What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

A few days later I was, I find, consulting a Bruges physician, a Dr. Herbout, whom I still remember perfectly well, about the health of my father, which had recently been causing my mother some anxiety. Herbout was an old army doctor who had served under Napoleon. It is probable that he was more of a surgeon than a physician. His opinion was that my father’s condition, though not satisfactory, did not indicate any cause for immediate alarm.

I remained at Bruges till the first week in April. That is to say, the Château d’Hondt was my home during those months, but the monotony of it was varied by frequent visits to Ostend, which Mrs. Fauche always found the means of making agreeable. One week of the time also was spent in a little tour through those parts of Belgium which I had not yet seen, in company with my old friend, and the reader’s old acquaintance, Fanny Bent. It was an oddly constituted travelling party—the young man full of strength, activity, and eagerness to see everything that indefatigable exertion could show him, and the very plain, Quaker-like, middle-aged old maid, absolutely new to Continental ways and manners and habits. Yet few people, I think, have ever seen the many interesting sights of the region we travelled over more completely than I and Fanny Bent. The number of towers (Antwerp among them) to the tops of which I took her, as recorded in my diary, seems preposterous. But Fanny Bent bravely stuck to her work, and where I led she followed. I have since squired many fairer and younger dames, but never one so bravely determined on doing all that was to be done. And very much we both enjoyed it.

Almost immediately after my return from this little excursion I received a letter from an old Wykehamist schoolfellow, the Rev. George Hall, of Magdalen, son of the head of Pembroke at Oxford, offering me a mastership in King Edward’s Grammar School, at Birmingham. The head master of that school was at that time Dr. Jeune, a Pembroke man, and thence a close friend of George Hall, who himself held one of the masterships, which he was about to resign. The salary of the mastership offered me was 200l. a year, with, of course, prospects of advancement. I at once determined to accept it, and with the promptitude which in those days characterised me (at least in all cases in which promptitude involved immediate locomotion), I decided to leave Bruges for Birmingham on the morrow. I slept at Ostend the next night, and the following day crossed to Dover with my friend Captain Smithett, of the Arrow, “the only other passengers,” says my diary, “being a maniac and a corpse.”

Smithett was a remarkably handsome man, and the very beau-idéal of a sailor. For many years he was the man always selected to carry any royal or distinguished personage who had to cross the Channel from or to Dover. He was an immense favourite with all the little Ostend world—with the female part of it, of course, especially. I remember his showing me with much laughter an anonymous billet doux which had reached him, beginning, “O toi qui commandes la Flèche, tu peux aussi commander les cœurs,” &c., &c. I discovered the writer some time subsequently in an extremely pretty baigneuse, the wife, I am sorry to say, of a highly respected Belgian banker. Perhaps all his Ostend admirers did not know that he had a charming wife at Dover. He was all the more an object of our admiration from the singular contrast between him and his colleague, a certain Captain Murch. Between them they did in those days the whole of the Ostend and Dover mail business. Poor Murch was much of an invalid, and, strange as it may seem, suffered invariably on every passage, from year’s end to year’s end, from sea sickness. Think of the purgatory involved in the combination of such a constitution with such a profession! The port of Ostend was at that time somewhat difficult to enter in heavy weather, and bad fogs were very frequent on that coast. Poor Murch was always getting into difficulties which involved “lying to,” and reaching his destination long after time; whereas we held that the dashing Arrow would go wherever the Flying Dutchman could. And indeed I have seen her come in when I could only remain at the pier-head by lashing myself to a post. So much for “le beau, Capitaine Smitète.”

