Part 16

“In my opinion you do not understand the laws of friendship aright. ’Tis generally believed it owes its birth to an agreement and conformity of humours, and that it lives no longer than ’tis preserved by the mutual care of those that bred it.” Is there no style in that? “’Tis wholly governed by equality, and can there be such a thing in it as distinction of power? No, sure, if we are friends we must both command and both obey alike; indeed, a mistress and a servant sounds otherwise; but that is ceremony and this is truth. Yet what reason had I to furnish you with a stick to beat myself withal, or desire that you should command, that do it so severely?” Observe her conduct of the relative there! “I must eat fruit no longer than I could be content you should be in a fever; is not that an absolute forbidding of me? It has frighted me just now from a basket of the most tempting cherries that e’er I saw, though I know you did not mean that I should eat none. But if you had I think I should have obeyed you.”

Evidently she had tossed her head over his dictation; but how well in hand is her temper, how admirable her style! It is very much in the manner of Madame when her querulous daughter had hurt her feelings; and entirely in that manner Madame would throw up the sponge at the end of a successful attack--entirely as Dorothy does here, with her, “If you had I think I should have obeyed you.” Dorothy is not, however, so quick to veer from the stormy to the rainy quarter. She can be fierce, as I have shown, when her feelings are overstrained, but there is no hysterical passion. Modesty forbade. “Love is a terrible word,” she says, “and I should blush to death if anything but a letter accused me on’t.” She could be bold on such occasions; she could be as saucy as Rosalind, and as tender. When it is a case of his going to Ireland, on business of his father’s, which may advance their personal affair, she urges him to be off. But when the hour has come--“You must give Nan leave to cut off a lock of your hair for me.... Oh, my heart! What a sigh was there! I will not tell you how many this journey causes, nor the fears and apprehensions I have for you. No, I long to be rid of you--am afraid you will not go soon enough. Do not you believe this? No, my dearest, I know you do not, whate’er you say....” Any good girl in love would feel like that, but not everyone could let you hear the quickened breath in a letter three hundred years old.

Sévigné was wise, and so is Dorothy. She read and could criticise, she read and remembered. With less philosophy, and no fatalism, she looked her world in the face, and had no illusions about it. But she was in love, and it was a good world. Cheerfulness kept breaking in. “What an age we live in, where ’tis a miracle if in ten couples that are married, two of them live so as not to publish to the world that they cannot agree.” Yet she thinks that one should follow the Saviour’s precept, take up the cross and follow. She believes that the trouble is mostly of the woman’s making, for as for the husband, if he grumbles, and the wife says nothing, he will stop for lack of nutriment, and nobody be any the worse. A splenetic husband of her acquaintance had the trick, when harassed, of rising in the night and banging the table with a club. His wife provided a stout cushion for the table, and was not disturbed.

Sévigné is merry, and so is Dorothy, though much more demure. In her seventy letters you will find no _tours de force_--nothing like the “prairie” letter, the marriage-of-Mademoiselle, or the “incendie” letter. She can touch you off a situation in a phrase excellently well, as when after a quarrel comes a reconciliation between her and her brother Henry, and she says, “’Tis wonderful to see what curtseys and legs pass between us; and as before we were thought the kindest brother and sister, we are certainly now the most complimental couple in England”; or, asking “Is it true my Lord Whitelocke goes Ambassador?” she comments upon him, “He was never meant for a courtier at home, I believe. Yet ’tis a gracious Prince.” Another Commonwealth lord, whose title depended upon the standing of the Court of Chancery, has a flick in the same letter: “’Twill be sad news for my Lord Keble’s son. He will have nothing left to say when ‘my Lord, my father,’ is taken from him.” Those are both brisk and pleasant; more ambitious is her discussion of the “ingredients” of a husband, which opens with sketches of impossible husbands. He “must not be so much of a country gentleman as to understand nothing but horses and dogs, and be fonder of either than his wife”; nor one “whose aim reaches no further than to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff”; nor “a thing that began the world in a free school ... and is at his furthest when he reaches the Inns of Court.” He must not be “a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary,” who “makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally”; nor a “travelled Monsieur, whose head is all feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes when everybody else dies of cold to see him.” In fact, “he must love me, and I him, as much as we are capable of.” Those impersonations might have come as well from Belmont as from Chicksands.

