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THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

by Anthony Trollope







CHAPTER I - THREE EDITORS


Let the reader be introduced to Lady Carbury, upon whose character and
doings much will depend of whatever interest these pages may have, as
she sits at her writing-table in her own room in her own house in
Welbeck Street. Lady Carbury spent many hours at her desk, and wrote
many letters wrote also very much beside letters. She spoke of herself
in these days as a woman devoted to Literature, always spelling the
word with a big L. Something of the nature of her devotion may be
learned by the perusal of three letters which on this morning she had
written with a quickly running hand. Lady Carbury was rapid in
everything, and in nothing more rapid than in the writing of letters.
Here is Letter No. 1


Thursday, Welbeck Street.

DEAR FRIEND,

I have taken care that you shall have the early sheets of my two
new volumes to-morrow, or Saturday at latest, so that you may, if
so minded, give a poor struggler like myself a lift in your next
week's paper. Do give a poor struggler a lift. You and I have so
much in common, and I have ventured to flatter myself that we are
really friends! I do not flatter you when I say, that not only
would aid from you help me more than from any other quarter, but
also that praise from you would gratify my vanity more than any
other praise. I almost think you will like my "Criminal Queens."
The sketch of Semiramis is at any rate spirited, though I had to
twist it about a little to bring her in guilty. Cleopatra, of
course, I have taken from Shakespeare. What a wench she was! I
could not quite make Julia a queen; but it was impossible to pass
over so piquant a character. You will recognise in the two or
three ladies of the empire how faithfully I have studied my
Gibbon. Poor dear old Belisarius! I have done the best I could
with Joanna, but I could not bring myself to care for her. In our
days she would simply have gone to Broadmore. I hope you will not
think that I have been too strong in my delineations of Henry VIII
and his sinful but unfortunate Howard. I don't care a bit about
Anne Boleyne. I am afraid that I have been tempted into too great
length about the Italian Catherine; but in truth she has been my
favourite. What a woman! What a devil! Pity that a second Dante
could not have constructed for her a special hell. How one traces
the effect of her training in the life of our Scotch Mary. I trust
you will go with me in my view as to the Queen of Scots. Guilty!
guilty always! Adultery, murder, treason, and all the rest of it.
But recommended to mercy because she was royal. A queen bred, born
and married, and with such other queens around her, how could she
have escaped to be guilty? Marie Antoinette I have not quite
acquitted. It would be uninteresting perhaps untrue. I have
accused her lovingly, and have kissed when I scourged. I trust the
British public will not be angry because I do not whitewash
Caroline, especially as I go along with them altogether in abusing
her husband.

But I must not take up your time by sending you another book,
though it gratifies me to think that I am writing what none but
yourself will read. Do it yourself, like a dear man, and, as you
are great, be merciful. Or rather, as you are a friend, be loving.

Yours gratefully and faithfully,

MATILDA CARBURY.

After all how few women there are who can raise themselves above
the quagmire of what we call love, and make themselves anything
but playthings for men. Of almost all these royal and luxurious
sinners it was the chief sin that in some phase of their lives
they consented to be playthings without being wives. I have
striven so hard to be proper; but when girls read everything, why
should not an old woman write anything?


