Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
pleasure. He looks for hard work and grinding circumstances.
I certainly had enjoyed but little pleasure, but I had been among
those who did enjoy it and were taught to expect it. And I had
filled my mind with the ideas of such joys.
And now, except during official hours, I was entirely without
control,--without the influences of any decent household around me.
I have said something of the comedy of such life, but it certainly
had its tragic aspect. Turning it all over in my own mind, as I
have constantly done in after years, the tragedy has always been
uppermost. And so it was as the time was passing. Could there be
any escape from such dirt? I would ask myself; and I always answered
that there was no escape. The mode of life was itself wretched. I
hated the office. I hated my work. More than all I hated my idleness.
I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in
life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of
authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which
I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued
out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was
out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In Official
life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not
seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could
command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama,
too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For
history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition.
But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved
very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the
months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was
passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgment
of the disgrace of postponing it. What reader will not understand
the agony of remorse produced by such a condition of mind?
The gentleman from Mecklenburgh Square was always with me in the
morning,--always angering me by his hateful presence,--but when the
evening came I could make no struggle towards getting rid of him.
In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and
Latin. I made myself familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with
the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms,
and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street,
where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, because
he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas. That was Northumberland Street by
the Marylebone Workhouse, on to the back-door of which establishment
my room looked out--a most dreary abode, at which I fancy I must
have almost ruined the good-natured lodging-house keeper by my
constant inability to pay her what I owed.
How I got my daily bread I can hardly remember. But I do remember
that I was often unable to get myself a dinner. Young men generally
now have their meals provided for them. I kept house, as it were.
Every day I had to find myself with the day's food. For my breakfast
I could get some credit at the lodgings, though that credit would
frequently come to an end. But for all that I had often breakfast
to pay day by day; and at your eating-house credit is not given. I
had no friends on whom I could sponge regularly. Out on the Fulham
Road I had an uncle, but his house was four miles from the Post
Office, and almost as far from my own lodgings. Then came borrowings
of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery.
Before I tell how it came about that I left this wretched life,
I must say a word or two of the friendships which lessened its
misfortunes. My earliest friend in life was John Merivale, with whom
I had been at school at Sunbury and Harrow, and who was a nephew
of my tutor, Harry Drury. Herman Merivale, who afterwards became my
friend, was his brother, as is also Charles Merivale, the historian
and Dean of Ely. I knew John when I was ten years old, and am happy
to be able to say that he is going to dine with me one day this
week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those
days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he
had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury
which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close
friends. And then there was one W---- A----, whose misfortunes in
life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly
loved. He had been at Winchester and at Oxford, and at both places
had fallen into trouble. He then became a schoolmaster,--or perhaps
I had better say usher,--and finally he took orders. But he was
unfortunate in all things, and died some years ago in poverty. He
was most perverse; bashful to very fear of a lady's dress; unable
to restrain himself in anything, but yet with a conscience that
was always stinging him; a loving friend, though very quarrelsome;
and, perhaps, of all men I have known, the most humorous. And he
was entirely unconscious of his own humour. He did not know that
he could so handle all matters as to create infinite amusement out
of them. Poor W---- A----! To him there came no happy turning-point
at which life loomed seriously on him, and then became prosperous.
W---- A----, Merivale, and I formed a little club, which we called
the Tramp Society, and subjected to certain rules, in obedience to
which we wandered on foot about the counties adjacent to London.
Southampton was the furthest point we ever reached; but Buckinghamshire
and Hertfordshire were more dear to us. These were the happiest
hours of my then life--and perhaps not the least innocent, although
we were frequently in peril from the village authorities whom we
outraged. Not to pay for any conveyance, never to spend above five
shillings a day, to obey all orders from the elected ruler of the
hour (this enforced under heavy fines), were among our statutes.
I would fain tell here some of our adventures:--how A---- enacted
an escaped madman and we his pursuing keepers, and so got ourselves
a lift in a cart, from which we ran away as we approached the
lunatic asylum; how we were turned out of a little town at night,
the townsfolk frightened by the loudness of our mirth; and how we
once crept into a hayloft and were wakened in the dark morning by
a pitchfork,--and how the juvenile owner of that pitchfork fled
through the window when he heard the complaints of the wounded man!
But the fun was the fun of W---- A----, and would cease to be fun
as told by me.
It was during these years that John Tilley, who has now been for
many years the permanent senior officer of the Post Office, married
my sister, whom he took with him into Cumberland, where he was
stationed as one of our surveyors. He has been my friend for more
than forty years; as has also Peregrine Birch, a clerk in the House
of Lords, who married one of those daughters of Colonel Grant who
assisted us in the raid we made on the goods which had been seized
by the Sheriff's officer at Harrow. These have been the oldest and
dearest friends of my life, and I can thank God that three of them
are still alive.
When I had been nearly seven years in the Secretary's office of
the Post Office, always hating my position there, and yet always
fearing that I should be dismissed from it, there came a way of
escape. There had latterly been created in the service a new body
of officers called surveyors' clerks. There were at that time
seven surveyors in England, two in Scotland and three in Ireland.
To each of these officers a clerk had been lately attached, whose
duty it was to travel about the country under the surveyor's orders.
There had been much doubt among the young men in the office whether
they should or should not apply for these places. The emoluments
were good and the work alluring; but there was at first supposed
to be something derogatory in the position. There was a rumour that
the first surveyor who got a clerk sent the clerk out to fetch his
beer, and that another had called upon his clerk to send the linen
to the wash. There was, however, a conviction that nothing could be
worse than the berth of a surveyor's clerk in Ireland. The clerks
were all appointed, however. To me it had not occurred to ask for
anything, nor would anything have been given me. But after a while
there came a report from the far west of Ireland that the man sent
there was absurdly incapable. It was probably thought then that
none but a man absurdly incapable would go on such a mission to the
west of Ireland. When the report reached the London office I was
the first to read it. I was at that time in dire trouble, having
debts on my head and quarrels with our Secretary-Colonel, and a
full conviction that my life was taking me downwards to the lowest
pits. So I went to the Colonel boldly, and volunteered for Ireland
if he would send me. He was glad to be so rid of me, and I went.
This happened in August, 1841, when I was twenty-six years old. My
salary in Ireland was to be but (pounds)100 a year; but I was to receive
fifteen shillings a day for every day that I was away from home,
and sixpence for every mile that I travelled. The same allowances
were made in England; but at that time travelling in Ireland was
done at half the English prices. My income in Ireland, after paying
my expenses, became at once (pounds)400. This was the first good fortune
of my life.
CHAPTER IV Ireland--my first two novels 1841-1848
In the preceding pages I have given a short record of the first
twenty-six years of my life,--years of suffering, disgrace, and
inward remorse. I fear that my mode of telling will have left an idea
simply of their absurdities; but, in truth, I was wretched,--sometimes
almost unto death, and have often cursed the hour in which I was
born. There had clung to me a feeling that I had been looked upon
always as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless thing,--as a creature
of whom those connected with him had to be ashamed. And I feel
certain now that in my young days I was so regarded. Even my few
friends who had found with me a certain capacity for enjoyment were
half afraid of me. I acknowledge the weakness of a great desire to
be loved,--of a strong wish to be popular with my associates. No
