Part 8
“I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable, solitary, Highland dwelling, among tall, red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don’t you think this would make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us[10] try our hands on it; the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies against runaway matches, and the character and fate of the two sisters would be _unexceptionable_. I expect it will be the first book every wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased and filled with dog’s ears. I hear the enchanting sound of some sentimental miss, the shrill pipe of some antiquated spinster, or the hoarse grumbling of some incensed dowager as they severally enquire for me at the circulating library, and are assured by the master that it is in such demand that, though he has thirteen copies, they are insufficient to answer the calls upon it; but that each one of them may depend upon having the very first that comes in!!!”
The interest, in these novels, is not awakened by any subtle characterisation or by serious sympathy with the dramatis personæ. It depends rather upon caustic wit, accurate local colour, a picture of manners, and a “museum of abnormalities.”
Miss Ferrier’s nice distinctions between the “well-bred,” and her photographs of vulgarity, may claim to rival Miss Burney’s.
“Mrs. St. Clair, for example, was considerably annoyed by the manners of Lady Charles, which made her feel her own as something unwieldy and overgrown; like a long train, they were both out of the way and in the way, and she did not know very well how to dispose of them. Indeed, few things can be more irritating than for those who have hitherto piqued themselves upon the abundance of their manner, to find all at once that they have a great deal too much, and that no one is inclined to take it off their hands, and that, in short, it is dead stock.”
Mrs. Bluemit’s tea-party, again, reveals the Blue-Stockings in all their glory; while Mr. Augustus Larkins--with his “regular features, very pink eyes, very black eyebrows, and what was intended for a very smart expression”--forcibly recalls Mr. Smith of Snow Hill. His ideal of dress and manners was evidently shared by Bob and Davy Black, who were
“dressed in all the extremes of the reigning fashions--small waists, brush-heads, stiff collars, iron heels, and switches. Like many other youths they were distinctly of opinion that ‘dress makes the man.’... Perhaps, after all, that is a species of humility rather to be admired in those who, feeling themselves destitute of mental qualifications, trust to the abilities of their tailor and hairdresser for gaining them the good-will of the world.”
It must be admitted that Miss Ferrier’s obviously spontaneous delight in satire has occasionally tempted her beyond the limits of artistic realism. Her miniature of the M‘Dow, for example, has all the objectionable qualities which revive our preference for the “elegancies” of romance.
“Here Miss M‘Dow was disencumbered of her pelisse and bonnet, and exhibited a coarse, blubber-lipped, sun-burnt visage, with staring sea-green eyes, a quantity of rough sandy hair, and mulatto neck, with merely a rim of white round her shoulders.... The gloves were then taken off, and a pair of thick mulberry paws set at liberty.”
No such criticism, however applies to those full-length portraits of the inimitable Aunts in _Marriage_--the “sensible” Miss Jacky, Miss Nicky, who was “not wanting for sense either,” and Miss Grizzy, the great letter-writer. “Their life was one continued _fash_ about everything or nothing”; and if a “sensible woman” generally means “a very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women, and children,” the Aunts were really “well-meaning, kind-hearted, and, upon the whole, good-tempered” old ladies, whose garrulous absurdities are a perpetual delight.
Again, Miss Pratt (of _The Inheritance_) has certain obvious affinities to the inimitable Miss Bates; as Mr. M‘Dow (in _Destiny_) recalls Collins; and the creation of that good soul, Molly Macaulay, bears solitary evidence to Miss Ferrier’s seldom-exerted powers of sympathetic subtlety.
We are tempted to wonder if there be any particular significance in the fact that, though Miss Ferrier wrote _Marriage_ almost immediately after the appearance of _Sense and Sensibility_, she did not publish it till seven years later.[11] If, during that interval, she felt compelled to study the supreme excellences of a sister-authoress, it is clear that she wisely abandoned any attempt at imitation. Her work, as we have seen, directly follows Miss Burney’s, and should be properly regarded in relation to _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_; reflecting Society--and the upstart--of a slightly later generation, then flourishing in North Britain.
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MARY RUSSELL MITFORD (1787-1855) is the only writer on record who has deliberately declared herself a disciple.
