IRELAND--MY FIRST TWO NOVELS.
1841-1848.
In the preceding pages I have given a short record of the first
twenty-six years of my life,--years of suffering, disgrace, and
inward remorse. I fear that my mode of telling will have left an idea
simply of their absurdities; but in truth I was wretched,--sometimes
almost unto death, and have often cursed the hour in which I was
born. There had clung to me a feeling that I had been looked upon
always as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing,--as a creature of
whom those connected with him had to be ashamed. And I feel certain
now that in my young days I was so regarded. Even my few friends who
had found with me a certain capacity for enjoyment were half afraid
of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to be loved,--of
a strong wish to be popular with my associates. No child, no boy, no
lad, no young man, had ever been less so. And I had been so poor; and
so little able to bear poverty. But from the day on which I set my
foot in Ireland all these evils went away from me. Since that time
who has had a happier life than mine? Looking round upon all those
I know, I cannot put my hand upon one. But all is not over yet. And,
mindful of that, remembering how great is the agony of adversity, how
crushing the despondency of degradation, how susceptible I am myself
to the misery coming from contempt,--remembering also how quickly
good things may go and evil things come,--I am often again tempted to
hope, almost to pray, that the end may be near. Things may be going
well now--
"Sin aliquem infandum casum, Fortuna, minaris;
Nunc, o nunc liceat crudelem abrumpere vitam."
There is unhappiness so great that the very fear of it is an alloy to
happiness. I had then lost my father, and sister, and brother,--have
since lost another sister and my mother;--but I have never as yet
lost a wife or a child.
When I told my friends that I was going on this mission to Ireland
they shook their heads, but said nothing to dissuade me. I think it
must have been evident to all who were my friends that my life in
London was not a success. My mother and elder brother were at this
time abroad, and were not consulted;--did not even know my intention
in time to protest against it. Indeed, I consulted no one, except
a dear old cousin, our family lawyer, from whom I borrowed £200 to
help me out of England. He lent me the money, and looked upon me with
pitying eyes,--shaking his head. "After all you were right to go," he
said to me when I paid him the money a few years afterwards.
But nobody then thought I was right to go. To become clerk
to an Irish surveyor, in Connaught, with a salary of £100 a
year, at twenty-six years of age! I did not think it right even
myself,--except that anything was right which would take me away from
the General Post Office and from London.
My ideas of the duties I was to perform were very vague, as were also
my ideas of Ireland generally. Hitherto I had passed my time, seated
at a desk, either writing letters myself, or copying into books those
which others had written. I had never been called upon to do anything
I was unable or unfitted to do. I now understood that in Ireland I
was to be a deputy-inspector of country post offices, and that among
other things to be inspected would be the postmasters' accounts! But
as no other person asked a question as to my fitness for this work,
it seemed unnecessary for me to do so.
On the 15th of September, 1841, I landed in Dublin, without an
acquaintance in the country, and with only two or three letters of
introduction from a brother clerk in the Post Office. I had learned
to think that Ireland was a land flowing with fun and whisky, in
which irregularity was the rule of life, and where broken heads were
looked upon as honourable badges. I was to live at a place called
Banagher, on the Shannon, which I had heard of because of its having
once been conquered, though it had heretofore conquered everything,
including the devil. And from Banagher my inspecting tours were to
be made, chiefly into Connaught, but also over a strip of country
eastwards, which would enable me occasionally to run up to Dublin. I
went to a hotel which was very dirty, and after dinner I ordered some
whisky punch. There was an excitement in this, but when the punch
was gone I was very dull. It seemed so strange to be in a country in
which there was not a single individual whom I had ever spoken to
or ever seen. And it was to be my destiny to go down into Connaught
and adjust accounts,--the destiny of me who had never learned the
multiplication table, or done a sum in long division!
