Part 4

I cannot myself, however, entirely avoid the impression that, in their natural desire for classification, the critics have laid undue stress on Mrs. Radcliffe’s use of Mystery. In the three hundred and four, double column, pages of _Udolpho_ there are, besides occasional voices, only three definite examples of this artifice--the waxen figure behind the veil, the moving pall, and the disappearance of Ludovico. The main plot is really no more than a spirited example of the conventional Romance-plan (in the development of which she is wittily said to have invented Lord Byron)--an involved narrative of terrible sufferings and dangers incurred by an immaculate heroine, of unmeasured tyranny and violence exerted by a melancholy villain, of protracted misunderstandings concerning the gallant hero, with hurried explanations all round in the last chapter to justify the wedding-bells.

Obviously there is no realism here. Everything depends upon conscious exaggeration: whether it be a description of “the Apennines in their darkest horrors,” or of a “gloomy and sublime” castle’s “mouldering walls”; of crime indulged without restraint, or innocence unsullied by the world. Montoni is not more inhuman in his passion than Emily in the “tender elevation of her mind.”

For despite the most solemn warnings of St. Aubert (quoted above), his Emily has far more sensibility than any of Miss Burney’s heroines, and exemplifies the dangerous doctrine that “virtue and taste are nearly the same.” She and Valancourt, indeed, were indifferent to “the frivolities of common life”; their “ideas were simple and grand, like the landscapes among which they moved”; their sentiments spontaneously “arranged themselves” in original verse.

The fact is, that Scott’s startlingly generous estimate suggests several sound conclusions: by dwelling upon the genuine poetical feeling to be observed in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances, and the sincerity of her sympathy with nature. Though it has been remarked, with some justice, that “as her story is usually enveloped in mystery, so there is, as it were, a haze over her landscapes”; and that, “were six artists to attempt to embody the Castle of Udolpho upon canvas, they would probably produce six drawings entirely dissimilar to each other, all of them equally authorised by the printed description.”

MRS. INCHBALD (1753-1821), on the other hand, followed the new school in writing simple narratives of everyday life; but she produced little more than a pale imitation of _The Man of Feeling_ (1771), by Henry Mackenzie, the only masculine exponent of “sensibility”; though her _Simple Story_ (1791) and _Nature and Art_ (1796) have been frequently reprinted. She aimed at dissecting the human heart, as Richardson had done; and there is, admittedly, a certain melodramatic, and almost decadent, charm in her work.

MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-1849) was, certainly, the most prominent of our novelists between Fanny Burney and Jane Austen. Being a girl of eleven when _Evelina_ was published, she lived to witness the triumph of _Vanity Fair_. Living beyond her eighth decade, she produced over sixty books. Having inspired Scott, on his own testimony, to the production of the Waverley Novels, she actually inaugurated, promoted, or established at least four forms of fiction more or less new to her contemporaries.

Like Fanny Burney, she owed much to the enthusiasm and example of a liberal-minded and cultured father: that Richard Lovell Edgeworth who married several of the young persons whom the author of _Sandford and Merton_ had educated for the honour of his own hand. He and Day were notable scholastic reformers, and the influence of their innumerable theories on life and the Pedagogue, largely imported from over the Channel, is everywhere visible in Maria’s work.

Richard Lovell actually collaborated in the two volumes, inspired by Rousseau’s _Émile_, on _Practical Education_ (1798), and supplied forewords of edification to that marvellous series in which she first proved the possibility of training the young idea by ethical storiettes which were _not_ tracts. That most clumsily named _Parents’ Assistant_ (1801), the _Moral Tales_ of the same year, and the fascinating _Frank_, are still nursery classics deserving of immortality. We may not, to-day, accept without protest many of the “lessons” which they were designed to enforce; but their sympathetic insight into the nature of the child (with which recently we have been so much concerned), the attractive simplicity and dramatic interest of the direct narrative, set an example, from the very foundations of juvenile literature, which has borne plentiful fruit.

It should be noticed, moreover, in this connection that Miss Edgeworth had already produced a spirited defence of female education (_Letters to Literary Ladies_, 1795); while she soon followed in the footsteps of Fanny Burney by writing most lively satires on _fin de siècle_ Society, pointed with travesties of French “naturalism,” of which the chief, perhaps, is _Belinda_, published in 1801; and further extended the scope of the modern novel by the introduction of the finished Short Story, under the attractive heading of _Tales of Fashionable Life_.

