rushing mode of publication to which the system of serial stories
had given rise, and by which small parts as they were written were
sent hot to the press, was injurious to the work done. If I now
complied with the proposition made to me, I must act against my
own principle. But such a principle becomes a tyrant if it cannot
be superseded on a just occasion. If the reason be "tanti," the
principle should for the occasion be put in abeyance. I sat as
judge, and decreed that the present reason was "tanti." On this my
first attempt at a serial story, I thought it fit to break my own
rule. I can say, however, that I have never broken it since.
But what astonished me most was the fact that at so late a day
this new Cornhill Magazine should be in want of a novel. Perhaps
some of my future readers will he able to remember the great
expectations which were raised as to this periodical. Thackeray's
was a good name with which to conjure. The proprietors, Messrs.
Smith & Elder, were most liberal in their manner of initiating the
work, and were able to make an expectant world of readers believe
that something was to be given them for a shilling very much in
excess of anything they had ever received for that or double the
money. Whether these hopes were or were not fulfilled it is not for
me to say, as, for the first few years of the magazine's existence,
I wrote for it more than any other one person. But such was certainly
the prospect;--and how had it come to pass that, with such promises
made, the editor and the proprietors were, at the end of October,
without anything fixed as to what must be regarded as the chief
dish in the banquet to be provided?
I fear that the answer to this question must be found in the habits
of procrastination which had at that time grown upon the editor.
He had, I imagine, undertaken the work himself, and had postponed
its commencement till there was left to him no time for commencing.
There was still, it may be said, as much time for him as for me.
I think there was,--for though he had his magazine to look after,
I had the Post Office. But he thought, when unable to trust his
own energy, that he might rely upon that of a new recruit. He was
but four years my senior in life but he was at the top of the tree,
while I was still at the bottom.
Having made up my mind to break my principle, I started at once from
Dublin to London. I arrived there on the morning of Thursday, 3d
of November, and left it on the evening of Friday. In the meantime
I had made my agreement with Messrs. Smith & Elder, and had arranged
my plot. But when in London, I first went to Edward Chapman, at 193
Piccadilly. If the novel I was then writing for him would suit
the Cornhill, might I consider my arrangement with him to be at an
end? Yes; I might. But if that story would not suit the Cornhill,
was I to consider my arrangement with him as still standing,--that
agreement requiring that my MS. should be in his hands in the
following March? As to that, I might do as I pleased. In our dealings
together Mr. Edward Chapman always acceded to every suggestion made
to him. He never refused a book, and never haggled at a price. Then
I hurried into the City, and had my first interview with Mr. George
Smith. When he heard that Castle Richmond was an Irish story, he
begged that I would endeavour to frame some other for his magazine.
He was sure that an Irish story would not do for a commencement;--and
he suggested the Church, as though it were my peculiar subject. I
told him that Castle Richmond would have to "come out" while any
other novel that I might write for him would be running through the
magazine;--but to that he expressed himself altogether indifferent.
He wanted an English tale, on English life, with a clerical flavour.
On these orders I went to work, and framed what I suppose I must
call the plot of Framley Parsonage.
On my journey back to Ireland, in the railway carriage, I wrote the
first few pages of that story. I had got into my head an idea of
what I meant to write,--a morsel of the biography of an English
clergyman who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation
by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of
those around him. The love of his sister for the young lord was
an adjunct necessary, because there must be love in a novel. And
then by placing Framley Parsonage near Barchester, I was able to
fall back upon my old friends Mrs. Proudie and the archdeacon. Out
of these slight elements I fabricated a hodge-podge in which the
real plot consisted at last simply of a girl refusing to marry the
man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly.
Nothing could be less efficient or artistic. But the characters
were so well handled, that the work from the first to the last
was popular,--and was received as it went on with still increasing
favour by both editor and proprietor of the magazine. The story was
thoroughly English. There was a little fox-hunting and a little
tuft-hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian cant. There
was no heroism and no villainy. There was much Church, but more
love-making. And it was downright honest love,--in which there was
no pretence on the part of the lady that she was too ethereal to
be fond of a man, no half-and-half inclination on the part of the
man to pay a certain price and no more for a pretty toy. Each of
them longed for the other, and they were not ashamed to say so.
