I am a bold coachman, and drive a good hackWith a coat of five capes that quite covers my back;And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many milesFrom the narrowest alley in all broad St. Giles.Though poor, we are honest and very content,We pay as we go, for meat, drink, and for rent;To work all the week I am able and willing,I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling;And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries,The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries,And I'd rather (said I), since it saves me from sin,Be the driver without, than the toper within.
I am a bold coachman, and drive a good hackWith a coat of five capes that quite covers my back;And my wife keeps a sausage-shop, not many milesFrom the narrowest alley in all broad St. Giles.Though poor, we are honest and very content,We pay as we go, for meat, drink, and for rent;To work all the week I am able and willing,I never get drunk, and I waste not a shilling;And while at a tavern my gentleman tarries,The coachman grows richer than he whom he carries,And I'd rather (said I), since it saves me from sin,Be the driver without, than the toper within.
The Cheap Repositorywas written to teach moral precepts. Neither Hannah More nor her readers saw any artistic beauty in the sordid lives of this lower stratum of society. They were not interested in the superstitions of "Poor Sally Evans," who hung a plant called "midsummer-men" in her room on Midsummer eve so that she might learn by the bending of the leaves if her lover were true to her, and who consulted all the fortune-tellers that came to her door to learn whether the two moles on her cheek foretold two husbands or two children.Hannah More recorded these simple fancies of poor Sally only to show her folly and the misfortunes that afterwards befell her on account of her superstitions. Writers of that century either laughed at the ignorant blunders of the poor, or used them to point a moral. An interest in them because they are human beings like ourselves with common frailties belongs to the next century. Nothing proves more conclusively the growth of the democratic idea than the changed attitude of the novel toward the ignorant and the criminal.
Hannah More was always interested in the education of young ladies. She wrote a series of essays calledStrictures on the Modern System of Female Education, in which she protested loudly against the tendency to give girls an ornamental rather than a useful education. This was so highly approved that she was asked to make suggestions for the education of the Princess Charlotte. This led to her writingHints towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess.
Hannah More finally embodied her theories on the education of women in a book which she thought might appeal most strongly to the young ladies themselves,Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Running through it, is a slight romance. Cœlebs, filled with admiration for Eve, as describedinParadise Lost, where she is intent on her household duties, goes forth into the world to find, if possible, such a helpmate for himself. As he meets different women, he compares them with his ideal, and, finding them lacking, passes a severe criticism upon female education and accomplishments. Finally, he meets a lady with well-trained mind, who delights in works of charity and piety, one well calculated to conduct wisely the affairs of his household. She has besides proper humility, and accepts with gratitude the honour of becoming Cœlebs's wife.
Until her death at the advanced age of eighty-eight years, Hannah More continued to write moral and religious essays, so that she was before the public view for over fifty years, Mrs. S. C. Hall in her bookPilgrimages to English Shrinesthus describes her in old age:
"Hannah More wore a dress of very light green silk—a white China crape shawl was folded over her shoulders; her white hair was frizzled, after a by-gone fashion, above her brow, and thatbacked, as it were, by a very full double border of rich lace. The reality was as dissimilar from the picture painted by our imagination as anything could well be; such a sparkling, light, bright, 'summery'-looking old lady—more like a beneficent fairy, than the biting author ofMr. Fantom, though in perfect harmony withThe Shepherd of Salisbury Plain."
While Hannah More was endeavouring to improve the condition of the poor by teaching them diligence and sobriety, a group of earnest men and women were writing books and pamphlets in which they claimed that poverty and ignorance were due to unjust laws. The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau had filled their minds with bright pictures of a democracy. These theories were considered most dangerous in England, but they were the theories which helped to shape the American constitution. Among these English revolutionists were William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and for a time Amelia Opie.
The strongest political novel wasCaleb Williamsby William Godwin. In this he shows how through law man may become the destroyer of man. This interest in the rights of man awakened interest in the condition of women; and Mary Wollstonecraft, who afterwardbecame Mrs. Godwin, wroteVindication of the Rights of Woman. This pamphlet was declared contrary to the Bible and to Christian law, although all its demands have now been conceded. Charlotte Smith was also interested in the position of women and the laws affecting them. InDesmondshe discussed freely a marriage problem which in her day seemed very bold, while in her private life she ignored British prejudices.
