Julia Pardoe. Mrs. Trollope. Harriet Martineau
Somewhere between the second and third decades of the nineteenth
century, the modern novel was born. The romances of the twenties are,
for the most part, old-fashioned in tone, and speak of an earlier age;
but in the thirties, the modern novel, with its exact reproduction of
places, customs, and speech, and strong local flavour, was full-grown.
Dickens, under the name of Boz, was contributing his sketches to _The
Old Monthly Magazine_ and the _Evening Chronicle_. Thackeray was
beginning to contribute articles to _Fraser's Magazine_, established in
1830. Annuals and monthlies sprang up in the night, and paid large sums
for long and short stories. The thirst for them was unquenchable. Many
women were supporting themselves by writing tales which did not live
beyond the year of their publication. Mrs. Marsh was writing stories of
fashionable life varied by historical romances. Mrs. Crowe wrote
stories of fashionable life varied by supernatural romances and tales of
adventure. In _The Story of Lilly Dawson_, published in 1847, the
heroine was captured and brought up by smugglers, and the gradual
development of her character was traced; thus giving to the story a
psychological interest. Lady Blessington earned two thousand pounds a
year for twenty years by novels and short stories of fashionable life.
Lady Blessington had a European reputation as a court beauty and a
brilliant and witty conversationalist. This with the coronet must have
helped to sell her books. They do not contain even a sentence that holds
the attention. A friend said of her, "Her genius lay in her tongue; her
pen paralysed it." More enduring work in fiction was done by Julia
Pardoe, Mrs. Trollope, and Harriet Martineau.
* * * * *
The novels of Julia Pardoe, like those of Mrs. Bray, owe their value,
not to their intrinsic merit, but to the comparatively unknown places to
which she introduces her readers. She accompanied her father, Major
Pardoe, to Constantinople, where they were entertained by natives of
high position, to whom they had letters of introduction, and Miss Pardoe
was the guest of their wives in the harem. Her knowledge of the mode of
life and habits of thought of Turkish women is considered second only
to that of Mary Wortley Montagu.
The material for her story _The Romance of the Harem_ was obtained
during her visits to these Turkish ladies. In this she has caught the
languid, heavily perfumed atmosphere of the Orient. Besides the main
plot, stories of adventure and love are related which beguiled the
slowly passing hours of the inmates of the seraglio. Some of them might
have been told by Schehezerhade, if she had wished to add to her
entertainment of _The Thousand and One Nights_.
After Miss Pardoe's return to England, she wrote a series of fashionable
novels, inferior to many of those of Mrs. Gore, and better than the best
of those by Lady Blessington. _Confessions of a Pretty Woman_, _The
Jealous Wife_, and _The Rival Beauties_ were the most popular of these,
although they have long since been forgotten.
In 1849, Miss Pardoe published a collection of stories under the title
_Flies in Amber_. The title, she explains in the preface, was suggested
by a belief of the Orientals that amber comes from the sea, and attracts
about it all insects, which find in it both a prison and a posthumous
existence. Some of the stories of this collection were gathered in her
travels. _An Adventure in Bithynia_, _The Magyar and the Moslem, or an
Hungarian Legend_, and the _Yere-Batan-Serai_, which means
Swallowed-up Palace, the great subterranean ruin of Constantinople, have
the interest which always attaches to tales gathered by travellers in
unfrequented places.
* * * * *
Mrs. Frances Trollope, the mother of the more famous author Anthony
Trollope, like Miss Pardoe, found material for stories in unfamiliar
places. Mrs. Trollope had the nature of the pioneer. With her family,
she sought our western lands of the Mississippi Valley, where the virgin
forest had resounded to the axe of the first settler but a short time
before. She wrote the first book of any note describing the manners of
the Americans; the first strong novel calling attention to the evils of
slavery in our Southern States; and the first one describing graphically
the white slavery in the cotton-mills of Lancashire; and she is,
perhaps, the only writer who began a long literary career at the age of
fifty-two.
