Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve,
For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly
As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.”
So with Lord Lytton’s Helen Mainwaring, the sunny gladness of whose nature must have vent like a bird’s, though he forbids us to fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from the absence of thought: “it is rather from the depth of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music.” Well and wisely Molière’s Cléonte exclaims, “Veux-tu de ces enjouements épanouis, de ces joies toujours ouvertes? et vois tu rien de plus impertinent que des femmes qui rient à tout propos?” Such a femme as the same author’s Zerbinette, a self-convicted giggler in and out of season, yet whose confession may be twisted into an example the other way, when she says, “J’ai l’humeur enjouée, et sans cesse je ris: mais, tout en riant, je suis sérieuse sur de certains chapitres.”
Among the writings of M. de St. Evremond there is an essay on the Idea of a Woman that never was, nor ever will be found. Emilia he calls this all too perfect, impossible she. And amongst the foremost of Emilia’s fine qualities he reckons the co-existence of seriousness au fond with vivacity of mien. “For we find that the gayest humour doth, at length, become tiresome; ... the most effervescent liveliness either disgusts or wearies you.” In the case of the celebrated Duchesse de Longueville, De Retz notices the exquisite effect of the sudden bursts of gaiety which would at times dispel her habitual but not inexpressive languor. Mdlle. de Scudéry, in her “Clélie,” was painting a well-known, perhaps too well-known, contemporary in the person of Clarice, when, “parmi toute cette disposition qu’elle a pour la joie,” she ascribes to this charmer, qui rit si aisément, a facile faculty of tear-shedding: elle sait pleurer, whenever occasion justifies weeping. As Lady Eastlake says, in her little treatise on Music, a change of key is the most powerful engine in the hands of a musician: we cannot bear the monotony of one key long, even the most joyful: “Gaiety without eclipse wearieth me, May Lilian.” We long for “a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse.” The Hon. Miss Byron takes the liberty of telling the sister of Sir Charles Grandison that “Your brother has hinted, Charlotte, that he loves you for your vivacity, and should still more, if you consulted time and occasion.” The affections are justly said to be more readily called into play by a mixture of mirth and melancholy; ours being a twofold life, the union of mortal with immortal, we covet happiness, yet turn back anon to the more majestic form of sorrow. There is a form of cheerfulness which, we are assured, nobody can stand:—
“Send me hence a thousand miles
From a face that always smiles;”
people ostentatiously and pretentiously cheerful being not unfrequently foolish people: their spirits of a brisk but thin quality—nothing about them in good working order. “For, in truth, the most fortunate existence has cares enough to make gravity our normal condition.” Roland Graeme, in the “Abbot,” earnestly assures his vivacious companion, “Ay, but, fair Catherine, there are moments of deep and true feeling, which are worth ten thousand years of liveliest mirth.” Melancholy Minna is a fine relief by contrast to laughter-loving Brenda; and it is suggestively told us of the old Udaller, their sire, that he liked his graver damsel better in the walk without doors, and his merry maiden better by the fireside; and that if he preferred Brenda after the glass circulated in the evening, he gave the preference to Minna before noon. So with Molly and Cynthia in “Wives and Daughters:” Molly always gentle, but very grave and silent; Cynthia merry, full of pretty mockeries, and hardly ever silent—only this constant brilliancy became a little tiresome in everyday life, being not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, so much as the “glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders.” The union of what can be harmonized of the two distinctive characters, is sure to be engaging in no ordinary degree. As in the Beryl of “George Geith.” “You imagine,” says Beryl, on one occasion, “because it is necessary to my existence to laugh at people’s oddities, that I never feel for their woes. You think, because I have a quick sense of the ludicrous, that I have no eyes for grief. And there you do me an injustice.” Such as Beryl will be found to take exception to predominant levity in the masculine gender, after the manner of the fair tenant of Wildfell Hall: “I do wish he would be sometimes serious,” she writes of her endeared Arthur: “I cannot get him to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don’t mind it now, but if it be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?” Tired out with such companionship, a complainant in one of Lovell Beddoes’ tragedies exclaims,—
“I’m weary of their laughter’s empty din.
Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests,