This self-denying feeling, it is seen, has reached a degree where every positive aspiration ends. The writer is herself aware that she leaves far behind her the sentimental novels she has read:
They never loved who wished to be near what they loved. Werther talks of dancing with Charlotte, of holding her in his arms; what feelings men have! Such a time is with me, a time of fear and blindness. I love to be so far from him, that it is requisite for me to watch and devise how I may catch a glance or a tone from him. I would not be nearer if I might; a glance, a tone is enough, is too much for me.
The story of Elmaide St. Clair is given as a warning example of overwrought sensibility and its fatal consequences, and it might be supposed that this quality in her is, therefore, deliberately exaggerated. Yet that part of the book, most of all, impresses the reader with the genuineness of its conception; it is written with obvious inspiration, and there is absolutely nothing of parody about the style. It is one of the few instances where the author seems to be in perfect sympathy with his subject, and he actually excels in the very kind of composition he at the same time pretends to condemn.—Another of the better episodes is neither romantic nor ‘fashionable,’ but foreshadows Maturin’s best attainments in realistic description of ordinary life of a certain kind. Whether it was an individual trait of Maturin, or whether it belongs to the Irish temperament—few English writers have displayed so intense a horror of a narrow, monotonous existence without any sort of excitement or interest. In The Wild Irish Boy, in Women, in Melmoth, this aversion is expressed more and more powerfully each time. In the present work this feeling is given an outlet in the case of the old couple in London, with whom Ormsby is placed while a child. They have retired from business in order to pass the remainder of their days in quietness; but instead of enjoying an agreeable rest, they are seized by an intolerable tedium, and by and by their life, as it were, develops into a stagnant pool:
The morning was passed by Mr. Sampson in examining books of obsolete accounts, which he had brought with him from the city “against a rainy day,” as he said in totting up sums, whose numbers he could by that time tell blindfold, and when he had found the amount, yawning and beginning again; sometimes he strolled about the house, examined locks that did not want repairing, shook his head at the weather-glass, and projected a removal of the clock from behind the parlour door, where its ticking made him melancholy after dinner. His wife retired to her room, examined the contents of old drawers, discovered that things grew yellow by lying by, and resolved to expose them to the sun some day in the following week; at a certain hour she visited the kitchen, watched the intrusion of strange cats, and detected the turnspit in his many contrivances to escape from duty, by which she boasted, dinner was prevented from being five minutes later than the time. They dined early without appetite, and retired early without drowsiness; sometimes a walk was proposed, on the appearance of a fine morning, but then the weather-glass was examined, till the time for walking had passed away; and looking wistfully at each other, they sunk into their easy chairs, and counted how many minutes till dinner.
The great bulk of the book, as has been said, aspires to treat of modern life in higher circles, of which Maturin, at the time, knew little or nothing. The descriptions, consequently, lack all atmosphere of reality, nor does the characterization augment the value of the whole. The worst of it all is that the hero is so uninteresting, and does not in the least fulfil the expectations roused by the effusions of Elmaide St. Clair. A very self-exulting tone is generally not in keeping with an autobiographical form, yet Ormsby Bethel does nothing to suppress the eulogies lavishly bestowed on him by well-meaning people, eulogies which he certainly does not deserve. He calls himself wild, but wildness is merely an embellishing name for weakness; there is nothing in him of real, refreshing wildness, or youthful recklessness; he is always in an unnatural state of exaltation, either of virtue or repentance. A preacher of morals and defender of religion as he aspires to be in a society that cares for neither, he displays, when emergency arises, no more strength of mind than his neighbours. What is it but a deplorable weakness in a man to publish about himself the letters of Elmaide St. Clair on the pretence that they treat of a period of his life of which he ‘could not speak in the first person?’ It is very doubtful whether Ormsby Bethel ever became popular among the public of circulating libraries. That the reader cannot feel sympathy for the hero is, of course, in itself no fault in a book, but in this case it is only too evident that it is the author’s intention he should.—The wholly imaginary character of Lady Montrevor is too superlative and violently exaggerated, and her wonderful accomplishments, of mind and body, are endlessly repeated in a most extravagant language. Her daughter Athanasia is more interesting; she is one of those delicate and ethereal beings Maturin always succeeded in designing, and of which there are no two quite alike. Athanasia is, like Byron’s Aurora,
—a fair and fairy one,
Of the best class, and better than her class[46]—
and, like her, she is also in possession of a portion of common sense and strength of mind, being eventually cured of the malady under which Elmaide St. Clair breaks down. At first, indeed, her case seems desperate. She is grown up into an ‘early, and exquisite, and dangerous maturity;’ she has been educated ‘without example but of vice and folly,’ and left to form her ideas from improper literature, until she is ‘dying to be the heroine of a mad and wicked tale of a Rousseau, of a Goethe, of a Wolstonecraft.’ And to become such a heroine she imagines it necessary for her to have both a husband and a lover. Therefore she encourages the attentions of the relative of her husband, who otherwise is quite indifferent to her. Yet at the bottom of her heart there is a yearning for fidelity, honourable love and quiet happiness, and when difficulties are gathering around her husband, this yearning grows stronger and stronger. At last she understands that the duties of life differ greatly from those of romance, and in a candid and touching letter—which her husband reads while she is sleeping!—she renounces the relative for ever. Now this argumentation would be very well if the aforesaid writers actually did maintain the views ascribed to them; but it is unquestionably a very childish way of understanding them to long for a forbidden attachment even in case you happen to be united to the man you love. Considering that Athanasia has grown up in an environment so corrupt as Maturin tries to depict it, it is certainly too far-fetched to throw the blame upon Julie and Charlotte. Yet it is never explicitly stated that Athanasia has misconceived what she has read; the opinions pass as those of the author. This curious anti-romantic freak of Maturin, whatever its cause, was not of long duration: eight years later accusations of the same kind were brought against himself, in connection with his tragedy of Bertram.—Among the secondary characters in the book that of Lady Delphina Orberry has been pointed out[47] as representing ‘a type of woman rare in English fiction.’ She is introduced as a rival of Lady Montrevor and is her contrast in every respect; her weapons against that lady’s dazzling brilliancy and sparkling wit are ‘soft, seducing manners,’ a ‘timid silence,’ and ‘melting whispers.’ Behind, however, this unterrifying exterior there is a mind totally depraved, whereas the heart of Lady Montrevor is discovered to have remained uncorrupted, in spite of her position in society. Undoubtedly how Lady Orberry clings to Ormsby like something too soft for him to shake off, gently but irresistingly involving her fate with his, is well described, and how she understands to excite his compassion by representing herself as unjustly suspected of that which she most wishes, in her relation to him. But the end, again, is forced and unnatural; it is only because the hero must be got out of his difficulties that she takes poison, confesses all her crimes to him, and gives him the letters of her unhappy daughter.
Notwithstanding all that can be said against The Wild Irish Boy, it is of considerable interest in Maturin’s earlier production, when regarded as a kind of preparatory study to Women, one of his masterpieces. Many of the characters and situations present obvious similarities, and it will, therefore, be necessary later on to refer to the present work. A few words are still required to define its character as an Irish novel, one of the first where elements typically Irish are brought forward.