1833, both sisters were married--Lady Georgiana on July 13, to Alexander
Fullerton, heir to considerable estates in Gloucestershire and in
Ireland. He had been in the Guards, but had resigned his commission, and
become an _attache_ to the Embassy at Paris. There the young couple
continued, and there, at the end of the year, was born their only child,
a son, whose very delicate health was a constant anxiety.
In 1841 Lord Granville ceased to be ambassador, and the whole family led
a wandering life in the South of France, Italy, and Germany,
interspersed with visits in England. In 1843 Mr. Fullerton, after long
study of the controversy, was received into the Church of Rome. His wife
had always greatly delighted in the deep and beautiful rites of that
communion, in its best aspects, and many of her most intimate friends
were devout and enlightened members of that Church; but she had been
bred up as a faithful Anglican, and she made no change as long as her
father lived. The tale on which her chief fame rests was the product of
the heart-searchings that she underwent, at the very time when the
thoughts and studies of good men were tending to discover neglected
truths in the Church of England.
Lady Georgiana said, in her old age, that she had never written for her
own pleasure, or to find expression of feeling, but always with a view
to the gains for her charities. She would rather have written poetry,
and the first impulse was given by her publisher telling her that she
would find a novel far more profitable than verses. Yet it is hardly
possible to believe that when once embarked she did not write from her
heart. She was a long time at work on her tale, which was written during
sojourns at various continental resorts, and finally submitted to two
such different critics as Lord Brougham and Charles Greville, both of
whom were carried away by admiration of the wonderful pathos of the
narrative, and the charm of description, as well as the
character-drawing. It is, however, curious that, while marking some
lesser mistakes, neither advised her to avoid the difficulty which makes
the entire plot an impossibility, namely, the omission of an inquest,
which must have rendered the secrecy of "Ellen Middleton" out of the
question.
The story opens most effectively with the appearance of a worn and
wasted worshipper in Salisbury Cathedral. One of the canons becomes
interested, and with much difficulty induces her to confide her griefs
to him in an autobiography, which she had intended to be read only after
her death. The keynote of Ellen's misfortunes is a slight blow, given
in a moment of temper, at fifteen years old, to her cousin, a naughty
child of eight, causing a fatal fall into the river below. No one knows
the manner of the disaster, except two persons whose presence was
unknown to her: Henry Lovell, a relative of the family, and his old
nurse, whom he swears to silence.
This woman, however, cannot refrain from strewing mysterious hints in
Ellen's way, and Henry Lovell obtains a power over the poor girl which
is the bane of her life. His old nurse (by very unlikely means) drives
him into a marriage with her grand-daughter, Alice, whose lovely,
innocent, devotional character, is one of the great charms of the book.
Ellen, almost at the same time, marries her cousin, Edward Middleton,
whom she loves with all her heart; but he is a hard man, severe in his
integrity, and his distrust is awakened by Henry's real love for Ellen,
and the machinations by which he tries to protect her from the malice of
the old nurse. The net closes nearer and nearer round Ellen, till at
last Edward finds her on her knees before Henry, conjuring him to let
her confess her secret. Without giving her a hearing, Edward commands
her to quit his house. A letter from Henry, declaring that she is his
own, and that she will not escape him, drives her to seek concealment at
Salisbury, where she is dying of consumption, caused by her broken
heart, when the good canon finds her, gives her absolution, and brings
about repentance, reconciliation, and an infinite peace, in which we are
well content to let her pass away, tended by her husband, her
mother-like aunt, and the gentle Alice.
It is altogether a fine tragedy. The strong passions of Henry Lovell,
the enthusiastic nature of Ellen, beaten back in every higher flight by
recurring threats from her enemies, the unbending nature of Edward, and
in the midst the exquisite sweetness of Alice, like a dove in the midst
of the tempest, won all hearts, either by the masterly analysis of
passion or by the beauty of delineation, while the religious side of the
tale was warmly welcomed by those who did not think, like Lord Brougham,
that it was "rank Popery." The sense of the power and beauty of the
story is only enhanced by freshly reading it after the lapse of many
years.
