respects, a very remarkable little volume. It used to be said that women
were too poetical by nature to make great poets, too receptive to be
really creative, too well satisfied with mere feeling to search after the
marble splendour of form. But we must not judge of woman's poetic power
by her achievements in days when education was denied to her, for where
there is no faculty of expression no art is possible. Mrs. Browning, the
first great English poetess, was also an admirable scholar, though she
may not have put the accents on her Greek, and even in those poems that
seem most remote from classical life, such as Aurora Leigh, for instance,
it is not difficult to trace the fine literary influence of a classical
training. Since Mrs. Browning's time, education has become, not the
privilege of a few women, but the inalienable inheritance of all; and, as
a natural consequence of the increased faculty of expression thereby
gained, the women poets of our day hold a very high literary position.
Curiously enough, their poetry is, as a rule, more distinguished for
strength than for beauty; they seem to love to grapple with the big
intellectual problems of modern life; science, philosophy and metaphysics
form a large portion of their ordinary subject-matter; they leave the
triviality of triolets to men, and try to read the writing on the wall,
and to solve the last secret of the Sphinx. Hence Robert Browning, not
Keats, is their idol; Sordello moves them more than the Ode on a Grecian
Urn; and all Lord Tennyson's magic and music seems to them as nothing
compared with the psychological subtleties of The Ring and the Book, or
the pregnant questions stirred in the dialogue between Blougram and
Gigadibs. Indeed I remember hearing a charming young Girtonian,
forgetting for a moment the exquisite lyrics in Pippa Passes, and the
superb blank verse of Men and Women, state quite seriously that the
reason she admired the author of Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country was that he
had headed a reaction against beauty in poetry!
Miss Chapman is probably one of Mr. Browning's disciples. She does not
imitate him, but it is easy to discern his influence on her verse, and
she has caught something of his fine, strange faith. Take, for instance,
her poem, A Strong-minded Woman:
See her? Oh, yes!--Come this way--hush! this way,
Here she is lying,
Sweet--with the smile her face wore yesterday,
As she lay dying.
Calm, the mind-fever gone, and, praise God! gone
All the heart-hunger;
Looking the merest girl at forty-one--
You guessed her younger?
Well, she'd the flower-bloom that children have,
Was lithe and pliant,
With eyes as innocent blue as they were brave,
Resolved, defiant.
Yourself--you worship art! Well, at that shrine
She too bowed lowly,
Drank thirstily of beauty, as of wine,
Proclaimed it holy.
But could you follow her when, in a breath,
She knelt to science,
Vowing to truth true service to the death,
And heart-reliance?
Nay,--then for you she underwent eclipse,
Appeared as alien
As once, before he prayed, those ivory lips
Seemed to Pygmalion.
* * * * *
Hear from your heaven, my dear, my lost delight,
You who were woman
To your heart's heart, and not more pure, more white,
Than warmly human.
How shall I answer? How express, reveal
Your true life-story?
How utter, if they cannot guess--not feel
Your crowning glory?
This way. Attend my words. The rich, we know,
Do into heaven
Enter but hardly; to the poor, the low,
God's kingdom's given.
Well, there's another heaven--a heaven on earth--
(That's love's fruition)
Whereto a certain lack--a certain dearth--
Gains best admission.
Here, too, she was too rich--ah, God! if less
Love had been lent her!--
Into the realm of human happiness
These look--not enter.
Well, here we have, if not quite an echo, at least a reminiscence of the
metre of The Grammarian's Funeral; and the peculiar blending together of
lyrical and dramatic forms, seems essentially characteristic of Mr.
Browning's method. Yet there is a distinct personal note running all
through the poem, and true originality is to be found rather in the use
made of a model than in the rejection of all models and masters. Dans
l'art comme dans la nature on est toujours fils de quelqu'un, and we
should not quarrel with the reed if it whispers to us the music of the
lyre. A little child once asked me if it was the nightingale who taught
the linnets how to sing.
