Anthony Trollope

“ Use her contribution in our next number! It had never occurred to us as probable, or hardly as possible, that we should use it in any number. Our eye glanced at the heap to see whether her fingers had been at work, but we perceived that the heap had not been touched. We have always flattered ourselves that no one can touch our heap without our knowing it. She saw the motion of our eye, and at once understood it. Mrs. Brumby, no doubt, possessed great intelligence, and, moreover, a certain majesty of demeanour. There was always something of the helmet of Minerva in the bonnet which she wore. ”

“ The “Panjandrum,”—which I had already learned to love as a mother loves her first-born,—the dear old “Panjandrum” must perish before its birth. I felt the pity of it! The thing itself,—the idea and theory of it, had been very good. But how shall a man put forth a magazine when he finds himself unable to write a page of it within the compass of a week? The meditations of that Sunday were very bitter, but perhaps they were useful. I had long since perceived that mankind are divided into two classes,—those who shall speak, and those who shall listen to the speech of others. ”

“ We can picture him to ourselves standing, full of thought, with his hand upon the lid, but never venturing to turn the lock. Indeed, we do not doubt but that the key of the box is put away among other secret treasures, a lock of his wife’s hair, perhaps, and the little shoe of the boy who did not live long enough to stand at his father’s knee. For a tender, soft-hearted man was the Doctor, and one who fed much on the memories of the past.
We often called upon Mr. and Mrs. Grimes at the Spotted Dog, and would sit there talking of Mackenzie and his family. ”

“ Quinten’s one evening in my best,—nay, why dally with the truth?—in my only pair of black dress trousers, which I had lent him ten days before, on the occasion, as I then believed, of a real dinner party, I almost denounced him before his colleagues. I think I should have done so had I not felt that he would in some fashion have so turned the tables on me that I should have been the sufferer. There are men with whom one comes by the worst in any contest, let justice on one’s own side be ever so strong and ever so manifest. ”

“ You find him to be an ordinary man, measuring perhaps five feet seven, and unable to reach the standard of the particular regiment in which he is ambitious of serving. You tell him so in what civillest words you know, and you are at once convicted in his mind of jealousy, ignorance, and falsehood! And yet he is perhaps a most excellent fellow, and capable of performing the best of service,—only in some other regiment! As we looked at Miss Gresley’s manuscript, tumbling it through our hands, we expected even from her some such result. ”

“ A policeman, seeing him at a street corner, would have had an eye upon him in a moment. He rubbed himself together within his old coat, as men do when they come out of gin-shops. His eye was as bright as before, but we thought that his mouth was meaner, and his nose redder. We were almost disenchanted with him. We said nothing to him at first about the Spotted Dog, but suggested to him our fears that if he undertook work at our hands he would lose the much more permanent employment which he got from the gentleman whom we had seen in the cupboard. ”

“ A well-to-do man may have no gloves, or may simply carry in his hands those which appertain to him rather as a thing of custom than for any use for which he requires them. But a tattered glove, worn on the hand, is to our eyes the surest sign of a futile attempt at outer respectability. It is melancholy to us beyond expression. Our brother editors, we do not doubt, are acquainted with the tattered glove, and have known the sadness which it produces. If there be an editor whose heart has not been softened by the feminine tattered glove, that editor is not our brother. ”

“ If such were to be their decision, how would it be possible that the “Panjandrum” should ever be brought into existence? Who could endure such ignominy and still persevere?
There was silence among us, which to me in the intensity of my feelings seemed to last for minutes. Regan was the first to speak. “Now, Mrs. St. Quinten,” he said, “it all rests with you.” An idea shot across my mind at the moment, of the folly of which we had been guilty in placing our most vital interests in the hands of a woman merely on the score of gallantry. ”

“ And there it lay for,—perhaps a fortnight. When during that period we extracted first one packet and then another for judgment, we would still leave Mrs. Brumby’s roll behind in the corner. On such occasions a pang of conscience will touch the heart; some idea of neglected duty will be present to the mind; a silent promise will perhaps be made that it shall be the next; some momentary sudden resolve will be half formed that for the future a rigid order of succession shall be maintained, which no favour shall be allowed to infringe. ”

“ I am old now, and never could do again that which perhaps I was never fitted to do with any fair prospect of success. I will never turn again to the ashes of my unborn child; but will console myself with the memory of my grievance, knowing well, as I do so, that consolation from the severity of harsh but just criticism might have been more difficult to find. When I think of the end of my efforts as a scholar, my mind reverts to the terrible and fatal catastrophe of one whose scholarship was infinitely more finished and more ripe than mine. ”

“ Where is the man of fifty, who in the course of his life has not learned to love some woman simply because it has come in his way to help her, and to be good to her in her struggles? And if added to that source of affection there be brightness, some spark of humour, social gifts, and a strong flavour of that which we have ventured to call humanity, such love may become almost a passion without the addition of much real beauty. ”

“ I am a poet;—at least, I so esteem myself. I am not a believer. My character will not bear investigation;—in saying which, I mean you to understand, not that I steal or cheat, but that I live in a dirty lodging, spend many of my hours in a public-house, and cannot pay tradesmen’s bills where tradesmen have been found to trust me. I have a wife and four children,—which burden forbids me to free myself from all care by a bare bodkin. I am just past forty, and since I quarrelled with my family because I could not understand The Trinity, I have never been the owner of a ten-pound note. ”

“ And yet this woman chose literature as her profession, and clung to it for awhile with a persistence which brought her nearer to the rewards of success than many come who are at all points worthy to receive them.
We have said that she was not a young woman when we knew her. We cannot fancy her to have been ever young. We cannot bring our imagination to picture to ourselves the person of Mrs. Brumby surrounded by the advantages of youth. ”

“ That such a thing might be achieved in literature I felt convinced. And it must be the work of three or four together. It should be something that should force itself into notice, and compel attention. It should deal with the greatest questions of humanity, and deal with them wisely,—but still should deal with them in a sportive spirit. Philosophy and humour might, I was sure, be combined. Social science might be taught with witty words, and abstract politics made as agreeable as a novel. ”

“ Below his coat we could only see his broken boots and the soiled legs of his trousers, which had reached that age which in trousers defies description. When we looked at him we could not but ask ourselves whether this man had been born a gentleman and was still a scholar. And yet there was that in his face which prompted us to believe the account he had given of himself. As we looked at him we felt sure that he possessed keen intellect, and that he was too much of a man to boast of acquirements which he did not believe himself to possess. ”

“ If I could roll Churchill Smith and Jack Hallam into one, throw in a dash of Walter Watt’s fine political eagerness, make use of Regan’s ready poetical facility, and then control it all by my own literary experience, the thing would be done. But it is so hard to blend the elements!
I had spoken often of it to Pat, and he had assented. “I’ll do anything into rhyme,” he used to say, “if that’s what you mean.” It was not quite what I meant. One cannot always convey one’s meaning to another; and this difficulty is so infinitely increased when one is not quite clear in one’s own mind! ”

“ Fortune either favoured him or the reverse,—as the reader may choose to regard the question,—in this, that there was room for the story in his periodical if he chose to take it. He wanted a novel,—but then he did not want feminine metaphysics. He sat thinking of it, wondering in his mind how that little smiling, soft creature with the gray eyes, and the dimples, and the pretty walking-dress, could have written those interminable pages as to the questionable criminality of crime; whether a card-sharper might not be a hero ”

“ But a human being, in regard to his power of production, is the reverse of a rope. He is as strong as his strongest part, and remembering the effect which Molloy’s words had had upon us at the Turkish bath, we still thought that there must be something in him. If so, how pleasant would it be to us to place such a man on his legs,—modestly on his legs, so that he might earn for his wife and bairns that meat and tea which he had told us that they were now lacking. An editor is always striving to place some one modestly on his legs in literature,—on his or her,—striving, and alas! ”

“ When a man speaks a great many words it is impossible that he should remember what they all were. That we told Mrs. Brumby on that occasion that we did not doubt but that we would use the manuscript which she left in our hands, we are quite sure was not true. We never went so near making a promise in our lives,—even when pressed by youth and beauty,—and are quite sure that what we did say to Mrs. Brumby was by no means near akin to this. ”

“ He may possess a diamond, and cannot sell it till he have sold it! What is a man to do who wishes to engage himself in any of the multifarious duties of the English press? How is he to begin? In New York I can tell such a one where to go at once. Let him show in conversation that he is an educated man, and they will give him a trial on the staff of any news paper;—they will let him run his venture for the pages of any magazine. He may write his fingers off here, and not an editor of them all will read a word that he writes. ”