Consequently they in England who were living, or had lived, the
same sort of life, liked Framley Parsonage. I think myself that
Lucy Robarts is perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever
drew,--the most natural, at any rate, of those who have been good
girls. She was not as dear to me as Kate Woodward in The Three
Clerks, but I think she is more like real human life. Indeed
I doubt whether such a character could be made more lifelike than
Lucy Robarts.
And I will say also that in this novel there is no very weak part,--no
long succession of dull pages. The production of novels in serial
form forces upon the author the conviction that he should not allow
himself to be tedious in any single part. I hope no reader will
misunderstand me. In spite of that conviction, the writer of stories
in parts will often be tedious. That I have been so myself is a
fault that will lie heavy on my tombstone. But the writer when he
embarks in such a business should feel that he cannot afford to have
many pages skipped out of the few which are to meet the reader's
eye at the same time. Who can imagine the first half of the first
volume of Waverley coming out in shilling numbers? I had realised
this when I was writing Framley Parsonage; and working on the
conviction which had thus come home to me, I fell into no bathos
of dulness.
I subsequently came across a piece of criticism which was written
on me as a novelist by a brother novelist very much greater than
myself, and
whose brilliant intellect and warm imagination led him
to a kind of work the very opposite of mine. This was Nathaniel
Hawthorne, the American, whom I did not then know, but whose works
I knew. Though it praises myself highly, I will insert it here,
because it certainly is true in its nature: "It is odd enough," he
says, "that my own individual taste is for quite another class of
works than those which I myself am able to write. If I were to meet
with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe I should
be able to get through them. Have you ever read the novels of Anthony
Trollope? They precisely suit my taste,--solid and substantial,
written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of
ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of
the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants
going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they
were being made a show of. And these books are just as English as
a beef-steak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an
English residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still
I should think that human nature would give them success anywhere."
This was dated early in 1860, and could have had no reference to
Framley Parsonage; but it was as true of that work as of any that
I have written. And the criticism, whether just or unjust, describes
with wonderful accuracy the purport that I have ever had in view
in my writing. I have always desired to "hew out some lump of the
earth," and to make men and women walk upon it just as they do walk
here among us,--with not more of excellence, nor with exaggerated
baseness,--so that my readers might recognise human beings like to
themselves, and not feel themselves to be carried away among gods
or demons. If I could do this, then I thought I might succeed
in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that
honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood
fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure; and sweet, and
unselfish; that a man will be honoured as he is true, and honest,
and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious,
and things nobly done beautiful and gracious. I do not say that
lessons such as these may not be more grandly taught by higher
flights than mine. Such lessons come to us from our greatest poets.
But there are so many who will read novels and understand them, who
either do not read the works of our great poets, or reading them
miss the lesson! And even in prose fiction the character whom
the fervid imagination of the writer has lifted somewhat into the
clouds, will hardly give so plain an example to the hasty normal
reader as the humbler personage whom that reader unconsciously feels
to resemble himself or herself. I do think that a girl would more
probably dress her own mind after Lucy Robarts than after Flora
Macdonald.
There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching
either virtue or nobility,--those, for instance, who regard
the reading of novels as a sin, and those also who think it to be
simply an idle pastime. They look upon the tellers of stories as
among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a
wicked world. I have regarded my art from so different a point of
view that I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons,
and my pulpit as one which I could make both salutary and agreeable
to my audience. I do believe that no girl has risen from the reading
of my pages less modest than she was before, and that some may have
learned from them that modesty is a charm well worth preserving. I
think that no youth has been taught that in falseness and flashness
is to be found the road to manliness; but some may perhaps have
learned from me that it is to be found in truth and a high but
gentle spirit. Such are the lessons I have striven to teach; and
I have thought it might best be done by representing to my readers
characters like themselves,--or to which they might liken themselves.
