If in this age of steam and electricity you would escape from the noise of the city, and experience for an hour the quiet joys of the English countryside, at a time when a chaise and four was the quickest means of reaching the metropolis from any part of the kingdom, turn to the pages of Jane Austen. In them have been preserved faithful pictures of the peaceful life of the south of England exactly as it existed a hundred and more years ago. The gently sloping downs crossed by hedgerows, the lazy rivers meandering through the valleys, the little villages half hidden in the orchards of apple, pear, peach, and plum, all suggest the land of happy homes. On the outskirts of every village there are the two of three gentlemen's houses: the substantial mansion of the squire, with its park of old elms, oaks, and beeches; a smaller house suitable for a gentleman of slender income, like Mr. Bennet, the father of the four girls ofPride and Prejudice, or for an elder son who will in time take possession of the hall, like CharlesMusgrove in the story ofPersuasion; and the still smaller parsonage standing in the garden of vegetables and flowers, surrounded by a laurel hedge, where lives a younger son or a friend of the family.
The gentry that inhabit these homes carry on the plot of Jane Austen's novels. And what an even, almost uneventful life they lead. Life with them is one long holiday. Dance follows dance, varied only by a dinner at the mansion, a picnic party, private theatricals, a brief sojourn at Bath, a briefer one in London, or a ride to Lyme, seventeen miles away. But Cupid ever hovers near, and in each one of these groups of gentle folk we watch the course of true love, "which never did run smooth." For in spite of match-making mammas and stern fathers with an eye that the marriage settlements shall be sufficient to clothe sentiment with true British respectability, the six novels of Jane Austen contain as many true and tender love stories, differing from one another not so much in the incidents as in the characters of the lovers. Unlike the older novelists, who constantly drew the attention away from the main theme by stories of thrilling adventure, Jane Austen holds closely to the great problem of fiction, whether or not the youths and maidens will be happily married at the conclusion of the book.
When Darcy first meets Elizabeth, the heroineofPride and Prejudice, he shuns her and her family as vulgar. Elizabeth is so prejudiced against him that she cannot forget his insulting arrogance. But Darcy's love cannot be stemmed. Other heroes have plunged into raging floods to rescue the fair heroine. Darcy does more. For love of Elizabeth he accepts the whole Bennet family, including Mrs. Bennet, who always says the silly thing, and Lydia, who had almost invited Wickham to elope with her and was indifferent as to whether or not he married her, until Darcy compelled him to do so—a bitter humiliation for a man whose greatest fault was overweening pride of birth. At last, Elizabeth comprehends the extent of his generosity, his superior understanding and strength of character, and Darcy is rewarded by the hand of the sunniest heroine in all fiction. Who but Elizabeth with her independent spirit, quick intelligence and lively wit could curb his family pride! They marry, and we know they will be happy.
Sense and Sensibilityworks out a problem for lovers. Like many romantic girls, Marianne asserts that a woman can love but once. "He never loved that loved not at first sight" is also part of her creed. But after her infatuation for Willoughby has been cured, she contentedly marries Colonel Brandon, although she knows that he frequently has rheumatism and wearsflannel waistcoats. Marianne will be much happier as the wife of a man of mature years who loves her impulsive nature and can control it than she would have been with the gallant who won her first love.
In the piquant satire ofNorthanger Abbeythere is another problem suggested. This book is distinctly modern. Man is the pursued; woman the pursuer. Bernard Shaw has treated this momentous question in a serious manner in many of his plays. Jane Austen regards it with a humorous smile. Did Henry Tilney ever know why he married Catherine Morland? Or was this daughter of a country parsonage, without beauty, without accomplishments, and without riches, aware that on her first visit to Bath she used feminine arts that would have put Becky Sharp to shame—who, by the way, was a little girl at that time—and would have made Anne, the knowing heroine ofMan and Superman, green with envy? Yet her arts consisted simply in following the dictates of her heart. She fell in love with Henry Tilney; looked for him whenever she entered the pump-room; was unhappy if he were absent and expressed her joy at his approach; saw in him the paragon of wisdom and looked at every thing with his eyes. From first ignoring her, he began to seek her society, and learn the true excellence of her character. And then Jane Austen explains:
"I must confess that this affection originated in nothing better than gratitude; or in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity, but if it is as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will be all my own."
But lest we think that Miss Austen is asserting a rule that women take the initiative in this matter of love and marriage, it is well to remember that Darcy first loved Elizabeth Bennet, and forced her to acknowledge his worth, and that Colonel Brandon married a young lady who had formerly supposed him at the advanced age of thirty-five to be occupied with thoughts of death rather than of love.
And Mr. Knightley is another hero who fell in love and waited patiently for its return. Emma is like Marianne in one respect, she needed guidance. Almost from childhood the mistress of her father's house and the first lady in the society of Highbury, she was threatened by two evils, "the power of having too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself." Mr. Knightley, the elder brother of her elder sister's husband, is the only person that sees that she is not always wise and that she is sometimes selfish. Heis the only one that chides her. Emma is interested in promoting the welfare of all about her, but she lacks that most feminine quality of insight, so that her well-meant help, as in the case of her protégée, poor Harriet Smith, is sometimes productive of evil. And yet Emma is brave and self-forgetful. Not until she has schooled herself to think of Mr. Knightley as married to Harriet, is she aware how much he is a part of her own life. But this is only another instance of her blindness. When she learns that he has loved her with all her faults ever since she was thirteen, she is very happy. There is no tumultuous passion in this union, but we are assured of a love that will abide through the years.
