[8] There is good ground for thinking that the change of title was made
after the novel was finished, for Mr. Austen-Leigh says that _Pride and
Prejudice_ was written between October 1796 and August 1797, while it
is referred to as _First Impressions_ in letters as late as June 1799.
[9] Even the names here sound unexpectedly similar.
“PERSUASION” TO “JANE EYRE”
(1818-1847)
SUSAN FERRIER (1782-1854) once declared that “perhaps, after all, the
only uncloying pleasure in life is that of fault-finding”; and this
cynical conclusion may serve to measure, in some degree, the peculiar
flavour of her brisk satire. The fact is, that she acquired her notions
of literary skill from intimate association with “the Modern Athens,”
as Edinburgh then styled itself, wherein “Crusty Christopher” and “The
Ploughman Poet” held sway. It was here, as we know, that “Brougham
and his confederates” formed that conspiracy of scorn, _The Edinburgh
Review_, which Wilson out-Heroded in _Blackwood_. Following Miss
Burney, in her spirited exhibition of “Humours,” Miss Ferrier also
continued the Edgeworth “national” novel, by exploiting a period of
Scotch history untouched by Scott.
As her friend, Wilson, remarks in the _Noctes_:
“These novels have one feature of true and melancholy interest quite
peculiar to themselves. It is in them alone that the ultimate
breaking-down and debasement of the Highland character has been
depicted. Sir Walter Scott had fixed the enamel of genius over the
last fitful flames of their half-savage chivalry, but a humbler
and sadder scene--the age of lucre-banished clans--of chieftains
dwindled into imitation squires, and of chiefs content to barter the
recollections of a thousand years for a few gaudy seasons of Almacks
and Crockfords, the euthanasia of kilted aldermen and steamboat
pibrochs was reserved for Miss Ferrier.”
And for the accuracy of her picture, the authoress herself lays claim
to having paid careful attention to the results of deliberate study.
“You may laugh,” she writes to Miss Clavering, “at the idea of its
being at all necessary for the writer of a romance to be versed in the
history, natural and political, the modes, manners, customs, etc., of
the country where its bold and wanton freaks are to be played; but I
consider it most essentially so, as nothing disgusts even an ordinary
reader more than a discovery of the ignorance of the author, who is
pretending to instruct and amuse.”
Meanwhile, the “Highlander” was more or less in fashion, and Susan
Ferrier set off her picture by vivid contrasts with the most
_recherché_ daughters of Society. An elegant slave of passion longs
to fly with her Henry to the desert--“a beautiful place, full of
roses and myrtles, and smooth, green turf, and murmuring rivulets,
and though very retired, not absolutely out of the world; where
one could occasionally see one’s friends, and give _déjeuner et
fêtes-champêtres_.” So the foolish Indiana in Miss Burney’s _Camilla_
considered a “cottage” but “as a bower of eglantine and roses, where
she might repose and be adored all day long.”
But a little experience soon teaches her she “did not very well then
know what a desert was.” Scotch mists and mountain blasts dispel the
fancy picture, and, after a brief period of acute wretchedness, the
really heartless victim of a so-called love match becomes the zealous
promoter of mercenary connections.
Miss Ferrier then introduces us to the next generation, where any
attempt at dogmatism about love becomes hazardous.
“Love is a passion that has been much talked of, often described, and
little understood. Cupid has many counterfeits going about the world,
who pass very well with those whose minds are capable of passion,
but not of love. These Birmingham Cupids have many votaries among
boarding-school misses, militia officers, and milliners’ apprentices,
who marry upon the mutual faith of blue eyes and scarlet coats;
have dirty houses and squalling children, and hate each other most
delectably. Then there is another species for more refined souls,
which owes its birth to the works of Rousseau, Goethe, Coffin, etc.
Its success depends very much upon rocks, woods, and waterfalls; and
it generally ends in daggers, pistols, poisons, or Doctors’ Commons.”
It would seem that even the heroine is, like Emily in _Udolpho_, rather
at sea concerning the proper distinction between virtue and taste.
She is “religious--what mind of any excellence is not? but hers is
the religion of poetry, of taste, of feeling, of impulse, of any and
everything but Christianity.” The worthy youth who loved her “saw much
of fine natural feeling, but in vain sought for any guiding principle
of duty. Her mind seemed as a lovely, flowery, pathless waste, whose
sweets exhaled in vain; all was graceful luxuriance, but all was
transient and perishable in its loveliness. No plant of immortal
growth grew there, no ‘flowers worthy of Paradise.’”