“Of course, I shall copy as closely as I can nature and Miss Austen--keeping, like her, to genteel country life; or rather going a little lower, perhaps; and, I am afraid, with more of sentiment and less of humour. I do not _intend_ to commit these delinquencies, mind. I _mean_ to keep as playful as I can; but I am afraid they will happen in spite of me.... It will be called--at least, I mean it so to be--_Our Village_; will consist of essays, and characters, and stories, chiefly of country life, in the manner of the _Sketch Book_, connected by unity of locality and purpose. It is exceedingly playful and lively, and I think you will like it. Charles Lamb (the matchless _Elia_ of the London Magazine) says nothing so fresh and characteristic has appeared for a long time.”
It _was_ called _Our Village_; and appeared in parts between 1824 and 1832, the earlier series being the best, because afterwards she wrote for remuneration--when “I would rather scrub floors, if I could get as much by that healthier, more respectable, and more feminine employment,”--a declaration which prepares us for the criticism that, though in her own day she was accused of copying the “literal” manner of Crabbe and Teniers, she was at heart a frank sentimentalist. “Are your characters and descriptions true?” asked her friend Sir William Elford; and she replied, “Yes! yes! yes! as true as is well possible. You, as a great landscape painter, know that, in painting a favourite scene, you do a little embellish, and can’t help it, you avail yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere, and _if anything be ugly, you strike it out_, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the picture is a likeness.”
Assuredly Miss Mitford was no realist, nor was her imitation servile. Once she expressed a desire that Miss Austen had shown “a little more taste, a little more perception of the graceful”; and, in such matters, as in culture, she was herself far more professional. But although she could describe, and even “compose,” with a charm of her own which almost defies analysis, Miss Mitford’s powers were strictly limited. The “country-town” atmosphere of _Belford Regis_ lacks spontaneity; and _Atherton_, her only attempt at a novel, is wanting in varied incident or motion. Readers attracted by mere simplicity, however, will feel always a peculiar affection for Miss Mitford, that would be increased by her “Letters” which she describes as “just like so many bottles of ginger-beer, bouncing and frothy, and flying in everybody’s face.”
Christopher North remarked in _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ that her writings were “pervaded by a genuine rural spirit--the spirit of Merry England. _Every line bespeaks the lady._”
And the “Shepherd” replied:
“I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi’ sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o’ me, is her pictures o’ poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither neerdoweels, and o’ huts and hovels without riggin’ by the wayside, and the cottages o’ honest puir men, and byres, and barns, and stackyards, and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, and at the gable-end of farm houses, ’tween lads and lasses as laigh in life as the servants in her father’s ha’. That’s the puzzle, and that’s the praise. But ae word explains a’--Genius--Genius, wull a’ the metafhizzians in the warld ever expound that mysterious monosyllable.--Nov. 1826.”
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MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY (1797-1851) has no place in the development of women’s work in fiction, since her one novel, _Frankenstein_, belongs to no type that has been attempted before or since, though it is often roughly described as a throw-back to the School of Terror. The conception of a man-made Monster, with human feelings--of pathetic loneliness and brutal cruelty--was eminently characteristic of an age which hankered after the byways of Science, imagined unlimited possibilities from the extension of knowledge, and was never tired of speculation. Inevitably the daughter of William Godwin had some didactic intentions; and her “Preface” declares her “by no means indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding of the enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence of universal virtue.” Among other things, Mrs. Shelley betrays her sympathy with Rousseau’s ideal of the “Man Natural,” and with vegetarianism. In a mood of comparative reasonableness and humanity the Monster promises, under certain conditions, to abandon his revenge and bury himself in the “Wilds of South America.”
“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite; acorns and berries will afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food.”
The ethical struggle, with which Mrs. Shelley has here concerned herself, arises from circumstances beyond the pale of experience; but her solution is characteristic, and echoes the spirit of Shelley himself. Frankenstein, “in a fit of enthusiastic madness, has created a rational creature,” who, finding himself hated by mankind, resolves to punish his creator. He promises, however, to abstain from murdering Frankenstein’s family, if that man of science will make for him a female companion with whom he may peacefully retire to the wilderness. Obviously the temptation is great. Frankenstein’s brother has been already destroyed: it would seem his duty to protect his father and his wife. But, on the other hand,
“My duties towards my fellow-creatures had greater claims to my attention, _because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery_. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for the first creature.”
There is no professional art in the story of Frankenstein, though it has a certain gloomy and perverse power. It is told in letters from an arctic explorer “To Mrs. Saville, England”; and the monster’s own life-story, with the only revelation of his emotions, is narrated within this narrative, in a monologue to Frankenstein.
It is uncertain whether the work would ever have been remembered, or revived, apart from our natural interest in the author; although, so far as it has any similarity with other work, it belongs to a class of novels which English writers have seldom attempted, and never accomplished with any distinction.
