Anthony Trollope: Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian

subjects. He is still living as I now write. But my other brother

died early.

While I was at Winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse.

He gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was,

took another farm. It is odd that a man should conceive,--and in

this case a highly educated and a very clever man,--that farming

should be a business in which he might make money without any

special education or apprenticeship. Perhaps of all trades it is

the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be

done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. And it is

one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable.

He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital.

This was the last step preparatory to his final ruin.

Soon after I had been sent to Winchester my mother went to America,

taking with her my brother Henry and my two sisters, who were then

no more than children. This was, I think, in 1827. I have no clear

knowledge of her object, or of my father's; but I believe that

he had an idea that money might be made by sending goods,--little

goods, such as pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives,--out

to the still unfurnished States; and that she conceived that an

opening might be made for my brother Henry by erecting some bazaar

or extended shop in one of the Western cities. Whence the money

came I do not know, but the pocket-knives and the pepper-boxes were

bought and the bazaar built. I have seen it since in the town of

Cincinnati,--a sorry building! But I have been told that in those

days it was an imposing edifice. My mother went first, with my

sisters and second brother. Then my father followed them, taking my

elder brother before he went to Oxford. But there was an interval

of some year and a half during which he and I were in Winchester

together.

Over a period of forty years, since I began my manhood at a desk

in the Post Office, I and my brother, Thomas Adolphus, have been

fast friends. There have been hot words between us, for perfect

friendship bears and allows hot words. Few brothers have had more

of brotherhood. But in those schooldays he was, of all my foes,

the worst. In accordance with the practice of the college, which

submits, or did then submit, much of the tuition of the younger

boys from the elder, he was my tutor; and in his capacity of teacher

and ruler, he had studied the theories of Draco. I remember well

how he used to exact obedience after the manner of that lawgiver.

Hang a little boy for stealing apples, he used to say, and other

little boys will not steal apples. The doctrine was already exploded

elsewhere, but he stuck to it with conservative energy. The result

was that, as a part of his daily exercise, he thrashed me with a big

stick. That such thrashings should have been possible at a school

as a continual part of one's daily life, seems to me to argue a

very ill condition of school discipline.

At this period I remember to have passed one set of holidays--the

midsummer holidays--in my father's chambers in Lincoln's Inn. There

was often a difficulty about the holidays,--as to what should be

done with me. On this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering

about among those old deserted buildings, and in reading Shakespeare

out of a bi-columned edition, which is still among my books. It

was not that I had chosen Shakespeare, but that there was nothing

else to read.

After a while my brother left Winchester and accompanied my father

to America. Then another and a different horror fell to my fate.

My college bills had not been paid, and the school tradesmen who

administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their

credit to me. Boots, waistcoats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, which,

with some slight superveillance, were at the command of other

scholars, were closed luxuries to me. My schoolfellows of course

knew that it was so, and I became a Pariah. It is the nature of

boys to be cruel. I have sometimes doubted whether among each other

they do usually suffer much, one from the other's cruelty; but I

suffered horribly! I could make no stand against it. I had no friend

to whom I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, and awkward, and

ugly, and, I have no doubt, sulked about in a most unattractive

manner. Of course I was ill-dressed and dirty. But ah! how well

I remember all the agonies of my young heart; how I considered

whether I should always be alone; whether I could not find my way

up to the top of that college tower, and from thence put an end to

everything? And a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies

from the shopkeepers. Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money,

which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the

pocket of the second master. On one awful day the second master

announced to me that my battels would be stopped. He told me the

reason,--the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and

he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money. The loss of a

shilling a week would not have been much,--even though pocket-money

from other sources never reached me,--but that the other boys all

knew it! Every now and again, perhaps three or four times in a

half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain servants

of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra

services. And now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he

received sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause

of the defalcation was explained to him. I never saw one of those

servants without feeling I had picked his pocket.

When I had been at Winchester something over three years, my father

returned to England and took me away. Whether this was done because

of the expense, or because my chance of New College was supposed

to have passed away, I do not know. As a fact, I should, I believe,

have gained the prize, as there occurred in my year an exceptional

number of vacancies. But it would have served me nothing, as there

would have been no funds for my maintenance at the University

till I should have entered in upon the fruition of the founder's

endowment, and my career at Oxford must have been unfortunate.

When I left Winchester, I had three more years of school before me,

having as yet endured nine. My father at this time having left my

mother and sisters with my younger brother in America, took himself

to live at a wretched tumble-down farmhouse on the second farm

he had hired! And I was taken there with him. It was nearly three

miles from Harrow, at Harrow Weald, but in the parish; and from

this house I was again sent to that school as a day-boarder. Let

those who know what is the usual appearance and what the usual

appurtenances of a boy at such a school, consider what must have

been my condition among them, with a daily walk of twelve miles

through the lanes, added to the other little troubles and labours

of a school life!

Perhaps the eighteen months which I passed in this condition,

walking to and fro on those miserably dirty lanes, was the worst

period of my life. I was now over fifteen, and had come to an age

at which I could appreciate at its full the misery of expulsion

from all social intercourse. I had not only no friends, but was

despised by all my companions. The farmhouse was not only no more