An Autobiography

In the spring of 1871 we,—I and my wife,—had de­cid­ed that we would go to Aus­tralia to visit our shep­herd son. Of course be­fore doing so I made a con­tract with a pub­lish­er for a book about the Colonies. For such a work as this I had al­ways been aware that I could not fair­ly de­mand more than half the price that would be given for the same amount of fic­tion; and as such books have an in­domitable ten­den­cy to stretch them­selves, so that more is given than what is sold, and as the cost of trav­el­ling is heavy, the writ­ing of them is not re­mu­ner­a­tive. This ten­den­cy to stretch comes not, I think, gen­er­al­ly from the am­bi­tion of the writer, but from his in­abil­i­ty to com­prise the dif­fer­ent parts in their al­lot­ted spaces. If you have to deal with a coun­try, a colony, a city, a trade, or a po­lit­i­cal opin­ion, it is so much eas­i­er to deal with it in twen­ty than in twelve pages! I also made an en­gage­ment with the ed­i­tor of a Lon­don daily paper to sup­ply him with a se­ries of ar­ti­cles—which were duly writ­ten, duly pub­lished, and duly paid for. But with all this, trav­el­ling with the ob­ject of writ­ing is not a good trade. If the trav­el­ling au­thor can pay his bills, he must be a good man­ag­er on the road.

Be­fore start­ing there came upon us the ter­ri­ble ne­ces­si­ty of com­ing to some res­o­lu­tion about our house at Waltham. It had been first hired, and then bought, pri­mar­i­ly be­cause it suit­ed my Post Of­fice av­o­ca­tions. To this rea­son had been added other at­trac­tions,—in the shape of hunt­ing, gar­den­ing, and sub­ur­ban hos­pi­tal­i­ties. Al­to­geth­er the house had been a suc­cess, and the scene of much hap­pi­ness. But there arose ques­tions as to ex­pense. Would not a house in Lon­don be cheap­er? There could be no doubt that my in­come would de­crease, and was de­creas­ing. I had thrown the Post Of­fice, as it were, away, and the writ­ing of nov­els could not go on for ever. Some of my friends told me al­ready that at fifty-five I ought to give up the fab­ri­ca­tion of love-sto­ries. The hunt­ing, I thought, must soon go, and I would not there­fore allow that to keep me in the coun­try. And then, why should I live at Waltham Cross now, see­ing that I had fixed on that place in ref­er­ence to the Post Of­fice? It was there­fore de­ter­mined that we would flit, and as we were to be away for eigh­teen months, we de­ter­mined also to sell our fur­ni­ture. So there was a pack­ing up, with many tears, and con­sul­ta­tions as to what should be saved out of the things we loved.

As must take place on such an oc­ca­sion, there was some heart-felt grief. But the thing was done, and or­ders were given for the let­ting or sale of the house. I may as well say here that it never was let and that it re­mained un­oc­cu­pied for two years be­fore it was sold. I lost by the trans­ac­tion about £800. As I con­tin­u­al­ly hear that other men make money by buy­ing and sell­ing hous­es, I pre­sume I am not well adapt­ed for trans­ac­tions of that sort. I have never made money by sell­ing any­thing ex­cept a man­u­script. In mat­ters of horse­flesh I am so in­ef­fi­cient that I have gen­er­al­ly given away hors­es that I have not want­ed.

When we start­ed from Liv­er­pool, in May, 1871, Ralph the Heir was run­ning through the St. Paul’s. This was the novel of which Charles Reade af­ter­wards took the plot and made on it a play. I have al­ways thought it to be one of the worst nov­els I have writ­ten, and al­most to have jus­ti­fied that dic­tum that a nov­el­ist after fifty should not write love-sto­ries. It was in part a po­lit­i­cal novel; and that part which ap­per­tains to pol­i­tics, and which re­counts the elec­tion­eer­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of the can­di­dates at Per­cy­cross, is well enough. Per­cy­cross and Bev­er­ley were, of course, one and the same place. Ne­efit, the breech­es-mak­er, and his daugh­ter, are also good in their way—and Moggs, the daugh­ter’s lover, who was not only lover, but also one of the can­di­dates at Per­cy­cross as well. But the main thread of the story,—that which tells of the do­ings of the young gen­tle­men and young ladies,—the he­roes and the hero­ines,—is not good. Ralph the heir has not much life about him; while Ralph who is not the heir, but is in­tend­ed to be the real hero, has none. The same may be said of the young ladies,—of whom one, she who was meant to be the chief, has passed ut­ter­ly out of my mind, with­out leav­ing a trace of re­mem­brance be­hind.

