Part 16

It is a curious instance of the change of fashion and the transient nature of popular memory that great difficulty is experienced in obtaining copies of Mrs. Norton's works, especially of her poems. "The Undying One," "The Dream," and one or two smaller pieces, are found only in the British Museum Library. The novels are embedded in the deeper strata of Mudie's, but are not mentioned in the catalogue of that all-embracing collection. Yet forty years ago, Mrs. Norton acknowledged that she made at one time about L1400 a year by her pen, this chiefly by her contributions to the annuals of that time.

Mrs. Norton, however, had not to contend with the cruel competition which lowers prices while it increases labour. In her day, the workers were few, and the employers less difficult to please. But these comparisons are not only odious, but fruitless. The crowd, the competition, the desperate struggle for life, exists, increases, and we cannot alter it. We can but train for the contest as best we may, and say with the lovely and sorely tried subject of this sketch, as she writes in her poem to her absent boys:

"Though my lot be hard and lonely, Yet I hope--I hope through all."

[Signature: Annie Hector]

("MRS. ALEXANDER")

"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER) MRS. EWING

_By_ MRS. MARSHALL

"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER)

MRS. EWING

Forty years ago, the mystic letters "A. L. O. E." ("A Lady of England") on the title-page of a book ensured its welcome from the children of those days. There was not then the host of gaily bound volumes pouring from the press to be piled up in tempting array in every bookseller's shop at Christmas. The children for whom "A. L. O. E." wrote were contented to read a "gift-book" more than once; and, it must be said, her stories were deservedly popular, and bore the crucial test of being read aloud to an attentive audience several times.

Many of these stories still live, and the allegorical style in which "A. L. O. E." delighted has a charm for certain youthful minds to this day. There is a pride and pleasure in thinking out the lessons hidden under the names of the stalwart giants in the "Giant Killer," which is one of "A. L. O. E.'s" earlier and best tales. A fight with Giant Pride, a hard battle with Giant Sloth, has an inspiriting effect on boys and girls, who are led to "look at home" and see what giants hold them in bondage.

"A. L. O. E.'s" style was almost peculiar to herself. She generally used allegory and symbol, and she was fired with the desire to arrest the attention of her young readers and "do them good." We may fear that she often missed her aim by forcing the moral, and by indulging in long and discursive "preachments," which interrupted the main current of the story, and were impatiently skipped that it might flow on again without vexatious hindrances.

In her early girlhood and womanhood "A. L. O. E." had written plays, which, we are told by her biographer, Miss Agnes Giberne, were full of wit and fun. Although her literary efforts took a widely different direction when she began to write for children, still there are flashes of humour sparkling here and there on the pages of her most didactic stories, showing that her keen sense of the ludicrous was present though it was kept very much in abeyance.

From the first publication of "The Claremont Tales" her success as a writer for children was assured. The list of her books covering the space of fifteen or twenty years is a very long one, and she had no difficulty in finding publishers ready to bring them out in an attractive form.

* * * * *

"The Rambles of a Rat" is before me, as I write, in a new edition, and is a very fair specimen of "A. L. O. E.'s" work. Weighty sayings are put into the mouth of the rats, and provoke a smile. The discussion about the ancestry of Whiskerando and Ratto ends with the trite remark--which, however, was not spoken aloud--that the great weakness of one opponent was pride of birth, and his anxiety to be thought of an ancient family; but the chief matter, in Ratto's opinion, was not whether our ancestors do honour to us, but whether by our conduct we do not disgrace them. Probably this page of the story was hastily turned here, that the history of the two little waifs and strays who took shelter in the warehouse, where the rats lived, might be followed.

