but the gentleman himself hurried into the hall. I at once began to
explain my business. "God bless me!" he said, "you are wet through.
John, get Mr. Trollope some brandy and water--very hot." I was
beginning my story about the post again when he himself took off my
greatcoat, and suggested that I should go up to my bedroom before
I troubled myself with business. "Bedroom!" I exclaimed. Then
he assured me that he would not turn a dog out on such a night as
that, and into a bedroom I was shown, having first drank the brandy
and water standing at the drawing-room fire. When I came down I was
introduced to his daughter, and the three of us went in to dinner.
I shall never forget his righteous indignation when I again brought
up the postal question on the departure of the young lady. Was I
such a Goth as to contaminate wine with business? So I drank my
wine, and then heard the young lady sing while her father slept
in his armchair. I spent a very pleasant evening, but my host was
too sleepy to hear anything about the Post Office that night. It
was absolutely necessary that I should go away the next morning
after breakfast, and I explained that the matter must be discussed
then. He shook his head and wrung his hands in unmistakable
disgust,--almost in despair. "But what am I to say in my report?"
I asked. "Anything you please," he said. "Don't spare me, if you
want an excuse for yourself. Here I sit all the day--with nothing
to do; and I like writing letters." I did report that Mr.---- was
now quite satisfied with the postal arrangement of his district;
and I felt a soft regret that I should have robbed my friend of his
occupation. Perhaps he was able to take up the Poor Law Board, or
to attack the Excise. At the Post Office nothing more was heard
from him.
I went on with the hunting surveyor at Banagher for three years,
during which, at Kingstown, the watering place near Dublin, I met
Rose Heseltine, the lady who has since become my wife. The engagement
took place when I had been just one year in Ireland; but there was
still a delay of two years before we could be married. She had no
fortune, nor had I any income beyond that which came from the Post
Office; and there were still a few debts, which would have been
paid off no doubt sooner, but for that purchase of the horse. When
I had been nearly three years in Ireland we were married on the
11th of June, 1844;--and, perhaps, I ought to name that happy day
as the commencement of my better life, rather than the day on which
I first landed in Ireland.
For though during these three years I had been jolly enough, I
had not been altogether happy. The hunting, the whisky punch, the
rattling Irish life,--of which I could write a volume of stories
were this the place to tell them,--were continually driving from
my mind the still cherished determination to become a writer of
novels. When I reached Ireland I had never put pen to paper; nor
had I done so when I became engaged. And when I was married, being
then twenty-nine, I had only written the first volume of my first
work. This constant putting off of the day of work was a great
sorrow to me. I certainly had not been idle in my new berth. I had
learned my work, so that every one concerned knew that it was safe
in my hands; and I held a position altogether the reverse of that
in which I was always trembling while I remained in London. But
that did not suffice,--did not nearly suffice. I still felt that
there might be a career before me, if I could only bring myself to
begin the work. I do not think I much doubted my own intellectual
sufficiency for the writing of a readable novel. What I did doubt
was my own industry, and the chances of the market.
The vigour necessary to prosecute two professions at the same time
is not given to every one, and it was only lately that I had found
the vigour necessary for one. There must be early hours, and I
had not as yet learned to love early hours. I was still, indeed, a
young man; but hardly young enough to trust myself to find the power
to alter the habits of my life. And I had heard of the difficulties
of publishing,--a subject of which I shall have to say much should
I ever bring this memoir to a close. I had dealt already with
publishers on my mother's behalf, and knew that many a tyro who
could fill a manuscript lacked the power to put his matter before
the public;--and I knew, too, that when the matter was printed,
how little had then been done towards the winning of the battle!
I had already learned that many a book--many a good book--
"is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
But still the purpose was strong within me, and the first effort
was made after the following fashion. I was located at a little
town called Drumsna, or rather village, in the county Leitrim,
where the postmaster had come to some sorrow about his money; and
my friend John Merivale was staying with me for a day or two. As
we were taking a walk in that most uninteresting country, we turned
up through a deserted gateway, along a weedy, grass-grown avenue,
till we came to the modern ruins of a country house. It was one of
the most melancholy spots I ever visited. I will not describe it
here, because I have done so in the first chapter of my first novel.
