Autobiography of Anthony Trollope | Page 2

always done. I will mention now the titles of his books that were published after the last included in the list which he himself has given at the end of the second volume:--
An Eye for an Eye, . . . . 1879 Cousin Henry, . . . . . . 1879 Thackeray, . . . . . . . 1879 The Duke's Children, . . . . 1880 Life of Cicero, . . . . . 1880 Ayala's Angel, . . . . . 1881 Doctor Wortle's School, . . . 1881 Frau Frohmann and other Stories, . 1882 Lord Palmerston, . . . . . 1882 The Fixed Period, . . . . . 1882 Kept in the Dark, . . . . . 1882 Marion Fay, . . . . . . 1882 Mr. Scarborough's Family, . . . 1883
At the time of his death he had written four-fifths of an Irish story, called The Landleaguers, shortly about to be published; and he left in manuscript a completed novel, called An Old Man's Love, which will be published by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons in 1884.
In the summer of 1880 my father left London, and went to live at Harting, a village in Sussex, but on the confines of Hampshire. I think he chose that spot because he found there a house that suited him, and because of the prettiness of the neighborhood. His last long journey was a trip to Italy in the late winter and spring of 1881; but he went to Ireland twice in 1882. He went there in May of that year, and was then absent nearly a month. This journey did him much good, for he found that the softer atmosphere relieved his asthma, from which he had been suffering for nearly eighteen months. In August following he made another trip to Ireland, but from this journey he derived less benefit. He was much interested in, and was very much distressed by, the unhappy condition of the country. Few men know Ireland better than he did. He had lived there for sixteen years, and his Post Office word had taken him into every part of the island. In the summer of 1882 he began his last novel, The Landleaguers, which, as stated above, was unfinished when he died. This book was a cause of anxiety to him. He could not rid his mind of the fact that he had a story already in the course of publication, but which he had not yet completed. In no other case, except Framley Parsonage, did my father publish even the first number of any novel before he had fully completed the whole tale.
On the evening of the 3rd of November, 1882, he was seized with paralysis on the right side, accompanied by loss of speech. His mind had also failed, though at intervals his thoughts would return to him. After the first three weeks these lucid intervals became rarer, but it was always very difficult to tell how far his mind was sound or how far astray. He died on the evening of the 6th of December following, nearly five weeks from the night of his attack.
I have been led to say these few words, not at all from a desire to supplement my father's biography of himself, but to mention the main incidents in his life after he had finished his own record. In what I have here said I do not think I have exceeded his instructions.
Henry M. Trollope. September, 1883.

Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

CHAPTER I
MY EDUCATION
1815-1834

In writing these pages, which, for the want of a better name, I shall be fain to call the autobiography of so insignificant a person as myself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little details of my private life, as of what I, and perhaps others round me, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such as they have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literary career offers to men and women for the earning of their bread. And yet the garrulity of old age, and the aptitude of a man's mind to recur to the passages of his own life, will, I know, tempt me to say something of myself;--nor, without doing so, should I know how to throw my matter into any recognised and intelligible form. That I, or any man, should tell everything of himself, I hold to be impossible. Who could endure to own the doing of a mean thing? Who is there that has done none? But this I protest:--that nothing that I say shall be untrue. I will set down naught in malice; nor will I give to myself, or others, honour which I do not believe to have been fairly won.