InMansfield Parkand inPersuasion, there is another variety of the old story. Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, the one the daughter of a poor lieutenant of marines, whose family is the most ill-bred in all Miss Austen's books, the other the neglected daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, Baronet, have more in common than any other of her heroines. Although these stories are different, yet in each it is the devotion of the heroine that guides the course of love through many obstacles into a quiet haven. Who that reads their story will say that Miss Austen's maidens are without passion? They do not analyse their feelings, nor do they pour themforth in wild soliloquy. But the heart of each is clearly revealed through little acts and expressions. Fanny Price, cherishing a love for Edmund Bertram, who was kind to her when she was neglected by everybody else, refuses to marry the rich, handsome, and brilliant Mr. Crawford, although she herself is penniless. We feel her misery as she realises that she is nothing but a friend to Edmund and rejoice with her when her love awakens a response. Anne Elliot, the gentlest of all her heroines, who in obedience to her father has broken her engagement to Captain Wentworth eight years before, when she is again thrown into his company, observes his every expression, and grows sad and weak in health at his studied neglect. Other heroines have said more, but none have felt more than Miss Austen's. Anne Elliot herself has spoken for them:
"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one) is that of loving longest, when existence, or when hope, is gone."
But Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, is a dramatist. So, lest this be taken for Miss Austen's opinion, Captain Wentworth has the last word here when he writes to Anne, "Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. Unjust I have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."
And so, at the close of these novels, two more happy homes are added to those of rural England.
Are there many heroes and heroines for whom we dare predict a happy married life? Would Mr. B. and Pamela have written such long letters to each other about the training of their children if conversation had not been a bore? Evelina must have been disappointed to discover that Lord Orville lived on roast beef, plum-pudding, and port wine instead of music and poetry. Of all Scott's heroes and heroines none had sacrificed more for each other than Ivanhoe and Rowena; he gave up Rotherwood, and, as a disinherited son, sought forgetfulness of her charms in distant Palestine; she put aside all hopes of becoming a Saxon queen, and was true to the gallant son of Cedric. Yet we have Thackeray for authority that they were not only unhappy, but often quarrelled after Scott left them at the altar. And none of Thackeray's marriages turned out well, although Becky Sharp made Rodney Crawley very happy until he discovered her wiles. Dickens was perhaps more fortunate, but David was led away by the cunning ways of Dora before he discovered a companion and helpmate in Agnes, a heroine worthy to be placed beside Elizabeth and Jane Bennet. George Eliot's books and those of later novelists are rather a warning than an incentive to matrimony. Have allour sighs and tears over the mishaps of ill-starred lovers been in vain, and is it true that when the curtain falls at the wedding it is only to shut from view a scene of domestic infelicity?
Not so with Jane Austen. She is the queen of match-makers. The marriages brought about by her guidance give a belief in the permanency of English home life, quite as necessary for the welfare of the kingdom as the stability of Magna Charta. Her heroes have qualities that wear well, and her heroines might have inspired Wordsworth's lines:
A creature not too bright or goodFor human nature's daily food,For transient sorrows, simple wiles,Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
A creature not too bright or goodFor human nature's daily food,For transient sorrows, simple wiles,Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
Besides the lovers, many diverting people lived in these homes of the gentry, quite as amusing as any of the peasants who were brought upon the stage by the older dramatists for our entertainment; perhaps more amusing, because of their self-sufficiency. These people seldom do anything that is peculiar, nor are they the objects of practical jokes, as were so many men and women in the earlier books; but they talk freely both at home and abroad about whatever is of interest to them. They seldom use stereotyped words or phrases, yet their conversation is a crystal from which the whole mental horizon of the speaker shines forth.When Mrs. Bennet learns that Netherfield Park has been let to a single gentleman of fortune, her first exclamation comes from the heart—"What a fine thing for our girls!" After Mr. Collins, upon whom Mr. Bennet's estate is entailed, has resolved to make all possible amends to his daughters by marrying one of them, and is making his famous proposal to Elizabeth, he says with solemn composure: "But, before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying—and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did." No wonder Elizabeth laughed at such a lover. Mr. Collins is the same type of man as Mr. Smith, whom Evelina meets at Snow Hill, but infinitely more ridiculous because he is an educated man of some attainments.
Then there is Mr. Woodhouse, the father of Emma, with his constant solicitude for everybody's health and his fears that they may have indigestion. When his daughter and her family arrive from London, all well and hearty, he says by way of hospitality: "You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all have a basin of gruel." His friend Mrs. Bates is always voluble. She is describing Mr. Dixon's country seat in Ireland to Emma: "Jane has heard a great deal of itsbeauty—from Mr. Dixon, I mean—I do not know that she ever heard about it from anybody else—but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses—and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them—for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter's not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them; of course she heard everything he might be telling Miss Campbell about his own home in Ireland." One respects the mental power of a woman who could remember the main thread of her discourse amid so many digressions.
How characteristic is Sir Walter Elliot's reply to the gentleman who is trying to bring a neighbour's name to his mind. "Wentworth? Oh, ay! Mr. Wentworth, the curate of Monkford. You misled me by the termGentleman. I thought you were speaking of some man of property." And not the least amusing of these people is Mr. Elton's bride, a pert sort of woman who for some reason patronises everybody into whose company she is thrown. After meeting Mr. Knightley, by far the most consequential person about Highbury, she expresses her approval of him to Emma: "Knightley is quite the gentleman! I like him very much! Decidedly, I think, a very gentlemanlike man."And Emma wonders if Mr. Knightley has been able to pronounce this self-important newcomer as quite the lady. Pick out almost any speech at random, and anyone who is at all familiar with Miss Austen will easily recognise the speaker.
This ability to describe people by such delicate touches has been highly praised by Macaulay in the essay on Madame D'Arblay before quoted. He thus compares Jane Austen with Shakespeare:
"Admirable as he [Shakespeare] was in all parts of his art, we must admire him for this, that, while he has left us a greater number of striking portraits than all other dramatists put together, he has scarcely left us a single caricature. Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers who, in the point which we have mentioned, have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for instance, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom, Mr.Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class. They have all been liberally educated. They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not one of them has any hobbyhorse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to his reverend brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed."