She was the mother of twelve children and the wife of a man of many schemes, so that she was continually devising ways to extricate her large family from the financial difficulties into which he plunged them. At one time a friend suggested to her that her husband's attention should be turned toward religion. Her reply was: "Oh, for heaven's sake, do not put it into his head to take to religion, for if he does, he will instantly begin by building a cathedral." She is supposed to have caricatured him in the projector who hoped to make a fortune by manuring his estate with old wigs. But when her husband was imprisoned for debt, she shared his captivity, and began to write to support her family. Although she died at the age of fifty-seven, she found time during her manifold cares to write thirty-eight volumes.
But not only did Mrs. Smith endure sorrows as great as those of her favourite heroine, SidneyBiddulph, but one of her daughters was equally unfortunate. She was married unhappily, and returned with her three children for her mother to support. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, after twenty-three years of married life, agreed to live in separate countries, he in Normandy, and she in England, although they always corresponded and were interested in each other's welfare. Yet this separation, together with the revolutionary tendencies discovered in her writings, raised a storm of criticism against her.
InDesmond, which was regarded as so dangerous, Mrs. Smith has presented the following problem: Geraldine, the heroine, is married to a spendthrift, who attempts to retrieve his fortunes by forcing his wife to become the mistress of his friend, the rich Duc de Romagnecourt. To preserve her honour she leaves him, hoping to return to her mother's roof; but her mother refuses to receive her and bids her return to her husband. As she dares not do this, and is without money, a faithful friend, Desmond, takes her under his protection, asking no reward but the pleasure of serving her. Finally Geraldine receives a letter informing her that her husband is ill. She returns to him, and nurses him until he dies; after a year of mourning she marries Desmond.
How could a woman have behaved more virtuously than Geraldine? She is always high-minded and actuated by the purest motives. But it was feared that her example might encourage wives to desert their husbands, and consequently the novel was declared immoral.
Desmondwas published in 1792, when the feeling against France was very bitter in England. The plot, as it meanders slowly through three volumes, is constantly interrupted by political discussions. The author's clearly expressed preference for a republican government, and her criticism of English law, met with bitter disapproval. One of the characters pronounces a panegyric upon the greater prosperity and happiness that has come to the French soldiers, farmers, and peasants, since they came to believe that they were sharers in their own labours, and the hero of the book, writing from France to a friend in England, says: "I lament still more the disposition which too many Englishmen show to join in this unjust and infamous crusade, against the holy standard of freedom; and I blush for my country." In the same book, the author censures the penal laws of England, by which robbery to the amount of forty shillings is punishable with death; and criticises the delay of the courts in dealing justice.
This criticism is expressed tamely, barely more than suggested, when compared with the vigorous attacks which Dickens made in thenext century on English law and the slow action of justice in the famous "Circumlocution Office." Dickens wrote with such vigour that he brought about a reform. A modern reader findsDesmondearnest and sincere, but tame to the point of dulness. It seems strange how the Tory party could see in this book a menace to the British constitution. But a writer in theMonthly Reviewfor December, 1792, advocated her cause. "She is very justly of opinion," he writes, "that the great events that are passing in the world are no less interesting to women than to men, and that, in her solicitude to discharge the domestic duties, a woman ought not to forget that, in common with her father and husband, her brothers and sons, she is a citizen."
The publication ofThe Old Manor Housein the following year won back for her many of the friends that she had lost byDesmond. But in this work also the same love of liberty, the same indifference to social distinctions, occur. The hero ofThe Old Manor Housejoins the English army, and is sent to fight against the Americans; in the many reflections upon this conflict, the author shows that her sympathies are with the colonists. The father of the hero had married a young woman who had nothing to recommend her but "beauty, simplicity, and goodness." The hero himself falls in love with and marries a girl beneath him in rank, but he does not seemto feel that he has done a generous thing, nor does the heroine show any gratitude for this honour. Each seems unconscious that their difference in rank should be a bar to their union, provided they do not offend old Mrs. Rayland, the owner of the manor. A great change had come over the novel since Pamela was overpowered with gratitude to her profligate master, Mr. B, for condescending to make her his wife.
