Of Thackeray I will speak again when I record his
death.
There were many others whom I met for the first time
at George Smith’s table. Albert Smith,
for the first, and indeed for the last time, as he
died soon after; Higgins, whom all the world knew as
Jacob Omnium, a man I greatly regarded; Dallas, who
for a time was literary critic to the Times, and who
certainly in that capacity did better work than has
appeared since in the same department; George Augustus
Sala, who, had he given himself fair play, would have
risen to higher eminence than that of being the best
writer in his day of sensational leading articles;
and Fitz-James Stephen, a man of very different calibre,
who had not yet culminated, but who, no doubt, will
culminate among our judges. There were many others;—but
I cannot now recall their various names as identified
with those banquets.
Of Framley Parsonage I need only further say, that
as I wrote it I became more closely than ever acquainted
with the new shire which I had added to the English
counties. I had it all in my mind,—its
roads and railroads, its towns and parishes, its members
of Parliament, and the different hunts which rode
over it. I knew all the great lords and their
castles, the squires and their parks, the rectors
and their churches. This was the fourth novel
of which I had placed the scene in Barsetshire, and
as I wrote it I made a map of the dear county.
Throughout these stories there has been no name given
to a fictitious site which does not represent to me
a spot of which I know all the accessories, as though
I had lived and wandered there.
“Castle Richmond;” “Brown,
Jones, and Robinson;” “North
America;” “Orley farm”
When I had half-finished Framley Parsonage, I went
back to my other story, Castle Richmond, which I was
writing for Messrs. Chapman & Hall, and completed
that. I think that this was the only occasion
on which I have had two different novels in my mind
at the same time. This, however, did not create
either difficulty or confusion. Many of us live
in different circles; and when we go from our friends
in the town to our friends in the country, we do not
usually fail to remember the little details of the
one life or the other. The parson at Rusticum,
with his wife and his wife’s mother, and all
his belongings; and our old friend, the Squire, with
his family history; and Farmer Mudge, who has been
cross with us, because we rode so unnecessarily over
his barley; and that rascally poacher, once a gamekeeper,
who now traps all the foxes; and pretty Mary Cann,
whose marriage with the wheelwright we did something
to expedite;—though we are alive to them
all, do not drive out of our brain the club gossip,
or the memories of last season’s dinners, or
any incident of our London intimacies. In our
lives we are always weaving novels, and we manage
