_ (1869), and only closed with
_The Duke’s Children_ (1880). During all those years the intellectual
fascination possessed by Disraeli, whether as writer or politician, for
the English public, so far from diminishing, had, upon the whole,
deepened. The sustained brilliancy of _Lothair_ (1868), and _Endymion_
(1881), sent readers back to _Coningsby_, _Sybil_, and _Tancred_. Of
that literary enchantment the United States knew comparatively little.
As a political novelist, Trollope was judged on his own merits, without,
as in England, any reference to the dazzling and unapproachable genius
who had preceded him. Before Disraeli, Plumer Ward had portrayed
statesmen in romances, which were generally forgotten by Englishmen,
while Bulwer-Lytton had given something of a political flavour to his
best-known novels. By the standard of Ward and Lytton, rather than, as
was the case in England, of Disraeli, the Americans judged Trollope.
They accordingly found in him an actuality and naturalness at once
instructive and refreshing; nor did they miss the verbal fireworks for
which the _Coningsby_ novels had accustomed the English reader to look.

It has already been shown how, on other subjects, Trollope stood with
the American public; before following him in his overseas movements,
some details may here be given of his practical relations with the
American publisher. From English publishers, Trollope, according to his
own estimate, received in all a little under £70,000. His American
receipts were rather more than £3000.[29] Beside his Post Office
Commission, Trollope, during his American visit of 1868, also acted as
the Foreign Office representative on the subject of International
Copyright. That, however, is a question scarcely suitable for treatment
here. As regards the primary and Postal errand, he accomplished the
purpose for which he had been sent, and obtained the terms asked by the
English Government. By the Convention which he negotiated, the postage
on a half ounce letter between England and the United States was fixed
at sixpence. With respect to the literary relations of the two
countries, Trollope brought back no equally definite result, but only
failed to do so because, in the nature of things, success was then
impossible. In the diplomacy of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Trollope essayed
nothing which he did not carry through. The literary monument of his
Egyptian journey in 1858 had been no work descriptive of the country,
but a novel, _The Bertrams_. For, unless he had found himself so far on
his way as Cairo, he would never have pilgrimaged to Jerusalem, or
collected the material in local colour for the Syrian scenes and
incidents in that novel. His official work had then been a Postal
Convention with the Egyptian authorities for our Australian and Indian
mails across the Delta. The same kind of duty he had performed so well
ten years earlier was repeated after the same fashion in 1868.

Trollope’s various transatlantic trips were the prelude to more extended
tours on that other side of the world where his postal rather than
literary labours had already made him a name. These Antipodean
experiences were, during the last eight years of his life, to give him
as a novelist something like a new lease of vigour and freshness.
Trollope’s instinctive sympathy with the temper and tendencies of his
time, whatever the movement in progress might be, had, as the reader
already knows, during his earliest youth, showed itself in the readiness
with which he came under the influence of Anglican leaders. A little
later the perennial Irish question, in its social as well as political,
its sentimental not less than its practical aspects, filled the air, and
gave both direction and colour to his initial experiment as a novelist,
_The Macdermots_ (1847). Active interest in politics was delayed till
the season of youth and enthusiasm had been outlived. But, when a little
over fifty, he could not resist the temptation to take a combatant’s
part in the battle, then at its height between the two great party
leaders of the time. Beaten at Beverley, and so debarred from delivering
himself about men and measures at St. Stephen’s, Trollope turned to
account the experiences he had gathered and the opinions he had formed,
in the _Phineas Finn_ stories.

Meanwhile, however, a new interest in the Greater Britain beyond the
seas had deeply stirred the popular imagination, and reflected itself in
the writings of his best known contemporaries. Trollope accordingly
realised that he had been wasting on party energies meant for the
Empire. Natural affection and the conscious need of securing imaginative
freshness by entire change of scene and thought were other motives
operating in the same direction. Within two or three years of recrossing
the Atlantic homewards, Trollope planned a yet more extensive tour with
the set purpose of bringing back from the Antipodes materials, not only
for history, but for fiction. The earliest writer of Trollope’s day to
feel and express the transoceanic inspiration of the new epoch was
Bulwer-Lytton, some eight years before he became Colonial Secretary in
the Derby Government. The example of _The Caxtons_ soon proved
contagious. In 1856 Trollope’s exact contemporary, Charles Reade,
published _It’s Never too Late to Mend_, whose dramatised form, in 1866,
not only revived the original story’s interest, but infused fresh force
into the agitation against transporting English criminals to
Australasian colonies. In 1859 Henry Kingsley suffused his spirited
romances, _Geoffrey Hamlyn_ and _The Hillyars and the Burtons_ with the
local colour he had collected during a short residence under the
Southern Cross; thus as a colonial novelist he differed from Reade, and
resembled Trollope,[30] in describing, from personal knowledge, the
scenes and incidents whose word-pictures bear in every detail the stamp
of fidelity to life. The original and chief motive of Mr. and Mrs.
Anthony Trollope’s expedition, in the May of 1871, to the other side of
the world, was that they might see once more a son then sheep-farming in
the Australian Bush. Trollope himself would have felt uncomfortable if
he had embarked without feeling that, while making holiday in a far
country, he was also collecting impressions for at least one new book.

Before actually setting sail, therefore, he had contracted with Chapman
and Hall for the Australian volumes published in 1873, and had also
found a newspaper opening for certain travel letters, to be incorporated
afterwards in the book. This, on coming out in 1873, was pronounced, by
_The Times_, “the most agreeable, just, and acute work ever written on
the subject.” On the other hand, _The Athenæum_ and _The Saturday
Review_ dwelt on the length, the diffuseness, and the want of method of
the ponderous volumes, “as dull as they are big.” Perplexity of
arrangement, and occasional obscurity of diction, were other charges
made by these critics against the work. Good taste in dealing with all
personal matters was the chief merit compensating for decline in
literary power, which even these censors allowed. The shrewdness of
insight with which _The Times_ credited Trollope was praise abundantly
justified by events. Indeed Trollope’s one mistake in judgment was his
prophecy about the annexation of Tasmania by Victoria. Any movement of
this kind he might, with a little more carefulness of enquiry and
accuracy of observation, have convinced himself was purely local in its
origin, never, in its growth, exceeded the narrowest limits, and was
repudiated, even in his day, by responsible Tasmanian as well as
Victorian statesmen. It never consequently entered into the regions of
practical politics.

His faith in the certainty of Australasian federation rested on much
stronger ground. Its fulfilment he did not live to witness. That took
place sixteen years after his death when, in the March of 1898, the
Australian Commonwealth bill became law. The book, written in his cabin
during the homeward voyage, succeeded beyond the author’s or publisher’s
expectations. This was due, first, to its happily-timed appearance;
secondly, to the convenient compass within which it brought together the
best that had been said by other writers, and all, indeed, which the
average reader could wish to know about the history, the politics, the
society, the resemblances to or differences from the Mother Country
noticed by Trollope during his eighteen months’ stay in Melbourne, New
South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, and New Zealand. The book
contained few of the carefully prepared literary effects investing the
account of the West Indies with a thoroughly popular charm. But,
whenever in his Australasian volumes Trollope dealt with what had struck
him as really noteworthy, he showed himself once more nearly at his
best; especially in his comparison between sheep-farming and
ostrich-farming as careers, in his few mining scenes, and, above all, in
his most graphic and informing account of the road system, which he had
minutely studied. The first novel resulting from the Australian jaunt
had in it many more touches of personal and domestic autobiography than
the travel volumes. Like _Phineas Redux_, it first came out in _The
Graphic_, and showed the intellectual benefit received by the novelist
from his wanderings under the Southern Cross.

_Harry Heathcote of Gangoill_ (1874), marked by no signs of imaginative
exhaustion, as well as written throughout in the old picturesque
fashion, is based on the industrial fortunes of Trollope’s Australian
son, chequered by climatic caprices and ill-minded neighbours, but in
spite of all this, by unflagging perseverance, steadily advancing. Most
of the Trollopian qualities, the imperious prejudices, and the
autocratic independence, combined with more amiable features appear in
the hero. He had been one of the original settlers, who acquired their
land by the simple process of “claiming” it. After he had made a good
start with his work a fresh Government scheme allowed newcomers to buy
whatever land they liked, even though it were already bespoke by the
earlier settlers. The sole condition of purchase was that the land thus
bought must exceed a certain minimum value. Of course the right of
compulsory purchase given to the “free selectors,” as they were called,
made them at loggerheads with such as had already established themselves
before they came.

Heathcote naturally saw in his nearest neighbour, a free selector, Giles
Medlicot, a man fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils, and of
affections dark as Erebus.[31] Soon there comes a great and dangerous
drought. The sheep farmers are on the watch day and night against one of
those prairie fires that would, in a few minutes, destroy all their
flocks’ food. Heathcote, ready to think all evil of the detested
interloper, without any reason suspects the free selector, Medlicot, of
a design to burn his farm and stock. Of course he is wrong; and no
flames, by whomsoever kindled, burst out on his property, at least for
the present. Eventually, however, there comes on him the fiery foe, more
dreaded by the pastoral squatter than pestilence or famine. Then the
gratuitously accused Medlicot proves Heathcote’s true friend; and by his
own courage and skill keeps the outbreak within narrower limits than
Heathcote had ever hoped. A large portion of the farm buildings and
plant is thus saved. The story ends with the reconciliation of the two
men so long and irrationally kept apart by mutual mistrust. Medlicot’s
marriage to Heathcote’s sister-in-law is the seal and fruit of a new
friendship.

The plot is too slight and the narrative too short to afford room for
much character creation. To those who follow, as is being done in these
pages, Trollope’s industrial course, the book has an interest quite
independent of its actual contents. It was written by Trollope in his
sixtieth year. Of the other colonial novelists already mentioned,
Charles Reade had not long turned forty when he published _It’s Never
Too Late To Mend_, and Henry Kingsley was under thirty at the time of
writing _Geoffrey Hamlyn_. This is the book whose glowing wealth of
local colour, scenic word-painting, and keen appreciation of Antipodean
character won for it the praise of an Australian epic. Kingsley’s and
Reade’s romances of life on the other side of the world were followed in
1866 by Hugh Nisbet’s Australian stories. These three writers present a
spirited and complete panorama of colonial existence, character, and
manner. All wrote in the very prime of their powers, but none enlivened
his subjects with a stronger glow of fancy or handled them with more
sureness and strength than, at the age of three-score, was shown by
Trollope in describing the fight with the flames in his _Harry Heathcote
of Gangoil_. This novel, like its colonial successor five years later,
_John Caldigate_, shows, better than could be done by pages of
biographical detail, that, after more than half a century of exacting
and incessant work, its author’s power of accurately observing and
mastering in their full significance new facts or ideas remained
practically unimpaired.

The home and the life to which Trollope returned in England during
December, 1872, were not the same as he had left behind him when
embarking a year and a half earlier on the _Great Britain_ for his
colonial voyage. The pleasant house at Waltham Cross, with its roomy and
always well-filled stables, its many hospitalities and its comparative
nearness to the meets of the Essex Hounds, was exchanged for the abode
in Montagu Square. Here Trollope passed the later portion of his London
life. Here too, on settling himself, he began to live with the
personages of the Australian goldfields story that was to appear in
1879. Long before then, however, he had become sufficiently intimate
with other creations of his fancy to put them into print. An old friend,
Lizzie, (Lady Eustace), received his first attention; in 1873 came _The
Eustace Diamonds_. This novel, like _The Belton Estate_, had first been
written for _The Fortnightly Review_. Its leading figure casually
reappears in later works, especially in _The Prime Minister_, where
Ferdinand Lopez shows at once his scoundrelism and ignorance of the
world in making certain absurd proposals to an attractive, vivacious,
but particularly wide-awake lady. What Lizzie Eustace is in _The Prime
Minister_, she had shown herself before in _The Eustace Diamonds_.

This rich, personable, and clever heroine labours under one weakness:
she can never speak the truth. As Lizzie Greystock, she made a brilliant
marriage with an elderly and opulent baronet. She had not passed her
first youth when she was left a widow more than comfortably provided
for. Amongst her husband’s personal estate is a magnificent diamond
necklace worth £20,000, an heirloom which, at his express wish, the lady
used to wear. To this precious ornament the dead baronet’s nearest
relations disputed her claim, on the ground that as a family possession
it was not his to give. “But,” replied her ladyship, “he gave it to me
for my very own, telling me that my appearance with it would be the best
of all tributes to his memory.” Lady Eustace no more expected this
account of the matter to be believed than she believed it herself. To
one thing, however, she had made up her mind: no one should take the
costly trinket out of her hands. Consequently wherever she goes it
accompanies her.

During one journey she believes she has lost it and gives the alarm.
Soon, however, she recovers her treasure, but does not impart the fact
to the police, whom she has caused to raise a hue and cry. One day the
necklace is really stolen, and the constables, having obtained a clue,
succeed in placing themselves on its track. Restoration is followed by
exposure; Lizzie Eustace’s marriage connections persevere with their
purpose of regaining for themselves the late baronet’s alleged gift to
his wife. Lady Eustace’s besetting weaknesses do not prevent her good
looks and captivating manners from attracting suitors for her hand.
Amongst these are Frank Greystock, one of Trollope’s most conventional
and least interesting specimens of gilded youth; Lord Fawn, a titled
booby, afterwards promoted to a place among the lay figures in the
parliamentary sketches; and another sprig of nobility, Lord George de
Bruce Carruthers, of doubtful reputation and of a bold, bad, buccaneer
appearance. Each of these, however, when it comes to the point, fights
off; Lizzie Eustace, to her chagrin, is left without one of the
trousered sex in tow. At this extremity, there appears on the scene an
ecclesiastical candidate for what she is pleased to call her heart. This
white-chokered adventurer is the Rev. Joseph Emilius, partly Jew, partly
Pole, and wholly scamp, being, in fact, the popular preacher who in
_Phineas Redux_ commits the murder of Mr. Bonteen, on suspicion of which
Phineas is arrested. But by that time Emilius, having served his turn,
has ceased to be Lady Eustace’s second husband in anything but name.

Unlike Gladstone, Disraeli did not consume much contemporary fiction,
parrying any questions on the subject with, “when I want to read a
novel, I write one.” Nor, except to Matthew Arnold, did he often talk to
authors about their works. But soon after the appearance of _The Eustace
Diamonds_, meeting Trollope at Lord Stanhope’s dinner-table, the great
man said to our novelist, “I have long known, Mr. Trollope, your
churchmen and churchwomen; may I congratulate you on the same happy
lightness of touch in the portrait of your new adventuress?” By 1879,
some five years after _Harry Heathcote of Gangoil_, there had been
completed the process of incubation, resulting in the second of the two
colonial stories, _John Caldigate_.

That novel, chiefly written during the voyage to South Africa,
presently to be mentioned, had for its scene the Australian
gold-diggings. We have long since seen how, during his Harrow days,
Anthony Trollope, as a day boy, lived with his father at Julians. Of
that there is some reminiscence in the intercourse under the old family
roof between the actual owner of the Cambridgeshire estate called
Folking and his heir. The two have hot words; the quarrel ends in John’s
selling the right of entail to his father for a lump sum in hard cash.
With this he pays his debts. Together with an old college friend, Dick
Shand, he sets off for the Australian goldfields.

The girl he loves has been left behind him, but on his way out he is
ensnared by Mrs. Smith, a mysterious lady with a past, fascinating by
her manner rather than her beauty, and now provided by her relatives
with a passage out that she may not get into mischief nearer home. Some
time after their arrival at the diggings, Dick Shand, whose weakness has
always been drink, breaks out and disappears, leaving no trace behind.
Caldigate perseveres, finds first one nugget, then another. At this rate
he by and by comes back a rich man. The first thing done by the
masterful and newly-fledged young Crœsus is to seek and obtain
reconciliation with his equally masterful father. Next, having borne
down her mother’s fierce opposition, he marries his boyhood’s flame,
Hester Bolton, the daughter of his father’s banker.

The young couple’s wedded happiness is interrupted by the appearance of
Mrs. Smith, together with John Caldigate’s old goldfield pals, Tom
Crinkett and Mick Maggott. These have bought Caldigate’s claim for a
large sum, only to find the gold suddenly give out. Hence their demand
for half the purchase-money’s (£20,000) return, under threat of a charge
of bigamy for having married Hester while an earlier wife, Mrs. Smith,
was yet alive. Thoroughly scared, Caldigate places his affairs in a
solicitor’s hands, but commits the fatal mistake of paying as hush-money
the £20,000 demanded by the conspirators. This, of course, tells heavily
against him at the trial, and he has to face other evidence, at least as
damning. The charge of bigamy, on which the trial takes place, is
supported by an envelope addressed in John Caldigate’s writing to Mrs.
John Caldigate. As to this, Caldigate admits having once written the
words in jest, but denies having sent the envelope, which, it must be
added, bears the Post Office stamp. In the face of such evidence the
jury could do nothing but convict. After the verdict, Hester finds
herself a wife without a husband; her refusal to return home is followed
by her capture, and forcible detention beneath the parental roof. But
now there begins a sequence of events, all combining to establish John
Caldigate’s innocence and to promise liberation from prison.

In manipulating the official details that are to make John Caldigate a
free man, Trollope shows the same painstaking ingenuity as he had done
during his term of Irish duty in bringing to light the frauds of the
Connemara postmaster. An amusingly acute Post Office clerk proves the
stamp on the envelope to have been manufactured after the date recorded
in the stamp. It was, therefore, a clear case of fake. Next, Dick Shand
surprises everyone by coming home to depose on oath that the alleged
marriage could not by any possibility have taken place at the time
alleged. Finally, the conspirators quarrel over their respective shares
in the £20,000, whose payment so disastrously incriminated Caldigate.
One of the gang turns Queen’s evidence; doing so, he secures the release
of the prisoner, who returns to his faithful wife.

It is as unpleasant as it is a powerful story; at not a few points equal
in graphic vigour and in harrowing multiplicity of incident to the
strong but revoltingly painful descriptions which mark another of
Charles Reade’s novels of colonial as well as maritime adventure, _Hard
Cash_. The pictures of goldfield life are suggestive enough as far as
they go, but would certainly have been better had not Trollope felt
himself under the necessity of having the book finished on his arrival
at Cape Town.

Noticeable for the rapidity of its movement, as well as the freshness of
its description, this second and last colonial novel contains a study
of character, executed with as much power and care as is to be found in
any of the later stories. Mrs. Bolton, Hester’s mother, is an
object-lesson of evangelicalism, seen, not in the actual teaching, but
in its results. Bromley, the Vicar of Folking, Caldigate’s native place,
is a typical easy-going clergyman, a favourite with the squire, and, as
we are left to conclude, with all his right-thinking parishioners. Mrs.
Bolton, unfortunately, has taken her theology from those less genial,
and, indeed, Calvinistic teachers, at whom, though no fresh
representative of the class is mentioned by name, Trollope deals a
farewell blow. Mrs. Bolton, a strong-minded woman, is not in herself
bad-hearted. But for the downright inhumanity of her religious
principles, she would have been a good and wise parent instead of a
bitter Low Churchwoman. It is of course a painful, but an effective
picture, because brought out under its author’s pervading and deep
conviction in these matters. The increasing bitterness of Trollope’s
anti-evangelical temper was not merely an inheritance of the spirit of
his mother’s _Vicar of Wrexhill_, or his early association with F. W.
Faber and other Oxford Anglicans already mentioned; it came also from
his own disappointing experience of what he considered evangelicalism’s
effects on the happiness and character of those he loved. Not later than
July 21, 1877, had been the date fixed by the author for sending in the
complete manuscript. On that day he had no sooner landed in South Africa
than he dropped his packet into the Cape Town Post Office; for at least
half the novel was written during Trollope’s voyage to South Africa.

“A poor, niggery, yellow-faced, half-bred sort of place, with an ugly
Dutch flavour about it,” was the visitor’s earliest impression of the
region in which he had just set foot. It improved a little on
acquaintance; but never interested or impressed him in the same way as
Australia. He found it, however, equally favourable to pedestrianism and
penmanship. “I am,” he said in one of his home letters, “on my legs
every day among the hills for four hours, and every day, too, I do my
four hours writing about what I have seen and heard, after the fashion
of our friend Froude.[32] I then sleep eight hours without stirring. The
other eight hours are divided between reading and eating, with
preponderance to the latter.” “The one person,” wrote Trollope to a
Scotch friend in 1878, “who has most struck me here, is a certain young
compatriot of yours, Leander Starr Jameson, who has just started in
medical practice at Kimberley, and in whom I see qualities that will go
to the making of events in this country.” When free from the influence
of personal feeling, Trollope was seldom far out in his estimates of
character. This acute presage concerning the then little known future
leader of the famous raid was first confided, if I mistake not, to John
Blackwood, the sole recipient of many of Trollope’s best sayings, and
the friend whom he valued more highly than he did any other member of
his own generation. After a really touching and unique fashion,
Trollope, nine years earlier, had shown his attachment to the famous
Scotch publisher; for, in 1870, he had contributed _Cæsar_ to the
Ancient Classics series, the copyright being a free present to “my old
friend John Blackwood.”

On the other hand, Blackwood found in Trollope none of the obstinacy
about which he had heard from others, but a most pleasant and docile
readiness to profit in his work by a publisher’s hints. In his quite
affectionate acknowledgment of the _Cæsar_, he said, “I value it the
more because I have looked this gift-horse in the mouth.” “Your new
classical venture,” said Blackwood to Trollope, “was in a line so
different from anything else you had done, that I scanned it closely; I
can, therefore, speak of its merits.”

Long before this, indeed, Trollope had been cited by Blackwood as a
model contributor. Charles Reade resented some of Blackwood’s proposed
emendations, especially in the case of some interminably diffuse
love-making scenes or conversations. “I have,” mildly rejoined the
publisher, “but ventured on submitting to you considerations, which
other authors of great experience in such feminine matters, for
instance, Trollope, willingly received.” Relations between the two
novelists were already a little strained because of Trollope’s complaint
that Reade had taken the notion of the play _The Wandering Heir_ from
his own story _Ralph the Heir_. Blackwood’s compliments to Trollope must
have rankled in Reade’s heart; for about this time Reade alluded to
Trollope as a literary knobstick, a publisher’s rat, and other pleasant
terms including, I think, his favourite reproach of Homunculus. But
peace-making friends intervened, and the matter settled itself almost as
amicably as at Bob Sawyer’s supper table in Lant Street borough.

The volumes on South Africa, begun the very day _John Caldigate_ left
Cape Town for Edinburgh, were issued by Chapman and Hall. The subject
had at least for some time been full of topical interest. In the May of
1875 the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, had proposed to Sir Henry
Berkeley, the Cape Town Governor, to confederate the three British
colonies, Cape Town, Natal, Griqua Land West, and the two Dutch
republics, The Orange River Free State, and The Transvaal Republic. J.
A. Froude, the historian, then travelling for his health’s sake after
his wife’s death, had, at the Minister’s wish, surveyed the
possibilities of the federation on the spot. Local jealousies prevented
the scheme from being carried through, or rather reduced a great
imperial project to a mere enabling measure in the South African Act of
August 1877. During 1874 the popular concern for South African affairs
culminated in the Langalibalele rising and the shortly following Zulu
War with Cetewayo. Then came Sir Theophilus Shepstone’s annexation of
The Orange River Free State diamond-fields, and Sir Bartle Frere’s Cape
Governorship and South African High Commissionership followed in 1877.

No two nineteenth century men of letters were personally more unlike
each other than James Anthony Froude and Anthony Trollope. “Old
Trollope, after banging about the world so long, now treading in my
footsteps, and, like an intellectual bluebottle, buzzing about at Cape
Town” was the historian’s characteristic comment, made in his softest
and silkiest tones on the novelist’s voyage to the country, visited by
himself some seven years earlier. Trollope secured his object by getting
out his South African book some two years before Froude, in 1880, had
published a line on the subject. In the Kimberley district, Trollope, we
have already seen, had discovered the historic “Dr. Jim.” He next made
the acquaintance and sounded the praises of the clever young lady Miss
Olive Schreiner, author of _The Story of an African Farm_, published on
Trollope’s instance by Chapman and Hall.

In 1878, however, no really popular work about the southern parts of the
dark continent had appeared before Trollope’s volumes. These drew the
Cape provinces, Natal, The Transvaal, and the diamond fields in The
Orange River Free State exactly as at the time they were, and liberally
relieved their purely historical or descriptive contents with touches
often as instructive as they were humorous, revealing scenery and
character by the flashlight of a representative anecdote or well-turned
phrase. The Transvaal annexation, accomplished before his visit, is
called, in a rather Carlylean phrase, one of the “highest-handed acts in
history”: “It was,” said Trollope, “a typical instance of the beneficent
injustice of the British.” For the rest, diamond-fields and goldmines
alike struck him as a “meretricious means of attracting population to
the country.” The Boer farmers are very fine fellows of their kind, most
unhandsomely treated by all English writers except himself. As for the
proposed withdrawal from The Transvaal, it is an idea only worthy of a
pusillanimous dunderhead. The reception given to the South African book
by the critics and public markedly indicated a recovery of the
popularity which a year or two earlier had seemed for the moment on the
wane. _The Times_ declared it had not a page uninstructive or dull. _The
Athenæum_ found that, coming in the nick of time, it admirably supplied
a public want. “Full of freshness and individuality in all its
presentations, social and political,” said _The Academy_. “Always
judicious, often very entertaining, and only from sometimes excessive
zeal a trifle diffuse,” chimed in _The Spectator_.

