Miss Ferrier, in fact, would have no hand in the “raw head and bloody bone schemes” in which Miss Clavering (who wrote “The History of Mrs. Douglas” in Marriage) had, apparently, invited her to collaborate, and chose rather to exemplify her own theories in three very similar stories: Marriage (1818), The Inheritance (1824), and Destiny (1831). Urged, again and again, to supplement these successes, she made “two attempts to write something else, but could not please herself, and would not publish anything”—a most praiseworthy resolution.
She has left us an entertaining account of her “plan” for Marriage, which may well serve for an exact description of her actual achievement.
“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[10] try our hands on it; the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies against runaway matches, and the character and fate of the two sisters would be unexceptionable. I expect it will be the first book every wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased and filled with dog’s ears. I hear the enchanting sound of some sentimental miss, the shrill pipe of some antiquated spinster, or the hoarse grumbling of some incensed dowager as they severally enquire for me at the circulating library, and are assured by the master that it is in such demand that, though he has thirteen copies, they are insufficient to answer the calls upon it; but that each one of them may depend upon having the very first that comes in!!!”
The interest, in these novels, is not awakened by any subtle characterisation or by serious sympathy with the dramatis personæ. It depends rather upon caustic wit, accurate local colour, a picture of manners, and a “museum of abnormalities.”
Miss Ferrier’s nice distinctions between the “well-bred,” and her photographs of vulgarity, may claim to rival Miss Burney’s.
“Mrs. St. Clair, for example, was considerably annoyed by the manners of Lady Charles, which made her feel her own as something unwieldy and overgrown; like a long train, they were both out of the way and in the way, and she did not know very well how to dispose of them. Indeed, few things can be more irritating than for those who have hitherto piqued themselves upon the abundance of their manner, to find all at once that they have a great deal too much, and that no one is inclined to take it off their hands, and that, in short, it is dead stock.”
Mrs. Bluemit’s tea-party, again, reveals the Blue-Stockings in all their glory; while Mr. Augustus Larkins—with his “regular features, very pink eyes, very black eyebrows, and what was intended for a very smart expression”—forcibly recalls Mr. Smith of Snow Hill. His ideal of dress and manners was evidently shared by Bob and Davy Black, who were
“dressed in all the extremes of the reigning fashions—small waists, brush-heads, stiff collars, iron heels, and switches. Like many other youths they were distinctly of opinion that ‘dress makes the man.’... Perhaps, after all, that is a species of humility rather to be admired in those who, feeling themselves destitute of mental qualifications, trust to the abilities of their tailor and hairdresser for gaining them the good-will of the world.”
It must be admitted that Miss Ferrier’s obviously spontaneous delight in satire has occasionally tempted her beyond the limits of artistic realism. Her miniature of the M‘Dow, for example, has all the objectionable qualities which revive our preference for the “elegancies” of romance.
“Here Miss M‘Dow was disencumbered of her pelisse and bonnet, and exhibited a coarse, blubber-lipped, sun-burnt visage, with staring sea-green eyes, a quantity of rough sandy hair, and mulatto neck, with merely a rim of white round her shoulders.... The gloves were then taken off, and a pair of thick mulberry paws set at liberty.”