[Illustration: ANTHONY TROLLOPE
(_From a drawing by Samuel Lawrence in the possession of Mrs. Anthony
Trollope_)]
ANTHONY
TROLLOPE
HIS WORK, ASSOCIATES
AND LITERARY ORIGINALS
BY T. H. S. ESCOTT
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN. MCMXIII
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
TO THOSE OF
ANTHONY TROLLOPE’S
NAME AND BLOOD NOW LIVING, AND
TO THE FEW SURVIVORS AMONG HIS
FRIENDS WHOSE MEMORY OF HIM IS
FRESH AND DEAR, THIS MONOGRAPH
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED
PREFACE
The beginning of my very juvenile acquaintance with Anthony Trollope has
been incidentally, but naturally, mentioned in the body of the present
work. Some of my nearest relatives had been with him at Winchester, and
had maintained their friendship with him till, during the sixties, there
began my own mature knowledge of him and the personal connection,
literary or social, that lasted till his death. In or about 1873, I was
commissioned by its editor to write for a magazine--now no doubt
defunct--“something full of actuality” about Trollope’s novels, how he
came to write them and who sat to him for his characters. “Be sure,”
were my editor’s instructions, “you put down nothing but what you get
from Trollope, and he wishes to appear about himself.” Not only, to the
best of my ability, did I do this; but, in the little writing-room at
his Montagu Square house, he himself went through every word of the
proof with me. So pleased did he seem to be with my performance that he
supplemented his remarks on it with many personal and literary details
about himself and those with whom, at the successive stages of his
career, he had to do. The material thus given covered indeed his whole
life from his infancy in Keppel Street down to the settlement in Montagu
Square, I think in 1873. “May I,” I asked, “make some notes to ensure my
remembering correctly?” “Certainly,” was the answer. “They will be no
good for what you have now sent to the printer, but some day, perhaps,
you will have more to say about me, and then your memoranda will tell
you as much as I know myself.” In 1882, partly through Trollope’s good
offices, I succeeded the then Mr. John Morley in _The Fortnightly
Review_ editorship. During the short time then remaining to my friend,
he more than once referred to the notes he had given me nearly ten years
earlier, adding, “Be sure you take care of them.”
In this way I have been nearly spared all necessity of consulting for
the present work Trollope’s own autobiography. Freshness therefore will,
I think, be found a characteristic of this volume. At the same time, I
have been greatly helped at many points by the oldest of Trollope’s,
till recently, surviving intimates, the late Lord James of Hereford, and
Trollope’s artistic colleague, to whom especially my obligations are
infinite, Sir J. E. Millais, as well as by Mr. Henry Trollope, the
novelist’s son. The account of Trollope’s earlier Post Office days owes
a great deal to the good offices of the few now living who had to do
with him at St. Martin’s-le-Grand: Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., Mr. Lewin
Hill, C.B., Colonel J. J. Cardin, C.B., and Mr. J. C. Badcock, C.B. To
these names I must add that of Sir Charles Trevelyan, who could recall
Trollope’s entrance in the public service, and who, before his death in
1886, talked to me more than once about _The Three Clerks_ and the
reputed portrait in it of himself. Similarly, Sir William Gregory of
Coole Park, Galway, the Harrow contemporary of Trollope and of Sidney
Herbert, before his death in 1892 supplied me with much material
illustrating Trollope’s earlier days in Irish and London society. I have
also been greatly helped as regards Trollope’s postal services at home
and abroad by Mr. Albert Hyamson of the General Post Office, as well as
in respect of Trollope’s closing days by Dr. Squire Sprigge, and in his
Sussex retirement by the Rev. A. J. Roberts, Vicar of Harting. The
sketch of Trollope in the hunting-field is, I believe, true to the life.
And this because its particulars, in the most obliging manner secured
for me by the son of Trollope’s oldest sporting friend, Mr. Sydney
Buxton, came from those of his family who had ridden by Trollope’s side
with the Essex hounds, or from Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. Trollope’s
Garrick Club contemporary, my old friend Sir Charles Rivers Wilson, has,
I believe, ensured accuracy for the account of his long connection with
an institution dearer to him than any other of the kind.