Inevitably the dear creature is captivated, at first sight, by any
good-looking villain: “There might, perhaps, be something of _hauteur_
in his lofty bearing; but it was so qualified by the sportive gaiety of
his manners, that it seemed nothing more than that elegant and graceful
sense of his own superiority, to which, even without arrogance, he
could not be insensible.”
The hero will no doubt require time before he can stand up against so
fine a gentleman; but justice requires his ultimate triumph, since, in
Miss Ferrier’s judgment, a “good moral” was always essential to fiction.
“I don’t think, like all penny-book manufacturers, that ’tis
absolutely necessary that the good boys and girls should be rewarded,
and the naughty ones punished. Yet, I think, where there is much
tribulation, ’tis fitter it should be the _consequence_, rather than
the _cause_, of misconduct or frailty. You’ll say that rule is absurd,
inasmuch as it is not observed in human life. That I allow; but we
know the inflictions of Providence are for wise purposes, therefore
our reason willingly submits to them. But, as the only good purpose of
a book is to inculcate morality, and convey some lesson of instruction
as well as delight, I do not see that what is called a _good moral_
can be dispensed with in a work of fiction.”
Miss Ferrier, in fact, would have no hand in the “raw head and bloody
bone schemes” in which Miss Clavering (who wrote “The History of Mrs.
Douglas” in _Marriage_) had, apparently, invited her to collaborate,
and chose rather to exemplify her own theories in three very similar
stories: _Marriage_ (1818), _The Inheritance_ (1824), and _Destiny_
(1831). Urged, again and again, to supplement these successes, she
made “two attempts to write _something_ else, but could not please
herself, and would not publish _anything_”--a most praiseworthy
resolution.
She has left us an entertaining account of her “plan” for _Marriage_,
which may well serve for an exact description of her actual achievement.
“I do not recollect ever to have seen the sudden transition of a
high-bred English beauty, who thinks she can sacrifice all for
love, to an uncomfortable, solitary, Highland dwelling, among tall,
red-haired sisters and grim-faced aunts. Don’t you think this would
make a good opening of the piece? Suppose each of us[10] try our hands
on it; the moral to be deduced from that is to warn all young ladies
against runaway matches, and the character and fate of the two sisters
would be _unexceptionable_. I expect it will be the first book every
wise matron will put into the hand of her daughter, and even the
reviewers will relax of their severity in favour of the morality of
this little work. Enchanting sight! already do I behold myself arrayed
in an old mouldy covering, thumbed and creased and filled with dog’s
ears. I hear the enchanting sound of some sentimental miss, the shrill
pipe of some antiquated spinster, or the hoarse grumbling of some
incensed dowager as they severally enquire for me at the circulating
library, and are assured by the master that it is in such demand that,
though he has thirteen copies, they are insufficient to answer the
calls upon it; but that each one of them may depend upon having the
very first that comes in!!!”
The interest, in these novels, is not awakened by any subtle
characterisation or by serious sympathy with the dramatis personæ. It
depends rather upon caustic wit, accurate local colour, a picture of
manners, and a “museum of abnormalities.”
Miss Ferrier’s nice distinctions between the “well-bred,” and her
photographs of vulgarity, may claim to rival Miss Burney’s.
“Mrs. St. Clair, for example, was considerably annoyed by the manners
of Lady Charles, which made her feel her own as something unwieldy and
overgrown; like a long train, they were both out of the way and in the
way, and she did not know very well how to dispose of them. Indeed,
few things can be more irritating than for those who have hitherto
piqued themselves upon the abundance of their manner, to find all at
once that they have a great deal too much, and that no one is inclined
to take it off their hands, and that, in short, it is dead stock.”
Mrs. Bluemit’s tea-party, again, reveals the Blue-Stockings in all
their glory; while Mr. Augustus Larkins--with his “regular features,
very pink eyes, very black eyebrows, and what was intended for a very
smart expression”--forcibly recalls Mr. Smith of Snow Hill. His ideal
of dress and manners was evidently shared by Bob and Davy Black, who
were
“dressed in all the extremes of the reigning fashions--small waists,
brush-heads, stiff collars, iron heels, and switches. Like many other
youths they were distinctly of opinion that ‘dress makes the man.’...
