occurrences of a few hours, whilst the visit is to be of long duration.
However enough has been said to indicate the lines along which the story
now develops. The feather-pate Juliana is not of those to whom Time
brings wisdom, and a further acquaintance with her surroundings only
serves to bring to light fresh disgusts. The gaunt apparitions of the
first evening grow no less tiresome as she knows them better, no less
hopelessly remote from every habit, tradition or association of her
life. But her poison is the reader's meat. In the course of the next few
pages we are introduced to Miss Grizzy's friend, Lady Maclaughlan, a
distinguished amateur of medicine and an object of awed admiration to
the sisters. As this lady steps upon the scene--fearfully and
wonderfully attired, and bearing in her hand her gold-headed cane--with
her deep-toned voice, her mercilessly blunt remarks, and her
uncompromising 'humph!'--her ineffectually recalcitrant little husband
borne behind her much as if he were a parcel--she is certainly one of
the most memorable figures in all fiction. And among the most laughable
scenes in all fiction must certainly be counted those in which in high
dudgeon she cuts short her visit to Glenfern Castle, and--still better,
and indeed unsurpassable--in which the ill-starred spinsters, mistaking
the day, arrive to visit her when they are not expected.
Nor must it for a moment be supposed that such creations as this and the
Aunts are mere masterpieces of the caricaturist. In Miss Ferrier's best
characters it may almost be said to be a rule that caricature enters
only into the details, and is never allowed to interfere with the main
outline. An accusation far more justly to be brought against the
authoress of this book is that of hard-heartedness, or a defect of
sympathy and even of toleration for her own creations. Susan Ferrier was
an uncompromisingly candid woman, as her interesting account of the
visits paid by her to Sir Walter Scott are enough to show. That her
heart was a kind one we know; but when she took pen in hand it was not
her way to extenuate anything. Neither was she given to view persons or
occurrences through any softening light of imagination or feeling. 'What
a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!' wrote another Scottish
author. But she, having devised a farcically cruel situation, squares
her shoulders and regards its development with a ruthlessness more
proper perhaps to science than to art. Not a touch of compunction has
she for her heroine--who, intolerably selfish and heartless as she is,
is yet but a child and the victim of the harshest circumstance; not a
touch of pity for the pathos and repression of such lives as those of
the Aunts. In a word, tolerance is not her strong point. And, admirable
as it is, her art yet suffers by the limitation of her sympathies. For
one pines for the hundred little humanising touches by virtue of which
the same characters--living though they be--might have lived with a
fuller and more gracious life. It is stated that Miss Ferrier's
favourite author was La Bruyere, and in such studies as those of Lady
Placid and Mrs Wiseacre he is obviously the model followed. And, though
her best creations surpass those of her master as a living character
will always surpass an abstract type, yet in this, her earliest effort,
she still retains a good deal too much of the frigid intellectual method
of the Frenchman.
What will, perhaps, more generally be considered a legitimate ground for
the unpleasant task of fault-finding is, however, the extremely
inartistic construction of the book. As we approach the middle, we are
surprised to find the interest shifted to an almost entirely new set of
characters, who belong to a new generation. Thus at a time when Lady
Juliana cannot be much more than eighteen years of age, she ceases to be
prominent in the story, and after the briefest interval we are called on
to follow the fortunes of her twin daughters, who are now nearing that
age. The bridegroom, Douglas, and two of the Aunts disappear altogether
from the book; and this is the more to be regretted because there are
few readers but will infinitely prefer the racy humours of the elder
generation to the insipid long-drawn-out love-affairs of the contrasted
sisters, even when these are more or less successfully enlivened by the
sallies of the shrewd Lady Emily, by the caricature figure of Dr Redgill
the _gourmand_, and by the absurdities of the literary _precieuses_ of
Bath.
The success of _Marriage_, justified by its painting of Scottish manners
and by the figures of Lady Maclaughlan and the spinster aunts, had the
right effect upon the sterling Scottish character of the authoress. It
led her to try how much better still she could do. Six years elapsed
before the appearance of her next book, which was published in
1824--like its predecessor, anonymously. Indeed secrecy as to her
literary undertakings appears to have been one of the novelist's
strongest desires; and, writing much of _The Inheritance_ at Morningside
House, near Edinburgh--where her father spent the summers--she complains
of the smallness of the house as making concealment very difficult.
