violent, less selfish, less brutal, there can be no doubt;--but
have they become less honest? If so, can a world, retrograding from
day to day in honesty, be considered to be in a state of progress?
We know the opinion on this subject of our philosopher Mr. Carlyle.
If he be right, we are all going straight away to darkness and the
dogs. But then we do not put very much faith in Mr. Carlyle,--nor
in Mr. Ruskin and his other followers. The loudness and extravagance
of their lamentations, the wailing and gnashing of teeth which comes
from them, over a world which is supposed to have gone altogether
shoddy-wards, are so contrary to the convictions of men who cannot
but see how comfort has been increased, how health has been improved,
and education extended,--that the general effect of their teaching
is the opposite of what they have intended. It is regarded simply
as Carlylism to say that the English-speaking world is growing
worse from day to day. And it is Carlylism to opine that the general
grand result of increased intelligence is a tendency to deterioration.
Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent
in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at
the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be
reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that
dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable.
If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all
its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory
in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into
Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful,
and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.
Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down
in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured
to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the
iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an
onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want
to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain
single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to
cheat the public into buying their volumes.
The book has the fault which is to be attributed to almost all
satires, whether in prose or verse. The accusations are exaggerated.
The vices are coloured, so as to make effect rather than to represent
truth. Who, when the lash of objurgation is in his hands, can
so moderate his arm as never to strike harder than justice would
require? The spirit which produces the satire is honest enough, but
the very desire which moves the satirist to do his work energetically
makes him dishonest. In other respects The Way We Live Now
was, as a satire, powerful and good. The character of Melmotte is
well maintained. The Beargarden is amusing,--and not untrue. The
Longestaffe girls and their friend, Lady Monogram, are amusing,--but
exaggerated. Dolly Longestaffe, is, I think, very good. And Lady
Carbury's literary efforts are, I am sorry to say, such as are too
frequently made. But here again the young lady with her two lovers
is weak and vapid. I almost doubt whether it be not impossible to
have two absolutely distinct parts in a novel, and to imbue them
both with interest. If they be distinct, the one will seem to be
no more than padding to the other. And so it was in The Way We Live
Now. The interest of the story lies among the wicked and foolish
people,--with Melmotte and his daughter, with Dolly and his family,
with the American woman, Mrs. Hurtle, and with John Crumb and the
girl of his heart. But Roger Carbury, Paul Montague, and Henrietta
Carbury are uninteresting. Upon the whole, I by no means look upon
the book as one of my failures; nor was it taken as a failure by
the public or the press.
While I was writing The Way We Live Now, I was called upon by the
proprietors of the Graphic for a Christmas story. I feel, with regard
to literature, somewhat as I suppose an upholsterer and undertaker
feels when he is called upon to supply a funeral. He has to supply
it, however distasteful it may be. It is his business, and he will
starve if he neglects it. So have I felt that, when anything in the
shape of a novel was required, I was bound to produce it. Nothing
can be more distasteful to me than to have to give a relish of
of the order. A Christmas story, in the proper sense, should be
the ebullition of some mind anxious to instil others with a desire
for Christmas religious thought, or Christmas festivities,--or,
better still, with Christmas charity. Such was the case with Dickens
when he wrote his two first Christmas stories. But since that the
things written annually--all of which have been fixed to Christmas
like children's toys to a Christmas tree--have had no real savour
of Christmas about them. I had done two or three before. Alas!
at this very moment I have one to write, which I have promised to
supply within three weeks of this time,--the picture-makers always
require a long interval,--as to which I have in vain been cudgelling
my brain for the last month. I can't send away the order to another
shop, but I do not know how I shall ever get the coffin made.
For the Graphic, in 1873, I wrote a little story about Australia.
Christmas at the antipodes is of course midsummer, and I was not
loth to describe the troubles to which my own son had been subjected,
by the mingled accidents of heat and bad neighbours, on his station
in the bush. So I wrote Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, and was well
through my labour on that occasion. I only wish I may have no
worse success in that which now hangs over my head.
