Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
not allowed to move without an attendant with a lighted candle. It
was only gradually that the mistake came to be understood. On us
there was still the horror of the bill, the extent of which could
not be known till the hour of departure had come. The landlord,
however, had acknowledged to himself that his inductions had been
ill-founded, and he treated us with clemency. He had never before
received a telegram.
I apologise for these tales, which are certainly outside my purpose,
and will endeavour to tell no more that shall not have a closer
relation to my story. I had finished The Three Clerks just before
I left England, and when in Florence was cudgelling my brain for
a new plot. Being then with my brother, I asked him to sketch me a
plot, and he drew out that of my next novel, called Doctor Thorne.
I mention this particularly, because it was the only occasion in
which I have had recourse to some other source than my own brains
for the thread of a story. How far I may unconsciously have adopted
incidents from what I have read,--either from history or from works
of imagination,--I do not know. It is beyond question that a man
employed as I have been must do so. But when doing it I have not
been aware that I have done it. I have never taken another man's
work, and deliberately framed my work upon it. I am far from
censuring this practice in others. Our greatest masters in works
of imagination have obtained such aid for themselves. Shakespeare
dug out of such quarries whenever he could find them. Ben Jonson,
with heavier hand, built up his structures on his studies of
the classics, not thinking it beneath him to give, without direct
acknowledgment, whole pieces translated both from poets and
historians. But in those days no such acknowledgment was usual.
Plagiary existed, and was very common, but was not known as a sin.
It is different now; and I think that an author, when he uses either
the words or the plot of another, should own as much, demanding to
be credited with no more of the work than he has himself produced.
I may say also that I have never printed as my own a word that has
been written by others. [Footnote: I must make one exception to
this declaration. The legal opinion as to heirlooms in The Eustace
Diamonds was written for me by Charles Merewether, the present
Member for Northampton. I am told that it has become the ruling
authority on the subject.] It might probably have been better for
my readers had I done so, as I am informed that Doctor Thorne, the
novel of which I am now speaking, has a larger sale than any other
book of mine.
Early in 1858, while I was writing Doctor Thorne, I was asked by
the great men at the General Post Office to go to Egypt to make a
treaty with the Pasha for the conveyance of our mails through that
country by railway. There was a treaty in existence, but that had
reference to the carriage of bags and boxes by camels from Alexandria
to Suez. Since its date the railway had grown, and was now nearly
completed, and a new treaty was wanted. So I came over from Dublin
to London, on my road, and again went to work among the publishers.
The other novel was not finished; but I thought I had now progressed
far enough to arrange a sale while the work was still on the stocks.
I went to Mr. Bentley and demanded (pounds)400,--for the copyright. He
acceded, but came to me the next morning at the General Post Office
to say that it could not be. He had gone to work at his figures
after I had left him, and had found that (pounds)300 would be the outside
value of the novel. I was intent upon the larger sum; and in furious
haste,--for I had but an hour at my disposal,--I rushed to Chapman
& Hall in Piccadilly, and said what I had to say to Mr. Edward
Chapman in a quick torrent of words. They were the first of a great
many words which have since been spoken by me in that back-shop.
Looking at me as he might have done at a highway robber who had
stopped him on Hounslow Heath, he said that he supposed he might
as well do as I desired. I considered this to be a sale, and it
was a sale. I remember that he held the poker in his hand all the
time that I was with him;--but in truth, even though he had declined
to buy the book, there would have been no danger.
CHAPTER VII "Doctor thorne"--"THE BERTRAMS"--"THE WEST INDIES" AND "THE SPANISH MAIN"
As I journeyed across France to Marseilles, and made thence a
terribly rough voyage to Alexandria, I wrote my allotted number of
pages every day. On this occasion more than once I left my paper
on the cabin table, rushing away to be sick in the privacy of my
state room. It was February, and the weather was miserable; but
still I did my work. Labor omnia vincit improbus. I do not say that
to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such
exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable
most men to work at almost any season. I had previously to this
arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly
recommend to those who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not
made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should
never be allowed to become spasmodic. There was no day on which
it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my
duty to write reports for the Post Office. I was free to be idle if
I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second
profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain
self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have always
prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the
period which I have 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 labour, so that the
deficiency might be supplied. According to the circumstances of the
time,--whether my other business might be then heavy or light, or
whether the book which I was writing was or was not wanted with
speed,--I have allotted myself so many pages a week. The average
number has been about 40. It has been placed as low as 20, and has
risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my page has been
made to contain 250 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.
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
labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the tortoise which always
catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses more time in
glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the tortoise
to make half his journey.
I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and
painful because their tasks have never been done in time. They
have ever been as boys struggling to learn their lessons as they
entered the school gates. Publishers have distrusted them, and 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."
The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost always
been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates
and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly
demand upon my industry, has done all that for me.
There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to
such a taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his
imagination should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves
him. When I have heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been
able to repress my scorn. To me it would not be more absurd if the
shoemaker were to wait for inspiration, or the tallow-chandler for
the divine moment of melting. If the man whose business it is to
write has eaten too many good things, or has drunk too much, or
smoked too many cigars,--as men who write sometimes will do,--then
his condition may be unfavourable for work; but so will be the
condition of a shoemaker who has been similarly imprudent. I have
sometimes thought that the inspiration wanted has been the remedy
which time will give to the evil results of such imprudence.--Mens
sana in corpore sano. The author wants that as does every other
workman,--that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the
surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on
my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than
the inspiration.
It will be said, perhaps, that a man whose work has risen to no
higher pitch than mine has attained, has no right to speak of the
strains and impulses to which real genius is exposed. I am ready
to admit the great variations in brain power which are exhibited by
the products of different men, and am not disposed to rank my own
very high; but my own experience tells me that a man can always do
the work for which his brain is fitted if he will give himself the
habit of regarding his work as a normal condition of his life. I
