Berners is possibly too antiquated in style to be suitable to a modern
audience. But where is Anne Askew, who wrote a ballad in Newgate; and
where is Queen Elizabeth, whose 'most sweet and sententious ditty' on
Mary Stuart is so highly praised by Puttenham as an example of
'Exargasia,' or The Gorgeous in Literature? Why is the Countess of
Pembroke excluded? Sidney's sister should surely have a place in any
anthology of English verse. Where is Sidney's niece, Lady Mary Wroth, to
whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist? Where is 'the noble ladie Diana
Primrose,' who wrote A Chain of Pearl, or a memorial of the peerless
graces and heroic virtues of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory? Where
is Mary Morpeth, the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden? Where
is the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I., and where is Anne
Killigrew, maid of honour to the Duchess of York? The Marchioness of
Wharton, whose poems were praised by Waller; Lady Chudleigh, whose lines
beginning--
Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name,
are very curious and interesting; Rachel Lady Russell, Constantia
Grierson, Mary Barber, Laetitia Pilkington; Eliza Haywood, whom Pope
honoured by a place in The Dunciad; Lady Luxborough, Lord Bolingbroke's
half-sister; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Lady Temple, whose poems were
printed by Horace Walpole; Perdita, whose lines on the snowdrop are very
pathetic; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that
'she was made for something better than a Duchess'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs.
Chapone, and Amelia Opie, all deserve a place on historical, if not on
artistic, grounds. In fact, the space given by Mrs. Sharp to modern and
living poetesses is somewhat disproportionate, and I am sure that those
on whose brows the laurels are still green would not grudge a little room
to those the green of whose laurels is withered and the music of whose
lyres is mute.
* * * * *
One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appeared
is A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods. To find any parallel to this
lurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy de Maupassant.
Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either of these two great
masters of fiction as her model, but there is something in her work that
recalls their method; she has not a little of their fierce intensity,
their terrible concentration, their passionless yet poignant objectivity;
like them, she seems to allow life to suggest its own mode of
presentation; and, like them, she recognises that a frank acceptance of
the facts of life is the true basis of all modern imitative art. The
scene of Mrs. Woods's story lies in one of the villages near Oxford; the
characters are very few in number, and the plot is extremely simple. It
is a romance of modern Arcadia--a tale of the love of a farm-labourer for
a girl who, though slightly above him in social station and education, is
yet herself also a servant on a farm. True Arcadians they are, both of
them, and their ignorance and isolation serve only to intensify the
tragedy that gives the story its title. It is the fashion nowadays to
label literature, so, no doubt, Mrs. Woods's novel will be spoken of as
'realistic.' Its realism, however, is the realism of the artist, not of
the reporter; its tact of treatment, subtlety of perception, and fine
distinction of style, make it rather a poem than a proces-verbal; and
though it lays bare to us the mere misery of life, it suggests something
of life's mystery also. Very delicate, too, is the handling of external
Nature. There are no formal guide-book descriptions of scenery, nor
anything of what Byron petulantly called 'twaddling about trees,' but we
seem to breathe the atmosphere of the country, to catch the exquisite
scent of the beanfields, so familiar to all who have ever wandered
through the Oxfordshire lanes in June; to hear the birds singing in the
thicket, and the sheep-bells tinkling from the hill. Characterisation,
that enemy of literary form, is such an essential part of the method of
the modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almost become to the
novelist what light and shade are to the painter--the one permanent
element of style; and if the power of A Village Tragedy be due to its
portrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm comes from its
Theocritean setting.
