A FRIEND OF TROLLOPE'S
Sta,—At the end of July, 1942, there appeared in Sotheby's book catalogue a letter from Anthony Trollone for sale, dated March 24th, 1861, and written to a Miss Dorothea Sankey (who has never been traced) from his new home at Waltham House. It contained an offer of marriage to Miss Sankey, should Trollope's wife, although in good health, pre-decease him. That very day I wrote to The Times Literary Supplement pointing out that the lady was over 50, as appeared from the catalogue, and Trollope 46, that it was probably not serious, but might be partly so, partly a joke and partly a tribute, and that a coldly calculating man might have written so. Also, that Trollope had had a miserable youth and might be determined not to be so again. I also quoted some of the !ollowing passage from his autobiography (World's Classics, p. 288) :—
There is a woman, of whom not to speak in a work purporting to be a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures which has graced my later years. In the last fifteen years she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend. She is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark by thinking of her. I do not know that I should please her or do any good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages would amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of myself without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me. I trust she may love to read the words I have now written, and to wipe away a tear as she thinks of my feeling while I write them.
My letter was ignored, but on August txth following appeared two letters in The Times, the sale coming on a few days later—one from Miss Muriel Trollope suggesting the letter was not serious, and that the union was one of 38 years and it appeared from letters in her possession a happy one. The other, from Mr. Michael Sadleir, who has done so much to reveal both the man and his work to us, suggesting it was not serious, that the lady could hardly have been less than 5o to Trollope's 46, and he was of the opinion that it did not suggest any hitherto unknown emotional entanglement in Trollope's life. On August 22nd following, the Supplement, on my writing again, did put in the passage above in a note, and that it was written (as I said) about April, 1876, and the letter in March, 1861, just 15 years earlier, the exact 15 years of which the passage speaks. Mr. Sadleir, in a letter to the Supplement of August loth last, returned to the matter again. He had found in Sir W. F. Pollocks's Personal Remembrances, dated June t5th, 1857, a record that Trollope came to breakfast announcing that : "I have just been making my 27th proposal of marriage," and added, "Trollope may well have made the same joke more than once." Thinking that this did not carry the matter further, I referred the editor again (three months ago), as Mx. Sadleir has never mentioned my suggestion at all, to my letter of 1942. As the editor has again not published my last letter, I confess that I think it might be canvassed in another literary paper, with the view of getting any information your readers may have. As a great admirer of Trollope, I think he can stand any light that can be thrown on his manly and upright
Burghclere, Hants.
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