Short Story Writers From England

"People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end."

"If you stood up and told the truth in the wrong way, it was not true any longer, though it might be as powerful as ever."

"Things we are accustomed to regard as myth or fairy story are very much present in people’s lives. Nice people behave like wicked stepmothers. Every day."

"Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them."

"At the top of his bent Trollope is a big, if not first-rate, novelist, and the top of his bent came when he drove his pen hard and fast after the humours of provincial life and scored, without cruelty but with hale and hearty common sense, the portraits of those well-fed, black-coated, unimaginative men and women of the fifties. In his manner with them, and his manner is marked, there is an admirable shrewdness, like that of a family doctor or solicitor, too well acquainted with human foibles to judge them other than tolerantly and not above the human weakness of liking one person a great deal better than another for no good reason. Indeed, though he does his best to be severe and is at his best when most so, he could not hold himself aloof, but let us know that he loved the pretty girl and hated the oily humbug so vehemently that it is only by a great pull on his reins that he keeps himself straight. It is a family party over which he presides and the reader who becomes, as time goes on, one of Trollope's most intimate cronies has a seat at his right hand. Their relation becomes confidential."

"Certainly, the Barchester novels tell the truth, and the English truth, at first sight, is almost as plain of feature as the French truth, though with a difference. Mr. Slope is a hypocrite, with a "pawing, greasy way with him". Mrs. Proudie is a domineering bully. The Archdeacon is well-meaning but coarse-grained and thick-cut. Thanks to the vigour of the author, the world of which these are the most prominent inhabitants goes through its daily rigmarole of feeding and begetting children and worshipping with a thoroughness, a gusto, which leaves us no loophole of escape. We believe in Barchester as we believe in the reality of our own weekly bills."

"They should instead read or re-read The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope, that definitive social satire on the rise and fall of a great financier. It explains more about the developing psychology of a rising financial meteor than column after column in any City page."

"His direct experience of politics...was limited to being an unsuccessful Liberal candidate for Beverley. That doesn't prevent his studies of the human political process – as opposed to his sketches of political ideas, in which he wasn't much interested – being, according to the shrewdest modern parliamentarians, right both in tone and detail."

"Crusty, quarrelsome, wrong-headed, prejudiced, obstinate, kind-hearted and thoroughly honest old Tony Trollope. He would have made a capital Conservative County member of the Chaplin or Lowther type."

"Trollope was a great, truthful, varied artist, who wrote better than he or his contemporaries realized, and who left behind him more novels of lasting value than any other writer in English."

"A time-honoured abuse, he held, is frequently less bad than its remedy."

"I rather enjoy patronage. I take a lot of trouble over it. At least it makes all those years of reading Trollope seem worthwhile."

"There's been this whole process in the last fifteen years of rediscovering women writers who were either undervalued or just plain forgotten. A great case in point, Margaret Oliphant, a Victorian writer, who I think is better than Trollope, more varied, more interesting-a fascinating writer that no one has ever heard of. She was a better writer than Trollope, and she knew it. She said very bitterly, "I was paid for my best book what Trollope got for his pot boilers." And he ground out potboilers by the score. There has been a misogyny and a stupidity at work, which we are coming out of."

"Trollope's genius is not the genius of Shakespeare, but his heroines have something of the fragrance of Imogen and Desdemona."

"His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of the usual... Trollope, therefore, with his eyes comfortably fixed on the familiar, the actual, was far from having invented a new category; his great distinction is that in resting there his vision took in so much of the field. And then he felt all daily and immediate things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings. He never wearied of the pre-established round of English customs—never needed a respite or a change—was content to go on indefinitely watching the life that surrounded him, and holding up his mirror to it."

"Of its own light kind there has been no better novel ever written than the Last Chronicle of Barset."

"Nick found a set of Trollope which had a relatively modest and approachable look among the rest, and took down The Way We Live Now, with an armorial bookplate, the pages uncut. "What have you found there?" said Lord Kessler, in a genially possessive tone. "Ah, you're a Trollope man, are you." "I'm not sure I am, really," said Nick. "I always think he wrote too fast. What was it Henry James said, about Trollope and his 'great heavy shovelfuls of testimony to constituted English matters'?" Lord Kessler paid a moment's wry respect to this bit of showing-off, but said, "Oh, Trollope's good. He's very good on money." "Oh...yes..." said Nick, feeling doubly disqualified by his complete ignorance of money and by the aesthetic prejudice which had stopped him from ever reading Trollope."

"In any case, his books will hereafter bear a certain historical interest, as the best record of actual manners in the higher English society between 1855 and 1875. That value nothing can take away, however dull, connu, and out of date the books may now seem to our new youth... If our new youth ever could bring itself to take up a book having 1865 on its title-page, it might find in the best of Anthony Trollope much subtle observation, many manly and womanly natures, unfailing purity of tone, and wholesome enjoyment."