Losing no time in London I reached Birmingham on the evening of Sunday the 5th, and found my friend Hall quite sure of my election by the governors of the school on the recommendation of his friend Jeune. But then began a whole series of slips between the cup and the lip! There appeared to be no doubt of their electing me if they elected anybody; but a part of the board wished, on financial grounds, to defer the election of a new master for a while. The governors at their meeting put off the decision of the matter to another meeting on the 24th. On the 24th the matter was again put off. I had left Birmingham on the 12th, with the promise from Jeune, in whom on that, and on subsequent occasions, I found a most kind friend, that he would do all he could to urge the governors to a decision, and lose no time in letting me know the result. On the 24th the election of a new master was again “deferred” by the governors, and the prospect of their coming to a decision to elect one shortly seemed to become more uncertain. Many other meetings of the board took place with a similar result. On one occasion Jeune told me that, had he been in Birmingham at the time of the meeting, he felt sure that he could have induced them to come to an election; but he had unfortunately been absent. At another meeting I was told that I should have been elected had not Sir Edward Thomason, one of the governors who wished to elect a master, run away to a dinner party, thus leaving the non-content party in the majority.

Meantime I took my degree at Oxford on the 29th of April, which was needed for holding the appointment in question, and waited with what patience I could in London, dividing my time between the dear and ever kind Grants, and my brother Anthony, who was doing—or rather getting into continual hot water for not doing;—his work at the Post Office. He was, I take it, a very bad office clerk; but as soon as he was appointed a surveyor’s clerk became at once one of the most efficient and valuable officers in the Post Office.

Leaving Oxford on the night of the 29th I returned to Birmingham, and was again tantalised by repeated inconclusive meetings of the school governors, till at last, on the 6th of May, Jeune told me that he thought that they would not come to an election till midsummer, but that in any case there was another of the masters whose resignation he had reason to believe would not be long deferred, and I should assuredly have his place. On this I returned to London, and on the 8th of May left it for Dover on my way to join my mother in Paris.

Having spoken of Anthony’s efficiency as an officer of the Post Office, I may, I think, in the case of so well known a man, venture to expend a page in giving the reader an anecdote of his promptness, of which, as of dozens of other similar experiences, he says nothing in his Autobiography. He had visited the office of a certain postmaster in the south-west of Ireland in the usual course of his duties, had taken stock of the man, and had observed him in the course of his interview carefully lock a large desk in the office. Two days afterwards there came from head-quarters an urgent inquiry about a lost letter, the contents of which were of considerable value. The information reached the surveyor late at night, and he at once put the matter into the hands of his subordinate. There was no conveyance to the place where my brother determined his first investigations should be made till the following morning. But it did not suit him to wait for that, so he hired a horse, and, riding hard, knocked up the postmaster whom he had interviewed, as related, a couple of days before, in the small hours. Possibly the demeanour of the man in some decree influenced his further proceedings. Be this as it may, he walked straight into the office, and said, “Open that desk!” The key, he was told, had been lost for some time past. Without another word he smashed the desk with one kick, and—there found the stolen letter!

I have heard from him so many good stories of his official experiences, that I feel myself tolerably competent to write a volume of “Memoirs of a Post Office Surveyor.” But for the present I must content myself with one other of his adventures. He had been sent to South America to arrange some difficulties about postal communication in those parts which our authorities wished to be accomplished in a shorter time than had been previously the practice. There was a certain journey that had to be done by a mounted courier, for which it was insisted that three days were necessary, while my brother was persuaded it could be done in two. He was told that he knew nothing of their roads and their horses, &c. “Well,” said he, “I will ask you to do nothing that I, who know nothing of the country, and can only have such a horse as your post can furnish me, cannot do myself. I will ride with your courier, and then I shall be able to judge.” And at daybreak the next morning they started. The brute they gave him to ride was of course selected with a view of making good their case, and the saddle was simply an instrument of torture. He rode through that hot day and kept the courier to his work in a style that rather astonished that official. But at night, when they were to rest for a few hours, Anthony confessed that he was in such a state that he began to think that he should have to throw up the sponge, which would have been dreadful to him. So he ordered two bottles of brandy, poured them into a wash-hand basin, and sat in it! His description of the agonising result was graphic! But the next day, he said, he was able to sit in his saddle without pain, did the journey in the two days, and carried his point.

But I must abstain from further anticipations of the memoirs above spoken of, the more especially as I left my own story at the point where I had before me, like Rousseau—and probably with no less rose-coloured anticipations—un voyage à faire, et Paris au bout, and that for the first time in my life!