On the next morning I called on the Secretary of the Irish Post
Office, and learned from him that Colonel Maberly had sent a very
bad character with me. He could not have sent a very good one; but
I felt a little hurt when I was informed by this new master that he
had been informed that I was worthless, and must in all probability
be dismissed. "But," said the new master, "I shall judge you by your
own merits." From that time to the day on which I left the service,
I never heard a word of censure, nor had many months passed before
I found that my services were valued. Before a year was over, I had
acquired the character of a thoroughly good public servant.
The time went very pleasantly. Some adventures I had;--two of which
I told in the _Tales of All Countries_, under the names of _The
O'Conors of Castle Conor_, and _Father Giles of Ballymoy_. I will not
swear to every detail in these stories, but the main purport of each
is true. I could tell many others of the same nature, were this the
place for them. I found that the surveyor to whom I had been sent
kept a pack of hounds, and therefore I bought a hunter. I do not
think he liked it, but he could not well complain. He never rode to
hounds himself, but I did; and then and thus began one of the great
joys of my life. I have ever since been constant to the sport, having
learned to love it with an affection which I cannot myself fathom
or understand. Surely no man has laboured at it as I have done, or
hunted under such drawbacks as to distances, money, and natural
disadvantages. I am very heavy, very blind, have been--in reference
to hunting--a poor man, and am now an old man. I have often had to
travel all night outside a mail-coach, in order that I might hunt the
next day. Nor have I ever been in truth a good horseman. And I have
passed the greater part of my hunting life under the discipline of
the Civil Service. But it has been for more than thirty years a
duty to me to ride to hounds; and I have performed that duty with a
persistent energy. Nothing has ever been allowed to stand in the way
of hunting,--neither the writing of books, nor the work of the Post
Office, nor other pleasures. As regarded the Post Office, it soon
seemed to be understood that I was to hunt; and when my services
were re-transferred to England, no word of difficulty ever reached
me about it. I have written on very many subjects, and on most of
them with pleasure; but on no subject with such delight as that
on hunting. I have dragged it into many novels,--into too many no
doubt,--but I have always felt myself deprived of a legitimate joy
when the nature of the tale has not allowed me a hunting chapter.
Perhaps that which gave me the greatest delight was the description
of a run on a horse accidentally taken from another sportsman,--a
circumstance which occurred to my dear friend Charles Buxton, who
will be remembered as one of the members for Surrey.
It was altogether a very jolly life that I led in Ireland. I was
always moving about, and soon found myself to be in pecuniary
circumstances which were opulent in comparison with those of my past
life. The Irish people did not murder me, nor did they even break
my head. I soon found them to be good-humoured, clever--the working
classes very much more intelligent than those of England--economical,
and hospitable. We hear much of their spendthrift nature; but
extravagance is not the nature of an Irishman. He will count the
shillings in a pound much more accurately than an Englishman, and
will with much more certainty get twelve pennyworth from each. But
they are perverse, irrational, and but little bound by the love of
truth. I lived for many years among them--not finally leaving the
country until 1859, and I had the means of studying their character.
I had not been a fortnight in Ireland before I was sent down to a
little town in the far west of county Galway, to balance a defaulting
postmaster's accounts, find out how much he owed, and report upon his
capacity to pay. In these days such accounts are very simple. They
adjust themselves from day to day, and a Post Office surveyor has
nothing to do with them. At that time, though the sums dealt with
were small, the forms of dealing with them were very intricate. I
went to work, however, and made that defaulting postmaster teach me
the use of those forms. I then succeeded in balancing the account,
and had no difficulty whatever in reporting that he was altogether
unable to pay his debt. Of course he was dismissed;--but he had been
a very useful man to me. I never had any further difficulty in the
matter.
But my chief work was the investigating of complaints made by the
public as to postal matters. The practice of the office was and is
to send one of its servants to the spot to see the complainant and
to inquire into the facts, when the complainant is sufficiently
energetic or sufficiently big to make himself well heard. A great
expense is often incurred for a very small object; but the system
works well on the whole as confidence is engendered, and a feeling is
produced in the country that the department has eyes of its own and
does keep them open. This employment was very pleasant, and to me
always easy, as it required at its close no more than the writing
of a report. There were no accounts in this business, no keeping of
books, no necessary manipulation of multitudinous forms. I must tell
of one such complaint and inquiry, because in its result I think it
was emblematic of many.
