Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

my terms long previously to the proposed date. I had made my terms

and written my story and sent it to the publisher long before it

was wanted; and so far my mind was at rest. The date fixed was the

first of July, which date had been named in accordance with the

exigencies of the editor of the periodical. An author who writes

for these publications is bound to suit himself to these exigencies,

and can generally do so without personal loss or inconvenience, if

he will only take time by the forelock. With all the pages that I

have written for magazines I have never been a day late, nor have

I ever caused inconvenience by sending less or more matter than I

had stipulated to supply. But I have sometimes found myself compelled

to suffer by the irregularity of others. I have endeavoured to

console myself by reflecting that such must ever be the fate of

virtue. The industrious must feed the idle. The honest and simple

will always be the prey of the cunning and fraudulent. The punctual,

who keep none waiting for them, are doomed to wait perpetually for

the unpunctual. But these earthly sufferers know that they are making

their way heavenwards,--and their oppressors their way elsewards.

If the former reflection does not suffice for consolation, the

deficiency is made up by the second. I was terribly aggrieved on

the matter of the publication of my new Vicar, and had to think

very much of the ultimate rewards of punctuality and its opposite.

About the end of March, 1869, I got a dolorous letter from the

editor. All the Once a Week people were in a terrible trouble. They

had bought the right of translating one of Victor Hugo's modern

novels, L'Homme Qui Rit; they bad fixed a date, relying on positive

pledges from the French publishers; and now the great French author

had postponed his work from week to week and from month to month,

and it had so come to pass that the Frenchman's grinning hero would

have to appear exactly at the same time as my clergyman. Was it

not quite apparent to me, the editor asked, that Once a Week could

not hold the two? Would I allow my clergyman to make his appearance

in the Gentleman's Magazine instead?

My disgust at this proposition was, I think, chiefly due to Victor

Hugo's latter novels, which I regard as pretentious and untrue to

nature. To this perhaps was added some feeling of indignation that

I should be asked to give way to a Frenchman. The Frenchman had

broken his engagement. He had failed to have his work finished by

the stipulated time. From week to week and from month to month he

had put off the fulfilment of his duty. And because of these laches

on his part,--on the part of this sententious French Radical,--I was

to be thrown over! Virtue sometimes finds it difficult to console

herself even with the double comfort. I would not come out in the

Gentleman's Magazine, and as the Grinning Man could not be got out

of the way, by novel was published in separate numbers.

The same thing has occurred to me more than once since. "You no

doubt are regular," a publisher has said to me, "but Mr. ---- is

irregular. He has thrown me out, and I cannot be ready for you till

three months after the time named." In these emergencies I have

given perhaps half what was wanted, and have refused to give the

other half. I have endeavoured to fight my own battle fairly, and

at the same time not to make myself unnecessarily obstinate. But

the circumstances have impressed on my mind the great need there is

that men engaged in literature should feel themselves to be bound

to their industry as men know that they are bound in other callings.

There does exist, I fear, a feeling that authors, because they are

authors, are relieved from the necessity of paying attention to

everyday rules. A writer, if he be making (pounds)800 a year, does not think

himself bound to live modestly on (pounds)600, and put by the remainder

for his wife and children. He does not understand that he should

sit down at his desk at a certain hour. He imagines that publishers

and booksellers should keep all their engagements with him to

the letter;--but that he, as a brain-worker, and conscious of the

subtle nature of the brain, should be able to exempt himself from

bonds when it suits him. He has his own theory about inspiration

which will not always come,--especially will not come if wine-cups

overnight have been too deep. All this has ever been odious to

me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in health, and therefore

unable to do as he has contracted in whatever grade of life. He who

has been blessed with physical strength to work day by day, year

by year--as has been my case--should pardon deficiencies caused

by sickness or infirmity. I may in this respect have been a little

hard on others,--and, if so, I here record my repentance. But

I think that no allowance should be given to claims for exemption

from punctuality, made if not absolutely on the score still with

the conviction of intellectual superiority.

The Vicar of Bullhampton was written chiefly with the object of

exciting not only pity but sympathy for fallen woman, and of raising

a feeling of forgiveness for such in the minds of other women. I

could not venture to make this female the heroine of my story. To

have made her a heroine at all would have been directly opposed

to my purpose. It was necessary therefore that she should be

a second-rate personage in the tale;--but it was with reference to

her life that the tale was written, and the hero and the heroine with

their belongings are all subordinate. To this novel I affixed a

preface,--in doing which I was acting in defiance of my old-established

principle. I do not know that any one read it; but as I wish to

have it read, I will insert it here again:--

"I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a

girl whom I will call,--for want of a truer word that shall not in

its truth be offensive,--a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow

her with qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought

her back at last from degradation, at least to decency. I have not

married her to a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain

that though there was possible to her a way out of perdition, still

things could not be with her as they would have been had she not

fallen.

"There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who

professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,

should allow himself to bring upon his stage a character such as

that of Carry Brattle. It is not long since,--it is well within the

memory of the author,--that the very existence of such a condition

of life as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and

daughters, and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that

ignorance was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer

is beyond question. Then arises the further question,--how far the

conditions of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern

to the sweet young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness

of thought is a matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women,

who are good, pity the sufferings of the vicious, and do something

perhaps to mitigate and shorten them without contamination from the

vice? It will be admitted probably by most men who have thought

upon the subject that no fault among us is punished so heavily