and had but one day in London in which to dispose of my manuscript.
I sat for an hour in Great Marlborough Street, expecting the return
of the peccant publisher who had broken his tryst, and I was about
to depart with my bundle under my arm when the foreman of the
house came to me. He seemed to think it a pity that I should go,
and wished me to leave my work with him. This, however, I would not
do, unless he would undertake to buy it then and there. Perhaps he
lacked authority. Perhaps his judgment was against such purchase.
But while we debated the matter, he gave me some advice. "I hope
it's not historical, Mr. Trollope?" he said. "Whatever you do,
don't be historical; your historical novel is not worth a damn."
Thence I took The Three Clerks to Mr. Bentley; and on the same
afternoon succeeded in selling it to him for (pounds)250. His son still
possesses it, and the firm has, I believe, done very well with the
purchase. It was certainly the best novel I had as yet written.
The plot is not so good as that of the Macdermots; nor are there
any characters in the book equal to those of Mrs. Proudie and the
Warden; but the work has a more continued interest, and contains
the first well-described love-scene that I ever wrote. The passage
in which Kate Woodward, thinking that she will die, tries to take
leave of the lad she loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I
read it. I had not the heart to kill her. I never could do that.
And I do not doubt but that they are living happily together to
this day.
The lawyer Chaffanbrass made his first appearance in this novel,
and I do not think that I have cause to be ashamed of him. But this
novel now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I
introduced a character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by
which I intended to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme
of competitive examination, of which at that time Sir Charles
Trevelyan was the great apostle. Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended
for Sir Charles Trevelyan,--as any one at the time would know who
had taken an interest in the Civil Service. "We always call him
Sir Gregory," Lady Trevelyan said to me afterwards, when I came
to know her and her husband. I never learned to love competitive
examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir Charles Trevelyan.
Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer,
was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too appears
in The Three Clerks under the feebly facetious name of Sir Warwick
West End.
But for all that The Three Clerks was a good novel.
When that sale was made I was on my way to Italy with my wife,
paying a third visit there to my mother and brother. This was in
1857, and she had then given up her pen. It was the first year in
which she had not written, and she expressed to me her delight that
her labours should be at an end, and that mine should be beginning
in the same field. In truth they had already been continued for
a dozen years, but a man's career will generally be held to date
itself from the commencement of his success. On those foreign
tours I always encountered adventures, which, as I look back upon
them now, tempt me almost to write a little book of my long past
Continental travels. On this occasion, as we made our way slowly
through Switzerland and over the Alps, we encountered again and
again a poor forlorn Englishman, who had no friend and no aptitude
for travelling. He was always losing his way, and finding himself
with no seat in the coaches and no bed at the inns. On one occasion
I found him at Coire seated at 5 A. M. in the coupe of a diligence
which was intended to start at noon for the Engadine, while it was
his purpose to go over the Alps in another which was to leave at
5.30, and which was already crowded with passengers. "Ah!" he said,
"I am in time now, and nobody shall turn me out of this seat,"
alluding to former little misfortunes of which I had been a witness.
When I explained to him his position, he was as one to whom life
was too bitter to be borne. But he made his way into Italy, and
encountered me again at the Pitti Palace in Florence. "Can you
tell me something?" he said to me in a whisper, having touched my
shoulder. "The people are so ill-natured I don't like to ask them.
Where is it they keep the Medical Venus?" I sent him to the Uffizzi,
but I fear he was disappointed.
We ourselves, however, on entering Milan had been in quite as much
distress as any that he suffered. We had not written for beds,
and on driving up to a hotel at ten in the evening found it full.
Thence we went from one hotel to another, finding them all full.
The misery is one well known to travellers, but I never heard of
another case in which a man and his wife were told at midnight to
get out of the conveyance into the middle of the street because the
horse could not be made to go any further. Such was our condition.
I induced the driver, however, to go again to the hotel which was
nearest to him, and which was kept by a German. Then I bribed the
porter to get the master to come down to me; and, though my French
is ordinarily very defective, I spoke with such eloquence to
that German innkeeper that he, throwing his arms round my neck in
a transport of compassion, swore that he would never leave me nor
my wife till he had put us to bed. And he did so; but, ah! there
were so many in those beds! It is such an experience as this which
teaches a travelling foreigner how different on the Continent is
the accommodation provided for him, from that which is supplied
for the inhabitants of the country.
It was on a previous visit to Milan, when the telegraph-wires were
only just opened to the public by the Austrian authorities, that
we had decided one day at dinner that we would go to Verona that
night. There was a train at six, reaching Verona at midnight, and
we asked some servant of the hotel to telegraph for us, ordering
supper and beds. The demand seemed to create some surprise; but
we persisted, and were only mildly grieved when we found ourselves
charged twenty zwanzigers for the message. Telegraphy was new at
Milan, and the prices were intended to be almost prohibitory. We
paid our twenty zwanzigers and went on, consoling ourselves with the
thought of our ready supper and our assured beds. When we reached
Verona, there arose a great cry along the platform for Signor
Trollope. I put out my head and declared my identity, when I
was waited upon by a glorious personage dressed like a beau for a
ball, with half-a-dozen others almost as glorious behind him, who
informed me, with his hat in his hand, that he was the landlord of
the "Due Torre." It was a heating moment, but it became more hot
when he asked after my people,--"mes gens." I could only turn round,
and point to my wife and brother-in-law. I had no other "people."
There were three carriages provided for us, each with a pair of
grey horses. When we reached the house it was all lit up. We were
not allowed to move without an attendant with a lighted candle. It
was only gradually that the mistake came to be understood. On us
there was still the horror of the bill, the extent of which could
not be known till the hour of departure had come. The landlord,