* * * * *
It is, however, not merely in fiction and in poetry that the women of
this century are making their mark. Their appearance amongst the
prominent speakers at the Church Congress, some weeks ago, was in itself
a very remarkable proof of the growing influence of women's opinions on
all matters connected with the elevation of our national life, and the
amelioration of our social conditions. When the Bishops left the
platform to their wives, it may be said that a new era began, and the
change will, no doubt, be productive of much good. The Apostolic dictum,
that women should not be suffered to teach, is no longer applicable to a
society such as ours, with its solidarity of interests, its recognition
of natural rights, and its universal education, however suitable it may
have been to the Greek cities under Roman rule. Nothing in the United
States struck me more than the fact that the remarkable intellectual
progress of that country is very largely due to the efforts of American
women, who edit many of the most powerful magazines and newspapers, take
part in the discussion of every question of public interest, and exercise
an important influence upon the growth and tendencies of literature and
art. Indeed, the women of America are the one class in the community
that enjoys that leisure which is so necessary for culture. The men are,
as a rule, so absorbed in business, that the task of bringing some
element of form into the chaos of daily life is left almost entirely to
the opposite sex, and an eminent Bostonian once assured me that in the
twentieth century the whole culture of his country would be in
petticoats. By that time, however, it is probable that the dress of the
two sexes will be assimilated, as similarity of costume always follows
similarity of pursuits.
* * * * *
In a recent article in La France, M. Sarcey puts this point very well.
The further we advance, he says, the more apparent does it become that
women are to take their share as bread-winners in the world. The task is
no longer monopolised by men, and will, perhaps, be equally shared by the
sexes in another hundred years. It will be necessary, however, for women
to invent a suitable costume, as their present style of dress is quite
inappropriate to any kind of mechanical labour, and must be radically
changed before they can compete with men upon their own ground. As to
the question of desirability, M. Sarcey refuses to speak. 'I shall not
see the end of this revolution,' he remarks, 'and I am glad of it.' But,
as is pointed out in a very sensible article in the Daily News, there is
no doubt that M. Sarcey has reason and common-sense on his side with
regard to the absolute unsuitability of ordinary feminine attire to any
sort of handicraft, or even to any occupation which necessitates a daily
walk to business and back again in all kinds of weather. Women's dress
can easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; but
most women refuse to modify or adapt it. They must follow the fashion,
whether it be convenient or the reverse. And, after all, what is a
fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of
ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. From
the point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law of
health, every principle of hygiene. While from the point of view of
simple ease and comfort, it is not too much to say that, with the
exception of M. Felix's charming tea-gowns, and a few English tailor-made
costumes, there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that can
be worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer. The
contortion of the feet of the Chinese beauty, said Dr. Naftel at the last
International Medical Congress, held at Washington, is no more barbarous
or unnatural than the panoply of the femme du monde.
And yet how sensible is the dress of the London milk-woman, of the Irish
or Scotch fishwife, of the North-Country factory-girl! An attempt was
made recently to prevent the pit-women from working, on the ground that
their costume was unsuited to their sex, but it is really only the idle
classes who dress badly. Wherever physical labour of any kind is
required, the costume used is, as a rule, absolutely right, for labour
necessitates freedom, and without freedom there is no such thing as
beauty in dress at all. In fact, the beauty of dress depends on the
beauty of the human figure, and whatever limits, constrains, and
mutilates is essentially ugly, though the eyes of many are so blinded by
custom that they do not notice the ugliness till it has become
unfashionable.
What women's dress will be in the future it is difficult to say. The
writer of the Daily News article is of opinion that skirts will always be
worn as distinctive of the sex, and it is obvious that men's dress, in
its present condition, is not by any means an example of a perfectly
rational costume. It is more than probable, however, that the dress of
the twentieth century will emphasise distinctions of occupation, not
distinctions of sex.
* * * * *
It is hardly too much to say that, by the death of the author of John
Halifax, Gentleman, our literature has sustained a heavy loss. Mrs.
Craik was one of the finest of our women-writers, and though her art had
always what Keats called 'a palpable intention upon one,' still its
imaginative qualities were of no mean order. There is hardly one of her
books that has not some distinction of style; there is certainly not one
of them that does not show an ardent love of all that is beautiful and
good in life. The good she, perhaps, loved somewhat more than the
beautiful, but her heart had room for both. Her first novel appeared in
1849, the year of the publication of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and
Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth, and her last work was done for the magazine which I
have the honour to edit. She was very much interested in the scheme for
the foundation of the Woman's World, suggested its title, and promised to
be one of its warmest supporters. One article from her pen is already in
proof and will appear next month, and in a letter I received from her, a
few days before she died, she told me that she had almost finished a
second, to be called Between Schooldays and Marriage. Few women have
enjoyed a greater popularity than Mrs. Craik, or have better deserved it.
