Part 1 (1/2)

An Autobiography

by Anthony Trollope

PREFACE

It may be well that I should put a short preface to this book In the summer of 1878 my father told me that he had written a th, but said that he had written me a letter, not to be opened until after his death, containing instructions for publication

This letter was dated 30th April, 1876 I will give here as much of it as concerns the public: ”I wish you to accept as a gift froes which contain a memoir of my life My intention is that they shall be published after ether to your discretion whether to publish or to suppress the work;--and also to your discretion whether any part or what part shall be o should be added to the memoir If you wish to say any word as from yourself, let it be done in the shape of a preface or introductory chapter” At the end there is a postscript: ”The publication, if made at all, should be effected as soon as possible after my death” My father died on the 6th of December, 1882

It will be seen, therefore, that h the press confors to the right-hand pages throughout the book, and I do not conceive that I was precluded fro Additions of any other sort there have been none; the few footnotes are my father's own additions or corrections And I have es, but not es has been oiven any of his own letters, nor was it his wish that any should be published

I see from my father's manuscript, and from his papers, that the first two chapters of this an the third chapter early in January, 1876, and that he finished the record before the h there are indications in the book by which itwritten

So ive in a feords the main incidents in raphy

He has said that he had given up hunting; but he still kept two horses for such riding as hbourhood of London He continued to ride to the end of his life: he liked the exercise, and I think it would have distressed him not to have had a horse in his stable But he never spoke willingly on hunting ive up his favourite amusement, and that as far as he was concerned there should be an end of it In the spring of 1877 he went to South Africa, and returned early in the following year with a book on the colony already written In the suentlemen who made an expedition to Iceland in the ”Mastiff,” one of Mr John Burns' steaether sixteen days, and during that time Mr and Mrs Burns were the hospitable entertainers When my father returned, he wrote a short account of _How the ”Mastiffs” went to Iceland_ The book was printed, but was intended only for private circulation

Every day, until his last illness, my father continued his work He would not otherwise have been happy He demanded from himself less than he had done ten years previously, but his daily task was always done I will mention now the titles of his books that were published after the last included in the list which he hiiven at the end of the second volume:--

An Eye for an Eye, 1879 Cousin Henry, 1879 Thackeray, 1879 The Duke's Children, 1880 Life of Cicero, 1880 Ayala's Angel, 1881 Doctor Wortle's School, 1881 Frau Frohmann and other Stories, 1882 Lord Palmerston, 1882 The Fixed Period, 1882 Kept in the Dark, 1882 Marion Fay, 1882 Mr Scarborough's Family, 1883

At the time of his death he had written four-fifths of an Irish story, called _The Landleaguers_, shortly about to be published; and he left in manuscript a completed novel, called _An Old Man's Love_, which will be published by Messrs Blackwood & Sons in 1884

In the sum, a village in Sussex, but on the confines of Hampshi+re I think he chose that spot because he found there a house that suited hihbourhood His last long journey was a trip to Italy in the late winter and spring of 1881; but he went to Ireland twice in 1882 He went there in May of that year, and was then absent nearly a ood, for he found that the softer at for nearly eighteenhe made another trip to Ireland, but from this journey he derived less benefit He was much interested in, and was very much distressed by, the unhappy condition of the country Few men knew Ireland better than he did He had lived there for sixteen years, and his Post Office work had taken hian his last novel, _The Landleaguers_, which, as stated above, was unfinished when he died

This book was a cause of anxiety to him He could not rid his mind of the fact that he had a story already in the course of publication, but which he had not yet coe_, did my father publish even the first number of any novel before he had fully co of the 3d of Noveht side, accoh at intervals his thoughts would return to him After the first three weeks these lucid intervals became rarer, but it was always very difficult to tell how far hisof the 6th of Deceht of his attack

I have been led to say these feords, not at all froraphy of himself, but to mention the main incidents in his life after he had finished his own record In what I have here said I do not think I have exceeded his instructions

HENRY M TROLLOPE

September, 1883

CHAPTER I

MY EDUCATION

1815-1834

In writing these pages, which, for the want of a better nanificant a person as myself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little details of my private life, as of what I, and perhaps others round me, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such as they have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literary career offers to arrulity of old age, and the aptitude of a es of his own life, will, I know, te so, should I kno to throw ible for of himself, I hold to be i of a ? Who is there that has done none? But this I protest;--that nothing that I say shall be untrue I will set down naught in ive to myself, or others, honour which I do not believe to have been fairly won

My boyhood was, I think, as unhappy as that of a young gentle fro on the part of my father, and from an utter want on my own part of that juvenile manhood which enables so the distresses which such a position is sure to produce

I was born in 1815, in Keppel Street, Russell Square; and while a baby, was carried down to Harrohere e far lease frorave of all my father's hopes, as, and of those of her children, and perhaps the director of her destiny and of ours My father had been a Wykae, and Winchester was the destination ofthe masters at Harrow, and as the school offered an education al in the parish, he, with a certain aptitude to do things differently frohout his life, deterust seminary as a ”t'other school” for Winchester, and sent three of us there, one after the other, at the age of seven My father at this ti dingy, almost suicidal chambers, at No 23 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,--chambers which on one melancholy occasion did become absolutely suicidal[1] He was, as I have been informed by those quite competent to know, an excellent and ued with so bad a temper, that he drove the attorneys from him In his early days he was a her hopes