T. H. S. ESCOTT.
WEST BRIGHTON,
_May 1913_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
APPRENTICESHIP TO LIFE
PAGE
A “tally-ho” story--Anthony Trollope’s ancestry, historical and
apocryphal--Among the Hampshire novelists--Frances Milton’s
girlhood--Acquaintance with Thomas Anthony Trollope--Marriage and
settlement in Keppel Street--Bright prospects soon clouded--Deep in the
mire of misfortune--The American experiment and its consequence--Sold
up--Mrs. Trollope becomes a popular authoress--Anthony at school--A
battle-royal and its sequel--Rough customs at Harrow--“Leg-bail”--A
family flight to Bruges--The future novelist as usher and prospective
soldier--Friendly influences at the Post Office--Autobiographical
touches in famous novels 3
CHAPTER II
THE NOVELIST AND THE OFFICIAL IN THE MAKING
Activity at the Post Office during the thirties--The romance of
letter-carrying--One of the State’s bad bargains--Trollope’s unhappy
life, in the office and out of it--The novelist in the making--London at
the beginning of the Victorian era--Lost opportunities--Mrs. Trollope’s
influence on her son’s works--Her religious opinions as portrayed
in _The Vicar of Wrexhill_--Anthony’s first leanings to
authorship--Literary labours of others of his name--With his mother
among famous contemporaries at home and abroad--The trials of a youthful
London clerk--Trollope’s remarkable friends of school and social
life 21
CHAPTER III
THE IRELAND THAT TROLLOPE KNEW
A fresh start--Off to Ireland--The dawn of better things--Ireland in the
forties and after--The Whigs and Tories in turn make vain efforts to
remove the nation’s chief grievances--The most deep-seated evils social
rather than political--Trollope’s bond of union with the “distressful
country”--Sowing the seed of authorship on Bianconi’s cars and in the
hunting-field--“It’s dogged as does it”--Ireland’s hearty welcome to the
Post Office official--Trollope and his contemporaries on the Irishman in
his true light--The future novelist at Sir William Gregory’s home--The
legislation of 1849--The history and race characteristics of the Irish
and the Jews compared--Irish novelists of Trollope’s day--Marriage with
Miss Heseltine in 1844--His social standing and hunting reputation in
Ireland--Interesting notabilities at Coole Park--Triumphant success of
Trollope’s Post Office plot--Scoring off the advocate 39
CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST TWO IRISH NOVELS
Trollope’s first novel, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_--“The best Irish
story that has appeared for half a century”--Clever effects of light and
shade--The story’s principal characters and their allegorical
significance--Typical sketches of Irish life and institutions--The
working of the spy system in detection of crime--Some specimens of
Trollopian humour--_The Kellys and the O’Kellys_--Trollope’s second
literary venture--Links with its predecessor--Its plot and some of the
more interesting figures--The squire, the doctor, and the parson 60
CHAPTER V
COSMOPOLITAN CULTURE AND ITS LITERARY FRUITS
Trollope’s _Examiner_ articles--Opposing religious experiences of
boyhood and early manhood--Moulding influences of his Irish life--The
cosmopolitan in the making--Interest in France and the French--_La
Vendée_--Trollope’s relation to other English writers on the French
Revolution--The moving spirits of the Vendean insurrection--Peasant
royalist enthusiasm--Opening of the campaign--The Chouans of
fact and fiction--A republican
portrait-gallery--Barère--Santerre--Westerman--Robespierre--Eleanor
Duplay 81
CHAPTER VI
ON HER MAJESTY’S SERVICE AND HIS OWN
Maternal influence in the Barchester novels--Trollope’s first literary
success with _The Warden_--The Barchester cycle begun--Origin of the
_Barchester Towers_ plot--The cleric in English fiction--Conservatism
of Trollope’s novels--Typical scenes from _The Warden_--Hiram’s
Hospital--Archdeacon Grantly’s soliloquy--Crushing the rebels--Position
of the Barchester series in the national literature--Collecting the raw
material of later novels--The author’s first meeting with Trollope--The
novelist helped by the official--Defence of Mrs. Proudie as a realistic
study--The Trollopian method of railway travelling--A daily programme of
work and play 101
CHAPTER VII
ON AND OFF DUTY ROUND THE WORLD
Chafing in harness--“Agin the Government”--_The Three Clerks_--A visit
to Mrs. Trollope--Florentine visitors of note in letters and art--A
widened circle of famous friends--Diamond cut diamond--Trollope’s new
sphere of activity--In Egypt as G.P.O. ambassador--Success of his
mission--_Doctor Thorne_--Homeward bound--Post and pen work by the
way--North and South--_The West Indies and the Spanish Main_--Carlyle’s
praise of it--_Castle Richmond_ and some contemporary novels--An early
instance of Thackeray’s influence over Trollope’s writings--Famous
editors and publishers--The flowing tide of fortune 117
CHAPTER VIII
ESTABLISHMENT IN LONDON
Resettlement in England--Bright prospects for the future--Importance of
_The Cornhill_ connection--_Framley Parsonage_ and other novels of
clerical life--Some novelists and their illustrators--Trollope’s debt to
Millais--The social services of leading lights help him in his
historical pictures of the day--Election to the Garrick and Athenæum
Clubs--Anthony Trollope as he appeared in 1862--Leading Garrick
figures--Thackeray’s social and literary mastery over
Trollope--Thackeray, Dickens, and Yates in a Garrick squabble--A divided
camp--Trollope on Yates and Yates on Trollope--The origin of the
politico-diplomatic Cosmopolitan Club--Informal gatherings--Trollope
becomes a member--Some famous “Cosmo” characters--The end of the
club--Other clubs frequented by Trollope--The Fielding--The Arundel--The
Arts--The Thatched House--The Turf 134
CHAPTER IX
IN PERIODICAL HARNESS
Trollope’s one work in the Thackerayan vein--_Brown, Jones, and
Robinson_--Its failure--Thackeray’s two efforts to enter official life
by a side door--Trollope’s opinion of “untried elderly tyros”--And of
Thackeray’s limitations--His _Life of Thackeray_--Philippics against
open competition in the Civil Service--A Liberal by profession, but a
Tory at heart--Anthony’s _bon mot_--_The Pall Mall Gazette_--Hunting
life in Essex--Sir Evelyn Wood to the rescue--Trollope’s
cosmopolitanism--_The Fortnightly Review_, an English _Revue des deux
Mondes_--Its later developments 160
CHAPTER X
THE BROADENING OF THE LITERARY AND GEOGRAPHICAL HORIZON
Trollope as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. G. H. Lewes among the lions of
literature and science at The Priory, Regent’s Park--Charles Dickens
present in the spirit, not in the flesh, thinks _Adam Bede_ is by
Bradbury or Evans, and doesn’t fancy it is Bradbury--Was there any
exchange of literary influence between George Eliot and
Trollope?--Trollope’s new departure illustrates the progress from the
idyllic to the epic--_Orley Farm_--Its plot--Trollope’s first visit to
the United States, in 1860 182
CHAPTER XI
AUTHOR, ARTIST, AND THEIR FEMININE SUBJECTS
Trollope and Millais succeed in their different spheres of life by
working on similar principles--The ideas which led Trollope to write
_Can You Forgive Her?_--Lady Macleod’s praises induce the heroine to
dismiss John Grey while Kate Vavasor’s devices draw her to her cousin
George--Alice’s spiritual and social surroundings take a great part in
moulding her character--Mrs. Greenow’s love affairs relieve the shadow
of the main plot--Burgo Fitzgerald tries to recapture Lady Glencora--Mr.
