MRS. STRETTON
About the same time as "Ellen Middleton" appeared, a novel was making its way rather by force of affectionate family portraiture than by plot or incident. "The Valley of a Hundred Fires" is really and truly Mrs. Stretton's picture of her father and mother, and her home; and her mother is altogether her heroine, while old family habits and anecdotes are given with only a few alterations. "The Valley of the Hundred Fires" has been placed by her on the borders of Wales, but it really was Gateshead, in Durham, quite as black and quite as grimy as the more southern region, inasmuch as no flowers would grow in the Rectory garden which, nevertheless, the children loved so heartily as to call it dear old Dingy. (It is Cinder Tip in the story.) Literally, they lived so as to show that
"Love's a flower that will not die For lack of leafy screen; And Christian hope may cheer the eye That ne'er saw vernal green;"
and that—at least, in the early days of this century—an abnormally large family was no misfortune to themselves or their parents.
The real name was Collinson, and the deep goodness and beneficence of the father, the Reverend John Collinson, and the undaunted cheerfulness, motherliness, and discipline of Emily, his wife, shine throughout, not at all idealised. The number of their children was fifteen, ten daughters and five sons; and the second daughter, Julia Cecilia, was, as she describes herself, a tall, lank, yellow baby who was born on the 25th of November 1812. She became as the eldest daughter to the others, for there had always been a promise that if there were several girls the eldest should be adopted by her aunt, wife to a clergyman and childless.
The two homes were a great contrast: the one kept in absolute order and great refinement, with music and flowers the constant delight and occupation, and the single adopted child trained up in all the precision of the household; while the other was a house of joyous freedom, kept under the needful restraints of sound religious principle, discipline and unselfishness. The story went that when the children were asked how many of them there were, they answered, "One young lady and eight little girls." Mrs. Collinson used to say, that if she ever saw any signs that her "one young lady" was either pining for companionship, or growing spoilt by the position, she would recall her at once; but the child was always happy and obedient, and pleased to impart her accomplishments to her sisters, who admired without jealousy. Comical adventures are recorded in the "Valley," such as when the whole train of little damsels, walking out under the convoy of Julia and a young nurserymaid, encountered a bull, which had lifted a gate on its horns. The maid thrust the baby into Julia's arms and ran away, while her charges retired into a ditch, the elder ones not much alarmed, because, as they said, the bull could not hurt them with the gate on its horns. It passed safely by them; but the little ones confessed to having been dreadfully frightened by a snail in the ditch, "which put out its horns like a little Kerry cow," and it creeped and it creeped!
One incident in their early childhood was the rioting that pervaded the collieries in the years immediately following the great French war. Mr. Collinson, being a magistrate, was called upon to accompany the dragoons in order to read the Riot Act. He thus left his family unprotected; but the seven thousand pitmen never touched the Rectory, and, according to the "Valley," replied courteously to two of the children, who rushed out to the top of the Cinder Tip, begging to know whether they had seen "our papa" and if he was safe.
There was another sadder episode, related also with much feeling, though a little altered, for it concerned the second son, not the eldest (then the only son) as described. A blow from a cricket ball did irreparable mischief to his knee, and it was suddenly decreed that amputation was necessary, long before the days of chloroform. The father was away from home, the mother sentenced not to be present, and the doctors consented that Julia should hold the patient's hand, smooth his hair, and try to tell him stories through the operation. It was successfully and bravely carried out, but the evil was not removed, and a few weeks later this much-loved boy was taken away. The circumstances, very beautiful and consoling, are given in the story; and there too is told how, before sunset on that sad day, the ninth little daughter was given, and struggled hard for the vigorous life she afterwards attained.
The "Parson's man" said one day, when his mistress, for once in her life, indulged in a sigh that her garden could never rival that of her sister, "We've got the finer flowers, ma'am."
Education was not the tyrannical care in those days that it is at present, and the young people obtained it partly through their parents, some at school, and some by the help of their grandmother and their aunt, but mostly by their own intelligence and exertions; and the family income was augmented by Mr. Collinson taking pupils. He had a fair private income; he had a curate, and was able to give a good education to his sons, one of whom made himself a name as Admiral Collinson, one of the Arctic explorers. If there were anxieties, they did not tell upon the children, whose memories reflect little save sunshine.
At nineteen, Julia Collinson became the wife of Walter de Winton, Esquire, of Maedlwch Castle, Radnorshire; but after only twelve years was left a widow, with two sons and a daughter. Her life was devoted to making their home as bright and joyous as her own had been; and it was only in the loneliness that ensued on the children going to school that her authorship commenced, with a child's book called "The Lonely Island."
Later she wrote "The Valley of the Hundred Fires," tracing the habits, characters and the destiny of the family of Gateshead. The father was by this time dead, and extracts from his sermons and diary appear; but "Emily," the mother, is the real heroine of the whole narrative, and though there is so little plot that it hardly deserves the name of novel, there is a wonderful charm in the delineation. There are a few descriptions of manners and of dresses which are amusing; nor must we omit the portrait of the grandmother, Mrs. King (called Reine in the book), daughter to the governor of one of the colonies in America before the separation, with the manners of her former princess-ship and something of the despotism. She was a friend of Hannah More, a beneficent builder of schools, and produced a revolt by herself cutting the hair of all the scholars!
"The Queen of the County" relates Mrs. de Winton's experiences of elections among "the stormy hills of Wales" in the early days of the Reform Bill. "Margaret and her Bridesmaids" draws more upon invention. Each of two young girls, through the injudiciousness of her parents, has married the wrong person. Margaret acquiesces too much in her husband's indolence, and when herself roused to the perception of duty tries in vain to recover lost ground. Her friend Lottie is a high-spirited little soul, determined to do her duty as a wife, but not to pretend the love she does not feel, till it has been won. She is rather provokingly and unnaturally perfect, especially as she is only seventeen, always knowing when to obey up to the letter in a manner which must so have "riled" her husband that his persistent love is hardly credible, though it shows itself in attempts to isolate her, so that she shall have no resource save himself. His endeavours bring upon him heart complaint, whereof he dies, under her tender care, though she never affects to be grief-stricken. Only, as Margaret has lost her husband about the same time in a yachting accident, Lottie refuses to listen to the addresses of a former lover of Margaret's until she is convinced both that her friend will never form another attachment and that the original passion she had inspired is absolutely dead. There is a good deal of character in the story, though overdrawn, and it has survived so as to call for a new edition.
To her children, as well as to her many nephews and nieces, Mrs. de Winton was a charming companion-mother, always fresh, young, vigorous and as full of playfulness as the Julia who led the band of little sisters. When all her children were grown up, in 1858, she married Richard William Stretton, who had been their guardian and an intimate friend of the family, by whom he was much beloved. He died in 1868, and Mrs. Stretton followed him on the 17th of July 1878, leaving behind her one of the brightest of memories. Her books are emphatically herself in their liveliness, their tenderness, their fond enshrining of the past.
The third of our group had an even more eventless life, and, instead of letting her imagination dwell on her own past, she studied the women of past history, and realised what they must have felt and thought in the scenes where most of them figure only as names. Her father belonged to the higher professional class, and lived with his large family, of whom Anne was the eldest, at the Paragon, Chelsea, where at eight years old Anne listened to the crash of the carriages, when the Bourbons were on their return to France, and witnessed the ecstasy of London on the visit of the Allied Sovereigns after Waterloo.
With the help of masters for special accomplishments, the daughters had the best of educations, namely, the stimulating influence of their father, an accomplished man, for whom they practised their music, wrote their themes, went out star-gazing, and studied astronomy, listening with delight to his admirable reading of Scott or Shakspere; they also had the absolute freedom of an extensive library. Anne Manning was pronounced to be no genius, but a most diligent, industrious girl; as indeed was proved, for, becoming convinced during the brief reign of a good governess of the duty of solid reading, she voluntarily read from the age of fourteen ten pages a day of real, if dry, history, persevering year after year, and thus unconsciously laying in a good foundation for her future work.
For health's sake the family went into the country, where they became tenants of a tumble-down Cistercian priory on the borders of Salisbury Plain. The numerous girls, with their mother and governess, lived there constantly; the father coming down as often as his business would allow, almost always by the Saturday coach, to spend Sunday. Here the first literary venture was made, when Anne was about seventeen. It was a short dialogue on a serious subject, which a young aunt managed to get accepted in St. Paul's Churchyard; and, as Miss Manning candidly avows, was so well advertised privately by her fond grandfather that—such were the palmy days of authorship—five hundred copies brought her in a profit of £60.
The story, "Village Belles," was completed at Tenby, the Priory having become too ruinous for habitation. It was put into the hands of Baldwin and Cradock, and no proofs were sent till the whole of the two first volumes came together. It was introduced to Mr. Manning thus, "Papa, I don't know what you will say, but I have been writing a story."
"Ho! ho! ho!" was his first answer, but he afterwards said, "My dear, I like your story very much"—and never again referred to it.
Her own after judgment was that it was an "incurably young, inexperienced tale which, after all top dressing, remained but daisied meadow grass."
Sorrow came in to fill the minds of the family (to the exclusion of mere fictitious interests) in the deaths within short intervals of two of the sisters, and their mother's invalidism, ending, within a few years, in her death. After this the winters were spent by the three sisters at the Paragon, the summers in a cottage at Penshurst, their father coming down for the Sunday. Anne Manning, meantime, was pursuing studies in painting and was an excellent amateur artist. She was also a botanist, and this has much to do with her accuracy in writing details of country life and habits.
Dates, alas! are wanting both in her own "Passages in the life of an Authoress," and in the recollections of her kind and affectionate biographer, Mrs. Batty; but it seems to have been in 1849 that her "Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell," at first written to amuse herself and her sisters, and afterwards sent to assist a brother in Australia, who was starting a local magazine, was given to the editor of "Sharpe's Magazine," then in its early youth.
It made her fame. Nobody had particularly thought of Milton in his domestic capacity before, except as having advocated divorce and made his daughters read Greek to him, and it was reserved for Miss Manning to make the wife paint her own portrait as the lively, eager girl, happy in country freedom with her brothers, important with her "housewife-skep" in her mother's absence, pleased with dress, but touched by the beautiful countenance and the sudden admiration of the strange visitor. There proves to be a debt which makes her marriage with him convenient to the father, and it is carried out in spite of the mother's strong objections, alike to the suitor's age, his politics, and his puritanism. We go along with the country girl in her disappointment and sense of dreariness in her unaccustomed London life, in the staid and serious household, where she sorely misses her brothers and is soon condemned for love of junketing. Then come her joy in her visit to her home at Forest Hill and her reluctance to return, fortified by her father's disapproval of Milton's opinions. By the time that a visit to some wise relatives has brought her to a better mind and to yearning after her husband, Milton has taken offence and has put forth his plea for divorce, which so angers her father that he will not hear of her return; nor does she go back till after many months and the surrender of Oxford, when on her own impulse she hurries to London, meets her husband unexpectedly, and when he "looks down on her with goodness and sweetness 'tis like the sun's gleams shining after rain."