This letter was addressed to Nicholas Broune, Esq., the editor of the
'Morning Breakfast Table,' a daily newspaper of high character; and,
as it was the longest, so was it considered to be the most important
of the three. Mr Broune was a man powerful in his profession,--and he
was fond of ladies. Lady Carbury in her letter had called herself an
old woman, but she was satisfied to do so by a conviction that no one
else regarded her in that light. Her age shall be no secret to the
reader, though to her most intimate friends, even to Mr Broune, it had
never been divulged. She was forty-three, but carried her years so
well, and had received such gifts from nature, that it was impossible
to deny that she was still a beautiful woman. And she used her beauty
not only to increase her influence,--as is natural to women who are
well-favoured,--but also with a well-considered calculation that she
could obtain material assistance in the procuring of bread and cheese,
which was very necessary to Her, by a prudent adaptation to her
purposes of the good things with which providence had endowed her. She
did not fall in love, she did not wilfully flirt, she did not commit
herself; but she smiled and whispered, and made confidences, and
looked out of her own eyes into men's eyes as though there might be
some mysterious bond between her and them--if only mysterious
circumstances would permit it. But the end of all was to induce some
one to do something which would cause a publisher to give her good
payment for indifferent writing, or an editor to be lenient when, upon
the merits of the case, he should have been severe. Among all her
literary friends, Mr Broune was the one in whom she most trusted; and
Mr Broune was fond of handsome women. It may be as well to give a
short record of a scene which had taken place between Lady Carbury and
her friend about a month before the writing of this letter which has
been produced. She had wanted him to take a series of papers for the
'Morning Breakfast Table,' and to have them paid for at rate No. 1,
whereas she suspected that he was rather doubtful as to their merit,
and knew that, without special favour, she could not hope for
remuneration above rate No. 2, or possibly even No. 3. So she had
looked into his eyes, and had left her soft, plump hand for a moment
in his. A man in such circumstances is so often awkward, not knowing
with any accuracy when to do one thing and when another! Mr Broune, in
a moment of enthusiasm, had put his arm round Lady Carbury's waist and
had kissed her. To say that Lady Carbury was angry, as most women
would be angry if so treated, would be to give an unjust idea of her
character. It was a little accident which really carried with it no
injury, unless it should be the injury of leading to a rupture between
herself and a valuable ally. No feeling of delicacy was shocked. What
did it matter? No unpardonable insult had been offered; no harm had
been done, if only the dear susceptible old donkey could be made at
once to understand that that wasn't the way to go on!

Without a flutter, and without a blush, she escaped from his arm, and
then made him an excellent little speech. 'Mr Broune, how foolish, how
wrong, how mistaken! Is it not so? Surely you do not wish to put an
end to the friendship between us!'

'Put an end to our friendship, Lady Carbury! Oh, certainly not that.'

'Then why risk it by such an act? Think of my son and of my daughter,--
both grown up. Think of the past troubles of my life;--so much suffered
and so little deserved. No one knows them so well as you do. Think of
my name, that has been so often slandered but never disgraced! Say
that you are sorry, and it shall be forgotten.'

When a man has kissed a woman it goes against the grain with him to
say the very next moment that he is sorry for what he has done. It is
as much as to declare that the kiss had not answered his expectation.
Mr Broune could not do this, and perhaps Lady Carbury did not quite
expect it. 'You know that for world I would not offend you,' he said.
This sufficed. Lady Carbury again looked into his eyes, and a promise
was given that the articles should be printed--and with generous
remuneration.

When the interview was over Lady Carbury regarded it as having been
quite successful. Of course when struggles have to be made and hard
work done, there will be little accidents. The lady who uses a street
cab must encounter mud and dust which her richer neighbour, who has a
private carriage, will escape. She would have preferred not to have
been kissed;--but what did it matter? With Mr Broune the affair was more
serious. 'Confound them all,' he said to himself as he left the house;
'no amount of experience enables a man to know them.' As he went away
he almost thought that Lady Carbury had intended him to kiss her
again, and he was almost angry with himself in that he had not done
so. He had seen her three or four times since, but had not repeated
the offence.

We will now go on to the other letters, both of which were addressed
to the editors of other newspapers. The second was written to Mr
Booker, of the 'Literary Chronicle.' Mr Booker was a hard-working
professor of literature, by no means without talent, by no means
without influence, and by no means without a conscience. But, from the
nature of the struggles in which he had been engaged, by compromises
which had gradually been driven upon him by the encroachment of
brother authors on the one side and by the demands on the other of
employers who looked only to their profits, he had fallen into a
routine of work in which it was very difficult to be scrupulous, and
almost impossible to maintain the delicacies of a literary conscience.
He was now a bald-headed old man of sixty, with a large family of
daughters, one of whom was a widow dependent on him with two little
children. He had five hundred a year for editing the 'Literary
Chronicle,' which, through his energy, had become a valuable property.
He wrote for magazines, and brought out some book of his own almost
annually. He kept his head above water, and was regarded by those who
knew about him, but did not know him, as a successful man. He always
kept up his spirits, and was able in literary circles to show that he
could hold his own. But he was driven by the stress of circumstances
to take such good things as came in his way, and could hardly afford
to be independent. It must be confessed that literary scruple had long
departed from his mind. Letter No. 2 was as follows;--


Welbeck Street, 25th February, 187-.