Palliser sacrifices his political position to ensure her safety--He is
rewarded at last--Other novels, both social and political 203
CHAPTER XII
RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY AND OPINIONS
Anglican orthodoxy and evangelical antipathies imbibed by Trollope in
childhood--His personal objections to the Low Church Party for
theological as well as social reasons--His characteristic revenge on
Norman Macleod for extorting from him a _Good Words_ novel--_Rachel Ray_
a case of “vous l’avez voulu, George Dandin”--And instead of a story for
evangelical readers a spun-out satire on evangelicalism--Its plot,
characters, and incidents--_Nina Balatka_ regarded as a problem Jew
story--_Linda Tressel_ to Bavarian Puritanism much as _Rachel Ray_ to
English--_Miss Mackenzie_ another hit at the Low Church--Its characters
and plot--_The Last Chronicle of Barset_ and _The Vicar of
Bullhampton_--Their serious elements, as well as social photographs and
occasional touches of satire against women, ever doing second thing
before first and then doing the first wrong--Both novels illustrate
Trollope’s views of the tragic volcano ever ready to break out from
under the social crust 223
CHAPTER XIII
PEN AND PLATFORM POLITICS
Failures of literary men in the political world at the beginning of the
nineteenth century--Trollope increases the number by going under at
Beverley--“Not in, but in at the death”--_Ralph the Heir_--Its plots and
politics--Trollope as editor of _The St. Paul’s Magazine_--_Phineas
Finn_--Some remarks on Trollope’s _Palmerston_--In the heart of
political society--The hero’s flirtations and fights in London--His
final return to the old home and friends--_Phineas Redux_--Again in
London--Charged with murder--Madame Goesler’s double triumph--Some
probable caricatures--Trollope renews acquaintance with Planty Pal and
his wife in _The Prime Minister_--The close of the political series
comes with _The Duke’s Children_ 245
CHAPTER XIV
AMERICAN MISSIONS AND COLONIAL TOURS
Trollope’s third visit to America--That of 1868 about the Postal Treaty
and Copyright Commission--Mr. and Mrs. Trollope’s Australian visit
(1871) to their sheep-farming son--Family or personal features and
influences in the colonial novels suggested by this journey--Trollope as
colonial novelist compared with Charles Reade and Henry Kingsley--Why
the colonial novels were preceded by _The Eustace Diamonds_--Rival South
African travellers--Trollope follows Froude to the Cape--What he thought
about the country’s present and future--How he found out Dr. Jameson and
Miss Schreiner--John Blackwood, Trollope’s particular friend among
publishers--Trollope, Blackwood’s pattern writer--_Julius
Cæsar_--Anthony’s birthday present to John--The South African book--What
the critics said--Well-timed and sells accordingly 269
CHAPTER XV
CLOSING ACQUAINTANCES, SCENES, AND BOOKS
Trollope on the third Earl Grey, the fourth Earl of Carnarvon, and the
Colonies--Intimacy at Highclere and its literary consequences--Trollope
and _Cicero_, 1879--Fraternally criticised by T. A. Trollope and
others--Fear of literary fogeydom produces later up-to-date novels
beginning with _He Knew He was Right_--A similarity between Trollope and
Dickens--Trollope and Delane--The editor’s article and novelist’s book
about social and financial scandals of the time--_Mr. Scarborough’s
Family_, Trollope’s first novel for a Dickens magazine--Retirement from
Montagu Square to North End, Harting--Last Irish novels, _An Eye for an
Eye_ (1879), _The Land Leaguers_ (1883), _Dr. Wortle’s School_--General
estimate--Last London residence--Seizure at Sir John Tilley’s--Death in
Welbeck Street--Funeral at Kensal Green 288
BIBLIOGRAPHY 309
INDEX 337
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ANTHONY TROLLOPE _Frontispiece_
HARTING GRANGE--NORTH FRONT _To face page_ 3
HARTING GRANGE--SOUTH ENTRANCE “ 288
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
[Illustration: HARTING GRANGE. NORTH FRONT.]
CHAPTER I
APPRENTICESHIP TO LIFE
A “tally-ho” story--Anthony Trollope’s ancestry, historical and
apocryphal--Among the Hampshire novelists--Frances Milton’s
girlhood--Acquaintance with Thomas Anthony Trollope--Marriage and
settlement in Keppel Street--Bright prospects soon clouded--Deep in
the mire of misfortune--The American experiment and its
consequence--Sold up--Mrs. Trollope becomes a popular
authoress--Anthony at school--A battle-royal and its sequel--Rough
customs at Harrow--“Leg-bail”--A family flight to Bruges--The
future novelist as usher and prospective soldier--Friendly
influences at the Post Office--Autobiographical touches in famous
novels.
The Norman Tallyhosier, who accompanied William the Conqueror to
England, when hunting with his royal master in the New Forest, happened
to kill three wolves; the King at once dubbed him “Troisloup.” The
changes and corruptions of successive centuries left the word Trollope.
Such at least was the traditional account of the patronymic volunteered
by Anthony Trollope, when at Harrow, to his school-fellow, Sidney
Herbert, and afterwards forcibly extracted from him upon many different
occasions by the boys, whose fancy it tickled or whose incredulity it
provoked. Such scepticism was the more pardonable, because the earliest
Trollope of any distinction, Sir Andrew, in the fifteenth century, rose
to knighthood during the Wars of the Roses from beginnings more humble
than would be expected in the case of one whose forefathers were
personages at the Norman Court. However that may be, the Trollope stock
can claim description as ancient, honourable, and of high degree. Amid
many changes of employment and fortune, Anthony Trollope’s bearing and
conduct were those of one who, while modestly proud of his ancestral
honours, yet always saw in them a Sparta given him by birth to adorn a
social capital entrusted to him by nature for laying out at intellectual
interest. Throughout all his trials and vicissitudes he lived with men
distinguished by their position or achievements. Comparing himself with
these, he might well be satisfied, not only with his power of
transmuting manuscript into money, but with having done as little as
any, and less than some, to bring discredit upon family antecedents and
an historic name.