There Mary Powell's journal ends. It is written in beautiful English, such as might well have been contemporary and could only have been acquired by familiarity with the writers of the period, flowing along without effort or pedantry so as to be a really successful imitation. It crept into separate publication anonymously, and achieved a great success, being in fact the first of many books imitating the like style of autobiography; nor has it ever been allowed to drop into oblivion. It was followed up after a time by "Deborah's Diary," being the record supposed to be kept by Milton's one faithful and dutiful daughter, who lived with him in his old age.
The "fascination of the old style," as she calls it, led her to deal with "The Household of Sir Thomas More" in the person of his noble daughter Margaret. There was a good deal more genuine material here, and she has woven in the fragments from Erasmus and others with great ingenuity, and imitated the style of the fifteenth century as well as she had done that of the seventeenth.
From that time Anne Manning's books had a ready sale, though still her name did not appear. "Cherry and Violet" was a tale of the plague of London; "Edward Osborne" told of the apprentice who leapt from the window of a house on London Bridge to save his master's daughter from drowning; "The Old Chelsea Bunhouse" described the haunts with which Miss Manning was familiar; and there were other stories of country life, such as the "Ladies of Bever Hollow." All were written in the purest style, such as could only be attained by one to whom slip-shod writing was impossible, and to whom it was equally impossible not to write what was gentle, charitable, and full of religious principle.
Miss Manning was a kind friend and charming letter-writer. Her health began to fail in 1854, when she was writing for a magazine "Some Passages in the Life of an Authoress," never completed. She continued to be an invalid under the care of her sisters till her death on the 14th of September, 1879.
DINAH MULOCK (MRS. CRAIK)
By MRS. PARR
n the small circle of women writers who shed literary lustre on the early years of her present Majesty's reign was Dinah Mulock, best known to the present novel-reading generation as the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman."
To appreciate fully the position that we claim for her, it will be necessary to turn back to the period when she began to write, and see who were her contemporaries.
Pre-eminent among these stand out three names—names immortal on the roll of fame for so long as taste and critical judgment last; the books of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot must be regarded as masterpieces of fiction. We, their humble followers, bow before their genius which time, fashion, or progress cannot dim or take from; therefore, to have achieved success and to have made an abiding fame while such luminaries were shining in the firmament was a distinction to be justly proud of—the result of talent, delicacy of handling, and grasp of character that were only a little below genius.
How vast the difference that one small step would have made it is not our purpose to show; our intention is rather to take a general view of the work of a writer who—now that close upon half a century has passed, since, in 1849, timidly and without giving her name, she launched on the world her first novel, "The Ogilvies"—has never lost her hold upon the reading public of Great Britain, the Colonies, America, or wherever the English tongue is spoken.
Dinah Mulock was born in 1826 at Stoke-upon-Trent in Staffordshire. Her disposition towards literature seems to have been inherited from her father, who was connected—but in no very prosperous way—with letters, and was known to Byron and to the poet Moore, whose fellow countryman he was. At the time of his daughter's birth, he was acting as spiritual minister to a small congregation who were followers of what were then generally thought to be his advanced and unorthodox opinions. Few who forsake the established road for their own peculiar rut find that prosperity bears them company, and the fortunes of the Mulock family during the embryo authoress's early years were unsettled and unsatisfactory. We are all given to rebel against the clouds which overcast our youth, seldom realising that to this pinch of adverse circumstance we owe much of that power to depict the sorrows, joys, and perplexities of life in the setting forth of which Miss Mulock became so eminently successful.
Before she had reached the age of twenty, she left her home and came to London, "feeling conscious," we are told, "of a vocation for authorship."
Now, in the present day, when novel writing has become an employment, profession, distraction, I might almost say a curse, there would be nothing remarkable in such a conviction; but in 1846 the mania of desiring to see their names in print had not seized upon our sex; therefore the divine afflatus must have been very strong which sent a timid attractive girl, hampered by all the prejudices of her day, to try the fortunes of her pen in London.
That she had not been deceived in her quality is shown by the success of "The Ogilvies," which not only was popular with novel readers, but raised hopes that the writer possessed great dramatic power, to be more ably used when experience had corrected the crude faults of a first book. The story, based on passionate first love, is written with the enthusiasm and vigour which comes pleasantly from a young hand, and makes us disposed to view leniently the superabundance of sentiment which, under other circumstances, we should censure. The death of the boy, Leigh Pennythorne, is rendered with a pathos which calls for admiration, and we are not surprised to see it ranked with the death of little Paul Dombey; while that of Katherine Lynedon, spoken of at the time as possessing great dramatic force, strikes us now as melodramatic and sensational.
Encouraged by having found favour with the public, Miss Mulock followed up her success with "Olive" (1850), "Agatha's Husband" (1852), "Head of the Family" (1854). Her literary reputation was now established; and, though her magnum opus, "John Halifax," had yet to be written, it may be as well to consider some of the merits and weaknesses of her style, her treatment of her subjects, and her delineation of character.
In a short sketch, such as this, it is not possible to give a synopsis of the plots of the various books, or even, in most cases, extracts from them. We have to confine ourselves to the endeavour to realise the effect they produced at the time they were written—the estimation they were then held in, and to see what position they now command among the novels of the present day.
Perhaps it will be only fair towards the faults we are about to find that we should recall the forward strides made by women in the past forty years. We who can recall the faulty teaching and the many prejudices of that date must often question if women now are sufficiently sensible of the advantages they possess.
A reviewer of Miss Mulock's novels, writing in 1866, says: "It is one of the chief misfortunes of almost every female novelist that her own education, as a woman, has been wretchedly defective;" and further on he adds: "the education of the majority of women leaves them not only without information, but without intelligent interest in any subject that does not immediately concern them." He then points out that it seems impossible for women to describe a man as he is—that they see him only from the outside. "They are ignorant of the machinery which sets the thing going, and the principle of the machinery; and so they discreetly tell you what kind of case it has, but nothing more."
Now, when the time has come that young men and maidens have other interests in common than those which spring out of flirtation and love-making, we may feel quite sure that each sex will get a better insight and have a juster knowledge of the other. The general taste for exercise, and the development of activity and health of body, has killed sentimentality and the heroines of the Rosa Matilda school. Not that these were the heroines that Miss Mulock created. Her ideals are to a certain extent made of flesh and blood, although they are not always living figures. Even at the period when we are told that "In the world of letters few authors have so distinct and at the same time so eminent a position as this lady," her judicious admirers find fault with her overflow of feminine sentimentality, which never permitted her ideal sufferers to conquer their griefs so far that they could take a practical and healthy interest in the affairs of the living world. "They live only 'for others'" says one critic, "'the beautiful light' is always in their faces; their hands 'work spasmodically' at least once in every two or three chapters."
Regarding the cramping influence of the prejudices which hedged in women in Miss Mulock's day, is it not very possible that this flaw in the portraiture of her own sex may have been due to the narrowness of her training rather than to any deficiency in her talent? Nothing more plainly shows how warped her judgment had become than many of the passages in "A Woman's Thoughts about Women." This is a book with much sound argument in it, and full of the desire to rectify the feminine grievances to which she was not blind. But when we come to a passage like the following, in which she asserts that all who "preach up lovely uselessness, fascinating frivolity, delicious helplessness, not only insult womanhood but her Creator," we ask how is this to be reconciled with the text which comes immediately after: "Equally blasphemous, and perhaps even more harmful, is the outcry about the equality of the sexes; the frantic attempt to force women, many of whom are either ignorant of, or unequal for, their own duties, into the position and duties of men. A pretty state of matters would ensue! Who that ever listened for two hours to the verbose confused inanities of a ladies' committee would immediately go and give his vote for a female House of Commons? or who, on receipt of a lady's letter of business—I speak of the average—would henceforth desire to have our courts of justice stocked with matronly lawyers and our colleges thronged by 'sweet girl graduates with their golden hair'? As for finance, if you pause to consider the extreme difficulty there always is in balancing Mrs. Smith's housekeeping book, or Miss Smith's quarterly allowance, I think, my dear Paternal Smith, you need not be much afraid lest this loud acclaim for women's rights should ever end in pushing you from your counting house, college, or elsewhere."
On this showing, such crass ignorance is to be accepted in women, and is to be taken as a matter of course and as natural to them as cutting their teeth or having measles or chicken pox. It is of little use to advocate "Self Dependence," "Female Professions," "Female Handicrafts," for those who cannot write a business letter or do a simple sum. Miss Mulock may have had, indeed I fear had, much reason to cast these reproaches at her sex. But that she did not feel their shame, and urge her sister women to strive for an education more worthy of intelligent beings, proves to me how deeply her mental gifts suffered from the cramping influence of the time in which she lived. Could she have enjoyed some of the advantages which spring out of the greater freedom of thought and action permitted in the present day, how greatly it would have enlarged her mental vision! Her male creations would have been cast in a more vigorous man-like mould. Her feminine ideals would no longer be incarnations of sentiment but living vital creatures. Where the mind is stunted the mental insight must be limited; and strong as were Miss Mulock's talents, they were never able to burst the bonds which for generations had kept the greater number of women in intellectual imprisonment.
In "Olive," the novel which immediately followed "The Ogilvies," Miss Mulock ventured on a very fresh and interesting subject. Olive, the heroine of the story, is a deformed girl, "a puir bit crippled lassie" with a crooked spine. To make this centre-character attractive and all-absorbing was a worthy effort on the part of an author, and we take up the book and settle ourselves to see how it will be done. Unfortunately, before long, the courage which conceived the personal blemish gives way, and, succumbing to the difficulties of making mind triumph over beauty, Miss Mulock commits the artistic error of trying to impress upon you that, notwithstanding the pages of lamentations over this deformity and the attack made on your sympathy, the disfigurement was so slight that no person could possibly have noticed it. Naturally this puts the heroine in a more commonplace position; and as several minor plots are introduced which Olive only serves to string together, much of the interest in her with which we started is frittered away.
Finally, Olive marries and restores the faith of a religious sceptic. And here it is curious to read the objections raised at the time against bringing into fiction "subjects most vital to the human soul." One critic, after describing the hero he is willing to accept—and, much to our regret, space prevents us showing this terrible model that we have escaped—says: "But a hero whose intellectual crotchets, or delusions, or blindness, are to be entrusted for repairs to a fascinating heroine—a mental perplexity which is to be solved in fiction—a deep-rooted scepticism which is to lose its vis vitæ according to the artistic demands of a tale of the fancy, this we cannot away with. Sceptics are not plastic and obliging. Would to Heaven scepticism could be cured by bright eyes, dulcet tones, and a novelist's art of love!"