The revolutionary principles of Mrs. Smith's novels were soon forgotten, but two new elements were introduced by her that bore fruit in English fiction. Her great gift to the novel was the portrayal of refined, quiet, intellectual ladies, beside whom Evelina and Cecilia seem but school-girls. Her heroines may be poor, they may be of inferior rank, but they are always ladies of sensitive nature and cultivated manners, and are drawn with a feeling and tenderness which no novelist before her had reached. A contemporary said of Emmeline, "All is graceful, and pleasing to the sight, all, in short, is simple, femininely beautiful and chaste." This might be said of all the women she has created. Old Mrs. Rayland, the central personage in her most popular novel,The Old Manor House, notwithstanding her exalted ideas of her own importance as a member of the Rayland family, and the arbitrary manner in which she compels all to conform to her old-fashioned notions, is always the high-born lady. We smile at her, but she never forfeits our respect. Scott said of her, "Old Mrs. Rayland is without a peer."
Mrs. Smith's second gift to the novel was her charming descriptions of rural scenery. Nature had for a long time been banished from the arts. Wordsworth in one of his prefaces wrote:
"ExceptingThe Nocturnal Reverieof Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two in theWindsor Forestof Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication ofParadise LostandThe Seasonsdoes not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one, from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination."
Fiction was as barren of scenery as poetry. None of the novelists were cognisant of the country scenes amid which their plots were laid, with the possible exception of Goldsmith.The Vicar of Wakefieldhas a rural setting, and there are references to the trees, the blackbirds, and the hayfields; but description is not introduced for the sake of its own beauty as in the novels of Charlotte Smith. InEthelindathere are beautiful descriptions of the English Lakes, part of the scene being laid at Grasmere;Celestinais in the romantic Provence;Desmondin Normandy; and inThe Old Manor Housewe have the soft landscape of the south of England.
InThe Old Manor Houseshe thus describes one of the paths that led from the gate of the park to Rayland Hall:
"The other path, which in winter or in wet seasons was inconvenient, wound down a declivity, where furze and fern were shaded by a few old hawthorns and self-sown firs: out of the hill several streams were filtered, which, uniting at its foot, formed a large and clear pond of near twenty acres, fed by several imperceptible currents from other eminences which sheltered that side of the park; and the bason between the hills and the higher parts of it being thus filled, the water found its way over a stony boundary, where it was passable by a foot bridge unless in time of floods; and from thence fell into a lower part of the ground, where it formed a considerable river; and, winding among willows and poplars for near a mile, again spread into a still larger lake, on the edge of which was a mill, and opposite, without the park paling, wild heaths, where the ground was sandy, broken, and irregular, still however marked by plantations made in it by the Rayland family."
Every feature of the landscape is broughtdistinctly before the eye. Such descriptions are not unusual now, but they were first used by Charlotte Smith.
Even more realistic is the picture of a road in a part of the New Forest near Christchurch:
"It was a deep, hollow road, only wide enough for waggons, and was in some places shaded by hazel and other brush wood; in others, by old beech and oaks, whose roots wreathed about the bank, intermingled with ivy, holly, and evergreen fern, almost the only plants that appeared in a state of vegetation, unless the pale and sallow mistletoe, which here and there partially tinted with faint green the old trees above them.
"Everything was perfectly still around; even the robin, solitary songster of the frozen woods, had ceased his faint vespers to the setting sun, and hardly a breath of air agitated the leafless branches. This dead silence was interrupted by no sound but the slow progress of his horse, as the hollow ground beneath his feet sounded as if he trod on vaults. There was in the scene, and in this dull pause of nature, a solemnity not unpleasant to Orlando, in his present disposition of mind."
In 1842, Miss Mitford wrote to Miss Barrett: "Charlotte Smith's works, with all their faults, have yet a love of external nature, and a powerof describing it, which I never take a spring walk without feeling." And again she wrote to a friend referring to Mrs. Smith, "Except that they want cheerfulness, nothing can exceed the beauty of the style."
The life and writings of Mrs. Inchbald had some things in common with the life and writings of Mrs. Smith. Both were obliged to write to support themselves as well as those dependent upon them. Both had seen many phases of human nature, and both viewed with scorn the pretensions of the rich and beheld with pity the sorrows of the poor. Both were champions of social and political equality. Mrs. Inchbald, however, was an actress and a successful playwright, hence her novels are the more dramatic, but they lack the beautiful rural setting which gives a poetic atmosphere to the writings of Charlotte Smith.
