It is not very long since some articles appeared in the 'Cornhill
Magazine' which were begun under the influence of certain ancient
bookshelves with so pleasant a flavour of the old world that it seemed
at the time as if yesterday not to-day was the all-important hour, and
one gladly submitted to the subtle charm of the past--its silent veils,
its quiet incantations of dust and healing cobweb. The phase is but a
passing one with most of us, and we must soon feel that to dwell at
length upon each one of the pretty old fancies and folios of the writers
and explorers who were born towards the end of the last century would be
an impossible affectation; and yet a postscript seems wanting to the
sketches which have already appeared of Mrs. Barbauld and Miss
Edgeworth, and the names of their contemporaries should not be quite
passed over.
In a hundred charming types and prints and portraits we recognise the
well-known names as they used to appear in the garb of life. Grand
ladies in broad loops and feathers, or graceful and charming as nymphs
in muslin folds, with hanging clouds of hair; or again, in modest
coiffes such as dear Jane Austen loved and wore even in her youth.
Hannah More only took to coiffes and wimples in later life; in early
days she was fond of splendour, and, as we read, had herself painted in
emerald earrings. How many others besides her are there to admire! Who
does not know the prim, sweet, amply frilled portraits of Mrs. Trimmer
and Joanna Baillie? Only yesterday a friend showed me a sprightly,
dark-eyed miniature of Felicia Hemans. Perhaps most beautiful among all
her sister muses smiles the lovely head of Amelia Opie, as she was
represented by her husband with luxuriant chestnut hair piled up Romney
fashion in careless loops, with the radiant yet dreaming eyes which are
an inheritance for some members of her family.
The authoresses of that day had the pre-eminence in looks, in gracious
dress and bearing; but they were rather literary women than anything
else, and had but little in common with the noble and brilliant writers
who were to follow them in our own more natural and outspoken times;
whose wise, sweet, passionate voices are already passing away into the
distance; of whom so few remain to us.[4] The secret of being real is no
very profound one, and yet how rare it is, how long it was before the
readers and writers of this century found it out! It is like the secret
of singing in perfect tune, or of playing the violin as Joachim can play
upon it. In literature, as in music, there is at times a certain
indescribable tone of absolute reality which carries the reader away and
for the moment absorbs him into the mind of the writer. Some
metempsychosis takes place. It is no longer a man or a woman turning the
pages of a book, it is a human being suddenly absorbed by the book
itself, living the very life which it records, breathing the spirit and
soul of the writer. Such books are events, not books to us, new
conditions of existence, new selves suddenly revealed through the
experience of other more vivid personalities than our own. The actual
experience of other lives is not for us, but this link of simple reality
of feeling is one all independent of events; it is like the miracle of
the loaves and fishes repeated and multiplied--one man comes with his
fishes and lo! the multitude is filled.
Footnote 4: And yet as I write I remember one indeed who is among us,
whose portrait a Reynolds or an Opie might have been glad to paint for
the generations who will love her works.
But this simple discovery, that of reality, that of speaking from the
heart, was one of the last to be made by women. In France Madame de
Sévigné and Madame de La Fayette were not afraid to be themselves, but
in England the majority of authoresses kept their readers carefully at
pen's length, and seemed for the most part to be so conscious of their
surprising achievements in the way of literature as never to forget for
a single instant that they were in print. With the exception of Jane
Austen and Maria Edgeworth, the women writers of the early part of this
century were, as I have just said, rather literary women than actual
creators of literature. It is still a mystery how they attained to their
great successes. Frances Burney charms great Burke and mighty Johnson
and wise Macaulay in later times. Mrs. Opie draws compliments from
Mackintosh, and compliments from the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, and Sydney
Smith, and above all tears from Walter Scott.
Perhaps many of the flattering things addressed to Mrs. Opie may have
said not less for her own charm and sweetness of nature than for the
merit of her unassuming productions; she must have been a bright, merry,
and fascinating person, and compliments were certainly more in her line
than the tributes of tears which she records.
The authoresses of heroines are often more interesting than the heroines
themselves, and Amelia Opie was certainly no exception to this somewhat
general statement. A pleasant, sprightly authoress, beaming bright
glances on her friends, confident, intelligent, full of interest in
life, carried along in turn by one and by another influence, she comes
before us a young and charming figure, with all the spires of Norwich
for a background, and the sound of its bells, and the stir of its
assizes, as she issues from her peaceful home in her father's tranquil
old house, where the good physician lives widowed, tending his poor and
his sick, and devotedly spoiling his only child.