And, finally, besides again collaborating with her father in an _Essay on Irish Bulls_ (1802), she produced that stimulating “Irish Brigade,” which banished the “stage” Patrick from literature, introduced genuine Celtic types, such as Coney, King of the Black Isles; and, by creating the “national” novel, may be regarded as the legitimate parent of what their illustrious author so modestly offered to the public as “something of the same kind for his own country.”

Although just failing everywhere to reveal genius, Miss Edgeworth reflects, with marvellous versatility, all the intellectual movements of her generation. Adopting, and adapting to her own purposes, the “form for women” set out by Miss Burney, she widened its application to the discussion of social and political problems, and was the first to make fiction a picture not only of life, but of its meaning. In fact she forestalled no less for adults, than for the young, that vast array of consciously didactic narrative which threatens, in our own time, to bury beyond revival the original, and the supreme, inspiration of Art in Literature--to give pleasure.

The humour, the pathos, the knowledge of the world, and, above all, the common sense regulating Miss Edgeworth’s work, have not secured her as permanent a popularity as she justly merits. But, if we do not, to-day, frequently read even _Ormond_, _The Absentee_, or _Castle Rackrent_, the occasions which gratefully recall their accomplished author to our remembrance are most astonishingly frequent.

Of HANNAH MORE (1745-1833) most readers probably know even far less than of Maria Edgeworth; and her work can only claim notice in this place on account of the energy with which she followed Miss Edgeworth’s lead in didactic fiction. Accustomed to the society of fashionable blue-stockings (then a comparative novelty in London life), she exposed their foibles with considerable humour in private correspondence; while her plays were cheerfully staged by Garrick. But awakened, in later life, to the sin of play-going, she became known for her vigorous tracts (inspiring, by turns, the foundation of Sunday schools and of the Religious Tract Society), until she published, at sixty-four, her one novel entitled _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_.

If this somewhat ponderous effusion does not altogether deserve the satirical onslaught with which Sydney Smith heralded in the _Edinburgh_ its first appearance, we cannot claim for the author any particular skill in construction or much fidelity to real life. It is, in fact, no more than a “dramatic sermon,” and a sermon, moreover, in support of narrow-minded sectarianism. As the reviewer informs us, “Cœlebs wants a wife ... who may add materially to the happiness of his future life. His first journey is to London, where, in the midst of the gay society of the metropolis, of course, he does not find a wife; and his next journey is to the family of Mr. Stanley, the head of the Methodists, a serious people, where, of course, he does find a wife.” That is the whole story. We must submit, in the meantime, to diatribes, pronounced by the virtuous, against dancing, theatres, cards, assemblies, and frivolous conversation, until we are in danger of losing all interest in the persons of the tale.

It is enough for us, in fact, to mark a niche for Miss More in the development of women’s work; only remembering the great service she rendered her generation by a rarely sympathetic understanding of the poor as individual human beings.

A STUDY IN FINE ART

(JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817)

With Jane Austen we reach the centre of our subject: the establishment of the Woman’s School, the final expression of domesticity. If not, perhaps, more essentially feminine than Fanny Burney, she is more womanly. The charming girlishness of _Evelina_ has here matured into a grown-up sisterly attitude towards humanity, which, without being either quite worldly or at all pedantic, is yet artistically composed. Whether consciously or not, she has spoken--within her chosen province--the last word for all women for all time. There is no comment on life, no picture of manners, no detail of characterisation--either humorous or sympathetic--which a man could have expressed in these precise words. Woman is openly the centre of her world; and, if men are more to her than fireside pets, she is only concerned with them as an element (or rather the chief element) in the life of women.

The comparison, already instituted, between the man-made “feminines” of _Pamela_ and _Clarissa Harlowe_ with Miss Burney’s “young ladies,” may be applied to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse with added emphasis in every particular. The “woman” in them is more modern, nearer the heart of humanity, but still spontaneously of that sex.

“To say the truth,” confesses a contemporary reviewer, “we suspect one of Miss Austen’s great merits in our eyes to be the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the _esprit de corps_--can scarcely ever forget that they _are authoresses_. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. _Elles se peignent en buste_, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austen is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it. As liable ‘to fall in love first,’ as anxious to attract the attention of an agreeable man, as much taken with a striking manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and firmness, as liable to have their affections biased by convenience or fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss Crawford and Fanny (vol. iii. p. 102); Fanny’s meeting with her father (p. 199); her reflection after reading Edmund’s letter (p. 246); her happiness (good, and heroine though she be), in the midst of the miseries of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any _authoress_ but Miss Austen would have ventured to temper the œtherial materials of a heroine.”

