Anthony Trollope: The Artist in Hiding PDF
Preview Anthony Trollope: The Artist in Hiding
ANTHONY TROLLOPE The Artist in Hiding R. C. TERRY © R. C. Terry 1977 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1977 978-0-333-21923-2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1977 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in N c:w Ya rk Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Terry,RC Anthony Trollope. 1. Troll ope, Anthony-Criticism and interpretation 823'.8 PR5687 ISBN 978-1-349-03384-3 ISBN 978-1-349-03382-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03382-9 This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement To my Mother and Father Contents List of Plates ix Acknowledgements xi 1 The Equal Mind 1 2 The Man and the Mask 13 Mud and solitude and poverty 21 20 horse power of vivacity 30 Pa terfarnilias 39 3 Apollo of the Circulating Library 48 Trade secrets 54 Elbow-grease of the mind 6o 4 The Rocks and Valleys 66 Ticklish ground 71 Downright, honest love 74 Prudence versus passion 82 Illusion and reality 87 Angels of light and small brown girls 96 5 The Bread and Cheese 108 Horne truths 112 The Palliser marriage 117 The ravages of love 132 Noningsby 140 6 Single Life 144 A woman's one career 154 Bachelorhood 164 Lizzie Eustace 170 7 Trollope and Ireland 175 Two nations 181 Famine and rebellion 190 viii Contents 8 The Outside World 201 Politics and the man of conscience 205 The Press 213 Gentlemen and others 219 Cheatery 233 Cathedrals and palaces 243 Appendix I A Summary of Events in the Life of Anthony Trollope 249 II Bibliography of Anthony Trollope 250 III Selected Bibliography of Studies on Anthony Trollope 254 IV Selected Bibliography of General Social, His- torical and Literary Background 259 V Twenty popular authors stocked by Mudie's Select Library, compiled from catalogues issued between 1857 and 1935 261 Notes Index List of Plates 1 Anthony Trollope (drawn by R. Birch, after a photograph by Sarony) 2a Waltham House (in 1900) 2b Harting Grange, North Front 3 A Trollopian maxim from The Last Chronicle of Barset, illus trated by George Thomas 4 Lord Lufton and Lucy Robarts in Framley Parsonage, illustrated by J. E. Millais 5 Illustrations by J. E. Millais from Orley Farm 6 Vignettes by Marcus Stone from He Knew He Was Right 7 Agonies at the writing desk: from The Vicar of Bullhampton, illustrated by H. Woods, and Kept in the Dark by J. E. Millais 8 Illustration by Luke Fildes from The Way We Live Now Acknowledgements In writing this book I am indebted to the University of Victoria, British Columbia, for leave in the early stages of my research, and to the Canada Council for generous financial support. I am grateful to Professor Kathleen Tillotson for her guidance in my initial studies on Trollope and for her encouragement at various stages during the writing. I wish to thank the staff of several libraries : the British Library, the Bodleian, the Senate House Library of the University of London, the libraries of Bedford College and of the Universities of Exeter and Victoria. Thanks are also due to Lady Faber for the loan of the photograph of Harting Grange, and to Hertford shire Library Service-Cheshunt Library for the photograph of Wal tham House. I also wish to thank Mrs Beth Clarke, Mrs Alice Lee and Mrs Joan Whitfield for typing and secretarial help. Finally, to my wife, Judith, I owe a special debt for invaluable practical help in discussing the novels with me and giving meticulous attention to my writing. R.C.T. December 1976 I find myself asking myself that terrible question of cui bono every morning. I am struggling to make a good book, but I feel that it will not be good. Trollope to George Eliot and G. H. Lewes, Melbourne, 27 February 1872 I did think much of Messrs. Longman's name, but I liked it best at the bottom of a cheque. Trollope, An Autobiography, ch. vi Though he wrote his share of rubbish, Trollope at his best was an artist pretending to be just a hunting-man earning enough to keep four horses. But secretly he was hunting for £arne, not foxes, and now he has it. J. B. Priestley, Victoria's Heyday The Equal Mind I MICHAEL SADLEIR: Trollope's quality remains intangible, baffles resolution ... It seems hardly fitting that a being, who in himself was so definite and so solid, who -like a solitary tower upon a hill - was visible for miles around in the wide landscape of Victorian England, should as a literary phenomenon be so difficult to seize and to describe; it is almost irritating that books in themselves so lustily prosaic should be so hard of definition. c. P. SNOW: Trollope wrote so much and, of all writers, he is the one least adapted for most kinds of academic approach. How do you start to dig into him? And with what books?1 Over forty years separate these comments, which share a common be wilderment about the nature of Trollope's character and achievement. In fact every critic I have come across points to the difficulty of defin ing Trollo pe-though some maintain he is hardly worth the trouble with the result that today Trollopes seem to stretch out in the glass of literary fashion to the crack of doom. There is Trollope of Barsetshire, whom everyone knows; Trollope the Social Historian; Trollope the Entertainer, who wrote novels as a hen lays eggs; the 'dark' Trollope of Professor A. 0. J. Cockshut; Trollope the Psychologist; Trollope the Moralist. It would be presumptuous, I feel, to add a 'new' Trollope, and so in this study I am concerned rather with a consolidated Trol lope: a reassessment of this tantalising character and the disarmingly placid world of his novels. The strangeness of Trollope's case becomes apparent immediately one begins to compare his literary fortunes with those of his contemporaries. There is no complete edition of his work. His first novel has been out of print since 1906. What major English novelist has had such a singular fate? The texts of nearly all his novels have received negligible attention and only thirty-three manuscripts of his forty-seven novels are now in existence.2 It was only in 1972 that a forgotten early work, The New Zealander, found its way into print. Much of his journalism remains uncollected. And when we consider his stature it is clear that we speak of Trollope without that confidence or consensus of judge ment with which we approach other Victorians. We accept without
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