Like Shakespeare Jane Austen knew the inner nature by intuition, and had learned its outward expression by observation. Character not only affects the speech of each one of her men and women, but determines their destiny and shapes the plot of the story. The class she has chosen to represent is the least under the sway of circumstances of any in England. With money for all needs, and leisure for enjoyment, free from obligations which pertain tohigher rank, character here develops freely and naturally. Not one of the matchmaking men or women, not even the intelligent Emma, succeeds in changing the life of those whom they attempt to influence. Character is stronger than any outside agency. In this respect, Jane Austen is decidedly at variance with Thomas Hardy or Tolstoi, but she is at one with Shakespeare.
In the opening paragraph of each book, character begins to assert itself. If Darcy had been withoutPRIDE, and Elizabeth had been withoutPREJUDICE; if Marianne had had her sensibilities under control; if Emma had not been blind; if Captain Wentworth had not been unjust and resentful—there would have been no story to tell, the course of true love would have run so smooth. But all of them are loving and faithful, and these qualities in the end conquer, and bring the stories to a happy conclusion.
Edmund Gosse thus writes of her delineation of character:
"Like Balzac, like Tourgenieff at his best, Jane Austen gives the reader an impression of knowing everything there was to know about her creations, of being incapable of error as to their acts, thoughts, or emotions. She presents an absolute illusion of reality; she exhibits an art so consummate that we mistake it fornature. She never mixes her own temperament with those of her characters, she is never swayed by them, she never loses for a moment her perfect, serene control of them. Among the creators of the world, Jane Austen takes a place that is with the highest and that is purely her own."
This seeming control of her characters is due largely to the fact that whatever happens to them is just what might have been expected. This is particularly true of the bad people she has created. Innocence led astray has been a popular means of exciting interest ever since Richardson told the sad story of Clarissa Harlowe. But there is no such incident in Jane Austen's books. Lydia, who hasn't a thought for anybody nor anything but a red-coat, and Wickham, who elopes with her without any intention of matrimony, are properly punished, by being married to each other, and the future unhappiness which must be their lot is due to their own natures. Willoughby had seduced one girl, trifled with the affections of another, and married an heiress, but he finds only misery, and sadly says: "I must rub through the world as well as I can." Henry Crawford, and his sister, with so much that is good in their natures, yet with a lack of moral fibre, are both unhappy. Each has lost the one they respected and loved and might have married. With what wit sheleaves William Elliot, the all-agreeable man, the heir of Sir Walter, who, that he may keep the latter single, has enticed the scheming Mrs. Clay from his home:
"And it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning or hers may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William."
And so punishment is meted out with that nicety of judgment which distinguishes every detail of her novels.
But Jane Austen has little interest in immorality. "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery; I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can," she says inMansfield Park. And her readers have observed that deeds of evil take place off the stage, while she records only what is reported of them in the drawing-room.
She dwells as little on misery as on guilt. She shows in her letters charitable regard for the poor people of Steventon and Chawton. She describes minutely the unkempt house of Lieutenant Price at Portsmouth with its incessant noise of heavy steps, banging doors, and untrained servants, where every voice was loud excepting Mrs. Price's, which resembled "the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness." Miss Austen's pen wasable to portray scenes of squalor and vice; she chose to turn from them. Perhaps she felt instinctively that true æsthetic pleasure cannot be produced by dwelling on a scene in a book which would be repulsive to the eye. Miss Austen wrote before there was much serious interest in the lives of the poor. Their only function in literature had been to provoke laughter. The sensitive daughter of the rector of Steventon may have felt, as others have, that there was no occasion to laugh at the blunders and ill-manners of peasants, which were proper and natural to their condition of life. She did not need these people to entertain us. There were quite as funny people in the hall as in the cottage, funnier, even, because their humorous sayings spring from a humorous twist in their natures, not from ignorance.
Sir Walter Scott, after readingPride and Prejudicefor the third time, said:
"That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me."
Sir Walter Scott proved the truth of the abovestatement inSt. Ronan's Well, one of the least successful of his novels, which was written in imitation of Jane Austen.
Because Jane Austen confined her work so closely to ordinary middle-class people, she has been called narrow. But if we judge men and women not by dress and manners, but by what they are, these people furnish as broad a view of humanity as could be obtained by travelling up and down the world. A trained botanist will gather an herbarium from a country lane that will give a more extended knowledge of botany than a less skilful one could get by travelling through the woods and fields of a continent. Very few novelists have portrayed greater varieties of human nature than Miss Austen.
Jane Austen's style has been praised by all critics. George William Curtis wrote of her art:
"She writes wholly as an artist, while George Eliot advocates views, and Miss Brontë's fiery page is often a personal protest. In Miss Austen, on the other hand, there is in kind, but infinitely less in degree, the same clear atmosphere of pure art which we perceive in Shakespeare and Goethe."
While Miss Austen has been so often likened to Shakespeare, she is in no sense a romantic writer. She belongs purely to the classicschool. She has the restraint, the perfect poise of the Greeks. She recognises everywhere the need of law. She accepts society as it exists under the restraints of law and religion. She no more questioned the English prayer book and the English constitution than Homer questioned the existence of the gods and the supreme power of kings. This feeling for law shaped her art. Her plots are perfectly symmetrical. There is no redundancy in expression. There is none of that wild luxuriance in fancy or expression so common in romanticism. Each word used is needed in the sentence, and is in its proper place. The strength of romanticism lies in its impetuosity; the strength of classicism lies in its self-control. This is the strength of Jane Austen.
