ELIZA LYNN LINTON
I.—THE WOMAN
'She was one of the bravest of the morally brave, for she suffered from that kind of local ostracism, consequent on her unorthodox opinions, which in a manner isolated her and reduced her society to a few—fit, if you will, but few all the same—yet she never relaxed her propagandism.'—E. Lynn Linton: Free Shooting.
THE little dare-devil girl,' as Canon Rawnsley, not without justification, calls her, was born in 1822, at Crosthwaite Vicarage, Keswick. All that remains of her on earth lies beneath the shadow of Crosthwaite Church—'the Lake Cathedral,' as she herself has styled it—an edifice oft 'restored' since St. Kentigern from his wattled preaching-house sounded forth the Gospel of Christ among the pagan dalesmen thirteen centuries ago. Her father was the Vicar. He was left with a large family of children on his hands at the death of his wife, five months after Eliza was born. Mr. Lynn was an educated man, and, according to his lights, a respectable minister. By contrast with the carousing, wrestling, boxing parsons of Cumberland in his day—as they are so graphically described by our authoress in more than one of her novels—he was a gentleman and a Christian. When his father-in-law (the Bishop of Carlisle) asked him what he would do about the serious charge of so many motherless sons and daughters, his reply was, 'I shall sit in my study and smoke my pipe, and commit them to Providence.' This he did, breaking the monotony of his secluded life by wielding the rod among his rude tribe of passionate lads and high-spirited girls, and spending the nights in prayer for them. The topsy-turveyest book that ever was written is Mrs. Linton's 'Christopher Kirkland.' It must be alluded to—somewhat out of place—because it is autobiographical, and is used as such by Mr. Layard, her historian. It is her life-story, with the sexes of the characters transposed. This transformation of men into women and women into men makes the book most grotesque in places, and quite incomprehensible to readers who have not the key. Read it, however, inside out, or upside down, as it were, and it is then not only understandable, but interesting and informing. It is, in reality, the mine from which almost all important facts about her have been quarried. She seems to have been a 'naughty boy' kind of girl, holding her own bravely in a household which she likens to 'a farmyard full of cockerels and pullets for ever pecking and sparring at one another.' Yet she had her fits of moodiness and day-dreaming. Her short sight helped to make her enjoy solitariness, and induced a habit of lonely study and thought. From such books as she could get hold of she taught herself languages, and obtained a fair knowledge of literature. Unable, however, to accommodate herself to the strange government of her father and the waywardness of her brothers and sisters, she (twenty-three years of age, with a twelvemonth's allowance in her pocket) went up to London to try her fortunes. Henceforth we may unite her lively and interesting booklet,'My Literary Life,' with 'Christopher Kirkland.' She obtained work on the Morning Chronicle, just purchased by the 'Peelite' party, and edited by the redoubtable John Douglas Cook. Her description of her first introduction to the terrible presence of her impatient, irascible commander-in-chief is graphic.
'So you are the little girl who has written that queer book, and you want to be one of the press-gang, do you?' was his salutation. 'Yes, I am the woman.' 'Woman you call yourself?' and more rough-mannered, but not unkindly, words of the same sort followed. For two years she was 'handy man' on the paper—the first woman on a newspaper staff to draw a salary. Then she visited Italy, and afterwards lived in Paris as correspondent for an English paper. Her London home was near the British Museum, where she kept up her reading. During her studies and her press employment she had found time to write and publish several novels, and contributed to All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens. Her first story brought forth a sonnet in her praise from Walter Savage Landor, and her association with Dickens introduced her to many other well-known literary men and women. She had inherited Gad's Hill, Kent, from her father, and this property she sold to Charles Dickens. Dickens had fallen in love with the place when a boy, and had even then resolved to buy it if ever he was able. Thackeray she knew, too, and he called upon her while she was in Paris, climbing five toilsome flights of stairs to reach the little rooms she shared with another young Anglo-French woman—bed and sitting-rooms combined. Landor she first met in Bath, where he then lived, and she was visiting. She was in a shop, 'when in there came an old man, still sturdy, vigorous, upright, alert,' dressed in brown, but negligently, and unbrushed. The keen eyes, lofty brow, and sweet smile attracted her. When she heard his name—she knew some of his 'Imaginary Conversations' by heart—she expressed her joy. 'And who is this little girl who is so glad to see an old man?' The question and answer made them friends on the spot, and they remained so for many years afterwards, she paying long visits to his house, and becoming his 'dear daughter,' while she always spoke and wrote to the old lion as 'father.'
It was in 1858 that her marriage with W. J. Linton took place. She had had a love episode in earlier life which probably left its mark upon her character; but this marriage can hardly claim any romance as its inspiration. It is even said that she agreed to wed the artist partly from pity and partly to test her educational theories upon his six children. The secluded life at Brantwood became irksome to her, and the Lintons moved to Leinster Square, Bayswater, where the City life became equally irksome to her husband. Then came the separation, and Linton's departure for America, Mrs. Lynn Linton occupying various quarters in London, working on the Saturday Review, writing more novels, patronizing and generously helping young lady aspirants for literary successes, and making herself the centre of charming circles of friends and guests. In the lofty Queen Anne's Mansions, rising like a hill-summit above the flat plains and lake of St. James's Park, she had an upper chamber—airy, quiet, and virtually inaccessible to all except the privileged and welcomed of her choice. She had her turn, as so many of her generation had, at the fashionable spiritualism of Home and other tricksters, and with theosophists like Sinnett, but was not entrapped by either, for, though her views were 'free' and 'advanced,' her struggles and her environments secured her the saving grace of common-sense. She was more nearly allied in thought to Voysey and Professor Clifford than to the more mystical unbelievers. She was a hard worker, and lived comfortably by her pen. Idleness for her would have meant 'suicidal vacancy.'
Failing somewhat in health, she tried change of air at Malvern with little avail, and her eyesight failed her, so that writing became difficult. She realized that the end was approaching. It arrived in 1898, when she was seventy-six years old. 'She faced the inevitable' with more of the resignation of the stoic than the assurance of the Christian. Canon Rawnsley preached her funeral sermon, and placed her mental attitude in the most favourable light, and 'with a sure and certain hope' in his own heart of her 'resurrection to eternal life.' So let us also leave her in God's all-just, all-merciful keeping. Her own belief was in 'Nirvana.' Her remains were cremated, and the ashes conveyed to Crosthwaite, where Robert Southey also is buried. Landor concludes his ode to her with 'Pure heart, and lofty soul, Eliza Lynn.' I think (let me say it reverently) that God Himself might thus speak of her, for I find these words in one of her later letters: 'We are all, all, all His children, and He does not speak to us apart, but to us all in our own language, equally according to our age—that is, our knowledge and civilization. To Him I live, and in Him I believe, but all the rest is dark.'
WOMEN AND POLITICS
'We do not find that European homes are made wretched, or that husbands are set at nought, because our women may choose their own religion, their own priest, and have unchecked intercourse with the family physician.
'Is it impossible to imagine a woman sweet and yet strong, high-minded and yet modest, tender if self-reliant, womanly if well-educated? Would a fine political conscience necessarily deaden-or depress the domestic one? Surely not! A fine political conscience would be only so much added—it would take nothing away. If women thought worthily about politics, as about smuggling and other things of the same class, they would be all the grander in every relation, because having so much clearer perception of baseness, and so much higher standard of nobleness.
'At all events, the phase of women's rights has to be worked through to its ultimate. If found impracticable, delusive, subversive, in the working, it will have to be put down again. It is all a question of power, both in the getting and the using.'—Eliza Lynn Linton: Ourselves.