Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

were very bitter; but they were very clever, and they saved the

family from ruin.

Book followed book immediately,--first two novels, and then a book

on Belgium and Western Germany. She refurnished the house which

I have called Orley Farm, and surrounded us again with moderate

comforts. Of the mixture of joviality and industry which formed

her character, it is almost impossible to speak with exaggeration.

The industry was a thing apart, kept to herself. It was not necessary

that any one who lived with her should see it. She was at her table

at four in the morning, and had finished her work before the world

had begun to be aroused. But the joviality was all for others.

She could dance with other people's legs, eat and drink with other

people's palates, be proud with the lustre of other people's finery.

Every mother can do that for her own daughters; but she could do it

for any girl whose look, and voice, and manners pleased her. Even

when she was at work, the laughter of those she loved was a pleasure

to her. She had much, very much, to suffer. Work sometimes came

hard to her, so much being required,--for she was extravagant, and

liked to have money to spend; but of all people I have known she

was the most joyous, or, at any rate, the most capable of joy.

We continued this renewed life at Harrow for nearly two years,

during which I was still at the school, and at the end of which

I was nearly nineteen. Then there came a great catastrophe. My

father, who, when he was well, lived a sad life among his monks and

nuns, still kept a horse and gig. One day in March, 1834, just as

it had been decided that I should leave the school then, instead

of remaining, as had been intended, till midsummer, I was summoned

very early in the morning, to drive him up to London. He had been

ill, and must still have been very ill indeed when he submitted to

be driven by any one. It was not till we had started that he told

me that I was to put him on board the Ostend boat. This I did,

driving him through the city down to the docks. It was not within

his nature to be communicative, and to the last he never told me

why he was going to Ostend. Something of a general flitting abroad

I had heard before, but why he should have flown first, and flown

so suddenly, I did not in the least know till I returned. When I got

back with the gig, the house and furniture were all in the charge

of the sheriff's officers.

The gardener who had been with us in former days stopped me as I

drove up the road, and with gestures, signs, and whispered words,

gave me to understand that the whole affair--horse, gig, and

barness--would be made prize of if I went but a few yards farther.

Why they should not have been made prize of I do not know. The

little piece of dishonest business which I at once took in hand

and carried through successfully was of no special service to any

of us. I drove the gig into the village, and sold the entire equipage

to the ironmonger for (pounds)17, the exact sum which he claimed as being

due to himself. I was much complimented by the gardener, who seemed

to think that so much had been rescued out of the fire. I fancy

that the ironmonger was the only gainer by my smartness.

When I got back to the house a scene of devastation was in progress,

which still was not without its amusement. My mother, through

her various troubles, had contrived to keep a certain number of

pretty-pretties which were dear to her heart. They were not much,

for in those days the ornamentation of houses was not lavish as it

is now; but there was some china, and a little glass, a few books,

and a very moderate supply of household silver. These things, and

things like them, were being carried down surreptitiously, through

a gap between the two gardens, on to the premises of our friend

Colonel Grant. My two sisters, then sixteen and seventeen, and the

Grant girls, who were just younger, were the chief marauders. To

such forces I was happy to add myself for any enterprise, and

between us we cheated the creditors to the extent of our powers,

amidst the anathemas, but good-humoured abstinence from personal

violence, of the men in charge of the property. I still own a few

books that were thus purloined.

For a few days the whole family bivouacked under the Colonel's

hospitable roof, cared for and comforted by that dearest of all women,

his wife. Then we followed my father to Belgium, and established

ourselves in a large house just outside the walls of Bruges. At

this time, and till my father's death, everything was done with

money earned by my mother. She now again furnished the house,--this

being the third that she had put in order since she came back from

America two years and a half ago.

There were six of us went into this new banishment. My brother

Henry had left Cambridge and was ill. My younger sister was ill.

