An article by Donald Macleod, D.D

Among the many memoirs which have been published of recent years, few have created greater interest than the autobiographical notes left by the late Mr. Anthony Trollope. We regret that we have been unable before to notice, in GOOD WORDS, the life of one who for many years past contributed to its pages, and to whom our readers were so much indebted.[1]

His reminiscences are full of interest and instruction. Professing to be chiefly literary, and teeming with literary criticism and delightful literary gossip, they also contain a self-revelation in which no detail is omitted necessary to the understanding of his life. In common with all who knew him only after he had achieved distinction, we were surprised by the picture he draws of the hardships of his early life. For no trace of sorrow, no memory of disappointment, could be detected in that bluff and cheery presence. He seemed to revel in the fresh air of a healthy, happy, and useful existence. The loud manly voice, the banging emphasis and straightness of leap with which he plunged into any matter of discussion, had something in them of his favourite amusement of hunting. He addressed you as a man trotting alongside, and in the teeth of a strong breeze, might address you. There was the ring of the “View-halloo” in his heartiness. His countenance beamed with thorough honesty and kindness. And yet he describes the first twenty-six years of his life as “years of suffering, disgrace, and inward remorse.” We are disposed to make large allowance, in these statements, for the influence of a sensitive temperament. His “craving for affection” probably made him exaggerate the slights to which he was exposed. A coarser nature would have forgotten many of the incidents that left deep scars on his kindly spirit. But the picture he gives of his school-days is none the less touching. The son of a barrister of some ability, who was afflicted with poverty, a bad temper, and thorough inaptitude for business, he was born under a conjunction of evil stars. His mother, the celebrated novelist, was the one solace of his youth, but by a hard fate he was long separated from her. He thus describes his first experience at school:—

“I was only seven, and I think that boys at seven are now spared among their more considerate seniors. I was never spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house and the school without a daily purgatory. No doubt my appearance was against me. I remember well, when I was still the junior boy in the school, Dr. Butler, the head master, stopping me in the street and asking me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow and all the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a little boy as I? Oh! what I felt at that moment! But I could not look my feelings. I do not doubt that I was dirty; but I think that he was cruel. He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise me by my face.”

Later on, when he was at Winchester College, he was as miserable as before.

“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, I knocked 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?”

He had other sorrows to meet before he entered on the business of his life in connection with the Civil Service. The beginning of his career at the Post Office was equally unfortunate with that of his boyhood. His superior officers at “The Grand” found him unpunctual and careless, while he thought them overbearing. It seemed to him as if he were doomed to ill-usage. Yet even during those unhappy years there were the stirrings of literary ambition, and tokens of the shape which that ambition was to take. He was haunted with a passion for castle-building.

“For weeks, for months, if I remember rightly, from year to year, I would carry on the same tale, binding myself down to certain laws, to certain proportions, and proprieties, and unities. Nothing impossible was ever introduced, nor even anything which, from outward circumstances, would seem to be violently improbable. I myself was of course my own hero.”

The two turning points of his career were his transference to Ireland and his marriage. In Ireland he found, for the first time, congenial surroundings, and he threw himself with enthusiasm into his official duties. His marriage added a new stimulus to his ambition. He determined to increase his income by the gains of authorship, and accordingly sat down to his first novel. This was in 1841, when he was twenty-six years old. Fortune, however, frowned on this first attempt, as she had frowned on every commencement he made in life. But a new spirit of courage was in him, and he faced the world with a determination to succeed. With that dauntless energy and perseverance which became his chief characteristic, he girded himself for his conflict with fortune. It was not, however, till 1855 that he gained his first success. It was then that “Barchester Towers” appeared, the earliest[2] of that series which included “Framley Parsonage,” and “The Last Chronicle of Barset.” It is on that series his fame will chiefly rest. From 1855 his place in contemporary literature was recognised. If it was not the very highest place, it was close to the highest. He would himself have been the last to claim equality with Thackeray or George Eliot. They had genius; Trollope had talent: but it was talent of rare quality. It seemed exhaustless in productive power, and capable of bringing its full strength to bear on every production, however rapidly executed. If his work never rises to the loftiest range, it maintains an excellence that is astonishing in view of the speed with which story followed story. He describes his method of working with perfect frankness. He despised the idea of a writer waiting for inspiration. “Genius,” he once said to us, “is but another name for the length of time a man can sit.” “I was once told,” he says in his Autobiography, “that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler’s wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler’s wax much more than in inspiration.” No cobbler’s wax, however, could have held him so firmly as did his own determination.

“According to the circumstances of the time,” he writes, “whether any other business might then be heavy or light, or whether the work which I was writing was or was not wanted with speed, I have allotted to myself so many pages a week. The average number has been about forty. It has been placed as low as twenty, and has risen to one hundred and twelve. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been made to contain two hundred and fifty words; and as words, if not watched, will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I went. In the bargains I have made with publishers, I have—not, of course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind—undertaken always to supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of my hand short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the excess has been very small. I have prided myself on completing my work exactly within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself especially in completing it within the proposed time, and I have always done so.”

