“Above all, my dear Emily, said he, do not indulge in the pride of
fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those who really
possess sensibility ought early to be taught that it is a dangerous
quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery or
delight from every surrounding circumstance. And since, in our passage
through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than
pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute
than our sense of good, we become the victim of our feelings, unless
we can in some degree command them. I know you will say--for you are
young, my Emily--I know you will say, that you are contented sometimes
to suffer, rather than give up your refined sense of happiness at
others; but when your mind has been long harassed by vicissitude, you
will be content to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion:
you will perceive that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the
substance; for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult:
it is of a temperate and uniform nature; and can no more exist in a
heart that is continually alive to minute circumstances than in one
that is dead to feeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard
you against the dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for
apathy. At your age, I should have said _that_ is a vice more hateful
than all the errors of sensibility, and I say so still. I call it a
_vice_, because it leads to positive evil. In this, however, it does
no more than an ill-governed sensibility, which, by such a rule, might
also be called a vice; but the evil of the former is of more general
consequence....
“I would not teach you to become insensible, if I could--I would only
warn you of the evils of susceptibility, and point out how you may
avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion
which has been fatal to the peace of many persons--beware of priding
yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility: if you yield to this
vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more
valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility.
Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy: apathy cannot know
the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of
real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.
Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to
good actions: the miser, who thinks himself respectable merely because
he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good for the
actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man of
sentiment without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who
delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, that they
turn from the distressed, and because their sufferings are painful to
be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is
that humanity which can be contented to pity where it might assuage!”
And we are finally disposed to question whether Miss Burney herself
were actually conscious of the subtlety with which she has allowed her
heroine to reveal, in every sentence, the scarcely perceptible advance
of her unsuspected “partiality.” The reader, of course, recognises
Orville at sight for what he proves to be in the final event; but he
frequently reminds us of Sir Charles Grandison--and in nothing so much,
perhaps, as in his gentlemanly precautions against letting himself go
or expressing his emotions. Only a woman of real delicacy, indeed,
could have imagined, or appreciated, the self-effacement with which
he helps and protects the guileless heroine from her unprincipled
admirers; and it required genuine refinement to give him the courage
evinced by his tactful inquiries into her circumstances and his most
fatherly advice. The whole development of the relations between them
must be acknowledged as a triumph of art, and conclusive evidence of
“nice” feeling.
It is impossible, I think, to put Cecilia herself on a level with
Evelina; though I personally have always felt that the more crowded
canvas of the _book_ so entitled, and its greater variety of incident,
reveal more mature power. But it is less spontaneous and, in a certain
sense, less original. To begin with, Cecilia is always conscious of her
superiority. Like her sister heroine, a country “miss,” and suddenly
tossed into Society without any proper guidance, she yet assumes
the centre of the stage without effort, and queens it over the most
experienced, by virtue of beauty and wealth. It may be doubted if
she has much “sensibility” for everyday matters: whereas the lavish
expenditure of emotional fireworks over the haughty Delviles, and the
melodramatic sufferings they entail, are most intolerably protracted,
and entirely destroy our interest in the conclusion of the narrative.
The occasional scene, or episode, we complained of in _Evelina_, is
here extended to long chapters, or books, of equally strained passion
on a more complex issue. Fortunately they all come at the end, and need
not disturb our enjoyment of the main story; though, indeed, the whole
plot depends far more on melodramatic effect. Mr. Harrell’s abominable
recklessness, and his sensational suicide, the criminal passion of Mr.
Monckton, and the story of Henrietta Belfield, carry us into depths
beyond the reach of _Evelina_, where Miss Burney herself does not walk
with perfect safety. And, in our judgment, such experiences diminish
the charm of her heroine.
Yet in the main Cecilia possesses, and exhibits those primarily
feminine qualities which now made their first appearance in English
fiction, being beyond man’s power to delineate. She, too, is that
“Womanly Woman” whom Mr. Bernard Shaw has so eloquently denounced. She
has the magnetic power of personal attraction; the charm of mystery;
the strength of weakness; the irresistible appeal with which Nature has
endowed her for its own purposes: so seldom present in the man-made
heroine, certainly not revealed to Samuel Richardson and his great
contemporaries.
