It is natural, if not inevitable, that the later works of Miss Burney
should have been suffered to remain unread and unremembered. Critics
have told us that they only face them unwillingly, from a sense of
duty; and none has ventured a second time. To-day, no doubt, readers
would hesitate before the five, or more, volumes of extenuated
sensibility.
And yet, though we should not ask for any reversal of this verdict,
there are points of interest--at any rate in _Camilla_--which will
repay attention. The fact is, that in this work Miss Burney has given
full rein to her ideal of women, her conception of home life, and her
notions about marriage: all eminently characteristic of the age, and
full of suggestion as to the work of women.
We have again, as the closing paragraph reminds us, “a picture of
youth,” primarily feminine; but Camilla is no mere repetition either of
Evelina or Cecilia. She has even more sensibility, and a new quality of
most attractive impulsiveness, which is perpetually leading her into
difficulties.
There is a double contrast, or comparison, of types. The heroine’s
uncle--Sir Hugh Tyrold--seems to have been conceived as a parody of the
young lady herself. He flies off at a tangent--far more youthfully than
she--changes his will three or four times in the first few chapters,
and is constantly upsetting the whole family by most ridiculous “plans”
for their happiness.
On the other hand, Edgar Mandlebert--the hero--suffers from too much
caution; implanted, it is true, by his worthy tutor; but obviously “at
home” in his nature. Practically the whole five volumes are concerned
with the misunderstandings produced by Camilla’s hasty self-sacrifices,
and his care in studying her character, without the key to her motives.
It would be easy, indeed, to describe the plot as a prolonged “much ado
about nothing.” The sentiments involved are palpably strained, absurdly
high-flown, and singularly unbalanced. But we should remember two
reasons for modifying our judgment, and hesitating before a complete
condemnation.
In the first place, the ideals for women, and for all intercourse
between the sexes, differ in nearly every particular from those of our
own day; and, in the second, these people were almost ridiculously
young. Love affairs, and often marriage, began for them when they
were fifteen; and it may be that were our own sons and daughters put
to the test at that age, their deeds and sentiments might surprise us
considerably.
“In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with
a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions;
Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury
and indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington,
beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the
vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the
rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though
not considerable, enabled its incumbent to attain every rational
object of his modest and circumscribed wishes; to bestow upon a
deserving wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; to educate
a lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive
propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present
enjoyment.
“In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary
couple were bound to each other by the most perfect union of
character, though in their tempers there was a contrast which had
scarce the gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt
dissimilitude. Mr. Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue,
saw with compassion all imperfections but his own, and there doubled
the severity which to others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged
him to pity blinded him not to approve; his equity was unerring,
though his judgment was indulgent. His partner had a firmness of
mind which nothing could shake: calamity found her resolute; even
prosperity was powerless to lull her duties asleep. The exalted
character of her husband was the pride of her existence, and the
source of her happiness. He was not merely her standard of excellence,
but of endurance, since her sense of his worth was the criterion for
her opinion of all others. This instigated a spirit of comparison,
which is almost always uncandid, and which here could rarely escape
proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the unskilfulness of
our fallible nature, that even the noble principle which impels
our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its
ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however,
distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection--that
magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;--Mr. Tyrold revered
while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she
fortified the melting humanity of her husband.”
Mrs. Tyrold, in fact, was a most alarming lady; and as that
“sad fellow,” their son Lionel--one of “the merry blades of
Oxford”--remarked with spirit, “A good father is a very serious
misfortune to a poor lad like me, as the world runs; it causes one such
confounded gripes of conscience for every little awkward thing one
does.”
It will be seen, at once, that such surroundings promised that
“repose” so “welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick and to
the happy,” with small occasion for “danger, difficulty, and toil”--the
delight of youth. Wherefore the flock, with only the son for black
sheep, must quit the fold, and see something of the wicked world
outside the garden. Their first venture would seem harmless enough;
being no farther than over the fields to Cleves Park, just purchased by
Uncle Sir Hugh, who had “inherited from his ancestors an unencumbered
estate of £5,000 per annum.”
“His temper was unalterably sweet, and every thought of his breast
was laid open to the world with an almost infantine artlessness.
But his talents bore no proportion to the goodness of his heart,
an insuperable want of quickness, and of application in his early
days, having left him, at a later period, wholly uncultivated, and
singularly self-formed.”
Mrs. Tyrold found occasion for further delight in the “superiority”
of her husband; “though she was not insensible to the fair future
prospects of her children, which seemed the probable result of this
change of abode.” Both parents, indeed, prove unexpectedly “worldly”
on this point; and though obviously far above the sacrifice of
_principle_ for _profit_, they permit their offspring to run risks--as
they deem them--in their complaisance to a rich relative.
