Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, the great mistress of the novel of manners in Scotland, was born in Edinburgh on the 7th September 1782, and was the youngest of her parents' ten children. Her father, James Ferrier, was a younger son of John Ferrier, laird of Kirklands, in Renfrewshire, and her mother—whose maiden name was Helen Coutts—was the daughter of a farmer near Montrose. James Ferrier was by profession a Writer to the Signet, having been admitted a member of the Society in the year 1770. He had been trained to his vocation in the office of a distant relative, who had the management of the Argyll estates, and to this gentleman's business he ultimately succeeded. He was thus on terms of intimacy with the Duke of Argyll, through whose instrumentality he was appointed a Principal Clerk of Session. In this office he had Sir Walter Scott as a colleague, and he was also so fortunate as to enjoy the friendship of Henry Mackenzie, author of the admirable Man of Feeling, of Dr Blair, and last, not least, of Burns. Thus, from her earliest years onward, his young daughter must have been accustomed to see and to hear of the literary lights of the Scotland of that day.
After their marriage, Mr and Mrs Ferrier occupied a flat in Lady Stair's Close in the Old Town. Their large family was made up of six sons and four daughters. When Susan was fifteen she lost her mother, and soon afterwards she was taken by her father to visit at Inverary Castle, the seat of his patron the Duke. Here a new world was opened to the plainly brought up Edinburgh girl. Here for the first time she saw fashion and the 'high life,' and here—either on this or some subsequent occasion—she formed several acquaintances which were destined to influence her career. Under John, fifth Duke of Argyll, society at the Castle had at that period a somewhat literary and artistic tone. Among its visitors was the accomplished Lady Charlotte Campbell—afterwards Lady Charlotte Bury—a name which, if unknown to the present generation, was once of some repute in the world of letters. Lady Charlotte was the Duke's younger daughter, and had inherited much of the beauty of her mother, the celebrated Elizabeth Gunning. She was just seven years older than Susan Ferrier, was distinguished by a passion for the belles-lettres, and was accustomed to do the honours of Scotland to the literary celebrities of the time. During the year of Miss Ferrier's first visit to the Castle, she published anonymously a first literary venture, which bore the conventional title of 'Poems upon Several Occasions,' by 'A Lady.'
It may readily be guessed that this fascinating and high-born personage—distinguished as she was by the honours and the romance of authorship—produced her due impression on the imagination of the young visitor. Susan's literary instincts must certainly have been quickened by the intimacy—for a friendship which lasted till death sprung up between herself and Lady Charlotte. But, if she was a gainer in one direction from the acquaintance, I am inclined to believe that she was a loser in another. Years after, when she herself became an authoress, her earliest work was disfigured by direct and unsparing portraiture of living persons among her acquaintance. Now no doubt this kind of writing may be productive of extreme mirth to persons qualified to read between the lines, and it must be acknowledged that Miss Ferrier's talent has made the mirth outlast its immediate occasion. Still, judged as art, this kind of thing is neither great nor gracious, and to her credit be it said that the authoress of Marriage lived to see that this was so, and to amend her style accordingly. It may be noted, however, that the works attributed to her friend Lady Charlotte include conspicuous instances of a similar error in taste. Amid the vicissitudes of many years, her ladyship lived to produce a number of works of fiction, of the contents of which such titles as Flirtation, The Journal of the Heart, A Marriage in High Life, may afford some indication. But the single work with which in the present day her name is associated—and if she never acknowledged the authorship, it must be remembered that she resisted all provocations to deny it—is the notorious Diary in which a lady-in-waiting of Caroline of Brunswick has chronicled the follies and indiscretions of that unhappy princess, and the unpleasantnesses of daily life in her Court. Bearing this in mind, one can scarcely regard the brilliant Lady Charlotte as the best of friends for a young woman, her inferior in years and station, though greatly her superior in talent.
Among other visitors met by Susan at Inverary, two may be particularised as having afterwards contributed by their oddities to enliven the pages of her first book. These were the eccentric Mrs Seymour Damer, the amateur sculptor and friend of Horace Walpole, and Lady Ferrers, widow of the peer who was hanged for the murder of his steward. With a Miss Clavering, a grand-daughter of the Duke, who was a child of eight at the time of her first visit to the Castle, she struck up an eager friendship. An animated correspondence was started between them, some of the letters in which have been preserved. These are for the most part undated, but have reference to a work of fiction which the young ladies proposed to undertake in partnership, and it is thus that the germ of Marriage is first brought to light.
'I do not recollect,' says Miss Ferrier, writing in high spirits; 'I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for love, to an uncomfortable solitary highland dwelling among tall red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don't you think this would make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us try our hands on it.' And, later on, after submitting a portion of her work, she writes again:—'I am boiling to hear from you, but I've taken a remorse of conscience about Lady Maclaughlan and her friends: if I was ever to be detected, or even suspected, I would have nothing for it but to drown myself. I mean, therefore, to let her alone till I hear from you, as I think we might compound some other kind of character for her that might do as well and not be so dangerous. As to the misses, if ever it was to be published they must be altered or I must fly my native land.'