Criticisms in this tone make more plain to us the difficulties which novelists in the fifties had to grapple with. So many subjects were tabooed, so many natural impulses restrained, while the bogey Propriety was flaunted to scare the most innocent actions, so that nothing short of genius could ride safely over such narrow-minded bigotry. That an extreme licence should follow before the happy mean could be arrived at, was a safe prediction; but many of the writers in that day must have had a hard task while trying to clip the wings of their soaring imaginations, so that they might not rise above the level marked out by Mrs. Grundy.
Now, all these social dogmas must have had an immense influence on the receptive mind of Dinah Mulock, and readers must not lose sight of this fact should they be inclined to call some of her books didactic, formal, or old-fashioned. She never posed as a brilliant, impassioned writer of stories which tell of wrongs, or crimes, or great mental conflicts. In her novels there is no dissection of character, no probing into the moral struggles of the human creature. Her teaching holds high the standard of duty, patience, and the unquestioning belief that all that God wills is well.
The enormous hold which, ever since its first appearance in 1857, "John Halifax" has had on a great portion of the English-speaking public, is due to the lofty elevation of its tone, its unsullied purity and goodness, combined with a great freshness, which appeals to the young and seems to put them and the book in touch with each other. Those who read the story years ago still recollect the charm it had for them; and, in a degree, the same fascination exists for youthful readers at the present time. The theme is noble, setting forth the high moral truth of "the nobility of man as man," and into its development the author threw all her powers.
From the opening sentence, where you are at once introduced to the ragged, muddy boy and the sickly helpless lad, you feel that these two will prove to be the leading actors in the story—probably made contrasts of, and perhaps played one against the other. This idea, however, is speedily dispelled. Possibly from a dread of failing where it is thought so many women do fail—in the portrayal of the unseen sides of character and the infinite subtleties it gives rise to—Miss Mulock, wisely we think, decided to place her story in the autobiographic form; and the gentle refined invalid, Phineas Fletcher, is made the deus ex machinâ to unravel to the reader not only the romance of his friend John Halifax's history, but also the working of his noble chivalrous nature. Few situations are more pathetically drawn than the attitude of these two lads, with its exchange of dependence and hero-worship on the one side, and of tender, helpful compassion on the other. A true David and Jonathan we see them, full of the trust, confidence, and sincerity young unsullied natures are capable of. And the story of the friendship, as it grows towards maturity, is equally well told.
His energy and his indomitable faith in himself make a prosperous man of the penniless boy. We follow him on from driving the skin cart to being master of the tan-yard; and throughout all his temptations, struggles, success, he maintains the same honest, fearless spirit.
It seems natural that when to such an exalted nature love comes it should come encircled with romance, and the wooing of Ursula March, as told by sensitive, affectionate Phineas Fletcher, is very prettily described.
For the reason that Ursula is an heiress with a host of aristocratic relations, John believes his love for her to be hopeless. He struggles against this overwhelming passion for some time, until the continuous strain throws him into a fever of which his friend fears he will die. In this agonising strait Phineas is inspired with the idea of confessing the truth to Ursula; and, after a touching scene in which this is most delicately done, she determines to go to the man who is dying of love for her. In the interview, which is too long to be given in its entirety and too good to be curtailed, John tells her that owing to a great sorrow that has come to him he must leave Norton Bury and go to America. She begs to be told the reason, and without an actual avowal he lets her see his secret.
"'John, stay!'
"It was but a low, faint cry, like that of a little bird. But he heard it—felt it. In the silence of the dark she crept up to him, like a young bird to its mate, and he took her into the shelter of his love for evermore. At once all was made clear between them, for whatever the world might say they were in the sight of heaven equal, and she received as much as she gave."
When lights are brought into the room John takes Ursula's hand and leads her to where old Abel Fletcher is sitting.
"His head was erect, his eyes shining, his whole aspect that of a man who declares before all the world, 'This is my own." 'Eh?' said my father, gazing at them from over his spectacles.
"John spoke brokenly, 'We have no parents, neither she nor I. Bless her—for she has promised to be my wife.'
"And the old man blessed her with tears."
Abel Fletcher, grave, stern, uncompromising—as members of the Society of Friends in that day were wont to be—is a clever study. He will not yield readily to the influence of John, and when he does give way it is by slow degrees. Yet one of the most winning traits in this somewhat over-perfect young man, given at times to impress his moral obligations rather brusquely, is the deference he pays to his former master and the filial affection he keeps for him; and the author manages in these scenes to put the two into excellent touch with each other—so that, through John's attitude to him, the hard close-fisted old tanner is transfigured into a patriarch who fitly gives his blessing to the bride, and later on, in a scene of great pathos, bestows his last benediction on her blind baby daughter.
It was said at the time of its publication, and it is still said, that in "John Halifax" Miss Mulock reached the summit of her power. That she felt this herself seems to be shown by her adopting the title of "Author of 'John Halifax.'" Its publication was in many ways a new departure. It was the first of that numerous series of books brought out by her (after) life-long friend, Mr. Blackett. Those were not the days when "twenty thousand copies were exhausted before a word of this novel was written;" yet the book had a remarkable and legitimate success. Of its merits a notable critic said, "If we could erase half a dozen sentences from this book it would stand as one of the most beautiful stories in the English language, conveying one of the highest moral truths." And that these few sentences, while in no way affecting the actual beauty of the story, are a blot and an "artistic and intellectual blunder—" the more to be deplored in a book whose moral teaching throughout is so excellent—we must confess. "The ragged boy, with his open, honest face, as he asks the respectable Quaker for work, is no beggar; the lad who drives the cart of dangling skins is not inferior to Phineas Fletcher, who watches for him from his father's windows and longs for his companionship; and the tanner—the honest and good man who marries Ursula March, a lady born—is her equal. Having shown that men in the sight of God are equal and that therefore all good men must be equal upon earth, what need that John should have in his keeping a little Greek Testament which he views as a most precious possession because in it is written 'Guy Halifax, Gentleman'? Are we to conclude that all his moral excellence and intellectual worth were derived from ladies and gentlemen who had been his remote ancestors, but with whom he had never been in personal contact at all, since at twelve years old he was a ragged orphan, unable to read and write?"
Miss Mulock could not have meant this, and yet she lays herself open to the charge, a kind of echo of which is heard in the adding to her good plain title of "John Halifax" the unnecessary tag, "Gentleman."
Her literary career being now fully established, Miss Mulock decided on taking up her permanent residence in London; and, about this time, she went to live at Wildwood, a cottage at North End, Hampstead. The now ubiquitous interviewer—that benefactor of those who want to know—had not then been called into being, so there is no record at hand to tell how the rooms were furnished, what the mistress wore, her likes, dislikes, and the various idiosyncrasies she displayed in half an hour's conversation. Such being the case we must be content with the simple fact that, charming by the candid sincerity of her disposition, and the many personal attractions that when young she possessed, Miss Mulock speedily drew around her a circle of friends whom, with rare fidelity, she ever after kept.
"John Halifax" was followed in 1859 by "A Life for a Life," a novel which, although it never obtained the same popularity, fully maintains the position won by its precursor. In it Miss Mulock breaks new ground both as to plot and the manner in which she relates the story, which is told by the hero and heroine in the form of a journal kept by each, so that we have alternate chapters of his story and her story. This form of construction is peculiar and occasionally presents to the reader some difficulties, but as a medium to convey opinions and convictions which the author desires to demonstrate it is happily conceived. The motive of the book is tragedy, the keynote murder—that is murder according to the exigencies of the story-teller. Max Urquhart, the hero—who at the time the tale opens is a staid, serious man of forty—is the perpetrator of this crime, committed at the age of nineteen in a fit of intoxication on a man named Johnston. Journeying from London to join a brother who is dying of consumption at Pau, Urquhart, through a mistake, finds that instead of being at Southampton he is at Salisbury. On the way he has made the acquaintance of the pseudo-driver of the coach, a flashy, dissipated fellow, who by a tissue of lies induces the raw Scotch lad to remain for some hours at the inn and then be driven on by him to where they will overtake the right coach. By this man young Urquhart is made drunk, and when as a butt he no longer amuses the sottish company they brutally turn him into the street. Later on he is aroused by the cut of a whip. It is his coach companion who pacifies him with the assurance that if he gets into the gig he will be speedily taken by him to Southampton. The lad consents, he is helped up and soon falls fast asleep to be awakened in the middle of Salisbury plain by his savage tormentor, who pushes him out and tells him to take up his lodging at Stonehenge. The poor youth, with just sufficient sense left in him to feel that he is being kept from his dying brother, implores the ruffian to take him on his way. "To the devil with your brother," is the answer, and in spite of all entreaties, Johnston whips up his horse, and is on the point of starting, when Urquhart, maddened by rage, catches him unawares, drags him from the gig, and, flings him violently on the ground, where his head strikes against one of the great stones, and he is killed.
How Urquhart manages to reach Southampton, and to get to Pau, he never knows; but when he does arrive at his destination, it is to find his brother dead and buried, and the fit of mania which follows is set down to the shock this gives him. At the end of a year, hearing that Johnston's death is attributed to accident, and being under the conviction that if the truth were told he would be hanged, he resolves to lock the secret in his own breast until the hour of his death draws near, and, in the meanwhile, to expiate his offence by living for others, and for the good he can do to them. He becomes an army doctor, goes through the Crimean War, and, when we are introduced to him, is doing duty at Aldershot, near where, at a ball, he meets the inevitable she, Theodora Johnston. If the hero is drawn dark, thin, with a spare, wiry figure, and a formal, serious air, the portrait of the heroine, with her undeniably ordinary figure, and a face neither pretty nor young, forms a fitting pendant to it. These two are irresistibly drawn towards each other, and, notwithstanding that the lady bears the fatal name of Johnston, they soon become engaged. Dr. Urquhart's tender conscience then demands that the tragic misdeed of his life shall be confessed to the woman he is about to make his wife, and, in a letter, he confides to her the sad history, adding, as postscript, some few days later: "I have found his grave at last." Here follows the inscription, which proves the dead man to have been the son of Theodora's father, her own half-brother, Henry Johnston. "Farewell, Theodora!"