On the fourth of November, 1827, Mrs. Trollope with her three children
sailed from London, and, after about seven weeks on the sea, arrived on
Christmas Day at the mouth of the Mississippi. After a brief visit in
New Orleans, this party of English travellers sailed up the river to
Memphis, where, remote from the comforts of civilisation, they abode for
a time under the direction of Mrs. Wright, an English lecturer who had
come to America for the avowed purpose of proving the perfect equality
of the black and white races. But Mrs. Trollope and her family soon
tired of life in the wilderness, and sought Cincinnati, at that time a
small city of wooden houses, not over thirty years of age. After two
years' residence in Cincinnati, she went by stage to Baltimore, visited
Philadelphia and New York, and returned to England, after a sojourn of
three and a half years in this country.
During her residence in the United States, she made copious notes of
what she saw and heard. These she published the year after her return to
England, under the title _Domestic Manners of the Americans_. At once
the pens of all the critics were let loose upon the author. Her American
critics declared that she knew nothing about them or their country; and
their English friends refused to believe that the people of America had
such shocking bad manners.
Mrs. Trollope reported truthfully what she saw and heard. But a frontier
city is made up of people gathered from the four corners of the earth:
each family is a law unto itself; so that the speeches Mrs. Trollope
carefully set down, and the customs she depicted, were often
peculiarities of individuals rather than of a community. But she has
left a vivid picture of American life in the twenties, less exaggerated
than the picture Charles Dickens gave of it in the forties. Mrs.
Trollope's attitude is no more hostile than his, but he is more
entertaining. He held us up to ridicule and laughed at us; she seriously
pointed out our errors in the hope that we might amend. She is slightly
inconsistent at times, for, while asserting the equality of whites and
blacks, she as bitterly resented the equality of white master and white
servant. Her purpose in writing this book was to warn her own countrymen
of the evils which must follow a government of the many.
Although she never takes the broad view, but always the narrow and
partial one, her book gives a good picture of the everyday life and
habits of thought of the next generation to that which had fought and
won the American Revolution. The white heat of republican fervour, so
obnoxious to a European, welded the nation together as one people, and
filled their hearts with a religious reverence for the constitution. She
meant them as a reproach, but we read these words with pride: "I never
heard from anyone a single disparaging word against their government."
Mrs. Trollope has been described by her friends as a refined woman of
charming personality. But as soon as she began to write, she donned her
armour and proclaimed her hostility either to her hero or to the larger
part of the characters of the book. This method is dangerous to art.
Even the genius of Thackeray is lessened by his lack of sympathy.
In 1833 Mrs. Trollope published her first novel, _The Refugee in
America_. It is the story of an English lord who has fled to America to
escape English justice. He and his friends have settled in Rochester,
New York. It was written for the sole purpose of describing the manners
of the people of our Eastern cities. The author's attitude toward them
is well illustrated by a conversation between Caroline, the young
English girl, and her American _protegee_, Emily. After a dinner in
Washington, Caroline exclaims to her friend:
"'Oh, my own Emily, you must not live and die where such things be.'
"Emily sighed as she answered, 'I am born to it, Miss Gordon.'
"'But hardly bred to it. We have caught you young, and we have spoiled
you for ever as an American lady.'"
Three years later Mrs. Trollope published her strongest novel, _The Life
and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_. This is a powerful
picture of early life on the Mississippi; it was the first novel since
Mrs. Behn's _Oroonoko_ which called attention to the evils of African
slavery. It is marred, however, by want of sympathy with the community
she is describing. Mr. Jonathan Whitlaw Senior has "squat in the bush,"
an expression to which Mrs. Trollope objects, but which brings to mind
at once the log cabin in the forest clearing, and the muscular, uncouth
pioneer. Jonathan furnishes firewood to the Mississippi steamers, and by
this means gains sufficient wealth to carry out his life's ambition: to
set up a store in Natchez, and to own "niggers." But the life of a
pioneer has made Jonathan as cunning as a fox. This cunning his son
Jonathan, the hero of the story, has inherited to the full. As a
slave-owner he is as grasping and cruel as Legree, whom Mrs. Stowe
immortalised some years later. His character, though drawn with strength
and vigour, is inconsistent. He is a miser, yet he is a gambler and a
spendthrift, qualities not often found together. He is not a true
representative of the son of a pioneer. Clio Whitlaw, the aunt of the
hero, belongs more truly to her environment. One suspects the English
family at Cincinnati had received neighbourly kindnesses from women like
her. With her physical strength and great courage she is kind and
neighbourly to all who need her help. The sad story of Edward Bligh, the
young Kentuckian who preached the gospel to the slaves, the victim of
lynch law, a word dreaded even then, is as thrilling as parts of _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_.
