Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

It may be well that I should put a short preface to this book. Inthe summer of 1878 my father told me that he had written a memoirof his own life. He did not speak about it at length, but saidthat he had written me a letter, not to be opened until after hisdeath, containing instructions for publication.

This letter was dated 30th April, 1876. I will give here as muchof it as concerns the public: "I wish you to accept as a gift fromme, given you now, the accompanying pages which contain a memoirof my life. My intention is that they shall be published aftermy death, and be edited by you. But I leave it altogether to yourdiscretion whether to publish or to suppress the work;and alsoto your discretion whether any part or what part shall be omitted.But I would not wish that anything should be added to the memoir.If you wish to say any word as from yourself, let it be done inthe shape of a preface or introductory chapter." At the end thereis a postscript: "The publication, if made at all, should be effectedas soon as possible after my death." My father died on the 6th ofDecember, 1882.

It will be seen, therefore, that my duty has been merely to passthe book through the press conformably to the above instructions.I have placed headings to the right-hand pages throughout the book,and I do not conceive that I was precluded from so doing. Additionsof any other sort there have been none; the few footnotes are myfather's own additions or corrections. And I have made no alterations.I have suppressed some few passages, but not more than would amountto two printed pages has been omitted. My father has not given anyof his own letters, nor was it his wish that any should be published.

So much I would say by way of preface. And I think I may also givein a few words the main incidents in my father's life after hecompleted his autobiography.

He has said that he had given up hunting; but he still kept twohorses for such riding as may be had in or about the immediateneighborhood of London. He continued to ride to the end of hislife: he liked the exercise, and I think it would have distressedhim not to have had a horse in his stable. But he never spokewillingly on hunting matters. He had at last resolved to give uphis favourite amusement, and that as far as he was concerned thereshould be an end of it. In the spring of 1877 he went to SouthAfrica, and returned early in the following year with a book onthe colony already written. In the summer of 1878, he was one ofa party of ladies and gentlemen who made an expedition to Icelandin the "Mastiff," one of Mr. John Burns' steam-ships. The journeylasted altogether sixteen days, and during that time Mr. and Mrs.Burns were the hospitable entertainers. When my father returned,he wrote a short account of How the "Mastiffs" went to Iceland.The book was printed, but was intended only for private circulation.

Every day, until his last illness, my father continued his work.He would not otherwise have been happy. He demanded from himselfless than he had done ten years previously, but his daily task wasalways done. I will mention now the titles of his books that werepublished after the last included in the list which he himself hasgiven at the end of the second volume:

An Eye for an Eye,.... 1879
Cousin Henry,...... 1879
Thackeray,....... 1879
The Duke's Children,.... 1880
Life of Cicero,..... 1880
Ayala's Angel,..... 1881
Doctor Wortle's School,... 1881
Frau Frohmann and other Stories, . 1882
Lord Palmerston,..... 1882
The Fixed Period,..... 1882
Kept in the Dark,..... 1882
Marion Fay,...... 1882
Mr. Scarborough's Family,... 1883

At the time of his death he had written four-fifths of an Irishstory, called The Landleaguers, shortly about to be published; andhe left in manuscript a completed novel, called An Old Man's Love,which will be published by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons in 1884.

In the summer of 1880 my father left London, and went to live atHarting, a village in Sussex, but on the confines of Hampshire. Ithink he chose that spot because he found there a house that suitedhim, and because of the prettiness of the neighborhood. His lastlong journey was a trip to Italy in the late winter and spring of1881; but he went to Ireland twice in 1882. He went there in Mayof that year, and was then absent nearly a month. This journey didhim much good, for he found that the softer atmosphere relievedhis asthma, from which he had been suffering for nearly eighteenmonths. In August following he made another trip to Ireland, butfrom this journey he derived less benefit. He was much interestedin, and was very much distressed by, the unhappy condition of thecountry. Few men know Ireland better than he did. He had livedthere for sixteen years, and his Post Office word had taken himinto every part of the island. In the summer of 1882 he began hislast novel, The Landleaguers, which, as stated above, was unfinishedwhen he died. This book was a cause of anxiety to him. He could notrid his mind of the fact that he had a story already in the courseof publication, but which he had not yet completed. In no othercase, except Framley Parsonage, did my father publish even thefirst number of any novel before he had fully completed the wholetale.

On the evening of the 3rd of November, 1882, he was seized withparalysis on the right side, accompanied by loss of speech. Hismind had also failed, though at intervals his thoughts would returnto him. After the first three weeks these lucid intervals becamerarer, but it was always very difficult to tell how far his mindwas sound or how far astray. He died on the evening of the 6th ofDecember following, nearly five weeks from the night of his attack.

I have been led to say these few words, not at all from a desireto supplement my father's biography of himself, but to mention themain incidents in his life after he had finished his own record. Inwhat I have here said I do not think I have exceeded his instructions.

Henry M. Trollope.September, 1883.

1815-1834

In writing these pages, which, for the want of a better name, I shallbe fain to call the autobiography of so insignificant a person asmyself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the littledetails of my private life, as of what I, and perhaps others roundme, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such asthey have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literarycareer offers to men and women for the earning of their bread. Andyet the garrulity of old age, and the aptitude of a man's mind torecur to the passages of his own life, will, I know, tempt me to saysomething of myself;nor, without doing so, should I know how tothrow my matter into any recognised and intelligible form. That I,or any man, should tell everything of himself, I hold to be impossible.Who could endure to own the doing of a mean thing? Who is therethat has done none? But this I protest:that nothing that I sayshall be untrue. I will set down naught in malice; nor will I giveto myself, or others, honour which I do not believe to have beenfairly won. My boyhood was, I think, as unhappy as that of a younggentleman could well be, my misfortunes arising from a mixture ofpoverty and gentle standing on the part of my father, and from anutter want on my part of the juvenile manhood which enables someboys to hold up their heads even among the distresses which sucha position is sure to produce.