When Anthony Trollope’s _Autobiography_ appeared in 1883, much of its
contents was already familiar outside the limit of his personal
intimates. No man so largely preoccupied, as his temperament and
pursuits made him, with himself, ever talked less about his interests
and affairs except with a few particular friends in the privacy of home
life. In the year of his death, 1882, mentioning to the present writer
the sheets of self-record whose preparation he had several years before
finished, he described them as a series of pegs. “On them,” he added,
“may be hung those materials about my life and work which may be
gathered by those who, like yourself, may be disposed to say something
about me.”
For several reasons presently to appear, nothing could better match
later associations of the Trollope family than for its mythical founder
first to have been heard of in the county where much of his mother’s
girlhood was passed, and where Anthony sometimes found a retreat for his
declining years. Troisloup’s descendants--to assume that there existed
some foundation in fact for the story which, without having thought much
about it, young Anthony presaged the novelist’s inventiveness by telling
his Harrow schoolmates--made no further contributions to Hampshire
history, but gradually identified themselves with the north-midland or
the northern counties. When the family baronetcy was created in 1641
the Trollopes had settled near Stamford, and soon supplied Lincolnshire
with one of its great territorial magnates in Sir John Trollope, who for
more than a quarter of a century represented the southern division of
the county. He belonged to those “men of metal and large-acred squires”
mentioned by Disraeli as forming Lord George Bentinck’s chief bodyguard
of the Tory revolt against Sir Robert Peel in 1846. This was that
typical county member who, during the full-dress debates on the Bill for
opening the ports, agreed with Sir Charles Burrell, Sir William
Jolliffe, and Sir Charles Knightley not to follow their leader. Under
protection, it had been repeatedly said during the debate and on other
occasions, the land failed to provide food for the people; Sir John
Trollope declared there was not in his own neighbourhood a single acre
lying waste, that from 1828 to 1841 Lincoln county had enlarged its
wheat produce by 70 per cent., while the population had only increased
20 per cent. Thus, argued Sir John, there was a large surplus available
to feed the manufacturing districts.
So long as he could persuade himself of a protectionist reaction being
even remotely possible, Sir John Trollope stuck to the House of Commons,
and took an active part in its business. Not indeed till some time after
his leaders had suddenly acquiesced in free trade did he, in 1868,
become Lord Kesteven. The exact place of Anthony Trollope in the family
to which he belonged may be best described by saying that the high Tory,
protectionist M.P. just mentioned, the seventh baronet, and the novelist
were descended from a common ancestor, Sir Thomas Trollope, the fourth
baronet. Between these two cousins of the Trollope name may be traced,
as will appear hereafter, certain affinities of character and
temperament as well as of blood. At each successive stage of his career
Anthony Trollope was what circumstances made him. Few courses in an
entirely new direction have ever shown more clearly and more perceptibly
than Trollope’s the impress of hereditary influences. These, however,
were less on the paternal than on his mother’s side.
The Hampshire, whose hunting-ground may or may not have witnessed the
Norman lupicide’s threefold feat, began in the early eighteenth century
to be the nursing mother of novelists. First, in order of time as well
as of fame, comes Jane Austen, born at Steventon Rectory in 1775. Miss
Austen’s works are as severely undenominational and as studiedly secular
as those of Maria Edgeworth, or as the educational system of Thomas Day.
Elsewhere in the same county, towards the close of the Georgian era,
appeared an author possessing little in common with the woman of genius
who opened her series with _Sense and Sensibility_. Charlotte Mary
Yonge’s best known works of fiction are still _The Heir of Redclyffe_
and _The Daisy Chain_. These, with _Heartsease_ and _The Monthly
Packet_, formed the most popular manuals in High Church households
throughout the first half of the Victorian age. Five years after Jane
Austen’s birth, her parents brought with them to Heckfield Vicarage,
from their earlier home at Stapleton, near Bristol, the girl who, as
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s future wife, was to become Anthony Trollope’s
mother. To her third son, while yet a boy, she imparted the desire of
emulating the industry and skill by which she was then supporting the
household. The living at Heckfield had come to Frances Milton’s father
from New College, of which he had been a Fellow; it provided him with
leisure for intellectual pastimes, always praised but seldom
remunerated, and provided his vividly imaginative, keen-witted, and
sarcastic daughter with opportunities for her earliest studies of
provincial character and life. The Rev. William Milton was a
mathematician with a turn for practical mechanics. He had elaborated a
patent that for some time he hoped might make his fortune; he had given
proof of real ability in his favourite pursuit by submitting, during his
stay at Stapleton, a scheme to the authorities of the town for improving
Bristol port. Some merit these suggestions must have had, for the lines
they indicated were afterwards followed in the actual development of the
land and sea approaches to the harbour. The city corporation voted
their thanks to the author of the design, but gave him nothing more.
Meanwhile the unsuccessful inventor’s daughter Frances Milton, by her
personal endowments of a pleasant face, a bright manner, and a clever,
sarcastic tongue, was attracting admirers. Amongst these was a young
Chancery barrister, like Miss Milton’s father a Wykehamist and a Fellow
of New College.
One of Mr. Milton’s sons, Henry Milton, obtained an appointment in a
branch of the Civil Service afterwards ornamented by one of the Milton
name,[1] and was frequently visited by his sisters at his London rooms.
