Mary Gresley, and An Editor's Tales

by Anthony Trollope

Of her early life, or their early lives, we know nothing; but the unfortunate circumstances which brought us into contact with Mrs. Brumby, made us also acquainted with the lieutenant. The lieutenant, we think, was younger than his wife;—a good deal younger we used to imagine, though his looks may have been deceptive. He was a confirmed invalid, and there are phases of ill-health which give an appearance of youthfulness rather than of age. What was his special ailing we never heard,—though, as we shall mention further on, we had our own idea on that subject; but he was always spoken of in our hearing as one who always had been ill, who always was ill, who always would be ill, and who never ought to think of getting well. He had been in some regiment called the Duke of Sussex’s Own, and his wife used to imagine that her claims upon the public as a woman of literature were enhanced by the royalty of her husband’s corps. We never knew her attempt to make any other use whatever of his services. He was not confined to his bed, and could walk at any rate about the house; but she never asked him, or allowed him to do anything. Whether he ever succeeded in getting his face outside the door we do not know. He wore, when we saw him, an old dressing-gown and slippers. He was a pale, slight, light-haired man, and we fancy that he took a delight in novels.

Their settled income consisted of his half-pay and some very small property which belonged to her. Together they might perhaps have possessed £150 per annum. When we knew them they had lodgings in Harpur Street, near Theobald’s Road, and she had resolved to push her way in London as a woman of literature. She had been told that she would have to deal with hard people, and that she must herself be hard;—that advantage would be taken of her weakness, and that she must therefore struggle vehemently to equal the strength of those with whom she would be brought in contact;—that editors, publishers, and brother authors would suck her brains and give her nothing for them, and that, therefore, she must get what she could out of them, giving them as little as possible in return. It was an evil lesson that she had learned; but she omitted nothing in the performance of the duties which that lesson imposed upon her.

She first came to us with a pressing introduction from an acquaintance of ours who was connected with a weekly publication called the “Literary Curricle.” The “Literary Curricle” was not in our estimation a strong paper, and we will own that we despised it. We did not think very much of the acquaintance by whom the strong introductory letter was written. But Mrs. Brumby forced herself into our presence with the letter in her hand, and before she left us extracted from us a promise that we would read a manuscript which she pulled out of a bag which she carried with her. Of that first interview a short account shall be given, but it must first be explained that the editor of the “Literary Curricle” had received Mrs. Brumby with another letter from another editor, whom she had first taken by storm without any introduction whatever. This first gentleman, whom we had not the pleasure of knowing, had, under what pressure we who knew the lady can imagine, printed three or four short paragraphs from Mrs. Brumby’s pen. Whether they reached publication we never could learn, but we saw the printed slips. He, however, passed her on to the “Literary Curricle,”—which dealt almost exclusively in the reviewing of books,—and our friend at the office of that influential “organ” sent her to us with an intimation that her very peculiar and well-developed talents were adapted rather for the creation of tales, or the composition of original treatises, than for reviewing. The letter was very strong, and we learned afterwards that Mrs. Brumby had consented to abandon her connection with the “Literary Curricle” only on the receipt of a letter in her praise that should be very strong indeed. She rejected the two first offered to her, and herself dictated the epithets with which the third was loaded. On no other terms would she leave the office of the “Literary Curricle.”

We cannot say that the letter, strong as it was, had much effect upon us; but this effect it had perhaps,—that after reading it we could not speak to the lady with that acerbity which we might have used had she come to us without it. As it was we were not very civil, and began our intercourse by assuring her that we could not avail ourselves of her services. Having said so, and observing that she still kept her seat, we rose from our chair, being well aware how potent a spell that movement is wont to exercise upon visitors who are unwilling to go. She kept her seat and argued the matter out with us. A magazine such as that which we then conducted must, she surmised, require depth of erudition, keenness of intellect, grasp of hand, force of expression, and lightness of touch. That she possessed all these gifts she had, she alleged, brought to us convincing evidence. There was the letter from the editor of the “Literary Curricle,” with which she had been long connected, declaring the fact! Did we mean to cast doubt upon the word of our own intimate friend? For the gentleman at the office of the “Literary Curricle” had written to us as “Dear ——,” though as far as we could remember we had never spoken half-a-dozen words to him in our life. Then she repeated the explanation, given by her godfather, of the abrupt termination of the close connection which had long existed between her and the “Curricle.” She could not bring herself to waste her energies in the reviewing of books. At that moment we certainly did believe that she had been long engaged on the “Curricle,” though there was certainly not a word in our correspondent’s letter absolutely stating that to be the fact. He declared to us her capabilities and excellences, but did not say that he had ever used them himself. Indeed, he told us that great as they were, they were hardly suited for his work. She, before she had left us on that occasion, had committed herself to positive falsehoods. She boasted of the income she had earned from two periodicals, whereas up to that moment she had never received a shilling for what she had written.