More satisfactory and important to Trollope than the book’s mere success
was the attention it secured from colonial readers, both at home and
abroad, more particularly with the South African department of the
Colonial Office in Whitehall. Lord Carnarvon was then responsible for
the government of Greater Britain. Before his retirement from the
Beaconsfield administration on the advance of the British fleet to
Constantinople early in 1878, he had read or heard enough of the work to
find its views of South African federation of more value to a
responsible statesman than the details, bearing on that subject, already
brought back to him by Froude from the Cape. This fact soon developed
into intimacy what had hitherto been only a casual acquaintance. There
then lived, at the age of seventy-six, the third Earl Grey; he had been
the singularly able and unsympathetic Colonial Minister in the Russell
administration of 1846. Trollope and Lord Carnarvon chanced, one day, to
come out together from a room in the Athenæum where Lord Grey was. “His
mistake,” said Trollope, referring to Russell’s ex-Colonial Secretary,
“always seemed to be his domination by the idea of its being possible to
give representative institutions and to stop short of responsible
government, after the English fashion under Elizabeth and the Stuarts.”
It was a casual remark, but associated itself with an episode in
Trollope’s life about which something must be said in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XV

CLOSING ACQUAINTANCES, SCENES, AND BOOKS

Trollope on the third Earl Grey, the fourth Earl of Carnarvon and
the Colonies--Intimacy at Highclere and its literary
consequences--Trollope and _Cicero_ 1879--Fraternally criticised by
T. A. Trollope and others--Fear of literary fogeydom produces later
up-to-date novels beginning with _He Knew He was Right_--A
similarity between Trollope and Dickens--Trollope and Delane--The
editor’s article and novelist’s book about social and financial
scandals of the time--_Mr. Scarborough’s Family_, Trollope’s first
novel for a Dickens magazine--Retirement from Montagu Square to
North End, Harting--Last Irish novels, _An Eye for an Eye_ (1879),
_The Land Leaguers_ (1883), _Dr. Wortle’s School_--General
estimate--Last London Residence--Seizure at Sir John
Tilley’s--Death in Welbeck Street--Funeral at Kensal Green.

The intimacy with the fourth Lord Carnarvon, and the warm welcome
awaiting him, on his frequent visits to Highclere in or after 1878, were
the direct social results of Trollope’s colonial travels and books,
especially of his South African experiences. “My own Post Office work,”
Trollope once said to me, “together with my own ideas of colonial
administration, naturally attracted me to a colonial Minister who,
before becoming the head of the department, had a hand in abolishing the
old Australian mail service, in creating the Encumbered States Act for
the West Indies, in improving England’s African relations with France by
the exchange of Albuda for Portendic, in terminating the Hudson Bay
monopoly, and of creating British Columbia as an imperial dependency. I
could not but contrast Lord Grey’s colonial policy between 1846 and 1852
with Lord Carnarvon’s, which immediately followed. To do this was to see
that Carnarvon understood what Grey had always missed,

[Illustration: HARTING GRANGE. SOUTH ENTRANCE.]

the vigorous aspiration for self-government natural to an Anglo-Saxon
community side by side with the weakness that must beset an executive
representing a democracy.” Like other colonial observers, Trollope had
been struck by certain resemblances between the condition of New Zealand
and the Cape, in that they both required English protection from the
natives. “In New Zealand,” continued Trollope, “I saw enough to be sure
that there could never have been any chance of quiet for ourselves or
safety for the natives until our troops were recalled, and the
colonists, forced to rely on their own resources, tried mild and just
measures instead of violent ones.” In due time the last regiment was
withdrawn, and the trouble with the Maoris ceased. “Generally,”
maintained Trollope, “a colony soon becomes a nation, and a spirited
nation will not tolerate the control of its internal affairs by a
distant Government.” Admitting this in the course of their many
conversations on the subject, Carnarvon accepted Trollope’s view that
the first business of the Colonial Office was to secure a maximum of
profit from the connection. This, the Minister and the novelist agreed,
must constitute a moral guarantee that separation, when it comes, will
be on mutually amicable terms.

The fourth Lord Carnarvon’s Hampshire hospitalities during the
nineteenth century’s last quarter were the social expression of an
intellectual idea. Without any parade of preparatory effort, they seemed
naturally to reproduce something that was characteristic of Cicero’s
country-house parties at his Tusculum and much more that reminded many,
Matthew Arnold included, of Falkland’s week-end feast of reason and flow
of soul at Great Tew. At Highclere, Trollope frequently met not only the
leading colonial politicians of the period, but scholars, lay or
clerical, as J. R. Green, J. R. Seeley, Charles Kingsley, H. P. Liddon,
as well as representatives of the rising talent and the new learning
from Oxford and Cambridge, and sometimes from the foreign Universities.
On these occasions he took an innocent boyish pleasure in displaying the
Wykehamist hall-mark, liked to feel, and quietly letting it be known
that he could read at least Roman authors otherwise than after Colonel
Newcome’s manner--in a translation, you know, in a translation. It was
in the Highclere smoking-room that, capping one of Trollope’s familiar
quotations, Robert Browning added, “My dear Trollope, this display of
classical lore really reminds one of Thackeray’s scholar who had earned
fame and the promise of a bishopric by his masterly translation of
_Cornelius Nepos_.” Trollope’s earliest magazine work--for the _Dublin
University_--had given him the opportunity of rubbing up and trotting
out his juvenile acquaintance with _Cæsar_. This afterwards expanded
itself into the volume gratuitously contributed, as already described,
to Blackwood’s series. Rather less than ten years later, some classical
small talk with his host, Robert Herbert, Robert Browning, and an Eton
master, Mr. Everard, at Highclere recalled to him his early interest in
Cicero, as well as of certain notes made from much miscellaneous reading
on the subject. These Ciceronian studies furnished forth the two volumes
issued by Chapman and Hall in 1880.

“An unconventional attempt to clothe an ancient Roman with modern
interest,” were the words aptly used by Sir William Gregory, Trollope’s
old Harrow contemporary, himself a Ciceronian student, to characterise
this book. Approaching his subject, not as a scholar or historian,
Trollope treats it in a style lively and amusing throughout. The
sympathy with Cicero, especially in exile, is as delightful and
refreshingly genuine as if Trollope were describing the difficulties of
Phineas Finn or the troubles, during his wife’s absence, of Mr. Furnival
in _Orley Farm_. There are the same enlightening good sense and
shrewdness in the description of Roman political parties and their
leaders as form the best portion of the novels describing the rivalries
of Daubeny and Gresham, and analysing the personal or political
situations so severely testing the wisdom and the patience of Mr.
Palliser and the Duke of Omnium. Of course, _Cicero_ brought criticisms
from a few experts. T. A. Trollope, Anthony’s elder brother, as well as
severe disciplinarian in their Winchester days, had been a classical
master under Jeune at King Edward’s School, Birmingham. He had therefore
cultivated a more exact kind of learning than Anthony. “You ought,” he
said after _Cicero_ came out, “to have let me correct the Latin words in
your proof. As it is, having, in your first volume, tried successively
Quintillian and Quintilian, in your second you finally relapse into
Quintillian. In another error you are at least consistent; for Pætus is
always given for Pœtus. Indeed,” he continued, “these diphthongs have
been among your worst enemies, because œdile is your standing version
for ædile, while by Œschilus I know--what others could only guess--that
you mean Æschylus.” More sympathetic censors ignored these literal
slips, but could not be blind to so serious an error as occurs in vol.
ii. 20, placing the Rostra in the Senate instead of the Forum. It was to
be expected also that so keen a censor as Trollope’s Winchester
contemporary, Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke, would have had something to
say about the proprætor Verres being loosely described as invested with
prætorian or consular powers.

Whatever its merits or defects, _Cicero_ at least resembled most of
Trollope’s books in being the literary expression of his personality.
From _The Warden_ in 1855 to _Cicero_ in 1880 nearly everything in
Trollope’s work--character, incident, description, dialogue--was a
natural emanation from the man himself, fresh, spontaneous, and
unforced. If, by comparison with those which preceded them, there seems
something artificial in the stories still to be mentioned, the reason is
that he had never lived in the same intimacy, as he himself put it, with
his new personages as he had done with the old. He had set himself to
describe no longer friends, but strangers. Since he began with _The
Macdermots_ in 1847, he had seen many changes in the popular taste for
fiction. He had himself encountered successfully many rivals. Wilkie
Collins, Whyte-Melville, Miss Braddon, and Shirley Brooks had
successively come on. Against all he held his own; he did not even
suffer from Charles Lever’s competition. The creator of _Harry
Lorrequer_ and _Charles O’Malley_ began writing books that took ground,
and were in a vein, which Trollope had already made his own. The later
Leverian novels, beginning with _The Daltons_ and continuing with _Sir
Brook Fossbrooke_, seemed to many, if actually they were not, bids
against Trollope’s _The Claverings_, _Orley Farm_, and _Can You Forgive
Her?_ They did not diminish the demand for those of Trollope’s books
that were variations upon the Barchester series.

Meanwhile, the social conditions of the time had changed as well as the
writers. The old exclusive _régime_ in which Trollope had been born and
bred was already doomed. The time-honoured class and caste barriers were
broken down. The new social fusion was all but complete. The Stock
Exchange and Lombard Street had overflowed into St. James’s. The new
wealth had possessed itself of the same acres, and the typical
country-house was a glorified edition of the Piccadilly palace. At the
same time domestic and social scandals, to be particularised hereafter,
semi-detached couples, elderly bucks, being also professional
lady-killers, and loveless marriages with all their tragic results,
became so common as no longer to attract notice.

As Bacon took all nature for his province, so Trollope had no sooner
overpassed the limits of country-house and rectory than he began to make
his novel a complete mirror of English life on all levels up-to-date. He
may have been occasionally mortified by a passing decline in the demand
for Christmas stories and for magazine serials from his pen. He never
thought much about the posthumous vitality of his works; although
nineteenth-century pictures, clerical or secular, of town or country, of
club or drawing-room, of the covert side, of the Government office, of
barrister’s chambers, and of the law courts, could not but have, at some
future time, the same value for the historian as Fielding and Smollett
possessed for Macaulay and Lecky. He realised the necessity, above all
things, of guarding himself against the charge of literary
old-fogeydom. Before completing his sixtieth year he had been
continually at work during more than a generation. He must therefore
show that he had moved with the times by modernising his themes and
their treatment. The anxiety to convince the public that he had as keen
an eye as ever for the very newest actualities of the time is especially
noticeable in _He Knew He Was Right_ (1869)[33] and _The Way We Live
Now_ (1875).[34]

The former of these first came out in sixpenny parts during 1867. As
originally designed by Trollope it was intended, on something the same
scale as had been done by Dickens in the Steerforth episode of _David
Copperfield_, to illustrate the tragical results, to social life and
personal character, of unbridled and obstinate self-will--a quality, be
it noted, equally characteristic of both novelists. Dickens, however,
pointed his moral by the single case of Steerforth. In Trollope’s story,
each of the chief personages is opinionated and dictatorial to the same
degree; in other words, all go wrong simply because all in turn know
they are right. So, it has been seen, in _Can You Forgive Her?_ the
heroine’s need of pardon was shared by more than one other lady, as well
as by at least two men.

In _He Knew He Was Right_, Colonel Osborne, the wealthy, middle-aged
rather than elderly, Conservative M.P. and professional lady-killer, has
known Mrs. Trevelyan from girlhood. He therefore thinks it the correct
thing to laugh at old Lady Milborough’s description of him as a serpent,
a hyena, or a kite, and, by his attentions to attractive young maidens,
to provoke, in Lady Milborough’s phrase, such domestic break-ups as he
brings about under the Trevelyans’ roof. On the other hand, Mr.
Trevelyan feels convinced beyond a doubt that, while wronging his wife
by no suspicions of the worst kind, it is his duty to warn her strongly
against the Colonel, and risk one of Lady Milborough’s break-ups, rather
than allow Osborne’s visits.

The best piece of character drawing is Colonel Osborne. After this the
neatest touches come in the Devonshire scenes describing Mrs.
Trevelyan’s movements after the flight from Curzon Street. The pictures
of the quiet home life, in or near Exeter, reproduce as regards places
and persons the same originals which were used in _Rachel Ray_. In the
later, as well as in the earlier novel, are reflected the same central
figure, the old-world maiden lady, and some of the same young people
whom in real life she gathered about her. The hostess, known by Trollope
from his childhood, was Miss Fanny Bent. Her youthful visitors were
Rachel Hutchinson, the doctor’s daughter, and Lucy Bowring, with perhaps
one or two schoolfellows brought by her from the neighbouring paternal
roof known as Claremont. Here Sir John Bowring passed his closing years.
Here, too, Anthony Trollope first studied the feminine types who
afterwards grew into Lily Dale, Lucy Robarts, Grace Crawley, Florence
Burton, and Julia Brabazon. The last of these characters, as she
appeared in the first chapter of _The Claverings_, was, indeed, no other
than Lucy Bowring herself, photographed from life. Without exception
probably, the portraits of English girls that have made half Trollope’s
fame are from Devonian or other West of England models. Stiffness and
wrong-headedness were infirmities to which Trollope himself frankly
confessed. Of those defects he has entirely compacted the brilliant,
wealthy, but suicidally perverse and obstinate Oxonian, Louis Trevelyan.
The gloomy and painful plot derives no pleasant relief from the comic or
lighter business, centred round the irritatingly vulgar detective,
Bozzle. This debased descendant of Inspector Bucket in _Bleak House_
fools the miserable and infatuated husband to the top of his bent; at
times he shows off his sharpness by insinuations so fanciful and odious
against the runaway wife, that, without the novelist saying so, one
knows it is as much as Trevelyan can do to keep from knocking him down.

Like one or two other of Trollope’s feminine characters, who show their
independence by sailing dangerously close to the wind, Mrs. Trevelyan
is thoroughly equal to taking care of herself, and, from the ethical
point of view, never comes near reproach. With a little more tact,
patience and wisdom, on her husband’s part, she would never have been
piqued into allowing Osborne’s attentions. She has been exasperated by
Trevelyan’s unreasonable exactions. So too, in _Phineas Finn_, Kennedy’s
conjugal accusations make Lady Laura return to her father; but Emily
Trevelyan has not been really compromised by her mature admirer. Had her
lord and master been less self-conscious and more a man of the world
than he is, he would not have fallen a victim to his own groundless
jealousy.

When treating feminine subjects, Dickens and Trollope are equally given
to represent their subordinate heroines as playing with fire, or forced
by circumstances into situations calculated to soil virtue itself or to
set malicious tongues wagging against purity incarnate. Sometimes, as
with Sir Leicester Dedlock’s wife, and Sir Joseph Mason’s widow, the
case is that of a lady with a past. Punishment when due is not escaped
entirely, but the wind is generally tempered to the shorn lamb, while
both novelists upon occasion invoke special providences for mitigating,
if not averting the penalty due to the actually fallen. Thus, in _David
Copperfield_, ruin comes indifferently to little Em’ly and Martha; but
it seems only in accordance with the fitness of things that the
catastrophe should not be equally full of horror in both cases. Poetical
justice, therefore, and the kindlier influences of her early nurture
ordain Em’ly’s partial rescue from the hideous blackness of poor
Martha’s fate. Trollope’s later and less known novels contain no better
character than Lady Mabel Grex in _The Duke’s Children_. But for her own
fine nature and great qualities she would assuredly have been doomed to
the irreparable ruin, her deliverance from which comes equally from
superhuman guidance and her own heroic self-discipline. Edith Dombey
cannot be said to have been allowed by Dickens a narrow escape, because
she was never in any real danger. Her mother’s training could not but
make her an adventuress; her husband’s short-sighted pride had to be
humbled by an elopement which would indeed disgrace his name, but whose
circumstances could bring no stain on her. In chastising, by their
flight, their respective husbands, Dickens’ second Mrs. Dombey and the
Mrs. Trevelyan of _He Knew He Was Right_, to some extent, resemble each
other; while in both cases the wifely vengeance recoils with nearly
equal severity upon the lady. Generally, however, Trollope lets off more
easily than does Dickens his fair triflers with the hearts of men. Thus,
in _Great Expectations_, Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Estella, is
punished as she deserves for trifling with Pip’s affections by being
paired off with the surly and ill-conditioned Bentley Drummle. The
arch-jilt of _Can You Forgive Her?_, Alice Vavasor, issuing scatheless
from all her escapades, is not punished at all, but may well thank her
stars in becoming the mistress of a comfortable Cambridgeshire
country-house as the talented, well-to-do and long-suffering John Grey’s
wife.[35]

Trollope’s next attempt at satirising the most malignant social
tendencies of the time exposed the idolatry of the golden calf, and in
its conception owed something to the pregnant remarks of one of the most
influential among his contemporaries. During the season of 1875,
Trollope’s hitherto slight acquaintance with Delane of _The Times_
matured into intimacy. At this time the great editor was much impressed
by the growth of extravagance and the increase of reckless speculation
in the overgrown and mischievously mixed conglomerate of London society.
The subject was one on which he and Trollope thought exactly alike. With
equal disgust and indignation both observed the acceptance of mere
wealth as a passport to the company of men and women who were social
leaders by right of birth. In their many talks about these subjects
originated both Trollope’s _The Way We Live Now_ and a certain _Times_
article presently to be mentioned. On resettling in London after his
colonial expeditions, Trollope had established himself in Montagu
Square. The first piece of work he did here was the novel in whose most
prominent figure, Melmotte, a grotesque and nauseating monstrosity, he
personified the commercial corruptions of the time with all their
brutalising effects upon character, as in private, so in public life.

Grouped round, and more or less associated with the over-coloured
financier, Melmotte, were many smaller personages representing or
suggesting other vicious propensities of the period. The bloated and
ferocious plutocrat has a vulgar but otherwise unobjectionable daughter
whom, when she dares any details to cross his will or stand in the way
of his villainies, he cuts into pieces--in plain English, horsewhips
within an inch of her life. There are other young ladies as unattractive
as Marie Melmotte, but less inoffensive. These are the girls who expend
their energies and innocence in intrigues to get husbands, not for love,
but for the enjoyment of greater freedom and more pocket-money. Melmotte
himself carries about him a certain suggestion of Baron Albert Grant in
the past, and of Whitaker Wright in the days that were then yet to come.
The deterioration of Club life is shown by the blackguard interior of
the Beargarden, where stripling debauchees, who sponge on their polite
paupers of mothers, and venal and pretentious newspaper hacks eat,
drink, and rampage at unholy hours.

Chronology might deny the statement that the Printing House Square
manifesto already referred to supplied Trollope with a brief for this
book; but both the novel and the article came out in the same year.
Each, in its different way, was a commentary on a state of things in
which the editor and the novelist would have willingly co-operated in
bringing to an end. Trollope’s Melmotte was an exaggerated type of the
French, German, and American adventurers who, in Delane’s words, gorge
like vultures on the country. These, said the editor, were the men whom
English gentlemen of family and station competed with each other in
helping to fleece society. These, too, were the qualities concentrated
by the novelist in the mammoth speculator of Grosvenor Square, who,
before the crash, made himself the demi-god of the season by his
splendid hospitalities to no less a person than the “Emperor of China.”

One of the incidents which had chiefly moved Delane, breaking through
his editorial custom to pen with his own hand his lay sermon, was this.
During the early seventies an English nobleman of ancient title and
descent, but of diminished territorial wealth, partly by games of chance
in which there seemed some suspicion of foul play, and partly by City
speculation into which he was enticed, had lost something like £10,000
to a Californian colonel, long since kicked out of all decent company.
This swindling Midas, who had winged Delane’s pen, gave Trollope more
than a hint for Melmotte in _The Way We Live Now_. Any resemblance borne
by Melmotte to another fraudulent and glorified capitalist, the Merdle
of _Little Dorrit_, is purely fortuitous. Trollope’s intimate friend Sir
Henry James once, in my hearing, mentioned the matter to him, to be told
“_The Way We Live Now_ appeared in 1875; I only read _Little Dorrit_ for
the first time on my way to Germany in 1878.”

During their founder’s and original editor’s life, Trollope wrote for
none of Dickens’ magazines. After 1870 _All the Year Round_ was carried
on by Charles Dickens the second; his very capable manager G. Holsworth
urged him to secure a novel from Trollope. This was written and
published; and _Mr. Scarborough’s Family_[36] was the most deliberately
and elaborately satirical of all Trollope’s stories. Mr. Scarborough has
conceived and nursed, till it becomes something like a monomania, a
detestation of legal restrictions generally and of those imposed by the
law of entail in particular. He has therefore, with an ingenuity which
highly delights him, contrived his own independence of primogeniture by
going through two marriage ceremonies with the mother of his eldest son.
One of these rites has been celebrated before that son’s birth, and one
after. There are also of course two marriage certificates, each relating
to the same nuptials, but each bearing a different date.

According therefore to the document he displays, he can at will prove
his eldest son legitimate or illegitimate. This son, Mountjoy, a
reckless but amiable spendthrift, has a heartless, calculating and
mercenary younger brother, Augustus. Mountjoy, by post-obits and things
of that sort, has pledged the paternal property to the Jews. At any cost
Scarborough resolves that his fine estate, Tretton Park, shall be kept
from the money-lenders. He therefore declares Mountjoy a bastard, and so
disqualifies him for inheriting. Thus the younger of the two brothers,
Augustus, feels no doubt of soon possessing the acres that, but for the
blot on his scutcheon, would have gone to Mountjoy. Meanwhile Mr.
Scarborough says nothing, but buys up all Mountjoy’s apparently
valueless post-obits. He thus, at comparatively slight expense, gives
his alleged natural son a pecuniarily clean slate.

This done he dashes to the ground the hopes of his younger son Augustus
by suddenly displaying his first marriage certificate as proof of
Mountjoy’s birth in wedlock. Having thus tricked successively all whom
it suited his humour to deceive, Mr. Scarborough has no more to do than
quietly breathe his last.

The irony and Mephistophelian fun of the story are not confined to the
situations now described, but overflow very effectively into the
amusingly drawn scenes with the duped and furious money-lenders.

The life at Waltham Cross had been more that of an Essex squire with
sporting tastes than of a hard-working author or a busy official. It was
an existence whose charm, as years went on, Trollope found himself bent
on tasting once more. While casting about for a suitable place, he heard
of what seemed as near perfection as possible, in West Sussex. North
End, or, as it is to-day known, The Grange, lies in Harting parish, some
twelve miles from Chichester and four from Petersfield. At one time two
farmhouses, but now joined together, it is among the best and prettiest
buildings in the district. Surrounded by an estate of nearly seventy
acres, its long line of windows and doors opens on a delightful lawn,
with a background of copse, studded with Scotch firs and larches. Under
these a long walk, worthy of Windsor or Kensington, starting from the
garden gate, leads through fields up to a South Down hill. On the lawn
itself might have been seen, even since Trollope’s day, at one end, the
greenhouse, whose flowers he used to tend. Nor were his North End days
passed less industriously than those in Montagu Square, where he had
pitched his tent on his return from Australia. His hours were,
nominally, almost the same as in the strenuous days when he first
cultivated the habit of very early rising, so as to get through the
daily task of authorship before being due either at Post Office
inspection or a meet of hounds, as the case may be. A cup of hot coffee
and milk carried him on till a solid breakfast at about nine; when he
sat down to that meal the day’s literary labours had generally been
altogether finished.

Only some time after leaving the Post Office, in 1868, did he
extensively use dictation for his novels. Good fortune gave him, while
still at Montagu Square, for his amanuensis a niece, Miss Bland. Apropos
of her sympathetic co-operation, he once said to me: “However early the
hour, however dull and depressing the dawn, we soon warm to our work and
get so excited with those we are writing about, that I don’t know
whether she or I are most surprised when the time comes to leave off for
breakfast.”

Trollope seemed in excellent health on settling at North End, Harting,
as well as throughout his stay there. But gradually he left his bed
later than formerly, and often reduced the number of words forming the
diurnal task. Together with this he increased his local hospitalities,
as well as enlarged his active interest in all parish concerns whether
of business or pleasure. Penny Readings were in those days still
popular. Trollope not only patronised and assisted at them, but
delighted his rural neighbours by securing on the platform, or in the
body of the room, some of his well-known London visitors, notably Sir
Henry James and J. E. Millais; while the picturesque surroundings of his
Sussex home inspired another guest, the Poet Laureate, Mr. Alfred
Austin, with one among the most charming of his later works, _The
Garden that I Love_. Not once during his stay at Harting did Trollope
see the Goodwood or Hambledon foxhounds “throw off”; and he did not
spend more time in the saddle on the South Downs than he would have done
during his equestrian constitutionals in Hyde Park.

Ireland first had, in 1847, made Anthony Trollope a novelist. His pen
was being exercised on an Irish subject when death took it from his
fingers. Before, however, beginning _The Land Leaguers_, he had, in
1879, published a short story, _An Eye for an Eye_, whose scene is laid
in county Clare.

Mrs. O’Hara’s life had been ruined by a marriage with a drunken and
cruel husband, from whom she has fled. To avoid him, she lives with her
daughter Kate in an obscure corner of the Clare coast. To the barracks
at the neighbouring town, Ennis, comes Fred Neville, heir to the Scroope
earldom, a handsome, charming, morally weak, but altogether irresistible
scamp. His acquaintance with Kate leads to an engagement, the declared
prelude of an early marriage. Neville’s English relatives succeed in
preventing this, but not before Kate’s personal surrender to her lover.
The hateful husband now renews his persecutions of the lady who has the
misfortune to be his wife. Mrs. O’Hara, maddened by these fresh troubles
and by her daughter’s ruin, contrives with her own hand Neville’s fatal
fall over a cliff. After this Kate goes abroad to take care of her
father, now a broken invalid. Mrs. O’Hara loses her wits and passes the
rest of her days in a mad-house. This unpleasant and painful story has
no other interest than that of mere horror. It is as depressing and
sombre as _The Kellys and the O’Kellys_ without any of the humorous
sidelights which in parts relieve the earlier work.