A Simple Story, the first, of Mrs. Inchbald's two novels, has been called the precursor ofJane Eyre. It is the first novel in which we are more interested in what is felt than in what actually happens. Mr. Dorriforth, a Catholic priest, and Miss Milner, his ward, fall in love with each other, and we watch this hidden passion, which preys upon the health of both. He is horrified that he has broken his vows; she is mortified that she loves a man who, she believes, neithercan nor does return her feeling for him. When he is released from his vow, it is the emotion, not external happenings, that holds the interest. The first part of the story is brought to a close with the marriage of Mr. Dorriforth, now Lord Elmwood, and Miss Milner.
Seventeen years elapse between the two halves of the novel. During this time trouble has come between them and they have separated. The character of each has undergone a change. Traits of disposition that were first but lightly observed have been intensified with years. Mrs. Inchbald writes of the hero: "Dorriforth, the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, is become a hard-hearted tyrant; the compassionate, the feeling, the just Lord Elmwood, an example of implacable rigour and justice." His friend Sandford has also changed with the years, but he has been softened, not hardened by them—"the reprover, the enemy of the vain, the idle, and the wicked, but the friend and comforter of the forlorn and miserable."
The story of Dorriforth gives unity to the two parts of the novel. The conflict between his love and his anger holds the reader in suspense until the conclusion. The characters of eighteenth-century fiction were actuated by but a small number of motives. In nearly all the novels the men were either generous and free or stingy and hypocritical; the women wereeither virtuous and winsome, or immoral and brazen. Mrs. Inchbald possessed, only in a less degree, George Eliot's power of character-analysis; she observed minor qualities, and she was as unflinching in following the development of evil traits to a tragic conclusion as was the author ofAdam Bede.
InThe Gentleman's Magazinefor March, 1791, some one wrote ofA Simple Story:
"She has struck out a path entirely her own. She has disdained to follow the steps of her predecessors, and to construct a new novel, as is too commonly done, out of the scraps and fragments of earlier inventors. Her principal character, the Roman Catholic lord, is perfectly new: and she has conducted him, through a series of surprising well-contrasted adventures, with an uniformity of character and truth of description that have rarely been surpassed."
There is, however, one hackneyed scene. A young girl is seized, thrust into a chariot, and carried at full speed to a lonely place. There is hardly an early novel where this bald incident is not worked up into one or more chapters, with variations to suit the convenience of the plot. It was as much a part of the stock in trade of the novelist of the eighteenth century as a family quarrel is of the twentieth. With this exception,A Simple Storyis new in its plot, incidents, characters, and mode of treatment.Emotion did not play so important a part in a novel again until Charlotte Brontë wroteJane Eyre.
Mrs. Inchbald's only other novel,Nature and Art, shows the artificialities of society. Two cousins, William and Henry, are contrasted. William is the son of a dean. Henry's father went to Africa to live, whence he sent his son to his rich uncle to be educated. Henry fails to comprehend the society in which he finds himself placed, and cannot understand that there should be any poor people.
"'Why, here is provision enough for all the people,' said Henry; 'why should they want? why do not they go and take some of these things?'
"'They must not,' said the dean, 'unless they were their own.'
"'What, Uncle! Does no part of the earth, nor anything which the earth produces, belong to the poor?'"
His uncle fails to answer this question to his nephew's satisfaction.
The vices and the fawning duplicity of William are contrasted with the virtues and independent spirit of Henry.
"'I know I am called proud,' one day said William to Henry.
"'Dear Cousin,' replied Henry, 'it must be only then by those who do not know you; forto me you appear the humblest creature in the world.'
"'Do you really think so?'
"'I am certain of it; or would you always give up your opinion to that of persons in a superior state, however inferior in their understanding? ... I have more pride than you, for I will never stoop to act or to speak contrary to my feelings.'"
William rises to eminence, in time becoming a judge. Henry, who is always virtuous, can obtain no preferment. This contrast in the two cousins is not so overdrawn as at first appears. William represents the aristocracy of the old world; Henry, the free representative of a new country.
A tragic story runs through the novel, which becomes intensely dramatic at the point where William puts on his black cap to pronounce sentence on the girl whom he had ruined years before. He does not recognise her; but she, who had loved him through the years, becomes insane, not at the thought of death, but that he should be the one to pronounce the sentence. It is doubtful if any novelist before Scott had produced so thrilling a situation, a situation which grew naturally out of the plot, and the anguish of the poor unfortunate Agnes has the realism of Thomas Hardy or Tolstoi.