A gentleman in county Cavan had complained most bitterly of the
injury done to him by some arrangement of the Post Office. The
nature of his grievance has no present significance; but it was
so unendurable that he had written many letters, couched in the
strongest language. He was most irate, and indulged himself in that
scorn which is so easy to an angry mind. The place was not in my
district, but I was borrowed, being young and strong, that I might
remember the edge of his personal wrath. It was mid-winter, and
I drove up to his house, a squire's country seat, in the middle
of a snow-storm, just as it was becoming dark. I was on an open
jaunting-car, and was on my way from one little town to another,
the cause of his complaint having reference to some mail conveyance
between the two. I was certainly very cold, and very wet, and very
uncomfortable when I entered his house. I was admitted by a butler,
but the gentleman himself hurried into the hall. I at once began to
explain my business. "God bless me!" he said, "you are wet through.
John, get Mr. Trollope some brandy and water,--very hot." I was
beginning my story about the post again when he himself took off my
greatcoat, and suggested that I should go up to my bedroom before
I troubled myself with business. "Bedroom!" I exclaimed. Then he
assured me that he would not turn a dog out on such a night as that,
and into a bedroom I was shown, having first drank the brandy and
water standing at the drawing-room fire. When I came down I was
introduced to his daughter, and the three of us went in to dinner. I
shall never forget his righteous indignation when I again brought up
the postal question on the departure of the young lady. Was I such
a Goth as to contaminate wine with business? So I drank my wine,
and then heard the young lady sing while her father slept in his
arm-chair. I spent a very pleasant evening, but my host was too
sleepy to hear anything about the Post Office that night. It was
absolutely necessary that I should go away the next morning after
breakfast, and I explained that the matter must be discussed then. He
shook his head and wrung his hands in unmistakable disgust,--almost
in despair. "But what am I to say in my report?" I asked. "Anything
you please," he said. "Don't spare me, if you want an excuse for
yourself. Here I sit all the day,--with nothing to do; and I like
writing letters." I did report that Mr. ---- was now quite satisfied
with the postal arrangement of his district; and I felt a soft regret
that I should have robbed my friend of his occupation. Perhaps he was
able to take up the Poor Law Board, or to attack the Excise. At the
Post Office nothing more was heard from him.
I went on with the hunting surveyor at Banagher for three years,
during which, at Kingstown, the watering-place near Dublin, I met
Rose Heseltine, the lady who has since become my wife. The engagement
took place when I had been just one year in Ireland; but there was
still a delay of two years before we could be married. She had no
fortune, nor had I any income beyond that which came from the Post
Office; and there were still a few debts, which would have been paid
off no doubt sooner, but for that purchase of the horse. When I had
been nearly three years in Ireland we were married on the 11th of
June, 1844;--and perhaps I ought to name that happy day as the
commencement of my better life, rather than the day on which I first
landed in Ireland.
For though during these three years I had been jolly enough, I
had not been altogether happy. The hunting, the whisky punch, the
rattling Irish life,--of which I could write a volume of stories
were this the place to tell them,--were continually driving from my
mind the still cherished determination to become a writer of novels.
When I reached Ireland I had never put pen to paper; nor had I
done so when I became engaged. And when I was married, being then
twenty-nine, I had only written the first volume of my first work.
This constant putting off of the day of work was a great sorrow to
me. I certainly had not been idle in my new berth. I had learned my
work, so that every one concerned knew that it was safe in my hands;
and I held a position altogether the reverse of that in which I
was always trembling while I remained in London. But that did not
suffice,--did not nearly suffice. I still felt that there might be a
career before me, if I could only bring myself to begin the work. I
do not think I much doubted my own intellectual sufficiency for the
writing of a readable novel. What I did doubt was my own industry,
and the chances of the market.
