Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

I was always an anti-Hillite, acknowledging, indeed, the great thing

which Sir Rowland Hill had done for the country, but believing him

to be entirely unfit to manage men or to arrange labour. It was a

pleasure to me to differ from him on all occasions;--and, looking

back now, I think that in all such differences I was right.

Having so steeped myself, as it were, in postal waters, I could not

go out from them without a regret. I wonder whether I did anything

to improve the style of writing in official reports! I strove to

do so gallantly, never being contented with the language of my own

reports unless it seemed to have been so written as to be pleasant

to be read. I took extreme delight in writing them, not allowing

myself to re-copy them, never having them re-copied by others, but

sending them up with their original blots and erasures,--if blots

and erasures there were. It is hardly manly, I think, that a

man should search after a fine neatness at the expense of so much

waste labour; or that he should not be able to exact from himself

the necessity of writing words in the form in which they should be

read. If a copy be required, let it be taken afterwards,--by hand

or by machine, as may be. But the writer of a letter, if he wish his

words to prevail with the reader, should send them out as written

by himself, by his own hand, with his own marks, his own punctuation,

correct or incorrect, with the evidence upon them that they have

come out from his own mind.

And so the cord was cut, and I was a free man to run about the

world where I would.

A little before the date of my resignation, Mr. James Virtue, the

printer and publisher, had asked me to edit a new magazine for

him, and had offered me a salary of (pounds)1000 a year for the work over

and above what might be due to me for my own contributions. I had

known something of magazines, and did not believe that they were

generally very lucrative. They were, I thought, useful to some

publishers as bringing grist to the mill; but as Mr. Virtue's business

was chiefly that of a printer, in which he was very successful,

this consideration could hardly have had much weight with him. I

very strongly advised him to abandon the project, pointing out to

him that a large expenditure would be necessary to carry on the magazine

In accordance with my views,--that I could not be concerned in it

on any other understanding, and that the chances of an adequate

return to him of his money were very small. He came down to Waltham,

listened to my arguments with great patience, and the told me that

if I would not do the work he would find some other editor.

Upon this I consented to undertake the duty. My terms as to salary

were those which he had himself proposed. The special stipulations

which I demanded were: firstly, that I should put whatever I pleased

into the magazine, or keep whatever I pleased out of it, without

interference; secondly, that I should, from month to month, give

in to him a list of payments to be made to contributors, and that

he should pay them, allowing me to fix the amounts; and, thirdly,

that the arrangement should remain in force, at any rate, for two

years. To all this he made no objection; and during the time that

he and I were thus bound together he not only complied with these

stipulations, but also with every suggestion respecting the magazine

that I made to him. If the use of large capital, combined with wide

liberality and absolute confidence on the part of the proprietor,

and perpetual good humour, would have produced success, our magazine

certainly would have succeeded.

In all such enterprises the name is the first difficulty. There

is the name which has a meaning and the name which has none--of

which two the name that has none is certainly the better, as it

never belies itself. The Liberal may cease to be liberal, or The

Fortnightly, alas! to come out once a fortnight. But The Cornhill

and The Argosy are under any set of circumstances as well adapted

to these names as under any other. Then there is the proprietary

name, or, possibly, the editorial name, which is only amiss because

the publication may change hands. Blackwood's has, indeed, always

remained Blackwood's, and Fraser's, though it has been bought and

sold, still does not sound amiss. Mr. Virtue, fearing the too

attractive qualities of his own name, wished the magazine to be

called Anthony Trollope's. But to this I objected eagerly. There

were then about the town,--still are about the town,--two or three

literary gentlemen, by whom to have had myself editored would

have driven me an exile from my country. After much discussion, we

settled on St. Paul's as the name for our bantling--not as being

in any way new, but as enabling it to fall easily into the ranks

with many others. If we were to make ourselves in any way peculiar,

it was not by our name that we were desirous of doing so.

I do not think that we did make ourselves in any way peculiar,--and

yet there was a great struggle made. On the part of the proprietor,

I may say that money was spent very freely. On my own part, I

may declare that I omitted nothing which I thought might tend to

success. I read all manuscripts sent to me, and endeavoured to judge

impartially. I succeeded in obtaining the services of an excellent

literary corps. During the three years and a half of my editorship

I was assisted by Mr. Goschen, Captain Brackenbury, Edward Dicey,

Percy Fitzgerald, H. A. Layard, Allingham, Leslie Stephen, Mrs.

Lynn Linton, my brother, T. A. Trollope, and his wife, Charles

Lever, E. Arnold, Austin Dobson, R. A. Proctor, Lady Pollock, G.

H. Lewes, C. Mackay, Hardman (of the Times), George Macdonald, W.

R. Greg, Mrs. Oliphant, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Leoni Levi, Dutton

Cook--and others, whose names would make the list too long. It

might have been thought that with such aid the St. Paul's would have

succeeded. I do not think that the failure,--for it did fail,--arose

from bad editing. Perhaps too much editing might have been the

fault. I was too anxious to be good, and did not enough think of

what might be lucrative.

It did fail, for it never paid its way. It reached, if I remember

right, a circulation of nearly 10,000--perhaps on one or two occasions

may have gone beyond that. But the enterprise had been set on foot

on a system too expensive to be made lucrative by anything short of

a very large circulation. Literary merit will hardly set a magazine

afloat, though, when afloat, it will sustain it. Time is wanted--or

the hubbub, and flurry, and excitement created by ubiquitous

sesquipedalian advertisement. Merit and time together may be

effective, but they must be backed by economy and patience.

I think, upon the whole, that publishers themselves have been the

best editors of magazines, when they have been able to give time

and intelligence to the work. Nothing certainly has ever been done

better than Blackwood's. The Cornhill, too, after Thackeray had

left it and before Leslie Stephen had taken it, seemed to be in

quite efficient hands--those hands being the hands of proprietor

and publisher. The proprietor, at any rate, knows what he wants and

what he can afford, and is not so frequently tempted to fall into

that worst of literary quicksands, the publishing of matter not for

the sake of the readers, but for that of the writer. I did not so