Emotion in her books is so restrained that the superficial reader doubts its existence. Yet her characters feel deeply and are sensitive to the acts and words of those about them. Although their feelings are under control, they are none the less real. The reader watches, but is not asked to participate in their griefs.
As she never moves to tears, neither does she provoke laughter, but she lightens every page with a quiet glow of humour. Humour was as natural to her as to Elizabeth Bennet, whose sayings give the sparkle toPride and Prejudice. Much of the humour in her letters consists of anunexpected turn to a sentence or an incongruous combination of words. She writes of meeting "Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife or himself must be dead." She announces the marriage of a gentleman to a widow by the laconic message, "Dr. Gardiner was married yesterday to Mrs. Percy and her three daughters." And again she says that a certain Mrs. Blount appeared the same as in September, "with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and fat neck." She sees through the affectations of society and observes the pleasure afforded by the small misfortunes of another as plainly as did Thackeray later. The wife of a certain gentleman is discovered "to be everything the neighbourhood could wish, silly and cross as well as extravagant." She finds continual source of enjoyment in people's foibles, and thinks that her own misfortunes ought to furnish jokes to her acquaintances, or she will die in their debt for entertainment.
In a less refined degree, this was the view of life of Miss Burney, her favourite author. Miss Austen was but three years old when Evelina made her début at Ranelagh, and not over seven when Cecilia visited her three guardians in London:Camillawas published in the year that it is thought that Miss Austen beganPride and Prejudice. During these years, Miss Burney's fame was undimmed. Consider yourself for a moment in a circulating library, in the year 1797 or 1798, suppose you are fond of novel reading, and have moreover the refined tastes of Miss Austen; you will find there no novelist who can hold a rival place to Miss Burney. Miss Austen refers to her both in her novels and letters. In only one passage in her novels has she interrupted her story to express a general opinion; that is inNorthanger Abbey, where she praises the art of the novelist, and refers particularly toCecilia,Camilla, andBelinda. In the same novel John Thorpe's lack of taste is emphasised by his callingCamillaa stupid book of unnatural stuff, which he could not get through. She evidently discussed Miss Burney's novels with the people she met; a certain young man just entered at Oxford has heard thatEvelinawas written by Dr. Johnson, and she finds two traits in a certain Miss Fletcher very pleasing: "She admiresCamilla, and drinks no cream in her tea." But Miss Austen was no blind disciple of Miss Burney. All the odd characters which Miss Burney culled from the lower ranks of society were swept away by Miss Austen. Everything approaching tragedy or the improbable is avoided, but what is left is amplified and refined until there is no more trace of Miss Burney than there is of Perugino in the paintings of Raphael.
Artists in other lines have striven in their work for a unified whole. Most novelists have been more intent on pointing a moral or producing a sensation than on the technique of their writing. Their works as a whole lack proportion. They obtrude unnecessarily in one part and are weak in another. Miss Austen wrote because the characters in her brain demanded expression. Who could remain silent with Elizabeth Bennet urging her to utterance? She wrote with the greatest care because she could do nothing slovenly. Whatever place may be assigned to her as the years go by, her novels surpass all others written in English in their perfect art.
Miss Austen's genius was but slowly recognised. Her first books were published in 1811, only three years beforeWaverley, and her last novels were published after it. Who will linger over the teacups while knights in armour are riding the streets without? It is not until the cavalcade has passed that home seems again a quiet, refreshing spot. So the public, tired of the brilliant scenes and conflicting passions of other novels, has in the last few years turned back to the simple, wholesome stories of Jane Austen.
Walter Scott, the most chivalrous of all writers, brought to an end woman's supremacy in the novel, in 1814. At this time prose fiction was far different from what it was in 1772, when Tobias Smollet died, and much of this difference was due to women. Professor Masson, in his lectures on the novel, gives the names of twenty novelists who wrote between 1789-1814 who are remembered in the history of English literature. "With the exception of Godwin," he writes, "I do not know that any of the male novelists I have mentioned could be put in comparison, in respect of genuine merit, with such novelists of the other sex as Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss Austen." It is equally worthy of note that, of the twenty names given, fourteen are women.
Although during these years women had developed the historical novel, and had brought the novel of mystery to a high degree of perfection,they left the most enduring stamp on literature as realists, as painters of everyday life and commonplace people. Francis Jeffrey wrote:
"It required almost the same courage to get rid of the jargon of fashionable life and the swarms of peers, foundlings, and seducers, that infested our modern fables as it did in those days to sweep away the mythological persons of antiquity, and to introduce characters who spoke and acted like those who were to peruse their adventures."
Women awakened interest in the humdrum lives of their neighbours next door, and this without any exaggeration, simply by minute attention to little things, and quick sympathy in the joys and sorrows of others. They described manners and customs; their view of life was largely objective. It is a noteworthy fact that while Scott was casting over all Europe the light of romanticism, the women writers of the time, with but one or two exceptions, were viewing life with the clear vision of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen, as if the world obtruded too glaringly upon their eyes to be lost sight of in happy day-dreams.
Susan Edmonstone Ferrier is better known to-day as the friend of Scott, and an occasional visitor at Abbotsford, than as a successful novelist. She was born at Edinburgh in 1782,where her father, James Ferrier, was Writer to the Signet, and at one time Clerk of Session, Scott being one of his colleagues. That great genius was one of the earliest to appreciate the excellence of her descriptions of Scottish life given in her first book, entitledMarriage, published anonymously in 1818. In the conclusion of theTales of my Landlordhe paid the unknown writer this graceful tribute:
"There remains behind not only a large harvest, but labourers capable of gathering it in; more than one writer has of late displayed talents of this description, and if the present author, himself a phantom, may be permitted to distinguish a brother, or perhaps a sister, shadow, he would mention in particular the author of the very lively work entitledMarriage."
