We have again, as the closing paragraph reminds us, “a picture of youth,” primarily feminine; but Camilla is no mere repetition either of Evelina or Cecilia. She has even more sensibility, and a new quality of most attractive impulsiveness, which is perpetually leading her into difficulties.
There is a double contrast, or comparison, of types. The heroine’s uncle—Sir Hugh Tyrold—seems to have been conceived as a parody of the young lady herself. He flies off at a tangent—far more youthfully than she—changes his will three or four times in the first few chapters, and is constantly upsetting the whole family by most ridiculous “plans” for their happiness.
On the other hand, Edgar Mandlebert—the hero—suffers from too much caution; implanted, it is true, by his worthy tutor; but obviously “at home” in his nature. Practically the whole five volumes are concerned with the misunderstandings produced by Camilla’s hasty self-sacrifices, and his care in studying her character, without the key to her motives. It would be easy, indeed, to describe the plot as a prolonged “much ado about nothing.” The sentiments involved are palpably strained, absurdly high-flown, and singularly unbalanced. But we should remember two reasons for modifying our judgment, and hesitating before a complete condemnation.
In the first place, the ideals for women, and for all intercourse between the sexes, differ in nearly every particular from those of our own day; and, in the second, these people were almost ridiculously young. Love affairs, and often marriage, began for them when they were fifteen; and it may be that were our own sons and daughters put to the test at that age, their deeds and sentiments might surprise us considerably.
“In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions; Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury and indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington, beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though not considerable, enabled its incumbent to attain every rational object of his modest and circumscribed wishes; to bestow upon a deserving wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; to educate a lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present enjoyment.
“In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary couple were bound to each other by the most perfect union of character, though in their tempers there was a contrast which had scarce the gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt dissimilitude. Mr. Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue, saw with compassion all imperfections but his own, and there doubled the severity which to others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged him to pity blinded him not to approve; his equity was unerring, though his judgment was indulgent. His partner had a firmness of mind which nothing could shake: calamity found her resolute; even prosperity was powerless to lull her duties asleep. The exalted character of her husband was the pride of her existence, and the source of her happiness. He was not merely her standard of excellence, but of endurance, since her sense of his worth was the criterion for her opinion of all others. This instigated a spirit of comparison, which is almost always uncandid, and which here could rarely escape proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the unskilfulness of our fallible nature, that even the noble principle which impels our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however, distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection—that magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;—Mr. Tyrold revered while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she fortified the melting humanity of her husband.”
Mrs. Tyrold, in fact, was a most alarming lady; and as that “sad fellow,” their son Lionel—one of “the merry blades of Oxford”—remarked with spirit, “A good father is a very serious misfortune to a poor lad like me, as the world runs; it causes one such confounded gripes of conscience for every little awkward thing one does.”
It will be seen, at once, that such surroundings promised that “repose” so “welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick and to the happy,” with small occasion for “danger, difficulty, and toil”—the delight of youth. Wherefore the flock, with only the son for black sheep, must quit the fold, and see something of the wicked world outside the garden. Their first venture would seem harmless enough; being no farther than over the fields to Cleves Park, just purchased by Uncle Sir Hugh, who had “inherited from his ancestors an unencumbered estate of £5,000 per annum.”
“His temper was unalterably sweet, and every thought of his breast was laid open to the world with an almost infantine artlessness. But his talents bore no proportion to the goodness of his heart, an insuperable want of quickness, and of application in his early days, having left him, at a later period, wholly uncultivated, and singularly self-formed.”
Mrs. Tyrold found occasion for further delight in the “superiority” of her husband; “though she was not insensible to the fair future prospects of her children, which seemed the probable result of this change of abode.” Both parents, indeed, prove unexpectedly “worldly” on this point; and though obviously far above the sacrifice of principle for profit, they permit their offspring to run risks—as they deem them—in their complaisance to a rich relative.