Besides _Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_, Mrs. Trollope created two other
characters that will cause her name to live as long as those of William
Harrison Ainsworth or G. P. R. James. The coarse scheming widow Barnaby
is the heroine of three novels, _Widow Barnaby_, _The Widow Married_,
and _The Widow Wedded, or the Barnabys in America_. In the last book
Mrs. Trollope somewhat humorously pays off her scores against her
American critics, who had dubbed her a cockney, unfamiliar with good
society in either England or America. The Widow Barnaby, who has come to
New Orleans with her husband after his little gambling ways have made
residence in London unpleasant, decides to earn some money by writing a
book on America. She describes the Americans, not as they are, but as
they think they are. She listens to all their boasts about themselves
and country, and puts it faithfully in her book. Of course they like it
and she becomes the literary lion of America.
Anthony Trollope, in his book _An Autobiography_, said of his mother's
books on America: "Her volumes were very bitter; but they were very
clever, and they saved the family from ruin." She is also given the
credit of having improved the manners of American society. Whenever a
"gentleman" at his club put his feet on the table, or indulged in any
liberty of which she would not have approved, others cried, "Trollope!
Trollope! Trollope!"
The _Vicar of Wrexhill_, the scene of which is laid in England, is an
attack on the evangelical clergy in the Episcopal Church. The vicar is
no truer to the great body of evangelical preachers than Jonathan
Jefferson Whitlaw is true to the great body of slave-owners. There is
the same exaggeration to prove a theory. Evangelical preaching is
harmful, is the theorem, and a man is selected to prove it who in any
walk of life would be a hypocrite and libertine. The book has many
interesting situations. The vicar's proposal to the rich widow, one of
his parishioners, is clever: "Let me henceforth be as the shield and
buckler that shall guard thee; so that thou shalt not be afraid for any
terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day." And he promises,
if she will marry him, to lead her "sinful children into the life
everlasting." No other book has shown, as this does, the powerful effect
upon sensitive natures of this kind of preaching. One feels that the
followers of the Reverend Vicar were under the influence of hypnotic
suggestion, and that their awakening from this spell was like the
awakening from a trance.
Mrs. Trollope was actuated by humanitarian motives. This was not as
usual then as since Dickens popularised the humanitarian novel. Only
three years after he wrote _Sketches by Boz_, Mrs. Trollope wrote _The
Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong_, the story of a boy employed
in the mills of Lancashire. Negro slavery in the South, even as Mrs.
Trollope saw it, was a happy state of existence compared with child
slavery in the mills of Ashleigh and Deep Valley, Lancashire, where the
children were driven to work by the lash in the morning, and were
crippled by the "Billy roller," the name of the stick by which they were
beaten for inattention to their work during the day. If the truth of
these horrors were not attested by other writers of this time, one would
doubt the possibility of their existence in the same land and at the
same time in which Wordsworth was writing of the beauties of his own
childhood, where the river Derwent mingled its murmurs with his nurse's
song.
Mrs. Trollope assailed injustice with a powerful pen. Woman's moral
nature is truer and more sensitive than man's. Even if her sympathies
cloud her judgment, it is better than that her judgment should reason
away her sympathies. Neither has woman in her philanthropy contented
herself with broad principles which would help all and therefore reach
none. The dusky slave in the cotton-fields, the pale-faced child in the
cotton-mills, have alike touched the hearts of women, who by their pens
have been able to awaken the conscience of a nation. The horror of child
labour wrung from Mrs. Browning the heart-felt poem, _The Cry of the
Children_. The four strong novels proclaiming the tyranny of the whites
over the blacks, _Oronooko_, _Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw_, _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_, and _The Hour and the Man_, were written by women.
