inimitable humour--the quick give-and-take of her conversations being
always in harmony with her characters. But, indeed, unsatisfactory as a
novel though "Daniel Deronda" is, it is full of beauties of all kinds,
from verbal wit to the grandly colossal sublimity of Mordecai, and
Deronda's outburst of passionate desire to weld the scattered Jews into
one nation of which he should be the heart and brain.
* * * * *
Whatever George Eliot did bears this impress of massive sincerity--of
deep and earnest feeling--of lofty purpose and noble teaching. She was
not a fine artist, and she spoilt her later work by pedantry and
overlay, but she stands out as the finest woman writer we have had or
probably shall have--stands a head and shoulders above the best of the
rest. She touched the darker parts of life and passion, but she touched
them with clean hands and a pure mind, and with that spirit of
philosophic truth which can touch pitch and not be defiled. Yet prolific
as she was, and the creator of more than one living character, she was
not a flexible writer and her range was limited. She repeated situations
and motives with a curious narrowness of scope, and in almost all her
heroines, save Dinah and Dorothea, who are evoluted from the beginning,
paints the gradual evolution of a soul by the ennobling influence of a
higher mind and a religious love.
We come now to a curious little crop of errors. Though so profound a
scholar--being indeed too learned for perfect artistry--she makes
strange mistakes for a master of the language such as she was. She
spells "insistence" with an "a," and she gives a superfluous "c" to
"Machiavelli." She sometimes permits herself to slip into the literary
misdemeanour of no nominative to her sentence, and into the graver sin
of making a singular verb govern the plural noun of a series. She says
"frightened at" and "under circumstances"; "by the sly" and "down upon";
and she follows "neither" with "or," as also "never" and "not." She is
"averse to"; she has even been known to split her infinitive, and to say
"and which" without remorse. Once she condescends to the iniquity of
"proceeding to take," than which "commencing" is only one stage lower in
literary vulgarity; and many of her sentences are as clumsy as a clown's
dancing-steps. As no one can accuse her of either ignorance or
indifference, still less of haste and slap-dash, these small flaws in
the great jewel of her genius are instructive instances of the clinging
effect of our carelessness in daily speech; so that grammatical
inaccuracy becomes as a second nature to us, and has to be unlearned by
all who write.
Nevertheless, with all her faults fully acknowledged and honestly shown,
we ever return as to an inexhaustible fountain, to her greatness of
thought, her supreme power, her nobility of aim, her matchless humour,
her magnificent drawing, her wise philosophy, her accurate learning--as
profound as it was accurate. Though we do not bracket her with Plato and
Kant, as did one of her panegyrists, nor hold her equal to Fielding for
naturalness, nor to Scott for picturesqueness, nor as able as was
Thackeray to project herself into the conditions of thought and society
of times other than her own, we do hold her as the sceptred queen of our
English Victorian authoresses--superior even to Charlotte Bronte, to
Mrs. Gaskell, to Harriet Martineau--formidable rivals as these are to
all others, living or dead.
If she had not crossed that Rubicon, or, having crossed it, had been
content with more complete insurgency than she was, she would have been
a happier woman and a yet more finished novelist. As things were, her
life and principles were at cross-corners; and when her literary success
had roused up her social ambition, and fame had lifted her far above the
place where her birth had set her, she realised the mistake she had
made. Then the sense of inharmoniousness between what she was and what
she would have been did, to some degree, react on her work, to the
extent at least of killing in it all passion and spontaneity. Her whole
life and being were moulded to an artificial pose, and the "made" woman
could not possibly be the spontaneous artist. Her yet more fatal blunder
of marrying an obscure individual many years younger than herself, and
so destroying the poetry of her first union by destroying its sense of
continuity and constancy, would have still more disastrously reacted on
her work had she lived. She died in time, for anything below
"Theophrastus Such" would have seriously endangered her fame and
lessened her greatness--culminating as this did in "Middlemarch," the
best and grandest of her novels, from the zenith of which "Daniel
Deronda," her last, is a sensible decline.