Perhaps, after all, that is a species of humility rather to be admired
in those who, feeling themselves destitute of mental qualifications,
trust to the abilities of their tailor and hairdresser for gaining
them the good-will of the world.”
It must be admitted that Miss Ferrier’s obviously spontaneous
delight in satire has occasionally tempted her beyond the limits
of artistic realism. Her miniature of the M‘Dow, for example, has
all the objectionable qualities which revive our preference for the
“elegancies” of romance.
“Here Miss M‘Dow was disencumbered of her pelisse and bonnet, and
exhibited a coarse, blubber-lipped, sun-burnt visage, with staring
sea-green eyes, a quantity of rough sandy hair, and mulatto neck, with
merely a rim of white round her shoulders.... The gloves were then
taken off, and a pair of thick mulberry paws set at liberty.”
No such criticism, however applies to those full-length portraits
of the inimitable Aunts in _Marriage_--the “sensible” Miss Jacky,
Miss Nicky, who was “not wanting for sense either,” and Miss Grizzy,
the great letter-writer. “Their life was one continued _fash_ about
everything or nothing”; and if a “sensible woman” generally means “a
very disagreeable, obstinate, illiberal director of all men, women, and
children,” the Aunts were really “well-meaning, kind-hearted, and, upon
the whole, good-tempered” old ladies, whose garrulous absurdities are a
perpetual delight.
Again, Miss Pratt (of _The Inheritance_) has certain obvious
affinities to the inimitable Miss Bates; as Mr. M‘Dow (in _Destiny_)
recalls Collins; and the creation of that good soul, Molly Macaulay,
bears solitary evidence to Miss Ferrier’s seldom-exerted powers of
sympathetic subtlety.
We are tempted to wonder if there be any particular significance in
the fact that, though Miss Ferrier wrote _Marriage_ almost immediately
after the appearance of _Sense and Sensibility_, she did not publish
it till seven years later.[11] If, during that interval, she felt
compelled to study the supreme excellences of a sister-authoress,
it is clear that she wisely abandoned any attempt at imitation. Her
work, as we have seen, directly follows Miss Burney’s, and should be
properly regarded in relation to _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_; reflecting
Society--and the upstart--of a slightly later generation, then
flourishing in North Britain.
* * * * *
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD (1787-1855) is the only writer on record who has
deliberately declared herself a disciple.
“Of course, I shall copy as closely as I can nature and Miss
Austen--keeping, like her, to genteel country life; or rather going
a little lower, perhaps; and, I am afraid, with more of sentiment
and less of humour. I do not _intend_ to commit these delinquencies,
mind. I _mean_ to keep as playful as I can; but I am afraid they
will happen in spite of me.... It will be called--at least, I mean
it so to be--_Our Village_; will consist of essays, and characters,
and stories, chiefly of country life, in the manner of the _Sketch
Book_, connected by unity of locality and purpose. It is exceedingly
playful and lively, and I think you will like it. Charles Lamb (the
matchless _Elia_ of the London Magazine) says nothing so fresh and
characteristic has appeared for a long time.”
It _was_ called _Our Village_; and appeared in parts between 1824
and 1832, the earlier series being the best, because afterwards she
wrote for remuneration--when “I would rather scrub floors, if I could
get as much by that healthier, more respectable, and more feminine
employment,”--a declaration which prepares us for the criticism that,
though in her own day she was accused of copying the “literal” manner
of Crabbe and Teniers, she was at heart a frank sentimentalist. “Are
your characters and descriptions true?” asked her friend Sir William
Elford; and she replied, “Yes! yes! yes! as true as is well possible.
You, as a great landscape painter, know that, in painting a favourite
scene, you do a little embellish, and can’t help it, you avail yourself
of happy accidents of atmosphere, and _if anything be ugly, you strike
it out_, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the
picture is a likeness.”
Assuredly Miss Mitford was no realist, nor was her imitation servile.
Once she expressed a desire that Miss Austen had shown “a little more
taste, a little more perception of the graceful”; and, in such matters,
as in culture, she was herself far more professional. But although
she could describe, and even “compose,” with a charm of her own which
almost defies analysis, Miss Mitford’s powers were strictly limited.