In this passage, even after allowing for girlish facetiousness of expression, Susan Ferrier appears in the character of an accomplished 'quiz,' sailing dangerously close to the wind. Of course her correspondent is delighted with the specimen of work submitted to her, and will not hear of anything being altered. What school-girl would? She essays to allay her friend's fear of discovery, and offers to take the responsibility of the personalities upon herself. In a subsequent letter, dated December 1810, she describes reading the manuscript to Lady Charlotte during a drive. Her ladyship laughed as she had never been seen to laugh before, and pronounced the fragment 'without the least exception the cleverest thing that ever was written'—a verdict which after more detailed examination she endorsed in writing, declaring it to be 'capital, with a dash under it.' Not otherwise do the thoughtless and light-hearted egg each other on to mischief.
But Miss Ferrier was by this time eight-and-twenty years of age. Her native strong good sense asserted itself, and for a long time she resolutely declined to publish her work. (I ought ere this to have explained that the intended collaboration with Miss Clavering had fallen through, the sole passage contributed by the younger lady being the brief and not particularly interesting History of Mrs Douglas). In course of time, however, the merits of the book became known to persons having more authority to judge them than Lady Charlotte Bury or her niece. Mr Blackwood, the publisher, read the manuscript, and strongly urged the authoress to prepare it for publication; whilst no less a personage than Sir Walter Scott, in the conclusion to his Tales of My Landlord—then seemingly in proof—referred flatteringly to a 'very lively work entitled Marriage,' and singled out its author for mention among writers of fiction capable of gathering in the rich harvest afforded by Scottish character. At length, in 1818—after undergoing several changes in the interval—the book was given to the world. It was published anonymously, and the authoress, speaking at a later date, professes to have believed that her name 'never would be guessed at, or the work heard of beyond a very limited sphere.' But from such obscurity the gallery of portraits which it contained must alone have sufficed to save it. For, in addition to the two ladies already mentioned—whose oddities appear to have contributed jointly to the inimitable figure of Lady Maclaughlan—the three spinster aunts were drawn from certain Misses Edmonstone, whilst Mrs Fox represented Mary, Lady Clerk, a well-known Edinburgh character of the time. It must not, however, be supposed that the vogue of the book depended upon adventitious circumstances alone; for Marriage soon became popular far beyond the limits of any local set. In London it was attributed to the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and it is even stated to have been very successful in a French translation.
Its success at home can surprise no one, for never before had the idiosyncrasies of Scottish society been so vigorously pourtrayed. As has already been seen, the means adopted for showing them off are ingeniously contrived. At the commencement of the story we are introduced to the beautiful but shallow and artificial Juliana, the Earl of Courtland's only daughter—a young lady who has been trained solely with a view to social success and the formation of a brilliant alliance, the more solid parts of education having in her case been systematically neglected. She is betrothed to the elderly Duke of L——, but at the last moment throws him over and elopes to Scotland. The companion of her flight is Douglas, a handsome young officer in the army, the child of Scotch parents, but brought up in England by a wealthy adoptive father. The honeymoon is scarce over when the young people find themselves, not only partially disabused of their illusions, but in actual pecuniary straits. Juliana's elopement has hopelessly alienated the Earl; whilst Douglas, absent from his regiment without leave, is superseded in the Gazette. In these circumstances the only course open to them is to take up their quarters with the bridegroom's father, at his castle of Glenfern in the Highlands. Their proposal to do so is most cordially received, and now the irony of circumstance begins to declare itself. Lady Juliana has repeatedly protested that with the man of her choice she could be happy in a desert. But then her idea of a desert, as she avows when 'tis too late, is a beautiful place full of roses and myrtles, which, though very retired, would not be absolutely out of the world; where one could occasionally see one's friends and give déjeuners and fêtes champêtres. A very different kind of place is Glenfern Castle. After a long journey in a drizzling rain through dreary scenery, their destination is reached, and Juliana makes her entrée, attended by her footman and lady's-maid, surrounded by her lap-dogs, squirrel, and mackaw, and encumbered by all the paraphernalia of an artificial elegance. Never was there a meeting between more opposed extremes.
'At the entrance of the strangers, a flock of females rushed forward to meet them. Douglas good-humouredly submitted to be hugged by three long-chinned spinsters whom he recognised as his aunts, and warmly saluted five awkward purple girls he guessed to be his sisters: while Lady Juliana stood the image of despair, and, scarcely conscious, admitted in silence the civilities of her new relations.'
The three elderly spinsters are the Laird's sisters—Miss Jacky, who is esteemed the most sensible woman as well as the greatest orator in the parish, Miss Grizzy the platitudinous, and Miss Nicky, who is not wanting in sense either; and these representatives of a bygone social order are the most celebrated characters in the book.