We find it difficult, even after so many years,—when the shame of the thing has worn off together with the hairs of our head,—to explain how it was that we allowed her to get, in the first instance, any hold upon us. We did not care a brass farthing for the man who had written from the “Literary Curricle.” His letter to us was an impertinence, and we should have stated as much to Mrs. Brumby had we cared to go into such matter with her. And our first feelings with regard to the lady herself were feelings of dislike,—and almost of contempt even, though we did believe that she had been a writer for the press. We disliked her nose, and her lips, and her bonnet, and the colour of her face. We didn’t want her. Though we were very much younger then than we are now, we had already learned to set our backs up against strong-minded female intruders. As we said before, we rose from our chair with the idea of banishing her, not absolutely uncivilly, but altogether unceremoniously. It never occurred to us during that meeting that she could be of any possible service to us, or that we should ever be of any slightest service to her. Nevertheless she had extracted from us a great many words, and had made a great many observations herself before she left us.

When a man speaks a great many words it is impossible that he should remember what they all were. That we told Mrs. Brumby on that occasion that we did not doubt but that we would use the manuscript which she left in our hands, we are quite sure was not true. We never went so near making a promise in our lives,—even when pressed by youth and beauty,—and are quite sure that what we did say to Mrs. Brumby was by no means near akin to this. That we undertook to read the manuscript we think probable, and therein lay our first fault,—the unfortunate slip from which our future troubles sprang, and grew to such terrible dimensions. We cannot now remember how the hated parcel, the abominable roll, came into our hands. We do remember the face and form and figure of the woman as she brought it out of the large reticule which she carried, and we remember also how we put our hands behind us to avoid it, as she presented it to us. We told her flatly that we did not want it, and would not have it;—and yet it came into our hands! We think that it must have been placed close to our elbow, and that, being used to such playthings, we took it up. We know that it was in our hands, and that we did not know how to rid ourselves of it when she began to tell us the story of the lieutenant. We were hard-hearted enough to inform her,—as we have, under perhaps lesser compulsion, informed others since,—that the distress of the man or of the woman should never be accepted as a reason for publishing the works of the writer. She answered us gallantly enough that she had never been weak enough or foolish enough so to think “I base my claim to attention,” she said, “on quite another ground. Do not suppose, Sir, that I am appealing to your pity. I scorn to do so. But I wish you should know my position as a married woman, and that you should understand that my husband, though unfortunately an invalid, has been long attached to a regiment which is peculiarly the Duke of Sussex’s own. You cannot but be aware of the connection which His Royal Highness has long maintained with literature.”

Mrs. Brumby could not write, but she could speak. The words she had just uttered were absolutely devoid of sense. The absurdity of them was ludicrous and gross. But they were not without a certain efficacy. They did not fill us with any respect for her literary capacity because of her connection with the Duke of Sussex, but they did make us feel that she was able to speak up for herself. We are told sometimes that the world accords to a man that treatment which he himself boldly demands; and though the statement seems to be monstrous, there is much truth in it. When Mrs. Brumby spoke of her husband’s regiment being “peculiarly the Duke of Sussex’s own,” she used a tone which compelled from us more courtesy than we had hitherto shown her. We knew that the duke was neither a man of letters nor a warrior, though he had a library, and, as we were now told, a regiment. Had he been both, his being so would have formed no legitimate claim for Mrs. Brumby upon us. But, nevertheless, the royal duke helped her to win her way. It was not his royalty, but her audacity that was prevailing. She sat with us for more than an hour; and when she left us the manuscript was with us, and we had no doubt undertaken to read it. We are perfectly certain that at that time we had not gone beyond this in the way of promising assistance to Mrs. Brumby.