The “country-town” atmosphere of _Belford Regis_ lacks spontaneity; and
_Atherton_, her only attempt at a novel, is wanting in varied incident
or motion. Readers attracted by mere simplicity, however, will feel
always a peculiar affection for Miss Mitford, that would be increased
by her “Letters” which she describes as “just like so many bottles of
ginger-beer, bouncing and frothy, and flying in everybody’s face.”
Christopher North remarked in _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ that her writings
were “pervaded by a genuine rural spirit--the spirit of Merry England.
_Every line bespeaks the lady._”
And the “Shepherd” replied:
“I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being
able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi’ sofas
and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in
lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o’ me, is
her pictures o’ poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and
ither neerdoweels, and o’ huts and hovels without riggin’ by the
wayside, and the cottages o’ honest puir men, and byres, and barns,
and stackyards, and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship
aneath trees, and at the gable-end of farm houses, ’tween lads
and lasses as laigh in life as the servants in her father’s ha’.
That’s the puzzle, and that’s the praise. But ae word explains
a’--Genius--Genius, wull a’ the metafhizzians in the warld ever
expound that mysterious monosyllable.--Nov. 1826.”
* * * * *
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY (1797-1851) has no place in the development
of women’s work in fiction, since her one novel, _Frankenstein_,
belongs to no type that has been attempted before or since, though it
is often roughly described as a throw-back to the School of Terror.
The conception of a man-made Monster, with human feelings--of pathetic
loneliness and brutal cruelty--was eminently characteristic of an
age which hankered after the byways of Science, imagined unlimited
possibilities from the extension of knowledge, and was never tired
of speculation. Inevitably the daughter of William Godwin had some
didactic intentions; and her “Preface” declares her “by no means
indifferent to the manner in which whatever moral tendencies exist in
the sentiments or characters it contains shall affect the reader; yet
my chief concern in this respect has been limited to the avoiding of
the enervating effects of the novels of the present day, and to the
exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection and the excellence
of universal virtue.” Among other things, Mrs. Shelley betrays
her sympathy with Rousseau’s ideal of the “Man Natural,” and with
vegetarianism. In a mood of comparative reasonableness and humanity the
Monster promises, under certain conditions, to abandon his revenge and
bury himself in the “Wilds of South America.”
“My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid,
to glut my appetite; acorns and berries will afford me sufficient
nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself, and
will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried
leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man, and will ripen our food.”
The ethical struggle, with which Mrs. Shelley has here concerned
herself, arises from circumstances beyond the pale of experience;
but her solution is characteristic, and echoes the spirit of Shelley
himself. Frankenstein, “in a fit of enthusiastic madness, has created
a rational creature,” who, finding himself hated by mankind, resolves
to punish his creator. He promises, however, to abstain from murdering
Frankenstein’s family, if that man of science will make for him a
female companion with whom he may peacefully retire to the wilderness.
Obviously the temptation is great. Frankenstein’s brother has been
already destroyed: it would seem his duty to protect his father and
his wife. But, on the other hand,
“My duties towards my fellow-creatures had greater claims to my
attention, _because they included a greater proportion of happiness or
misery_. Urged by this view, I refused, and I did right in refusing,
to create a companion for the first creature.”
There is no professional art in the story of Frankenstein, though it
has a certain gloomy and perverse power. It is told in letters from
an arctic explorer “To Mrs. Saville, England”; and the monster’s own
life-story, with the only revelation of his emotions, is narrated
within this narrative, in a monologue to Frankenstein.
It is uncertain whether the work would ever have been remembered, or
revived, apart from our natural interest in the author; although, so
far as it has any similarity with other work, it belongs to a class
of novels which English writers have seldom attempted, and never
accomplished with any distinction.