The vigour necessary to prosecute two professions at the same time is
not given to every one, and it was only lately that I had found the
vigour necessary for one. There must be early hours, and I had not as
yet learned to love early hours. I was still, indeed, a young man;
but hardly young enough to trust myself to find the power to alter
the habits of my life. And I had heard of the difficulties of
publishing,--a subject of which I shall have to say much should
I ever bring this memoir to a close. I had dealt already with
publishers on my mother's behalf, and knew that many a tyro who could
fill a manuscript lacked the power to put his matter before the
public;--and I knew, too, that when the matter was printed, how
little had then been done towards the winning of the battle! I had
already learned that many a book--many a good book--
"is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
But still the purpose was strong within me, and the first effort was
made after the following fashion. I was located at a little town
called Drumsna, or rather village, in the county Leitrim, where the
postmaster had come to some sorrow about his money; and my friend
John Merivale was staying with me for a day or two. As we were taking
a walk in that most uninteresting country, we turned up through a
deserted gateway, along a weedy, grass-grown avenue, till we came
to the modern ruins of a country house. It was one of the most
melancholy spots I ever visited. I will not describe it here, because
I have done so in the first chapter of my first novel. We wandered
about the place, suggesting to each other causes for the misery we
saw there, and while I was still among the ruined walls and decayed
beams I fabricated the plot of _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_. As to
the plot itself, I do not know that I ever made one so good,--or, at
any rate, one so susceptible of pathos. I am aware that I broke down
in the telling, not having yet studied the art. Nevertheless, _The
Macdermots_ is a good novel, and worth reading by any one who wishes
to understand what Irish life was before the potato disease, the
famine, and the Encumbered Estates Bill.
When my friend left me, I set to work and wrote the first chapter or
two. Up to this time I had continued that practice of castle-building
of which I have spoken; but now the castle I built was among the
ruins of that old house. The book, however, hung with me. It was only
now and then that I found either time or energy for a few pages. I
commenced the book in September, 1843, and had only written a volume
when I was married in June, 1844.
My marriage was like the marriage of other people, and of no special
interest to any one except my wife and me. It took place at Rotherham
in Yorkshire, where her father was the manager of a bank. We were not
very rich, having about £400 a year on which to live. Many people
would say that we were two fools to encounter such poverty together.
I can only reply that since that day I have never been without money
in my pocket, and that I soon acquired the means of paying what I
owed. Nevertheless, more than twelve years had to pass over our heads
before I received any payment for any literary work which afforded an
appreciable increase to our income.
Immediately after our marriage, I left the west of Ireland and the
hunting surveyor, and joined another in the south. It was a better
district, and I was enabled to live at Clonmel, a town of some
importance, instead of at Banagher, which is little more than a
village. I had not felt myself to be comfortable in my old residence
as a married man. On my arrival there as a bachelor I had been
received most kindly, but when I brought my English wife I fancied
that there was a feeling that I had behaved badly to Ireland
generally. When a young man has been received hospitably in an Irish
circle, I will not say that it is expected of him that he should
marry some young lady in that society;--but it certainly is expected
of him that he shall not marry any young lady out of it. I had given
offence, and I was made to feel it.
There has taken place a great change in Ireland since the days in
which I lived at Banagher, and a change so much for the better, that
I have sometimes wondered at the obduracy with which people have
spoken of the permanent ill condition of the country. Wages are now
nearly double what they were then. The Post Office at any rate is
paying almost double for its rural labour,--9s. a week when it used
to pay 5s., and 12s. a week when it used to pay 7s. Banks have sprung
up in almost every village. Rents are paid with more than English
punctuality. And the religious enmity between the classes, though it
is not yet dead, is dying out. Soon after I reached Banagher in 1841,
I dined one evening with a Roman Catholic. I was informed next day
by a Protestant gentleman who had been very hospitable to me that I
must choose my party. I could not sit both at Protestant and Catholic
tables. Such a caution would now be impossible in any part of
Ireland. Home-rule no doubt is a nuisance,--and especially a nuisance
because the professors of the doctrine do not at all believe it
themselves. There are probably no other twenty men in England or
Ireland who would be so utterly dumfounded and prostrated were
Home-rule to have its way as the twenty Irish members who profess
to support it in the House of Commons. But it is not to be expected
that nuisances such as these should be abolished at a blow. Home-rule
is at any rate better and more easily managed than the rebellion at
the close of the last century; it is better than the treachery of
the Union; less troublesome than O'Connell's monster meetings; less
dangerous than Smith O'Brien and the battle of the cabbage-garden at
Ballingary; and very much less bloody than Fenianism. The descent
from O'Connell to Mr. Butt has been the natural declension of a
political disease, which we had no right to hope would be cured by
any one remedy.