Later on there is a discussion between a father and his little boy about the advantage of ragged schools, then a somewhat new departure in philanthropy. Imagine a boy of nine, in our time, exclaiming, "What a glorious thing it is to have ragged schools and reformatories, to give the poor and the ignorant, and the wicked, a chance of becoming honest and happy." Boys of Neddy's age, nowadays, would denounce him as a little prig, who ought to be well snubbed for his philanthropical ambition, when he went on to say, "How I should like to build a ragged school myself!" "The Voyage of the Rats to Russia" is full of interest and adventure, and the glimpse of Russian life is vivid, and in "A. L. O. E.'s" best manner.

Indeed, she had a graphic pen, and her descriptions of places and things were always true to life. In "Pride and his Prisoners," for instance, there are stirring scenes, drawn with that dramatic power which had characterised the plays she wrote in her earlier days. "The Pretender, a farce in two Acts, by Charlotte Maria Tucker," is published in Miss Giberne's biography. In this farce there is a curious and constantly recurring play on words, but the allegory and the symbol with which she afterwards clothed her stories are absent.

* * * * *

"A. L. O. E." did not write merely to _amuse_ children; and the countless fairy tales and books of startling adventure, in their gilded covers and with their profuse illustrations, which are published every year, have thrown her stories into the shade. But they are written with verve and spirit, and in good English, which is high praise, and cannot always be given to the work of her successors in juvenile literature. In her books, as in every work she undertook throughout her life, she had the high and noble aim of doing good. Whether she might have widened the sphere of her influence by less of didactic teaching, and by allowing her natural gifts to have more play, it is not for us to inquire.

It is remarkable that this long practice in allegory and symbol fitted her for her labours in her latter years, amongst the boys and girls of the Far East. Her style was well adapted to the Oriental mind, and kindled interest and awoke enthusiasm in the hearts of the children in the Batala Schools. Here she did a great work, which she undertook at the age of fifty-four, when she offered her services to the Church Missionary Society as an unpaid missionary.

"All for love, and no reward" may surely be said to be "A. L. O. E.'s" watchword, as, with untiring energy, she laboured amongst the children in a distant part of the empire. Even there she was busy as an author. By her fertile pen she could reach thousands in that part of India who would never see her face or hear her voice. She wrote for India as she had written for England, ever keeping before her the good of her readers. The Hindu boys and girls, as well as the children of this country, have every reason to hold her name in grateful remembrance as one of the authors who have left a mark on the reign of Queen Victoria.

MRS. EWING

There lingers over some people whom we know a nameless charm. It is difficult to define it, and yet we feel it in their presence as we feel the subtle fragrance of flowers, borne to us on the wings of the fresh breeze, which has wandered over gorse and heather, beds of wild hyacinth, and cowslip fields, in the early hours of a sunny spring day. A charm like this breathes over the stories which Mrs. Ewing has left as an inheritance for English children, and for their elders also, for all time. The world must be better for her work; and looking back over the sometimes toilsome paths of authorship, this surely, above all others, is the guerdon all craftswomen of the pen should strive to win.

There is nothing morbid or melodramatic in Mrs. Ewing's beautiful stories. They bubble over with the joys of child-life; they bristle with its humour; they touch its sorrows with a tender, sympathetic hand; they lend a gentle sadness of farewell to Death itself, with the sure hope of better things to come.

* * * * *

It was in 1861 and 1862 that those who were looking for healthy stories for children found, in "Melchior's Dream and other Tales," precisely what they wanted. Soon after, _Aunt Judy's Magazine_, edited by Mrs. Ewing's mother, Mrs. Gatty, made a new departure in the periodical literature for children. The numbers were eagerly looked for month by month, and the title of the magazine was given to commemorate the "Judy" of the nursery, who had often kept a bevy of little brothers and sisters happy and quiet by pouring forth into their willing ears stories full of the prowess of giants, the freaks of fairies, with occasional but always good-natured shafts aimed at the little faults and frailties of the listening children.