* * * * *
FRANCES TROLLOPE (1780-1863) has been so completely overshadowed by
her son Anthony--himself a distinguished practitioner in the domestic
novel--that few readers to-day are aware that her fertile pen produced
a “whole army of novels and books of travel, sometimes pouring into
the libraries at the rate of nine volumes a year.” She began her
career--curiously enough, when she was past fifty--by a severely
satirical attack on the United States, entitled _Domestic Manners of
the Americans_; and her first novel, _The Abbess_, did not appear till
1833. She was essentially feminine in the enthusiasm of her tirades
against various practices in her generation, and has been freely
criticised for want of taste. _The Vicar of Wrexhill_ (1837), indeed,
is coloured by a violent prejudice which goes far to justify this
objection, and may even excuse the disparaging deduction on women’s
intellect drawn by a contemporary reviewer, who thus characterises her
spirited defence of “oppressed Orthodoxy”:
“It is a great pity that the heroine ever set forth on such a foolish
errand; she has only harmed herself and her cause (as a bad advocate
always will) and had much better have remained at home pudding-making
or stocking-mending, than have meddled with what she understands so
ill.
“In the first place (we speak it with due respect for the sex) she
is guilty of a fault which is somewhat too common among them; and
having very little, except prejudice, on which to found an opinion,
she makes up for want of argument by a wonderful fluency of abuse. A
_woman’s religion is chiefly that of the heart, and not of the head_.
She goes through, for the most part, no dreadful stages of doubt, no
changes of faith: _she loves God as she loves her husband by a kind of
instinctive devotion_. Faith is a passion with her, not a calculation;
so that, in the faculty of believing, though they far exceed the other
sex, in the power of convincing they fall far short of them.”[12]
More than one woman writer has risen, of later years, triumphantly
to confute any such complacent masculine superiority; but it must be
admitted that Mrs. Trollope is scarcely judicial in the venom she
pours out so eloquently upon the head of her “Vicar,” his worshippers,
and his accomplices. This was not quite the direction in which women
could most wisely develop the domestic novel in her day; while
they still--like the Brontës, but in a spirit quite alien to Jane
Austen’s--upheld “that manly passion for superiority which leads _our
masters_ to covet in a companion chosen for life ... that species of
weakness which is often said to be the most attractive feature in
the female character.” It is, again, a curious want of taste which
allows her to dwell upon the pleasure experienced by a comparatively
respectable young man in making a little girl of eight tipsy--though he
is the Vicar’s son.
But, on the other hand, there is considerable power and much sprightly
humour in the story. Mrs. Trollope’s _good_ (_i.e._ orthodox) people
are really delightful, and admirably characterised. The _genuine_ piety
of Rosalind, the Irish heiress, is most artistically united to graceful
vivacity and natural charm: the testy Sir Gilbert is perfectly matched
with Lady Harrington: and the three young Mowbrays are drawn from life.
The study of Henrietta Cartwright, driven to atheism by the hypocrisy
of her horrible father, has all the force of a real human tragedy; and,
if the villainy of Evangelicism is exaggerated, it is painted with
graphic humour. She works from nature, and finds excellent “copy” in
the parish.
Mrs. Trollope, in fact, has left us proof in abundance that women had
learnt to “write with ease”; if, in her case, over-production and
misplaced zeal have led to an abuse of her talents.
* * * * *
HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876), “Queen of philanthropists,” has left
a stamp of almost passionate sincerity on everything she wrote. From
earliest days she declared that her “chief subordinate object in life
was the cultivation of her intellectual powers, with a view to the
instruction of others by her writings.” Believing herself the servant
of humanity, she sought to save souls by the diffusion of a little
knowledge.
Inevitably, under such influence, her work was always didactic;
whether inspired by the orthodox faith of her earlier years or the
Atkinson-interpretation of Comte she afterwards espoused: whether
directed towards social reform, or expressed in narrative and
biography. The greater number of her publications, whether or no
actually written for the press, contain those qualities which make the
best journalism; and, though occasionally capricious and “superior”
in private judgment, her brief critical biographies, from the _Daily
News_, are masterpieces in the vignette. She knew “everybody” in her
day; and contributed much to the thirst for “information,” reasonably
applied, which characterised our grandfathers.
But, as a novelist, she has two special claims to notice. Her
“Playfellow Series” (embracing _Feats on the Fiord_, _The Crofton
Boys_, and _The Peasant and the Prince_) are living to-day among
the few priceless inherited treasures of literature. Less obviously
didactic than the Edgeworth “nursery classics,” they have certain
similar characteristics of spontaneity, sympathetic understanding, and
simple directness. Each occupied with quite different subjects, they
are informed by the same spirit, excite the same kind of pleasure,
and--for all their decided, but _not_ obtrusive, moralising--appeal to
the same healthy taste. By those to whom their life-like young people
have been among the chosen friends of childhood, the memories will
never fade.
