MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

“Uncle, darling," inquired she, "where are the men we have all heard of?"

"How should I know? What men?"

"Where are the men of sentiment, that can understand a woman, and win her to reveal her real heart, the best treasure she has, uncle dear?" She paused for a reply; none coming, she continued with decreasing energy:”

“Dinner is at six."

"Very well, dear."

"Yes; but six in this house means sixty minutes after five and sixty minutes before seven. I mention this the first day because you are just come from a place where it means twenty minutes to seven; also let me observe that I think I have noticed soup and potatoes eat better hot than cold, and meat tastes nicer done to a turn than—"

"To a cinder?"

“Dear madam,my niece Lucy has been due here three days.I have waited to see whether you would part with her without being dunned.My curiosity on that point is satisfied,& I have now only my affection to consult,which I do by requesting you to put her & her maid into a carriage that will be waiting for her at your door 24 hours after you receive this note.I have the honor to be, madam,' an old brute!!”

😂

I have a favor to ask you,cousin—a great favor.You see I am so very little,& you are so big; now the husband ought to be the biggest

Quite my own opinion,Reggy

Well,dear, now if you would be so kind as not to grow any older till I catch you up,I shall be so very,very,very much obliged to you,dear

I will try,Reggy.Nineteen is a very good age.I will stay there as long as my friends will let me

Thank you,cousin

Lucy,you are a great comfort; it is so nice to have some one to pour out one's heart to; my husband is no use at all

Aunt Bazalgette!

In that way. You listen to my faded illusions,to the aspirations of a nature too finely organized, ah! to find its happiness in this rough, selfish world. When I open my bosom to him,what does he do? Guess now—whistles

Then I call that rude

So do I;& then he whistles more & more

“That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I remember, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left,—something dim and inaccurate,—but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.”

😊

“Only those who have done it know how great is the labour of moving and arranging a few thousand volumes. At the present moment I own about 5000 volumes, and they are dearer to me even than the horses which are going, or than the wine in the cellar, which is very apt to go, and upon which I also pride myself.”

“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.”

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.

I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a girl whom I will call,—for want of a truer word that shall not in its truth be offensive,—a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow her with qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought her back at last from degradation, at least to decency. I have not married her to a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain that…

much as novels are bought & read,there exists still an idea,a feeling which is very prevalent,that novels at their best are but innocent.Men read more of them than of poetry,because such reading is easier than the reading of poetry;but they read them,as men eat pastry after dinner,not without some inward conviction that the taste is vain if not vicious.I take upon myself to say that it is neither vicious nor vain

I have before said how entirely I fail to reach the altitude of those who think that a man devoted to letters should be indifferent to the pecuniary results for which work is generally done.An easy income has always been regarded by me as a great blessing.Not to have to think of sixpences,or very much of shillings; not to be unhappy because the coals have been burned too quickly,& the house linen wants renewing…

I started for the States in August & returned in the following May.The war was raging during the time that I was there,& the country was full of soldiers. A part of the time I spent in Virginia, Kentucky,& Missouri,among the troops, along the line of attack.I visited all the States (excepting California) which had not then seceded,failing to make my way into the seceding States unless I was prepared to visit them…

Sir Charles Taylor (Thackeray) was our king at the Garrick Club, to which, however, I did not yet belong. He gave the best dinners of my time, and was,—happily I may say it—the best giver of dinners. A man rough of tongue, brusque in his manners, odious to those who dislike him, somewhat inclined to tyranny, he is the prince of friends, honest as the sun, and as openhanded as Charity itself.

That from Mr. Thackeray was as follows:—

36 ONSLOW SQUARE, S. W. October 28th.

MY DEAR MR. TROLLOPE,—Smith & Elder have sent you their proposals; and the business part done, let me come to the pleasure, and say how very glad indeed I shall be to have you as a co-operator in our new magazine. And looking over the annexed programme, you will see whether you can't help us in many other ways besides tale-telling

“Whilst travelling on postal service abroad or riding over the rural districts in England, or arranging the mails in Ireland,—and such for the last eighteen years had now been my life,—I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the literary life in London. It was probably some feeling of this which had made me anxious to move my penates back to England.”

“—Mens sana in corpore sano. The author wants that as does every other workman,—that and a habit of industry. I was once told that the surest aid to the writing of a book was a piece of cobbler's wax on my chair. I certainly believe in the cobbler's wax much more than the inspiration.”

“I was free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by certain self-imposed laws.”

Labor omnia vincit improbus. I do not say that to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable most men to work at almost any season. […] labour, when not made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should never be allowed to become spasmodic.

I have certainly always had also before my eyes the charms of reputation. Over and above the money view of the question, I wished from the beginning to be something more than a clerk in the Post Office. To be known as somebody,—to be Anthony Trollope if it be no more,—is to me much. The feeling is a very general one, and I think beneficent. It is that which has been called the "last infirmity of noble mind”..

“I had learned to think that Ireland was a land flowing with fun and whisky, in which irregularity was the rule of life, and where broken heads were looked upon as honourable badges. I was to live at a place called Banagher, on the Shannon, which I had heard of because of its having once been conquered, though it had heretofore conquered everything, including the devil.”

“I was always in trouble. A young woman down in the country had taken it into her head that she would like to marry me,—and a very foolish young woman she must have been to entertain such a wish. I need not tell that part of the story more at length, otherwise than by protesting that no young man in such a position was ever much less to blame than I had been in this.”

Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I had commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal, and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession unregarded—never looked at—till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit.

“I had read Shakespeare and Byron and Scott, and could talk about them. The music of the Miltonic line was familiar to me. I had already made up my mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English language,—a palm which I only partially withdrew after a second reading of Ivanhoe, and did not completely bestow elsewhere till Esmond was written.”

“She was an unselfish, affectionate, and most industrious woman, with great capacity for enjoyment and high physical gifts. She was endowed too, with much creative power, with considerable humour, and a genuine feeling for romance. But she was neither clear-sighted nor accurate; and in her attempts to describe morals, manners, and even facts, was unable to avoid the pitfalls of exaggeration.”

I sometimes look back,meditating for hours together,on his adverse fate.He was a man,finely educated,of great parts,with immense capacity for work,physically strong very much beyond the average of men,addicted to no vices,carried off by no pleasures,affectionate by nature,most anxious for the welfare of his children,born to fair fortunes,who,when he started in the world,may be said to have had everything at his feet

I have written many novels under many circumstances;but I doubt much whether I could write one when my whole heart was by the bedside of a dying son.Her power of dividing herself into two parts,keeping her intellect by itself clear from the troubles of the world,fit for the duty it had to do,I never saw equalled.I do not think that the writing of a novel is the most difficult task which man may be called upon to do

“I was an idle, desolate hanger-on, that most hopeless of human beings, a hobbledehoy of nineteen, without any idea of a career, or a profession, or a trade. As well as I can remember I was fairly happy, for there were pretty girls at Bruges with whom I could fancy that I was in love; and I had been removed from the real misery of school. But as to my future life I had not even an aspiration.”

“Whatever she saw she judged, as most women do, from her own standing-point. If a thing were ugly to her eyes, it ought to be ugly to all eyes,—and if ugly, it must be bad. What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters? The Americans were to her rough, uncouth, and vulgar,—and she told them so.”

“But with her politics were always an affair of the heart,—as, indeed, were all her convictions. Of reasoning from causes, I think that she knew nothing. Her heart was in every way so perfect, her desire to do good to all around her so thorough, and her power of self-sacrifice so complete, that she generally got herself right in spite of her want of logic; but it must be acknowledged that she was emotional.”