Miss Ferrier wrote but three novels,Marriage,The Inheritance, andDestiny, a period of six years intervening between the appearance of each of them. Like Miss Burney and Miss Edgeworth she depicts two grades of society. She shows forth the fashionable life of Edinburgh and London, and the cruder mode of living found in the Scottish Highlands. But between her and her models there is the great difference of genius and talent. They passed what they had seen through the alembic of imagination; she has depicted what she saw with the faithfulness of the camera, and thecrude realism of these scenes does not always blend with the warp and woof of the story.
Like Miss Edgeworth, Miss Ferrier had a moral to work out. She treats society as a satirist, and lays bare its heartlessness, and the unhappiness of its members who to escape ennui are led hither and thither by the caprice of the moment. While she may present one side of the picture, one hesitates to accept Lady Juliana, Mrs. St. Clair, or Lady Elizabeth as common types of a London drawing-room.
Her plots as well as her characters suffer from this conscious attempt to teach the happiness that must follow the practice of the Christian virtues. InMarriagethere are two complete stories. Lady Juliana is the heroine of the first part; her two daughters, who are born in the first half, supplant their mother as heroines of the second half. The plot ofDestinyis not much better. The denouement is tame, and the characters lack consistency.The Inheritancehas the strongest plot of the three; but Mrs. St. Clair and her secret interviews with the monstrosity Lewiston, who, by the way, has the honour to be an American, throw an air of unreality over a story in many respects intensely real. In this story, as in so many old novels, the nurse's daughter had been brought up as the rightful heiress. The scene in which she tells her betrothed lover, the heir of theestate, the story of her birth, which she had just learned, is said to have suggested to Tennyson the beautiful ballad ofLady Clare.
But when Miss Ferrier sees loom in imagination the sombre purple hills of the Highlands, with the black tarns in the hollows half-hidden in mist, her genius awakes. If she had devoted herself to these people and this region, and ignored the fashionable life of the cities, she might have written a book worthy to be placed beside the best of Miss Edgeworth or Miss Mitford. At the time she wrote, the Highland chief no longer summoned his clan about him at a blast from his bugle, but he had lost little of his old-time picturesqueness. The opening ofDestinydescribes the wealth of the chief of Glenroy:
"All the world knows that there is nothing on earth to be compared to a Highland chief. He has his loch and his islands, his mountains and his castle, his piper and his tartan, his forests and his deer, his thousands of acres of untrodden heath, and his tens of thousands of black-faced sheep, and his bands of bonneted clansmen, with claymores and Gaelic, and hot blood and dirks."
But Miss Ferrier also depicted a more sordid type of Highlander. Christopher North in hisNoctes Ambrosianæwrites of her novels:
"They are the works of a very clever woman,sir, and they have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the last fitful gleams of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler and sadder scene—the age of lucre-banished clans,—of chieftains dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat pibrochs, was reserved for Miss Ferrier."
Besides her descriptions of the Highlands, Miss Ferrier has drawn several Scotch characters that deserve to live. What a delightful group is described inMarriage, consisting of the three Misses Douglas, known as "The girls," and their friend Mrs. Maclaughlan! Miss Jacky Douglas, the senior of the trio, "was reckoned a woman of sense"; Miss Grizzy was distinguished by her good-nature and the entanglement of her thoughts; and it was said that Miss Nicky was "not wanting for sense either"; while their friend Lady Maclaughlan loved and tyrannised over all three of them. Sir Walter Scott admired the character of Miss Becky Duguid, a poor old maid, who "was expected to attend all accouchements,christenings, deaths, chestings, and burials, but she was seldom asked to a marriage, and never to any party of pleasure." Joanna Baillie thought the loud-spoken minister, M'Dow, a true representative of a few of the Scotch clergy whose only aim is preferment and good cheer. But none of her other characters can compare with the devoted Mrs. Molly Macaulay, the friend of the Chief of Glenroy inDestiny. When Glenroy has an attack of palsy, she hurries to him, and when she is told that he has missed her, she exclaims with perfect self-forgetfulness:
"Deed, and I thought he would do that, for he has always been so kind to me,—and I thought sometimes when I was away, oh, thinks I to myself, I wonder what Glenroy will do for somebody to be angry with,—for Ben-bowie's grown so deaf, poor creature, it's not worth his while to be angry at him,—and you're so gentle that it would not do for him to be angry at you; but I'm sure he has a good right to be angry at me, considering how kind he has always been to me."
Christopher North said of Molly Macaulay, "No sinner of our gender could have adequately filled up the outline."
George Saintsbury, considering the permanent value of Miss Ferrier's work, wrote for theFortnightly Reviewin 1882:
"Of the four requisites of the novelist, plot,character, description, and dialogue, she is only weak in the first. The lapse of an entire half-century and a complete change of manners have put her books to the hardest test they are ever likely to have to endure, and they come through it triumphantly."
But, besides the excellences mentioned by Mr. Saintsbury, Miss Ferrier is master of humour and pathos. No story is sadder than that of Ronald Malcolm, the hero ofDestiny. He had been willed the castle of Inch Orran with its vast estates, but with the provision that he was to have no benefit from it until his twenty-sixth year. In case of his death the property was to go to his father, an upright but poor man. As Ronald had many years to wait before he could enjoy his riches, he entered the navy. His ship was lost at sea and the news of his death reported in Scotland. But Ronald had been rescued from the sinking ship, and returned to his father's cottage. Here he met a purblind old woman, who told him how his father, Captain Malcolm, had moved to the castle, and what good he was doing among his tenantry. She described the sorrow of the people at the death of Ronald, but added: "Och! it was God's providence to tak' the boy out of his worthy father's way; and noo a' thing 's as it should be, and he has gotten his ain, honest man; and long, long may he enjoy it!" And then she saidthankfully, "The poor lad's death was a great blessing—och ay, 'deed was 't." The scene where Ronald goes to the castle and looks in at the window upon the happy family group, consisting of his father and mother, brothers and sisters, resembles in many particulars the sad return of Enoch Arden. The close of the scene is as touching in the novel as in the poem: "Yes, yes, they are happy, and I am forgotten!" sobs the lad, as he turns away.