Naturally, it was a great success, and the second book, "Grantley
Manor," which was not published till after her father's death and her
own secession to Rome, was floated up on the same tide of popularity. It
contrasted two half-sisters, Margaret and Ginevra, one wholly English,
the other half Italian by race and entirely so by breeding. Still,
though Ginevra is the more fascinating, Margaret is her superior in
straightforward truth. For, indeed, Lady Georgiana never fell into the
too frequent evil of depreciation and contempt of the system she had
quitted, and remained open-minded and loving to the last. The excellence
of style and knowledge of character as well as the tone of high breeding
which are felt in all these writings recommended both this and
"Ladybird," published in 1852. Both are far above the level of the
ordinary novel, and some readers preferred "Ladybird" to the two
predecessors.
* * * * *
In the meantime, an estate in England at Midgham had become a home, and
young Granville Fullerton had gone into the army. On the 29th of May
1855, he was cut off by a sudden illness, and his parents' life was ever
after a maimed one, though full of submission and devotion. Externally,
indeed, Lady Georgiana still showed her bright playfulness of manner,
and keen interest in all around her, so that the charm of her society
was very great, but her soul was the more entirely absorbed in religion
and in charity, doing the most menial offices for the sick poor and
throwing herself into the pleasures of little children. She questioned
with herself whether she ought to spend time in writing instead of on
her poor, when the former task meant earning two hundred pounds a year
for them, but she decided on uniting the two occupations, the more
readily because she found that her works had a good influence and helped
on a religious serial in which she took a warm interest.
But her _motifs_ were now taken from history, not actual life. "La
Comtesse de Boneval" is a really marvellous _tour de force_, being a
development from a few actual letters written by a poor young wife,
whose reluctant husband left her, after ten days, for foreign service,
and never returned. Lady Georgiana makes clear the child's hero-worship,
the brief gleam of gladness, the brave resolve not to interfere with
duty and honour, and the dreary deserted condition. All is written in
French, not only pure and grammatical, but giving in a wonderful manner
the epigrammatic life and freshness of the old Parisian society. This is
really the ablest, perhaps the most pathetic, of her books.
"Ann Sherwood" is a picture of the sufferings of the Romanists in
Elizabethan times, "A Stormy Life" is the narrative of a companion of
Margaret of Anjou--both showing too much of the author's bias. "Too
Strange not to be True" is founded on a very curious story, disinterred
by Lord Dover, purporting that the unhappy German wife of the
ferociously insane son of Peter the Great, at the point of death from
his brutality, was smuggled away by her servants, with the help of
Countess Konigsmark, the mother of Marshal Saxe, while a false funeral
took place. She was conveyed to the French Settlements in Louisiana, and
there, after hearing that the Czarowitz was dead, she married a French
gentleman, the Chevalier d'Auban. Here, in these days of one-volume
tales, the story might well have ended, but Lady Georgiana pursues the
history through the latter days of the princess, after she had returned
to Europe and had been bereaved of her husband and her daughter. She
lived at Brussels, and again met Marshal Saxe in her extreme old age.
The figures of the Chevalier, and the sweet daughter, Mina, are very
winning and graceful, and there are some most interesting descriptions
of the Jesuit missions to the Red Indians; but, as a whole, the book had
better have closed with the marriage with d'Auban.
* * * * *
There is little more to say of Lady Georgiana's life. It was always
affectionate, cheerful and unselfish, and it became increasingly devout
as she grew older. After a long illness, she died at Bournemouth, on the
19th of January 1885, remembered fondly by many, and honoured by all who
knew her saintly life. As to literary fame, she may be described as
having written one first-rate book and a number fairly above the
average.
MRS. STRETTON
About the same time as "Ellen Middleton" appeared, a novel was making
its way rather by force of affectionate family portraiture than by plot
or incident. "The Valley of a Hundred Fires" is really and truly Mrs.