Only by reading these old novels can onecomprehend the change produced in England by the next half-century. The teachings of Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Inchbald were declared dangerous to the state. That they taught disrespect for authority, was one of the many charges brought against them. Yet with what ladylike reserve they advance views which a later generation applauded when boldly proclaimed by Dickens, Thackeray, and Disraeli!
The novel of the mysterious and the supernatural did not appear in modern literature until Horace Walpole wroteThe Castle of Otrantoin 1764, during the decade that was dominated by the realism of Smollett and Sterne. The author says it was an attempt to blend two kinds of romance, the ancient, which was all improbable, and the modern, which was a realistic copy of nature. The machinery of this novel is clumsy. An enormous helmet and a huge sword are the means by which an ancestor of Otranto, long since dead, restores the castle to a seeming peasant, who proves to be the rightful heir.
This book produced no imitators until 1777, when Clara Reeve wroteThe Old English Baron, which was plainly suggested by Walpole's novel, but is more delicate in the treatment of its ghostly visitants. Here, as inThe Castle of Otranto,the rightful heir has been brought up a peasant, ignorant of his high birth. Again his ancestors, supposedly dead and gone, bring him into his own. One night he is made to sleep in the haunted part of the castle, where his parents reveal to him in a dream things which he is later able to prove legally. He learns the truth about his birth, comes into his estate, and wins the lady of his heart. When he returns to the castle as its master, all the doors fly open through the agency of unseen hands to welcome their feudal lord.
The characters of both these novels are without interest, and the mysterious element fails to produce the slightest creepy thrill.
Twelve years passed before Walpole's novel found another imitator in Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, who so far excelled her two predecessors that she has been called the founder of the Gothic romance, and in this field she remains without a peer. In her first novel,The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne, as inThe Old English Baronby Clara Reeve, a peasant renowned for his courage and virtue loves and is beloved by a lady of rank. A strawberry mark on his arm proves that he is the Baron Malcolm and owner of the castle of Dunbayne, at which juncture amid great rejoicings the story ends.
The characters and the style foreshadow Mrs.Radcliffe's later work. The usurping Baron of Dunbayne, who has imprisoned in his castle the women who might oppose his ambition; the two melancholy widows; their gentle and pensive daughters; their brave, loyal, and virtuous sons in love respectively with the two daughters; the Count Santmorin, bold and passionate, who endeavours by force to carry off the woman he loves—these are types that Mrs. Radcliffe repeatedly developed until in her later novels they became real men and women with strong conflicting emotions.
But superior to all her other powers is her ability to awaken a feeling of the presence of the supernatural. The castle of Dunbayne has secret doors and subterranean passages. The mysterious sound, as of a lute, is wafted on the air from an unknown source. Alleyn, in endeavouring to escape through a secret passage, stumbles over something in the dark, and, on stooping to learn what it is, finds the cold hand of a corpse in his grasp. This dead man has nothing to do with the story, but is introduced merely to make the reader shudder, which Mrs. Radcliffe never fails to do, even after we have learned all the secrets of her art. We learn later in the book how the corpse happened to be left here unburied; for in that day of intense realism, half-way between the ancient belief in ghosts and the modern interest in mentalsuggestion, every occurrence outside the known laws of physics was greeted with a cynical smile. But, although Mrs. Radcliffe always explains the mystery in her books, we hold our breath whenever she designs that we shall.
The Sicilian Romance,The Romance of the Forest,The Mysteries of Udolpho, andThe Italianwere written and published during the next seven years and each one shows a marked artistic advance over its predecessor. With the opening paragraph of each, we are carried at once into the land of the unreal, into regions of poetry rather than of prose. Rugged mountains with their concealed valleys, whispering forests which the eye cannot penetrate, Gothic ruins with vaulted chambers and subterranean passages, are the scenes of her stories; while event after event of her complicated plot happens either just as the mists of evening are obscuring the sun, or while the moonlight is throwing fantastic shadows over the landscape. It is an atmosphere of mystery in which one feels the weird presence of the supernatural. This is heightened by the ghostly suggestions she brings to the mind, as incorporeal as spirits. A low hurried breathing in the dark, lights flashing out from unexpected places, forms gliding noiselessly along the dark corridors, a word of warning from an unseen source, causethe reader to wait with hushed attention for the unfolding of the mystery.