I said just now that we have no “prairie” letter from Dorothy. We have something not far from it, though, and I will give as much of it as I dare. It is of her very best in the way of unforced, happy description; but after it I must give no more. The date of it is early May, 1653:

“You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for me. About ten o’clock I think of making me ready, and when that’s done I go into my father’s chamber, and from thence to dinner, where my cousin Mollie and I sit in great state in a room and at a table that would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. (a suitor of Dorothy’s, a Mr. Levinus Bennet) comes in question, and then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so.”

I could go on to empty the whole paragraph on to the page, for it is all excellent; but will stop with that happily rounded period. Charm, or the deuce, is in it.

Beyond it I will not go. Too little straw has been allowed to the making of my brick. With twice as much more--with some of the letters to Lady Diana or Queen Mary, freed from the preoccupations of a love affair--who can say that we might not have had something to set off against the letters to Mesdames de Lafayette, de Coulanges, de Guitant? We have something very distinctive and charming, at any rate, enough to certify us that we have missed of a letter-writer of excellence who need not have feared comparison with our best. She had not the vivacity, or the opportunities of Lady Mary; but she had what that lively observer missed of, a heart wherewith to inform her writing. She had not the wit of Lady Harriet Granville, but she had more humanity. I would not put her up, in a Court of Claims, to “walk” before Mrs. Carlyle, or plead her sagacity and tenderness against that unhappy woman’s brilliancy. Yet who would hesitate in the choice of one of them for correspondent? Whose book would you sooner have at the bed’s head? Such questions, however, do not arise. You judge Literature like coins at the Mint. You are either good or bad. If you ring false--out you go.

REALISM WITH A DIFFERENCE

_Moll Flanders_, which has now received the large octavo honours due to a classic, was written, Defoe tells us, in 1683. The statement is almost certainly part of the cheat, for it was published in 1722, two years after _Robinson Crusoe_; and if it had been true he would have performed a feat which has never been equalled, that of writing his first novel with the accomplishment shown in that of his prime. Nothing in the technique of _Crusoe_ shows any advance upon _Moll Flanders_. Its greater popularity is, of course, due to its matter: it is more _simpatico_, more moving, more endearing to youth. The adventures upon the island are more arbitrary and more surprising. They come from outside the hero, not from his inside. Anything shocking may happen upon a desert island, even the greatest shock of all, which is to find that it is not deserted. _Suave mari magno_ ... the tag holds good when you are thrilled by a tale in the first person. The flesh creeps; but it is like being tickled by a kindly hand. The pleasure to be had from _Moll Flanders_ comes when we know enough of the world to have need of large allowances. Then it is that we are interested in the liabilities of character, and love to see the oracle worked out. In _Moll Flanders_ we do. With the single premise that Moll was the abandoned child of a thief and baggage, cast upon the parish by gypsies, everything that happens to her follows as inevitably as night the day. She engages the compassion of a genteel family, and is taken in quasi-adoption. She grows up with the children of the house, petted by the daughters, and in due time, naturally, by the sons, one of whom “undoes” her. But by the time that happens we know something of Moll’s temperament, and nod sagaciously at what, we say, was bound to be. So it goes on from stave to stave to make out the promise of the title-page that, born in Newgate, she was “Twelve Year a _Whore_, five times a _Wife_ (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a _Thief_, Eight Year a transported _Felon_ in _Virginia_, at last grew _Rich_, liv’d Honest, and died a _Penitent_.” It sounds uncommonly like Boccaccio’s tale of the Princess of Babylon, not at all unlike _Gil Blas_; but the point is that it is most of all like Life, that the lurid programme is smoothly and punctually kept, and that we never withhold our assent for a moment--not even from the added statement that it was “Written from her own Memorandums.” It is no more necessary to believe that than that it was written in 1683; but there is no difficulty in believing either.