We wandered about the place, suggesting to each other causes for
the misery we saw there, and, while I was still among the ruined
walls and decayed beams, I fabricated the plot of The Macdermots
of Ballycloran. As to the plot itself, I do not know that I ever
made one so good,--or, at any rate, one so susceptible of pathos.
I am aware that I broke down in the telling, not having yet studied
the art. Nevertheless, The Macdermots is a good novel, and worth
reading by any one who wishes to understand what Irish life was
before the potato disease, the famine, and the Encumbered Estates
Bill.
When my friend left me, I set to work and wrote the first chapter
or two. Up to this time I had continued that practice of castle-building
of which I have spoken; but now the castle I built was among the
ruins of that old house. The book, however, hung with me. It was
only now and then that I found either time or energy for a few
pages. I commenced the book in September, 1843, and had only written
a volume when I was married in June, 1844.
My marriage was like the marriage of other people, and of no
special interest to any one except my wife and me. It took place
at Rotherham, in Yorkshire, where her father was the manager of a
bank. We were not very rich, having about (pounds)400 a year on which to
live.
Many people would say that we were two fools to encounter such
poverty together. I can only reply that since that day I have never
been without money in my pocket, and that I soon acquired the means
of paying what I owed. Nevertheless, more than twelve years had to
pass over our heads before I received any payment for any literary
work which afforded an appreciable increase to our income.
Immediately after our marriage, I left the west of Ireland and the
hunting surveyor, and joined another in the south. It was a better
district, and I was enabled to live at Clonmel, a town of some
importance, instead of at Banagher, which is little more than a
village. I had not felt myself to be comfortable in my old residence
as a married man. On my arrival there as a bachelor I had been
received most kindly, but when I brought my English wife I fancied
that there was a feeling that I had behaved badly to Ireland
generally. When a young man has been received hospitably in an
Irish circle, I will not say that it is expected of him that he
should marry some young lady in that society;--but it certainly is
expected of him that he shall not marry any young lady out of it.
I had given offence, and I was made to feel it.
There has taken place a great change in Ireland since the days in
which I lived at Banagher, and a change so much for the better,
that I have sometimes wondered at the obduracy with which people
have spoken of the permanent ill condition of the country. Wages
are now nearly double what they were then. The Post Office, at any
rate, is paying almost double for its rural labour,--9s. a week
when it used to pay 5s., and 12s. a week when it used to pay 7s.
Banks have sprung up in almost every village. Rents are paid with
more than English punctuality. And the religious enmity between
the classes, though it is not yet dead, is dying out. Soon after I
reached Banagher in 1841, I dined one evening with a Roman Catholic.
I was informed next day by a Protestant gentleman who had been
very hospitable to me that I must choose my party. I could not sit
both at Protestant and Catholic tables. Such a caution would now
be impossible in any part of Ireland. Home-rule, no doubt, is a
nuisance,--and especially a nuisance because the professors of the
doctrine do not at all believe it themselves. There are probably
no other twenty men in England or Ireland who would be so utterly
dumfounded and prostrated were Home-rule to have its way as the
twenty Irish members who profess to support it in the House of
Commons. But it is not to be expected that nuisances such as these
should be abolished at a blow. Home-rule is, at any rate, better
and more easily managed than the rebellion at the close of the
last century; it is better than the treachery of the Union; less
troublesome than O'Connell's monster meetings; less dangerous than
Smith O'Brien and the battle of the cabbage-garden at Ballingary,
and very much less bloody than Fenianism. The descent from O'Connell
to Mr. Butt has been the natural declension of a political disease,
which we had no right to hope would be cured by any one remedy.
When I had been married a year my first novel was finished. In
July, 1845, I took it with me to the north of England, and intrusted
the MS. to my mother to do with it the best she could among the
publishers in London. No one had read it but my wife; nor, as far
as I am aware, has any other friend of mine ever read a word of
my writing before it was printed. She, I think, has so read almost
everything, to my very great advantage in matters of taste. I am sure
I have never asked a friend to read a line; nor have I ever read a
