Mary was promptly legalized, would Godwin consent to receive them. He
then expressed his great satisfaction, and wrote to his brother in the
country that his daughter had married the eldest son of a wealthy
baronet.
If this world affords true happiness, it is to be found in a home where
love and confidence increase with years, where the necessities of life
come without severe strain, where luxuries enter only after their cost
has been carefully considered. We are told that wealth is a test of
character--few of us have to submit to it. Poverty is the more usual
test. It is difficult to be very poor and maintain one's self-respect.
Godwin found it impossible.
He, whose chief wish it had been to avoid domestic entanglements and who
wanted his gratification and happiness studied habitually, was living in
a storm-centre of poverty, misery, and tragedy. Claire was known to have
had a baby by Lord Byron, who had deserted her; Harriet Shelley had
drowned herself in the Serpentine; Fanny Godwin, his step-daughter,
took poison at Bristol. The philosopher, almost overcome, sought to
conceal his troubles with a lie. To one of his correspondents he refers
to Fanny's having been attacked in Wales with an inflammatory fever
"which carried her off."
Meanwhile, the sufferings of others he bore with splendid fortitude. In
a very brief letter to Mary Shelley, answering hers in which she told
him of the death of her child, he said, "You should recollect that it is
only persons of a very ordinary sort and of a pusillanimous disposition
that sink long under a calamity of this nature." But he covered folio
sheets in his complainings to her, counting on her sensitive heart and
Shelley's good-nature for sympathy and relief.
With the death of Shelley, Godwin's affairs became desperate. Taking
advantage of some defect in the title of the owner of the property which
he had leased, he declined for some time to pay any rent, meanwhile
carrying on a costly and vexatious lawsuit. Curiously enough, in the
end, justice triumphed. Godwin was obliged to pay two years' arrears of
rent and the costs of litigation. Of course, he looked upon this as an
extreme hardship, as another indication of the iniquity of the law. But
he was now an old man; very little happiness had broken in upon him, and
his friends took pity on him. Godwin was most ingenious in stimulating
them to efforts on his behalf. A subscription was started under his
direction. He probably felt that he knew best how to vary his appeals
and make them effective. So much craft one would not have suspected in
the old beggar.
One thing he always was--industrious. He finished a wretched novel and
at once began a "History of the Commonwealth." He finished "The Lives of
the Necromancers," and promptly began a novel; but with all his writings
he has not left one single phrase with which his name can be associated,
or a single thought worth thinking.
It is almost superfluous to say that he had no sense of humor. With his
head in the clouds and his feet in his slippers, he mused along.
Hazlitt tells a capital story of him. Godwin was writing a "Life of
Chatham," and applied to his acquaintances to furnish him with
anecdotes. Among others, a Mr. Fawcett told him of a striking passage in
a speech by Lord Chatham on General Warrants, at the delivery of which
he (Mr. Fawcett) had been present. "Every man's house has been called
his castle. And why is it called his castle? Is it because it is
defended by a wall, because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be
nothing more than a straw-built shed. It may be open to all the
elements; the wind may enter it, the rain may enter--but the king cannot
enter."
Fawcett thought that the point was clear enough; but when he came to
read the printed volume, he found it thus: "Every man's house is his
castle. And why is it called so? Is it because it is defended by a wall,
because it is surrounded with a moat? No, it may be nothing more than a
straw-built shed. It may be exposed to all the elements; the rain may
enter into it, all the winds of heaven may whistle around it, but the
king cannot,"--and so forth.
Things were going from bad to worse. Most of his friends were dead or
estranged from him. He had made a sad mess of his life and he was very
old. Finally, an appeal on his behalf was made to the government, the
government against which he had written and talked so much. It took pity
on him. Lord Grey conferred on him the post of Yeoman Usher of the
Exchequer, whatever that may be, with a residence in New Palace Yard.
The office was a sinecure, "the duties performed by menials." For this
exquisite phrase I am indebted to his biographer, C. Kegan Paul. It
seems to suggest that a "menial" is one who does his duty. Almost
immediately, however, a reformed Parliament abolished the office, and
Godwin seemed again in danger; but men of all creeds were now disposed
to look kindly on the old man. He was assured of his position for life,
and writing to the last, in 1836 he died, at the age of eighty, and was
buried by the side of Mary Wollstonecraft in St. Pancras Churchyard.