It was indeed a comfort for any editor to have Trollope as a writer, for there was never any anxiety as to “copy” being forthcoming at the appointed time. We remember the surprise we experienced when, on the occasion of our first arranging with him for a story, he asked, “How many words do you wish?” “On what day do you wish copy?” was the next question. A jotting was then taken of the agreement, and it was observed by him to the letter. Such methods cannot but appear inconsistent with any preconceived notions of inspiration, and as being too mechanical for the accomplishment of the best work. Yet we believe it had no such trammelling influence on Trollope, whose temperament was such that he could reach his highest power whether he was flying in an express train or being pitched about in a steamer in a gale. With unflinching regularity and decision he could concentrate his mind on his allotted task—sometimes even timing himself with his watch for the production of so many words in so many minutes. We question, however, whether the consciousness of having to fill so many pages, while quite consistent with the maintenance of a certain literary proportion, did not sometimes lead to undue “padding.” If he worked hard, he very properly expected to be paid for his work. He had no false sentimentalism as to money in connection with art. “It is a mistake to suppose that a man is a better man because he despises money. Who does not desire to be hospitable to his friends, generous to the poor, liberal to all, munificent to his children, and to be himself free from the carking fear which poverty creates?” The profits which he reaped from his works amounted in all to something between £70,000 and £80,000. It seems a large sum, but when we consider the talent and industry employed, and think of what this same talent and industry might have gained had they been engaged at the bar or in commerce, we cannot estimate the result of his life’s work as at all extraordinary.

His conception of the moral purposes to be served by the writer of novels is a noble one, and he is justified in his claim to having honestly tried to fulfil his ideal.

“There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility—those, for instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin, and those, also, who think it to be simply an idle pastime. They look upon the tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. I have regarded my art from so different a point of view that I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable to my audience. I do believe that no girl has risen from the reading of my pages less modest than she was before, and that some may have learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. I think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness is to be found the road to manliness; but some may perhaps have learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high, but gentle, spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and I have thought it might best be done by representing to my readers characters like themselves, or to which they might liken themselves.”

His life, in spite of its incessant toil, was an exceedingly happy one, and he recognised its happiness to the full. His duties afforded him the opportunity of travelling extensively. Egypt, the West Indies, America, Australia, South Africa, became familiar ground to him. When at home he had his four hunters ever ready to carry him to the covert side, and (what was more difficult) to carry a rider across country who was so short-sighted that he could never form a judgement of fence or ditch, and who boldly rode straight at everything. From his habit of rising every morning at 5.30 a.m., he was able to have his literary work over in good time, and the day free for any other duty or amusement. Loving his own fireside, he yet enjoyed going into society, and seldom in his later life did he miss, when in town, the afternoon visit to the Garrick, and the afternoon rubber at whist there. Never making any very loud professions of religion, and regarding all that was innocent in life as open to his free enjoyment, all his friends knew him to be a reverent and sincere Christian.

From the affection and admiration with which we regard him, it is painful for us to draw attention to one passage in his Autobiography in which his memory has evidently betrayed him, and in which he writes in a tone which, for many reasons well known to us, has filled us with surprise. We refer to the following passage:—

“ ‘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. It was, he said, all his own fault. He should have taken my advice. He should have known better. But the story, such as it was, he could not give to his readers in the pages of GOOD WORDS. Would I forgive him? Any pecuniary loss to which his decision might subject me the owner of the publication would willingly make good. There was some loss—or rather would have been—and that money I exacted, feeling that the fault had in truth been with the editor. There is the tale now to speak for itself. It is not brilliant, nor in any way very excellent, but it certainly is not very wicked. There is some dancing in one of the early chapters, described, no doubt, with that approval of the amusement which I have always entertained; and it was this to which my friend demurred. It is more true of novels than perhaps of anything else, that one man’s food is another man’s poison.”

When we remember the trueness of the friendship which existed between Mr. Trollope and Dr. Norman Macleod, and which was not even disturbed by the incident of “Rachel Ray,” we are at a loss to account for the irritation which this passage betrays. Still more unaccountable is his narrative of the rejection of “Rachel Ray,” and his supposition that the only cause for it was the occurrence of some dancing in the early part of the story. To show the groundlessness of the reason he attributes, we have but to recall to our readers the song once written for GOOD WORDS by Norman Macleod himself.

“Dance, my children! lads and lassies!
    Cut and shuffle, toes and heels!
Piper, roar from ever chanter
    Hurricanes of Highland reels!
Make the old barn shake with laughter,
    Beat its flooring like a drum:
Batter it with Tullochgorum,
    Till the storm without is dumb!
Sweep in circles like a whirlwind,
    Flit across like meteors glancing:
Crack your fingers, shout in gladness,
    Think of nothing but of dancing.”