Miss Chapman's other poems contain a great deal that is interesting. The
most ambitious is The New Purgatory, to which the book owes its title. It
is a vision of a strange garden in which, cleansed and purified of all
stain and shame, walk Judas of Cherioth, Nero the Lord of Rome, Ysabel
the wife of Ahab, and others, around whose names cling terrible memories
of horror, or awful splendours of sin. The conception is fine, but the
treatment is hardly adequate. There are, however, some good strong lines
in it, and, indeed, almost all of Miss Chapman's poems are worth reading,
if not for their absolute beauty, at least for their intellectual
intention.
* * * * *
Nothing is more interesting than to watch the change and development of
the art of novel-writing in this nineteenth century--'this so-called
nineteenth century,' as an impassioned young orator once termed it, after
a contemptuous diatribe against the evils of modern civilisation. In
France they have had one great genius, Balzac, who invented the modern
method of looking at life; and one great artist, Flaubert, who is the
impeccable master of style; and to the influence of these two men we may
trace almost all contemporary French fiction. But in England we have had
no schools worth speaking of. The fiery torch lit by the Brontes has not
been passed on to other hands; Dickens has influenced only journalism;
Thackeray's delightful superficial philosophy, superb narrative power,
and clever social satire have found no echoes; nor has Trollope left any
direct successors behind him--a fact which is not much to be regretted,
however, as, admirable though Trollope undoubtedly is for rainy
afternoons and tedious railway journeys, from the point of view of
literature he is merely the perpetual curate of Pudlington Parva. As for
George Meredith, who could hope to reproduce him? His style is chaos
illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered
everything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except
tell a story; as an artist he is everything, except articulate. Too
strange to be popular, too individual to have imitators, the author of
Richard Feverel stands absolutely alone. It is easy to disarm criticism,
but he has disarmed the disciple. He gives us his philosophy through the
medium of wit, and is never so pathetic as when he is humorous. To turn
truth into a paradox is not difficult, but George Meredith makes all his
paradoxes truths, and no Theseus can thread his labyrinth, no OEdipus
solve his secret.
However, it is only fair to acknowledge that there are some signs of a
school springing up amongst us. This school is not native, nor does it
seek to reproduce any English master. It may be described as the result
of the realism of Paris filtered through the refining influence of
Boston. Analysis, not action, is its aim; it has more psychology than
passion, and it plays very cleverly upon one string, and this is the
commonplace.
* * * * *
As a reaction against this school, it is pleasant to come across a novel
like Lady Augusta Noel's Hithersea Mere. If this story has any definite
defect, it comes from its delicacy and lightness of treatment. An
industrious Bostonian would have made half a dozen novels out of it, and
have had enough left for a serial. Lady Augusta Noel is content to
vivify her characters, and does not care about vivisection; she suggests
rather than explains; and she does not seek to make life too obviously
rational. Romance, picturesqueness, charm--these are the qualities of
her book. As for its plot, it has so many plots that it is difficult to
describe them. We have the story of Rhona Somerville, the daughter of a
great popular preacher, who tries to write her father's life, and, on
looking over his papers and early diaries, finds struggle where she
expected calm, and doubt where she looked for faith, and is afraid to
keep back the truth, and yet dares not publish it. Rhona is quite
charming; she is like a little flower that takes itself very seriously,
and she shows us how thoroughly nice and natural a narrow-minded girl may
be. Then we have the two brothers, John and Adrian Mowbray. John is the
hard-working, vigorous clergyman, who is impatient of all theories,
brings his faith to the test of action, not of intellect, lives what he
believes, and has no sympathy for those who waver or question--a
thoroughly admirable, practical, and extremely irritating man. Adrian is
the fascinating dilettante, the philosophic doubter, a sort of romantic
rationalist with a taste for art. Of course, Rhona marries the brother
who needs conversion, and their gradual influence on each other is
indicated by a few subtle touches. Then we have the curious story of
Olga, Adrian Mowbray's first love. She is a wonderful and mystical girl,
like a little maiden out of the Sagas, with the blue eyes and fair hair
of the North. An old Norwegian nurse is always at her side, a sort of
Lapland witch who teaches her how to see visions and to interpret dreams.