* * * * *
The name of Harriet Martineau was a familiar one in every household
during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Like Mrs. Trollope she
was a woman of fearless honesty. But Harriet Martineau was never the
_raconteur_, she was first the educator. She wrote story after story to
teach lessons in political and social science. Her method of work, as
set forth in her autobiography, was peculiar, and the result is not
uninteresting. In her _Political Economy Tales_, she selected certain
principles which she wished to set forth, and embodied each principle in
a character. The operations of these principles furnished the plot of
the story. Besides the illustrations of the principles by the
characters, the laws were discussed in conversation, and thus the lesson
was taught. In the story _Brooke and Brooke Farm_, she made use of an
expression which Ruskin almost paraphrased: "The whole nation, the whole
world, is obliged to him who makes corn grow where it never grew
before; and yet more to him who makes two ears ripen where only one
ripened before." In the tale _A Manchester Strike_, factory life and the
problems that face the working men are set forth, the aim being to show
that work and wages depend upon the great laws of supply and demand.
Miss Martineau wrote two novels. _Deerbrook_, in 1839, was modelled on
_Our Village_. The village doctor, Mr. Hope, is the central figure. Firm
in his convictions, he loses the favour of the leading families, and
through their influence he is deprived of his practice. A fever,
however, sweeps over the place and his former enemies beg, not in vain,
for his skilful services. A double love story runs through the book.
Mrs. Rowland, a scheming woman, is the most cleverly drawn of the
characters, and was evidently suggested by some of Miss Edgeworth's
fashionable ladies.
Harriet Martineau also visited America, but some years later than Mrs.
Trollope, when the slavery agitation was at its height. As she had
written upon the evils of slavery before she left England, she was
invited to attend a meeting of the Abolitionists in Boston. She accepted
this invitation, and expressed there her abhorrence of slavery. After
this she received letters from some of the citizens of the pro-slavery
States, threatening her life if she entered their domain. This
naturally threw her entirely with the Abolition party, and she wrote
many articles to help their cause.
Miss Martineau's second novel, _The Hour and the Man_, grew out of her
sympathy and belief in the coloured race. Toussaint de L'Ouverture, the
devoted slave, soldier, liberator, and martyr, is the hero. Every scene
in which this wonderful black figures is vividly written. Many of the
minor incidents are but slightly sketched, and many of the minor
characters elude the reader's grasp. How far this book is a truthful
portrayal of the negro cannot be judged until the "race problem" is
surveyed with unprejudiced eyes. Then and not until then will its place
in literature be assigned. She gives the same characterisation of this
hero of St. Domingo as does Wendell Phillips in his wonderful speech of
which the following is the peroration:
"But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of History
will put Phocian for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for
England, Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate
flower of our earlier civilisation, then, dipping her pen in the
sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the
soldier, the statesman, the martyr, TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE."
_The Hour and the Man_ was published in 1840, and was warmly received by
the Abolitionists. William Lloyd Garrison, after reading it, wrote the
following sonnet to the author:
England! I grant that thou dost justly boast
Of splendid geniuses beyond compare;
Men great and gallant,--women good and fair,--
Skilled in all arts, and filling every post
Of learning, science, fame,--a mighty host!
Poets divine, and benefactors rare,--
Statesmen,--philosophers,--and they who dare
Boldly to explore heaven's vast and boundless coast,
To one alone I dedicate this rhyme,
Whose virtues with a starry lustre glow,
Whose heart is large, whose spirit is sublime,
The friend of liberty, of wrong the Foe:
Long be inscribed upon the roll of time
The name, the worth, the works of HARRIET MARTINEAU.
Miss Martineau wrote on a variety of subjects, and generally held a view
contrary to the accepted one. She wrote upon mesmerism, positivism,
atheism, which she professed, and after each book warriors armed with
pens sprang up to assail the author. But she had many friends, even
among those who were most bitter against her doctrines. One wrote of
her, "There is the fine, honest, solid, North-country element in her."
R. Brimley Johnson in _English Prose_, edited by Craik in 1896, said of
her writings:
"Her gift to literature was for her own generation. She is the exponent
of the infant century in many branches of thought:--its eager and
sanguine philanthropy, its awakening interest in history and science,
its rigid and prosaic philosophy. But her genuine humanity and real
moral earnestness give a value to her more personal utterances, which do
not lose their charm with the lapse of time."
Harriet Martineau's name and personality will be remembered in history
after her books have been forgotten.