Anthony Trollope to GE and GHL, Melbourne, 27 February 1872
Title
Anthony Trollope to GE and GHL, Melbourne, 27 February 1872
Title
Anthony Trollope to GE and GHL, Melbourne, 27 February 1872
Sender
Anthony Trollope
Recipient
Ge and Ghl
Date(s)
- 1872-02-27
Place
Melbourne
Letter Content
Anthony Trollope to GE and GHL, Melbourne, 27 February 1872
MS: Yale. Published: The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. B.A. Booth, 1951, pp. 290-291.
Melbourne | 27 February 1872.
Dear Friends,
I was so glad to [get] a letter from the Priory! I ought to have written sooner myself; -- but I am hurried from place to place, and have no rest for my foot, and do not do the things I ought to do. I am beginning to find myself too old to be 18 months away from home. Not that I am fatigued bodily; -- but mentally I cannot be at ease with all the new people and new things. And I find myself asking myself that terrible question of cui bono every morning. I am struggling to make a good book, but I feel that it will not be good. 79 It will be desultory and inaccurate; -- perhaps dull, and where shall I be then?
Forsters first volume is distasteful to me, -- as I was sure it would be. 80 Dickens was no hero; he was a powerful, clever, humorous, and, in many respects, wise man; -- very ignorant, and thick-skinned, who had taught himself to be his own God, and to believe himself to be a sufficient God for all who came near him; -- not a hero at all. Forster tells of him things which should disgrace him, -- as the picture he drew of his own father, and the hard words he intended to have published of his own mother; but Forster himself is too coarse-grained, (though also a very powerful man) to know what is and what is not disgraceful; what is or is not heroic.
Cigars! Yes, indeed, you in your comfort smoke cigars I dont doubt, and drink coffee, and look on the pleasant faces of books, and write with good ink at a comfortable table, -- and are civilized. I am reduced to the vilest tobacco out of the vilest pipe, and drink the vilest brandy and water, -- very often in very vile company. But perhaps I shall live to get home when, -- not the noctes caenaeque Deum -- but the pleasant morning table may be spread for me again with just that sufficiency of the divinae aurae which rescues an hour of sensual enjoyment from any touch of reproach.
My best and kindest love to both --
Yours always
A. T.
MS: Yale. Published: The Letters of Anthony Trollope, ed. B.A. Booth, 1951, pp. 290-291.
Melbourne | 27 February 1872.
Dear Friends,
I was so glad to [get] a letter from the Priory! I ought to have written sooner myself; -- but I am hurried from place to place, and have no rest for my foot, and do not do the things I ought to do. I am beginning to find myself too old to be 18 months away from home. Not that I am fatigued bodily; -- but mentally I cannot be at ease with all the new people and new things. And I find myself asking myself that terrible question of cui bono every morning. I am struggling to make a good book, but I feel that it will not be good. 79 It will be desultory and inaccurate; -- perhaps dull, and where shall I be then?
Forsters first volume is distasteful to me, -- as I was sure it would be. 80 Dickens was no hero; he was a powerful, clever, humorous, and, in many respects, wise man; -- very ignorant, and thick-skinned, who had taught himself to be his own God, and to believe himself to be a sufficient God for all who came near him; -- not a hero at all. Forster tells of him things which should disgrace him, -- as the picture he drew of his own father, and the hard words he intended to have published of his own mother; but Forster himself is too coarse-grained, (though also a very powerful man) to know what is and what is not disgraceful; what is or is not heroic.
Cigars! Yes, indeed, you in your comfort smoke cigars I dont doubt, and drink coffee, and look on the pleasant faces of books, and write with good ink at a comfortable table, -- and are civilized. I am reduced to the vilest tobacco out of the vilest pipe, and drink the vilest brandy and water, -- very often in very vile company. But perhaps I shall live to get home when, -- not the noctes caenaeque Deum -- but the pleasant morning table may be spread for me again with just that sufficiency of the divinae aurae which rescues an hour of sensual enjoyment from any touch of reproach.
My best and kindest love to both --
Yours always
A. T.
Signature
A. T.
Citation
Anthony Trollope, Anthony Trollope to GE and GHL, Melbourne, 27 February 1872, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91700