Anthony Trollope: Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

7. CHAPTER VII - "DOCTOR THORNE"--"THE BERTRAMS"--"THE WEST INDIES" AND "THE SPANISH MAIN" (continued)

At this time there was nothing in the success of the one or the failure of the other to affect me very greatly. The immediate sale, and the notices elicited from the critics, and the feeling which had now come to me of a confident standing with the publishers, all made me know that I had achieved my object. If I wrote a novel, I could certainly sell it. And if I could publish three in two years,--confining myself to half the fecundity of that terrible author of whom the publisher in Paternoster Row had complained to me,--I might add œ600 a year to my official income. I was still living in Ireland, and could keep a good house over my head, insure my life, educate my two boys, and hunt perhaps twice a week, on œ1400 a year. If more should come, it would be well;--but œ600 a year I was prepared to reckon as success. It had been slow in coming, but was very pleasant when it came.

On my return from Egypt I was sent down to Scotland to revise the Glasgow Post Office. I almost forget now what it was that I had to do there, but I know that I walked all over the city with the letter-carriers, going up to the top flats of the houses, as the men would have declared me incompetent to judge the extent of their labours had I not trudged every step with them. It was midsummer, and wearier work I never performed. The men would grumble, and then I would think how it would be with them if they had to go home afterwards and write a love-scene. But the love-scenes written in Glasgow, all belonging to The Bertrams, are not good.

Then in the autumn of that year, 1858, I was asked to go to the West Indies, and cleanse the Augean stables of our Post Office system there. Up to that time, and at that time, our Colonial Post Offices generally were managed from home, and were subject to the British Postmaster-General. Gentlemen were sent out from England to be postmasters, surveyors, and what not; and as our West Indian islands have never been regarded as being of themselves happily situated for residence, the gentlemen so sent were sometimes more conspicuous for want of income than for official zeal and ability. Hence the stables had become Augean. I was also instructed to carry out in some of the islands a plan for giving up this postal authority to the island Governor, and in others to propose some such plan. I was then to go on to Cuba, to make a postal treaty with the Spanish authorities, and to Panama for the same purpose with the Government of New Grenada. All this work I performed to my satisfaction, and I hope to that of my masters in St. Martin's le Grand.