For the illustration of our main theme, we have so far dwelt upon
the revelation of womanhood achieved by Miss Burney. It is time to
consider, in more detail, her application of the new “realism,” her
method of “drawing from life,” now first recognised as the proper
function of the novelist. It is here that her unique education, or
experience, has full play. Instead of depending, like Richardson, upon
the finished analysis of a few characters, centred about one emotional
situation, or of securing variety of interests and character-types, _à
la_ Fielding, by use of the “wild-oats” convention, she works up the
astonishing “contrasts” in life, which she had herself been privileged
to witness, and achieves comedy by the abnormal mixture of Society.
Thus she is able to find drama in domesticity. Her most original
effects are produced in the drawing-room or the assembly, at a ball or
a theatre, in the “long walks” of Vauxhall or Ranelagh: wherever, and
whenever, mankind is seen only at surface-value, enjoying the pleasures
and perils of everyday existence. How vividly, as Macaulay remarks,
did she conjecture “the various scenes, tragic and comic, through
which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly
connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings,
good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid young
orphan: a coarse sea-captain; an ugly insolent fop, blazing in a superb
court-dress; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow
Hill, and tricked out in second-hand finery for the Hampstead ball; an
old woman, all wrinkles and rouge, flirting her fan with the air of a
Miss of seventeen, and screaming in a dialect made up of vulgar French
and vulgar English; a poet lean and ragged, with a broad Scotch accent.
By degrees these shadows acquired stronger and stronger consistence:
the impulse which urged Fanny to write became irresistible; and the
result was the history of Evelina.”
Of what must seem, to our thinking, the extraordinary licence permitted
to persons accounted gentlemen, Miss Burney avails herself to the
utmost; and Evelina is scarcely less often embarrassed or distressed
by Willoughby’s violence and the insolence of Lord Merton, than by
the stupid vulgarity of the Branghtons and “Beau” Smith. We have
primarily the sharp contrast between Society and Commerce--each with
its own standards of comfort, pleasure, and decorum; and secondarily,
a great variety of individual character (and ideal) within both
groups. The “contrasts” of Cecilia are, in the main, more specifically
individual, lacking the one general sharp class division, and may be
more accurately divided into one group of Society “types,” another of
Passions exemplified in persons obsessed by a single idea. It is “in
truth a grand and various picture-gallery, which presented to the eye
a long series of men and women, each marked by some strong peculiar
feature. There were avarice and prodigality, the pride of blood and
the pride of money, morbid restlessness and morbid apathy, frivolous
garrulity, supercilious silence, a Democritus to laugh at everything,
and a Heraclitus to lament over everything.... Mr. Delvile never
opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station; or
Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr.
Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of
a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking
remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr.
Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr.
Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the miseries
of the poor; or Mrs. Belfield, without some indelicate eulogy on her
son; or Lady Margaret, without indicating jealousy of her husband.
Morrice is all skipping, officious impertinence, Mr. Gosport all
sarcasm, Lady Honoria all lively prattle, Miss Larolles all silly
prattle.”
It is primarily, indeed, a most diverting picture of manners; and if,
as we have endeavoured to show, Miss Burney advanced on Richardson by
the revelation of womanhood in her heroines, the realism of her minor
persons must be applauded rather for its variety in outward seeming
than for its subtlety of characterisation. As Ben Jonson hath it:
“When some one peculiar quality
Does so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluxions all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a _humour_.”
It is in the exhibition of “humours” that our authoress delights and
excels.
Of any particular construction Miss Burney was entirely guiltless;
in this respect, of course, lagging far behind Fielding. She has no
style, beyond a most attractive spontaneity; writing in “true _woman’s_
English, clear, natural, and lively.” Under the watchful eye of Dr.
Johnson, indeed, she made some attempt at the rounded period, the
“elegant” antithesis, in _Cecilia_: but, regretting the obvious effort,
we turn here again, with renewed delight, to the flowing simplicity of
her dramatic dialogue.
There is no occasion, at this time of day, to dwell upon her
sparkling wit, though we may note in passing its obviously
feminine inspiration--as opposed to the more scholarly subtleties
of Fielding--and its patent superiority to, for example, the
kitten-sprightliness of Richardson’s “Lady G.” We cannot claim that
Miss Burney made any particular _advance_ in this matter; but, here
again, her work stands out as the first permanent expression--at least
in English--of that shrewd vivacity and quickness of observation with
which so many a woman, who might have founded a salon, has been wont
to enliven the conversation of the home and to promote the gaiety of
social gatherings. We must recognise, on the other hand, that, if
commonly more refined than her generation, Miss Burney has yielded to
its prejudice against foreigners in some coarseness towards Madame
Duval; as we marvel at her father’s approval of this detail--while
actually deploring the vigour of her contempt for Lovel, the fop!
