A more fortunate and prosperous pioneer than Mrs. Radcliffe in the way of novel-writing was Maria Edgeworth. Born on 1 January, 1767, at Black Bourton, not far from, Oxford, Miss Edgeworth was the daughter of Richard Edgeworth, an Irish landlord and British moralist. In the words of "Hudibras" he
Married his punctual dose of wives
to the number of four, and had four families. They were wonderfully harmonious, and as Maria Edgeworth was of the first family, and only some twenty-two years younger than her father, she was the constant companion of an energetic and intelligent man, reckoned one of the leading bores of his age, and tinctured with the ideas of his friend, the humourless Mr. Thomas Day, author of "Sandford and Merton". Miss Edgeworth saw much of Irish life, fashionable and rustic, at Edgeworthstown, and very early began to write under the direction of her father, whose Muse was the didactic. She wrote the stories in "The Parents' Assistant" for her own little brothers and sisters, to whom, as to children generally, she was devoted. The self-consciously virtuous Frank is her father, idealized (we cannot believe that she consciously satirized him), and the ever-delightful Rosamond is herself. Modern children may rage against the cruelty of the mother of Rosamond, in the tale of "The Purple Jar," but probably children of an earlier date were too much interested in Rosamond and the jar to grieve over the heroine's lack of shoes. "Lazy Lawrence," "Simple Susan," "Waste Not, Want Not," and the rest, are all dear to persons who read them at the right age, and draw from the last-named tale an undying love of long, sound pieces of string, saved from parcels.
It seems to be a matter of ascertained fact that Mr. Edgeworth too often had his oar in the paper boats of his daughter's novels, that he altered, and transposed, and suggested, and inserted moral sentiments; and could not keep the maxims of Mr. Thomas Day out of the memorial. Miss Edgeworth had abundance of humour, and would not have made Sir James Brook lecture to Lord Colambie, a total stranger, "on all ancient and modern authors on Ireland from Spenser" (why not from Giraldus Cambrensis?) "to Young and Beaufort". In "Castle Rackrent" (1800) Mr. Edgeworth had no hand, and it is reckoned the best of Miss Edgeworth's books on Ireland. It is not a novel: Thady, an ancient peasant, merely tells the tale of four generations of O'Shaughneseys, squires who much resembled the Osbaldistone family as described by Diana Vernon. All were greedy and reckless oppressors of their devoted tenantry, but one was more of a drunkard, another more of a litigant, another more of a cruel debauchee, and the last more of a good-natured fool, as innocent of worldly matters as Leigh Hunt (but not so much to his own advantage), than the rest. Their wives are worthy of them. Poor Thady maintains his "great respect for the family" throughout, and there is a humorous pathos in his topsy-turvy code of ethics, constructed out of insanely depraved Irish moral conventions of the period. The fairy belief, and the Banshee, peep out in the notes: Miss Edgeworth was the precise reverse of Mrs. Radcliffe in the matter of romance. The book at once became popular, with "Belinda," a very readable story of London society, and "The Absentee," in which the Irish characters are much better when in their own green isle than when abroad. The horrors of an estate ruled by a corrupt and cruel agent are barely credible, and the hero is a wooden if generous puppet, while Lady Colbrony, trying to be more English than the English, in London, is not really so amusing as similar characters in Thackeray. Scott, with his usual generosity, publicly asserted more than once that Miss Edgeworth's example led him to attempt the delineation of his own country-folks; and perhaps the happiest of weeks at Abbotsford was spent during Miss Edgeworth's visit. In Paris, Edinburgh, and London she was a lioness, and enjoyed all the pleasant rewards of friendship and fame which fortune denied to Miss Austen. Her later novels, "Ormonde," "Harrington," and "Helen," were duly appreciated; in May, 1849, she ended a long, happy, and beneficent life.
Charles Brockden Brown.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) is commonly regarded as the first American novelist. He came at an unfortunate moment, for in the years of his activity as a romancer (1797-1801) English fiction was at a low ebb, and, uninfluenced by Fielding and Sterne, and neglectful of Fanny Burney, he followed Godwin (in "Caleb Williams"), and adopted the mysterious effects of Mrs. Radcliffe. In his "Wieland," the terrific and fatal agency which brings down fate, is akin to that which Monsieur de Saint Luc used to frighten Henri III., and which Chicot exposed, in Dumas's novel. In "Arthur Mervyn," Brown wrote with much vigour a realistic description of a yellow fever hospital. His friendly critics place him above Mrs. Radcliffe in his mastery of the truly horrid; but though his books were republished in England, they do not appear in the list of Miss Catherine Morland in "Northanger Abbey". If Brown were superior to the great enchantress, at least he followed the model which she had created, without the humour which affords relief in "The Italian". He did not deal in Italian castles and abbeys of the Valois period, but cast his romances in his native Philadelphia.