Again, Miss Burney, as we have seen, had first made it possible for a woman to write novels and be respectable. Yet even with her, authorship was something of an adventure. Her earliest manuscripts were solemnly burnt, as in repentance for frivolity, before her sorrowing sisters; needlework was ordained every morning by a not tyrannical stepmother; social duties occupied most afternoons and evenings. And if she _must_ write, Dr. Burney was always ready enough at dictation, and any lady might act as secretary to such a father without reproach.

In the outside world, when her success was won, we can detect a similar attitude. The authoress of _Evelina_, indeed, was taken up everywhere and universally petted; but even literary Society never regarded her quite as one of themselves. We feel that she was always on show among them--a kind of freak, like the girl who cried to order at dinner-parties without spoiling her complexion; welcomed, but not admitted--as were actors, musicians, and others born and bred for the amusement of the great.

She herself never resumed work for its own sake after the first flush of popularity, in which she composed _Cecilia_. As lady-in-waiting, bored by tiresome punctilio; as Madame D’Arblay, happy in simple domesticity; her pen lay idle save when exercised by filial piety or specifically to earn money. The later novels were pure hack-work, obviously lacking in spontaneity.

It was reserved for Jane Austen, the daughter of a later generation, though actually dying before Miss Burney, to establish finally the position of woman as a professional novelist. True, she was even more domestic than her predecessor, and entirely without what we should regard as the necessary training or experience. Her family were seldom aware of the time given to work, simply because it never occurred to her that she might claim privacy or resent interruption. But they took a keen interest in the results, and evidence exists in abundance of their reading every completed volume with enthusiasm.

Of her own attitude towards her work, and of its reception with the public, there can be no doubt. She always regarded herself, and was regarded, as a professional. Circumstances might induce temporary silence, because she was domestic, modest, and affectionate; but if Jane Austen never complained--and we hear of no protest at the extraordinary delay in their appearance--we may be quite sure the novels were written for the public, by whom she felt confident one day of being read. The style is obviously spontaneous, of which the writing itself meant keen enjoyment; but the work was not done merely for the pleasure of doing it. It was her life--not because of any disappointment in love, if she experienced such, but because genius such as hers demands self-expression and commands a hearing. From the beginning, moreover, no one stopped to marvel that a woman could do so well: they judged her as an artist among her peers.

Jane Austen had none of the advantages of Miss Burney, who knew everybody, including the wig-maker next door. Apparently she took little interest in politics or social problems; and our ideals of culture suffer shock before her allusions to _The Spectator_, to read and admire which she holds the affectation of a blue-stocking. Admittedly she was a voracious novel-reader, but for her own pleasure merely; certainly not with any idea of historical development or artistic criticism. In all probability even her study of human nature was spontaneous and unconscious.

Yet she expected to be taken seriously. Miss Burney had ventured an apology for her art--a plea as woman to men which was daring enough for her generation, but still an apology. Miss Austen, speaking as much for the authoress of _Evelina_ as for herself, shows far more confidence. She enlarges upon the skill and the labour involved in writing a novel, for which _honour is due_.[3] What she demands has been given her in full measure to overflowing. How closely her stories have wound themselves about the hearts of every successive generation, it were idle to measure or estimate. They are a part of our inheritance: appreciation is reckoned a test of culture.

In the perfection, or development, of the methods inaugurated by Samuel Richardson--particularly as applied by women-writers--she also stands supreme. She entirely avoids criminals, melodrama, or any form of excitement. She does not even demand sensibility from her common-sense heroines.

While a woman was thus placing the corner-stone to the rise of domestic realism, man accomplished a glorious revival of Romanticism. Scott was born only four years before Jane Austen: _Waverley_ and _Mansfield Park_ were published in the same year. Fortunately we are able to form an accurate estimate of the impression her work produced upon her great contemporary, since the earliest serious appreciation of Jane was actually written by Sir Walter, and opens with a most instructive comparison between the “former rules of the novel” and “a class of fictions which has arisen,” as he expresses it, “almost in our times.” The article appeared in the _Quarterly Review_, October 1815; and it is very significant for us to notice that Scott places _Peregrine Pickle_ and _Tom Jones_ in the “old school,” dating the new style only “fifteen or twenty years” back.