I also left in the hands of the ed­i­tor of The Fort­night­ly, ready for pro­duc­tion on the 1st of July fol­low­ing, a story called The Eu­stace Di­a­monds. In that I think that my friend’s dic­tum was dis­proved. There is not much love in it; but what there is, is good. The char­ac­ter of Lucy Mor­ris is pret­ty; and her love is as gen­uine and as well told as that of Lucy Ro­barts or Lily Dale.

But The Eu­stace Di­a­monds achieved the suc­cess which it cer­tain­ly did at­tain, not as a love-sto­ry, but as a record of a cun­ning lit­tle woman of pseu­do-fash­ion, to whom, in her cun­ning, there came a se­ries of ad­ven­tures, un­pleas­ant enough in them­selves, but pleas­ant to the read­er. As I wrote the book, the idea con­stant­ly pre­sent­ed it­self to me that Lizzie Eu­stace was but a sec­ond Becky Sharpe; but in plan­ning the char­ac­ter I had not thought of this, and I be­lieve that Lizzie would have been just as she is though Becky Sharpe had never been de­scribed. The plot of the di­a­mond neck­lace is, I think, well arranged, though it pro­duced it­self with­out any fore­thought. I had no idea of set­ting thieves after the bauble till I had got my hero­ine to bed in the inn at Carlisle; nor of the dis­ap­point­ment of the thieves, till Lizzie had been wak­ened in the morn­ing with the news that her door had been bro­ken open. All these things, and many more, Wilkie Collins would have arranged be­fore with in­fi­nite labour, prepar­ing things pre­sent so that they should fit in with things to come. I have gone on the very much eas­i­er plan of mak­ing every­thing as it comes fit in with what has gone be­fore. At any rate, the book was a suc­cess, and did much to re­pair the in­jury which I felt had come to my rep­u­ta­tion in the nov­el-mar­ket by the works of the last few years. I doubt whether I had writ­ten any­thing so suc­cess­ful as The Eu­stace Di­a­monds since The Small House at Alling­ton. I had writ­ten what was much bet­ter,—as, for in­stance, Phineas Finn and Nina Bal­at­ka; but that is by no means the same thing.

I also left be­hind, in a strong box, the man­u­script of Phineas Redux, a novel of which I have al­ready spo­ken, and which I sub­se­quent­ly sold to the pro­pri­etors of the Graph­ic news­pa­per. The ed­i­tor of that paper great­ly dis­liked the title, as­sur­ing me that the pub­lic would take “Redux” for the gen­tle­man’s sur­name—and was dis­sat­is­fied with me when I replied that I had no ob­jec­tion to them doing so. The in­tro­duc­tion of a Latin word, or of a word from any other lan­guage, into the title of an Eng­lish novel is un­doubt­ed­ly in bad taste; but after turn­ing the mat­ter much over in my own mind, I could find no other suit­able name.

I also left be­hind me, in the same strong box, an­oth­er novel, called An Eye for an Eye, which then had been some time writ­ten, and of which, as it has not even yet been pub­lished, I will not fur­ther speak. It will prob­a­bly be pub­lished some day, though, look­ing for­ward, I can see no room for it, at any rate, for the next two years.

If there­fore the Great Britain, in which we sailed for Mel­bourne, had gone to the bot­tom, I had so pro­vid­ed that there would be new nov­els ready to come out under my name for some years to come. This con­sid­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, did not keep me idle while I was at sea. When mak­ing long jour­neys, I have al­ways suc­ceed­ed in get­ting a desk put up in my cabin, and this was done ready for me in the Great Britain, so that I could go to work the day after we left Liv­er­pool. This I did; and be­fore I reached Mel­bourne I had fin­ished a story called Lady Anna. Every word of this was writ­ten at sea, dur­ing the two months re­quired for our voy­age, and was done day by day—with the in­ter­mis­sion of one day’s ill­ness—for eight weeks, at the rate of 66 pages of man­u­script in each week, every page of man­u­script con­tain­ing 250 words. Every word was count­ed. I have seen work come back to an au­thor from the press with ter­ri­ble de­fi­cien­cies as to the amount sup­plied. Thir­ty-two pages have per­haps been want­ed for a num­ber, and the print­ers with all their art could not stretch the mat­ter to more than twen­ty-eight or -nine! The work of fill­ing up must be very dread­ful. I have some­times been ridiculed for the me­thod­i­cal de­tails of my busi­ness. But by these con­trivances I have been pre­served from many trou­bles; and I have saved oth­ers with whom I have worked—ed­i­tors, pub­lish­ers, and print­ers—from much trou­ble also.

