“I dined the other day with Anthony Trollope, a big, red-faced, rather underbred Englishman of the bald-with-spectacles type. A good roaring positive fellow who deafened me (sitting on his right) till I thought of Dante’s Cerberus. He says he goes to work on a novel ‘just like a shoemaker on a shoe, only taking care to make honest stitches.’ Gets up at 5 every day, does all his writing before breakfast, and always writes just so many pages a day. He and Dr. Holmes were very entertaining. The Autocrat started one or two hobbies, and charged, paradox in rest—but it was pelting a rhinoceros with seed-pearl.
“Dr. You don’t know what Madeira is in England?
“T. I’m not so sure it’s worth knowing.
“Dr. Connoisseurship in it with us is a fine art. There are men who will tell you a dozen kinds, as Dr. Waagen would know a Carlo Dolci from a Guido.
“T. They might be better employed!
“Dr. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.
“T. Ay, but that’s begging the whole question. I don’t admit it’s worse doing at all. If they earn their bread by it, it may be worse doing (roaring).
“Dr. But you may be assured—
“T. No, but I mayn’t be asshŏrred. I won’t be asshored. I don’t intend to be asshŏred (roaring louder)!
“And so they went it. It was very funny. Trollope wouldn’t give him any chance. Meanwhile, Emerson and I, who sat between them, crouched down out of range and had some very good talk, with the shot hurtling overhead. I had one little passage at arms with T. apropos of English peaches. T. ended by roaring that England was the only country where such a thing as a peach or a grape was known. I appealed to Hawthorne, who sat opposite. His face mantled and trembled for a moment with some droll fancy, as one sees bubbles rise and send off rings in still water when a turtle stirs at the bottom, and then he said, ‘I asked an Englishman once who was praising their peaches to describe to me exactly what he meant by a peach, and he described something very like a cucumber.’ I rather liked Trollope.”