In this way Frances Milton and her lover contrived to see a good deal of
each other. The street where Frances Milton now kept house for her
brother was the same, Keppel Street, as that in which, though at a
different number, the Chancery barrister, with his wife, was afterwards
to live, and his children, amongst them his third son Anthony, were to
be born. Thomas Anthony Trollope’s Lincoln’s Inn chambers were within a
few minutes’ walk. When the two lovers were not billing and cooing
together in Bloomsbury, they were exchanging letters dealing with many
other subjects besides their own mutual attachment. In the earlier days
of courtship the swain addressed his epistles to Henry Milton on the
understanding that his sister was to see them. Sometimes on both sides
these epistles ran into elaborate and rather pedantic essays, while on
the gentleman’s they were couched in carefully thought out and even
precious language natural to a clever, reflective, well-read, and
rather supercilious young college don. Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s
lyrical ballads were coming out in 1798. Not less conservative in his
taste than in his politics, Thomas Anthony Trollope had only a sneer for
the fearful and wonderful products of the new romantic school: if Miss
Milton wished to see some new poems that were at least good literature,
let her read what had just been given to the world by two Wykehamist
bards. One of these was named Jones, the other Crowe. Both were Fellows
of New College, and both had won the highest praise of experts like
Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers. When he deals with other subjects,
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s epistolary style undergoes a portentous
change. Both the gentleman and the lady are equally business-like,
precise, and severely the reverse of ornate in the forecasts of their
united future. Read with the intervening reminiscence of _David
Copperfield_, Thomas Anthony Trollope’s summary of his present, and
estimate of his prospective circumstances, curiously remind one of the
language in which Wilkins Micawber described his obligations to “my
friend” Traddles, as well as of the complete arrangements he had made
for discharging these claims in full. The sum and substance of the
Milton-Trollope calculations is that at their marriage the husband--his
fellowship of course given up--would, from his Lincoln’s Inn practice
and his patrimony, be able to count on something like nine hundred a
year. On the other side the wife would bring a dowry of thirteen hundred
pounds, independently of any resources provided by her father. As a
fact, however, she was to receive a paternal allowance of fifty pounds a
year, as well as occasional additions for clothes or other specific
purposes.
On the strength of these figures there seemed nothing rash in
encountering the risk of an early union. Accordingly, on the
twenty-third of the proverbially unlucky month of May 1809, the marriage
was celebrated at the bride’s home, Heckfield. Then came the settlement
at 16 Keppel Street; there they remained almost uninterruptedly until
their migration to Harrow. There too were born their first five
children; while two daughters came in Harrow Weald. Of this family, five
died before they were sixty, the eldest son, Thomas Adolphus, and the
third, Anthony, dealt with in these pages, reached the threshold of old
age, though Anthony fell short by fifteen years of his elder brother’s
term. As soon as the Keppel Street children could, in nursery phrase,
take notice, they must have found themselves observed by interesting and
distinguished company. The father was known among solicitors for a man
quite as able as he was queer-tempered, and for a thoroughly sound
lawyer. He had also just chanced upon one of those little personal
advertisements sometimes useful at the Bar. His friend the artist Hayter
was then, on the Duke of Bedford’s commission, painting the picture that
speedily became famous, Lord William Russell’s trial; in Thomas Anthony
Trollope he found the original for a foremost member of the legal group
of spectators in the court.
Forensic success, however well won by brains, knowledge, and industry,
sometimes suddenly, sometimes by faintly observed degrees, is apt to
melt away. The head of the Keppel Street household could found, and to
some extent build up, a valuable practice, but he was without the temper
or tact which would ensure a politic or even a civil answer to a fool.
And to him, especially in the legal world, most people seemed fools. The
attorneys who brought briefs to his chambers, if their replies to his
questions did not exactly suit his phraseological whim, found themselves
as browbeaten as if they had been refractory or prevaricating witnesses
badgered by a cross-examining counsel. For a long time Thomas Anthony
Trollope’s clients meekly submitted to their fate, and, notwithstanding
his ill-temper and unpopularity, the bitter-tongued lawyer made so
handsome an income as to exchange the fogs of the Bloomsbury home for
the clear air and fine views of a bracing suburb. Harrow, as within an
easy drive of the law courts, was the spot selected. The residence,
substantially built after its owner’s designs, and comfortably
furnished, received the name of Julians. But though from one point of
view a monument of Thomas Anthony Trollope’s legal triumphs, it proved
a forerunner of his fall. As if under the breath of some evil genius,
who could have been none other than himself, the rising fabric of his
professional prosperity, by slow but sure degrees, crumbled into dust.
Once having discovered that they could get their work done practically
as well elsewhere by counsel not superior to the common courtesies of
life, the long-enduring solicitors brought their papers to Trollope no
more. Every week ruin, crushing and complete, drew visibly nearer. At
last there was decided on a move of the whole family from Keppel Street
to Julians.
Thomas Anthony Trollope’s New College Fellowship implied a competent
acquaintance with Greek and Latin; he had shown his turn for the law
when he won the Vinerian Scholarship. His ambition was that his sons
should follow in his steps. Beginning to despair of that, he grew
discontented with his own position at the Bar, notwithstanding his
brilliant start as an equity lawyer. The growing infirmities of his
temper frightened away clients; his practice fell off. With something
like infatuation he resolved on exchanging a profession in which he
might have made his fortune, and could still have done well, for a
pursuit so absolutely ruinous as farming. For the failure now in store
his own perverse impetuosity could alone be blamed. He was the most
industrious of men, as well as the most exemplary and self-denying in
all the relationships of life. “The truth is,” said Anthony Trollope,
“my father soon found that the three or four hundred acre farm, which he
rented of Lord Northwick, had been taken by him on a false
representation of its opportunities. Even in the bitterness of spirit
caused by the consequent disillusion, he looked forward, as he said, ‘to
some compensation in having more time to teach me and my brother Tom our
classics.’”
The Julians experiment initiated a series of reverses that beggared the
father; it would have left the sons without home or education, but for
the extraordinary exertions of a resourceful, gifted, and heroic wife.