And though as yet we hardly told each other that it was so, we began

to feel that that desolating fiend, consumption, was among us. My

father was broken-hearted as well as ill, but whenever he could

sit at his table he still worked at his ecclesiastical records. My

elder sister and I were in good health, but I was an idle, desolate

hanger-on, that most hopeless of human beings, a hobbledehoy

of nineteen, without any idea of a career, or a profession, or

a trade. As well as I can remember I was fairly happy, for there

were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in

love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But

as to my future life I had not even an aspiration. Now and again

there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that

she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while

she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have

thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were

the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.

Then, by degrees, an established sorrow was at home among us. My

brother was an invalid, and the horrid word, which of all words were

for some years after the most dreadful to us, had been pronounced.

It was no longer a delicate chest, and some temporary necessity

for peculiar care,--but consumption! The Bruges doctor had said

so, and we knew that he was right. From that time forth my mother's

most visible occupation was that of nursing. There were two sick

men in the house, and hers were the hands that tended them. The

novels went on, of course. We had already learned to know that they

would be forthcoming at stated intervals,--and they always were

forthcoming. The doctor's vials and the ink-bottle held equal

places in my mother's rooms. I have written many novels under many

circumstances; but I doubt much whether I could write one when my

whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son. Her power of dividing

herself into two parts, and keeping her intellect by itself clear

from the troubles of the world, and fit for the duty it had to do,

I never saw equalled. I do not think that the writing of a novel

is the most difficult task which a man may be called upon to do;

but it is a task that may be supposed to demand a spirit fairly

at ease. The work of doing it with a troubled spirit killed Sir

Walter Scott. My mother went through it unscathed in strength,

though she performed all the work of day-nurse and night-nurse to

a sick household;--for there were soon three of them dying.

At this time there came from some quarter an offer to me of a

commission in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and so it was apparently

my destiny to be a soldier. But I must first learn German and

French, of which languages I knew almost nothing. For this a year

was allowed me, and in order that it might be accomplished without

expense, I undertook the duties of a classical usher to a school

then kept by William Drury at Brussels. Mr. Drury had been one of

the masters at Harrow when I went there at seven years old, and is

now, after an interval of fifty-three years, even yet officiating

as clergyman at that place. [Footnote: He died two years after

these words were written.] To Brussels I went, and my heart still

sinks within me as I reflect that any one should have intrusted to

me the tuition of thirty boys. I can only hope that those boys went

there to learn French, and that their parents were not particular

as to their classical acquirements. I remember that on two occasions

I was sent to take the school out for a walk; but that after the

second attempt Mrs. Drury declared that the boys' clothes would not

stand any further experiments of that kind. I cannot call to mind

any learning by me of other languages; but as I only remained in

that position for six weeks, perhaps the return lessons had not

been as yet commenced. At the end of the six weeks a letter reached

me, offering me a clerkship in the General Post Office, and I

accepted it. Among my mother's dearest friends she reckoned Mrs.

Freeling, the wife of Clayton Freeling, whose father, Sir Francis

Freeling, then ruled the Post Office. She had heard of my desolate

position, and had begged from her father-in-law the offer of a

berth in his own office.

I hurried back from Brussels to Bruges on my way to London, and

found that the number of invalids had been increased. My younger

sister, Emily, who, when I had left the house, was trembling on

the balance,--who had been pronounced to be delicate, but with that

false-tongued hope which knows the truth, but will lie lest the

heart should faint, had been called delicate, but only delicate,--was

now ill. Of course she was doomed. I knew it of both of them,

though I had never heard the word spoken, or had spoken it to any

one. And my father was very ill,--ill to dying, though I did not

know it. And my mother had decreed to send my elder sister away to

England, thinking that the vicinity of so much sickness might be

injurious to her. All this happened late in the autumn of 1834, in

the spring of which year we had come to Bruges; and then my mother

was left alone in a big house outside the town, with two Belgian

women-servants, to nurse these dying patients--the patients being

her husband and children--and to write novels for the sustenance

of the family! It was about this period of her career that her best

novels were written.