Defoe, if he began to write novels at fifty-eight, came by his method as Athené by her ægis; it sprang fully armed from his brain. He never varied it for a worse, and could not have for a better. It was to tell his story in plain English without emotion, and to get his facts right. That is his secret, which nobody since his time has ever worked so well. The _Police News_ style has often been used, and many a writer has laboured after his facts. Some have succeeded--very few--in smothering their feelings, and some, of course, have had no feelings to smother. Defoe alone accomplishes his ends with consummate mastery. He is certainly our greatest realist, and there are few in France to beat him. Perhaps the nearest approach to him was made by the Abbé Prevost in _Manon Lescaut_ (1731)--but put Zola beside him if you would judge his method fairly. Zola, who went about his business with stuffed notebooks, succeeded in various aims of the novelist, but not in commanding assent. He could not control himself; the poor man had an itch. Artistically speaking, he did unpardonable things. Some of the bestiality of _La Terre_ might have happened in a Norman village; a Norman village _might_ have been called Rognes. To conjoin the two in a realistic romance is paltry. It absolutely disenchants the reader, and gives away the writer and his malady with both hands. You may call a town Eatanswill in a satire; but _La Terre_ is not a satire. As for _Manon_, astonishingly documented as it is, the conviction which it carries does not survive perusal, though it revives in every re-perusal. Its intention, which is rather to suggest than to narrate, to provoke than to satisfy, is apparent when the book is shut. No such aims are to be detected in _Moll Flanders_, concerned apparently with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The triumph of the method, used as Defoe only can use it, remains to be told. _Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner._ We can all see round Moll Flanders, behind her as well as before. The current of the tale, every coil and eddy and backwash of it, is not only exactly like life, it puts us in a position to appraise life. Conviction of such a matter, rare as it is, is not so difficult to secure as the understanding of it. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances in every guilty course. One finds them for oneself as a neighbour, in the jury box, on the bench. One finds them or invents them. In _Moll Flanders_ they steal upon us unawares until, quite suddenly, we find ourselves with her in a human relationship. Her close shaves, her near-run things in shop-lifting give us thrills; but when she is rash enough to steal a horse we are aghast. Mad-woman! how can she dispose of a horse in a common lodging-house? When she is finally lagged we agonise with her. Why? We know that she could not help herself. But there’s more than that. She is never put beyond our moral pale. She steals from children, but suffers both shame and sorrow. She robs a poor householder of her valuables in a fire, but cannot forget the treachery. She picks the pocket of a generous lover when he is drunk, but repents and confesses. He forgives her, and so do we. All her normal relations with her fellow-creatures are warm with the milk of human kindness. For instance, she puts herself, for business purposes, in the disposition of a “Governess,” that is, an old gentlewoman who is procuress, midwife, baby-farmer, and receiver of stolen goods. But the pair are on happy and natural terms. Moll calls her Mother; the old thing calls Moll Child; and when she is transported as a convicted thief she entrusts “Mother” with all her little fortune, and is faithfully served in that and other concerns. The pair of them, rascals together, are bad lots, if you will--and good sorts too. That’s the virtue of the realistic method when you are not on the look out for bad smells.

In her dealings with my sex, certainly she was often and unguardedly a wife, as well as something else not so proper. Yet kindness was her only fault. Whatever else she may have been as a wife, she was a good one, faithful, affectionate, sympathetic, and most responsive. If the young man who undid her had kept his promises, I daresay she would have lived to be Mayoress of Colchester and mother to some sixteen children, without a stain upon her character. As it was, she must have had half that number. She is never a beast. She never revels, nor wallows, nor is besotted; she is no slave to appetite. She plays hazard one night and wins a matter of fifty guineas. She will not play again for fear of becoming a gamester. She continues a thief for many years, though often moved to break away. Why does she not break away?

“Though by this job I was become considerably richer than before, yet the resolution I had formerly taken of leaving off this horrid trade when I had gotten a little more, did not return, but I must still get farther, and more; and the avarice joined so with the success, that I had no more thoughts of coming to a timely alteration of life, though without it I could expect no safety, no tranquillity in the possession of what I had so wickedly gained; but a little more, and a little more, was the case still.”

What could be more human, and on our footing more reasonable, than that? That, in fact, which saved _The Beggar’s Opera_ from being an immoral, cynical, even a flagrant work, was precisely that which gives Moll Flanders our sympathy--its large humanity. There is heart in every average human being, as well as much vice and an amazing amount of indolence; but to see it there you must have it yourself, and to exhibit it there you must be a good deal of a genius. We feel for Moll without esteeming her: we say, “There but for the grace of God....” What saves us? Well, caution, timidity, the likes of those; but chiefly the grace of God.

