Here we at once supply our childish wants,
Novels are hotbeds for your forward plants.”
Later on, Sheridan gave us the immortal Lydia Languish feeding her sentimentality upon that “evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge,” the circulating library. Lydia’s taste in books is catholic, but not altogether free from reproach. “Fling ‘Peregrine Pickle’ under the toilet,” she cries to Lucy, when surprised by a visit from Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony. “Throw ‘Roderick Random’ into the closet. Put ‘The Innocent Adultery’ into ‘The Whole Duty of Man.’ Thrust ‘Lord Aimworth’ under the sofa. Cram ‘Ovid’ behind the bolster. Put ‘The Man of Feeling’ into your pocket. There—now for them!”
How “The Man of Feeling” ever went into Lucy’s pocket remains a mystery, for it takes many volumes to hold that discursive romance, where everything from character to clothes is described with relentless minuteness. If a lady goes to a ball, we are not merely told that she looked radiant in “white and gold,” or in “scarlet tulle,” after the present slipshod fashion; but we are carefully informed that “a scarf of cerulean tint flew between her right shoulder and her left hip, being buttoned at each end by a row of rubies. A coronet of diamonds, through which there passed a white branch of the feathers of the ostrich, was inserted on the left decline of her lovely head.” And so on, until the costume is complete.
By this time women had regularly enrolled themselves in the victorious army of novel-writers, and had won fame and fortune in the field. Consider the brilliant and instantaneous success of Frances Burney. Think of the excitement she aroused, and the honors heaped thick and fast upon her. A woman of twenty-six when she wrote “Evelina,” she was able, by dint of short stature and childish ways, to pass for a girl of seventeen, which increased amazingly the popular interest in her novel. Sheridan swore he could not believe so young a thing could manifest such genius, and begged her to write him a comedy on the spot. Sir Joshua Reynolds professed actual fear of such keen wit and relentless observation. Dr. Johnson vowed that Richardson had written nothing finer, and Fielding nothing so fine as “Evelina;” and playfully protested he was too proud to eat cold mutton for dinner when he sat by Miss Burney’s side. Posterity, it is true, while preserving “Evelina” with great pride, has declined to place it by the side of “Tom Jones” or “Clarissa Harlowe;” but if we had our choice between the praise of posterity which was Miss Austen’s portion, and the praise of contemporaries which was Miss Burney’s lot, I doubt not we should be wise enough to take our applause off-hand,—“dashed in our faces, sounded in our ears,” as Johnson said of Garrick, and leave the future to look after itself.
It is pleasant, however, to think that the first good woman novelist had her work over rather than under estimated. It is pleasant also to contemplate the really bewildering career of Maria Edgeworth. Miss Edgeworth’s books are agreeable reading, and her children’s stories are among the very best ever written; but it is not altogether easy to understand why France and England contended to do her honor. When she went to London or to Paris she became the idol of brilliant and fashionable people. Peers and poets united in her praise. Like Mrs. Jarley, she was the delight of the nobility and gentry. The Duke of Wellington wrote verses to her. Lord Byron, whom she detested, extolled her generously. Moore pronounced her “delightful.” Macaulay compared the return of the Absentee to the return of Ulysses in the “Odyssey.” Sir Walter Scott took forcible possession of her, and carried her away to Abbotsford,—a too generous reward, it would seem, for all she ever did. Sydney Smith delighted in her. Mrs. Somerville, the learned, and Mrs. Fry, the benignant, sought her friendship; and finally, Mme. de Staël, who considered Jane Austen’s novels “vulgar,” protested that Miss Edgeworth was “worthy of enthusiasm.”
Now this was all very charming, and very enjoyable; but with such rewards following thick and fast upon successful story-writing, it is hardly surprising that every year saw the band of literary aspirants increase and multiply amazingly. People were beginning to learn how easy it was to write a book. Already Hannah More had bewailed the ever increasing number of novelists, “their unparalleled fecundity,” and “the frightful facility of this species of composition.” What would she think if she were living now, and could see over a thousand novels published every year in England? Already Mrs. Radcliffe had woven around English hearths the spell of her rather feeble terrors, and young and old shuddered and quaked in the subterranean corridors of castles amid the gloomy Apennines. Why a quiet, cheerful, retiring woman like Mrs. Radcliffe, who hated notoriety, and who loved country life, and afternoon drives, and all that was comfortable and commonplace, should have written “The Mysteries of Udolpho” passes our comprehension; but write it she did, and England received it with a mad delight she has never manifested for any triumph of modern realism. The volume, we are assured, was too often torn asunder by frantic members of a household so that it might pass from hand to hand more rapidly than if it held together.