When Harry Heathcote was over, I returned with a full heart to
Lady Glencora and her husband. I had never yet drawn the completed
picture of such a statesman as my imagination had conceived. The
personages with whose names my pages had been familiar, and perhaps
even the minds of some of my readers--the Brocks, De Terriers, Monks,
Greshams, and Daubeneys--had been more or less portraits, not of
living men, but of living political characters. The strong-minded,
thick-skinned, useful, ordinary member, either of the Government or
of the Opposition, had been very easy to describe, and had required
no imagination to conceive. The character reproduces itself from
generation to generation; and as it does so, becomes shorn in
a wonderful way of those little touches of humanity which would
be destructive of its purposes. Now and again there comes a burst
of human nature, as in the quarrel between Burke and Fox; but, as
a rule, the men submit themselves to be shaped and fashioned, and
to be formed into tools, which are used either for building up or
pulling down, and can generally bear to be changed from this box
into the other, without, at any rate, the appearance of much personal
suffering. Four
-and-twenty gentlemen will amalgamate themselves
into one whole, and work for one purpose, having each of them to
set aside his own idiosyncrasy, and to endure the close personal
contact of men who must often be personally disagreeable, having
been thoroughly taught that in no other way can they serve either
their country or their own ambition. These are the men who are
publicly useful, and whom the necessities of the age supply,--as
to whom I have never ceased to wonder that stones of such strong
calibre should be so quickly worn down to the shape and smoothness
of rounded pebbles.
Such have been to me the Brocks and the Mildmays, about whom I have
written with great pleasure, having had my mind much exercised in
watching them. But had I also conceived the character of a statesman
of a different nature--of a man who should be in something perhaps
superior, but in very much inferior, to these men--of one who could
not become a pebble, having too strong an identity of his own. To
rid one's self of fine scruples--to fall into the traditions of
a party--to feel the need of subservience, not only in acting but
also even in thinking--to be able to be a bit, and at first only a
very little bit,--these are the necessities of the growing statesman.
The time may come, the glorious time when some great self action
shall be possible, and shall be even demanded, as when Peel gave
up the Corn Laws; but the rising man, as he puts on his harness,
should not allow himself to dream of this. To become a good, round,
smooth, hard, useful pebble is his duty, and to achieve this he
must harden his skin and swallow his scruples. But every now and
again we see the attempt, made by men who cannot get their skins to
be hard--who after a little while generally fall out of the ranks.
The statesman of whom I was thinking--of whom I had long thought--was
one who did not fall out of the ranks, even though his skin would
not become hard. He should have rank, and intellect, and parliamentary
habits, by which to bind him to the service of his country; and he
should also have unblemished, unextinguishable, inexhaustible love
of country. That virtue I attribute to our statesmen generally.
They who are without it are, I think, mean indeed. This man should
have it as the ruling principle of his life; and it should so rule
him that all other things should be made to give way to it. But he
should be scrupulous, and, being scrupulous, weak. When called to
the highest place in the council of his Sovereign, he should feel
with true modesty his own insufficiency; but not the less should
the greed of power grow upon him when he had once allowed himself
to taste and enjoy it. Such was the character I endeavoured to
depict in describing the triumph, the troubles, and the failure
of my Prime Minister. And I think that I have succeeded. What the
public may think, or what the press may say, I do not yet know,
the work having as yet run but half its course. [Footnote: Writing
this note in 1878, after a lapse of nearly three years, I am obliged
to say that, as regards the public, The Prime Minister was a failure.
It was worse spoken of by the press than any novel I had written.
I was specially hurt by a criticism on it in the Spectator. The
critic who wrote the article I know to be a good critic, inclined
to be more than fair to me; but in this case I could not agree with
him, so much do I love the man whose character I had endeavoured
to portray.]
That the man's character should be understood as I understand
it--or that of his wife's, the delineation of which has also been
a matter of much happy care to me--I have no right to expect, seeing
that the operation of describing has not been confined to one novel,
which might perhaps be read through by the majority of those who
commenced it. It has been carried on through three or four, each
of which will be forgotten even by the most zealous reader almost
as soon as read. In The Prime Minister, my Prime Minister will not
allow his wife to take office among, or even over, those ladies who
are attached by office to the Queen's court. "I should not choose,"
he says to her, "that my wife should have any duties unconnected
with our joint family and home." Who will remember in reading
those words that, in a former story, published some years before,
he tells his wife, when she has twitted him with his willingness
to clean the Premier's shoes, that he would even allow her to clean
them if it were for the good of the country? And yet it is by such
details as these that I have, for many years past, been manufacturing
within my own mind the characters of the man and his wife.