It is impossible here to give more than this crude outline of the plot of a book in which, far beyond the story she means to tell, the author has her own individual opinions and convictions to impress on us. The temptation to earnest writers to try, through their writings, to make converts of their readers, is often very strong, and in this instance Miss Mulock undoubtedly gave way to it. She had not only a vehement abhorrence of capital punishment, but, to quote from her book, she maintained "that any sin, however great, being repented of and forsaken, is, by God, and ought to be by man, altogether pardoned, blotted out, and done away."
As was at the time said, "Her argument demands a stronger case than she has dared to put;" but so ably are the incidents strung together, so touchingly are the relative positions of these suffering souls described, that their sorrows, affection, and fidelity become convincing; and, full of the pathetic tragedy of the situation, we are oblivious of the fact that what is called a crime is nothing greater than an accident, a misfortune, and that for murder we must substitute manslaughter.
From the date of the appearance of "John Halifax," Miss Mulock's pen was never long idle. Composition was not a labour to her; and friends who knew her at that time, describe her as walking about the room, or bending over on a low stool, rapidly setting down her thoughts in that small delicate writing which gave no trouble to read. She had beautiful hands; a tall, slim, graceful figure; and, with the exception of her mouth, which was too small, and not well shaped, delicate and regular features. These attractions, heightened by a charming frankness of manner, made her very popular. Her poetic vein was strong. She published several volumes of poems, and many of her verses, when set to music, became much admired as songs.
Following "A Life for a Life," came, in somewhat quick succession, "Studies from Life," "Mistress and Maid," "Christian's Mistake," "A Noble Life," "Two Marriages." These in a period of ten years.
As may be supposed, they are not all of equal merit; neither does any one of them touch the higher level of the author's earlier books. Still, there is good honest work in each, and the same exalted purity of tone, while much of the sentimentality complained of before is wholly omitted or greatly toned down.
"Mistress and Maid" is one of those good, quiet stories, full of homely truths and pleasant teaching, in which is shown the writer's quick sympathy with the working class. The maid, Elizabeth, is as full of character and of refined feelings as is Hilary Leaf, the mistress, and her one romance of love, although not so fortunate, has quite as much interest. The opening scenes, in which these two first meet, are excellent, giving us, all through their early association, touches of humour—a quality which, in Miss Mulock's writings, is very rare.
The picture of the rather tall, awkward, strongly built girl of fifteen, hanging behind her anxious-eyed, sad-voiced mother, who pushes her into notice with "I've brought my daughter, ma'am, as you sent word you'd take on trial. 'Tis her first place, and her'll be awk'ard like at first. Hold up your head, Elizabeth," is drawn with that graphic fidelity which gives interest to the most commonplace things in life. The awkward girl proves to be a rough diamond, capable of much polish, and by the kindly teaching of Hilary Leaf she is turned into an admirable, praiseworthy woman. One has to resist the temptation to say more about Hilary Leaf, an energetic, intelligent girl who, when she cannot make a living for herself and her sister by school-keeping, tries, and succeeds, by shop-keeping. The description of the struggles of these two poor ladies to pay their way, and keep up a respectable appearance, comes sympathetically from the pen of a woman whose heart was ever open to similar distresses in real life. To her praise be it remembered that to any tale of true suffering Dinah Mulock never closed her ears or her hand.
Her next two novels, "Christian's Mistake" and "A Noble Life," in our opinion, fall far short of any of her previous efforts. Yet they were both received with much popular favour, particularly the former, which called forth warm praise from reviewers.
For us not one of the characters has a spark of vitality. Christian is not even the shadow of a young girl made of flesh and blood. Her forbearance and self-abnegation are maddening. Her husband, the "Master of St. Bede's,'" twenty-five years her senior and a widower, is nothing but a lay figure, meant to represent a good man, but utterly devoid of intellect and, one would think, of feeling, since he permits his young bride, possessed of all the seraphic virtues, to be snubbed and brow-beaten by two vulgar shrewish sisters-in-law. There is no interest of plot or depicting of character, and the children are as unreal and offensive as their grown up relations. In "A Noble Life," also, there is nothing which stirs our sympathies. Even the personal deformities of the unfortunate little earl fail to touch us, and, when grown up and invested with every meritorious attribute, he is more like the "example" of a moral tale than a being of human nature.
As has been said, the portrayal of men is not this author's strong point. "Her sympathy with a good man is complete on the moral, but defective on the intellectual side"—a serious deficiency in one who has to create beings in whom we are asked to take a sustained interest.
That she could rise superior to this defect is shown in "The Woman's Kingdom." In this story Miss Mulock displays all her old charm of simplicity and directness, and is strong in her treatment of domestic life. At the outset she announces that it will be a thorough love story, and takes as her text that "love is the very heart of life, the pivot upon which its whole machinery turns, without which no human existence can be complete, and with which, however broken and worn in part, it can still go on working somehow, and working to a comparatively useful and cheerful end." This question we shall not stop to argue, but proceed with—we cannot say the plot, for of plot there is none; it is just an every-day version of the old, old story, given with admirable force and sweetness. It is said to appeal principally to young women, and it is possible that this is true, as the writer can recall the intense pleasure reading it gave to her nearly thirty years ago.
The book opens with the description of some seaside lodgings, in which we find twin sisters as opposite in character as in appearance. Edna is an epitome of all the virtues in a very plain binding. Letty, vain, spoilt, but loving her sister dearly, is a beauty. "Such women Nature makes rarely, very rarely; queens of beauty who instinctively take their places in the tournament of life, and rain influence upon weak mortals, especially men mortals." Two of the latter kind arrive as lodgers at the same house, brothers, also most dissimilar—Julius Stedman, impulsive, erratic and undisciplined; William, his elder brother, a grave, hard-working doctor, just starting practice. The four speedily become acquaintances—friends—and when they part are secretly lovers. Letty, by reason of what she calls "her unfortunate appearance," never doubts but that she has conquered both brothers; but happily it is to Edna that the young doctor has given his heart; and when in time Letty hears the news, "and remembers that she had been placing herself and Dr. Stedman in the position of the Irish ballad couplet,
Did ye ever hear of Captain Baxter, Whom Miss Biddy refused afore he axed her?
her vanity was too innocent and her nature too easy to bear offence long."
"But to think that after all the offers I have had you should be the first to get married, or anyhow, engaged! Who would ever have expected such a thing?" "Who would, indeed?" said Edna, in all simplicity, and with a sense almost of contrition for the fact. "Well, never mind," answered Letty consolingly, "I am sure I hope you will be very happy; and as for me"—she paused and sighed—"I should not wonder if I were left an old maid after all, in spite of my appearance."
But to be left an old maid is not to be Letty's fate. Julius, already bewitched by her beauty through being much more thrown into her society, falls passionately in love with her, and for lack of any one else, and because his ardour flatters and amuses her, Letty encourages him, permits an engagement, and promises to join him in India. But on the voyage out she meets a rich Mr. Vanderdecken, with whom she lands at the Cape, and whom she marries. This is the tragic note in the happy story, the one drop of gall in the Stedmans' cup of felicity. Edna and her husband are patterns of domestic well-being. The joys and cares of every-day life have mellowed all that was good in them, and the account given of their home and their family is one we dwell upon lovingly.
Perhaps it is but natural that in our later reading we should note some small discrepancies that had formerly escaped us. We regret that the sisters had drifted so widely apart, and that each should seem to be so unconcerned at the distance which divides them. It is as if happiness can make us callous as well as luxury. And although it was true that Letty's desertion suddenly wrecked the hopes of her lover, it seems hardly probable that such an unstable being as Julius would have taken her falseness so seriously. A wiser man might have foreseen the possibility.
Still, when this and more is said, our liking for the story remains as strong as ever. We know of few books which give a better picture of healthful domestic happiness and pure family life.
Although we have hitherto called, and shall continue to call, our authoress by her maiden name, she had in 1864 changed it by marrying Mr. G. Lillie Craik, a partner in the house of Macmillan & Co., and shortly after she removed to Shortlands, near Bromley, in Kent. This change in her state does not appear to have interfered with her occupation, and for many years volume followed volume in quick succession.
Unwisely, we think, for her literary reputation, she was led, through her strong sympathy, to advocate marriage with a deceased wife's sister in a novel, published in 1871, called "Hannah."
The novel with a purpose is almost certain to fall into the error of giving the argument on one side only. Its author has rarely any toleration for the ethical aspect of the other side of the question, and it is to be doubted if such books ever advance the cause they desire to advocate. In "Hannah" we are perfectly surfeited by those who wish to marry within the forbidden degree, and we feel as little toleration for the placid Bernard Rivers—one of those men who never believe in the pinch of a shoe until they want to put it on their own feet—as for Jim Dixon, who, after evading the law, speedily grows tired of the deceased wife's sister, and avails himself of his legal advantage to take another wife.
The objections we feel to novels of this class are well stated by a writer in the Edinburgh Review, No. clxxxix. "We object," he says, "on principle to stories written with the purpose of illustrating an opinion, or establishing a doctrine. We consider this an illegitimate use of fiction. Fiction may be rightfully employed to impress upon the public mind an acknowledged truth, or to revive a forgotten woe—never to prove a disputed one. Its appropriate aims are the delineation of life, the exhibition and analysis of character, the portraiture of passion, the description of nature."
In most of these aims Miss Mulock had proved herself an expert. In addition to her numerous novels and volumes of poems, she wrote a large number of tales for children, many of which, I am told, are exceedingly charming. One cannot read her books without being struck by the intense affection she felt for children. She had none of her own, but she adopted a daughter to whom she gave a mother's love and care. From time to time there appeared from her pen volumes of short stories, studies, and essays; but it is not by these that her name and fame will be kept green. Neither will her reputation rest on her later novels. This she must have realised herself when writing, "Brains, even if the strongest, will only last a certain time and do a certain quantity of work—really good work." Miss Mulock had begun to work the rich vein of her imagination at an early age. She took few holidays, and gave herself but little rest.
She was by no means what is termed a literary woman. She was not a great reader; and although much praise is due to the efforts she made to improve herself, judged by the present standard, her education remained very defective. That she lacked the fire of genius is true, but it is no less true that she was gifted with great imaginative ability and the power of depicting ordinary men and women leading upright, often noble lives.
The vast public that such books as hers appeal to is shown in the large circulation of some of her works, the sale of "John Halifax, Gentleman" amounting to 250,000 copies, 80,000 of which—the sixpenny edition—have been sold within the last few months. This shows that her popularity is not confined to any one class. The gospel she wrote was for all humanity.
As a woman, she was loved best by those who knew her best. "Dinah was far more clever than her books," said an old friend who had been recalling pleasant memories to repeat to me. She died suddenly on the 12th of October 1887, from failure of the heart's action—the death she had described in the cases of Catherine Ogilvie, of John Halifax, and of Ursula, his wife—the death she had always foreseen for herself.