Mrs. Radcliffe not only won fame and amassed a considerable fortune,—she received five hundred pounds for “Udolpho” and eight hundred for “The Italian,”—but she gave such impetus to the novel of horrors, which had been set going by Horace Walpole’s “Castle of Otranto,” that for years England was oppressed and excited by these dreadful literary nightmares. Matthew—otherwise “Monk”—Lewis, Robert Charles Maturin, and a host of feebler imitators, wrote grisly stories of ghosts, and murders, and nameless crimes, and supernatural visitations. Horrors are piled on horrors in these dismal and sulphurous tales. Blue fire envelops us, and persevering spectres, who have striven a hundred years for burial rites, sit by their victims’ bed-sides and recite dolorous verses, which is more than any self-respecting spectre ought to do. Compacts with Satan are as numerous as bargain counters in our city shops. Suicides alternate briskly with assassinations. In one melancholy story, the despairing heroine agrees to meet her lover in a lonely church, where they intend stabbing themselves sociably together. Unhappily, it rains hard all the afternoon, and—with an unexpected touch of realism—she is miserably afraid the bad weather will keep her indoors. “The storm was so violent,” we are told, “that Augusta often feared she could not go out at the appointed time. Frequently did she throw up the sash, and view with anxious looks the convulsed elements. At half past five the weather cleared, and Augusta felt a fearful joy.”
It might have been supposed that the gay, good-humored satire of “Northanger Abbey” would have laughed these tragic absurdities from the land. But Miss Austen alone, of all the great novelists of England, won less than her due share of profit and renown. Her sisters in the field were loaded down with honors. When the excellent Mrs. Opie became a Friend, and refused to write any more fiction, except, indeed, those moral but unlikely tales about the awful consequences of lying, her contemporaries spoke gravely of the genius she had sacrificed at the shrine of religion. Charlotte Bronté’s masterpiece gained instant recognition throughout the length and breadth of England. Of George Eliot’s sustained success there is no need to speak. But Jane Austen, whose incomparable art is now the theme of every critic’s pen, was practically ignored while she lived, and perhaps never suspected, herself, how admirable, how perfect was her work. Sir Walter Scott, it is true, with the intuition of a great story-teller, instantly recognized this perfection; and so did Lord Holland and a few others, among whom let us always gladly remember George IV., who was wise enough to keep a set of Miss Austen’s novels in every one of his houses, and who was happy enough to receive the dedication of “Emma.” Nevertheless, it cannot be forgotten that fifteen years elapsed between the writing of “Pride and Prejudice” and its publication; that Cadell refused it unread,—a dreadful warning to publishers,—and that all Miss Austen ever realized from her books in her lifetime was seven hundred pounds,—one hundred pounds less than Mrs. Radcliffe received for a single story, and nearly two thousand pounds less than Frances Burney was paid for her absolutely unreadable “Camilla.” High-priced novels are by no means a modern innovation, though we hear so much more about them now than formerly. Blackwood gave Lockhart one thousand pounds for the manuscript of “Reginald Dalton,” and “Woodstock” brought to Scott’s creditors the fabulous sum of eight thousand pounds.
For with Sir Walter flowered the golden age of English fiction. Fortune and fame came smiling at his beck, and the great reading world confessed itself better and happier for his genius. Then it was that the book-shops were besieged by clamorous crowds when a new Waverly novel was promised to the public. Then Lord Holland sat up all night to finish “Old Mortality.” Then the excitement over the Great Unknown reached fever heat, and the art of the novelist gained its absolute ascendency, an ascendency unbroken in our day, and likely to remain unbroken for many years to come. At present, every child that learns its letters makes one more story-reader in the world, and the chances are it will make one more story-writer to help deluge the world with fiction. Novels, it has been truly said, are the only things that can never be too dear or too cheap for the market. The beautiful and costly editions of Miss Austen and Scott and Thackeray compete for favor with marvelously cheap editions of Dickens, that true and abiding idol of people who have no money to spend on hand-made paper and broad margins. It is the same with living novelists. Rare and limited editions for the rich; cheap and unlimited editions for the poor; all bought, all read, and the novelist waxing more proud and prosperous every day. So prosperous, indeed, so proud, he is getting too great a man to amuse us as of yore. He spins fewer stories now, and his glittering web has grown a trifle gray and dusty with the sweepings from back outlets and mean streets. He preaches occasionally in the market-place, and he says acrimonious things anent other novelists whose ways of thinking differ from his own. These new, sad fashions of speech are often very grievous to his readers, but nothing can rob him of our friendship; for always we hope that he will take us by the hand, and lead us smilingly away from the relentless realities of life to the golden regions of romance where the immortal are.