PRODIGIOUS FEAT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5604, 12 April 1943, Page 5

PRODIGIOUS FEAT

AMAZING MRS TROLLOPE 114 VOLUMES IN 14 YEARS (By T.H.C.) One of the most amazing feats of authorship is to be seen in the remarkable career cf Mrs Frances Trollope, mother of the renowned Anthony Trollope. Although she did not write a book until she was 52 years of age, in the next 24 years she produced no fewer than 114 volumes. It was a desperate need of money that drove her to her en. The daughter of Rev. William Milton, vicar of Heckfield, England, she was nearly 30 years old at the time of her marriage in 1809. That marriage wag destined to give her not only a husband who was a business failure but also six children in the first ten years of her married life, and a pack of domestic and financial troubles. Her husband was one of those unfortunate men who have only to put their hands to some enterprise in order for it to fail. While practising is a lawyer in his rooms at Lincoln’s Inn, London, he decided that his fortunes entitled him to a country residence in addition to his city home. Accordingly he built a large house on a farm at Harrow. That home was the beginning of his financial ruin and the cause of Mrs Trollope’s meteoric literary career. STARTING AFRESH AT forty-eight Losing many of his law connections as a result of his intolerably bad temper, and suffering adversity with the farm, Mr Trollope’s fortune soon evaporated into thin air. Letting the country residence, he and his wife and family descended to the farm-house on the land. Then, in an effort to save the financial situation, Mr Trollope gave up his law work altogether, and took another farm. But as he had had no agricultural training, and could boast very little practical experience of farming, it was not to be wondered at that this enterprise also failed, landing his family in the slough of financial despair.

In 1827, therefore, when she was 48 years old, Frances Trollope sailed for America with the last few pounds she had managed to salvage for the double purpose of setting up her son Henry in a small business in Cincinatti, and also breaking up her English home without advertising their broken fortunes to all the world. She remained in America for four years. A woman of keen observation, quick perception, and amazing industry, she resolved to capitalise the visit by writing a book, hoping thereby to save the family from its financial straits. When, therefore, she arrived back in England in 1831 she unpacked from her luggage the manuscript she had prepared on “ The Domestic Manners of the Americans.” This found favour with a publisher, and appeared in print the following year, when she was 52 years of age. For the copyiight of the book she received two sums of £4OO each, which enabled her to rehabilitate the poverty-strick-en family, and was the first instalment of a considerable income from literature for the next twenty-odd years. WIDELY POPULAR Her book on America was well received. and was followed almost immediately by two novels, and then a book on Belgium and Western Germany. Her novels, the best of which

are considered to be “The Widow Barnaby ” and “ The Vicar of Wrexhill,” bore little artistic thoroughness, although they were popular for a time in wide circles.

Her income now permitted her to re-furnish the house and to provide modest comforts for the long-suffer-ing family. Although bearing so much financial strain, in addition to the cares of a fair-sized family, she was always bright and cheerful, making the best of things, and always able to cheer others when there was every cause for despair. Her family rarely saw her at her writing, for she was at her table at four in the morning, and had finished her daily quota of composition before the rest of the household was astir. It was no doubt from his mother that her illustrious son Anthony inherited such systematic methods of authorship. DRIVEN BY NECESSITY Soon financial troubles again came their way, and the family fled to Ostend. From her literary income Mrs Trollope again furnished a house near Bruges—the third in two and a half years since her return from America. But no sooner were they established in their new quarters than an avalanche of sickness descended descended upon the unfortunate family. In a short time her husband, hei daughter Emily, an 4 her son Henry were all laid low with consumption; so that Mrs Trollope was bread-win-ner, housekeeper, and nurse for the dying - patients. As she sat up at night, between tending their wants, she bent over her manuscripts with untiring industry and amazing cheerfulness, “ in order,” as Anthony afterwards said, “ that there might be a decent roof for them to die under.” The medicine phials and the ink bottle stood side by side at her elbow as she nursed and wrote. Thus, her active imagination, her unfailing love, and her fear of further financial disaster driving her able pen, she succeeded in making money to provide for her stricken home. One by one her patients died, and in 1841 Mrs Trollope was free from her heavy load and crushing responsibility, and returned to England. There she lived a gay enough life for some time in Hadley, then in London, and then in Cumberland—still up before the lark, busy with her pen. Finally moving in 1844 to Florence, she continued writing up to 1856, when, at 76 years of age, she published her 114th volume. She was still in Florence at the time of her death seven years later.