Adrian mocks at this superstition, as he calls it, but as a consequence
of disregarding it, Olga's only brother is drowned skating, and she never
speaks to Adrian again. The whole story is told in the most suggestive
way, the mere delicacy of the touch making what is strange seem real. The
most delightful character in the whole book, however, is a girl called
Hilary Marston, and hers also is the most tragic tale of all. Hilary is
like a little woodland faun, half Greek and half gipsy; she knows the
note of every bird, and the haunt of every animal; she is terribly out of
place in a drawing-room, but is on intimate terms with every young
poacher in the district; squirrels come and sit on her shoulder, which is
pretty, and she carries ferrets in her pockets, which is dreadful; she
never reads a book, and has not got a single accomplishment, but she is
fascinating and fearless, and wiser, in her own way, than any pedant or
bookworm. This poor little English Dryad falls passionately in love with
a great blind helpless hero, who regards her as a sort of pleasant tom-
boy; and her death is most touching and pathetic. Lady Augusta Noel has
a charming and winning style, her descriptions of Nature are quite
admirable, and her book is one of the most pleasantly-written novels that
has appeared this winter.
Miss Alice Corkran's Margery Merton's Girlhood has the same lightness of
touch and grace of treatment. Though ostensibly meant for young people,
it is a story that all can read with pleasure, for it is true without
being harsh, and beautiful without being affected, and its rejection of
the stronger and more violent passions of life is artistic rather than
ascetic. In a word, it is a little piece of true literature, as dainty
as it is delicate, and as sweet as it is simple. Margery Merton is
brought up in Paris by an old maiden aunt, who has an elaborate theory of
education, and strict ideas about discipline. Her system is an excellent
one, being founded on the science of Darwin and the wisdom of Solomon,
but it comes to terrible grief when put into practice; and finally she
has to procure a governess, Madame Reville, the widow of a great and
unappreciated French painter. From her Margery gets her first feeling
for art, and the chief interest of the book centres round a competition
for an art scholarship, into which Margery and the other girls of the
convent school enter. Margery selects Joan of Arc as her subject; and,
rather to the horror of the good nuns, who think that the saint should
have her golden aureole, and be as gorgeous and as ecclesiastical as
bright paints and bad drawing can make her, the picture represents a
common peasant girl, standing in an old orchard, and listening in
ignorant terror to the strange voices whispering in her ear. The scene
in which she shows her sketch for the first time to the art master and
the Mother Superior is very cleverly rendered indeed, and shows
considerable dramatic power.
Of course, a good deal of opposition takes place, but ultimately Margery
has her own way and, in spite of a wicked plot set on foot by a jealous
competitor, who persuades the Mother Superior that the picture is not
Margery's own work, she succeeds in winning the prize. The whole account
of the gradual development of the conception in the girl's mind, and the
various attempts she makes to give her dream its perfect form, is
extremely interesting and, indeed, the book deserves a place among what
Sir George Trevelyan has happily termed 'the art-literature' of our day.
Mr. Ruskin in prose, and Mr. Browning in poetry, were the first who drew
for us the workings of the artist soul, the first who led us from the
painting or statue to the hand that fashioned it, and the brain that gave
it life. They seem to have made art more expressive for us, to have
shown us a passionate humanity lying behind line and colour. Theirs was
the seed of this new literature, and theirs, too, is its flower; but it
is pleasant to note their influence on Miss Corkran's little story, in
which the creation of a picture forms the dominant motif.
* * * * *
Mrs. Pfeiffer's Women and Work is a collection of most interesting essays
on the relation to health and physical development of the higher
education of girls, and the intellectual or more systematised effort of
woman. Mrs. Pfeiffer, who writes a most admirable prose style, deals in
succession with the sentimental difficulty, with the economic problem,
and with the arguments of physiologists. She boldly grapples with
Professor Romanes, whose recent article in the Nineteenth Century, on the
leading characters which mentally differentiate men and women, attracted
so much attention, and produces some very valuable statistics from
America, where the influence of education on health has been most
carefully studied. Her book is a most important contribution to the
discussion of one of the great social problems of our day. The extended
activity of women is now an accomplished fact; its results are on their
trial; and Mrs. Pfeiffer's excellent essays sum up the situation very
completely, and show the rational and scientific basis of the movement
more clearly and more logically than any other treatise I have as yet
seen.
