There is nothing morbid or melodramatic in Mrs. Ewing's beautiful stories. They bubble over with the joys of child-life; they bristle with its humour; they touch its sorrows with a tender, sympathetic hand; they lend a gentle sadness of farewell to Death itself, with the sure hope of better things to come.
It was in 1861 and 1862 that those who were looking for healthy stories for children found, in "Melchior's Dream and other Tales," precisely what they wanted. Soon after, Aunt Judy's Magazine, edited by Mrs. Ewing's mother, Mrs. Gatty, made a new departure in the periodical literature for children. The numbers were eagerly looked for month by month, and the title of the magazine was given to commemorate the "Judy" of the nursery, who had often kept a bevy of little brothers and sisters happy and quiet by pouring forth into their willing ears stories full of the prowess of giants, the freaks of fairies, with occasional but always good-natured shafts aimed at the little faults and frailties of the listening children.
Aunt Judy's Magazine had no contributions from Mrs. Ewing's pen till May 1866 and May 1867. Then the delightful "Remembrances of Mrs. Overtheway" enchanted her youthful readers. Little Ida's own story and her lonely childhood had an especial charm for them; and Mrs. Overtheway's remembrances of the far-off days when she, too, was a child, were told as things that had really happened. And so they had! For, in the disappointment of the imaginative child who had created a fair vision from her grandmother's description of Mrs. Anastasia Moss as a golden-haired beauty in rose-bud brocade, and instead, saw an old lady with sunken black eyes, dressed in feuilles mortes satin, many a child may have found the salient parts of her own experience rehearsed!
"Alas!" says Mrs. Overtheway, when little Ida, soothed by her gentle voice, has fallen asleep. "Alas! my grown-up friends, does the moral belong to children only? Have manhood and womanhood no passionate, foolish longings, for which we blind ourselves to obvious truth, and of which the vanity does not lessen the disappointment? Do we not all toil after rose-buds to find feuilles mortes?" It is in touches like this, in her stories, that Mrs. Ewing appeals to many older hearts as well as to those of the young dreamers, taking their first steps in the journey of life.
In 1857, Juliana Horatia Gatty married Alexander Ewing, A.P.D., and for some time "Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances" were not continued. The last of them, "Kerguelin's Land," is considered by some critics the most beautiful of the series, ending with the delightful surprise of little Ida's joy in the return of her lost father.
Mrs. Ewing's stories are so rich in both humour and pathos, that it is difficult to choose from them distinctive specimens of her style, and of that charm which pervades them, a charm which we think is peculiarly her own.
Mrs. Ewing gave an unconsciously faithful portrait of herself in "Madam Liberality." The reader has in this story glimpses of the author's own heroic and self-forgetful childhood. Perhaps this tale is not as well known as some which followed it: so a few notes from its pages may not be unwelcome here.
Madam Liberality, when a little girl, was accustomed to pick out all the plums from her own slice of cake and afterwards make a feast with them for her brothers and sisters and the dolls. Oyster shells served for plates, and if by any chance the plums did not go round the party, the shell before Madam Liberality's place was always the empty one. Her eldest brother had given her the title of Madam Liberality; and yet he could, with refreshing frankness, shake his head at her and say, "You are the most meanest and the generousest person I ever knew."