[Signature: E. Lynn Linton.]
MRS. GASKELL
_By_ EDNA LYALL
MRS. GASKELL
Of all the novelists of Queen Victoria's reign there is not one to whom
the present writer turns with such a sense of love and gratitude as to
Mrs. Gaskell. This feeling is undoubtedly shared by thousands of men and
women, for about all the novels there is that wonderful sense of
sympathy, that broad human interest which appeals to readers of every
description. The hard-worked little girl in the schoolroom can forget
the sorrows of arithmetic or the vexations of French verbs as she pores
over "Wives and Daughters" on a Saturday half-holiday, and, as George
Sand remarked to Lord Houghton, this same book, "Wives and Daughters,"
"would rivet the attention of the most _blase_ man of the world."
With the exception of her powerful "Life of Charlotte Bronte," Mrs.
Gaskell wrote only novels or short stories. The enormous difficulties
which attended the writing of a biography of the author of "Jane Eyre"
would, we venture to think, have baffled any other writer of that time.
It is easy now, years after Charlotte Bronte's death, to criticise the
wisdom of this or that page, to hunt up slight mistakes, to maintain
that in some details Mrs. Gaskell was wrong. To be wise too late is an
easy and, to some apparently, a most grateful task; but it would,
nevertheless, be hard to find a biography of more fascinating interest,
or one which more successfully grappled with the great difficulty of the
undertaking.
As Mr. Clement Shorter remarks, the "Life of Charlotte Bronte" "ranks
with Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' and Lockhart's 'Life of Scott.'" It is
pleasant, too, to read Charlotte Bronte's own words in a letter to Mr.
Williams, where she mentions her first letter from her future friend and
biographer:
"The letter you forwarded this morning was from Mrs. Gaskell, authoress
of 'Mary Barton.' She said I was not to answer it, but I cannot help
doing so. The note brought the tears to my eyes. She is a good, she is a
great woman. Proud am I that I can touch a chord of sympathy in souls so
noble. In Mrs. Gaskell's nature it mournfully pleases me to fancy a
remote affinity to my sister Emily. In Miss Martineau's mind I have
always felt the same, though there are wide differences. Both these
ladies are above me--certainly far my superiors in attainments and
experience. I think I could look up to them if I knew them."
For lovers of the author of "Mary Barton" it is hard, however, not to
feel a grudge against the "Life of Charlotte Bronte"--or, rather, the
reception accorded to it. Owing to the violent attacks to which it gave
rise, to a threatened action for libel on the part of some of those
mentioned in the book, and to the manifold annoyances to which the
publication of the Biography subjected the writer, Mrs. Gaskell
determined that no record of her own life should be written.
It is pleasant to find that there were gleams of light mixed with the
many vexations. Charles Kingsley writes to Mrs. Gaskell in warm
appreciation of the "Life":
"Be sure," he says, "that the book will do good. It will shame literary
people into some stronger belief that a simple, virtuous, practical
home-life is consistent with high imaginative genius; and it will shame,
too, the prudery of a not over-cleanly, though carefully whitewashed,
age, into believing that purity is now (as in all ages till now) quite
compatible with the knowledge of evil. I confess that the book has made
me ashamed of myself. 'Jane Eyre' I hardly looked into, very seldom
reading a work of fiction--yours, indeed, and Thackeray's are the only
ones I care to open. 'Shirley' disgusted me at the opening, and I gave
up the writer and her books with the notion that she was a person who
liked coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I
never put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my
misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me. Well have you done
your work, and given us a picture of a valiant woman made perfect by
sufferings. I shall now read carefully and lovingly every word she has
written."
Mrs. Gaskell's wish regarding her own biography has, of course, been
respected by her family; but the world is the poorer, and it is
impossible not to regret that the life of so dearly loved a writer must
never be attempted.
The books reveal a mind as delicately pure as a child's, wedded to that
true mother's heart which is wide enough to take in all the needy.