If there is to be profit as well as pleasure in the study of biography,
what lesson can be learned from such a life?
Many years before he died Godwin had written a little essay on
"Sepulchres." It was a proposal for erecting some memorial to the dead
on the spot where their remains were interred. Were one asked to
suggest a suitable inscription for Godwin's tomb it might be
HOW NOT TO DO IT.
In the ever-delightful "Angler," speaking of the operation of baiting a
hook with a live frog, Walton finally completes his general instructions
with the specific advice to "use him as though you loved him." In
baiting my hook with a dead philosopher I have been unable to accomplish
this. I do not love him; few did; he was a cold, hard, self-centred man
who did good to none and harm to many. As a husband, father, friend, he
was a complete failure. His search for truth was as unavailing as his
search for "gratification and happiness." He is all but forgotten. It is
his fate to be remembered chiefly as the husband of the first
suffragette.
What has become of the
Wonderful things he was going to do
All complete in a minute or two?
Where are now his novel philosophies and theories? To ask the question
is to answer it.
Constant striving for the unobtainable frequently results in neglect of
important matters close at hand--such things as bread and cheese and
children are neglected. Some happiness comes from the successful effort
to make both ends meet habitually and lap over occasionally. My
philosophy of life may be called smug, but it can hardly be called
ridiculous.
IX
A GREAT VICTORIAN
For a time after the death of any author, the world, if it has greatly
admired that author, begins to feel that it has been imposed upon,
becomes a little ashamed of its former enthusiasm and ends by neglecting
him altogether. This would seem to have been Anthony Trollope's case, to
judge from the occasional comment of English critics, who, if they refer
to him at all, do so in some such phrase as, "About this time Trollope
also enjoyed a popularity which we can no longer understand." From one
brief paper purporting to be an estimate of his present status, these
nuggets of criticism are extracted:--
Mr. Trollope was not an artist.
Trollope had something of the angry impatience of the middle-class
mind with all points of view not his own.
"Tancred" is as far beyond anything that Trollope wrote as "Orley
Farm" is superior to a Chancery pleading.
We have only to lay "Alroy" on the same table with "The Prime
Minister" to see where Anthony Trollope stands.
It is not likely that Trollope's novels will have any vogue in the
immediate future; _every page brings its own flavor of unreality_.
[Italics mine.]
And in referring to Plantagenet Palliser, who figures largely in so many
of his novels, the author says:--
Some nicknames are engaging; "Planty Pall" is not one of these. The
man is really not worth writing about.
"Is He Popenjoy?" is perhaps the most readable of all Mr.
Trollope's works. It is shorter than many.
Finally, when it is grudgingly admitted that he did some good work, the
answer to the question, "Why is such work neglected?" is, "Because the
world in which Trollope lived has passed away." It would seem that
absurdity could go no further.
American judgment is in general of a different tenor, although Professor
Phelps, of Yale, in his recent volume, "The Advance of the English
Novel," dismisses Trollope with a single paragraph, in which is embedded
the remark, "No one would dare call Trollope a genius." Short, sharp and
decisive work this; but Professor Phelps is clearing the decks for
Meredith, to whom he devotes twenty or more pages. I respect the opinion
of college professors as much as Charles Lamb respected the equator;
nevertheless, I maintain that, if Trollope was not a genius, he was a
very great writer; and I am not alone.
Only a few days ago a cultivated man of affairs, referring to an
interesting contemporary caricature of Dickens and Thackeray which bore
the legend, "Two Great Victorians," remarked, "They were great
Victorians, indeed, but I have come to wonder in these later years
whether Anthony Trollope will not outlive them both." And while the mere
book-collector should be careful how he challenges the opinion of "one
who makes his living by reading books and then writing about
them,"--the phrase is Professor Phelps's,--nevertheless, when one's
opinion is supported, as mine is, by the authority of such a novelist as
our own Howells, he may perhaps be forgiven for speaking up.