Stretton's picture of her father and mother, and her home; and her
mother is altogether her heroine, while old family habits and anecdotes
are given with only a few alterations. "The Valley of the Hundred Fires"
has been placed by her on the borders of Wales, but it really was
Gateshead, in Durham, quite as black and quite as grimy as the more
southern region, inasmuch as no flowers would grow in the Rectory garden
which, nevertheless, the children loved so heartily as to call it dear
old Dingy. (It is Cinder Tip in the story.) Literally, they lived so as
to show that
"Love's a flower that will not die
For lack of leafy screen;
And Christian hope may cheer the eye
That ne'er saw vernal green;"
and that--at least, in the early days of this century--an abnormally
large family was no misfortune to themselves or their parents.
The real name was Collinson, and the deep goodness and beneficence of
the father, the Reverend John Collinson, and the undaunted cheerfulness,
motherliness, and discipline of Emily, his wife, shine throughout, not
at all idealised. The number of their children was fifteen, ten
daughters and five sons; and the second daughter, Julia Cecilia, was, as
she describes herself, a tall, lank, yellow baby who was born on the
25th of November 1812. She became as the eldest daughter to the others,
for there had always been a promise that if there were several girls the
eldest should be adopted by her aunt, wife to a clergyman and childless.
The two homes were a great contrast: the one kept in absolute order and
great refinement, with music and flowers the constant delight and
occupation, and the single adopted child trained up in all the precision
of the household; while the other was a house of joyous freedom, kept
under the needful restraints of sound religious principle, discipline
and unselfishness. The story went that when the children were asked how
many of them there were, they answered, "One young lady and eight little
girls." Mrs. Collinson used to say, that if she ever saw any signs that
her "one young lady" was either pining for companionship, or growing
spoilt by the position, she would recall her at once; but the child was
always happy and obedient, and pleased to impart her accomplishments to
her sisters, who admired without jealousy. Comical adventures are
recorded in the "Valley," such as when the whole train of little
damsels, walking out under the convoy of Julia and a young nurserymaid,
encountered a bull, which had lifted a gate on its horns. The maid
thrust the baby into Julia's arms and ran away, while her charges
retired into a ditch, the elder ones not much alarmed, because, as they
said, the bull could not hurt them with the gate on its horns. It passed
safely by them; but the little ones confessed to having been dreadfully
frightened by a snail in the ditch, "which put out its horns like a
little Kerry cow," and it creeped and it creeped!
One incident in their early childhood was the rioting that pervaded the
collieries in the years immediately following the great French war. Mr.
Collinson, being a magistrate, was called upon to accompany the dragoons
in order to read the Riot Act. He thus left his family unprotected; but
the seven thousand pitmen never touched the Rectory, and, according to
the "Valley," replied courteously to two of the children, who rushed out
to the top of the Cinder Tip, begging to know whether they had seen "our
papa" and if he was safe.
There was another sadder episode, related also with much feeling, though
a little altered, for it concerned the second son, not the eldest (then
the only son) as described. A blow from a cricket ball did irreparable
mischief to his knee, and it was suddenly decreed that amputation was
necessary, long before the days of chloroform. The father was away from
home, the mother sentenced not to be present, and the doctors consented
that Julia should hold the patient's hand, smooth his hair, and try to
tell him stories through the operation. It was successfully and bravely
carried out, but the evil was not removed, and a few weeks later this
much-loved boy was taken away. The circumstances, very beautiful and
consoling, are given in the story; and there too is told how, before
sunset on that sad day, the ninth little daughter was given, and
struggled hard for the vigorous life she afterwards attained.
The "Parson's man" said one day, when his mistress, for once in her
life, indulged in a sigh that her garden could never rival that of her
sister, "We've got the finer flowers, ma'am."
Education was not the tyrannical care in those days that it is at
present, and the young people obtained it partly through their parents,
some at school, and some by the help of their grandmother and their
aunt, but mostly by their own intelligence and exertions; and the family
income was augmented by Mr. Collinson taking pupils. He had a fair
private income; he had a curate, and was able to give a good education
to his sons, one of whom made himself a name as Admiral Collinson, one
of the Arctic explorers. If there were anxieties, they did not tell upon
the children, whose memories reflect little save sunshine.