It is sometimes said that John Halifax is not a real man, but only a
woman's ideal of a man. Well, let us be grateful for such ideals. No
one can read the story of which John Halifax is the hero without being
the better for it. Mrs. Craik will live long in the affectionate memory
of all who knew her, and one of her novels, at any rate, will always have
a high and honourable place in English fiction. Indeed, for simple
narrative power, some of the chapters of John Halifax, Gentleman, are
almost unequalled in our prose literature.
* * * * *
The news of the death of Lady Brassey has been also received by the
English people with every expression of sorrow and sympathy. Though her
books were not remarkable for any perfection of literary style, they had
the charm of brightness, vivacity, and unconventionality. They revealed
a fascinating personality, and their touches of domesticity made them
classics in many an English household. In all modern movements Lady
Brassey took a keen interest. She gained a first-class certificate in
the South Kensington School of Cookery, scullery department and all; was
one of the most energetic members of the St. John's Ambulance
Association, many branches of which she succeeded in founding; and,
whether at Normanhurst or in Park Lane, always managed to devote some
portion of her day to useful and practical work. It is sad to have to
chronicle in the first number of the Woman's World the death of two of
the most remarkable Englishwomen of our day.
(1) Memoirs of Wilhelmine Margravine of Baireuth. Translated and edited
by Her Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princess
of Great Britain and Ireland. (David Stott.)
(2) Women's Voices: An Anthology of the most Characteristic Poems by
English, Scotch, and Irish Women. Selected, edited, and arranged by Mrs.
William Sharp. (Walter Scott.)
(3) A Village Tragedy. By Margaret L. Woods. (Bentley and Son.)
MR. MAHAFFY'S NEW BOOK
(Pall Mall Gazette, November 9, 1887.)
Mr. Mahaffy's new book will be a great disappointment to everybody except
the Paper-Unionists and the members of the Primrose League. His subject,
the history of Greek Life and Thought: from the Age of Alexander to the
Roman Conquest, is extremely interesting, but the manner in which the
subject is treated is quite unworthy of a scholar, nor can there be
anything more depressing than Mr. Mahaffy's continual efforts to degrade
history to the level of the ordinary political pamphlet of contemporary
party warfare. There is, of course, no reason why Mr. Mahaffy should be
called upon to express any sympathy with the aspirations of the old Greek
cities for freedom and autonomy. The personal preferences of modern
historians on these points are matters of no import whatsoever. But in
his attempts to treat the Hellenic world as 'Tipperary writ large,' to
use Alexander the Great as a means of whitewashing Mr. Smith, and to
finish the battle of Chaeronea on the plains of Mitchelstown, Mr. Mahaffy
shows an amount of political bias and literary blindness that is quite
extraordinary. He might have made his book a work of solid and enduring
interest, but he has chosen to give it a merely ephemeral value and to
substitute for the scientific temper of the true historian the prejudice,
the flippancy, and the violence of the platform partisan. For the
flippancy parallels can, no doubt, be found in some of Mr. Mahaffy's
earlier books, but the prejudice and the violence are new, and their
appearance is very much to be regretted. There is always something
peculiarly impotent about the violence of a literary man. It seems to
bear no reference to facts, for it is never kept in check by action. It
is simply a question of adjectives and rhetoric, of exaggeration and over-
emphasis. Mr. Balfour is very anxious that Mr. William O'Brien should
wear prison clothes, sleep on a plank bed, and be subjected to other
indignities, but Mr. Mahaffy goes far beyond such mild measures as these,
and begins his history by frankly expressing his regret that Demosthenes
was not summarily put to death for his attempt to keep the spirit of
patriotism alive among the citizens of Athens! Indeed, he has no
patience with what he calls 'the foolish and senseless opposition to
Macedonia'; regards the revolt of the Spartans against 'Alexander's Lord
Lieutenant for Greece' as an example of 'parochial politics'; indulges in
Primrose League platitudes against a low franchise and the iniquity of
allowing 'every pauper' to have a vote; and tells us that the
'demagogues' and 'pretended patriots' were so lost to shame that they