In the endeavour to improve upon her first achievement, Miss Ferrier was
triumphantly successful. 'The new book,' wrote one of Mr Blackwood's
correspondents at the time of its publication, 'is a hundred miles above
_Marriage_.' Nor does this assertion overshoot the mark; for if the one
is at most a bit of brilliant promise, the other is a superb
performance. Foremost among its advantages must be counted, in place of
the slip-slop of _Marriage_, an interesting and admirably-compacted
plot, and a vigorous literary style--the latter marked indeed, yet not
marred, by a mannerism of literary quotation. What was shapeless and
redundant in _Marriage_ is here moulded and restrained by exigencies of
the story, with the result that characters well-defined, and skilfully
contrasted and relieved, confront the reader standing boldly and firmly
on their feet.
Several features of _The Inheritance_ seem to have been suggested by the
celebrated Douglas Cause. The Honourable Thomas St Clair, youngest son
of the Earl of Rossville, has forfeited the countenance of his family by
marrying out of his own rank in life. He settles with his wife in
France, and here in the course of years a succession of deaths places
him in the position of heir-presumptive to the earldom. He announces at
head-quarters the important tidings that Mrs St Clair is expecting to
be confined, and having done so, with the Earl's concurrence he and his
wife prepare to return to Scotland. But the confinement takes place,
prematurely, on the journey. A female child is born, after which event
the projected return is indefinitely postponed. So much by way of proem.
The opening of the story shows us Mrs St Clair, now a widow, and her
daughter, Gertrude, a beautiful and blooming maiden, taking up their
abode with the elderly and unmarried Lord Rossville, who recognises the
young lady as heiress to his title and estates. Under his roof,
attention is drawn to a likeness existing between Gertrude and the
portrait of one Lizzie Lundie, a low-born beauty of a bygone day, who
had sat as model for a painting in the Castle. This resemblance is
noticed by more than one person, and on more than one occasion, and
reference to it is generally accompanied by marks of agitation in Mrs St
Clair. Meantime the youthful heiress has won the admiration of two young
men, cousins of her own, who frequent the Castle--the handsome and
elegant Colonel Delmour, a man of fashion and of the world, and the less
showy but far deeper-natured Edward Lyndsay. A singular meeting now
takes place between Mrs St Clair and a stranger named Lewiston, and soon
afterwards it becomes apparent that the latter exercises a great, though
unexplained, power over the lady. The stranger's identity is presently
revealed as that of the husband--long supposed to be dead--of a nurse of
Gertrude's, to whom she had been tenderly attached. At a nocturnal
meeting with Lewiston, at which Mrs St Clair has by entreaty, and by
throwing out vague threats, compelled her daughter to be present,
Lyndsay arrives upon the scene in time to save Gertrude from
molestation, and thus earns her gratitude. However Delmour now declares
his passion, which Gertrude returns--with the result that an
understanding is come to between them. But the Earl has other intentions
regarding the disposal of the hand of his heir, which for family and
political reasons he designs to confer upon the Colonel's elder brother,
a colourless man-of-affairs. By asserting her independence in this
matter, Gertrude provokes Lord Rossville's displeasure; but the
unforeseen effect of his lordship's purblind and blundering intervention
is merely to bring to light the fact that Lyndsay also is in love with
his beautiful cousin. The Earl, who has power to dispose of his
possessions as he pleases, is meditating to disinherit Gertrude on
account of her disobedience, when his sudden death leaves her free to
follow her own wishes. In the meantime, Delmour's conduct has supplied
ground for doubting the purity of his motives; whilst Lyndsay, who has
again come to her rescue in a trying interview with Lewiston, has shown
himself throughout a staunch friend to her best interests. But Gertrude
is now Countess of Rossville in her own right; her lover returns to her
side, and she is herself too noble-minded to question his
disinterestedness. Under his influence she launches out into a variety
of extravagant schemes, and going to London, where she becomes the
admired of all admirers, devotes herself wholly to the pleasures of
society, which for a time have rather an injurious effect upon her
character. Lyndsay makes an appeal to her better self, but amid the
excitement of her surroundings his remonstrance passes unheeded. Jaded
by the excesses of fashionable life, at the end of the season she
returns to Rossville, where the intrusive Lewiston, who has been
thought drowned, now again appears upon the scene, and provoked by her
disdainful treatment divulges the secret that she is the daughter, not
of Mrs St Clair, but of her nurse, and that consequently she has no
title to her present position. Overwhelmed by this intelligence, which
Mrs St Clair's confession confirms, Gertrude loses no time in informing
her lover of the true state of matters, and in so doing reveals the
miserable shallowness of his nature. Delmour's love for the beautiful
and high-spirited girl is genuine; but nameless and without fortune as
she now is, he hesitates to fulfil his engagement towards her. Her love
for him has been of such a different nature that she is well-nigh
broken-hearted by the discovery. But the faithful Lyndsay stands her
friend in need, and the book closes with her reinstatement, long
afterwards, as his wife, in the brilliant position which she has already
wrongly, though innocently, occupied.