When I had been married a year my first novel was finished. In July,
1845, I took it with me to the north of England, and intrusted
the MS. to my mother to do with it the best she could among the
publishers in London. No one had read it but my wife; nor, as far
as I am aware, has any other friend of mine ever read a word of my
writing before it was printed. She, I think, has so read almost
everything, to my very great advantage in matters of taste. I
am sure I have never asked a friend to read a line; nor have I
ever read a word of my own writing aloud,--even to her. With one
exception,--which shall be mentioned as I come to it,--I have never
consulted a friend as to a plot, or spoken to any one of the work I
have been doing. My first manuscript I gave up to my mother, agreeing
with her that it would be as well that she should not look at it
before she gave it to a publisher. I knew that she did not give me
credit for the sort of cleverness necessary for such work. I could
see in the faces and hear in the voices of those of my friends who
were around me at the house in Cumberland--my mother, my sister, my
brother-in-law, and, I think, my brother--that they had not expected
me to come out as one of the family authors. There were three or
four in the field before me, and it seemed to be almost absurd
that another should wish to add himself to the number. My father
had written much--those long ecclesiastical descriptions--quite
unsuccessfully. My mother had become one of the popular authors of
the day. My brother had commenced, and had been fairly well paid for
his work. My sister, Mrs. Tilley, had also written a novel, which was
at the time in manuscript--which was published afterwards without her
name, and was called _Chollerton_. I could perceive that this attempt
of mine was felt to be an unfortunate aggravation of the disease.
My mother however did the best she could for me, and soon reported
that Mr. Newby of Mortimer Street was to publish the book. It was to
be printed at his expense, and he was to give me half the profits.
Half the profits! Many a young author expects much from such an
undertaking. I can with truth declare that I expected nothing. And
I got nothing. Nor did I expect fame, or even acknowledgment. I was
sure that the book would fail, and it did fail most absolutely. I
never heard of a person reading it in those days. If there was any
notice taken of it by any critic of the day, I did not see it. I
never asked any questions about it, or wrote a single letter on the
subject to the publisher. I have Mr. Newby's agreement with me, in
duplicate, and one or two preliminary notes; but beyond that I did
not have a word from Mr. Newby. I am sure that he did not wrong me in
that he paid me nothing. It is probable that he did not sell fifty
copies of the work;--but of what he did sell he gave me no account.
I do not remember that I felt in any way disappointed or hurt. I am
quite sure that no word of complaint passed my lips. I think I may
say that after the publication I never said a word about the book,
even to my wife. The fact that I had written and published it, and
that I was writing another, did not in the least interfere with my
life or with my determination to make the best I could of the Post
Office. In Ireland, I think that no one knew that I had written a
novel. But I went on writing. _The Macdermots_ was published in 1847,
and _The Kellys and the O'Kellys_ followed in 1848. I changed my
publisher, but did not change my fortune. This second Irish story was
sent into the world by Mr. Colburn, who had long been my mother's
publisher, who reigned in Great Marlborough Street, and I believe
created the business which is now carried on by Messrs. Hurst &
Blackett. He had previously been in partnership with Mr. Bentley in
New Burlington Street. I made the same agreement as before as to half
profits, and with precisely the same results. The book was not only
not read, but was never heard of,--at any rate in Ireland. And yet it
is a good Irish story, much inferior to _The Macdermots_ as to plot,
but superior in the mode of telling. Again I held my tongue, and not
only said nothing but felt nothing. Any success would, I think, have
carried me off my legs, but I was altogether prepared for failure.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the writing of these books, I did not
imagine, when the time came for publishing them, that any one would
condescend to read them.