Around her grave in Keston churchyard stood a crowd of mourners—rich, poor, old and young—sorrowing for the good loyal friend who had gone from them, whose face they should see no more.
JULIA KAVANAGH. AMELIA
BLANDFORD EDWARDS
By MRS. MACQUOID
t is difficult to think of two writers more strongly contrasted, judging from the revelation their books afford of their natures and ways of thought. They both strove, in their novels, to represent individual specimens of humanity. They must both have possessed the power of distinct vision; but though Miss Kavanagh was a keen observer of externals, her types seem to have been created by imaginative faculty rather than by insight into real men and women, while Miss Edwards appears to have gone about the world open-eyed, and with note-book in hand, so vivid are some of her portraits.
In traditions, also, these writers differ. Miss Kavanagh has complete faith in the old French motto, "le bon sang ne peut pas mentir;" while one of Miss Edwards's heroes, an aristocrat by birth, is extremely happy as a merchant captain, with his plebeian Italian wife.
The two writers, however, strike the same note in regard to some of their female personages. Both Barbara Churchill and Nathalie Montolieu are truthful to rudeness.
Julia Kavanagh never obtrudes her personality on the reader, though she lifts him into the exquisitely pure and peaceful atmosphere which one fancies must have been hers. There is something so restful in her books, that it is difficult to believe she was born no longer ago than 1824, and that only twenty years ago she died in middle life; she seems to belong to a farther-away age—probably because her secluded life kept her strongly linked to the past, out of touch with the new generation and the new world of thought around her.
She began to write for magazines while still very young, and was only twenty-three when her first book, "The Three Paths," a child's story, was published. After this she wrote about fourteen novels, the best known of which are "Madeleine," "Nathalie," and "Adèle." She wrote many short stories, some of which were re-printed in volumes—notably the collection called "Forget-me-nots," published after her death. She also wrote "A Summer and Winter in the two Sicilies," "Woman in France in the 18th Century," "Women of Christianity," and two books which seem to have been highly praised—"Englishwomen of Letters" and "Frenchwomen of Letters."
Julia Kavanagh's first novel, "Madeleine," appeared in 1848—a charming story, its scene being in the Auvergne. The beginning is very striking, the theme being somewhat like that of "Bertha in the Lane"; but Madeleine, when she has given up her false lover, devotes the rest of her life to founding and caring for an orphanage.
Born in Ireland, Julia Kavanagh spent the days of her youth in Normandy, and the scene of her second novel, "Nathalie," is Norman, though Nathalie herself is a handsome, warm-blooded Provençale. The scenery and surroundings are very lifelike, but, with one exception, the people are less attractive than they are in "Adèle." In both books one feels a wish to eliminate much of the interminable talk, which could easily be dispensed with.
Nathalie, the country doctor's orphan daughter, teacher to the excellently drawn schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Dantin, is sometimes disturbingly rude and tactless, in spite of her graceful beauty. With all this gaucherie, and a violent temper to boot, Nathalie exercises a singular fascination over the people of the story, especially over the delightful Canoness, Aunt Radégonde, who is to me the most real of Miss Kavanagh's characters. Madame Radégonde de Sainville is a true old French lady of fifty years ago, as charming as she is natural.
The men in Julia Kavanagh's books have led secluded lives, or they are extremely reserved—very hard nuts indeed to crack for the ingenuous, inexperienced girls on whom they bestow their lordly affection. One does not pity Nathalie, who certainly brings her troubles on herself; but in the subsequent book, sweet little Adèle is too bright a bit of sunshine to be sacrificed to such a being as William Osborne.
The old château in which Adèle has spent her short life is in the north-east of France; its luxuriant but neglected garden, full of lovely light and shade, its limpid lake, and the old French servants, are delightfully fresh. The chapters which describe these are exquisite reading—a gentle idyll glowing with sunshine, and with a leisureful charm that makes one resent the highly coloured intrusion of the Osborne family, though the Osborne women afford an effective contrast. Adèle is scantily educated, but she is always delightful, though we are never allowed to forget that she is descended from the ancient family of de Courcelles. She is thoroughly amiable and much enduring, in spite of an occasional waywardness.
Fresh and full of beauty as these novels are, with their sweet pure-heartedness, their truth and restful peace, they cannot compare with the admirable short sketches of the quiet side of French life by the same writer. The scenes in which the characters of these short stories are set, show the truth of Julia Kavanagh's observation, as well as the quality of her style; they are quite as beautiful as some of Guy de Maupassant's little gem-like Norman stories, but they are perfectly free from cynicism, although she truly shows the greedy grasping nature of the Norman peasant. The gifts of this writer are intensified, and more incisively shown, in these sketches because they contain few superfluous words and conversations. Julia Kavanagh must have revelled in the creation of such tales as "By the Well," and its companions; they are steeped in joyous brightness, toned here and there with real pathos as in "Clément's Love" and "Annette's Love-Story," in the collection called "Forget-me-nots."
Such a story as "By the Well" would nowadays be considered a lovely idyll, and, by critics able to appreciate its breadth and finished detail, a Meissonier in point of execution: it glows with true colour.
Fifine Delpierre is not a decked-out peasant heroine; she is a bare-footed, squalid, half-clothed, half-starved little girl, when we first see her beside the well. This is the scene that introduces her.
"It has a roof, as most wells have in Normandy, a low thatched roof, shaggy, brown, and old, but made rich and gorgeous when the sun shines upon it by many a tuft of deep green fern, and many a cluster of pink sedum and golden stonecrop. Beneath that roof, in perpetual shade and freshness, lies the low round margin, built of heavy ill-jointed stones, grey and discoloured with damp and age; and within this ... spreads an irregular but lovely fringe of hart's-tongue. The long glossy leaves of a cool pale green grow in the clefts of the inner wall, so far as the eye can reach, stretching and vanishing into the darkness, at the bottom of which you see a little tremulous circle of watery light. This well is invaluable to the Lenuds, for, as they pass by the farm the waters of the little river grow brackish and unfit for use. So long ago, before they were rich, the Lenuds having discovered this spring through the means of a neighbouring mason, named Delpierre, got him to sink and make the well, in exchange for what is called a servitude in French legal phrase; that is to say, that he and his were to have the use of the well for ever and ever. Bitter strife was the result of this agreement. The feud lasted generations, during which the Lenuds throve and grew rich, and the Delpierres got so poor, that, at the time when this story opens, the last had just died leaving a widow and three children in bitter destitution. Maître Louis Lenud, for the Parisian Monsieur had not yet reached Manneville, immediately availed himself of this fact to bolt and bar the postern-door through which his enemy had daily invaded the courtyard to go to the well....
"'It was easily done, and it cost me nothing—not a sou,' exultingly thought Maître Louis Lenud, coming to this conclusion for the hundredth time on a warm evening in July. The evening was more than warm, it was sultry; yet Maître Louis sat by the kitchen fire watching his old servant, Madeleine, as she got onion soup ready for the evening meal, utterly careless of the scorching blaze which shot up the deep dark funnel of the chimney. Pierre, his son, unable to bear this additional heat, stood in the open doorway, waiting with the impatience of eighteen for his supper, occasionally looking out on the farmyard, grey and quiet at this hour, but oftener casting a glance within. The firelight danced about the stone kitchen, now lighting up the armoire in the corner, with cupids and guitars, and shepherds' pipes and tabors, and lovers' knots carved on its brown oak panels; now showing the lad the bright copper saucepans, hung in rows upon the walls; now revealing the stern grim figure of his father, with his heavy grey eyebrows and his long Norman features both harsh and acute; and very stern could Maître Louis look, though he wore a faded blue blouse, an old handkerchief round his neck, and on his head a white cotton nightcap, with a stiff tassel to it; now suddenly subsiding and leaving all in the dim uncertain shadows of twilight.
"During one of these grey intervals, the long-drawling Norman voice of Maître Louis spoke:
"'The Delpierres have given up the well,' he said, with grim triumph.
"'Ay, but Fifine comes and draws water every night,' tauntingly answered Pierre.
"'Hem!' the old man exclaimed with a growl....
"'Fifine comes and draws water every night,' reiterated Pierre....
"... he had seen the eldest child Fifine, a girl of eight or ten, sitting on her doorstep singing her little brother to sleep, with a wreath of hart's-tongue round her head, and a band of it round her waist. 'And a little beggar, too, she looked,' scornfully added Pierre, 'with her uncombed hair and her rags.'
"'Shall we let the dog loose to-night?' he said."
"Maître Louis uttered his deepest growl, and promised to break every bone in his son's body if he attempted such a thing.
"Pierre silently gulped down his onion soup, but the 'do it if you dare' of the paternal wink only spurred him on. He gave up the dog as too cruel, but not his revenge.
"The night was a lovely one and its tender subdued meaning might have reached Pierre's heart, but did not. He saw as he crouched in the grass near the old well that the full round moon hung in the sky; he saw that the willows by the little river looked very calm and still" ... [the revengeful lad watches for the child and falls asleep, then wakes suddenly].
"... behold ... there was little Fifine with her pitcher standings in the moonlight ... she stood there with her hair falling about her face, her torn bodice, her scanty petticoats, and her little bare feet. How the little traitress had got in, whilst he, the careless dragon, slept, Pierre could not imagine; but she was evidently quite unconscious of his presence.... The child set her pitcher down very softly, shook back the hanging hair from her face, and peeped into the well. She liked to look thus into that deep dark hole, with its damp walls clothed with the long green hart's-tongue that had betrayed her. She liked also to look at that white circle of water below; for you see if there was a wrathful Adam by her, ready for revenge, she was a daughter of Eve, and Eve-like enjoyed the flavour of this forbidden fruit.... Fifine ... took up her pitcher again and walked straight on to the river. Pierre stared amazed, then suddenly he understood it all. There was an old forgotten gap in the hedge beyond the little stream, and through that gap Fifine and her pitcher nightly invaded Maître Louis Lenud's territory.... having picked up a sharp flint which lay in the grass Pierre rose and bided his opportunity. Fifine went on till she had half-crossed a bridge-like plank which spanned the stream, then, as her ill-luck would have it, she stood still to listen to the distant hooting of an owl in the old church tower on the hill. Pierre saw the child's black figure in the moonlight standing out clearly against the background of grey willows, he saw the white plank and the dark river tipped with light flowing on beneath it. Above all, he saw Fifine's glazed pitcher, bright as silver; he was an unerring marksman, and he took a sure aim at this. The flint sped swiftly through the air; there was a crash, a low cry, and all was suddenly still. Both Fifine and her pitcher had tumbled into the river below and vanished there."
Pierre rescues her, and when Fifine has been for some years in service with the repentant Pierre's cousin her improved looks and clothing make her unrecognisable to the thick-headed well-meaning young farmer.