Anthony Trollope’s mother had an indomitable faculty of finding material
for success in the very welter of misfortune. The eligible modern
mansion Julians had, of course, soon to be deserted for the much less
dignified and commodious Julians farm. Next came settlement beneath a
smaller and meaner roof. Even here Mrs. Trollope contrived almost
miraculously to transform her environment, and convert what threatened
to become a ruin into an habitable if not a comfortable shelter. It was
only after her departure on missions of domestic duty that Anthony
Trollope and his father realised the full misery growing out of the
removal from Bloomsbury to Harrow Weald. Weak lungs had been inherited
by most of the children from their father, whose health now, under the
quickly successive trials, had permanently given way. Further gold
invested in the agricultural experiment would, it had now become clear,
only pave and hasten the approach to the Bankruptcy Court.
“If he looks at a card, if he rattles a box,
Away fly the guineas from this Mr. Fox.”
The sentiment of the familiar couplet was exactly applicable to Thomas
Anthony Trollope. Except in the possession of the most capable and
unselfish wife in the world, and of children all intellectually above
the average, and in two instances destined to achieve fame as well as
fortune, fate and luck had an undying grudge against him. Part of his
little house property had become commercially useless because the
title-deeds were lost. At the same time something went wrong with money
which, at her marriage, had been settled on Mrs. Trollope.
Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer and Bloomerism did not become household words
till 1849. Almost fifty years Mrs. Bloomer’s senior, Robert Owen had
acquired in the State of Indiana twenty thousand acres of land for
establishing a communistic colony near the Wabash River, known as New
Harmony. Miss Frances Wright constituted herself in England at once the
missionary of Owen’s socialistic gospel and, by her habit, the
anticipatory pioneer of the Bloomer dress. In the Bloomer costume,
afterwards a standing subject of pictorial jokes in _Punch_, she
delivered a series of enthusiastic lectures throughout the south of
England. By her various proofs of disinterested zeal for the movement,
she secured first the interest, then the admiration and friendship, of
the lady who presided over the Trollope _ménage_ successively in London
and at Harrow, and whose natural sympathies always impelled her towards
whatever novelty might excite popular laughter and opposition. The short
tunic, the wide sash round the waist, the full trousers gathered in at
the ankles, and the broad-brimmed straw hat, generally held in the hand,
all proclaiming the presence of the earliest lady lecturer from the new
world, were soon familiar beneath the Trollope roof. They imprinted
themselves indelibly on the young Anthony’s mind. About the same time he
made some other useful or interesting acquaintances of a cosmopolitan
sort. Chief amongst these was the French republican soldier, General
Lafayette, who had fought in the United States army against the English.
The Trollope family’s experiences, whenever and wherever gathered,
formed a common stock on which all might and did draw as they chose for
conversational or literary use. In his parents’ earlier continental
trips Henry was the son usually taken, Anthony being left behind to the
tender mercies of his brother Tom, and his school work at Winchester.
Afterwards, however, Anthony found himself compensated for missing his
share in these earlier excursions by a quick succession, in a few years,
of more pleasure trips abroad than a lifetime brings to most English
boys.
For the moment, however, the effect of Miss Wright’s visits to Julians
or to the other Harrow abodes was to fill Thomas Anthony Trollope with
dreams of regaining in the new world what he had lost in the old; and
the rest of that clever but self-deluded good man’s record really
suggests an exaggerated version, from which Dickens’s genius shrank, of
the money-making experiments resorted to by Wilkins Micawber. America
was a young country, just acquiring a taste for the prettinesses and
elegancies of life. A bazaar or store for fancy goods, not of course in
New York, but at some provincial capital like Cincinnati, might prove a
success. The premises might also include a room to be used for lectures
or fine art exhibitions; if the latter, the French artist, Auguste
Hervieu, had long been an intimate of the Trollope household, and might
render valuable service. As a fact, the accomplished and amiable Gaul
had already been induced by Miss Wright to establish himself on American
soil. Nashoba, however, whither he had been directed, disappointed him;
he was now free to place himself entirely at the disposition of Mrs.
Trollope and the son, Henry, who had accompanied her. Commercially, the
transatlantic trip miscarried not less signally than everything else to
which Anthony Trollope’s father put his hand. At the same time it turned
his wife into a highly popular author, and created in her third son,
then a lad of seventeen, a determination to imitate the maternal
performance. The United States experience also provided a theme for her
earliest essay at recovering with her pen the prosperity that had been
blighted by her husband’s evil star. Even in some of the later fiction
that proved the chief gold-mine, Frances Trollope brought in her
American experiences. These, however, long before that, had formed the
exclusive subject of the book on which alone her earliest reputation
rested. _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ had been roughed out in a
first draft before her return voyage to England was at an end.
By this time, her husband’s embarrassments had reached the desperate
stage. In 1834 came the final crash. Mrs. Trollope now divided her time
between the direction of her home and the preparation of the book which
was to support it. Her husband occupied himself with his pen to less
profitable account. Even the pretence of farming had been well-nigh
given up. Early one morning in the March of 1834, young Anthony, then a
Harrow boy of nineteen in his last half, was told to drive his father to
London in the gig, which up to that time had been retained. To the boy’s
surprise, the point to be made for was not the more or less familiar
legal quarter, but St. Katherine’s Docks. Here the father disappeared
into a vessel bound for Antwerp; the lad regained the cottage at
Harrow, to find it in the bailiffs’ hands. The landlord, Lord Northwick,
had in fact put in an execution. The Trollopes, however, had made
substantial and loyal friends in the Harrow district. To know Mrs.
Trollope was to admire her courageous activity under calamities,
crushing or paralysing in their character and degree. When her own
roof-tree had been rooted up, offers of hospitality poured in from every
side. Still the eventual necessity of securing a home remained. The
father of the family had found the conventional ambulatory solution of
the difficulty, and, giving his creditors the security of “leg-bail,”
had fled, as we have seen, across the Channel. For the present their
settlement was Bruges, a house called the Château D’Hondt, just outside
St. Catharine Gate. Here the father recedes into the background. The
central figure of the whole Belgian episode is his wife, who during
these years left the impress of her own personality, moral and
intellectual, in characters so distinct upon her son that her example
decided for him what was to be his life’s business. Her pen formed the
staff on which the whole family leaned, and alone supported the roof
which sheltered them. Her husband’s days were visibly numbered. Lung
disease of a hopeless kind had set in with her son Henry and her
daughter Emily. Always nursing her invalids, she never failed to produce
her daily tale of “copy” for the printer.
At the time of her husband’s death in 1835 she was busy at, and soon
after published, her work on Paris and the French. The vivacity and
truth of this volume made it a success within a few weeks of its coming
out. It was not till some years later, when her son Anthony, preparing
at the time for authorship, directed attention to it, that its chapter
devoted to George Sand was discovered to be the best thing of its kind
that had yet come from an English pen. Mrs. Trollope’s books, beginning
with _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ in 1832 and, twenty-four years
later, ending with _Fashionable Life_, were mostly written in the
intervals of nursing, feeding, and in all ways caring for husband and
children smitten with a mortal disease. So far as they influenced her
third son, they will be reverted to in these pages. Mrs. Trollope was a
well-born, well-bred, well-connected, delicately nurtured as well as
exemplary woman. Her father, William Milton, the Heckfield clergyman,
had gone to the ancient and honourable stock of Gresleys for his bride.
The daughter of this marriage, Frances, had from her childhood lived in
the best society, metropolitan or provincial, during its most exclusive
periods. Her wealthier relatives and acquaintances never allowed their
connection with her to drop. Hence the opportunities which, quite as
much as those given by his paternal relationships, introduced Anthony
Trollope himself, as a young man, to the most desirable houses of his
day.
Meanwhile the elder Trollope’s death had been preceded by a crisis in
the life of his third son. Thirteen years before the date now reached,
his parents’ settlement at Harrow had naturally caused him to be sent as
a day-boy to the great school, then in the ground-swell left by domestic
disturbances which, though they had occurred so long since as almost to
be forgotten, projected some demoralising influence upon a generation
yet to come. In 1805, Joseph Drury retired from the headmastership.
George Butler was elected his successor by Archbishop Manners-Sutton’s
casting-vote, against Mark Drury, the local favourite. The poet Byron,
then a boy at the school and a monitor, led a rebellion against the new
Head. Other disturbances and barrings-out followed. Twelve years before
Anthony’s entrance there had happened events not favourable to the
position of day-boys at the school. The Harrow parishioners in 1810
petitioned Chancery for the restriction of the school to local
residents, chiefly, of course, shopkeepers. The counsel employed by the
school bore a name, Fladgate, which, in connection with the Garrick
Club, was to be well known by Anthony Trollope in later years. The whole
episode, being much talked about at the time, had the effect of
familiarising Trollope, while a boy, with the old school of lawyers,
figuring so frequently in his novels. Sir William Grant, as Master of
the Rolls, thought the boarders so essential to the school’s prestige
and prosperity, that he would not sanction any limitation of their
number. He risked, however, offending the masters by insisting on fresh
guarantees as regards day-boys for the rights of residence. “The
controversy,” said Trollope to the present writer, “had the effect of
adding a fresh sting to my position as a day-boy. The masters snubbed me
more than ever because I was one of the class which had brought about
legal interference with their vested interests. The young aristocrats,
who lived sumptuously in the masters’ houses, treated me like a pariah.”
At the same time the tenant of Julians Farm supplemented the supervision
of the boy’s home-lessons with Spartan severity of physical discipline,
at least one box on the ear for every false quantity in a Latin line.
Nor was there any gilding of the pill with pocket-money, books, or even
proper clothes. Harrow had then a larger percentage of exceedingly rich
men’s sons among its boys than either Eton or Winchester. Anthony’s
appearance may often have been against him; but the public opinion of
the place, if not at first, would in the long run have declared itself
against persecuting a boy who was not a fool, who knew the use of his
fists, and against whom the worst that could be said was that he came
from a poor home. He was, however, as throughout life he remained,
morbidly sensitive. “My mother,” he said to me in the year of his death,
“was much from home or too busy to be bothered. My father was not
exactly the man to invite confidence. I tried to relieve myself by
confiding my boyish sorrows to a diary that I have kept since the age of
twelve, which I have just destroyed, and which, on referring to it for
my autobiography some time since, I found full of a heart-sick,
friendless little chap’s exaggerations of his woes.”
In all great schools sets are inevitable, and disappointments,
heartburnings, and jealousies at real or imaginary exclusions are rife.
Trollope, however, showed himself capable of holding his own, both in
the schoolroom and in the playground. Judge Baylis, his contemporary,
admits that home boarders were often bullied and pursued with stones,
but emphatically testifies that Trollope, being big and powerful, got
off easily; he once, it seems, fought a boy named Lewis for nearly an
hour, punishing his adversary so heavily that he had to go home. Of
course it was, as at every big English school of the time, a rough and
occasionally a brutal life, enlivened with such customs as “rolling-in,”
“tossing,” and “jack-o’-lantern”; this last was put down by Longley, who
followed Butler as headmaster during Trollope’s time. The education was
exclusively Latin and Greek, as it was everywhere else. But at home
Anthony Trollope received a thorough grounding in modern languages,
especially French and Italian, from his accomplished mother, and was
noticed by his contemporary Sydney Herbert as a boy full of general
knowledge. At a private school kept by one of the Harrow Drurys near
Sunbury, some of the time coming between his two Harrow periods was
sandwiched in with really good results. Among his Harrow friends other
than Herbert were the three Merivales: John, afterwards Registrar in the
Court of Chancery, Herman, the permanent Colonial Under-Secretary, and
Charles, the Roman historian, who, as Archdeacon of Ely, remained
Trollope’s friend through life, and whom I have met at dinner at his
house in Montagu Square.