Sometimes the solution is trivial. The reader and the inmates of Udolpho are held in suspense chapter after chapter by some terrible appearance behind a black veil. When Emily ventures to draw the curtain, she drops senseless to the ground. But this appearance turns out to be merely a wax effigy placed there by chance. Often the explanation is more satisfactory. The disappearance of Ludovico during the night from the haunted chamber where he was watching in hopes of meeting the spirits that infested it, makes the most sceptical believe for a time in the reality of the ghostly visitants; and his reappearance at the close of the book, the slave of pirates who had found a secret passage leading from the sea to this room, and had used it as a place of rendezvous, is declared by Sir Walter Scott to meet all the requirements of romance.
But by a series of strange coincidences and dreams Mrs. Radcliffe still makes us feel that the destiny of her characters is shaped by an unseen power. Adeline is led by chance to the very ruin where her unknown father had been murdered years before. She sees in dreams all the incidents of the deed, and a manuscript he had written while in the power of his enemies falls into her hands. Again by chance shefinds an asylum in the home of a clergyman, Arnaud La Luc, who proves to be the father of her lover, Theodore Peyrou. It seems to be by the interposition of Providence that Ellena finds her mother and is recognised by her father. So in every tale we are made aware of powers not mortal shaping human destiny.
Mrs. Radcliffe adds to this consciousness of the presence of the supernatural by another, perhaps more legitimate, method. She felt what Wordsworth expressed inTintern Abbey, written the year after her last novel was published:
And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things.
And I have feltA presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf something far more deeply interfused,Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,And the round ocean and the living air,And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;A motion and a spirit, that impelsAll thinking things, all objects of all thought,And rolls through all things.
Mrs. Radcliffe seldom loses her feeling for nature, and has a strong sense of the effect of environment on her characters. Julia, when in doubt about the fate of Hippolitus, often walked in the evening under the shade of the high trees that environed the abbey. "The dewy coolness of the air refreshed her. The innumerable roseate tints which the partingsun-beams reflected on the rocks above, and the fine vermil glow diffused over the romantic scene beneath, softly fading from the eye as the night shades fell, excited sensations of a sweet and tranquil nature, and soothed her into a temporary forgetfulness of her sorrow." As the happy lovers, Vivaldi and Ellena, are gliding along the Bay of Naples, they hear from the shore the voices of the vine-dressers, as they repose after the labours of the day, and catch the strains of music from fishermen who are dancing on the margin of the sea.
Sometimes nature is prophetic. The whole description of the castle of Udolpho, when Emily first beholds it, is symbolical of the sufferings she is to endure there: "As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From these, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared invade its solitary reign." When Emily is happy in the peasant's home in the valley below, she lingers at the casement after the sun has set: "But a clear moonlight that succeeded gave to the landscape what timegives to the scenes of past life, when it softens all their harsh features, and throws over the whole the mellowing shade of distant contemplation." It is this feeling for nature as a constant presence in daily life, now elating the mind with joy, now awakening a sense of foreboding or inspiring terror, and again soothing the mind to repose, that gives to her books a permanent hold upon the imagination and marks their author as a woman of genius.
In her response to nature, she belongs to the Lake School. Scott said of her: "Mrs. Radcliffe has a title to be considered as the first poetess of romantic fiction, that is, if actual rhythm shall not be deemed essential to poetry." Mrs. Smith describes nature as we all know it, as it appears on the canvasses of Constable and Wilson. Mrs. Radcliffe's descriptions of ideal and romantic nature have earned for her the name of the English Salvator Rosa.
Mrs. Radcliffe's characters are not without interest, although they are often mere types. All her heroes and heroines are ladies and gentlemen of native courtesy, superior education, and accomplishments. InThe Mysteries of Udolphoshe has set forth the education which St. Aubert gave to his daughter, Emily: "St. Aubert cultivated her understanding with the most scrupulous care. He gave her a general view of the sciences, and an exact acquaintancewith every part of elegant literature. He taught her Latin and English, chiefly that she might understand the sublimity of their best poets. She discovered in her early years a taste for works of genius; and it was St. Aubert's principle, as well as his inclination, to promote every innocent means of happiness. 'A well informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the contagion of vice and folly.'"
In all their circumstances her characters are well-bred. This type has been nearly lost in literature, due, perhaps, to the minuter study of manners and the analysis of character. When an author surveys his ladies and gentlemen through a reading-glass, and points the finger at their oddities and pries into their inmost secrets, even the Chesterfields become awkward and clownish. But Mrs. Radcliffe, like Mrs. Smith, is a true gentlewoman, and speaks of her characters with the delicate respect of true gentility. Julia, Adeline, Emily, and Ellena, the heroines of four of her books, love nature, and while away the melancholy hours by playing on the lute or writing poetry, and are, moreover, well qualified to have charge of a baronial castle and its dependencies. Her heroes are worthy of her heroines. As they are generally seen in the presence of ladies, if they have vices there is no occasion for their display.