The only fault that can be found with these chronicles of Manneville is the likeness between them. The "Miller of Manneville," in the "Forget-me-not" collection, is full of charm, but it too much resembles "By the Well." The "Story of Monique" gives, however, a happy variety, and Monique is a thorough French girl; so is Mimi in the bright little story called "Mimi's Sin." Angélique again, in "Clément's Love," is a girl one meets with over and over again in Normandy, but these Norman stories are all so exquisitely told that it is invidious to single out favourites.
The stories laid in England, in which the characters are English, are less graphic; they lack the fresh and true atmosphere of their fellows placed across the Channel.
Julia Kavanagh died at Nice, where she spent the last few years of her life. Had she lived longer she would perhaps have given us some graphic stories from the Riviera, for it is evident that foreign people and foreign ways attracted her sympathies so powerfully that she was able to reproduce them in their own atmosphere. In a brief but touching preface to the collection called "Forget-me-nots," published after her death, Mr. C. W. Wood gives us a lovable glimpse of this charming writer; reading this interesting little sketch deepens regret that one had not the privilege of personally knowing so sweet a woman.
In regard to truth of atmosphere in her foreign stories, Julia Kavanagh certainly surpasses Amelia B. Edwards. In "Barbara's History," in "Lord Brackenbury," and in other stories by Miss Edwards, there are beautiful and graphic descriptions of foreign scenery, and we meet plenty of foreign people; but we feel that the latter are described by an Englishwoman who has taken an immense amount of pains to make herself acquainted with their ways and their speech—they somewhat lack spontaneity. In the two novels named there are chapters so full of local history and association that one thinks it might be well to have the books for companions when visiting the places described; they are full of talent—in some places near akin to genius.
"Barbara's History" contains a great deal of genuine humour. It is a most interesting and exciting story, though in parts stagey; the opening chapters, indeed the whole of Barbara's stay at her great-aunt's farm of Stoneycroft, are so excellent that one cannot wonder the book was a great success. Now and again passages and characters remind one of Dickens; the great-aunt, Mrs. Sandyshaft, is a thorough Dickens woman, with a touch of the great master's exaggeration; Barbara's father is another Dickens character. There are power and passion as well as humour in this book, but in spite of its interest it becomes fatiguing when Barbara leaves her aunt and the hundred pigs.
There is remarkable truth of characterisation in some of this writer's novels. Hugh Farquhar is sometimes an eccentric bore, but he is real. Barbara Churchill at times is wearyingly pedantic; then, again, she is just as delightfully original—her first meeting with Mrs. Sandyshaft is so inimitable that I must transcribe a part of it.
A rich old aunt has invited Barbara Churchill, a neglected child of ten years old, to stay with her in Suffolk. Barbara is the youngest of Mr. Churchill's three girls, and she is not loved by either her widowed father or her sisters, though an old servant named Goody dotes on the child. Barbara is sent by stage-coach from London to Ipswich:—
"Dashing on between the straggling cottages, and up a hill so closely shaded by thick trees that the dusk seems to thicken suddenly to-night, we draw up all at once before a great open gate, leading to a house of which I can only see the gabled outline and the lighted windows.
"The guard jumps down; the door is thrown open; and two persons, a man and a woman, come hurrying down the path.
"'One little girl and one box, as per book,' says the guard, lifting me out and setting me down in the road, as if I were but another box, to be delivered as directed.
"'From London?' asks the woman sharply.
"'From London,' replies the guard, already scrambling back to his seat; 'All right, ain't it?'
"'All right.'
"Whereupon the coach plunges on again into the dusk; the man shoulders my box as though it were a feather; and the woman who looks strangely gaunt and grey by this uncertain light, seizes me by the wrist and strides away towards the house at a pace that my cramped and weary limbs can scarcely accomplish.
"Sick and bewildered, I am hurried into a cheerful room where the table is spread as if for tea and supper, and a delicious perfume of coffee and fresh flowers fills the air; and—and, all at once even in the moment when I am first observing them, these sights and scents grow all confused and sink away together, and I remember nothing ... when I recover, I find myself laid upon a sofa, with my cloak and bonnet off, my eyes and mouth full of Eau de Cologne, and my hands smarting under a volley of slaps, administered by a ruddy young woman on one side, and by the same gaunt person who brought me in from the coach on the other. Seeing me look up, they both desist; and the latter, drawing back a step or two, as if to observe me to greater advantage, puts on an immense pair of heavy gold spectacles, stares steadily for some seconds, and and at length says:
"'What did you mean by that now?'
"Unprepared for so abrupt a question, I lie as if fascinated by her bright grey eyes, and cannot utter a syllable.
"'Are you better?'
"Still silent, I bow my head feebly, and keep looking at her.
"'Hey now. Am I a basilisk? Are you dumb, child?'
"Wondering why she speaks to me thus, and being, moreover, so very weak and tired, what can I do, but try in vain to answer, and failing in the effort, burst into tears again? Hereupon she frowns, pulls off her glasses, shakes her head angrily, and, saying: 'That's done to aggravate me, I know it is,' stalks away to the window, and stands there grimly, looking out upon the night. The younger woman, with a world of kindness in her rosy face ... whispers me not to cry.
"'That child's hungry,' says the other coming suddenly back. 'That's what's the matter with her. She's hungry, I know she is, and I won't be contradicted. Do you hear me, Jane?—I won't be contradicted.'
"'Indeed, ma'am, I think she is hungry, and tired too, poor little thing.'
"'Tired and hungry!... Mercy alive, then why don't she eat? Here's food enough for a dozen people. Child, what will you have? Ham, cold chicken pie, bread, butter, cheese, tea, coffee, ale?'
" ... Everything tastes delicious; and not even the sight of the gaunt housekeeper ... has power to spoil my enjoyment.
"For she is the housekeeper, beyond a doubt. Those heavy gold spectacles, that sad-coloured gown, that cap with its plain close bordering can belong to no one but a housekeeper. Wondering within myself that she should be so disagreeable; then where my aunt herself can be; why she has not yet come to welcome me; how she will receive me when she does come; and whether I shall have presence of mind enough to remember all the curtseys I have been drilled to make, and all the speeches I have been taught to say, I find myself eating as though nothing at all had been the matter with me, and even staring now and then quite confidently at my opposite neighbour.... Left alone now with the sleeping dogs and the housekeeper—who looks as if she never slept in her life—I find the evening wearisome. Observing too that she continues to look at me in the same grim imperturbable way, and seeing no books anywhere about, it occurs to me that a little conversation would perhaps be acceptable, and that, as I am her mistress's niece, it is my place to speak first.
"'If you please, ma'am,' I begin after a long hesitation.
"'Hey?'
"Somewhat disconcerted by the sharpness and suddenness of this interruption, I pause, and take some moments to recover myself.
"'If you please, ma'am, when am I to see my aunt?'
"'My aunt, if you please, ma'am?'
"'Mercy alive! and pray who do you suppose I am?'
"'You, ma'am,' I falter, with a vague uneasiness impossible to describe; 'are you not the housekeeper?'
"To say that she glares vacantly at me from behind her spectacles, loses her very power of speech, and grows all at once quite stiff and rigid in her chair, is to convey but a faint picture of the amazement with which she receives this observation.
"'I,' she gasps at length, 'I! Gracious me, child, I am your aunt.' I feel my countenance become an utter blank. I am conscious of turning red and white, hot and cold, all in one moment. My ears tingle; my heart sinks within me; I can neither speak nor think. A dreadful silence follows, and in the midst of this silence my aunt, without any kind of warning, bursts into a grim laugh, and says:
"'Barbara, come and kiss me.'
"I could have kissed a kangaroo just then, in the intensity of my relief; and so getting up quite readily, touch her gaunt cheek with my childish lips, and look the gratitude I dare not speak. To my surprise she draws me closer to her knee, passes one hand idly through my hair, looks not unkindly, into my wondering eyes, and murmurs more to herself than me, the name of 'Barbara.'
"This gentle mood is, however, soon dismissed, and as if ashamed of having indulged it, she pushes me away, frowns, shakes her head, and says quite angrily:
"'Nonsense, child, nonsense. It's time you went to bed.'"
[Next morning at breakfast.]
"'Your name,' said my aunt, with a little off-hand nod, 'is Bab. Remember that.'" ... [Mrs. Sandyshaft asks her great niece why she took her for the housekeeper; the child hesitates, and at last owns that it was because of her dress.]
... "'Too shabby?'
"'N—no, ma'am, not shabby; but....'
"'But what? You must learn to speak out, Bab. I hate people who hesitate.'
"'But Papa said you were so rich, and....'
"'Ah! He said I was rich did he? Rich! Oho! And what more, Bab? What more? Rich indeed! Come, you must tell me. What else did he say when he told you I was rich?'
"'N—nothing more, ma'am,' I replied, startled and confused by her sudden vehemence. 'Indeed nothing more.'
"'Bab!' said my aunt bringing her hand down so heavily upon the table that the cups and saucers rang again, 'Bab, that's false. If he told you I was rich, he told you how to get my money by-and-by. He told you to cringe and fawn, and worm yourself into my favour, to profit by my death, to be a liar, a flatterer, and a beggar, and why? Because I am rich. Oh yes, because I am rich.'
"I sat as if stricken into stone, but half comprehending what she meant, and unable to answer a syllable.
"'Rich indeed!' she went on, excited more and more by her own words and stalking to and fro between the window and the table, like one possessed. 'Aha! we shall see, we shall see. Listen to me, child. I shall leave you nothing—not a farthing. Never expect it—never hope for it. If you are good and true, and I like you, I shall be a friend to you while I live; but if you are mean and false, and tell me lies, I shall despise you. Do you hear? I shall despise you, send you home, never speak to you, or look at you again. Either way, you will get nothing by my death. Nothing—nothing!'
"My heart swelled within me—I shook from head to foot. I tried to speak and the words seemed to choke me.
"'I don't want it,' I cried passionately. 'I—I am not mean. I have told no lies—not one.'
"My aunt stopped short, and looked sternly down upon me, as if she would read my very soul.
"'Bab,' said she, 'do you mean to tell me that your father said nothing to you about why I may have asked you here, or what might come of it? Nothing? Not a word?'
"'He said it might be for my good—he told Miss Whymper to make me curtsey and walk better, and come into a room properly; he said he wished me to please you. That was all. He never spoke of money, or of dying, or of telling lies—never.'
"'Well then,' retorted my aunt, sharply, 'he meant it.'
"Flushed and trembling in my childish anger, I sprang from my chair and stood before her, face to face.
"'He did not mean it,' I cried. 'How dare you speak so of Papa? How dare....'