I think that Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, is a perfect
gentleman. If he be not, then am I unable to describe a gentleman.
She is by no means a perfect lady; but if she be not all over
a woman, then am I not able to describe a woman. I do not think
it probable that my name will remain among those who in the next
century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction;--but
if it does, that permanence of success will probably rest on the
character of Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Rev. Mr.
Crawley.
I have now come to the end of that long series of books written by
myself with which the public is already acquainted. Of those which
I may hereafter be able to add to them I cannot speak; though I
have an idea that I shall even yet once more have recourse to my
political hero as the mainstay of another story. When The Prime
Minister was finished, I at once began another novel, which is now
completed in three volumes, and which is called Is He Popenjoy?
There are two Popenjoys in the book, one succeeding to the title
held by the other; but as they are both babies, and do not in the
course of the story progress beyond babyhood, the future readers,
should the tale ever be published, will not be much interested in
them. Nevertheless the story, as a story, is not, I think, amiss.
Since that I have written still another three-volume novel, to
which, very much in opposition to my publisher, I have given the
name of The American Senator. [Footnote: The American Senator and
Popenjoy have appeared, each with fair success. Neither of them has
encountered that reproach which, in regard to The Prime Minister,
seemed to tell me that my work as a novelist should be brought to
a close. And yet I feel assured that they are very inferior to The
Prime Minister.] It is to appear in Temple Bar, and is to commence
its appearance on the first of next month. Such being its
circumstances, I do not know that I can say anything else about it
here.
And so I end the record of my literary performances,--which I
think are more in amount than the works of any other living English
author. If any English authors not living have written more--as
may probably have been the case--I do not know who they are. I find
that, taking the books which have appeared under our names,
I have
published much more than twice as much as Carlyle. I have also
published considerably more than Voltaire, even including his
letters. We are told that Varro, at the age of eighty, had written
480 volumes, and that he went on writing for eight years longer.
I wish I knew what was the length of Varro's volumes; I comfort
myself by reflecting that the amount of manuscript described as a
book in Varro's time was not much. Varro, too, is dead, and Voltaire;
whereas I am still living, and may add to the pile.
The following is a list of the books I have written, with the dates
of publication and the sums I have received for them. The dates
given are the years in which the works were published as a whole,
most of them having appeared before in some serial form.
Names of Works. Date of Publication. Total Sums Received.
The Macdermots of Ballycloran, 1847 (pounds)48 6 9
The Kellys and the O'Kellys, 1848 123 19 5
La Vendee, 1850 20 0 0
The Warden, 1855 727 11 3
Barchester Towers, 1857 /
The Three Clerks, 1858 250 0 0
Doctor Thorne, 1858 400 0 0
The West Indies and the
Spanish Main, 1859 250 0 0
The Bertrams, 1859 400 0 0
Carried forward, (pounds)2219 16 17
Names of Works. Date of Publication. Total Sums Received.
Brought Forward, (pounds)2219 16 17
Castle Richmond, 1860 600 0 0
Framley Parsonage, 1861 1000 0 0
Tales of All
Countries--1st Series, 1861
" " 2d 1863 > 1830 0 0
" " 3d 1870 /
Orley Farm, 1862 3135 0 0
North America, 1862 1250 0 0
Rachel Ray, 1863 1645 0 0
The Small House at Allington, 1864 3000 0 0
Can You Forgive Her? 1864 3525 0 0
Miss Mackenzie, 1865 1300 0 0
The Belton Estate, 1866 1757 0 0
The Claverings, 1867 2800 0 0
The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867 3000 0 0
Nina Balatka, 1867 450 0 0
Linda Tressel, 1868 450 0 0
Phineas Finn, 1869 3200 0 0
He Knew He Was Right, 1869 3200 0 0
Brown, Jones, and Robinson, 1870 600 0 0
The Vicar of Bullhampton, 1870 2500 0 0
An Editor's Tales, 1870 378 0 0
Caesar (Ancient Classics), 1870 0 0 0
[Footnote: This was given by me as a present to
my friend John Blackwood]