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FRANCES TROLLOPE (1780-1863) has been so completely overshadowed by her son Anthony--himself a distinguished practitioner in the domestic novel--that few readers to-day are aware that her fertile pen produced a “whole army of novels and books of travel, sometimes pouring into the libraries at the rate of nine volumes a year.” She began her career--curiously enough, when she was past fifty--by a severely satirical attack on the United States, entitled _Domestic Manners of the Americans_; and her first novel, _The Abbess_, did not appear till 1833. She was essentially feminine in the enthusiasm of her tirades against various practices in her generation, and has been freely criticised for want of taste. _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837), indeed, is coloured by a violent prejudice which goes far to justify this objection, and may even excuse the disparaging deduction on women’s intellect drawn by a contemporary reviewer, who thus characterises her spirited defence of “oppressed Orthodoxy”:
“It is a great pity that the heroine ever set forth on such a foolish errand; she has only harmed herself and her cause (as a bad advocate always will) and had much better have remained at home pudding-making or stocking-mending, than have meddled with what she understands so ill.
“In the first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex) she is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion, she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A _woman’s religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head_. She goes through, for the most part, no dreadful stages of doubt, no changes of faith: _she loves God as she loves her husband by a kind of instinctive devotion_. Faith is a passion with her, not a calculation; so that, in the faculty of believing, though they far exceed the other sex, in the power of convincing they fall far short of them.”[12]
More than one woman writer has risen, of later years, triumphantly to confute any such complacent masculine superiority; but it must be admitted that Mrs. Trollope is scarcely judicial in the venom she pours out so eloquently upon the head of her “Vicar,” his worshippers, and his accomplices. This was not quite the direction in which women could most wisely develop the domestic novel in her day; while they still--like the Brontës, but in a spirit quite alien to Jane Austen’s--upheld “that manly passion for superiority which leads _our masters_ to covet in a companion chosen for life ... that species of weakness which is often said to be the most attractive feature in the female character.” It is, again, a curious want of taste which allows her to dwell upon the pleasure experienced by a comparatively respectable young man in making a little girl of eight tipsy--though he is the Vicar’s son.
But, on the other hand, there is considerable power and much sprightly humour in the story. Mrs. Trollope’s _good_ (_i.e._ orthodox) people are really delightful, and admirably characterised. The _genuine_ piety of Rosalind, the Irish heiress, is most artistically united to graceful vivacity and natural charm: the testy Sir Gilbert is perfectly matched with Lady Harrington: and the three young Mowbrays are drawn from life. The study of Henrietta Cartwright, driven to atheism by the hypocrisy of her horrible father, has all the force of a real human tragedy; and, if the villainy of Evangelicism is exaggerated, it is painted with graphic humour. She works from nature, and finds excellent “copy” in the parish.
Mrs. Trollope, in fact, has left us proof in abundance that women had learnt to “write with ease”; if, in her case, over-production and misplaced zeal have led to an abuse of her talents.
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HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876), “Queen of philanthropists,” has left a stamp of almost passionate sincerity on everything she wrote. From earliest days she declared that her “chief subordinate object in life was the cultivation of her intellectual powers, with a view to the instruction of others by her writings.” Believing herself the servant of humanity, she sought to save souls by the diffusion of a little knowledge.
Inevitably, under such influence, her work was always didactic; whether inspired by the orthodox faith of her earlier years or the Atkinson-interpretation of Comte she afterwards espoused: whether directed towards social reform, or expressed in narrative and biography. The greater number of her publications, whether or no actually written for the press, contain those qualities which make the best journalism; and, though occasionally capricious and “superior” in private judgment, her brief critical biographies, from the _Daily News_, are masterpieces in the vignette. She knew “everybody” in her day; and contributed much to the thirst for “information,” reasonably applied, which characterised our grandfathers.
But, as a novelist, she has two special claims to notice. Her “Playfellow Series” (embracing _Feats on the Fiord_, _The Crofton Boys_, and _The Peasant and the Prince_) are living to-day among the few priceless inherited treasures of literature. Less obviously didactic than the Edgeworth “nursery classics,” they have certain similar characteristics of spontaneity, sympathetic understanding, and simple directness. Each occupied with quite different subjects, they are informed by the same spirit, excite the same kind of pleasure, and--for all their decided, but _not_ obtrusive, moralising--appeal to the same healthy taste. By those to whom their life-like young people have been among the chosen friends of childhood, the memories will never fade.