* * * * *
At nineteen, Julia Collinson became the wife of Walter de Winton,
Esquire, of Maedlwch Castle, Radnorshire; but after only twelve years
was left a widow, with two sons and a daughter. Her life was devoted to
making their home as bright and joyous as her own had been; and it was
only in the loneliness that ensued on the children going to school that
her authorship commenced, with a child's book called "The Lonely
Island."
Later she wrote "The Valley of the Hundred Fires," tracing the habits,
characters and the destiny of the family of Gateshead. The father was by
this time dead, and extracts from his sermons and diary appear; but
"Emily," the mother, is the real heroine of the whole narrative, and
though there is so little plot that it hardly deserves the name of
novel, there is a wonderful charm in the delineation. There are a few
descriptions of manners and of dresses which are amusing; nor must we
omit the portrait of the grandmother, Mrs. King (called Reine in the
book), daughter to the governor of one of the colonies in America before
the separation, with the manners of her former princess-ship and
something of the despotism. She was a friend of Hannah More, a
beneficent builder of schools, and produced a revolt by herself cutting
the hair of all the scholars!
"The Queen of the County" relates Mrs. de Winton's experiences of
elections among "the stormy hills of Wales" in the early days of the
Reform Bill. "Margaret and her Bridesmaids" draws more upon invention.
Each of two young girls, through the injudiciousness of her parents, has
married the _wrong_ person. Margaret acquiesces too much in her
husband's indolence, and when herself roused to the perception of duty
tries in vain to recover lost ground. Her friend Lottie is a
high-spirited little soul, determined to do her duty as a wife, but not
to pretend the love she does not feel, till it has been won. She is
rather provokingly and unnaturally perfect, especially as she is only
seventeen, always knowing when to obey up to the letter in a manner
which must so have "riled" her husband that his persistent love is
hardly credible, though it shows itself in attempts to isolate her, so
that she shall have no resource save himself. His endeavours bring upon
him heart complaint, whereof he dies, under her tender care, though she
never affects to be grief-stricken. Only, as Margaret has lost her
husband about the same time in a yachting accident, Lottie refuses to
listen to the addresses of a former lover of Margaret's until she is
convinced both that her friend will never form another attachment and
that the original passion she had inspired is absolutely dead. There is
a good deal of character in the story, though overdrawn, and it has
survived so as to call for a new edition.
* * * * *
To her children, as well as to her many nephews and nieces, Mrs. de
Winton was a charming companion-mother, always fresh, young, vigorous
and as full of playfulness as the Julia who led the band of little
sisters. When all her children were grown up, in 1858, she married
Richard William Stretton, who had been their guardian and an intimate
friend of the family, by whom he was much beloved. He died in 1868, and
Mrs. Stretton followed him on the 17th of July 1878, leaving behind her
one of the brightest of memories. Her books are emphatically herself in
their liveliness, their tenderness, their fond enshrining of the past.
The third of our group had an even more eventless life, and, instead of
letting her imagination dwell on her own past, she studied the women of
past history, and realised what they must have felt and thought in the
scenes where most of them figure only as names. Her father belonged to
the higher professional class, and lived with his large family, of whom
Anne was the eldest, at the Paragon, Chelsea, where at eight years old
Anne listened to the crash of the carriages, when the Bourbons were on
their return to France, and witnessed the ecstasy of London on the visit
of the Allied Sovereigns after Waterloo.
With the help of masters for special accomplishments, the daughters had
the best of educations, namely, the stimulating influence of their
father, an accomplished man, for whom they practised their music, wrote
their themes, went out star-gazing, and studied astronomy, listening
with delight to his admirable reading of Scott or Shakspere; they also
had the absolute freedom of an extensive library. Anne Manning was
pronounced to be no genius, but a most diligent, industrious girl; as
indeed was proved, for, becoming convinced during the brief reign of a
good governess of the duty of solid reading, she voluntarily read from
the age of fourteen ten pages a day of real, if dry, history,
persevering year after year, and thus unconsciously laying in a good
foundation for her future work.