Finally, for all technicalities of her art, Miss Burney remains an
amateur in authorship, who, by a lucky combination of genius and
experience, was destined to utter the first word for women in the
most popular form of literature; and to point the way to her most
illustrious successors for the perfection of the domestic novel.
Probably the most important, more or less contemporary, criticism on
the early achievements of women, was uttered--incidentally--by Hazlitt
in 1818. Dismissing Miss Edgeworth’s _Tales_ as “a kind of pedantic,
pragmatical common-sense, tinctured with the pertness and pretensions
of the paradoxes to which they are so complacently opposed,” assigning
the first place to Mrs. Radcliffe for her power of “describing the
indefinable and embodying a phantom,” he says of Miss Burney and of
feminine work generally:
“Madame D’Arblay is a mere common observer of manners, _and also a
very woman_. It is this last circumstance which forms the peculiarity
of her writings, and distinguishes them from those masterpieces[1]
which I have before mentioned. She is a quick, lively, and accurate
observer of persons and things; but she always looks at them with a
consciousness of her sex, and in that point of view in which it is
the particular business and interest of women to observe them ... her
_forte_ is in describing the absurdities and affectations of external
behaviour, or the manners of people in company.... The form such
characters or people might be supposed to assume for a night at a
masquerade....
“Women, in general, have a quicker perception of any oddity or
singularity of character than men, and are more alive to any absurdity
which arises from a violation of the rules of society, or a deviation
from established custom. This partly arises from the restraints on
their own behaviour, which turn their attention constantly on the
subject, and partly from other causes. The surface of their minds,
like that of their bodies, seems of a finer texture than ours; more
soft, and susceptible of immediate impulses. They have less muscular
strength, less power of continued voluntary attention, of reason,
passion, and imagination; but they are more easily impressed with
whatever appeals to their senses or habitual prejudices. The intuitive
perception of their minds is less disturbed by any abstruse reasonings
on causes or consequences. They learn the idiom of character, as they
acquire that of language, by rote, without troubling themselves about
the principles. Their observation is not the less accurate on that
account, as far as it goes, for it has been well said that ‘there is
nothing so true as habit.’
“There is little other power in Madame D’Arblay’s novels than that
of immediate observation; her characters, whether of refinement or
vulgarity, are equally superficial and confined. The whole is a
question of form, whether that form is adhered to or infringed. It
is this circumstance which takes away dignity and interest from her
story and sentiments, and makes the one so teasing and tedious, and
the other so insipid. The difficulties in which she involves her
heroines are too much ‘Female Difficulties’; they are difficulties
created out of nothing. The author appears to have no other idea of
refinement than that it is the reverse of vulgarity; but the reverse
of vulgarity is fastidiousness and affectation. There is a true and
a false delicacy. Because a vulgar country Miss would answer ‘Yes’
to a proposal of marriage in the first page, Madame D’Arblay makes
it a proof of an excess of refinement, and an indispensable point
of etiquette in her young ladies, to postpone the answer to the end
of five volumes, without the smallest reason for their doing so, and
with every reason to the contrary.... The whole artifice of her fable
consists in coming to no conclusion. Her ladies ‘stand so upon their
going,’ that they do not go at all.... They would consider it as
quite indecorous to run downstairs though the house were in flames,
or to move an inch off the pavement though a scaffolding was falling.
She has formed to herself an abstract idea of perfection in common
behaviour, which is quite as romantic and impracticable as any other
idea of the sort.... Madame D’Arblay has woven a web of difficulties
for her heroines, something like the great silken threads in which
the shepherdesses entangled the steed of Cervantes’ hero, who swore,
in his fine enthusiastic way, that he would sooner cut his passage to
another world than disturb the least of these beautiful meshes.”
The critic recognises the essential quality of Miss Burney’s work--its
femininity--which he reckons, curiously enough, as a fault. But
prejudices die hard and it is evident that he is not ready for the new
point of view.
_Evelina_, 1778.
_Cecilia_, 1782.
_Camilla_, 1796.
_The Wanderer_, 1814.