Miss Ferrier, however, seldom touches the pathetic; she is first of all a humourist. But there is a blending of the smiles and tears of human life in the delightful character of Adam Ramsay. Engaged as a boy to Lizzie Lundie, he had gone forth into the world to make a fortune, but when he returned after many years he found that she had married in his absence, and soon afterwards had died. Crabbed to all about him, he still cherished the remembrance of his early love, and was quickly moved by any appeal to her memory.
The practical philosophy of the Scottish peasantry is amusingly set forth in the scene where Miss St. Clair visits one of the cottages on Lord Rossville's estate. She found the goodman very ill, and everything about the room betokening extreme poverty. When she offered to send him milk and broth, and a carpet and chairs to make the room more comfortable,his wife interposed, "A suit o' gude bein comfortable dead claise, Tammes, wad set ye better than aw the braw chyres an' carpets i' the toon." Sometime afterward, when Miss St. Clair called to see how the invalid was, she found him in the press-bed, while the clothes were warming before the fire. His wife explained that she could not have him in the way, and if he were cold, it could not be helped, as the clothes had to be aired, and added, "An' I 'm thinkin' he 'll no be lang o' wantin' them noo."
But notwithstanding her humour, Miss Ferrier was a stern moralist, whose attitude toward life had been influenced indirectly by the teachings of John Knox. She sometimes seems to stand her characters in the stocks, and call upon the populace to view their sins or absurdities. She seldom throws the veil of charity over them. Men as novelists are prone to exaggeration. Women have represented life with greater truth both in its larger aspects and in details. Miss Ferrier carries this quality to an extreme. She tells not only the truth, but, with almost heartless honesty, reveals the whole of it, so that many of her men and women are repugnant to the reader while they amuse him. The best judges of Scottish manners have borne witness to the exactness of her portraiture. She is, perhaps, an example of the artistic failure of over-realism.
Mary Russell Mitford like Miss Ferrier painted her scenes and her portraits from real life. But there is as wide a difference between their writings as between the rocky ledges of the Grampian Hills and the soft meadows bathed in the sunshine which stretch back of the cottages of Our Village. Miss Mitford's, indeed, was a sunny nature, not to be hardened nor embittered by a lifelong anxiety over poverty and debts. Her father, Dr. Mitford, had spent nearly all his own fortune when he married Miss Mary Russell, an heiress. Besides being constantly involved in lawsuits, he was addicted to gambling, and soon squandered the fortune which his wife had brought him, besides twenty thousand pounds won in a lottery. He is said to have lost in speculations and at play about seventy thousand pounds, at that time a large fortune. The authoress was a little over thirty years of age when the poverty of the family forced them to leave Bertram House, their home for many years, and remove to a little labourer's cottage about a mile away, on the principal street of a little village near Reading, known as Three Mile Cross. Here the support of the family devolved upon the daughter, a burden made harder by the continual extravagance of the father, whom she devotedly loved. Although she received large sums for her writings, it is with the greatest weariness that shewrites to her friend Miss Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, of the struggles that have been hers the greater part of her life, the ten or twelve hours of literary drudgery each day, often in spite of ill health, and her hope that she may always provide for her father his accustomed comforts. Not only was she enabled to do this, but, through the help of friends, to pay, after his death, the one thousand pounds indebtedness, his only legacy to her.
Yet there is not a trace of this worry in the delightful series of papers calledOur Village, which she began to contribute at this time to theLady's Magazine. Before this she had become known as a poet and a successful playwright, but had believed herself incapable of writing good prose. Necessity revealed her fine power of description, and Three Mile Cross furnished her with scenes and characters.
Our Villagemarked a new style in fiction. The year it was commenced, she wrote to a friend:
"With regard to novels, I should like to see one undertaken without any plot at all. I do not mean that it should have no story; but I should like some writer of luxuriant fancy to begin with a certain set of characters—one family, for instance—without any preconceived design farther than one or two incidents or dialogues, which would naturally suggest freshmatter, and so proceed in this way, throwing in incidents and characters profusely, but avoiding all stage tricks and strong situations, till some death or marriage should afford a natural conclusion to the book."
Miss Mitford followed this plan as far as her great love of nature would permit. For when she found her daily cares too great to be borne in the little eight-by-eight living-room, she escaped to the woods and fields. She loved the poets who wrote of nature, and next to Miss Austen, whom she placed far above any other novelist, she delighted in the novels of Charlotte Smith, and in her own pages there is the same true feeling for nature.
Our Villagefollows in a few particulars Gilbert White'sHistory of Selborne. As he described the beauties of Selborne through the varying seasons of the year, she describes her walks about Three Mile Cross, first when the meadows are covered with hoar frost, then when the air is perfumed with violets, and later when the harvest field is yellow with ripened corn. All the lanes, the favourite banks, the shady recesses are described with delicate and loving touch. How her own joyous, optimistic nature speaks in this record of a morning walk in a backward spring:
"Cold bright weather. All within doors, sunny and chilly; all without, windy and dusty,It is quite tantalising to see that brilliant sun careering through so beautiful a sky, and to feel little more warmth from his presence than one does from that of his fair but cold sister, the moon. Even the sky, beautiful as it is, has the look of that one sometimes sees in a very bright moonlight night—deeply, intensely blue, with white fleecy clouds driven vigorously along by a strong breeze, now veiling and now exposing the dazzling luminary around whom they sail. A beautiful sky! and, in spite of its coldness, a beautiful world!"