Jane Austen.
Scott's first novel was finished and published in 1814. His friend, Morritt of Rokeby, said that before "Waverley" appeared, novels were read only by ladies' maids and seamstresses. Yet, eighteen or nineteen years before the birth of "Waverley," novels as great in their own style as Scott's, and as imperishable, had been written by a girl of 21, whose first published works of fiction came earlier than "Waverley" into the world. Before 1803, Jane Austen (born 1775) had written "Northanger Abbey"; before the beginning of the nineteenth century "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility," were completed by her. But though a speculative publisher bought "Northanger Abbey" in 1803, he never published it, and "Sense and Sensibility" (1811) with "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), lay long neglected, like the poems of Theocritus in their dark chest, before they were given to the world. They were not received, like Miss Burney's "Evelina," with triumphant acclaims; the author was not surrounded and flattered by the wits, as was Miss Burney. Indeed Jane Austen, in her lifetime, was never made a lioness. Slow and all but silent approval of her genius advanced by degrees and deepened into the diapason of her ever-widening renown.
She was the daughter of a country clergyman, the Rector of Steventon in Hampshire, much of her later life (she died at 42, in 1817) was passed at the hamlet of Chawton near Winchester. Bath was her metropolis; she describes its pleasure and society with inimitable charm and humour in "Northanger Abbey," and "Persuasion," published after her death, in 1818. She lived in the heart of a kind and happy family, among her nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, with such squires, clerics, doctors, solicitors, sportsmen, naval officers, and old maids as clustered round or visited Steventon and Chawton. She watched them with a smiling intense observation; she winced from their mindless gregariousness; they are never out of their neighbours' houses. But she was only a very little cruel, even to the most brainless of baronets, or the stupidest of mothers, or the least well-bred of jolly good-humoured matrons, or the noisiest of children. She does show the trifling defects of spoiled children, but she was the kindest and best-beloved of aunts. Meanness she does brand in the really awful characters of John Dash wood and his wife; stupid pride in Sir Walter Elliot and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (who receives her deserts from Miss Elizabeth Bennet), and clerical sycophancy in the immortal Mr. Collins. But Mr. Collins is so amusing that we can no more be angry with him than with Mr. Pecksniff. Mr. Woodhouse, in "Emma," is next door to an idiot, and in actual life he would have been insufferable, except to the good and gentle. But the excellence of his heart, and the sweetness of his manners, cause him to be surrounded by patient and silent affection from all who know him; and not less good and fortunate is the most voluble of chatter-boxes, Miss Bates. Only for a single moment is Emma, the heroine, unable to hold her peace when Miss Bates is too intolerable; and this youthful excess is bitterly repented by the beautiful sinner. Emma was extremely young when she was a snob, Miss Austen did not draw an angel in Emma, but a good, human girl. We cannot really call Miss Austen severe, though we cannot but see how much she must have suffered among people so dull that a lady's recollection of the name of her dead son's naval Captain is described as "one of those extraordinary bursts of mind that sometimes do happen".
Less than twenty years divided Miss Burney's "Evelina" (1778) from the composition of "Northanger Abbey" and "Pride and Prejudice". These years had brought an astonishing change. The Smollettian element in Miss Burney's books and the horse-play have vanished; vanished has that amazing style which the fair Fanny evolved. The manners of naval officers have passed from the brutal to the courtly. Miss Burney is antiquated, she is archaic, she belongs to another world than ours, while Miss Austen is perennially fresh, and sparkling with wit; she recaptures, without imitation, the humour and the ease of Addison. Unlike Scott, she is almost never stilted: her people, as a rule, talk like men and women of this world, not like Helen Macgregor. "Northanger Abbey," which is in part meant as a quiet but delightful mockery of Mrs. Radcliffe's haunted abbeys, secret panels, and mysterious sounds, was written but six years after "The Sicilian Romance" sent a shudder through its myriad readers; and is almost of the year of "The Mysteries of Udolpho". The girl of the Steventon rectory was already mocking "The Great Enchantress," and the smile outlives the shriek.