actually preached to the parasitic mob of Athens the doctrine of
autonomy--'not now extinct,' Mr. Mahaffy adds regretfully--and
propounded, as a principle of political economy, the curious idea that
people should be allowed to manage their own affairs! As for the
personal character of the despots, Mr. Mahaffy admits that if he had to
judge by the accounts in the Greek historians, from Herodotus downwards,
he 'would certainly have said that the ineffaceable passion for autonomy,
which marks every epoch of Greek history, and every canton within its
limits, must have arisen from the excesses committed by the officers of
foreign potentates, or local tyrants,' but a careful study of the
cartoons published in United Ireland has convinced him 'that a ruler may
be the soberest, the most conscientious, the most considerate, and yet
have terrible things said of him by mere political malcontents.' In
fact, since Mr. Balfour has been caricatured, Greek history must be
entirely rewritten! This is the pass to which the distinguished
professor of a distinguished university has been brought. Nor can
anything equal Mr. Mahaffy's prejudice against the Greek patriots, unless
it be his contempt for those few fine Romans who, sympathising with
Hellenic civilisation and culture, recognised the political value of
autonomy and the intellectual importance of a healthy national life. He
mocks at what he calls their 'vulgar mawkishness about Greek liberties,
their anxiety to redress historical wrongs,' and congratulates his
readers that this feeling was not intensified by the remorse that their
own forefathers had been the oppressors. Luckily, says Mr. Mahaffy, the
old Greeks had conquered Troy, and so the pangs of conscience which now
so deeply afflict a Gladstone and a Morley for the sins of their
ancestors could hardly affect a Marcius or a Quinctius! It is quite
unnecessary to comment on the silliness and bad taste of passages of this
kind, but it is interesting to note that the facts of history are too
strong even for Mr. Mahaffy. In spite of his sneers at the provinciality
of national feeling and his vague panegyrics on cosmopolitan culture, he
is compelled to admit that 'however patriotism may be superseded in stray
individuals by larger benevolence, bodies of men who abandon it will only
replace it by meaner motives,' and cannot help expressing his regret that
the better classes among the Greek communities were so entirely devoid of
public spirit that they squandered 'as idle absentees, or still idler
residents, the time and means given them to benefit their country,' and
failed to recognise their opportunity of founding a Hellenic Federal
Empire. Even when he comes to deal with art, he cannot help admitting
that the noblest sculpture of the time was that which expressed the
spirit of the first great _national_ struggle, the repulse of the Gallic
hordes which overran Greece in 278 B.C., and that to the patriotic
feeling evoked at this crisis we owe the Belvedere Apollo, the Artemis of
the Vatican, the Dying Gaul, and the finest achievements of the Perganene
school. In literature, also, Mr. Mahaffy is loud in his lamentations
over what he considers to be the shallow society tendencies of the new
comedy, and misses the fine freedom of Aristophanes, with his intense
patriotism, his vital interest in politics, his large issues and his
delight in vigorous national life. He confesses the decay of oratory
under the blighting influences of imperialism, and the sterility of those
pedantic disquisitions upon style which are the inevitable consequence of
the lack of healthy subject-matter. Indeed, on the last page of his
history Mr. Mahaffy makes a formal recantation of most of his political
prejudices. He is still of opinion that Demosthenes should have been put
to death for resisting the Macedonian invasion, but admits that the
imperialism of Rome, which followed the imperialism of Alexander,
produced incalculable mischief, beginning with intellectual decay, and
ending with financial ruin. 'The touch of Rome,' he says, 'numbed Greece
and Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, and if there are great buildings
attesting the splendour of the Empire, where are the signs of
intellectual and moral vigour, if we except that stronghold of
nationality, the little land of Palestine?' This palinode is, no doubt,
intended to give a plausible air of fairness to the book, but such a
death-bed repentance comes too late, and makes the whole preceding
history seem not fair but foolish.
It is a relief to turn to the few chapters that deal directly with the
social life and thought of the Greeks. Here Mr. Mahaffy is very pleasant
reading indeed. His account of the colleges at Athens and Alexandria,
for instance, is extremely interesting, and so is his estimate of the
schools of Zeno, of Epicurus, and of Pyrrho. Excellent, too, in many
points is the description of the literature and art of the period. We do
not agree with Mr. Mahaffy in his panegyric of the Laocoon, and we are
surprised to find a writer, who is very indignant at what he considers to
be the modern indifference to Alexandrine poetry, gravely stating that no
study is 'more wearisome and profitless' than that of the Greek
Anthology.
The criticism of the new comedy, also, seems to us somewhat pedantic. The
aim of social comedy, in Menander no less than in Sheridan, is to mirror
the manners, not to reform the morals, of its day, and the censure of the
Puritan, whether real or affected, is always out of place in literary
criticism, and shows a want of recognition of the essential distinction
between art and life. After all, it is only the Philistine who thinks of
blaming Jack Absolute for his deception, Bob Acres for his cowardice, and
Charles Surface for his extravagance, and there is very little use in
airing one's moral sense at the expense of one's artistic appreciation.
Valuable, also, though modernity of expression undoubtedly is, still it
requires to be used with tact and judgment. There is no objection to Mr.
Mahaffy's describing Philopoemen as the Garibaldi, and Antigonus Doson as
the Victor Emmanuel of his age. Such comparisons have, no doubt, a
certain cheap popular value. But, on the other hand, a phrase like
'Greek Pre-Raphaelitism' is rather awkward; not much is gained by
dragging in an allusion to Mr. Shorthouse's John Inglesant in a
description of the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius; and when we are
told that the superb Pavilion erected in Alexandria by Ptolemy
Philadelphus was a 'sort of glorified Holborn Restaurant,' we must say
that the elaborate description of the building given in Athenaeus could
have been summed up in a better and a more intelligible epigram.
On the whole, however, Mr. Mahaffy's book may have the effect of drawing
attention to a very important and interesting period in the history of
Hellenism. We can only regret that, just as he has spoiled his account
of Greek politics by a foolish partisan bias, so he should have marred
the value of some of his remarks on literature by a bias that is quite as
unmeaning. It is uncouth and harsh to say that 'the superannuated
schoolboy who holds fellowships and masterships at English colleges'
knows nothing of the period in question except what he reads in
Theocritus, or that a man may be considered in England a distinguished
Greek professor 'who does not know a single date in Greek history between
the death of Alexander and the battle of Cynoscephalae'; and the
statement that Lucian, Plutarch, and the four Gospels are excluded from
English school and college studies in consequence of the pedantry of
'pure scholars, as they are pleased to call themselves,' is, of course,
quite inaccurate. In fact, not merely does Mr. Mahaffy miss the spirit
of the true historian, but he often seems entirely devoid of the temper
of the true man of letters. He is clever, and, at times, even brilliant,
but he lacks reasonableness, moderation, style and charm. He seems to
have no sense of literary proportion, and, as a rule, spoils his case by
overstating it. With all his passion for imperialism, there is something
about Mr. Mahaffy that is, if not parochial, at least provincial, and we
cannot say that this last book of his will add anything to his reputation
either as an historian, a critic, or a man of taste.
Greek Life and Thought: from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest.
By J. P. Mahaffy, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. (Macmillan and Co.)
MR. MORRIS'S COMPLETION OF THE ODYSSEY
(Pall Mall Gazette, November 24, 1887.)