One distinguished London literary paper pronounced it to be “one of the most disagreeable novels we have ever read”; and ended with the crushing assertion that it could “hardly imagine a book more calculated to depress and disgust even a hardened reader ... the amours are mean, the people mostly repulsive, and the surroundings depressing.” Another advised us to “call in a third coadjutor, in the shape of a judicious but determined expurgator of rubbish”; The Weekly Sun, which did indeed, as Martin said, give us the best, and best written, notice that we had had, ended a review of eight columns by condemning the book as “unsympathetic, hard, and harsh,” though “worthy of study, of serious thought, of sombre but perhaps instructive reflection.” A few reviewers of importance certainly showed us—as St. Paul says—no little kindness, (not that I wish it to be inferred that reviewers are a barbarous people, which would be the height of ingratitude,) but, on the whole, poor Charlotte fared badly, and one Dublin paper, while “commending the book” to its readers, even saying that Francie was “an attractive heroine,” went on to deplore the “undeniable air of vulgarity which clings to her,” and finally exclaimed, with grieved incredulity, “Surely no girl of Francie’s social position screams, ‘G’long, ye dirty fella’!”
A very regrettable incident, but, I fear (to quote kind Mr. Brown), though legendary, it is not nonsensical.
So was it also with our own friends. My mother first wrote, briefly, “All here loathe Charlotte.” With the arrival of the more favourable reviews her personal “loathing” became modified; later, at my behest, she gave me the following able synopsis of unskilled opinion.
“As you told me to give you faithfully all I heard, pro and con, about Charlotte, I will do so.
“Mrs. A. ‘Very clever, very clever, but I have no praise for it, Mrs. Somerville, no praise! The subjects are too nasty! I have no interest in such vulgar people, and I’m sure the Authors have really none either, but it is very clever of them to be able to write at all, and to get money for it!’
“Mrs. B. was extremely interested in the book and thought it most powerful, but said that nothing would induce her even to tell her sisters that such a book was to be had, as the imprecations would shock them to that extent that they would never get over it.
“Then Miss C. didn’t like it, first because of the oaths and secondly because it would give English people the idea that in all ranks of Irish life the people were vulgar, rowdy, and gave horrible parties.
“The D.’s didn’t like it either, for the same reasons, but thought if you had given ‘Christopher’ a stronger back-bone, and hadn’t allowed him to say ‘Lawks!’, that he would have been a redeeming character, and also ‘Pamela,’ had she only been brought forward more prominently, and that you had allowed her to marry ‘Cursiter.’”
From these, and many similar pronouncements, it was but too apparent to us that the Doctors were entirely agreed in their decision, and that my mother had herself summarised the general opinion, when she wrote to one of her sisters that “Francie deserved to break her neck for her vulgarity; she certainly wasn’t nice enough in any way to evoke sympathy, and the girls had to kill her to get the whole set of them out of the awful muddle they had got into!’
The authors, on receipt of these criticisms, laughed rather wanly. “Sophie pleurait, mais la poupée restait cassée.” Although we could laugh, a certain depression was inescapable.