"His hard riding as an overgrown heavy-weight, his systematic whist playing, his loud talk, his burly ubiquity and irrepressible energy in everything,—formed one of the marvels of the last generation. And that such a colossus of blood and bone should spend his mornings, before we were out of bed, in analysing the hypersensitive conscience of an archdeacon, the secret confidences whispered between a prudent mamma and a love-lorn young lady, or the subtle meanderings of Marie Goesler's heart,—this was a real psychologic problem."

"I wonder whether it be really true, as I have more than once seen suggested, that the publication of Anthony Trollope's autobiography in some degree accounts for the neglect into which he and his works fell so soon after his death. I should like to believe it, for such a fact would be, from one point of view, a credit to "the great big stupid public." ... Like every other novelist of note, he had two classes of admirers—those who read him for the sake of that excellence which here and there he achieved, and the undistinguishing crowd which found in him a level entertainment. But it would be a satisfaction to think that "the great big stupid" was really, somewhere in its secret economy, offended by that revelation of mechanical methods which made the autobiography either a disgusting or an amusing book to those who read it more intelligently."

"I wish Mr. Trollope would go on writing Framley Parsonage for ever. I don't see any reason why it should ever come to an end, and every one I know is always dreading the last number. I hope he will make the jilting of Griselda a long while a-doing."

"I must confess that my theory of men and their resemblance to their works must fall to the ground in Trollope's case, for it would be impossible to imagine anything less like his novels than the author of them. The books, full of gentleness, grace, and refinement; the writer of them, bluff, loud, stormy, and contentious; neither a brilliant talker nor a good speaker; but a kinder-hearted man and a truer friend never lived."

"If the identity between the Mr. Anthony Trollope of private life and the Mr. Anthony Trollope who has enriched English literature with novels that will yet rank as nineteenth-century classics is not immediately perceived, it can only be because the observer is destitute of the faculty of perception. 'The style is the man;' the popular and successful author is the straightforward unreserved friend; the courageous, candid, plain-speaking companion."

"But there is something else I care yet more about, which has impressed me very happily in all those writings of yours that I know—it is that people are breathing good bracing air in reading them—it is that they (the books) are filled with belief in goodness without the slightest tinge of maudlin. They are like pleasant public gardens, where people go for amusement and, whether they think of it or not, get health as well."

"I am much struck in "Rachel" with the skill with which you have organized thoroughly natural everybody incidents into a strictly related, well-proportioned whole, natty and complete as a nut on its stem. Such construction is among those subtleties of art which can hardly be appreciated except by those who have striven after the same result with conscious failure."

"You knew Anthony Trollope of course. His immeasurable energies had a bewildering effect on my invalid constitution. To me, he was an incarnate gale of wind. He blew off my hat; he turned my umbrella inside out. Joking apart, as good and staunch a friend as ever lived – and, to my mind, a great loss to novel-readers. Never in any marked degree either above or below his own level. In that respect alone, a remarkable writer, surely? If he had lived five years longer, he would have written fifteen more thoroughly readable works of fiction. A loss – a serious loss – I say again."

"Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic."

"If we pass per saltum from Byron to Anthony Trollope, it is to remark that his works are lacking in those distinctive attributes which belong to a classically trained mind. He himself supplies the clue, remarking that he learned nothing, even of classics — a feat which is worthy of record."

"Such a work as Orley Farm is perhaps the most satisfactory answer that can be given to so disagreeable an imputation. Here, it may fairly be said, is the precise standard of English taste, sentiment, and conviction. Mr. Trollope has become almost a national institution."

"Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable."

"Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write."

"As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, — in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives."

"The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little — or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives."

"A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules."

"Barchester Towers has become one of those novels which do not die quite at once, which live and are read for perhaps a quarter of a century."

"Take away from English authors their copyrights, and you would very soon take away from England her authors."

"Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed."

"He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise me by my face."

"When any body of statesmen make public asservations by one or various voices, that there is no discord among them, not a dissentient voice on any subject, people are apt to suppose that they cannot hang together much longer."

"No one can depute authority. It comes too much from personal accidents, and too little from reason or law to be handed over to others."

"From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility. Does the law require patriotism, philanthropy, self-abnegation, public service, purity of purpose, devotion to the needs of others who have been placed in the world below you? The law is a great thing, — because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you."

"Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners."

"I think it is so glorious," said the American. "There is no such mischievous nonsense in all the world as equality. That is what father says. What men ought to want is liberty."

"Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words. And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter, — a power which we are apt to call repartee, which is in truth the readiness which comes from continual practice. You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his own against the latter. In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius. But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all. It is, — as is style to the writer, — not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried. Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer? Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send."

"But how shall I excuse it? There are things done which are as holy as the heavens, — which are clear before God as the light of the sun, which leave no stain on the conscience, and which yet the malignity of man can invest with the very blackness of hell!"

"One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them."

"People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger."

"She certainly had a little syllogism in her head as to the Duke ruling the borough, the Duke's wife ruling the Duke, and therefore the Duke's wife ruling the borough; but she did not think it prudent to utter this on the present occasion."

"You Ministers go on shuffling the old cards till they are so worn out and dirty that one can hardly tell the pips on them."

"Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something to do."