The other Irish novel was written almost concurrently with a very slight
sketch, _An Old Man’s Love_--his last completed story--a year after _The
Land Leaguers_. The writing of _The Land Leaguers_ had been prepared for
by his final stay, during some weeks, on the other side of St. George’s
Channel, in the spring of 1882. To that period belongs his decisive
separation from Gladstonian Liberalism. His warm friendship with W. E.
Forster had made him reluctant to leave the Liberals even after he had
begun to distrust their policy; but during his stay on the other side of
St. George’s Channel in the spring of 1882, he had penetrated the
artificial, purely American, and Anti-British origin of Irish
Nationalism. The professional agitation-monger against the British
connection, as described in _The Land Leaguers_, was a Yankee, perhaps
with some Hibernian strain in his blood, but, from the Giant’s Causeway
to Cape Clear, equally ignorant of and indifferent to the welfare and
the wants of the population whether from a national or local point of
view. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, he appeared one day as the
plausible and patriotic champion of oppressed Erin on the platform; the
next, as the promoter of a bogus land company at a Galway market; and
then, by a complete change of part, as the insinuating concert or
theatrical impresario, who philanthropically puts young ladies with
pretty faces, good figures, and voices in the way of making their
fortunes and enriching their families. The literary contrasts thus
suggested are worked up in _The Land Leaguers_ with pathos and power, as
well as old humour.[37]

Trollope’s two greatest contemporaries, Thackeray and Dickens, did not
live to finish their last novels, _Denis Duval_ and _Edwin Drood_
respectively. So, too, it was with Trollope himself. After a journey to
Italy about a year before his death he prepared himself for writing _The
Land Leaguers_ by two tours in Ireland. This was one of the only two
books--_Framley Parsonage_ having been the other--whose publication
began before the closing chapter had been written; it was therefore
destined to remain a fragment.

Of the practically unknown stories belonging to this period, the only
one which it would be fair, however briefly, to recall is _Dr. Worth’s
School_ (1881). That contains a last addition to the long clerical
portrait gallery--a pedagogue in holy orders, in whom, to judge from his
temperament, the artist must have taken an autobiographical interest.
For Dr. Wortle has the same reputation as Trollope himself for
blustering amiability, an imperious manner and a good heart. With the
rectory of Bowick he combines schoolmastering of a very select and
remunerative kind. Of course Dr. Wortle himself is too busy, and his
wife too preoccupied with parochial or social duties to bestow much
personal attention upon the boys. All this is therefore left to the
assistant master, Mr. Peacocke, and his wife.

Peacocke, an ex-Fellow of Trinity, has spent much time in America. Here
he first met Mrs. Peacocke, a young and beautiful woman, married while a
mere girl to a worthless and cruel profligate, Ferdinand Lefroy, who
soon afterwards disappears, killed, it is said, in a drunken brawl. The
first husband, as will at once be guessed, is not dead but, as he soon
shows, very much alive. Peacocke has thus to choose between deserting
the defenceless woman, whom, however vainly, he has done all he could to
make his wife, or brazening it out, risk the consequences, and refuse to
give her up. Adopting that latter course, he makes much trouble for
himself, even in such a paradise of matrimonial laxity as the United
States. He therefore recrosses the Atlantic with the hope of beginning a
new life in his native land. At Dr. Wortle’s, Peacocke is doing well
when the story of his own and his wife’s past becomes known. Pressure is
now placed on Dr. Wortle to dismiss his immoral usher. His generous
refusal to do so loses him nearly all his pupils, and determines
Peacocke to search America for evidence that, by conclusively
establishing Lefroy’s death, will clear both Dr. Wortle and himself. His
errand succeeds. Peacocke brings back with him proof of his having
violated neither the marriage law nor the decalogue. The way is
therefore open for an indisputably legal union with Mrs. Peacocke. That
is followed by the return of prosperity to all persons concerned. The
parents who have withdrawn their sons rally round Peacocke’s loyal
chief. The curtain falls on the entrance upon the new lease of
prosperity of Dr. Wortle’s school and all connected with it.

Few novelists have beat out their gold leaf so thin as was
systematically done by Trollope. None but himself have persisted in the
practice for years without encountering signs of weariness in their
public that have caused them to change their ways. Trollope never felt,
or, at least, practically acknowledged such a compulsion. _Dr. Wortle’s
School_ only attained to the dimensions of a book, because the story
that gives the title to the volume receives the addition of incidents
and characters, organically quite unconnected with the central
personages and plot. Trollope, therefore, consistently and to the last,
in the structure of his novels persevered with a method somewhat apt to
try his readers’ patience. In other words, by distracting attention from
the creatures of his imagination originally placed in the foreground, he
weakens their hold upon the mind. The legitimate or the most serviceable
purpose of an underplot is to illustrate from another part of the stage,
or on a stage entirely different, those evolutions of character or
course of action belonging to the maiden narrative. This was almost as
entirely ignored by Trollope as it was thoroughly understood by Dickens.

In _Dombey and Son_ the gipsy underplot is a close parallel to, as well
as an apposite commentary on, the principal theme of Mr. Dombey and his
second wife. Like Edith Skewton, Alice Brown is a tall, handsome girl,
out of whose beauty a grasping and worthless mother makes what capital
she can. Alice’s outlook on life is in every particular Edith’s also;
one of scorn for herself and her mother, and a weary defiance to the
world. Alice, too, resembles Edith in being a much less strong-willed
mother’s passive instrument, not from any sympathy with her, but from an
utter indifference to good or ill. Further, the personal likeness
between the two is explained by the fact of Alice Brown’s being Edith
Dombey’s illegitimate sister. Again, it is through Alice’s mother, Mrs.
Brown, that Dombey discovers the continental whereabouts of the
defaulting Carker and of his own wife. The analogy appears still closer
when one remembers that, after the mother’s death, Alice rises above the
level to which she had been degraded, without knowing what happiness
means. With Dickens, the whole episode is not the less significant
because it is shadowy, and its vagueness at no point interferes with the
central narrative.

Another quality distinguishing Trollope from most other novelists is a
literary style, shown from the first and retained to the last, exactly
suited to his subject-matter, appealing at once to the cultivated and
the general reader. Writing not for a limited circle--like his junior in
years, but, in work, almost his contemporary, Meredith, or his avowed
master and idol, Thackeray--with his pen, as in his pursuits, habits,
and tastes, he was, after the English manner, essentially masculine. Yet
he knew more of the feminine mind and nature than any author of his
generation. His descriptions of mixed society in drawing-room or Club
may occasionally lack lightness in handling, polish and point. His
scenes, humorous or pathetic, serious or trivial, between women alone in
seaside lodgings or in country houses, unite with a vividness of
presentation a fineness of touch, unique in English fiction. That was
the quality apropos of which a London hostess once said to him, “Mr.
Trollope, how do you know what we women say to each other when we get
alone in our room?” A few hours before this question, being at the
Athenæum, he had heard a member of the Club complain that in _The Last
Chronicle of Barset_ Mrs. Proudie was still allowed to live. “Feeling
sure,” said Trollope, “from this, that the bishopess was beginning to
pall on the public, I went home and killed her.” Add to this width,
depth, and variety of the interest he excited the fact that he never
risked being dull in the affectation or effort of being profound and
that, from first to last, his bold, clear, if sometimes diffuse style
was tainted by no symptoms of the modern euphuism known as preciosity,
Trollope’s claim to the description of a national novelist cannot be
denied.

The advance of the story, prose or verse, narrative or dramatic, from
the Attic stage to Samuel Richardson, as from the creator of Clarissa to
the creator of Hetty Sorrel, has been from incident to character.
Character analysis and character casuistry naturally go together.
Hence, to some degree it has been already possible to see in Trollope
the progenitor of the twentieth-century problem novel. From that point
of view, the man, whose development has been traced in these pages, was
the typical product, not of a great creative, but of a reflective and
critical age. Thus he illustrated, in however different form, the same
influences of his age as showed themselves, among prose writers, not
only in Meredith, but in Matthew Arnold or Carlyle, in A. W. Kinglake or
in Laurence Oliphant; and among poets, in Browning.

The turn for psychological puzzles together with the dissection of human
motive and action common to the two men made Trollope Browning’s
favourite among contemporary writers. Socially, during the last half of
their careers the novelist and the poet led much the same lives,
visiting at the same houses and most easily unbending in the same
company. One of the latest occasions on which the two met each other was
in the grounds of Lambeth Palace in 1882. Their host upon that occasion
was Archibald Campbell Tait. By something of a coincidence, before the
year was out both the archbishop and that literary guest who was more
closely associated by his writings than any English author with the
higher and lower orders of the Anglican clergy were dead. Tait died on
December 3rd, Trollope on December 6th.

During the two years passed by him at Harting there had been no great
decline in his health. After leaving his Sussex home, he saw little
again of Montagu Square. With that place, however, those who knew him
best always most pleasantly connected his name. There the book-room or
study, the scene of nearly all his literary toils, with Miss Bland for
his amanuensis, was on the ground-floor behind the dining-room. Above
that his books had overflowed into a double drawing-room; one of its
chief features was a capacious recess at the north end, fitted with some
book-shelves, but chiefly used by him for visitors with whom he wished
some special talk. The contents of the shelves now mentioned had a
history highly characteristic of their owner. Robert Bell, the once
universally known book-lover, critic, and author, had left to his widow
a smaller estate than was expected. His library was announced for sale
at Willis and Sotheran’s. “This,” said Trollope, “must not be. We all
know the difference in value between buying and selling of books.” He at
once saw the executors; the auction arrangements were cancelled.
Trollope bought all the volumes at a price, fixed by himself, much above
their market worth.

This was only one instance of the kindly and unselfish actions
unostentatiously performed by one among the broadest-minded,
kindest-hearted of men. Not unreservedly a man of peace himself, he more
than once acted as peacemaker, in reconciling to each other friends of
his long at variance. Thus a difference originating in the newspaper
office (_The Daily News_) with which they both had to do, kept apart for
nearly a generation two of his intimates, Edward Pigott and Edward
Dicey. Neither would probably have spoken again to the other but for
Trollope’s genial and tactful intervention. This happened during the
last eighteen months of his life. His manner in doing it reminded both
men of a sixth-form boy who, separating two juniors engaged in
fisticuffs, bids them, with a gentle kick, go about their business.

When, in 1873, Trollope had taken the Montagu Square house, it was for
the purpose of ending both his days and his work there and there only.
The fates, however, had decided against that. In the late autumn of 1882
Trollope reappeared in London, but took up his abode at Garland’s Hotel,
Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. On the 3rd of November, while dining at the
house of his brother-in-law, Sir John Tilley, he had a paralytic
seizure. He was removed to a nursing home at 34 Welbeck Street, and
attended by Dr. Murrell with Sir William Jenner in consultation. For a
fortnight his condition improved; then came a relapse. Death followed
after an illness which had lasted about a month. On the following
Saturday, December 9th, he was laid to rest, not far from Thackeray’s
grave, in Kensal Green. Among those present at his funeral were: the
most famous survivor of his literary generation, Robert Browning; J. E.
Millais, his artistic colleague in so many novels; Mr. Alfred Austin;
Frederick Chapman, the head of the publishing firm Chapman and Hall,
with which during many years previously he chiefly had to do, his own
small interest in which he bequeathed to his family; and an Australian
friend, Mr. Rusden, as the representative of those colonies where he had
long found some of his most loyal readers.

On the same day that Trollope died there died also, at Cannes, the
French socialistic writer Louis Blanc, known to Trollope during the
years of his London exile, and, it might have been thought, long
forgotten by his English acquaintances. Nevertheless the London papers
of December 7th, 1882, devoted a larger space to their comments on the
French Radical’s career than to the English novelist’s works. The
newspaper verdict was generally represented by _The Times_, which, after
a passing reference to his miscellaneous literary activities, correctly
enough reflected the public estimate by emphasising Trollope’s sustained
hold on his readers and the uniform level of merit during thirty-five
years of unceasing work.

His death was immediately followed by some fall in the demand for his
writing. Since then, however, time has redressed the balance after so
marked a fashion that, among the leading literary features of the
twentieth century, a permanent revival of popular interest in the novels
and in the man who wrote them will have a place.

* * * * *

A BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF THE

FIRST EDITIONS OF THE WORKS

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

COMPILED BY MARGARET LAVINGTON

WITH NOTES DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM HIS _AUTOBIOGRAPHY_
AND FROM INFORMATION KINDLY GIVEN BY HIS SON,
HENRY M. TROLLOPE

1847

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 345; Vol. II., pp. 382; Vol. III., pp. 743
(sic). [This figure is plainly a misprint for 437, as the preceding page
is numbered 436.]

The plot, which Trollope considered to be as good as any he ever made,
of this book, was conceived during a walk with his friend, John
Merivale, around the village of Drumsna, Co. Leitrim, in the course of
which they came upon the modern ruins of a country-house, as described
in Chapter I. It was begun in September 1843, and finished a year after
his marriage, which took place in June 1844. His mother, Mrs. Frances
Trollope the novelist, arranged for its publication with Mr. Newby, who
neither paid the author anything nor rendered an account of the sales
which were presumably very small. The sum of £48, 6_s._ 9_d._ mentioned
in the Autobiography as received for this book was probably therefore in
respect of the new edition of 1859. Mr. Henry Merivale Trollope kindly
informs me that another copy of the first edition in his possession
contains a new and different title-page, as though the publisher, seeing
that another novel had been issued, hoped to help the sale of his
remaining copies by the additional words, “Author of _The Kellys and the
O’Kellys_.” The book is in all other respects the same. This later
title-page reads as follows:

1848

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 298; Vol. II., pp. 298;
Vol. III., pp. 285.

For this book Colburn agreed to pay the author half profits, but
actually incurred a loss which amounted to £63, 10_s._ 1½_d._ Only
375 copies were printed, and 140 sold. The sum of £123, 19_s._ 5_d._,
recorded as received for this work, was therefore probably in respect of
later editions. The influence of a friend obtained a short notice in the
_Times_ to the effect that the book was like a leg of mutton,
substantial, but a little coarse, but before this notice appeared
Trollope had made up his mind never to ask for, or deplore, criticism;
never to thank a critic for praise, or quarrel with him for censure. To
this rule he adhered with absolute strictness, and recommended it to all
young authors.

1850

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv (preface pp. iii-iv), 320; Vol. II., pp.
330; Vol. III., pp. 313.

According to the agreement for this book Trollope was to receive £20
down; £30 when Colburn had sold 350 copies; and £50 more should he sell
450 within six months. The £20 was received, but no more, so that the
sales were presumably no larger than before. No reviews of it seem ever
to have met Trollope’s eye.

1855

THE | WARDEN. | By | ANTHONY TROLLOPE. | London: | Longman, Brown,
Green, and Longmans. | 1855. |

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. iv, 336.

Conceived while wandering around Salisbury Cathedral during his work in
establishing rural posts, _The Warden_ was begun by Trollope at Tenbury
in Worcestershire on July 29, 1852, and finished in Ireland in the
autumn of the following year. This was the first book of the series of
novels of which Barchester was the central site. He received a cheque
for £9, 8_s._ 8_d._ at the end of 1855, and £10, 15_s._ 1_d._ a year
later. A thousand copies were printed, and of these about 300 were
converted into another form five or six years later, and sold as
belonging to a cheap edition.

A review in the _Times_ rebuked the author for indulging in
personalities in the matter of one Tom Towers, introduced by him as a
contributor to the _Jupiter_. But though Trollope had certainly thus
alluded to the _Times_, he was at that period entirely ignorant of the
_personnel_ of its staff.

1857

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 305; Vol. II., p. 299; Vol. III., pp. iv,
321.

Written chiefly in railway trains while investigating the rural postal
system of England, _Barchester Towers_ was the second of the series
dealing with the bishops, deans, and archdeacon of Barchester. It was
published by Longman, after a refusal on the author’s part to curtail
the work, on the half-profit system, with the payment of £100 in advance
from the half-profits. Writing in 1876, Trollope records a small yearly
income from this and the preceding book, _The Warden_, making together
at that date a total of £727, 11_s._ 3_d._

1858

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv, 340; Vol. II., pp. iv, 322; Vol. III.,
pp. iv, 334.

An autobiographical interest marks this book, for the story of how
Trollope was admitted into the Secretary’s office of the General Post
Office in 1834 by Henry and Clayton Freeling, the sons of Sir Francis,
is told in the opening chapters under the guise of Charley Tudor’s
admittance into the Internal Navigation Office. The whole scheme of
competitive examination is deplored, and its supporters, Sir Charles
Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Lord Iddesleigh) appear
respectively as Sir Gregory Hardlines and Sir Warwick West End. The book
gave official offence.

As Longman was not prepared to buy it outright, Trollope took it to
Bentley, who paid him £250 for all rights.

1858

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv, 305; Vol. II. pp. iv, 323; Vol. III.,
pp. iv, 340.

The plot of this book was sketched for Trollope by his brother, Thomas
Adolphus, whom he was visiting in Florence in 1857. This was the only
occasion on which he had recourse to other brains for the thread of a
story. While writing it in Dublin early in 1858, he was asked to go to
Egypt to arrange a postal treaty with the Pasha. He sold his book, when
passing through London, to Chapman and Hall for £400, Bentley refusing
to give more than £300; and finished it in Egypt, writing his allotted
number of pages every day, even during sea-sickness on the terribly
rough voyage to Alexandria.

By the sales, he judged this to be his most popular book.

1859

8vo. In One Volume: pp. iv, 395. With coloured map.

When Trollope was asked to go to the West Indies to reconstruct the
whole of its postal system, he proposed this book to Chapman and Hall,
asking £250 for the single volume. The contract was made without
difficulty, and he returned with the completed work. His view of the
relative position of white men and black was upheld by three articles in
the _Times_, which made the fortune of the book. Trollope regarded it as
the best he had ever written.

1859

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv. 335; Vol. II., pp. iv. 344; Vol. III.,
pp. iv. 331.

Begun the day after finishing _Doctor Thorne_, this book was written
under very vagrant circumstances at Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar,
Glasgow, at sea, and finished in Jamaica. It was sold to Chapman and
Hall for £400, but never attained the popularity of _Doctor Thorne_.

Trollope says that he never heard it well spoken of.

1860

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 303; Vol. II., pp. iv, 300; Vol. III.,
pp. vi, 289.

Declined by George Smith in November 1859 for the _Cornhill Magazine_,
which was to appear for the first time some eight weeks hence, on the
ground that it was an Irish story, this book was published later by
Chapman & Hall, as originally intended, after _Framley Parsonage_ had
been running in the _Cornhill_. This was the only occasion on which
Trollope had two different novels in his mind at the same time. He asked
and obtained £600 for it on the success of _The West Indies_.

1861

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 333; Vol. II., pp. 318; Vol. III., pp. 330.

There are two illustrations in each volume, the list being on page iv.
(unnumbered) of Vol. I.

Messrs. Smith & Elder, having offered Trollope £1000 for the copyright
of a three-volume novel to appear serially in their new venture, the
_Cornhill_, declined _Castle Richmond_ on account of its Irish
character, but begged him to frame some other story, suggesting the
Church as a theme peculiar to his powers. He thereupon fell back on his
old Barchester friends and wrote a tale that became increasingly popular
as it proceeded. _Framley Parsonage_ appeared in the _Cornhill_ from
January 1860 to April 1861. The author himself doubted the possibility
of making a character more life-like than Lucy Robarts.

1861

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. 312.

This is the First Series; for the Second, see under 1863.

CONTENTS

La Mère Bauche. _Republished from Harper’s New York Magazine._
The O’Conors of Castle Conor. _From the same._
John Bull on the Guadalquivir. _From Cassell’s Family Paper._
Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica. _From the same._
The Courtship of Susan Bell. _From Harper’s New York Magazine._
Relics of General Chassé. _From the same._
An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids. _From Cassell’s Family Paper._
The Château of Prince Polignac. _From the same._

Some of these stories reflect Trollope’s own adventures. The second is
based on his early days in Ireland, and the third on the chief incident
in a journey to Seville.

1862

8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 320; Vol. II., pp. viii, 320. Each volume
contains twenty illustrations.

Completed before he started for America in 1861, this appeared in twenty
shilling numbers, and Trollope obtained £3135. While rating the plot
highly he thought it declared itself too soon. Of the illustrations by
Millais he wrote: “I have never known a set of illustrations so
carefully true, as are these, to the conceptions of the writer of the
book illustrated. I say that as a writer. As a lover of art I will add
that I know no book graced with more exquisite pictures.” The drawing of
Orley Farm itself, in the frontispiece, depicts in reality the farmhouse
at Harrow in which the Trollope family lived during the author’s
boyhood.

1862

8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii.; folding map, 467; Vol. II., pp. viii, 494
(Appendices A, B, and C, pp. 467-494.)

On the outbreak of the War of Secession in 1861 Trollope applied for
nine months’ leave of absence from the Post Office and visited America,
writing as he went from State to State. It is interesting to note that,
contrary to the very strong feeling in England in favour of the South,
he felt with and prophesied the victory of the North. The book met the
demand of the moment; second and third editions were published in the
same year, and Trollope received £1250.

1863

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. 371.

CONTENTS.

1. Aaron Trow.
2. Mrs. General Talboys.
3. The Parson’s Daughter of Oxney Colne.
4. George Walker at Suez.
5. The Mistletoe Bough.
6. Returning Home.
7. A Ride Across Palestine.
8. The House of Heine Brothers in Munich.
9. The Man who kept his Money in a Box.

Republished from various periodicals.

For the first of this series see under 1861. For these two books and
(probably) for _Lotta Schmidt_, virtually one of the same series, though
the title was discontinued, Trollope received a total sum of £1830. The
tales reflect much of his own experiences.

1863

Small 8vo. Vol I., pp. iv, 319; Vol. II., pp. iv, 310.

Written at the request of Dr. Norman Macleod for _Good Words_, _Rachel
Ray_ was partly printed by him, and then returned with profuse apologies
as unsuitable--as Trollope had predicted it would be. It therefore
appeared in ordinary volume form. A later and cheaper edition contained
one illustration by Millais. Trollope received a total of £1645.

1864

Octavo. Vol. I., pp. 312; Vol. II., pp. 316.

Vol. I. contains ten illustrations; Vol. II., eight.

On the conclusion of _The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson_,
this far more popular work appeared serially in the _Cornhill_ from
September 1862 to April 1864. Published in book form in 1864, it ran
into a third edition within the year, and Trollope received a sum of
£3000. Sir Raffle Buffle, a hero of the Civil Service, was intended to
represent a type, not a man; but the man for the picture was soon
chosen. Trollope, however, had never seen, and never did see, the
supposed prototype.

1864

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 320; Vol. II., pp. vi, 320.

This story was partly formed on a comedy, _The Noble Jilt_, written by
Trollope in 1850 and refused by George Bartley, the actor-manager. It
became very dear to the author as the first of a series that continued
with _Phineas Finn_, _Phineas Redux_, and _The Prime Minister_. _Can You
Forgive Her?_ appeared in twenty shilling numbers from August 1863, and
Trollope received £3525.

Each volume contains twenty illustrations. Those in the first volume
were by “Phiz” (Hablot K. Browne), but Frederick Chapman, the publisher,
considered them so bad and incongruous that the remainder were made by a
Miss Taylor.

1865

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 312; Vol. II., pp. vi, 313.

Issued in ordinary volume form in the early spring of 1865, _Miss
Mackenzie_ was written with the desire to prove love an unessential
element in a novel, but the attempt broke down before the conclusion. It
brought the author £1300.

1865

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. 115.

CONTENTS.

The Man who Hunts and doesn’t Like it.
The Man who Hunts and does Like it.
The Lady who Rides to Hounds.
The Hunting Farmer.
The Man who Hunts and never Jumps.
The Hunting Parson.
The Master of Hounds.
How to Ride to Hounds.

1866

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv, 284; Vol. II., pp. iv, 308; Vol. III.,
pp. iv, 276.

This was the first serial to appear in the new _Fortnightly Review_,
established by Trollope and others in May 1865, under the editorship of
G. H. Lewes. It brought in a sum of £1757.

1866

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. 112.

CONTENTS

The Family that Goes Abroad because it’s the Thing to Do.
The Man who Travels Alone.
The Unprotected Female Tourist.
The United Englishmen who Travel for Fun.
The Art Tourist.
The Tourist in Search of Knowledge.
The Alpine Club Man.
Tourists who Don’t Like their Travels.

1866

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. 130.

CONTENTS

I. The Modern English Archbishop.
II. English Bishops, Old and New.
III. The Normal Dean of the Present Day.
IV. The Archdeacon.
V. The Parson of the Parish.
VI. The Town Incumbent.
VII. The College Fellow who has taken Orders.
VIII. The Curate in a Populous Parish.
IX. The Irish Beneficed Clergyman.
X. The Clergyman who Subscribes for Colenso.

These sketches incurred the wrath of a great dean, and were the subject
of a hostile review in the _Contemporary Review_.

1867

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 313; Vol. II., pp. vi, 309.

This was the last book written for the _Cornhill_ in which it appeared
serially from February 1866 to May 1867. The total sum received was
£2800, being the highest rate of pay ever accorded to Trollope. It was
offered by George Smith, the proprietor of the magazine, and paid in a
single cheque.

1867

8vo. Vol. I., pp. 384; Vol. II., pp. 384.

The shilling magazines having interfered greatly with the success of
novels published in numbers without other accompanying matter, George
Smith made the experiment of bringing this book out in monthly parts at
sixpence each. The enterprise was not entirely successful, but the
author received £3000 for the use of the MS.

He killed off “Mrs. Proudie” in consequence of a conversation he could
not help overhearing between two clergymen at the Athenæum Club.