[Illustration: FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY MESS^{RS} ELLIOT & FRY]
Mr. Howells not long ago, in a criticism of the novels of Archibald
Marshall, refers to him as a "disciple of Anthony Trollope," whom he
calls "the greatest of the Victorians." This is high praise--perhaps too
high. Criticism is, after all, simply the expression of an opinion; the
important question is, whether one has a right to an opinion. It is easy
to understand why the author of "Silas Lapham" should accord high place
to Trollope.
Trollope can never be popular in the sense that Dickens is popular, nor
is it so necessary to have him on the shelves as to have Thackeray; but
any one who has not made Trollope's acquaintance has a great treat in
store; nor do I know an author who can be read and re-read with greater
pleasure. But to fall completely under the lure of his--genius, I was
going to say, but I must be careful--he should be read quietly--and
thoroughly: that is to say, some thirty or forty volumes out of a
possible hundred or more.
It may at once be admitted that there are no magnificent scenes in
Trollope as there are in Thackeray; as, for example, where Rawdon
Crawley in "Vanity Fair," coming home unexpectedly, finds Becky
entertaining the Marquis of Steyne. On the other hand, you will not
find in any of his best stories anything so deadly dull as the endless
talk about Georgie Osborne, aged variously five, seven, or ten years, in
the same volume. How often have I longed to snatch that infant from his
nurse and impale him on the railings of St. James's Park!
For the most part, people in Trollope's stories lead lives very like our
own, dependent upon how our fortunes may be cast. They have their
failures and their successes, and fall in love and fall out again, very
much as we do. At last we begin to know their peculiarities better than
we know our own, and we think of them, not as characters in a book, but
as friends and acquaintances whom we have grown up with. Some we like
and some bore us exceedingly--just as in real life. His characters do
not lack style,--the Duke of Omnium is a very great person indeed,--but
Trollope himself has none. He has little or no brilliancy, and we like
him the better for it. The brilliant person may become very fatiguing to
live with--after a time.
It is, however, in this country rather than in England that Trollope
finds his greatest admirers. To-day the English call him
"mid-Victorian." Nothing worse can be said. Even Dickens and Thackeray
have to fight against an injunction to this effect, which I cannot
believe is to be made permanent. Nothing is more seductive and dangerous
than prophecy, but one more forecast will not greatly increase its bulk,
and so I venture to say that, Dickens and Thackeray aside, Trollope
will outlive all the other novelists of his time. Dickens has come to
stay; Thackeray will join the immortals with two novels under his arm,
and perhaps one novel of George Eliot and one by Charles Reade will
survive; but Beaconsfield, Bulwer-Lytton, Kingsley, and a host of others
once famous, will join the long procession headed for oblivion, led by
Ann Radcliffe.
And if it be Trollope's fate to outlast all but the greatest of his
contemporaries, it will be due to the simplicity and lack of effort with
which he tells his tale. There is no straining after effect--his
characters are real, live men and women, without a trace of caricature
or exaggeration. His humor is delicious and his plots sufficient,
although he has told us that he never takes any care with them; and
aside from his character-drawing, he will be studied for the lifelike
pictures of the upper-and middle-class English society of his time. Not
one only, but all of his novels might be called "The Way We Live Now."
Someone has said that he is our greatest realist since Fielding; he has
been compared with Jane Austen, lacking her purity of style, but dealing
with a much larger world.
"I do not think it probable that my name will remain among those who in
the next century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction."
So wrote Trollope in the concluding chapter of his autobiography. And he
adds: "But if it does, that permanency of success will probably rest on
the characters of Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Reverend
Mr. Crawley." Now it is as certain that Trollope is remembered as it is
that we are in the next century; but it is not so much for any single
character, or group of characters, or, indeed, any single book, that he
is remembered, as it is for the qualities I have referred to. We may not
love the English people, but we all love England; we love to go there
and revel in its past; and the England that Trollope described so
accurately is rapidly passing away; it was going perhaps more quickly
than the English people themselves knew, even before this war began.
