He once made an earnest plea that the critic’s name should be appended to his article, believing that this would make the writer more careful both of his censure and praise, and that the reader could determine the value of the criticism. On the subject of critical dishonesty he says: “If the writer will tell us what he thinks, though his thoughts be absolutely vague and useless, we can forgive him; but when he tells us what he does not think, actuated either by friendship or animosity, then there should be no pardon for him. This is the sin in modern English criticism of which there is most reason to complain.”
Anthony Trollope thinks that it is wrong that a literary name should carry so much favor with it. He says: “I, indeed, had never reached a height to which praise was awarded as a matter of course; but there were others who sat on higher seats, to whom the critics brought unmeasured incense and adulation, even when they wrote, as they sometimes did write, trash which from a beginner would not have been thought worthy of the slightest notice. I hope no one will think that in saying this I am actuated by jealousy of others. Though I never reached that height, still I had so far progressed that that which I wrote was received with too much favor. The injustice which struck me did not consist in that which was withheld from me, but in that which was given to me. I felt that aspirants coming up below me might do work as good as mine, and probably much better work, and yet fail to have it appreciated.”
Mr. Trollope is undoubtedly right in his general statement. While as a rule literary productions stand on their merits, the name of Tennyson or some other writer of equal fame will insure the sale of an article which, if written by an unknown writer, would be promptly rejected. Young writers need not complain of this. Distinguished names render articles marketable, and give them a commercial value that publishers can not ignore. To test the correctness of his theory, Mr. Trollope wrote two novels anonymously, which were not received with favor.
Mr. Trollope’s success in a pecuniary point of view was very slow. During the first ten years of his literary career he did not receive compensation enough to buy the pens, ink and paper he used. Twelve years passed before he received any appreciable increase of salary from his books. From that time his compensation was good. His books brought him in all something like $350,000.
The chapter that he devotes to the English novelists of his day is very interesting. He places Thackeray first, George Eliot second, and Dickens third. Most readers would perhaps reverse this order. Of Thackeray’s great work he says: “I myself regard ‘Esmond’ as the greatest novel in the English language, basing that judgment upon the excellence of its language, on the clear individuality of the characters, on the truth of its delineations in regard to the time selected, and on its great pathos.” He pays a high tribute to Charlotte Bronte, and then adds: “‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Esmond,’ and ‘Adam Bede,’ will be in the hands of our grandchildren, when ‘Pickwick’ and ‘Pelham’ and ‘Harry Lorrequer’ are forgotten; because the men and women depicted are human in their aspirations, human in their sympathies, and human in their actions.” He commends Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade quite highly, but thinks the latter has no clear conception of literary honesty.
Mr. Trollope relates an amusing incident concerning one of his favorite characters. He was seated in a club room, when two clergymen entered and commenced to criticise his works. “The gravamen of their complaint lay in the fact that I introduced the same characters so often. ‘Here,’ said one, ‘is the archdeacon whom we have had in every novel he has ever written.’ ‘And here,’ said the other, ‘is the old duke whom he has talked about till everybody is tired of him. If I could not invent new characters, I would not write novels at all.’ Then one of them fell foul of Mrs. Proudie. It was impossible for me not to hear their words, and almost impossible to hear them and be quiet. I got up, and standing between them, I acknowledged myself to be the culprit. ‘As to Mrs. Proudie,’ I said, ‘I will go home and kill her before the week is over.’ And so I did. The two gentlemen were utterly confounded, and one of them begged me to forget his frivolous observations. I have sometimes regretted the deed, so great was my delight in writing about Mrs. Proudie, … and I still live much in company with her ghost.”
Mr. Trollope made a number of visits to the United States, and was in Washington at the time of the Mason and Slidell controversy. Mr. Sumner was opposed to giving up the men. Mr. Seward’s counsel prevailed with President Lincoln, and the men were released. He says that this “was the severest danger that the Northern cause encountered during the war.” He describes a visit to Brigham Young as follows:
“I called upon him, sending to him my card, apologizing for doing so without an introduction, and excusing myself by saying that I did not like to pass through the territory without seeing a man of whom I had heard so much. He received me in his doorway, not asking me to enter, and inquired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. ‘I guess you’re a miner,’ said he. I again assured him that I was not. ‘Then how do you earn your bread?’ I told him that I did so by writing books. ‘I’m sure you’re a miner,’ said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door. I was properly punished, as I was vain enough to conceive that he would have heard my name.”
This autobiography is a delightful book. The candor with which the writer speaks of his own books, pointing out their defects and calling attention to their merits, the freedom with which he speaks of his early struggles, his method of work, and his success, the spirit of fairness with which he criticises his contemporaries—all these reveal a mind healthy in tone, and call forth our hearty admiration.