But how naturally we meet the people of the village and become interested in them. There is Harriet, the belle of the village, "a flirt passive," who made the tarts and puddings in the author's kitchen; Joel Brent, her lover, a carter by calling, but, by virtue of his personal accomplishments, the village beau. There is the publican, the carpenter, the washerwoman; little Lizzie, the spoilt child, and all the other boys and girls of the village. It is very natural to-day to meet these poor people in novels; at that time the poor people of Ireland and Scotland had begun to creep into fiction, but it was as unusual in England as a novel without a plot. Even to-day Miss Mitford's attitude toward these people is not common. It seems never to have occurred to the author, and certainly does not to her readers, that these mendressed in overalls and these women in print dresses with sleeves rolled to the elbow were not the finest ladies and gentlemen of the land. She greets them all with a playful humour which reminds one of the genial smile of Elia. C. H. Herford inThe Age of Wordsworthwrote ofOur Village:
"No such intimate and sympathetic portrayal of village life had been given before, and perhaps it needed a woman's sympathetic eye for little things to show the way. Of the professional story-teller on the alert for a sensation there is as little as of the professional novelist on the watch for a lesson."
Belford Regis, a series of country and town sketches, was written soon after the completion ofOur Village. Here again is the happy blending of nature and humanity; the same fusion of truth and fiction. As Belford Regis is "Our Market Town," there is a wider range of characters, as different classes are represented; and a more intimate view, since the same people appear in more than one story. Stephen Lane, the butcher, and his wife are often met with. He is so fat that "when he walks, he overfills the pavement, and is more difficult to pass than a link of full-dressed misses or a chain of becloaked dandies." Of Mrs. Lane she writes: "Butcher's wife and butcher's daughter though she were, yet was she a graceful and graciouswoman, one of nature's gentlewomen in look and in thought." There was Miss Savage, "who was called a sensible woman because she had a gruff voice and vinegar aspect"; and Miss Steele, who was called literary, because forty years ago she made a grand poetical collection. Miss Mitford even does justice to Mrs. Hollis, the fruiterer and the village gossip; "There she sits, a tall, square, upright figure, surmounted by a pleasant, comely face, eyes as black as a sloe, cheeks as rounds as an apple, and a complexion as ruddy as a peach, as fine a specimen of a healthy, hearty English tradeswoman, the feminine of John Bull, as one would desire to see on a summer's day.... As a gossip she was incomparable. She knew everybody and everything; had always the freshest intelligence, and the newest news; her reports like her plums had the bloom on them, and she would as much have scorned to palm upon you an old piece of scandal as to send you strawberries that had been two days gathered."
A reviewer in theAthenæumthus criticises the book:
"If (to be hypercritical) the pictures they contain be a trifle too sunny and too cheerful to be real—if they show more generosity and refinement and self-sacrifice existing among the middle classes than does exist,—too muchof the meek beauty, too little of the squalidity of humble life,—we love them none the less, and their authoress all the more."
InBelford Regiswe miss the fields, the brooks, the flowers, and the sky, which made the charm ofOur Village. In some respects it is a more ambitious book, but it has not the perennial charm ofOur Village.
Miss Mitford's favourite author, as we have seen, was Jane Austen. She had the same regard for her that Miss Austen felt for Fanny Burney. The two authors have many points of resemblance. Both have the same clear vision, and sunny nature; the same repugnance to all that is sensational, or coarse, or low; the same dislike of strong pathos or broad humour; and Miss Mitford has approached more closely than any other writer to the elegance of diction and purity of style of Miss Austen.
They have another point in common, they both show excellent taste in their writings. This quality of good taste is due to native delicacy and refinement, a sensitive withdrawal from what is ugly, and a quick feeling for true proportion; the very things which give to a woman her superior tact, which Ruskin has called "the touch sense." In the novel it is pre-eminently a feminine characteristic. Few men have it in a marked degree. It adds all the charm we feel in the presence of a refinedwoman to the novels of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austen, and Miss Mitford.
But, while Miss Mitford and Miss Austen have many points of resemblance, they have many points of difference. Miss Austen liked the society of men and women, and during her younger days was fond of dinner-parties and balls. Miss Mitford preferred the woods and fields, liked the society of her dogs, and wrote to a friend before she was twenty that she would never go to another dance if she could help it. Miss Austen selects a small group of gentry, and by the intertwining of their lives forms a beautiful plot; Miss Mitford rambles through the village and the country walks of Three Mile Cross, and as she meets the butcher, the publican, the boys at cricket, she gleans some story of interest, and brings back to us, as it were, a basket in which have been thrown in careless profusion violets and anemones, cowslips and daisies, and all the other flowers of the field.
Mrs. Anna Maria Hall, a country-woman of Miss Edgeworth, wrote of her first novel: "My Sketches of Irish Character, my first dear book, was inspired by a desire to describe my native place, as Miss Mitford had done inOur Village, and this made me an author." Most of these sketches were drawn from thecounty of Wexford, her native place, whose inhabitants, she says in the preface, are descendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers of the reign of Henry the Second, and speak a language unknown in other districts of Ireland.
The book is a series of well-told stories of the poor people, whom we should have imagined to be pure Celt, if the author had not said they resembled the English. There is the tender pathos, the quick humour, the joke which often answers an argument, the guidance of the heart rather than the head; but she has dwelt upon one characteristic but lightly touched upon by Miss Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, the poetic feeling of the Celt, the imagery that so often adorns their common speech. The old Irish wife says to the bride who speaks disrespectfully of the fairies: "Hush, Avourneen! Sure they have the use of the May-dew before it falls, and the colour of the lilies and the roses before it's folded in the tender buds; and can steal the notes out of the birds' throats while they sleep."
