His manners were repulsive, his understanding narrow, and his principles inflexibly rigid; his mind was rather tenacious than strong; what little he knew, he knew thoroughly, and what he once acquired he retained for ever. Early in life he had made a large fortune with a spotless character, and having retired from business, found his mind utterly vacant; by the persuasion of his wife, he was induced to listen to the evangelical preachers, and (as is often the case with converts either in early youth or in advanced life,) in a short time he far outwent his preceptors. Calvinism, Calvinism was every thing with him; his expertness in the five points would have foiled even their redoutable refuter, Dr. Whitby himself; but his theology having obtained full possession of his head, seemed so satisfied with its conquest, that it never ventured to invade his heart.—
To a character thus formed, the abstinence from the vanities of life costs no struggle, and implies no victory over himself, for Calvinism is sufficient to afford him amusement as well as edification; the most enthusiastic playgoer could not await a first night with more eagerness than Wentworth looks forward to an occasion upon which a Socinian, a Catholic, an Arian, and an Arminian Methodist, are to be exposed ‘for the whole night to the battery of a dozen resolute Calvinists.’ In the house of Wentworth the community naturally can feel safe from any disturbing interferences, and it is, in fact, their habitual place of meeting. Among the daily guests is the greatest orator of the sect, a Tartuffian figure called Macowen, who appears to have also a private reason for visiting the family:
He was the son of a poor labourer, the tenant of a wealthy gentleman in Cork, whose wife was evangelical; she instructed the children of her husband’s tenants in her own system; her husband gave her no disturbance; he followed his fox-hounds all day, and damned his wife’s Methodism over his claret all night. The good lady went her own way, and discovering in this lad, maugre his fierce red hair and bare broad feet, evident marks of his being “a growing and a gracious character” — — — — She proposed a subscription among her friends to enable him to enter the university, and be qualified “to minister at the altar.”
The subscription went on zealously, and young Macowen entered College; but when once there, his views, as they were called, expanded so rapidly, that no Church Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent, had the good fortune precisely to suit his sentiments in orthodoxy of system, or purity of discipline. Thus he moved a splendid and erratick meteor, shedding his light on the churches as he passed, but defying them all to calculate his orbit, or ascertain his direction. In the mean time, it had been suggested to him that many evangelical females, of large fortune, would not be unwilling to share his fate. This hint, often repeated and readily believed, threw a most odious suavity into his manner; his overblown vulgar courtesy was like the flowers of the poppy, all glare and stench. Under these circumstances, he had become the intimate of the Wentworth family; and from the moment he beheld Eva, his feelings were what he could not describe, and would not account for even to himself, but what he was determined implicitly to follow. His system took part with his inclinations, and in a short time he believed it a duty to impress her with the conviction that her salvation must depend on her being united with him.—
The inmost reason for Mr. Wentworth having suffered so meritorious a wooer to be outrivalled by the unbelieving De Courcy lies in his still being enough of a man of business fully to appreciate the considerable property the latter is heir to. His wife, on the other hand, is really attached to the preserver of her ‘niece.’ She is a woman remarkable for intelligence of mind and dignity of character; and though her manner appears stiff and constrained by the influence of her religion, she is naturally warm-hearted and loves Eva as if she were her own child. She cannot, however, do much to enliven the heavy routine fixed by Wentworth and Macowen, the monotony of which is broken only by scenes like the following. De Courcy and Montgomery call one morning when the gentlemen are sitting at the breakfast-table, engaged in an animated controversy with a new convert:
The muffins had been swallowed wholesale, the eggs scarcely tasted, (though Macowen was a very good judge of eggs), and the tea drank scalding hot, in the rage of debate, and still it raged. Mrs. Wentworth sat at her knitting, at safe distance from the field of battle, and Eva poured out cup after cup in silence. Macowen had been pressing the new convert for a test of his faith; for he had no idea of a man’s having any religion unless he could specify it under a particular denomination, and signify his creed by a kind of free-masonic sign, technical and decisive. This the convert refused, it seems; and as the young men came in, he was bellowing, with a cup of tea in his hand, which he was spilling in the trepidation of his rage,—“No, sir—no, sir—never, never. I will neither be Catholic or Protestant, Arminian or Calvinist.”