_Aunt Judy's Magazine_ had no contributions from Mrs. Ewing's pen till May 1866 and May 1867. Then the delightful "Remembrances of Mrs. Overtheway" enchanted her youthful readers. Little Ida's own story and her lonely childhood had an especial charm for them; and Mrs. Overtheway's remembrances of the far-off days when she, too, was a child, were told as things that had really happened. And so they had! For, in the disappointment of the imaginative child who had created a fair vision from her grandmother's description of Mrs. Anastasia Moss as a golden-haired beauty in rose-bud brocade, and instead, saw an old lady with sunken black eyes, dressed in _feuilles mortes_ satin, many a child may have found the salient parts of her own experience rehearsed!

"Alas!" says Mrs. Overtheway, when little Ida, soothed by her gentle voice, has fallen asleep. "Alas! my grown-up friends, does the moral belong to children only? Have manhood and womanhood no passionate, foolish longings, for which we blind ourselves to obvious truth, and of which the vanity does not lessen the disappointment? Do we not all toil after rose-buds to find _feuilles mortes_?" It is in touches like this, in her stories, that Mrs. Ewing appeals to many older hearts as well as to those of the young dreamers, taking their first steps in the journey of life.

In 1857, Juliana Horatia Gatty married Alexander Ewing, A.P.D., and for some time "Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances" were not continued. The last of them, "Kerguelin's Land," is considered by some critics the most beautiful of the series, ending with the delightful surprise of little Ida's joy in the return of her lost father.

* * * * *

Mrs. Ewing's stories are so rich in both humour and pathos, that it is difficult to choose from them distinctive specimens of her style, and of that charm which pervades them, a charm which we think is peculiarly her own.

Mrs. Ewing gave an unconsciously faithful portrait of herself in "Madam Liberality." The reader has in this story glimpses of the author's own heroic and self-forgetful childhood. Perhaps this tale is not as well known as some which followed it: so a few notes from its pages may not be unwelcome here.

Madam Liberality, when a little girl, was accustomed to pick out all the plums from her own slice of cake and afterwards make a feast with them for her brothers and sisters and the dolls. Oyster shells served for plates, and if by any chance the plums did not go round the party, the shell before Madam Liberality's place was always the empty one. Her eldest brother had given her the title of Madam Liberality; and yet he could, with refreshing frankness, shake his head at her and say, "You are the most _meanest_ and the _generousest_ person I ever knew."

Madam Liberality wept over this accusation, and it was the grain of truth in it that made her cry, for it was too true that she screwed, and saved, and pinched to have the pleasure of "giving away." "Tom, on the contrary, gave away without pinching and saving. This sounds much handsomer, and it was poor Tom's misfortune that he always believed it to be so, though he gave away what did not belong to him, and fell back for the supply of his own pretty numerous wants upon other people, not forgetting Madam Liberality."

What a clever analysis of character is this! We have all known the "Toms," for they are numerous, and some of us have known and but scantily appreciated the far rarer "Madam Liberalitys."

It is difficult to read unmoved of the brave child's journey alone to the doctor to have a tooth taken out which had caused her much suffering. Then when about to claim the shilling from her mother, which was the accustomed reward for the unpleasant operation, she remembered the agreement was a shilling for a tooth with fangs, sixpence for a tooth without them. She did so want the larger sum to spend on Christmas presents; so, finding a fang left in her jaw, she went back to the doctor, had it extracted, and staggered home once more, very giddy but very happy, with the tooth and the fang safe in a pill box!

"Moralists say a great deal about pain treading so very closely on the heels of pleasure in this life, but they are not always wise or grateful enough to speak of the pleasure which springs out of pain. And yet there is a bliss which comes just when pain has ceased, whose rapture rivals even the high happiness of unbroken health.

"Relief is certainly one of the most delicious sensations which poor humanity can enjoy."

Madam Liberality often suffered terrible pain from quinsy. Thus we read sympathetically of her heroic efforts one Christmastide, when nearly suffocated with this relentless disease, to go on with her preparations to get her little gifts ready for the family. And how we rejoice when a cart rumbles up to the door and brings a load of beautiful presents, sent by a benevolent lady who has known Madam Liberality's desire to make purchases for her brothers and sisters, and has determined to give her this delightful surprise.