DEAR MR BOOKER,

I have told Mr Leadham [Mr Leadham was senior partner in the
enterprising firm of publishers known as Messrs. Leadham and
Loiter] to send you an early copy of my "Criminal Queens." I have
already settled with my friend Mr Broune that I am to do your "New
Tale of a Tub" in the "Breakfast Table." Indeed, I am about it
now, and am taking great pains with it. If there is anything you
wish to have specially said as to your view of the Protestantism
of the time, let me know. I should like you to say a word as to
the accuracy of my historical details, which I know you can safely
do. Don't put it off, as the sale does so much depend on early
notices. I am only getting a royalty, which does not commence till
the first four hundred are sold.

Yours sincerely,

MATILDA CARBURY.

ALFRED BOOKER, ESQ.,

"Literary Chronicle" Office, Strand.


There was nothing in this which shocked Mr Booker. He laughed
inwardly, with a pleasantly reticent chuckle, as he thought of Lady
Carbury dealing with his views of Protestantism,--as he thought also
of the numerous historical errors into which that clever lady must
inevitably fall in writing about matters of which he believed her to
know nothing. But he was quite alive to the fact that a favourable
notice in the 'Breakfast Table' of his very thoughtful work, called
the 'New Tale of a Tub,' would serve him, even though written by the
hand of a female literary charlatan, and he would have no compunction
as to repaying the service by fulsome praise in the 'Literary
Chronicle.' He would not probably say that the book was accurate, but
he would be able to declare that it was delightful reading, that the
feminine characteristics of the queens had been touched with a
masterly hand, and that the work was one which would certainly make
its way into all drawing-rooms. He was an adept at this sort of work,
and knew well how to review such a book as Lady Carbury's 'Criminal
Queens,' without bestowing much trouble on the reading. He could
almost do it without cutting the book, so that its value for purposes
of after sale might not be injured. And yet Mr Booker was an honest
man, and had set his face persistently against many literary
malpractices. Stretched-out type, insufficient lines, and the French
habit of meandering with a few words over an entire page, had been
rebuked by him with conscientious strength. He was supposed to be
rather an Aristides among reviewers. But circumstanced as he was he
could not oppose himself altogether to the usages of the time. 'Bad;
of course it is bad,' he said to a young friend who was working with
him on his periodical. 'Who doubts that? How many very bad things are
there that we do! But if we were to attempt to reform all our bad ways
at once, we should never do any good thing. I am not strong enough to
put the world straight, and I doubt if you are.' Such was Mr Booker.

Then there was letter No. 3, to Mr Ferdinand Alf. Mr Alf managed, and,
as it was supposed, chiefly owned, the 'Evening Pulpit,' which during
the last two years had become 'quite a property,' as men connected
with the press were in the habit of saying. The 'Evening Pulpit' was
supposed to give daily to its readers all that had been said and done
up to two o'clock in the day by all the leading people in the
metropolis, and to prophesy with wonderful accuracy what would be the
sayings and doings of the twelve following hours. This was effected
with an air of wonderful omniscience, and not unfrequently with an
ignorance hardly surpassed by its arrogance. But the writing was
clever. The facts, if not true, were well invented; the arguments, if
not logical, were seductive. The presiding spirit of the paper had the
gift, at any rate, of knowing what the people for whom he catered
would like to read, and how to get his subjects handled so that the
reading should be pleasant. Mr Booker's 'Literary Chronicle' did not
presume to entertain any special political opinions. The 'Breakfast
Table' was decidedly Liberal. The 'Evening Pulpit' was much given to
politics, but held strictly to the motto which it had assumed;--

Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri

and consequently had at all times the invaluable privilege of abusing
what was being done, whether by one side or by the other. A newspaper
that wishes to make its fortune should never waste its columns and
weary its readers by praising anything. Eulogy is invariably dull,--a
fact that Mr Alf had discovered and had utilized.

Mr Alf had, moreover, discovered another fact. Abuse from those who
occasionally praise is considered to be personally offensive, and they
who give personal offence will sometimes make the world too hot to
hold them. But censure from those who are always finding fault is
regarded so much as a matter of course that it ceases to be
objectionable. The caricaturist, who draws only caricatures, is held
to be justifiable, let him take what liberties he may with a man's
face and person. It is his trade, and his business calls upon him to
vilify all that he touches. But were an artist to publish a series of
portraits, in which two out of a dozen were made to be hideous, he
would certainly make two enemies, if not more. Mr Alf never made
enemies, for he praised no one, and, as far as the expression of his
newspaper went, was satisfied with nothing.

