XXII
I wonder whether it be really true, as I have more than once seen suggested, that the publication of Anthony Trollope's autobiography in some degree accounts for the neglect into which he and his works fell so soon after his death. I should like to believe it, for such a fact would be, from one point of view, a credit to "the great big stupid public." Only, of course, from one point of view; the notable merits of Trollope's work are unaffected by one's knowledge of how that work was produced; at his best he is an admirable writer of the pedestrian school, and this disappearance of his name does not mean final oblivion. Like every other novelist of note, he had two classes of admirers--those who read him for the sake of that excellence which here and there he achieved, and the undistinguishing crowd which found in him a level entertainment. But it would be a satisfaction to think that "the great big stupid" was really, somewhere in its secret economy, offended by that revelation of mechanical methods which made the autobiography either a disgusting or an amusing book to those who read it more intelligently. A man with a watch before his eyes, penning exactly so many words every quarter of an hour--one imagines that this picture might haunt disagreeably the thoughts even of Mudie's steadiest subscriber, that it might come between him or her and any Trollopean work that lay upon the counter.
The surprise was so cynically sprung upon a yet innocent public. At that happy time (already it seems so long ago) the literary news set before ordinary readers mostly had reference to literary work, in a reputable sense of the term, and not, as now, to the processes of "literary" manufacture and the ups and downs of the "literary" market. Trollope himself tells how he surprised the editor of a periodical, who wanted a serial from him, by asking how many thousand words it should run to; an anecdote savouring indeed of good old days. Since then, readers have grown accustomed to revelations of "literary" method, and nothing in that kind can shock them. There has come into existence a school of journalism which would seem to have deliberately set itself the task of degrading authorship and everything connected with it; and these pernicious scribblers (or typists, to be more accurate) have found the authors of a fretful age only too receptive of their mercantile suggestions. Yes, yes; I know as well as any man that reforms were needed in the relations between author and publisher. Who knows better than I that your representative author face to face with your representative publisher was, is, and ever will be, at a ludicrous disadvantage? And there is no reason in the nature and the decency of things why this wrong should not by some contrivance be remedied. A big, blusterous, genial brute of a Trollope could very fairly hold his own, and exact at all events an acceptable share in the profits of his work. A shrewd and vigorous man of business such as Dickens, aided by a lawyer who was his devoted friend, could do even better, and, in reaping sometimes more than his publisher, redress the ancient injustice. But pray, what of Charlotte Bronte? Think of that grey, pinched life, the latter years of which would have been so brightened had Charlotte Bronte received but, let us say, one third of what, in the same space of time, the publisher gained by her books. I know all about this; alas! no man better. None the less do I loathe and sicken at the manifold baseness, the vulgarity unutterable, which, as a result of the new order, is blighting our literary life. It is not easy to see how, in such an atmosphere, great and noble books can ever again come into being. May it, perhaps, be hoped that once again the multitude will be somehow touched with disgust?--that the market for "literary" news of this costermonger sort will some day fail?
Dickens. Why, there too was a disclosure of literary methods. Did not Forster make known to all and sundry exactly how Dickens' work was done, and how the bargains for its production were made? The multitudinous public saw him at his desk, learnt how long he sat there, were told that he could not get on without having certain little ornaments before his eyes, and that blue ink and a quill pen were indispensable to his writing; and did all this information ever chill the loyalty of a single reader? There was a difference, in truth, between the picture of Charles Dickens sitting down to a chapter of his current novel, and that of the broad-based Trollope doing his so many words to the fifteen minutes. Trollope, we know, wronged himself by the tone and manner of his reminiscences; but that tone and manner indicated an inferiority of mind, of nature. Dickens--though he died in the endeavour to increase (not for himself) an already ample fortune, disastrous influence of his time and class--wrought with an artistic ingenuousness and fervour such as Trollope could not even conceive. Methodical, of course, he was; no long work of prose fiction was ever brought into existence save by methodical labour; but we know that there was no measuring of so many words to the hour. The picture of him at work which is seen in his own letters is one of the most bracing and inspiring in the history of literature. It has had, and will always have, a great part in maintaining Dickens' place in the love and reverence of those who understand.