Even when she describes spoiled children and domestic discord, as in A Very Ill-Tempered Family, we get an attractive portrait of Isobel, who becomes the peace-maker and is herself helped in her time of struggle by passages from Thomas à Kempis and the petitions of the “Te Deum,” and who is enabled to conciliate and save her hot-tempered brother. This sketch and the companion one of A Great Emergency are full of quaint wit and wisdom, though with fewer verbal quips than the earlier tales. Mrs. Ewing has the art of wrapping up her advice in a fascinating story, and does not make her pills with eight corners. The felicitously chosen titles, often reminding us of John Bunyan, by no means disappoint the reader.
Many may think that Lob Lie by the Fire is her completest work of art; and certainly it is a skilfully constructed composition, with a fragrance as of Cranford in its earlier scenes. But it is in the trilogy of her last years that her powers culminated. Between 1879 and 1882 Mrs. Ewing produced the three works most widely popular—Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life. These constitute an imperishable memorial to her genius, and have sold in enormous numbers, reaching to one hundred and fifty thousand in the case of Jackanapes. In these books every sentence is carefully chosen; no superfluous word is to be found; we get pen pictures of rarest excellence.
In Jackanapes we have the high ideal of soldierly self-sacrifice, and in The Story of a Short Life the application of military habits and endurance to a crippled and stunted life. In Daddy Darwin’s Dovecot we have a sweet idyll of village life. The lad, John March, on emerging from the workhouse school, has the double ambition to be a choir-boy and to take care of doves. We delight to trace his fidelity and diligence; his master soon sees and says that “he’s no vagrant.” “He’s fettling up all along. Jack’s the sort that if he finds a key he’ll look for the lock; if ye give him a knife-blade, he’ll fashion a heft.” And in the peaceful close of the story we listen to the master, with his last strength, saying to his adopted son, “’Twas that sweet voice o’ thine took me back again to public worship, and it’s not the least of all I owe thee, Jack March. A poor reason, lad, for taking up with a neglected duty—a poor reason—but the Lord is a God of mercy, or there’d be small chance for most of us.” As the old man died “his lips were trembling with the smile of acutest joy.”
In most of her books Mrs. Ewing traces the progress of children from youth to manhood and gives us an insight into the development of their character. Thus in Lob Lie by the Fire, for example, we have the foundling christened John Broom; we see him adopted by Miss Betty and Miss Kitty in spite of the warnings of the cautious lawyer, but under the guidance of the good clergyman who, while feeling he may be encouraging them in grave indiscretion, feels impelled to say, “I do know that he has a Father Whose image is also to be found in His children—not quite effaced in any of them—and Whose care of this one will last when yours may seem to have been in vain.” We journey with him in all his difficult training; we are with him in his chivalrous devotion to McAlister, the Highlander, whose honour he saves and whose last hour he comforts. We watch him, as the beneficent “brownie” in his village home, as he brings luck to Lingborough, and works for others. In this tale, as in so many others, we feel that sustained personal interest which belongs to a biography.
But it is in connection with The Story of a Short Life that interest has recently been rekindled in Mrs. Ewing in many quarters, on account of the remarkable development of the “Guild of the Brave Poor Things,” which has sprung into existence as the direct outcome of this tale. As Sir Walter Besant built the “People’s Palace” by the picture painted in his novel, so Mrs. Ewing has done an equally important work, though not herself permitted to live to see the results of her suggestions.
In the work of this guild gatherings of afflicted people—blind, deaf, paralysed, or otherwise incapacitated for the full activity of ordinary life and work—are held at regular intervals in London and other centres. Classes suitable to their varied needs are conducted; companies of the brave who suffer, often with infinite heroism, are inspirited by being assembled for bright meetings, in which all that the suggestion of the atmosphere and colour of military habit can impart, is used to make prominent the fact that the members are as truly soldiers as the veterans of the “tented field,” that the “courage to bear and the courage to dare are really one and the same.” Thus the schoolrooms are decked with banners, while the roll-call of members and the singing of the tug-of-war hymn (Bishop Heber’s “The Son of God goes forth to war”) are looked forward to eagerly by the sufferers, young and old, who are banded together in this comradeship of affliction. It is almost startling to find walls emblazoned with the motto “Lætus sorte meâ,” and to learn that many people, innocent of any language but their mother-tongue, have become intelligently proud of the words which bid them be happy in their lot.[1]
The whole of this movement, now spreading rapidly, has come from Mrs. Ewing’s sweetly pathetic story, which appeared under its familiar title of A Story of a Short Life only four days before the death of its author in 1885. Some three years previously it had been issued in magazine form under the forbidding Latin title of its motto. An Irishman, who was a Dorsetshire parson, came with a present of magnificent climbing roses to Mrs. Ewing a short time afterwards. When he was thanked for his gift, he said rather grumpily, “You’ve given me pleasure enough—and to lots of others.” Then he suddenly chirped up and said, “Lætus cost me 2s. 6d. though. My wife bet me 2s. 6d. I couldn’t read it aloud without crying. I thought I could. But after a page or two I put my hand in my pocket. I said, ‘There—take your half-crown, and let me cry comfortably when I want to!’”[2]
We understand that this tale is based largely on life; certainly it enshrines much of the surroundings of Aldershot, where Major and Mrs. Ewing lived for eight years. In it we have the life-history of the lad Leonard, and trace how this high-spirited and spoiled child conquers his peevishness and triumphs over the limitations of his lot as a cripple. For a time after his accident his violent and irritable temper carries all before it; his very crutches become “implements of impatience”; but he is subdued, and eventually transfigured by intercourse with a gallant officer wearing the Victoria Cross, who teaches him that he, too, may be a happy warrior, and, though “doomed to go in company with pain,” may “turn his necessity to glorious gain,” and count himself as true a soldier as any wounded on the battle-field. Leonard not only becomes brave and patient, but he forms a book or register of “Poor Things,” that is, of people who, like the blind organ-tuner, manage almost as well in spite of their troubles. In this roll of honour he inscribes the names of those who
“argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate one jot