Sacramento daily record-union., 1883-11-03
THE STORY OF A STORY WRITER
BOOK REVIEW.
An AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By Anthony Trollope. New
York Harper Bros (Franklin Square Library
San Francisco A. L. Bancroft & Co.

The autobiography of Anthony Trellope.
which has just been given to the world. and
that the New York Herald had synopsized
and csbled to America recently, will, unless
we are much mistaken in our estimate of
popular tastes, attract attention from the
general public of character that does not
attach to many works CT that order. 1t will
work, for in fact as literary production it is
only ordinary; but the interest will be Of the
kind that is born of curiosity. As there is
about the stage life of actors peculiar inter.
est that is inviting even to those who never
enter theater, so about the lives of famous
literary men there is an interest which is in.
defnable. Men love to lift the curtain snd
look in upon the privacy, the inner life, the
methods, the trials and temptations of the
man who has endesred himself to them by
the magic of his genius. Carlyle, Dickens,
Byron, George Eliot, George Sand and
score of others have been the subjects of this
curiosity, and the privacy of their lives has
been laid bare for public inspection. Troll
lope probably intended to take the edge from
this inquiring spirit by telling all there was
to be told concerning himself. He protests
that what he has written of himself and the
men of his time is the strictest truth, and set
down free from prejudice. This we are fain
to believe. Trcllope will never rank among
the great nOvelists. he was rot
great master of fiction ; but nei.
ther was he an ordinary one.
He was popular novelist; he got close to
the popular heart; he won his way to the
sympathies of the great middle conservative
class. He did not command for his pages the
most cultured readers, nor invite to review Of
his methods the great critics but he did
command world of readers, and host of
critics whose admiration and whose criticism
no literary man can afford to despise. He
was a successful rovelist as the world meas.
ures success. He won his way TO an honora-
BILE front by dint Of hard work. He be-
Eeved genius to be curse when IN
accompanied by dogged industry, and per-
sistent, determined application. He was
eminently working novelist. He entered
life under difficulties, and struggled against
adverse circumstances which would have
swept the ordinary man down the current
into obscurity. Now the self-told tale of the
life of such a man, one so well known TO Eng
lish speaking people, must be full of interest.
We have found it SO, and predict for the
work a wide reading. Let us briefly outline
the autobiography, and in doing which we
shall not by any means detract from its in.
trinsic Interest, but rather invite to the pleas.
ure its perusal inspires. The work was given
to the public on the 14th of October. 1t was
Trollope's wish that it should be published
speedily after his death. 1t is to the credit
of the modesty of the man that he did
not present it in his lifetime. He at
tributes its writing to the aptitude
Of an old mans mind to recur to the pas
ssges Of his own life. To tell everything of
ones own life, he holds to be impossible.
How can one endure the doing of so mean
a thing, he exclsims. But he admits that
be is forced to speak more of himself than he
likes, because he is so anxious to speak of
those with whom he was associated, and
among whom he passed his days. His fathers
life was early failure, and there resulted
tempestuous disposition and an ugly temper
that wore out the spirit of Trollope's mother,
and brought upon the children much misery.
The old home will be remembered by Troll
lope's readers as 81 Orley Farm" At school,
L ~ L
his comrades and bullied in way to take
the starch out" of him efectually, and to do
more-to humiliate him. He had but poor
est clothing, and that ill.kept. and he soon be-
school" His teachers, as teachers are all too
apt to do, followed the movement of the
scholars, and neglected, irsulted and morti.
fed the lad. He wss the victim Of pedagogic
the agonies of which sensitive pature is
capable. His education at best was a poor
one, and it really impresses the reader that
he would have been better off out, instead of
in school. He had to toll as few lads do at
school, walking, for instance, twelve miles
day to mis- tasks. Finally family misfortunes
drove the Trollopes to France, and
there Anthony became school
usher, taking thereafter clerkship
in. the London Postoffice. How he. ever
managed to pass the civil service exsmins-
ton is as much puzzle TO the reader as
it SEEING to have been to Trollope. At
this time his whole family, excepting his
mother and himself was dying miserably
in poverty, and the mother watched the
sick and sat up at night and wrote novels to
gain a crust and keep roof over head.
That lad who did not know the multipiica-
ton table, knew next to nothing Of the art
of penmanship and was sbominsbly ignorant
of the English branches generally, should have
passed the examination PREDATORY to the
clerkship named, is not at all creditsble to
the English system of that day. Trollope
tells the story OF that examination in his
well-known tale entitled 1.-THE Three Clerks
But he got the place, and it was lucky for him
that he did. 1t was the turning point in his
career. he had all the days of his youth been
building castles in the air. He was constantly
constructing tales and imaginary romances
and dramas, and dreaming of the things he
could write down if he only knew how.
These fsncies were not vague, but well de-
fined, and with him took on the coherency of
reality. The more he dreamed the more real
they became, and the more the necessity
seemed to press him on to the writing of them
down. Still he did not take up the idea of
attempting it until he left the Postoffice.
The truth was, that outside Of his tasks
he was constantly kept busy dodging
creditors and fighting misery and poverty.
The ordinary youth would have gone to the
bottom, and have been raked up finally in
the cutters by the police, but Trollope had
in bim stuff for better things. With mighty
resolve he fled from London when he was 26.