It is only in the characters of her villainsthat good and evil are intertwined, and she awakens our sympathy for them equally with our horror. Monsieur La Motte, a weak man in the power of an unscrupulous one, is the best drawn character inThe Romance of the Forest. He has taken Adeline under his protection and has been as a father to her. But before this he had committed a crime which has placed his life in the hands of a powerful marquis. To free himself he consents to surrender Adeline to the marquis, who has become enamoured of her beauty, hoping by the sacrifice of her honour to save his own life. He is agitated in the presence of Adeline, and trembles at the approach of any stranger. Scott said of him, "He is the exact picture of the needy man who has seen better days."
InThe Italian, Schedoni, a monk of the order of Black Penitents for whom the novel is named, is guilty of the most atrocious crimes in order that he may further his own ambition, but he is not devoid of natural feeling. Scott says the scene in which he "is in the act of raising his arm to murder his sleeping victim, and discovers her to be his own child, is of a new, grand, and powerful character; and the horrors of the wretch who, on the brink of murder, has just escaped from committing a crime of yet more exaggerated horror, constitute the strongest painting which has been produced by Mrs.Radcliffe's pencil, and form a crisis well fitted to be actually embodied on canvas by some great master."
Every book has one or more gloomy, deep-plotting villains. But all the people of rank bear unmistakable marks of their nobility, even when their natures have become depraved by crime. In this she is the equal of Scott.
In every ruined abbey and castle there is a servant who brings in a comic element and relieves the strained feelings. Peter, Annette, and Paulo are all faithful but garrulous, and often bring disaster upon their masters by overzeal in their service.
When Vivaldi, the hero ofThe Italian, is brought before the tribunal of the inquisition, his faithful servant, Paulo, rails bitterly at the treatment his master has received. Vivaldi, well knowing the danger which they both incur by too free speech, bids him speak in a whisper:
"'A whisper,' shouted Paulo, 'I scorn to speak in a whisper. I will speak so loud that every word I say shall ring in the ears of all those old black devils on the benches yonder, ay, and those on that mountebank stage, too, that sit there looking so grim and angry, as if they longed to tear us in pieces. They—'
"'Silence,' said Vivaldi with emphasis. 'Paulo, I command you to be silent.'
"'They shall know a bit of my mind,' continued Paulo, without noticing Vivaldi. 'I will tell them what they have to expect from all their cruel usage of my poor master. Where do they expect to go to when they die, I wonder? Though for that matter, they can scarcely go to a worse place than that they are in already, and I suppose it is knowing that which makes them not afraid of being ever so wicked. They shall hear a little plain truth for once in their lives, however; they shall hear—'"
But by this time Paulo is dragged from the room.
The plots of all Mrs. Radcliffe's novels are complicated. A whole skein is knotted and must be unravelled thread by thread.The Mysteries of Udolphois the most involved. Characters are introduced that are for a time apparently forgotten; one sub-plot appears within another, but at the end each is found necessary to the whole.
The Italianis simpler than the others: the plot is less involved, and there are many strong situations. The opening sentence at once arouses the interests of the reader: "Within the shade of the portico, a person with folded arms, and eyes directed towards the ground, was pacing behind the pillars the whole extent of the pavement, and was apparently so engaged by his own thoughts as not to observe that strangers were approaching. Heturned, however, suddenly, as if startled by the sound of steps, and then, without further pausing, glided to a door that opened into the church, and disappeared." Another scene in which the Marchesa Vivaldi and Schedoni are plotting the death of Ellena, is justly famous. The former is actuated by the desire to prevent her son's marriage to a woman of inferior rank; the latter hopes that he may gain an influence over the powerful Marchesa that will lead to his promotion in the church. Their conference, which takes place in the choir of the convent of San Nicolo, is broken in upon by the faint sound of the organ followed by slow voices chanting the first requiem for the dead.