Sir Hugh is a very prodigy of indiscretion, and complicates matters
by the introduction of more cousins--Indiana Lynmere, an empty-headed
but “most exquisite workmanship of nature,” and her wicked brother
Clermont; who were his wards. A young orphan of great wealth, Edgar
Mandlebert, pupil and ward of the Rev. Tyrold, completes the group;
though mischief is made, and all complications really inaugurated, by
Indiana’s silly governess, Miss Margland.
Obviously there are two main issues at stake--the property of Sir Hugh,
and the hand of Edgar. Miss Margland desires both for her favourite,
and evinces much ingenuity in the pursuit. The worthy baronet, however,
does not long hesitate about the estate. He designs it originally for
Camilla, simply because she charms him most, and, with his customary
naïveté, lets all the world into the secret. Then, by his own absurd
thoughtlessness, he suffers the “little sister Eugenia” to catch
the smallpox; and by ill-timed playfulness, lames her for life.
Heart-broken with remorse, and perfectly confident in Camilla’s
generous disinterestedness, he promptly compensates the poor child by
making _her_ his heiress; and, after again announcing his intentions in
public, proves unexpectedly resolute in maintaining them to the end.
By outsiders, however, it is occasionally still supposed that all his
money will go to Camilla; and, consequently, she has some experience of
fortune-hunters.
The character of Eugenia deserves notice. She is quite unlike Camilla,
and the differences are no doubt accentuated by the combination
of disease and deformity which, shutting her out from the obvious
distractions of “youth,” afford much time for solitary reflection. Her
uncle, moreover, provided her with a scholarly tutor, and to Lionel she
was always “dear little Greek and Latin.” It was, indeed, this highly
educated, but very youthful, paragon on whom her own family depended at
every crisis, whose advice they followed, whose opinion they sought,
whose approval was their standard of conduct and feeling. Younger than
Camilla, she was more mature, more thoughtful and clear-headed, always
decided and always right. Curiously enough, these young people seldom
consulted their parents, they went to Eugenia; and she, in the most
important crisis of her life, actually _opposed_ the judgment of her
elders, demanding from herself a sacrifice which even their lofty ideal
did not expect or commend. They considered her mistaken, but “they knew
she must do what she thought right,” and they sadly acquiesced.
Yet there were no Spartan heroics about Eugenia. She had even more
“sensibility” than Camilla, far more romance, and was more easily
deceived. Among other schemes of repentance for the injuries he had
so innocently inflicted on her, Sir Hugh “arranged” for her to marry
Clermont Lynmere, before that young gentleman had come home; and, of
course, informed the whole household of his project. Such was Eugenia’s
extravagant refinement in romance, that, though she could not avoid
being attracted by the most obviously insincere raptures of young men
in want of her fortune, one of them “kissing her hand she thought a
_liberty most unpardonable_. She regarded it as an injury to Clermont,
that would risk his life should he ever know it, _and a blot to her own
delicacy_, as irreparable as it was irremediable.”
It is obvious that such excessive refinement proves ill-fitted to
combat the unprincipled ambitions of the other sex, incited by her
uncle’s generosity; and when the villain, feigning a passion well
calculated to stir her fancy, threatens to blow out his brains if she
refuse him, we do not read of her yielding with surprise. To her notion
a promise given under any circumstances is absolutely binding; and
when, undeceived, she is recommended by her pious parents to repudiate
it, the heroic martyr remains steadfast, and suffers much through some
volumes. Yet even in that extremity she proves a rock to her more
wavering elder sister.
We have wandered too long, however, from our heroine.
“Camilla was, in secret, the fondest hope of her mother, though the
rigour of her justice scarce permitted the partiality to beat even
in her own breast. Nor did the happy little person need the avowed
distinction. The tide of youthful glee flowed jocund from her heart,
and the transparency of her fine blue veins almost showed the velocity
of its current. Every look was a smile, every step was a spring, every
thought was a hope, every feeling was joy! and the early felicity of
her mind was without alloy.... The beauty of Camilla, though neither
perfect nor regular, had an influence peculiar on the beholder, it
was hard to catch its fault; and the cynic connoisseur, who might
persevere in seeking it, would involuntarily surrender the strict
rules of his art to the predominance of its loveliness. Even judgment
itself, the coolest and last betrayed of our faculties, she took
by surprise, though it was not till she was absent the seizure was
detected. Her disposition was ardent in sincerity, her mind untainted
with evil. The reigning and radical defect of her character--an
imagination that submitted to no control--proved not any antidote
against her attractions: it caught, by its force and fire, the
quick-kindling admiration of the lively; it possessed, by magnetic
persuasion, the witchery to create sympathy in the most serious.”