1867

8vo. In One Volume: pp. 403.

The half-fly-leaf bears the words, “Reprinted from ‘Good Words’ and
other Magazines.” There is no list of contents, but the titles of the
tales are as follows:

Lotta Schmidt.
The Adventures of Fred Pickering.
The Two Generals.
Father Giles of Ballymoy.
Malachi’s Cove.
The Widow’s Mite.
The Last Austrian who left Venice.
Miss Ophelia Gledd.
The Journey to Panama.

Trollope himself appears to have regarded this as the third of the
series of _Tales of All Countries_, though the actual title had been
abandoned. The stories reflect in some degree his own adventures, and
for the three books he received a total of £1830. An edition, dated
1870, contains slight bibliographical variations.

1867

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 228; Vol. II, pp. 215.

Begun in 1865, and published anonymously in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ in
1866, the authorship was discovered by Hutton of the _Spectator_ from
the repetition of some special phrase peculiar to Trollope. The total
sum received for this book was £450.

1868

Small 8vo. In One Volume, pp. 322.

CONTENTS

On Horse-Racing.
On Hunting.
On Shooting.
On Fishing.
On Yachting.
On Rowing.
On Alpine Climbing.
On Cricket.

Of these eight papers, which appeared in _St. Paul’s Magazine_, only the
second, “On Hunting,” pp. 70-129 inclusive, is by Trollope, though the
Preface, pp. 1-7 inclusive, is also his.

1868

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 216; Vol. II., pp. 215.

Page v. (unnumbered) of Vol. I. contains a list of the persons of the
story.

Written in June and July 1867 for _Blackwood’s Magazine_, in which it
appeared anonymously. Neither this nor _Nina Balatka_ was a success, and
Blackwood declined the third such tale which was ready for him. (See
_The Golden Lion of Granpère_, 1872, below.) Trollope received £450,
which was probably not more than half the sum he would have obtained had
he allowed his name to appear.

1869

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 320; Vol. II., pp. vi, 328.

The total sum received for this book was £3200. Completed in May 1867,
it appeared in the following October in the new _St. Paul’s Magazine_,
founded by James Virtue, and edited by Trollope for three and a half
years at a salary of £1000 a year. He attended the gallery of the House
of Commons for two months in order to describe correctly the ways and
doings of a Parliamentary member. It ran till May 1869. See also note to
_Can You Forgive Her?_ above.

1869

8vo. In Two Volumes. Vol. I., pp. ix, 384; Vol. II., pp. ix, 384.

First appeared in thirty-two weekly parts (the first four parts being
sewed in one); from November 7, 1867 to May 22, 1868.... Price Sixpence
each. The paper cover had an illustration by Marcus Stone, and the
publishers were Virtue & Company, 294 City Road, and 26 Ivy Lane,
Paternoster Row; New York: 12 Dey Street, the proprietors of the _St.
Paul’s Magazine_. The total sum received for this book was £3200. It was
finished during the negotiations for a postal treaty undertaken by
Trollope at Washington.

1870

Small 8vo. In One Volume. With frontispiece and vignette title page
before title page as given above; pp. iv, 254.

This ran serially in the _Cornhill_ from August 1861 to March 1862. It
was Trollope’s only--and unsuccessful--attempt at a humorous work. He
received £600 for it.

The illustrations were by [Illustration: symbol]

1870

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. vi, 182.

John Blackwood having started a series of _Ancient Classics for English
Readers_ under the editorship of the Rev. William Lucas Collins, he
invited Trollope to write the fourth book of the new venture. Trollope
chose his subject and finished the book in three months, giving it as a
present to his friend the publisher. It was outside his usual line of
work and was coldly received.

1870

8vo. In One Volume, pp. xvi (Preface vii-ix inclusive), 481.

Begun at Washington in 1868 during the negotiations for a postal treaty,
the day after finishing _He knew He was Right_, this book was intended
for publication in _Once a Week_ in 1869. Owing, however, to the
dilatoriness of Victor Hugo, _The Vicar of Bullhampton_, and the
translation of _L’Homme qui Rit_ would thus have appeared together, and
this the proprietors, Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, naturally deemed
unsuitable. They offered Trollope publication in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_, but he refused with some heat, and they then issued the work
in eight parts, paying him the sum of £2500.

This book was written with the intention of exciting pity and sympathy
for a fallen woman, and the author so far departed from his usual
principle as to affix a preface, which he reprinted in his
_Autobiography_ (Vol. II., 177), in support of his subject.

1870

8vo. One Volume: pp. 375.

CONTENTS

The Turkish Bath.
Mary Gresley.
Josephine de Montmorenci.
The Panjandrum.
The Spotted Dog.
Mrs. Brumby.

Republished from the _St. Paul’s Magazine_, of which he was editor,
these stories reflect in an indirect manner Trollope’s own experiences.
He himself considered _The Spotted Dog_ the best of them. The total sum
received for this book was £378.

1871

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. vii, 323.

Begun in November 1868 on the conclusion of _The Vicar of Bullhampton_,
and written on the same plan as _Nina Balatka_ and _Linda Tressel_, this
story was sold to _Macmillan’s Magazine_ for £750, in which it appeared
serially without any marked success. It was then sold by the proprietors
to Messrs. Hurst & Blackett, who proposed bringing it out in two volume
form. Trollope, however, had his own ideas as to the proper length of a
volume, and persuaded them to print it in one.

A new edition was published by Macmillan & Co., London and New York, in
the same year.

1871

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 342; Vol. II., pp. 338; Vol. III., pp. 347.

This ran serially through the _St. Paul’s Magazine_. Trollope thought it
one of the worst novels he had ever written, but the plot of it was
afterwards used by Charles Reade for his play, _Shilly-Shally_.

The total sum received for this book was £2500, and it was re-issued in
the same year by another firm, as follows:

8vo. In One Volume: pp. iv, 434.

1872

8vo. In One Volume: pp. 353.

Written in September and October 1867, this story was intended for
anonymous publication in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, but as Blackwood had
not found this arrangement profitable in the cases of _Nina Balatka_ and
_Linda Tressel_, it lay by until it appeared in _Good Words_ and the
author received £550.

1873

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 354; Vol. II., pp. viii, 363; Vol.
III., pp. viii, 354.

This appeared in the _Fortnightly_ from July 1871 during Trollope’s
absence in Australia. The legal opinion as to heirlooms which it
contains was written by Charles Merewether, afterwards M.P. for
Northampton, and Trollope was told that it became the ruling authority
on the subject. As regarded sales, this was the most successful book
since _The Small House at Allington_. The author received £2500.

1873

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 533. With coloured map as frontispiece;
Introduction, pp. 1-22: Queensland, pp. 25-181; New South Wales, pp.
185-348; Victoria, pp. 351-515; Appendices I-V, pp. 516-530; Index, pp.
531-533.

Vol. II., pp. vi, 516. With coloured folding map of Tasmania; Tasmania,
pp. 1-76; Western Australia, pp. 79-150; South Australia, pp. 153-250;
Australian Institutions, pp. 253-297; New Zealand, pp. 301-494;
Conclusion, pp. 497-500; Appendices I-III, pp. 501-512; Index, pp.
513-516.

This was the outcome of a visit to the Antipodes. Trollope, with his
wife, left England in May 1871, and returned with the MS. practically
finished in December 1872. About 2000 copies of the first edition were
sold, and the book again did well in small four-volume form. Trollope
received £1300.

1874

Small 8vo. In One Volume, pp. 313.

Written in 1873 by request of the proprietors of the _Graphic_, who paid
him £450, _Harry Heathcote_ reflects many of the experiences of
Trollope’s second son, who was a sheep farmer in Australia.

1874

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 317; Vol. II., pp. viii, 314.

This story was written on the voyage to Australia in 1871, at the rate
of sixty-six pages of MS. a week for eight weeks, each page containing
250 words. Trollope records that he missed one day’s work through
illness. It appeared in the _Fortnightly_ in 1873 on the conclusion of
_The Eustace Diamonds_.

The total sum received for this book was £1200.

1874

Octavo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 339; Vol. II., pp. v., 329.

This story, with _An Eye for an Eye_, was left behind in a strong box by
Trollope when he visited Australia in 1871-2. It was subsequently sold
to the proprietors of the _Graphic_ for £2500, in which paper it
appeared in 1873.

The illustrations, twelve in each volume, are by Frank Holl.

See also the note under _Can You Forgive Her?_ above.

1875

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 320; Vol. II., pp. vi, 319.

The illustrations are by L. G. F.

This was a vigorous piece of satire, written in Trollope’s new home, 39
Montagu Square, in 1873. It appeared in shilling numbers from February
1874 to September 1875.

The total sum received for this book was £3000.

1876

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 337; Vol. II., pp. iv, 342; Vol. III.,
vi, 346; Vol. IV., pp. vi, 347.

This book appeared in eight parts at five shillings each, with an
illustration in medallion on the paper covers, which were engraved by
Dalziel. It was in most respects a failure, worse reviewed than any
novel Trollope had written. He was especially hurt by a criticism in the
_Spectator_. The total sum received for this work was £2500.

See also note under _Can You Forgive Her?_ above.

1877

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 293; Vol. II., pp. viii, 293; Vol.
III., pp. vii, 284.

First appeared in _Temple Bar_ in 1875, while Trollope was engaged upon
his _Autobiography_. The total sum received for this book was £1800.

The author himself regarded it as inferior to _The Prime Minister_, but
it was more favourably received.

1878

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vii, 301; Vol. II., pp. vii, 297; Vol.
III., pp. vii, 319.

First appeared in _All the Year Round_ in 1877.

The total sum received for this book was £1600. It was written
immediately after _The Prime Minister_.

1878

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vii, 352; Vol. II., pp. vii, 346 and index, pp.
347-352 inclusive.

Written during a visit to the colony in 1877. The total sum received for
this book was £850.

1879

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 290; Vol. II., pp. vi, 296; Vol. III.,
pp. vi, 302.

The total sum received for this book was £1800. It appeared first in
_Blackwood’s Magazine_.

1879

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 215; Vol. II., pp. vi, 208.

This was written before the visit to Australia in 1871-2.

1879

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 219; Vol. II., pp. viii, 222.

1879

Small 8vo. In one Volume: pp. vi, 210.

This was one of the English Men of Letters Series, edited by John
Morley.

1880

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 320; Vol. II., pp. viii, 327; Vol.
III., pp. viii, 312.

First published in volume form.

1880

8vo. Vol. I., pp. vii, 419, with Introduction, pp. 1 to 40 inclusive;
and Appendices A, B, C, D, E, pp. 401-419 inclusive; Vol. II., pp. vii,
423, with Appendix, pp. 405-410 inclusive; and Index, pp. 411-423
inclusive.

1881

8vo. Vol. I., pp. iv, 280; Vol. II., pp. iv, 272; Vol. III., iv,
277.

Published in volume form only.

1881

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vi, 237; Vol. II., pp. vi, 246.

Published in volume form only.

1882

Small 8vo. In One Volume: pp. vi, 416.

CONTENTS.

Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices.
The Lady of Launay.
Christmas at Thompson Hall.
The Telegraph Girl.
Alice Dugdale.

This was also issued in two volume form, with the same pagination, Vol.
I. containing pp. vi, 1-197; Vol. II. pp. 201-416.

1882

Small 8vo. In One Volume; pp. 220 (index, pp. 215-220).

1882

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 200; Vol. II., pp. 203.

Originally published in _Blackwood’s Magazine_.

1882

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 253; Vol. II., pp. 239.

1882

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. viii, 303; Vol. II., pp. viii, 282; Vol.
III., pp. viii, 271.

1883

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vii, 308; Vol. II., pp. vii, 326; Vol.
III., pp. vii, 325.

First appeared in _All the Year Round_.

1883

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. xiv, 259; with a portrait frontispiece and
Preface, pp. v-xi, by Henry Merivale Trollope, dated September 1883.
Vol. II., pp. 227.

Trollope died on December 6, 1882. His _Autobiography_, which had been
written about 1876, was published by his son in 1883. It is on this
authoritative work that most of the notes in this Bibliography are
based.

1883

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. vii, 280; Vol. II., pp. vii, 296; Vol.
III., pp. vii, 291.

The following note by Henry M. Trollope appears in the first volume:

“This novel was to have contained sixty chapters. My father had written
as much as is now published before his last illness. It will be seen
that he had not finished the forty-ninth chapter; and the fragmentary
portion of that chapter stands now just as he left it. He left no
materials from which the tale could be completed, and no attempt at
completion will be made. At the end of the third volume I have stated
what were his intentions with regard to certain people in the story; but
beyond what is there said I know nothing.”

In the preface to the _Autobiography_ Mr. Trollope further states this
to have been the only book, beside _Framley Parsonage_, of which his
father published even the first number before completing the whole tale,
and its unfinished condition weighed heavily upon his mind. It appeared
in a weekly paper called _Life_, beginning in the autumn of 1882.

1884

Small 8vo. Vol. I., pp. 226; Vol. II., pp. 219.

Vol. I. contains the following note by Henry M. Trollope: “This story,
_An Old Man’s Love_, is the last of my father’s novels. As I have stated
in the preface to his _Autobiography, The Landleaguers_ was written
after this book, but was never fully completed.”

THE BARSETSHIRE NOVELS

The combined republication of the novels dealing with the fictitious
county of Barsetshire was undertaken by Chapman and Hall in 1879, under
the collective title of _The Chronicles of Barsetshire_. This includes--

The Warden.
Barchester Towers.
Doctor Thorne.
Framley Parsonage.
The Small House at Allington.
The Last Chronicles of Barsetshire.

They filled eight volumes, large crown 8vo.

There is a short introduction in the first volume, and an illustration
to each novel, but to _The Last Chronicles_ there are two. Most of these
are signed F. A. F(raser). Trollope told his son that he did not really
think _The Small House_ belonged to the series, but he was pressed by
Frederick Chapman to include the book and therefore he consented.

FUGITIVE ARTICLES

Although this is a Bibliography of First Editions only, some brief
indication of Trollope’s more fugitive work may be given.

In 1848-9 he wrote a series of letters to the _Examiner_, under the
editorship of John Forster, on the condition of Ireland and in defence
of the policy of the Government. No remuneration for these was ever
offered him.

In 1855-6, or thereabouts, he wrote several articles for the _Dublin
University Magazine_, one on Julius Cæsar, one on Augustus Cæsar, and
another, savage in its denunciation, on Competitive Examinations.

Shortly after Thackeray’s death, Trollope wrote an appreciative sketch
of his late edition for the _Cornhill_, and this was reprinted, together
with an “In Memoriam” article by Charles Dickens, in _Thackeray, the
Humourist, and the Man of Letters_, by Theodore Taylor, published by D.
Appleton, New York, 1864.

On the establishment of the _Fortnightly Review_ in 1865 he contributed
numerous articles, among them one advocating the signature of the
authors to periodical writing; another in defence of fox-hunting, in
answer to Freeman the historian; and two on Cicero. Many of the reviews
are also from his pen.

The _Pall Mall Gazette_ having been founded in the same year (1865),
Trollope was for some time a frequent contributor, his Hunting and
Clerical Sketches being afterwards reprinted in book form. He wrote on
the American War, and reviewed new publications, one of which involved
him in a quarrel with a friend. He was also requested to attend the May
Meetings at Exeter Hall and give a graphic description of the
proceedings. This resulted in only one article, _A Zulu in Search of a
Religion_, for Trollope flatly refused to go again.

From 1859 to 1871 he records that he “wrote political articles,
critical, social, and sporting articles, for periodicals, without
number,” and during the journey to Australia, in 1871-2, he supplied a
series of articles to the _Daily Telegraph_. These sundries, when he
wrote his _Autobiography_, had brought him a sum of £7800.

UNPUBLISHED AND PROJECTED WORKS

In 1850 Trollope wrote a comedy, partly in blank verse and partly in
prose, called _The Noble Jilt_, which was declined by George Bartley,
the actor-manager. He afterwards made use of the plot in _Can You
Forgive Her?_ Nor was this his only attempt at work for the stage, for
in 1869 he dramatised a scene from _The Last Chronicle of Barsetshire_
under the title of _Did He Steal It?_--a comedy in three acts. This,
too, was declined by the manager of the Gaiety Theatre, George
Hollingshead, who had asked for it. It was, however, printed but not
published.

He proposed a handbook on Ireland to John Murray, worked hard on it for
some weeks, and submitted nearly a quarter of the supposed length, which
was returned, nine months later, without a word. This was about 1850.

Trollope read widely with a view to writing a history of English prose
fiction, beginning with _Robinson Crusoe_, but when Dickens and Bulwer
Lytton died, his spirit flagged, and the project was abandoned. Early
English drama, too, interested him greatly, and he left very many
criticisms of plots and characterisation written at the end of each
play.

In the summer of 1878, at the invitation of John Burns, afterwards first
Lord Inverclyde, he joined a party of friends on board _The Mastiff_,
one of Burns’ steamships, for a sixteen days’ cruise to Iceland. He was
asked by his host to write an account of the trip, and did so, the book
being issued, for private circulation only, in quarto form, to admit of
the illustrations (the illustrator was also one of the party) and a map.
Its title-page reads as follows:

Trollope at different times gave a few lectures, which he had printed
but never published. The subjects of these included, among others:

The Civil Service as a Profession.
The War in America.
English Prose Fiction as a Rational Amusement.
The Higher Education of Women.

(With regard to the last it may be noted that he was always opposed to
female suffrage.)

AMERICAN ROYALTIES

As Trollope was commissioned by the Foreign Office when in America in
1861 to make an effort on behalf of international copyright, it is
worthy of note that he himself was pirated widely. One book (perhaps _Is
He Popenjoy?_), for which he received £1600 in England, was sold by his
publishers here to an American firm for £20, the highest price they
would give, considering the chance of piration by other houses. In the
American form it was published at 7½_d._ For a list of actual sums
received, see p. 272.

ARTICLES OF BIOGRAPHICAL INTEREST GIVEN IN POOLE’S INDEX

+-------------------------+----------------+-----------------------+----+----+
| Title | Author | Periodical |Date|Page|
+-------------------------+----------------+-----------------------+----+----+
|Anthony Trollope |W. T. Washburn |North American Review |1860| 292|
| “ “ |A. V. Dicey |Nation (New York) |1874| 174|
|Anthony Trollope (with | | | | |
| portrait) | ...... |Once a Week |1872| 498|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Appleton’s Journal |1871| 551|
|Anthony Trollope | ...... | “ “ |1879| 275|
|Anthony Trollope | | | | |
| (portrait of) | ...... |Galaxy |1871| 451|
|Anthony Trollope |T. H. S. Escott |Time |1879| 626|
|Death of Anthony Trollope| ...... |Spectator |1882|1573|
| “ “ “ |James Bryce |Nation (New York) |1883| 10|
|Obituary of Anthony | | | | |
| Trollope |R. F. Littledale|Academy |1882| 433|
|Anthony Trollope |M. Schuyler |American |1883| 152|
| “ “ | ...... |Saturday Review |1882| 755|
| “ “ | ...... |Month |1883| 484|
| “ “ |J. Hawthorne |Manhattan |1883| 573|
| “ “ |E. A. Freeman |Macmillan’s Magazine |1883| 236|
|Anthony Trollope | | | | |
| (same article) | “ |Eclectic Magazine |1883| 406|
| “ “ “ | “ |Littell’s Living Age |1883| 177|
|Anthony Trollope | ...... |Good Words |1883| 142|
|Anthony Trollope | | | | |
| (same article) | ...... |Littell’s Living Age |1883| 567|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Eclectic Magazine |1883| 531|
|Anthony Trollope | ...... |Blackwood’s Magazine |1883| 316|
| “ “ | ...... |Westminster Review |1884| 83|
|Anthony Trollope | | | | |
| (same article) | ...... |Littell’s Living Age |1884| 195|
|Anthony Trollope |B. Tuckermann |Princetown Review |1883| 17|
| “ “ |H. James |Century |1883| 385|
| “ “ | ...... |Knowledge |1882| 475|
| “ “ | ...... |Literary World (Boston)|1882| 456|
| “ “ |Donald Macleod |Good Words |1884| 248|
|Anthony Trollope | | | | |
| (with portrait) |W. H. Pollock |Harper’s Magazine |1883| 907|
|Anthony Trollope and | | | | |
| the _Times_ | ...... |Knowledge |1882| 462|
|Anthony Trollope as a | | | | |
| Critic | ...... |Spectator |1883|1373|
|Anthony Trollope compared| | | | |
| with Daudet | ...... |Atlantic Monthly |1884| 426|
|Autobiography of Anthony | | | | |
| Trollope | ...... |Spectator |1883|1377|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Literary World (Boston)|1883| 442|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Saturday Review |1883| 505|
| “ “ “ |R. F. Littledale|Academy |1883| 273|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Atlantic Monthly |1884| 267|
|Autobiography of Anthony | ...... |Littell’s Living Age |1883| 579|
| Trollope | | | | |
| “ “ “ | ...... |Blackwood’s Magazine |1884| 577|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Macmillan’s Magazine |1884| 47|
| “ “ “ |A. Tanzer |Nation (New York) |1883| 396|
| “ “ “ | ...... |Athenæum |1883|II.457|
|Boyhood of Anthony | ...... |Spectator |1883|1343|
| Trollope | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope’s Mode | ...... |London Society |1883| 347|
| of Work (with portrait)| | | | |
|Literary Life of Anthony | ...... |Edinburgh Review |1884| 186|
| Trollope | | | | |
|Literary Life of Anthony | ...... |Littell’s Living Age |1884| 451|
| Trollope (same article)| | | | |
|Last Reminiscences of | ...... |Temple Bar |1884| 129|
| Anthony Trollope | | | | |
|Last Reminiscences of | ...... |Critic |1884| 25|
| Anthony Trollope (same | | | | |
| article) | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope’s Place |F. Harrison |Forum |1895| 324|
| in Literature | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope |D. P. Trent |Citizen |1896| 297|
|Anthony Trollope (with |H. T. Peck |Bookman |1901| 114|
| portrait) | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope |G. S. Street |Cornhill |1901| 349|
|Anthony Trollope (same | “ |Littell’s Living Age |1901| 128|
| article) | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope |Leslie Stephen |National Review |1901| 68|
|Anthony Trollope (same | “ “ |Littell’s Living Age |1901| 366|
| article) | | | | |
|Anthony Trollope | “ “ |Eclectic Magazine |1902| 112|
| “ “ |G. Bradford, Jun.|Atlantic Monthly |1902| 426|
|Recoming of Anthony | “ “ |Dial |1903| 141|
| Trollope | | | | |
|An Appreciation and |T. H. S. Escott |Fortnightly |1906|1905|
| Reminiscence of Anthony| | | | |
| Trollope | | | | |
|The Trollopes: a famous |A. B. M‘Gill |Bookbuyer |1900| 195|
| literary clan | | | | |
+-------------------------+-----------------+----------------------+----+----+

INDEX

[_The names of characters in Trollope’s novels are distinguished by an
asterisk_]