The plot of _The Inheritance_, of which the above is a sketch, is a
model of its kind, whilst from first to last the conduct of the
narrative is perfect. Indeed the _form_ of the story could not be
improved--a rare merit even in a masterpiece of British fiction; and
though the book is a long one, it contains not a superfluous page. Among
the numerous authors quoted in the course of it are Shakespeare and the
Greek dramatists, and perhaps, without stretching probability too far,
we may assume that the authoress had studied the latter as well as the
former. In any case _The Inheritance_ in its own degree unites principal
characteristics of the Greek and the Shakespearian drama, for the web of
circumstance inexorably woven about the innocent and unconscious heroine
is entirely in the manner of the first, whilst the indifferent,
life-like alternation of tragic and ludicrous incident in the narrative
is of a piece with Shakespeare's irony. No finer example of the latter
could be cited than the impressive scene in which Lord Rossville,
looking blankly from his window one snowy afternoon, is amazed to see a
hearse approaching the Castle. Out of the vehicle, when it has reached
the door, steps his lordship's pet aversion and the reader's
delight--the undaunted and ubiquitous Miss Pratt. The voluble lady has a
long story to tell of the circumstances which have compelled her to
resort to this unconventional mode of conveyance, whilst the pompous
Earl is scandalised at the general impropriety of the proceedings, and
especially at thought of the hearse of Mr McVitae, the Radical
distiller, putting up for the night at the Castle. However there is no
help for it; nor as it turns out is the visit so ill-timed as had
seemed, for the next morning Lord Rossville is discovered dead upon his
bed.
But if the book is remarkable for its admirable story, certainly not
less remarkable is it for the extraordinary wealth of character which it
portrays. Probably few 'novels of plot' are so rich in character, few
'novels of character' so strong in plot. It may be that some carping
critic of the ungentle sex will be found to object to Lyndsay and to
Delmour, the contrasted lovers of the heroine, as to 'a woman's men'--to
urge that their demeanour is too consistently emotional, too
demonstrative, to be founded upon any very solid base of character or of
disposition. But supposing (which I am far from granting) that there
were some truth in this, here at any rate all ground even for
hypercriticism must end. And where in fiction is there a heroine more
charming and more lovable than Gertrude St Clair--gentle yet
high-spirited as she is, natural, and the soul of truth? Her pretended
mother--ambitious and worldly-minded, violent, embittered by the slights
and mortifications of her youth and bent vindictively upon
retaliation--rises to the dignity of tragedy. Then we have the
inimitable rattle and busybody, Miss Pratt, at home everywhere except in
her own house, and incessantly referring to the sayings and doings of an
invisible 'Anthony Whyte'--a very masterpiece of humorous delineation;
and old Adam Ramsay, the cross-grained, misanthropic, Indian uncle, who
yet compels our sympathy by his sentimental attachment to the home of
his boyhood, and his constancy to the memory of his ill-starred love.
