About the same time as his connection with the Arts, Trollope became an original member of a very different fraternity. This was the Civil Service Club, 86 St. James’s Street, as its name implies, intended primarily for those composing the staff of our Government offices. The expenses of its maintenance necessitated the admission of outsiders. In 1865, therefore, it dropped the original name, to receive its present style, the Thatched House Club--a topographical designation in every way suitable, seeing that the house stands on nearly the same site as that once occupied by the historical Thatched House tavern. By the time, however, of this change, Trollope had ceased all connection with the place. Nor, he told me, did he ever re-cross its threshold until the occasion, mentioned above, on which the present writer brought him and Edmund Yates together as fellow-guests in its dining-room. Towards the close of his London life Trollope joined the Turf Club in Piccadilly which, in a previous state of existence, had been the Arlington in Arlington Street, famous for the high points of its whist and the expertness of its players. The card room at the Turf was, however, to Trollope the least of its attractions, and indeed his recreations of this sort were always, I am pretty sure, confined to afternoon whist at the Athenæum.
Trollope’s one work in the Thackerayan vein--_Brown, Jones, and Robinson_--Its failure--Thackeray’s two efforts to enter official life by a side door--Trollope’s opinion of “untried elderly tyros”--And of Thackeray’s limitations--His _Life of Thackeray_--Philippics against open competition in the Civil Service--A Liberal by profession, but a Tory at heart--Anthony’s _bon mot_--_The Pall Mall Gazette_--Hunting life in Essex--Sir Evelyn Wood to the rescue--Trollope’s cosmopolitanism--_The Fortnightly Review_, an English _Revue des Deux Mondes_--Its later developments.
Trollope’s London course, literary and social, began, as has been already shown, under Thackeray’s ægis. To the first editor of _The Cornhill_ he owed his place in the set with which he soon became, and always remained, a favourite, as well as his earliest profitable connection with periodical letters. Naturally and properly Trollope repaid this debt to the utmost of his power, not only by every possible acknowledgment of lasting gratitude, but by the occasional compliment of literary imitation. The novels of English country life contributed by him to _The Cornhill_--_Framley Parsonage_ in 1860, and _The Small House at Allington_ that began to follow it in 1862, the year before Thackeray’s death--showed no sign of Thackeray’s influence. These were the two books that completed the process, begun by _The Warden_ in 1855, of placing permanently the public he by this time understood beneath the spell of his pen. Before, however, the introduction of _The Cornhill_ readers to Lily Dale, John Eames, and Adolphus Crosbie, Trollope had contributed to the same magazine a loosely written, satirical sketch, _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_, which a hostile critic might be excused for describing as Thackeray-and-water. With a congenial subject, Trollope could always be depended on for abundant humour and irony. Both these qualities in _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_ lack the spontaneity or ease without which the charm of Trollope’s writing disappears. So, in fact, thought Trollope himself; so too, however courteously he softened the expression of his opinion, did the polite and amiable Mr. George Smith. Yet even so, _Brown, Jones, and Robinson_ is not at all poorer than Thackeray’s own mark as seen in many of his earlier pieces for _Fraser_, and in many of the _Roundabout Papers_ which he hurried through for _The Cornhill_ while the printers were waiting for copy. It was Trollope’s single unqualified failure. Never again was he betrayed by his Thackeray homage into the mistake of mimicry.
