Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

We were at this time very much unsettled as regards any residence.

While we were living at Clonmel two sons had been born, who certainly

were important enough to have been mentioned sooner. At Clonmel we

had lived in lodgings, and from there had moved to Mallow, a town

in the county Cork, where we had taken a house. Mallow was in the

centre of a hunting country, and had been very pleasant to me. But

our house there had been given up when it was known that I should

be detained in England; and then we had wandered about in the western

counties, moving our headquarters from one town to another. During

this time we had lived at Exeter, at Bristol, at Caermarthen,

at Cheltenham, and at Worcester. Now we again moved, and settled

ourselves for eighteen months at Belfast. After that we took a

house at Donnybrook, the well-known suburb of Dublin.

The work of taking up a new district, which requires not only that

the man doing it should know the nature of the postal arrangements,

but also the characters and the peculiarities of the postmasters

and their clerks, was too heavy to allow of my going on with my

book at once. It was not till the end of 1852 that I recommenced it,

and it was in the autumn of 1853 that I finished the work. It was

only one small volume, and in later days would have been completed

in six weeks,--or in two months at the longest, if other work had

pressed. On looking at the title-page, I find it was not published

till 1855. I had made acquaintance, through my friend John Merivale,

with William Longman the publisher, and had received from him an

assurance that the manuscript should be "looked at." It was "looked

at," and Messrs. Longman made me an offer to publish it at half

profits. I had no reason to love "half profits," but I was very

anxious to have my book published, and I acceded. It was now more

than ten years since I had commenced writing The Macdermots, and

I thought that if any success was to be achieved, the time surely

had come. I had not been impatient; but, if there was to be a time,

surely it had come.

The novel-reading world did not go mad about The Warden; but I soon

felt that it had not failed as the others had failed. There were

notices of it in the press, and I could discover that people around

me knew that I had written a book. Mr. Longman was complimentary,

and after a while informed me that there would be profits to divide.

At the end of 1855 I received a cheque for (pounds)9 8s. 8d., which was

the first money I had ever earned by literary work;--that (pounds)20 which

poor Mr. Colburn had been made to pay certainly never having been

earned at all. At the end of 1856 I received another sum of (pounds)10

15s. 1d. The pecuniary success was not great. Indeed, as regarded

remuneration for the time, stone-breaking would have done better.

A thousand copies were printed, of which, after a lapse of five or

six years, about 300 had to be converted into another form, and sold

as belonging to a cheap edition. In its original form The Warden

never reached the essential honour of a second edition.

I have already said of the work that it failed altogether in

the purport for which it was intended. But it has a merit of its

own,--a merit by my own perception of which I was enabled to see

wherein lay whatever strength I did possess. The characters of the

bishop, of the archdeacon, of the archdeacon's wife, and especially

of the warden, are all well and clearly drawn. I had realised to

myself a series of portraits, and had been able so to put them on

the canvas that my readers should see that which I meant them to

see. There is no gift which an author can have more useful to him

than this. And the style of the English was good, though from most

unpardonable carelessness the grammar was not unfrequently faulty.

With such results I had no doubt but that I would at once begin

another novel.

I will here say one word as a long-deferred answer to an item of

criticism which appeared in the Times newspaper as to The Warden.

In an article-if I remember rightly--on The Warden and Barchester

Towers combined--which I would call good-natured, but that I take

it for granted that the critics of the Times are actuated by higher

motives than good-nature, that little book and its sequel are spoken

of in terms which were very pleasant to the author. But there was

added to this a gentle word of rebuke at the morbid condition of the

author's mind which had prompted him to indulge in personalities,--the

personalities in question having reference to some editor or manager

of the Times newspaper. For I had introduced one Tom Towers as being

potent among the contributors to the Jupiter, under which name I

certainly did allude to the Times. But at that time, living away in

Ireland, I had not even heard the name of any gentleman connected

with the Times newspaper, and could not have intended to represent

any individual by Tom Towers. As I had created an archdeacon, so had

I created a journalist, and the one creation was no more personal

or indicative of morbid tendencies than the other. If Tom Towers

was at all like any gentleman connected with the Times, my moral

consciousness must again have been very powerful.

It was, I think, before I started on my English tours among the

rural posts that I made my first attempt at writing for a magazine.

I had read, soon after they came out, the two first volumes of

Charles Menvale's History of the Romans under the Empire, and had

got into some correspondence with the author's brother as to the

author's views about Caesar. Hence arose in my mind a tendency to

investigate the character of probably the greatest man who ever

lived, which tendency in after years produced a little book of

which I shall have to speak when its time comes,--and also a taste

generally for Latin literature, which has been one of the chief

delights of my later life. And I may say that I became at this time

as anxious about Caesar, and as desirous of reaching the truth as

to his character, as we have all been in regard to Bismarck in these

latter days. I lived in Caesar, and debated with myself constantly

whether he crossed the Rubicon as a tyrant or as a patriot. In

order that I might review Mr. Merivale's book without feeling that

I was dealing unwarrantably with a subject beyond me, I studied the

Commentaries thoroughly, and went through a mass of other reading

which the object of a magazine article hardly justified,--but which

has thoroughly justified itself in the subsequent pursuits of my

life. I did write two articles, the first mainly on Julius Caesar,

and the second on Augustus, which appeared in the Dublin University

Magazine. They were the result of very much labour, but there came

from them no pecuniary product. I had been very modest when I sent

them to the editor, as I had been when I called on John Forster,

not venturing to suggest the subject of money. After a while I did

call upon the proprietor of the magazine in Dublin, and was told

by him that such articles were generally written to oblige friends,

and that articles written to oblige friends were not usually paid

for. The Dean of Ely, as the author of the work in question now

is, was my friend; but I think I was wronged, as I certainly had