“In its first appearance, the novel was the legitimate child of the romance; and though the manners and general turn of the composition were altered so as to suit modern times, the author remained fettered by many peculiarities derived from the original style of romantic fiction. These may be chiefly traced in the conduct of the narrative, and the tone of sentiment attributed to the fictitious personages. On the first point, although

‘The talisman and magic wand were broke, Knights, dwarfs, and genii vanish’d into smoke,’

still the reader expected to peruse a course of adventures of a nature more interesting and extraordinary than those which occur in his own life, or that of his next-door neighbour. The hero no longer defeated armies by his single sword, clove giants to the chine, or gained kingdoms. But he was expected to go through perils by sea and land, to be steeped in poverty, to be tried by temptation, to be exposed to the alternate vicissitudes of adversity and prosperity, and his life was a troubled scene of suffering and achievement. Few novelists, indeed, adventured to deny to the hero his final hour of tranquillity and happiness, though it was the prevailing fashion never to relieve him out of his last and most dreadful distress until the finishing chapters of his history; so that although his prosperity in the record of his life was short, we were bound to believe it was long and uninterrupted when the author had done with him. The heroine was usually condemned to equal hardships and hazards. She was regularly exposed to being forcibly carried off like a Sabine virgin by some frantic admirer. And even if she escaped the terrors of masked ruffians, an insidious ravisher, a cloak wrapped forcibly around her head, and a coach with the blinds [down] driving she could not conjecture whither, she had still her share of wandering, of poverty, of obloquy, of seclusion, and of imprisonment, and was frequently extended upon a bed of sickness, and reduced to her last shilling before the author condescended to shield her from persecution. In all these dread contingencies the mind of the reader was expected to sympathise, since by incidents so much beyond the bounds of his ordinary experience, his wonder and interest ought at once to be excited. But gradually he became familiar with the land of fiction, the adventures of which he assimilated not with those of real life, but with each other. Let the distress of the hero or heroine be ever so great, the reader reposed an imperturbable confidence in the talents of the author, who, as he had plunged them into distress, would in his own good time, and when things, as Tony Lumkin says, were in a concatenation accordingly, bring his favourites out of all their troubles. Mr. Crabbe has expressed his own and our feelings excellently on this subject.

‘For should we grant these beauties all endure Severest pangs, they’ve still the speediest cure; Before one charm be wither’d from the face, Except the bloom which shall again have place, In wedlock ends each wish, in triumph all disgrace. And life to come, we fairly may suppose, One light bright contrast to these wild dark woes.’

“In short, the author of novels was, in former times, expected to tread pretty much in the limits between the concentric circles of probability and possibility; and as he was not permitted to transgress the latter, his narrative, to make amends, almost always went beyond the bounds of the former. Now, although it may be urged that the vicissitudes of human life have occasionally led an individual through as many scenes of singular fortune as are represented in the most extravagant of these fictions, still the causes and personages acting on these changes have varied with the progress of the adventurer’s fortune, and do not present that combined plot, (the object of every skilful novelist), in which all the more interesting individuals of the dramatis personæ have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. In the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with whom he was born, and is contemporary,--shares precisely the sort of weal and woe to which his birth destined him,--moves in the same circle,--and, allowing for the change of seasons, is influenced by, and influences the same class of persons by which he was originally surrounded. The man of mark and of adventure, on the contrary, resembles, in the course of his life, the river whose mid-current and discharge into the ocean are widely removed from each other, as well as from the rocks and wild flowers which its fountains first reflected; violent changes of time, of place, and of circumstances, hurry him forward from one scene to another, and his adventures will usually be found only connected with each other because they have happened to the same individual. Such a history resembles an ingenious, fictitious narrative, exactly in the degree in which an old dramatic chronicle of the life and death of some distinguished character, where all the various agents appear and disappear as in the page of history, approaches a regular drama, in which every person introduced plays an appropriate part, and every point of the action tends to one common catastrophe.

“We return to the second broad line of distinction between the novel, as formerly composed, and real life,--the difference, namely, of the sentiments. The novelist professed to give an imitation of nature, but it was, as the French say, _la belle nature_. Human beings, indeed, were presented, but in the most sentimental mood, and with minds purified by a sensibility which often verged on extravagance. In the serious class of novels, the hero was usually

‘A knight or lover, who never broke a vow.’

And although, in those of a more humorous cast, he was permitted a licence, borrowed either from real life or from the libertinism of the drama, still a distinction was demanded even from Peregrine Pickle, or Tom Jones; and the hero, in every folly of which he might be guilty, was studiously vindicated from the charge of infidelity of the heart. The heroine was, of course, still more immaculate; and to have conferred her affections upon any other than the lover to whom the reader had destined her from their first meeting, would have been a crime against sentiment which no author, of moderate prudence, would have hazarded, under the old _régime_.