_Academy, The_, on _South Africa_, 287

Addison, Joseph, 162

Ainsworth, Harrison, illustrated by Cruikshank, 138

Albany, literary associations of the, 174-6

Albert, Prince, influence of, 256, 260

Albuda, 288

Alexandria, 124

Alison’s _History of Europe_, account of French Revolution in, 87, 88, 98

_All the Year Round_, 139

---- _Mr. Scarborough’s Family_, 298

Alpine Society, the, 155

Althorp, Lord, in the Albany, 176

*Amedroz, Clara, 218

American Civil War, the, Trollope’s impressions of, 200-202

American receipts, Trollope’s, 272

_American Senator, The_, material for, 202, 270

Ancient Classics Series, _Cæsar_, 284, 290

Anderson, James, actor, 146

Anglo-Egyptian postal treaty, Trollope arranges, 122-4

Anne, Queen, 162

Antwerp, 13

*Arabin, Dean, and Mrs., 105, 205, 237-9

*Aram, Solomon, 195

Archdeckne, caricatured by Thackeray, 148

Arlington Club, the, 159

*Armstrong, George, 80

Arnold, Matthew, analytical psychology of, 306

---- at Highclere, 289

Artists’ Rifle Corps, the, 157, 158

Arts Club, the, foundation of, 157, 158

Arundel Club, the, 156

Ashley, Lord. _See_ Shaftesbury

Ashley’s Hotel, 156

Astley’s Circus, 125

_Athenæum, The_, on _Australia_, 275

---- on _Rachel Ray_, 243

---- on _South Africa_, 286

---- on _The Warden_, 111

Athenæum Club, Trollope as member of, 142, 143, 153, 159, 232, 287, 305

Austen, Jane, born at Steventon, 6

---- _Pride and Prejudice_, 25, 53

---- Trollope compared with, 112, 128, 137, 138, 186

Austin, Alfred, attends Trollope’s funeral, 308

---- his politics, 177

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

---- _The Garden that I Love_, 301

_Australia and New Zealand_, estimates of, 275, 276

Australian mail-service, the, 288

Austro-Italian War, the, 256

_Autobiography_, Trollope’s, 4;
quoted, 60

*Aylmer, Captain, 218

Aytoun and Martin, quoted, 26

Bacon, Francis, 292

Baden-Baden, 216

*Baker, Miss, 234

*Balatka, Nina, 231

*Ball, John, 234

*Ballandine, Lord, 78, 79

Ballantine, advocate, 194

Barcelona, Hannay at, 163

Barchester novels, the, clerical portraiture in, 102

---- regarded collectively, 205, 220, 269, 292

_Barchester Towers_, clerical portraiture in, 103, 105, 225-8, 235

---- genesis of, 205

---- publication of, 114

Barclay, Captain, pedestrian, 125

Barère, Bertrand, Macaulay on, 95, 96

Barrington, Lord, 154

Barrington, Sir Jonah, _Memoirs_ of, 49

*Barton, Rev. Amos, 133

Bath, Trollope at, 229

Bathe, Sir Henry de, at the Garrick, 145

Bayes, Daniel, 249

Baylis, Judge, on Trollope at Harrow, 17

Beaconsfield, Lord. _See_ Disraeli

Bedford, Duke of, commissions Hayter, 9

Beesly, E. S., at George Eliot’s, 183

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

*Beilby and Burton, 220

Bell, Jockey, 266

Bell, Robert, library of, 307

*Bellfield, Captain, 213

_Belton Estate, The_, publication of, 179, 217, 218, 279

*Belton, Will, 218

Bent, Miss Fanny, 294

Bentinck, Lord George, his revolt against Peel, 5

---- reputation of, 141

Bentley, Richard, loses Trollope as a client, 122

Berkeley, Sir Henry, Governor of Cape Town, 285

Berlin, Trollope in, 173

_Bertrams, The_, 234

---- written in Egypt, 124, 273

Berwick-on-Tweed, Earle, M.P. for, 175

Beverley, Trollope contests, 105, 213, 217, 245-254, 267, 269, 274

Bianconi, Charles, his Irish cars, 44, 45

Birmingham, King Edward’s School, 20, 291

Birmingham League, the, 178

Blackburn, Morley contests, 180

Blackie, Professor, Trollope visits, 126

_Blackwood’s Magazine_, _Scenes of Clerical Life_, 183

Blackwood, John, publishes Trollope’s anonymous work, 231-4

---- Trollope’s relations with, 132, 284, 285, 290

*Blake, Dot, 76-80

Blanc, Louis, death of, 308

Bland, Miss, amanuensis, 300, 306

Blankenberghe, 260

Blessington, Countess of, 127;
her retort to Napoleon III, 34

Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 11

Boccaccio, 129

Bohemian societies in London, 156

*Bold, John, 107

*Bold, Mrs., 105, 230, 237

*Bolster, Bridget, 193, 198

*Bolton, Hester, 281-3

*Boncassen, Isabel, 268

_Bon Gaultier Ballads_, quoted, 26

*Bonner, Mary, 252-4

*Bonteen, Mr., 261, 280

*Boodle, Captain, 222

Borthwick, Algernon, in Florence, 121

Boulogne, duels at, 260

*Bourbotte, 97

Bowood, 143

Bowring, Lucy, original of Julia Brabazon, 294

Bowring, Sir John, 294

*Bozzle, 294

*Brabazon, Julia, 220, 294

Bradbury & Evans, Messrs., printers, 184

---- issue _Once a Week_, 239

Braddon, Amelia, influence of, 188, 241, 291

*Brady, Pat, 71-5

Brantingham Thorp, 249

*Brattle, Sam, 241, 242

*Brentford, Earl of, 258-263

Bridgwater, disfranchisement of, 251 _note_

Bright, John, in fiction, 265

Bristol, port of, 6

British Columbia, independence of, 288

British Guiana, Trollope in, 127

Broadhead, at Sheffield, 178

*Bromar, Marie, 218, 219

*Bromley, Rev. Mr., 283

Brontë, Charlotte, _Jane Eyre_, 132

Brontë, Emily, _Wuthering Heights_, 62

Brooks, Shirley, influence of, 291

Brougham, Lord, as member of the Athenæum, 143

Broughton, Rhoda, _Not Wisely, but Too Well_, 167

*Brown, Jonas, Fred and George, 76, 77

_Brown, Jones, and Robinson_, critical estimate of, 160, 161, 220

---- its reception in America, 270

Browne, Hablot K., illustrations by, 138, 139

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 119;
her preference for _The Three Clerks_, 185

Browning, Robert, at George Eliot’s, 183

---- attends Trollope’s funeral, 308

---- his home in Florence, 119

---- on _The Three Clerks_, 37

---- on Trollope, 290, 306

*Brownlow, Edith, 240

Bruges, Trollope family at, 14, 17, 20, 28

Brussels, 56

Bryce, James, at Washington, 163

Budleigh Salterton, Trollope at, 113

Bull Run, battle of, 201

Bulwer, Sir Henry, in Paris, 34, 255, 256

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, contests St. Ives, 245

---- his opinion of women, 206

---- international sympathy of, 173

---- political element in novels of, 272

---- Thackeray on, 148

---- _The Caxtons_, 275

---- _The Last of the Barons_, 94

---- _What Will He do with It?_, 208

---- _Zanoni_, 88

*Bunce, 107

Burke, Edmund, 86

Burke, Sir John and Lady, 57

Burrell, Sir Charles, 5

Burton, Decimus, architect of the Athenæum, 143

*Burton, Florence, 221, 294

Burton, Sir R. F., as diplomatist, 163

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

Butler, George, headmaster of Harrow, 15

Butt, Isaac, 57

---- cross-examines Trollope, 58-60

Buxton, Charles, as a hunting man, 168

Buxton, E. N., on Trollope in the hunting field, 169, 197

Byron, Lord, his influence, 206

---- his rebellion against Dr. Butler, 15

---- on _Don Juan_, 110

---- Trelawny’s _Reminiscences_ of, 119

Cadiz, 49

_Cæsar_, a gift to John Blackwood, 284, 290

Cæsar, Julius and Augustus, Trollope’s articles on, 165

Cahir, 45

Cairns, advocate, 194

Cairo, Trollope in, 123, 273

Calcraft, Granby, 57

*Caldigate, John, 280-283

Calne, Macaulay, M.P. for, 246

Cambridge, Trollope visits, 84

Cannes, 308

Canning, George, Bentinck secretary to, 141

Canterbury, election at, 260

_Can You Forgive Her?_ critical estimate of, 33,
176, 185, 197, 202, 204-220, 238, 240, 261, 292, 293, 296

---- founded on _The Noble Jilt_, 157, 208

---- illustrations of, 204

---- political element of, 247, 256, 265

Cape Town, Trollope at, 282-7, 289

Cardwell, at Winchester, 17

---- M.P. for Oxford, 164, 246

Carleton, William, his Irish novels, 53, 54

Carlton House, site of, 143

Carlyle, Thomas, 306

---- as a conversationalist, 142

---- his _French Revolution_, 88, 97-100

---- Macaulay on, 121

---- on Trollope, 115, 127

---- Trollope on, 127

Carnarvon, Lord, his South African policy, 285, 287-9

---- Trollope’s friendship with, 288

*Carruthers, Lord George de Bruce, 280

Casewick, Lincolnshire, 28

*Cashel, Earl of, 78-80

_Castle Richmond_, plot of, discussed, 83, 128-131, 206

*Cathelineau, 97

Catherine II of Russia, 207

Cattermole, George, illustrates _The Old Curiosity Shop_, 138

Central America, Trollope in, 127

Cetewayo, war with, 285

*Chadwick, Mr., 107

*Chaffanbrass, 194

Chamberlain, Joseph, secular educationalist, 178

Chapman, Edward, accepts _Doctor Thorne_, 122

Chapman, Frederick, attends Trollope’s funeral, 308

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 177, 179

Chapman & Hall, Messrs., Trollope’s connection with,
122, 173, 179, 199, 228, 239, 257, 275, 285, 286, 308

Charles II, King, 262

Charles X, exile of, 86

Charlotte, Princess, 224

Chartists, the, 38

*Cheesacre, farmer, 213

Cheltenham, Trollope at, 211, 229

Chichester, 299

*Chilton, Lord, 170, 197, 198, 259, 260

Chouans, rising of the, 94

*Chouardin, 97

_Christian Examiner, The_, 53

Christie, James, at the Garrick, 146

Christina of Spain, Queen, 207

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 270 _note_

_Cicero_, analysis of, 290, 291

Cider Cellars, the, 156

Cincinnati, 13

Civil Service, Trollope on the, 166

Civil Service Club, the, 158

Clancarty, Lord, of Garbally, 56

Clanricarde, Lord, his relations with Thackeray, 161

---- his relations with Trollope, 131, 139

Clarendon, Lord, 163

Clarke, Miss, salon of, 34

*Clavering, Captain Archibald, 221, 222

*Clavering, Rev. Henry, 220

_Claverings, The_, critical estimate of, 220-222

---- Julia Brabazon, 294

---- publication of, 165, 220

Clerical portraiture, by Trollope, 101-116, 136, 205, 224-244

Clonmel, Trollope at, 45, 60

Cobden, Richard, in fiction, 265

Cockburn, Sir Alexander, assists Trollope in his
_Life of Palmerston_, 255, 256

Colchester, Lord, as Postmaster-General, 118, 222

Coleridge, Lord, 194

Coleridge, S. T., as a Tory, 86

---- as a conversationalist, 142

---- Thomas Anthony Trollope on, 8

_Colleen Bawn, The_, 54

*Colligan, Doctor, 80

Collins, Wilkie, popularity of, 188, 241, 291

---- Trollope compared with, 128, 129, 291

---- withdraws from the Garrick, 149

Cologne, 173

Columbia, Trollope in, 127

Competitive examinations, Trollope on, 166

Congreve, his clergymen, 104

Conington’s translation of Horace, 150, 171, 203, 214

Connemara, 82

Constantinople, British fleet at, 287

Cook, Douglas, 267 _note_

---- editor of the _Saturday_, 176, 243

Coole Park, Trollope at, 49, 54-7, 63

Cooper, Fenimore, influence of, 271

---- _The Last of the Mohicans_, 53

Cork, 48

_Cornhill Magazine, The_, Trollope’s connection with,
129, 131-4, 136, 160, 164, 186, 188, 204, 208, 220, 270

Cosmopolitan Club, the, membership of, 153-5, 172, 173

Cottereau, Jean, 94

Cottery St. Mary, Herts, 28

_Courtship of Susan Bell, The_, publication of, 271

*Cox & Cummins, 107

*Crawley, Grace, 105, 294

*Crawley, Rev. Josiah, 105, 236

*Crinkett, Tom, 281

Croker, John Wilson, as member of the Athenæum, 143

---- original of Rigby, 87

*Crook, 193

*Crosbie, Adolphus, 160, 208

Crosskill, Alfred, 249

Crowe, a Wykehamist poet, 8

Cruikshank, George, illustrates _Oliver Twist_, 138

Crystal Palace, the, 183

Cunningham, J. W., incumbent of Harrow, 30, 54, 83

_Daily News, The_, 307

*Dale, Lily, 137, 160, 187, 205, 294

Dale, R. W., educational policy of, 178

*Daubeny, Premier, 264, 265, 290

Davis, Jefferson, Gladstone on, 201

Davy, Sir Humphry, at the Athenæum, 143

Day, Thomas, educational system of, 6, 30

*De Courcy, Lady Rosina, 267

Defoe, Daniel, _Robinson Crusoe_, 129

---- _The Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, 242

Delane, J. T., on foreign adventurers, 296-8

---- Trollope’s intimacy with, 126, 296

*Denot, Adolphe, 92

Denys, Sir George, 174

Derby, Lord, his ministry, 118, 155, 250, 275

*Desmond, Lady Clara, 130, 131

Devonshire, eighth Duke of, 259

Dicey, Edward, reconciled to Pigott, 307

---- sub-edits the _St. Paul’s_, 257

Dickens, Charles, _All the Year Round_, 158, 298

---- _American Notes_, 202

---- as member of the Garrick, 145, 147-149

---- _Bleak House_, 119, 235, 294

---- character of, 171

---- _David Copperfield_, 8, 12, 20, 293, 295

---- _Dombey & Son_, 222, 295, 296, 304

---- _Edwin Drood_, 302

---- _Great Expectations_, 139, 296

---- _Household Words_, 149

---- _Little Dorrit_, 147, 298

---- _Martin Chuzzlewit_, 202

---- _Nicholas Nickleby_, 101

---- _Old Curiosity Shop_, 138, 236

---- _Oliver Twist_, 71, 76, 138

---- on Dissent, 112, 225, 235

---- on George Eliot, 183, 184

---- on Thackeray, 151 _note_

---- on Trollope, 76

---- _Our Mutual Friend_, 110

---- _Pickwick Papers_, 26, 137, 138, 235

---- refuses to contest Reading, 245

---- _Tale of Two Cities_, 88, 194

---- Thackeray invites to Oxford, 247

---- Thackeray on, 147, 150, 151

---- Trollope compared with, and influenced by,
32, 37, 110, 128, 220, 243, 251, 256, 257, 295

---- Trollope’s relations with, 182, 192

Disraeli, Benjamin, at Gore House, 128

---- _Coningsby_, 17, 87, 143, 172, 260

---- Earle, secretary to, 174

---- _Endymion_, 172, 265

---- _Henrietta Temple_, 252

---- his maiden speech, 61

---- _Lothair_, 259

---- ministry of, 250, 287

---- M.P. for Maidstone, 246

---- on a statesman’s wife, 262

---- on _The Eustace Diamonds_, 280

---- on the revolt against Peel, 5

---- policy of, 155

---- political novels of, 110, 271, 272

---- portrayed as Daubeny, 264, 265

---- reputation of, 141

---- _Vivian Grey_, 245

*Dockwrath, 190-199

_Doctor Thorne_, 105

---- composition of, 124

---- publication of, 122, 173, 241

_Domestic Manners of the Americans, The_, 102

---- Louis Philippe on, 34

D’Orsay, Count, 127

Draycote, Yorkshire, 174

Dresden, 263

Drummond, Thomas, his dictum on property, 43

Drummond-Wolff, Henry, 154

Drury family, the, 29

---- their school at Sunbury, 17

Drury, Joseph, headmaster of Harrow, 15

Drury, Mark, master at Harrow, 15

Drury Lane Theatre, 143

_Dr. Wortle’s School_, analysis of, 302-4

Dublin, Archbishop of. _See_ Trench

Dublin, decay of society in, 65, 67, 82

---- Trollope in, 40

_Dublin University Magazine_, 53

---- Trollope’s articles in, 165, 166

Ducrow, at Astley’s, 125

Duelling, decay of, 260

Duff, Grant, 154

Duffy, Gavan, influence of, 69

_Duke’s Children, The_, publication of, 216

---- Lady Mabel Grex, 295

---- political element of, 257, 268, 269, 271

*Dumouriez, General, 97

Dunkellin, Lord, 82

*Dunstable, Miss, 105

*Duplay, Eleanor, 99, 100

Dyne, headmaster of Highgate, 151

Eames, John, 160

Earle, Ralph, career of, 174, 175

Edgeworth, Maria, fiction of, 6, 53, 61-3, 138, 186

Edgeworth, Richard, his educational system, 30

Edinburgh, 285

---- Trollope in, 126

_Edinburgh Courant, The_, Hannay of, 126

_Edinburgh Review, The_, 95, 121

Edward IV, King, 94

Edward VII, King, 155

Edwards, H. S., on Paris, 89

Edwards, Sir Henry, M.P. for Beverley, 248, 250

*Effingham, Violet, 259-264

Egypt, Trollope in, 273

Eldon, Lord, 118

Elementary Schools Bill, the, 178

Eliot, George, 244

---- _Adam Bede_, 106, 136, 184, 254

---- her influence on Trollope, 183-5, 187, 305

---- _Middlemarch_, 110, 185

---- _Romola_, 183, 184

---- _Scenes of Clerical Life_, 183

Eliot, Lord, as Irish Secretary, 42, 57

Elizabeth, Queen, 207, 287

Elwell, Charles, 249

Ely, Archdeacon of. _See_ Charles Merivale

*Emilius, Rev. Joseph, 280

Encumbered Estates Act, the, 50, 51, 288

_English Churchman, The_, 242

English Men of Letters Series, _Thackeray_, 164

*Erle, Barrington, 261

Escott, T. H. S., acquaintance with Trollope, 113, 115

---- _Masters of English Journalism_, 168 _note_

Essex hunt, the, 168, 197, 278

Eton, 16

*Eustace, Lizzie, Lady, 279

_Eustace Diamonds, The_, analysis of, 279

---- publication of, 218

Evangelicalism, Mrs. Trollope’s attack on, 30, 31, 84, 101

---- Trollope’s dislike of, 101, 210, 223-244, 261, 283

Evans, Marian. _See_ George Eliot

Everard, Mr., at Highclere, 290

Everingham, 248

_Examiner, The_, Trollope’s letters in, 37, 81-3, 128, 182

Exeter, portrayed by Trollope, 229, 233, 294

_Eye for an Eye, An_, analysis of, 301

Faber, F. W., his influence on Trollope, 83-5, 283

Fane, Julian, 172

Faraday, Michael, at the Athenæum, 143

Farmer, George, 147

Farmer, Nurse, 224

*Father John, 75, 76

*Fawn, Lord, 280

Feminist views, Trollope’s, 206-210

*Fenwick, Frank, 240

Fielding, Henry, novels of, 104, 137, 293

---- _Tom Jones_, 25

Fielding Club, the, 156

Fiesole, Landor at, 119

*Finn, Malachi and Phineas, 257

*Fitzgerald, Burgo, 214-17

*Fitzgerald, Owen, 130

*Fitzgerald, Misses, 131

*Fitzgibbon, Laurence, 258

Fladgate, Counsel for Harrow, 15

Fladgate, Mr., at the Garrick, 146

*Flannelly, for, 68, 73

*Fletcher, Arthur, 266

Florence, George Eliot in, 184

---- Mrs. Trollope in, 55, 83

---- Santa Croce, 83

---- T. A. Trollope in, 184

---- Trollope in, 83, 118-122, 140, 184

*Folking, 281

Forman, Buxton, 152

Forster, John, editor of the _Examiner_, 37, 81, 128, 182

---- his friendship with the Trollopes, 27, 37

---- introduces Trollope to Blackwood, 231

---- on Trollope and Thackeray, 164

Forster, W. E., as educationalist, 178

---- his friendship with Trollope, 302

_Fortnightly Review, The_, foundation and policy of, 174-181, 204

---- Trollope’s novels appear in, 217, 218, 279

Fox, Charles James, 86

_Framley Parsonage_, 302

---- clerical element of, 136

---- Lucy Robarts, 131, 138

---- publication of, 135, 137, 186

Frankfort, 173

Fraser, Sir W. A., on Trollope and Thackeray, 165

_Fraser’s Magazine_, 161

Freeling, Mrs. Clayton, her influence on behalf of Trollope, 18, 19, 27

Freeling, Sir Francis, as Secretary to the Post Office, 18, 21, 23, 39

Freeman, E. A., on hunting, 179

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

Freiburg, 173

French Revolution, the, Trollope’s knowledge of, 85-100

Frere, Sir Bartle, 285

Froude, James Anthony, in South Africa, 284-7

---- on Trollope, 48, 49, 133

---- _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_, 48, 49

*Furnival, Mr., 191, 290

Garbally, 56

Garland’s Hotel, Trollope at, 307

Garrick Club, the, 15, 116, 233

Garrick Club, history of, 143

---- Thackeray as member of, 142, 144, 147-9, 156

---- Trollope as member of, 142-153, 156, 170, 172

Gasquet, Father Thomas, his _Black Deaths_, 129

*Gayner, Bob, 75, 76

_Gentleman’s Magazine, The_, 239

George I, King, 163

George III, King, 143

George V, King, 146

Gibbon’s _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, 228

Gibraltar, siege of, 18

---- Trollope at, 124

*Gilfil, Mr., 133

*Gilmore, Harry, 240

Gladstone, W. E., as a novel-reader, 280

---- if portrayed by Trollope, 256, 258, 264

---- ministry of, 177, 180, 247

---- on Jefferson Davis, 201

---- Trollope separates from his Liberalism, 302

---- Trollope’s energy compared with, 125

Glasgow, Trollope in, 125

*Glencora, Lady, 214-216, 259, 264

Glenesk, Lord, at the Garrick, 146

---- in Florence, 121

*Goesler, Madame Max, 259-266

_Golden Lion of Granpère, The_, analysis of, 218, 219

Goodwood hunt, the, 301

_Good Words_, returns _Rachel Ray_, 227, 228, 235

*Gordeloup, Madame, 221, 222

Gort, 49

Graham, supports Lord de Grey, 42

*Graham, Felix, 196

Granby, Lord, 141

Grange, the, Harting, 299

Grant, Baron Albert, 297

Grant family, the, 29

Grant, Sir William, Master of the Rolls, 16

Grantham, 115

*Grantly, Archdeacon, 104-9, 205

*Grantly, Griselda, 220

Granville, Lord, 120, 154

---- induced to serve under Derby, 155

_Graphic, The, Phineas Redux_, 257

---- _Harry Heathcote_, 277

_Great Britain_, S.S., 278

Great Exhibition, 1851, 112

Green, J. R., at Highclere, 289

*Greenow, Mrs., 213, 214

Greenwood, Frederick, founder and editor of the _P.M.G._, 168, 171, 172

Greg, William Rathbone, 172

Gregg, Tresham, 57

Gregory, Sir William, his friendship for Trollope, 49, 53, 55-7, 61, 139, 141

---- in Florence, 121

Gregory, Sir William, on _Cicero_, 290

---- on Phineas Finn, 266

*Gresham, Mr., 264, 265, 290

Gresley family, the, 15, 27, 35

*Grex, Lady Mabel, 268, 295

*Grey, John, 211-217, 263, 296

Grey, Lord, colonial policy of, 288

---- his Reform Bill, 246

---- ministry of, 176

---- Trollope on, 287, 288

Grey, Lord de, as Viceroy of Ireland, 41, 57

*Greystock, Frank, 280

*Greystock, Lizzie, 279

*Griffenbottom, Mr., 254

Griffin, Gerald, _The Collegians_, 54

*Grimes, 213

Grimshaw, Rev. Mr., 226

*Grindley, 213

Griqualand West, 285

Guadet, 90

_Guardian, The_, 242

Hadley, Barnet, 28

Hague, the, 56

Hall, F., journalist, 249

Hall, Mrs. S. C., her Irish novels, 53

Hambledon foxhounds, the, 301

*Handy, Abel, 107, 108

Hannay, James, at Barcelona, 163

---- his influence, 172

---- in Edinburgh, 126

Hanover Rooms, the, 141

*Haphazard, Sir Abraham, 107

Harcourt, William Vernon, on the _Saturday_, 172

*Harding, Septimus, 104, 106, 109, 205, 237

*Hardlines, Sir Gregory, 118

_Hargrave, the Man of Fashion_, 33

Harlow, 168

Harper, J. Henry, 272 _note_

_Harper’s Magazine_, Trollope’s work issued in, 271

Harrison, Frederick, supports the _Fortnightly_, 174, 178

Harrow, Trollope at school at, 3, 15-17, 23, 50, 111, 281, 290

---- Trollope family at, 8, 9, 43, 45, 188, 206, 210

_Harry Heathcote of Gangoil_, analysis of, 275 _note_, 276-8

Hart, Mr., 267 _note_

Harting, Trollope’s home at, 299-301, 306

Hartington, Lord, as portrayed by Trollope, 259

*Hartletop, Marchioness of, 220

Harwich, Prinsep contests, 140 _note_

Hawkshaw, Mr., 249

Hawthorn, Nathaniel, as Consul, 163

Hayter, his picture of Lord W. Russell’s trial, 9

Hayward, Abraham, 154

Heckfield Vicarage, Hants, 6, 8, 205

_He Knew He Was Right_, analysis of, 293-6

---- West Indian scenes in, 126

Hellicar family, the, 27

Hennessy, Sir John Pope, as Phineas Finn, 264

Henry of Navarre, King, 94

Herbert, Sidney, his friendship with Trollope, 3, 17

Herbert, Sir Robert G. W., 270 _note_

---- at Highclere, 290

---- at the Cosmopolitan, 154

Hereford, 108

Herries, Lord, 141, 248

Hervieu, Auguste, his friendship with the Trollopes, 13

Heseltine, Mr., of Rotherham, 54

Highclere, Trollope visits, 288-290

Highgate School, 151

Hill, Rowland, Trollope’s relations with,
24, 25, 36, 117, 118, 131, 161, 199, 200