A month or two after my re­turn home, Lady Anna ap­peared in The Fort­night­ly, fol­low­ing The Eu­stace Di­a­monds. In it a young girl, who is re­al­ly a lady of high rank and great wealth, though in her youth she en­joyed none of the priv­i­leges of wealth or rank, mar­ries a tai­lor who had been good to her, and whom she had loved when she was poor and ne­glect­ed. A fine young noble lover is pro­vid­ed for her, and all the charms of sweet liv­ing with nice peo­ple are thrown in her way, in order that she may be made to give up the tai­lor. And the charms are very pow­er­ful with her. But the feel­ing that she is bound by her troth to the man who had al­ways been true to her over­comes every­thing—and she mar­ries the tai­lor. It was my wish of course to jus­ti­fy her in doing so, and to carry my read­ers along with me in my sym­pa­thy with her. But every­body found fault with me for mar­ry­ing her to the tai­lor. What would they have said if I had al­lowed her to jilt the tai­lor and marry the good-look­ing young lord? How much loud­er, then, would have been the cen­sure! The book was read, and I was sat­is­fied. If I had not told my story well, there would have been no feel­ing in favour of the young lord. The hor­ror which was ex­pressed to me at the evil thing I had done, in giv­ing the girl to the tai­lor, was the strongest tes­ti­mo­ny I could re­ceive of the mer­its of the story.

I went to Aus­tralia chiefly in order that I might see my son among his sheep. I did see him among his sheep, and re­mained with him for four or five very happy weeks. He was not mak­ing money, nor has he made money since. I grieve to say that sev­er­al thou­sands of pounds which I had squeezed out of the pock­ets of per­haps too lib­er­al pub­lish­ers have been lost on the ven­ture. But I re­joice to say that this has been in no way due to any fault of his. I never knew a man work with more per­sis­tent hon­esty at his trade than he has done.

I had, how­ev­er, the fur­ther in­ten­tions of writ­ing a book about the en­tire group of Aus­tralasian Colonies; and in order that I might be en­abled to do that with suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion, I vis­it­ed them all. Mak­ing my head­quar­ters at Mel­bourne, I went to Queens­land, New South Wales, Tas­ma­nia, then to the very lit­tle known ter­ri­to­ry of West­ern Aus­tralia, and then, last of all, to New Zealand. I was ab­sent in all eigh­teen months, and think that I did suc­ceed in learn­ing much of the po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and ma­te­r­i­al con­di­tion of these coun­tries. I wrote my book as I was trav­el­ling and brought it back with me to Eng­land all but com­plet­ed in De­cem­ber, 1872.

It was a bet­ter book than that which I had writ­ten eleven years be­fore on the Amer­i­can States, but not so good as that on the West In­dies in 1859. As re­gards the in­for­ma­tion given, there was much more to be said about Aus­tralia than the West In­dies. Very much more is said—and very much more may be learned from the lat­ter than from the for­mer book. I am sure that any one who will take the trou­ble to read the book on Aus­tralia, will learn much from it. But the West In­di­an vol­ume was read­able. I am not sure that ei­ther of the other works are, in the prop­er sense of that word. When I go back to them I find that the pages drag with me—and if so with me, how must it be with oth­ers who have none of that love which a fa­ther feels even for his ill-favoured off­spring. Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be read­able.

Feel­ing that these vol­umes on Aus­tralia were dull and long, I was sur­prised to find that they had an ex­ten­sive sale. There were, I think, 2,000 copies cir­cu­lat­ed of the first ex­pen­sive edi­tion; and then the book was di­vid­ed into four lit­tle vol­umes, which were pub­lished sep­a­rate­ly, and which again had a con­sid­er­able cir­cu­la­tion. That some facts were stat­ed in­ac­cu­rate­ly, I do not doubt; that many opin­ions were crude, I am quite sure; that I had failed to un­der­stand much which I at­tempt­ed to ex­plain, is pos­si­ble. But with all these faults the book was a thor­ough­ly hon­est book, and was the re­sult of un­flag­ging labour for a pe­ri­od of fif­teen months. I spared my­self no trou­ble in in­quiry, no trou­ble in see­ing, and no trou­ble in lis­ten­ing. I thor­ough­ly im­bued my mind with the sub­ject, and wrote with the sim­ple in­ten­tion of giv­ing trust­wor­thy in­for­ma­tion on the state of the Colonies. Though there be in­ac­cu­ra­cies,—those in­ac­cu­ra­cies to which work quick­ly done must al­ways be sub­ject,—I think I did give much valu­able in­for­ma­tion.