His father’s ambition to get Anthony, like his brothers Thomas and
Henry, into Winchester was fulfilled in 1827, when Anthony had for his
fellow-Wykehamists, amongst others, Roundell Palmer, Robert Lowe, and
Cardwell. The three years of St. Mary Winton were followed in 1830 by
another Harrow spell of three or four. After that Anthony Trollope, like
the rest of his family, remained a wanderer upon the face of the earth,
and homeless until his parents gained a resting-place at Bruges.
Disraeli’s Young Englanders in _Coningsby_, despairing of a career in
England, are about to join the Austrian service. Young Anthony Trollope,
if not from any Disraelian motive, seriously determined to do the same
thing. Subject to an examination in European languages, he contrived to
secure the promise of a cavalry commission in the Austrian army. To
place himself in the way of picking up the necessary acquaintance with
continental tongues, he became for a few weeks an usher in a Belgian
school. From that slavery he was delivered by the unexpected opening of
the employment that was to make him first a useful member of society,
and then a distinguished and a successful man.
In _A Publisher and His Friends_, the second John Murray, at Mrs.
Trollope’s request, is said to have obtained for her third son the Post
Office clerkship which took him back in 1834 from Bruges to London.
Other influences, however, co-operated in the same direction as those of
Albemarle Street. Among Mrs. Trollope’s wide, varied, and influential
acquaintance was Mrs. Clayton Freeling, daughter-in-law of the then
chief secretary at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, Sir Francis Freeling. That
lady overflowed with admiration of the splendid struggle made by her
friend to keep her home together and secure a future for her boys. Sir
Henry Holland, the great physician of the time, a man whose word on any
subject went for much in official and political circles, had already
helped the future Sir Henry Taylor to a career in the Colonial Office;
he had also, as one gathers from his autobiography, been looking out for
a chance of doing the Trollopes a good turn. Any one of these agencies
would have been enough in young Anthony Trollope’s case. Their
combination in his favour gave him the additional advantage of reminding
the heads of the department he entered that he possessed powerful
friends in high places. His family connections stood him also in good
stead. So, said Mrs. Freeling, they ought to do, especially with the
Postmaster-General; for had not young Anthony’s kinsman, Admiral Sir
Henry Trollope, Sir Thomas Trollope’s grand-nephew, not only rendered
his country heroic service at sea in the French wars, but also won
special fame and promotion as a sort of amateur postman by carrying
despatches from the chief commander of the fleet abroad to the
Government in London--particularly in 1781, during the whole episode of
Gibraltar’s release by Admiral Rodney. Sixteen years later he secured
fresh distinction in suppressing the mutiny at the Nore. For reward a
peerage and the capital to support it would not have been excessive. As
it was, he only received such a pension as enabled him to lead a country
gentleman’s life in Herefordshire. The utmost therefore, urged Mrs.
Freeling, that the Whigs then in power could do for her friend’s boy
would be only an instalment towards paying the arrears of the public
debt due for Admiral Trollope’s tact, presence of mind, and naval
eminence. Finally, protested this indefatigable lady, the Whigs owed
some reparation for their breach of faith towards her _protégé’s_
father.
Thomas Anthony Trollope had indeed been actually promised a London
police-magistrateship by Lord Melbourne, who wriggled out of his
engagement under some backstairs pressure. Their reverses therefore had
not robbed the Trollope family of “friends at Court.” Young Anthony, in
fact, belonged by birth and connection to the governing classes. He
might well have aspired to a higher branch in the Civil Service. During
the Victorian era another man of letters, more brilliant perhaps but
less famous afterwards than Trollope became, Grenville Murray, was given
a position in the Foreign Office without satisfying any severer test of
fitness than was done by Trollope when he began work at St.
Martin’s-le-Grand. From one point of view what he had picked up at
Harrow and Winchester formed the least remunerative part of his
equipment. As a public school boy he had learned to look after himself,
let people see he was a gentleman, intended to be treated as one, and to
adapt himself to circumstances. As much classics as either school gave
him he might have acquired in his father’s study, if the teacher and the
scholar had not come to open war before the course was over. As it was,
Thomas Anthony Trollope, almost as soon as his son could hold a pen,
taught him the points to be aimed at in letter-writing--clearness,
conciseness, abstinence from the repetition of words or ideas, and the
non-introduction of any unnecessary or irrelevant matter. At the same
time he instructed him by example in the theory and practice of
_précis_ writing. This formed the morning’s educational routine in the
Harrow home. After tea came the mother’s turn. Mrs. Trollope was a far
more cultivated woman than might be supposed from her books. Proud, as
well as fond, of all her boys, she taught them of an evening enough
French, German, and Italian to speak and write these languages
correctly, as well as understand them when spoken, without difficulty,
and converse in them with ease.
“As for my father,” once said Trollope, “while the soul of honour and
unselfishness, after he gave up the Bar he showed a want of ballast, a
fickleness, and an inability to make both ends meet, really reminding
one of Micawber in _David Copperfield_.” Trollope’s own apprenticeship
to work for his livelihood came some years later than it had done to
Dickens. Years after the establishment of his literary fame, Trollope
adopted the habit of interspersing his stories with touches as really
autobiographical as anything in _David Copperfield_. He had not long
exchanged the Harrow home for continental wandering, when his efforts to
support himself began. These took an educational direction. His eldest
brother eventually became, under Dr. Jeune, a master at King Edward’s
School, Birmingham. To that height Anthony did not aspire, and was
satisfied, till some other employment came, if he could cease to be a
burden to his mother, by giving English lessons to small boys in a
Belgian school.