at this very moment I have one to write, which I have promised to
supply within three weeks of this time,--the picture-makers always
require a long interval,--as to which I have in vain been cudgelling
my brain for the last month. I can't send away the order to another
shop, but I do not know how I shall ever get the coffin made.
For the Graphic, in 1873, I wrote a little story about Australia.
Christmas at the antipodes is of course midsummer, and I was not
loth to describe the troubles to which my own son had been subjected,
by the mingled accidents of heat and bad neighbours, on his station
in the bush. So I wrote Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, and was well
through my labour on that occasion. I only wish I may have no
worse success in that which now hangs over my head.
When Harry Heathcote was over, I returned with a full heart to
Lady Glencora and her husband. I had never yet drawn the completed
picture of such a statesman as my imagination had conceived. The
personages with whose names my pages had been familiar, and perhaps
even the minds of some of my readers--the Brocks, De Terriers, Monks,
Greshams, and Daubeneys--had been more or less portraits, not of
living men, but of living political characters. The strong-minded,
thick-skinned, useful, ordinary member, either of the Government or
of the Opposition, had been very easy to describe, and had required
no imagination to conceive. The character reproduces itself from
generation to generation; and as it does so, becomes shorn in
a wonderful way of those little touches of humanity which would
be destructive of its purposes. Now and again there comes a burst
of human nature, as in the quarrel between Burke and Fox; but, as
a rule, the men submit themselves to be shaped and fashioned, and
to be formed into tools, which are used either for building up or
pulling down, and can generally bear to be changed from this box
into the other, without, at any rate, the appearance of much personal
suffering. Four-and-twenty gentlemen will amalgamate themselves
into one whole, and work for one purpose, having each of them to
set aside his own idiosyncrasy, and to endure the close personal
contact of men who must often be personally disagreeable, having
been thoroughly taught that in no other way can they serve either
their country or their own ambition. These are the men who are
publicly useful, and whom the necessities of the age supply,--as
to whom I have never ceased to wonder that stones of such strong
calibre should be so quickly worn down to the shape and smoothness
of rounded pebbles.
Such have been to me the Brocks and the Mildmays, about whom I have
written with great pleasure, having had my mind much exercised in
watching them. But had I also conceived the character of a statesman
of a different nature--of a man who should be in something perhaps
superior, but in very much inferior, to these men--of one who could
not become a pebble, having too strong an identity of his own. To
rid one's self of fine scruples--to fall into the traditions of
a party--to feel the need of subservience, not only in acting but
also even in thinking--to be able to be a bit, and at first only a
very little bit,--these are the necessities of the growing statesman.
The time may come, the glorious time when some great self action
shall be possible, and shall be even demanded, as when Peel gave
up the Corn Laws; but the rising man, as he puts on his harness,
should not allow himself to dream of this. To become a good, round,
smooth, hard, useful pebble is his duty, and to achieve this he
must harden his skin and swallow his scruples. But every now and
again we see the attempt, made by men who cannot get their skins to
be hard--who after a little while generally fall out of the ranks.
The statesman of whom I was thinking--of whom I had long thought--was
one who did not fall out of the ranks, even though his skin would
not become hard. He should have rank, and intellect, and parliamentary
habits, by which to bind him to the service of his country; and he
should also have unblemished, unextinguishable, inexhaustible love
of country. That virtue I attribute to our statesmen generally.
They who are without it are, I think, mean indeed. This man should
have it as the ruling principle of his life; and it should so rule
him that all other things should be made to give way to it. But he
should be scrupulous, and, being scrupulous, weak. When called to
the highest place in the council of his Sovereign, he should feel
with true modesty his own insufficiency; but not the less should
the greed of power grow upon him when he had once allowed himself
to taste and enjoy it. Such was the character I endeavoured to
depict in describing the triumph, the troubles, and the failure
of my Prime Minister. And I think that I have succeeded. What the
public may think, or what the press may say, I do not yet know,
the work having as yet run but half its course. [Footnote: Writing
this note in 1878, after a lapse of nearly three years, I am obliged
to say that, as regards the public, The Prime Minister was a failure.
It was worse spoken of by the press than any novel I had written.
I was specially hurt by a criticism on it in the Spectator. The
critic who wrote the article I know to be a good critic, inclined
to be more than fair to me; but in this case I could not agree with
him, so much do I love the man whose character I had endeavoured
to portray.]
That the man's character should be understood as I understand
it--or that of his wife's, the delineation of which has also been
a matter of much happy care to me--I have no right to expect, seeing
that the operation of describing has not been confined to one novel,
which might perhaps be read through by the majority of those who
commenced it. It has been carried on through three or four, each
of which will be forgotten even by the most zealous reader almost
as soon as read. In The Prime Minister, my Prime Minister will not
allow his wife to take office among, or even over, those ladies who
are attached by office to the Queen's court. "I should not choose,"
he says to her, "that my wife should have any duties unconnected
with our joint family and home." Who will remember in reading
those words that, in a former story, published some years before,
he tells his wife, when she has twitted him with his willingness
to clean the Premier's shoes, that he would even allow her to clean
them if it were for the good of the country? And yet it is by such
details as these that I have, for many years past, been manufacturing
within my own mind the characters of the man and his wife.
I think that Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, is a perfect
gentleman. If he be not, then am I unable to describe a gentleman.
She is by no means a perfect lady; but if she be not all over
a woman, then am I not able to describe a woman. I do not think
it probable that my name will remain among those who in the next
century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction;--but
if it does, that permanence of success will probably rest on the
character of Plantagenet Palliser, Lady Glencora, and the Rev. Mr.
Crawley.
I have now come to the end of that long series of books written by
myself with which the public is already acquainted. Of those which