"I could say no more, but, terrified at my own impetuosity, faltered, covered my face with both hands, and burst into an agony of sobs.
"'Bab,' said my aunt, in an altered voice, 'little Bab,' and took me all at once in her two arms, and kissed me on the forehead.
"My anger was gone in a moment. Something in her tone, in her kiss, in my own heart, called up a quick response; and nestling close in her embrace, I wept passionately. Then she sat down, drew me on her knee, smoothed my hair with her hand, and comforted me as if I had been a little baby.
"'So brave,' said she, 'so proud, so honest. Come, little Bab, you and I must be friends.'
"And we were friends from that minute; for from that minute a mutual confidence and love sprang up between us. Too deeply moved to answer her in words, I only clung the closer, and tried to still my sobs. She understood me.
"'Come,' said she, after a few seconds of silence, 'let's go and see the pigs.'"
The sketch of Hilda Churchill is very good, and so is that of the Grand Duke of Zollenstrasse. Taken as a whole, if we leave out the concluding chapters, "Barbara's History" is a stirring, original, and very amusing book, full of historical and topographical information, written in terse and excellent English, and very rich in colour—the people in it are so wonderfully alive.
"Lord Brackenbury" is very clever and full of pictures, but it lacks the brightness and the originality of "Barbara's History." Amelia B. Edwards wrote several other novels—"Half a Million of Money," "Miss Carew," "Debenham's Vow," &c. &c. She also published a collection of short tales—"Monsieur Maurice," etc.—and a book of ballads. Born in 1831, she began to write at a time when sensational stories were in fashion, and produced a number of exciting stories—"The Four-fifteen Express," "The Tragedy in the Bardello Palace," "The Patagonian Brothers"—all extremely popular; though, when we read them now, they seem wanting in the insight into human nature so remarkably shown in some of her novels.
She was a distinguished Egyptologist, and the foundation in 1883 of the Egypt Exploration Fund was largely due to her efforts; she became one of the secretaries to this enterprise, and wrote a good deal on Egyptian subjects for European and American periodicals. She wrote and illustrated some interesting travel books, especially her delightful "A Thousand Miles up the Nile," and an account of her travels in 1872 among the—at that time—rarely visited Dolomites. The latter is called "Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys:" it is interesting, but not so bright as the Nile book.
When one considers that a large part of her output involved constant and laborious research—that for the purposes of many of the books she had to take long and fatiguing journeys—the amount of good work she accomplished is very remarkable; the more so, because she was not only a writer, but an active promoter of some of the public movements of her time. She was a member of the Biblical Archæological Society—a member, too, of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Literature. Then she entered into the woman's question, not so popular in those days as it is in these, and was vice-president of a Society for promoting Women's Suffrage.
It is difficult to understand how in so busy and varied a life she could have found sufficient leisure for writing fiction; but she had a very large mental grasp, and probably as large a power of concentration. Remembering that she was an omnivorous reader, a careful student, possessed too of an excellent memory, we need not wonder at the fulness and richness of her books.
MRS. NORTON
By MRS. ALEXANDER
t is hardly necessary to state that this beautiful and charming woman was the second daughter of Thomas Sheridan and grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, of Regency renown. She was one of three sisters famous for beauty and brains, the eldest of whom married Lord Dufferin, and the youngest Lord Seymour, afterwards Duke of Somerset.
Born in the first decade of the present century, she married at nineteen, in 1827, George Norton, brother of the third Lord Grantley—a union which proved most unhappy. In 1836 Mr. Norton sought for a divorce, in an action which entirely failed. Nevertheless, Norton remained irreconcilable, and availed himself of all the powers which the law then lent to a vindictive husband, claiming the proceeds of his wife's literary work, and interfering between her and her children. But it is with Mrs. Norton as a writer rather than as a woman that we are concerned, and it is useless now to dwell upon the story of her wrongs and struggles.
Previous to this unfortunate suit she produced, in 1829, "The Story of Rosalie, with other Poems," which seems to have been her first published work. This was well received and much admired.
In 1830 "The Undying One," a poem on the Wandering Jew, was brought out, followed in 1840 by "The Dream and other Poems." This was highly praised in the Quarterly Review by Lockhart, who spoke of her as "the Byron of poetesses." Other poems from her pen touched on questions of social interest: "A Voice from the Factories" and "The Child of the Islands," a poem on the social condition of the English people. She also printed "English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century," and published much of it in pamphlets on Lord Cranworth's Divorce Bill of this year (1853), thus assisting in the amelioration of the laws relating to the custody of children, and the protection of married women's earnings.
Her natural tendency was towards poetry, and the first five books published by her were all in verse. In 1851 appeared a novel, in three volumes, called "Stuart of Dunleath," which was succeeded by "Lost and Saved" and "Old Sir Douglas."
It is curious to observe the depth and width of the gulf which yawns between the novel of 1851 and the novel of to-day.
The latter opens with some brief sentence spoken by one of the characters, or a short dialogue between two or three of them, followed by a rapid sketch of their position or an equally brief picture of the scene in which the action of the piece is laid. The reader is plunged at once into the drama, and left to guess the parts allotted by the author to his puppets.
Forty-five years ago, when Mrs. Norton wrote "Stuart of Dunleath," the reader had to pass through a wide porch and many long passages before he reached the inner chambers of the story. An account of the hero and heroine's families, even to the third and fourth generation, was indispensable, and the minutest particulars of their respective abodes and surroundings were carefully detailed. The tale travelled by easy stages, with many a pause where byways brought additional wayfarers to join the throng of those already travelling through the pages; while each and all, regardless of proportion, were described with equal fulness whatever their degree of importance.
These are the characteristics of Mrs. Norton's novels, which stretch in a leisurely fashion to something like two hundred thousand words. Nevertheless, "Stuart of Dunleath" shows great ability and knowledge of the world. It is evidently written by a well-read, cultivated, and refined woman, with warm feelings and strong religious convictions. The descriptions are excellent, the language is easy and graceful.
The scene of the story lies chiefly in Scotland, and the Scotch characters are very well drawn, save one, Lady Macfarren, who is inhumanly hard. This, too, is one of the peculiarities of the forty or forty-five year old novel; its people are terribly consistent in good or evil. The dignity, the high-mindedness, the angelic purity of the heroine is insupportable, and the stainless honour, the stern resistance to temptation, the defiance of tyrannical wrongdoers, makes the hero quite as bad.
In "Stuart of Dunleath," however, the hero is decidedly weak. He is the guardian of Eleanor Raymond, the heroine, and, seeing a probability of making a large profit by a speculative loan, risks her money, hoping to obtain the means to buy back his estate without diminishing her fortune. The speculation fails. Eleanor is reduced to poverty, and Stuart is supposed to drown himself. Then the impoverished heroine, who is desperately in love with her guardian, is compelled to marry a wealthy baronet, Sir Stephen Penrhyn. This is the beginning of troubles, and very bad troubles they are, continuing steadily through two-thirds of the book.
Sir Stephen is a brutally bad husband, is shamelessly unfaithful, personally violent, breaks his wife's arm, and makes her life a burden. Her little twin sons are drowned in a boating accident, and then Stuart returns from the grave, having been stopped in his attempt to drown himself by a picturesque old clergyman, and started off to America, where he manages to recover the lost fortune.
By his advice, Eleanor leaves her tyrant and takes steps to obtain a divorce, but before the case is ready for hearing is seized with scruples and gives up the attempt, chiefly because she fears she is influenced by an unholy love for Stuart. Finally she gets leave of absence from her amiable spouse, and dies of a broken heart before it expires, Stuart having married her dearest friend, the brilliant Lady Margaret Fordyce, thinking that Eleanor had no real affection for him.
The scruples are much to her credit, of course, but she might have tried to save the remainder of her life from the degradation which must have been the result of a reunion with her husband, yet kept aloof from Stuart without offending God or breaking any sacred law.
Eighteen very distinct characters figure in these pages, and three or four children. Of these the best drawn are those most lightly sketched. The author's favourites are too much described, their merits, their peculiarities, their faults (if allowed to have any) are detailed as the writer sees them. But they do not act and live and develop themselves to the reader, and, therefore, become abstractions, not living entities.
"Lost and Saved," written some dozen of years afterward, has much the same qualities as "Stuart of Dunleath." The subsidiary characters are more convincing than the leading ladies and gentlemen. The hero, if such a man could be so termed, with his extreme selfishness, his surface amiability, his infirmity of purpose and utter faithlessness, is well drawn. There is a respectable hero also, but we do not see much of him, which is not to be regretted, as he is an intolerable prig.
In this romance the heroine elopes with Treherne, the villainous hero. (Of course, there are the usual family objections to their wedding.) They intend to go to Trieste, but in the confusion of a night march they get on board the wrong steamer, and find themselves at Alexandria. Here Treherne is confronted with his aunt, the magnificent Marchioness of Updown. He is therefore obliged to suppress Beatrice (the heroine) until the Marchioness "moves on."
They consequently set off on a voyage up the Nile, apparently in search of a clergyman to marry them. It seems, by the way, a curious sort of hunting-ground in which to track an English parson. Then Beatrice falls dangerously ill, and nothing will save her save a parson and the marriage service. A benevolent and sympathetic young doctor is good enough to simulate a British chaplain, and the knot is tied to the complete satisfaction of Beatrice. Much misery ensues.
It must be added that the magnificent Marchioness of Updown is an extraordinary picture. Besides being a peeress by marriage, she is the daughter of an earl, an aristocrat born and bred. Yet her vulgarity is amazing. Her stupid ill-nature, her ignorance, her speech and manner, suggest the idea of a small shopkeeper in a shabby street.
In this novel Mrs. Norton portrays the whited-sepulchre sort of woman very clearly in Milly, Lady Nesdale, who is admired and petted by Society, always smiling, well tempered, well dressed, careful to observe les bienséances, making herself pleasant even to her husband; while, screened by this fair seeming, she tastes of a variety of forbidden fruit, one mouthful of which would be enough to consign a less astute woman to social death. This class of character figures largely in present day novels, but few equal, none surpass, Mrs. Norton's masterly touch.
"Old Sir Douglas," her last novel, was published in Macmillan's Magazine, 1867. It is planned on the same lines as her previous works of fiction—the plot rather complicated, the characters extremely numerous; among these is an almost abnormally wicked woman who works endless mischief.