The Irish Peasantry, andLights and Shadows of Irish Life, won Mrs. Hall the ill-will rather than the love of her countrymen. She had lived for a long time in England, and upon returning to her native land was impressed by the lack of forethought which kept the country poor. Their early marriages, their indifference to time, their frequent visits to the public house,their hospitality to strangers even when they themselves were in extreme poverty and debt—all made so deep an impression upon her mind that she attempted to teach the Irish worldly wisdom. But the lesson was distasteful to the people and probably useless, as the characteristics which she would change were the very essence of the Irish nature, the traits which made him a Celt, not a Saxon. In these books, the wooings, weddings, and funerals are portrayed, and there is a little glimpse of fairy lore.
Midsummer Eve, a Fairy Tale of Love, grew out of the fairy legends of Ireland. It is said that a child whose father has died before its birth is placed by nature under the peculiar guardianship of the fairies; and, if born on Midsummer Eve, it becomes their rightful property; they take it to their own homes and leave in its place one of their changelings. The heroine of the story is a child of that nature, over whose birth the fairies of air, earth, and water preside. But at the will of Nightstar, Queen of the Fairies of the Air, she is left with her mother, but adopted and watched over by the fairies as their own. Their great gift to her is that of loving and being loved. The human element is not well blended with the fairy element. The entire setting should have been rural, for in the city of London, particularly in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, wherepart of the story is placed, it is not easy to keep the tranquil twilight atmosphere, which fairies love. The book is like a song in which the bass and soprano are written in different keys. But when we are back in Ireland, and the fairies again appear and disappear, it is charming. The old woodcutter, Randy, who sees and talks with the fairies, is a delightful creature, and gives to the story much of its beauty.
Mrs. Hall's novels have but little literary value, but she has brought to light Irish characteristics and Irish traditions which were overlooked by her predecessors, and for that reason they deserve to live.
It is impossible to comprehend the Byronic craze which swept cool-headed England off her feet during the regency.Childe Haroldwas the fashion, and many a hero of romance, even down to the time ofPendennis, aped his fashions. Disraeli and Bulwer were among his disciples. Bulwer's early novels,FalklandandPelham, were influenced by him; andVivian GreyandVenetiamight have been the offspring of Byron's prose brain, so completely was Disraeli under his influence at the time.
The poorest of the novels of this class, but the one which gives the most intimate picture of Byron, isGlenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb. Its hero is Byron. The plot follows the outlines of her own life, and all the characters were counterparts of living people whom she knew. Calantha, the heroine, representing Lady Caroline, is married to Lord Avondale, or William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, at one time Premier of England. Lord and Lady Avondale are very happy, until Glenarvon,"the spirit of evil," appears and dazzles Calantha. Twice she is about to elope with him, but the thought of her husband and children keeps her back. They part, and for a time tenderbillets-douxpass between them, until Calantha receives a cruel letter from Glenarvon, in which he bids her leave him in peace. Other well-known people appeared in the book. Lord Holland was the Great Nabob, Lady Holland was the Princess of Madagascar, and Samuel Rogers was the Yellow Hyena or the Pale Poet. The novel had also a moral purpose; it was intended to show the danger of a life devoted to pleasure and fashion.
Of course the book made a sensation. Lady Caroline Lamb, the daughter of Earl Bessborough, the granddaughter of Earl Spencer, related to nearly all the great houses of England, had all her life followed every impulse of a too susceptible imagination. Her infatuation for Lord Byron had long been a theme for gossip throughout London. She invited him constantly to her home; went to assemblies in his carriage; and, if he were invited to parties to which she was not, walked the streets to meet him; she confided to every chance acquaintance that she was dying of love for him. Yet, as one reads of this affair, one suspects that this devotion was nothing more than the infatuation of a high-strung nature for the hero of aromance. In writing to a friend about her husband, she says, "He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it." On her death-bed she said of her husband, "But remember, the only noble fellow I ever met with was William Lamb."
A month after her death, Lord Melbourne wrote a sketch of her life for theLiterary Gazette. In this he said:
"Her character it is difficult to analyse, because, owing to the extreme susceptibility of her imagination, and the unhesitating and rapid manner in which she followed its impulses, her conduct was one perpetual kaleidoscope of changes.... To the poor she was invariably charitable—she was more: in spite of her ordinary thoughtlessness of self, for them she had consideration as well as generosity, and delicacy no less than relief. For her friends she had a ready and active love; for her enemies no hatred: never perhaps was there a human being who had less malevolence; as all her errors hurt only herself, so against herself only were levelled her accusation and reproach."
How far Byron was in earnest in this tragicomedy is more difficult to determine. In one letter to her he writes: "I was and am yours, freely and entirely, to obey, to honour, to love, and fly with you, where, when, and how yourself might and may determine." That Byronwas piqued when he read the book, his letter to Moore proves: "By the way, I suppose you have seenGlenarvon. It seems to me if the authoress had written the truth—the whole truth—the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the picture can't be good; I did not sit long enough." It was not pleasing to Lord Byron's vanity to appear in her book as the spirit of evil, beside her husband, a high-minded gentleman, ready to sacrifice for his friends everything "but his honour and integrity."
Notwithstanding the humorous elements in the connection of Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb, the story is pathetic. His poetic personality attracted her as the light does the poor moth. Disraeli caricatured her in the character of Mrs. Felix Lorraine inVivian Grey, and introduced her intoVenetiaunder the title of Lady Monteagle, where he made much of her love for the poet Cadurcis, otherwise Lord Byron.
Lady Caroline Lamb wrote two other novels, but they are of no value. In her third,Ada Reis, considered her best, she introduced Bulwer as the good spirit.
The little poem written by Lady Caroline Lamb on the day fixed for her departure from Brocket Hall, after it had been decided thatshe was to live in retirement away from her husband and son, shows tenderness and poetic feeling: