What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

What so grievously changed him? I do not believe that he was soured by pecuniary misfortune, though he had more than enough. His first great misfortune—the marriage of his old widower uncle, whose heir he was to have been—was, I have the means of knowing, borne by him well, bravely and with dignity. I believe that he was destroyed mind and body by calomel, habitually used during long years.

Throughout life he was a laborious and industrious man. I have seen few things of the kind with more of pathos in it than his persevering attempt to render his labour of some value by compiling a dictionary of ecclesiastical terms. He had quite sufficient learning and sufficient industry to have produced an useful book upon the subject if he had only had the possibility of consulting the, of course, almost innumerable necessary authorities. The book was published in quarto by subscription, and two or three parts of it had been delivered to the subscribers when death delivered him from his thankless labour and his subscribers from further demands on their purses. I do not suppose that any human being purchased the book because they wished to possess it. And truly, as I have said, it was a pathetic thing to see him in his room at Château d’Hondt, ill, suffering, striving with the absolutely miserable, ridiculously insufficient means he had been able with much difficulty to collect, to carry on his work. He was dying—he must, I think, have known that he was; he had not got beyond D in his dictionary; all the alphabet was before him, but he would not give up; he would labour to the last. My mother was labouring hard, and her labour was earning all that supplied very abundantly the needs of the whole family. And I cannot help thinking that a painful but not ignoble feeling urged my poor father to live at least equally laborious days, even though his labour was profitless.

Poor father! My thoughts as I followed him to the grave were that I had not done all that I might have done to alleviate the burthen of unhappiness that was laid upon him. Yet looking back on it all from the vantage-ground of my own old age (some fifteen years greater than that which he attained) I do not see or think that any conduct of mine would have made matters better for him.

My father’s death naturally made an important change in my mother’s plans for the future. The Château d’Hondt was given up, adieus were said, not without many au revoirs, to many kind friends at Bruges, and more especially at Ostend, and we left Belgium for England. After some time spent in house-hunting, my mother hired a pleasant house with a good garden on the common at Hadley, near Barnet, and there I remained with her, still awaiting my Birmingham preferment, all that winter and the following spring. The earlier part of the time was saddened by the rapid decline and death of my younger sister, Emily. We knew before leaving Bruges that there was but a slender hope of saving her from the same malady which had been fatal to my brother Henry. But the medical men hoped or professed to hope, that much might be expected from her return to her native air. But the mark of the cruel disease was upon her, and very rapidly after our establishment at Hadley she sank and painlessly breathed her last.

Poor little Emily! She was a very bright espiègle child, full of fun and high spirits. There is a picture of her exactly as I remember her. She is represented with flowing flaxen curls and wide china-blue eyes, sitting with a brown holland pinafore on before a writing-desk and blowing a prismatically-coloured soap-bubble. The writing copy on the desk lying above the half-covered and neglected page of copy-book bears the legend “Study with determined zeal!”

Her youngest child had ever been to my mother as the apple of her eye, and her loss was for the passing day a crushing blow. But, as usual with her, her mind refused to remain crushed, any more than the grass is permanently crushed by the storm wind that blows over it. She had the innate faculty and tendency to throw sorrow off when the cause of it had passed. She owed herself to the living, and refused to allow unavailing regret for those who had been taken from her to incapacitate her for paying that debt to the utmost.

And once again, as was usual with her, her new home became a centre of social enjoyment and attraction for all, especially the young, who were admitted to it. I do not remember that with the exception of the family of the rector, Mr. Thackeray, we had many acquaintances at Hadley. I remember a bit of fun, long current among us, which was furnished by the reception my mother met with when returning the call of the wife of a wealthy distiller resident in the neighbourhood. The lady was of abnormal bulk, and when my mother entered the room in which she was sitting, she said, “Excuse me, ma’am, if I keep my chair, I never raise. But I am glad to see you—glad to see anybody,” with much emphasis on the last word. I wish every caller was received with as truthful an expression of sentiments.

Our society consisted mainly of friends staying in the house, or of flying visitors from London. As usual, too, my mother soon gathered around her a knot of nice girls, who made the house bright. For herself she seemed always ready to take part in all the fun and amusement that was going; and was the first to plan dances, and charades, and picnics, and theatricals on a small and unpretending scale. But five o’clock of every morning saw her at her desk; and the production of the series of novels, which was not brought to a conclusion till it had reached the hundred and fifteenth volume, though it was not begun till she was past fifty, never ceased.

The Christmas was, I remember, a very merry one. We were seeing a good deal of a young fellow-clerk of my brother’s in the secretary’s office at the Post Office, who was then beginning to fall in love with my sister Cecilia, whom he married not long afterwards. He was then at the beginning of a long official life, from which he retired some years ago as Sir John Tilley, K.C.B. Among others of our little circle, I especially remember Joseph Henry Green, the celebrated surgeon, Coleridge’s literary executor, who first became known to us through his brother-in-law, Mr. Hammond, who was in practice at Hadley. Green was an immensely tall man, with a face of no beauty, but as brightly alive with humour as any I ever saw. He was a delightful companion in a walk; and I remember to the present hour much of the curious and out-of-the-way information I picked up from him, mainly on subjects more or less connected with his profession—for he, as well as I, utterly scouted the stupid sink-the-shop rule of conversation. I remember especially his saying of Coleridge, à propos of a passage in his biography which speaks of the singular habit (noticed by his amanuensis) that he had of occupying his mind with the coming passage, which he was about to dictate, while uttering that with which the writer was busy, that he (Green) had frequently observed the same peculiarity in his conversation.

Some few of our guests came to us from beyond the Channel, among them, charming Mrs. Fauche, with her lovely voice and equally lovely face, whose Ostend hospitalities my mother was glad to have an opportunity of returning.