It was, however, as a poetess that Mrs. Norton was chiefly known. Her verse was graceful and harmonious, but more emotional than intellectual. Wrath at injustice and cruelty stirred the depths of her soul; her heart was keenly alive to the social evils around her and she longed passionately for power to redress them. The effect of her own wrongs and sufferings was to quicken her ardour to help her fellow women smarting under English law as it at that time existed. What that law then permitted is best exemplified by her own experience. When the legal proceedings between her and her husband were over, and her innocence of the charges brought against her was fully established, she was allowed to see her children only once for the space of half an hour in the presence of two witnesses chosen by Mr. Norton, though this state of things was afterwards ameliorated by the Infant Custody Act, which allowed some little further restricted intercourse.
But these evil times are past. Indeed, it seems hard to believe that barely fifty years separates the barbarous injustice of that period from the decent amenities of this, as regards the respective rights of husbands and wives.
Mrs. Norton's second poem of importance, "The Undying One," is founded on the legend of the Wandering Jew, a subject always attractive to the poetic imagination. It contains many charming lines, and touches on an immense variety of topics, wandering, like its hero, over many lands. The sufferings of isolation are vividly depicted, and isolation must, of necessity, be the curse of endless life in this world.
"Thus, thus, to shrink from every outstretched hand, To strive in secret and alone to stand, Or, when obliged to mingle in the crowd, Curb the pale lip which quiveringly obeys, Gapes wide with sudden laughter, vainly loud, Or writhes a faint, slow smile to meet their gaze. This, this is hell! the soul which dares not show The barbed sorrow which is rankling there, Gives way at length beneath its weight of woe, Withers unseen, and darkens to despair!"
In these days of rapidity and concentration, poems such as this would never emerge from the manuscript stage, in which they might be read by appreciative friends with abundant leisure.
The same observation applies to "The Dream." A mother sits watching the slumber of her beautiful young daughter who, waking, tells her dream of an exquisite life with the one she loves best, unshadowed by grief or pain. The mother warns her that life will not be like this, and draws a somewhat formidable picture of its realities. From this the girl naturally shrinks, wondering where Good is to be found, and is answered thus:
"He that deals blame, and yet forgets to praise, Who sets brief storms against long summer days, Hath a sick judgment. And shall we all condemn, and all distrust, Because some men are false and some unjust?"
Some of Mrs. Norton's best and most impassioned verses are to be found in the dedication of this poem to her friend, the Duchess of Sutherland.
Affection, gratitude, indignation, grief, regret—these are the sources of Mrs. Norton's inspiration; but of any coldly intellectual solution of life's puzzles, such as more modern writers affect, there is little trace.
"The Lady of La Garaye" is a Breton tale (a true one) of a beautiful and noble Châtelaine, on whom Heaven had showered all joy and blessing. Adored by her husband, she shared every hour of his life and accompanied him in his favourite sport of hunting. One day she dared to follow him over too wide a leap. Her horse fell with and on her. She was terribly injured, and crippled for life. After much lamenting she is comforted by a good priest, and institutes a hospital for incurables, she and her husband devoting themselves to good works for the remainder of their days. The versification is smooth, the descriptions are graceful and picturesque; but neither the subject nor its treatment is enthralling.
Mrs. Norton's finest poetic efforts are to be found in her short pieces. One entitled "Ataraxia" has a soothing charm, which owes half its melody to the undertone of sadness which pervades the verse.
"Come forth! The sun hath flung on Thetis' breast The glittering tresses of his golden hair; All things are heavy with a noon-day rest, And floating sea-birds cleave the stirless air. Against the sky in outlines clear and rude The cleft rocks stand, while sunbeams slant between And lulling winds are murmuring through the wood Which skirts the bright bay, with its fringe of green.
"Come forth! all motion is so gentle now It seems thy step alone should walk the earth, Thy voice alone, the 'ever soft and low,' Wake the far haunting echoes into birth.
From the perusal of her writings, the impression given by her portrait, and the reminiscences of one who knew her, we gather an idea of this charming and gifted woman, whose nature seems to have been rich in all that makes for the happiness of others, and of herself. We feel that she possessed a mind abundantly stored, an imagination stimulated and informed by sojourning in many lands; a heart, originally tender and compassionate, mellowed by maternal love, a judgment trained and restrained by constant intercourse with the best minds of the period, a wit keen as a damascene blade, and a soul to feel, even to enthusiasm, the wrongs and sufferings of others.
Add to these gifts the power of swift expression, and we can imagine what a fascination Mrs. Norton must have possessed for those of her contemporaries who had the privilege of knowing her. "She was the most brilliant woman I ever met," said the late Charles Austen, "and her brilliancy was like summer lightning; it dazzled, but did not hurt." Unless, indeed, she was impelled to denounce some wrong or injustice, when her words could strike home. Yet to this lovely and lovable woman, life was a long disappointment; and through all she has written a strain of profound rebellion against the irony of fate colours her views, her delineations of character, her estimate of the social world. By her relations and friends she was warmly appreciated.
She did not succeed in obtaining the relief of divorce until about 1853. Mr. Norton survived till 1875, and in 1877, a few months before her death, his widow married Sir William Stirling-Maxwell.
It is a curious instance of the change of fashion and the transient nature of popular memory that great difficulty is experienced in obtaining copies of Mrs. Norton's works, especially of her poems. "The Undying One," "The Dream," and one or two smaller pieces, are found only in the British Museum Library. The novels are embedded in the deeper strata of Mudie's, but are not mentioned in the catalogue of that all-embracing collection. Yet forty years ago, Mrs. Norton acknowledged that she made at one time about £1400 a year by her pen, this chiefly by her contributions to the annuals of that time.
Mrs. Norton, however, had not to contend with the cruel competition which lowers prices while it increases labour. In her day, the workers were few, and the employers less difficult to please. But these comparisons are not only odious, but fruitless. The crowd, the competition, the desperate struggle for life, exists, increases, and we cannot alter it. We can but train for the contest as best we may, and say with the lovely and sorely tried subject of this sketch, as she writes in her poem to her absent boys:
"Though my lot be hard and lonely, Yet I hope—I hope through all."
"Mrs. Alexander"
"A. L. O. E." (MISS TUCKER)
MRS. EWING
By MRS. MARSHALL
orty years ago, the mystic letters "A. L. O. E." ("A Lady of England") on the title-page of a book ensured its welcome from the children of those days. There was not then the host of gaily bound volumes pouring from the press to be piled up in tempting array in every bookseller's shop at Christmas. The children for whom "A. L. O. E." wrote were contented to read a "gift-book" more than once; and, it must be said, her stories were deservedly popular, and bore the crucial test of being read aloud to an attentive audience several times.
Many of these stories still live, and the allegorical style in which "A. L. O. E." delighted has a charm for certain youthful minds to this day. There is a pride and pleasure in thinking out the lessons hidden under the names of the stalwart giants in the "Giant Killer," which is one of "A. L. O. E.'s" earlier and best tales. A fight with Giant Pride, a hard battle with Giant Sloth, has an inspiriting effect on boys and girls, who are led to "look at home" and see what giants hold them in bondage.
"A. L. O. E.'s" style was almost peculiar to herself. She generally used allegory and symbol, and she was fired with the desire to arrest the attention of her young readers and "do them good." We may fear that she often missed her aim by forcing the moral, and by indulging in long and discursive "preachments," which interrupted the main current of the story, and were impatiently skipped that it might flow on again without vexatious hindrances.
In her early girlhood and womanhood "A. L. O. E." had written plays, which, we are told by her biographer, Miss Agnes Giberne, were full of wit and fun. Although her literary efforts took a widely different direction when she began to write for children, still there are flashes of humour sparkling here and there on the pages of her most didactic stories, showing that her keen sense of the ludicrous was present though it was kept very much in abeyance.
From the first publication of "The Claremont Tales" her success as a writer for children was assured. The list of her books covering the space of fifteen or twenty years is a very long one, and she had no difficulty in finding publishers ready to bring them out in an attractive form.
"The Rambles of a Rat" is before me, as I write, in a new edition, and is a very fair specimen of "A. L. O. E.'s" work. Weighty sayings are put into the mouth of the rats, and provoke a smile. The discussion about the ancestry of Whiskerando and Ratto ends with the trite remark—which, however, was not spoken aloud—that the great weakness of one opponent was pride of birth, and his anxiety to be thought of an ancient family; but the chief matter, in Ratto's opinion, was not whether our ancestors do honour to us, but whether by our conduct we do not disgrace them. Probably this page of the story was hastily turned here, that the history of the two little waifs and strays who took shelter in the warehouse, where the rats lived, might be followed.
Later on there is a discussion between a father and his little boy about the advantage of ragged schools, then a somewhat new departure in philanthropy. Imagine a boy of nine, in our time, exclaiming, "What a glorious thing it is to have ragged schools and reformatories, to give the poor and the ignorant, and the wicked, a chance of becoming honest and happy." Boys of Neddy's age, nowadays, would denounce him as a little prig, who ought to be well snubbed for his philanthropical ambition, when he went on to say, "How I should like to build a ragged school myself!" "The Voyage of the Rats to Russia" is full of interest and adventure, and the glimpse of Russian life is vivid, and in "A. L. O. E.'s" best manner.
Indeed, she had a graphic pen, and her descriptions of places and things were always true to life. In "Pride and his Prisoners," for instance, there are stirring scenes, drawn with that dramatic power which had characterised the plays she wrote in her earlier days. "The Pretender, a farce in two Acts, by Charlotte Maria Tucker," is published in Miss Giberne's biography. In this farce there is a curious and constantly recurring play on words, but the allegory and the symbol with which she afterwards clothed her stories are absent.
"A. L. O. E." did not write merely to amuse children; and the countless fairy tales and books of startling adventure, in their gilded covers and with their profuse illustrations, which are published every year, have thrown her stories into the shade. But they are written with verve and spirit, and in good English, which is high praise, and cannot always be given to the work of her successors in juvenile literature. In her books, as in every work she undertook throughout her life, she had the high and noble aim of doing good. Whether she might have widened the sphere of her influence by less of didactic teaching, and by allowing her natural gifts to have more play, it is not for us to inquire.
It is remarkable that this long practice in allegory and symbol fitted her for her labours in her latter years, amongst the boys and girls of the Far East. Her style was well adapted to the Oriental mind, and kindled interest and awoke enthusiasm in the hearts of the children in the Batala Schools. Here she did a great work, which she undertook at the age of fifty-four, when she offered her services to the Church Missionary Society as an unpaid missionary.
"All for love, and no reward" may surely be said to be "A. L. O. E.'s" watchword, as, with untiring energy, she laboured amongst the children in a distant part of the empire. Even there she was busy as an author. By her fertile pen she could reach thousands in that part of India who would never see her face or hear her voice. She wrote for India as she had written for England, ever keeping before her the good of her readers. The Hindu boys and girls, as well as the children of this country, have every reason to hold her name in grateful remembrance as one of the authors who have left a mark on the reign of Queen Victoria.