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The Crawley story is undoubtedly the finest thing Trollope ever did; but for myself, I enjoy the unity, completeness, and masterly scheme of Doctor Thorne, and I like Mary Thorne better than any of Trollope's women.
Trollope's novels will have a special value for the future student of English social life in the nineteenth century. The race-course, the hunting field, the country seat, Piccadilly, Hyde Park, the life of clubs and parliament, are described by him with photographic minuteness.
Then there is the proprietary name, or, possibly, the editorial name, which is only amiss because the publication may change hands. Blackwood's has, indeed, always remained Blackwood's, and Fraser's, though it has been bought and sold, still does not sound amiss. Mr. Virtue, fearing the too attractive qualities of his own name, wished the magazine to be called Anthony Trollope's.
I could not subscribe to this, and think that Trollope's work, of which I am fond, shows the bad effect; but I did imbibe contempt for yielding to the feeling of incapacity, and put myself steadily to my desk for my allotted time, writing what I could. Whether the result were ten words or ten hundred I tried to regard With equanimity.
There was no authority for such a thing. Had it been suffered to remain it would probably have been called "Trollope's folly!" Subsequently, but not immediately after we left it, the place oddly enough I forget the name we gave it became the property and the residence of my brother-in-law.
You can see that bread-and-butter never enters into the cares of these people; it is only the cake which is sometimes endangered. or has not sufficient plums in it. I suppose that nearly everyone has heard of the beauties of Sydney Harbour 'our harbour, as the Sydneyites fondly call it. If you want a description of them read Trollope's book. He has not exaggerated an iota on this point.
Dickens's and Trollope's works are there, and I saw a well-read copy of 'Self-Help, though it was doubtless through a very different sort of self-help that most of the prisoners who perused it had got there. Last of all, we saw the men searched on coming in from their work in the fields, or in the different workshops.
Those things I remember, but what I was reading the day before my writing life began I have forgotten. I have only a vague notion that it might have been one of Trollope's political novels. And I remember, too, the character of the day.
And yet Mrs Pansey considered that Anthony Trollope's celebrated Mrs Proudie was an overdrawn character. As to Miss Norsham, she was in the depths of despair, for, if Mrs Pansey was to be believed, there was no eligible husband for her in Beorminster.
For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters. His horror of Anthony Trollope's novels was notorious, especially his dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.