For health's sake the family went into the country, where they became
tenants of a tumble-down Cistercian priory on the borders of Salisbury
Plain. The numerous girls, with their mother and governess, lived there
constantly; the father coming down as often as his business would allow,
almost always by the Saturday coach, to spend Sunday. Here the first
literary venture was made, when Anne was about seventeen. It was a short
dialogue on a serious subject, which a young aunt managed to get
accepted in St. Paul's Churchyard; and, as Miss Manning candidly avows,
was so well advertised privately by her fond grandfather that--such were
the palmy days of authorship--five hundred copies brought her in a
profit of L60.
The story, "Village Belles," was completed at Tenby, the Priory having
become too ruinous for habitation. It was put into the hands of Baldwin
and Cradock, and no proofs were sent till the whole of the two first
volumes came together. It was introduced to Mr. Manning thus, "Papa, I
don't know what you will say, but I have been writing a story."
"Ho! ho! ho!" was his first answer, but he afterwards said, "My dear, I
like your story very much"--and never again referred to it.
Her own after judgment was that it was an "incurably young,
inexperienced tale which, after all top dressing, remained but daisied
meadow grass."
Sorrow came in to fill the minds of the family (to the exclusion of mere
fictitious interests) in the deaths within short intervals of two of the
sisters, and their mother's invalidism, ending, within a few years, in
her death. After this the winters were spent by the three sisters at the
Paragon, the summers in a cottage at Penshurst, their father coming down
for the Sunday. Anne Manning, meantime, was pursuing studies in painting
and was an excellent amateur artist. She was also a botanist, and this
has much to do with her accuracy in writing details of country life and
habits.
* * * * *
Dates, alas! are wanting both in her own "Passages in the life of an
Authoress," and in the recollections of her kind and affectionate
biographer, Mrs. Batty; but it seems to have been in 1849 that her
"Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell," at first written to amuse
herself and her sisters, and afterwards sent to assist a brother in
Australia, who was starting a local magazine, was given to the editor
of "Sharpe's Magazine," then in its early youth.
It made her fame. Nobody had particularly thought of Milton in his
domestic capacity before, except as having advocated divorce and made
his daughters read Greek to him, and it was reserved for Miss Manning to
make the wife paint her own portrait as the lively, eager girl, happy in
country freedom with her brothers, important with her "housewife-skep"
in her mother's absence, pleased with dress, but touched by the
beautiful countenance and the sudden admiration of the strange visitor.
There proves to be a debt which makes her marriage with him convenient
to the father, and it is carried out in spite of the mother's strong
objections, alike to the suitor's age, his politics, and his puritanism.
We go along with the country girl in her disappointment and sense of
dreariness in her unaccustomed London life, in the staid and serious
household, where she sorely misses her brothers and is soon condemned
for love of junketing. Then come her joy in her visit to her home at
Forest Hill and her reluctance to return, fortified by her father's
disapproval of Milton's opinions. By the time that a visit to some wise
relatives has brought her to a better mind and to yearning after her
husband, Milton has taken offence and has put forth his plea for
divorce, which so angers her father that he will not hear of her
return; nor does she go back till after many months and the surrender of
Oxford, when on her own impulse she hurries to London, meets her husband
unexpectedly, and when he "looks down on her with goodness and sweetness
'tis like the sun's gleams shining after rain."
There Mary Powell's journal ends. It is written in beautiful English,
such as might well have been contemporary and could only have been
acquired by familiarity with the writers of the period, flowing along
without effort or pedantry so as to be a really successful imitation. It
crept into separate publication anonymously, and achieved a great
success, being in fact the first of many books imitating the like style
of autobiography; nor has it ever been allowed to drop into oblivion. It
was followed up after a time by "Deborah's Diary," being the record
supposed to be kept by Milton's one faithful and dutiful daughter, who
lived with him in his old age.