By W. W. GIST.
A peep into a literary workshop is always interesting. There is
always some curiosity to know how a man of letters does his work.
This fascinating autobiography gives us a clear insight into Anthony
Trollope’s manner of study, and states many other facts that are
intensely interesting.
Anthony Trollope’s parents were both of a literary turn of mind. His
father had no business capacity, and everything he attempted went wrong.
His mother and brother came to America and opened a bazar at Cincinnati,
hoping to amass a fortune. This proved a failure, and upon returning to
England, Mrs. Trollope wrote a book on America, which brought a fair
compensation. For years she supported the family by her pen. There is
indeed something heroic in her watching by the bedside of her dying
husband and son, and writing her books during the intervals that the sick
did not demand her attention. Her first book was written when she was
fifty years of age. She wrote in all one hundred and fourteen volumes.
Anthony Trollope’s school advantages were poor, and the trials of his
childhood were greater than those of the average youth. In 1834, at the
age of nineteen, he entered the postal service and continued in it for
thirty-three years, effecting many valuable reforms and proving himself
an efficient government officer.
His literary work was done in such a manner as not to interfere in the
least with his duties as inspector of postoffices. Few men have the power
of will to hold themselves to the rigid, exacting plan of study that he
imposed upon himself. He hired a man to call him at 5:30 each morning,
and his literary work was done between that hour and 8:30, before he
dressed for breakfast. He did not, however, spend the whole of the three
hours in writing. During the first half hour he read aloud what he had
written the day before, so that his ear could detect any lack of harmony
in expression, and that he might catch the spirit of his last day’s work.
Can anything be more systematic than his method of writing a book, as
told in his own language:
“When I commenced a new book I always prepared a diary, divided into
weeks, and carried it on for the period which I allowed myself for the
completion of the work. In this I have entered, day by day, the number
of pages I have written, so that if at any time I have slipped into
idleness for a day or two, the record of that idleness has been there
staring me in the face and demanding of me increased labor, so that the
deficiency might be supplied.… I have allotted 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 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. There has ever been the record before me, and a week
passed with an insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye,
and a month so disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.”
He was not satisfied to hold himself rigidly to specified hours. Much
of the time he wrote with his watch open before him, and his task was
to complete a page every fifteen minutes. “I have found that the two
hundred and fifty words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch
went.” He seems to feel that the one only who has acquired a facile
style can expect to produce a given quantity in a given time. “His
language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of the
great performer’s fingers; as words come from the mouth of the indignant
orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained compositor; as the
syllables tinkled out by little bells form themselves to the ear of the
telegrapher.”
In comparing himself with the authors who follow no systematic method of
work, he says: “They have failed to write their best because they have
seldom written at ease. I have done double their work—though burdened
with another profession—and have done it almost without an effort. I have
not once, through all my literary career, felt myself even in danger of
being late with my task. I have known no anxiety as to copy.”
In another connection he speaks of having three unpublished novels in
his desk, and adds: “One of these has been six years finished, and has
never seen the light since it was first tied up in the wrapper which now
contains it. I look forward with some grim pleasantry to its publication
after another period of six years, and to the declaration of the critics
that it has been the work of a period of life at which the power of
writing novels had passed from me.”
His method in writing enabled him to produce books quite rapidly, and
this accounts in part for the unpublished works on hand. Only once did he
permit a story to appear as a serial. In all other cases the story was
completed before the printer saw any part of it.
He defends his habit of work as follows: “I have been told that such
appliances are beneath the notice of a man of genius. I have never
fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been so I think I might
well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing, surely, is so
potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force of the
water-drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really
daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules.”
His duties as a government officer required him to travel a great
deal, and he soon learned to do much of his literary work while on his
journeys. He wrote on a tablet while riding in the cars; one story was
written while traveling on three different continents; “Lady Anna” was
written while making a voyage from Liverpool to Australia.
Anthony Trollope had very positive views on the subject of criticism.
Early in his literary career he reached this conclusion: “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 heart, for censure.” A critic of the _Times_ once
commended his books very highly. The critic afterward ventured to inform
Mr. Trollope that he was the author of the criticism. The blunt reply
was to the effect that he was under no obligations for the complimentary
notice.
He once censured a professional critic for accepting a handsome present
from an author whose works the critic had commended. His idea was that
the man who has received a present for praising a book will not feel free
to criticise adversely the next book by the same author. He states his
views at length on this point: “I think it may be laid down as a golden
rule in literature that there should be no intercourse at all between an
author and his critic. The critic, as critic, should not know his author,
nor the author, as author, his critic.… Praise let the author try to
obtain by wholesome effort; censure let him avoid, if possible, by care
and industry. But when they come, let him take them as coming from some
source which he cannot influence, and with which he should not meddle.”