Miss Martineau’s adult narratives have less distinction; although her _Hour and the Man_ is a creditable effort in the historic form, and _Deerbrook_ has much emotional power. To our taste the tone of the latter must be criticised for its somewhat sensational religiosity, and for the priggish perfection of its “white” characters. But, on the other hand, there is subtlety in contrasts among the “undesirables”; genuine pathos in, for example, the description of Mrs. Enderby’s death; and plenty of artistic “interest” in the plot: nor can we neglect mention of the remarkable portrait of Morris, the servant and most real friend to her “young ladies.”
We cannot avoid, in conclusion, some reference to a distinction elaborated in an early chapter between the drudgery of “_teaching_” and the “sublime delights of _education_”: wherein the author quaintly remarks that a visiting governess can “do little more than stand between children and the faults of the people about them”; betraying herein the normal prejudice of the pedagogue against the parent.
Similar theories clearly inspire the eloquence--of a later chapter--upon a thorny subject on which the author achieved some pioneer work in her own life.
“‘Cannot you tell me,’ enquires the persecuted heroine, ‘of some way in which a woman may earn money?’
“‘A woman?’ is the stern reply. ‘What rate of woman? Do you mean yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking, by milking cows and going into service, and, in some parts of the kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated woman, a woman with the powers God gave her religiously improved, with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would make every species of responsibility safe,--for such a woman there is in all England no chance of subsistence but teaching--that sort of ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances--and for which not one in a thousand is fit,--or by being a superior Miss Nares--the feminine gender of the tailor and hatter.’”
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MRS. GASKELL (1810-1865) must always be remembered as authoress of _Cranford_, which has startling similarities to the work of Jane Austen, and excels her in pathos. If Fanny Burney immortalised “sensibility,” and Jane Austen created “the lady,” Mrs. Gaskell may well be called “The Apologist of Gentility.” She taught us that it was possible to be genteel without being vulgar; and her “refined females,” if enslaved to elegance and propriety, are ladies in the best sense of the word.
“Although they know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other’s opinions.” They are “very independent of fashion; as they observe: ‘What does it signify how we dress here at Cranford, where everybody knows us?’ and if they go from home, their reason is equally cogent: ‘What does it signify how we dress here, where nobody knows us?’” We may smile at their ingenious devices for concealing poverty, their grotesque small conventions, their horror at any allusions to death or other causes for genuine emotion, and their love of gossip; but our superiority stands rebuked before simple Miss Matty’s sense of honour “as a shareholder,” and before the “meeting of the Cranford ladies” for the generous contribution of their “mites in a secret and concealed manner.” As Miss Pole expresses it, “We are none of us what may be called rich, though we all possess a genteel competency, sufficient for tastes that are elegant and refined, and would not, if they could, be vulgarly ostentatious”; and they fully appreciated the true charity of “showing consideration for the feelings of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female.”
Here, indeed, as in almost every thought or deed of their uneventful existence, our grandmothers can teach us that the eager interest in our neighbours, which we are accustomed to brand as vulgar and impertinent, was in actual fact a powerful incentive to Christian practices. There is a passage in _Cranford_ which would baffle the most elaborate statistics of ordered philanthropy, as it must silence the protest of false pride, and remain an invulnerable argument against the isolation of modern life. “I had often occasion to notice,” observes the visitor, “the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities in Cranford: the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they fell, to make a _pot-pourri_ for some one who had no garden; the little bundles of lavender-flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to burn in the bedroom of some invalid. Things that many would despise, and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all attended to in Cranford.”
Nor were Miss Matilda Jenkyns and her friends deficient in any outward show of true breeding. Despite the most astonishing vagaries of taste in dress, language, and behaviour, they were dignified by instinct, and, on all occasions of moment, revealed a natural manner that is above reproach. Their simple-minded innocence and genuine humility never tempted them to pass over impertinence or tolerate vulgarity, and their powers of delicate reproof were unrivalled. We cannot admire the “green turban” of Miss Matty’s dream, or share her dread of the frogs in Paris not agreeing with Mr. Holbrook; we should have been ashamed, maybe, to assist her in “chasing the sunbeams” over her new carpet; and we may detect sour grapes in Miss Pole’s outcry against that “kind of attraction which she, for one, would be ashamed to have”; yet I fancy the best of us would covet admission to Cranford society, and be proud to number its leaders among our dearest friends.