The would-be author, who cannot make his way either by intellect or favour, can hardly do better, perhaps, than establish a grievance. Let there be anything of a case of ill-usage against editor or publisher, and the aspirant, if he be energetic and unscrupulous, will greatly increase his chance of working his way into print. Mrs. Brumby was both energetic and unscrupulous, and she did establish her grievance. As soon as she brought her first visit to a close, the roll, which was still in our hands, was chucked across our table to a corner commodiously supported by the wall, so that occasionally there was accumulated in it a heap of such unwelcome manuscripts. In the doing of this, in the moment of our so chucking the parcel, it was always our conscientious intention to make a clearance of the whole heap, at the very furthest, by the end of the week. We knew that strong hopes were bound up in those various little packets, that eager thoughts were imprisoned there the owners of which believed that they were endowed with wings fit for aërial soaring, that young hearts,—ay, and old hearts, too,—sore with deferred hope, were waiting to know whether their aspirations might now be realised, whether those azure wings might at last be released from bondage and allowed to try their strength in the broad sunlight of public favour. We think, too, that we had a conscience; and, perhaps, the heap was cleared as frequently as are the heaps of other editors. But there it would grow, in the commodious corner of our big table, too often for our own peace of mind. The aspect of each individual little parcel would be known to us, and we would allow ourselves to fancy that by certain external signs we could tell the nature of the interior. Some of them would promise well,—so well as to create even almost an appetite for their perusal. But there would be others from which we would turn with aversion, which we seemed to abhor, which, when we handled the heap, our fingers would refuse to touch, and which, thus lying there neglected and ill-used, would have the dust of many days added to those other marks which inspired disgust. We confess that as soon as Mrs. Brumby’s back was turned her roll was sent in upon this heap with that determined force which a strong feeling of dislike can lend even to a man’s little finger. And there it lay for,—perhaps a fortnight. When during that period we extracted first one packet and then another for judgment, we would still leave Mrs. Brumby’s roll behind in the corner. On such occasions a pang of conscience will touch the heart; some idea of neglected duty will be present to the mind; a silent promise will perhaps be made that it shall be the next; some momentary sudden resolve will be half formed that for the future a rigid order of succession shall be maintained, which no favour shall be allowed to infringe. But, alas! when the hand is again at work selecting, the odious ugly thing is left behind, till at last it becomes infested with strange terrors, with an absolute power of its own, and the guilty conscience will become afraid. All this happened in regard to Mrs. Brumby’s manuscript. “Dear, dear, yes;—Mrs. Brumby!” we would catch ourselves exclaiming with that silent inward voice which occasionally makes itself audible to most of us. And then, quite silently, without even whispered violence, we would devote Mrs. Brumby to the infernal gods. And so the packet remained amidst the heap,—perhaps for a fortnight.

“There’s a lady waiting in your room, Sir!” This was said to us one morning on our reaching our office by the lad whom we used to call our clerk. He is now managing a red-hot Tory newspaper down in Barsetshire, has a long beard, a flaring eye, a round belly, and is upon the whole the most arrogant personage we know. In the days of Mrs. Brumby he was a little wizened fellow about eighteen years old, but looking three years younger, modest, often almost dumb, and in regard to ourselves not only reverential but timid. We turned upon him in great anger. What business had any woman to be in our room in our absence? Were not our orders on this subject exact and very urgent? Was he not kept at an expense of 14s. a week,—we did not actually throw the amount in his teeth, but such was intended to be the effect of our rebuke,—at 14s. a week, paid out of our own pocket,—nominally, indeed, as a clerk, but chiefly for the very purpose of keeping female visitors out of our room? And now, in our absence and in his, there was actually a woman among the manuscripts! We felt from the first moment that it was Mrs. Brumby.

With bated breath and downcast eyes the lad explained to us his inability to exclude her. “She walked straight in, right over me,” he said; “and as for being alone,—she hasn’t been alone. I haven’t left her, not a minute.”