Here the man creates his surroundings or sets the tone, presumably exemplifying the author’s ideal. He is singularly pure-minded, preposterously domestic, and very confident about the natural supremacy of man. It is the immense amount of tender detail, the infinite number of soft touches which convict the author of femininity. Her hero, however, is no knight of romance, no Bayard of the drawing-room, no love-lorn youth of dreams, no “fine gentleman,” the mate of a girl’s sensibility. He is not all soul and heart. He is of tougher fibre in groundwork (despite his “halo”), and primarily practical. Concerned externally with such tough problems as trade depression, the “bread riots,” and the introduction of machinery, he is more often placed before us as lover, husband, father, and friend. Frank and decisive, he has remarkable self-control, and remains ideally simple. He has no doubts about sin and goodness, indifference or faith. We should be tempted to say that he spent his life in the nursery, though sometimes, indeed, the view of the nursery is not unworthy of our attention:
“I delighted to see dancing. Dancing, such as it was then, when young people moved breezily and lightly, as if they loved it; skimming like swallows down the long line of the Triumph—gracefully winding in and out through the graceful country-dance—lively always, but always decorous. In those days people did not think it necessary to the pleasures of dancing that any stranger should have the liberty to snatch a shy, innocent girl round the waist, and whirl her about in mad waltz or awkward polka, till she stops, giddy and breathless, with burning cheek and tossed hair, looking—as I would not have liked to see our pretty Maud look.”
Most of us, I fancy, would think better of John without Phineas at his elbow, if he were less supremely self-conscious, less given to that analysis of his own acts and emotions which is essentially feminine. But Mrs. Craik will not let her hero alone. She thrusts him upon us without mercy, till we are driven to cry “halt.” We are convinced that no human being could comfortably carry about with him so heavy a burden of perfectibility. He is (as women have often fancied us) not what we are but what she would have us be; and here, as elsewhere, even the Ideal does not please man.
PERSONALITIES
All art is the expression of an individuality, and environment has some influence on genius. Without question Evelina and Cecilia owe much to the accidents of Miss Burney’s own experience. Hers, indeed, was an eventful, almost romantic, life. To-day we only remember Dr. Burney as the father of Fanny; but he was a man of mark in his own generation, and his industrious enthusiasm was obviously infectious. Fanny was not early distinguished among his clever children, and we must conclude that she had something of that delicate refinement granted her heroines, making her rather shy and diffident among the mixed gatherings in which he took such pride and delight. As one of her sisters remarked, this lack of self-confidence gave her at times the appearance of hauteur; and it is quite obvious that no suspicions could have been aroused in any of them of her capacity for “taking notes.” Hers was always the quiet corner where “the old lady,” as they called her at home, could observe the quality, occasionally join in a spirited conversation, and—after her own fashion—enjoy “the diversions.” Her characteristics, says fourteen-year-old Susan, “seem to be sense, sensibility, and bashfulness, even to prudery.” It would be kinder, perhaps, to credit her with modesty such as we find expressed in her own account of Evelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World:
“Perhaps this may seem rather a bold attempt and title for a female whose knowledge of the world is very confined, and whose inclinations, as well as situation, incline her to a private and domestic life. All I can urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents and adventures to which a ‘young woman’ is liable; I have not pretended to shew the world what it actually is, but what it appears to a young girl of seventeen: and so far as that, surely any girl who is past seventeen may safely do? The motto of my excuse shall be taken from Pope’s Temple of Fame:
‘In every work, regard the author’s end;
None e’er can compass more than they intend.’”
How far she had actually experienced adventures, or at least met characters, similar to those of her novel, her entertaining Diaries most abundantly illustrate. One is almost ashamed before the enthusiasm which, between domesticities considered becoming a lady, secretarial work for Dr. Burney, and voluminous letters to her faithful friend Daddy Crisp, the authoress accomplished so much in so comparatively short a period.
For she had not only to “scribble” Evelina, but to copy it all out in a feigned upright hand. It was natural enough that Lowndes, bookseller, should have refused to publish without the whole manuscript, but equally natural that she should complain:
“This man, knowing nothing of my situation, supposed, in all probability, that I could sit quietly at my bureau, and write on with expedition and ease, till the work was finished. But so different was the case, that I had hardly time to write half a page a day; and neither my health nor inclination would allow me to continue my nocturnal scribbling for so long a time, as to write first, and then copy, a whole volume. I was therefore obliged to give the attempt and affair entirely over for the present.”