It is a picture of an ideal, stammeringly defined by Edgar: “The utmost
vivacity of sentiment, all the charm of soul, eternally beaming in
the eyes, playing in every feature, glowing in the complexion, and
brightening every smile.”
Obviously hero and heroine are born for each other. He admires her
above all women, himself has every perfection. And though Mrs. Tyrold
may have “gloried in the virtuous delicacy of her daughter, that so
properly, _till it was called for_, concealed her tenderness from the
object who so deservingly inspired it,” the reader can feel no doubt,
from the beginning, of her decided “partiality.”
There are two obstacles, however, between the lovers. In the first
place, Edgar’s tutor had twice been deceived by women; and so acts
upon his loyal pupil, by the urgent recommendation of caution and
delay, that he becomes “a creature whose whole composition is a pile
of accumulated punctilios”; one who “will spend his life in refining
away his own happiness.” It is obvious that, left to herself, Camilla’s
nature would bear the closest inspection, as even the old misanthrope
ultimately admits. But Miss Margland cannot endure any rivalry with
Indiana, the “beautiful vacant-looking cousin” who has been taught to
consider herself irresistible, though it is not quite clear what Miss
Burney would have her readers believe as to the power of beauty. At
one point she declares that “a very young man seldom likes a silly
wife. It is generally when he is further advanced in life that he takes
that depraved taste. He then flatters himself a fool will be easier to
govern.” But elsewhere we are told that
“Men are always enchanted with something that is both pretty and
silly; because they can so easily please and so soon disconcert it;
and when they have made the little blooming fools blush and look down,
they feel nobly superior, and pride themselves in victory.... A man
looks enchanted while his beautiful young bride talks nonsense; it
comes so prettily from her ruby lips, and she blushes and dimples with
such lovely attraction while she utters it; he casts his eyes around
him with conscious elation to see her admirers, and his enviers.”
The wily governess has all the audacity of a born diplomatist. She
simply informs Sir Hugh, who always believes everybody, that Edgar is
“practically” engaged to her pet pupil. The old man regards the matter
as settled, and, in perfect innocence, encourages her machinations to
make a fact of her desire--the girl herself being flattered into an
indifferent accomplice.
Now Camilla had acquired the habit, quite becoming to girlhood, of
looking to Edgar, more or less consciously, for guidance through
life, and of actually asking his advice on all delicate, or doubtful,
occasions. Miss Margland ingeniously accuses her of trying to catch
the heir by these “confidences,” and Sir Hugh, without for one moment
acknowledging the possibility of Camilla having a bad motive, advises
her to avoid even the appearance of jealousy, and leave Indiana a fair
field. Such an appeal to her generosity, from so kind a friend, was
sure of eager support; and the unfortunate girl is thus driven to seek
friends against whom Edgar had warned her, and to assume the character
of capriciousness and instability. This proves her Introduction to the
Great World, whither Miss Burney hurries all her heroines. Like the
rest, she arrives entirely unprepared, parents of those days apparently
not considering either advice or guidance on such matters a part of
their duty. Framed for innocent pleasure, her natural gaiety and ardent
temperament lead her astray in every direction. She remains entirely
unsoiled, but invariably does the wrong thing. She gets into debt,
through sheer ignorance and humility; she makes friends of “doubtful”
people, through pity and innocence; she even follows the advice of a
worldly acquaintance, attempting to move her lover by flirting with
other men. Every word and action is designed to please him: all have
the contrary effect. His heart remains faithful; his reason must
criticise.
At this stage of the work Miss Burney revives somewhat of her first,
spontaneous, manner. The descriptions of Society--wherein “_Ton_,
in the scale of connoisseurs in _certain circles_, is as much above
fashion, as fashion is above fortune”--are animated and amusing. We
are introduced to many new types, male and female, naïvely exaggerated
perhaps in detail, but absolutely alive and cunningly varied. The
“prevailing ill-manners of the leaders in the _ton_” astonish, no less
than their brutal cowardice--in face of a _girl’s_ danger--disgusts.
Fine gentlemen, it would seem, are neither gallant nor chivalrous.
The ladies, indeed, are not much better. A divinity, unequally yoked,
“excites every hope by a _sposo_[2] properly detestable--yet gives
birth to despair by a coldness the most shivering.” Less favoured
beauties are equally vain, and some of them more indiscreet.