* * * * *
It is interesting to note that many of the most advanced modern ideas on
the subject of the education of women are anticipated by Defoe in his
wonderful Essay upon Projects, where he proposes that a college for women
should be erected in every county in England, and ten colleges of the
kind in London. 'I have often thought of it, 'he says,' as one of the
most barbarous customs in the world that we deny the advantages of
learning to women. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew,
or make baubles. They are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write
their names or so, and that is the height of a woman's education. And I
would but ask any who slight the sex for their understanding, "What is a
man (a gentleman I mean) good for that is taught no more?" What has the
woman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught? Shall we upbraid
women with folly when it is only the error of this inhuman custom that
hindered them being made wiser?' Defoe then proceeds to elaborate his
scheme for the foundation of women's colleges, and enters into minute
details about the architecture, the general curriculum, and the
discipline. His suggestion that the penalty of death should be inflicted
on any man who ventured to make a proposal of marriage to any of the girl
students during term time possibly suggested the plot of Lord Tennyson's
Princess, so its harshness may be excused, and in all other respects his
ideas are admirable. I am glad to see that this curious little volume
forms one of the National Library series. In its anticipations of many
of our most modern inventions it shows how thoroughly practical all
dreamers are.
* * * * *
I am sorry to see that Mrs. Fawcett deprecates the engagement of ladies
of education as dressmakers and milliners, and speaks of it as being
detrimental to those who have fewer educational advantages. I myself
would like to see dressmaking regarded not merely as a learned
profession, but as a fine art. To construct a costume that will be at
once rational and beautiful requires an accurate knowledge of the
principles of proportion, a thorough acquaintance with the laws of
health, a subtle sense of colour, and a quick appreciation of the proper
use of materials, and the proper qualities of pattern and design. The
health of a nation depends very largely on its mode of dress; the
artistic feeling of a nation should find expression in its costume quite
as much as in its architecture; and just as the upholstering tradesman
has had to give place to the decorative artist, so the ordinary milliner,
with her lack of taste and lack of knowledge, her foolish fashions and
her feeble inventions, will have to make way for the scientific and
artistic dress designer. Indeed, so far from it being wise to discourage
women of education from taking up the profession of dressmakers, it is
exactly women of education who are needed, and I am glad to see in the
new technical college for women at Bedford, millinery and dressmaking are
to be taught as part of the ordinary curriculum. There has also been
started in London a Society of Lady Dressmakers for the purpose of
teaching educated girls and women, and the Scientific Dress Association
is, I hear, doing very good work in the same direction.
* * * * *
I have received some very beautiful specimens of Christmas books from
Messrs. Griffith and Farran. Treasures of Art and Song, edited by Robert
Ellice Mack, is a real edition de luxe of pretty poems and pretty
pictures; and Through the Year is a wonderfully artistic calendar.
Messrs. Hildesheimer and Faulkner have also sent me Rhymes and Roses,
illustrated by Ernest Wilson and St. Clair Simmons; Cape Town Dicky, a
child's book, with some very lovely pictures by Miss Alice Havers; a
wonderful edition of The Deserted Village, illustrated by Mr. Charles
Gregory and Mr. Hines; and some really charming Christmas cards, those by
Miss Alice Havers, Miss Edwards, and Miss Dealy being especially good.
* * * * *
The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets once
remarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that no
one can live for three days without poetry. This, however, can hardly be
said to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiously
uncommon quality which is called common-sense. I fancy that most people,
if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like their
culture to repose on a basis of good cookery, and as there is something
to be said for this attitude, I am glad to see that several ladies are
interesting themselves in cookery classes. Mrs. Marshall's brilliant
lectures are, of course, well known, and besides her there is Madame
Lebour-Fawssett, who holds weekly classes in Kensington. Madame Fawssett
is the author of an admirable little book, entitled Economical French
Cookery for Ladies, and I am glad to hear that her lectures are so
successful. I was talking the other day to a lady who works a great deal
at the East End of London, and she told me that no small part of the
permanent misery of the poor is due to their entire ignorance of the
cleanliness and economy necessary for good cooking.
