Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

of the innocent joys of his life, said the clergyman, to have my

novels read to him by his daughters. But now I was writing a book

which caused him to bid them close it! Must I also turn away to

vicious sensation such as this? Did I think that a wife contemplating

adultery was a character fit for my pages? I asked him in return,

whether from his pulpit, or at any rate from his communion-table,

he did not denounce adultery to his audience; and if so, why should

it not be open to me to preach the same doctrine to mine. I made

known nothing which the purest girl could not but have learned,

and ought not to have learned, elsewhere, and I certainly lent no

attraction to the sin which I indicated. His rejoinder was full

of grace, and enabled him to avoid the annoyance of argumentation

without abandoning his cause. He said that the subject was so much

too long for letters; that he hoped I would go and stay a week with

him in the country,--so that we might have it out. That opportunity,

however, has never yet arrived.

Lady Glencora overcomes that trouble, and is brought, partly by her

own sense of right and wrong, and partly by the genuine nobility

of her husband's conduct, to attach herself to him after a certain

fashion. The romance of her life is gone, but there remains a

rich reality of which she is fully able to taste the flavour. She

loves her rank and becomes ambitious, first of social, and then of

political ascendancy. He is thoroughly true to her, after his thorough

nature, and she, after her less perfect nature, is imperfectly true

to him.

In conducting these characters from one story to another I realised

the necessity, not only of consistency,--which, had it been maintained

by a hard exactitude, would have been untrue to nature,--but also

of those changes which time always produces. There, are, perhaps,

but few of us who, after the lapse of ten years, will be found to

have changed our chief characteristics. The selfish man will still

be selfish, and the false man false. But our manner of showing or

of hiding these characteristics will be changed,--as also our power

of adding to or diminishing their intensity. It was my study that

these people, as they grew in years, should encounter the changes

which come upon us all; and I think that I have succeeded. The

Duchess of Omnium, when she is playing the part of Prime Minister's

wife, is the same woman as that Lady Glencora who almost longs to

go off with Burgo Fitzgerald, but yet knows that she will never do

so; and the Prime Minister Duke, with his wounded pride and sore

spirit, is he who, for his wife's sake, left power and place when

they were first offered to him;--but they have undergone the changes

which a life so stirring as theirs would naturally produce. To do

all this thoroughly was in my heart from first to last; but I do

not know that the game has been worth the candle.

To carry out my scheme I have had to spread my picture over so wide

a canvas that I cannot expect that any lover of such art should

trouble himself to look at it as a whole. Who will read Can You

Forgive Her? Phineas Finn, Phineas Redux, and The Prime Minister

consecutively, in order that they may understand the characters of

the Duke of Omnium, of Plantagenet Palliser, and of Lady Glencora?

Who will ever know that they should be so read? But in the performance

of the work I had much gratification, and was enabled from time to

time to have in this way that fling at the political doings of the

day which every man likes to take, if not in one fashion then in

another. I look upon this string of characters,--carried sometimes

into other novels than those just named,--as the best work of

my life. Taking him altogether, I think that Plantagenet Palliser

stands more firmly on the ground than any other personage I have

created.

On Christmas day, 1863, we were startled by the news of Thackeray's

death. He had then for many months given up the editorship of the

Cornhill Magazine,--a position for which he was hardly fitted either

by his habits or temperament,--but was still employed in writing

for its pages. I had known him only for four years, but had grown

into much intimacy with him and his family. I regard him as one

of the most tender-hearted human beings I ever knew, who, with an

exaggerated contempt for the foibles of the world at large, would

entertain an almost equally exaggerated sympathy with the joys

and troubles of individuals around him. He had been unfortunate in

early life--unfortunate in regard to money--unfortunate with an

afflicted wife--unfortunate in having his home broken up before

his children were fit to be his companions. This threw him too much

upon clubs, and taught him to dislike general society. But it never

affected his heart, or clouded his imagination. He could still revel

in the pangs and joys of fictitious life, and could still feel--as

he did to the very last--the duty of showing to his readers the

evil consequences of evil conduct. It was perhaps his chief fault

as a writer that he could never abstain from that dash of satire

which he felt to be demanded by the weaknesses which he saw around

him. The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but

little,--or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his

own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he

lives. I myself regard Esmond as the greatest novel in the English

language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language,

on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of

its delineations in regard to the tine selected, and on its great

pathos. There are also in it a few scenes so told that even Scott

has never equalled the telling. Let any one who doubts this read

the passage in which Lady Castlewood induces the Duke of Hamilton to

think that his nuptials with Beatrice will be honoured if Colonel

Esmond will give away the bride. When he went from us he left behind

living novelists with great names; but I think that they who best

understood the matter felt that the greatest master of fiction of

this age had gone.

Rachel Ray underwent a fate which no other novel of mine has

encountered. Some years before this a periodical called Good Words

had been established under the editorship of my friend Dr. Norman

Macleod, a well-known Presbyterian pastor in Glasgow. In 1863 he

asked me to write a novel for his magazine, explaining to me that

his principles did not teach him to confine his matter to religious

subjects, and paying me the compliment of saying that he would feel

himself quite safe in my hands. In reply I told him I thought he

was wrong in his choice; that though he might wish to give a novel

to the readers of Good Words, a novel from me would hardly be what

he wanted, and that I could not undertake to write either with

any specially religious tendency, or in any fashion different from

that which was usual to me. As worldly and--if any one thought me

wicked--as wicked as I had heretofore been, I must still be, should

I write for Good Words. He persisted in his request, and I came

to terms as to a story for the periodical. I wrote it and sent it

to him, and shortly afterwards received it back--a considerable

portion having been printed--with an intimation that it would not

do. A letter more full of wailing and repentance no man ever wrote.