Looking, moreover, at that goodly row of novels--whether in the dear old
shabby volumes that have been read and re-read for years, or in that
dainty little set recently published in a case, which the rising
generation can enjoy--one cannot help reflecting that here is "A Little
Child's Monument," surely the most beautiful memorial of a great love
and a great grief that could be imagined. It was not until the death of
her little child--the only son of the family--that Mrs. Gaskell,
completely broken down by grief, began, at her husband's suggestion, to
write. And thus a great sorrow brought forth a rich and wonderful
harvest, as grief borne with strength and courage always may do; and the
world has good reason to remember that little ten months' child whose
short life brought about such great results.
A question naturally suggests itself at this point as to Mrs. Gaskell's
birth and education. How far had she inherited her literary gifts? And
in what way had her mind been influenced by the surroundings of her
childhood and girlhood? Her mother, Mrs. Stevenson, was a Miss Holland,
of Sandlebridge, in Cheshire; her father--William Stevenson--was at
first classical tutor in the Manchester Academy, and later on, during
his residence in Edinburgh, was editor of the _Scots Magazine_ and a
frequent contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_. He was next appointed
Keeper of the Records to the Treasury, an appointment which caused his
removal from Edinburgh to Chelsea; and it was there, in Cheyne Row, that
Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson, the future novelist, was born.
Owing to the death of her mother, she was adopted when only a month old
by her aunt, Mrs. Lumb, and taken to Knutsford, in Cheshire, the little
town so wonderfully described in "Cranford." For two years in her
girlhood she was educated at Stratford-on-Avon, walking in the flowery
meadows where Shakspere once walked, worshipping in the stately old
church where he worshipped, and where he willed that his body should be
left at rest; nor is it possible to help imagining that the associations
of that ideal place had an influence on the mind of the future writer,
doing something to give that essentially English tone which
characterises all her books.
After her father's second marriage she went to live with him, and her
education was superintended by him until his death in 1829, when she
once more returned to Knutsford. Here, at the age of twenty-two, she was
married to the Rev. William Gaskell, M.A., of Cross Street Chapel,
Manchester; and Manchester remained her home ever after.
Such are the brief outlines of a life story which was to have such a
wide and lasting influence for good. For nothing is more striking than
this when we think over the well-known novels--they are not only
consummate works of art, full of literary charm, perfect in style and
rich with the most delightful humour and pathos--they are books from
which that morbid lingering over the loathsome details of vice, those
sensuous descriptions of sin too rife in the novels of the present day,
are altogether excluded.
Not that the stories are namby-pamby, or unreal in any sense; they are
wholly free from the horrid prudery, the Pharisaical temper, which makes
a merit of walking through life in blinkers and refuses to know of
anything that can shock the respectable. Mrs. Gaskell was too genuine an
artist to fall either into this error or into the error of bad taste and
want of reserve. She drew life with utter reverence; she held the
highest of all ideals, and she dared to be true.
How tender and womanly and noble, for instance, is her treatment of the
difficult subject which forms the _motif_ of "Ruth"! How sorrowfully
true to life is the story of the dressmaker's apprentice with no place
in which to spend her Sunday afternoons! We seem ourselves to breathe
the dreadful "stuffy" atmosphere of the workroom, to feel the dreary
monotony of the long day's work. It is so natural that the girl's fancy
should be caught by Henry Bellingham, who was courteous to her when she
mended the torn dress of his partner at the ball; so inevitable that she
should lose her heart to him when she witnessed his gallant rescue of
the drowning child. But her fall was not inevitable, and one of the
finest bits in the whole novel is the description of Ruth's hesitation
in the inn parlour when, finding herself most cruelly and unjustly cast
off by her employer, she has just accepted her lover's suggestion that
she shall go with him to London, little guessing what the promise
involved, yet intuitively feeling that her consent had been unwise.