* * * * *
The Popular Ballad Concert Society has been reorganised under the name of
the Popular Musical Union. Its object will be to train the working
classes thoroughly in the enjoyment and performance of music, and to
provide the inhabitants of the crowded districts of the East End with
concerts and oratorios, to be performed as far as possible by trained
members of the working classes; and, though money is urgently required,
it is proposed to make the Society to a certain degree self-supporting by
giving something in the form of high-class concerts in return for
subscriptions and donations. The whole scheme is an excellent one, and I
hope that the readers of the Woman's World will give it their valuable
support. Mrs. Ernest Hart was the secretary, and the treasurer is the
Rev. S. Barnett.
(1) Etudes et Souvenirs. By Madame Ristori. (Paul Ollendorff.)
(2) The New Purgatory and Other Poems. By Elizabeth Rachel Chapman.
(Fisher Unwin.)
(3) Hithersea Mere. By Lady Augusta Noel, Author of Wandering Willie,
From Generation to Generation, etc. (Macmillan and Co.)
(4) Margery Merton's Girlhood. By Alice Corkran. (Blackie and Son.)
(5) Women and Work. By Emily Pfeiffer. (Trubner and Co.)
(6) Treasures of Art and Song. Edited by Robert Ellice Mack. (Griffith
and Farren.)
(7) Rhymes and Roses. Illustrated by Ernest Wilson and St. Clair Simons.
Cape Town Dicky. Illustrated by Alice Havers. The Deserted Pillage.
Illustrated by Charles Gregory and John Hines. (Hildesheimer and
Faulkner.)
THE POETS' CORNER--IV
(Pall Mall Gazette, January 20, 1888.)
A cynical critic once remarked that no great poet is intelligible and no
little poet worth understanding, but that otherwise poetry is an
admirable thing. This, however, seems to us a somewhat harsh view of the
subject. Little poets are an extremely interesting study. The best of
them have often some new beauty to show us, and though the worst of them
may bore yet they rarely brutalise. Poor Folks' Lives, for instance, by
the Rev. Frederick Langbridge, is a volume that could do no possible harm
to any one. These poems display a healthy, rollicking, G. R. Sims tone
of feeling, an almost unbounded regard for the converted drunkard, and a
strong sympathy with the sufferings of the poor. As for their theology,
it is of that honest, downright and popular kind, which in these
rationalistic days is probably quite as useful as any other form of
theological thought. Here is the opening of a poem called A Street
Sermon, which is an interesting example of what muscular Christianity can
do in the sphere of verse-making:
What, God fight shy of the city?
He's t' other side up I guess;
If you ever want to find Him,
Whitechapel's the right address.
Those who prefer pseudo-poetical prose to really prosaic poetry will wish
that Mr. Dalziel had converted most of his Pictures in the Fire into
leaders for the Daily Telegraph, as, from the literary point of view,
they have all the qualities dear to the Asiatic school. What a splendid
leader the young lions of Fleet Street would have made out of The
Prestige of England, for instance, a poem suggested by the opening of the
Zulu war in 1879.
Now away sail our ships far away o'er the sea,
Far away with our gallant and brave;
The loud war-cry is sounding like wild revelrie,
And our heroes dash on to their grave;
For the fierce Zulu tribes have arisen in their might,
And in thousands swept down on our few;
But these braves only yielded when crushed in the fight,
Man to man to their colours were true.
The conception of the war-cry sounding 'like wild revelrie' is quite in
the true Asiatic spirit, and indeed the whole poem is full of the daring
English of a special correspondent. Personally, we prefer Mr. Dalziel
when he is not quite so military. The Fairies, for instance, is a very
pretty poem, and reminds us of some of Dicky Doyle's charming drawings,
and Nat Bentley is a capital ballad in its way. The Irish poems,
however, are rather vulgar and should be expunged. The Celtic element in
literature is extremely valuable, but there is absolutely no excuse for
shrieking 'Shillelagh!' and 'O Gorrah!'