But in reference to _The O'Kellys_ there arose a circumstance which
set my mind to work on a subject which has exercised it much ever
since. I made my first acquaintance with criticism. A dear friend of
mine to whom the book had been sent--as have all my books--wrote me
word to Ireland that he had been dining at some club with a man high
in authority among the gods of the _Times_ newspaper, and that this
special god had almost promised that _The O'Kellys_ should be noticed
in that most influential of "organs." The information moved me very
much; but it set me thinking whether the notice, should it ever
appear, would not have been more valuable, at any rate more honest,
if it had been produced by other means;--if for instance the writer
of the notice had been instigated by the merits or demerits of the
book instead of by the friendship of a friend. And I made up my mind
then that, should I continue this trade of authorship, I would have
no dealings with any critic on my own behalf. I would neither ask for
nor deplore criticism, nor would I ever thank a critic for praise,
or quarrel with him, even in my own heart, for censure. To this
rule I have adhered with absolute strictness, and this rule I would
recommend to all young authors. What can be got by touting among the
critics is never worth the ignominy. The same may of course be said
of all things acquired by ignominious means. But in this matter it
is so easy to fall into the dirt. _Facilis descensus Averni._ There
seems to be but little fault in suggesting to a friend that a few
words in this or that journal would be of service. But any praise so
obtained must be an injustice to the public, for whose instruction,
and not for the sustentation of the author, such notices are
intended. And from such mild suggestion the descent to crawling at
the critic's feet, to the sending of presents, and at last to a
mutual understanding between critics and criticised, is only too
easy. Other evils follow, for the denouncing of which this is hardly
the place;--though I trust I may find such place before my work is
finished. I took no notice of my friend's letter, but I was not the
less careful in watching _The Times_. At last the review came,--a
real review in _The Times_. I learned it by heart, and can now
give, if not the words, the exact purport. "Of _The Kellys and the
O'Kellys_ we may say what the master said to his footman, when the
man complained of the constant supply of legs of mutton on the
kitchen table. 'Well, John, legs of mutton are good substantial
food;' and we may say also what John replied: 'Substantial,
sir;--yes, they are substantial, but a little coarse.'" That was the
review, and even that did not sell the book!
From Mr. Colburn I did receive an account, showing that 375 copies
of the book had been printed, that 140 had been sold,--to those, I
presume, who liked substantial food though it was coarse,--and that
he had incurred a loss of £63, 10s. 1½d. The truth of the account I
never for a moment doubted; nor did I doubt the wisdom of the advice
given to me in the following letter, though I never thought of
obeying it--
Great Marlborough Street,
November 11, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR.--I am sorry to say that absence from town
and other circumstances have prevented me from earlier
inquiring into the results of the sale of _The Kellys and
the O'Kellys_, with which the greatest efforts have been
used, but in vain. The sale has been, I regret to say,
so small that the loss upon the publication is very
considerable; and it appears clear to me that, although
in consequence of the great number of novels that are
published, the sale of each, with some few exceptions,
must be small, yet it is evident that readers do not
like novels on Irish subjects as well as on others. Thus
you will perceive it is impossible for me to give any
encouragement to you to proceed in novel-writing.
As, however, I understand you have nearly finished the
novel _La Vendée_, perhaps you will favour me with a sight
of it when convenient.--I remain, &c. &c.
H. COLBURN.
This, though not strictly logical, was a rational letter, telling a
plain truth plainly. I did not like the assurance that "the greatest
efforts had been used," thinking that any efforts which might be made
for the popularity of a book ought to have come from the author;--but
I took in good part Mr. Colburn's assurance that he could not
encourage me in the career I had commenced. I would have bet twenty
to one against my own success. But by continuing I could lose only
pen and paper; and if the one chance in twenty did turn up in my
favour, then how much might I win!