Personally, Mr Alf was a remarkable man. No one knew whence he came or
what he had been. He was supposed to have been born a German Jew; and
certain ladies said that they could distinguish in his tongue the
slightest possible foreign accent. Nevertheless it was conceded to him
that he knew England as only an Englishman can know it. During the
last year or two he had 'come up' as the phrase goes, and had come up
very thoroughly. He had been blackballed at three or four clubs, but
had effected an entrance at two or three others, and had learned a
manner of speaking of those which had rejected him calculated to leave
on the minds of hearers a conviction that the societies in question
were antiquated, imbecile, and moribund. He was never weary of
implying that not to know Mr Alf, not to be on good terms with Mr Alf,
not to understand that let Mr Alf have been born where he might and
how he might he was always to be recognized as a desirable
acquaintance, was to be altogether out in the dark. And that which he
so constantly asserted, or implied, men and women around him began at
last to believe,--and Mr Alf became an acknowledged something in the
different worlds of politics, letters, and fashion.

He was a good-looking man, about forty years old, but carrying himself
as though he was much younger, spare, below the middle height, with
dark brown hair which would have shown a tinge of grey but for the
dyer's art, with well-cut features, with a smile constantly on his
mouth the pleasantness of which was always belied by the sharp
severity of his eyes. He dressed with the utmost simplicity, but also
with the utmost care. He was unmarried, had a small house of his own
close to Berkeley Square at which he gave remarkable dinner parties,
kept four or five hunters in Northamptonshire, and was reputed to earn
L6,000 a year out of the 'Evening Pulpit' and to spend about half of
that income. He also was intimate after his fashion with Lady Carbury,
whose diligence in making and fostering useful friendships had been
unwearied. Her letter to Mr Alf was as follows:


DEAR MR ALF,

Do tell me who wrote the review on Fitzgerald Barker's last poem.
Only I know you won't. I remember nothing done so well. I should
think the poor wretch will hardly hold his head up again before
the autumn. But it was fully deserved. I have no patience with the
pretensions of would-be poets who contrive by toadying and
underground influences to get their volumes placed on every
drawing-room table. I know no one to whom the world has been so
good-natured in this way as to Fitzgerald Barker, but I have heard
of no one who has extended the good nature to the length of
reading his poetry.

Is it not singular how some men continue to obtain the reputation
of popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of
their country worthy of note? It is accomplished by unflagging
assiduity in the system of puffing. To puff and to get one's self
puffed have become different branches of a new profession. Alas,
me! I wish I might find a class open in which lessons could be
taken by such a poor tyro as myself. Much as I hate the thing from
my very soul, and much as I admire the consistency with which the
'Pulpit' has opposed it, I myself am so much in want of support
for my own little efforts, and am struggling so hard honestly to
make for myself a remunerative career, that I think, were the
opportunity offered to me, I should pocket my honour, lay aside
the high feeling which tells me that praise should be bought
neither by money nor friendship, and descend among the low things,
in order that I might one day have the pride of feeling that I had
succeeded by my own work in providing for the needs of my
children.

But I have not as yet commenced the descent downwards; and
therefore I am still bold enough to tell you that I shall look,
not with concern but with a deep interest, to anything which may
appear in the 'Pulpit' respecting my 'Criminal Queens.' I venture
to think that the book,--though I wrote it myself,--has an
importance of its own which will secure for it some notice. That
my inaccuracy will be laid bare and presumption scourged I do not
in the least doubt, but I think your reviewer will be able to
certify that the sketches are lifelike and the portraits well
considered. You will not hear me told, at any rate, that I had
better sit at home and darn my stockings, as you said the other
day of that poor unfortunate Mrs Effington Stubbs.

I have not seen you for the last three weeks. I have a few friends
every Tuesday evening;--pray come next week or the week following.
And pray believe that no amount of editorial or critical severity
shall make me receive you otherwise than with a smile.

Most sincerely yours,

MATILDA CARBURY.


Lady Carbury, having finished her third letter, threw herself back in
her chair, and for a moment or two closed her eyes, as though about to
rest. But she soon remembered that the activity of her life did not
admit of such rest. She therefore seized her pen and began scribbling
further notes.




