Thenceforth Charlotte went steadily in for Authorship. Volume after volume flowed from her fertile pen; most of them for children; many of them exceedingly amusing; all of them definitely designed to teach something. One is rather disposed to fancy that in the writing of these books there may have been, in the beginning, something of a struggle. Charlotte was by nature ambitious; and her literary gift was considerable; and some of its potentialities appear to have been sacrificed to her ardent desire for usefulness. Whether she ever could or would have made her mark in any of the higher walks of literature is a question which could only have been decided by actual experiment; but at least she must have felt it to lie within the bounds of possibility. Some people may think that her desire for usefulness was a little too ardent in its manifestation, since it led to so extremely didactic a mode of writing as that of many among her books. No one can deny that some of the said volumes do contain a large amount of direct ‘preaching’; not merely of life-lessons, interwoven with the story in such wise that the one could not be read and the other missed, but rather of little sermons so alternating with the story that a child might read the latter and skip the former. Probably, most children, when reading to themselves, did follow this plan. Directness to a fault was, however, a leading characteristic of Charlotte all through life. The same tendency,—many would say in plain terms, the same mistake—is apparent in the later years of her Indian work, in the mode of her Zenana teaching.
With respect to her writings, nothing is more impossible than to gauge correctly the amount of comparative good worked in any age, by different books or different styles of composition. That which makes the most stir, that which has the greatest apparent success, is by no means always the most wide in its influence. Some of us may be inclined to think that A. L. O. E. might have reached a larger circle, might have gained a more extensive influence, if she had less anxiously pressed so very much didactic talk into her tales,—if too she had more studiously cultivated her own dramatic instincts, and had more closely studied human nature. All this we are quite at liberty to believe. For the question as to ‘doing good’ through a book does not rest upon the amount of religious teaching which may be packed into a given number of printed pages, but rather upon the force with which a certain lesson is presented, with or without many words. There is no especial power in an abundance of words; rather the reverse!
But the main gist of the matter as regarded Charlotte herself lies outside all these questions. It is found in the simple fact that she determinately stamped down her own personal ambitions, and bent her powers with a most single heart to this task of ‘doing good’; that she resolutely yielded herself and her gifts to the Service of her Heavenly Father, desiring only that His Name might be honoured in what she undertook. Whether she always carried out this aim in the wisest manner is a secondary consideration. From the literary and artistic point of view, one may say that she undoubtedly did make some mistakes. From the standpoint of a simple desire to do good, one may question whether she could not have done yet more good by a different style of writing. But with regard to the purity and earnestness of her desire, with regard to the putting aside of personal ambitions, with regard to the single-heartedness of her aims, there can be no two opinions. And He who looks on the heart, He who gauges our actions not by results but by the motives which prompt them,—He, we may well believe, honoured His servant for her faithful work in His Service.
Nor must we ignore the measure of marked success which she certainly had, if one may judge from the speed with which her books came out, and the demand which apparently existed for them. Even in her most didactic tales there are keen and witty touches, and droll descriptions. For ‘teaching’ purposes her boys may sometimes converse together as boys never do converse; but none the less those boys are real, and they recur in after years to the memory as only living people or vivid creations ever do recur. In some of her rather higher flights, such as Pride and his Prisoners, are to be found stirring scenes, drawn with dramatic power.
One thing should be noted: the curiously allegorical or symbolical style of thought which was natural to her.
It did not appear in the girlish dramatic efforts,—unless in the direction of a perpetual play upon words,—but in her published books it developed speedily. This was remarkable in her; not because of any peculiar result from it in England, but because of its very peculiar adaptation to Indian needs. One may almost think of her authorship in England as mainly a long preparation for her Indian toil; the continuous practice in habits of imagery and allegory, by no means especially suited to our Western minds, gradually fitting her to deal with the Oriental mind, little as she yet dreamt of any such destination for herself. All these years, without knowing it, she was waiting for and was working upward to ‘the Crown of her Life,’ as it may be termed; those eighteen years in the Panjab. All these years she was being prepared and made ready, till she should be as a ‘sharpened instrument’ in the Hand of her Master, fitted for the work which He would give her to do.
Among the many volumes published during the first fifteen or twenty years of authorship were the following:—The Giant-Killer, The Roby Family, The Young Pilgrim, History of a Needle, and Rambles of a Rat, before 1858; Flora, The Mine, Precepts in Practice, Idols in the Heart, and Whispering Unseen, before 1860; Pride and his Prisoners, The Shepherd of Bethlehem, My Neighbour’s Shoes, War and Peace, Light in the Robber’s Cave, and The Silver Casket, before 1864. A trio of volumes appeared in succession, the first of which she wrote at her Mother’s suggestion,—Exiles in Babylon, Rescued from Egypt, and Triumph of Midian. Another trio, coming in due course,—Fairy Know-a-Bit, Parliament in the Playroom, and The Crown of Success,—were bright little books, containing a good deal of useful information. Besides these were published at intervals House Beautiful, Living Jewels, Castle of Carlmont, Hebrew Heroes, Claudia, Cyril Ashley, The Lady of Provence, The Wreath of Smoke, and very many others.
One of the most strongly allegorical of her earlier works was The Giant-Killer; and in that little book she no doubt made free use of her own experiences.
It is easy to believe that she must have had many a hard battle with Giant Sloth, before she gained the habit of always rising at six o’clock in the morning, a habit persevered in through life. Again, one of her eager and impulsive temperament could not have been naturally free from a clinging to her own way, and from a certain vigorous self-seeking; and many a bitter conflict must have been gone through, before friends could, with an all but unanimous voice, speak of hers as a peculiarly unselfish character. In the struggles of Fides to get out of the Pit of Selfishness, we may read between the lines of Charlotte’s girlish battlings.