rule. I can say, however, that I have never broken it since.
But what astonished me most was the fact that at so late a day
this new Cornhill Magazine should be in want of a novel. Perhaps
some of my future readers will he able to remember the great
expectations which were raised as to this periodical. Thackeray's
was a good name with which to conjure. The proprietors, Messrs.
Smith & Elder, were most liberal in their manner of initiating the
work, and were able to make an expectant world of readers believe
that something was to be given them for a shilling very much in
excess of anything they had ever received for that or double the
money. Whether these hopes were or were not fulfilled it is not for
me to say, as, for the first few years of the magazine's existence,
I wrote for it more than any other one person. But such was certainly
the prospect;--and how had it come to pass that, with such promises
made, the editor and the proprietors were, at the end of October,
without anything fixed as to what must be regarded as the chief
dish in the banquet to be provided?
I fear that the answer to this question must be found in the habits
of procrastination which had at that time grown upon the editor.
He had, I imagine, undertaken the work himself, and had postponed
its commencement till there was left to him no time for commencing.
There was still, it may be said, as much time for him as for me.
I think there was,--for though he had his magazine to look after,
I had the Post Office. But he thought, when unable to trust his
own energy, that he might rely upon that of a new recruit. He was
but four years my senior in life but he was at the top of the tree,
while I was still at the bottom.
Having made up my mind to break my principle, I started at once from
Dublin to London. I arrived there on the morning of Thursday, 3d
of November, and left it on the evening of Friday. In the meantime
I had made my agreement with Messrs. Smith & Elder, and had arranged
my plot. But when in London, I first went to Edward Chapman, at 193
Piccadilly. If the novel I was then writing for him would suit
the Cornhill, might I consider my arrangement with him to be at an
end? Yes; I might. But if that story would not suit the Cornhill,
was I to consider my arrangement with him as still standing,--that
agreement requiring that my MS. should be in his hands in the
following March? As to that, I might do as I pleased. In our dealings
together Mr. Edward Chapman always acceded to every suggestion made
to him. He never refused a book, and never haggled at a price. Then
I hurried into the City, and had my first interview with Mr. George
Smith. When he heard that Castle Richmond was an Irish story, he
begged that I would endeavour to frame some other for his magazine.
He was sure that an Irish story would not do for a commencement;--and
he suggested the Church, as though it were my peculiar subject. I
told him that Castle Richmond would have to "come out" while any
other novel that I might write for him would be running through the
magazine;--but to that he expressed himself altogether indifferent.
He wanted an English tale, on English life, with a clerical flavour.
On these orders I went to work, and framed what I suppose I must
call the plot of Framley Parsonage.
On my journey back to Ireland, in the railway carriage, I wrote the
first few pages of that story. I had got into my head an idea of
what I meant to write,--a morsel of the biography of an English
clergyman who should not be a bad man, but one led into temptation
by his own youth and by the unclerical accidents of the life of
those around him. The love of his sister for the young lord was
an adjunct necessary, because there must be love in a novel. And
then by placing Framley Parsonage near Barchester, I was able to
fall back upon my old friends Mrs. Proudie and the archdeacon. Out
of these slight elements I fabricated a hodge-podge in which the
real plot consisted at last simply of a girl refusing to marry the
man she loved till the man's friends agreed to accept her lovingly.
Nothing could be less efficient or artistic. But the characters
were so well handled, that the work from the first to the last
was popular,--and was received as it went on with still increasing
favour by both editor and proprietor of the magazine. The story was
thoroughly English. There was a little fox-hunting and a little
tuft-hunting, some Christian virtue and some Christian cant. There
was no heroism and no villainy. There was much Church, but more
love-making. And it was downright honest love,--in which there was
no pretence on the part of the lady that she was too ethereal to
be fond of a man, no half-and-half inclination on the part of the
man to pay a certain price and no more for a pretty toy. Each of
them longed for the other, and they were not ashamed to say so.
Consequently they in England who were living, or had lived, the
same sort of life, liked Framley Parsonage. I think myself that
Lucy Robarts is perhaps the most natural English girl that I ever
drew,--the most natural, at any rate, of those who have been good
girls. She was not as dear to me as Kate Woodward in The Three
Clerks, but I think she is more like real human life. Indeed
I doubt whether such a character could be made more lifelike than
Lucy Robarts.
And I will say also that in this novel there is no very weak part,--no
long succession of dull pages. The production of novels in serial
form forces upon the author the conviction that he should not allow
himself to be tedious in any single part. I hope no reader will
misunderstand me. In spite of that conviction, the writer of stories
in parts will often be tedious. That I have been so myself is a
fault that will lie heavy on my tombstone. But the writer when he
embarks in such a business should feel that he cannot afford to have
many pages skipped out of the few which are to meet the reader's
eye at the same time. Who can imagine the first half of the first
volume of Waverley coming out in shilling numbers? I had realised
this when I was writing Framley Parsonage; and working on the
conviction which had thus come home to me, I fell into no bathos
of dulness.
I subsequently came across a piece of criticism which was written
on me as a novelist by a brother novelist very much greater than
myself, and whose brilliant intellect and warm imagination led him
to a kind of work the very opposite of mine. This was Nathaniel
Hawthorne, the American, whom I did not then know, but whose works
I knew. Though it praises myself highly, I will insert it here,
because it certainly is true in its nature: "It is odd enough," he
says, "that my own individual taste is for quite another class of
works than those which I myself am able to write. If I were to meet
with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe I should
be able to get through them. Have you ever read the novels of Anthony
Trollope? They precisely suit my taste,--solid and substantial,
written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of
ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of
the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants
going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they