Framley Parsonage--or, rather, my connection with the Cornhill--was
the means of introducing me very quickly to that literary world
from which I had hitherto been severed by the fact of my residence
in Ireland. In December, 1859, while I was still very hard at work
on my novel, I came over to take charge of the Eastern District,
and settled myself at a residence about twelve miles from London,
in Hertfordshire, but on the borders both of Essex and Middlesex,--which
was somewhat too grandly called Waltham House. This I took on
lease, and subsequently bought after I had spent about (pounds)1000 on
improvements. From hence I was able to make myself frequent both
in Cornhill and Piccadilly, and to live, when the opportunity came,
among men of my own pursuit.
It was in January, 1860, that Mr. George Smith--to whose enterprise
we owe not only the Cornhill Magazine but the Pall Mall Gazette--gave
a sumptuous dinner to his contributors. It was a memorable banquet
in many ways, but chiefly so to me because on that occasion I first
met many men who afterwards became my most intimate associates.
It can rarely happen that one such occasion can be the first
starting-point of so many friendships. It was at that table, and
on that day, that I first saw Thackeray, Charles Taylor (Sir)--than
Lewes, and John Everett Millais. With all these men I afterwards
lived on affectionate terms;--but I will here speak specially of
the last, because from that time he was joined with me in so much
of the work that I did.
Mr. Millais was engaged to illustrate Framley Parsonage, but this
was not the first work he did for the magazine. In the second number
there is a picture of his accompanying Monckton Milne's Unspoken
Dialogue. The first drawing he did for Framley Parsonage did not
appear till after the dinner of which I have spoken, and I do not
think that I knew at the time that he was engaged on my novel. When
I did know it, it made me very proud. He afterwards illustrated
Orley Farm, The Small House of Allington, Rachel Ray, and Phineas
Finn. Altogether he drew from my tales eighty-seven drawings, and
I do not think that more conscientious work was ever done by man.
Writers of novels know well--and so ought readers of novels to
have learned--that there are two modes of illustrating, either of
which may be adopted equally by a bad and by a good artist. To
which class Mr. Millais belongs I need not say; but, as a good
artist, it was open to him simply to make a pretty picture, or to
study the work of the author from whose writing he was bound to take
his subject. I have too often found that the former alternative
has been thought to be the better, as it certainly is the easier
method. An artist will frequently dislike to subordinate his ideas
to those of an author, and will sometimes be too idle to find out
what those ideas are. But this artist was neither pro
ud nor idle.
In every figure that he drew it was his object to promote the
views of the writer whose work he had undertaken to illustrate, and
he never spared himself any pains in studying that work, so as to
enable him to do so. I have carried on some of those characters from
book to book, and have had my own early ideas impressed indelibly
on my memory by the excellence of his delineations. Those illustrations
were commenced fifteen years ago, and from that time up to this
day my affection for the man of whom I am speaking has increased.
To see him has always been a pleasure. His voice has been a sweet
sound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised
without joining the eulogist; I have never heard a word spoken
against him without opposing the censurer. These words, should he
ever see them, will come to him from the grave, and will tell him
of my regard,--as one living man never tells another.
Sir Charles Taylor, who carried me home in his brougham that
evening, and thus commenced an intimacy which has since been very
close, was born to wealth, and was therefore not compelled by the
necessities of a profession to enter the lists as an author. But
he lived much with those who did so,--and could have done it himself
had want or ambition stirred him. He was our king at the Garrick
Club, to which, however, I did not yet belong. He gave the best
dinners of my time, and was,--happily I may say is, [Footnote:
Alas! within a year of the writing of this he went from us.]--the
best giver of dinners. A man rough of tongue, brusque in his manners,
odious to those who dislike him, somewhat inclined to tyranny, he
is the prince of friends, honest as the sun, and as openhanded as
Charity itself.
Robert Bell has now been dead nearly ten years. As I look back
over the interval and remember how intimate we were, it seems odd
to me that we should have known each other for no more than six
years. He was a man who had lived by his pen from his very youth;
and was so far successful that I do not think that want ever came
near him. But he never made that mark which his industry and talents
would have seemed to ensure. He was a man well known to literary
men, but not known to readers. As a journalist he was useful
and conscientious, but his plays and novels never made themselves