* * * * *

The story of Madam Liberality, from childhood to maturity, is, we think, written in Mrs. Ewing's best manner, though, perhaps, it has never gained the widespread popularity of "Jackanapes," and "The Story of a Short Life," or "A Flat Iron for a Farthing."

Of the last-named story Mrs. Bundle is almost the central figure. In the childhood of Reginald Dacre, who writes his own reminiscences, she played a prominent part. Loyal and true, she held the old traditions of faithful service; her master's people were her people, and she had but few interests apart from them.

The portrait of Reginald's mother hung in his father's dressing-room, and was his resort in the early days of his childish sorrows. Once when his dog Rubens had been kicked by a guest in his father's house, Reginald went to that picture of his golden-haired mother and wept out his plaintive entreaties that "Mamma would come back to Rubens and to him--they were so miser-ra-ble." "Then," he says, "in the darkness came a sob that was purely human, and I was clasped in a woman's arms and covered with tender kisses and soothing caresses. For one wild moment, in my excitement and the boundless faith of childhood, I thought my mother had heard me and come back. But it was only Nurse Bundle!"

Then, passing over many years, when Reginald Dacre brought his bride to his old home, this faithful friend, after giving her loving welcome to the new Mrs. Dacre, went, in the confusion and bewilderment of old age, with its strange mingling of past and present, to the room where the portrait of her lost lady with the golden hair still hung; and there, the story goes on to say, "There, where years before she had held me in her arms with tears, I, weeping also, held her now in mine--quite dead!"

This is one of the most pathetic incidents in all Mrs. Ewing's works, told without the least exaggeration and with the simplicity which is one of the characteristics of her style.

"Lob Lie by the Fire" contains some of the author's brightest flashes of humour, and yet it closes with a description of Macalister's death, drawn with the tender hand with which that solemn mystery is ever touched by Mrs. Ewing, beautiful in its pathetic simplicity. Nothing in its way can be more profoundly touching than the few words which end this story:--

"After a while Macalister repeated the last word, '_Home_.' And as he spoke there spread over his face a smile so tender and so full of happiness that John Broom held his breath as he watched him. As the light of sunrise creeps over the face of some rugged rock, it crept from chin to brow, and the pale blue eyes shone, tranquil, like water that reflects heaven. And when it had passed, it left them still open--but gems that had lost their ray."

* * * * *

"Jackanapes" is so well known, almost the best known of the author's charming stories, that we will not dwell on the pathos of that last scene, when Jackanapes, like one in the old allegory, heard the trumpets calling for him on the other side--the gallant boy who had laid down his life for his friend. But the character of the Gray Goose, who slept securely with one leg tucked up under her on the green, is so delightfully suggestive that we must give some of her wisdom as a specimen of the author's humorous but never unkindly hits at the weaknesses to which we are all prone.

"The Gray Goose and the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who kept their ages secret. Indeed, Miss Jessamine never mentioned any one's age, or recalled the exact year in which anything had happened. The Gray Goose also avoided dates. She never got farther than 'last Michaelmas,' 'the Michaelmas before that,' and 'the Michaelmas before the Michaelmas before that.' After this her head, which was small, became confused, and she said 'Ga-ga!' and changed the subject."

Then again:

"The Gray Goose always ran away at the first approach of the caravans, and never came back to the green till nothing was left of the fair but footmarks and oyster-shells. Running away was her pet principle; the only system, she maintained, by which you can live long and easily, and lose nothing.

"Why in the world should any one spoil the pleasures of life, or risk his skin, if he can help it?

'What's the use? Said the goose.'

Before answering which one might have to consider what world, which life, and whether his skin were a goose skin. But the Gray Goose's head would never have held all that."

* * * * *

Major Ewing was stationed at Aldershot in 1869, and during the eight years Mrs. Ewing lived there her pen was never idle. _Aunt Judy's Magazine_ for 1870 was well supplied with tales, of which "Amelia" is perhaps one of the best.