But here, as in _Cecilia_, our author cannot resist the indulgence of
heroics. She is not satisfied with her delightful “Comedy of Manners,”
with the ordinary misunderstandings and heart-burnings essential to
romance. In her later volumes she plunges Camilla, and the whole Tyrold
family, into the wildest distress. They lose all their money; Eugenia’s
husband commits suicide; Lionel nearly murders an uncle, from whom
he had expectations, by a practical joke; and Camilla acquires, by an
over-elaborated series of foolish impulses, the appearance of having
injured her parents beyond forgiveness. Immersed in difficulties, and
not in the least understanding the circumstances, her father and mother
refuse to see her; and the forsaken maiden prays for death. The whole
episode is given in Miss Burney’s worst manner, tempting the reader
to mere angry impatience with so much false sentiment and senseless
emotion. They tremble, they faint, they weep, they see visions; we
could almost fancy ourselves in Bedlam.
In the end, of course, Edgar comes back, receives an “explanation”
from Camilla--written, as she supposed, on her death-bed; and promptly
restores everybody to their senses and, incidentally--having plenty to
spare--to prosperity.
“Thus ended the long conflicts, doubts, suspenses, and sufferings
of Edgar and Camilla; who, without one inevitable calamity, one
unavoidable distress, so nearly fell the sacrifice to the two extremes
of Imprudence, and Suspicion, to the natural heedlessness of youth
unguided, or to the acquired distrust of experience that had been
wounded.”
At first sight, certainly, it would seem that we had little here of the
Richardson-realism, and that Miss Burney was challenging comparison, in
their own field, with such melodramatic romancists as Mrs. Radcliffe.
Yet Camilla, and even Eugenia, are far more like real life than Emily
St. Aubert. However extravagantly composed, they are _founded on_
nature, whereas the older novelists worked entirely from imagination.
Before Richardson (and here, of course, Mrs. Radcliffe belongs to the
earlier age) the models for character were not drawn from experience
and observation. There was, it would seem, a preconceived notion, and
certain accepted rules, for the “make-up” of heroes, heroines, parents,
villains and the rest--which are somewhat akin to the constructed ideal
of abstract Beauty favoured by certain art critics. They were prepared,
without very much reference to actual humanity, from mysteriously
acquired recipes of virtue and vice.
We cannot find any reason to believe that Miss Burney ever worked,
in her most “exalted” moments, on such a plan. She idealised from
life, not from the imagination. She really believed that the young
ladies of her acquaintance all aimed, more or less consciously,
at that exquisite delicacy which she delighted to exhibit; and, in
all probability, she was justified in her faith. Her rhapsodies
are sincere; and they obviously apply to her own sentiments,
shared by her contemporaries. They are--in their own very feminine
fashion--reflections on reality--not creations of art by any accepted
canons.
And the very exaggerated artificiality of _Camilla_ makes it more
typical--of herself and her period--than _Evelina_ or _Cecilia_: and
therefore more representative of Woman, when she began to write fiction
for herself. The genius of her earlier work carried it some way in
advance of its time; although the progress of her immediate successors
is most remarkable. Camilla is the very essence of eighteenth-century
girlhood; ill-mated, as they were no doubt, to “our present race of
young men,” whose “frivolous fickleness nauseates whatever they can
reach”; who--when they are not heroes--“have a weak shame of asserting,
or even listening to what is right, and a shallow pride in professing
and performing what is wrong.”
It is instructive, indeed, to observe with what apparent crudity Miss
Burney has chosen to illustrate the greater purity and refinement,
the superior moral standard, of women to those of men: a problem which
seems to have almost vanished with Jane Austen (though we may detect it
at work under the surface), and which has reappeared so prominently,
after quite a new fashion, in modern literature. By the men novelists
this was practically assumed without comment; but our knowledge of
facts would seem to warrant the emphasis awarded the question by women
in their opening campaign of the pen. Here, as elsewhere, Miss Burney
was almost the first to teach us what women actually thought and felt:
in marked contrast to what it had been hitherto considered becoming for
them to express. She was, always, and everywhere, the mouthpiece of her
sex.
And, finally, because she was not an “instructed” or professional
writer, and had not studied good literature, we must recognise the
real, great drawback of _Camilla_: its grandiloquent style. Dr. Johnson
did much for English prose: his ultimate influence was towards vigour,
simplicity, clearness, and common sense. But he was personally pompous,
a whale in the dictionary; and those who copied him without discretion
only made themselves ridiculous. It would be easy enough to find
parallels in _Rasselas_, and elsewhere, for all the clumsy inversions
and stilted antitheses of _Camilla_. But here we can only regret the
blindness of ignorant hero-worship, and the natural, if foolish,
desire to please or flatter by imitation. Miss Burney wrote Johnsonese
fluently, and thereby ruined her natural powers. We cannot estimate, by
her foolishness, the influence of the Dictator.
Imitation has not been, fortunately, the besetting sin of women
novelists, and we may pass over this one “terrible example” without
further comment.