To read Trollope is to take a course in modern English history--social
history to be sure, but just as important as political, and much more
interesting. He has written a whole series of English political novels,
it is true, but their interest is entirely aside from politics. It may
be admitted that there are dreary places in Trollope, as there are
dreary reaches on the lovely Thames, but they can be skipped, and more
rapidly; and, as Dr. Johnson says, "Who but a fool reads a book
through?"
The reason so many American girls marry, or at least used to marry,
Englishmen, was because they found them different from the men whom they
had grown up with; not finer, not as fine, perhaps, but more
interesting. It is for some such reason as this that we get more
pleasure out of Trollope than we do out of Howells, whose work, in some
respects, resembles his. And Trollope, although he frequently stops the
progress of his story to tell us what a fine thing an English gentleman
is, never hesitated to "Paint the warts," and it is not altogether
unpleasant to see the warts--on others.
Trollope takes, or appears to take, no care with his plots. The amazing
thing about him is that he sometimes gives his plot away; but this seems
to make no difference. In the dead centre of "Can You Forgive Her?"
Trollope says that you must forgive her if his book is written aright.
Lady Mason, in "Orley Farm," confesses to her ancient lover that she is
guilty of a crime; but when she comes to be tried for it, the interest
in her trial is intense; so in "Phineas Redux," where Phineas is tried
for murder, the reader is assured that he is not guilty and that it will
come out all right in the end; but this does not in the least detract
from the interest of the story. Compare with this Wilkie Collins's
"Moonstone," probably the best plot in English fiction. The moment that
you know who stole the diamond and how it was stolen, the interest is at
an end.
I have referred to the trial in "Orley Farm." It is, in my judgment, the
best trial scene in any novel. I made this statement once to a well-read
lawyer, and he was inclined to dispute the point, and of course
mentioned "Pickwick." I reminded him that I had said the best, not the
best known. Bardell vs. Pickwick is funny, inimitably funny, never to be
forgotten, but burlesque. The trial in "A Tale of Two Cities" is heroic
romance; but the trial in "Orley Farm" is real life. The only trial
which can be compared to it is Effie Deans's, which I confess is
infinitely more pathetic, too much so to be thoroughly enjoyed.
In "Orley Farm" one can see and hear Mr. Furnival, with his low voice
and transfixing eye; one knows that the witness in his hands is as good
as done for; and as for Mr. Chaffanbrass,--and did Dickens ever invent a
better name?--he knew his work was cut out for him, and he did it with
horrible skill. One sees plainly that the witnesses were trying to tell
the truth, but that Chaffanbrass, intent on winning his case, would not
let them: he was fighting, not for the truth, but for victory. The
sideplay is excellent, the suppressed excitement in the court-room, the
judge, the lawyers, are all good.
At last Mr. Furnival rises: "Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "I never
rose to plead a client's cause with more confidence than I now feel in
pleading that of my friend, Lady Mason." And after three hours he closes
his great speech with this touching bit: "And now I shall leave my
client's case in your hands. As to the verdict which you will give, I
have no apprehension. You know as well as I do that she has not been
guilty of this terrible crime. That you will so pronounce I do not for a
moment doubt. But I do hope that the verdict will be accompanied by some
expression on your part which may show to the world at large how great
has been the wickedness displayed in the accusation."
And Trollope adds: "And yet as he sat down he knew that she had been
guilty! To his ear her guilt had never been confessed; but yet he knew
that it was so, and knowing that, he had been able to speak as though
her innocence were a thing of course. That those witnesses had spoken
the truth he also knew, and yet he had been able to hold them up to the
execration of all around them as though they had committed the worst of
crimes from the foulest of motives! And more than this, stranger than
this, worse than this,--when the legal world knew,--as the legal world
soon did know,--that all this had been so, the legal world found no
fault with Mr. Furnival, conceiving that he had done his duty by his
client in a manner becoming an English barrister and an English
gentleman."
I have frequently heard people say that they would like to attend a
trial. It is not worth while: trials are either shocking or stupid; the
best way to see a trial is to read "Orley Farm."