Hirsch, Baron de, 175

Hodgson, Colonel, 250

Hoey, Mrs. Cashel, co-operates with Yates, 149, 150

Holcroft, Thomas, novelist, 187

Holland, Lord, Carlyle introduced to, 127

Holland, Sir Henry, his friendship for Taylor and Trollope, 142

---- influence of, 18

Höllenthal, 173

Holsworth, G., manager of _All the Year Round_, 298

Home Rule, Trollope’s attitude to, 250

Hood, Thomas, on Exeter quarrels, 229

Hook, Theodore, at the Athenæum, 143

Hope, Beresford, owner of the _Saturday_, 243

Hope family, the, 176

Hope’s _Anastasius_, 119

Horace, quoted, 150, 171, 203, 214, 252

Houghton, Lord, 103

---- at the Cosmopolitan, 154

---- his social services to Trollope, 142

---- on Landor, 119

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

Household Franchise Bill, the, 250

Hudson Bay monopoly, the, 288

Hugo, Victor, _L’homme qui rit_, 239

Hull, 250

Hunting, Trollope’s love of, 135, 168-171, 179, 204, 213, 248, 250

Hutchinson, Rachel, 294

Hutton, R. H., detects authorship of _Nina Balatka_, 232

Huxley, Professor, supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

_Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News_, 204

Indiana, Communistic colony in, 11

International Copyright, Trollope’s negotiations for, 273

Ireland, abuses of English administration of, 40-45, 51, 69, 74

---- famine and distress in 1848, 81-3, 128-133

---- novels on, 48, 52-4, 61

---- postal system of, 58

---- sport in, 45, 46, 49, 56, 135

Irish Constabulary, the, 69-74

Irish Nationalism, origin of, 302

Irish people, the, character of, 52, 87

Irving, Washington, in London, 163

Isabella of Spain, Queen, 207

_Is He Popenjoy?_ publication of, 298

Italy, Unity of, 256

Ivry, battle of, 94

Jamaica, Trollope in, 126

James II, King, 207

James, Edwin, original of Stryver, 194

James, Sir Henry. _See_ James of Hereford

James of Hereford, Lord, his friendship with Trollope, 203, 204, 298, 300

Jameson, Leander Starr, Trollope on, 284

Jenner, Sir William, 307

Jeremiah, quoted, 105

Jerusalem, Trollope in, 124, 273

Jeune, Dr., headmaster of King Edward’s School, 20, 291

Jew Bill, the, 141

_John Bull_, 124

_John Caldigate_, 285

---- analysis of, 275 _note_, 278, 280-283

*Johnson family, the, 189

Johnstone, Sir Frederick, 179

Joliffe, Sir William, 5

_Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_, publication of, 31

Jones, a Wykehamist poet, 8

*Jones, Mary Flood, 258

Jones, Owen, at George Eliot’s, 183

Journalism, Trollope’s portrayal of, 263

Jowett, Benjamin, father of, 38

“Judex,” his contributions to the _Fortnightly_, 180

Julians, Harrow, Trollope family at, 9, 12, 16, 188

Kauffmann, Angelica, 158

Kean, Charles, 146

*Keegan, 73

*Kelly, Martin, 78, 79

_Kellys and the O’Kellys, The_, plot of, discussed, 76-80, 230, 301

---- publication of, 81, 86

Kemble, John, 146

Kennard, Captain, contests Beverley, 248, 250

*Kenneby, 199

Kennedy, Mr., M.P., 259-263, 295

Kensal Green, Trollope’s grave in, 307

Kesteven, Lord, political standing of, 5

Kickham, Charles Joseph, his Irish novels, 34

Kimberley, Jameson at, 284

King Edward’s School, Birmingham, 20, 291

King-Harman, Colonel, 264

Kinglake, A. W., 306

---- at the Cosmopolitan, 155

---- unseated for Bridgwater, 251

Kingsley, Charles, at Highclere, 289

Kingsley, Henry, colonial novels of, 275, 278

Kingston, Jamaica, 126

Knightley, Sir Charles, 5

Knights of the Round Table, the, 156

Knockbane, 82

Lacy, Walter, actor, 146

_Lady Anna_, publication of, 271

Lafayette, General, his friendship with the Trollopes, 12, 27, 88

La Grange, 27

Lambeth Palace, Trollope at, 306

Langalibalele rising, the, 285

Langdale, Charles, 249

_Lancet, The_, 129

_Land Leaguers, The_, 51

---- analysis of, 270, 301, 302

Landor, Walter Savage, as Boythorn, 119

Lane, John, his Trollope reprints, 60 _note_

Lansdowne, Lord, as member of the Athenæum, 143

---- Carlyle introduced to, 127

---- his acquaintance with Trollope, 140

---- his support of Macaulay, 246

Lardner, Dionysius, Thackeray on, 148

*Larochejaquelin, Henri de, 91-4

_Last Chronicle of Barset, The_, 105, 110, 112, 305

---- analysis of, 236-8

_La Vendée_, analysis of, 85-100, 219

---- publication of, 102, 103, 105

Layard, Sir A. H., founds the Cosmopolitan, 153

*Leatherham, Sir Richard, 194

Lecky, W. E. H., his eighteenth-century studies, 104, 137, 292

Leech, Master of the Rolls, 267

Leeds, Bull Inn, 192

Le Fanu, J. S., Trollope’s acquaintance with, 167

*Lefroy, Ferdinand, 303

Leighton, Sir Frederick, illustrates _Romola_, 183

---- in Florence, 120

*Lescure, 91-3

Lever, Charles, as Consul, 163

---- avoids Mrs. Trollope, 55

---- _Charles O’Malley_, 48, 53

---- _Harry Lorrequer_, 53

---- his friendship with Trollope, 48, 50, 166, 167

---- his influence on Trollope, 258, 271, 292

---- illustrated by Cruikshank, 138

---- in Florence, 119, 121

---- _Sir Brook Fossbrooke_, 79

Leveson-Gower, Hon. Frederick, at the Cosmopolitan, 154

---- in Florence, 120

Lewes, George Henry, as a critic, 132

---- edits the _Fortnightly_, 176

---- his influence on Trollope, 172, 182
_See also_ George Eliot

---- on _North America_, 244

Lewis, thrashed by Trollope, 17

Lewis, Mrs. Arthur, 157

Lewis, Wyndham, supports Disraeli at Maidstone, 246

Liddon, H. P., at Highclere, 289

_Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy_, 38

_Life of Palmerston_, publication of, 247, 255

Lincoln, Lord, 141

Lincolnshire, wheat produce of, 5

_Linda Tressel_, analysis of, 233, 234

---- publication of, 230, 233

Linton, Mrs. Lynn, influence of, 185, 254

Lisbon, Embassy at, 172

Liverpool, Hawthorne, Consul at, 163

Liverpool, Lord, his Irish policy, 69

London University, 183

Longley, headmaster of Harrow, 17

Longman, William, as publisher to Trollope, 110, 114, 132

Lonsdale, Lord, his kindness to Trollope, 36

*Lopez, Ferdinand, 265-7, 279

Loti, Pierre, at the Cosmopolitan Club, 173

_Lottery of Marriage, The_, 33

Louis XVI, fall of, 88, 90

Louis Napoleon, Prince, at Gore House, 128

Louis Philippe, Mrs. Trollope’s interview with, 34, 35, 86

Lover, Samuel, _Handy Andy_, 52

*Low, Mr., 257

Lowe, Robert, at Winchester, 17

*Lowther, Mary, 240

Lowther Castle, Trollope at, 36

*Lufton, Lord, 137, 138, 237, 238

*Lynch, Anastatia, 79, 80

*Lynch, Barry, 78-80

*Lynch, Simeon, 78-80

Lytton, Lord, 172

---- in Paris, 34

Lytton, second Lord, Trollope’s acquaintance with, 182

Maberley, Colonel, his opinion of Trollope, 23-25, 36, 39, 40, 144

Macaulay, Lord, 104, 137, 292

---- as a conversationalist, 142

---- as member of the Athenæum, 143

---- M.P. for Calne, 246

---- on Bertrand Barère, 95, 96

---- on Carlyle, 121

*Macdermot, Feemy, 64-77

*Macdermot, Larry, 63-78

Macdermot, Thady, 64-77

_Macdermots of Ballycloran, The_, autobiographical element in, 56

---- plot of, discussed, 61-78, 95, 130, 152, 191, 274, 291

---- publication of, 60, 81, 168

Mackenzie, Dr. R. Shelton, on _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_, 270

Mackintosh, Sir James, 143

*Macleod, Alice, 210

Macleod, Rev. Norman, returns _Rachel Ray_, 227, 228

*Macleod, Sir Archibald and Lady, 210

Madrid, 49

*Maggott, Mick, 281

_Magpie, The_, 29, 32

*Maguire, Jeremiah, 234

Mahoon, Ogorman, duellist, 260

Maidstone, Disraeli M.P. for, 246

Maine, H. S., 172

Malta, Trollope at, 124

Manchester, See of, 114

Manners-Sutton, Archbishop, votes for Dr. Butler, 15

Marie-Antoinette, Queen, death of, 96

*Marrable, Walter, 240, 241

Marryat, Captain, influence of, 271

Marylebone Cricket Club, 145

Mason, seizure of, 201

*Mason, Lucius, 189-198

*Mason, Sir Joseph, 189-198, 295

Maurice, F. D., 167

*Maxwell, 213

Maxwell, Marmaduke, contests Beverley, 248, 250

Maxwell, Sir W. Stirling, founds the Cosmopolitan, 153

Mayenne, Duke of, 94

*M‘Keon, Mrs., 76

Meade, Hon. Robert, 154, 270 _note_

Meath hounds, the, 135

*Medlicot, Giles, 277

Meetkerke family, the, 27, 36

Meetkerke, Penelope, 28

Melbourne, Trollope in, 276

Melbourne, Lord, his Irish policy, 41

---- promises post to T. Anthony Trollope, 19

*Melmotte, 297, 298

Melville, Whyte, influence of, 291

---- Taylor on, 145, 146

Meredith, George, school of, 305, 306

Merivale, Charles, John, and Herman, their friendship with Trollope, 17

Merivale, _History of the Romans under the Empire_, 165

Methodists, the, 223

Methuen, Lord, strength of, 141

*Milborough, Lady, 293

Millais, Sir J. E., his friendship with Trollope, 128, 170, 203, 300, 308

---- illustrates Trollope’s books, 137, 138, 140, 203, 204

---- in Florence, 120

Milnes, Monckton. _See_ Lord Houghton

Milton family, the, 27, 36

Milton, Henry, career of, 7

Milton, John, _Paradise Lost_, 186

Milton, Rev. William, 205

---- as an unsuccessful inventor, 6

---- his wife, 15

Mirabeau, on Robespierre, 98

_Miss Mackenzie_, analysis of, 234

*Moggs, Ontario, 254

Mohl, Madame, salon of, 34

Moliere, quoted, 228

*Monk, Lady, 214-216

*Monk, Mr., 258

Montagu Square, London, Trollope’s home in, 279, 296, 300, 306, 307

Montgomery, Alfred, his social services to Trollope, 140, 142

Moore, A. W., 270 _note_

Moore, Thomas, at the Athenæum, 143

---- on Crowe, 8

Morgan, Lady, her Irish novels, 54

Morier, Sir Robert, founds the Cosmopolitan, 153

Morland, George, 75, 104

Morley of Blackburn, Lord, on the _Fortnightly_, 173, 176, 180

_Morning Post, The_, Stuart, correspondent of, 121

*Moulder, 192-9

Moyville Vandeleur family, the, 121

_Mr. Scarborough’s Family_, analysis of, 298

Mudie’s Library, 113, 137

Murray, Grenville, as diplomatist, 163

---- enters the Foreign Office, 19

---- in Florence, 119

Murray, John, 107

---- on _Don Juan_, 110

Murray, John, the second, his influence on behalf of Trollope, 18

---- Milton, reader for, 7 _note_

Murrell, Dr., 307

Musset, Alfred de, quoted, 130

_Mysterious Assassin, The_, 68

Napoleon I, Whig enthusiasm for, 87, 98

Napoleon III, 34

---- policy of, 201

Nashoba, 13

Natal, government of, 285

_Nation, The_, 68

Neate, Charles, supports Thackeray at Oxford, 246-8

*Neefit, Polly, 253, 254

*Neefit, tailor, 252

*Neville, Fred, 301

Newby, publisher of _The Macdermots_, 61

Newcastle-on-Tyne, Morley, M.P. for, 180

New College, Oxford, Fellowships of, 7, 8, 10, 107, 205

New Forest, the, 3

New Harmony, Indiana, 11

Newman, Cardinal, his influence on Trollope, 84, 85

Newton, Ralph, 251-4

*Newton, Rev. Gregory, 253

New York, Trollope in, 127, 270

New Zealand, Trollope in, 276, 289

_Nina Balatka_, analysis of, 231

---- anonymity of, 232

Nisbet, Hugh, Australian stories of, 278

_Noble Jilt, The_, germ of _Can You Forgive Her?_ 157, 208

Nolan, “Tom the Devil,” 57

Nore, mutiny at the, 19

Norfolk, Duke of, 248

_North America_, critical estimate of, 200-202, 244

North End, Harting, 299, 300

Northwick, Lord, landlord of Julians, Harrow, 10, 14

Nott, Dr., 224, 225

Nottingham Assizes, 199

Nubar Bey, on Trollope, 123, 124

Nuremberg, 233

O’Brien, Sir Patrick, M.P., on _The Macdermots_, 61

O’Brien, Smith, influence of, 66

O’Connell, Daniel, ascendency of, 41, 78

_O’Conors of Castle Conor, The_, publication of, 271

Offley’s Hotel, 156

O’Flaherty, Edmund, 82

*O’Hara, Mrs., 301

_Old Man’s Love, An_, 301

Oliphant, Laurence, 306

---- on _Nina Balatka_, 232

*Omnium, Duke of, 105, 195, 209, 259, 264-8, 290

_Once a Week_, _Vicar of Bullhampton_, written for, 239

*Ongar, Lady, 221

Orange River Free State, 285

_Orley Farm_, analysis of, 188-199, 202, 204-8, 238, 261, 290

---- popularity of, 185, 188

---- publication of, 271

---- quoted, 45

*Orme, Mrs., 198

*Orme, Sir Peregrine, 195-8

*Osborne, Colonel, 293

Ouida, on the _Fortnightly_, 179

Owen, Robert, his land in Indiana, 11

Oxford, contested by Thackeray, 164, 245-8

---- Trollope visits, 84

Page, Robert, _Hermsprang_, 187

*Palliser, Lady Mary, 268

*Palliser, Plantagenet, 214-217, 259, 264, 265, 290

_Pall Mall Gazette, The_, foundation of, 168, 171

Palmer, Roundell, at Winchester, 17

Palmerston, Lord, ministry of, 175, 177

---- on mankind, 207

---- policy of, 42, 201

Palmerston, Lord, Trollope’s monograph on. See _Life of Palmerston_

Paris, Mrs. Trollope in, 28, 33-5, 53

---- social character of, 89

---- Trollope in, 255

*Parker, Sexty, 267

Parnell, C. S., 58

Pattle, Virginia, 140

*Peacocke, Mr., 303

Peel, Sir Robert, as Premier, 166

---- bestows laureateship on Tennyson, 154

---- his Irish policy, 41, 42, 69, 82

---- recalled by Gresham, 265

---- sociability of, 141

---- Tory revolt against, 5

Pelham family, the, 176

Peninsular & Oriental Company, the, 124

Penny Readings, Trollope’s interest in, 300

Petersfield, 299

Petre, H., his staghounds, 169, 197

_Petticoat Government_, 33

_Phineas Finn_, autobiographical element in, 37, 56

---- Duke of Omnium, 195

---- hunting element in, 170, 197

---- political element in, 176, 255-265, 269, 271, 290

---- publication of, 257, 295

_Phineas Redux_, analysis of, 265, 269

---- publication of, 257, 276

“Phiz,” illustrations by, 137

Pigott, E. F. S., at George Eliot’s, 183

---- in Florence, 120, 121

---- on Landor, 119

---- on Trollope and Thackeray, 156, 165

---- reconciled to Dicey, 307

---- supports the _Fortnightly_, 174

Pliny, on plague, 129

Poole, Waring, M.P. for, 174, 175

Poor Law in Ireland, the, 43

Pope, Alexander, _Pastorals_, 186

---- quoted, 67

Portendic, 288

Portrush, 82

Post Office, the, history of, 22

---- its literary lights, 152

---- pillar-boxes introduced by Trollope, 114

---- reorganised by Freeling, 21

---- Trollope as an official at, 21-6, 36, 39, 106, 117, 131, 249, 254, 282

---- Trollope as surveyor of, 57-9, 113, 134, 205, 229

---- Trollope becomes a junior clerk in, 18-20

---- Trollope lectures at, 118

---- Trollope retires from, 231, 256, 257, 270, 300

---- Yates as an official at, 148, 151

Postal Treaty with America, arranged by Trollope, 270, 273

Postal Treaty with Egypt, arranged by Trollope, 122-4, 273

Prague, 231

Preston, 115

*Prime, Mrs., 229

_Prime Minister, The_, analysis of, 265-9, 279

---- publication of, 216

Prinsep, Henry Thoby, his kindness to Trollope, 140

Prinsep, Val, his friendship with Trollope, 140

Prior, Matthew, 163

Probat’s Hotel, 143

*Prong, Mr., 230, 233, 235, 243

*Proudie, Bishop, 220

*Proudie, Mrs., 206, 227

---- Trollope on, 111, 114, 305

_Publisher and his Friends, A_, 18

*Puddleham, Rev. Mr., 241

_Punch_, Bloomerism in, 12

---- _The Naggletons_, 111

Pycroft, Rev. James, on Trollope, 110, 114

Quain, Sir Richard, at the Cosmopolitan, 154

---- at the Garrick, 146, 150

---- his friendship with Trollope, 255, 266

---- on Trollope, 171

Quin, Dr., his friendship with Trollope, 154, 155

*Quiverful family, the, 105

_Ralph the Heir_, analysis of, 251-6, 269

Ramsay, Dean, his _Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character_, 54

*Ray, Mrs., 229

_Rachel Ray_, critical analysis of, 227-230, 234, 294

---- political element of, 247, 256

---- publication of, 227, 228, 236, 294

Reade, Charles, at the Arundel Club, 156

---- _Hard Cash_, 282

---- his relations with Trollope and Blackwood, 284, 285

---- _It’s Never Too Late to Mend_, 275, 278

---- Trollope compared with, 128, 129

Reading, Dickens refuses to contest, 245

Récamier, Madame, salon of, 34

Reform Bill, the, 246

Reform Club, influence of the, 246, 247

---- in Trollope’s political novels, 258, 261

_Relics of General Chassé_, publication of, 271

Reunion Club, the, 156

_Revue des Deux Mondes, La_, 173

*Reynolds, Joe, 72-5

Richardson, Samuel, his analysis of feminine character, 187

---- Trollope compared with, 110, 242, 305

Richmond, Duke of, as Postmaster-General, 21

Ripon, See of, 114

Rivers-Wilson, Sir Charles, at the Garrick, 146

*Robarts, Lucy, 131, 137, 138, 187, 205, 294

*Robarts, Mark, 137, 236

Robespierre, Carlyle and Trollope on, 89, 96-100

Rodney, Admiral Lord, 18

Rogers, Samuel, on Crowe, 8

Roland, 90

Romaine, Rev. Mr., 226

Roman Catholicism, Trollope’s attitude to, 84-7

Romilly, Colonel Frederick, as duellist, 260

Romilly, Samuel, 143

Roothings, the, 169, 197

Rotherham, 54

*Round, 193

Rousseau, J. J., 92

*Rowan, Luke, 230

*Rowley, Sir Marmaduke, 126

*Rubb, Mr., 234

Rusden, Mr., 308

Russel, Alexander, Trollope meets, 126

Russell, Lord John, 30

---- his Irish policy, 82

---- his Jew Bill, 141

---- ministry of, 255

Russell, Lord William, trial of, 9

Russell, Reginald, as duellist, 260

Russell, William Howard, at the Garrick, 146, 149

---- in Dublin, 167

Sala, G. A., as editor, 257

---- on Thackeray, 165

Salisbury, depicted in _The Warden_, 103, 108, 111, 236

Sand, George, Mrs. Trollope on, 14

*Santerre, 96

_Saturday Review, The_, on Australia, 275

---- on _Rachel Ray_, 243

---- on _North America_, 244

---- writers for, 172, 176, 235

Savage Club, the, 156

*Scarborough, Augustus and Mountjoy, 299

*Scatcherd family, the, 105

Schreiner, Olive, _The Story of an African Farm_, 286

_Scotsman, The_, Russel of, 126

Scott, Sir Walter, 53

---- his loose historical method, 94

---- _Ivanhoe_, 25

---- _Waverley_, 62

*Scroope, Earl, 301

*Scruby, 213

Scudamore, F. I., at the Post Office, 151

---- on Trollope, 125

Seeley, J. R., at Highclere, 289

Semiramis, Queen, 209

Seton, Sir Bruce, at the Garrick, 146

Sewell, Elizabeth Missing, novels of, 30, 102

Sewell family, the, 107

Seymour, Alfred, career of, 175

Seymour, Danby, supports the _Fortnightly_, 174, 175

Shaftesbury, Seymour, M.P. for, 175

Shaftesbury, Earl of, his friendship with the Trollopes, 37, 38, 83

Shakespeare, William, George Eliot compared with, 185

---- _Hamlet_, 62, 76

---- his art of contrast, 62, 74, 237

---- _Merchant of Venice_, quoted, 277

---- _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, 104

---- _Othello_, 71

*Shand, Dick, 281-2

Sheehan, Remy, 57

Sheffield, 54

---- Broadhead at, 178

Shelley, P. B., Trelawny’s _Reminiscences_ of, 119

Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, 285

Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Lord, on Cicero, 291

Sherwood, Mrs., novels of, 102

*Silverbridge, Lord, 268

Simeon, Charles, 223

Simpson’s, Strand, 156

Skerrett, Henrietta, 30

*Skulpit family, the, 108

*Slide, Quintus, 263

Slidell, seizure of, 201

Sloane, Mr., his acquaintance with the Trollopes, 83

*Slope, Mr., 112, 114, 225, 227, 228, 230, 235

_Small House at Allington, The_, autobiographical element in, 26

---- Lily Dale, 137, 187

---- publication of, 160, 184, 186, 208, 271

Smith, Albert, 26

---- influence of, 152

Smith, George, finances the _P.M.G._, 172

---- his friendship with Trollope, 140, 161, 168, 172

---- reads _Jane Eyre_, 132

Smith & Elder, Messrs., Trollope’s relations with, 128, 131, 132

*Smith, Mrs., 281

Smith, Sydney, his acquaintance with Trollope, 140

---- on Ireland, 40

---- quotes _The Vicar of Wrexhill_, 30

---- succeeds Coleridge as talker, 142

Smollett, Tobias, novels of, 137, 292

Smythe, George, his duel in 1852, 260

Society Club, the, 143

Somers, Lady, 140

Sotheran, Messrs., 307

_South Africa_, reception of, 286, 287

Southey, Robert, as a Tory, 86

Spain, Trollope in, 124

_Spectator, The_, Hutton of, 232

---- on _Rachel Ray_, 243

---- on _South Africa_, 287

_Speeches of Charles Dickens_, 151 _note_.

Spencer, Herbert, at George Eliot’s, 183

Spenser, Edmund, 25

Spezzia, Lever at, 119, 121

*Sprout, 267

*Sprugeon, 267

Stamford, Trollopes at, 5

_Standard, The_, Tom Austin on, 177

*Standish, Lady Laura, 258-264

*Stanhope, Dr., 224

*Stanhope family, the, 105

Stanhope, Lord, Trollope meets Disraeli at, 280

Stanley of Alderley, Lord, grants Trollope leave of absence, 199

---- supports Lord de Grey, 42

Stapleton, near Bristol, 6

*Staubach, Frau, 233, 234

*Staveley, Madeline, 196-8

*Steinmarc, Peter, 233

Stephen, Fitzjames, 172

Sterling Club, the, Trollope at, 142

Steventon, Hampshire, 6

Stewart, James, 250

St. Helier’s, Jersey, first pillar-box erected at, 114

St. Ives, contested by Bulwer-Lytton, 245

St. Just, denounced by Barrère, 96

St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Trollope at, 21, 39, 55

Stone, Marcus, at the Arts Club, 158

_St. Paul’s Magazine, The_, edited by Trollope, 257

Strangford, George, 7th Viscount, 172

Strangford, Percy, 8th Viscount, 172

_Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson,
The_, critical estimate of, 160, 161, 220

-- its reception in America, 270

Stuart, James Montgomery, in Florence, 121

*Stumfold, Rev. and Mrs., 234

Suez, postal arrangements at, 124

Suez Canal, the, 125

Sully, Duc de, 207

_Summer in Western France, A_, publication of, 32

Sunbury, Trollope at, 17

Surtees, novels of, 133

Sussex, Duke of, supports the Garrick Club, 143

Sutherland, Sir Thomas, 124 _note_

Sykes, Christopher, M.P. for Beverley, 249

Tait, Archbishop, entertains Trollope, 306

_Tales of All Countries_, analysis of, 85, 124

---- offered to the _Cornhill_, 132

---- publication of, 271

Talfourd family, the, 156

Tallyhosier, a Norman, 3

*Tappitt, Mr., 230

Tasmania, Trollope in, 276

Taylor, Sir Charles, at the Garrick, 145

Taylor, Sir Henry, career of, 18

---- his friendship with the Trollopes, 27, 142

---- in Paris, 34

---- introduces Carlyle to Lord Holland, 127

Taylor, Tom, on Thackeray, 165

Tennyson, Lord, at the Cosmopolitan, 154

---- at George Eliot’s, 183

---- popularity of, 186

---- quoted, 215

Terry, Kate, 157

Tewfik, Khedive, 123

Thackeray, W. M., as a member of the Garrick, 142, 144, 147-9, 156

---- as editor of the _Cornhill_, 164, 257

---- contests Oxford, 164, 245-8

---- death of, 165, 182, 307

---- _Denis Duval_, 302

---- Dickens on, 151 _note_

---- _Henry Esmond_, 120

---- his appreciation of Trollope, 117, 133, 183

---- his attempts to enter official life, 131, 161-3

---- his opinion of women, 206

---- his portrait of Trelawny, 119

---- his title used for the _P.M.G._, 168

---- in America, 163

---- _Lovel the Widower_, 139

---- on Dickens, 150, 151, 187

---- _Pendennis_, 148, 172

---- _Roundabout Papers_, 139, 161

---- satirises Calcraft, 57

---- Trollope compared with, and influenced by,
110, 128, 130, 145, 157, 160, 220, 243, 305