MR. PEPYS HIS APPLE-CART

It is hard to deal fairly by Samuel Pepys, and that because he has dealt so fairly by himself. You cannot even put that amazing candour of his down to his credit, for reasons which grow upon you as you read. If he was candid it was to please himself, and, as one must suppose, nobody else in the world. Whatever his motive was, it certainly was not to read a moral lesson to mankind. But that he is all in his Diary, the whole of him, inside and out, is evident upon any prolonged perusal of it. He has neither been blind to himself, nor kind; he never excuses himself, and rarely accuses. He pities himself, when he has been found out, and hugs himself when he has made a good deal, or played the fortunate gallant; but he rarely indeed pities anybody else, and if he hugs other persons, always mentions it. Though we cannot impute his honesty to righteousness, nevertheless it seems rather hard that he should have to suffer for it.

Anyhow, his merits would have transpired without a diary. State papers exist to testify to them; his mounting credit is its own record. Evelyn liked him, so did the King and his brother, so did Sir William Coventry. Undoubtedly he was an able Clerk of the Acts, and by the standard of any times but some which are still modern history, an honest public servant. Had he lived in the golden age of the Civil Service, an age which only ended a few years ago, he would not have taken any commissions at all. As things are now, he took very few; as they were in his day, what he took was negligible. I feel sure that the Crown did uncommonly well by him. Then, socially, he was a brisk, companionable creature, with an infectious laugh, a taste for languages, the drama, parlour-science and chamber-music. He had curiosity, which always makes a man good company; he was both dilettante and connoisseur; he was affable with all sorts and conditions, gave himself no airs, had vanity, but little conceit. Women liked him; he had a way with him. And then he liked them. I cannot imagine Pepys for five minutes in a woman’s company without her knowing all that she need about him, and about it. Morally, he was a beast, without pity or scruple, or personal shame, or courage, or honour. He was depraved, and knew it, and didn’t care so long as no one else knew it. He was the slave of public opinion, and in moments of apprehension what that might be, sacrificed his companion in his dealing without a thought. And yet women liked him, and suffered him. Psychologically, he is, so far, an unsolved problem. Nobody has found out why on earth he wrote himself down what he did write down; I have seen no account which satisfies. To that I should add that no attempt to explain him seems to have been made since we received all that we ever can receive of his Diary.

R. L. Stevenson’s exegesis was based upon Minors Bright, who is now superseded by Wheatley. It is elaborate, and I think fanciful. I doubt if it could have been accepted upon the then available evidence: it is clean out of date now. Shortly, it was that Pepys, taking (as he did) infinite pleasure in the minutiæ of memory, was careful to make a hoard of such things for his after-needs. But even when that theory was propounded we knew that Pepys recorded his shames and humiliations, and it is difficult to allow that he might have looked forward to recalling those towards his latter end. Now, however, we know the worst that Pepys could say of himself, and lack nothing but the literal details of his acts. We know how he glorifies and how he humiliates himself--for he writes down all his failures along with his triumphs; we can see him splash in the bagnio, and afterwards get rolled in the gutter. It can be no question of remembrance. What is it, then? Any man may conceive, and many will do the things which Pepys did: but not record them, complacently, with the grin of relish. Why on earth did he do that? I have a suggestion to make, though I am not certain that it meets the whole case. My first opinion was that he derived that cerebral excitation out of his details which it is to be supposed the lad may who defaces walls with a stump of pencil, or the lover who, writing about kisses, or craving them as he writes, ends up his letter with a pullulation of little crosses--paraphrases of his passion. Reading him again, I see that that is not all. It is part of the truth; it is true of the middle of the Diary. But it is not the whole truth--not true of the beginning, not true of the end. I now believe that he originally intended his entries of delinquency as an act of penance or humiliation--and that is supported by the accounts he gives of all his shifts and turns under the screw of jealousy--but that out of that act he found himself obtaining a perverse pleasure, which overlaid his first intention and supplanted it. In the earlier diary you will find him expressing his relief over lapses avoided or temptations withstood; from 1663 onwards that is exceedingly rare; then, at the very end, when he has been found out and has lost conceit in his delight, his reflections are as contrite as you please. For the moment that explanation satisfies me.