"Ruth became as hot as she had previously been cold, and went and opened
the window, and leant out into the still, sweet evening air. The bush of
sweetbriar underneath the window scented the place, and the delicious
fragrance reminded her of her old home. I think scents affect and
quicken the memory even more than either sights or sounds; for Ruth had
instantly before her eyes the little garden beneath the window of her
mother's room, with the old man leaning on his stick watching her, just
as he had done not three hours before on that very afternoon." She
remembers the faithful love of the old labouring man and his wife who
had served her parents in their lifetime, and for their sake would help
and advise her now. Would it not be better to go to them?
"She put on her bonnet and opened the parlour door; but then she saw the
square figure of the landlord standing at the open house door, smoking
his evening pipe, and looming large and distinct against the dark air
and landscape beyond. Ruth remembered the cup of tea that she had drunk;
it must be paid for, and she had no money with her. She feared that he
would not let her leave the house without paying. She thought that she
would leave a note for Mr. Bellingham saying where she was gone, and how
she had left the house in debt, for (like a child) all dilemmas appeared
of equal magnitude to her; and the difficulty of passing the landlord
while he stood there, and of giving him an explanation of the
circumstances, appeared insuperable, and as awkward and fraught with
inconvenience as far more serious situations. She kept peeping out of
her room after she had written her little pencil note, to see if the
outer door was still obstructed. There he stood motionless, enjoying his
pipe, and looking out into the darkness which gathered thick with the
coming night. The fumes of the tobacco were carried into the house and
brought back Ruth's sick headache. Her energy left her; she became
stupid and languid, and incapable of spirited exertion; she modified her
plan of action to the determination of asking Mr. Bellingham to take her
to Milham Grange, to the care of her humble friends, instead of to
London. And she thought in her simplicity that he would instantly
consent when he had heard her reasons."
The selfishness of the man who took advantage of her weakness and
ignorance is finely drawn because it is not at all exaggerated. Henry
Bellingham is no monster of wickedness, but a man with many fine
qualities spoilt by an over-indulgent and unprincipled mother, and
yielding too easily to her worldly-wise arguments.
Ruth first sees a faint trace of his selfishness--she calls it
"unfairness"--when, on their arrival in Wales, he persuades the landlady
to give them rooms in the hotel and to turn out on a false pretext some
other guests into the _dependance_ across the road. She understands his
selfish littleness of soul only too well when, years after, she talks to
him during that wonderfully described interview in the chapter called
"The Meeting on the Sands." He cannot in the least understand her. "The
deep sense of penitence she expressed he took for earthly shame, which
he imagined he could soon soothe away." He actually has the audacity to
tempt her a second time; then, after her indignant refusal, he offers
her marriage. To his great amazement she refuses this too. "Why, what on
earth makes you say that?" asked he....
"I do not love you. I did once. Don't say I did not love you then; but I
do not now. I could never love you again. All you have said and done
since you came to Abermouth has only made me wonder how I ever could
have loved you. We are very far apart; the time that has pressed down my
life like brands of hot iron, and scarred me for ever, has been nothing
to you. You have talked of it with no sound of moaning in your voice,
no shadow over the brightness of your face; it has left no sense of sin
on your conscience, while me it haunts and haunts; and yet I might plead
that I was an ignorant child; only I will not plead anything, for God
knows all. But this is only one piece of our great difference."
"You mean that I am no saint," he said, impatient at her speech.
"Granted. But people who are no saints have made very good husbands
before now. Come, don't let any morbid, overstrained conscientiousness
interfere with substantial happiness--happiness both to you and to
me--for I am sure I can make you happy--ay! and make you love me too, in
spite of your pretty defiance.... And here are advantages for Leonard,
to be gained by you quite in a holy and legitimate way."
She stood very erect.
"If there was one thing needed to confirm me, you have named it. You
shall have nothing to do with my boy by my consent, much less by my
agency. I would rather see him working on the roadside than leading such
a life--being such a one as you are.... If at last I have spoken out too
harshly and too much in a spirit of judgment, the fault is yours. If
there were no other reason to prevent our marriage but the one fact that
it would bring Leonard into contact with you, that would be enough."