---- Trollope’s estimate of, 161-5, 170, 171

---- Trollope’s relations with, 128-136, 139

_Thackeray_, Men of Letters Series, written by Trollope, 164

---- quoted, 247

Thatched House Club, the, 158

Theocritus, 186

Thiers, Adolphe, at the Cosmopolitan, 155

*Thorne, Mary, 105

*Thorne, Squire, 105

Thorold, Algar, editor of Trollope reprints, 60

_Three Clerks, The_, autobiographical element in, 25, 31, 37

---- incurs official displeasure, 117

---- Katie Woodward, 131, 133

---- popularity of, 183, 185

Thucydides, 129

Tilley, Sir John and Lady, 28, 46, 307

*Tim, 73

_Time_, article on Trollope in, 152

_Times, The_, correspondence in, 103

---- Delane of, 126, 296

---- on _Australia_, 275, 276

---- on _Rachel Ray_, 242

---- on _South Africa_, 286

---- Russell of, 146

---- Trollope’s obituary in, 308

*Todd, Miss, 234

_Tom Brown_, 138

Trades Unionism, Trollope on, 178

Tralee Assizes, the, Trollope attends, 58, 60

Transvaal, the, 285

*Tregear, Frank, 268

Trelawny, literary works of, 119

Trench, R. C., his acquaintance with Trollope, 120

*Trendellsohn, Anton, 231, 232

*Trevelyan, Louis, 294

*Trevelyan, Mr. and Mrs., 293-6

Trevelyan, Mrs., father of, 126

Trevelyan, Sir Charles, as Sir Gregory Hardlines, 118

---- his friendship with Trollope, 166

---- his method of work, 116

Trieste, Lever at, 119

Trollope family, the, origin of their name, 3

Trollope, Admiral Sir Henry, 18

Trollope, Anthony [his literary works will be found under their own titles]

---- his birth, 7

---- his boyhood and education, 12-20

---- enters the Post Office, 18, 21

---- his independence of character, 23, 32

---- his relations with Rowland Hill, 23, 39, 117, 118, 199

---- his classical attainments, 24, 284, 290

---- his literary tastes, 25, 112

---- his mother’s influence, 28-39, 52, 54, 83, 101, 223

---- in Paris, 34

---- his life in Ireland, 37, 40-60, 84, 128, 134, 206

---- his letters in the _Examiner_, 37, 81, 128

---- his love of hunting, 45, 46, 56, 168, 197, 250

---- his officialism, 49, 55, 117, 132, 161, 166, 254

---- his marriage, 54

---- his Post Office inspectorship, 57-9, 73, 81, 113, 137

---- his first novel, 60

---- in Florence, 83, 118-122

---- his religious tendencies, 83-88, 106, 233-244

---- his position as a Victorian novelist, 88, 128, 161, 187, 291, 306

---- his method of work, 101-4, 115, 116, 125, 235

---- his conservatism, 106

---- his clerical portraiture, 106, 111, 114

---- his literary style, 107, 185, 191, 197

---- his postal work in Egypt, 122-5, 273

---- visits Scotland, 125, 126

---- visits the West Indies, 126, 127

---- his friendship with Millais, 128, 140, 203-5

---- his connection with the _Cornhill_, 128-137, 160

---- his home at Waltham Cross, 135, 168, 278, 299

---- his entry into London Society, 139-142, 167, 182

---- as a club-man, 143-159

---- his connection with the _P.M.G._, 168-172

---- his pessimism, 170, 171

---- his continental visits, 173

---- his connection with Messrs. Chapman & Hall, 173, 177, 179, 199, 228, 275

---- his connection with the _Fortnightly_, 174-181, 217

---- his physical appearance, 191

---- his visits to America, 199-202, 270

---- his attitude on feminine subjects, 205-211, 238

---- his work for Messrs. Blackwood, 232-4, 284, 290

---- contests Beverley, 245-251, 267

---- his sentimentalism, 255

---- retires from the Post Office, 256, 270

---- his political novels, 255-7, 264

---- on journalism, 263

---- concludes a postal treaty in Washington, 270

---- his reception in America, 270-273

---- visits Australia and New Zealand, 274-8, 280

---- settles in Montagu Square, 279, 306

---- visits South Africa, 282-9

---- visits Highclere, 289

---- his satirical work, 293, 296

---- life at the Grange, 299

---- his death and burial, 307, 308

---- his kindliness, 307

Trollope, Cecilia, 28

Trollope, Emily, death of, 14

Trollope, Frances, befriended by Taylor, 142

---- _Fashionable Life_, 14

---- girlhood of, 6, 7, 15

---- her attack on Evangelicalism, 223-225, 235, 251, 283

---- her influence on her son Anthony, 25, 27-38,
62, 78, 101, 205, 223, 224, 251

---- in Florence, 55

---- literary career of, 14, 27-38, 54

---- marriage of, 8, 27

---- visits America and writes _The Domestic
Manners of the Americans_, 13, 14, 201, 202

Trollope, Henry, death of, 14

---- edits the _Magpie_, 32

Trollope, Henry, travels of, 12, 13

Trollope, Sir Andrew, 3

Trollope, Sir John, 166

---- his interest in his cousins, 27, 28

---- _See_ Lord Kesteven

Trollope, Sir Thomas, 4th Baronet, 5, 18

Trollope, Thomas Adolphus, as a school-master, 20, 291

---- as a conversationalist, 153

---- career of, 9

---- early promise of, 28, 32

---- his influence on Anthony, 45, 113, 188, 245

---- in Florence, 184

---- on _Cicero_, 291

Trollope, Thomas Anthony, as a barrister, 7-10

---- death of, 14, 28, 33

---- failure of, 10-14, 28, 210

---- his _Encyclopœdia Ecclesiastica_, 107

---- his wife. _See_ Frances Trollope

---- Lord Melbourne’s promise to, 19

---- portrait of, 9

*Trowbridge, Marquis of, 241

Turf Club, the, 158, 159

Turnbull, M.P., 267

Twickenham, Pope at, 186

Twyford, 106

Tyndall, John, at George Eliot’s, 183

_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, 31

*Underwood, Clarissa, 253

*Underwood, Sir Thomas, 252, 254

Upton, William Carey, 250

*Urmand, Adrian, 219

*Usbech, Jonathan, 189

*Usbech, Miriam, 189

*Ussher, Myles, 69-77

*Vavasor, Alice, 210-217, 296

*Vavasor, George, 211-217, 263

*Vavasor, John, 210

*Vavasor, Kate, 212

*Vavasor, Squire, 210

Venables, G. S., on the _Saturday_, 172

Vendean rising, the, 93-9

Vergniaud, 90

Versailles, 92

Viaud, L. M. J., 173

_Vicar of Bullhampton, The_, analysis of, 239-242

---- publication of, 239

---- reception of, 242-4

_Vicar of Wrexhill, The_, attack on Evangelicalism in,
29, 30, 54, 84, 86, 101, 225, 235, 283

Victoria, Queen, 69, 256

---- buys Leighton’s “Cimabue’s Madonna,” 120

Vienna, Mrs. Trollope in, 35

---- Congress, the, 57, 85

Vinerian Scholarship, the, 10

Virtue, Messrs., publish the _St. Paul’s Magazine_, 257

Voltaire, quoted, 92

Voss, Michel and George, 218, 219

Vyner, Sir Robert, 21

Wabash River, 11

Walkley, A. B., 152

Waltham Cross, Trollope’s home at, 135, 142, 168, 278, 299

Ward, Plumer, novels of, 110, 272

Ward hunt, the, 135

_Warden, The_, clerical portraiture in, 102-112

---- journalists in, 263

---- Mrs. Trollope on, 32

---- popularity of, 257, 291

---- publication of, 29, 102, 103, 114, 132, 135, 136, 149, 152, 160, 168

Waring, Captain Walter, 174

Waring, Charles, supports the _Fortnightly_, 174-6

Warwick, the king-maker, 94

Washington, British Embassy at, 163

---- Trollope in, 127, 201, 270, 273

Waterford, 82

Watts, G. F., at the Cosmopolitan, 154

---- in Florence, 120

---- Trollope’s acquaintance with, 140

_Way We Live Now, The_, analysis of, 293, 296-8

*Webb, Mr., 76

Wedgwood, Josiah, 249

Wellington, Duke of, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 69, 83

---- at Cork, 48

---- ministry of, 176

Wesley, John, 223

*Westerman, 97

West Indies, postal treaty with, 127, 288

_West Indies and the Spanish Main, The_, publication of, 127

*Westmacott, Mr., 254

Westminster, Morley contests, 180

Westminster Hall, Watts’ cartoon in, 120

*Wharton, Emily, 266

White’s Club, 141

_Widow Barnaby, The_, 33, 213

_Widow Wedded, The_, 33

William the Conqueror, names the Trollope family, 3

Willis & Sotheran, Messrs., 307

Willis, W. H., rejected from the Garrick, 149

Winchester Cathedral, 224

---- College, Trollope family at, 7, 12, 16, 17, 50, 84, 86

---- St. Cross Hospital, 106

Wood, Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn, in the hunting field, 169, 197

Wood, Mrs. Henry, influence of, 188, 241

*Woodward, Kate, 117, 131

Wordsworth, William, 154

---- Thomas Anthony Trollope on, 8

_World, The_, Celebrities at Home, 152

*Wortle, Dr., 303

Wright, Frances, her friendship with the Trollopes, 11

Wright, Whitaker, 297

*Wyndham, Fanny, 78-80

Wyndham, Percy, his Wiltshire estates, 175

Wynne, Sir Watkin William, Methuen’s feat on, 141

Yates, Edmund, as a Post Office official, 148, 151

---- as editor, 257

---- _Black Sheep_, 146

---- _Broken to Harness_, 149

---- coolness between Trollope and, 149-152

---- his feud with Thackeray, 147-9

---- literary method of, 149, 150

Yonge, Charlotte Mary, her fiction, 6, 30, 102, 187, 223, 224

_Yorkshire Post, The_, 249

Young, Arthur, _Tour in Ireland_, 52

*Zamenoy, 231

Zulu War, the, 285

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she, although now nothing but his friend, still met him
occasionally and corresponded frequently with him, and how she
passed her time in the midst of her miniature court. This work
enables us to realise the very genuine affection which Napoleon
possessed for his first wife, an affection which lasted till death
closed her eyes in her lonely hermitage at La Malmaison, and until
he went to expiate at Saint Helena his rashness in braving all
Europe. Comparatively little is known of the period covering
Josephine’s life after her divorce, and yet M. Turquan has found
much to tell us that is very interesting; for the ex-Empress in her
two retreats, Navarre and La Malmaison, was visited by many
celebrated people, and after the Emperor’s downfall was so
ill-judged as to welcome and fete several of the vanquished hero’s
late friends, now his declared enemies. The story of her last
illness and death forms one of the most interesting chapters in
this most complete work upon the first Empress of the French.

NAPOLEON IN CARICATURE: 1795-1821. By A. M. BROADLEY. With an
Introductory Essay on Pictorial Satire as a Factor in Napoleonic
History, by J. HOLLAND ROSE, Litt. D. (Cantab.). With 24 full-page
Illustrations in Colour and upwards of 200 in Black and White from rare
and unique originals. 2 Vols. Demy 8vo. 42s. net.

_Also an Edition de Luxe._ 10 guineas net.

NAPOLEON’S LAST CAMPAIGN IN GERMANY. By F. LORAINE PETRE. Author of
“Napoleon’s Campaign in Poland,” “Napoleon’s Conquest of Prussia,” etc.
With 17 Maps and Plans. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ In the author’s two first histories of Napoleon’s campaigns (1806
and 1807) the Emperor is at his greatest as a soldier. The third
(1809) showed the commencement of the decay of his genius. Now, in
1813, he has seriously declined. The military judgment of Napoleon,
the general, is constantly fettered by the pride and obstinacy of
Napoleon, the Emperor. The military principles which guided him up
to 1807 are frequently abandoned; he aims at secondary objectives,
or mere geographical points, instead of solely at the destruction
of the enemy’s army; he hesitates and fails to grasp the true
situation in a way that was never known in his earlier campaigns.
Yet frequently, as at Bautsen and Dresden, his genius shines with
all its old brilliance.

The campaign of 1813 exhibits the breakdown of his over-centralised
system of command, which left him without subordinates capable of
exercising semi-independent command over portions of armies which
had now grown to dimensions approaching those of our own day.

The autumn campaign is a notable example of the system of interior
lines, as opposed to that of strategical envelopment. It marks,
too, the real downfall of Napoleon’s power, for, after the fearful
destruction of 1813, the desperate struggle of 1814, glorious
though it was, could never have any real probability of success.

FOOTPRINTS OF FAMOUS AMERICANS IN PARIS. By JOHN JOSEPH CONWAY, M.A.
With 32 Full-page Illustrations. With an Introduction by Mrs. JOHN LANE.
Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ Franklin, Jefferson, Munroe, Tom Paine, La Fayette, Paul Jones,
etc., etc., the most striking figures of a heroic age, working out
in the City of Light the great questions for which they stood, are
dealt with here. Longfellow the poet of the domestic affections;
matchless Margaret Fuller who wrote so well of women in the
nineteenth century; Whistler master of American artists;
Saint-Gaudens chief of American sculptors; Rumford, most
picturesque of scientific knight-errants and several others get a
chapter each for their lives and achievements in Paris. A new and
absorbing interest is opened up to visitors. Their trip to
Versailles becomes more pleasurable when they realise what Franklyn
did at that brilliant court. The Place de la Bastille becomes a
sacred place to Americans realizing that the principles of the
young republic brought about the destruction of the vilest old
dungeon in the world. The Seine becomes silvery to the American
conjuring up that bright summer morning when Robert Fulton started
from the Place de la Concorde in the first steam boat. The Louvre
takes on a new attraction from the knowledge that it houses the
busts of Washington and Franklyn and La Fayette by Houdon. The
Luxembourg becomes a greater temple of art to him who knows that it
holds Whistler’s famous portrait of his mother. Even the
weather-beaten bookstalls by the banks of the Seine become
beautiful because Hawthorne and his son loitered among them on
sunny days sixty years ago. The book has a strong literary flavour.
Its history is enlivened with anecdote. It is profusely
illustrated.

MEMORIES OF JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER: The Artist. By THOMAS R. WAY. Author
of “The Lithographs of J. M. Whistler,” etc. With numerous
Illustrations. Demy 4to. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ This volume contains about forty illustrations, including an
unpublished etching drawn by Whistler and bitten in by Sir Frank
Short, A.R.A., an original lithograph sketch, seven lithographs in
colour drawn by the Author upon brown paper, and many in black and
white. The remainder are facsimiles by photo-lithography. In most
cases the originals are drawings and sketches by Whistler which
have never been published before, and are closely connected with
the matter of the book. The text deals with the Author’s memories
of nearly twenty year’s close association with Whistler, and he
endeavours to treat only with the man as an artist, and perhaps,
especially as a lithographer.
[38] Also an EDITION DE LUXE on hand-made paper, with the etching
printed from the original plate. Limited to 50 copies.

HISTORY OF THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY: A Record of a Hundred Years’ Work
in the Cause of Music. Compiled by MYLES BIRKET FOSTER, F.R.A.M., etc.
With 16 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ As the Philharmonic Society, whose Centenary is now being
celebrated, is and has ever been connected, during its long
existence, with the history of musical composition and production,
not only in this country, but upon the Continent, and as every
great name in Europe and America in the last hundred years (within
the realm of high-class music), has been associated with it, this
volume will, it is believed, prove to be an unique work, not only
as a book of reference, but also as a record of the deepest
interest to all lovers of good music. It is divided into ten
Decades, with a small narrative account of the principal happenings
in each, to which are added the full programmes of every concert,
and tables showing, at a glance, the number and nationality of the
performers and composers, with other particulars of interest. The
book is made of additional value by means of rare illustrations of
MS. works specially composed for the Society, and of letters from
Wagner, Berlioz, Brahms, Liszt, etc., etc., written to the
Directors and, by their permission, reproduced for the first time.

IN PORTUGAL. By AUBREY F. G. BELL. Author of “The Magic of Spain.” Demy
8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ The guide-books give full details of the marvellous convents,
gorgeous palaces, and solemn temples of Portugal, and no attempt is
here made to write complete descriptions of them, the very name of
some of them being omitted. But the guide-books too often treat
Portugal as a continuation, almost as a province of Spain. It is
hoped that this little book may give some idea of the individual
character of the country, of the quaintnesses of its cities, and of
peasant life in its remoter districts. While the utterly opposed
characters of the two peoples must probably render the divorce
between Spain and Portugal eternal, and reduce hopes of union to
the idle dreams of politicians. Portugal in itself contains an
infinite variety. Each of the eight provinces (more especially
those of the _alemtejanos_, _minhotos_ and _beiröes_) preserves
many peculiarities of language, customs, and dress; and each will,
in return for hardships endured, give to the traveller many a day
of delight and interest.

A TRAGEDY IN STONE, AND OTHER PAPERS. By LORD REDESDALE, G.C.V.O.,
K.C.C., etc. Demy 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

⁂ “From the author of ‘Tales of Old Japan’ his readers always hope
for more about Japan, and in this volume they will find it. The
earlier papers, however, are not to be passed over.”--_Times._

⁂ “Lord Redesdale’s present volume consists of scholarly essays on
a variety of subjects of historic, literary and artistic
appeal.”--_Standard._

⁂ “The author of the classic ‘Tales of Old Japan’ is assured of
welcome, and the more so when he returns to the field in which his
literary reputation was made. Charm is never absent from his
pages.”--_Daily Chronicle._

MY LIFE IN PRISON. By DONALD LOWRIE. Crown 8vo. 6_s._ net.

⁂ This book is absolutely true and vital. Within its pages passes
the myriorama of prison life. And within its pages may be found
revelations of the divine and the undivine; of strange humility and
stranger arrogance; of free men brutalized and caged men humanized;
of big and little tragedies; of love, cunning, hate, despair, hope.
There is humour, too though sometimes the jest is made ironic by
its sequel. And there is romance--the romance of the real; not the
romance of Kipling’s 9.15, but the romance of No. 19,093, and of
all the other numbers that made up the arithmetical hell of San
Quentin prison.

Few novels could so absorb interest. It is human utterly. That is
the reason. Not only is the very atmosphere of the prison
preserved, from the colossal sense of encagement and
defencelessness, to the smaller jealousies, exultations and
disappointments; not only is there a succession of characters
emerging into the clearest individuality and genuineness,--each
with its distinctive contribution and separate value; but beyond
the details and through all the contrasted variety, there is the
spell of complete drama,--the drama of life. Here is the underworld
in continuous moving pictures, with the overworld watching. True,
the stage is a prison; but is not all the world a stage?

It is a book that should exercise a profound influence on the lives
of the caged, and on the whole attitude of society toward the
problems of poverty and criminality.

AN IRISH BEAUTY OF THE REGENCY: By MRS. WARRENNE BLAKE. Author of
“Memoirs of a Vanished Generation, 1813-1855.” With a Photogravure
Frontispiece and other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 16s. net.

⁂ The Irish Beauty is the Hon. Mrs. Calvert, daughter of Viscount
Pery, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and wife of Nicholson
Calvert, M.P., of Hunsdon. Born in 1767, Mrs. Calvert lived to the
age of ninety-two, and there are many people still living who
remember her. In the delightful journals, now for the first time
published, exciting events are described.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By STEWART HOUSTON
CHAMBERLAIN. A Translation from the German by JOHN LEES. With an
Introduction by LORD REDESDALE. Demy 8vo. 2 vols. 25s. net. Second
Edition.

⁂ “A man who can write such a really beautiful and solemn
appreciation of true Christianity, of true acceptance of Christ’s
teachings and personality, as Mr. Chamberlain has done...
represents an influence to be reckoned with and seriously to be
taken into account.”--_Theodore Roosevelt in the Outlook, New
York._

⁂ “It is a masterpiece of really scientific history. It does not
make confusion, it clears it away. He is a great generalizer of
thought, as distinguished from the crowd of mere specialists. It is
certain to stir up thought. Whoever has not read it will be rather
out of it in political and sociological discussions for some time
to come.”--_George Bernard Shaw in Fabian News._

⁂ “This is unquestionably one of the rare books that really matter.
His judgments of men and things are deeply and indisputably sincere
and are based on immense reading.... But even many well-informed
people... will be grateful to Lord Redesdale for the biographical
details which he gives them in the valuable and illuminating
introduction contributed by him to this English
translation.”--_Times._

THE SPEAKERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS from the Earliest Times to the
Present Day, with a Topographical Account of Westminster at Various
Epochs, Brief Notes on Sittings of Parliament and a Retrospect of the
principal Constitutional Changes during Seven Centuries. By ARTHUR IRWIN
DASENT, Author of “The Life and Letters of JOHN DELANE,” “The History of
St. James’s Square,” etc., etc. With numerous Portraits, including two
in Photogravure and one in Colour. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.

ROMANTIC TRIALS OF THREE CENTURIES. By HUGH CHILDERS. With numerous
Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ This volume deals with some famous trials, occurring between the
years 1650 and 1850. All of them possess some exceptional interest,
or introduce historical personages in a fascinating style,
peculiarly likely to attract attention.

The book is written for the general reading public, though in many
respects it should be of value to lawyers, who will be especially
interested in the trials of the great William Penn and Elizabeth
Canning. The latter case is one of the most enthralling interest.

Twenty-two years later the same kind of excitement was aroused over
Elizabeth Chudleigh, _alias_ Duchess of Kingston, who attracted
more attention in 1776 than the war of American independence.

Then the history of the fluent Dr. Dodd, a curiously pathetic one,
is related, and the inconsistencies of his character very clearly
brought out; perhaps now he may have a little more sympathy than he
has usually received. Several important letters of his appear here
for the first time in print.

Among other important trials discussed we find the libel action
against Disraeli and the story of the Lyons Mail. Our knowledge of
the latter is chiefly gathered from the London stage, but there is
in it a far greater historical interest than would be suspected by
those who have only seen the much altered story enacted before
them.

THE OLD GARDENS OF ITALY--HOW TO VISIT THEM. By Mrs. AUBREY LE BLOND.
With 100 Illustrations from her own Photographs. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

⁂ Hitherto all books on the old gardens of Italy have been large,
costly, and incomplete, and designed for the library rather than
for the traveller. Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond, during the course of a
series of visits to all parts of Italy, has compiled a volume that
garden lovers can carry with them, enabling them to decide which
gardens are worth visiting, where they are situated, how they may
be reached, if special permission to see them is required, and how
this may be obtained. Though the book is practical and technical,
the artistic element is supplied by the illustrations, one at least
of which is given for each of the 71 gardens described. Mrs. Aubrey
Le Blond was the illustrator of the monumental work by H. Inigo
Triggs on “The Art of Garden Design in Italy,” and has since taken
three special journeys to that country to collect material for her
“The Old Gardens of Italy.”

The illustrations have been beautifully reproduced by a new process
which enables them to be printed on a rough light paper, instead of
the highly glazed and weighty paper necessitated by half-tone
blocks. Thus not only are the illustrations delightful to look at,
but the book is a pleasure to handle instead of a dead weight.

DOWN THE MACKENZIE AND UP THE YUKON. By E. STEWART. With 30
Illustrations and a Map. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

⁂ Mr. Stewart was former Inspector of Forestry to the Government of
Canada, and the experience he thus gained, supplemented by a really
remarkable journey, will prove of great value to those who are
interested in the commercial growth of Canada. The latter portion
of his book deals with the various peoples, animals, industries,
etc., of the Dominion; while the story of the journey he
accomplished provides excellent reading in Part I. Some of the
difficulties he encountered appeared insurmountable, and a
description of his perilous voyage in a native canoe with Indians
is quite haunting. There are many interesting illustrations of the
places of which he writes.

AMERICAN SOCIALISM OF THE PRESENT DAY. By JESSIE WALLACE HUGHAN. With an
Introduction by JOHN SPARGO. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

⁂ All who are interested in the multitudinous political problems
brought by the changing conditions of the present day should read
this book, irrespective of personal bias. The applications of
Socialism throughout the world are so many and varied that the book
is of peculiar importance to English Socialists.

THE STRUGGLE FOR BREAD. By “A RIFLEMAN” Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

⁂ This book is a reply to Mr. Norman Angell’s well-known work, “The
Great Illusion” and also an enquiry into the present economic state
of Europe. The author, examining the phenomenon of the high
food-prices at present ruling in all great civilized states, proves
by statistics that these are caused by a relative decline in the
production of food-stuffs as compared with the increase in general
commerce and the production of manufactured-articles, and that
consequently there has ensued a rise in the exchange-values of
manufactured-articles, which with our system of society can have no
other effect than of producing high food-prices and low wages. The
author proves, moreover, that this is no temporary fluctuation of
prices, but the inevitable outcome of an economic movement, which
whilst seen at its fullest development during the last few years
has been slowly germinating for the last quarter-century.
Therefore, food-prices must continue to rise whilst wages must
continue to fall.

THE LAND OF TECK & ITS SURROUNDINGS. By Rev. S. BARING-GOULD. With
numerous Illustrations (including several in Colour) reproduced from
unique originals. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.

GATES OF THE DOLOMITES. By L. MARION DAVIDSON. With 32 Illustrations
from Photographs and a Map. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. 5s. net.

⁂ Whilst many English books have appeared on the Lande Tirol, few
have given more than a chapter on the fascinating Dolomite Land,
and it is in the hope of helping other travellers to explore the
mountain land with less trouble and inconvenience than fell to her
lot that the author has penned these attractive pages. The object
of this book is not to inform the traveller how to scale the
apparently inaccessible peaks of the Dolomites, but rather how to
find the roads, and thread the valleys, which lead him to the
recesses of this most lovely part of the world’s face, and Miss
Davidson conveys just the knowledge which is wanted for this
purpose; especially will her map be appreciated by those who wish
to make their own plans for a tour, as it shows at a glance the
geography of the country.

KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE. By WILLIAM ARKWRIGHT. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

⁂ This is a remarkably written book--brilliant and vital. Mr.
Arkwright illumines a number of subjects with jewelled flashes of
word harmony and chisels them all with the keen edge of his wit.
Art, Letters, and Religion of different appeals move before the
reader in vari-coloured array, like the dazzling phantasmagoria of
some Eastern dream.