Those of us who love Trollope love him for those very qualities which
cause fatigue in others. Our lives, it may be, are fairly strenuous; it
is hardly necessary for us to have our feelings wrung of an evening.
When the day is done and I settle down in my arm-chair by the crackling
wood fire, I am no longer inclined to problems, real or imaginary. I
suppose the average man does his reading with what comfort he may after
dinner; it is the time for peace--and Trollope. It may be that the
reader falls asleep. What matter? Better this, I should say, than that
he should be kept awake by the dissection of a human soul. This
vivisection business is too painful. No, give me those long descriptions
of house-parties, those chapters made up of dinner conversations, of
endless hunting scenes, of editorials from newspapers, of meetings of
the House, of teas on the Terrace, and above all, give me the
clergy--not in real life for a minute, but in the pages of Trollope.
But nothing happens, you say. I admit that there is very little blood
and no thunder; but not all of us care for blood and thunder. Trollope
interests one in a gentler way; in fact, you may not know that you have
been interested until you look at your watch and find it past midnight.
And you can step from one book to another almost without knowing it. The
characters, the situations repeat themselves over and over again; your
interest is not always intense, but it never entirely flags. You are
always saying to yourself, I'll just read one more chapter.
After you have read fifteen or twenty of his novels,--and you will
surely read this number if you read him at all,--you will find that you
are as intimate with his characters as you are with the members of your
own family, and you will probably understand them a great deal better.
Professor Phelps says that he is constantly besieged with the question:
"Where can I find a really good story?" I would recommend that he keep a
list of Trollope's best novels at hand. Surely they are in accord with
his own definition of what a novel should be--a good story well told. I
will make such a list for him if he is in any difficulty about it.
I am told by those who know, that Trollope's sporting scenes are
faultless. Never having found a horse with a neck properly adjusted for
me to cling to, I have given up riding. Seated in my easy-chair, novel
in hand, in imagination I thrust my feet into riding-boots and hear the
click of my spurs on the gravel, as I walk to my mount; for some one has
"put me up"; forgetful of my increasing girth, I rather fancy myself in
my hunting clothes. Astride my borrowed mount, following a pack of
hounds, I am off in the direction of Trumpeton Wood.
Fox-hunting, so fatiguing and disappointing in reality, becomes a
delight in the pages of Trollope. The fox "breaks" at last, the usual
accident happens, someone misjudges a brook or a fence and is thrown. If
the accident is serious, they have a big man down from London. I know
just who he will be before he arrives; and when the services of a
solicitor or man of business are required, he turns out to be an old
friend.
Although I have never knowingly killed a grouse or a partridge, being
utterly unfamiliar with the use of shooting irons of any kind, Trollope
makes me long for the first of August, that I may tell my man to pack my
box and take places in the night mail for Scotland.
And then comes the long hoped-for invitation to spend a week end at
Matching Priory; or, it may be that the Duke of Omnium's great
establishment, Gatherum Castle, is to be open to me. Dukes and
duchesses, lords and ladies, M.P.'s, with the latest news from town, of
ministries falling and forming--I have been through it all before. I
know the company; when a man enters the room, I know in advance just
what turn the gossip will take.
But, above all, the clergy! Was there ever a more wonderful gallery of
portraits? Balzac, you will say. I don't know--perhaps; but beginning
with the delightful old Warden, his rich, pompous, but very human
son-in-law, Archdeacon Grantley, Bishop Proudie and his shrewish lady,
and that Uriah Heep of clergymen, Mr. Slope--it is a wonderful
assemblage of living men and women leading everyday lives without
romance, almost without incident.
Trollope was the painter, perhaps I should say the photographer, _par
excellence_ of his time. He set up his camera and took his pictures from
every point of view. Possibly he was not a very great artist, but he was
a wonderfully skillful workman. As he says of himself, he was at his
writing-table at half-past five in the morning; he required of himself
250 words every quarter of an hour; his motto was _nulla dies sine
linea_--no wet towel around his brow. He went "doggedly" at it, as Dr.
Johnson says, and wrote an enormous number of books for a total of over
seventy thousand pounds. He looked upon the result as comfortable, but
not splendid.