The Italianis generally considered the strongest of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. It was published in 1797, and was as enthusiastically received as were its predecessors, but for some reason it was the last book Mrs. Radcliffe published. Neither the fame it brought her, nor the eight hundred pounds she received for it from her publishers, tempted its author from her life of retirement. Publicity was distasteful to her. At the age of thirty-four, at an age when many novelists had written nothing, she ceased from writing, and spent the rest of her years either in travel or in the seclusion of her own home.
The novel at this time was not considered seriously as a work of art, and Mrs. Radcliffe may have considered that she was but trifling with time by employing her pen in that way. In looking over the book reviews inThe Gentlemen's Magazinefor the years from 1790 to 1800, it is significant that, while column after column is spent in lavish praise of a book of medicine or science which the next generation proved to be false, and of poetry that had no merit except that its feet could be counted, seldom is a novel reviewed in its pages.The Mysteries of Udolphowas criticised for its lengthy descriptions, andThe Italianwas ignored.
The direct influence of these novels on the literature of the nineteenth century cannot be estimated. Mrs. Radcliffe's influence upon her contemporaries can be more easily traced. The year after the publication ofThe Mysteries of UdolphoLewis wroteThe Monk. This has all the horrors but none of the refined delicacy of Mrs. Radcliffe's work. Robert Charles Maturin borrowed many suggestions from her, and the gentle satire ofNorthanger Abbeycould never have been written if Jane Austen had not herself come under the influence ofThe Romance of the Forest.
But her greatest influence was upon Scott. The four great realistic novelists of the eighteenth century, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett andSterne whose influence can be so often traced in Thackeray and Dickens, seem never to have touched the responsive nature of Scott. He edited their works and often spoke in their praise, but that which was deepest and truest in him, which gave birth to his poetry and his novels, seems never to have been aware of their existence. Mrs. Radcliffe and Maria Edgewood were his most powerful teachers.
Andrew Lang in the introduction toRob Royin the Border edition of theWaverley Novelscalls attention to the fact that Waverley, Guy Mannering, Lovel ofThe Antiquary, and Frank Osbaldistone were all poets. Not only these men, but others, as Edward Glendinning and Edgar Ravenswood, bear a strong family resemblance to Theodore Peyrou, Valancourt, and Vivaldi, as well as to some of the other less important male characters in Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Scott's men stand forth more clearly drawn, while Mrs. Radcliffe's are often but dimly outlined. Ellen Douglas, the daughter of an exiled family; the melancholy Flora MacIvor, who whiled away her hours by translating Highland poetry into English; Mary Avenel, dwelling in a remote castle, are all refined, educated gentlewomen such as Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Radcliffe delighted in, and are placed in situations similar to those in which Julia, Adeline, and Emily are found.
But the heroines of Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Radcliffe have a quality which not even Scott has been able to give to his women. It is expressed by a word often used during the reign of the Georges, but since gone out of fashion. They were women of fine sensibilities. Johnson defines this as quickness of feeling, and it has been used to mean a quickness of perception of the soul as distinguished from the intellect. The sensibilities of women may not be finer than those of men, but they respond to a greater variety of emotions. This gives to them a certain evanescent quality which we find in Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, the portraits of Madame Le Brun and Angelica Kauffman, and the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This quality men have almost never grasped whether working with the pen or the brush. Rosalind, Juliet, Viola, Beatrice, all possess it; and in a less degree, Diana of the Crossways is true to her sex in this respect. But the features of nearly every famous Madonna, no matter how skilful the artist that painted her, are stiff and wooden when looked at from this point of view, and Scott's heroines, with the possible exception of Jeanie Deans, are immobile when compared with woman as portrayed by many an inferior artist of her own sex.
Scott's complicated plots and his constant introduction of characters who are surroundedby mystery or are living in disguise again suggest Mrs. Radcliffe. Again and again he selected the same scenes that had appealed to her, and in his earlier novels and poems he filled them in with the same details which she had chosen. Perhaps it is due to her influence that all the hills of Scotland, as some critic has observed, become mountains when he touches them: "The sun was nearly set behind the distant mountain of Liddesdale" was the beginning of an early romance to have been entitledThomas the Rhymer. Knockwinnock Bay inThe Antiquaryis first seen at sunset, and it is night when Guy Mannering arrives at Ellangowan Castle. Melrose is described by moonlight. The sun as it sets in the Trossachs brings to the mind of Scott the very outlines and colours which Mrs. Radcliffe had used in giving the first appearance of Udolpho, a scene which Scott has highly praised; while these famous lines of James Fitz-James have caught the very essence of one of her favourite spots: