Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed them. Towards the good

books and tea no training had been given me. There was no house in

which I could habitually see a lady's face and hear a lady's voice.

No allurement to decent respectability came in my way. It seems to

me that in such circumstances the temptations of loose life will

almost certainly prevail with a young man. Of course if the mind be

strong enough, and the general stuff knitted together of sufficiently

stern material, the temptations will not prevail. But such minds

and such material are, I think, uncommon. The temptation at any

rate prevailed with me.

I wonder how many young men fall utterly to pieces from being turned

loose into London after the same fashion. Mine was, I think, of

all phases of such life the most dangerous. The lad who is sent

to mechanical work has longer hours, during which he is kept from

danger, and has not generally been taught in his boyhood to anticipate

pleasure. He looks for hard work and grinding circumstances.

I certainly had enjoyed but little pleasure, but I had been among

those who did enjoy it and were taught to expect it. And I had

filled my mind with the ideas of such joys.

And now, except during official hours, I was entirely without

control,--without the influences of any decent household around me.

I have said something of the comedy of such life, but it certainly

had its tragic aspect. Turning it all over in my own mind, as I

have constantly done in after years, the tragedy has always been

uppermost. And so it was as the time was passing. Could there be

any escape from such dirt? I would ask myself; and I always answered

that there was no escape. The mode of life was itself wretched. I

hated the office. I hated my work. More than all I hated my idleness.

I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in

life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of

authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which

I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued

out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was

out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In Official

life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not

seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could

command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama,

too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For

history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition.

But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved

very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the

months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was

passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgment

of the disgrace of postponing it. What reader will not understand

the agony of remorse produced by such a condition of mind?

The gentleman from Mecklenburgh Square was always with me in the

morning,--always angering me by his hateful presence,--but when the

evening came I could make no struggle towards getting rid of him.

In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and

Latin. I made myself familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with

the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms,

and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street,

where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, because

he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas. That was Northumberland Street by

the Marylebone Workhouse, on to the back-door of which establishment

my room looked out--a most dreary abode, at which I fancy I must

have almost ruined the good-natured lodging-house keeper by my

constant inability to pay her what I owed.

How I got my daily bread I can hardly remember. But I do remember

that I was often unable to get myself a dinner. Young men generally

now have their meals provided for them. I kept house, as it were.

Every day I had to find myself with the day's food. For my breakfast

I could get some credit at the lodgings, though that credit would

frequently come to an end. But for all that I had often breakfast

to pay day by day; and at your eating-house credit is not given. I

had no friends on whom I could sponge regularly. Out on the Fulham

Road I had an uncle, but his house was four miles from the Post

Office, and almost as far from my own lodgings. Then came borrowings

of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery.

Before I tell how it came about that I left this wretched life,

I must say a word or two of the friendships which lessened its

misfortunes. My earliest friend in life was John Merivale, with whom

I had been at school at Sunbury and Harrow, and who was a nephew

of my tutor, Harry Drury. Herman Merivale, who afterwards became my

friend, was his brother, as is also Charles Merivale, the historian

and Dean of Ely. I knew John when I was ten years old, and am happy

to be able to say that he is going to dine with me one day this

week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those

days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he

had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury

which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close

friends. And then there was one W---- A----, whose misfortunes in

life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly

loved. He had been at Winchester and at Oxford, and at both places

had fallen into trouble. He then became a schoolmaster,--or perhaps

I had better say usher,--and finally he took orders. But he was

unfortunate in all things, and died some years ago in poverty. He

was most perverse; bashful to very fear of a lady's dress; unable

to restrain himself in anything, but yet with a conscience that

was always stinging him; a loving friend, though very quarrelsome;

and, perhaps, of all men I have known, the most humorous. And he

was entirely unconscious of his own humour. He did not know that

he could so handle all matters as to create infinite amusement out

of them. Poor W---- A----! To him there came no happy turning-point

at which life loomed seriously on him, and then became prosperous.

W---- A----, Merivale, and I formed a little club, which we called

the Tramp Society, and subjected to certain rules, in obedience to

which we wandered on foot about the counties adjacent to London.

Southampton was the furthest point we ever reached; but Buckinghamshire

and Hertfordshire were more dear to us. These were the happiest

hours of my then life--and perhaps not the least innocent, although

we were frequently in peril from the village authorities whom we

outraged. Not to pay for any conveyance, never to spend above five

shillings a day, to obey all orders from the elected ruler of the

hour (this enforced under heavy fines), were among our statutes.

I would fain tell here some of our adventures:--how A---- enacted

an escaped madman and we his pursuing keepers, and so got ourselves

a lift in a cart, from which we ran away as we approached the

lunatic asylum; how we were turned out of a little town at night,

the townsfolk frightened by the loudness of our mirth; and how we

once crept into a hayloft and were wakened in the dark morning by

a pitchfork,--and how the juvenile owner of that pitchfork fled