CHANGING RUSSIA. A Tramp along the Black Sea Shore and in the Urals. By
STEPHEN GRAHAM. Author of “Undiscovered Russia,” “A Vagabond in the
Caucasus,” etc. With Illustrations and a Map. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

⁂ In “Changing Russia,” Mr. Stephen Graham describes a journey from
Rostof-on-the-Don to Batum and a summer spent on the Ural
Mountains. The author has traversed all the region which is to be
developed by the new railway from Novo-rossisk to Poti. it is a
tramping diary with notes and reflections. The book deals more with
the commercial life of Russia than with that of the peasantry, and
there are chapters on the Russia of the hour, the Russian town,
life among the gold miners of the Urals, the bourgeois, Russian
journalism, the intelligentsia, the election of the fourth Duma. An
account is given of Russia at the seaside, and each of the watering
places of the Black Sea shore is described in detail.

ROBERT FULTON ENGINEER AND ARTIST: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By H. W.
DICKINSON, A.M.I.Mech.E. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.

⁂ No Biography dealing as a whole with the life-work of the
celebrated Robert Fulton has appeared of late years, in spite of
the fact that the introduction of steam navigation on a commercial
scale, which was his greatest achievement has recently celebrated
its centenary.

The author has been instrumental in bringing to light a mass of
documentary matter relative to Fulton, and has thus been able to
present the facts about him in an entirely new light. The
interesting but little known episode of his career as an artist is
for the first time fully dealt with. His stay in France and his
experiments under the Directory and the Empire with the submarine
and with the steamboat are elucidated with the aid of documents
preserved in the Archives Nationales at Paris. His subsequent
withdrawal from France and his employment by the British Cabinet to
destroy the Boulogne flotilla that Napoleon had prepared in 1804 to
invade England are gone into fully. The latter part of his career
in the United States, spent in the introduction of steam navigation
and in the construction of the first steam-propelled warship, is of
the greatest interest. With the lapse of time facts assume
naturally their true perspective. Fulton, instead of being
represented, according to the English point of view, as a charlatan
and even as a traitor, or from the Americans as a universal genius,
is cleared from these charges, and his pretensions critically
examined, with the result that he appears as a cosmopolitan, an
earnest student, a painstaking experimenter and an enterprising
engineer.

It is believed that practically nothing of moment in Fulton’s
career has been omitted. The illustrations, which are numerous, are
drawn in nearly every case from the original sources. It may
confidently be expected, therefore, that this book will take its
place as the authoritative biography which everyone interested in
the subjects enumerated above will require to possess.

A STAINED GLASS TOUR IN ITALY. By CHARLES H. SHERRILL. Author of
“Stained Glass Tours in England,” “Stained Glass Tours in France,” etc.
With 33 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

⁂ Mr. Sherrill has already achieved success with his two previous
books on the subject of stained glass. In Italy he finds a new
field, which offers considerable scope for his researches. His
present work will appeal not only to tourists, but to the
craftsmen, because of the writer’s sympathy with the craft. Mr.
Sherrill is not only an authority whose writing is clear in style
and full of understanding for the requirements of the reader, but
one whose accuracy and reliability are unquestionable. This is the
most important book published on the subject with which it deals,
and readers will find it worthy to occupy the position.

SCENES AND MEMORIES OF THE PAST. By the Honble. STEPHEN COLERIDGE. With
numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ Mr. Stephen Coleridge has seen much of the world in two
hemispheres and has been able to count among his intimate personal
friends many of those whose names have made the Victorian age
illustrious.

Mr. Coleridge fortunately kept a diary for some years of his life
and has religiously preserved the letters of his distinguished
friends; and in this book the public are permitted to enjoy the
perusal of much vitally interesting correspondence.

With a loving and appreciative hand the author sketches the
characters of many great men as they were known to their intimate
associates. Cardinals Manning and Newman, G. F. Watts, James
Russell Lowell, Matthew Arnold, Sir Henry Irving, Goldwin Smith,
Lewis Morris, Sir Stafford Northcote, Whistler, Oscar Wilde,
Ruskin, and many others famous in the nineteenth century will be
found sympathetically dealt with in this book.

During his visit to America as the guest of the American Bar in
1883, Lord Coleridge, the Chief Justice, and the author’s father
wrote a series of letters, which have been carefully preserved,
recounting his impressions of the United States and of the leading
citizens whom he met.

Mr. Coleridge has incorporated portions of these letters from his
father in the volume, and they will prove deeply interesting on
both sides of the Atlantic.

Among the illustrations are many masterly portraits never before
published.

From the chapter on the author’s library, which is full of
priceless literary treasures, the reader can appreciate the
appropriate surroundings amid which this book was compiled.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE: HIS WORK, ASSOCIATES AND ORIGINALS. By T. H. S.
ESCOTT. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ The author of this book has not solely relied for his materials
on a personal intimacy with its subject, during the most active
years of Trollope’s life, but from an equal intimacy with
Trollope’s contemporaries and from those who had seen his early
life. He has derived, and here sets forth, in chronological order,
a series of personal incidents and experiences that could not be
gained but for the author’s exceptional opportunities. These
incidents have never before appeared in print, but that are
absolutely essential for a right understanding of the
opinions--social, political, and religious--of which Trollope’s
writings became the medium, as well as of the chief personages in
his stories, from the “Macdermots of Ballycloran” (1847) to the
posthumous “Land Leaguers” (1883). All lifelike pictures, whether
of place, individual, character of incident, are painted from life.
The entirely fresh light now thrown on the intellectual and
spiritual forces, chiefly felt by the novelist during his
childhood, youth and early manhood, helped to place within his
reach the originals of his long portrait gallery, and had their
further result in the opinions, as well as the estimates of events
and men, in which his writings abound, and which, whether they
cause agreement or dissent, always reveal life, nature, and
stimulate thought. The man, who had for his Harrow schoolfellows
Sidney Herbert and Sir William Gregory, was subsequently brought
into the closest relations with the first State officials of his
time, was himself one of the most active agents in making penny
postage a national and imperial success, and when he planted the
first pillar-box in the Channel Islands, accomplished on his own
initiative a great postal reform. A life so active, varied and
full, gave him a greater diversity of friends throughout the
British Isles than belonged to any other nineteenth century worker,
literary or official. Hence the unique interest of Trollope’s
course, and therefore this, its record.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH PATRIOTISM. By ESMÉ C. WINGFIELD STRATFORD,
Fellow King’s College, Cambridge. In 2 vols. Demy 8vo. With a
Frontispiece to each volume, (1,300 pages). 25s. net.

⁂ This work compresses into about HALF A MILLION WORDS the
substance of EIGHT YEARS of uninterrupted labour.

The book has been read and enthusiastically commended by the
leading experts in the principal subjects embraced in this
encyclopædic survey of English History.

When this work was first announced under the above title, the
publisher suggested calling it “A New History of England.” Indeed
it is both. Mr. Wingfield Stratford endeavours to show how
everything of value that nations in general, and the English nation
in particular, have at any time achieved has been the direct
outcome of the common feeling upon which patriotism is built. He
sees, and makes his readers see, the manifold development of
England as one connected whole with no more branch of continuity
than a living body or a perfect work of art.

The author may fairly claim to have accomplished what few previous
historians have so much as attempted. He has woven together the
threads of religion, politics, war, philosophy, literature,
painting, architecture, law and commerce, into a narrative of
unbroken and absorbing interest.

The book is a world-book. Scholars will reconstruct their ideas
from it, economics examine the gradual fruition of trade, statesmen
devise fresh creative plans, and the general reader will feel he is
no insignificant unit, but the splendid symbol of a splendid world.

CHARLES CONDER: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By FRANK GIBSON. With a Catalogue of
the Lithographs and Etchings by CAMPBELL DODGSON, M.S., Keeper of Prints
and Drawings, British Museum. With about 100 reproductions of Conder’s
work, 12 of which are in colour. Demy 4to. 21s. net.

⁂ With the exception of one or two articles in English Art
Magazines, and one or two in French, German, and American
periodicals, no book up to the present has appeared fully to record
the life and work of Charles Condor, by whose death English Art has
lost one of its most original personalities. Consequently it has
been felt that a book dealing with Conder’s life so full of
interest, and his work so full of charm and beauty, illustrated by
characteristic examples of his Art both in colour and in black and
white, would be welcome to the already great and increasing number
of his admirers.

The author of this book, Mr. Frank Gibson, who knew Conder in his
early days in Australia and afterwards in England during the rest
of the artist’s life, is enabled in consequence to do full justice,
not only to the delightful character of Conder as a friend, but is
also able to appreciate his remarkable talent.

The interest and value of this work will be greatly increased by
the addition of a complete catalogue of Conder’s lithographs and
engravings, compiled by Mr. Campbell Dodgson, M.A., Keeper of the
Print-Room of the British Museum.

PHILIP DUKE OF WHARTON. By LEWIS MELVILLE. Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 21s.
net.

⁂ A character more interesting than Philip, Duke of Wharton, does
not often fall to the lot of a biographer, yet, by some strange
chance, though nearly two hundred years have passed since that
wayward genius passed away, the present work is the first that
gives a comprehensive account of his life. A man of unusual parts
and unusual charm, he at once delighted and disgusted his
contemporaries. Unstable as water, he was like Dryden’s Zimri,
“Everything by starts and nothing long.” He was poet and
pamphleteer, wit, statesman, buffoon, and amorist. The son of one
of the most stalwart supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty, he went
abroad and joined the Pretender, who created him a duke. He then
returned to England, renounced the Stuarts, and was by George I.
also promoted to a dukedom--while he was yet a minor. He was the
friend of Attenbury and the President of the Hell-Fire Club. At one
time he was leading Spanish troops against his countrymen, at
another seeking consolation in a monastery. It is said that he was
the original of Richardson’s Lovelace.

THE LIFE OF MADAME TALLIEN NOTRE DAME DE THERMIDOR (A Queen of Shreds
and Patches.) From the last days of the French Revolution, until her
death as Princess Chimay in 1885. By L. GASTINE. Translated from the
French by J. LEWIS MAY. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other
Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ There is no one in the history of the French Revolution who has
been more eagerly canonised than Madame Tallien; yet according to
M. Gastine, there is no one in that history who merited
canonisation so little. He has therefore set himself the task of
dissipating the mass of legend and sentiment that has gathered
round the memory of “_La Belle Tallien_” and of presenting her to
our eyes as she really was. The result of his labour is a volume,
which combines the scrupulous exactness of conscientious research
with the richness and glamour of a romance. In the place of the
beautiful heroic but purely imaginary figure of popular tradition,
we behold a woman, dowered indeed with incomparable loveliness, but
utterly unmoral, devoid alike of heart and soul, who readily and
repeatedly prostituted her personal charms for the advancement of
her selfish and ignoble aims. Though Madame Tallien is the central
figure of the book, the reader is introduced to many other
personages who played famous or infamous roles in the contemporary
social or political arena, and the volume, which is enriched by a
number of interesting portraits, throws a new and valuable light on
this stormy and perennially fascinating period of French history.

MINIATURES: A Series of Reproductions in Photogravure of Ninety-Six
Miniatures of Distinguished Personages, including Queen Alexandra, the
Queen of Norway, the Princess Royal, and the Princess Victoria. Painted
by CHARLES TURRELL. (Folio.) The Edition is limited to One Hundred
Copies for sale in England and America, and Twenty-Five Copies for
Presentation, Review, and the Museums. Each will be Numbered and Signed
by the Artist. 15 guineas net.

RECOLLECTIONS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT. By his Valet FRANÇOIS. Translated
from the French by MAURICE REYNOLD. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

THE WIFE OF GENERAL BONAPARTE. By JOSEPH TURQUAN. Author of “The Love
Affairs of Napoleon,” etc. Translated from the French by Miss VIOLETTE
MONTAGU. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ Although much has been written concerning the Empress Josephine,
we know comparatively little about the _veuve_ Beauharnais and the
_citoyenne_ Bonaparte, whose inconsiderate conduct during her
husband’s absence caused him so much anguish. We are so accustomed
to consider Josephine as the innocent victim of a cold and
calculating tyrant who allowed nothing, neither human lives nor
natural affections, to stand in the way of his all-conquering will,
that this volume will come to us rather as a surprise. Modern
historians are over-fond of blaming Napoleon for having divorced
the companion of his early years; but after having read the above
work, the reader will be constrained to admire General Bonaparte’s
forbearance and will wonder how he ever came to allow her to play
the Queen at the Tuileries.

THE JOURNAL OF A SPORTING NOMAD. By J. T. STUDLEY. With a Portrait and
32 other Illustrations, principally from Photographs by the Author. Demy
8vo. 12s. 6d. net.

⁂ “Not for a long time have we read such straightforward,
entertaining accounts of wild sport and adventure.”--_Manchester
Guardian._

⁂ “His adventures have the whole world for their theatre. There is
a great deal of curious information and vivid narrative that will
appeal to everybody.”--_Standard._

SOPHIE DAWES, QUEEN OF CHANTILLY. By VIOLETTE M. MONTAGU. Author of “The
Scottish College in Paris,” etc. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16
other Illustrations and Three Plans. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6d. net.

⁂ Among the many queens of France, queens by right of marriage with
the reigning sovereign, queens of beauty or of intrigue, the name
of Sophie Dawes, the daughter of humble fisherfolk in the Isle of
Wight, better known as “the notorious Mme. de Feucheres,” “The
Queen of Chantilly” and “The Montespan de Saint Leu” in the land
which she chose as a suitable sphere in which to exercise her
talents for money-making and for getting on in the world, stand
forth as a proof of what a woman’s will can accomplish when that
will is accompanied with an uncommon share of intelligence.

MARGARET OF FRANCE DUCHESS OF SAVOY. 1523-1574. A Biography with
Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations and Facsimile
Reproductions of Hitherto Unpublished Letters. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6d. net.

⁂ A time when the Italians are celebrating the Jubilee of the
Italian Kingdom is perhaps no unfitting moment in which to glance
back over the annals of that royal House of Savoy which has
rendered Italian unity possible. Margaret of France may without
exaggeration be counted among the builders of modern Italy. She
married Emanuel Philibert, the founder of Savoyard greatness; and
from the day of her marriage until the day of her death she
laboured to advance the interests of her adopted land.

MADAME DE BRINVILLIERS AND HER TIMES. 1630-1676. By HUGH STOKES. With a
Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12_s._
6d. net.

⁂ The name of Marie Marguerite d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers,
is famous in the annals of crime, but the true history of her
career is little known. A woman of birth and rank, she was also a
remorseless poisoner, and her trial was one of the most sensational
episodes of the early reign of Louis XIV. The author was attracted
to this curious subject by Charles le Brun’s realistic sketch of
the unhappy Marquise as she appeared on her way to execution. This
_chef d’oeuvre_ of misery and agony forms the frontispiece to the
volume, and strikes a fitting keynote to an absorbing story of
human passion and wrong-doing.

THE VICISSITUDES OF A LADY-IN WAITING. 1735-1821. By EUGENE WELVERT.
Translated from the French by LILIAN O’NEILL. With a Photogravure
Frontispiece and 16 other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6d. net.

⁂ The Duchesse de Narbonne-Lara was Lady-in-Waiting to Madame
Adelaide, the eldest daughter of Louis XV. Around the stately
figure of this Princess are gathered the most remarkable characters
of the days of the Old Regime, the Revolution and the first Empire.
The great charm of the work is that it takes us over so much and
varied ground. Here, in the gay crowd of ladies and courtiers, in
the rustle of flowery silken paniers, in the clatter of high-heeled
shoes, move the figures of Louis XV., Louis XVI., Du Barri and
Marie-Antoinette. We catch picturesque glimpses of the great wits,
diplomatists and soldiers of the time, until, finally we encounter
Napoleon Bonaparte.

ANNALS OF A YORKSHIRE HOUSE. From the Papers of a Macaroni and his
kindred. By A. M. W. STIRLING, author of “Coke of Norfolk and his
Friends.” With 33 Illustrations, including 3 in Colour and 3 in
Photogravure. Demy 8vo. 2 vols. 32s. net.

WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH AND HIS FRIENDS. By S. M. ELLIS. With upwards
of 50 Illustrations, 4 in Photogravure. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. 32_s._ net.

NAPOLEON AND KING MURAT. 1805-1815: A Biography compiled from hitherto
Unknown and Unpublished Documents. By ALBERT ESPITALIER. Translated from
the French by J. LEWIS MAY. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16
other Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

LADY CHARLOTTE SCHREIBER’S JOURNALS Confidences of a Collector of
Ceramics and Antiques throughout Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Turkey. From the year 1869 to 1885.
Edited by MONTAGUE GUEST, with Annotations by EGAN MEW. With upwards of
100 Illustrations, including 8 in colour and 2 in Photogravure. Royal
8vo. 2 volumes. 42_s._ net.

CHARLES DE BOURBON, CONSTABLE OF FRANCE: “THE GREAT CONDOTTIERE.” By
CHRISTOPHER HARE. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other
Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12_s._ 6_d._ net.

THE NELSONS OF BURNHAM THORPE: A Record of a Norfolk Family compiled
from Unpublished Letters and Note Books, 1787-1843. Edited by M. EYRE
MATCHAM. With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 other illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 16_s._ net.

⁂ This interesting contribution to Nelson literature is drawn from
the journals and correspondence of the Rev. Edmund Nelson, Rector
of Burnham Thorpe and his youngest daughter, the father and sister
of Lord Nelson. The Rector was evidently a man of broad views and
sympathies, for we find him maintaining friendly relations with his
son and daughter-in-law after their separation. What is even more
strange, he felt perfectly at liberty to go direct from the house
of Mrs. Horatio Nelson in Norfolk to that of Sir William and Lady
Hamilton in London, where his son was staying. This book shows how
completely and without any reserve the family received Lady
Hamilton.

MARIA EDGEWORTH AND HER CIRCLE IN THE DAYS OF BONAPARTE AND BOURBON. By
CONSTANCE HILL. Author of “Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends,”
“Juniper Hall,” “The House in St. Martin’s Street,” etc. With numerous
Illustrations by ELLEN G. HILL and Reproductions of Contemporary
Portraits, etc. Demy 8vo. 21s. net.

CESAR FRANCK: A Study. Translated from the French of Vincent d’Indy,
with an Introduction by ROSA NEWMARCH. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry Milton’s appointment was to the Office of the Secretary of
War, before 1854 also the Colonial Minister. The other official of
the Milton name, born 1820, was Henry Milton’s son, and consequently
Anthony Trollope’s first cousin. He entered the same department in
1840 as his father had done before him. On the organisation of the War
Office in 1856 he became Assistant Accountant-General; afterwards,
having meanwhile been told off on much special service, he became in
1871 Accountant-General. The successive stages of a most brilliant
career were crowned by his knighthood and retirement in 1878-9. His
literary judgment and scholarship were of the greatest value to his
cousin Anthony, and caused his services as “reader” to be in much
demand with the second John Murray.

[2] Sir Henry Taylor survived Anthony Trollope by four years, dying
in 1886. Forster died in 1876. Both told the present writer of their
unavailing invitations of Anthony Trollope while a Post Office clerk to
their house.

[3] Visiting Paris soon after the _coup d’état_ of 1851, his hostess at
Gore House during his London exile found herself coldly received by her
guest of other days. “Do you,” he carelessly asked, “make any long stay
in Paris, Madame?” “And you, Monseigneur?” was the happy rejoinder.

[4] _The Macdermots_, p. 301.

[5] Here, as elsewhere, the reference is to Mr. John Lane’s series of
Trollope reprints.

[6] _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, p. 11.

[7] _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, pp. 174, 175.

[8] The usual “e” in the last syllable of this historic name is always
omitted by Trollope, and so not written here.

[9] _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, v. 1.

[10] Jeremiah vi. 16.

[11] _The Warden_, pp. 72-83.

[12] _Adventures of a Younger Son._ Published 1830. This was
republished as recently as 1890, while shortly before his death (1881)
Trelawny put forth the revised version of his _Byron and Shelley
Reminiscences_.

[13] On this subject I am indebted to the present P. & O. chairman, Sir
Thomas Sutherland, for an expression of opinion to this effect. The
negotiation, indeed, was before his time, and he knows nothing about
any record of it in the Company’s archives; but, he adds, “supposing
the question to have been one of accelerating the transit of the mails
through Egypt, the Company must surely have favoured an improvement
which could, in no way that I could see, have been adverse to their
interest.”

[14] _Castle Richmond_, p. 5, line 12.

[15] This was natural enough. Prinsep himself had been a sort
of political Ulysses, having contested unsuccessfully several
constituencies, till he secured his return for Harwich, only, upon
petition, to be unseated.

[16] To see at his best Dickens on Thackeray, one should turn to
Messrs. Chatto and Windus’s _Speeches of Charles Dickens_, and under
the date March 29, 1858, read the just and generous eulogy bestowed by
the author of _David Copperfield_ on him who wrote _Vanity Fair_.

[17] Trollope’s _Thackeray_ (English Men of Letters Series), p. 49.

[18] See _Masters of English Journalism_ (T. Fisher Unwin), p. 244, &c.
The account here referred to was that given the writer by the founder
and first editor of the _The Pall Mall_, F. Greenwood.

[19] “Our years keep taking toll as they roll on” (Conington’s
translation, Horace’s _Epistles_, Bk. II., ii. 5).

[20] Reprinted by Chapman and Hall (1865-6).

[21] Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were the well-known printers with whom
Dickens had so much to do.

[22] Conington’s rendering for the _grata protervitas_ of Horace, Ode
i, 19, 7, more compactly, and perhaps not less faithfully translatable
by “sweet sauciness.”

[23] Tennyson, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_.

[24] Such, and not the usually quoted “tu l’as voulu,” are Molière’s
actual words.

[25] _Thackeray_ (Macmillan, pp. 48, 49).

[26] The fact thus referred to by Trollope was this. At the time of
his own failure for Beverley the author of _Eothen_ was coming in for
Bridgewater, but was promptly unseated on petition, the borough itself
being, like Beverley, disfranchised a little later.

[27] Some of these names were celebrated in verses that Trollope loved
to quote:

“Mr. Leech made a speech;
Learned, terse, and strong.
Mr. Hart on the other part,
Was glib and neat, but wrong.
Mr. Parker made that darker,
Which was dark enough without.
Mr. Cook cited a book,
The Chancellor said, ‘I doubt.’”

[28] Such cases of a state official’s temporary return to a department
which he had finally left are quite exceptional. The best known,
perhaps, is that of Sir Robert Herbert, who was permanent Under
Secretary at the Colonial Office from 1873-1892, was succeeded in that
capacity by Hon. R. Meade, but, on Meade’s death, returned for a time
to his old room at the Colonial Office till Mr. Meade’s place was
permanently filled. In the same year Mr. A. W. Moore retired from the
India Office in or about 1880, and reappeared in it after an interval
of five years as private secretary to the Indian Minister, Lord
Randolph Churchill.

[29] The courtesy of Mr. J. Henry Harper enables me to show exactly how
this sum was made up:--

£
Mar. 1, 1859. _The Bertrams_ 25
May 29, 1860. _Castle Richmond_ 50
1867. _The Claverings_ (_Cornhill_)
Mar. 12, 1872. _The Golden Lion of Granpere_ 250
1874. _Lady Anna_ 200
Oct. 25, 1866. _The Last Chronicle of Barset_ 150
Dec. 31, 1868. _Phineas Finn_ 100
May 30, 1872. _The Eustace Diamonds_ 200
Feb. 7, 1861, and Apr. 15, 1862. _Orley Farm_ 200
Sept. 23, 1863. _Rachel Ray_ 50
Jan. 19, 1871. _Ralph the Heir_ 200
1870. _Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite_ (Plates, &c.) 750
Oct. 13, 1859. _West Indies_, &c. 30
Aug. 31, 1859. _Relics of General Chassé_, &c. 40
Mar. 13, 1874. _Phineas Redux_ 50
Mar. 13, 1874. _Harry Heathcote of Gangoil_ 50
Apr. 18, 1860. _The O’Conors of Castle Conor_ 40
Sept. 29, 1875. _The Way We Live Now_ (and _Electros_) 200
Feb. 7 and Mar. 10, 1876. _The Prime Minister_ 175
May 19, 1877. _The American Senator_ 70
Apr. 26, 1878. _Is He Popenjoy?_ 20
June 24, 1878. _The Lady of Launay_ 10
July 2, 1880. _The Duke’s Children_ 10
Dec. 2, 1880. _Dr. Wortle’s School_ 10
Dec. 28, 1880. _Life of Cicero_ 100
July 20, 1881. _Ayala’s Angel_ 10
Mar. 15, 1882. _The Fixed Period_ 10
May 16, 1882. _Kept in the Dark_ 50
Oct. 10, 1882. _The Two Heroines of Plumplington_ 10
July 30, 1883. _Mr. Scarborough’s Family_ 10
June 13, 1884. _An Old Man’s Love_ 10
-----
£3080
-----

[30] Trollope’s colonial novels, _Harry Heathcote of Gangoil_ and _John
Caldigate_, were both written after his Australasian journey.

[31] _The Merchant of Venice_, Act v, Scene 1.

[32] That great word-painter, it should be said, had also visited South
Africa some eight years earlier, had written and lectured concerning
it, and by so doing, it may well be, at first set Trollope on going to
Africa too.

[33] New edition, one vol.: Chapman & Hall.

[34] New impression, one vol.: Chatto & Windus, 1907.

[35] _Can You Forgive Her?_ vol. i. p. 18.

[36] _Is He Popenjoy?_ also appeared in _All the Year Round_ in 1878.

[37] _The Land Leaguers_, new edition, 1884: Chatto & Windus.

[38] This is Out of Print with the Publisher.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Anthony Trollope; His Work, Associates and Literary Originals" ***

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