I came home across Amer­i­ca from San Fran­cis­co to New York, vis­it­ing Utah and Brigham Young on the way. I did not achieve great in­ti­ma­cy with the great po­lyg­a­mist of the Salt Lake City. I called upon him, send­ing to him my card, apol­o­gis­ing for doing so with­out an in­tro­duc­tion, and ex­cus­ing my­self by say­ing that I did not like to pass through the ter­ri­to­ry with­out see­ing a man of whom I had heard so much. He re­ceived me in his door­way, not ask­ing me to enter, and in­quired whether I were not a miner. When I told him that I was not a miner, he asked me whether I earned my bread. I told him I did. “I guess you’re a miner,” said he. I again as­sured him that I was not. “Then how do you earn your bread?” I told him I did so by writ­ing books. “I’m sure you’re a miner,” said he. Then he turned upon his heel, went back into the house, and closed the door. I was prop­er­ly pun­ished, as I was vain enough to con­ceive that he would have heard my name.

I got home in De­cem­ber, 1872, and in spite of any res­o­lu­tion made to the con­trary, my mind was full of hunt­ing as I came back. No real res­o­lu­tions had in truth been made, for out of a stud of four hors­es I kept three, two of which were ab­solute­ly idle through the two sum­mers and win­ter of my ab­sence. Im­me­di­ate­ly on my ar­rival I bought an­oth­er, and set­tled my­self down to hunt­ing from Lon­don three days a week. At first I went back to Essex, my old coun­try, but find­ing that to be in­con­ve­nient, I took my hors­es to Leighton Buz­zard, and be­came one of that nu­mer­ous herd of sports­men who rode with the “Baron” and Mr. Selby Lown­des. In those days Baron Meyer was alive, and the rid­ing with his hounds was very good. I did not care so much for Mr. Lown­des. Dur­ing the win­ters of 1873, 1874, and 1875, I had my hors­es back in Essex, and went on with my hunt­ing, al­ways try­ing to re­solve that I would give it up. But still I bought fresh hors­es, and, as I did not give it up, I hunt­ed more than ever. Three times a week the cab has been at my door in Lon­don very punc­tu­al­ly, and not un­fre­quent­ly be­fore seven in the morn­ing. In order to se­cure this at­ten­dance, the man has al­ways been in­vit­ed to have his break­fast in the hall. I have gone to the Great East­ern Rail­way—ah! so often with the fear that frost would make all my ex­er­tions use­less, and so often too with that re­sult! And then, from one sta­tion or an­oth­er sta­tion, have trav­elled on wheels at least a dozen miles. After the day’s sport, the same toil has been nec­es­sary to bring me home to din­ner at eight. This has been work for a young man and a rich man, but I have done it as an old man and com­par­a­tive­ly a poor man. Now at last, in April, 1876, I do think that my res­o­lu­tion has been taken. I am giv­ing away my old hors­es, and any­body is wel­come to my sad­dles and horse-fur­ni­ture.

Sin­gu­la de nobis anni praedan­tur eu­ntes;

Eripuere jocos, venerem, con­vivia, ladum;

Ten­dunt ex­tor­quere po­e­ma­ta.

Our years keep tak­ing toll as they move on;

My feasts, my frol­ics, are al­ready gone,

And now, it seems, my vers­es must go too.

This is Con­ing­ton’s trans­la­tion, but it seems to me to be a lit­tle flat.

Years as they roll cut all our plea­sures short;

Our pleas­ant mirth, our loves, our wine, our sport,

And then they stretch their power, and crush at last

Even the power of singing of the past.

I think that I may say with truth that I rode hard to my end.

Vixi puel­lis nuper idoneus,

Et mil­i­tavi non sine glo­ria;

Nunc arma de­func­tumque bello

Bar­bi­ton hic paries habebit.

I’ve lived about the covert side,

I’ve rid­den straight, and rid­den fast;

Now breech­es, boots, and scar­let pride

Are but me­men­toes of the past.