“Don’t put Arminian first,” said Mr. Wentworth.
He went on.—“Neither Trinitarian or Arian—neither Universalist or Particularist. No sir.—Sir, I will be a Christian.—Yes, I will be a Christian, (foaming with passion). I will—I will be a Christian.” And his voice was actually a roar, and he thumped the table in the fury of his vociferation and the eagerness of his orthodoxy.—
Against this sombre background stand out the characters of the principal personages. Eva, the most pathetic among all the figures of Maturin’s creation, is drawn with a skill almost unparalleled in the art of representing a character in the purest and most ethereal light imaginable, without detracting anything from an unswerving fidelity to nature. She is as real in her goodness as in her timidity and inexperience. She has all the passive loveliness which can possibly flourish in such surroundings as hers, and is completely devoid of every active quality implying any degree of independence of mind. There is nothing brilliant about her, and the range of her ideas is certainly narrow. She would not think of doubting the infallibility of the opinions expressed by Mr. Wentworth or Macowen; but for her own part she instinctively clings to what there is best and noblest in her religion; and what little energy she possesses is employed, not in controversy, but in works of charity among the children of the poor. She is never severe to any one except herself, and shows firmness only in a punctual attention to her own religious duties. With these she unfortunately feels the demands of her temporal bridegroom to be irreconcilable, and though she suffers greatly under the conflict, she cannot find her way out of it. Her attachment to De Courcy is true and deep; but she is, as Scott said, ‘unable to express her passion otherwise than by dying for it.’ A passion of so unsubstantial a description would have put to severe trial the patience of most lovers, let alone that of De Courcy who, at the commencement of the story, is a young man of seventeen, without any self-denying tendencies. The inclination of Maturin to represent his heroes and heroines in their earliest dawn of youth sometimes led to implausibilities, but not in the present case. De Courcy is the most carefully sketched of all his male characters, delineated, in fact, with a subtlety and penetration far in advance of what the fiction of the time usually attained. His chief characteristics are precocity and weakness; constitutional weakness, in spite of a splendid external appearance, and an inconsistency of mind and fickleness of disposition constantly at war with the good and generous qualities which the author, with impartial hand, bestows upon him. The interest of a ‘protector’ with which he regards Eva after their little adventure very soon and very naturally yields to a deeper feeling which, to begin with, knows of no pretensions. On the first occasion of his being invited to the house of Wentworth he is plunged amid an evangelical dinner-party, most capitally described, where he feels but ill at ease, being the only ‘unenlightened’ person present; the gentlemen are sitting apart, ‘on their chairs sublime, in thought more elevate, and reason high’ in terms which he does not even understand—and the ladies are gathered in the drawing-room talking, for the most part, nothing at all; but one look from Eva repays him all his weariness and embarrasment: ‘For months after he fed on that look; it came to him like a beam of light, and he forgot whether it was day or night when it glanced before his eyes.’ Yet the pleasure of feeding on a look sooner or later will be exhausted, and a character like his is not formed to bear disappointments. He is almost broken down both in mind and body when he suspects that he is indifferent to Eva, and when he has learned that this is not so, the incompatibility of their views and habits seems to raise insuperable obstacles between them. Their short hours of confidence are always interrupted in the same way:
One evening he had succeeded in prevailing on her to listen to “The Lay of the Last Minstrel;” she was struck by the introduction, and Charles was proceeding with that increasing confidence which the increasing interest of a listener gives a reader, when the clock struck, and she reminded him it was time to go to the evening lecture at Bethesda Chapel. Charles, with a sigh, threw aside the poem, and accompanied her. The sermon was eloquent and long, the congregation profoundly attentive; Charles sate abstracted and listless. As they returned, the lovely calmness of a vernal night revived the feelings of Charles; and as Eva leaned on his arm, and sometimes raised her looks (but with other feelings than his) to the bright blue spangled sky, that exquisite passage broke involuntarily from his lips, that ends with, “for lovers love the western star.”