Trollope eventually got quite responsible work at the post office.

Some writers found consular and diplomatic posts: among the Americans, Hawthorne, Howell, and (James Russell) Lowell; among the French, Chateaubriand and Stendhal.

Louis Auchincloss was a lawyer.

I am not in that market, but this seems implausible. My neighborhood is pretty prosperous, but I doubt that $400k/year is the standard. Yet kids do go off to daycare.

That was the story that was current back then, at least the tying to a tree part. It may have been invented, but not by the New Yorker writer.

This is in the US? I have rarely heard political homilies.

What does this have to do with the post?