"The word which best describes Fanny Fern is the word Lady. All her ways and tastes are feminine and refined. Everything she wears, every article of furniture in her rooms, all the details of her table, must be clean, elegant, tasteful. Her attire, which is generally simple and inexpensive, is always exquisitely nice and becoming. In the stormiest days, when no visitor could be expected, she is as carefully dressed and adorned as though she was going to court. We say as carefully, though, in fact, she has a quick instinct for the becoming, and makes herself attractive without bestowing much time or thought upon the matter. Her voice is singularly musical; her manner varies with her humor; but it is always that of a lady. One who knows Fanny Fern has an idea what kind of women they must have been for whom knights-errant did battle in the Middle Ages.
"With all her strength, Fanny Fern is extremely sensitive. She can enjoy more, suffer more, love more, hate more, admire more and detest more, than any one whom we have known. With all her gentleness of manner, there is not a drop of milk and water in her veins. She believes in having justice done. Seventy times and seven she could forgive a repentant brother; but not once, unless he repented.
"Fanny Fern writes rapidly, in a large, bold hand; but she sends no article away without very careful revision; and her manuscript is puzzling to printers from its numberless erasures and insertions. She writes from her heart and her eye; she has little aptitude or taste for abstract thought. She never talks of her writings, and cares little for criticism, however severe. She is no more capable of writing an intentional double entendre, than the gross-minded men who have accused her of doing so are capable of appreciating the worth of pure womanhood.
"Such are some of our impressions of Fanny Fern, to which we may add, that she has the finest form of any woman in New York, and that no one of the names recently assigned her in the papers is her true name. In ordinary circumstances, we should not have thought it right thus to describe the characteristics of a lady; our sole, and we think, sufficient justification is, the publication of statements respecting her, only less vulgar than calumnious."
XL.
THE OTHER SIDE.
The following review of Ruth Hall is from the pen of a talented woman, far above any feelings of pique or jealousy.
"Our first recollections of 'Fanny Fern' are connected with her appearance in the Olive Branch a few years since. We were then entirely ignorant of her real name and position, nor did we, in common with the indifferent public, feel any particular interest or curiosity respecting them. The impression of the careless reader would have been that the spicy scraps bearing this signature were the production of some hoydenish school-girl, ambitious to see her writings in print. With the supposition that they were the work of a young lady, was associated an indefinite, but slightly painful feeling that the writer was not sufficiently endowed with female delicacy. While a perfect sketch, artistically wrought out, and disfigured by no defects of style or coarse inuendoes, partially filled a column, the same column often contained another article, full of these blemishes. Vulgar expressions and exclamations were often used, though when these writings were afterwards collected and published in a book, these were carefully pruned away. Some judicious friend had evidently guided the pen to strike out phraseology which would have been injurious if not fatal to Fanny's rising fame. Whether this judicious friend was the 'Mr. Tibbetts' through whose agency her first work was introduced to the publishers, who received and forwarded to her all the proofs, reading the whole aloud to her as fast as it appeared in type, we are not able to say. Upon 'Fern Leaves,' and successive volumes, thus carefully pruned of what too plainly revealed a certain coarseness in the habits of thought of the writer, the public has doubtless passed a just verdict. With the fame thus won, and the independence thus secured, would that 'Fanny Fern' had been satisfied.
"We do not intend to attempt an elaborate review of 'Ruth Hall.' As a novel it will not bear it. We have read it through twice without catching any clew to its merits or intentions as a work of art. Disjointed fragments of what should be a beautiful and complete edifice, are all that meet the eye. As in the newly discovered remains of ancient cities, monstrous faces, caricatures of humanity, glare upon us when we look for 'the human face divine.' One cannot but feel that the mind of the artist must have been itself deformed to have designed such monstrosities. On looking over the preface, we perceive that the author disclaims the intention of writing a novel. We will therefore examine 'Ruth Hall' as an auto-biography.
"A work which appears before the world, heralded as such, with the evident intention of being so understood, should above all else, be distinguished for truth. Exaggerated, instead of correct descriptions, imaginary instead of real conversations and letters, which if genuine, have no point, and if fictitious, no interest, should not have been admitted to its pages. The work abounds in these. If 'Ruth Hall' is 'Fanny Fern,' then the incognito of the latter is forever laid aside. Half the charm attached to her writings has already vanished. She is no longer a 'Maid of the Mist,' whose silvery veil conceals deformities and enhances beauties, but plain 'Fanny Fern;' and 'Ruth Hall' is 'Fanny Fern' described by herself. Let us look at this description.
"'Ruth Hall' is not without vanity. In the very first chapter, 'her lithe form had rounded into symmetry and grace, her slow step had become light and elastic, her smile winning, and her voice soft and melodious.'