He once made an earnest plea that the critic’s name should be appended to
his article, believing that this would make the writer more careful both
of his censure and praise, and that the reader could determine the value
of the criticism. On the subject of critical dishonesty he says: “If the
writer will tell us what he thinks, though his thoughts be absolutely
vague and useless, we can forgive him; but when he tells us what he does
not think, actuated either by friendship or animosity, then there should
be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism of
which there is most reason to complain.”
Anthony Trollope thinks that it is wrong that a literary name should
carry so much favor with it. He says: “I, indeed, had never reached a
height to which praise was awarded as a matter of course; but there were
others who sat on higher seats, to whom the critics brought unmeasured
incense and adulation, even when they wrote, as they sometimes did write,
trash which from a beginner would not have been thought worthy of the
slightest notice. I hope no one will think that in saying this I am
actuated by jealousy of others. Though I never reached that height, still
I had so far progressed that that which I wrote was received with too
much favor. The injustice which struck me did not consist in that which
was withheld from me, but in that which was given to me. I felt that
aspirants coming up below me might do work as good as mine, and probably
much better work, and yet fail to have it appreciated.”
Mr. Trollope is undoubtedly right in his general statement. While as a
rule literary productions stand on their merits, the name of Tennyson
or some other writer of equal fame will insure the sale of an article
which, if written by an unknown writer, would be promptly rejected. Young
writers need not complain of this. Distinguished names render articles
marketable, and give them a commercial value that publishers can not
ignore. To test the correctness of his theory, Mr. Trollope wrote two
novels anonymously, which were not received with favor.
Mr. Trollope’s success in a pecuniary point of view was very slow.
During the first ten years of his literary career he did not receive
compensation enough to buy the pens, ink and paper he used. Twelve years
passed before he received any appreciable increase of salary from his
books. From that time his compensation was good. His books brought him in
all something like $350,000.
The chapter that he devotes to the English novelists of his day is very
interesting. He places Thackeray first, George Eliot second, and Dickens
third. Most readers would perhaps reverse this order. Of Thackeray’s
great work he says: “I myself regard ‘Esmond’ as the greatest novel in
the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its
language, on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth
of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great
pathos.” He pays a high tribute to Charlotte Bronte, and then adds:
“‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Esmond,’ and ‘Adam Bede,’ will be in the hands of
our grandchildren, when ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Pelham’ and ‘Harry Lorrequer’
are forgotten; because the men and women depicted are human in their
aspirations, human in their sympathies, and human in their actions.” He
commends Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade quite highly, but thinks the
latter has no clear conception of literary honesty.
Mr. Trollope relates an amusing incident concerning one of his favorite
characters. He was seated in a club room, when two clergymen entered
and commenced to criticise his works. “The gravamen of their complaint
lay in the fact that I introduced the same characters so often. ‘Here,’
said one, ‘is the archdeacon whom we have had in every novel he has
ever written.’ ‘And here,’ said the other, ‘is the old duke whom he
has talked about till everybody is tired of him. If I could not invent
new characters, I would not write novels at all.’ Then one of them
fell foul of Mrs. Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their
words, and almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and
standing between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. ‘As to
Mrs. Proudie,’ I said, ‘I will go home and kill her before the week is
over.’ And so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded, and one
of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations. I have sometimes
regretted the deed, so great was my delight in writing about Mrs.
Proudie, … and I still live much in company with her ghost.”
Mr. Trollope made a number of visits to the United States, and was in
Washington at the time of the Mason and Slidell controversy. Mr. Sumner
was opposed to giving up the men. Mr. Seward’s counsel prevailed with
President Lincoln, and the men were released. He says that this “was the
severest danger that the Northern cause encountered during the war.” He
describes a visit to Brigham Young as follows:
“I called upon him, sending to him my card, apologizing for doing so
without an introduction, and excusing myself by saying that I did not
like to pass through the territory without seeing a man of whom I had
heard so much. He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and
inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a
miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. ‘I guess
you’re a miner,’ said he. I again assured him that I was not. ‘Then how
do you earn your bread?’ I told him that I did so by writing books. ‘I’m
sure you’re a miner,’ said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back
into the house, and closed the door. I was properly punished, as I was
vain enough to conceive that he would have heard my name.”
This autobiography is a delightful book. The candor with which the writer
speaks of his own books, pointing out their defects and calling attention
to their merits, the freedom with which he speaks of his early struggles,
his method of work, and his success, the spirit of fairness with which he
criticises his contemporaries—all these reveal a mind healthy in tone,
and call forth our hearty admiration.