Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention,

the canvas should be crowded with real portraits, not of individuals

known to the world or to the author, but of created personages

impregnated with traits of character which are known. To my thinking,

the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the

vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the

agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must,

however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort. That

of The Bertrams was more than ordinarily bad; and as the book was

relieved by no special character, it failed. Its failure never

surprised me; but I have been surprised by the success of Doctor

Thorne.

At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the

failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale,

and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which

had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all

made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel,

I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two

years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible

author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to

me,--I might add (pounds)600 a year to my official income. I was still

living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure

my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a week, on (pounds)1400

a year. If more should come, it would be well;--but (pounds)600 a year I

was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but

was very pleasant when it came.

On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the

Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had

to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the

letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the

men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their

labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer,

and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and

then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home

afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in

Glasgow, all belonging to The Bertrams, are not good.

Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West

Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system

there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices

generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British

Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be

postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands

have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated

for residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous

for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the

stables had become Augean. I was also instructed to carry out in

some of the islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to

the island Governor, and in others to propose some such plan. I

was then to go on to Cuba, to make a postal treaty with the Spanish

authorities, and to Panama for the same purpose with the Government

of New Grenada. All this work I performed to my satisfaction, and

I hope to that of my masters in St. Martin's le Grand.

But the trip is at the present moment of importance to my subject,

as having enabled me to write that which, on the whole, I regard

as the best book that has come from my pen. It is short, and, I

think I may venture to say, amusing, useful, and true. As soon as

I had learned from the secretary at the General Post Office that

this journey would be required, I proposed the book to Messrs.

Chapman & Hall, demanding (pounds)250 for a single volume. The contract

was made without any difficulty, and when I returned home the work

was complete in my desk. I began it on board the ship in which I

left Kingston, Jamaica, for Cuba,--and from week to week I carried

it on as I went. From Cuba I made my way to St. Thomas, and through

the island down to Demerara, then back to St. Thomas,--which is

the starting-point for all places in that part of the globe,--to

Santa Martha, Carthagena, Aspinwall, over the Isthmus to Panama, up

the Pacific to a little harbour on the coast of Costa Rica, thence

across Central America, through Costa Rica, and down the Nicaragua

river to the Mosquito coast, and after that home by Bermuda and New

York. Should any one want further details of the voyage, are they

not written in my book? The fact memorable to me now is that I

never made a single note while writing or preparing it. Preparation,

indeed, there was none. The descriptions and opinions came hot

on to the paper from their causes. I will not say that this is the

best way of writing a book intended to give accurate information.

But it is the best way of producing to the eye of the reader, and

to his ear, that which the eye of the writer has seen and his ear

heard. There are two kinds of confidence which a reader may have

in his author,--which two kinds the reader who wishes to use his

reading well should carefully discriminate. There is a confidence

in facts and a confidence in vision. The one man tells you accurately

what has been. The other suggests to you what may, or perhaps what

must have been, or what ought to have been. The former require simple

faith. The latter calls upon you to judge for yourself, and form

your own conclusions. The former does not intend to be prescient,

nor the latter accurate. Research is the weapon used by the former;

observation by the latter. Either may be false,--wilfully false; as

also may either be steadfastly true. As to that, the reader must

judge for himself. But the man who writes currente calamo, who

works with a rapidity which will not admit of accuracy, may be as

true, and in one sense as trustworthy, as he who bases every word

upon a rock of facts. I have written very much as I have, travelled

about; and though I have been very inaccurate, I have always

written the exact truth as I saw it ;--and I have, I think, drawn

my pictures correctly.

The view I took of the relative position in the West Indies

of black men and white men was the view of the Times newspaper at

that period; and there appeared three articles in that journal, one

closely after another, which made the fortune of the book. Had it

been very bad, I suppose its fortune could not have been made for

it even by the Times newspaper. I afterwards became acquainted with

the writer of those articles, the contributor himself informing me

that he had written them. I told him that he had done me a greater

service than can often be done by one man to another, but that I was

under no obligation to him. I do not think that he saw the matter

quite in the same light.

I am aware that by that criticism I was much raised in my position

as an author. Whether such lifting up by such means is good or bad

for literature is a question which I hope to discuss in a future

chapter. But the result was immediate to me, for I at once went to

Chapman & Hall and successfully demanded (pounds)600 for my next novel.

Soon after my return from the West Indies I was enabled to change

my district in Ireland for one in England. For some time past my