But Mr. Trollope ought to have had no difficulty in divining the reasons for “Rachel Ray” not being accepted, because he had these reasons given at length by Norman Macleod in a letter which we published in the memoir of our brother, and part of which we here reproduce, not only to show that there is very little trace of “wailing and repentance,” but also to give our readers an insight into the principles upon which the former and present editors have tried to select fiction—that most difficult of all elements in a periodical with the aims which GOOD WORDS has always put before it.

“N.B.—This letter will keep cold till you are at peace with all the world, with a pipe well filled, and drawing well. Read it then, or a bit each day for a month.

“Glasgow, June 11th, 1863.

“You are not wrong: nor have you wronged me or my publishers in any way. I frankly admit this; but neither am I wrong. This, ‘by your leave,’ I assert. The fact is that I misunderstood you and you me, though I more than you have been the cause of the misunderstanding. What I tried to explain and wished you to see when we met here was, the peculiar place which GOOD WORDS aimed at occupying in the field of cheap Christian literature. I have always endeavoured to avoid, on the one hand, the exclusively narrow religious ground—narrow in its choice of subjects and in its manner of treating them—hitherto occupied by our religious periodicals; and, on the other hand, to avoid altogether whatever was antagonistic to the truths and spirit of Christianity, and also as much as possible whatever was calculated to offend the prejudices, far more the sincere convictions and feelings of fair and reasonable ‘Evangelical’ men. Within these extremes it seemed to me that a sufficiently extensive field existed, in which any novelist might roam and find an endless variety of life and manners to describe with profit to all, and without giving offence to any. This problem which I wished to solve did not and does not seem to me a very difficult one, unless for very one-sided ‘Evangelical’ or anti-‘Evangelical’ writers. At all events, being a clergyman as well as an editor—the one from deepest convictions, though the other, I fear, is from the deepest mistake—I could not be else than sensitive lest anything should appear in GOOD WORDS out of harmony with my convictions and my profession. Well, then, was I wrong in assuming that you were an honest believer in revealed Christian truth? I was not. Was I wrong in believing and hoping that there were many truly Christian aspects of life, as well as the canting and humbug ones, with which you heartily sympathised, and which you were able and disposed to delineate? I was not.

“Perhaps I had no ground for hoping that you would give me a different kind of story from those you had hitherto published. If so, forgive me this wrong. Possibly the wish was father to the thought. But the thought did not imply that any of your former novels had been false either to your own world within or to the big world without—false to truth or to nature. It assumed only that you could with your whole heart produce another novel which, instead of showing up what was weak, false, disgusting in professing Christians, might also bring out, as has never yet been done, what Christianity as a living power derived from faith in a living Saviour, and working in and through living men and women, does, has done, and will do, what no other known power can accomplish in the world, for the good of the individual or mankind…. Why, when one reads of the good men in most novels, it can hardly be discovered where they got their goodness; but let a parson, a deacon, a church member be introduced and at once we guess where they have had their badness from—they were professing Christians. Now all this, and much more, was the substance of my sermon to you.

“Now, my good Trollope, you have been, in my humble opinion, guilty of committing this fault, or, as you might say, praiseworthy in doing this good, in your story. You hit right and left; give a wipe here, a sneer there, and thrust a nasty prong into another place; cast a gloom over Dorcas Societies, and a glory over balls lasting till four in the morning. In short, it is the old story. The shadow over the Church is broad and deep, and over every other spot sunshine reigns. That is the general impression which the story gives, so far as it goes. There is nothing, of course, bad or vicious in it—that could not be from you—but quite enough, and that without any necessity from your head or heart, to keep GOOD WORDS and its Editor in boiling water until either or both were boiled to death.

“* * * I know well that my position is difficult, and that, too, because I do not write to please both parties, but simply because I wish to produce, if possible, a magazine which, though too wide for the ‘Evangelicals,’ and too narrow for the anti-‘Evangelicals,’ and therefore disliked by both cliques, may nevertheless rally round it in the long run the sympathies of all who occupy the middle ground of a decided, sincere, and manly Evangelical Christianity.”

We have only to add in reference to another remark made by Mr. Trollope—that such have been the changes in public opinion that the once rejected novel would probably now be published without question in GOOD WORDS,—that having just finished the perusal of “Rachel Ray,” we thoroughly endorse the judgement of the former editor.

We will close this brief sketch of the good Anthony Trollope with a story lately given us, which is both amusing and will serve to show how hearty was the friendship which existed between him and Norman Macleod, long after “Rachel Ray’s” rejection had been forgotten. They were both with Mr. John Burns (the well-known chairman of the Cunard Line) at a little Highland inn, when, after supper, stories were told, and the laughter became loud and long, lasting far into the night. In the morning an old gentleman, who slept in a bedroom above where they were, complained to the landlord of the manner in which his night’s rest had been disturbed, and presumed to express his astonishment that such men should have taken more than was good for them. “Well,” replied the landlord, “I am bound to confess there was much loud talking and laughter; but they had nothing stronger than tea and fresh herrings.” “Bless me,” rejoined the old gentleman, “if that is so, what would they be after dinner!”

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