Miss Martineau’s adult narratives have less distinction; although her
_Hour and the Man_ is a creditable effort in the historic form, and
_Deerbrook_ has much emotional power. To our taste the tone of the
latter must be criticised for its somewhat sensational religiosity,
and for the priggish perfection of its “white” characters. But, on the
other hand, there is subtlety in contrasts among the “undesirables”;
genuine pathos in, for example, the description of Mrs. Enderby’s
death; and plenty of artistic “interest” in the plot: nor can we
neglect mention of the remarkable portrait of Morris, the servant and
most real friend to her “young ladies.”
We cannot avoid, in conclusion, some reference to a distinction
elaborated in an early chapter between the drudgery of “_teaching_”
and the “sublime delights of _education_”: wherein the author quaintly
remarks that a visiting governess can “do little more than stand
between children and the faults of the people about them”; betraying
herein the normal prejudice of the pedagogue against the parent.
Similar theories clearly inspire the eloquence--of a later
chapter--upon a thorny subject on which the author achieved some
pioneer work in her own life.
“‘Cannot you tell me,’ enquires the persecuted heroine, ‘of some way
in which a woman may earn money?’
“‘A woman?’ is the stern reply. ‘What rate of woman? Do you mean
yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the
uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking,
by milking cows and going into service, and, in some parts of the
kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you
have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated
woman, a woman with the powers God gave her religiously improved,
with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which
surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would
make every species of responsibility safe,--for such a woman there
is in all England no chance of subsistence but teaching--that sort
of ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education
of circumstances--and for which not one in a thousand is fit,--or by
being a superior Miss Nares--the feminine gender of the tailor and
hatter.’”
* * * * *
MRS. GASKELL (1810-1865) must always be remembered as authoress of
_Cranford_, which has startling similarities to the work of Jane
Austen, and excels her in pathos. If Fanny Burney immortalised
“sensibility,” and Jane Austen created “the lady,” Mrs. Gaskell may
well be called “The Apologist of Gentility.” She taught us that it was
possible to be genteel without being vulgar; and her “refined females,”
if enslaved to elegance and propriety, are ladies in the best sense of
the word.
“Although they know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly
indifferent to each other’s opinions.” They are “very independent of
fashion; as they observe: ‘What does it signify how we dress here at
Cranford, where everybody knows us?’ and if they go from home, their
reason is equally cogent: ‘What does it signify how we dress here,
where nobody knows us?’” We may smile at their ingenious devices for
concealing poverty, their grotesque small conventions, their horror at
any allusions to death or other causes for genuine emotion, and their
love of gossip; but our superiority stands rebuked before simple Miss
Matty’s sense of honour “as a shareholder,” and before the “meeting
of the Cranford ladies” for the generous contribution of their “mites
in a secret and concealed manner.” As Miss Pole expresses it, “We are
none of us what may be called rich, though we all possess a genteel
competency, sufficient for tastes that are elegant and refined, and
would not, if they could, be vulgarly ostentatious”; and they fully
appreciated the true charity of “showing consideration for the feelings
of delicate independence existing in the mind of every refined female.”
Here, indeed, as in almost every thought or deed of their uneventful
existence, our grandmothers can teach us that the eager interest in our
neighbours, which we are accustomed to brand as vulgar and impertinent,
was in actual fact a powerful incentive to Christian practices. There
is a passage in _Cranford_ which would baffle the most elaborate
statistics of ordered philanthropy, as it must silence the protest of
false pride, and remain an invulnerable argument against the isolation
of modern life. “I had often occasion to notice,” observes the
visitor, “the use that was made of fragments and small opportunities
in Cranford: the rose-leaves that were gathered ere they fell, to make
a _pot-pourri_ for some one who had no garden; the little bundles of
lavender-flowers sent to strew the drawers of some town-dweller, or to
burn in the bedroom of some invalid. Things that many would despise,
and actions which it seemed scarcely worth while to perform, were all
attended to in Cranford.”
Nor were Miss Matilda Jenkyns and her friends deficient in any outward
show of true breeding. Despite the most astonishing vagaries of taste
in dress, language, and behaviour, they were dignified by instinct,
and, on all occasions of moment, revealed a natural manner that is
above reproach. Their simple-minded innocence and genuine humility
never tempted them to pass over impertinence or tolerate vulgarity, and
their powers of delicate reproof were unrivalled. We cannot admire the
“green turban” of Miss Matty’s dream, or share her dread of the frogs
in Paris not agreeing with Mr. Holbrook; we should have been ashamed,
maybe, to assist her in “chasing the sunbeams” over her new carpet; and
we may detect sour grapes in Miss Pole’s outcry against that “kind of
attraction which she, for one, would be ashamed to have”; yet I fancy
the best of us would covet admission to Cranford society, and be proud
to number its leaders among our dearest friends.
In fact, the artistic achievement of _Cranford_ is the creation of an
atmosphere. Like the authors of _Evelina_ and of _Emma_, Mrs. Gaskell
is frankly feminine, and not superior to the smallest detail of
parochial gossip; but while the ideals of refinement portrayed are more
akin to Miss Burney’s (allowing for altered social conditions), her
methods of portraiture more nearly resemble Miss Austen’s. She depends,
even less, upon excitement, mystery, or crime, and _Cranford_, indeed,
may be described as “a novel without a hero,” without a plot, and
without a love-scene. Miss Brown’s death is the one event with which
we are brought, as it were, face to face throughout the whole sixteen
chapters. The realities of life, whether sad or joyful, are enacted
behind the scenes and never used for dramatic effect, a reticence
most striking in the incident of Captain Brown’s heroic death. They
serve only to reveal the strong and true hearts of those whose dainty
old-world mannerisms have already secured our sympathy.
Mrs. Gaskell has _left out_ even more than Jane Austen of the ordinary
materials of fiction (though she is an adept at pathos), and her
characters are equally living. She has less wit, but almost as much
humour.
The most obvious limitation of _Cranford_, indeed, is more apparent
than real. As everyone will remember, “all the holders of houses” are
women. “If a married couple settles in the town, somehow the gentleman
disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only
man in the Cranford evening tea-parties, or he is accounted for by
being at his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all
the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant
only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the
gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do there?... A man
is so in the way in the house.”
Even the Rector dare not attend a public entertainment unless “guarded
by troops of his own sex--the National School boys whom he had treated
to the performance.” The “neat maid-servants” were never allowed
“followers”; and it was Miss Matty’s chief consolation in starting her
little business that “she did not think men ever bought tea.” She was
afraid of men. “They had such sharp, loud ways with them, and did up
accounts, and counted their change so quickly.”
Yet, in fact, the masculine element in _Cranford_ comes frequently to
the front; and the men’s characters are drawn with no less firmness of
outline than the women’s. Miss Matty derives much from her Reverend
father--deceased, from that sturdy yeoman Thomas Holbrook, and from
“Mr. Peter.” It is Captain Brown, and no other, whose misfortunes
unmask the real tenderness of Miss Jenkyns herself; and the good Mr.
Hoggins occasions the only serious discord narrated in the select
circle of “elegant females,” to whom his uncouth surname was a
perpetual affront. The unfortunate conjurer, Signor Brunoni, otherwise
Mr. Brown (was it accident or design, we wonder, which gave him the
same plebeian name as the gallant Captain?); his brother Thomas;
the great Mr. Mulliner, “who seemed never to have forgotten his
condescension in coming to live at Cranford”; honest farmer Dobson; and
dear, blundering Jim Hearn, whose tactful notion of kindness was “to
keep out of your way as much as he could”; each played their part in
the lives of their lady-betters.
Thomas Holbrook, his quotations from Shakespeare, George Herbert, and
Tennyson; his love of Nature; his two-pronged forks; and his charming
“counting-house,” have no less subtle originality than any character in
the whole book; and we should hesitate to name any record of perfect
fidelity, without sentimentalism, to be compared with the simply
chivalrous and cheerful attentions of this gentleman of seventy to
the old lady who had refused, at the bidding of father and sister,
“to marry below her rank.” One can only echo the pious aspiration (so
touching in its unselfish abandonment of a cherished ideal), by which
alone Miss Matty betrayed the emotions excited by the visit to her old
lover: “‘God forbid,’ said she, in a low voice, ‘that I should grieve
any young hearts.’”