To her life at Aldershot we owe the story which had for its motto "Loetus sorte mea," and which is full of the most graphic descriptions of the huts and the soldiers' life in camp. As in the story of Madam Liberality we have glimpses of the author's childhood with all its little cares and joys, so in the "Story of a Short Life" we have the actual experience of a soldier's life in camp.

O'Reilly, the useful man of all trades, with his warm Irish heart, and his devotion to the Colonel's wife, his erratic and haphazard way of performing his duties, his admiration for the little gentleman in his velvet coat and lace collar, who stood erect by his side when the funeral passed to the music of the Dead March, imitating his soldierlike bearing and salute, is a vivid picture touched by the skilled hand of a word painter.

So also is the figure of the V.C., who in his first talk with the crippled child, stands before us as the ideal of a brave soldier, who sets but little store on his achievements, modest as the truly great always are, and encouraging the boy to fight a brave battle against irritable temper and impatience at the heavy cross of suffering laid upon him.

"'You are a V.C.,' Leonard is saying, 'and you ought to know. I suppose nothing--not even if I could be good always from this minute right away till I die--nothing could ever count up to the courage of a V.C.?'

"'God knows it could, a thousand times over,' was the V.C.'s reply.

"'Where are you going? Please don't go. Look at me. They're not going to chop the Queen's head off, are they?'

"'Heaven forbid! What are you thinking about?'

"'Why because--look at me again--ah! you've winked it away; but your eyes were full of tears, and the only other brave man I ever heard of crying was Uncle Rupert, and that was because he knew they were going to chop the poor king's head off.' That was enough to make anybody cry."

They were in the room where the picture of the young cavalier ancestor of Leonard hung. He always called him "Uncle Rupert," and he would meditate on the young face with the eyes dim with tears--eyes which always seemed to follow him, and, as he fancied, watched him sorrowfully, now no longer able to jump about and play with the Sweep, but lying helpless on his couch, or limping about on his crutches, often with pain and difficulty.

This conversation between the V.C. and Leonard was the beginning of a strong friendship which was put to the test one Sunday when Leonard lay dying in the hut of his uncle, the barrack-master.

The V.C. hated anything like display or bringing himself into notice. Thus it cost him something to take up his position outside the iron church in the camp, that Leonard might hear the last verses of the tug-of-war hymn. The V.C.'s attachment to his little friend triumphed over his dislike to stand alone singing,

"The Son of God goes forth to war, A kingly crown to gain."

The melodious voice of the gallant young soldier rang through the air and reached the dying ears of little Leonard. The soldiers loved this hymn, and the organist could never keep them back. The soldiers, the story says, had begun to tug. In a moment more the organ stopped, and the V.C. found himself with over three hundred men at his back, singing without accompaniment and in unison:

"A noble army, men and boys, The matron and the maid, Around the Saviour's throne rejoice In robes of white arrayed."

Even now, as the men paused to take breath after their "tug," the organ spoke again softly but seraphically. Clearer and sweeter above the voices behind him rose the voice of the V.C. singing to his little friend:

"They climbed the steep ascent to Heaven Through peril, toil and pain."

The men sang on, but the V.C. stopped as if he had been shot. For a man's hand had come to the Barrack Master's window _and pulled down the blind_!

Here, again, we have an instance of this author's power to touch her readers, even to tears, by the true pathos which needs but few words to bring it home to many hearts.

Taken as a whole, "The Story of a Short Life" has, it may be, some faults of construction, which arose from its being written in detached portions. The history of St. Martin, though it is not without its bearing on the story of the beautiful and once active child's bruised and broken life, and his desire to be a soldier, rather spoils the continuity of the narrative.

"The Story of a Short Life" was not published in book form until four days before the author's death; but it was not her last work, though from its appearance at that moment the title was spoken of by some reviewers as singularly appropriate.