Miss Bell Black, afterwards Mrs Major Waddell, is delightful in her
perfect inanity and fatuity; and though her creator may not yet have
learned to suffer fools gladly, she certainly has by this time mastered
the art of portraying 'as though she loved' them. The Earl of Rossville,
puffed up by a sense of his own importance, long-winded, sesquepedalian
and null; Miss Lilly, the poetess, her Cockney lover and her brothers;
gentle Anne Black; Miss Becky Duguid, the accommodating poor relation;
Mrs Fairbairn, the materfamilias; and the peasant-woman whose misguided
foresight leads her to prepare betimes her ailing husband's
dead-clothes,--all of them are admirable, and all bear evidence of being
freshly observed from the life. But the writer has learnt the lesson of
substituting poetic for local truth; and if any portraits appear in this
gallery--and it is stated that Adam Ramsay to some extent represents the
authoress's father--they are such as can no longer rightly give offence
to anyone. Miss Ferrier had reached middle life when she wrote _The
Inheritance_, and perhaps the laughter which it provokes is less
boisterous than that aroused by the first essays of her youth. But for a
scene of high comedy--to select one from many--the first conversation of
Miss Pratt and Uncle Adam would certainly be difficult to surpass.
Finally, we have abundant evidence that in all that she wrote our
authoress was actuated by a genuine desire for the moral and religious
welfare of her reader; but in comparison to that of _Marriage_, her
_tone_ in this book is as is the influence of a well-guided life to a
sententious homily delivered from a pulpit. In one word, there is no
single point in her art in which she has not risen from what is crude
and tentative to what is finished and masterly.
As it well deserved to be, _The Inheritance_ was a great success, and
amongst those from whom it elicited warm commendation the names of
Jeffrey and Sir Walter Scott may be particularised. Some of the chief
comic actors of the day wished to have it produced upon the stage, with
which object the manager of Covent Garden Theatre applied to Mrs Gore,
the novelist, for a dramatic version of the story. But that lady's
intentions were anticipated by one Fitzball, a purveyor of transpontine
wares in the kind, to whose unfitness for his task the complete failure
of the play, when it came to be produced, may probably be ascribed. For
in its strong, well-developed plot, and diversified characterisation,
the story possesses in a high degree the chief requisites of a
successful stage-play. _The Inheritance_ has also the distinction of
having furnished to Tennyson the outline of his beautiful ballad of
_Lady Clare_.
Miss Ferrier was a very careful craftswoman--a fact to which much of her
success has been attributed--and it was not until 1831 that her next
book, _Destiny_, appeared. Much of it was written at Stirling Castle,
while she was on a visit to the wife of the Governor of the garrison.
The new novel was dedicated to Sir Walter Scott, to whom the authoress
had good reason to feel obliged, for it was largely in consequence of
his skilful bargaining that she had received for it the large sum of
L1700 from Cadell. The prices paid to her by Blackwood for her two
previous books had been L150 and L1000 respectively.
As _The Inheritance_ represents the meridian of the writer's powers, so
_Destiny_ represents their decline--not because there are not some as
good things, or very nearly as good things, in the latter as in the
former, but because the whole is very much less good. The construction
of _Destiny_ is loose and inartificial, and almost from the outset the
want of a strong frame-work which shall hold the contents together and
keep them in place makes itself felt. Properly speaking, there are two
stories in the story,--namely, that which centres in the disposal of the
Inch Orran property and the adventures of Ronald Malcolm, and that which
concerns itself with the development of the relations between Edith and
her recalcitrant lover. In itself of course this would be no defect, but
instead of being interwoven, or subordinated one to the other, the two
stories are allowed to run parallel and distinct until near the end of
the book. Thus their interest is dissipated--an effect which diffuseness
of treatment materially increases. Idle pages and straggling incidents
abound, and in fact the sense of form which was so conspicuous in _The
Inheritance_ is in _Destiny_ conspicuous only by absence.