CHAPTER II - THE CARBURY FAMILY


Something of herself and condition Lady Carbury has told the reader in
the letters given in the former chapter, but more must be added. She
has declared she had been cruelly slandered; but she has also shown
that she was not a woman whose words about herself could be taken with
much confidence. If the reader does not understand so much from her
letters to the three editors they have been written in vain. She has
been made to say that her object in work was to provide for the need
of her children, and that with that noble purpose before her she was
struggling to make for herself a career in literature. Detestably
false as had been her letters to the editors, absolutely and
abominably foul as was the entire system by which she was endeavouring
to achieve success, far away from honour and honesty as she had been
carried by her ready subserviency to the dirty things among which she
had lately fallen, nevertheless her statements about herself were
substantially true. She had been ill-treated. She had been slandered.
She was true to her children,--especially devoted to one of them--and
was ready to work her nails off if by doing so she could advance their
interests.

She was the widow of one Sir Patrick Carbury, who many years since had
done great things as a soldier in India, and had been thereupon
created a baronet. He had married a young wife late in life and,
having found out when too late that he had made a mistake, had
occasionally spoilt his darling and occasionally ill-used her. In
doing each he had done it abundantly. Among Lady Carbury's faults had
never been that of even incipient,--not even of sentimental--infidelity
to her husband. When as a lovely and penniless girl of eighteen she
had consented to marry a man of forty-four who had the spending of a
large income, she had made up her mind to abandon all hope of that
sort of love which poets describe and which young people generally
desire to experience. Sir Patrick at the time of his marriage was
red-faced, stout, bald, very choleric, generous in money, suspicious
in temper, and intelligent. He knew how to govern men. He could read
and understand a book. There was nothing mean about him. He had his
attractive qualities. He was a man who might be loved,--but he was
hardly a man for love. The young Lady Carbury had understood her
position and had determined to do her duty. She had resolved before
she went to the altar that she would never allow herself to flirt and
she had never flirted. For fifteen years things had gone tolerably
well with her,--by which it is intended that the reader should
understand that they had so gone that she had been able to tolerate
them. They had been home in England for three or four years, and then
Sir Patrick had returned with some new and higher appointment. For
fifteen years, though he had been passionate, imperious, and often
cruel, he had never been jealous. A boy and a girl had been born to
them, to whom both father and mother had been over indulgent,--but the
mother, according to her lights, had endeavoured to do her duty by
them. But from the commencement of her life she had been educated in
deceit, and her married life had seemed to make the practice of deceit
necessary to her. Her mother had run away from her father, and she had
been tossed to and fro between this and that protector, sometimes
being in danger of wanting any one to care for her, till she had been
made sharp, incredulous, and untrustworthy by the difficulties of her
position. But she was clever, and had picked up an education and good
manners amidst the difficulties of her childhood,--and had been
beautiful to look at.

To marry and have the command of money, to do her duty correctly, to
live in a big house and be respected, had been her ambition,--and during
the first fifteen years of her married life she was successful amidst
great difficulties. She would smile within five minutes of violent
ill-usage. Her husband would even strike her,--and the first effort of
her mind would be given to conceal the fact from all the world. In
latter years he drank too much, and she struggled hard first to
prevent the evil, and then to prevent and to hide the ill effects of
the evil. But in doing all this she schemed, and lied, and lived a
life of manoeuvres. Then, at last, when she felt that she was no
longer quite a young woman, she allowed herself to attempt to form
friendships for herself, and among her friends was one of the other
sex. If fidelity in a wife be compatible with such friendship, if the
married state does not exact from a woman the necessity of debarring
herself from all friendly intercourse with any man except her lord,
Lady Carbury was not faithless. But Sir Carbury became jealous, spoke
words which even she could not endure, did things which drove even her
beyond the calculations of her prudence,--and she left him. But even
this she did in so guarded a way that, as to every step she took, she
could prove her innocence. Her life at that period is of little moment
to our story, except that it is essential that the reader should know
in what she had been slandered. For a month or two all hard words had
been said against her by her husband's friends, and even by Sir
Patrick himself. But gradually the truth was known, and after a year's
separation they came again together and she remained the mistress of
his house till he died. She brought him home to England, but during
the short period left to him of life in his old country he had been a
worn-out, dying invalid. But the scandal of her great misfortune had
followed her, and some people were never tired of reminding others
that in the course of her married life Lady Carbury had run away from
her husband, and had been taken back again by the kind-hearted old
gentleman.

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