Later on, a fever visits the town, and Ruth becomes a nurse. When she
hears that the father of her child is ill and untended she volunteers to
nurse him, and, being already worn out with work, she dies in
consequence. The man's smallness of mind, his contemptible selfishness,
are finely indicated in the scene where he goes to look at Ruth as she
lies dead.
He was "disturbed" by the distress of the old servant Sally, and saying,
"Come, my good woman! we must all die," _tries to console her with a
sovereign_!!
The old servant turns upon him indignantly, then "bent down and kissed
the lips from whose marble, unyielding touch he recoiled even in
thought." At that moment the old minister, who had sheltered Ruth in her
trouble, enters. Henry makes many offers to him as to providing for
Ruth's child, Leonard, and says, "I cannot tell you how I regret that
she should have died in consequence of her love to me." But from gentle
old Mr. Benson he receives only an icy refusal, and the stern words,
"Men may call such actions as yours youthful follies. There is another
name for them with God."
The sadness of the book is relieved by the delightful humour of Sally,
the servant. The account of the wooing of Jeremiah Dixon is a
masterpiece; and Sally's hesitation when, having found her proof against
the attractions of "a four-roomed house, furniture conformable, and
eighty pounds a year," her lover mentions the pig that will be ready for
killing by Christmas, is a delicious bit of comedy.
"Well, now! would you believe it? the pig were a temptation. I'd a
receipt for curing hams.... However, I resisted. Says I, very stern,
because I felt I'd been wavering, 'Master Dixon, once for all, pig or no
pig, I'll not marry you.'"
The description of the minister's home is very beautiful. Here are a few
lines which show in what its charm consisted:
"In the Bensons' house there was the same unconsciousness of individual
merit, the same absence of introspection and analysis of motive, as
there had been in her mother; but it seemed that their lives were pure
and good not merely from a lovely and beautiful nature, but from some
law the obedience to which was of itself harmonious peace, and which
governed them.... This household had many failings; they were but human,
and, with all their loving desire to bring their lives into harmony with
the will of God, they often erred and fell short. But somehow the very
errors and faults of one individual served to call out higher
excellences in another; and so they reacted upon each other, and the
result of short discords was exceeding harmony and peace."
The publication of "Ruth," with its brave, outspoken words, its fearless
demand for one standard of morality for men and women, subjected the
author to many attacks, as we may gather from the following warm-hearted
letter by Charles Kingsley:
"_July 25, 1853._
"I am sure that you will excuse my writing to you thus abruptly
when you read the cause of my writing. I am told, to my great
astonishment, that you had heard painful speeches on account of
'Ruth'; what was told me raised all my indignation and disgust....
Among all my large acquaintance I never heard, or have heard, but
one unanimous opinion of the beauty and righteousness of the book,
and that above all from really good women. If you could have heard
the things which I heard spoken of it this evening by a thorough
High Church, fine lady of the world, and by her daughter, too, as
pure and pious a soul as one need see, you would have no more
doubt than I have, that, whatsoever the 'snobs' and the bigots may
think, English people, in general, have but one opinion of 'Ruth,'
and that is, one of utter satisfaction. I doubt not you have had
this said to you already often. Believe me, you may have it said
to you as often as you will by the purest and most refined of
English women. May God bless you, and help you to write many more
such books as you have already written, is the fervent wish of
your very faithful servant,
"C. KINGSLEY."
"Mary Barton," which was the first of the novels, was published in 1848,
and this powerful and fascinating story at once set Mrs. Gaskell in the
first rank of English novelists. People differed as to the views set
forth in the book, but all were agreed as to its literary force and its
great merits. Like "Alton Locke," it has done much to break down class
barriers and make the rich try to understand the poor; and when we see
the great advance in this direction which has been made since the date
of its publication, we are able partly to realise how startling the
first appearance of such a book must have been. The secret of the
extraordinary power which the book exercises on its readers is,
probably, that the writer takes one into the very heart of the life she
is describing.