Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

as that fault, often so light in itself but so terrible in its

consequences to the less faulty of the two offenders, by which a

woman falls. All of her own sex is against her, and all those of

the other sex in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought

to have contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her, were

her trouble any other than it is.

"She is what she is, and she remains in her abject, pitiless,

unutterable misery, because this sentence of the world has placed

her beyond the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said,

no doubt, that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection

to female virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from

vice. But this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception

of those who have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand.

Instead of the punishment, there is seen a false glitter of gaudy

life,--a glitter which is damnably false,--and which, alas I has

been more often portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of

young girls, than have those horrors which ought to deter, with

the dark shadowings which belong to them.

"To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex,

as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life

is, happy, bright, and glorious, is certainly to allure to vice

and misery. But it may perhaps be possible that if the matter be

handled with truth to life, some girl, who would have been thoughtless,

may be made thoughtful, or some parent's heart may be softened."

Those were my ideas when I conceived the story, and with that

feeling I described the characters of Carry Brattle and of her

family. I have not introduced her lover on the scene, nor have I

presented her to the reader in the temporary enjoyment of any of

those fallacious luxuries, the longing for which is sometimes more

seductive to evil than love itself. She is introduced as a poor

abased creature, who hardly knows how false were her dreams, with

very little of the Magdalene about her--because though there may

be Magdalenes they are not often found--but with an intense horror

of the sufferings of her position. Such being her condition, will

they who naturally are her friends protect her? The vicar who has

taken her by the hand endeavours to excite them to charity; but

father, and brother, and sister are alike hard-hearted. It had

been my purpose at first that the hand of every Brattle should be

against her; but my own heart was too soft to enable me to make

the mother cruel,--or the unmarried sister who had been the early

companion of the forlorn one.

As regards all the Brattles, the story is, I think, well told.

The characters are true, and the scenes at the mill are in keeping

with human nature. For the rest of the book I have little to say.

It is not very bad, and it certainly is not very good. As I have

myself forgotten what the heroine does and says--except that she

tumbles into a ditch--I cannot expect that any one else should

remember her. But I have forgotten nothing that was done or said

by any of the Brattles.

The question brought in argument is one of fearful importance. As

to the view to be taken first, there can, I think, be no doubt. In

regard to a sin common to the two sexes, almost all the punishment

and all the disgrace is heaped upon the one who in nine cases out

of ten has been the least sinful. And the punishment inflicted is

of such a nature that it hardly allows room for repentance. How is

the woman to return to decency to whom no decent door is opened?

Then comes the answer: It is to the severity of the punishment alone

that we can trust to keep women from falling. Such is the argument

used in favour of the existing practice, and such the excuse

given for their severity by women who will relax nothing of their

harshness. But in truth the severity of the punishment is not known

beforehand; it is not in the least understood by women in general,

except by those who suffer it. The gaudy dirt, the squalid plenty,

the contumely of familiarity, the absence of all good words and all

good things, the banishment from honest labour, the being compassed

round with lies, the flaunting glare of fictitious revelry, the

weary pavement, the horrid slavery to some horrid tyrant,--and then

the quick depreciation of that one ware of beauty, the substituted

paint, garments bright without but foul within like painted sepulchres,

hunger, thirst, and strong drink, life without a hope, without the

certainty even of a morrow's breakfast, utterly friendless, disease,

starvation, and a quivering fear of that coming hell which still

can hardly be worse than all that is suffered here! This is the

life to which we doom our erring daughters, when because of their

error we close our door upon them! But for our erring sons we find

pardon easily enough.

Of course there are houses of refuge, from which it has been

thought expedient to banish everything pleasant, as though the only

repentance to which we can afford to give a place must necessarily

be one of sackcloth and ashes. It is hardly thus that we can hope

to recall those to decency who, if they are to be recalled at

all, must be induced to obey the summons before they have reached

the last stage of that misery which I have attempted to describe.

To me the mistake which we too often make seems to be this,--that

the girl who has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if

possible, at any rate out of speech, as though she had never existed,

and that this ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, put

in part also from a dread of the taint which the sin brings with

it. Very low as is the degradation to which a girl is brought when

she falls through love or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for

luxurious ease, still much lower is that to which she must descend

perforce when, through the hardness of the world around her,

she converts that sin into a trade. Mothers and sisters, when the

misfortune comes upon them of a fallen female from among their

number, should remember this, and not fear contamination so strongly

as did Carry Brattle's married sister and sister-in-law.

In 1870 I brought out three books,--or rather of the latter of

the three I must say that it was brought out by others, for I had

nothing to do with it except to write it. These were Sir Harry

Hotspur of Humblethwaite, An Editor's Tales, and a little volume

on Julius Caesar. Sir Harry Hotspur was written on the same plan as

Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel, and had for its object the telling

of some pathetic incident in life rather than the portraiture of a

number of human beings. Nina and Linda Tressel and The Golden Lion

had been placed in foreign countries, and this was an English story.

In other respects it is of the same nature, and was not, I think,

by any means a failure. There is much of pathos in the love of

the girl, and of paternal dignity and affection in the father.

It was published first in Macmillan's Magazine, by the intelligent

proprietor of which I have since been told that it did not make

either his fortune or that of his magazine. I am sorry that it

should have been so; but I fear that the same thing may be said of

a good many of my novels. When it had passed through the magazine,

the subsequent use of it was sold to other publishers by Mr.

Macmillan, and then I learned that it was to be brought out by them