If we judge it as an essay in character-painting, rather than as a
story, no doubt the novel comes off better. Again, as in _The
Inheritance_, we have a gallery of masterly portraits--though this time
the collection is smaller, and the paintings less highly-finished; and
again we feel that these portraits are drawn, not from some conventional
limbo of the novelist's, but from observation of life itself, backed up
by true imagination. Among the group, the Reverend Duncan M'Dow bears
off the palm from all competitors. This insufferable person,
imperturbable in his own conceit--with his horse-laugh over his own
jocularity, his grossness of manners, his greed for 'augmentation,' and
his wounded self-love mingling with overweening vanity at the end of the
book--is a piece of life itself, and the description of his
luncheon-party is as good as anything accomplished by the authoress. The
incarnation of fashionable selfishness and frivolity in the person of
Lady Elizabeth Malcolm runs him close; but she is probably a less
entirely original creation than the Minister--not that she is in any
sense a copy, but that the same sort of model has been oftener studied.
If we seek for something pleasanter to contemplate, the simple
warm-hearted Molly Macauley, the dreamer of dreams, and the devoted
adherent of the Chief who snubs her, is an endearing figure. The Chief
himself, who loves good eating, and does not disdain to truckle to his
rich childless kinsman, is a conspicuous example of materialisation and
degeneracy, though the dotage of his 'debilitated mind and despotic
temper' becomes almost as tiresome to the reader as it became to Edith
and Sir Reginald. The key to the character of Benbowie, Glenroy's echo,
is not quite apparent, and we should have liked to be assured (as we
believe) that it was mere ineptitude, and not meanness, which caused him
to disappear so hastily on an important occasion when money was
required, and to return bringing it with him when it could no longer be
of use. The vignettes of Inch Orran, the 'particular man,' and his wife,
also stand out in the memory, as does that of the odious Madame Latour.
And from this it will be seen that, with one or two exceptions, the more
disagreeable personages of the book remain the most in evidence, for the
Conways and the family of Captain Malcolm fade into insignificance
beside those whose names are enumerated above. And, though the crux is
an old one, where the high purpose of the writer is so much insisted on,
perhaps it may not be unfair to enquire how far exactly she can be held
to succeed in her aims, when even the regenerate reader is ill at ease
in the company of her good characters and enjoys himself among her awful
examples. The artificiality of some of its dialogues and the triteness
of some of its reflections are further symptoms of the enervation which
has begun to invade the book.
Miss Ferrier's history is the history of her books, and to these remarks
upon her final literary production little need be added. Her mother
being dead, and her three sisters married, it fell to her lot to keep
house for her father, to whom she was devotedly attached, and with him
she continued to reside until his death in January 1829. Her life, which
was divided between Morningside House and Edinburgh, and varied by
occasional visits to her sisters, is described as a very quiet one, and
if we may accept the Adam Ramsay of _The Inheritance_ as at all a close
portrait of Mr Ferrier, it must have had its grim side too. She had long
suffered from her eyes, and in 1830 she paid her final visit to London,
in order to consult an oculist. From his treatment, however, she seems
to have derived little benefit; her eyesight failed, and it became
necessary for her to spend much of her time in a darkened room; and
though she still continued occasionally to receive a few friends at tea
in the evening, her life from henceforth was a very retired one. She
died in Edinburgh, on the 5th November 1854, at the house of her
brother, Mr Walter Ferrier, and was interred in St Cuthbert's
Churchyard.
Her dislike of publicity characterized her to the last. It was not until
1851, when a new edition of her works was published, that she consented
to allow her name to appear upon the title-page, whilst her
unwillingness to be made the subject of a biography led her to destroy
all letters which might have been used for such a purpose, and in
particular a correspondence with one of her sisters, which contained
much biographical matter. The records of her life are consequently few,
but the following testimony of an intimate friend is interesting:--
'The wonderful vivacity she maintained in the midst of darkness and
pain for so many years, the humour, wit, and honesty of her
character, as well as the Christian submission with which she bore
her great privation and general discomfort, when not suffering acute
pain, made everyone who knew her desirous to alleviate the
tediousness of her days; and I used to read a great deal to her at
one time, and I never left her darkened chamber without feeling that
I had gained something better than the book we might be reading,
from her quick perception of its faults and its beauties, and her
unmerciful remarks on all that was mean or unworthy in conduct or
expression.'