Holbrook, moreover, had been no doubt largely responsible for
encouraging the inherent good qualities of Miss Matty’s scapegrace
brother (afterwards the popular Mr. Peter), whose thoughtless pranks
form so strange, and yet so fitting, a background to those finished
miniature-sketches of the stern Rector and his sweet young wife. It
is, indeed, a fine instance of poetical justice by which Mr. Peter is
allowed, in his old age, to bestow a richly merited peace and comfort,
in addition to the diversion of masculine society, upon the very sister
whose early life had been so terribly clouded by his misdeeds.
One is almost tempted to say that Mrs. Gaskell does scant justice to
the first invader of the Amazons, when she refers to Captain Brown
as “a tame man about the house.” Yet those of us with sufficient
imagination to realise the firm exclusiveness of Miss Deborah Jenkyns,
should appreciate the significance of the phrase. The military
gentleman, “who was not ashamed to be poor,” only found his way to that
lady’s good graces by sterling qualities of true manliness. He was
“even admitted in the tabooed hours before twelve,” because no errand
of kindness was beneath his dignity or beyond his patience.
Miss Matty expresses the prevailing sentiment about men, as she has
done on most subjects worthy of attention, with that “love of peace and
kindliness,” which “makes all of us better when we are near her.”
“I don’t mean to deny that men are troublesome in a house. I don’t
judge from my own experience, for my father was neatness itself, and
wiped his shoes in coming in as carefully as any woman; but still a
man has a sort of knowledge of what should be done in difficulties,
that it is very pleasant to have one at hand ready to lean upon. Now
Lady Glenmire” (whose engagement to Mr. Hoggins was the occasion of
this gentle homily), “instead of being tossed about and wondering
where she is to settle, will be certain of a home among pleasant
and kind people, such as our good Miss Pole and Mrs. Forrester.
And Mr. Hoggins is really a very personable man; and so far as his
manners--why, if they are not very polished, I have known people with
very good hearts, and very clever minds too, who were not what some
people reckoned refined, but who were tender and true.” Again: “Don’t
be frightened by Miss Pole from being married. I can fancy it may be
a very happy state, and a little credulity helps one through life
very smoothly--better than always doubting and doubting, and seeing
difficulties and disagreeables in everything.”
The finality of the above quotations may further remind us of an
unexpected conclusion to which a careful study of _Cranford_ must
compel the critic. Despite its apparent inconsequence, the desultory
nature of the narrative, and its surprising innocence of plot, the work
is composed with an almost perfect sense of dramatic unity. In reality
every event, however trivial or serious, every shade of character,
however subtle or obvious, is at once subordinate and essential to the
character of the heroine. A heroine, “not far short of sixty, whose
looks were against her,” may not attract the habitual novel-reader;
but unless we submit to the charm of Miss Matty’s personality, we have
misread _Cranford_. Deborah, the domineering, had not so much real
strength of character, and serves only as a foil to her sister’s wider
sympathies; the superficial quickness of Miss Pole never ultimately
misled her friend’s finer judgment; the (temporary) snobbishness of
the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson troubles her heart indeed, but leaves
her dignity unruffled; and the other members of the circle scarcely
aspire to be more than humble admirers of the “Rector’s daughter.”
Miss Matty, of course, is sublimely unconscious of her own influence,
and the authoress very nearly deceives us into fancying her equally
innocent. But she gives away the secret in her farewell sentence; and
I, for one, would not quarrel with her for pointing the moral. Miss
Matty can never lose her place in the Gallery of the Immortals, and we
would not neglect to honour the painter’s name.
Mrs. Gaskell, in _Cranford_, may claim to have reached perfection by
one finished achievement; which embodies the ideal to which we conceive
that the work in fiction peculiar to women had been, more or less
consciously, directed from the beginning. Probably the art would have
been less flawless, if applied--as it was by sister-novelists--to a
wider range of persons and subjects. Nothing of quite this kind has
been again attempted, and it is not likely that such an attempt would
succeed.
We should only notice, in passing, that Mrs. Gaskell left other
admirable, and quite feminine, work on more ordinary lines. _Wives and
Daughters_ is a delightful love story; while _North and South_ and
_Mary Barton_ are almost the first examples of that keen interest in
social problems, and the life of the poor, in legitimate novels (not
fiction-tracts), which we shall find so favourite a topic of women from
her generation until to-day.